Kyril, motionless with shock, suddenly leaned half across the table, running to lift him, but Rohana was already there, cradling the unconscious man’s head against her knee.
“Let him lie till it is over,” she said in a low, angry voice. “You have done enough for one morning. Go and call his man to help him to bed. Are you content, Kyril? Do you know now why I begged you not to provoke or trouble him? Do you honestly think”-she raised gray eyes, literally blazing with anger, to her son’s-“that anything-anything goes on under this roof which I do not know, or permit?”
Jaelle felt a lump in her throat, obstructing speech. She had seen epileptic seizures before, but she had never before seen dom Gabriel in the grip of one. Now, looking at Rohana, kneeling and holding her husband’s head, she realized exactly why Rohana spent so much of her life-foolishly, slavishly, she had often thought-in keeping dom Gabriel quiet and content, in averting his rage and calming his anger. Rohana’s burden was far heavier than she thought.
Could I myself do so much for any man, however I loved him? And Rohana was given to him by her family, hardly knowing his name. Yet all these years she has managed it so that few outside the household even know his disability! She must have seen the warning signs, and tried to avoid any trouble. …
“Mother, I am sorry,” Kyril begged. “I truly thought he should know of this.”
Rohana swept him with a look of utter contempt. “Did you truly, my son? You cannot bear to think of any woman who does not obey you as if you were a God! And now you thought you had her at your mercy! How petty you are, Kyril! So to salve your wounded pride, and to revenge yourself against Jaelle, you have goaded your father into a fit; and he will be ill for days.” She brushed aside his excuses without listening. “Go and call his body-servant, and help carry him to his bed, and no more talk. You have insulted our guests, and I will not forgive you soon for this!”
He went, glowering, and Jaelle came to Rohana’s side. “Rohana, I am sorry-I did not realize”
Rohana sighed and smiled at her. “Certainly not, child; you thought you were dealing with a rational man. You spoke more gently than I would have expected, and you said nothing that was not true. And I know that Kyril provoked you.”
Her eyes rested for a moment on Jaelle’s arms as if she could see the painful bruises there, and Jaelle thought, Does she truly read my mind?
When Kyril had helped to carry the unconscious man away, Rohana rose to her feet. She looked weary and worn.
“I know that you three”-her glance took in Peter and Magda, too-“were planning to leave today. Can you delay one more day? Today I must remain and make certain Gabriel is recovering as he should; tomorrow I can be ready to ride to Thendara with you.”
“To come with us? Why?” Jaelle asked.
Rohana looked at Magda and said, “Because I have made a very important discovery; I must talk at once with Lorill Hastur. He is under a misconception which, if it is not corrected at once, can have the gravest consequences for both our worlds. So, if you will have my company on the road to Thendara, tomorrow morning I will be ready to ride with you.”
Chapter
SIXTEEN
It was raining when they reached the travel-shelter at sunset, and as the party began to dismount, Rohana said, “I had hoped to reach Thendara today, but I have no great liking for riding half the night. It will be tomorrow for certain.”
“I shall be glad to get there,” Magda said, but then she began to wonder. Just what awaited her in Thendara? Even this one night’s respite was welcome.
As she was unsaddling her horse, Darrill, son of Darnak, came up behind her, lifting the heavy saddle from her hands. She smiled and relinquished it, and stood beside him as he began giving their horses fodder. He waited until most of Rohana’s guardsmen had withdrawn-Lady Rohana, as wife of the Lord of Ardais, could not travel without a considerable escort-then asked in a low voice, “Will you be glad to get back to your own world, Margali?”
She said, troubled, “I am not sure it is my world anymore, Darrill. I am sworn to the Free Amazons.”
“But surely … Piedro told me that was but a disguise, a way of allowing you to travel in safety.”
“Piedro does not know anything about it,” Magda said, with unexpected sharpness.
“I don’t think I understand.”
“I am not sure that I understand it myself,” she said. “It is true that I took the oath as a means to an end; not really aware of what it meant. But later I chose, of my free will, to honor it, and I will do so, whatever happens.”
Slowly, he nodded. “I can understand that. But what will the Terrans say?”
That, she thought, is the question. Will I spend the rest of my life as a fugitive from the Empire’s justice? “I will try to get a leave of absence to honor my obligation to the Guild-house,” she said. “And after that I think I could work more effectively for the Empire. It would allow me to do many things that an ordinary woman could not do here, otherwise.”
He said, very low, “Margali, when I first met with you on midwinter-night, I was very impressed with your courage and spirit. It seemed to me that no woman of our people could have so much, and I thought it must be only that you were a stranger, a Terran. Now there are times when it seems to me that you are even more like a woman of our own people. You are not like anyone I have ever known before.” He raised his eyes, and looked directly into hers, and for a moment Magda thought he would kiss her. Then he swallowed hard, recalled himself, and turned a little away. He said, “Forgive me; I must finish with the horses.”
As he went about his work, Magda found herself thinking, If I am not careful, he will be falling in love with me. And that is a complication I cannot allow now. I must be very careful. The thought made her a little regretful. I discovered at midwinter that I must find new ways of relating to my world; but before I complicate my life with another man, I must find out more about myself!
It might be flattering to have young Darrill in love with her; but it would be a cruel thing to test her new awareness of men by capturing his interest and perhaps his heart, when she was not free, could not make any permanent or serious commitment to anyone. Jaelle had defended her flirting on the grounds that she had never left any man wounded or heart-scalded by her teasing. I must be very careful to avoid that, too, Magda thought.
Inside the travel-shelter, which was one of the largest, the guardsmen, and Peter among them, had made their fire at one end; Rohana with her ladies, and Magda and Jaelle, at the other. As usual, Rohana sent word that Peter should come and join them at their meal. When they had finished, she looked at Peter and Jaelle, close together, their hands linked in the shadows, and said to Magda, “In common humanity, I think we should leave them alone for a few minutes.” She raised her voice slightly. “Come, my ladies, I think the time has come to visit the guardsmen at the other fire and see if they are content with their rations and their comfort.”
Rohana’s maid, a fat and sentimental old woman, looked back with an encouraging smile at Jaelle, as they went toward the other fire, and Jaelle felt herself blushing. Then she forgot the woman, as Peter drew her into his arms for a long, passionate kiss. She sank gratefully into his arms, blessing Rohana for even this moment or two alone with her lover; it would not be more than a few minutes, but while it lasted she could reassure herself. …
Finally he loosed her. “I am dizzy with wanting you! At least it will not be long; we reach Thendara tomorrow. Do you still love me, Jaelle?”
She looked up, laughing, into his face. “Can you doubt it?”
“But you avoid me.”
“Avoid you? Of course not, love,” she said, with a little flicker of laughter. “You certainly do not think I could lie with you in the presence of a half dozen guardsmen and all of Rohana’s maids!”
He looked away, uneasy at her directness. “That is not what I meant,” he protested, “but we could be together more often on the road; you could ride at my side, spen
d more time in my company! All during this trip you have treated me like someone you might have met at a public dancing-class, not like your lover!” He used the word in the inflection that made its nearest meaning “promised husband,” and she smiled, pressing his hand.
“You are my beloved,” she said in a whisper, “and soon we shall be together as much as you wish. But I am an Amazon, Piedro. I have not told you much about our laws and customs, but one of the things we are taught is that there is only one way in which women can travel among men without causing trouble and dissension. And that is by behaving as human beings; not as sexual creatures, women whose major business in life is to attract men to protect and care for them.”
“Oh, come, surely Lady Rohana and her companions-”
“Rohana is the wife of their lord, a sacred trust they must safeguard with their lives. And her ladies are covered by her-her special charisma. But I am an Amazon and I have renounced my protected status as Comynara. And I am working among them; I organized this journey. So I must not come among them as a woman who is-is free to be desired. Can’t you understand?” she begged. “If I spend much time with you, show myself as your lover”-she, too, used the word in the inflection meaning “promised wife,” and he pressed her hand-“then I show myself to them as a woman. And they begin to think of me as a woman, and before long they begin to compete in small ways for my favor and attention, and to show themselves before me as men, and soon there is dissension among them all, and ill feeling. So I must be just another worker, one of themselves. They must feel at ease with me, not temper their speech to a woman’s ears, or feel compelled to give me their lightest work.”
She did not shade her words with the faintest reproof, but Peter recalled that a few days ago she had frowned at him for helping her, unasked, with a heavy load.
He said, “Are you trying to tell me that there is no work which is beyond your strength?”
“No, no indeed!”
“I should think not,” said Peter indignantly, looking at the slender girl. “And what do you do, proud Amazon, when you find something beyond your strength?”
She smiled and said, “Precisely what you do among men, when you find something too heavy to lift, or a task needing four hands to accomplish it. You are not a tremendously strong man, I imagine; when a task demands more strength than you have in your arms, I suppose you simply say to one of the other men, ‘Come here and help me lift this before I strain my guts!’ Well, that is exactly what I do. If I have made it obvious that I do not shirk any work within my strength, then they will help me as they would help another man with a task too heavy for him, and not with any thought of a woman who must be sheltered!”
“I hope you do not always intend to treat me that way!” he said, and she laughed and raised her hand to touch his cheek lovingly.
“When we are alone, beloved, I shall be so fragile and demanding that you will sometimes think I am Lady Rohana herself, who is not by law permitted to move as much as a day’s ride without her maid and her lady companion and half a dozen guards! But you must not expect me to be anything other than I am, my love.” She stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down and kissed him quickly. “Enough for now. Rohana and her women are coming back, and tomorrow we will be in Thendara.”
“And tomorrow night …” Peter said, smiling at her, and for a moment she held herself against him, not at all unwilling to let him know she shared his eagerness. Then, sighing, they moved apart as Rohana with her ladies returned to their fire.
They rode down into Thendara a little after noon. Rohana said as they came through the gates, “What will you do now? Jaelle, you must go to the Guild-house, I know, with Margali.”
Magda felt a small clutch of fear. It’s here. There’s no more delaying. Oh, God, I’m frightened!
Certainly, within my lifetime, Darkover will be a part of the Empire, and it will make no difference. The usual time from first contact to affiliation is about fifty years, and that’s almost half over. But will that come too late to do me any good? Must I be exiled from one world to the other?
She thought this, not knowing that Darkover was to prove unique in the history of the Empire, and that not only her own lifetime but many lifetimes would pass before Darkover and the Empire were reconciled. Just the same, the curious little flash of precognition iced her blood again, and she pulled her fur-trimmed riding-cloak-Rohana’s midwinter gift-about her shoulders.
“This is idiotic!” Peter said, looking back to make certain they were out of earshot of Rohana’s women and the guardsmen. “You can’t possibly do that, Magda. Somehow or other, we’ve got to get you out of that nonsense of spending half a year in the Guild-house. I’m sure you’d find it interesting, but we can’t possibly afford to lose our only resident female expert. Come back with me now to the HQ, and let the people there think of some way to get you out of it.”
Magda said, in exasperation, “Peter, you don’t understand. I am oath-bound, and I will honor my oath. I will try, after, to make it right with the Empire authorities; but the obligation must be met nevertheless!”
“Oh, that,” he said in contempt. “You know as well as I do that an oath taken under duress is not valid!”
Jaelle looked at him in shock and dismay; and Magda, with that new, devastating sensitivity to thoughts, knew that Peter had just shocked Jaelle to speechlessness. An oath is sacred. What kind of man could ignore it? And if he had no awareness of what the oath meant to Magda, how could he possibly know what it meant to Jaelle?
Can he ever know, Jaelle thought with desolation, that it is the very mainspring of my being? It was only a moment, then her love began to make excuses for him; soon, soon he would understand. She smiled gaily at Peter and said to Magda, “We shall have to teach him better than that, will we not, sister?”
Rohana interrupted, sensing the strain: “The best way is for you, all three of you, to be my guests at Comyn Castle tonight. There is room in the Ardais suite for a dozen or more; and you, Piedro, can send word to your Terran supervisor that tomorrow we will all meet with Lorill Hastur. Both of them will be eager to know how this affair has ended.”
They agreed to that compromise, and an hour later were all settled in comfortable quarters in the Ardais suite. Magda was tired from the long journey, and lay down for a nap, but she knew that sleep was simply another way of avoiding, for a time, the unendurable conflicts. Tomorrow, at whatever cost, they must be faced.
Peter stood for a few moments at the door of the room the women shared. He said, hurt, “Jaelle, you are avoiding me again!”
“No, my love. In a day or two we shall declare ourselves as freemates, before witnesses,” she promised, standing on tiptoe to kiss him with a passion that swept away his doubts. “But just now I am Rohana’s guest in Comyn Castle and for her good name I must abide, under this roof, by her laws and rules of conduct rather than my own. But I love you. Never doubt it, promise me, Piedro, promise.”
“I promise,” he assured her, then, in surprise, bent to wipe the tears from her eyes. “My love, my darling, why are you crying?”
“I-I don’t know,” she stammered, and although he knew she was evading him, there was nothing he could say. “Even though I am a Free Amazon, Piedro, you must sometimes just let me be a woman, and not always reasonable. …”
When he had gone away, and Magda had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Jaelle wandered, restlessly, around the Ardais suite. At this time of year it was deserted; Rohana and her guests seemed to rattle around the empty rooms and corridors like a few pods on a tree stripped by a storm. At last Rohana sought her out.
“Come and sit with me for a little while, Jaelle. It may be a long time before we can spend time together like this; at Council season I have little leisure to enjoy your company, and it may be many years before you can pay me another visit at Ardais.”
They sat before the fire that had been kindled in Rohana’s room. For a time they said little, but at last Jaelle got out of her chair and c
ame and sat on the hearth-rug beside her kinswoman. She laid her head for a moment on Rohana’s knee; hesitantly, Rohana stroked the soft hair. As a girl Jaelle had never permitted caresses and Rohana had quickly learned not to offer them, but for once she seemed to invite them.
At last Jaelle said, “I did not tell you this, but you probably have guessed. Piedro has asked me to remain in Thendara as his freemate; and I have consented.”
Rohana looked down at Jaelle with a distant sadness. She loves him so much; and I know I cannot really understand. Rohana herself had been given in marriage very young, had obediently married the man chosen by her family, without question, and had never been touched by this kind of passion. At last she asked, with a hesitant tenderness, “Have you ever regretted your oath, Jaelle?”
“Never before this, never for a moment,” Jaelle said. Then, forcing the words out, “Just the same, I think you were right, years ago, when you said I was too young for such a choice.”
That struck to Rohana’s heart, almost with physical pain. Merciful Goddess, I gave her freedom, the freedom that had been denied to me. Was I so wrong? For a moment time slipped out of focus, past and present blending together, and it seemed to Rohana that it was again the last day of Jaelle’s long visit to Castle Ardais, in her fifteenth year. Rohana had known Jaelle was not happy there: she detested Kyril and had no great liking for Rohana’s younger son and daughter; she thought Gabriel a petty tyrant; she had chafed at the need to wear skirts even for riding; and on the last day of her visit she had come to Rohana like this and told her, defiantly, that she would take the Amazon oath on the very day she was legally free to do so.
Rohana had foreseen this, but had still been dismayed by the actuality. She felt Jaelle had as yet no idea what she was renouncing.