Retribution (40 page)

T
here was pandemonium, what
sounded like a hundred voices and thoughts all pounding into my
brain at once. Clara was screaming, prying with trembling hands at
her frozen son, her fingernails breaking on the sharp edges of
ice-hard shirtsleeve and the unyielding marble flesh. Sir Nicholas
was pulling at his wife’s arm, thundering words that were all
noise, no meaning. Girls and children shrieked in their high
voices. “Papa!” Jana’s voice penetrated the cacophony, recognizable
to a mother’s ears above all the others. “Oh, Papa, I’m sorry! I
won’t ever wear breeches again, I promise.”

I crouched, bent low in a near-faint beside
Dominic’s tall statue of amazed defeat, trying to think, telling
myself to stay in control, not to give way, while my body sank
lower and my mind flew apart in all directions. My eyes focused at
random on a small brownish-red pebble. I reached for it with my
free hand, picked up the clayey little marble, felt my gorge rise
as it melted into sticky ooze between my fingers. Dominic’s blood.
It was a ball of my husband’s blood, blood I had caused to be shed
as much as Niall had.

I sank to my knees, smearing the blood on the
floor as my palm skidded in its slick wetness. The knuckles of my
left hand scraped on the crack between two badly-fitted flooring
stones. My dagger was still in my clenched fist, the prism bouncing
separated light off the walls. Tears dropped onto the back of my
hand, trickled between my fingers and misted from the reverse-heat
beam of light I had formed to create the net. I sat down hard on my
rear, my jaws coming together in a snap.
I am gifted
, I told
myself.
No matter how weak in body, what I have done, I can
undo
.

It was Naomi who cleared the room. Tall and
fierce, the prism in her large, bony hand flashing disjointed
rainbows, she had only to glance in a person’s direction for him to
disappear through the doorway. With the healer’s gentle touch she
loosened Clara’s fingers from the arm of her son and helped her to
a seat. She stared Sir Nicholas eye to eye, told him he could stay
if he could promise to be silent; if not, he would do more good by
keeping the others out. He gulped and swallowed and moved to stand
guard at the door.

I forced myself up, sucking energy from my
mind into my body, and took a look around. Jana was sitting in the
corner, her head on her raised knees, weeping. She had gone
upstairs as Dominic had ordered her to and changed back into her
dress. With everyone else downstairs, no one to help her, she had
had to struggle alone in frightened, agitated haste with the
feminine layers. A sleeve was twisted tight under one arm and her
camisole had bunched up, sticking out over the back of her neck. At
my touch she lifted her head. “Papa’s dead,” she said. “Because I
wore breeches.”

I pulled her to her feet, straightened the
sleeve and smoothed the camisole down her back, then held her
quivering body tight against me. “No,” I said, “Papa has only a
very small wound. He’s all frozen, so he’ll be very safe. The blood
can’t even flow.” Saying it to Jana made it real, gave me hope.
“You can watch while Naomi and I heal him.” I knew Jana would do
better seeing for herself than banished with the rest. There was no
point in worrying that she might see us fail. We simply couldn’t
fail. “And your wearing breeches had nothing to do with it. Nothing
at all.”

Jana’s tears continued to fall while I spoke
but she accepted my words with a child’s belief in her mother. She
sniffed and nodded and let me lead her by the hand closer to the
scene of the aborted duel.

I maintained the artificial composure while
Naomi and I examined the odd tableau: Niall’s sword stuck in
Dominic’s chest, Niall’s hand on the sword, Dominic’s hand holding
his own sword, the other arm raised and curved as if about to
explore the unexpected wound. A statue of love gone wrong. A 3D
diagram of marriage hell.
Pretend this is an ordinary
situation
, I thought,
a simple crypta mishap
. The kind
of problem that would be presented to us at La Sapienza, a
brainteaser for the sibyl in training.

Naomi looked at me and grinned.
We shall
have to do better than this
,
Lady Amalie
, she thought to
me,
when we search for ore in our crypta cell
. In the midst
of chaos I knew that there was communion between us, that Naomi and
I could work and live together with mutual respect, however
different the lives that had brought us here.

The knowledge helped me think, to work on the
problem in front of us. “Here’s what we do,” I said after a few
moments of deliberation. “Thaw them just enough to soften the
flesh. We’ll need men beside them to catch them when they slump.
Loosen Niall’s hand from the sword hilt and pull the tip out of
Dominic. We must keep them as cold as possible so Dominic won’t
hemorrhage. Once we get the sword free, you heal Dominic’s wound
while I prevent Niall from thawing too quickly. If the wound is
worse than I think, I’ll help you.”

Naomi agreed wordlessly and left the room,
returning shortly with Ranulf and Sir Nicholas. Grim-faced and
nervous, each man stood beside his frozen patient like the seconds
at an illicit wedding performed against the families’ wishes.

The thawing was tricky. Niall’s flesh had to
be relaxed more than I would have liked, as the extremities freeze
more thoroughly than the rest of the body and are slower to loosen.
When he collapsed into his father’s arms his eyes fell on me where
I stood aiming the daylight through my prism into my eyes. “If...
I... have... killed... Dominic...” He pulled each word with
difficulty from his congealed throat. “I... will... hold... you...
responsible... woman... or... not.”

The duel had accomplished everything that
Dominic could have wished. Niall’s anger at his lover was gone,
washed away in noble combat by a torrent of fear, concentration and
sweat. All that remained was the code of honor that had led to the
quarrel and required the fight. Niall had lived up at last to the
exacting demands of the code, but apparently I had fallen short. I
had interfered in the affairs of men. Niall was calling me on it,
responding in kind, challenging me and warning that my sex would
not protect me.

Naomi looked up from her work with Dominic.
She shook her head with a mix of maternal pride and wifely
exasperation. “Margrave Aranyi is not dead, nor likely to be,” she
said to her man. “But if it were not for Lady Amalie you would most
certainly be dead. And what good would that do anybody?” She was
defending me against the natural anger of her new lover. I touched
her mind in gratitude, felt only a warm glow.

I took the chance to observe Dominic’s
condition while Naomi worked on him. As I had sworn to my daughter,
the wound was not serious. Had the freezing not stopped the
penetration, Niall’s blade would have gone straight through the
heart, but as it was it had only cut the chest muscle. The sword
was removed soon enough, Dominic’s tunic and shirt cut away, the
neat edges of the wound cleansed and pulled together to mend.
Slowly, as if lifting the weight of the world with his biceps,
Dominic raised an arm, felt at the thin red line Naomi had left to
mark the place so we could monitor it for infection.

When Naomi stood up to straighten her spine
from her hunched posture, Niall slithered out of his father’s
grasp, crawled over from his place on the floor and laid his head
against Dominic’s bare chest. “Never bury my bones apart from
yours.” He spoke Patroclus’s answer to Achilles’ speech. “Let them
lie together.”

Dominic turned his head slowly at his lover’s
words. “Beloved,” he whispered. “You will have to kill me in
earnest before I let you leave me again.” He made the tremendous
effort a second time and lifted his arm to hold Niall in his
inflexible semi-frozen embrace.

Both men were weak, Niall almost as much as
Dominic. The freezing of the force field is like a dive in deep
water, the thawing like a return to the lesser air pressure of
land. The release from the force field should be gradual, over many
hours, to prevent nitrogen from bubbling out of the blood and body
tissues at the sudden change. After the quick partial thaw I had
given the men they must rest and sleep, move as little as possible
to avoid damage to the blood vessels and the muscles they served,
while the relaxation was slowly completed.

At Naomi’s and my request, Sir Nicholas and
Ranulf began to lift Niall to carry him upstairs to his bed, where
he could sleep off the ill effects. Niall resisted, croaking in his
frozen voice, weeping viscous sluggish tears, clinging with stiff,
crooked fingers to Dominic’s arm. “No,” he said, “I will not leave
him.”

Sir Nicholas cursed and swore but could not
bring himself to overpower his son in the unequal contest. Clara
spoke low in her husband’s ear, smiling through her tears at her
son, so adamant despite his supine state. “Fine.” Sir Nicholas gave
in with poor grace as his wife pursued her argument. “Put them in
together, just like the Royal fucking Guards barracks.”

If the scene had resembled a wedding ceremony
earlier, we had the consummation now. Niall was carried
upstairs—willingly, since he had won his point—to the guest suite
Dominic and I had shared last night. Like the bride after the
feast, surrounded by women, his mother and his sisters, and Naomi,
he was undressed and laid between the sheets to receive into his
bed the man to whom he had promised himself. It was the ancient
ritual, the vows exchanged in words to be sealed in the acts of the
body.

Dominic, drunk from the sluggish flow of
blood to the brain, chanted a ribald wedding song under his breath
as Ranulf and another guard struggled with his dead weight up the
narrow stairs. He stared giddily upside-down into Ranulf’s stern
face. “Wish me luck,” he said. “I fear I won’t be able to do my
manly duty.”

Ranulf grinned and obliged, beginning the
long litany of coarse good wishes with which the groom’s male
companions traditionally spur him to his task. “May your lordship
have the strength of the bull with the heifer.” We were spared the
illustrative gesticulating that usually accompanies this recital,
as Ranulf’s hands were full, supporting his master’s frozen
shoulders. “May you rise like the stallion to the mare—” He caught
Sir Nicholas’s murderous glare and shut his mouth, his face
resuming its habitual austerity.

Yet even Sir Nicholas could not deny the
sense of completion that emanated from the bed when his son and his
lover were settled side by side. It was unmistakable to all with
the least sensitivity. What had been parted was joined. What had
been broken was mended. No one in this house, who knew and loved at
least one of the partners in this marriage, could wish to sever so
essential a union.

Clara leaned over and gave her son a kiss.
“Isis and Astarte bless this couple,” she said, like any mother of
the bride. But her eyes were on Naomi as she spoke, her hand on her
own pregnant belly.

Jana stood on the other side of the bed near
Dominic. She was afraid to touch him but unwilling to leave him.
She looked from his sleepy serene face to Niall’s and over to me,
then back again, unsure if what she saw was the peace of
contentment or death. “Papa,” she said, “I’m sorry. Please don’t
die.”

Dominic was too exhausted to comprehend.
“Die?” He answered his daughter’s fears with a soft laugh. “How
could I die, now that my true love has been restored to me?”

I went to take her hand and lead her out.
“Papa just needs a good long sleep,” I said. “When he’s slept out
he’ll be fine.” I kissed Dominic once before we went, as Clara had
blessed her son. His lips twitched at the touch of mine but he was
already gone with Niall in the communion of sleep to the male
paradise they shared.

There would be little of the stallion or the
bull in this bed for several hours. Dominic and Niall could sleep
and wake in each other’s arms. In communion, Dominic could share
with Niall the sad story of Reynaldo, could explain the reason for
the violence and madness that had almost destroyed their love.
Niall could learn of all Dominic had suffered, would find the
forgiveness surging in his blood like fresh oxygen. Like nitrogen,
any remaining hurt and anger would evaporate slowly through his
skin into the air; only the healthy plasma of love would
remain.

Naomi and I also needed rest. The telepathic
work drains a person’s energy more completely than a day’s ride—and
I am no rider, as Dominic would remind me when we returned home.
With Dominic and Niall occupying the guest suite, Naomi and I must
also share sleeping quarters. After seeing our men properly bedded
we moved down the corridor to her little room.

“Why is everybody going to bed in the
morning?” Jana asked.

“Because,” I said, a yawn cracking my jaws,
“we did enough work for a whole day in just an hour.” Unable to
address the substance of her complaint, I offered what comfort I
could. “You can sleep with me and Naomi.”

Jana scowled. “It’s not bedtime. I’m not
sleepy. I want to catch the bandits.”

Clara had trailed us out of the guest suite.
“I’ll look after her.” She put her arm around the child, speaking
as if Jana were the only other person in the house. “Come
downstairs and keep me company. I’d like to hear about your
adventures.”

Jana warmed to the woman who was mother to so
many girls, who knew how to talk to a child on her own terms. “They
made us eat goat knuckles.” Jana was boasting of her fortitude as
Clara shut the door on me and Naomi. “A stupid boy insulted Niall,
so I fought him. I made his nose bleed...”

Naomi and I undressed and let the clothes
drop to the floor. In the narrow bed I rested in the crook of her
long arm, as Niall had done a few short hours ago. With
thought-trails of our
crypta
still resonating between us in
the unavoidable proximity, we slept in partial communion.