Clatan 26th, 1513 – Merchant District, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

“That’s brothers for you.” Mama said with a chuckle over the story that Lyssa had just finished telling about Julia’s brother Edmund. Edmund was a pest a lot of the time, still in the bratty boy stage. Julia sometimes said that all boys were always brats, but if her brother Brandon was a brat, he was at least nice enough to not be a brat when Lyssa was around.

“Was Uncle Christian like that?” Lyssa wondered aloud. Mama got a somewhat far away look on her face and smiled.

“Pretty much. He wasn’t as much of a pest as he could have been just because I think that Patron kept him away from us like Aunt Selene and I were contagious or something.” She shrugged. “But he could be when he put his mind to it.”

“…Mama?” Lyssa twisted her fingers around. Mama made a vague noise for her to continue. “Why do you call your father Patron?”

“It’s his name.” Mama told her. She always looked so closed off when Lyssa asked about her grandfather. Mama didn’t really talk a lot about Patron.

“Well, it’d be confusing if every father was named Father, wouldn’t it?” Lyssa giggled. “But my father’s name is Masen and I call him father.” Mama nodded in agreement.

“Lyssa, everybody’s got a different relationship with their father. And when I was your age, I called Patron father just like you do. But sometimes–with some fathers–something changes and you just can’t call him that anymore. Sometimes your relationship with your father changes–and it’s not applicable anymore.” Mama sighed deeply and looked off into the deepening gloom in the room.

“Applicable?” Lyssa sounded out the word.

“It means appropriate or relevant.” Mama explained.

“But why wouldn’t it be app–apple–why wouldn’t it be appropriate, Mama. He was still your father.”

“He was still the man who sired me, Lyssa, but there was one point at which he stopped being my father.” Mama told her. Lyssa looked at her mother blankly.

“I don’t understand.”

“And I really hope you never do.” Mama smiled again, but there was something in it that was sad. Sometimes when they talking about the Cassidy side of her family , it felt like trying read and make sense of a book that was missing half of it’s pages. Mama obviously loved Uncle Christian and Aunt Selene very much, but when it came to her grandparents, what she seemed to feel was–varied–at best.

Lyssa tried to think of a question or story that would put a smile back on Mama’s face. Not a fake smile or a sad one, but a real one. But she didn’t get a chance because the door swung open a half-heartbeat later.

“Lyssandra, please go to your room.” Father said in that impatient, almost grouchy tone he usually used with Lyssa when she was with Mama. She looked at Mama, who was staring into what she usually called the middle distance, an expression like she’d just bitten into a lemon on her face, her fingernails drumming on the arm of her chair.

When Mama noticed that Lyssa was watching her, her lips stretched into something that was almost but not quite a real smile. “Go on, Lyssie, your parents need to have a talk.” That word always sounded like a–what did the tutor call it–portend of doom? when Mama used it in reference to Lyssa’s father.

Lyssa slid out of the chair and padded across the floor, feeling small and very out of place as she did it. She–felt like when her grandfather turned his attention to her, in dislike as best as Lyssa could tell, simply because unlike her cousin, she wasn’t a boy. Mama had all sorts of things she said about that, but almost none of them when she knew Lyssa could hear her.

Her father watched her, not choosing to step away from the spot he’d stopped at when he opened the door until she was out of the door. She could hear his heavy footsteps against the marble of the floor even through the cushion of the rug.

She went to her room and sat down on her bed with an experimental bounce, looking at the wall that separated it from her mother’s. There was this funny little niche behind the fireplace in Mama’s room and Mama’d had the wonderful idea to set Lyssa’s desk into the niche with a tall cabinet for storing linens and things. It was wonderfully warm and cozy when it was winter. A whole year of the fireplace crackling and putting the warmth through the wall into the tile. It was one of the reasons that Lyssa loved wintertime.

Father preferred summer. And summer was fun, she could play outside. Splash in the frequent mud puddles. There were fresh things to steal out of the garden and less hours were dedicated to lessons. Mama preferred fall, and Lyssa liked to go on long walks with Mama to the orchards where all the leaves would get painted. Mama would tell her stories about sprites that only came out at night to paint each leaf just the perfect shade. And she liked that too, but there was something sad about fall.

It was prettier, but sad. And Lyssa couldn’t help but think that there was something awfully sad about the fact that Mama liked fall best.

But that wasn’t really why she was looking at the niche. Without the fire crackling, you could sometimes hear if people were talking in the next room. She knew she wasn’t supposed to listen, but she was curious sometimes.

“It is my house, Annette.”

“Oh, aye, as you always remind me when your father comes for a visit. Your house, your money, your wife, your daughter.” Lyssa could practically see Mama ticking off the points on her fingers.

“Do not make this about my father!” Father snarled.

“How the fuck am I not supposed to, Masen?” Lyssa blushed even if there was no one around to see her. She knew that “fuck” was a bad word, although from what she knew about what it meant, it had something to do with sex. She and Julia had pooled everything they’d ever heard about what it was, but they still didn’t know what it was. Still, she’d bet every copper of her pocket money for the whole month that sex, whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. Mama joked about it sometimes, and you just didn’t joke about something that was bad.

So maybe it was just a bad way of saying something that wasn’t bad?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Father growled.

“The fact that you become an autocratic jackass every time your father comes for a visit. We can go months staying out of each other’s way and then your father comes for a visit and suddenly you have to become a de Ganis male again. That’s not going to work with me, Masen, and you know it. You know better.” Mama told him. “I don’t come in your room and order you around, it’s only common courtesy that you reciprocate. Especially considering what I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Oh?” Father wasn’t nearly as good at saying Oh? as Mama was. Mama could say whole sentences with one word, Father just sounded annoyed.

“Yeah, I imagine that you’re up here to tell me that your father has noticed you’ve been sleeping in Lyssa’s room. I’m not getting any younger, et cetera, et cetera. We need to get to work on that son we haven’t got yet.” Mama told him.

Lyssa rocked herself back and forth. Almost everyone else she knew had a sibling and sometimes Lyssa wondered what it’d be like to have a sister or a brother–a little–she knew that Mama had a lot of fun with Aunt Selene. But she liked having Mama to herself too. Julia didn’t get a lot of attention from her mama and papa and she had brothers and sisters.

And given that Father barely noticed her at all, that’d only be worse with a brother, wouldn’t it?

“Is it so wrong for an old man to want to see his line carried on?” Father had asked.

“He’s got your nephew, Julio recently got remarried, and Warner hasn’t even gotten married yet. He’ll see his line carried on without you having to climb into my bed leaving us both to close our eyes and pretend that we’re with somebody else. Especially as it sure as hell better be false hope we’d be feeding him.” Mama spat.

“False hope? What are you going on about, Annie?”

“Do not call me that.” Mama’s voice had gone so icy that even through the wall, Lyssa shivered. “We are not having any more children, Masen. We talked about that and bloody agreed. It’s false hope to make him think we’re even trying for another child. We aren’t. He’s never going to get his boy out of you and you just need to get that through his fat skull.”

“Annette.” Maybe it wasn’t nice to think, but Father couldn’t be as clever as he thought he was because even Lyssa knew that you wouldn’t get anywhere with Mama by snapping at her like that.

“No, Masen, let’s be honest. I thought that was the agreement. We could leave whatever we wanted to alone, but what we said to each other would be the truth. I am not bedding you for your father to get off on.” Mama practically snarled the last part.

“My father does not get off on us sleeping together,  Annette. I overlooked the sheep-fucking jokes, because they were implied, but I will not let you slander my father by saying he–he gets off on us making–.” Father growled out.

“Truth, Masen.” Mama interrupted. “What we do is not lovemaking–that requires love. Not just barely tolerance that when it tips over the line lands on it’s face in disdain.” Mama sounded tired and Lyssa sighed. Maybe this was why you weren’t supposed to listen to other people’s conversations. Wasn’t being married supposed to be about love?

Why didn’t Mama and father love each other? Why did they have to have agreements and arrangements and stuff that sounded more like what Father talked about with Lord Jayson than what the story books said mothers and fathers were supposed to have with each other.

Lyssa slipped off her bed and went over to her dollhouse, pulling her dolls out and trying to shut out her parents now. She found that a murmur of conversation between the dolls covered most of the murmur of conversation from Mama’s room. In her world mamas and papas would never have agreements. And when she grew up and got married she didn’t want to have an agreement with her husband. She wanted to be loved by him. She wanted, when she was dead and gone and up in heaven with Lord Wright and the Llamas, when somebody told her story, for them to say “And they lived happily ever after.” Not “and they came to an agreement.”

…That wasn’t too much to ask for, was it…?

“Time to get ready for bed, Lyssandra.” Father said from the door to her room. She looked up to protest, but the dim light outside the windows told her that it wasn’t as early as she thought it was.

“Aye, father.” She climbed to her feet and walked to the dresser behind the new screen that Mama had gotten for her. That had caused an argument when it was delivered too. She really wished Grandfather would just go home, all he did was make Mama and Father fight. “You can see right through the top of it, Annette, what good does it do?” 

“She’s seven, Masen,” Mama had rolled her eyes right in Father’s face. “Just who do you think is going to be in her room watching her get dressed?”

“Then why did you buy it for her?” 

“Because she asked nicely and paid for half of it with her own pocket money.” Mama had said. “We’ll worry about getting her a full coverage screen when she’s got something that we need to worry about getting covered. And when there might possibly be someone who wants to watch her getting dressed.” Lyssa hadn’t understood the look that Mama had shot at Father and some deep shiver inside said that she didn’t want to know either.

She looked up at the mirror that hung over the dresser to see Father still standing in the doorway. She started to turn to ask if something was wrong, her nightie clutched in one hand when Father turned abruptly and left with a slammed door.

Once dressed for bed, she slipped from the room and tapped on Mama’s door. “Yes?” Mama herself was getting ready for bed, maybe it was later, even, than Lyssa had thought it was.

“It’s me, mama. Father didn’t say if I was supposed to sleep in your room tonight or in my room.” Lyssa told her.

“Oh. In here, I guess, I don’t know if he’ll be sleeping here tonight–but better not to wake you up if he decides he’s going to.” Every time they had company that stayed at the house and not in the inn, Lyssa slept in Mama’s room. The one time someone had jokingly suggested that Lyssa sleep in Father’s room, Mama had turned around eyes blazing like full summer sunlight hitting an emerald and told them that Lyssa’d sleep in her father’s room over her dead body.

“Mama, can I ask you a question?” Lyssa hovered in front of the door for a long moment.

“Anything, I just reserve the right not to answer it.” Mama joked folding her petticoats.

“Mama–why does Grandfather want you to have a son?” Mama sighed so deeply it looked like she had deflated slightly. Leaving her stay on and hair still back, she walked around the screen and slid onto the bed, patting the mattress beside her.

“Sweetie, your grandfather has this idea–it’s wrong, but it’s one that a lot of people have clung to for a long time, that boys are better than girls. You see, unless you actually put it into law, like they did up in Avilion, boys inherit everything when a father dies. So it’s important, in some places–and some houses like the one that your great-grandfather was born into…”

“The de Ganises?” Lyssa asked clamboring up onto the bed and pulling Mama’s coverlet up like a fort.

“Yep. It’s important to have a son to leave everything to for them.”

“What do you think?”

“I think if fathers cared a little more about not marrying their daughters off to jerks maybe they wouldn’t have to worry so much about what happened to their estates when they died if they didn’t have a son.” Mama shrugged.

Lyssa glanced down at the stitching on the coverlet. “Mama?”

“Hmmm?”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t met Father?” Lyssa asked, blinking back tears.

“No.” Mama said it with no hesitation. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because maybe you’d be happier if you didn’t have to be with him.” Lyssa said.

“Nope. Cause if I hadn’t met and married your father, I wouldn’t have you.” Mama said, stroking her hair. “And all the maybes that come out of having not met Masen would never make up for not having you in my life.”

“Really?”

“You can bet on it.” Mama smiled and kissed her hair and maybe it wasn’t happily ever after, but it was pretty happy right now.