Exile's Song (14 page)

Secrets sometimes seemed to fill the airy house with a vapor, the smell of ancient rage and sorrow. Margaret was so accustomed to it that she rarely asked questions. She tried to guess his mood, and failed, biting her lower lip and shifting from foot to foot.

“Marjorie?” he said unguardedly. “No. Your mother was Marjorie’s sister, Thyra.”

Margaret tried to digest this new, and unwelcome, bit of information. Who? She knew that name—sometimes he shouted it in his sleep. It always gave her the shivers. She wanted to leave the room now, but her curiosity got the better of her. “I’ve heard of some pretty weird marriage customs, but that is a new one! Is the first child always born by the wife’s sister?” She was being sarcastic, and she knew it, but she would have died before she let her father know that she was interested.

He didn’t laugh. “It wasn’t deliberate,” he said, looking bleak. Margaret was just old enough to think she understood and be embarrassed, whether for him or herself she was not sure.

“Does Dio know?”

“Yes, of course; I told her the whole thing when—when I found out myself,” he said. “Did you know Dio and I once had a child?” The pain in his voice made her wince.

“No,” she said, a little more gently. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s why—Dio was so glad to have you.”

“But why did you never have others?” She had longed for sisters and brothers, for the sorts of large, bustling families she saw among the Thetans. Margaret had always felt a little cheated in being an only child.

“I didn’t dare,” he said roughly. A terrifying picture flashed into her mind, of a wretched infant too deformed to survive. “I couldn’t make her face that . . . again. No man would.” He hesitated. “Dio said you should be told, but I’ve always been too cowardly. Our son—died. Then I found you. You were such a wonderful little girl, and Dio wanted a child of mine so much. I think she’s been a good mother.”

“She is. I never questioned that.”
But where—and who—is Thyra—my own mother?

“Dio should have had half a dozen children. She would have liked to,” her father said, “but I just could not risk it.” Margaret could not contradict him. But why was it a secret? And why had she always felt it was somehow her fault, some failure of hers, that there were no other children?

“No,” he said gently, and she knew he had heard her, in that strange way he had sometimes. She had never been able to figure out how he did it—as if he could read her mind. She was sure that was impossible. Certainly it was unthinkable—people should not be able to invade the minds of others. “It had nothing to do with you—though at your age, I know that is really difficult for you to believe. When I was your age, I thought everything that went wrong with my father was my fault, and I expect you are the same.” Since Margaret could not imagine her father as ever having been young, let alone being wrong, she had withdrawn before he said anything more. She remembered going back to her room, and then shutting his words away, making herself forget what he had said. She had done that other times, she realized now. Whenever anything frightened her, or was too painful, she sent the memory away into a place in her mind that was locked and hidden.

Now, in the warm waters of the bath, she wondered if the red-haired, screaming woman in her dreams was this Thyra. If she was, Margaret hated to think about it. And who was that man she kept getting glimpses of? If only she had told the Old Man the truth, all those years before, about her dreams. But, she hadn’t trusted him enough to disclose her dreams. And there was no use thinking about the past. It was gone, and it really did not matter to her.

Was the Thyra who had owned that
ryll
the same woman? It seemed likely, but there wasn’t anyone she could ask about it. She noticed her fingers were starting to get all prunish from the water, and that was such a normal thing that she felt better in spite of herself. Margaret shoved aside this riddle she would probably never solve, and finished her bath.

If the woman in her dreams was the same Thyra whose
ryll
she had played two days before, if she was indeed her mother, then the Old Man had a great deal to explain. If she saw him again—no,
when
—she was going to tie him to a chair and not let him go until he told her everything! The resolve heartened Margaret more than a little, for she realized she was no longer a frightened girl. Well, perhaps just a little frightened, but certainly not a child any longer.

 

Bureaucracy, Margaret thought, was something invented by the devil to make the lives of people more difficult. After two days of wrestling with petty officials in the Terran Sector, she had been told that she could not send Ivor’s body home because she was not a relative. He had to be buried on Darkover, and if Ida wanted to claim the body, she would have to come there and claim it. She had called the person behind the desk several colorful and unlikely names, then stomped off with the headache she was certain was going to become a permanent fixture in her brain.

She had telefaxed Ida—enriching the Federation’s communications system considerably, but not with any sense of satisfaction for herself—and received a sad message telling her to bury the professor on Darkover at least for the time being. Margaret had found a coffin maker, with some help from Anya, and had chosen a nice casket. It had been an almost comforting experience, because the man had wanted to know all about Ivor—what he did and what he liked. He showed her designs from his book, and she chose a guitar to be carved onto the top of the coffin.

Now there was one spot on her brow that throbbed incessantly, and she had rubbed the skin almost raw—as raw as she felt within. Filling out forms and answering the same questions over and over had almost held her grief at bay. But in the moments when she was not busy, she felt lost and abandoned. Only the kindly presence of Master Everard and Anya kept her from surrendering completely to hopelessness. They behaved as if they had known her and Ivor all their lives, as if he were a valued friend, not a stranger who had had the poor manners to die in their house after only two days’ stay.

Master Everard walked beside her now, along the narrow streets. The coffin was borne along by four members of the Musicians Guild, and the rest of Master Everard’s household walked behind it. Margaret carried the professor’s precious guitar in one hand. Her palm was nearly healed from where she had fallen in her wild rush to get back to the music master’s house, but the cut on her knee was scabbed and painful.

As they approached the little cemetery which lay at the edge of the Terran Sector, a number of people stopped and looked at the procession. Margaret, deep in her anguish, ignored the curious looks she got from Darkovans and Terrans. She was dressed in the clothing she had bought from MacEwan, for warmth and comfort, and it was all she could manage to put one foot in front of the other. She kept stumbling in the unfamiliar long skirt.

They passed beneath a handsome stone arch and entered the walled enclosure. There were a scattering of headstones, trees here and there, and up ahead, a little huddle of figures she thought were the statues from her dream. Then one turned and she realized they were quite alive. The breeze brought the clean scent of balsam and stirred the garments of those who waited.

“I hope you do not mind, child. I asked a few people from Music Street to join us.” Master Everard was weary, and he seemed apprehensive as he spoke.

“No, I don’t mind. But they never knew him. It seems strange.”

“True, but they would have wished to have known him. In the short time I had with him, I found him to be a very good man. I feel very gifted in that time, you see.”

Margaret didn’t, but there seemed to be nothing to add, so she moved onward, her eyes burning with unshed tears, her muscles aching with fatigue. Margaret came to the grave, looked into the faces of strangers, and saw—not strangers, but friends she had not known she possessed. It gave her the strength to endure as the Terran chaplain, in his gray clericals, a sober note between the greens and blues of the Darkovans, began to read the ritual words. Ivor had not been an adherent of any one of Terra’s many faiths—if he had a religion, it was music—so the words were impersonal, almost without impact.

The pallbearers lowered the casket into the earth, and the chaplain read from his book, a worn volume, old-fashioned and probably valuable. The words, like the book, were well worn, ages old, formal and probably as meaningless to the Darkovans as they were to her. When he was done, he bent over, cast a handful of dirt into the grave, and withdrew, his duty done.

Stepping toward the open earth, Margaret bent and picked up a clod of dirt. As her fingers closed around it, she felt a disturbing tingle, as if the very soil itself could speak. She could not move for a moment, the sensation of the warm earth in her hand, as if Darkover were running along her blood. Then she dropped the bit of earth down onto the coffin, and went utterly still.

Margaret stood frozen on the spot until a woman stepped forward. Her hair was dark, her skin pale, and she was dressed in blue. She raised her arms and began to sing in a strong soprano that rang out between the trees and headstones. It was a mournful melody, heart-piercing in its beauty and purity. The words were of springs Ivor would never see, food he would never taste, and flowers he would never smell. All the senses were celebrated, and Margaret, her composure shattered, sobbed helplessly.

When the unknown woman was done, she stepped aside, and a large man took her place. Margaret recognized the voice as that of the man who would succeed Everard as head of the Guild. She could not recall his name just then. He sang a beautiful song in a form of Darkovan that was archaic, and Margaret struggled to follow the words. The warm vigor of his baritone filled her with a sense of release, and she found she could stop crying and just listen in silence. She wiped her face on her sleeve, the sudden calm enveloping her so unexpectedly she hardly knew what to do.

At last, Margaret took Ivor’s ancient guitar out of the case, tuned it carefully, and stroked the strings. Roughly at first, she sang, her voice hoarse. But as she warmed up, she forgot herself in the music, picking pieces which the professor had especially loved, old Terran songs, and drinking songs from the University. She sang love songs from a dozen worlds, and when she grew too weary to continue, she concluded with a dirge so ancient no one knew where it had originated. It spoke of a hero, fallen before his time, brave and fearless.

When she looked up, Margaret found that the little crowd of mourners had been touched by the music, weeping or holding back tears. She lowered the guitar and bowed her head. It was over.

Everard touched her arm. “Come. Let’s go home now.”

Home? Where was home? Where did she belong? All her sense of loss rushed back, gnawing at her and making her head hurt. “Thank you for everything, Master Everard. You have been so kind. But I’d like to sit here for a while, with Ivor. Then I will come back to the house. Would you be so kind as to take Ivor’s guitar with you?”

“Certainly, but are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?”

“Oh, yes. I know the way perfectly well now.”

“I am sure you do. You are a very remarkable woman, Marguerida Alton.” With that, he left her.

A
lone now, Margaret grieved. Birds sang on the branches of the trees in the cemetery; she heard them without really paying attention. At last, her body decided it was hungry and brought her back to the present with a start. It was irritating. Then she could almost hear Ivor chuckling and telling her not to be a complete idiot. She walked through the stone gates of the graveyard and started looking for someplace to eat.

She found a little cookshop just before the Terran Zone. Most of the patrons were Terrans, sporting their black leather uniforms and speaking in loud voices. She winced at the noise, and found a table near the back of the shop, where it was relatively quiet. She let her mind wander idly, feeling numb.

A plump girl in Darkovan dress came over and asked what she wanted. Too tired to choose, Margaret told her to bring something from the menu chalked behind the counter. Whatever it was, she was certain it would be good and filling.

The serving girl brought her a bowl of steaming rabbit-horn stew, a basket of bread still warm from the oven, and a mug of beer. There were large chunks of tender meat in a thick sauce, and lots of vegetables which tasted hauntingly familiar. The herbs and spices still tasted strange to her tongue, long accustomed to the blandness of University cuisine. She found herself smiling over the food, remembering her early experiences with food at the Commons. As one of her classmates had informed her while she gazed in horror at a bowl of flavorless cereal masquerading as breakfast, “University food offends no one, being without either taste or character.” That pleasant memory made her chuckle softly.