Guinevere (16 page)

She had walked to her room; she saw no one as she passed. She sat on the edge of her bed and carefully picked up her riding shoes. She wrapped the linen around her legs and then laced the shoes over it, watching the leather thongs cross in chi’s up her calf. “Christos” she thought. It made no sense.

There was a great force inside pushing outward, hunting for escape. She must go quickly.

She pulled on her gloves and went out to the courtyard. No one dared stop her. Caet stood there with her horse. His face was smeared but he was holding his tears back. He put out his hands to give her a lift up. She took the reins from him and started to put her foot into his cupped hands. Then, just for a second, she seemed really to see him. Her face softened, and bending, she kissed his cheek. He jumped back, startled, and then turned his face away so she couldn’t see. He knew now why Pincerna wasn’t going to Leodegrance himself. He watched her go and then ran back to the stables. Pincerna was waiting.

“Has she gone?”

“Yes, through the gate just now.”

Pincerna patted his back. “Good lad. Now, you know your job. Don’t let your grief slow your pace. You are the best rider in the compound and you must prove it today. Leodegrance must be here when I return!”

“I will bring him.” Through the numbing sorrow, he felt a thrill of pride. He was the one being trusted; not one of the foster sons or men at arms, but Caet. Pincerna had known that none of them felt as he did and he had discovered Caet’s dream to be like the brothers. He would not fail them!

Pincerna took another horse, not fast but surefooted. He was not a good rider and he prayed that he could stay on long enough to complete his work. He rode out the gate and across the creek and then turned sharply, following a newly broken trail into the forest.

Guenlian didn’t notice the watchman at the gate or hear his cry of “God save us all!” She didn’t feel the water splashing against the horse’s flanks and wetting her legs as she crossed the creek. She concentrated on making the horse take her the way she wanted to go and holding back the thing inside her until she was well away from everyone.

Once she entered the forest, she broke off from the main path and let the horse find its own way among the trees and through the underbrush. The awful pushing was at her throat; she swallowed against it, but it was too strong. Suddenly, like a sword thrust into her brain, came the realization. She began to scream.

It was like no sound she had ever made before. It was deep and inhuman, a primal wrenching forth of the anguish within.

“My children! My babies!” she shrieked as she slid from the horse. The words were indistinguishable, long, drawn-out sobs of words. She fell to her knees and clutched the ground with her hands, her fingers digging into it and pulling out clods of new grass. She ripped the earth and pounded it until she was grimy and bleeding, but the earth didn’t notice. All the while her cries poured forth, with scarcely a breath taken. She couldn’t stop. She had to kill this horrible pain, to beat it out of herself. She clawed at her chest, ripping her delicate robe and leaving thin lines of blood against her skin. She kicked and screamed and pounded at the uncaring ground until she lay exhausted, beaten, whimpering and alone.

A thousand years passed. She vaguely felt someone lift her gently and wipe her face, murmuring all the while. She didn’t resist. She was still too busy fighting the battle within herself to care what was being done to her body. There was no victory that way. She was lifted further and placed upon a horse. A voice was speaking to her but it didn’t make sense.

“Please, my lady, hold on for only a moment. I’m too old to steady you while I climb up myself.”

She slid forward and limply held her arms about the horse’s neck while Pincerna got up behind her. Then he gathered up the reins and placed her head and shoulder against his chest. Then he held her with one arm while he tried to guide the horse with the other.

“Forgive the liberty, my lady,” he pleaded. “I must get you home. I must take care of you.”

She nodded. It didn’t matter. As long as no one disturbed her from her struggle. They went slowly. Pincerna reflected with a grim irony that if he were a young man, this would be romantic and dashing. Now he suspected that he only appeared foolish.

A branch brushed Guenlian’s arm as it dangled beside her. Something stirred. Who was this man? Pincerna? Something about Pincerna. He had told her something once and she had been very sorry but had forgotten it almost at once. What was it about Pincerna?

“You lost your children too, didn’t you?”

He sighed. Perhaps he should keep talking, just to keep her from thinking. But this wasn’t exactly the story he would have picked.

“Yes, my lady, all of them. Two to the winter sickness, one to the sea, and one more to the Irish raiders.”

“Killed?”

“I hope so. They took her on a slaving run one day when she and two friends were out hunting for shells on the beach. I never should have let her go.”

He was silent for a while.

“My wife died with one more in childbed and then I was alone with a farm and no one to leave it to, so I just walked away. I would have walked until I died if I hadn’t been a Christian, but the hermit who lived on the beach told me I would see them all again if I went on living, but if I took my own life all hell would part us. I don’t know if I believed him but I couldn’t take the chance. So I walked until I came here and you took me in.”

“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.”