Her Hand In Marriage

Vashtan checked his appearance in the window of the carriage for the seventeenth time. He passed his calloused fingers over the smooth buttons of his new suit. Feelings spun inside him--tentative, elated, eager, terrified--it changed every second.

There was a house for sale on Veldane Boulevard. The Imperator College was both accepting applicants and handing out stipends. He'd saved enough for a clean suit from the pawnbrokers--slightly worn but still ten steps up from his usual mining rags--and scrubbed his hands and face, pulled the tangles out of his long hair, and booked a carriage so as to arrive in style.

     The houses in this part of Medressea were a holdover from the old colonial days. Set back from the wide tree-lined road behind iron fences higher than a man, they were sprawling white-painted affairs of three or more storeys, their elaborate front lawns studded with statues overlooking fountains and carp pools.

     The Basingford mansion towered over him as he stepped down from the carriage.

     "Swinging high, eh?" The driver remarked, cocking an eyebrow.

     "That's what I thought when I met her. But Estella's not like that at all, really."

     "It's the mother you've got to watch out for."

     "Not her father? Lord Basingford's a real--"

     "--fathers just want their daughters to be happy. It's the mother that'll wreck you."

     "She won't. I'm a good match."

     "Popping the question?"

     "No, no. First visit to the family home." He smoothed down his hair and adjusted his collar.

     "Good luck lad. I'll stick for when they chuck you out on the cobbles."

#

     Vashtan presented himself to the Gate Porter. He tried to have a chat but the man just rolled his eyes, grunted and led him to the massive front door. He should not think how many other suitors this man might have brought up here. At the front door he was passed to another servant and left to wait in a room where he strongly suspected the chairs cost more than he made in a month. The carpet was red and so thick he scarcely dared put his whole weight on it. He didn't have long to wait.

#

Lord Eredon Basingford surveyed the shabbily dressed youth in his East Parlour, taking in the worn patches at his elbows, the loose threads at his cuffs and the lank, greasy-looking hair that cascaded over Vashtan's shoulders, and reflected that the poor lad didn't even realise the snub he'd received in being made to wait here, instead of behind sent to Eredon's study.

     Mariana's doing, of course. She was old blood and would never allow her daughter to see a man who couldn't trace his lineage back at least eight generations. Especially not given her resentment for the marriage she'd been pressured into with the upstart young magnate who had somehow acquired enough dockside property to start his own business empire. Oh, Eredon had thought he was being terribly clever, forcing the Medressian nobility to bring him into the fold or else risk the notion spreading that a common man could in fact make his fortune.

     How she hated him. With every sumptous banquet, every pleasant (or so he thought) evening spent together, she never quite concealed it. Every time he involved her in a business decision or provided funding for one of her political campaigns, she hated him a little bit more. At night she hated him, in subtle ways, with her body. He had gotten by for thirty years, always hoping she might soften to him, haunted by the knowledge that he didn't really do the things he did for her because he loved her but because of the guilt he felt in marrying her against her wishes. He alternated between burying himself in his work and launching into periods of near-religious devotion, to no avail.

     "Freeman Vashtan D'Med. A pleasure," he said.

     "Lord Basingford. This is an honour," the young lad said earnestly. He held out his hand. Eredon's fingers twitched but he made no move to clasp hands with Vashtan. After an awkward moment Vashtan dropped his hand.

     "I see you've dressed up for the occasion." He meant the statement to be dismissive, but having already refused to shake the poor lad's hand he just couldn't muster the required level of venom. And, whispered a treacherous voice in his mind, had his own suit been of much better quality when he visited the Lenemici mansion to meet Mariana's parents?

     "I did my best, sir. I... uh..." Vashtan spoke in a rush. "I know I'm no man of means but I'm a hard worker, sir, and I save. I don't drink or take latesh and I visit Sanctuary every Sonsday. And your daughter means the world to me."

     "I'll be blunt, Freeman. What future can you possibly provide for our daughter? Where do you see your place in society? What prospects for prosperity can you put on the table?"

     Many of Estella's previous suitors had balked at that question and blubbed about levels of privilege, trust funds, court access and mercantile investments.

     "She'll be loved. And fed. And warm. As long as I have the coin and the work. I've applied to the Imperator Academy. I don't mean to brag, but I'm bright and I mean to make something of myself. And I think, sir, that you know as well as I - a woman with the quality of bloodline and upbringing that your daughter has benefited from would not consider my courtship were that not true."

     Eredon grunted. Mariana had been very clear: he was to drive the boy away by any means. But now he could see why the light came into Estella's eyes when she spoke of this grubby young man.

     "All I'm asking is the chance to prove this to yourself, and to Estella's mother."

     Mentally, Eredon stepped back from the moment, noting how clammy Vashtan's hands were. The lad was risking a great deal to come here. Had his intentions been less than honourable and had he somehow ensnared Estella through base charm he could have seen her in secret probably for some weeks before anyone found out. So he was not only honest and forthright, but he had integrity, qualities so far missing in any of the suitors Mariana had arranged from among the ranks of the 'gentlemen of worth' in Medressea. Vashtan might even made a good Imperator-Baron one day, with the right training and the right mentor. Might.

     He folded his hands behind his back and with great, slow, heavy formality he gave Vashtan his response.

#

"You what!?" Mariana shrieked, as her husband relayed his decision to her. She should have known blood would out and Eredon was from barely better stock than this dirty, filthy miner. "And where are they know, exactly? Together? Is he pawing at her corset? You simply can't trust these people, Ered." Her voice went shrill.

     "These people?" he said quietly, and she knew she'd made a mistake. Eredon Basingford knew how to blow his top convincingly but she'd never known him reach the end of his fuse. His rage came out colder than ice on the high mountains. "You would wish for our daughter what was done to you--an arranged marriage to someone you didn't love, for the benefit of your parents."

     She opened her mouth, acid building for a retort, but he ploughed on.

     "I know you've always resented me. I tried my best, never forced you, supported your every endeavour, but a gilded prison is still a prison and I can't hold your hatred for me against you any longer. But your situation--our life--is none of your daughter's fault and I will not permit you to drown her in your own suffering. Nor will I drown her in mine."

     He had never raised his voice to her before, and barely did so now, but she knew the difference. Her acid vanished, replaced instead by a deep sadness.

     She slumped to the bed, clinging to the corner post. The smooth wood felt like sandpaper, the silk of her nightclothes like barbed iron sheets. Everything she had done for her family... the memories might as well have been ashes.

     Ered had never forced her, never tied her up for held her down--it had been her who joined him in bed on their wedding night--but it had felt like rape every time. Her parents’ doing, she supposed, and beyond them the society of the Imperial Capital of Medressea, with all its stratified expectations. It had been a violation, that she was required by duty, by base social blackmail, to suffer the intrusion into her body and her life by this rough and ready commoner, this aspiring son of a merchant.

     She reached inside herself to find the soft, enveloping love mothers were supposed to have and found only jagged and burning sensations, a blizzard of anger and jealous from which she had sheltered behind the walls of material possessions and social standing. She recoiled from it.

     Hadn't Eredon given her everything she'd ever asked for? But none of it could make up for the unforgivable crime of his common blood. How could it, when for the greater portion of Mariana's seventeen years before the betrayal of marriage she had been taught by her mother that she was a princess, a light among the people, a glass decanter among clay mugs.

     And then Freeman Eredon D'Med--without even a proper surname!--had been introduced and without batting an eyelid her mother had informed her in no uncertain terms that should would be marrying this jumped-up commoner. Betrayal. Betrayal followed by rape.

     She pictured Estella. How well she knew the wounded look her daughter could produce. "But mama," she would say, tugging at the hem of Mariana's dress. "Mama, please..."

     Would she bind her daughter's hands and stand behind a mask of smiles as Estella walked down the aisle with a man she didn't love?

     "Eredon... Eredon, please..."

     Her husband crossed the room to the ornamental desk. The window behind it looked out over the frozen Medress Strait.

     "I locked this drawer thirty years ago," he said, taking out from against the skin over his heart a tiny iron key on a chain of silver so fine it was barely visible.

     He opened the drawer, laid out a document within on the surface of the desk and signed it. Through her blurred eyes she couldn't see what it said, but there were spaces for two signatures.

     "I should have offered you this a long time ago. My deepest apologies to you for my cowardice, Lady Mariana Celestine Lenemici Basingford D'Med."

     "Ered... what is this?"

     "Divorce papers, my Lady. If you want them. I, Freeman Eredon D'Med, Lord Basingford by appointment, do formally renounce my claim of marriage to you."

     "Eredon, I don't--I don't--"

     The world dissolved in tears.

     "I won't make this decision for you," he said gently, "and I don't suggest it lightly."

     Something crystallised inside her. All the swirling pain and confusion coalesced to a single point of light and heat and she crossed the room to grasp her husband's hands.

     In a voice rich with feeling she said: "Things will be different."

 

END