‘And doubtless all that you told to your dupes who were here just now,’ I said. ‘You have taken great care for my honor, somewhat less for your own. Now get out of my sight, and for God’s sake keep out of it, for if you come near me again for a while, I think that I shall kill you.’
He stood staring at me while the torch spluttered in his hand, and for a moment the muscles worked about his jaw and throat as though there was something more that he would say. Then he turned, with one long look at Bedwyr in passing that could not quite conceal his triumph, and ran down the curling stair as though the hounds of hell were after him.
Bedwyr still stood unmoving, as though on guard before the small deep-set doorway. ‘Get back inside,’ I said.
I saw him swallow, but he did not move, and deliberately I drew my sword and brought up the point to his throat. ‘Get back.’
His hand tightened convulsively on his own sword hilt, and it hung by a hair, whether or not the next instant we should be fighting for the doorway.
Then Guenhumara cried out harshly, ‘Bedwyr! Do as he says!’
He hesitated an instant longer, then with his eyes still leveled on my face, took a step backward, and another. I followed, with the point of my sword still kissing his throat, until both of us were within the room; then crashed the door to behind me, and stood leaning against it, looking from him to Guenhumara and back again. The place was a store chamber, half full of cloth bales and raw fleece; several of the fleeces had been pulled out from the stack and piled to make a couch, and on the black ramskin spread uppermost of all, lay a broken garland of wood anemones. I saw all that by the soft light of the fat-oil lamp, yet I never looked at anything but Bedwyr’s face and Guenhumara’s.
‘Did you ever go to Coed Gwyn at all?’ I drove my sword back into its wolfskin sheath and my own voice seemed to rasp at my throat as the blade rasped against its casing. ‘Have you had good hunting in the Arfon hills, this half winter past, or was there richer hunting here? Did you merely lie up within a day’s ride of Venta, until I was safely away and the Queen could send for you?’
Bedwyr spoke for the first time, tossing down his own sword, since the sheath was not on him. ‘The hunting was good in Arfon, and I returned from it yesterday, not even knowing that you were away.’
‘A fortunate chance!’ I said. ‘And it seems that you wasted little time in making good use of it!’
Silence took us by the throat. Guenhumara still stood pressed against the wall as though impaled there, so that I might almost have thought to see the spear shaft between her breasts. Her unbound hair fell in a strong tawny smoke about her, and her eyes, straining to mine, seemed mere blind black holes in her deathly face.
‘Artos,’ Bedwyr said at last, ‘I plead no excuses for either of us; to do so would be a waste of breath. Guenhumara and I have loved each other, tonight. But I swear to you before whatever gods there be, that this was the first and only time.’
I laughed, and the sound of the laughter was foul and brutal in my own ears. ‘Did love come on you so suddenly, then? Did you sup with her to keep her from another lonely evening, and find too late that Sasticca had mingled mandrake in the wine cup? How is it then, that all men know what has been going forward? Even my armor-bearer cried out to me not to go with Medraut tonight, knowing well enough what I should find!’
Bedwyr showed neither shame nor anger, only grief in the haggard lines of his face, and of all strange and unexpected things, a certain grave kindliness. He could afford to be kind. ‘No need for mandrake,’ he said. ‘The care that is between Guenhumara and me grew slowly and in the dark.’
‘In the dark!’ I echoed bitterly.
‘But not as you mean it. Listen to me, Artos, whatever comes after, listen to me now. For more than ten years, you and I and Guenhumara have been closer to each other than to any other living soul, and Guenhumara is a woman. We did not know, any more than you knew, the thing that was happening, until you brought me to her, sick with my wound after Badon.’
‘And you had all the summer together, while I was sweating on the war trail.’
‘And we had all the summer together, while you were sweating on the war trail. Was that our fault?’
I thought of the autumn evening and the light nonsense that we had tossed like a golden ball, to and fro. ‘So that was why you went back to your own quarters?’
‘Yes, when you came back I knew that I must go because she was yours.’
‘You forgot that easily enough tonight. Your memory, it seems, is not of the best.’
‘I had been up in the mountains alone, all the end of winter, all the bitter waking spring, sleeping alone and eating my heart out. And when I came back, and saw her again, I forgot that she belonged to you, and remembered only that my love clung to her, and hers to me.’
I remember that it was then, in the pause that followed, that Guenhumara came away from the wall to stand beside him. ‘It is true, Artos, it is true, every word of it,’ she said.
And I, God help me, I knew now where her new kindness, her air of harvest, had come from; and it was as though the dark life-blood were draining away from some wound in me. I had always sworn to myself that if Guenhumara took a lover, I would not be jealous, remembering that I had failed her; but I had never thought, never in my darkest and coldest dreams, that the lover would be Bedwyr. Strange are the ways of the heart. I think that truly I could have allowed Guenhumara her lover: I know that if Bedwyr had taken any other woman it would have troubled me no more than did Cei’s wenchings. But they had turned to each other, the two people I loved best in the world, and doing so, each had taken the other from me, and I was left outcast and alone, and betrayed. The black bitterness rose and rose within me, and there was a little drum pounding, pounding, behind my temples.
Guenhumara came half a step toward me, with her hands held out, and her voice had the throb of a swan’s wings in flight, that had always shaken the heart in my breast. ‘Artos, for your own sake as well as for ours, try to forgive us!’
And I said, ‘What is there to forgive? There is only once in your life and mine, that ever I was more than half a man to you. It is but the way of things that the mare needs the stallion at the right season!’
She cried out at that as though I had struck her. ‘Artos, no!’ and gave back the half step again.
And I saw something in her face and in Bedwyr’s that made the hammer stop beating in my head. ‘My God! You never told him that, did you!’
It was Bedwyr who answered. ‘No, she never told me that.’
‘That was – merciful of her.’
‘No,’ Guenhumara said. ‘The things that are between you and me are not for sharing with Bedwyr.’
‘Nor the things which are between you and Bedwyr for sharing with me. Did ever you love me at all, Guenhumara?’
She did not come back the half step, but I think that something of her longing was toward me, even then. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘only we could never cross each other’s thresholds. I tried as well as you, but we could never cross.’
I stepped sideways from before the door, for it seemed to me that this thing was ended. ‘That is all there is to say, isn’t it?’
Neither of them moved, and I turned on Bedwyr, who seemed to have drawn aside in spirit from what concerned only Guenhumara and me. ‘Well then, what now? You have tasted her, and it seems that the taste pleases. Are you not going to claim her from me?’
The old mocking smile twisted his lips an instant. ‘Does a wise man claim Caesar’s wife from Caesar?’
Guenhumara said quickly, ‘That is what you will do? You will send us away?’
‘What else did you think I should do?’
‘I don’t know. If you were a different man, I think that you might have us killed. As it is – I don’t know.’ She drew a long shaken breath, and began to bargain, or I thought at the time that she was trying to bargain, though I could not grasp her purpose, for I knew well enough that the queenship mattered
little to her. I understand now that she was striving desperately to save something out of the ruin, to salve some rags of good for all three of us, for me most of all. ‘If you will forgive this one night— ’ Her voice broke and she steadied it, too proud to use a woman’s weapon of tears. ‘If it seems to you that the years that I have been your faithful wife, and Bedwyr your loyal lieutenant, have any weight to set against this one night, I will promise you – on my knees if you like – that we will never again be alone together, nor speak one word to each other when you are not by.’
Fool! To think that was the thing that mattered, the mere fact of love-making. Fool not to understand that I would have had her lie with Bedwyr a score of times, not loving him, rather than know her heart crying out to him while she lay faithful one night in my arms. Bedwyr understood, but in some ways Bedwyr and I were nearer to each other than Guenhumara and I had ever been.
‘Bedwyr would need to make the half of that promise,’ I said harshly, ‘and I think that he would not make it. Na na, Guenhumara, you offer a thing too hard for mere mortals, for me as well as you. You are no more my wife – nor you, Bedwyr, my lieutenant and my sword brother; all that is finished ... It should be pleasant at Coed Gwyn now, though I fear that the snowdrops will be over. You have until noon to make what arrangements you need, and be out of Venta.’
Guenhumara began to plead again, desperately. ‘Artos, listen – oh listen! Not both of us! Surely it is enough if you banish one? Send me away – send me home in shame to my father’s hearth, for a bad woman who dishonored your bed; or if you are more merciful, let me go back to the House of Holy Ladies at Eburacum, as of my own free will. Only let you not send Bedwyr from you; the time comes when you will need him as you never needed him before!’
Bedwyr still stood unmoving, an image of silent grief, his chin sunk into his cloak and his sword fallen at his feet. He raised his head and looked at me, and I know we were both thinking of the House of Holy Ladies in the Street of the Clothworkers, and Guenhumara clinging to me, looking back as I carried her away, with that shudder as of a wild goose flying over her grave ... ‘Will you abide by that?’ I cried to him. ‘Great God, man, will you let her take the whole payment on her shoulders?’
‘In the part assigned to me, there would perhaps be something of payment also.’ His words blurred a little, as though his lips were stiff. ‘But I think that the question does not arise.’
All the flame of my anger had sunk to gray ash, and I was cold to my inmost soul, and suddenly very weary. I said, ‘Na, it does not arise, there is no more place for you here than there is for her. Take her and go, for I want neither of you near me ever again.’
I dragged open the door, and with Guenhumara’s voice in my ears, calling my name for the last time, stumbled my way down the stairs in the dark, blundering against the walls like one very drunk.
In the courtyard a breath of wind tossed the last living branch of the wild pear tree, and scattered a few fragile petals into the dark well water ...
chapter thirty-four
Thinning Ranks
THE NEXT DAY WAS THE THIRD SUNDAY IN THE MONTH, a day when, by long custom, Ambrosius, whenever he was in Venta, had sat in audience for any man who had a wrong to be righted, a grievance to air, a plan to put forward, to come to him in the Great Hall. I had continued that practice after him and so that Sunday I sat in the High Seat on the dais with certain of the Companions ranged for a ceremonial guard behind me, and the Queen’s chair empty at my side, and strove to make my bruised brain take in this man’s need for release from military service, and that woman’s complaint against the corn merchant. The old cloak of imperial purple that had also been Ambrosius’s hung on me as heavily as did the custom of the day, but it was good that I had something that must be done. I think if I could have rested that day, I should have gone mad ... The first humblebee of the year had strayed in from outside and was bruising its head against one of the windows that still had glass in it, in futile attempt at escape, and the sound teased and tangled at the edges of my attention. ‘No escape, no escape—’ I frowned, striving to concentrate on the rights and wrongs of the case being poured out before me.
There were more people than usual that day, but of course all Venta must know by now; they stared and whispered, or I thought they did, and I did not care, if only they would go, if only I need not sit there seeing their faces – faces after faces after faces – through a haze made by the throbbing in my head.
It was over and the last of the waiting throng in the forecourt had melted away, and the gray light of day was fading in soft spring rain beyond the windows. And I was about to rise and go back to Ambrosius’s quarters – I had given orders for my gear to be fetched from the Queen’s Courtyard, which was home to me no longer – when a confused tramp of many footsteps sounded outside, and Pharic’s voice answered by another, and as I glanced questioningly at Cei who stood big and grim and gray-golden beside my chair, Guenhumara’s brother came in by the lower door, carrying his favorite falcon hooded on his fist, and followed by all that were left of the mounted band who had come to me as her dowry.
He strode up the hall to stand before me, his tall Caledonians tramping behind him. He made the customary salute before the High Seat, and stood there with his head tipped far back and the level black brows joined into one bar, frowning, and stared at me out of hot red-brown eyes.
‘You have something to say to me?’ I demanded, at last.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It is this, Artorius Augustus. It has been told to us that last night you sent Guenhumara my sister and your Queen from the court in shame.’
‘It was not I who set the shame on her forehead,’ I said coldly.
‘Na, and for that reason, because she herself wove the shame, we seek no feud between you and us, no vengeance for your putting her away. Yet still, to me, she is my sister, and to all of us she is the daughter of our chieftain’s hall, and therefore we, who have been your men loyally for ten years and more, count ourselves no more among the ranks of the Companions, because you put her away in shame.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘You have my leave to go north again to your own place.’
The hot hawk’s stare never changed or wavered from my face. ‘We seek no leave. We go north, back to our own hills, taking with us the women we have married and the bairns we have bred here in the South. We come to tell you this, no more.’
I remember sitting there in the High Seat, with the carved wolf’s heads on the foreposts biting into my hands, staring and staring into the midst of that proud unswerving gaze. ‘So be it,’ I said at last. ‘When do you ride?’
‘The horses are already saddled, and there will be something of a moon, later.’
‘Then it seems that there is nothing more to be said.’
‘One thing more.’ Pharic’s gaze, leaving my face for the first time, moved deliberately to that of my armor-bearer, who sat in attendance on the dais steps with my spear and buckler across his knees. ‘Come, Riada.’
He got up slowly but without hesitation; clearly he had expected the summons and knew that it must be obeyed. But he turned to look at me with a troubled and wretched face. ‘Sir, I do not wish to go. But they are my tribe.’
‘They are your tribe,’ I said.
He knelt for an instant and touched my foot in the old gesture, then rose and went to join Pharic. And with a last grave salute – there was no hot blood in this parting; it was, as it were, a matter of honor, almost of ritual – the whole band turned about and strode down the hall.
When they were gone, the great chamber seemed very empty, and I was aware suddenly of the rattle of spring rain against the windows, and the bee still bruising its foolish head against the thick greenish panes. I got up slowly, and turned to the door behind the dais. Cei followed me in silence like a big faithful hound, and I turned to him in the doorway, resting a hand on his shoulder for the comfort that I might have found in resting it on Cabal’s head. ‘Do you remem
ber my saying to you once that I’d have no married women to make trouble among the Companions? That when two men desired one woman, that was when the Brotherhood began to break?’
‘Something of the sort,’ Cei said heavily.
‘I was right, wasn’t I?’
The faithful core of the Brotherhood never broke, save by death, which is another matter. But neither Flavian nor Gwalchmai, not even Cei, were as near to me as Bedwyr had been, and I knew to the full the solitude above the snow line that I had dreaded all my life. And since, in the years that came after, even fighting had for the most part given place to statecraft, there was little to do save work. So I worked, while the springs and autumns passed and in the courtyard where I had kept my dogs as a boy, the last branch of the wild pear tree died. I worked at the task of making Britain strong, of hammering out a stable government; I labored over the treaty with the coastwise Saxons, that the thing might not fall to pieces when I could no longer hold it secure in the hollow of my hand. It is all without life in my mind as a badly tempered blade. All my life I have been a fighting man by nature, an administrator only by difficult adoption. Also, so far as might be, I stopped feeling, in those years, and the things that enter only by the head, no man remembers as he does the things that enter by the heart.
Cerdic had taken the three war boats that were his, with a full crew of sword companions to each of them, and before his days of grace were all run out, had left the shores of Britain. We heard of him from time to time, briefly and uncertainly as the flicker of summer lightning at twilight, now here, now there, chiefly as a raider, occasionally as a sailor of strange seas. We began to hear of him at Portus Namnetus on the Gaulish coast; the place was the perfect stamping ground for the son of Fox Vortigern and the Lady Rowan, for in the country about the Liger mouth, Celt and Saxon for no reason had come together and made a mingled race. And as time went by, it seemed that he had made his home quarters there. Until the ninth or tenth summer after Badon, that was all.