Stormqueen! (49 page)

“A storm,” he said, “and shadows, shadows over Aldaran.” His voice died to a whisper, as if he heard the thunders again, though this time it was only in his mind.

When Donal returned to the high seat of his foster-father he said firmly, “Sir, the hour is late. Since this will not end like a traditional wedding, with a bedding as well, I have given orders for the guesting-cup to be brought and the minstrels dismissed.”

Aldaran’s face turned dark with sudden flaring anger.

“You take all too much on yourself, Donal! I have given no orders to that effect!”

Donal was startled, mystified at the sudden rage. Dom Mikhail had left all such things in his hands for the last three midwinter feasts. He said reasonably, “I did as you have always bidden me to do, sir. I acted upon my own best judgment.” He hoped that by quoting his foster-father’s own words he could calm him.

Instead, Dom Mikhail leaned forward with clenched hands and demanded, “Are you so eager to rule all in my place, then, Donal? That you cannot wait for my word - “

Donal thought, bewildered,
Is he mad? Is his mind going
?

Dom Mikhail opened his mouth to say more, but the servants had already entered bearing the jeweled cup containing a rich mixture of wine and spices, which would go around, shared from hand to hand. It was offered to Dom Mikhail, who held it motionless between his two hands for so long that Donal trembled. Courtesy finally conquered. Dom Mikhail set the cup to his lips, bowed to Donal, and handed him the cup. In his turn Donal barely tasted the mixture, but steadied it for Dorilys to taste, and passed it on to Allart and Cassandra.

The abortive scene had put a damper on what little remained of festivity. One by one, as they sipped from the cup, the guests bowed to Lord Aldaran and withdrew. Dorilys suddenly began to cry, noisy childish crying which suddenly escalated into screaming, bawling hysteria.

Dom Mikhail said helplessly, “Why, Dorilys, child,” but she shrieked louder than ever when he touched her.

Margali came to enfold the child in her arms. “She is exhausted, and no wonder. Come, come, my little love, my baby. Let me take you away to your bed. Come, my darling, my bird, don’t cry anymore,” she crooned.

Dorilys, surrounded by Margali and Elisa and old Kathya, was half carried from the hall. The few remaining guests, embarrassed, slipped away to their beds.

Donal, crimson and raging, picked up a glass of wine and emptied it at a single swallow, then refilled it with angry determination. Allart went toward him to speak, then sighed and withdrew. There was nothing he could do for Donal now, and if Donal chose to get himself drunk, it was only a fitting end to this enormous fiasco of a festival. Allart joined Cassandra at the door, and went silently, at her side, down the hallway toward their own rooms.

“I do not blame the child,” Cassandra said, painfully dragging herself upward on the stairs, holding to the railing. “It cannot be easy to be displayed as a bride before all these folk, and everyone staring and talking scandal about this wedding, and then to be put to bed in the nursery as if nothing had happened. Some wedding for the child! And some wedding night!”

Allart said gently, taking her by the elbow to steady her lagging step, “As I remember, my beloved, you spent your wedding night alone.”

“Yes,” she said, turning her eyes on him and smiling, “but my bridegroom was not abed with someone he loved better, either. Do you think Dorilys does not know Donal shares Renata’s bed? She is jealous.”

Allart scoffed. “Even if she does know - at her age, would it mean anything to her? She may be jealous because Donal cares more for Renata than he does for her, but he is only her big brother; surely it does not mean to her what it would have meant to you!”

“I am not so sure,” Cassandra said. “She is not so young as most people think. In years - yes, I grant you, she is a child. But no one with her gift, no one with two deaths behind her, no one with the training she has had from Renata, is really a child, whatever the years may indicate. Merciful gods,” she whispered, “what a tangle this is! I cannot imagine what will come of it!”

Allart, who could, was wishing that he could not

Very late that night, Renata, in her solitary room, was wakened by a sound at her door. Instantly knowing who was there, she opened it to see Donal, disheveled, swaying on his feet, very drunk.

“On this night - is it wise, Donal?” she asked, but she knew he was beyond caring for that. She could feel the despair like physical pain in him.

“If you turn me away now,” he raged, “I shall throw myself from the heights of this castle before the dawn!”

Her arms went out to hold him against her, compassionately; to draw him inside, to shut the door after him.

“They may marry me to Dorilys,” he said, with drunken earnestness, “but she will never be my wife. No woman living shall be my wife but you!”

Merciful Avarra, what will become of us
? she thought. Renata was a monitor; there could have been no worse time for him to come to her like this, and yet she knew, sharing with him all the rage and despair of the humiliating night past, that she could deny him nothing, nothing that could ease even a little the pain of what had happened. She knew, too, with a despairing foresight, that she would come from this night bearing his son.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Late in the winter, Allart met Cassandra on the stairway which led into the south wing of Castle Aldaran, where the women spent much of their time at this season in the conservatory rooms which caught the winter sun.

“It is a bright day,” he said. “Why not come and walk with me in the courtyard? I see so little of you these days!” Then, laughing, he checked himself. “But no, you cannot - this afternoon is your festival in the women’s quarters for Dorilys; is it not?”

Everyone at Castle Aldaran knew that in the last tenday Dorilys had first shown the signs of maturity - an official occasion for rejoicing. During the last three days she had been distributing her toys and playthings, her dolls and her favorite childish garments, among the children in the castle. The afternoon would be the private quasi-religious celebration among the women which marked leaving the company of the children and entering the society of the women.

“I know her father has sent her a special gift of some sort,” Allart said.

Cassandra nodded. “And I am embroidering her some bands for a new shift,” she said.

“What goes on at these women’s affairs, anyhow?” Allart asked.

Cassandra laughed gaily. “Ah, you must not ask me that, my husband,” she said, and then, with mock seriousness, “There are some things it is not good for men to know.”

Allart chuckled. “Now there is a byword I have not heard since I left the company of the
cristoforos
. And I suppose we will not have your company at dinner either!”

“No. Tonight the women will dine together for her festival,” Cassandra said.

He stooped to kiss her hand. “Well, then, bear Dorilys my congratulations,” he said, and went out, while Cassandra, holding carefully to the railing - her lame knee had bettered somewhat, but was still troublesome on the stairs - went up toward the conservatory.

During the winter the women spent much of their time here, for these rooms alone caught the winter sun. They were bright with plants blooming in the light of the solar reflectors, and in the last tenday, in preparation for this celebration, branches of fruit-blossom had been brought inside and forced in the sunlight to adorn the gathering. Margali, as household
leronis
and also as Dorilys’s foster-mother, was in charge of the ceremonies. Most of the women of the castle were present, the wives of the stewards and household knights and other functionaries, Dorilys’s own waiting-women, a few of her favorites among the servant-women, and her own nurses, governesses, and teachers.

First she was taken to the chapel, and a lock of her hair was cut and laid upon the altar of Evanda, with fruit and flowers. After this Margali and Renata bathed her - Cassandra, as the highest in rank of the lady guests, had been invited to assist at this ritual - and dressed her from the skin out in new clothes, doing up her hair in a woman’s coiffure. Margali, looking at her nursling, remembered how different she looked from when, less than a year ago, she had been masquerading in woman’s garments at her handfasting.

Part of the purpose of this party, in earlier days, had been to make, for the new member of the woman’s community, such things as she would need in her adult life; a remnant of a harsher time in the mountains. It was still, by tradition, a party at which all women brought their sewing, and everyone took at least a few stitches in items intended for the guest of honor. As they sewed, the harp went from hand to hand, each of the women being expected to sing a song, or tell a story, to amuse the others. Elisa had had the tall harp brought from the schoolroom and sang mountain ballads. A variety of dainties had been provided for refreshments, including some of Dorilys’s favorite sweets, but Renata noticed that she only nibbled at them listlessly. “What is the matter,
chiya
?”

Dorilys passed her hand over her eyes. “I am tired and my eyes hurt a little. I don’t feel like eating.”

“Come now, it is too late for that,” one of them teased. “Two or three days ago was your time for headaches and vapors of that sort, if you must! You should be perfectly well again by now!” She examined the length of linen in Dorilys’s lap.

“What are you making, Dori?”

Dorilys said with dignity, “I am embroidering a holiday shirt for my husband,” and moved her wrist to display the
catenas
bracelet on it. Renata, watching her, suddenly did not know whether to laugh or cry. Such a traditional bridelike occupation, and the child had been given into a marriage which would never be more than a mockery! Well, she was still very young, and it would not hurt her to embroider a shirt for the big brother she loved and who was, in the eyes of the law, her husband.

Elisa finished her ballad, and turned to Cassandra.

“It is your turn. Will you favor us with a song, Lady Hastur?” she asked deferentially.

Cassandra hesitated, feeling shy, then realized that if she refused it might be taken as an indication that she considered herself above this gathering.

“With pleasure,” she said, “but I cannot play on the tall harp, Elisa. If someone will lend me a
rryl
- “

When the smaller instrument was fetched and tuned, she sang for them, in a sweet husky voice, two or three of the songs of the Valeron plains, far away. These were new to the mountain women, and they asked for more, but Cassandra shook her head.

“Another time, perhaps. It is Dorilys’s turn to sing for us, and I am sure she is eager to try out her new lute,” she said. The lute, an elaborate gilded and painted one, adorned with ribbons, was Lord Aldaran’s gift to his daughter on this occasion, replacing the old one of her mother’s on which she had learned to play. “And I am sure she would welcome a rest from sewing!”

Dorilys looked up languidly from the mass of linen on her knees. “I don’t feel like singing,” she said. “Will you excuse me, kinswoman?” She drew her hand across her eyes, then began to rub them. “My head aches. Do I have to do any more sewing?”

“Not unless you wish, love, but we are all sewing here.”

Margali said. In her mind was a gently amused picture, which Cassandra and Renata could both read clearly, that Dorilys was all too ready to develop headaches when it came to doing the hated sewing.

“How dare you say that about me,” Dorilys cried out, flinging the shirt in a wadded muddle to the floor. “I am really sick, I am not pretending! I don’t even want to sing, and I
always
want to sing - ” And suddenly she began to cry.

Margali looked at her in dismay and consternation.
But I didn’t open my mouth! Gods above, is the child a telepath, too
?

Renata said gently, “Come here, Dorilys, and sit by me. Your foster-mother did not speak; you read her thoughts, that is all. There is no need to be troubled.”

But Margali was not accustomed to barricading her thoughts from Dorilys. She had come to believe that her charge had no trace of telepathic power, and she could not prevent the swift thought that flashed through her mind.