‘But principally Trimontium,’ said Guenhumara, and drew away from me a little as we walked. ‘Ah well, I promised, did I not, that you should not find me a too clinging wife.’
I made a clumsy, protesting gesture of some sort toward her, and then checked it because of the men who still lounged in the gateway. Even alone with Guenhumara I was shy of any intimate gesture, being a hamstrung lover in all things; and before other eyes I could not touch her at all. The gate was very near now, and she spoke quickly and very quietly, with a breath of unhappy laughter. ‘Na na, you need not pretend, my lord; part of you will breathe a great breath of relief when I am gone.’
‘And part of me will miss you as a newly blinded man misses the first light of morning,’ I said in the same suppressed tone.
She looked around at me, then, and in the last few steps, drew nearer again. ‘God help us both!’ she said, as she had said it on the first night of all. The long evening shadow of the gate towers fell across us.
By the end of that year’s war trail, I knew that I could safely leave Valentia to itself, at least for a while, and turn south at last, to redeem my four-year-old promise to Eburacum. And that following summer I did not send Guenhumara back to her father, but for the first and only time in our years together, carried her with me. It seems an odd decision now, and looking back, I am not sure how I came to make it. I suppose at the roots of the thing, because I wanted to so sorely. I knew that the small Sisterhood who had fled with the rest of Eburacum when the Sea Wolves came, had returned to what was left of their house in the city; and I could leave Guenhumara with them, and perhaps, if the chances of war fell so, see her from time to time through the summer.
So we rode south, leaving behind us the usual small garrisons in Three Hills and Castra Cunetium. Old Blanid rode with the baggage train, like a battered old rook clinging to the tail of a wagon, but Guenhumara put on again the breeks and short tunic that, with her hair hidden, still made her look like a boy, and rode ahead with the Companions.
The men of Eburacum welcomed us back as though we had been their long-lost kindred, crowding the streets to cheer us in. I looked for Helen among the throng, and did not see her until a knot of poppy-red ribbons flung from above hit Cei on the mouth as he rode beside me, and glancing up, I saw her raddled face laughing down from an upper window. She waved to both of us, and I waved back. Cei thrust the ribbons into his bosom and blew her smacking kisses through his fiery beard as though he had not loved every girl of the baggage train and a score of others besides, and wearied of them all since the last time that he lay in her arms.
They had given a good account of themselves in the past four years, the men of Eburacum and the Brigantian territory; they had held their city free of the Sea Wolves, and here and there even thrust back the Saxon settlement from along the coast and river mouths, and they carried themselves like hounds with two tails. But there still waited work enough for us to do. We made camp in the old fortress as we had done before, while the war host made itself battle-ready; and for days the bargaining that rose from the corn merchants’ stores and the sellers of dried meat and sour wine, the fletchers and the leatherworkers bade fair to drown the rasp of file and the ring of hammer on anvil from Jason the Swordsmith, and the armorers’ shops throughout all the city.
It was not until the last day before we marched out that I took Guenhumara, with Blanid still grumbling and flapping in attendance, to the House of the Holy Ladies. It was a long low building turning a blank eyeless face upon the Street of the Clothmakers that ran toward the fortress gates. The patched walls with scars of burning still upon them, the clumsy new thatch that showed the ends of charred beams here and there under the eaves, told clearly enough of the state in which the Saxons had left it. We spoke with the Mother Abbess in her little private chamber, and after Guenhumara had been made gently welcome, and led away from me by a small scurrying Sister like a sad little bird, I lingered for a last word with the woman who ruled this narrow enclosed world.
She was a tall woman, and I think had been beautiful. Her hands folded in her dark robed lap were beautiful still, and strong, though knotted with rheumatism and yellow-white as the ivory of the crucifix hanging on the lime-washed wall behind her, a big hand that I could imagine holding a sword. She would make a foe worthy of any man’s blade, I felt that instinctively, and liked her the more for it, as one good fighting man recognizes his brotherhood with another. ‘There was something more you wished to say to me, my Lord Count of Britain?’
‘Only this.’ It was a thing that must be set clear and straight between us. ‘That I would not have you shelter the Lady Guenhumara under any false hope of a gift for your nunnery. What money I have, whatever treasure I can gather, goes to feeding my men, in the purchase of war-horses and the retempering of sword blades. And furthermore, it has been in my mind these many years that since I fight, among other matters, to keep the roof over the Church’s head and the light unquenched on the altar and its holy ones with their throats uncut, it is the Church that owes to me, not I that owe to the Church.’
‘So I have heard, these many years also,’ the Abbess said gravely.
And I had another thought, and came a step nearer to the tall chair in which she sat. ‘One thing more, Holy Mother; I mean no disrespect in this, but I ride away tomorrow, and Guenhumara will be in your hands. I am not greatly loved by the Church of Christ, as both you and I know, and to speak truth that has not held me long from my sleep at nights; and if, when I come back, I find that my wife has not been well and kindly used in every way, then women as you are—’
‘You will see whether this house of God will not burn as brightly a second time as it did the first,’ said the Mother Abbess. ‘Do not spend your threat on me, Artos the Bear, for there is no need, I assure you.’ Suddenly and most unexpectedly she smiled, a smile that was somewhat grim about the mouth, but danced behind her eyes. ‘As Abbess of this house of Holy Sisters, it is my duty to tell you that you are a most sinful man, a despoiler of Christ’s Garden second only to the Saxon kind, and that on the day when Almighty God in His Glory parts the sheep from the goats, you are assuredly damned. But as a mere woman, and one perhaps not overblest with meekness, it is in my heart to spoil all by telling you that if I were a man and fighting to hold back the Barbarian flood and the darkness from the land, I believe that I should feel and act much as you have done, and deserve damnation also, in the Day of Judgment.’
‘Holy Mother,’ I said, and did not realize until the words were spoken, how unseemly they were, ‘I wish I had you among my Companions.’
‘Maybe I should make a better fighting man than I do a nun,’ she said, and I do not think she felt the words an outrage. ‘Though God knows that I strive to live by His rule and be worthy of my trust. But as to the Lady Guenhumara – we are a small sisterhood, and poor; we live for the most part on the charity of the good people of this city, and on the outcome of three fields beyond the walls. We have no store of gold, no jeweled image or worked altar cloth to give you for the purchase of horses or sword blades, but we will share most willingly what we have with your wife, and strive to make her happy among us until you come for her again. Let that be our gift, some payment of our debt to you.’
‘There could be none greater,’ I said. I pulled off a bracelet of enameled bronze that I had worn since I was a boy, and set it on the table beside her. ‘That is not to destroy the gift, but that Guenhumara need not live on the charity of the good citizens of Eburacum. I thank you, Holy Mother. I am ashamed.’
I knelt for her blessing, the first time I had received a blessing from the Church since the day that I took Gwalchmai from his fenland monastery. And the small scurrying Sister, summoned by a little bronze bell that stood on the table to the Abbess’s hand, led me away and thrust me out into the fine spring rain that was scudding down the Street of Clothworkers, and I heard the heavy door rattle shut on the women’s world that I had left behind me.
That summer we rode the war trail all
up the coast, northward and northward and northward, burning and harrying as we went, and gathering an ever-growing war host from the hills and moors, until we rounded the end of the Wall at Segedunum and came up with the traces of our last summer’s southernmost harryings, and knew that at least for an hour, until the next tide rose and the next wind blew from across the sea, our coasts from the Bodotria to the estuary of the Metaris were free of the Saxon scourge. But it was a long trail and a hard one, and there was no return to Eburacum in all that time, so that it was full autumn before I saw Guenhumara again.
We rode into the city on a still October evening full of wood-smoke and the smell of coming frost, with great rustling flights of starlings sweeping homeward overhead. And I do not think that there was one living soul in Eburacum who could walk or crawl or be carried, from the age-palsied beggar on two sticks to the wide-eyed baby held up against its mother’s shoulder, from the chief magistrate with his formal speech of welcome, to the very dunghill curs, who did not come swarming into the streets to see us clatter past and give us a welcome fit for heroes, as though we were newly in from some battle of gods and Titans, instead of a summer spent in burning out Saxon hornets’ nests and getting well stung for our pains. Their voices broke about us in great waves of sound, they cast branches of golden leaves and autumn berries before our horses’ feet, they crashed forward and surged about us so that at times we could barely force a way onward at all. I was riding old Arian, for it was his last campaign that we returned from, and I felt that the triumph was his due – he had always loved a triumph; he was playing to the trumpets now, tossing his head and all but dancing – and indeed it was as well that I did so, for Signus, although magnificent in a charge, was still inclined to fret and turn difficult in a crowd.
I had meant to go straight up to the fortress, get out of my filthy war gear and if possible shake off the crowd, and then go quietly down to the House of the Holy Ladies and ask Guenhumara if she would come with me now or bide where she was for the few days until we marched for Trimontium again.
But as we turned into the Street of the Clothworkers that led up from the main street to the fortress, and I saw the blind wall of the house close before me, it was as though I heard Guenhumara call, not with the ears of my body, but in some quiet place in the very midst of myself, beyond the reach of the joyous uproar all around me. She was calling me, needing me, not later when I had gone up to the fortress and shed my harness and was at leisure for other things, but now in this present moment. I told myself that I was a fool and imagining things, but I knew that I was not – I was not – and in a few moments more I should be swept past the house, with the Companions torrenting up the street behind me, and the light troops and the rattling baggage train, on and up toward the fortress gate, and Guenhumara left crying after me ...
‘Sound me the Halt!’ I cried to Prosper. He shouted back, something that had the note of a question or a protest, but I did not hear the words. ‘Sound me the Halt, damn you, and keep on sounding it!’
I was already swinging Arian out of the main stream, forcing him through the onlookers, who bunched and scattered squealing, to give me passage, as I heard the horn sounding its brief imperative message. ‘Halt! Halt! Halt!’ I heard the shouts of the watchers and the turmoil break out behind me, the trampling and cursing as the cavalry obeyed the unexpected order. Bedwyr had thrust through to my side, and leaned half out of the saddle to catch Arian’s bridle from me as I dropped to the ground. I turned to the small strong door, thrusting back Cabal, who would have followed me, and beat on it with the hilt of my dirk.
The same small scurrying Sister came in answer to the summons, glancing past me into the street with a white startled face, even as she saw who I was. ‘My Lord Artos?’
‘I have come for my wife,’ I said.
In a short while I was standing again in the small lime-washed chamber with the ivory crucifix on the wall. The room was dim with the autumn evening, and empty. But almost at once a slight sound made me swing around to the door; and the Mother Abbess stood there. ‘This is a house of prayer and contemplation. Are you responsible for this uproar before our door?’
‘I have a war host with me, and the people of Eburacum are glad to see them come again ... I am come for my wife, Holy Mother.’
‘Would it not have been better to have gone up to the fortress first, and come for her in a gentler manner, when the welcome had died down?’
‘Much. That was what I meant to do, but when we turned into the Street of the Clothworkers and I saw the nunnery wall before me I – changed my mind.’
She moved aside from the small deep-set door. ‘So. Go then and fetch her as swiftly as may be; I think that you will find her in our little herb garden, waiting for you. And—’ The shimmer of a smile crept once more into her dry low voice. ‘I believe that she will give you a good enough account of us to save the nunnery roof from a second taste of fire.’ She had moved to the table and picked up the little bronze bell that stood there. ‘Sister Honoria will show you the way.’
A nun, a stranger this time, with the soft anxious eyes and surging flanks of a cow ripe for the bull, answered the summons, and to her the Mother Abbess said, ‘Take my Lord Artorius into the herber, and send someone to bid Blanid bring out her mistress’s bundles. The Lady Guenhumara is leaving us.’
She turned to me for the last time. ‘You have been hunting Saxons into the sea all summer, they tell me. Our gratitude and our prayers together with those of all Britain must be yours for that – and I think you may need our prayers more than you do our gratitude. Do not bring Guenhumara to take her leave; Sister Ancheret our Infirmarer is sick herself, and I am very busy in her place, with the poor sick folk who come to us morning and evening. She has my blessing already.’
I thanked her, and followed the broad black back as it surged deliberately down a stone-flagged passage, through a bare hall set with trestle tables and benches, and out into a narrow courtyard with a well in the midst of it. A young nun was drawing water at the well, but never looked up as we passed. I suppose it would have been a sin. On the far side of the courtyard was an archway in a high curved crumbling wall that looked as though it might have been part of the outer wall of the theatre in the old days. And the fat nun took one hand from the loose sleeves of her habit and pointed to it, never lifting her eyes to my face. ‘If you go through there, you will find her. But pray be careful for our little cat. She will suckle her kittens always in the midst of the path; and striped tabby as they are, it is not easy to see them if they chance to be in the shade of the cherry tree ... I will go and tell Blanid about the Lady Guenhumara’s clothes. She has such pretty kirtles, blue and violet, and a checkered cloak; but she has only worn a gray one here ... ’
I heard the flap of her clumsy sandals recrossing the court behind me, as I went on through the doorway in the wall.
Beyond was a long irregular strip of garden, high-walled on all sides, and seemingly with no way out save the one by which I had come. A place filled with the soft dusty grays and greens and silky mouse-browns of herbs and medicinal plants now run to seed, where the sinking turmoil of the street outside came only as the roar of surf on a distant shore. And at the far end, her face turned to the archway, stood Guenhumara, dim-colored as the garden, save for the brightness of her hair.
She took a hurried step forward when she saw me, then checked, and stood quite still to wait my coming. I came near to treading on the tabby cat after all, for my eyes were filled with Guenhumara, but I was aware of it just in time, where the striped shade of the cherry tree lay in the last dregs of sunlight across the path, and stepped safely over it and the guzzling kittens. Then I was with Guenhumara, taking the hands she held out to me. I wanted to fling my arms around her and bruise her body, and her mouth against mine, but she seemed so remote in the old gray gown she wore, remote and far away from me, like a nun herself, and I could not.
‘Guenhumara! Guenhumara, is it well with you?’
/> ‘Well enough,’ she said; and then echoing my tone in that low vibrant voice of hers: ‘Artos! Artos, are you really here so soon?’
‘I did not mean to come until I had got rid of my war gear and the good folk of Eburacum. But I had a sudden feeling that you wanted me – it was as though you called to me, Guenhumara.’
‘And so you came.’
‘And so I came.’ I had her by the hand and was drawing her back toward the archway. I did not know why I had the feeling that there was no time to be lost in getting her away from the place. It was certainly nothing to do with the tumult outside; it was more like a sudden sense of danger. And yet it was hard to see what could menace her in that quiet nunnery garden.
‘I left the good folk of Eburacum and the whole war host giving tongue like the Wild Hunt before the door. Did you call me, Guenhumara?’
She looked up into my face with grave smoke-colored eyes under the feathered tawny brows. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Old Marcipor who chops wood for the Sisters and helps with the heaviest part of the gardening, he brought us word this morning that the Count of Britain would ride in before dusk; and all day the city has been humming to itself, and all day I have waited. And then I heard the shouting and the trumpets and the horses’ hooves, and I knew that you were back in Eburacum and that you must pass up this street to the fortress, and I thought, Presently, when he has seen his mess safe into camp, and stripped off his sweaty harness and perhaps eaten, and found time to breathe, then he will come for me. Tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning he will come for me. And then quite suddenly I knew that I could not wait. I have waited, not too impatiently, all summer, but when I heard the horses, and the people shouting “Artos!” I knew that I could not wait any longer – it was as though I were suffocating within these walls. I believe if you had passed, I should have made them open the door, and run after you to catch your stirrup.’ She broke off. ‘No, I should not – of course I should not. I should have waited somehow, till you came.’