“I am sick unto death of Mrs. Blessingham’s. I don’t know why they are so determined here to delay us, delay us, delay us. No marriage until late twenties. No babies until one is thirty, at least. And no sensible reason for any of it except that the older we are, the better prepared we will be. It’s ridiculous! Pray heaven some impecunious but stalwart lord will show up so Papa may impress him with my dowry and I may go elsewhere!”
“Before you could marry a lord, you’d have to be accepted by the Covenant Tribunal,” retorted Carlotta. “Probably the Tribunal won’t even accept a commoner your age!”
“Oh, pooh! Covenant, covenant, that’s all I hear. You nobles certainly like to make life difficult and boring for yourselves.”
To which Genevieve silently but wholeheartedly assented. The covenants were like a strict nanny, always saying no or don’t or can’t. “No singing, Jenny. Singing girls are like crowing hens. Both of them come to the same bad ends.” “No running, Jenny. Covenantal girls conduct themselves with decorum.” “No dreaming of Prince Charming, Jenny. Don’t forget:”
‘Covenantal daughters marry who . . .
ever their papas tell them to!’
Daughters of the covenants were required to bear their children at home and nurse them for at least a year, thus joining noble nurture to noble nature. Daughters of the covenant were required to rear their daughters as they themselves had been reared, through an untroubled and godly girlhood to a dutiful maturity of gracious submission.
Long ago, when she was much younger and had not learned to display resignation, Genevieve had rebelled against that duty. “Why?” she had cried to her mother. “Why do I have to when I don’t want to!”
Her mother had replied, softly as always, “Because our great-great-great-grandmothers assented to it, Jenny. When our forefathers bought Haven, they recruited strong, healthy young women to be the royal and noble mothers of all future generations, and the young women were allowed to choose to come to Haven or not, as they pleased, but if they opted to come to Haven, they agreed to obey the covenants.”
“I didn’t agree! What right did some woman a thousand years ago have to agree for me?”
“Because that’s how it works, love. We all do what our ancestors found to be best. Why learn hard lessons over and over?”
“Nursing babies for a year!” young Genevieve had said scornfully. “Della’s sister’s baby is only six months, and she’s weaning him already!”
“Year-long nursing is in the covenants,” Mother had said, little lines of worry between her eyes.
“It wasn’t in the original covenants. I read them my very own self!”
“Jenny, I’ve asked you to stay out of the library. Your father will . . .”
“I read them,” she had insisted, pouting. She had also read the history of the settlement, and could understand very well why young women might have promised almost anything to get away from the planets they had lived upon. Besides, the covenants back then were not at all like they were now!
Mother sighed, running a pale hand across her brow, as though to sort out the thoughts that lived inside. “The Tribunal has made some amendments from time to time. I’m sure there are good reasons for all the covenants, and we have been taught that women are happiest in gracious submission to the covenants.”
If that had been the case, Mother should have been very happy, but she had never seemed so to Genevieve. Of course, what Mother said upstairs in her public voice for the Marshal or the servants to hear, and what mother said down in the cellars when she and Genevieve were alone there, were totally different things. Upstairs was covenant, covenant, covenant, all over everything, like moss, with the visiting scrutator scraping away at it to uncover any hidden notions of disobedience or independence.
Despite her private reservations, Genevieve earned a passing grade during each spiritual audit, however, and that was the public side of things.
The secret side of things happened in the lonely hours of the night, when Mother and she went tip-toeing down the stony stairs into the earth-smelling dark, lit only by their candles. It happened when they pushed open the heavy, dusty doors to go beyond the wine cellar, past the coal store, into the deep, moist world of otherness, when they left the covenants behind. Once hidden away they became, so Mother said, separate minds who taught and learned things not of that world. Those teachings would be realized in Genevieve’s time, or if not, passed on to Genevieve’s daughters to be realized in some later time. Whichever it might be, they couldnever be practiced or spoken of anywhere else! Never until the time was right. Promise.