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.”
We had passed under the narrow arched doorway into the courtyard again. The strange sense of danger was less pressing now, and I had begun to tell myself that I was a fool. I checked beside the wellhead and turned to look at her. She seemed not so remote now, as though from her, too, the shadow was passing, as though the life were waking in her again; and I noticed for the first time that she had left off her braids and knotted up the heavy masses of her hair at the back of her head after the manner of Roman women; that was partly what had made her seem strange to me. I would have caught her into my arms and kissed her then, heedless of the eyes looking on, but she held me off with both hands on my breast, begging with a strange urgency, “No, Artos! Not here! Please, please not here!” and the moment passed, and there were the dark figures of nuns about us, and she was turning from one to another, taking her leave of them, with old Blanid clutching her bundle on the outskirts of the cluster. “God be with you, Sister Honoria, Sister Rufia — pray for me — Sister Praxedes.” But it was not a time to be lingering over farewells. I caught her up and bore her out through the fluttering black-robed throng, across the eating hall and down the passageway and the shallow steps beyond. A Sister scurried ahead to draw the bolts and bars of the door. Blanid flapped along with toothless duckings of delight in our rear. And so, much as though I were bearing off a bride by force, I carried Guenhumara out into the crowded street.
We were greeted by a roar from those near enough to see what was happening, a high, delighted squealing from the women, a crash of laughter and shouted welcome from my own Companions. Bedwyr had dismounted, and stood holding Arian’s bridle besides his own horse’s, while Cabal, sitting alert and quivering where I had left him, sprang up with wildly lashing tail. I tossed Guenhumara up onto Arian’s back and taking the reins from Bedwyr, mounted behind her and settled her into the crook of my bridle arm. Bedwyr was laughing up at me, his crooked face alight and on fire with his laughter. “Sa sa! Bravely done, old Hero! Here is matter for a harp song!”
“Make it for us after supper!” I cried, and struck my heel into the horse’s flank.
Arian broke forward, Bedwyr swung into his saddle, Pharic pressed up on my other side calling greetings to his sister, and the rest of the Company came jingling and clattering after me. Guenhumara looked back over my shoulder at the small deep-set door in the eyeless nunnery wall, and I felt her shiver. The kind of swift convulsive shudder that is supposed to mean a gray goose flying over one’s grave; and instinctively I tightened my arm about her. “What is it? Were you unhappy there? Were they not kind to you after all?” Under the roar of voices, the clatter of hooves and jinkety-jink of harness, we could speak together as privately as though we were alone on Eildon slopes with only the curlew to overhear. “Because if that is the way of it, I’ll —”