Birth: A Novella Read online

  The Ormonde woman seemed quite distressed when I thanked her and accepted, and I was just starting to pick up her thoughts to find out why a false offer had been made, when I saw Katrina’s red face and received her own feelings of mortification. I thanked the Ormonde woman again, then dismissed her, saying that my own maid was perhaps well enough to assist me after all.

  “You’re supposed to say no,” Katrina said. “My lady.”

  “Then why did she offer?” I asked.

  “It’s a courtesy,” Katrina said with weary patience. “You’re their guest. But that doesn’t mean you should shame me by accepting.”

  “I thought you needed a rest,” I said. “You’ve had to ride, and sleep on the floor—”

  “That’s my job!” she shouted. “That’s what I do!”

  “Not really,” I said. “You’re stuck traveling like this because I wanted to go home all of a sudden, but your job is to help me with my clothes and my hair.”

  “Oh,” Katrina said. All the fight went out of her and she turned her large brown eyes, which Kojiro the guard had so admired, to the floor. “I see. I thought—”

  She had thought we were colleagues. Maybe not friends, but surely she was more to me than just a washerwoman and a hairdresser. Hadn’t she worried about me when I had my fights with Dominic? Hadn’t she sympathized with me in my estrangement from my husband, and hoped for our reconciliation? Hadn’t she walked outside with me, without guards, and endured the humiliating groping of men on the streets, and not complained, and not betrayed me?

  I was much luckier than I deserved, I saw. I steeled myself for the encounter and opened my arms. “I’m thoughtless and careless,” I said. “I only wanted to spare your body, but I didn’t consider your feelings.”

  “Oh, Lady Amalie.” She cried and sniffled into my neck. She had no mother, I realized, having lost her to childbirth years back. “I would go anywhere with you, suffer anything—”

  There was another knock on the door, and Luisa, Lady Ormonde, her nose seeming to lift of its own power and turn up at the maudlin scene. “‘Gravina.” She curtsied to me, far too deeply than was necessary. “My woman, Rebecca, reports that you required her services, then turned her away.”

  I let go of Katrina and tried to speak firmly, although I was trembling from the aftereffects of the close embrace, and the fatigue of travel and hunger. “Yes, I thought my maid was overtired from our journey, but I was wrong. I’m sorry about the mistake with Rebecca. Please, apologize to her on my behalf.”

  Luisa laughed in an artificial tone. “‘Gravina Aranyi,” she said, “there is no need for that. You are our honored guest. Sir Karl and I wish only to see to your comfort.” She stood in the doorway, apparently requiring more from me in the way of assurance.

  I looked into her mind, as carefully as I dared. Her thoughts were a cauldron of hatred and resentment—that I had really married Dominic after all, with the brand in my flesh to prove it, that I was returning to Aranyi for the birth of the child, as only the most devoted of wives would attempt under the circumstances, and that Stefan was still in Eclipsia City.

  “Stefan will probably join us at Aranyi during the winter break,” I said, lying, the only thing I could think of that might appease her.

  She stiffened at the name. “Supper will be served in half an hour.” She would not deign to discuss her son with me, who had displaced him. “Will you come downstairs, ‘Gravina, or will you be pleased to have a tray brought to your room?”

  Another trick question. I looked helplessly from Katrina to Lady Ormonde. There were no clues. One fact was clear: Luisa didn’t want to see any more of me, and the feeling was mutual. “If it’s not too much trouble,” I said in a simpering little voice I couldn’t control, “I would like a tray. So near my time, it is tiring to travel.”

  Luisa smiled in cold acquiescence. “Very good, ‘Gravina.”

  ***

  Roger and Tariq work slowly, using their own energy to replenish Dominic’s. After a few agonizing minutes Dominic’s color improves, from the ashen gray-white of death to the milky pale of merely weak. He breathes again, gasping, his chest expanding and emptying as violently as when I shamed him at the tournament. His eyes blink rapidly, tears forming in the corners and flowing across the surface, alleviating the clouded dryness of the death-stare.

  Later on I will learn the details: that although the birth was normal, I had hemorrhaged immediately afterward, a risk for first births to women over thirty-five; and that Dominic, untrained in healing, having done what he could to stop the worst of the bleeding, simply poured his entire, slightly-more-than-human physical strength into me, allowing my body to accelerate its clotting process and replenish some of the lost blood.

  For now I know only that he has saved me, even at the cost of his own life. He had made the choice of Alcestis, who was willing to die in place of her husband. It is because of Roger and Tariq that Dominic has not had to pay the price. But he would have.

  I know what you did for me, I say, kissing him in communion, without turning my head or touching lips. Neither one of us has strength to move an inch. My dearest love.

  ***

  Dominic flung open the connecting door between my bedchamber and bathroom as I was undressing for an early night at the Ormondes’. “You didn’t come down to supper,” he said, as if accusing me of dancing naked before the entire corps of Royal Guards.

  Once again I had disgraced myself. “I was tired,” I said. “And Lady Ormonde asked me if I wanted a tray.”

  “She also asked if you needed a maid,” he said. “It’s a tradition between hosts and guests, a standard phrase of etiquette. It’s not meant literally. You shame us and them by accepting.”

  “She didn’t want me at supper,” I said. “She resents me because of Stefan.”

  “Who cares?” Dominic said. “You are ‘Gravina Aranyi. You shouldn’t give a flying fuck what people think.”

  “That’s courtesy?” I said, shouting at him as he was shouting at me. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. And I don’t believe it. It seems to me all I do is try to guess what other people want, and when I guess wrong, I’m blamed for being rude.” I caught my breath. “Well, fuck it. I’m not playing that game anymore. I’m no good at it and I always get it wrong. Always. So from now on I’m going to do exactly what I want. Nothing else. And if you don’t like it, you know what you can do about it.”

  “Good,” Dominic said. “That’s fine.” He was still standing by the bathroom door, apparently expecting me to cry or apologize.

  “So if you’re finished lecturing me on proper ‘Graven behavior,” I said, “get the fuck out of my room.” I swallowed and added, “My lord husband.”

  He smiled in his close-mouthed, terrifying way, and slammed the door on his way out.

  Katrina had shrunk back against the far wall at Dominic’s entrance. Now she came bravely forward. “My lady,” she said in her soft voice, “why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Speak so roughly to your lord husband.” She shook her head. “Marcin would beat me if I spoke like that to him. And he’d be right to.”

  “That’s never right,” I said. “A man who hits his wife is scum, worse than scum, a criminal.”

  Katrina laughed. “Then the world is full of criminals. Any man would beat his wife for behaving as you do. Margrave Aranyi must love you very much, that he never lifts a finger.”

  “If he did lift a finger,” I said, touching the prism in the handle of my dagger, “I’d blast it off and shove it up his ass.” Then I burst into tears. I was still crying when I got into bed, and Katrina sat with me until I slept.

  ***

  We wake up hours later, my head on Dominic’s arm beneath me, the baby between us. She nurses greedily, grunting as she works to keep the milk flowing. Her dark hair is thick and coarse, like her father’s. I feel Dominic’s energy circulating inside me.

  “Why did you want to die?”
he says in a whisper I can barely catch. He’s very weak, his deep, powerful voice diminished to a papery rasp.

  “I didn’t,” I say. “I think I was dying, and my mind created a little scene for me, trying to make sense of what was happening.” I want to treat it lightly, as much for myself as for Dominic. “I mean, I don’t really believe I’ll meet my mother on the road to Andrade when I die.”

  Dominic is not in the mood for whimsy. But I felt it, he thinks, the exertion of speech too great for him. You jumped, chose death. You chose death over life with me. He drags his weary mind over recent events, fixes on a likely cause. It must have been because of what I did with Roger, the way I was rough with him. I knew you wouldn’t like that, but I couldn’t stop.

  That was my labor pains starting, I say. Wasn’t it?

  Partly, Dominic says. He’s always compulsively honest once he decides he is at fault. And partly my own anger—at him, at you. My old desires…

  There is some truth to his fear—I did fall off the ledge, if not for the reason he thinks. I feel obligated to match Dominic’s honesty, although it doesn’t come as easily to me as to him. But I have always been able to be honest with myself, and he is more like an extension of me than a separate consciousness. I thought you didn’t love me anymore, I say.

  How could you think that? he says. It’s not possible. He dismisses my nonsensical answer.

  After the tournament and what I did, I say, the way you were so cold and angry—it felt like you hated me.

  Dominic attempts a laugh. You can’t mean that. Just because I was angry.

  He obviously has no idea how impressive a spectacle his visible rage is, how enormous an occurrence is covered by the little word “angry.” You were gone for a week, and when you came back you wouldn’t talk to me. I reduce it to simple indisputable facts.

  I was furious, he says, rueful, remembering. But I can’t not love you. And you were rather magnificent yourself, you know, the way you disarmed those thugs so quickly and neatly.

  He can be gracious about it now. But I can’t forget the pain of his extreme rage that felt like everything that is the opposite of love.

  Amalie, he says, the thoughts lax with fatigue, I always love you. And I know you love me, even when you curse and shout at me like a—

  A termagant, I repeat his word. I know. I’m sorry.

  Stop saying you’re sorry. It’s your way, just as mine is violent anger. That’s why I left, rather than take it out on you or the household.

  So you took it out on Stefan?

  No, he says, surprised. Why would I? It wasn’t his fault. No, I went to him for sympathy, and he gave it to me. He told me I should have– showed you I was master, was his way of expressing it. And that’s when I blew up at him, and he said he wanted to break it off between us.

  This is the aspect of Eclipsian life that scares me. That’s what Katrina says. I offer my own incident, testing him again. Katrina says you should beat me.

  Katrina is a stupid, ignorant woman, Dominic says. Besides, you said if I lifted a finger, you’d—

  I remember, I say. You don’t have to repeat it.

  But I like it, he says. The way you shout at me, the things you say. Nobody else does that.

  You don’t seem to like it at the time.

  Dominic tries to tighten his arm around my shoulders in an embrace, finds he’s too weak to lift even a finger, and settles back into the touch of light communion. I’m not used to it, that’s all. And you know I have a bad temper. But please, Amalie, never doubt my love for you, exactly as you are.

  The baby unclamps her lips from my nipple and burps. Dominic cradles her head, marveling at her soft fuzz of dark hair, and extends his little finger to her. She has milky inner eyelids already, not open yet, like a newborn kitten, but she can sense actions, or perhaps our thoughts. She clutches her father’s finger determinedly, as if to hold him in the life he almost gave up.

  I take a deep breath. Honor requires that I acknowledge what has happened, and I refuse to get this wrong. “You saved my life,” I say aloud, needing to hear the words, a kind of proclamation. “Roger and Tariq saved yours. I owe them a great debt, one that will take a lifetime to repay.”

  Dominic lies in silence. I think he’s fallen asleep, until he says, I owe them the debt, not you. It’s my life they saved, not yours.

  This is familiar ground. I know, I say. A woman doesn’t pay debts of honor. It doesn’t matter anymore that I will always get it wrong. So long as Dominic is alive to scold me, to chastise me, so long as he regains his strength so that I can safely curse and shout at him, that is what matters.

  “Is that how I am with you?” he whispers, appalled into speech. “Do I scold and chastise you? It’s a wonder you wanted them to save me.”

  “It’s my fault,” I say. “I shame you and make mistakes—”

  “You never shame me.” Dominic is vehement, fierce, shaking with the effort of articulating his emotion. “I shame myself, hurting you, frightening you. You can’t be expected to know all these things. It takes years, growing up here—”

  “No,” I say, “all it takes is keeping my marriage vow, knowing your mind, thinking before acting.”

  “Don’t do that,” he says. “Promise me you won’t start thinking our marriage to death.”

  “That’s easy,” I say. “I haven’t been thinking straight since I met you.” The baby’s sleepy head nods, falls on my breast. Black hair and—blue eyes I think, under the milky eyelids. She will be a beauty.

  All babies have blue eyes, Dominic thinks.

  She’ll look like him, I can see it already, will be like him. Tall and dark-haired, quick in speech and thought, athletic and short-tempered. I put both arms around her, hold her safe to my side. How I love her.

  Magnificent, I think, and we sleep, the three of us, in communion. All babies have it—communion with parents who love them.

  ***

  Dominic and I were no longer speaking by the time we returned to Aranyi, the good work of our slow journey undone by the stay at Ormonde. It was the beginning of the Midwinter season, and the household, what was left of it, had anticipated a visit to distant family or the quiet of an empty house, the freedom to celebrate without the stifling presence of the master and mistress.

  I granted all requests for leave. Naomi didn’t ask—she had already gone on her long trek into the deep forest. She went on foot, people said, taking no provisions beyond gifts of hothouse fruit for her mother, and with only the clothes on her back. The old people chuckled knowingly. She’d manage fine, they said. She knew how to get meat without snares.

  I told myself not to panic, that my own internal examinations had shown me that the child was healthy, and that my body was adjusting well, expanding and softening in the pelvis, gaining a good amount of weight, and going through the correct hormonal changes. People had used natural childbirth for centuries, I lectured myself. Yes, my cynical self replied, and maternal and infant deaths had kept the population down for centuries, too.

  Dominic was supposed to help me. He had gone through it before, with his natural-born son, and the mother had survived, with a healthy child to show for it. But what if our estrangement altered things? It was all based on communion, and ours wasn’t really functional. I must be the one to reach out to him, I decided, make the overture. It was essential.

  There is no tradition of gift-giving at Midwinter as there is on Terra for the vague equivalent of Xmas. I knew, from his thoughts, that Dominic had found a gift for me anyway, months ago, before things were so bad between us, that it was small enough to carry on our journey, and that he had remembered to bring it, despite everything. So perhaps there was hope. More than that I determined not to find out, allowing him the pleasure of a surprise if he still wished to give it to me.

  I, however, had not got him a gift, or even thought about it, disliking the whole empty procedure intensely. On Terra it had all seemed so pointless, purchasing in secret one more objec
t for people who had too many possessions as it was, who didn’t use or need half of what they owned. Here, there was more scope for imagination, for gifts of service or ritual instead of merchandise. I decided to spend the festival time in observation.

  In the days before Midwinter Night, I saw that Dominic, deprived of all sexual outlets of marriage, had been using one of the young stable hands, a small, dark-haired boy, close to Stefan’s age and build. Dominic would visit the stables, pretend to inquire about one of the horses, make an assignation, and the two of them would couple—in the barn, or in an empty horse stall at night. There was no need for such subterfuge and squalor; the boy’s two roommates had gone to their homes and there were many empty beds. Dominic seemed to dislike doing it in the house at all, as he wouldn’t bring the boy to his room, either.

  On the festival night there was almost no real celebration. With a minimal kitchen staff and cleanup crew, it would have been a very small pleasure for the huge nightmare that would greet us the next morning. Those members of the household who remained at Aranyi simply drank steadily after supper until their wretched singing sounded good to them, then danced a little, just to get the feel of each other, and paired off rather glumly. I sat and watched, having nothing better to do, expecting Dominic to go with his stable boy.

  What he did instead scared me. He spotted a young girl, perhaps thirteen at the most. She was the daughter of one of the cooks, but she had rudimentary inner eyelids, one of those many half-breed children in any ‘Graven household, fathered at a festival perhaps, or with gifted strains in her genome from generations back. She had a pretty face, dark red hair and a lovely little figure, about my size and shape, before I grew as big around as the enormous cheese wheels in the dairy house—

  She looked like me. That’s what made Dominic notice her. He danced with her almost the entire festival, what little there was of it, shutting his mind to the horrible raucous singing, and he caught her up and carried her to a bedroom as soon as the dancing ended, and he made love to her. He didn’t fuck her, or nail her, or screw her, or all the other words that people sometimes use for the abandon of the midseason festivals. He was gentle with her, and kind, and he made her laugh, putting her at ease when she was scared about being with the master. Her mother had let her attend the festival only because she was sure, with almost nobody here, and Margrave Aranyi vir, not interested in girls, that no harm could come to her.