Alis (17 page)

“Good morning, stranger.” The voice was as brisk as ever. “Are you in need? Can I aid you?”

Still Alis did not move. Her mother came in under the shade of the leafy branches.

“By the state of your clothes, you have traveled far and perhaps you are weary. Will you come in and break your fast with us?” She smiled at the ragged figure whose face was half concealed by the shawl wrapped about her head. “Come. My hens are laying well. I will give you good fresh eggs, and new bread with honey from my own bees. And you shall rest awhile and tell us what we may do for you.”

She held out her hand, and when there was no response, took Alis gently by the arm and drew her down the garden and into the house.

Seated at the table in the kitchen, where the meal was already spread, was a gray-haired man, somewhat rounded in the shoulders. He looked up in surprise as they came in. Alis gave a start. It was her father. But he had aged, and his face was etched with lines of melancholy. Her mother seated her beside the table and sat down herself, saying firmly, “Now my dear, won’t you put up your shawl and we will say the morning prayer before we break our fast.”

With a weary hand, Alis pushed back the wrap. She heard a sharp intake of breath from her father and saw her mother go still. Then her father’s voice tentative, trembling, as if he dared not believe.

“Alis?”

She did not look at him. She looked at her mother: a few more lines perhaps, a few more gray hairs, but she still had her strength. For a long moment they stared at each other. Then Alis said bleakly, “I have come back. I will do what you want. I will marry him.”

I
n the weeks that followed she refused to answer any questions. Otherwise she was obedient. She submitted to examination by the Healers who declared that her body showed she had not yet lain with a man, and could therefore marry in purity.

And now the day had come.

Her mother poured the laboriously heated water into the wooden tub, and when Alis sat motionless in it, she soaped her body for her, moving her hands gently, anxiously, over the girl’s skin, most unlike her usual brisk self. She washed the dark hair and rinsed it in herb-sweetened water. Then she dressed her daughter in the simple white-and-green bridal robe. Alis made no protest: she let her limbs be moved into convenient positions; she obeyed instructions to bend this way or that. But she said nothing.

When it was all done she went into the front room. Her father was there in his prayer-house clothes, gazing out of the window. He looked round when she entered and came forward to kiss her gently on the forehead. Taking her hand, he said, “I would not have chosen this for you, Alis, but sometimes our paths are chosen for us. He is not a bad man, and he has no choice, either.”

If she heard the pleading note in his voice, she gave no sign.

Her mother came in with a plate of wheat cakes and a cup of milk. “You must eat something, Alis. This is no day to go without sustenance.”

Obediently she reached out and took a wheat cake. On her tongue it had no taste: she felt the dry flakes separate and the material turn to pulp. Her jaws moved it and her throat swallowed it. The milk in her mouth was wet and chill: she felt its passage down into her belly.

 

 

Alis stepped out into the gray, still day. No sun or sound of wind, nothing moving but she and her parents treading the path to the prayer house. She went a little ahead of them, alone, moving like a sleepwalker.

In the gray stone interior of the prayer house, the whole Community was gathered for the ceremony. Some of the women—especially the younger ones—had brightened their sober clothing with a touch of green in honor of the wedding—perhaps a fine kerchief kept for such occasions, or a spray of leaves. The chatter was less subdued than usual, for the people had not gotten over their surprise that the Minister was to marry the daughter of their own senior Elder.

Galin had been with them for twelve years: in all that time, not one woman had been able to attract his gaze, though many had tried. There was also the mystery of Alis’s disappearance after the fire in

Two Rivers, and a rumor that the marriage had been ordained by the Great Council, which had decreed that every Minister must take a wife. Some thought it hard on the girl to be given to a man old enough to be her father—such unions were usually frowned on, sometimes forbidden. There was plenty to talk about.

Reaching the doorway, Alis stopped. The building dilated before her eyes so that the neat lines of wall and window swelled slowly into curves and arcs. Her father took her arm, murmuring something, and she went forward. At the table facing the crowded wooden benches, Galin was already seated on the left. He was pale. He did not look at her. Beside him, in the center, was the Minister appointed for the occasion, a thin-featured, raw-skinned man, completely bald. He looked up at her as she approached. His face seemed to be doing odd things, the mouth curving upward and the eyes wrinkling at the corners. She thought that he must have some sickness. She stared at him until he looked away. Her father said softly in her ear, “You must sit, Alis, beside the Minister.”

She made to go round the table toward Galin but her father steered her to the other side. Of course! Galin was not the Minister today: he was the bridegroom. A spasm of nausea gripped her, sending bitter liquid up into her throat. She swallowed.

Now the Minister who was not Galin was standing up. The people ceased their chatter. The ceremony was beginning.

She went through it in a daze: yes she would be his wife; no she had not known another man; yes she knew the duties of a wife and would perform them faithfully; yes the will of the Maker was in all things her will, and so on. In a dream she heard Galin making his responses. His voice came to her from a great distance, oddly muffled as if she heard him underwater.

Of the feast she remembered nothing. And then it was time for them to leave together.

 

 

She had not yet spoken a single word to him. He went in front of her to make up the fire, which had burned down. When he turned, she was still standing in the doorway.

“Shut the door, Alis. Come in. This is your home now.”

She did not move. She heard his voice but his words made no sense. He came over to shut the door himself. He could not have done it without brushing against her, but she took a step forward to prevent it. And so she came in and the door was closed.

He maneuvered past her and went back to the fire, kneeling down to fiddle with the wood, keeping his face away from her. At last he could do no more. “I told Martha not to come back today. I thought it would be . . . easier.”

She remained standing. She knew she should speak to him but her lips would not open.

He said, “I’ll fetch us some ale. You’ve touched nothing all day and I, too. Come with me and I’ll show you where everything is kept.”

She felt almost as if she were dead—still and cold. After a moment he turned away again and went out of the room.

In the interval she did not move. And then he was there again, carrying two tankards that he put down carefully on the polished wooden table.

“Come, Alis. Sit, and have your drink. You must be tired and you cannot stand there forever.”

At last she moved, obedient to the simple command. She seated herself at the table opposite him passively. He pushed one of the tankards toward her.

“When you have refreshed yourself, I will show you everything.

There’s a garden—you didn’t know that, maybe—at the back. It’s neglected, I’m afraid, but you could grow herbs and vegetables—flowers, too, if you wanted.”

He sounded doubtful, as if he were unsure what a girl of sixteen might want, and then added not unkindly, “Drink your ale. It will sustain you.”

She looked at him at last. “I cannot.” And she bent down her head, weeping in great gasping sobs. Through the sound of her grief she heard him speak her name.

“Alis, don’t. I beg of you. How are we to go on together if this is how we begin?” She raised her head. He looked horrified, helpless, and she was glad. Let him suffer, too. He got up, as if to come round the table to her, and she stilled her weeping and stiffened. He stopped. The thought that he might touch her, even to comfort her, filled her with terror. She longed to hurt him.

“How else should we begin? I wish I had died before this day. You have taken my life from me.”

Bitterly he replied, “I had no more choice than you. Why should you blame me? Do you not think I would have done otherwise, if it had been in my power?”

“I do not believe you. You are the Minister. You could have said no.”

He sighed wearily. “Oh, Alis. Do you think the Minister of a little Community has so much power? Besides, it would not have mattered how important I was. This marriage is the Maker’s will.”

She turned her head away.

He spoke again. “I know you do not understand. We must talk of these things in the days to come.”

At this reference to their future, she shuddered. He saw it and said angrily, “Do you think you alone suffer? Do you think I wanted to marry you?”

She stood up, summoning her pride, sorry that she had given way to tears. Coldly she said, “Show me the rest of the house. Since I am its mistress now, I had better know its ways.”

All her childhood, his austere figure had been part of her landscape, and with her mother he had ruled her world. She did not believe that he had had no choice.

He took her through the simple house. Apart from the main room there was not much to see downstairs, just the kitchen with its store cupboards and the privy out the back. The top of the steep wooden stairs brought them to a narrow passageway with two closed doors, one immediately on the left, the other at the far end. The first room was a fair-sized chamber with a bed of the kind they called a marriage bed because it was wide enough for two. It was made up with the wedding sheets of good linen that her mother had prepared for her. She stared at it, sickened. She thought of the knife she had left behind with Edge. From behind her, his dry voice interrupted her trance.

“The other chamber is yours. I have made up a bed for you there.”

She turned to him. She could make no sense of what he said; she could see only the marriage bed that was wide enough for two.

He gestured to the doorway and she went along the passageway to the other door. “Open it, Alis.”

She did so. The tiny room contained a narrow wooden bed-stead, made up with coarse cotton sheeting and a rough blanket. On a small table beside the bed was the copy of the Book, a marriage gift from her parents. Nothing else. He stood beside her. In the narrow space they were almost touching. She held herself rigid. Then without looking at him she said, “What is this room for? What will I do here?”

“You will sleep here, if you wish.”

Still she did not understand. “But I thought . . . the other room . . .” There was a long silence. At length he said simply but firmly, “I will not force you, Alis. Know that.”

And then he went away, his boots hard on the wooden staircase, and she was left alone in the little chamber with the bed and the Book.

F
or a long time she stood without moving. It was too much to take in, this sudden release from horror. Though she had promised herself that she would not weep again, the shock brought on tears. When she had finished weeping and dried her eyes, she did not know what to do: she was no ordinary bride with a joyful path laid out for her. Could it be true that she need not lie with him? Surely that could not be. But she would not think of that now. For tonight at least, she was safe. There was some good where she had expected none, relief instead of dread. She drew strength from it, and not knowing what else to do, went down the stairs.

He was sitting again at the wooden table with two tankards before him. He looked up when she came in. “Come and drink now.”

She did as she was bidden, aware suddenly that she was hungry, too, though she had not thought she would ever want to eat again. Tentatively, not sure of her position, she asked, “Is there any food in the house?”

“Yes, yes. Martha will have prepared food for us, and there will be cheese in the store cupboard.”

He spoke wearily, as if he did not care. In her newfound relief, she could feel something like concern for him. And a kind of pride, too. After all, she was a wife now. Her mother had not despised the traditional work of the household although she was an Elder and a scholar of the Book. “Are you not hungry? Shall I prepare something?”

He looked up. “Yes, if you please. Do so.”

If she had hoped for gratitude she was disappointed. He spoke formally, distantly, much as if she were a servant who had requested instructions. Nevertheless it was a relief to have something to do.

In the kitchen larder she found a whole roast fowl under a muslin cover, and as he had said there was bread and cheese: simple, wholesome food, and the fowl a little luxury to celebrate this marriage that neither of them wanted. She suspected her mother’s hand in that. Placing portions of the bird on the red earthenware platters, she swallowed down the tears that
would
rise despite all her efforts: the thought of her mother was like scalding water on tender skin.

He pronounced the blessing and they ate in silence. When they had done and all was tidy again, she returned to the table to sit opposite him. Now she would raise the subject that had preoccupied her during their sad meal. Hesitating, for she feared his answer, she said, “Will Martha not think it strange that I lie in the little chamber and not . . . ?” She could not bring herself to say “with you.”

He shook his head. “In such cases it is common enough. She will assume that I summon you to me, or come to you myself when . . .” He broke off.