Juliet Marillier - Cybele's Secret

been obliged to explain to him that his eldest daughter had gone to the Other Kingdom and that he would never see her again. When I was finished, Father asked a couple of questions: Was Tati looking well? Had I been injured at all? And lastly, was I happy with the final fate of Cybele’s Gift? If so, Father said, he would draw a line under that matter and we would simply move on. I assured him that what we had done was for the best, even though it meant his voyage had been a commercial failure. It was not an easy conversation.

Stoyan was silent and tense, though when Father embraced him and thanked him for bringing me back safely, he thawed a little. We would be leaving on the Stea de Mare in a few days’ time, and there was much still to be done. If we had not returned when we had, Father would have stayed in Istanbul and kept on searching for us. Because of that uncertainty, he had not finalized the accounts or completed packing the goods we had purchased to take back to Transylvania. He would need me to help with the former and Stoyan for the latter.

I was so tired I could hardly stay on my feet. I greeted Giacomo and Maria and thanked them for their help. They had not only nursed my father back to health but had also put a great deal of effort into assisting him with the search. Father scrutinized me as I swayed and yawned, then told me the accounts could wait until tomorrow. I went to bed and slept for fourteen hours. I got up, washed, and ate breakfast, then went back to bed, promising Father I would do the work in the afternoon. He and Stoyan were busy in the downstairs chamber we were using for our goods, packing up silks.

I did not wake until the midday call to prayer rang out over the Genoese mahalle. I found Father out on the gallery drinking tea. He had sent Stoyan to the docks with a cartload of items to be stowed on the ship.

“I’ve had a visitor,” Father said. “Sit down, Paula. You still look exhausted.” He stood and gestured to the tea vendor down in the courtyard.

“A visitor?” I queried, subsiding onto a chair. “Who?”

“Your friend Duarte Aguiar. He paid me a formal call.”

“I’m sorry I missed him.” It was unsurprising. Duarte would have felt obliged to give some explanation, I imagined, for what must appear to the outside world as a kind of abduction. “When is Stoyan coming back, Father?”

“In time for supper, I imagine.” Father was looking at me quizzically. “Why do you ask?”

“No special reason.” I couldn’t bear that we should leave with things the way they were between Stoyan and me. But he had made it clear that he didn’t want to entertain my suggestion. On all sorts of levels, this was perfectly logical. We were completely different. Our homes were many miles apart. I was a scholarly girl of prosperous merchant stock, he an uneducated farmer from a remote village. He had sworn to find his brother and take the news to his mother, and I was on my way back home. It could be years before I traveled this way again. I might never come. What chance of success could a partnership between us possibly have?

“Mmm-hmm,” murmured Father. “Have you two argued? I’ve noticed quite a frosty atmosphere between you. And Stoyan seems…” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “He seems disturbed.”

“We had a disagreement. Don’t trouble yourself with it.” Oh, how I wished one of my sisters were here, Jena in particular, so I could unburden my sadness and confusion to her and seek some practical advice. This wasn’t something I could tell Father.

After I’d been scowling into the middle distance for a while, Father said, “Aren’t you going to ask me what Aguiar wanted?”

“Wanted? Wasn’t he here to apologize to you?”

The tea vendor’s boy had come up with a laden tray. I helped myself to a glass and sipped gratefully.

“He asked for your hand in marriage.” Father sounded mildly amused as he delivered this thunderbolt.

“He…what?”

“Made a formal proposal of marriage, accompanied by all the information a father expects at such a time. It sounds as if the fellow is quite wealthy, Paula. And the family is well thought of by the rulers of that country, if Aguiar is to be believed. All this, of course, weighed against his dubious personal reputation. He spoke highly of you. You’ve clearly made an impression.”

I was almost speechless. “Why didn’t he say anything to me?” Never in my wildest flight of imagination had I foreseen this. I struggled to make sense of how I felt. Confused and unsettled, certainly. But pleased as well. After Stoyan’s rebuff, this made me feel just a little better about myself. Duarte did have a lot to offer, far more than my father could learn from a quick interview. “What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I said no, of course.” Father was calm, his gaze fixed on me.

“You said no? Just like that? Without even asking me?” I was outraged. Perhaps this was what run-of-the-mill fathers did, fathers of the kind who did not view their daughters as intelligent, independent human beings with opinions of their own. But not my father.

“You needed your sleep. Don’t be upset, Paula. A man who gives up after a single refusal is not worth considering as a son-in-law, in my view. I expect he’ll be back. Are you saying you actually want to marry the fellow?”

I felt a blush rising to my cheeks. “I’m not saying that at all, Father. Only that I would like to be consulted before such a decision is made. It is the rest of my life, after all.”

“Portugal is a long way off.” He looked suddenly desolate. I got up and went to put my arms around him.

“He might not come back anyway,” I said. “Don’t worry, Father. Now where are these accounts?”

Stoyan returned briefly, procured supper for the three of us, then asked my father if he might absent himself until tomorrow morning. He was still trying to avoid me, I knew it. There were questions in my eyes, perhaps—questions whose answers would be too painful to speak aloud.

As we ate in awkward silence, it came to me that I did not need to look at Stoyan to make an inventory of all the things that pleased me about him: his imposing height and broad shoulders, his muscular arms, the cascade of thick dark hair, the amber eyes that could be as gentle as a dove’s or as fierce as a wolf’s. The pale intensity of his complexion, marked by the jagged scar whose trajectory I would like to trace with my fingers. The strong bones of cheeks and jaw. Most of all, his rare wisdom, an inner stillness and understanding that went far beyond such surface cleverness as a capacity to read and write or a facility with numbers. There was so little time left. His silence troubled me, and so did the forbidding look on his face. I knew how strong-minded he was. The shield he had set up around himself was almost perfect. But tonight, for the first time since the voyage home, I thought I