I saw her face, candid and eager, and could not believe her false. Behind her Edmund smiled at me, as he had done many times, over her enthusiasm. If they were not honest the whole world was a stinking ruin, broken and slimed like the village which the Bayemot overran. And I had killed the Bayemot. I said to the Player King:
“You played well. Gold will be sent you in the morning.”
• • •
But in the night I woke, and having wakened did not sleep again. Scenes from the play came back to me; the words of the two lovers rang in my ears with Jenny’s mocking voice behind them. “Listen . . . Listen, blind Luke . . .” I tossed and turned and, rising early, took a horse and rode out of the North Gate, past the astonished watch.
I rode hard and far, like a coward fleeing from a battlefield. But there was no escaping this battle; its blind and hateful warriors harried me without mercy, and a hundred swords pierced me. And I knew there was no medicine to heal these wounds.
So I came back, tired and sick at heart, to the city which I ruled. I had become a slave to my own eyes and ears. I must watch them both, listen to every word that passed between them, interpret every gesture. While I did so, I must hide my misery.
And in my slavery I was tossed to and fro. I would see her look at him and fill with anger. Then she would look at me, wide-eyed and smiling, and the anger would turn to love, and self-disgust. I had no interest in anything else. My Captains came to me, with news or questions, and I listened and spoke and a moment later did not know what they had said or I had replied.
Days passed. I had no appetite but forced myself to eat, dully chewing and swallowing the food which like everything else but one thing had become meaningless. My life was consumed with watching, guessing. Then one night, when we had both been guests in his mother’s house, he handed her her cloak on parting and I saw his hand rest, for another long moment, on her shoulder.
We walked through the streets toward the palace; for so short a distance we had not brought horses. They were less dark than they had been: last winter I had had oil lamps put up such as they had in Salisbury. Blodwen hummed a tune. I said:
“Are you happy?”
“Yes!”
“Are you thinking yet of returning to Klan Gothlen?”
She glanced at me in surprise. “Why, no.”
“You have been a long time here.”
She laughed. “Have I outstayed my welcome, then?”
“If you do not go soon, you will be caught by the winter.”
“Would that be so terrible a thing?”
I said slowly: “I was wondering . . . what it is that keeps you.”
“I have told you. I love your city. More than my own, I think.”
I said: “What person?”
“What person? Who else but Luke, Prince of Three Cities?”
She said the words lightly, jesting, but there was a falseness. I asked:
“What of Edmund?”
“I am fond of Edmund, and all your friends.”
“Only fond?”
She stopped. We stood under an oil lamp. Some distance away a polymuf scuttled into an alley, made still more crooked in shape by the shadows which surrounded him. We were alone. Blodwen said:
“Speak openly, Luke, and honestly.”
My throat swelled and I had to force words from it.
“This,” I said. “Have you betrayed me with Edmund?”
Her eyes looked into mine unflinchingly. “I have not betrayed you with Edmund, or anyone.”
My misery lifted. I could live again as a free man, not a fugitive from nightmares. I said:
“You swear this?”
“If swearing is needed, I swear it.”
I wanted only one thing more. I took her hands.
“And you do not love him? You will swear that, too?”
She smiled, and for the instant all was well. Then she shook her head.
“No,” she said softly. “That I will not swear.”
FIVE
THE COUNCIL OF CAPTAINS
I SENT WORD VERY EARLY to Edmund that I wished him to ride with me. It was still dark when we clattered down the High Street, drawing curses from an upper room where the noise of our passing roused some good citizen from sleep, across the river and along the road to East Gate.
He asked me when we met what reason there was for our journey, at such an hour. I told him he would know in good time. It had crossed my mind that Blodwen might have sent word to him herself, telling him of what had passed between us, and I searched his face for sign of this. But the bewilderment there was real; he truly did not know why I had come for him. He shrugged his shoulders and, accepting his Prince’s command as a Captain must, mounted and rode with me.
The guard saluted us as we left the city. I set no frenzied pace as I had done on that recent solitary ride. Then my adversaries had been phantasms of the mind. Now there was only one, who had a face and rode at my side. The sky ahead was paling with the dawn. I looked behind me at the gate and remembered my father’s head, stuck on a spear above it. I had thought life could bring no greater anguish than that. It seemed a small thing now.
We traveled in silence. Edmund was not unused to this. I had had my times of silence before, when my mind was busy with some project and I saw no need of speech, and he had accustomed himself to them. The city slept behind us. There was only the sound of hoofs and harness and our horses’ breaths snorting in the chilly air.
We reached the Elder Pond, black and rimmed with ice, and I took the fork that led to the Contest Field. I reined my horse in when we reached it. It lay bare and empty, with the dark mass of Catherine’s Hill behind it. On the hill’s top its grove of trees stood like mourners against the ashen sky. I thought of this place as I had seen it once, with the sun shining after rain on a spring day, and the whole city, it seemed, cheering the Young Captains as they led their teams in for the Contest.
There had been something to win then, too, and against great odds. I remembered my young self. Had I fought so hard for no more than a jeweled sword?
Edmund kept the silence. I said at last:
“Do you recall the time we fought here?”
“Of course.”
“And how I beat you.”
He smiled. “That, too.”
“You said once, when we watched another Contest together, that on a second chance you would have won.”
“Did I, Luke?” He shook his head. “I do not remember that.”
“Do you still think so?”
“That I would have beaten you? No. I knew that after you had killed the Bayemot. I have some courage but when the odds are hopeless I draw back. You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.”
I paused before I said: “At least some good came of it.”
“Yes. You rule three cities, and will rule more.”
I said: “Our friendship.”
“Yes. A better thing still.”
“It has meant much to me. I have Captains who serve me well, a dwarf warrior who would die for me, but those things are not friendship. There were three of us: you, Martin and I. Martin turned Acolyte and now has left us altogether, to go to Sanctuary. Only you and I remain.”
There was a faraway honking and high up small dots trailed across the gray. Wild geese, on their journey to lands we would never know. I said:
“Let us talk of Blodwen, Edmund.”
Our eyes met. He said slowly: “What of her?”
“I think you know.”
He did not deny that, but said: “There has been nothing between us.”
“Nothing?” I spoke bitterly. “No looks, no touches of hands?”
“No more than that.”
“Listen,” I said, “she is mine. Cymru gave her to me at the banquet at which we both sat, after the killing of the Bayemot. Is this not true?”
“Yes,” Edmund said. “But she is a girl, not something to be given.”
In the mind’s eye I saw Blodwen again, as she stood with me on the staircase above her father’s throne room, and heard her voice: “I am not an honor—I am Blodwen! I will be my own woman. Remember that, Luke of Winchester.” I said: