Sword at Sunset (34 page)

‘Why?’

‘Because I am shamed if you do not. It means little enough that you caught me with you into the Long Dance at Midsummer, though my father sets some store by it; men will say only that you
were drunk. But my father offered me to you in the hall before all men, and if you refuse his offer, do you know what the whole Dun, the whole tribe, will say? They will say that you have had me,
on Midsummer Eve or later – the Great Mother knows that I have been often enough alone with you in the guest place. They will say that you have had me, and found me not to your taste. It will
be hard to live with open shame, in my father’s hall.’

‘Is there less shame,’ I said ruthlessly, ‘in buying a husband for a hundred mounted men?’

‘It is usual enough for a woman to be chosen for her dowry. And the shame would at least be only between you and me, not open before all men.’

‘Would that make it easier to bear?’

She made a small, infinitely weary gesture. ‘I don’t know. For a man, maybe no; for a woman, maybe yes.’

‘Listen,’ I said urgently. ‘Listen, Guenhumara. You do not know what it is you ask for. We carry with us a few ragged whores in the baggage train; they help to care for the
wounded and they keep the lads happy; but save for their kind, the life that we lead is no life for a woman. Therefore if we are fools enough to marry, we leave our wives at their father’s
hearths, hoping, one day, to see them again. Flavian will tell you as much; he married a girl at Deva, and he has a son more than a year old, but he has not seen him yet, nor the girl since she had
scarce begun to carry him. It may be that next year I shall be able to spare him a few weeks to be with them, it may be not.’

‘You are the Count of Britain. There is no man to refuse you your woman with you, at least in winter quarters.’ And I saw by her ruthlessness how desperate she was in her
purpose.

‘I am the Count of Britain, and therefore my woman would have the hardest life of all, for I should have left for her only the few rags of myself that Britain does not claim.’ I was
fighting as it were with my back to the last ditch, fighting not only her but something in myself.

‘She might make do with those, in the winter nights,’ Guenhumara said gently. And then she laughed, suddenly and wildly. ‘But you have no need to fear that I shall prove too
clinging a wife – I am more like to knife you one night in your sleep!’

‘Why, when I have done your will?’

She did not answer at once, and now I could not see her face against the still brightening fires of the sunset. And when she spoke again, her voice had lost its vibrant quality. ‘Because
you will know the truth. Because pity is not much easier to bear than shame.’

I had not meant to touch her, but I caught her by the shoulders then, and turned her to the light so that I could see her face. The feel of her was good under my hands, light-boned and warm with
life. She stood quite unresisting, looking up at me, waiting. And in the harsh westering light I saw her, for the first time, and not through firelight and the heady fumes of pipe music and heather
beer. I saw that she was a tawny woman, tawny of skin as well as hair, and save for that hair with no especial beauty. I saw that her eyes were gray, under coppery brows that were level as the dark
brows of her brothers, and the lashes tipped with gold like the hairs of a bay horse. I think it was in that moment also that I became aware of her atmosphere, the quiet that lay beneath her
surface, even under the stress of the present moment. Young though she was, so much younger than Ygerna, it seemed to me that she had the essential quietness of autumn that contains both promise
and fulfillment, while Ygerna had all the painful craving urgency of spring. ‘Listen, Guenhumara,’ I said again. ‘I don’t love you. I don’t think it is in me to love
any woman, not – now. But if I am to take you, it will not be for any reason that should give you cause to knife me in my sleep, nor even for gratitude because you tended me while I was sick,
and kept the dog alive for me. I shall take you because I can have a hundred mounted men with you – did you not say yourself it is usual enough for a woman to be chosen for her dowry? And
because I like the feel of you, as though you were a well-balanced spear, and I like the sound of your voice.’ She made no sign, no sound, only went on looking at me; and I plowed clumsily
ahead. ‘But you will have so much the worst of the bargain; go home now and think, and be very sure, and when you have thought enough, send me word.’

‘I lay awake all night, and have had my fill of thinking,’ Guenhumara said.

The first cold drops of the next rain squall were spattering about us, drawing a blurred gray veil across the last of the sunset, and I heard the gulls crying as they swept by. ‘You will
get wet,’ I said, oblivious of the fact that she was wet already from the earlier rain, and pulled her against me and flung half my cloak about her; I knew by now that she was pleasant to the
touch, but even so the nearness of her body was unexpectedly sweet in the warm dark under the folds, and the sweetness of it dizzied me a little. I put my arms around her and caught her hard
against me, and bent my head and kissed her. She was a tall woman, and I had not far to go to stoop as I had done sometimes before. Her lips were cold and wet with rain under my mouth, and the rain
hung chill on her hair and lashes, and for a moment there seemed nothing there, no more than if I had kissed the tall gray standing stone behind her. Then the fire of life sprang up within the
stone, she seemed to melt, and leap up toward me within herself, and her mouth woke under mine into swift, eager response. And almost in the same instant she was remote again as one of the Nine
Sisters. She slipped from my arms and from the shelter of my cloak, and turned and ran.

I was left looking after her, by the lichened standing stone in the rain, while Cabal, who had watched the whole scene sitting on his haunches at my side, glanced up at me, his tail thumping
softly behind him. I was still feeling that instant of wild response, so quickly come and lost again that now I could scarcely believe that it had existed at all. But deep within me I knew that I
had not imagined it.

In a little, when I had given her time to be well away, I whistled Cabal after me and set off once more for the Dun. The rain had died out again, and the wine color of the wet heather was
turning smoky in the dusk.

That night before I slept, I sent for Flavian to the guest place, and told him what must be told. None of the Companions had spoken to me of the chieftain’s offer and the taboo that I had
invented on the spur of the moment, though I suppose they must have spoken of it among themselves; and Flavian did not speak now, only stood with one arm against the rooftree and stared into the
flame of the little seal-oil lamp, until I had to break the pause myself.

‘Well?’ I said.

He brought his gaze back from the lamp. ‘And you are going to have her with you in winter quarters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, of course, since we are to have wives among us at Trimontium, I may send for Teleri?’

My heart sickened and sank, and it was my turn now to stare into the flame of the seal-oil lamp. ‘No, Flavian.’

‘But how is the case different, sir?’ His voice still had the levelness it had as a boy.

‘Because I am the Count of Britain, the captain of you all,’ I said. ‘Sometimes the leader may have what he denies to his followers. Because I am the leader and there is only
one leader, what I do does not make a precedent, but if I give you leave to do the same, how may I refuse it to any man in Trimontium – and within a year we shall be overwhelmed with pregnant
women and squalling cubs, a danger to themselves and a danger to us, clogging our sword arms and dividing our hearts!’ But the words tasted evil in my mouth, for never before had I used my
leaderhood to take for myself anything that was not for my men also; not so much as a mouthful of sour soup or a wound dressed out of turn.

We were silent for a while, and then he said, ‘Don’t do it, sir.’

‘I shall have a dowry of a hundred men and horses with her.’

He looked up quickly. ‘And that is your whole reason?’

‘It is reason enough.’

‘Then marry her and leave her at her father’s hearth, as I have had to leave Teleri all this while.’

‘That – is not in the bargain.’

He was silent again, a longer silence this time, filled with the soft boom of wind and the hush of storm rain across the thatch, for the night had fulfilled the promise of the sunset. The door
apron flapped and bellied against its restraining pegs, and the lamp flame jumped and fluttered, sending fantastic shadows licking along the rafters. Then he said, ‘This is the first time you
have ever done anything unjust, sir.’

And I said, ‘That is not such a bad record. Bear with me in my injustice, Flavian, I am only a mortal man with my sins heavy on my shoulders, not an archangel.’

‘We are not the kind to know much about archangels, we of the Brother hood; we have thought of you always as – maybe a little larger than life, that is all,’ he said, and moved
very slowly toward the doorway.

I let him almost get there, but I could not let him go through it. I was fiddling with my sword belt, on the point of slipping it free, for I had sent Amlodd away early; then I abandoned it. I
said, ‘Minnow, don’t desert me.’

He turned instantly, and I saw by the jumping light of the seal-oil lamp, the suspicious brightness of his eyes. ‘I think I could not.’ He came back quickly and dropped on one knee
to free the sword belt himself. ‘Where does Amlodd keep the silver sand? This clasp needs burnishing. He’s not such a good armor-bearer as I was.’

But I lay awake most of the night with a bad taste in my mouth.

In the days that followed, the life of the Dun went on seemingly much as usual, but down in the dark beneath the surface of familiar things, a wild tide was rising. No outward sign told of its
rising, and had I been of my father’s world, I doubt that I should have sensed anything at all; but my mother in me knew the look in men’s eyes, and heard the dark familiar singing in
the blood.

Three days before Lammas, Maglaunus the chieftain was not in his accustomed place at supper in his high hall; but no man glanced at the empty seat with its great black bearskin spread over it,
nor spoke of his absence, for we knew the reason for it. No man can take the godhead upon himself without time apart to make himself ready ... Always there must be one to wear the Horns; one to give
life and fruitfulness out of his own substance, the King and the Sacrifice in one, to die for the life of the people if need be, as the Christos died. Sometimes it is a priest that becomes the
Incarnate God, sometimes even a Christian priest, for in the wilds and the mountain places men do not set such rigid frontiers to their faiths as they do in cities; sometimes it is the king, the
chieftain, and that is the old way, and holds within it the true meaning. Lammas fell on a Sabbath that year, and for the first part, the day was as other Sabbaths.

Early in the morning we went down from the Dun to hear mass in the small bracken-thatched church that served both the Dun and the fisher village below it. For once, Cabal was not with me, being
too much taken up with the hut where Maglaunus’s favorite hunting bitch was in season; but I remember that Pharic had his hawk with him – indeed he seldom moved far without her –
and carried her still, when we reached the church door and went in under the stone lintel. There was room in the church for Maglaunus’s household, and for the small band of Companions who
followed me, but for few more, and so for the most part the lesser folk of both Dun and village remained outside in the forecourt like a low-walled sheepcote. It made little difference, for they
could hear all that went on through the open doorway, and at the appointed time the three monks of the Holy House at Are Cluta, who lived in the humpbacked bothy beside the church, would bring out
to them the Bread and Wine.

I heard little of the service, for with my eyes schooled straight in front of me, I seemed all the while, with every sense I possessed, to be watching Guenhumara with her maidens about her, in
the women’s part of the church. When the time came for the Sacred Meal, I knew how she looked around for her brothers, for Pharic most of all, that they might go up together, and I knew that
they had always gone up together. I went up next, and knelt at Pharic’s other side – his left side on which he carried his hawk; and it is so that I remember the small unvoiced battle
of wills between priest and princeling, the one denying and the other maintaining the right to bring his hawk to the Lord’s Table. Clearly it was a longstanding struggle, and when after a few
moments the priest lowered his eyes in defeat, it was a defeat that he had known many times before.

The three dark-frocked brethren must have realized the chieftain’s absence, and understood its reason. They must have known, when they carried out the Host to the kneeling warriors and
fisherfolk in the forecourt, that in a few hours they would be up on the moors with the Nine Sisters, stretching eager hands to an older and deeper-rooted Lord than the Christos. But they made no
sign; they were withdrawn, showed nothing in their quiet faces; and I knew that they would ask no questions.

When we came out again through the forecourt gate, with the mass of worshippers already thinning, Pharic, still carrying his hawk, was gentling the back of her neck with one finger, so that she
bobbed her unhooded head, hunching her shoulders in pleasure. ‘It is a good hawking day,’ he said suddenly, and glanced about him, at his brothers and the rest of us. ‘The Lord
knows we may not have many more chances before the autumn molt, and I am away up to the moors. Laethrig, my Lord Artos – Sulian – Gault – who comes with me?’ And swinging on
his heel without pause for any answer, to shout for horses and others of his hawks to be brought down.

But indeed the plan fell in with our mood well enough, for I think all of us wanted some outlet for the unrest that was growing in us, something to fill the hours until dark. And when the horses
were brought and a couple more hawks, each with its familiar glove, we mounted, and gathered up a few dogs to flush game for us, and headed for the marshy glens northward, in search of heron.