by Judith Tarr
“None needed,” William said with edged graciousness. “It’s simple Christian charity.”
Her smile was dangerously sweet. “You’ll reap the reward in heaven,” she said.
The hall erupted in the ladies’ wake. The squire who led them to the guesthouse and the servants who ran ahead to clear it of men and their gear would be telling the tale for days. They already had flights of doves leaping from the Ladies’ hands, and both uttering prophecies that grew more dire with each repetition.
Henry barely noticed. As the ladies went out past him, he caught a faint scent: hawthorn and roses.
All his senses had leaped to the alert. The two Ladies’ five attendants were shadows, cloaked figures who had stood mute and motionless while their superiors engaged in a battle of words with the king. Their faces were hidden deep within their hoods.
One of them was taller than the others. She was last to leave the hall, gliding as they all did, as if she moved on air or water rather than human feet.
Hawthorn and roses. It could not be—and yet—
He slipped away from the tumult, blind and deaf to it. His hand dropped to the purse at his belt, where Ethelfleda’s charm still was. Its sharp scent was faded now, but he still got a waft of it whenever he opened the purse. There was no hawthorn in that, that he knew of, but roses it had.
As quickly as he had run after the ladies, once he had come within reach of the guesthouse, his steps dragged. Men were tumbling out of it, servants squawking after them with brooms, amid a great to-do of cleaning and clearing and tidying. The ladies must have retreated to the inner reaches.
They would stay at least for the night. Henry did not need to disturb them immediately.
If he delayed, they might escape. She might escape. And the curse would stay on him, and he would be half a man forever.
He forced himself forward. The hall was midway in its transformation from a guardroom into a ladies’ bower. The servants, recognizing him, bowed him through into the room beyond.
It was a sleeping-room, with beds along the walls, and a hearth backed against that of the hall. The ladies were there, divested of their mantles. They were human enough by firelight and lamplight: dark or brown in the way of the old blood, except for one, who stood tall and fair.
Henry was dimly aware that his sister was engaging in a fiercely polite altercation with a smaller, darker Lady. He had come in quietly enough that none of them had yet noticed him. There was ample time to be certain that yes, the fair one was she. There was no doubt of it.
The Ladies’ discussion went on, growing both more heated and more rigidly courteous. As far as he cared to notice, it seemed they disagreed as to whether it was wise to stay the night under the king’s power. Or was it the king’s curse?
It did not matter. She was almost close enough to touch, frowning slightly as she listened. The others were sorting out the beds, arranging belongings, and chasing cobwebs out of the corners. She stood still, intent on the elder Ladies.
He had not remembered that she was so tall, or that she had so much grace. Her face was carved in ivory. Her hands were long and elegant, but there was strength in them, as in the rest of her. All too well he remembered how strong she was; how easily she had borne the weight and the urgency of him.
Her magic was damped to an ember, deep within wards. It was wise of her to be so careful, but it kept her from realizing that he was there.
He should leave. He had seen her. He could summon her, as the king’s brother might, and speak to her where he held the power and not she.
He should do that. But he stayed where he was. The altercation was not going to end: two wills of equal strength had clashed, and neither would give way.
“Stay the night,” he heard himself say. “Leave in the morning. Surely that’s a reasonable compromise.”
They all jumped like deer. It would have been rather satisfying if he had been in any state of mind to notice. He could only see her. The others were a shadow and a blur.
“I would think it would be reasonable,” his sister said. There was a distinct acidity in her tone. “Whatever any of us foresees, it’s not going to happen tonight.”
The Lady sighed and spread her hands. “Now there are two against me. I see no good coming of this.”
“But no ill, either,” Henry said. He was letting his heart speak, which was a rarity with him; but in her presence, he could not do otherwise. “You must have known when you came, that this was a greater game than some of us knew. I think you need to let it play itself out.”
The Lady looked him in the face. He had the sensation that she knew him a great deal better than he knew her. And yet she still seemed surprised by what she saw in him. “You,” she said. “You are—”
She did not go on. She shook her head and shifted her gaze to Cecilia. “You knew,” she said.
“Always,” said Cecilia.
“I,” said the Lady, half ruefully and half in exasperation, “did not. I could only see the other. This changes things. Perhaps a great deal.”
“It gives us hope,” Cecilia said.
“Maybe,” said the Lady. “I still foresee what I foresee.”
“So do we all,” Cecilia said.
Henry was feeling very young. His mother had had such conversations, usually with his father, sometimes with Cecilia, when he was small. Later the queen had taught him enough that he understood some of what passed between his elders.
Here and now, he was too stubbornly proud to demand an explanation. He bowed stiffly instead and said, “Now that you have settled the question—whatever that is—may I have your leave to go?”
“That would probably be best,” Cecilia said.
The Lady nodded. They had already dismissed him; their attention had turned away from him, back to each other.
Henry found that he was seething. But not enough to keep him there. He had found out what he needed to know—and fallen into an adders’ nest of new questions. He would go away and brood, sulk a little, and try to understand what he had seen and heard.
She followed him out. He was too deep in his fit of temper to notice until he had gone most of the way through the now clean and swept hall, and had his hand on the door. She caught him then, bringing him to an abrupt halt.
Her touch made him shiver. The part of him that had been so limp and useless was suddenly and rampantly erect.
He turned to face her. There was a flush on her ivory cheeks; her eyes were fierce. “You remember,” she said.
“Do all you ladies talk in riddles?” Henry asked.
“You know,” she said. “You remember. I didn’t think . . .”
“What, that a man could keep track of all the women in his bed?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re honest, at least,” he said. “We do keep track. I do. I remember every face and every meeting. Every name.”
She did not take the bait. “All of them? Every one?”
“Every one,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why would I forget?”
“You are not like the other men I know,” she said.
“How many do you know?”
Her flush deepened. “Don’t laugh at me.”
“Believe me, lady,” he said, “I am not laughing. You have haunted my sleep and waking every night and day since I met you.”
That surprised her. Somehow he had not thought it would. “Do you mean that?”
“I swear on my mother’s name,” he said.
“Oh,” she said softly, in wonder. She reached to touch his face. She did not have to reach far, since she was so nearly his own height. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. There were so many women’s memories in you. I thought I’d be just one more—if I was that much.”
“I have not been able to touch another woman since,” he said tightly. “I haven’t even wanted to, except once. And that—was humiliating.”
She blinked. It seemed she did not understand. She had been
a maiden, after all, living in a community of women.
Then she said, “Truly, I am sorry. I didn’t put a curse on you, if that’s what you’ve been thinking. All I laid on you was my blessing.”
“That’s what it was,” he said. “A working. A Word.”
“A prayer for your safety and a wish that I would see you again,” she said. “That was all.”
“It was enough,” Henry said. He found he could not cling to his anger. The sight, the scent of her, made him dizzy.
“I’ll take it off you,” she said. “Here. Let me—”
“No.” That startled both of them. “No,” Henry said again. “Leave it.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to forget you,” he said.
“If you need my working on you to remember me,” she said tartly, “then maybe I’m not worth remembering.”
“I didn’t mean—” Henry said.
She brushed his brow and cheek with her hand. He felt something go: a tightness in the spirit, as it were.
It did not change anything. He was still captivated—exasperated, too. Annoyed. Obsessed.
He hoped she could see it. Maybe she could: she frowned at him. “Now go,” she said.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
Her lips set.
“Why? What don’t you want me to know?”
She took his face in her hands and drew it down the little way to hers, and kissed him long and deep. She did not answer his question.
She was not going to. He, unlike his sister, knew when a battle could not be won.
He also knew how to circle around it and take it from behind. “Very well then. I’ll give you a name. Mathilda—I’ll call you Mathilda.”
Her eyes widened. “But that’s—”
“My mother is dead,” he said, “and no longer in need of it. Why, are you insulted? Did I offend you?”
“Not in the slightest,” she said. “It feels . . . odd. Pleasing. I like it.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I always say what I mean.”
“So you do,” he said.
She kissed him again, even longer this time. “Thank you,” she said.
That was a dismissal, he thought. But she held him back with one hand, while the other reached into her robe, drawing out something wrapped in a bit of old linen.
The scent that came from it was unmistakable. She folded the worn fabric back from a rose. It was pure and shining white, fresh and blooming as if she had plucked it but a moment before. But there was no such blossom anywhere in this place, not in the dead of winter.
She held it out to him. “Take it,” she said. “Keep it. It comes from the Otherworld; it’s been with me since I was a child. It has my blessing on it, but that shouldn’t trouble you. When you want to remember me, it will help.”
He had to take the thing: she would have dropped it otherwise. Its scent was heavenly sweet. “I always did prefer roses to hawthorn,” he said.
“I, too,” she said, “but for a garland, with the thorns, it would be a little too much of a sacrifice for most.”
He found that he was smiling. He folded the rose on its wrappings and slipped it into his purse, next to the talisman that might have brought him to her, and might not. “Mathilda,” he said: sealing the name on her.
Then he could go—not easily, but it was time.
They would meet again. He was as sure of that as he was of his own name.
CHAPTER 42
Edith had expected to meet Henry—had asked to come on this embassy because of it. What she had not expected was that he would do something so simple and yet so profound as to change her name. More than that, he had named her for his mother, that great enchantress and queen.
She was still Edith to herself, but the name of Mathilda had begun to work inside her, opening parts of her that had been shut, and making some of them stronger. It was a strange working and subtly potent.
Cecilia fought to the last to confront her brother again and force him to see what he must do. But Etaine won that battle. William would only grow more intransigent, the harder they tried to compel him.
“Much like you,” Etaine said gently.
Cecilia’s nostrils thinned. Edith braced for the blast of magic, but Cecilia was too wise to fall into that trap. “You’ll pay for that,” she said.
“It will be worth the price,” said Etaine serenely.
Cecilia snarled, sounding remarkably like William, but she gave way.
They left Salisbury at dawn, in still and bitter cold. Wind and snow had stopped, but the clouds were heavy and low. It would be a bitter ride, even by the straight track.
Edith almost turned and galloped back into the town. She could feel Henry in the bishop’s palace like an ember in a hearth full of ashes. He was dreaming of her.
Just as she tightened rein to turn her mare, Cecilia spoke beside her. It was nothing of consequence, but it distracted her, as no doubt Cecilia had intended.
The moment of temptation had passed. Edith was bound to the journey.
They were already out of sight of Salisbury, advancing toward the Giants’ Dance. In the vicinity of so much power, straight tracks could turn strange. This one pierced the Otherworld itself rather than skimming its edges, and passed through a place of ash and burned stumps of trees.
That was so much like Edith’s vision of Henry in Salisbury that she looked for the ember in the ashes, but there was none. It was all grey and lifeless: dead to the heart of things.
“Half a thousand years of Saxons,” Cecilia said, still riding beside Edith, “then kings who were meant to restore Britain but squandered their inheritance instead, all in a fog of Christian holiness. Now the Christians’ reckoning of years comes to a crux. A thousand years and a hundred, they calculate, since their god-man was born. To the Old Things that means nothing, but men believe in it—and men’s belief has immeasurable power.”
“‘God created men, but men create their gods,’” Edith said. “That was in a book I read when I was in the abbey.”
“The gods existed long before men,” said Cecilia, “but men’s faith made them strong. When that faith faded, so did they. Now even their bright country is dying.”
“Do you think one man, even if he is a king, can turn the tide?” Edith asked her. “My father gave his blood to the earth, and that won seven years. Now it’s worse than ever. What will we have to do, go back to the year-king? Then the season-king, the month-king, the day-king? Will there be any end to it?”
“If my brother takes the kingship in the old way, the deep way, in heart and soul, there is hope,” Cecilia said. “We can help, we Guardians. So can and will every other person of power in Britain. But we must have a king to complete us. Otherwise we remain a mere mob of discrete magics.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be Red William,” Edith said. “He doesn’t believe, even when he’s seen—even when it’s come near to killing him. He blinds himself to the truth.”
“And yet my father chose him to be king,” Cecilia said. “I never knew the old man hated Britain so much.”
“Maybe he didn’t,” said Edith. “Maybe he knew something we don’t know.”
“I would hope for that,” Cecilia said, “but I don’t know if I can believe in it.”
“Faith has power,” Edith said. “Remember that.”
Cecilia shot her a glance, warning her against insolence, but she could hardly deny her own word, turned back on her though it might be.
It was a hard road back to the Isle, and a harder winter waiting. The Otherworld could not warm the bitter cold, for it was slowly freezing over itself. The undying grass was fading; the flowers were withered and dead.
Edith wondered if the rose was still alive somewhere near Henry—if he had even kept it. She felt in her heart that he had. So much was breaking and dying in this terrible winter, but she still dreamed of him. As often as not, the dreams could have been true: he was sleeping or feasting or si
tting over wine with this lord or that.
The Isle clung to its strength. More and more of that was coming from the Ladies: the earth had little to give, and the Otherworld was in worsening straits.
By the shifting of the sun’s path and the turning of the stars, winter should have been giving way to spring. The snow was still deep, rivers locked in ice. Even the lake of the Isle was frozen far out from its banks, although the island in its center rose from a ring of clear water.
One morning on her way to teach the youngest acolytes certain rites that they would need to know if winter ever broke, Edith slowed as she passed one of the cow-byres. The warm smell of cattle wafted out. There were two people inside, working and talking.
Everyone on the Isle did fair duty, from the least to the greatest. Even so, it gave Edith pause to hear Etaine and Cecilia carrying on their long debate while they scrubbed out the byre.
“We need Anselm,” Etaine said. “Three of us are not enough.”
“He won’t come,” said Cecilia. “He prayed for the king to exile him and free him from his burden—and the king gladly obliged. He’ll only come back if William summons him. Then he’ll come, groaning and whining and making sure the world knows what a great sacrifice he’s made.”
“William is not likely to call him back,” said Etaine.
Cecilia sighed gustily—even Edith, outside in the snow, could hear her. “No, he is not. And we do need him. Unless . . .”
“There’s no time to raise another Guardian, even if one were ready,” Etaine said. “In our way we were as feckless as the king. We let one of the four pillars of Britain be sent into exile, instead of fighting to keep him where he belonged.”
“Where he never wanted to be.” Cecilia paused. They worked in unison for a while: pitching hay, from the sound of it. Then she said, “A king who refuses to be the true king. A Guardian who loathes his own powers and does his best to deny them, though the land itself has chosen him. Is it an omen? Is Britain telling us that it wants to die?”
“Not die, maybe,” Etaine said slowly. “But change, yes. It’s an ill fit, this Norman invasion, though it came to save Britain from the destruction of its old powers. Saxons still live here, still work their spells in the guise of prayer. I think . . . Britain meant them to be part of it, too. If they knew; if they knew how.”