Guinevere

by Sharan Newman

  “A long time ago.”

  “Yes, and I don’t want to die now, even if I did then. I can wait if I must to see them. And if you’ll pardon me again, my lady, you can, too.”

  “I needn’t. I see them now,” she said and her voice chilled him. He tried to force the horse to go a little faster. “I see all of them. That’s what I can’t bear. If I could envision them as men, soldiers who did their jobs and died fighting, I would be able to live with it. But I only see their sweet, baby faces, their innocent children’s smiles and feel them ripped from my arms and slaughtered, thrown alive into the flames!”

  Her voice went from a harsh whisper to a shriek and Pincerna could only hold her frantically with one arm and pray for help.

  It came. Leodegrance, followed by Caet, heard her and came. Leodegrance, his face aged and worn, held out his arms for his wife and she went to them, still wailing softly as if she had forgotten how to stop. He took her home and the maids who loved her best bathed her and bound her battered hands. They wrapped her in warm, soft blankets and tried to get her to eat, but she did not seem to understand. So they left her in her own bed and went away to dry their own tears.

  Flora wasn’t among them. When she had heard the news she had simply collapsed. She was in her room now, awake, but too feeble to move or even speak. Tenuantius, Guinevere’s teacher, was the closest thing to a doctor they had, and so he was sent for. He listened to a maid’s recounting of what Flora had said before she fainted and gazed for some minutes into her open eyes. Then he ordered a guard set on the door.

  “Her mind appears to have totally gone,” he told Leodegrance. “For some reason, she blames herself for their deaths and the shock of this has brought on a sort of paralysis. She is very old and may not recover. At this point, it would probably be a blessing.”

  Leodegrance waved him away. “Take care of her. You know best what to do. Tell me if there is any change.” He hurried to be with his wife.

  Guenlian was sleeping now, fitfully, with moans and thrashings. Leodegrance sat beside her. From the moment, only a few hours past, when Caet had raced toward him, he had not had a minute to digest what had happened. He could not comprehend yet that his sons were dead, although a dull ache in his heart warned him that he soon would. He only saw his wife, who had been his strength through years of precarious living, lying helpless and hurt before him. With that in his eyes, everything else was, for the time being, remote. He took her hand, willing her to return to him. The shadows of the bedposts lengthened and he realized that it was still daylight, barely time for dinner. He pleaded with her to look at him, to waken and see him instead of the image of her burning sons. Finally, with one great, shuddering moan, she opened her eyes and stared at him directly, sanely. But her first words startled him for they were not what he had expected.

  “Where is Guinevere?” Her voice condemned him.

  Lord! Where was she? Off in the woods somewhere. She didn’t know. She would come home laughing and find him. Someone must go find her.

  “Caet!” Leodegrance shouted. Guenlian didn’t even start at the noise. She was back in her nightmare. But Caet was there at once. He had not gone back to his work in the stables but lurked near the door hoping to be of some further service, longing to show his loyalty and love and, perhaps, also his ability.

  Leodegrance regarded him with affection. “A fine lad,” he thought, “I remember his birth. It was the same winter that Guenlian was carrying Mark.” A stab of pain caught him and he quickly spilled forth his errand.

  “Guinevere is somewhere still out in the fields or woods, Caet. She went for a walk some time ago. She is probably on her way home now. You must find her before someone else tells her about her brothers. Don’t say anything except that I was worried about her. Bring her to me at once. Can you find her?”

  “Yes, I will,” Caet answered. The soldier again, he held his body proudly as he walked out.

  But Guinevere was already there. She had felt something wrong, even through her communion with the unicorn, perhaps because of it. Vaguely disturbed and annoyed at having her first afternoon with him spoiled, she had hurried toward home. The field workers had seen her but turned their backs as they saw her approach. They were not working, just standing or leaning on their tools. Before she crossed the creek, she could hear the sounds of wild lamentation from the villa. As she rushed past all the people, they would stop their sobbing a moment and stare at her, but no one spoke. The noise was terrifying. It came from every corner and pulsed against Guinevere’s skin as she ran through the rooms, too confused and frightened to speculate the reason for it all.

  She came at last to her parents’ door, just as Caet was leaving. She never forgot the sight. Guenlian lying in bed, her hair tangled, her face streaked with tears, staring at nothing, and beside her, Leodegrance, hunched brokenly, his head in his hands.

  “Mother!” Guinevere cried. “Father, what has happened to her? Tell me!”

  Leodegrance raised his face to answer her, but at her voice, Guenlian rose and stretched out her arms.

  “My last baby! Guinevere, come to me. I must hold you! I must know I have one child left!”

  Guinevere went to her and held her, feeling strange to be comforting her mother, who had never needed anything from her before. It was long afterward that she finally understood what had happened.

  In the next few days the whole makeup of the household changed. The fosterlings were all sent home. Their going made little difference to Guinevere at first, for she had had little to do with them, but after they left the villa was quieter, and many of the servants began to leave too, until eventually only a dozen or so of the oldest or most devoted remained. Guenlian slowly forced herself back to life. Twenty years of responsibility saved her. It was her duty to tend to the household, to see that everyone was cared for. Her movements were not as sure, her speech less decisive. Sometimes she would suddenly pull in her breath as if struck. But she survived.

  Leodegrance worried her. In the first hours of anguish, he had been too busy giving orders and arranging matters to stop and let his grief out. Now he refused to. He immersed himself in estate problems, took inventories, planned repairs, sent messages to Cador and Merlin so incessantly that most of the horses were usually gone. He pushed himself every waking minute and then simply fell into an exhausted sleep, almost a coma, from which he awoke unrested but determined to go on. He spoke only of business and turned away from every sympathizer, even his wife. His energy was constant and frantic, like a bonfire determined to burn itself to extinction.

  Finally one night, near the end of summer, Guenlian found him in her dressing room. He sat alone in the twilight, slumped over and so still that she feared he was dead. But as she approached he spoke. His voice was dull and blurred with tears.

  “Our sons are dead,” he said. “They are gone and Rome is gone. We are living in a mausoleum, each clinging to our familiar sarcophagus. We have lived out our lives for nothing more than to be the last of our race.”

  He raised his voice, more life coming into it.

  “I’m sick of those platitudinous callers who tell us not to worry, for our boys are in heaven. Heaven! What are they to do in heaven? Sing psalms? They are soldiers, fighters. There is no need of them in heaven. Are there armies in God’s country? Is even He struggling to hold on to the skies? Bah! I didn’t raise my sons for the glory of heaven. I raised them for Rome. I’ll hear no more of heaven and the mercy of God. I have followed the new religion and what has it given me? I got nothing and I’ll give nothing back. God doesn’t care for me. With all the talk of love I haven’t even been given comfort. What has God given us to help bear this blow?”

  Guenlian went to him and knelt at his feet, embracing him fiercely. “Each other, my dearest. We have each other! Now that you have come back to me.”

  For the first time since that awful day, he looked at her. “I thought for a time that you would die, too,” he whispered. “You are a great gift. If
I were to lose you, I would truly believe I was in hell, for I would certainly have nothing left.”

  Gently, she helped him up and led him to bed. There they found such comfort as the living can give each other.

  • • •

  Everyone praised Guinevere during this hard time. She was melancholy, but not maudlin. She wept tastefully whenever her brothers were mentioned. She was considerate with everyone, devoted to Flora, who was still bedridden and did not seem to know any of them. She dutifully stayed near her mother, except for a brief time each day when she was sent alone to the forest, “for exercise.”

  “Poor dear,” the maids clucked. “She doesn’t want us to see her cry. Let her go; no one would harm such a child.”

  She kept repeating to herself, “My brothers are dead. My brothers are dead. The Saxons killed them. Matthew will never tease me again or sweep me up on his horse for a ride. John won’t tell me any more legends about the stars. And Mark will never sing to me or kiss me good night.”

  But she couldn’t sense the finality of their lives, only the ending of something in hers. She had never seen a dead person. She only knew of battles from sagas and harpers’ tales. It didn’t occur to her that Matthew would never ride a horse nor John see the stars nor Mark sing to anyone again. Vaguely, she felt that they were still doing all those things, but without her. She resented them for not returning. So when she wept against the unicorn’s flank, it was for herself, for the sudden emptiness in her own life, not the destruction of theirs.

  Being with the unicorn soothed her without questions or demands. It was always there waiting for her, no matter what time she was able to get away. It told her stories of things she didn’t understand. It knew nothing of the world of men except its part in the pattern of capture and death. But it knew how the trees prepared for the winter and the celebration the woodland made with the coming of spring. It told her of how the earth repaid the sacrifices of battleblood by growing all the more lush and green the following year. It knew the tunes the stars play deep on a winter night and even the first notes of the aubade sung by the mountains to the sun chariot in ancient times. All this lulled Guinevere and rested her aching heart. She had not fully cast her lot with humanity and was unaware that she had the choice of becoming one of those amoral, immortal creatures the unicorn spoke of, or one like those who followed Geraldus. She came closer to becoming one that summer than she ever would again, until the end. But she wasn’t aware of the decision and so let others make it for her.

  Chapter Nine

  It seemed a mockery for summer to be so beautiful that year. The rain and sun combined for what was certain to be one of the best harvests in many seasons. Guenlian and Leodegrance spent only superficial interest on it. It was enough for them if they could get up each morning, dress, and accomplish one more day without succumbing to their own despair. After the first vicious tide of grief had subsided, they spoke no more of it. By mutual consent, their conversation was mundane to the point of sterility.

  “May I have my blue beads, dear?”

  “Of course. Will there be guests to dinner?”

  “I think not. I have heard that Potius and his family are emigrating. Is that so?”

  “Yes, the old sot complains that he can no longer get decent wine here so he is going back to Gaul to see if he can raise his own. The fool! Wait until he discovers that grapes do not grow already fermented in the cask!”

  “Not many neighbors left to come to dinner.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not in the mood for much company anymore.” Abruptly, “I must go check the horses. The roan mare has a sore on her left hind foot that isn’t healing well.”

  “Yes, I must hurry myself. I really should be sure the maids have cleaned the dining hall properly. Things have been lax with them ever since Flora has been ill.”

  Ever so carefully, they stepped around the open wounds, averting their eyes from the festers. Everyone followed their own pattern until the whole household felt as if it were involved in some complicated ritual dance, where one missed beat would bring catastrophe.

  And the center about which this dance revolved was Guinevere, never a part of the pattern, but always the focus, an object of caution and concern. She spent a part of every day with her unicorn, now that the weather was warm. Constant association with it had left a sort of aura about her. Spending so much time with a creature of fantasy gave her an otherworldliness and a serene attitude that half frightened those around her.

  “It’s not natural,” a stableman flatly declared one day. “She doesn’t seem human, that one.”

  “What are you saying?” a housemaid answered indignantly. “She’s as kind and gracious as can be. Grows more like her poor, dear mother every day.”

  “Sure, she smiles at you and asks after your health, but do you think she sees you? Look at her eyes sometime instead of at the floor. They give me the shudders.”

  “What do you want from her, to kiss the hem of your robe? A smile and a friendly word aren’t enough for your excellency. If her eyes bother you, it may be your own guilty conscience looking back at you.”

  “You’re all addled by that girl. You think she’s as pure as rainwater. Look how everyone lets her run off to the forest any time she pleases without a guard or even a maid. She stays there for hours and comes back smiling like she’s seen a vision. But nobody asks her where she goes or who she meets. She’s probably got a lover from some peasant family and is laughing at you all for not seeing it . . . Urk!”

  Pincerna had entered behind him and now grabbed him by the collar. He was almost frothing with righteous anger.

  “Get your disgusting body back to the stables! If I ever hear of you repeating such evil slander about the Lady Guinevere, then freeman or not, I’ll lash you until there isn’t a piece of whole skin left on your body! If she looks even to scum like you as if she’s seen a vision, maybe she has. Do you think the saints appear to your kind? Now get back to work and never let me see you here in the house again! Do you understand?”

  The horseman was a head taller than Pincerna and twenty years younger, but he nodded and left as if an entire army were chasing him. That night, he stole one of the best horses and escaped. Leodegrance received the news with indifference.

  “He won’t get far. Our mark is on the horse. No one will believe we gave it to him. In the meantime, we have others.”

  Pincerna shook his head. The Leodegrance of old would have gone out after the man and brought him back tied face downward over the horse’s tail. He wondered if he should mention the accusations the man had made. No, of course there was no truth m them and Leodegrance and Guenlian had enough just now. Still, it might not be a bad idea to send someone out after her, just to be sure she was safe. Whom could he send? Caet? No, it might start more gossip if he were seen sneaking out after her, and tongues were ever ready to spread such tales. Who then? A woman? It really wasn’t dangerous in the immediate area. But not many of the servants were left and none could really be spared for so many hours. Of course, Rhianna! It was so easy to forget her, she hardly ever spoke. He had trouble remembering that she was still about the house, the only fosterling who had insisted upon remaining. It probably wasn’t good for her to do so. The house was too glum these days. She really hadn’t been looking well, lately. This was no place for a young girl now, not even Guinevere, really.

  That thought passed through his head with a shock. No, it wasn’t a good place for Guinevere now. But who could imagine her anywhere else? One might as well uproot the tree by the gate. Pincerna dismissed that whole idea.

  Accordingly, the next day when Guinevere set out, Rhianna followed her. She took a basket with her as an excuse if noticed, but no one questioned her. Rhianna was the sort of person who is easily overlooked. She was seventeen and had a well-developed body for her age, and long, slender legs. But her face was still that of a child and she had a way of staring wistfully at the world around her that discouraged most of the men of h
er class. They preferred their women round and flirtatious, at least for enjoying before their marriages were arranged. Mark had commented on her figure, but it had never occurred to him to go farther than that. Her meekness made him nervous.

  Rhianna was more than fashionably pale. Her skin was almost greenish white and she panted a bit as she hurried to keep up with Guinevere without being seen. Occasionally Guinevere would break into a run and leave Rhianna far behind. Rhianna went as fast as she could, but she knew she couldn’t keep up and was sure she would lose her.

  She had not wanted the job of spy, but it hadn’t occurred to her to refuse. Every time someone approached her these days she trembled for fear they would insist she return home. She couldn’t go home, not now. And yet she didn’t have any idea of what she would do. Like the rest of the house, she could only think one day ahead, no more. But the day for a decision was nearing for her.

  Guinevere had disappeared into a tangle of vines and branches. Rhianna waited a minute and then followed her. The growth was very thick—it was impossible to see far ahead. Struggling to remove the vines caught in her hair she didn’t stop quickly enough on the other side and nearly stumbled over the two of them.

  The unicorn started and rose to its feet. Guinevere looked up.

  “It’s all right,” she said lazily. “It’s only Rhianna. She won’t hurt you. Let her touch you, too.”

  But the beautiful creature only shook its mane and backed away from her, vanishing among the trees.

  “Wait!” Guinevere called. “Come back! It’s only Rhianna!”

  Rhianna grabbed her arm. “Don’t bother, Guinevere. It can’t come back for me. It won’t let me come near it.”

  Then she sank to the ground, coughing and weeping bitterly.

  “Rhianna!” Guinevere put her arms around her. “Don’t cry so. You are the only one after me who has seen him. Not many people do even that. I suppose he is only my unicorn. Perhaps you’ll meet one some day.”