“Did I show it so clearly to all the hall, then?”
“To no more than half, maybe.” Her eyes were fixed on my face, and suddenly I saw them dilate until the black swallowed all the color; and she laid the mockery aside as though it were a weapon. “I came to tell you something that it may be well for you to know, before the Lammas torches. If you take me as Maglaunus my father wishes, he will give you one hundred men with their mounts, for my dowry. That I know in truth. . . . Our horses are not so great as yours, but they are good horses, bred in the first place from some cavalry mounts of a Legion that was lost somewhere among the Lowland hills in the far-off days, and we have kept the strain pure.”
I was more startled, I think, than I had been when Maglaunus first bade me take her; and when I spoke at last, it was more harshly than I had meant. “Did Maglaunus your father send you to tell me this?”
“If so, I would have died before I came!”
“Would you? I want horses and men, but not — like that.”
I could scarcely have complained if she had spat in my. face, but she only said with a small quickly suppressed sigh, “No, I suppose that you would not,” and then, bracing herself to a yet more rigid stillness, “Artos, until now, I have counted myself a proud woman; and I am laying my pride at your feet for you to trample it into the dirt if you choose. I beg you to take me.”
“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 ram 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.