“Sylvan,” she begged, suddenly terrified. “Don’t.”
“I must,” he whispered. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you. The moment I first took you into my arms on the dance floor. You must have known. You must have felt—”
She shook her head, forbidding him to say anything more. “If you say anything else, Sylvan, I will have to forbid you this house. I am not free to listen to you. I have a family.”
“So? What difference does that make?”
“To you, none perhaps. To me, all the difference.”
grass • 242
“Is it your religion? Those priest persons you have with you? Do they guard you for Rigo?”
“Father Sandoval? Father James? Of course not, Sylvan. They help me guard myself!” She turned away from him. exasperated. “How can I explain to you? You have none of the same ideas. And you are so young. It would be a sin!”
“Because I am young?”
“No. Not for that reason. But because I am married to someone else, it would be a sin.”
He looked puzzled. “Not on Grass.”
“Have you no sacrament of marriage upon Grass?”
He shrugged. “It is not marriages the bons need but children. Proper children, of course, though the fiction will often do as well as the fact. There’s many a bon with commoner blood, though the Obermuns would deny it. Well, look at it yourself! Why should Rowena have a lonely bed all spring and all fall while Stavenger hunts, or recovers from hunting, or sweats thinking of hunting again? I have no doubt Shevlok is Stavenger’s son, but I have some doubts about myself.”
“Have you no sins upon Grass? Nothing that you feel is wrong to do?”
He stared at her, as though trying to see past her surface to the mystery she confronted him with. “It would be wrong to kill another bon, I suppose. Or to force a woman if she weren’t willing, or hurt a child. Or to take something from some other estancia. But no one would see it as wrong for us to be lovers.”
She regarded him almost with fear. His eyes glowed with fervor, his hands reached out to her. Her fleeting desire to take those hands filled her with panic. So she had once longed to take Rigo’s hands. How could she convince someone who had so little in common with her when her own self was conspiring against her? “You say you love me, Sylvan.”
“I do.”
“And by this you mean more, I presume, than mere lust. You are not telling me only that you want my body.” She flushed, saying this, a thing she had never said, not even to Rigo. It was only possible to say it if she walked away from him, to the window where she stood looking out.
“Of course not,” he blurted, stung.
She spoke to the garden. “Then, if you love me, you will say nothing further about it. You must accept what I tell you. I am married to Rigo It does not matter if that marriage is happy or unhappy. It doesn’t matter that you and I might be happier together than either of us might be with others. None of that matters, and you must not speak of it! My marriage is a fact in my religion, and that fact can’t be changed. I will be your friend. I cannot be your lover. If you want religious explanations, ask Father Sandoval to explain it If I were even to converse with you about it, it would be an occasion of sin.”
“What can I do?” he begged. “What can I do?”
“Nothing. Go home. Forget you came here. Forget you said anything, as I will try to do.”
He rose, unwillingly, reluctantly, far more stirred to passion by her refusal than he would have been by her consent. He could not let her go. “I will be your friend,” he cried. “And you must be mine. This business of the plague, we must not forget that. You need me to help you with that!”
She turned back to him, her arms crossed protectively across her breasts. “Yes, we need you, Sylvan. If you will. But not if you talk about this other thing.” Her throat was dry. She longed to comfort him, he seemed so distraught, but she did not dare touch him or even smile at him.
“Very well, then. I will not talk about this other thing.” He made a wide, two-handed gesture, as though casting everything away, though he gave up nothing. If talking of love was not the way to Marjorie’s affection, he would try to find some other way. He would not give up courting her. He did not understand Marjorie’s religion, but he would learn about it. Obviously it tolerated many things it did not allow. Otherwise that proud, harsh man, her husband, would not be able to keep his mistress almost upon his wife’s doorstep!
He stayed, for a time, sitting a good distance from her, discussing the things she needed to know. He promised to do everything he could to find out whether there was any unusual disease upon Grass. He let nothing happen to disturb her again, controlling their conversation with a courtly charm, seeing her gradually relax, lower her defenses, become the woman he had danced with. When he left her, he felt his eyes grow wet, wondering what she thought of him, amazed that it mattered to him that much. He was no youngster to worry what a woman thought! And yet… and yet he did.
She, looking after him, was more stirred than she had been in years, wishing with all her heart that he had never come, that he had never spoken, or that she had met him before she had met Roderigo Yrarier.
It was an evil thought. She went to the chapel and prayed. Over the years, prayer had comforted her. It did not do so now, though she knelt for most of an hour, seeking peace. The light over the altar glowed red Once she had thought of it as a holy eye, seeing her, but she did not think it saw her now. She had been God’s child once. Now she was only a thinking virus, a thing beset by longings with no appeasement allowed. “How long has it been since I laughed at something?” she asked herself. “How long since we have had any fun at all, as a family?” She could remember both, and it had been long, too long ago, when Stella was still a child, before Rigo had Eugenie.
She went outside. The afternoon had grown chill. From the northeast came the muted roar of an aircar. She hurried toward the graveled court where it would land, stood there shivering and looking up. She needed Rigo, needed Stella, needed family, needed to belong to someone, be held by someone. She would make them offer her something, make them show some affection. She would beg it, demand it!
The car came slowly closer, from a speck to a ball, from a ball to an ornament, one of the ornaments her family had used to hang upon trees at Christmas time, bulging with rococo extravagance.
It landed. The door opened and the servant who had piloted it got out and went away, without looking at her. Rigo came out, facing the car, turning slowly until he saw her, He did not move then, just stood there, his face still and empty. There was an endless moment during which nothing moved at all, a moment in which a first dreadful suspicion hardened into certainty,
“Stella!” she cried, her voice shrilling into the wind.
Rigo made a hopeless gesture but said nothing. He did not move toward her. She knew he was too ashamed to do so, that he knew there was nothing he could ever say which would help at all.
“Brother Mainoa,” she insisted, pounding her fist on the kitchen table where she found Father James and her son having an evening snack together. “Brother Mainoa knows something! He’s been out in the grass. He’s seen. Things. If the Hippae have taken Stella, he’s the only one who can possibly help us.”
“Where is your husband?” the priest asked. “Marjorie, where is Uncle Rigo?”
“I don’t know,” she said, turning wild eyes upon him. “He came into the house.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That she was gone. Vanished. She never returned. Like Janetta. Like the bon Damfels girl. Gone.” She gulped for air, as though she could not possibly get enough into her lungs. “He won’t be any use. He’s like them. Like Stavenger and like the Obermun bon Haunser. I’ve been thinking who to ask. Not any of the bons. They don’t do anything about it when their own children get carried off; they wouldn’t do anything for mine. Not anyone from Commons. They don’t know anything about it. Not villagers. They’re frightened to death of the grass. I wish you could have seen Sebastian Mechanic’s face when he was telling me about the thundering in the night. But someone told him! Who do you suppose? I asked. He says Brother Mainoa. It always comes back to Brother Mainoa!”