Retribution (35 page)

Ranulf, the guards and Katrina were all
introduced, at which point Clara came to our rescue, whisking us
off upstairs to show me the suite Dominic and I would occupy. We
were fortunate indeed in our quarters. It was the manor’s finest
accommodation, a large bedroom with its own bathroom, kept ready
for the sudden arrival of noble guests. Jana was thrilled to learn
she would share a bed with one of the daughters of the household,
as Katrina would with a female servant. Clara, apparently
anticipating that we might bring along an unmarried young lady, had
prepared a small room for Naomi to have all to herself.

In a tedious and unavoidable ritual of
hospitality, as Katrina stood right beside me, Clara returned to
volunteer the maid services of a household woman. I thanked my
hostess and declined the offer as required, and was then free to
remove the mud-flecked riding clothes, wash the worst of it off my
face and put on the one indoor gown that would do for the rest of
my stay. Katrina helped me and Jana in our changes, then did the
same for herself.

Back downstairs, Naomi, Katrina, Jana and I
were pulled into the pre-dinner circle. A drink was pressed into my
hand and I was given a choice seat near the fire while the table
was readied.

Jana fit in easily with the large family. She
found a girl her own size, no doubt a couple of years older, and
admired her doll without enthusiasm. “I have a doll too,” she said.
“But she stayed home with the baby. He was afraid to travel.”

Our host had already been won over. “But
you’re not, Lady Jana,” Sir Nicholas said, quick to understand her
meaning. He was not as thick as he took pains to appear, a fact I
ought to have learned from our past encounters.

“No,” Jana said. “I helped capture a
bandit.”

Dominic turned at his daughter’s words.
“Cherie,” he said, “it is impolite to brag, especially of one’s
bravest deeds.” He smiled and winked so Jana would know he wasn’t
angry and was only following the convention that dictates how
parents must speak to their children in front of other adults.

“Oho!” Sir Nicholas boomed. I was going to
have to keep my distance from that loud voice or my hearing might
not be so acute by the time we returned home. “We have an Amazon in
our midst!”

Our host’s joking words annoyed Dominic. He
turned his cold gaze on Sir Nicholas, looked him up and down like a
cadet who had turned out for parade with his tunic unbuttoned and
his weapon rusted, and dismissed him. “No,” Dominic said, “we do
not.”

We were called in to dinner before anything
could come of this snub. I was seated, as custom decreed, next to
Sir Nicholas, Dominic with Clara. Perhaps because Niall was absent,
Naomi had no partner and was given a place at the end of the high
table where she sat in regal silence, eating quickly and neatly and
observing the rest of us through her green eyes that missed
little.

The first half of the meal passed pleasantly
enough. The food was excellent, not so different from what we would
serve at Aranyi, although with less variety and more reliance on
seasonal crops. The conversation was general and light, ranging
from the weather and the conditions of the fields and herds to
rumors of marriages in the making, gossip from the city and court,
and the amusing behavior of the Terrans. Parents and children,
servants and guests, all participated equally or not, as they
chose. As time went on, however, we began to separate into our
designated pairs.

Apart from his loudness, my host was an easy
partner. I could eat while he talked, rarely required to give an
answer or speak myself. I listened, as I had no choice, to his
accounts of his lands’ yields, his theories on childrearing, and
his pride in the match he had made for Nichola with the eldest son
of a smallholder in the Lao Realm, far to the southeast. “Better to
be the lady in charge of a manor than a hanger-on of ‘Graven,
married to a younger son, or worse, a companion, always under the
thumb of the wife.” I saw the look of triumph he directed at
Dominic. “Titles and rank aren’t worth selling one’s children into
glorified slavery for, sons or daughters.”

A strange man, Niall’s father, in awe of his
‘Graven guests but determined not to cringe and fawn. Admirable in
a way, and I could sense no real hostility in him. He was standing
up for himself and for his kind: the gentry, the manor lords and
farmers, who had held on steadfastly to the Eclipsian ways while so
many of the ‘Graven had abandoned them, unable to produce heirs,
unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices in the face of Terran
encroachments. If the seminaries were slowly rebuilding their
population of students and sibyls, it was thanks to Sir Nicholas
and his fellow gentry, fertile and gifted and willing to dedicate
some of their offspring to a noble servitude. Dominic and Sir
Nicholas had more in common than either seemed likely to admit,
each determined that the interests of his class and the old world
of Eclipsis they represented must override personal
considerations.

I smiled around a mouthful of roast fowl and
nodded assent to my host’s opinions on marriage. “So, ‘Gravina.”
Sir Nicholas’s voice was softer now, almost low enough that a
person in the upstairs bedroom might not catch every word. “I
assume you keep the household accounts, like my good wife.”

I nodded again, uneasily. It was the custom
in most landed families for the wife to manage the finances, since
the husband was likely to be too active in farming or military
pursuits to keep up the day-to-day familiarity that good
bookkeeping requires.

Sir Nicholas had taken the answer for granted
and moved ahead to the point of the inquiry. “How many acres would
you say Aranyi encompasses, freehold and rent, farm, pasture and
forest?”

The question caught me totally off guard. I
had thought we were making innocuous dinner-table conversation and
saw that I had in fact been suckered into something very much like
the marriage negotiation we had used to gain entry. I glanced
furtively at Dominic for support, but he was engrossed in
conversation with Clara and did not acknowledge my silent call for
guidance.

Sir Nicholas took my lack of answer for
caginess. “I understand,” he said with a salesman’s false warmth.
“Don’t like to put all your cards on the table at once. “How about
this. I’ll give you an estimate of what I think and you can simply
tell me whether I’m close. Is that fair?”

There were more brains behind that handsome,
bluff exterior than I’d imagined or taken the trouble to look. It
was a little late now to organize my thoughts to adapt to this new
information so I fell back on the appearance of sagacious silence,
nodding yet a third time, not fooling my host one bit.

Sir Nicholas named a figure—amazingly
accurate. He didn’t need any words from me to know he’d hit it on
the head. “Good,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, to
show I’m not trying to force you to expose yourself unilaterally,
I’ll tell you straight out that Galloway has at best a tenth of
that, maybe closer to a twentieth. Still, it’s valuable land, more
pasture and forest than farm, I grant, but the location, on the far
northern border, means it provides a very important service to
Margrave Aranyi, wouldn’t you agree?”

I felt my mouth hanging open with a load of
half-chewed grilled vegetables in it and made an effort to swallow.
“Sir Nicholas,” I said, once I could speak, “neither Margrave
Aranyi nor I have ever disparaged Galloway—”

Sir Nicholas raised his hand. “My lady,” he
said, “It may not seem like much to you, but Galloway is a good
holding, a respectable holding, and it’s been in my family—well, as
long as Aranyi has been in your husband’s family. And for most of
that time Galloway has been independent. Loyal to Aranyi as the
power in the region, but by choice, not by force. And what keeps
it? What keeps it intact, viable and loyal?”

“People,” I said coming up with the lamest of
guesses. “People to do the work.”

Sir Nicholas laughed like heavy artillery
opening a battle across a valley. “That’s right, my lady. And not
just any people. A son. A son to carry on when his father’s dead or
too old to manage.”

I recalled our first encounter, before my
marriage, when I had been tempted to spend a festival night with
him, as Sir Nicholas studied my face and body, more with
crypta
than with his eyes. This was a very masculine
personality, intelligent and direct, and he knew what Dominic would
be within his rights to do should I feel the least bit insulted.
Sir Nicholas’s gift was not as strong as his wife’s, but it was
perfectly adequate to the task of assessing the qualities of a
dinner companion. He learned what he needed to know, that I was
over forty and unlikely to have any more children. “You have a son,
my lady, do you not? And Margrave Aranyi, he has also a
natural-born son?”

I could think of Struan more easily now and
agreed with what I thought was casual indifference.

Sir Nicholas picked up on my residual
discomfort. “Now, now,” he said. “A man’s a man, as you well know.
You can’t blame your husband for something he did before his
marriage, for wanting to keep his property in his family. And you
made sure to put your own claim in.” He winked at me with
respect.

He had just recapitulated, crudely and
concisely, Dominic’s and my argument of two days ago. “But see
here.” Sir Nicholas was serious again, and no longer genial. He
dropped the mask of the jolly host, letting the shrewdness and the
toughness show as he looked over toward his wife where she chatted
comfortably with Dominic. “My Clara and I have been able to get
only the one son. We were lucky the first time, but it’s been girls
ever since.”

I said something sympathetic that made no
impression.

“I don’t like to see her wearing herself down
like this, every two or three years another one,” Sir Nicholas said
almost softly, so that Clara might not hear. “And if we didn’t know
the facts, that it’s the man’s seed that makes the sex, I’d try to
get a natural-born son of my own, with her blessing. But that’s the
way it is, I’m a father of daughters—all of them smart,
good-looking. I’ve no fault to find with them.” He smiled, as if to
show he had nothing against the female sex. “Still, it’s Niall
who’ll inherit Galloway, Niall who must bring his own bride home to
give me a grandson.”

What has this to do with me?
It was on
the tip of my tongue to ask the foolish question but I bit it back
in time. Sir Nicholas had learned something else when he studied me
a few minutes ago, more than just my age and that I resented
Dominic’s natural-born son: that I wanted Niall to return with us
to Aranyi as much as Dominic did; that I was not an ally in the
parents’ desire to see this relationship ended.

Sir Nicholas lowered his head along with his
voice, speaking in a soothing tone, intimacy without the intrusion
of telepathic communion. “I’ve said it before—I don’t mind this
vir
stuff, did it myself when I was young, we all do. If
Niall wants to call himself Margrave Aranyi’s companion the rest of
his life, that’s his choice. But Galloway needs Galloways to keep
it. And until Niall can ensure the safety of Galloway, provide for
the continuity of the line, he won’t be going anywhere with you—you
or your smooth-talking lord of a husband.”

He sat back in triumph at my speechless
shock, having trumped any cards I might have held or laid on the
table. I remembered another incident from that Midwinter festival
when Val was three months old, nursing on demand so that I carried
him around with me most of the time. Dominic and Niall had been
lovers only a few days. Madly, passionately in love, they could
hardly keep their hands off each other even in front of parents and
guests. Conversation is difficult at these large parties but I had
spoken briefly with Sir Nicholas. He’d had more than a few too many
and was trying, with what had seemed like avuncular kindness, to
reassure me as to the seriousness of Dominic’s and Niall’s
relationship.

“Only a little harmless buggery,” he’d said.
“Didn’t hurt me any at Niall’s age. Military Academy, all boys and
men together, that’s how it starts. Marriage ends it, man finds out
there’s nothing like his wife’s warm, wet little—” He’d looked down
then, seen Val suckling at my breast, and nearly had a fit,
coughing and choking, remembering whom he was talking to and that
marriage hadn’t ended it for my husband. But I had liked Sir
Nicholas the more for his openness and lack of pretense. His wife
had the brains, or so I’d thought then, not allowing for the
effects of the drink.

There wasn’t much I could say now. Dinner was
coming to an end. The last courses had been brought in, passed
around and removed untouched by me while Sir Nicholas had educated
me on the ways of the gentry and executed his surprise attack on
the wife of his son’s potential abductor. I made one feeble attempt
to defend my side. “But it’s up to Niall, surely. He’s an adult and
can decide for himself—”

Sir Nicholas slammed his hand down on the
trestle table, making the dishes rattle. Drops of wine rose
straight up out of my recently-refilled goblet and plopped back
down again. “By the balls of Erebos!” he roared. “I haven’t said
one word that Niall wouldn’t say himself if he were here. Say it to
your face and to Margrave Aranyi too! Whatever that husband of
yours did to drive him back home, he did him a favor. Niall knows
where his duty lies, knows what matters in the long run. And it’s
not some kind of boys’ romance, or butt-fucking, or whatever it is
he got at Aranyi!”

Dominic was on his feet with the noise and
the offensive words, but it was Clara who took the initiative.
While living with Sir Nicholas for twenty-some years had left her
impervious to most shouts, bellows and booms, she could recognize
excess in her husband’s words, if not his voice. “Nicholas!
‘Gravina Aranyi is our guest. There’s no need to roar in her face
like a mad bull.”