Dominion Fred Saberhagen (the two towers ebook .TXT) 📖

herself that at the time she first met Saul, she hadn’t really been Cinderella. Neither dirt-poor nor uneducated. Anyway, poverty, Hildy had decided, was far more a state of mind, or perhaps a statement of social position, than it was a measure of actual money available. It was just that when she first met Saul she had been only nineteen years old and her own sole support, and the degree in computer science that was going to make her independent and successful was a number of years that seemed like a good part of a lifetime in the future. And Saul was still far from being used to the possession of wealth himself, though wealth had been in his family for generations. He was still walking on air with the reality of the whole vast inheritance, that day when he just strolled into the pizza place, and looked at Hildy and said—

   Hildy’s rather feverish reverie was broken at this point by the sound of a door opening. In contrast to the stones surrounding it, it was an ordinary-looking twentieth century door, only a few decades old. Sturdy, weatherproofed wood with a no-nonsense modern lock, it was set in the side of the round watchtower that extended up ten feet or so above the roof. Old Grandfather Littlewood, as Saul and Vivian kept saying, might have been eccentric to import and rebuild himself a French castle, but he had not been daft enough to want to live in an unmodernized one.

   As the door swung outward across stone flags, a young woman’s face wreathed in black curls came into view around its edge. The face lit with a friendly smile at the sight of Hildy.

   “There you are. “ This was Vivian, Saul’s sister. At the twenty-eight she claimed, she was a couple of years younger than Saul, and looked considerably younger still. Her basically pale skin, like her brother’s, seemed to resist tan and sunburn alike; but recent weeks in Hawaii and California had managed to impart a light bronze tint to both of them. Vivian was not as tall as her brother, but even more innately elegant. Hildy, in contrast, had white-blond hair and Scandinavian blue eyes. Her short frame was shapely enough, and not at all fat, but she was definitely on the sturdy side. With slightly improved reflexes she might have made a tennis champion; she could never have become a fashion model.

   Vivian, wearing jeans and a trim shirt that displayed her own thin figure to good advantage, came forward smiling.  “If you’re in the midst of some serious meditation I don’t have to interrupt it.”

   Hildy, who had found herself getting on much better than she had expected with Vivian, was determined to be cheerful. “Oh, I can meditate any time. What’s up?”

   Her sister-in-law put on a look of mild concern.  “It’s just that the great housewarming weekend starts in a very few days now, and we were insisting that all the guests and all the help have medieval dress of some sort. And I’m afraid that so far I have done zilch about what I’m going to wear, and—”

   “Oh, the weekend. Oh my God yes, a costume. There’s been so much else to do I’ve just completely— ”

    “I know, dear. Me too. Anyway, Saul and I have just decided to dash into the city. He with more business to be done, as usual. Me to track down this place I’ve heard about where they make you costumes that are really clothes, if you know what I mean.”

   “Oh. Oh yes. I’d better come along. How are you going?”

   “Your husband wants to fly, he’s really happy with his new license. We can land at Meigs, that’s right on the lakefront you know, and be in and out of the city in no time, comparatively speaking.”

   “Great idea.” Hildy looked at her new wrist-watch.  “Give me ten minutes to get changed?”

   “Sure. I doubt we’re going to leave inside of half an hour anyway. The great tycoon’s still on the phone.”

   “Good,” said Hildy, wondering not for the first time if it was this casual put-down attitude of Vivian’s that kept her from getting married. And Hildy started for the door in the tower and the stair inside it. But then she found herself delaying involuntarily for one more look around.

   “There are moments,” said Vivian, watching her now with quiet amusement,  “when I envy you.”

   “Why?” Hildy asked in wonder.

   “Because. To you all this is so very new. This was more or less our family home, Saul and I spent a fair amount of time here, visiting Grandfather, when we were kids. There was wealth around, even if we didn’t have much.” Vivian waved her hand. No need to go into all that again now; Hildy had heard often enough already the tangled tale of family politics, quarrels, disinheritance, legal maneuverings. But now the older generation were all gone and the courts’ final ruling had come down. The castle and its grounds were only a small part of Saul’s and Vivian’s inheritance.

   “I envy you most of the time, I think.” Hildy murmured now.  “That you can take to all this naturally.” She looked around again;  “I think I’m falling in love with the place.”

   The roof where they stood was perhaps two hundred feet above the broad, brown surface of the Sauk, which flowed at the foot of the high bluffs on which the castle perched. The river, slow now with summer, was visible only in dots and patches hazed by the green of the nearby crowns. In fact, when you looked out in any direction from the roof, what you could see was mainly the tops of nearby trees. The grounds of the castle, small airstrip included, covered about ten or twelve acres, most of it right atop the riverside bluffs and down their slope. The bluffs, heavily wooded, were much too steep ever to have