Retribution (29 page)

The eclipse came late this day, early in its
backward weekly cycle. We stood with lowered eyelids, lifting our
faces to its invisible power, hidden behind the clouds. Ranulf
turned his back out of respect while Dominic and I murmured the
call-and-response of the invocations to the sun gods and goddesses.
I felt the full spectrum, the energy that powers our gift, bending
around the edge of the corona and into my mind.

Dominic had stated the most important fact
yesterday. He said he fought every day against his cruel
compulsions. That was why I admired him, for his moral labors
against the flaws in his nature, and why Reynaldo had disgusted me,
despite their similarities. Whatever Dominic might say about our
physical communion that drew us together, I knew there was an
element of choice in it, at least for me. It was, ironically, what
Dominic had said in his demonic incarnation as the torturer, that
men have moral choices they can make. Being such a good man was a
struggle for Dominic, tougher for him than for many a less complex,
less interesting man with few weaknesses. Dominic fought his own
just war every day of his life—a hard slog most of those days—and I
loved him for it.

The moon’s shadow moved away from the hidden
sun to give us the remaining hour of daylight. The charcoal had
burned down to white cinders, the stones of the fireplace glowing
red-hot in the twilight, as the bones lost their shape and turned
to ash. As they drifted upward in the smoke, floating across the
valley below, the oppressiveness of the last weeks lifted from me.
Dominic felt it too. I could sense the lightness in him, the return
of hope, of pleasure, of love.

We shoveled the last of Reynaldo out over the
land he had coveted, that had produced him and had reclaimed him,
nor did we grudge him his resting place. After making sure the fire
was completely extinguished, the hearth covered with earth, we
remounted almost gaily in the dusk and rode slowly down the
trail.

When we dismounted inside the castle gates,
Dominic embraced Ranulf before the older man had a chance to
retreat. “Thank you, old friend,” Dominic said. “You have eased a
difficult journey for me.”

Ranulf’s arms seemed to close around his
master’s slim body without his knowledge or consent. Cheek to
cheek, the two men swayed, holding onto a moment that would likely
never come again. When the men separated, Ranulf’s eyes glittered
with what looked like tears in the torchlight. “You are home safe
now, my lord,” he said. “You and your good lady.” He bowed to me
and was gone through the entrance to warmth and supper within.

Dominic and I lingered in the darkness of the
courtyard. It was cold now that night had closed in, the reminder
that this was not, after all, high summer, but the prelude to
winter. The first of the evening’s icy rain began drizzling down,
misting my uncovered hair and dampening our clothes. Still we did
not go in. We stood in an embrace more awkward than Dominic’s with
Ranulf, Dominic so tall, my head squashed against his chest midway
up his shirtfront. There was something delightful in the
strangeness of it, alone in the courtyard, anonymous in the dark.
“We’re free now, Amalie,” Dominic whispered to the blackness over
my head.

We slunk in at last like delinquent children
in our ruined clothes, late for supper, needing a bath. There was a
muffled roar of voices, a rush of excitement, the press of bodies.
The entire staff of Aranyi was lined up in the entrance, extending
into the great hall, welcoming us home and congratulating us on
work well done. It had taken us a while to accept our
responsibility, but once we did we had not sloughed it off with a
trick of
crypta
. No, we had done work everybody could
comprehend. Like any plowman or kitchen maid we had
mucked
in
, gotten our hands dirty, used our muscles and our sweat. And
like the stable hands and farmers we had mucked out the sty in the
dungeon.

Nothing much was said, only a few words of
thanks, while we picked up the thoughts of gratitude from all
around us. In our muddy clothes, I in my shameful breeches and
shirt, we were passed along the lengthy gantlet of respect and
love.

Upstairs, undressing for my bath, I
discovered that my period, its schedule disrupted by the upheavals
of the last month, had returned in force. Isobel’s younger son
would never wear these breeches, I thought, consigning the ruined
garment to the scrap pile. I had a brief, silly moment of regret,
although I had not planned to keep it, knowing that the potential
child, the one Dominic and I had started the night I sang, would
never exist.

Dominic came in while I was drying myself. He
took the towel from me, picked me up and carried me into the
Margrave’s bedroom. “I’m bleeding, Dominic.” It was a typical first
day, thick gobs of blood and glop emerging at intervals like the
eruptions of an unhealed wound.

“There’s nothing wrong with a little
bloodshed in a good cause.” Dominic, so fastidious in most things,
had never minded this. To him, the period was the best proof there
would be no more surprises like Val.

He laid me down on the bed, leapt lithely to
rest on hands and knees above me without actually landing on me,
and kissed my mouth, then my neck, then my breasts. He dabbled his
hand in the sticky redness between my legs, touched the tip of one
finger to his tongue and made a face. “Not as good as what comes
out here,” he said, squeezing a nipple. “But better than the
alternative.” Pregnancy, he meant.

I pulled Dominic’s face closer, arched my
back to raise my breasts to his mouth, spread my legs and lifted
them to lock around his waist. We were in the full communion now,
ready for the physical oneness that was merely our bodies’
representation of what our minds had already accomplished. Dominic
was hard, holding back with difficulty; there would be no prolonged
foreplay tonight.
My love
, I thought to him,
my lord
husband.

Nothing happened. My legs quivered and
lowered. A blood clot oozed out, followed the path of least
resistance, meandering into the crack of my ass. Dominic rolled
onto his back. The moment passed as quickly as it had come. We
released each other, lay panting side by side, looking into each
other’s eyes.

Communion imposes a discipline of its own, an
honesty that is absolute. There was no escaping the truth. “Niall,”
I said. “You must try to convince Niall to forgive you.” There
could be no real marriage for me and my
vir
husband without
his companion. If I was Dominic’s second self, the completion of
him in a unique communion, Niall was his true love, the more
conventional kind of partner that a man chooses.

Dominic rammed the headboard with a fist,
furious at the predicament we were in, that had just been so
cruelly illustrated. There was no warning from Dominic’s mind of
his sudden act of temper; I jumped at the loud thud and the shaking
of the bed, gasping at the snaking trail of white-hot pain that
traveled up Dominic’s arm, and mine, in our communion. The heavy
wood was still shuddering while Dominic shook his hand out and
sucked the bruised knuckles. “I can’t, Amalie. We’ve been all over
that.”

“But maybe,” I said, “now that things have
been resolved, he’ll sense it himself. He might be willing to
listen to what you have to say, to give you a chance.”

“No, Amalie,” Dominic said. He caressed my
arm that ached with his injury, sucked my knuckles that burned with
the force of his blow. “But his parents might.” A calculating smile
animated his face, making him look more sinister than ever.
“Galloway would be obligated to consider a formal proposal from
Aranyi. They’d have to call truce long enough to negotiate an offer
of marriage.”

D
ominic planned the approach
to Galloway as he would any other military campaign.
“Reconnaissance saves lives,” he said as we prepared for the first
step, apologizing to the musicians. Traveling entertainers are
often entrusted with messages to deliver, both official and
clandestine. These men might be useful, provided they could be
brought over to our side.

‘Graven or not, what Dominic had done to the
musicians was a serious offense. Musicians and all professional
entertainers enjoy a protected status, their persons sacred, like
priests. It was the reason this pair traveled throughout the
‘Graven Realms without guards, just the two of them, relying on
their own skill as swordsmen to defend themselves from bandits and
thieves. They had not suspected that by serving their muse inside
the walls of Aranyi Fortress they would face a worse threat than
any they might have encountered on the trail.

Dominic had written the men a letter of
recommendation, so that they would no longer have to roam from
house to house, begging in kitchens, unsure of their reception.
With this letter in circulation, signed in Dominic’s own hand and
sealed with the distinctive Aranyi crest, people would be clamoring
for the men’s appearance. They would be able to choose where to
work, and when. Their future was secure, for the rest of their
lives.

The letter was composed and copied out in
Dominic’s secretary’s clear script and sent in for the musicians’
perusal. They would have final say over the wording. But a personal
apology was unavoidable and I accompanied Dominic to their room to
make the attempt. Dominic should not have to bear full
responsibility for the acts of that terrible night. It was
important to me, after all I had learned of Dominic’s family and
his past, that the men should understand something of the truth;
that what had happened had been, if not exactly my fault, at least
instigated by my insistence that they perform the excerpt from the
Iliad.

The two men were almost completely recovered
by now, Naomi having done her usual meticulous job of healing. The
blond lutist, who had suffered the concussion, was sitting up,
picking at the strings of his instrument, composing a tune, going
over a phrase that didn’t seem quite right. The piper, whose
shoulder had been damaged, stood by the bedside of his companion,
playing the harmony. Dominic’s letter lay open on the table.

The lutist raised his eyebrows in a haughty
inquiry at Dominic’s knock on the open door. The piper scowled in a
most unfriendly manner. Dominic stepped forward, tall and graceful,
and asked permission to speak.

“It is your house, Margrave,” the blond
said.

Dominic was at his most charming. “No,” he
said, “in this room, you are the masters, I am the intruder.”

“Very pretty,” the piper said. “Say what you
have to say.” His own injury almost forgotten, he had the fierce
anger that comes from love, his concern for the insult and the
injury to his companion outweighing any explanation Dominic might
offer.

Dominic spoke succinctly and humbly. He did
not make a great show of remorse or attempt histrionics of grief.
“There is no excuse for my behavior,” he said, reciting the mantra
of the ‘Graven Military Academy. (No excuse,
sir!
a cadet
would shout when reprimanded for some minor infraction by an
officer.) “I can only hope that my letter affords you some
practical assistance, as atonement.”

Coming from Dominic it was irresistible. A
man would have to have a heart of stone to be unmoved by the real
sorrow obvious in my husband’s deep throb of a voice, his
consciousness of the effect he created only adding to his appeal.
The lutist was but flesh and blood. “Margrave Aranyi,” he said, a
smile creasing his thin face, “such a letter is most generous, but
we can accept it only if it reflects your honest assessment of our
abilities, freely given.”

One man, at least, was in Dominic’s hands,
the other sure to follow soon enough, so I added my little bit to
the plea and prepared to leave. “I am as much to blame as my
husband. It was thoughtless of me, and insensitive, encouraging you
to sing a piece that has such painful associations for Margrave
Aranyi.”

“Oh yes?” The lutist sensed an interesting
story.

I excused myself and turned to the door while
Dominic’s glassy eyes stabbed between my shoulder blades. “My wife
is not always the most discreet of women.” He knew I was not out of
earshot and had waited only long enough for me to be out of sight
to take his revenge with a show of propriety.

Out in the corridor I clacked my sandals
along the stone floor, slipped them off and tiptoed back barefoot.
I knew that Dominic could not be at his ease with these men in his
wife’s presence. There was no point in using
crypta
—Dominic
would discover me in his mind instantly and block me out.

As I returned to stand outside the door the
men were laughing over some remark of Dominic’s. “Women!” the
lutist said. I could visualize him tossing his long mane of
hair.

“What would you know of women?” The piper
teased his companion.

“More than you,” the lutist said.

There was a pause. “Please, my lord, there is
no need to say anything.” It was the lutist again, about to ask a
favor. How he guessed at Dominic’s musical ability I don’t know,
but I think my husband is renowned in certain circles for more than
his swordsmanship. “I would appreciate your help with something.
I’ve been working on this for two days now and I can’t get it
right.”

He strummed introductory chords, then picked
out the melody, singing a few phrases of a love song. “Tall and
slender as a young sapling, the muscles ripple under your skin like
a field of grain in the wind.” The beloved was not a woman, I
guessed, nor was the lover, the singer of the song. “Go on,” the
blond said to his companion, “play your harmony.”

Dominic was silent, listening. When he heard
the part in question he must have made some kind of sign. The music
stopped abruptly. “What about this?” he asked. Then he did
something that shocked me: he sang. He repeated the song perfectly,
exactly as he had heard it only once, and when he reached the
unfinished section he changed it, all without missing a beat, even
fitting the words to the new notes.