The Brothers of Gwynedd (60 page)

  The light there was from two candles in a sconce on the wall, and no brighter than in the passage, yet bright enough to show that the figure bending over an open chest was not David. Nor was there time to withdraw unnoticed, for I had swung the curtain aside without any care to be silent, and as I entered the room she had heard me, and straightened and turned, without alarm, to see who it was who came. She chilled into perfect stillness. The hands a little outspread above the folded gowns in the chest hung motionless, every finger taut. The candles were slightly behind her, and her face was in shadow, yet I felt the burning darkness of her eyes fending me off. So I knew that she had had no part in this, that it was David who had done it to both of us.

  It was not my own pain that caused me to draw back from her, it was rather the clear intimation of hers. Time that had done nothing to comfort me had brought her no comfort. In that moment I hated and cursed my breast-brother for his arrogance in meddling with us. And I said, through lips so stiff I could barely speak:

  "I ask your pardon! I have been called here mistakenly. I had not meant to intrude on you." And with that I turned from her, with what an effort I cannot express, and groped my way to the doorway.

  I saw her stir out of her marble stillness just as I swung about and grasped at the curtain. Behind me she said sharply: "Samson!" And when that word halted me with the latch in my hand: "No, do not go!" she said, in a gentler tone.

  I turned about, and she had come a step towards me, and the ice had melted out of her flesh and bones, and it was a live, warm creature who stood gazing at me. "Come in," she said, "and close the door."

  "To what purpose?" I said. "This was none of my seeking. David sent for me here." And that was a coward's word if ever there was, but I was angry with him for daring to play God's part with us, and so wrung that I did not know whether it was mistaken affection for us both that moved him, or pure black mischief, to provide himself with entertainment, now that his sport in fighting was taken from him.

  But Cristin said: "David can be very wise. Even very kind. Do you think I do not know you have been avoiding me all these days? All these years! What profit is there in that, since you cannot avoid me for ever? It was time to resolve it. How much of this silence and pretence and avoidance do you think my heart can bear? In the name of God, are we not grown man and woman, able to hold whatever God fills us with? If I am to come north, as I have chosen to do, what future is there for us, if we cannot meet like ordinary human creatures, treat each other with consideration, do our work side by side without constraint?"

  In the course of these words all that was ice had become a gradual and glowing fire, and she was as I had known her in the beginning, so gallant and so dear, the heart failed, beholding her. I stood mute in my anguish and my bliss, helpless before her.

  She took one more step towards me, since I would not go to her, and now she had but to reach a hand a little before her to flatten it against my heart and feel how it thundered, with what desire and despair. And I but to stretch out my arms and gather her like a sheaf in the harvest, but that her troth and mine lay between us like iron bars. Her face was turned up to me, earnestly searching me. I never knew her to use any wiles upon me or any other. She had her own proud and purposeful chivalry. When she opened her eyes wide, thus, and poured their wit and intelligence and enquiry into me, she also let me in to the deep places of her own nature, and gave me the courage to enter there.

  She said: "Why did you turn away from me at Dolwyddelan, and leave me without a word of farewell, after all we had done and known together? You had no right!"

  I said: "For reason enough. I had no right to stay. You are my brother's wife. You knew it before ever I did. You saw the ring I had from my mother, the fellow to his."

  She moved neither towards me nor away, but held her place. Her eloquent and generous mouth lengthened and quivered, and her eyes darkened into iris-purple. In a slow, hard voice, just above her breath, she said: "Tell me the truth! Is that all I am?"

  By what wisdom of David or mercy of God I do not know, in that moment my heart opened like a flower that has long been bound by frost, as if the sun had come out to warm me, and the rain to water me. I saw her mine and not mine, neither to be taken nor left, by reason of the barrier of duty and faith, by reason of the bond of love and worship. As I was bound not to despoil, so I was bound not to forsake. And I had done ill all this while, in depriving her and myself of what was ours and wronged no man.

  I never touched or troubled or enticed her, but stood to face her as she stood to face me, God seeing us. I said, with all my heart and mind and soul: "You are my love, the first one, the only one, the last one I shall ever know. I have loved you from the first night ever I knew you, before I knew if you were maid or wife. I loved you then without guilt or shame, and so I love you now, and shall lifelong. There will never be any change in me. To the day of my death I shall love you."

  Such ease I got from this utterance, I marvelled how I could have kept from making the avowal long before. Nor was it the ease of surrender and despair, but of release from bondage. And she stood before me so flushed and warmed with the reflection of my release that she was like a clear vessel filled with light.

  "Now," she said, "you do me justice indeed, and I will do the like for you. Why should you or I go hungry for want of what is ours to feed upon without harming any man or committing any sin? When first I learned to know you, not knowing myself whether I was wife or widow, I loved you for your great gentleness and goodness to a dying man who owned he had used you ill. It may be I did wrong to choose you, but choose you I did, for once lost to me you might never be recovered, and I tell you now, such an election happens only once in any life, and in most lives never. If it was a sin, the sin was mine, and there is no man can blame you. I went with you because it was more to me to have your dear companionship than any other man's love and worship. God he knows I hoped for more, but I have had hopes before that came to grief, and the lot laid on me I could bear. But when you took from me even your dear companionship, in which my heart rested, that I could not bear."

  "I do repent me," I said, "that ever I did a thing so weak and so unjust as to abandon you. My love and worship is yours only, and yours lifelong, even if I never speak the words to you again. And my service and loyalty I can offer freely, before all the world. Forgive me, that ever I did you so great a hurt."

  "You have healed me," she said. "I give you my pledge for yours. I shall never love any man but you."

  "Yet we are taking from Godred what is rightly his," I said, though I meant no protest against what was now past changing, but only to make all things clear between us, that we might know what it was we did.

  "We are taking from Godred," she said steadily, "nothing that he has ever possessed. I was wed to him when I was fourteen years old; I never saw him until the match was made. And we are taking from him, I swear to you, nothing that he values, even if he had once possessed it. I am a dutiful and serviceable wife to Godred, all he has asked of me I have been and done, and will do, and will be. And I have no complaint of him. But my love he never sought, or needed, or regarded. I do him no wrong."

  Behind her the candles guttered, and a thread of tallow ran down from the flame. The curtain swung lightly, for the door behind it was still open. I felt the chill touch of the night wind, as though someone trod close on my heels. But when I stilled to listen for a moment, there was no sound. And such doubt and fear as remained in me I spoke out then, saying it would not be easy, that if she wished to take back her decision and remain in the south I would still be her faithful lover all my days, though apart from her, and such comfort as there was in that knowledge she might have without the heroic pain of nearness and silence. But all she did was to smile at me with that wild radiance making her face glorious, and to ask me: "Is that your wish?" And there was nothing I could do but say, no! Her peace I desired. My own was safe in her hands. My wish was to see her and to serve her and to be at her call if ever she needed me. But that if it cost her too dear, that I could not endure.

  "My mind is as yours," she said. "I will not willingly go a month, a week, no, not a day if I had my way, without the sight of you, and the sound of your voice. What you can endure, so can I. If you can make a sacrament out of your sorrow and deprivation, so can I. What I cannot do is to cease from loving you, and I would not if I could. It is the best gift God ever gave me, to love you and be loved in return."

  In these high terms we made our compact, Cristin and I. And then it came upon me that no more must be said, that the time to set the seal on so lofty a purpose was now, when all the words had been uttered that were needed between us, once for all time, and it remained only to prove what we had sworn, and make it binding for ever. And the way to do that was to bid her goodnight and commit her to the blessing of God, and so go from her without so much as the touch of hands, or too lingering an exchange of looks, as if we still had doubts, who had none.

  So I did. And she, with as deep an understanding, gave me my goodnight back again, and turned to continue lifting the folded gowns from the chest. From this night on we were to meet before other people, and carry our daily burdens encountering and separating as our duties moved us, demanding nothing, repeating nothing, and even if by chance we met without witnesses, there would be no such exchange again, as none would be needed. Neither would there now be any resentment or any loneliness or any greed, for if we had not that great bliss of love fulfilled in the flesh, yet a manner of fulfilment, stranger and after its own fashion more marvellous, we surely had.

  I went out from her like one in an exalted dream, and did not look back, for her image was within me. And I thought myself both blessed and accursed, but if the one was the price of the other, of what then could I complain?

  In the inner ward of Carreg Cennen there was a faint silvering of moonlight, and on the wall I could hear the feet of the watch pacing. Out of the shadows near the great hall a man came walking lightly and briskly, and whistled as he came. When he drew near to me he broke off, and haled me cheerfully by name, in the voice of Godred.

  "Samson!" said he, as though surprised to find me still among the waking. "You work late tonight." And since he halted in friendly fashion, I was obliged to do the same, though I would gladly have avoided him then. "I am looking for my wife," he said. "Surely she cannot still be packing her gowns and bliauts? But you're the last man I should be asking—the prince's own clerk, and a bachelor is hardly likely to be involved with a matter of stuff gowns and linen wimples. I must go and find her."

  Yet he lingered, eyeing me with the intimate smile I had observed in him ever since the turn I had done him at Carmarthen bridge, when he was unhorsed and in danger of trampling.

  "I've had no chance to speak with you," he said, "since this evening's news, there's been such bustle to be ready to leave tomorrow. But I hope you may think it, as I do, a most happy chance that Cristin and I are to come and serve close to you, in Gwynedd. True, Cristin will be mainly at Neigwl, where the lady makes her home, but it's none so far, and we have peace now to travel and visit. And since David is often in attendance on the prince, I shall hope to be close to you very often during the year. Are you pleased?"

  So pointblank a question, and in a tone so warm and trusting, what could I do but own to pleasure? Which I did with the more heart, seeing it had its own enormous truth, out of his knowledge, which yet did him no injury.

  "So all things work together for good," he said. In the light of the moon I could see the fair smoothness of his face, boyish and bright, and the round, candid eyes limpid brown under his tanned forehead and silvery-fair hair. "I rejoice at being able to serve near to one who has once salvaged my life for me—and once, more precious, my wife! I feel you," he said, in that high, honeyed voice that made speech into song, "closer to me than a brother. Forgive me if I presume!" And he linked his hands in most becoming deprecation before his breast, in the full light of the moon, and the fingers of his right hand played modestly with the fingers of his left, turning and turning the ring upon the little finger, a silver seal bearing the image of a tiny hand, severed at the wrist, holding a rose. I had no need to see it more clearly, I knew it well. Once I had worn the fellow to it, my unknown father's solitary gift to my mother. I watched the silver revolving steadily, quite without the spasmodic motion of agitation or strain. "Closer than a brother!" said Godred, softly and devoutly.

  "You make too much," I said, "of services that fell to me by pure chance. There is no man among us would not have done as much in the same case."

  "Oh, no, you wrong yourself," said Godred fervently. "There are many who would have done less. And perhaps some," he said, "who would have done more." This last in the same honeyed tone, too cloying, as honey itself cloys. "Now in the north I may be able to repay all. All!" he said, and uttered a soft, shy laugh. "But I must go find my wife," he said, and clapped me on the shoulder with the hand that wore the ring, and so passed on, silvered by the moon.

  I would have held him back from her then, if I could, to spare her the too sudden and too apt reminder, yet I knew that she was armed and able. It was not that that clouded all my ecstasy as I went slowly to my bed. But I could not help seeing still the slow, measured spinning of that silver ring, white in the moonlight, and hearing the soft insinuation of his voice. And I remembered too well the flickering of the candles in the draught from the door, and the chill of some presence treading hard on my heels. And my own voice saying in its own excuse: "You are my brother's wife. You knew it before ever I did. You saw the ring…" I prayed hard and slept little. And the next day we rode for Gwynedd.