Marion Bradley - The Forbidden Tower

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?”

“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.

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.