Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust

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Copyright ©1987 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

First published in The Other Side of the Mirror, 1987

Bride Price

Marion Zimmer Bradley

Around her the chapel of Comyn Castle was silent; empty save for herself and the painted figures of Camilla, Hastur, and Cassilda on the walls, painted in the old style; Camilla with her arms filled with fruits of summer, Cassilda with starflowers in her hands, Hastur silent and motionless before the women; as unresponsive as Gabriel before her on his bier. The body was covered with heavy velvet draperies in the Aillard colors, gray and crimson, and Rohana, dry-eyed, could only remember the filmy draperies in the same colors, laid out on her narrow bed on the morning of their wedding.

“It looks like a Keeper’s funeral,” she quipped. “All that for a wedding? And for me?”

“Rohana,” her mother said solemnly, “It is a good marriage. I cannot understand you; your sisters, if they had been given to the Head of a Domain, would have been beside themselves with delight. Yet you act as if all this had nothing to do with you. One would think—” Lady Liane stopped, and Rohana knew that her mother had been on the point of asking a question to which she really did not want to know the answer. One would think you had really wanted to stay in the Dalereuth Tower for the rest of your life. But that could have been arranged, after all. Instead Lady Liane asked, “Is Gabriel Ardais not to your liking, you ungrateful girl?”

“How could he possibly not be to her liking?” asked Dame Sarita, who had nursed all three of the Aillard daughters and had been present at both previous marriages. “He is so tall and handsome, strong, well-spoken—”

“What a pity that you cannot marry him, Nurse, if he is so much to your liking,” Rohana said, but her heart was not really in the teasing.

“No, but really,” said her mother, frowning a little, “I swore no daughter of mine would ever be forced unwilling to her bride-bed, and if you dislike Gabriel, you had only to say so before things had gone this far.”

Rohana sighed, taking pity on the dismay in her mother’s face. “No, no, it is not that I dislike Gabriel; he is certainly no worse than any other who has been offered to me. But you can hardly blame me for thinking that this day is for the pleasure of my kin, and not for mine, or even for Gabriel’s. Every day since the handfasting it has been drummed into me early and late—how rare it is to unite two of the greatest Houses in the Domains, to join hands, Ardais Heir to Aillard daughter, till the wedding sounds more like a stock-breeding fair than a bridal.” She looked down into the courtyard where smoke was rising from the pit where two great beasts were being roasted in the coals; the smell was savory and good but somehow it sickened her. “I am only surprised you do not have rope-dancers and jugglers and the three-legged man from Candermay to divert the crowds while they await the main event; or are you planning to return to the customs of the Ages of Chaos, when the bride and groom gave the star performance and the crowds stood around to cheer them on?”

“Rodi, for shame!” Dame Sarita reproved, blushing.

“Well, it is not my pleasure being done, nor Gabriel’s,” Rohana said. “Somebody should get some amusement out of it, after all. It is Aillard being married to Ardais, not Rohana to Gabriel. I have learned my part as well as any lyric performer on any stage in Thendara, and I dare say I will do it as well but without the applause.”

“Silly girl,” reproved the nurse, “every woman on her bridal day is a queen.”

“Oh, yes, said Rohana, “a bride is allowed to queen it for a day.” She stood in her light shift, her coppery hair falling loose and straight to her waist, looking with level brows raised at the finery spread on her bed. “In the hope that a day’s queenship will help her forget that from that day she is forever subject to some man and has given up even her own name.”

“But Rohana, that is not so,” said Lady Liane. “Do you truly believe I am only subject to your father?”

“No, mother, but you are Aillard, and you married a man you knew your inferior; and my father knew from his wedding day that his bride was also his Lady to be served and obeyed. I wed with a Comyn Lord from Ardais, where they reckon even inheritance in the man’s line; his wife will not be his superior or even his equal. I have no heart to enforce my will by strife, Mother, and so—” she shrugged, “I doubt I will enforce it at all.” She let herself drop into a chair.

“Come, my babe, don’t be dismal,” said Dame Sarita, chucking her under the chin. “A day will come when you will remember this as the happiest day of your life.”

“Does that mean that all days after this will be less happy?” asked Rohana with a sigh.

“By no means, child; I know days like this are a strain, but this will soon be over, and then you will know all the delights that are in store for a bride. I remember my own dear good man—” she began reminiscently, but Lady Liane interrupted her.

“Sarita, the child’s hardly breakfasted. Go down to the pantry and find something tasty, a mug of soup, you know what she will like best,” she said, and when the nurse went away, Lady Liane drew Rohana against her, stroking her hair.

“Child, I can’t bear to see you so wretched,” she said. “I truly thought that you liked Gabriel.”

“And so I do, Mother; I like him as well as I could like any man I have seen only once for an hour or so.”

Oddly, the Lady blushed. She said in a stifled voice, “Daughter, do you know how much custom was violated for that much? I had to explain to Lord Ardais that you were a leronis and accustomed to much freedom; I dare say he thought you immodest for asking actually to meet your promised husband.

“Or is it only that you are shy of being the center of attention? It is true that in the Tower you did not learn to live with all eyes on you as a Comynara must. Or perhaps—Rodi, is it your woman’s time? If so, I shall ask your father to have a word in private with Gabriel, and make him understand that he should let you alone for a day or so—”

Rohana grimaced. “Nurse is already ahead of you, Mother; for half the last cycle she has been dosing me with her midwife’s messes to prevent that very thing.”

Lady Liane smiled and for the first time in her entire life Rohana felt that her mother spoke to her as an equal.

“I could wish my mother or nurse had shown that much foresight; but in those days no one would have spoken to a young maiden of such things. Though I must say that when I had courage to speak, your father was most kind and understanding.”

It was hard to think of her stately mother and father as an embarrassed young bride and a considerate young bridegroom. “How old were you then, Mother?”

“Fifteen,” said Lady Liane, “Sabrina was born before I completed my sixteenth year; I was so pleased that my first child was a daughter for Aillard; your father was sorely disappointed, but he was kind and brought me flowers. And Sabrina had two children before she was your age. And your sister Marelie also wished to marry young; too young, I thought, which was why I asked that she should spend a year first in Dalereuth Tower before you. But she had no talent for laran. This was why I was proud when you displayed that talent; and Lord Ardais, too, is pleased, since it seems Gabriel has but little of it. If you wished to spend your life in a Tower, Rohana, you had only to say so.”

Rohana had had a private wager with herself that her mother would say exactly this, and in these words;

but the heart had gone out of the game. She sighed and shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I have not the gift. Of our group it was Leonie who had it; and Melora.” She swallowed and covered her face with her hands. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Melora,” she said, weeping. “From the time we were little girls, we promised one another that whichever of us married first, the other would be her bride-woman. Why will no one tell me what has happened to Melora, Mother? Is she dead? Did she elope with a groom, or a stable-sweeper, or a charcoal-burner?”

Lady Liane sighed and shook her head. “No, my love; we would have told you that, that you might avoid such a catastrophic choice. You are now old enough to know; she was taken by Dry Town bandits, and those who went to seek her vanished and were never heard from again. We hope she is dead.”

Rohana flinched with dread, and her mother embraced her and stroked her hair. At that moment it almost seemed possible to pour out all her fears and questions; but Sarita came back into the room with a tray of food and the opportunity was gone, perhaps forever.

“You must eat well,” she urged, “for you’ll get but little in your bridal dress. I brought you a mug of soup with noodles, and a slice of roast rainbird, and blackfruit cakes; look, love, have you seen the catenas?” She held up the beautifully filigreed copper marriage bracelets.

Lady Liane rose, kissed Rohana carefully on the brow, and the moment’s intimacy was gone. She said, “I will see you when you are dressed, my dear,” and withdrew.

Dressed like an exquisite doll in the Ardais colors, Rohana moved through the lengthy ceremonies; the bracelets were locked on her wrists, she exchanged a ritual kiss with Gabriel; his lips, too, seemed cold as ice. He made over to her the keys of his Great House, and introduced her to his paxmen; she accepted the ritual kiss on her hand from each of them. Through all this he was as remote and withdrawn as she was herself; had they forced this marriage on him? And yet he was not indifferent to her; now and again she would notice his eyes fixed on her.

Rohana knew that she was beautiful; young as she was, men had desired her. She had learned to seem indifferent to it; in the Tower, where she could not possibly be unaware of it, she had learned to shut it out; now there would be no way to remove herself from it. She knew that was what marriage was all about, and felt a certain fastidious distaste for the whole thing. Well, she would do what was expected of her, no one could ask for more. But the intensity in Gabriel’s eyes frightened her.

By the time they were led to the bedding, she was really afraid. She knew that the country jokes, the roughhousing, were only traditional; the girls expected her to giggle and struggle, perhaps to cry and be ashamed. Well, they should not have any fun from her; she remained perfectly composed, smiling faintly at the worst of the jokes, lifting her brows a little when they were too vulgar. The witnesses had been prepared to keep it up for hours, but Rohana’s cool withdrawn face made it seem pointless; one by one the songs and laughter died away and they were left alone.

Gabriel turned to her and said, “I have never seen so young a bride so composed; where did you learn that, my Lady?”

“You know I was a leronis in Dalereuth; the first thing we are taught is self-command, under circumstances far more trying than this. I did not want them to treat me like a freak at Festival Fair.”

He said, “By your leave, my Lady?” got out of bed and threw the bolt of the door. Returning, he came and sat on the edge of her bed. He was not quite so tall as she thought, but stockier and more broad-shouldered; his face was pale and through her own nervousness she thought, seeing beads of sweat falling and rolling from the crisp red curls at his hairline, why, he is nervous, too, and for the first time she thought of this unknown young man, not as an unknown conspirator in this unwanted bridal, but a victim like herself. She held out her hands to him.

“Talk to me a little, Gabriel. I know so little about you … it seems strange that by custom a husband and wife should meet as strangers. I do not even know how old you are.”

“I shall be twenty-six at spring sowing,” he said. “I know my father told yours that I was twenty-three because he was afraid they would think me too old for you; but I want to be honest with you, Rohana.” It was the first time he had used her name. “I do not think they told you, either, that I had been married before. She died in childbirth when we had not been married a full year.”

Rohana thought, that could happen to me. But the thought was distant and dreamlike and she knew—with the laran which was still mysterious to her sometimes—that this was not the death allotted for her. She wondered if he had loved the dead woman and if this marriage was an unwelcome to him as it had been to her.

He said, touching her hand lightly through the folds of lace at her wrist, “I wish to ask you—I know this is a strange request for a marriage-night—” and stopped.

Rohana bracing herself against some unspeakable request—if it embarrassed him, what could it be?—said gently “You can always ask. Speak, my husband.” She was still too shy to say his name.

“I would ask you—to be kind to my daughter. She is only two years old, and I fear she has known little kindness in her life. I have seen her but a few times. I brought her a doll but perhaps she was too small to pay much heed to it.”

Rohana said, “I certainly would never be unkind to a little child who has done me no harm. I know little of children—I had no chance to see much of them in the Tower—and I have seen little of my sister’s children. But I promise I will never be cruel to her—I will not beat her or be rough with her even in words, I promise you that. What is her name?”

“Cassilda,” he said, and she was startled; on the plains of Valeron where she had been brought up, the name Cassilda was regarded too reverently to give to a human child.

“You are schooled in a Tower, Rohana? Were you to be a leronis?”

“So I thought for a time; but when the time came for me to leave to marry, no one protested. My gift is not so great.”

He said, not looking at her, “Rohana, I know that within the Tower—some women are free to take lovers. If you have loved before, I swear I will never reproach you. Is there another who owns your heart?”

“No,” she said, startled; she had never believed that a man, and a mountain man at that, could understand this. Yet she was troubled by the memory.

Melora’s cousin, Rafael. He had wanted her and they had come so close to being lovers. Not because she desired him—she had hardly even understood what desire meant, till she felt it burning in him, he had wanted her so much that she had herself been tormented, sharing his hunger and his need; she had wished to give him this, to comfort him; she had been distressed by his suffering but at the same time helplessly reluctant; and he had sensed her reluctance and would not take her against her innermost will; nor accept her only as a gift of kindness.

She reached now for Gabriel’s hand and said gently, “No, my husband; I am grateful to you for your understanding, but I have never felt more for any man than friendship, and no man can say of me that he has had more of me than a dance by moonlight and the tips of my fingers to kiss.”

Gabriel squeezed her hand. He said “I am almost sorry for that,” he said. “Since you must be married to a stranger, I think it would have been a good thing to know what it is to—to love someone you had chosen, before you were married off to—to someone you could not be expected to love that much.” He said it without sadness.

Curiously Rohana was dismayed. She thought, I do not want him to love me. It is enough that I must leave my home and live among strangers, hard enough to be a wife in a strange land without that burden, too. I wish we might do our duty to one another and ask of each other no more than that. It would be easier if I could be always indifferent to him, with no bond further than the children we have; if I could be as indifferent to him, as cold and unmoved as I was to those girls teasing me when we were bedded. And at the same time some perverse instinct of contrariness demanded, Why is he so sure I will never love him?

He said after a moment, so that she wondered if he had some laran after all and read her mind, “Rohana, this was not altogether an arranged marriage; I asked my father to seek your hand, though I knew you were too young for me.”

She stared in surprise; why should he have done such a thing? She did not remember ever laying eyes on him, though she supposed they must have seen one another now and then in Council season, perhaps when she was a little girl and he already a young man.

Ah, Blessed Cassilda, I could endure this if only I could be altogether indifferent to him. She heard the hostility in her own voice as she asked “Why, Gabriel?”

He said, his words stumbling, “Not only because you are beautiful, do not think that.”

So he knows that would offend me, she thought. At least he did not think she was one of those women offended unless they are flattered and complimented for their looks. She had known so many of them.

“Because,” he explained, stammering a little, “Once when I came to visit your brother, I saw you singing and playing a rryl. I love music more than anything else—except perhaps my horses—and the thought that we could have that in common—”

“Are you fond of music?”

“I have little skill to play any instrument,” he said. “I was born with clumsy hands that will not do my will—but until my voice broke I was first treble in the choir in Nevarsin. I am said to have a pleasant voice still, and I love singing. It would please me above all things if one of our children might be musical. I hold that a gift higher than any laran.”

“I heard you singing tonight,” she confessed—one of those dreadful rowdy drinking songs—”And it is true you have a pleasing voice.”

“I am glad that something about me pleased you,” he said, and looked at her with a faint hopeful smile, “I never saw a bride look so wretched and I could not bear to think you already hated me.”

She said quickly, impulsively “I find nothing in you that I could hate.” And he smiled—she was reminded of a puppy trying to be friendly.

“Do you think less of me because I cannot carry my drink like a man? My brothers are always making fun of me that I cannot carry my wine and that often it makes me ill—they said a bridegroom insults his bride if he will not drink to her and I should get properly drunk at least once in my life.”

“You need never drink on my account; I despise drunkenness,” she said, and found herself wishing he would stay like this.

He smiled faintly. “I was afraid if I had too much to drink, I should lose myself and—handle you roughly,” he said. “When I was married to Catalina—” he looked away from her, “they persuaded me to go to her drunk—I was afraid, too—and it was a long time after that before she could overcome her—her fear of me; I do not think she was entirely free of it when she died.”

“How dreadful for you!” Rohana said without stopping to think.

“And for her, poor girl; I wished to run no risk of frightening you.”

She said, warmed by an impulse, “I do not think I could ever be afraid of you, Gabriel.”

“God forbid you should ever have cause.” He said after a moment “If a man can court a—a mistress, or a courtesan, and bring her to care for him, I see no reason why a husband should not woo his wife for a lover. You might come to care as much for me as for a man you had chosen yourself.” His eyes were filled with what she recognized incredulously to be tears. “I have been married to the most beautiful and noble lady in the Domains, after all—the one I would have chosen anywhere.”

And as had happened in the Tower, she could feel the swelling surge of his desire, and as it had done then it half-frightened her, half-excited, sweeping her away into intense awareness of him.

This is what it is then, to touch the mind without fear or hesitation, I need not hold myself back from him, it is right to want him, to share his passion; it is even my duty.

Still she felt a touch of sadness. How can I ever know whether this is what I want or whether I am simply caught up in sharing his passion, his wishes, his desire? Is there nothing left of my own? As she laid her hand in his and then raised her arms to embrace him, she wondered if it mattered.

The important thing was that they were joined as one; did it matter which first desired? Yes, she thought sadly, it matters, but not enough for me to resist this sharing, since whether I will or not, I have been given to him. And since we are given to one another, it is better we should have one another willing than unwilling.

I could remain myself, and resist this—I did it in the Tower; why give Gabriel what I denied Rafael then, just because our families have joined us without our own wishes? Or rather without my wish—for Gabriel wishes to love me. I could remain aloof from him—but there would be none of the happiness I feel we might have together. I could remain myself, and have an unhappy marriage. Is that too great a price to pay for my own integrity? Or I can let myself be caught up into this overpowering emotion and perhaps be very happy—at least for a time—and never more know what it is to be myself.

But how can I be other than myself? Is this not myself, too? she wondered, and then Gabriel was kissing her, and she had forgotten what it was to wonder.

And now he lay dead before her, and she could only ask herself if she had ever known what it was to love, or if there was such a thing. This man she had sheltered, tended, to whom she had borne children, with whom she had lived for more than half a lifetime. Now, she thought, I am alone, and forever.

But I am myself again—if can remember who I am. Or why.

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