The men and maids had finished the washing, and in the rare bright sun, were out in the courtyards, pegging up sheets and towels, linens and garments, from lines strung everywhere. They were laughing gaily and calling jokes back and forth, tramping about in the mud and melting snow. The courtyard was full of wet flapping linens, blowing in the gusty wind. They looked merry and busy, but Callista knew from experience that if she joined them it would put a damper on their high spirits. They were used to Ellemir, but to the women of the estate — and even more to the men — she was still a stranger, exotic, to be feared and revered, a Comyn lady who had been a leronis at Arilinn. Only Ferrika, who had known her as a child, was capable of treating her as another young woman like herself. She was lonely, she realized as she watched the young girls and women running back and forth with armfuls of wet wash for the lines and dry sheets for the cupboards, making jokes and teasing one another.
She was lonely, belonging nowhere, she felt, not in the Tower, not among them.
After a time she went off to the greenhouses. Heaters were always kept inside the greenhouses, but she could see that some of the plants near the window had been frostbitten, and in one of the buildings the weight of snow had broken several panes. Although it had been hastily boarded up, some fruit bushes had died. She saw Andrew at the far end, showing the gardeners how to cut away damaged vines, looking for live wood.
She rarely looked at Andrew, being so accustomed to being aware of him in other ways. Now she wondered if Ellemir thought him handsome or ill-looking. The thought annoyed her disproportionately. She knew Andrew thought her beautiful. Not being a vain woman, and, because of the taboo which had surrounded her all her adult life, unaccustomed to masculine attention, this always surprised her a little. But now, she felt that since Ellemir was so lovely, and she was so thin and pale, he must certainly think Ellemir more beautiful.
Andrew looked up, smiled and beckoned to her. She came to his side, politely nodding to the gardener. “Are these bushes all dead?”
He shook his head. “I think not. Killed to the root, maybe, but they’ll grow again this spring.” He added to the man, “Mind you mark where you’ve cut them back, so you don’t plant anything else there and disturb the roots.”
Callista looked at the cut bushes. “These leaves should be picked and sorted, and those which aren’t frost-damaged must be dried, or we’ll have no seasoning for our roasts till spring!”
Andrew relayed the order. “A good thing you were here! I may be a good gardener, but I’m no cook, even on my world.”
She laughed. “I am no cook at all, on any world. I know something of herbs, that is all.”
The gardener bent to take away the cut branches, and behind his back Andrew bent to kiss her quickly on the forehead. She had to steel herself not to move out of reach, as long habit and deep reflexes prompted. He was aware of the abortive movement and looked at her in pained surprise, then, remembering, sighed and smiled.
“I am glad to see you looking so well, my love.”
She said, sighing, feeling nothing in his kiss, “I feel like that bush there, killed down to the roots. Let’s hope I’ll grow again in spring too.”
“Should you be out? Damon said you should rest again today.”
“Well, Damon has a bad habit of being right, but I feel like a mushroom in a dark cellar,” Callista said, “it’s so long since I’ve seen the sunlight!” She halted in a patch of sun, savoring the warmth on her face, while Andrew moved along, checking the rows of vegetables and pot-herbs. “I think everything here is still in good order, but I’m not familiar with these. What do you think, Callista?”
She came and knelt beside the low bushes, checking their roots. “I told Father years ago that he should not plant the melons so close to the wall. It’s true that there’s more sunlight here, but there isn’t really enough insulation in a bad storm. This one will die before the fruit is ripe, and if this one survives” — she pointed — “the cold has killed the fruit. The rind may do for pickle, but it will not ripen and must be taken away before it rots.” She called the gardener back to give orders.
“We will have to ask for some more seed from one of the lower lying farms. Perhaps Syrtis has been protected from the storm. They have good fruit trees and we can ask them for some melons, and some slips from their vines. And these should be taken to the kitchens. Some can be cooked before they spoil, others salted and put by.”
As the men went to carry out the orders, Andrew slipped his hand between her arm and her body. She tensed, went rigid, then quick color flooded her face.
“I am sorry. It is only a… a reflex, a habit…”
Back to square one. All the physical reflexes, so slowly and carefully obliterated in the months since their marriage, were returned in full strength. Andrew felt helpless and defeated. He knew that this had been necessary to save her life, but seeing it actually in action again was another shock, and a severe one.
“Don’t look like that,” Callista begged. “It’s only for a little while!”
He sighed. “I know. Leonie warned me of this.” His face tightened, and Callista said edgily, “You really hate her, don’t you?”
“Not her. But I hate what she did to you. I can’t forgive that, and I never will.”
Callista felt a curious inward trembling, a shaking she could never quite control. She kept her voice even with an effort. “Be fair, Andrew. Leonie put no compulsion on me to be Keeper. I chose of my free will. She simply made it possible for me to follow that most difficult of paths. And it was also of my free will that I chose to endure the… the pain of leaving. For you,” she added, looking straight at Andrew.
Andrew sensed that they were perilously close to a quarrel. With one part of himself he craved it, a thunderclap which would clear the air. The thought came unbidden that with Ellemir that would be the way: a short, sharp quarrel, and a reconciliation which would leave them closer than ever.
But he could never do that with Callista. She had learned, with what suffering he could never guess, to keep her emotions deeply guarded, hidden behind an impermeable barrier. He breached that wall at his peril. He might now and then persuade her briefly to lower it or draw it aside, but it would always be there and he could never risk destroying it without destroying Callista too. If she seemed hard and invulnerable on the surface, he sensed that behind this she was more vulnerable than he could ever know.
“I won’t blame her, sweetheart, but I wish she could have been more explicit with us, with both of us.”
That was fair enough, Callista thought, remembering — like a bad dream, like a nightmare! — how she had railed at Leonie in the overworld. Still she felt compelled to say, “Leonie didn’t know.”
Andrew wanted to shout, well, why in hell didn’t she? That’s her business, isn’t it? But he dared not criticize Leonie to her either. His voice was shaking. “What are we to do? Just go on like this, with you unwilling even to touch my hand?”
“Not unwilling,” she said, forcing the words past a lump in hre throat. “I cannot. I thought Damon had explained it to you.”
“And the best Damon could do only made it worse!”
“Not worse,” she said, her eyes blazing again. “He saved my life! Be fair, Andrew!”
Andrew muttered, his eyes lowered, “I’m tired of being fair.”
“I feel that you hate me when you talk like that!”
“Never, Callie,” he said, sobered. “I just feel so damnably helpless. What are we to do?”