Retribution (37 page)

“Did you never try to arrange a marriage for
Niall?” I asked. If Clara had shared her other secrets so freely,
this one shouldn’t be difficult. It seems counterintuitive, but
telepaths often marry a partner chosen by their parents or a
marriage broker. Most parents want their child to be happy and work
hard to find a compatible partner. When the match is made
carefully, the young newlyweds usually form an affectionate, even
loving communion soon enough.

“We spoke of it, Nicholas and I,” Clara said,
obviously finding the memory painful. “But we’re not insensitive.
We could feel Niall’s aversion, the physical distaste and worse,
the mental revulsion at the thought of such intimacy with an
unknown woman, and we couldn’t do it. Force him, I mean.” She
studied me, much as her husband had at dinner, but more thoroughly,
having no need to fear Dominic’s jealous wrath as a man would. “You
did it. You and Margrave Aranyi. You married, despite his–
preferences.”

“It was luck,” I said, “an attraction of
crypta
.” It no longer frightened me to admit the truth.
“Dominic wouldn’t have given me a second thought—or look—whatever
his duty to Aranyi, if there hadn’t been that connection between
us.” The memory suggested a hopeful aspect. “And I think a man
becomes– can become– more, shall we say, flexible with age.
Margrave Aranyi was over forty when we married and—”

“Well over,” Clara said. She lowered her
eyelids, inner and outer, in a sign of disdain she could not
control.

I stared at the woman, lowering my own inner
eyelids in defense. Dominic was about five years older than me, an
insignificant difference given his health and condition. Forty-one
or -two was not so unusual an age for a man to marry, even here.
Why was Clara exaggerating things?
Of course
—whether or not
Clara had overheard Naomi’s awful prophecy she didn’t want Niall to
wait so long, to press his luck and gamble on the future of
Galloway for another twenty years.

But Dominic had gambled. Dominic had faced
the same problem as Niall, ten or twenty times worse, as Aranyi was
a greater holding than Galloway: an entire Realm, not one freehold
manor. The pressure on Dominic must have been so much worse, yet
Dominic had solved his problem, first with a woman I knew nothing
about, not even her name, years ago, when Dominic was little older
than Niall, then with Lady Melanie after his first son died.
Dominic had kept himself free, fathering two sons without taking on
the responsibilities of marriage. Marrying me had been an act of
love, with no thoughts of property or inheritance, as the argument
over Val had proved.

Niall need not marry at all, as both his
father and his mother had suggested.
Father a son
, they had
said. Marriage would be ideal, but the purpose of it was to produce
the heir. If Niall wished to return to Aranyi, and could find a
willing woman—and if he had better luck than his father—he might
have a boy he could acknowledge, make his heir. Everybody, parents
and companion, could be satisfied with that outcome.

“I will do what I can.” I answered Clara’s
earlier request. Woman to woman, mother to mother, we had measured
the other and discovered one small area of agreement. “But I think
it’s out of my hands.” If the problem was so easily solved Niall
would have done it himself, without waiting for the intercession of
parents and lover’s family.

Clara’s voice took on some genuine warmth.
“You have already helped us, my lady. You brought that woman.”

What woman?
I almost asked. “Oh,
Naomi.” I explained about the
crypta
cell, the need to find
ore for the miners.

“But surely you could have appealed for help
from a seminary?” Clara was puzzled. “You trained at La Sapienza.
You are ‘Gravina Aranyi. It is a reasonable request.”

Reasonable or not, it had never occurred to
me. The thought of begging help from the place where I had been
such a notable failure, the kind of place in which Dominic also,
many years ago, had been less than successful, was abhorrent to me.
“No,” I said, “it is our problem, to solve as best we can.”

Clara accepted my answer with polite
skepticism and returned to the subject of Naomi. “Nevertheless, I
am glad she is here. She is not the bride we might have chosen for
Niall, but I see she is gifted and, I think, not uninterested in
our son.”

I had never considered the question one way
or the other. “If she is,” I said, “I promise that it will be
Niall’s decision, not my husband’s, whether he is interested in
her.”
Little chance of that
. Niall had lived in the same
house with her for a year and a half, with nothing passing between
them beyond the necessary words of courtesy at meals.

Clara smiled and moved away, having
accomplished her mission. She and her husband had said what they
must. The remainder of the visit could follow a more conventional
pattern now that the phony marriage offer had been disposed of. I
rejoined the feminine conversation, unable to focus on any of it,
and was relieved when Dominic and Nicholas returned from the
stables. Dominic had the look of some soldiers I had seen in images
from Terran history, survivors of an early mechanized war suffering
from what was called “shellshock.”

The rest of the long afternoon dragged by as
Sir Nicholas, with encouragement from Clara, teased out the story
of my ambush, captivity and rescue. Since Niall was not here,
Dominic and I felt free to boast of his heroics while minimizing
our own.

I had looked forward to the chance to praise
Niall in front of his family, to let them see how important a role
he had played in my rescue. Now, after all I had learned, I was
uneasy, wishing there was some way to change the subject. The whole
story simply reinforced his parents’ viewpoint. Everything Niall
had done—going in alone to negotiate with the bandits, leading the
force against the arrow assault to batter down the door, his valor
in the battle that followed and his capture of Reynaldo—proved that
Niall had risked his life, put himself in mortal danger many times,
all for a woman who was another man’s wife, for children who were
not his. Niall’s heroism had been the devotion of a man for his
lover. He had behaved like Dominic’s sworn companion, not like the
unmarried, childless heir to Galloway.

There was one moment of distraction. At the
revelation of the bows and arrows Sir Nicholas went silent, his
eyes straying to the antique hunting bow and quiver that hung,
blackened by smoke, in the rafters of the hall. “Erebos take me,”
he said, “it’s a wonder something like that hasn’t happened
before.”

Long before the Armaments Convention had been
adopted and enforced bows and arrows had been the average man’s
weapon, needing no
crypta
to operate, within reach of
everyone who could obtain wood, sinew, and metal or bone. In the
far northern holdings, where the laws of ‘Graven Assembly did not
always extend, the weapon had remained a favored way to put meat on
the table and provide sport in time of peace. As Dominic reminded
me later, even at Aranyi, the wooden chests in which the weapons
had been kept still stood in every watchtower and along every
parapet.

It seemed Reynaldo had not had such an
original idea after all. “Why didn’t it?” I asked. “Happen before.
Why were we so fortunate?” My sarcasm was merely a front. I was
stunned to think that so simple and effective a means of conquest
and destruction was lurking in people’s memories, and in their
houses, all around us.

“Because, my lady,” Sir Nicholas said, “sane
men know what your lord husband will do to them if they try it.”
Our host had found something to say in Dominic’s favor. Bandits
with bows and arrows were a threat to everyone in the north. Even
if Niall had not been dragged into Aranyi trouble he might have had
to face the danger on his own another time. Sir Nicholas was man
enough to express gratitude, whatever his personal feelings about
the source of the protection.

From the little I could sense of Dominic’s
mind in the midst of all this talk and company he appeared to be
unsurprised at the welcome we had received. He had had to cope with
this same sort of demand, could understand the reasons behind it
and sympathize with his companion. After his dazed look on his
return from the stables he had recovered his poise and spoke with
his usual graceful eloquence.

Dominic was still hopeful, as he had been
after dinner. Although Sir Nicholas and Clara claimed that Niall
shared their views it was significant to Dominic, as it was to me,
that Niall was not here to say them himself. His mother had
admitted to me that Niall still loved Dominic. Love, not this feud
which should long since have blown over, was more likely the reason
for Niall’s absence. He had let his mother and father do the
talking—very effectively—while he hid from Dominic like a shy
virgin who suspects that, if left unchaperoned with her handsome
fiancé, he will deflower her, with her active encouragement, before
the wedding ceremony.

It was quite probable, I decided, that Niall
did not embrace his parents’ position with the same enthusiasm. He
might well agree in principle but feel unable to meet the
obligation in person. Unlike Dominic, he was exclusively
vir
, although I guessed Dominic had been similarly
uncompromising at this age. If Niall dared put in an appearance,
Dominic would be sure to find a way to see him alone. Surrounded by
healthy young parents, a gaggle of sisters, an endless cycle of
boring jobs that Sir Nicholas, his tenants and laborers could
easily handle on their own, Niall would not need much persuading to
put off the problem of the heir to a later date.

N
iall came in late that
afternoon, just in time to take a quick bath and change his clothes
for supper. When he entered the hall, his hair clean and damp, Jana
flew at him, shrieking with delight, and launched herself into his
arms like a horse in a steeplechase. “Niall! Niall! Niall!” She had
no other words.

Niall hugged his greatest admirer with almost
equal affection and endured her blizzard of kisses. “Betrothed.” He
used their pet name without thinking and pretended to stagger under
her weight. “You’ve grown so big it’ll take me and my second man
both to carry you over the threshold when we’re married.” He set
her down gently while she clung to his breeches and shirt.

Sir Nicholas and Clara exchanged significant
glances, neither entirely pleased nor displeased at the word. It
was not uncommon for a man to betroth his companion to his sister
or his daughter, a way to create a close family tie between two men
without their own marriage. Jana would be a bride far above Niall’s
expectations, but he would have to wait ten years for her,
important years between twenty and thirty that he should spend with
his wife, producing heirs.

“Jana is not really betrothed,” I said, to
relieve or disappoint them as the case might be. “Margrave Aranyi
and I do not believe in making matches for our daughter before she
has had a chance to choose for herself.”

“Of course we’re not betrothed,” Jana said.
“Niall is Papa’s companion. But he’s my friend too.”

Dominic had been standing in the background
all this time, almost invisible, in the dark corner of the room
away from the fire. Only his silver inner eyelids gleamed, picking
up the orange light, a large gray cat curled silent and vigilant,
waiting for his prey to make a careless move. He stepped forward
suddenly, the light glinting off the silver and jet trim of his
dress uniform. “Companion,” he said. Just the one word.

Niall’s eyes darted up involuntarily. He and
Dominic exchanged a smoldering look. I half expected lightning to
fork between them, sparks or smoke to shoot out from them, a
visible manifestation of the communion that had resumed, even
without physical touch. All the sound in the room seemed to die
away. Niall’s eyes grew round and wet, his pale inner eyelids
descending in an erotic reflex, sparkling in the firelight, before
he broke the spell.

“Margrave Aranyi.” He bowed with bent knee in
the formal manner of court presentation. His voice was harsh,
almost choking, before he cleared his throat and spoke with cold
precision. “I see you have brought your lady wife and daughter for
protection.” Dominic reeled backward from the blow—not so much the
mocking words as the swift, brutal shutting down of communion.

“Lady Amalie.” Niall gave me a deeper bow
that was somehow more playful. “Forgive me for my absence. There is
a lot of work to do on a freehold.” He grinned in his old
mischievous manner. “But when my parents informed me there was talk
of marriage between our two houses, I did not want to miss my
chance with my betrothed.” He blinked several times and smiled down
at Jana. If there were tears on his cheeks it was impossible to
know. His hair was still wet and dripping from his quick bath. “I
hope I am not too late.”

I looked over at Dominic. He had tears on his
face, no mistake. “No,” he said. “It is we who have delayed.” He
took the same step forward again he had lost at Niall’s rebuff and
held out a friendly hand. “Yet surely we have come in time to make
peace between us.”

Niall had turned his back to greet Naomi and
the others, and did not see the offered hand. He remained shielded,
no thoughts emanating from him, and doubtless none of ours
penetrating.

Supper went quickly. We were paired as
before, Clara with Dominic, Sir Nicholas with me. Niall and Naomi
made a third couple. Dominic was too polite to ignore Clara and
stare past her at her son like a starving man let in to beg at a
feast. He ate hurriedly and efficiently while keeping up his end of
the conversation with his hostess.

Niall also did an excellent job of showing
interest in his partner. One might have thought they were the
separated couple, reunited at last. Naomi talked in a low voice,
Niall nodded agreement. When he spoke she listened intently,
watching with her piercing green eyes, all her attention on his
face, yet seeming to be in a different dimension altogether.