Exile''s Song

  Aaron sketched a drawing of the proposed garment, telling one of the boys to bring an embroiderer. Margaret summoned the last of her energy to put an end to the torment of voices around her. “Please! Stop! I don’t need any dancing clothes. I am a scholar, not a princess.” Then she fled into the back room, removed the garments and yanked her uniform back on.

  When she returned to the workroom, Dayborah had vanished, and both Manuella and Aaron had puzzled expressions. Indeed, Aaron looked more than puzzled—he looked hurt!

  MacEwan said, “But what about the Midsummer Ball?”

  As firmly as she was able, Margaret replied, “I’m sure if there is a ball at midsummer, I will not attend. I do not move in those sorts of circles. What I want now is a good wool cloak, for a man perhaps this much shorter than you, Master MacEwan,” she gestured with one hand, “and quite elderly. I really must get back to him soon—this has all taken too long.”

  “Well, if you must, you must, domna. We will have everything brought to the Castle later in the day, then.” She sensed the confusion, and a mild resentment from them, as if she were deliberately robbing them of some pleasure. If only she could make sense of anything. Her brain felt filled with porridge, and lumpy porridge at that.

  “Castle?” They had mistaken her for someone else. Suddenly her sense of humor asserted itself. It was like a very bad old story. She must resemble some local noble, and they must think she was slumming.

  Young Geremy said, “The domna is staying with Master Everard, in Music Street. I told you that before!” He was red with embarrassment.

  His elders all looked at him with that expression of disappointment that went with disbelief. Aaron MacEwan shook his head. ’If you say so, domna.”

  “I do say so,” she said, exasperated. “Now, if you will just make up a parcel, I will take it with me.”

  “No, indeed; that would not be fitting,” Master MacEwan answered firmly, clearly not believing either her or his young nephew. He was the picture of outraged dignity. “We will send it within the hour.”

  Margaret gave up. They refused to be convinced she was who she said she was, and stubbornly went on believing she was someone else entirely. “How much will this be?” Aaron stared off into the corner of the room, abstracted, while Manuella named a price which was much less than she had been prepared to pay. At least they were not overcharging her. When the awkward business of commerce was completed, MacEwan cleared his throat.

  “Domna,” Aaron said, “It is not our place to question you. But when young Ethan told me who you were, or appeared to be, I was truly honored that you had chosen my shop for your custom. Oh, I confess I did it for my own glory. I have little occasion to dress a lady of the comyn, for mostly they buy cloth and have their own servants make it up. It goes against the grain to think of untrained hands on my fine goods, but that is just how things are. I am not without a reputation, but one can only go so far with social climbers, lyric performers, and gleemen.”

  Her skull was now throbbing as if a thousand drums were beating within it, and her skin felt cold and clammy beneath her uniform. Summoning all the good manners she was able, Margaret replied, “Believe me, Master MacEwan, if I were going to patronize any tailor, it would be you. You have been more than kind. I know an artist when I see one. I don’t know who you think I am, but believe me, I am not a member of this comyn. I’ve never heard of it before!”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Margaret knew they were not so much untrue as inaccurate. She knew the word, knew what it meant, but it was all connected to that place in her brain where she did not want to go. No, where she must not go, even if she wished to. The air around her seemed too still, and she listened again for the sound of summer thunder. She could see the looking glass out of the corner of her eye, and there seemed to be something in it, just the hint of a face. But it was a frightening face, and she turned her gaze away quickly.

  Then a great weight seemed to settle on her chest. A huge hand gripped her heart and squeezed. She felt herself lean against the long cutting table, its edge pressing into her hipbones as a long swirling tunnel opened before her eyes. Falling, falling! She tumbled into the depths and everything vanished in circling darkness.

  5

  Margaret opened her eyes and felt a hard, flat surface beneath her back. Overhead there were high beams, painted with intricate patterns that made her head spin and her stomach churn. Where was she? For a second she couldn’t remember. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the beams. Something soft and heavy lay across her body. She closed her fingers around it, and felt the warm, rough kiss of a woolen blanket. She could smell it, the good, clean smell of mountain balsam. She shut her eyes and tried to breathe normally.

  When she opened her eyes again, she found the dark, bearded visage of Aaron MacEwan watching her with anxious eyes. She could feel something beneath her head, and guessed it was a bolt of goods. “Be still, child. Manuella will bring you a cup of tea. You gave us quite a scare, fainting like that. I don’t blame you. This hot spell we are having makes me giddy sometimes, too. The shop gets so stuffy.”

  Hot spell! She felt as cold as a block of ice. Her hands and feet ached with the chill, while her chest was drenched with frigid, clammy sweat. Margaret had an urge to scream or laugh with madness. She took a ragged breath, forcing a calm she did not feel down into her body. The events of the previous day swept into her memory, and she knew that by Darkover measure it was a very warm day indeed.

  Margaret struggled to sit up, and the world spun. She sank back weakly, angry at her body’s betrayal. Something was wrong, something so terrible she did not want to know it. She must! It was urgent. But her mind refused to cooperate.

  Hands helped her to sit upright, tender hands, callused and work-worn hands, the real hands of real people. A mug of strong, scented tea rested against her mouth. She was so thirsty! She swallowed, scalding her tongue slightly. It was heavy with honey, hot and sweet. She gulped, then sputtered and coughed as a drop went down the wrong way. The terrible weakness began to leave her body, and she emptied the cup, draining it in huge, ungraceful gulps. The sugar hit her bloodstream like a drug, and memory flooded back.

  Ivor! Something is wrong with Ivor! The certainty of it filled her with dread. She could not say how she knew, but for once she did not try to persuade herself that her imagination was at work. It was too real for that. Her teeth chattered against the rim of the empty mug, and she trembled all over.

  Margaret resisted the urge to leap off the firm, supporting surface of the long cutting table and run back to Music Street. Only the sure knowledge that her knees would buckle at the first step made her remain where she was for a few minutes, breathing as slowly as she could. All the discipline of her academic training asserted itself, and slowly dizziness departed and a small sense of strength returned to her limbs.

  “Please—I must go immediately!”

  “But, domna, you are ill.” That was Manuella, her small features creased with concern. Even in her roil of emotions, Margaret knew the concern was genuine, and she was touched. These people were strangers, and yet they behaved toward her as if she mattered. It touched a deep longing within her, something that was injured. She had not known it was there until that moment.

  Gritting her teeth she pushed aside the urge to sink into the kindness of these people, pushed the blanket off her legs, and braced herself. “That does not matter. I must return to Master Everard’s immediately!” She pushed her feet onto the scrap-littered floor, then staggered like a drunk. “Geremy! Ethan—take me back as quickly as you can!”

  Both adults and children looked at each other helplessly. Aaron gave a shrug, as if to say “As you wish,” and she straightened up. Margaret pulled her hated uniform tunic down where it had rucked up under her arms, and shivered all over. There was no real need to hasten, and in her heart she knew it. It was too late. But she wanted desperately to be wrong. She had one vivid impression from her spiral int
o darkness, the memory of a hand clutching her heart. Yet she knew it was not her heart, but that of Ivor which had been seized. She wished for it to be a dream, but she was certain it was as real as the hands which offered assistance now, actual and terrible.

  Outside the shop, the light in the street was red. The great, bloody sun had slipped close to the low roofs of the houses, casting deep shadows between them. Her feet sped as she dashed down the lane, her heels striking hard against the rough cobbles, pushing the pace with her long legs, until both boys were gasping beside her. Her blood pounded like the death-drums of Vega VI, throbbing in her ears until she was nearly nauseous. One foot slipped, and she went down, falling on her palms and knees. The pain made her cry out sharply, cursing more fluently than she imagined she could.

  The lads helped her up, and Margaret looked down at the cut across one palm as if from a great distance. She could feel a warm trickle seeping down her leg beneath her uniform. Her fine hair had pulled free of the butterfly clasp which remained in it, and fluttered against her cheeks as the boys watched her tensely. She tucked the wisps back impatiently, smearing a streak of fresh blood across her brow without realizing it.

  Where were they? The streets seemed endless, winding and twisting beneath the rubidescent light of the lowering sun. How long had she been unconscious? Why had she left Ivor, when she felt he was not quite right? Her feet moved rapidly, mechanically. She focused her energy on reaching her destination, trying not to think, not to imagine what she already knew, though she could not say how.

  The door to the house swung open before she could grasp the wooden knocker. Master Everard himself, pale and shocked, stood before her, his skin nearly as pale as his white hair, and his old teeth yellow against it. His blue eyes were damp with grief as he took in her disheveled appearance .

  “Ivor . . .” she gasped, her heart aching in her breast.

  “Dear child, I have sad news for . . .”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Her voice sounded blunt and crude in her ears, thick and rough like a jackdaw’s call.

  Everard nodded as he drew her into the house. “Yes, he is gone. The lad went to waken him and could not. He must have slipped away in his sleep.”

  “But he wasn’t sick,” she protested, her voice rising shrilly, like that of a weary, hysterical child. “He simply can’t be dead,” Margaret insisted stupidly.

  Master Everard helped her to a seat, patting her hand kindly. “We don’t know what happened, child. He was old. He was weary. When a man’s time comes, it comes. His face is peaceful, and I do not think he suffered at all.”

  “I have to go to him!”

  “No! You are in no condition to see him. Just sit still and calm yourself.”

  “But I have to see him—I have to be with him!” Helpless tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Anya bustled across the room. She carried a bowl of steaming water and a soft cloth. Clucking gently, she wiped the tears off Margaret’s face, and the blood off her torn hands. Margaret winced while the cuts were cleaned and rubbed with a thick salve that smelled of herbs, sharp and bracing. Behind the woman, the music master stood, twisting his hands before him, trying to help and being told to stay away.

  Margaret wanted very much to push Anya’s hands away, to yell at the two kind people who hovered around her. She lacked the strength to even form the words. She tried to get up, but her legs refused to support her.

  Margaret huddled on the seat, wishing she could rouse from this nightmare. She knew it was real, but she felt so faraway, so distant. Her mind floated without direction, the smell of the salve making her feel drowsy. She remembered Ethan’s mispronunciation of Thetis. I never got to tell Ivor about the planet of “thesis.” What a silly thing to think of, but he would have loved it. Fresh tears welled in her eyes.

  “Come along to bed now,” Anya told her.

  “I have to see him. Really, I will be all right, if only I can see him.”

  “You are in no . . .”

  “Anya—take her to him. She can’t rest like this.”

  Master Everard’s voice was sharp, pained, and authoritative.

  The housekeeper gave a grunt, looked at the old man, and nodded. She helped Margaret up the long stairs, and the two of them went into Ivor’s room. Anya stood in the doorway while Margaret walked toward the bed, her feet hesitant now. There was no need to hurry.

  The room was on the afternoon side of the house, as her own was on the morning side, and the rays of the sun came through the window, casting a glow on the figure in the huge bed. He looked so small. And peaceful. Just as if he were only sleeping, as she had seen him sleep hundreds of times before. But she knew he was not going to wake up.

  “Ivor,” she whispered, then repeated the word louder. What could I have done? Nothing. So why do I feel this is somehow my fault? “I’m sorry! Why did you have to leave me? What am I going to tell Ida? How am I going to go on without you?” The words sounded foolish in her ears, but she knew they weren’t. They were just human words, what people said and thought when someone died.

  “I loved you, old man. Did I ever tell you that? Did I ever tell you that you were a father to me, all these years, and that I would not have traded one second of it for all the credits in the universe?” Margaret reached down and took the hand of the man, twined her chilled fingers between his cold ones. She could still smell his familiar scent from the bedclothes, the odor of his face lotion and the stuff he put on his thinning hair.

  Margaret stood for a long time, holding the cooling hand in her own, thinking of their years together, and his many kindnesses. At last her aloneness filled her senses. He was gone, and she would have to do the best she could, though at that moment, she wasn’t sure she knew what that was. She put his hand down on his chest, smoothed the covers a little, touched his wrinkled cheek tenderly, and turned away. There was nothing more she could do.

  Exhaustion hit her like a bludgeon then, and her knees buckled. She staggered against the side of the huge bed, hitting her shin so hard that dots of light danced in her eyes. Grimly, she shut out the pain. It would still be there later, she knew. It would always be there. She was empty of tears, empty of everything except pain and loss. Anya took her arm gently, and led her off to bed.

  Walls; high walls; rose above her. Beneath her little feet, there were great squares of concrete. Margaret felt so small, so powerless. She looked at the great sculptures which stood around her. There was a long keyboard, like a curl of the sea, rising beside her. She stood on tiptoe and tried to touch one of the keys; and a soft chime sounded in her ears. It reminded her of something, but she could not remember what. The sound was the sound of fine crystal, and it made her shiver.

  A bear, round and hefty, danced on a pedestal, friendly. Beside it there was a long sheet of metal, covered with intricate Ceti tri-model notation. Margaret tried to puzzle it out, for Ceti notation worked both as music and as language. It was a code, and she knew how to read it, but there was no sense to what she saw. She moved as if through some thick, invisible liquid, slowly and with difficulty. She stared into it as she circled the statuary garden and sought a way out.

  A yellow sun, hateful to her eyes, glared at her, and escaping it became urgent. She walked along the walls, staring at the stones, looking for an exit. At last, she found a door, so small she had missed it before. As tiny as she was, it was smaller still, just over a foot high and hardly reaching her knee. She reached down a hand and twisted the little metal handle. It was locked. She beat small fists against the door, turning and twisting, as the statues seemed to mock her efforts. Exhausted, she put her head against the door and wept.

  She opened swollen eyelids and felt the pillow beneath her head. The cover was damp. Margaret blinked her eyes, and cleared her vision. It was not very dark in the room. She turned toward the window, and decided it was about mid-afternoon, local time. Why was she in bed? She hated sleeping in the daytime. It left her feeling muzzy-headed and crabby.


  Why had she slept in daylight? Margaret rolled onto her back, and looked up at the richly-painted beams above her head. Memory rose like a river, flooding her mind. The fainting spell in the shop, the terrible run back to Master Everard’s, the spill on the cobblestones. She lifted one hand and saw the tidy gauze bandage which wrapped around her palm. No, she had not imagined it. Ivor was dead.

  The tears came again, running into her ears with a maddening trickle. Her grief hardened into a kind of rage, a sense of having been abandoned again! She couldn’t figure out where that came from, this emptiness within her that filled her with a senseless anger which seemed to have no particular object. She sat up and cursed fluently in several languages, expelling the rage with words, until she sounded like a lunatic to herself.

  Margaret silenced herself abruptly, and let her mind wander purposelessly. She did not want to think, because thinking just filled her with pain. For a moment she wished for the oblivion of wine, and found herself thinking of the Senator in his bouts of drink. Was this why he did it? For the first time she almost understood him, and found the sensation disquieting. She did not want to understand her father—ever!

  Banishing him to the place where she consigned her most hated memories, Margaret found herself recalling the intricate rhymed couplets of Zeepangu. On that mist-shrouded planet, death was seen as an incredible shirking of responsibility. The mourners never wept or showed any sorrow. Instead, they cursed the corpse and cast the two-lined poems into the grave. She almost understood, for a moment, their sense of outrage and loss. But she was not Zeepangese, and she had no desire to curse Ivor for abandoning her. She just desperately wished he hadn’t died, as futile as that desire was, and that she was not so terribly frightened. How did anyone bear the pain of death?