A FEW days later, Bedwyr asked for leave to go up to Coed Gwyn for a while, and for the first time in my life, part of me was glad to see him go. Na, not glad, but conscious of an odd relief in his going, that had in some way to do with that strange evil moment during the final charge, though what, I did not know, for I took care not to look too closely.
Winter wore away while, still deeply meshed in the unfamiliar tasks of kingship, I scarcely noticed that the evenings were growing long and light, and the still-bare woods full of the clear surprised twitterings and flutings of thrush and wren and robin, trying over again the song that they had forgotten since last year. And then suddenly the pale promise of spring was fulfilled and running like the green Solas Sidh, the Fairy Fire, through the woods and heaths; and in the tangle of the old palace gardens, the fragile white stars of the anemones turned their backs to the wind. And when I took three squadrons of the Companions and rode up to see to the defenses around Sabrina head, where the Scots’ attacks had still to be reckoned with, Bedwyr had not yet returned, and Owain took command of his squadron.
It was about the half of a month before we turned the horses’ heads home again.
On the last day of the return ride we reached the derelict villa on the Sorviodunum Road a little before dusk, and in the usual way of things I would have ordered camp there, and covered the last seven or eight miles in the morning, but all at once, even as I drew rein before the nettle-choked gateway of the cattle yard where we often corralled the horses, I was filled with a wild impatience to be home that was in part the mere wish of a tired man to see the lamplight shining from his own door, and his own woman with her hair tumbled on the pillow, in part a sense of desperate urgency, of something wrong, that came to me clear and unmistakable like a bird’s call out of the evening sky. It was a glorious evening, the kind on which the last luminous twilight lingers on far beyond its usual time; there would be the last half of a moon later, and the big sorrel colt I was riding seemed fresh enough, as did the other horses.
I called to the rest, “How say you, brothers? There’s a moon coming. If we bait the horses and ride on again when we’ve eaten, we can be in Venta by midnight. Shall we push forward and give our wives a start?”
We off-saddled the horses, watered them and turned them loose to graze and roll while we ate hard oaten bread and dried curds, and stretched saddle-cramped legs for a while. And all the time I was possessed of that wild impatience to be pushing on, mingled more and more strongly with a sense of dread without cause; a shadow without substance to cast it. It seemed an unbearably long time until I could decently give the order to saddle and remount.
The moon was high when we came up the last straight stretch between the graves and the poplar trees to the west gate of Venta. The gate towers stood up against the glimmering sky, black, like a cliff. But the clatter of our horses’ hooves had given warning of our coming, and the yellow glim of a lantern blinked in the lookout above the gateway, voices sounded, giving orders, and the heavy valves began to grind open before I had need to shout for admittance. And we clattered through into the wide main street of Venta, streets whitened by the moon, between the dark walls of the houses, which might have been the streets of a deserted city for all the sign of life in them, save for a half-wild cat who turned with eyes that were twin green sparks of hate to spit at us before streaking off into the shadows, and here and there a woman flitting like a tawdry night moth along the dark side of the way; and once a strayed reveler late out of some wineshop, and wavering his unsure way home, who shouted something about folks that must come clamoring up the street like the Wild Hunt, waking other folks in their beds, and then continued on his way, singing mournfully but with surprising sweetness:
I have hated that song ever since.
We dismounted in the wide forecourt of the palace. The horses were led away by the grooms and stable servants who came running with lanterns, and the sleep still in their eyes like a century or so of dust, to take charge of them, and the Companions clattered off to their own quarters. I had an idea that Cei wished to come with me, as though he thought that I might have some need of him; if so, I must have got rid of him some way, for when I went on toward the Queen’s Courtyard, I was alone, save for my armor-bearer. But all the happenings of that night are confused and darkened in my mind.
I passed one of my own lads on guard duty at the courtyard entrance, and a few moments later (the door was never barred) was in the atrium. The place was dark save for the few red gleeds still glowing in the brazier, and Margarita, when she sprang up from her place and came with her usual grave delight to greet me, was an enchanted creature, flushed to the color of a pink pearl shell. Nothing could be very wrong, I thought, with the house quiet in sleep and Margarita in her usual place, and I began to call myself all kinds of a fool. I bade Riada light a couple of candles and bring some wine, for there seemed no point in rousing the household, and while he groped for the candles in their prickets and kindled them with a twig from the charcoal embers, I flung off my cloak and stood holding my hands over the dim warmth of the brazier, for there was a chill in me, though the night was not cold.
The light sprang up, quickening from candle to candle, and the familiar room grew warmly out of obscurity, and Margarita was more enchanted than any white hound by candlelight. I glanced about me as Riada departed to carry out the second part of his orders, as I had done at so many homecomings, seeing the kingfisher-colored saint on the wall above the big olivewood rug chest, the signs of Guenhumara’s occupation that had made the big smoky room, so long deserted, into my home. Indeed it was as though she had only just left the room, for a small red Samian bowl on the table, half full of water, still contained a few chill white anemones and beside it lay her scissors and thread and a length of plaited green rushes, as though she had been making a garland or a festival wreath.
And suddenly, looking at these traces of Guenhumara, it seemed to me strange that she had not awakened and come down to me. We had not made much tumult, in our coming in, but she was a light sleeper — light as a leaf — and I had never come home before, even at this hour of night, that she had not roused. Suddenly the sense of disaster, which the sight of all things in their usual places had quieted in me for a short while, flared up again, and I turned from the brazier and ran up the narrow stairway.