The fire had burned low; but flames still flickered along the dark lengths of the heavy back logs, painting the near floor of the room with ruddy color. Amanda, a half-empty cup beside her which must have originally been full of tea, for it had a milky color and she drank her coffee black, sat cross-legged on the dark red, rectangular carpet directly before the fireplace, gazing into it, her wrists on her knees and her hands relaxed, palm-upwards.
She sat like a slim, erect shadow against the light of the fire. He looked at her almost from the side, but slightly ahead. She was wearing the dark brown work pants and the soft yellow shirt she had had on earlier at dinner; but her shirt had been opened at the neck, and the wings of the collar lay out on her shoulders. Her hair was untied from its earlier, workaday restriction and lay loosely on her neck. Her face was tilted slightly toward the fire, and pensive. Close as he was now, in the silence of the house, he could hear the clear magic of her voice, in spite of its softness, plainly singing:
"… green flows the water by my love's bright fancy.
Green are the pools at the foot of the falls,
Dark under willow - and past is the sleeping.
Light in the morning, a little bird calls …"
He drew back abruptly into darkness, closing his ears to the rest of the song. It was as if he had come upon her naked and sleeping. Silently, he retraced his steps to the kitchen; and stood, uncertain.
From the living room, the murmur of her singing ended. He took a deep breath, stooped to put his boots back on, then stepped back without a sound and reached for the door by which he had entered earlier. He opened it silently, closed it noisily, and walked forward without carefulness through the passage and into the living room.
She was standing by the fire as he entered, looking in his direction as he came through the entrance into the room. Her eyes focused on the sweater he wore and widened a little. He stopped, facing her with a little distance between them.
"I went for a walk," he said. "I grabbed this off one of the pegs to wear. I hope that was all right?"
"Of course," she said. There was a second's hesitation. "It was Ian Graeme's."
"Oh, it was?"
"Yes. One he knitted for himself, one winter." She smiled just a little. "We tend to keep our hands busy in the winter here, when we're snowed in."
There was another brief pause.
"You're feeling more lively, then?" Her eyes, darkened in the firelit room, watched him.
"I was. I'm ready for sleep now." He smiled back at her. Their eyes met for a second, then glanced aside.
"Goodnight," he said, and went on into the corridor leading to his bedroom, hearing her answer "goodnight" behind him and leaving the large room, the firelight and her, behind him.
He reached his own room, went in, and closed the door. He was conscious of the weight of the sweater, still upon him. He took it off and proceeded to undress, then lay down on his back on the bed. A wave of his hand over the night table signalled the sensor there to turn off the lighting; and the bedroom around him was plunged in darkness.
He lay there. After a while the sound of her steps came down the hall, passed his bedroom and went on to her own. Silence claimed the house. He continued to lie, awake, staring into the darkness, his heart torn by a sorrow and longing he did not dare to investigate too closely.
Chapter Forty-six
The following day was Sunday, according to the weekly calendar on the Dorsai. Amanda took Hal with her to visit several of the neighboring homesteads, where there were individuals who had offered to help at Foralie during his meeting with the Grey Captains.
One of these was the Debigné household; and Hal had his suspicions confirmed that the intensity of Amanda was not something shared by her younger sister. What was necessary was for someone to be in residence at Foralie from the day before to the day after the meeting; and for others to help with meals and maintenance from the time the first of the Captains arrived - as much as an estimated twenty-four hours ahead of the meeting time until the last of them left - as much as twenty-four hours after.
On the way back to Fal Morgan after lunch, Amanda took Hal by a route somewhat out of their way to an observation point even higher up than Foralie. It was a patch of grass on a flat ledge hardly large enough to have supported Fal Morgan. They dismounted; and Amanda took a scope out of one of her saddle bags.
"Sit down," she said to Hal, dropping down herself, cross-legged upon the grass. He settled beside her and she gave him the scope.
"Look there," she said, pointing. She was directing his attention beyond and below Graemehouse, the roof of which, with the roofs of its outbuildings, was visible perhaps a kilometer below and to the left of them.
Hal put the scope to his eyes and located the spot she had indicated. It was a green patch surrounded by trees somewhat less than eight hundred meters below the house.
"I see it," he said. "What is it?"
"The site of the original Foralie - the house," she said. "Foralie was built by Eachan Khan, in the first place. When Cletus married his daughter, Melissa, he built Graemehouse on Foralie land where you see it now. After Cletus defeated Dow deCastries in his attempt to control all the Younger Worlds with the power of Old Earth, and Melissa went with Cletus to Graemehouse, Eachan Khan began to show his age - he hadn't much before - and Melissa talked him into joining her and Cletus at Graemehouse. He did, and Foralie was left empty - but with everything still in it for a year or two. Eachan didn't seem to be able to make up his mind what to do with it. Then, one night, it caught fire and burned down. Since then Graemehouse has been Foralie."
"I see," said Hal. The green space below him was certainly a pleasant place to have put a house, much more sheltered among the trees than Graemehouse on its high perch. He lowered the scope and looked at Amanda.
"We could have ridden down there," said Amanda, "but there's nothing much to see when you get there; and actually from here you get a better picture of how it was."
"Yes," he said; and passed the scope back to her.
"No. Hang on to it for a bit," she said. "You can also see Fal Morgan down there - or at least part of its roofs. The trees get in the way, a bit. But you may remember you couldn't see it at all from Graemehouse, for the trees."
"You're right." He put the scope to his eyes again and looked. Then lowered it once more to look at her. All this about the original Foralie, and the rest of it, was certainly the sort of thing she might expect him to be interested in; but he could not help feeling that there was a reason behind her obvious one for telling him about this, and showing the original Foralie to him, from this vantage point.
"It was Foralie, the original house, that Cletus came back to after Dow deCastries had moved in with his troops to take over the Dorsai, when all her fighting men were gone," she said. "You know about that?"
Hal nodded.
"That was in the early days, wasn't it?" he said. "Nearly two hundred years ago, when the Earth was split between the Alliance and the Coalition? And Dow was a Coalition man who got the two governments to combine their forces, under him, so he could take over the newer worlds? I know about it. Cletus Grahame opposed Dow, Dow arranged contracts to drain all the trained soldiers off Dorsai, then moved in here to take the planet over; and those who were left here, the grandparents, the children and the mothers, stopped him."
He grinned.
"There're still historians who think Dow must have cut his own throat; because noncombatants can't defeat elite troops."
"Did you ever think that?" Amanda asked.