“I have made you a calendar, marked with the days and the moons. If you do your duty this night, see, I have marked in crimson the date when your first son will be born!”
Damon was red with stifled laughter. Andrew could see that he would rather have thrown it at Domenic’s head, but he accepted it, let them ceremoniously help him into bed at Ellemir’s side. Domenic said something to Ellemir which made her duck down and smother her face in the sheets, then conducted the watchers to the door, with mock solemnity.
“And now, so that we may pass our night in peaceful drinking, undisturbed by whatever goes on beyond these doors, I have another gift for the happy couple. I shall set up a telepathic damper just inside your doors—”
Damon sat up in bed and flung a pillow at them, finally losing patience. “Enough is enough,” he shouted. “Get the hell out of here and leave us in peace!”
As if that had been what they were waiting for — perhaps it was — the whole crowd of men and women began to withdraw quickly toward the doors. “Really,” Domenic rebuked, drawing his face into reproving lines, “can you not contain your impatience a little longer, Damon? My poor little sister, at the mercy of such unseemly haste!” But he closed the door, and behind him Andrew heard Damon come to the door and bolt it. At least there was a limit to the jokes considered proper, and Damon and Ellemir were alone.
But now it was his turn. There was, he thought grimly, only one good thing about all this. By the time the drunken men were finished with their horseplay, he was going to be too tired — and too damn mad — for anything except sleep.
They thrust him into the room where Callista waited, surrounded by the young girls, friends of Ellemir, their own servants, young noblewomen from the surrounding countryside. They had taken away her somber crimson draperies, put her into a thin gown like Ellemir’s, her hair unbraided, streaming over her bare shoulders. She looked quickly up at him, and somehow it seemed to Andrew for a moment that she looked much younger than Ellemir: young, lost, and vulnerable.
He sensed that she was fighting to keep back tears. Shyness and reluctance were part of the game, but if she really broke down and cried, he knew, they would be ashamed and resentful of her for spoiling their fun. They would despise her for her inability to join in the game.
Children could be cruel, he told himself, and so many of these girls were only children. Young as she looked, Callista was a woman. She was, perhaps, never a child; she had her childhood stolen by the Tower… He steeled himself against whatever was coming, knowing that however rough it was for him, it was worse for Callista.
How soon can I get them out of here, he wondered, before she breaks down and cries, and hates herself for it? Why should she have to endure this nonsense?
Domenic took him firmly by the shoulders and turned him around, facing away from Callista.
“Pay attention,” he admonished. “We have not finished with you yet, and the women have not yet made Callista ready for you. Can you not wait a few minutes?” And Andrew let Domenic do as he would, preparing to give courteous attention to the jokes be did not understand. But he thought longingly of the time when he and Callista would be alone.
Or would that be worse? Well, whether or not there was this to get through, somehow, first. He let Domenic and the men lead him into the adjoining room.
Chapter Six
There were times when it seemed to Andrew that Damon’s contentment was a visible thing, something which could be seen and measured. At such times, as the days lengthened and winter came on, in the Kilghard Hills, Andrew could not help feeling a bitter envy. Not that he grudged Damon a moment of his happiness; it was only that he longed to share it.
Ellemir too looked radiant. It made him cringe, sometimes, to think that the servants at Armida, strangers, Dom Esteban himself, noticed this difference and blamed him, that forty days after their marriage Ellemir looked so joyous, while day by day Callista seemed to grow more pale and grave, more constrained and sorrowful.
It was not that Andrew was unhappy. Frustrated, yes, for it was sometimes nerve-racking to be so close to Callista — to endure the good-natured jokes and raillery which were the lot, he supposed, of every newly married man in the galaxy — and to be separated from her by an invisible line he could not cross.
And yet, if they had come to know one another by any ordinary route, there would have been a long time of waiting. He reminded himself that they had married when he had known her less than forty days. And this way he could be with her a great deal, coming to know the outward girl, Callista, as well as he had come to know her inwardly, in mind and spirit, when she had been in the hands of the catmen, imprisoned in darkness within the caves of Corresanti. Then, when for some strange reason she could reach no other mind on Darkover save Andrew Carr’s, their minds had touched, so deeply that years of living together could have created no closer bond. Before he had ever laid eyes on her in the flesh he had loved her, loved her for her courage in the face of terror, for what they had endured together.
Now he came to love her for outward things as welclass="underline" for her grace, her sweet voice, her airy charm and quick wit. She could make jokes even about their present frustrating separation, which was more than Andrew could do! He loved too the gentleness with which she treated everyone, from her father, who was crippled and often peevish, to the youngest and clumsiest of the household servants.
One thing for which he had not been prepared was her inarticulateness. For all her quick wit and easy repartee, she found it difficult to speak of things which were important to her. He had hoped they could talk freely together about the difficulties which faced them, about the nafure of her training in the Tower, the way in which she had been taught never to respond with the slightest sexual awareness. But on this subject she was silent, and on the few occasions Andrew tried to get her to speak of it she would turn her face away, stammer and grow silent, her eyes filling with tears.
He wondered if the memory was so painful, and would be filled again with indignation at the barbarous way in which a young woman’s life had been deformed. He hoped, eventually, she would feel free enough to talk about it; he could not think of anything else that might help free her from the constraint. But for the present, unwilling to force her into anything, even to speaking against her will, he waited.
As she had foreseen, it was not easy to be so close to her, and yet distant. Sleeping in the same room, though they did not share a bed, seeing her sleepy and flushed and beautiful in the morning, in her bed, seeing her half-dressed, her hair about her shoulders — and yet not daring more than the most casual touch. His frustration took strange forms. Once, when she was in her bath, feeling foolish but unable to resist, he had picked up her nightgown and pressed it passionately to his lips, breathing in the fragrance of her body and the delicate scent she used. He felt dizzy and ashamed, as if he had committed some unspeakable perversion. When she returned, he could not face her, knowing that they were open to one another and that she knew what he had done. He had avoided her eyes and gone quickly away, unwilling to face the imagined contempt — or pity — in her face.
He wondered if she would have preferred him to sleep elsewhere, but when he asked her, she said shyly, “No, I like to have you near me.” It occurred to him that perhaps this intimacy, sexless as it was, was a necessary first step in her reawakening.
Forty days after the marriage the high winds and snow flurries gave way to heavy snows, and Andrew’s time was taken up, day after day, in arranging for the wintering of the horses and other livestock, storing accessible fodder in sheltered areas, inspecting and stocking the herdmen’s shelters in the upland valleys. For days at a time he would be out, spending days in the saddle and nights in outdoor shelters or in the far-flung farmsteads which were part of the great estate.