All the while I was aware of my men watching me, with a kind of suspended judgment that might turn into anything. . . . The awareness did nothing to ease the waiting days. I half longed for her coming, as those days went by, half dreaded it, sometimes wondered whether she would come at all.
She came, and we swept her into Castra Cunetium by torchlight. It was a wild night, the feast of Samhain, and I remember how the torches flared in the wind, sending their tawny smoke billowing all across the forecourt, their light beating like bright wings in the darkness upon the faces of the men who thronged around us, and clatter and jink and hoof drum of the cavalry swept in after us through the gates. Guenhumara rode between her brother Pharic and myself, with her cloak flying loose from its shoulder clasp. I had not known her in the first moments of our meeting, almost a day’s march farther westward, for with her tall slight body clad in plaid breeks for the long ride, and her hair gathered up under a soft woolen cap, she looked for all the world like a fine-boned stripling. And indeed I think that few among the crowding garrison realized who she was, for I saw them craning behind her for the commander’s woman. That was until we clattered to a halt, and I dismounted and turned to help her down; for I remember, then the roar went up.
I had not touched her until then, for we had not dismounted at our meeting. There were still grumblings of trouble in the hills, and we had ridden hard to reach Cunetium before full dark, and in the instant before she kicked free from the stirrup and slid into my arms, I knew a wild expectancy; but as it had been before, among the Nine Sisters, I felt as I caught and set her down that there was nothing there, that I might have been holding one of the cool gray standing stones; and this time there was no time for the fire and the life to kindle, for she turned from me at once, swaying with exhaustion as she was, to face the new life about her, with all her defenses like a drawn sword in her hand.
Pharic and the rest were swinging down from their horses, and Bedwyr, who was once again in command of the outpost garrison, had come out from among his squadron to bid her welcome.
I said, “Guenhumara, here is Bedwyr, my sword brother and lieutenant.”
I had wondered how it would be between Bedwyr and Guenhumara when they came together, and I was left still wondering.
I remember him making the bent knee to her that a man makes to a queen; I remember his ugly, crooked face smiling down at her, faintly mocking, his reckless eyebrow flaring like the windblown flames of the torches, saying with the drawling tenderness in his voice that I had never heard him use on a woman before, “I never thought to see a flower springing in the hard ground of this old fort — and it not even summer.”
“A hand for the harp as well as the sword.” Guenhumara’s gaze touched on the embroidered Up of the harp bag that cocked above his shoulder. “Was that grace note plucked from the last song you made?”
“Na na — but I may find it fit in well enough when I come to make the next. There is something tells me that you set little store by the minstrel kind.”
“I have known only the one harper in my father’s hall,” she said gently. “He can outplay any of his kind along the west coast, when it comes to Oran Môr, the Great Music; but I have heard over-many light lilts to the Lady Guenhumara’s shining hair — especially when he would have another arm ring or a new bull calf for his herd.”
“Be assured, at least, that I have no use for an arm ring, nor for a bull calf,” Bedwyr said, with the smile flickering around his lips. “And alas! I have not yet seen the Lady Guenhumara’s shining hair!”
Standing by, it seemed to me that I was watching two swordsmen playing for the feel of each other’s blades, but whether the foils were blunted or sharp, I could not yet be sure. I have thought since, that they were not sure themselves. I made the late rounds with Bedwyr that night, neither of us speaking any word of Guenhumara, and after he had gone back to the mess hall and the evening firelight, I lingered behind, leaning my elbows on the crumbling stone breastwork that still faced the old turf ramparts, and staring out into the blustery darkness of the hills. I meant to follow him at any moment, but I was still there when something moved below and behind me, and as I swung around, Guenhumara herself came up the rampart stair. She was close-muffled in the heavy folds of her riding cloak, but the light of a distant pine-knot torch behind her made a bright copper-dust nimbus through her unbound hair, and I knew by that, and by her way of moving, I suppose, that she had changed back into women’s gear.
“Guenhumara! You should be in your bed.”
She reached out her hand to Cabal, who had risen from his place beside my feet to welcome her better than I had done. “I am too restless for my bed. Everything is so strange; I felt caged in that little room with its face turned nowhere save into a courtyard, and all the wind and the darkness outside.” She came beside me, and set both hands on the cold age-eaten coping. “So this is a Roman fort — a Dun of the Red Crests?”
“Is it not at all as you expected?”
“I do not know. Yes, I suppose so. They say that the Romans like to have their lives boxed into squares and fenced with straight lines. . . . One was telling me, a while since, that in Roman cities the houseplaces have high square rooms to them, and that they are built all along ways so straight that they might have been ruled with a spear shaft. Would that be true?”
Memory twinged at me, and out of the dark and under the wind it seemed for a moment that another woman’s voice was in my ears, a low voice, and mocking. “They say that in Venta there are streets of houses all in straight rows, and in the houses are tall rooms with painted walls; and Ambrosius the High King wears a cloak of the imperial purple.” And I wanted to catch Guenhumara into my arms and hold her fast against all threat to take her from me, defying Ygerna, defying God Himself if need be. But I knew with a sick helplessness that I could not so much as touch her until she gave me leave.
“It is true. The better houses, and the main streets, anyway,” I said, and hoped that my voice was steady. “There are small crooked ways behind the straight ones, and they creep out farther in these days, as the grass creeps farther between the wheel ruts in the streets.”
“The grass is not Roman,” Guenhumara said with a small tired whimper of laughter. “It flows in curves when the wind blows over.”
“You will grow used to it all in time.”
“I will grow used to it in time,” she agreed, “but tonight it is all so strange — so many strange faces in the torchlight. Do you know, save for your trout-freckled armor-bearer, I have not seen in this Red Crest’s eyrie, one of those who were with you in my father’s hall.”
“They will be most of them at Trimontium,” I said. “Flavian rode this far with me, and then on south, to winter with his wife and bairn.”
She looked around quickly. “Was that his price?”
“His price?” I did not fully grasp her meaning for a moment, and could only repeat the words, stupidly. “His price?”
And I think she must have seen how it was, for suddenly she was trying to catch her words back. “Na na, that was a wicked thing to say — stupid, which is worse; I shall be less stupid when I am not so tired. You told me before, that it might be you could let him go this winter, and it might be not, and I am glad that you could let him go.” She moved a little nearer to me as she spoke, as though to make up for some hurt or failure, and I knew that I had the beginning of the leave that I had waited for, and put my arm around her as we propped side by side against the rampart wall.