We took all except the few who had run first and escaped across the river. James had been one of these. When their Captains surrendered a gray-haired man spoke for them. He said:
“This ransom will not be easy to pay. Will you give us time, sire?”
I said: “There will be no ransom.”
My own army and my Captains stood behind me. The Romsey Captain said:
“No ransom?”
I said: “My father took Petersfield, and I take Romsey. You belong to our realm of Winchester. Serve it faithfully and you will come to no harm.”
There was silence before the Romsey Captain spoke.
“Maybe the men of Petersfield did not set a high value on their ancient liberties. We do. Prince, you cannot ask this. We have lost the battle and will pay you ransom. But we will not serve you, nor your realm.”
The silence came back. So short a time before there had been the clang of metal, cursings, men shouting and dying. The last shreds of mist steamed off the river. My men listened as closely as theirs. I said:
“You speak like an honest man. You could have given me soft words and defied me later. And I would have been forced to come again to your city, this time in anger. But since you defy us now you will return to your city weaponless. And we will keep a garrison there as long as it is needed.”
He stared at me. “You are not in the city yet.”
“No.” I nodded. “But will the gates be kept shut against us, with so fine a crop of hostages?”
He bowed his head, in acceptance. It was all silence, and their defeat spoke louder than our victory. I said to Greene: “See to it,” and rode away.
• • •
We left our garrison in Romsey and rode back along the Itchen valley. Citizens crowded out from the South Gate, cheering and welcoming us back. They shouted my name: “Luke!” I heard them cry: “Prince of Three Cities!”
I rode at the head of my army into Winchester. The crowd was even thicker inside, and noisier. Then it seemed to melt and grow quiet. I saw horsemen with foreign but familiar trappings. And someone else.
She sat white-robed on a white horse. Her beauty seemed to make the air grow still. She bowed her fair head, her blue eyes smiling.
She said: “I grew tired of waiting, Luke. So I came to see this city which you promised me.”
THREE
BLODWEN’S SUMMER
IT IS STRANGE WHAT POWER beauty can wield over men’s minds. Blodwen had been only three days in the city, but she had conquered them absolutely.
They cheered us as we rode up through the streets together to the palace. Then they gathered outside. This was usual after a victory. The Prince must show himself on the main balcony, to be cheered again and to promise his citizens free ale at the victory feast that followed.
They acclaimed me well enough when I went out, and shouted my name with vigor. But when I drew Blodwen out to stand beside me, I thought they would go mad. I had never heard such cheering anywhere. And when she blew them a kiss I thought they were mad already: the din battered one’s eardrums.
And her power, I saw, lay not in her beauty alone but in the warmth and ease that went with it, that were a part of it. The gesture of blowing them a kiss illustrated that. In the press directly under the balcony I saw an old polymuf road-sweeper called Dirk. He was not much of a sweeper, having arms little bigger than a baby’s to hold his broom, but there was no other work he could do: his mind was not much greater than a child’s, either. He stood and held up his tiny arms toward her, and tears flooded down his face unchecked. He had taken the kiss as his; as they all had.
I looked at her, close by where they were far off, and still found no flaw. The pink and white of her skin, the delicate gold of her hair, were without blemish, as was the wide-eyed candor and radiance of her look. I thought of my own roughness beside her: no one could ever have praised me for my looks. But at least this beauty was to be mine, and I had a right arm strong enough to defend it against all threats or dangers.
It took some doing but we escaped from them at last. And at last we were alone, in my parlor. She said:
“I like your city, Luke, and your people.”
“It is plain they love you.”
Now that we were together and on our own I felt my old awkwardness with her return. It was part of the awkwardness I had always felt with girls, but made worse by the power her beauty had over me, too. I had a strong arm to defend her, but I wished desperately for a readier tongue with which to talk to her.
She smiled. “You have not given me much welcome yet. Are you not glad to see me?”
She offered me her cheek, and I kissed it clumsily. Then I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her again, but she slipped from me. I said:
“I am very glad to see you. You know that. But astonished. How do you come to be here?”
She shrugged. “As you came to my city—through the wild country and over the pass between the Burning Lands.” She gave a small shiver. “That was the part I did not like—those smoldering black rocks and sand, and no life anywhere.”
I burst out: “But how did your father permit it? To make such a journey and take such risks . . .”
Blodwen smiled. “As I told you in Klan Gothlen, we women of the Wilsh are our own mistresses. We are not so easily bid as your southern ladies. My father did not want me to come but he did not try to stop me. He sent fifty of his finest soldiers to guard me, though. I was safe enough from the savages.”
I could believe that: every one of the fifty would have given his life for her, and although at first I had been contemptuous of the Wilsh as soldiers I had reached a different view before we left their city. But I was still astonished that she should have come. Not only because of the hazardousness of the journey. There might also seem to be impropriety in it. It was not fitting for a girl, even though betrothed, to seek out and visit a man.
She smiled at me again, and I reminded myself that these considerations were part of our southern customs. And I realized that even if that were not the case, even if such rules bound girls in the land of the Wilsh as well, they could not bind Blodwen. Nothing could. She did not live by the rules of others but framed her own.
She said: “I will tell you why I came, Luke—apart, of course, from wishing to see you again.”
She laughed at those last words, making a jest of them and taking away, though gently, some of the pleasure they had given me. She put her hand on mine, and I felt its soft warmth.
“Do you remember,” she asked me, “when we spoke on the stairs above the throne room in my father’s palace?”
“I remember.”
“And how after faithfully promising to return one day and claim your prize”—she laughed again at this—“you asked me if I would rather you did not?”
I nodded. She went on:
“I thought a lot about you after you had gone, Luke. You came to our land as a stranger and stayed as a hero. The artists are hard at work on the painting of Luke and the Bayemot. The great Gwulum himself is painting the figure of Luke because he cannot trust any of his disciples to do it well enough. It was a strange and dazzling time, your stay with us.”
Strange and dazzling for me also, but I said nothing.
“You had said you would return, and I think you are a man who keeps his word. But your return must be for one thing: our marriage. From that must come a shared life together, a real thing, not a dream. And for me a life in an unknown land and city, since a wife must go to her husband’s country.