“You’re neither a monk nor a Guardsman, so you surely don’t want it any shorter than it is now, do you?” His own hair was trimmed smoothly, about the length of his collar; Andrew shrugged. Custom and dress were completely relative. His own hair now seemed enormously long, shaggy, unkempt, yet it was shorter than Damon’s. Shaving with the new razors, he found himself wondering why, on a freezing planet like Darkover, only old men went bearded against the cold. But then, customs made no sense.
Downstairs, looking at the hall hung with green boughs, and spiced festival cakes smelling not unlike the gingerbread of his Terran Christmases, it seemed poignantly like a childhood celebration on Terra. Most of the guests were people he had seen at his wedding. There was a lot of dancing, and enough heavy drinking to surprise Andrew, who had thought of the Darkovan hillmen as sober people. He said so to Damon, and his brother-in-law nodded. “We are. That’s why we save our drinking for special occasions, and those occasions don’t come very often. So make the best of them. Drink up, brother!” Damon was taking his own advice; he was already half drunk.
There were some of the boisterous kissing games he remembered from his wedding. Andrew remembered something he had read years ago, how urban societies with a great deal of leisure developed highly sophisticated amusements, not needed for the rare leisure of people who spent a lot of time in hard manual work. Remembering what he had heard of frontier days on his own world, quilting parties, corn-husking bees, where hardworking farmers whiled the time with what would later be considered games for young children — bobbing for apples, blindman’s buff — he realized he should have expected this. Even here in the Great House there was plenty of hard work to be done and festivals like this were few, so if the games seemed childlike to him, it was his fault, not the fault of these hardworking farmers and ranchers. Most of the men had calloused hands betraying plenty of hard physical labor, even the noblemen. His own hands were hardened as they had not been since he left the horse ranch in Arizona, at nineteen. The women worked too, he thought, remembering the days Ellemir spent supervising in the kitchens, and Callista’s long hours in still-room and greenhouse. Both of them joined gaily in the dancing, and in the simple games. One of them was not unlike blindman’s buff, with a man and a woman blindfolded and made to seek through the crowds for one another.
When the dancing began he was much in demand as a partner. He found out why when a youngster still in his teens swept Callista into the dance, saying over his shoulder to his previous partner, a girl who looked no more than fourteen, “If I dance with a bride at Midwinter, I shall be married before the year is out!”
The girl — a child really, in a child’s flowered frock, her hair in long curls about her cheeks — came up to Andrew, saying with a pert smile to hide her shyness, “Why, then, I’ll dance with the groom!” Andrew let the child pull him on to the dance floor, warning her that he was not a good dancer. Later he saw the girl again, in a corner with the youngster who had wanted to be married that season, kissing with what seemed to be unchildlike passion.
As the night wore on there was a lot of pairing off in corners and wandering away in couples into the dark outer part of the halls. Dom Esteban got very drunk and was eventually carried off to bed, senseless. One by one the guests took their leave, or said good night and were escorted to their beds. Most of the servants had joined in the party and were as drunk as the other guests, not having a long ride in the cold ahead of them. Damon had fallen asleep on a bench in the Great Hall, and was snoring. It was the dimness before dawn when they looked around the Great Hall, with its drooping greenery, scattered bottles and cups, discarded sweets and refreshments, realizing that their duties as hosts were ended and they could seek their own beds. After a few halfhearted efforts to rouse Damon, who muttered drunkenly at them, they left him there and went upstairs without him. Andrew was amazed. Even at his wedding, Damon had drunk sparingly. Well, even a sober man had a right to get drunk at the New Year, he supposed.
In the rooms which the two couples were to share that night because of the house party, he felt a knifelike frustration, intensified by his half-drunken state, amorous and disappointed. It was a hell of a life, married like this and sleeping alone. A hell of a marriage, so far, and what felt like a travesty of a Christmas party. He felt let-down, dismal. Maybe with Damon drunk, Ellemir — but no, the women had climbed together into his big bed, as they had done during Callista’s long illness. He supposed he would sleep again in the small one that was usually Callista’s, and Damon, if he came upstairs at all, in the sitting room of the suite.
The women were giggling together like little girls. Had they been drinking too? Callista called his name softly and he came over to them. They were lying close together, laughing in the dim light. Callista reached up and pulled him down to them.
“There’s room for you here.”
He hesitated. Did this make any sense, tantalizing himself this way? Then he laughed, climbing in beside them. The bed was an enormous one that would have held half a dozen without crowding. Callista said softly, “I wanted to prove something to you, my love,” and gently pushed Ellemir into his arms.
He felt furious embarrassment that seemed to burn through his whole body, dousing his passion like ice water. He had never felt so naked, so exposed, in his life.
Oh hell, he felt. He was behaving like a fool. Wasn’t this the next logical step anyway? But logic had no part in his feelings.
Ellemir felt warm, familiar, comforting in his arms.
What’s the matter, Andrew?
The matter, and damn it, she had to know it, was Callista’s presence. He supposed that to some people this would be especially exciting. Ellemir followed his thoughts, which associated this kind of thing with erotic exhibitions, attempts to rouse jaded tastes, decadence. She said in a whisper, “But it isn’t at all like that, Andrew. We are all telepaths. Whatever we do, the others will know it, be part of it, so why pretend that any of us can ever completely shut out any of the others?”
He felt Callista’s fingertips touching his face. Strange that in the dark, though their small hands were almost identical, he could be so sure it was Callista’s hand and not Ellemir’s on his cheek.
Among telepaths the concept of that kind of privacy could not exist, he knew, so shutting doors and going away in isolation was only a pretense. There came a time when you stopped pretending…
He tried to bring back his previous amorous state, but drunkenness and embarrassment conspired to defeat him. Ellemir laughed, but it was perfectly clear that the laugh did not intend ridicule. “I think we’ve all had too much to drink. Let’s sleep, then.”
They were all almost asleep when the door of the room opened and Damon came in, moving unsteadily. He looked down at them, smiling. “Knew I’d find you all here.” He flung his clothes this way and that. He was still blundering drunk. “Come on, make room, where do I—”
“Damon, you want to sleep it off,” Callista said. “Won’t you be more comfortable—”
“Comfortable be damned,” Damon said drowsily. “Nobody ought to have to sleep alone at festival time!”
Laughing, Callista made room at her side and Damon crawled in, was instantly asleep. Andrew felt a mad laughter blowing away his embarrassment. As he fell asleep he became aware of a dim thread of rapport, weaving among them, as if Damon, even in sleep, reached out for the comfort of their presence, drawing them all close together, intertwined, close-folded, their hearts beating in rhythm, a slow pulse, an infinite comfort. He thought, not knowing whether it was his own thought or another’s, that Damon was there, it was all right now. That was the way it ought to be. He felt Damon’s awareness: All my loved ones… I will never be alone again…