I remember that it was then, in the pause that followed, that Guenhumara came away from the wall to stand beside him. “It is true, Artos, it is true, every word of it,” she said.
And I, God help me, I knew now where her new kindness, her air of harvest, had come from; and it was as though the dark life-blood were draining away from some wound in me. I had always sworn to myself that if Guenhumara took a lover, I would not be jealous, remembering that I had failed her; but I had never thought, never in my darkest and coldest dreams, that the lover would be Bedwyr. Strange are the ways of the heart. I think that truly I could have allowed Guenhumara her lover: I know that if Bedwyr had taken any other woman it would have troubled me no more than did Cei’s wenchings. But they had turned to each other, the two people I loved best in the world, and doing so, each had taken the other from me, and I was left outcast and alone, and betrayed. The black bitterness rose and rose within me, and there was a little drum pounding, pounding, behind my temples.
Guenhumara came half a step toward me, with her hands held out, and her voice had the throb of a swan’s wings in flight, that had always shaken the heart in my breast. “Artos, for your own sake as well as for ours, try to forgive us!”
And I said, “What is there to forgive? There is only once in your life and mine, that ever I was more than half a man to you. It is but the way of things that the mare needs the stallion at the right season!”
She cried out at that as though I had struck her. “Artos, no!” and gave back the half step again.
And I saw something in her face and in Bedwyr’s that made the hammer stop beating in my head. “My God! You never told him that, did you!”
It was Bedwyr who answered. “No, she never told me that.”
“That was — merciful of her.”
“No,” Guenhumara said. “The things that are between you and me are not for sharing with Bedwyr.”
“Nor the things which are between you and Bedwyr for sharing with me. Did ever you love me at all, Guenhumara?”
She did not come back the half step, but I think that something of her longing was toward me, even then. “Yes,” she said, “only we could never cross each other’s thresholds. I tried as well as you, but we could never cross.”
I stepped sideways from before the door, for it seemed to me that this thing was ended. “That is all there is to say, isn’t it?”
Neither of them moved, and I turned on Bedwyr, who seemed to have drawn aside in spirit from what concerned only Guenhumara and me. “Well then, what now? You have tasted her, and it seems that the taste pleases. Are you not going to claim her from me?”
The old mocking smile twisted his lips an instant. “Does a wise man claim Caesar’s wife from Caesar?”
Guenhumara said quickly, “That is what you will do? You will send us away?”
“What else did you think I should do?”
“I don’t know. If you were a different man, I think that you might have us killed. As it is — I don’t know.” She drew a long shaken breath, and began to bargain, or I thought at the time that she was trying to bargain, though I could not grasp her purpose, for I knew well enough that the queenship mattered little to her. I understand now that she was striving desperately to save something out of the ruin, to salve some rags of good for all three of us, for me most of all. “If you will forgive this one night —” Her voice broke and she steadied it, too proud to use a woman’s weapon of tears. “If it seems to you that the years that I have been your faithful wife, and Bedwyr your loyal lieutenant, have any weight to set against this one night, I will promise you — on my knees if you like-that we will never again be alone together, nor speak one word to each other when you are not by.”
Fool! To think that was the thing that mattered, the mere fact of lovemaking. Fool not to understand that I would have had her lie with Bedwyr a score of tunes, not loving him, rather than know her heart crying out to him while she lay faithful one night in my arms. Bedwyr understood, but in some ways Bedwyr and I were nearer to each other than Guenhumara and I had ever been.
“Bedwyr would need to make the half of that promise,” I said harshly, “and I think that he would not make it. Na na, Guenhumara, you offer a thing too hard for mere mortals, for me as well as you. You are no more my wife — nor you, Bedwyr, my lieutenant and my sword brother; all that is finished. . . . It should be pleasant at Coed Gwyn now, though I fear that the snowdrops will be over. You have until noon to make what arrangements you need, and be out of Venta.”
Guenhumara began to plead again, desperately. “Artos, listen — oh listen! Not both of us! Surely it is enough if you banish one? Send me away — send me home in shame to my father’s hearth, for a bad woman who dishonored your bed; or if you are more merciful, let me go back to the House of Holy Ladies at Eburacum, as of my own free will. Only let you not send Bedwyr from you; the time comes when you will need him as you never needed him before!”
Bedwyr still stood unmoving, an image of silent grief, his chin sunk into his cloak and his sword fallen at his feet. He raised his head and looked at me, and I know we were both thinking of the House of Holy Ladies in the Street of the Clothworkers, and Guenhumara clinging to me, looking back as I carried her away, with that shudder as of a wild goose flying over her grave. . . . “Will you abide by that?” I cried to him. “Great God, man, will you let her take the whole payment on her shoulders?”
“In the part assigned to me, there would perhaps be something of payment also.” His words blurred a little, as though his lips were stiff. “But I think that the question does not arise.”
All the flame of my anger had sunk to gray ash, and I was cold to my inmost soul, and suddenly very weary. I said, “Na, it does not arise, there is no more place for you here than there is for her. Take her and go, for I want neither of you near me ever again.”
I dragged open the door, and with Guenhumara’s voice in my ears, calling my name for the last time, stumbled my way down the stairs in the dark, blundering against the walls like one very drunk.
In the courtyard a breath of wind tossed the last living branch of the wild pear tree, and scattered a few fragile petals into the dark well water. . .
THE next day was the third Sunday in the month, a day when, by long custom, Ambrosius, whenever he was in Venta, had sat in audience for any man who had a wrong to be righted, a grievance to air, a plan to put forward, to come to him in the Great Hall. I had continued that practice after him and so that Sunday I sat in the High Seat on the dais with certain of the Companions ranged for a ceremonial guard behind me, and the Queen’s chair empty at my side, and strove to make my bruised brain take in this man’s need for release from military service, and that woman’s complaint against the corn merchant. The old cloak of imperial purple that had also been Ambrosius’s hung on me as heavily as did the custom of the day, but it was good that I had something that must be done. I think if I could have rested that day, I should have gone mad. . . . The first bumblebee of the year had strayed in from outside and was bruising its head against one of the windows that still had glass in it, in futile attempt at escape, and the sound teased and tangled at the edges of my attention. “No escape, no escape —” I frowned, striving to concentrate on the rights and wrongs of the case being poured out before me.