The thing was hopeless. I would have trusted the household of Druim Dhu with my own soul or hers, but I knew that nothing I could do or say would change her own belief in the matter. Nevertheless, I tried once more, desperately. “Guenhumara, there was good faith between me and the people of Druim Dhu, and whatever of evil the Dark People may work from time to time, they do not break faith unless one first breaks faith with them. If I had let slip Cei to forage among their corn pits that whiter —”
But she was not even listening. She was not conscious of my hands on her, and I dropped them to my sides with a feeling of leaden hopelessness. When she spoke again, it was more gently, but the gentleness brought her no nearer to me than she had been before. “I know that you loved her too, and I know that you could not understand what you were doing. But I shall remember always that it was because of you that the bairn died. . . . No, don’t touch me; I don’t want to touch you or be touched by you — not for a long while, maybe never any more.”
I was defeated, and I knew it with a helpless despair.
I took one last look at the Small One’s body, and went past Guenhumara, Cabal faithful at my heels. It was her right to be left alone with the child. I went out through the dun-lit atrium and across the courtyard to the storeroom, where a cot was always kept furnished with rugs and a pillow in case I sent back a messenger or came myself too late at night to rouse the household, and flung myself down there. And the strange thing is that I slept until close on noon.
We buried Hylin the next night, and so I was able to help carry the little bier, before I rode back to join the Brotherhood next day. Aquila, who was at home nursing a breast wound, came with me; and Ambrosius and a few others. I had not many friends in Venta at that time of year. We carried her from the house after dark, with torches, in the Roman manner. The men of the Roman heritage who were old when I was a boy used to say that a woman’s whole life was “lived between the torches,” for she left her home at night and by torchlight only twice, the first time in her bridal litter and the second on her bier. But for small Hylin there was only once, and she would never know a bridal litter.
It was a windy night, and the torches streamed raggedly in the wind that made a soft turmoil in the leaves of the poplar trees; and the shadows leapt and ran all about the small grave.
Afterward there was no funeral feast. It was such a little death, too little for such things. We walked back in a silent knot, the torches quenched, and parted at the gate of the old Governor’s Palace. Aquila would have walked with me all the way and so I think would Ambrosius, but I wanted no man with me, and they knew and loved me well enough to let me go alone.
The moon was several nights past the full, but when I came into the Queen’s Court there was enough light to show me the figure of a man sitting on the broad rim of the old cracked fountain basin.
Cabal growled softly in his throat, until I stilled him with a hand on his collar. And the man got up and turned toward me. I could see little in that light, save that he was of nearly my own height, fair-haired, and very young, but something in his voice, when he spoke in the British tongue, stirred and crept in my memory. “You are Artos the Bear, him that they call the Count of Britain?”
“I am Artos the Bear. You have some business with me? A message?” But I knew he was no man of the war host that I had ever seen.
“No message,” he said. “A matter of my own, but hearing of the sorrow upon your house, it seemed better that I wait for you here, rather than walk in unheralded at such a time.”
“Surely it must be a matter of great urgency, that it will not keep until the morning, even over such a night as this one.”
He said, “Forgive me. I am a stranger here, new come from the mountains and unused to cities of any kind. What place should I turn to on my first night in Venta Belgarum, save to my father’s house?”
Utter silence came upon me; a dark and icy stillness. And in it the words seemed to spread and spread like the ringwise ripples when a pebble is dropped into still water. And when the last ripple died into the dark edge of the stillness, I could only repeat his last words, and set them spreading again.
“Your father’s house?”
So Ygerna had kept her word. I knew the timbre of his voice now. Across the years I heard it again: “May you have much joy in your son, my lord — much joy in your son — much joy . . .”
“I am called Medraut,” he said. “My mother said that she told you I should be called Medraut, after the pet white rat that she had, with ruby eyes.”
“She did; and that she would send you to me when you came to manhood. It will have cost her something to redeem that promise, for she must miss you sorely — or are there others born after you?” I tried to catch the insult back, remembering that she was his mother. “Forgive me, Medraut, I should not have said that.”
He gave a small bitter laugh. “Na na, I make no mistake as to the cause you had to love my mother, or she to love you. But she will not miss me. She is dead. It was when she lay dying that she bade me come to you.”
We were silent again, and then I said, “For your sake, I should be sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Doubtless you loved her.”
“Loved her?” he said musingly. “I do not know. I have learned more of hate than of love. I only know that I was part of her and she of me, as though there was still some cord between us. . . .” He was fingering the carved acanthus leaves of the old fountain curb, watching his own hand in the moonlight. Then he looked up, and said a horrible thing — horrible in its piteousness and serf-betrayal. “It is cold outside my mother. I know now why the newly born draw their first breath in weeping.”
And in reply I had a thought that was equally horrible. I wondered if he was in truth born into life even now, or whether his mother had devoured him as a wildcat in captivity will devour her young. But I only said, “It is cold in this wind. Come into the house, Medraut.”
“As my father bids me,” he said.
There was no one in the atrium, but a low fire still burned in the brazier, and the candles were lit as usual in their tall prickets, and from Guenhumara’s private chamber came the click of a shuttle to and fro. I left him standing by the brazier and crossed to the farther door and went in, letting the heavy curtains fall again behind me.
Guenhumara stood weaving at her loom — a piece of saffron cloth with a border of some intricate many-colored design. She never turned around when I entered, though she must have heard me, and Margarita, crouched against an upright of the loom, lifted her head from her paws and thumped her feathered tail as Cabal padded into the room. “Guenhumara,” I said.
She tossed the shuttle across and let it fall into its resting place; then turned slowly to face me, and I saw by the dry brilliance of her eyes that she had not shed one tear. “Artos — it is over, then.”
“It is over.” I glanced about me into the shadows. “How long have you been here alone? Where is Teleri and old Blanid?”
“I do not know. I sent them away, sometime. They did not want to go.”
“It is not good that you should have been alone!”
The gray shadow of a smile touched her mouth but never the hot bright eyes. “You mistake. It is good for me to have been alone. Better than to be stifled by the soft sympathy of other women. Who is the man that I heard come in with you? I thought it was agreed there was to be no death feast for the child.”
“A man I found waiting for me outside. Bring wine into the atrium, Guenhumara.”