'Tressa," I said, suddenly finding it easy to smile. "You set a trap for me, baited with Tressa."
For a fleeting instant, I saw her stiffen, as though in surprise, and then she tossed her head, although her voice, when she resumed, sounded unchanged. "A trap? You make me sound unfriendly, Caius. How would I do that, and why?"
'To lead me astray, perhaps?" I kept my tone light and friendly, part of me afraid she might take offence where none was intended.
"From what?"
· "Why, from my resolve to remain sexually unencumbered, what else?"
Again, that fleeting stillness, and then a laugh—high, clear and amused—and all I could see was the black shape of her, all detail lost against the flaring brightness of the sky. at her back.
"Unencumbered? You would see a lovely young woman like Tressa as an encumbrance?"
I waited, but she had nothing more to add, and when I was sure of that, I shrugged. "Most men who consider celibacy worthwhile would, Shelagh."
"Ah yes, of course, your celibacy."
"What? What do you mean, 'your celibacy'?"
"Just what I said, and with a heavy hint of scorn. Celibacy, in any man, is an admission of failure to live as the gods intended—but in you, my dearest friend, it is ludicrous." She straightened up, abruptly, and moved away from the window, so that I could see her face again, and I felt a surge of relief. Now she laughed aloud and moved directly to sit at the table where I had sat earlier that day.
"Why are you laughing at me?"
"I'm not." But even as she denied it, her laughter-continued, although I knew it as the laughter of a friend, containing nothing demeaning. "Come, come here and sit with me." I moved to sit across from her on the other chair and she sat still for a space of heartbeats, smiling now and shaking her head fondly. "You have the gift we share to thank for this, dear Cay, for I admit I brought Tressa to you deliberately. I saw her, in a dream one night, and saw you with her, smiling." She held up her hand- "Now, don't ask me, for I cannot say whether the dream was prophesy or no, but it was clear, and unmistakable, and wholesome. So I acted upon it."
"Whether I would or not?"
"No, for I knew you would. You need to." She shook her head, briefly and impatiently, and puffed an errant wing of hair out of her eyes. "Caius, this talk of celibacy is absurd, coming from you, and I care not for your careful, self-serving reasons. You are no celibate!" She made the word sound like catamite. "Aye, you'd have me believe you would be celibate! At least, your responsible mind would be, with its love of logic, and that I believe. But what of your other parts—even the other part of your mind, that which purges itself in dreams of women who may or may not be faceless? That purging, that effusion of your seed, is evidence that there is life in you, Caius, demanding to be lived. To deny it, in die face of your god, or mine, or those of anyone else, must be a sin, man! Look at me, now, don't turn your face away"
I looked back to her but said nothing and her eyes narrowed.
"Is it the girl? You find her displeasing?"
I shook my head. "No, not at all. She is most pleasant, and she is clean and wholesome."
"What, then? There's something wrong, somewhere. Where is her lack?"
"She has none, that I can see. None physical."
"And none mental, either. Have you spoken with her?"
I felt my eyebrows rise in surprise. "Of course I have. I spoke with her today. She prattled on for the longest time about the things she was doing."
"No, not like that. She was nervous and afraid of you, I suspect. Have you spoken with her, Cay? Have you conversed with her?"
"On what topic?"
She sighed explosively and threw up her hands in a gesture of resignation. "On anything, man! Caius, you could talk with that girl about anything you have in your mind at any time. Don't be gulled by what you think of—being a man—as her simpleness or her untutored, Cumbrian speech. That young woman is the most gifted seamstress I have ever known, and she has a mind as good as mine or Ludmilla's or any other woman you could think of—and that means it's as good as any man's in a hundred." She slumped back then in her chair, looking at me wide-eyed and shaking her head very gently from side to side as though in wonderment at my ignorance.
"What is it, Shelagh?" I asked. "You have something to tell me, I think."
. "I do. Do you remember this?" She dropped her hands into her lap and spread the fingers of each over one of her leather-covered thighs, on either side of Where the front of her tunic hung down between them. I gazed at them in confusion, my heart suddenly pounding in my breast.
"Remember what?" The tension in my voice was unmistakable—dense and sexual.
"The body beneath these clothes, the one we decided together long since, and for the very best of reasons, that you may never have. In all the years since then, we have never done a thing of which we need ever be ashamed in the eyes of anyone."
I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Aye, I know all that, so what are you saying to me, Shelagh?"
"That I know how much the wanting can hurt, Cay, despite the fact of a husband whom I love and who loves me and who can satisfy my wanting. It grieves me, and has done so now for years, to know that you have no surcease for yours, other than random dreams."
Her voice faded away and a long silence ensued. Eventually I nodded.
"I see. And so you chose Tressa as my plaything?"
"I chose Tressa, you foolish man, but not as a plaything. I chose her for you. And I chose her with great care:"
I smiled. "How so? You dreamed her, you said."
'True, I dreamed of her first. But dreams are dreams and life is real—you of all people know that as well as I do—and so I examined the woman very carefully before I made a move. Every part of her—her youth, her health, her background and her character—I sieved for imperfections, and, save one, found none. She is perfect for you, Cay."
"But I have no wish to marry, Shelagh. If I can't have you, I'll have no one." I said nothing of the fact that I had sworn an oath to myself after Cassandra's death that I would never take another woman as my wife. I saw no need to mention that, and I had had no thought of Tressa as a wife. *
"There speaks a fool, so those words can't be yours. I said nothing of marriage. Finding you a wife was far from my mind."
"That may be true, Shelagh, but it disregards my own notions of responsibility. To return to the gift we share, I, too, have seen things. No dream, but a vision, of a kind. That's why I fled from her today."
"What? What did you see?"
"A thing that frightened me. Today, as I stood over her—she was gathering up her balls of yam that I had knocked to the floor—I saw an image of her, big with child, gravid and threatening. My child. That was the end of it, then and there."
"Pah! That was nothing. A last-moment flash of conscience and self-chastisement."
I gazed at her in surprise. "You say so? Then it was as effective as it could have been. I'll have no more of it, because she will end up with child, if I lay hand on her, and that is a complication of which I have no slightest need. I would not father bastards, so her pregnancy would mean my taking her to wife, and that, with no adverse reflection on Tressa, simply cannot be. My role in life is clear, clean and decided long since—Arthur Pendragon, first, last and always. So trust my judgment and let be, Shelagh."
"She is barren."
"What?" Her words almost drove die breath from me, and I felt my mouth gape with shock. Shelagh was smiling again, though still gently.
'Tressa is barren. That was the single imperfection that I found in her. Her husband put her out a year and more ago and took another wife, who had already borne him two fat sons while he was wed to Tressa, thus proving that the fault lay in Tressa and not in him. Since then, Tressa has lived solely on her ability to wield a needle better than any other in Ravenglass. So you see, her need for comforting and succour is as great as yours."