Sword at Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  It sounded a wildly unlikely excuse, but after all, it was no more unlikely than the taboos laid upon Conary Môr, the Scottish hero, that he should never drive right-handwise around Tara nor sleep in a house from which firelight shone at night ... At all events, since no man could disprove it, it might at least gain me a breathing space ...

  There was a murmuring all down the hall, a whispering among the women; the chieftain’s brows drew together and they all but met across the bridge of his nose, and a dark flush burned beneath his eyes. Guenhumara, on the other hand, when I cast another quick glance at her, was so white that the paint stood out sharp-edged and ugly on her lids and cheekbones, though she met my look quietly and with the shadow of a smile.

  Then the deep rumble of his laughter boomed into the moment’s hush. ‘Aye well, what is five days? We can pass the time cheerfully enough, and at the end of it you shall give me your answer. Meanwhile, drink to the bond of friendship between us, my Lord Artos the Bear!’

  Five days! I had forgotten how long I had lain sick; the lateness of the summer. Well, five days’ respite was better than none. ‘To the bond of friendship between us,’ I said, and drank off what was left of the sweet fiery stuff and gave the cup back into Guenhumara’s hands as she stood to take it from me; and felt as I did so, that her hands were shaking. She smiled, and took it with a lovely dignity that made me the more aware of her armor, and turned to rejoin the other women.

  The uneasy silence in the hall was engulfed suddenly in the snarling flurry of a dog fight as Cabal, who had lain quiet at my feet all evening, only raising his hackles and snarling a warning from time to time whenever one of the other hounds, stiff-legged and hostile, drew too near, rose with a full-throated roar of fury and flung himself against three of them at the same time. (I was to learn, when I knew him better, that he was not a fighter among his own kind, but that when he did fight, odds meant nothing to him.) Most of the other dogs flung themselves into the battle, and for a while we had hot work to separate them, even with a few firebrands and the contents of a pot of beer flung into their midst; and when finally I had succeeded in strangling Cabal off a howling adversary and most of the other dogs had been kicked outside to finish their fighting where they would, the scene that was just past seemed to be forgotten, and the beer went around faster than before.

  I was as grateful to Cabal as though he had sprung into battle in defense of my life.

  chapter sixteen

  Lammas Torches

  NEXT MORNING I WHISTLED CABAL TO HEEL, AND TOOK TO the moors behind the Dun, heading for the high empty places as I had always done in time of stress since I was a boy. Also I was bent on testing my strength, for once Lammas was over, the sooner I was away from the Dun of Maglaunus the better. It was a day of hurrying storm clouds and swiftly changing lights that came and went across the great slow billows of the moor where the heather was coming into flower, so that at one moment a whole hillside would be bloomed dark as sloes, and the next, the color of thin spilled wine. And as the light came and went, changing and scurrying about the moors, so my thoughts changed and shifted, scudding about my mind as I walked. The only thing that remained constant amid the turmoil was my determination not to take Guenhumara from her father’s hearth. It was not only that I flinched from the idea of taking any woman, but quite simply that I had no place for her in my way of life, no life to give any woman. Yet I knew that that would not satisfy Maglaunus; and there was the war alliance with him to be taken into the account, the hope of men and aid that we desperately needed, the necessity of bonding the tribes together that was our only hope of throwing back the Barbarians. Last night he had said, ‘Drink to the bond of friendship between us.’ But would that hold, after the slight that, however I tried to soften it, I must put on his daughter in four days’ time? And the woman herself? Would it be better for her (supposing that I could get the word to her) to save her pride and maybe gain her father’s anger, by herself refusing the marriage – or to be shamed by my refusal before the whole tribe and keep her father’s favor? And would it make any difference whether she refused or not? Which was worse for a woman, the shame or the danger? The danger or the shame? As to my chances now of winning Maglaunus to the Red Dragon, whichever way things went, they were not worth a brown tufted rush in the wind. Oh gods! What a tangle! I cursed, and stumbled on, not taking much notice of anything about me, until a chill scurry of rain on the back of my neck woke me to my surroundings, and to the knowledge that I had walked too far and was spent.

  I sat down in the lee of a hump of thorn trees, with Cabal lying nose on paws beside me, while the rain squall blotted out the moors, and then blew over and left the world refreshed and shining. I sat on for a while after, listening with one ear to the rich contented boom of bees in the young bell heather, and when I was somewhat rested, turned westward again and set off toward the coast, at an easier pace.

  Presently I was walking into the eye of a wild sunset, with gray clouds racing across a western sky of saffron and silver gilt, and the sea running translucent gold to the skyline; and found that I was heading directly toward the hill shoulder with its ring of standing stones where we had danced on Midsummer’s Eve. They stood up, shadow-bloomed, dark with rain against the tumbled brightness of the sky. The shining lances of the sunset were in my eyes, and it was not until Cabal pricked his ears at one of the standing stones, that I saw a figure standing in the shadow of it. I whistled the hound to my side as he started forward with an uncertain sound between a snarl and a whimper, and caught him by the collar. But the figure never moved, indeed in its utter silence it might have been one of the standing stones, and it was not until I was almost within reach that I knew it for Guenhumara in a tunic of unbleached gray sheep’s wool that was one in color with the stone behind her.

  ‘My Lady Guenhumara! What is it that you do here?’

  ‘I was waiting for you,’ she said composedly.

  ‘But how could you know that I should come this way?’

  ‘Maybe I called you.’

  Fear touched me with a cold fingertip, and I was remembering another woman in a saffron gown, standing in a bothy doorway with that same air of stillness of having stood there since time began, saying, ‘I have waited for you a long time ... ’

  Then Guenhumara laughed. ‘Na, I am no witch to comb my hair and call down the moon. I saw which way you walked, and came out after you, that is all. Here, from the Nine Sisters you can see far across the moors, and I hoped to be able to meet you on your way back. One cannot talk in the Dun without the very jackdaws crying the thing that one talked of from the rooftops next morning.’

  ‘I can well believe it. What is the thing that you would say to me?’

  She had moved a little toward me, out from the shadow of her standing stone, and the light of the stormy sunset tangled in her hair and turned it to an autumn fire. She said, ‘When the Lammas torches are lit, what will you say to my father the chieftain?’

  I was silent, not knowing what to reply; and after a pause, she said in a low faintly mocking voice – her voice was the lowest I have ever heard in a woman, yet very clear, vibrant as a bronze bell. ‘Na, my Lord Artos, you need not say it; I know. I knew while you were still searching under my father’s eyes for your way out.’

  ‘Did I show it so clearly to all the hall, then?’

  ‘To no more than half, maybe.’ Her eyes were fixed on my face, and suddenly I saw them dilate until the black swallowed all the color; and she laid the mockery aside as though it were a weapon. ‘I came to tell you something that it may be well for you to know, before the Lammas torches. If you take me as Maglaunus my father wishes, he will give you one hundred men with their mounts, for my dowry. That I know in truth ... Our horses are not so great as yours, but they are good horses, bred in the first place from some cavalry mounts of a Legion that was lost somewhere among the Lowland hills in the far-off days, and we have kept the strain pure.’

  I was more startled, I think, tha
n I had been when Maglaunus first bade me take her; and when I spoke at last, it was more harshly than I had meant. ‘Did Maglaunus your father send you to tell me this?’

  ‘If so, I would have died before I came!’

  ‘Would you? I want horses and men, but not – like that.’

  I could scarcely have complained if she had spat in my face, but she only said with a small quickly suppressed sigh, ‘No, I suppose that you would not,’ and then, bracing herself to a yet more rigid stillness, ‘Artos, until now, I have counted myself a proud woman; and I am laying my pride at your feet for you to trample it into the dirt if you choose. I beg you to take me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am shamed if you do not. It means little enough that you caught me with you into the Long Dance at Midsummer, though my father sets some store by it; men will say only that you were drunk. But my father offered me to you in the hall before all men, and if you refuse his offer, do you know what the whole Dun, the whole tribe, will say? They will say that you have had me, on Midsummer Eve or later – the Great Mother knows that I have been often enough alone with you in the guest place. They will say that you have had me, and found me not to your taste. It will be hard to live with open shame, in my father’s hall.’

  ‘Is there less shame,’ I said ruthlessly, ‘in buying a husband for a hundred mounted men?’

  ‘It is usual enough for a woman to be chosen for her dowry. And the shame would at least be only between you and me, not open before all men.’

  ‘Would that make it easier to bear?’

  She made a small, infinitely weary gesture. ‘I don’t know. For a man, maybe no; for a woman, maybe yes.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said urgently. ‘Listen, Guenhumara. You do not know what it is you ask for. We carry with us a few ragged whores in the baggage train; they help to care for the wounded and they keep the lads happy; but save for their kind, the life that we lead is no life for a woman. Therefore if we are fools enough to marry, we leave our wives at their father’s hearths, hoping, one day, to see them again. Flavian will tell you as much; he married a girl at Deva, and he has a son more than a year old, but he has not seen him yet, nor the girl since she had scarce begun to carry him. It may be that next year I shall be able to spare him a few weeks to be with them, it may be not.’

  ‘You are the Count of Britain. There is no man to refuse you your woman with you, at least in winter quarters.’ And I saw by her ruthlessness how desperate she was in her purpose.

  ‘I am the Count of Britain, and therefore my woman would have the hardest life of all, for I should have left for her only the few rags of myself that Britain does not claim.’ I was fighting as it were with my back to the last ditch, fighting not only her but something in myself.

  ‘She might make do with those, in the winter nights,’ Guenhumara said gently. And then she laughed, suddenly and wildly. ‘But you have no need to fear that I shall prove too clinging a wife – I am more like to knife you one night in your sleep!’

  ‘Why, when I have done your will?’

  She did not answer at once, and now I could not see her face against the still brightening fires of the sunset. And when she spoke again, her voice had lost its vibrant quality. ‘Because you will know the truth. Because pity is not much easier to bear than shame.’

  I had not meant to touch her, but I caught her by the shoulders then, and turned her to the light so that I could see her face. The feel of her was good under my hands, light-boned and warm with life. She stood quite unresisting, looking up at me, waiting. And in the harsh westering light I saw her, for the first time, and not through firelight and the heady fumes of pipe music and heather beer. I saw that she was a tawny woman, tawny of skin as well as hair, and save for that hair with no especial beauty. I saw that her eyes were gray, under coppery brows that were level as the dark brows of her brothers, and the lashes tipped with gold like the hairs of a bay horse. I think it was in that moment also that I became aware of her atmosphere, the quiet that lay beneath her surface, even under the stress of the present moment. Young though she was, so much younger than Ygerna, it seemed to me that she had the essential quietness of autumn that contains both promise and fulfillment, while Ygerna had all the painful craving urgency of spring. ‘Listen, Guenhumara,’ I said again. ‘I don’t love you. I don’t think it is in me to love any woman, not – now. But if I am to take you, it will not be for any reason that should give you cause to knife me in my sleep, nor even for gratitude because you tended me while I was sick, and kept the dog alive for me. I shall take you because I can have a hundred mounted men with you – did you not say yourself it is usual enough for a woman to be chosen for her dowry? And because I like the feel of you, as though you were a well-balanced spear, and I like the sound of your voice.’ She made no sign, no sound, only went on looking at me; and I plowed clumsily ahead. ‘But you will have so much the worst of the bargain; go home now and think, and be very sure, and when you have thought enough, send me word.’

  ‘I lay awake all night, and have had my fill of thinking,’ Guenhumara said.

  The first cold drops of the next rain squall were spattering about us, drawing a blurred gray veil across the last of the sunset, and I heard the gulls crying as they swept by. ‘You will get wet,’ I said, oblivious of the fact that she was wet already from the earlier rain, and pulled her against me and flung half my cloak about her; I knew by now that she was pleasant to the touch, but even so the nearness of her body was unexpectedly sweet in the warm dark under the folds, and the sweetness of it dizzied me a little. I put my arms around her and caught her hard against me, and bent my head and kissed her. She was a tall woman, and I had not far to go to stoop as I had done sometimes before. Her lips were cold and wet with rain under my mouth, and the rain hung chill on her hair and lashes, and for a moment there seemed nothing there, no more than if I had kissed the tall gray standing stone behind her. Then the fire of life sprang up within the stone, she seemed to melt, and leap up toward me within herself, and her mouth woke under mine into swift, eager response. And almost in the same instant she was remote again as one of the Nine Sisters. She slipped from my arms and from the shelter of my cloak, and turned and ran.

  I was left looking after her, by the lichened standing stone in the rain, while Cabal, who had watched the whole scene sitting on his haunches at my side, glanced up at me, his tail thumping softly behind him. I was still feeling that instant of wild response, so quickly come and lost again that now I could scarcely believe that it had existed at all. But deep within me I knew that I had not imagined it.

  In a little, when I had given her time to be well away, I whistled Cabal after me and set off once more for the Dun. The rain had died out again, and the wine color of the wet heather was turning smoky in the dusk.

  That night before I slept, I sent for Flavian to the guest place, and told him what must be told. None of the Companions had spoken to me of the chieftain’s offer and the taboo that I had invented on the spur of the moment, though I suppose they must have spoken of it among themselves; and Flavian did not speak now, only stood with one arm against the rooftree and stared into the flame of the little seal-oil lamp, until I had to break the pause myself.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  He brought his gaze back from the lamp. ‘And you are going to have her with you in winter quarters?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, of course, since we are to have wives among us at Trimontium, I may send for Teleri?’

  My heart sickened and sank, and it was my turn now to stare into the flame of the seal-oil lamp. ‘No, Flavian.’

  ‘But how is the case different, sir?’ His voice still had the levelness it had as a boy.

  ‘Because I am the Count of Britain, the captain of you all,’ I said. ‘Sometimes the leader may have what he denies to his followers. Because I am the leader and there is only one leader, what I do does not make a precedent, but if I give you leave to do the same, how may I refuse it
to any man in Trimontium – and within a year we shall be overwhelmed with pregnant women and squalling cubs, a danger to themselves and a danger to us, clogging our sword arms and dividing our hearts!’ But the words tasted evil in my mouth, for never before had I used my leaderhood to take for myself anything that was not for my men also; not so much as a mouthful of sour soup or a wound dressed out of turn.

  We were silent for a while, and then he said, ‘Don’t do it, sir.’

  ‘I shall have a dowry of a hundred men and horses with her.’

  He looked up quickly. ‘And that is your whole reason?’

  ‘It is reason enough.’

  ‘Then marry her and leave her at her father’s hearth, as I have had to leave Teleri all this while.’

  ‘That – is not in the bargain.’

  He was silent again, a longer silence this time, filled with the soft boom of wind and the hush of storm rain across the thatch, for the night had fulfilled the promise of the sunset. The door apron flapped and bellied against its restraining pegs, and the lamp flame jumped and fluttered, sending fantastic shadows licking along the rafters. Then he said, ‘This is the first time you have ever done anything unjust, sir.’