“If you do not get drunk, you might be overeager and mishandle your bride.” Damn Domenic and his jokes! Fortunately none of them except Damon, who understood the problem, knew what he was going through.
If they did know, they’d probably think it was funny! Andrew considered. Just one more dirty joke for a wedding!
Abruptly he felt distress, dismay… Callista! Callista in trouble somewhere! He hurried in her direction, letting his own telepathic sensitivity guide him.
He found her at one end of the hall, pinned against the wall by Dezi, who had one arm at either side of her so she could not dodge away and escape. He was leaning forward as if to kiss her. She twisted to one side and then the other, trying to avoid his lips, imploring him. “Don’t, Dezi, I do not want to defend myself against a kinsman—”
“We are not now in the Tower, domna. Come now, one real kiss…”
Andrew grabbed the boy by one shoulder and plucked him away, lifting him clear of the floor.
“Damn it, leave her alone!”
Dezi looked sullen. “It was but a jest between kinfolk.”
“A jest Callista seemed not to share,” Andrew said. “Get lost! Or I’ll—”
“You’ll what ?” Dezisneered. “Challenge me to a duel?”
Andrew looked down at the slight youngster, flushed, angry, obviously drunk. Abruptly his anger melted away. There was something to be said, he thought, for the Terran custom of a legal age for drinking. “Challenge, hell,” he said laughing, looking down at the angry boy. “I’ll put you over my knee and spank you for the nasty little boy you are. Now go away and sober up and stop bothering the grown-ups!”
Dezi gave Andrew a look like murder, but he went, and Andrew realized that for the first time since the declaration he was alone with Callista.
“What the hell was that all about?”
She was as crimson as her light draperies, but she tried to make a joke of it. “Oh, he said that now I was Keeper no more, I was free at last to give way to the irresistible passion he is sure he must arouse in any female breast.”
“I should have mopped up the floor with him,” Andrew said.
She shook her head. “Oh, no, I think he’s simply drunk a bit more than he can carry. And he is a kinsman, after all. It’s not unlikely he’s my father’s son.”
Andrew had, after all, half guessed this when he saw Domenic and Dezi side by side. “But would he so misuse a girl he believes to be his sister?”
“Half-sister,” Callista answered, “and in the hills, half-brothers and half-sisters can lie together if they will, or even marry, though it is considered luckier for them to bear no children so close akin. And horseplay and dirty jokes are expected at a wedding, so what he did was only rude, not shocking. I am too sensitive, and after all he is very young.”
She still looked shaken and distressed, and Andrew still thought he should have wiped the floor up with the boy; then, tardily, he wondered if he had been too hard on Dezi. Dezi wasn’t the first kid or the last to drink more than he could handle and make himself obnoxious.
He said gently, looking at her tired, strained face, “This will be over soon, love.”
“I know.” She hesitated. “You do know… the custom… ?”
“Damon told me,” he said wryly. “I gather they put us to bed together, with plenty of rough jokes.”
She nodded, coloring. “It is supposed to encourage the begetting of children, and in this part of the world that is very important to a young family, as you can imagine. So we, must simply… make the best of it.” She glanced at him, crimson, and said, “I am sorry. I know this will make it worse—”
He shook his head. “Actually, I don’t think so,” he said, smiling. “If anything, that kind of thing would tend to put me off anyhow.” He saw the flicker of guilt again in her face, and ached to comfort and reassure her.
“Look,” he said gently, “think of it this way: let them have their fun, but we can do as we please, and that will be our secret, as it should be. In our own time. So we can sit back and ignore their nonsense.”
She sighed and smiled at him. She said softly, “If you really think of it that way…”
“I do, love.”
“I’m so glad,” she said in a whisper. “Look, Ellemir is being pulled away by all the girls.” She added quickly, at his look of dismay, “No, they’re not hurting her, it’s only the custom that a bride should struggle and fight a little. It comes from the days when girls were married off without consent, but it’s only a joke now. See, Father’s body-servants have taken my father away, and Leonie will withdraw too, so the young folk can make all the noise they like.”
But Leonie was not withdrawing; she came and stood beside them, still and somber in her crimson draperies.
“Callista, child, do you want me to stay? Perhaps in my presence the jokes will be a little more restrained and seemly.”
Andrew could sense how much Callista longed for this, but she smiled and touched Leonie’s hand, the feather-touch customary among telepaths. “I thank you, kinswoman. But I… I must not start by cheating everyone of their fun. No bride ever died of embarrassment, and I am sure I shall not be the first.” And Andrew, looking at her, bravely steeled to endure without complaint whatever obscene horseplay they had created for a Keeper who gave up her ritual virginity, remembered the gallant girl who had made brave little jokes, even when she was a prisoner, alone and terrified in the caves of Corresanti.
It is for this that I love her so, he told himself.
Leonie said, very gently, “As you will, then, darling. Take my blessing.” She bowed gravely to them both and went away.
As if her withdrawal had loosed the floodgates, a tide of young men and girls came surging up to them in full flood.
“Callista, Ann’dra, you waste time here, the night is wearing away. Have you nothing better to do this night than talk?”
He saw Damon being pulled along by Dezi; Domenic grasped his own hand and he was drawn away from Callista, saw the flood of young girls surge up around her and conceal her from him. Someone shouted out, “We’ll make sure she’s ready for you, Ann’dra, so you needn’t defile these holy robes of hers!”
“Come along, both of you,” Domenic cried, in high good spirits. “These fellows would rather stay here drinking all night, I am sure, but now they must do their duty, a bride must not be kept waiting.”
He and Damon were hauled up the stairs, shoved into the living room of the suite they had prepared this morning. “Don’t get them mixed up now,” the Guardsman Caradoc called out drunkenly. “When the brides are twins, how is a mere husband, and drunk at that, to know if he lies in the arms of the right woman?”
“What difference does it make?” asked a strange young man. “That is for them to settle among themselves, is it not? And when the lamp is out, one woman is like another. If they are confused between left hand and right, what difference does it make?”
“We must start with Damon. He has lost so much time that he must make haste to do his duty to his clan,” Domenic said gaily. Damon was quickly stripped of his clothing and wrapped in a long robe. The bedroom door was opened with ceremony and Andrew could see Ellemir, thinly gowned in spider-silk, her copper hair unbound and streaming over her breasts. She was red-faced, giggling uncontrollably, but Andrew sensed that it was on the ragged edge of hysterical sobbing. It was enough, he thought. It was too much. Everyone should get out and leave them alone.
“Damon,” Domenic said solemnly, “I have made you a gift.”
Andrew saw with relief that Damon was just drunk enough to be good-natured. “That is kind of you, brother-in-law. What is your gift?”