Gravity Box and Other Spaces (14 page)

“I love you both,” William said. “I'm sorry it hasn't come out better.”

Above her in the dark the two men hugged each other, briefly. She eased onto her back, opened her arms wide, and embraced them both.

She looked up at the sudden stillness. For a long time she did not want to look at him. She held the handwritten page before her, pretending to herself that she was simply appreciating it, that it still meant so much to her that she could find nothing to say, but the silence stretched, and she set the page aside and looked at him.

There was no way to divide the time into infinite sections, no way to prevent herself from coming to the
point of knowing that he was gone. At least his eyes were closed. He had always been afraid of dying with his eyes open. He could never explain it clearly to her. It was the only thing he had ever failed to put into words, but it had to do with dreams and darkness and fear of being caught in the wrong reality.

Conny closed the chest and went to tell Geoffrey that William was dead.

Geoffrey sat staring out the window. The mourners had all gone, few as they were. Conny knelt beside him and touched his hand. Dry and papery.

“What now?” he asked.

“We go on.”

“With what? I haven't felt much this last year. A few times.” He looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Will it be like this from now on?”

“I don't know.” She patted his hand, stood, and moved closer to the fireplace.

Conny broke twigs and piled them onto the ashes of the last fire, then set four good-sized logs on top of them. The dried sticks caught easily and soon the logs burned, too. She sat on a footstool and watched the flames lick the air.

“Did you ever wonder what it would've been like if it'd been me you met first and married?”

“No.”

Geoffrey had come near, away from the window, hands in his pockets. He stared into the fire. “I think I'll go for a walk.”

“All right.”

He hesitated. “Conny—do you think when I get back—maybe—”

“We'll see.”

He nodded and turned away. A few moments later Conny heard the door close.

She sighed and turned to the chest, close at hand. It seemed to have grown larger over the years. The pages were an inch away from filling it completely.

She understood Geoffrey's frustration. It was a frustration they shared. Neither of them had felt any desire for nearly a year, not since that last night when William had surprised them both. They talked about that night sometimes, as if it marked history for them. Conny supposed that it did.

In the morning William had been feverish and blood flowed from his mouth. They finally got him to see a doctor, a triumph of sorts after all the years of refusal. Tuberculosis. It surprised no one, perhaps not even William, but somehow, as if hearing it made it finally real, William grew weaker and sicker. Geoffrey and Conny had done their best to take care of him, but there was not much they could do. William still refused to go to a sanatorium. He wrote little. Friends sent cards. A few sent money.

Geoffrey was afraid. He did not want to leave her, but without William—without William's scratching and scribbling, without his continual act of creation—he thought she might leave, or that he might. He wondered if William's words were all that bound them one to the other.

She lifted a sheet from the trunk. The words blurred. “This is all we had,” she said. “All that's left.”

She fed it into the fire.

Innumerable pleasures ignited her senses—the smooth texture of skin, the pressure of hands, the rush of breathing in her ear, taste of sweat—the tension now
building in her stomach, as if someone were holding her inside, a safe, warm, protective embrace. Too many sensations. She counted them all now, after so many times, and counted them again. She slid a hand between her thighs, pressed her fingers into the moistness, and the pressure began to build again, like the fear of finding something long lost and wanting never to lose it again. The stillness surrounded her, as if she were enveloped in silence, drifting in a non-place, without time. It came like panic and an exquisite urge to escape—

She stared into the fire, at the few dark shreds of blackened paper. She was still staring at it when Geoffrey opened the door and came into the room.

“Conny?”

She looked up at him. His scar, she noticed, was not so prominent anymore. Over the years it had grown fainter and fainter, so that now it was only obvious when he became flushed and excited.

“Geoffrey.” She took out another page. “I have something for us. Something William left us.”

So was for many days and months maintained

By us, in secrecy, the amorous game;

Still grew by love, and such new vigor gained,

I in my inmost bosom felt the flame…

Ludovico Ariosto
Orlando Furioso
Canto V

“I will not have my line sullied!”

Mindan, the royal gamekeeper, waited. The king's tirade washed around him and Karl, the first minister, and Alistar, the king's geomancer. King Prester of Catanac enjoyed a good thunder, whether the audience was small or large. His voice, gravelly with age, swam around the pillars and arches of his council chamber.

Karl offered a sympathetic nod to the gamekeeper. Mindan knew the first minister had endured many more of these outbursts. Alistar kept back, halfway to the door leading to the private passages the council and other advisers used when coming or leaving. As usual, Mindan could read nothing in the sorcerer's face.

“If Staban thinks he can pass off his slut of a daughter on my son and improve his circumstances by a foul marriage, he is mistaken!”

It seemed to Mindan that Karl managed not to roll his eyes only by an extraordinary exercise of will.

“Majesty,” Karl said, “benefit would transfer in both directions. Catanac would acquire a safe route through to—”

“I'm aware of all that! Makes no difference. I will not have my son wed well-used cunny, king's daughter or not.”

Alistar gave the king a sidelong look at that, but continued to say nothing. Alarm entered Karl's eyes, though, and Mindan wondered what else was going on concerning these negotiations. Not that he wanted to know—he was uncomfortable listening to this, not used to being privy to the closed-chamber politics of the realm—but he could not leave, having been summoned to this audience. Like most people, Mindan had thought the marriage joining two royal lines was long settled.

“With all due respect, Majesty,” Karl continued with a hesitant catch in his voice, “you can hardly substantiate such a characterization. The princess is, after all, a princess. She would be unlikely to have the liberty to live the kind of life you suggest, much less the inclination.”

“No? You've been to Masady, Karl. You know what license they exercise there. My father said it was one great brothel, and I found little to dispute the claim. I don't care if the girl's had one or one thousand; no maidenhead, no wedding.”

Alistar cleared his throat. “Your pardon, Majesty, but you yourself decreed that the lack of a hymen is no indication of virginity. We can scarcely violate our own standards.”

“True enough,” Prester said. “For that reason I insist on a more accurate test.”

“More accurate?” Karl said. “What do you intend to do, have spies question everyone in Masady who might have bedded her?”

Prester smiled at that. “Not a bad idea. Do you recommend it?”

“No. I do not, sire.”

“A bit impractical at that, eh? No, I have another test in mind, which is why I summoned Mindan.”

“Majesty?” Mindan said.

“I want you to find something for me, gamekeeper, something I have every faith in your abilities to find. Just bear in mind that this is for the good of the realm. We court disaster if this alliance is borne of a sullied union. Catanac would be disgraced and ridiculed and our authority gravely diminished.”

“Find something—?”

“I want you to go to Githira.”

Mindan suppressed the shudder that began in his gut. “An einhyrn.”

Prester's grin showed his small, even teeth, yellowed with age. “You know my mind exactly. Not the whole animal. Just the horn. That should suffice. Isn't that correct, Alistar?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the geomancer said. “We haven't much time, though. The einhyrn is rare and the wardens of Githira are very good at their calling.”

“That's why I'm sending Mindan. If he can't do it, then we must find some other means of averting disaster. I want you to leave immediately, gamekeeper. I'm dispatching an emissary to Ethalic, which lies to the south of Githira. If I'm not mistaken the road runs near one of the passes into it.”

“Yes, Majesty,” Mindan said. “The Tripass Inn. As you command.”

“I'm sorry you had to be present for that,” Karl said as he escorted Mindan to one of the courtyards of the palace.

“Not my place to judge, m'lord.”

“Loyal of you, gamekeeper.” Karl sighed. “I confess I usually know what he's thinking, but this has me utterly baffled. It's not as if this has come up suddenly. The betrothal of young Stephen and the daughter of King Staban has been a matter of long-settled policy. The king agreed to this more than a year ago.”

“It sounds as if he just wants to be sure the girl is worthy.”

Karl scowled. “Whether or not the girl is a virgin is immaterial. It's not important. What is important is what is seen. If the king declares her acceptable, no one would dare gainsay him. All he risks by this sudden stubbornness is a possible breach of relations with Masady. If there were a good reason to sabotage it, I could understand, but—” He shook his head. “He's planning something, but has not troubled to tell me. I'm worried.”

“He is the king.”

“Yes, and for the most part he's been a good one. Better in many ways than his father.” He laughed. “Forgive me. These are no concerns of yours, gamekeeper. The king decrees, and I must find a way to see them done. Sometimes it seems impossible. I'm only grumbling over another problem I have to solve.” He let out a tired puff of air. “I sometimes worry that in serving the king I might fail Catanac.”

“Hardly seems possible.”

“Commendable, gamekeeper. But—”

“My father taught me, ‘You serve that which doesn't betray your heart.' Even if I don't understand everything intended, King Prester's never asked me to do anything against my own conscience.”

“What would you do if he did?”

“I've never considered the possibility. I suppose—”

“Go on. I'll repeat nothing you say.”

Mindan shrugged as if to be rid of a burden. “I'd have to find trust. If not here, then—” his voice trailed off.

Karl patted his shoulder. “Forgive me if I trouble your scruples.”

“You have no need to apologize to me, m'lord. It's your business to see that what's right is done. I imagine that means trying to see as many ways of a thing as you can. I'm very glad to have my duties and not yours.”