Swin woke and found himself lying in bed. He felt hungry, but very comfortable and peaceful. His brain was still lit up with the afterglow of a great burst of memory, like the emergence of the sun that sends long rain-filled beams through the clouds of a stormy afternoon. Far and wide they shone, banishing a hundred shadows, lighting up a thousand dripping leaves and flowers. For a long time, a couple of hours or more, he lay calm and still, enjoying his thoughts, delighting in the full recovery of his mind and the cessation of itchy torment. Of the close of his meeting with Fuindis, however, he could remember nothing. There had been the first intimations of that new and glorious light, and then the light itself; and then he must have fainted. And now – now it was morning. Time for breakfast. He was in a four-poster bed; the bedchamber was large, elegantly proportioned and smoothly ceiled. The posts of the bed were richly carved, as were the sills of the two tall windows and the volutes of the great decorated mantel; but the furnishings were sparse, with only a couple of chairs and a small table on the brown drugget. From beyond the glowing, white-curtained windows came a humming of bees and a peaceful cooing of doves. Slowly Swin began to desire to get out of bed, but the joy of his healing absorbed him yet awhile; and a knock fell on the door before he had moved.
He called out, and a woman entered. Sitting up in bed, Swin found that he was wearing a fine embroidered nightshirt, open at the throat, fastened at the cuffs with bone buttons. The woman curtseyed. She was dressed as the Punchkins had last seen her. Her hair was smoothly braided, her eyebrows strong and dark. Swin recognised her at once, and instantly recalled her name, and all the circumstances of his two previous meetings with her, and various other relevant pieces of knowledge; and this first practical use of his recovered memory was so enjoyable, so keenly pleasurable, that for a few moments longer he simply sat and beamed at his hostess.
‘Welcome to Caras Gulwen,’ she had just said. ‘You have slept well. Would you now... er... Mr. Gumasson?’
‘Good morning!’ he said exuberantly, throwing back the bedclothes and flinging his legs out. ‘Mistress Bryd!’ he cried, unable to refrain from smiling all the time like a simpleton: ‘How very nice to see you again! Wencela sends her greetings: she’s well, and she’s got herself a good new situation with Lady Vornis, a wealthy dame of the City! And you may like to know that she saved my life while I was there! So that cancels any debt you may possibly feel you still owe me for the service I inadvertently rendered you, the spring before last! And it’s such a pleasure to see you again, and to remember who you are!’ He had advanced on her, and was now fervently shaking both her hands in both of his. She took a half-step back, struggling not to laugh – to keep up her primness and composure. ‘May I kiss you?’ he demanded.
She blushed; she returned his look, her eyes fierce yet calm beneath the level brows. Then she offered him her mouth. The kiss was short and soft, but full of understanding on her side and appreciation on his. He let go of her hands.
‘How long have I slept?’ he asked.
‘More than a day and a night,’ she answered.
‘No wonder I feel so well – but now – what about poor old Erum?’
‘Who?’
‘My friend. The companion who came with me, through the gate of the whirlpool. I forgot to mention him to the Lady down below.’
‘Nobody’s mentioned him to me either.’
‘Do you mean he’s still stuck on the rocks? For the last thirty hours?’ Swin was aghast. He explained Erum’s plight to Bryd, and she promised to dispatch help.
‘Now, sir, as for you,’ she went on, ‘you’re an honoured guest. You are high in the favour of our Mistress. You are free to stay here as long as you wish, to come and go as you please, to make this house your home. I am directed to wait upon you and grant all your desires, so far as I may.’
The words were all conventional words of hospitality, but the steady eye-contact was charged with increasing power. Before Bryd had finished she was blushing again, and Swin’s face felt a little warm too.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘some breakfast, please, and lots of it. Plenty of everything you’ve got. But first a bath and – no, I’ve had enough cold water to last me a while.’ He combed his fingers thoughtfully through his thick red beard. ‘Water to wash in, a pair of scissors, a towel and a razor, please.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘Oh, call me Swin, do!’
She smiled. ‘All right, Swin. Shall I barber you?’
‘What? Oh, goodness me, certainly! Yes! Wonderful!’
She asked him to roll back the drugget. She placed a chair in the middle of the floor. A few minutes later he was sitting in it, bare-chested, with folded arms. She hovered behind him with a pair of scissors, neatly clipping his hair and removing his beard. Piles of reddish curls drifted around the chair.
‘Your garden looks very bright,’ said Swin. The windows were wide open. The terrace with its flower-beds, and the stone steps, and the meadow that lay beyond, and the brown cows, and the lily-covered pool formed a beautiful picture, all encompassed or framed by the dark woods. Already a bright heavy stillness, as of midday, seemed to press down on the land.
‘Yes,’ said Bryd. ‘Would you like to have breakfast out there? Soon it’ll be too hot to enjoy sitting outside.’
Swin did not answer. He was enjoying her nearness, her light touch and the delicate perfume of her hands and wrists; but by association he was remembering, what indeed he had never forgotten – the last occasion of a woman’s doing this service for him, and what that had led to. Bryd, Brydda. There was a strange resemblance between them.
‘You’ve gone away from me,’ she said.
‘Am I not free to come and go as I please?’
‘Of course. I have said so. But do you not desire to tell me why you are sad?’
The question was aimed at Swin’s honesty and hit the edge of the target. He thought of not answering, or of saying ‘no’, but that would be to lie. ‘And you?’ he answered, prevaricating, ‘do you desire to hear the tale?’
‘Yes,’ she answered simply.
Swin made no response to this. He sat in silence. She finished cutting his hair, then began to run a razor down a leather strop. The blade glittered in the sunlight, its reflection darting and hovering around the ceiling with unpredictable thoughtlike swiftness. She laid the razor down among the shaving-tackle that had been brought in, picked up a brush and a cake of soap in a dish, dipped the brush in a jug of warm water and proceeded to raise a scented lather. She brushed the lather on to Swin’s jaw. Then she picked up the razor again. With a slightly perverse, slightly aggressive trustfulness Swin offered his bare throat to the blade. She shaved him smoothly and skilfully, without the tiniest cut. Every so often her fingertips caressed his scarred neck.
‘Thank you,’ he said when the lather had all been washed off. The words were poor and ungracious, but for once he could not think of anything better. He ran his hand over his smooth chin. He slipped the sleeves of his shirt over his arms, which he then folded while standing and waiting in grumpy silence. Two of the pretty maidservants brought in the laden breakfast-trays and set the table while Bryd swept up Swin’s hair with a dustpan and brush. The long curls glinted with coppery fire. She took a small, clean bag from the pocket of her apron. She tipped all the hair-clippings out of the pan and into the mouth of the bag, which she then pulled tight with a drawstring. She offered the bag to him.
‘What’s that for?’ he asked.
‘For whom, not for what. For you to offer her, if you will. For Fuindis.’
‘As a sort of...devotion?’
‘Yes. A token payment, if you like. Now, Swin, shall I stay with you or leave you to sulk by yourself?’
‘Dryhten-Sweald, that touched home! What a pig I’m being! Please stay with me, dear Bryd: I desire your company. Have you breakfasted?’
‘The pig is one of her favourite animals,’ said Bryd kindly. They sat down at the window, facing one another over the table.
‘I had words with her,’ said Swin, ‘as I’m sure you know. It’s because I’m of the royal line that Berma picked me out: that’s what makes me a suitable candidate. I should be glad: I should be feeling the honour of it. I should be grateful to...to the Goddess, Yabeth, I suppose. It seems that she turned all heaven and earth upside-down for my sake – to rescue me from Metod. I should –’
‘Don’t keep saying that,’ said Bryd, interrupting him gently as she handed him a cup of tea.
‘What?’
‘Should. There are no “shoulds” here. “Shoulds” belong to Dru and the Temple, not to Caras Gulwen. Tell me what you are feeling.’
‘Oh... irritable. Resentful. Rebellious.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I lack any sense of my own freedom in this! I’ve spent the last eighteen months of my life being dragged from stock to stone, from pillar to post, letting other folk drag me about because it seemed the only thing to do; and I understand, yes, I understand that Berma, or Fuindis, or Yabeth, if they aren’t all one – that she’s cross with me for disobeying her summons. But now that I have obeyed it, I’m to be dragged off once again, it seems, on yet another...ghastly ordeal of an adventure, not of my own choosing!’
‘But this is the natural order of things,’ she replied. ‘Believe me, they understand that now.’
‘For goodness sake, Bryd, what do you mean?’
‘Your rebellion, your resistance – they spring from your true self, your dark substance, your stubbornness which is your true strength. Suppose you were a man of lucid reasoning mind, of malleable temper, of calm elvish spirit – like your bishop friend, perhaps. If you were shown the need of Yabeth for a special servant, a knight of her own, you would fully understand the why and the wherefore of it: you would feel honoured, you would no doubt assent, and you would do your best: but you would not be strong enough. You would be no fit material for her purposes. She needs one with a dark tough will of his own, one like hers, one through whom her own darkness can act. That is why, as they now understand, it was inevitable, it was all in the disposition of Metod, as you might say, that you should at first resist her and act contrary to her summons. She is angry with you, no doubt; but she is also patient, and eager, and loving.’
‘Merely at first? She’s over-confident.’
‘No,’ said Bryd, fixing her dark eyes on him: ‘this is your own true depth of being and desire: that you should serve her indeed. Why do you think Berma waited so long? Or do you think her a fool?’
‘I’d think her very presumptuous,’ said Swin angrily, ‘if she told me to my face that she knew what my own true desire is, better than I do!’
‘Do not judge her by any scale of mortals. She is of Elvish kind, and she communes with Yabeth, the Goddess, who is the author and giver of all desire. How should she not discern in such matters better than you or I?’
‘It is my true desire, then, or so I am to believe, to serve her as her knight and do her bidding in all things – and only some mysterious shadow, of which I myself am at present unaware, some shadow of the past that lies on me, still prevents me from eagerly seeing and embracing this destiny.’
‘...Despite your contempt and irony, that was very well stated. I only need to add that I myself am the one assigned by her servant to help you discover and free yourself from this shadow.’
‘Bryd: dear Lady Bryd: forgive my crudeness and my foul language when I tell you, as I must, that that is just such a wagon-load of bullshit! I have no such ambition! I have never aspired towards a misty knighthood or distant future kingship! My desire is all in the present moment – as whose is not? And in truth there is a shadow on it, but of that I am very well aware!’
‘So what is your present desire and your shadow?’
Swin put down his tea-cup with noiseless delicacy, over-controlled and exaggerated. Then he reached across the table and took her hands. ‘My present desire is for you,’ he said, fixing glowing blue eyes upon her. ‘You are a lovely woman, a most desirable woman, in strength and magnificent beauty far surpassing all the noble dames above my own age that I saw in the City, and all the women of the tribes, and all the maidens of my own native land. Your eyes are enchanted pools, your hands skilful and sweet-scented, your spirit full of a lioness’s courage, and unless I am greatly mistaken, you have already offered yourself to me: but, for the grief and the guilt that lie upon my heart, I cannot accept the fulfilment that you might bestow.’
Saying nothing, Bryd stood up, lifted her chair and moved it round, near to Swin’s. Seeing this, Swin also turned his chair. She sat down close to him, so that their knees were touching. She looked into his tormented, questioning face with a friendly smile.
Swin gave a great sob and shudder. He clutched her hands and began to speak. He told her of Brydda, of her trust in him, of her pregnancy and betrayal. He told of the seven women and the nine children, of Engwe and Vornis, of Sisilas and the child of Sisilas, and the sufferings of the others. ‘It seems to be my fate,’ he said miserably, ‘never to lie with a woman without kindling her womb. And it is the fate of all who yield themselves to me, to suffer misfortune, persecution or death. And it is the fate of the little babies – oh, what can we say about them?’
He sat hunched in his pain, shedding slow tears that fell down on to the knot of four tightly-joined hands.
Bryd considered her answer.
When at last he looked up, she leaned forward and kissed his lips.
‘Such high scruple, and such deep compassion,’ she began, ‘uncommon as they are, might well have been expected to be discovered in a child of the true royal line; and have I not proved them for myself? Do you remember our meeting by the lake, after Calendis had thrust me forward to become your prey, or else the object of that same scrupulous compassion? We spoke then of ruth, and law, and soul: things beyond Fuindis’s ken, although Calendis sees them to be necessary qualities of a king. But come now. If this be truly your shadow, as you say, come forth: come out of it. See, the sun is shining!’
Swin’s manhood was roused, and the folds of his nightshirt were raised into a tent; but his eyes were doubtful and anxious. He blurted out the question that was in his mind:
‘You don’t mind having a baby?’
‘Make your mind easy about that,’ she said. ‘There’s no such doom on you as you imagine. Or if there is, we can master it together.’
‘You won’t have one? You’re sure?’
‘There are mysteries,’ she answered mildly, ‘not fit to be spoken of to a man. Yes, I am quite sure.’
‘In that case, mistress,’ said Swin, sitting up and letting go of her hands, ‘you will oblige me now by standing, and removing all your clothes, here, in full view.’
She promptly obeyed him. First slipping off her light, flat-soled shoes, she stood before him in bare feet, curtsied, untied her apron, folded it and placed it on her chair, unbuttoned the bodice of her plain gown and slipped it off, so that she was naked to the waist. All this time her eyes never left Swin’s. Her movements were unhurried, her forehead clear, her lips still curved: her self-bestowal was untroubled, unhesitating. She stepped out of her dress and gathered it up tidily. All her movements were delightful to watch. Swin felt a first pleasant little touch of lordship, a sense of obeyed command and gratified desire, as of one who is to receive what is his by right. Bryd untied the cord of her petticoat, dropped it to the floor, then unbuttoned, dropped and walked out of her under-drawers. Nude, she bent down to pick up these last two garments. Then, facing him without the least shame or defence in her eyes, she unpinned her hair. As she raised her arms Swin saw the lifting of the beautiful breasts and the black tufts of her armpits. Below the rounded, somewhat drooping belly the hair of her groin was not quite as luxuriant as the witch’s – the comparison could hardly be avoided – but full enough, rich enough, certainly inviting enough. She pushed a hand through her hair to send it back over her shoulders; the long dark mane, half unplaited, fell midway down the golden back. Swin was struck again by the quality she had, as of some great splendid cat, a lioness or tigress: and that was another thing: the summer tan, the rosy golden-brown of her face and hands did not fade out, but continued uniformly over her whole body. Swin held out a hand to her, summoning her to him. Lithely, with a small assured swing of the hips and dimpled thighs, she came to him and sat down on his lap. Clasping her passionately in his arms, exploring her mouth with his own, Swin felt her in all her weight, her undreamlike solidity, her smoothness and fragrance and femaleness.
‘Oh,’ he said by-and-by: ‘Should we draw the curtain?’
Her glance mocked him. ‘“Should”?’
‘Damn it, come to bed!’ He shoved an arm under her thighs, lifted her up and carried her there, while she cheerfully held on to his neck with one arm. He laid her on the bed, threw off his own single garment, grabbed her roughly and positioned himself to thrust inside her. Her legs spread wide, entwined round his. In the fullness of desire, after months of guilt and abstinence, he penetrated her deeply – once – twice – thrice. Fiercely and unemotionally he stared into her eyes, and still she did not flinch. On the third stroke his seed burst out of him. He strained and gasped; he sank his head into the pillow. She kept him encircled in her arms, and one word she spoke into his ear: ‘Welcome.’
Then, with slight sudden dismay: ‘Quick, lad, grab a case off one of the pillows. No, stay inside me! Get me a pillow-case!’
He bestirred himself. He used his teeth and one hand to draw out the pillow, while she held the other end of its case. Joined together, they struggled absurdly for half a minute. A few feathers flew out.
‘My goodness,’ Bryd said, ‘it feels like pints in there. Your Lordship certainly needed that!’
Swin withdrew from her, rolled over on his side and lay still. He was sweating. The room seemed to have become much warmer. Outside, the sunlight shimmered.
‘Swin?’
‘M’m?’
‘Do you want me to go out?’
‘No. Stay here.’
‘And chat?’
‘If you like.’
He felt her move, and turned back to see what she was doing, and found himself looking at her bottom, with the pad of cloth held in place between her tautened thighs. He ran a hand over them appreciatively. Bryd was reaching down the side of the bed, rummaging in one of the drawers that opened out below the mattress-box. She kneeled up again and turned to face him. There were a few scratches on her shoulders. One was bleeding.
‘Did I do that? Sorry!’
‘Give me your hand.’
In a little while Swin was lying with his head in her lap, looking up at the round undersides of her breasts and her intent face. She worked on his fingernails with scissors and file. ‘I’d like to ask you something,’ she said, ‘if you don’t mind telling... Now you’ve got your memory back...’ (clip!) ‘What was it like, while you were dead? Do you remember anything?’
‘I do remember quite a lot, since you ask,’ said Swin thoughtfully.
‘...I remember being outside my body, and poor old Melohtar coming and crying over the pieces, and trying to put them back together. But it was grey and misty. I was fading away.
‘...I remember the grey turning to blackness, and then not-quite blackness. Darkness. I remember the feeling that I had woken up in a cold hard place, lonely and stony, dark and dim. The Halls of Metod.
‘I hadn’t heard about them until I started talking with Erum. Back home we reckon that you either sink down into the earth or the bogs, when you die, or else rise up to join the sky-hunt of Orom and the sky-feast of Sweald. And...yes, I remembered that, and I was dismayed, because I obviously wasn’t at a feast or a hunt. But in the Temple they teach that Metod has a great fortress-dungeon where all the dead souls go: and they all just wait there, waiting and wandering through the dim aisles and passages. And that’s what it did seem to be like.
‘There are very, very many souls in that castle, in fact all of them: but the place is so vast that they only bump into each other now and then, as they go shuffling about: and they’re usually too timid to speak to each other. And I began to explore, cautiously peering about, just like the rest. And I looked up, and I saw the great hanging tapestries.’
‘Other hand?’
‘Thanks... The whole house is full of tapestries. Some of them against the walls, others free-standing on great frames, and some hanging down from the rafters, blocking out almost all the light from the windows. Erum says that Dryhten-Metod has got a wife. She’s the Weaver. Our Druids don’t talk about her, if she’s real, but Erum says she spends the whole time weaving a record of everything that happens, and what everybody has done, every single deed, good and bad. She puts it all down in wool, and then the tapestries are hung up in the halls...but there’s so little light, you can hardly see ’em. So none of the ghosts knows where his own record is hanging. But they’re very anxious to find out what has been written about them: they’re perpetually anxious: it’s all they care about. And so – all this was in my dream – they’re forever wandering and craning their necks up at the huge dark tapestries, peeping and peering and trying to catch a glimpse.
‘So I was there with them.
‘And after a long time of wandering I came across a silver box, like a lichdwelling: you know, the kind of burial chest that they use in the great Cities. There was a word written on it, and I knew it was my own name, and the box was for me. So I lay down inside it, and – in my dream – I went to sleep, and had a dream within the dream.
‘I dreamt that all the Gods were marching against this same house of Metod. They were all dressed up for fighting, with armour and banners and weapons. They were coming on my account. They were going to attack the place, force a way in and rescue me. It was all purely on my account. And then I saw Dryhten-Metod himself going out to them for a parley. He explained to them that it was unreasonable of them to attack his castle, against all the law and custom of the immortals, and so on; but they surrounded him, grabbed him and held him down on the table which was there, like at a real parley. And then – and then they treated him abominably. You know, raped him. Up the arse. Dryhten-Sweald certainly did it, and I think he was the first in a queue. And it was somehow in this very act, this violation of the Lord of the Dead, that his own castle was violated and breached. There was a kind of opening in the walls, and then green light shining all round me. Then the silver chest began to rock, like a boat floating away on the tide. And then there are no more memories, till I found myself floating – in a boat – coming up to the –’
He sat up, suddenly startled, and seized her hands.
‘I came out of the whirlpool, didn’t I? That was how I left here! And you were waiting on the bank.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And then we put the boat in the cave...and it was you who took care of me all the way back to Garholt, wasn’t it? My wits were all confused.’
‘Yes, I and others. We looked after you. But all was done by Her command.’
‘I have so much to thank you for. Including these here! I’ve never been so elegant.’ He looked at his manicured hands in simple wonder, like a rustic.
‘A pleasure, my friend. But that death-vision of yours is disturbing, is it not? Such anger and violence. What do you think it says about your desire?’
‘Among my folk, we don’t generally pay much attention to our dreams, save at special times and ceremonies, such as the young men’s initiation. If the Gods need to say anything to us they send a special dream to the Bard.’
‘At your own initiation, what did you dream of?’
‘Never mind that,’ said Swin. ‘Lie down. I’m too much in your debt.’
‘I have learned that dreams of the Gods are always important. Oh... We do well to heed them: to consider what the God means by appearing to us. Oh. That’s lovely.’
‘Well, she’s appeared to me twice now,’ murmured Swin, ‘and neither time did she leave me in any doubt about her meaning.’
‘Oh, never mind. Oh. Just go on, sir, please, sir.’
Attentively and diligently Swin kissed and sometimes gently bit her neck, shoulders, breasts and nipples. With flowing hand-strokes he caressed her belly and thighs; with a lighter touch he drew his fingers up between her legs, which readily opened to allow him in deeper. Bryd quivered and relaxed. Teasingly, fleetingly, his fingertips brushed the damp hair, the warm wet softness. Her hips bucked and strained impatiently. Her hand came down, clasped his, gave guidance. Finding a steady stroke, an attunement, Swin continued to encourage her. The gasps deepened, and the pitch of the little moaning cries was raised. At last she gave a full-throated call that might well have been heard outside the house, and farther, from beyond the meadow and the deep forest. But Swin had not yet finished: three more times did he kiss and fondle her to the extremity of blissful pleasure, until her face and bosom were red, her breasts streaked with saliva, her armpits dripping in the heat. He pushed up her arm, ran his tongue into the roots of the wet thicket, tasted the salt and the freshness. Then, hungrily, his lips traversed the whole length of her torso. He slipped his hand under her hip and rolled her over on top of him. She promptly opened her thighs, admitting his head, enveloping his senses in a delicious smothering darkness like some re-entered womb; unless he chose to open his eyes, to gain a close view of her buttocks, like two great smooth hills, and the disclosed valley between them. Still licking, still tasting, still connected with the surges of her pleasure, he embraced the full, heavy hips as they rocked above him. Meanwhile she had encountered his prick, was tenderly squeezing and kissing his balls, taking him into her lively mouth and rubbing him with accomplished fingers. But now her own last fulfilment was near: she must relinquish Swin while he still embraced her lower body and plied his aching tongue, must abandon herself and give a last loud cry, which came to his ears through the soft, thick-muffling flesh. Then she was still. Swin’s fingers traced the course of the wet valley, touched and caressed the tight little hole – clean, moist, exciting. She began on him a second time, giving him a pleasure more thrilling and intense than he had ever known before. With a tremendous lava-like flow, with a sense of rising from the deeps of the earth to the summit of a fiery mountain, he came into her mouth.
He felt her gulp and swallow.
They disentangled themselves from each other. They lay side by side, holding hands, though each felt the other’s hand as hot and sticky. Swin hoped that if he lay very still, the rivers of his sweat might eventually cool him down. Rather to his surprise, he began to feel vexed. The acts that he and this woman had performed together now struck him as silly and undignified.
She leaned over him: her cheeks were red, her hair gathered into tangling tails; and there was a drop of whiteness at the corner of her mouth. ‘That was lovely for me,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of water?’
Swin nodded, and then drank the water without thanking her. She laid her head on his chest; he put one arm around her shoulders and laid the other along her flank. A butterfly, bluish-white with flickering white spots on its wings, came dancing in through one of the windows. For quite a long time Swin and Bryd watched it flutter round the room. The short strips of sunlight blazed on the floor. At last the butterfly wandered out of the other window and disappeared.
‘You’ve no work to be getting on with?’ Swin asked.
‘No. We have all the time in the world to spend together as you please. But I will depart at your bidding... Shall I go?’
Swin tightened his grip on her shoulders and slapped her leg a couple of times.
‘You’re angry again,’ he heard her say.
He gave a deep sigh. ‘This lovemaking has been very, very sweet,’ he said: ‘great fun. But it hasn’t solved anything.’
‘Solved? Are you stuck on a riddle?’
‘Yes, that is how it feels. The shadow, and the brightness, and the desire of you, and the burdens of knighthood and kingship that I don’t want – they’re like coloured cords all tangled up in a very hard knot. Which I can’t undo.’
She patted his chest. ‘Good! Good man! That seems very clear! It’s your task to seek for the true cord: mine is just to help you.’
‘Then tell me,’ he said to her hair, ‘how shall I find it?’
‘I don’t know. But you will. You’re getting very near.’
For a few moments Swin was pleased by her praise and lay basking in self-satisfaction. But then his irritation returned, more strongly than before. He writhed under her, pushed her away and sat up. He swore a crude oath of his own people. ‘The hell with it,’ he said. ‘Go on, cut my toes as well.’
‘Of course, Swin,’ she said respectfully. They rearranged themselves so that she could take hold of his foot. She got down to work on the long jagged nails, carefully saving each clipping and adding it to the bag which contained his fingernails and hair.
‘All the folk, in all the tribes of my land, so far as I know,’ he said, now in a more detached and musing voice, ‘hold that one should always burn one’s hair and nails, and everything else that grows from one.’
‘Should?’
‘Yes, should. Otherwise it might get into the hands of an enemy. If a powerful foe, such as a witch – for there are witches in my land too – possesses the outgrowths that belong to you, she is able to control you: her spells can dominate you.’
‘Yes, and so?’
‘But Fuindis, I think, does not seek to control me.’
‘No. She wouldn’t know what to make you do.’
‘Yet you call it an offering. A token.’
‘Yes...?’
‘Well then, I ask myself: what is my desire in this? Do I desire to offer these things to a witch? And the answer is, well, no, of course not.’
‘It is true that desire may sometimes run towards a No rather than a Yes; but that ‘no’ of yours is thin. Your desire isn’t in it at all.’
He sighed. ‘All right, let’s try another thread. Let’s talk about something I was thinking of before. Do you know that according to the law of my tribe, I’m not yet allowed to wear a beard? Being still a youngster? Not yet a proper man? Oh, I’m a warrior insofar as I’ve hazarded my life in battle, but I’m not allowed to be married, nor to hold land, nor to sit in council nor on the mead-bench in hall. My uncle, who is the lord of our homestead, has always hated me – though I’ve never understood why – and denied me the rites of initiation.’
‘That is very sad.’
‘So I look back on myself, a fatherless red-haired boy, at odds with the other boys, set to feed the pigs, taunted and nicknamed, while secretly begging the Bard and the Druid for scraps of knowledge, for which I had a great hunger. Though they were both very generous, I must grant them that. And my grandfather was kind too. And I did not complain of my lot – have never complained until now. But if, with no father to speak for me, I was denied a proper youth and manhood – how shall I suddenly leap over that gap? How shall my feet land firmly on the ground?’
‘But what now... What is it that you still feel the lack of?’
‘Vision, I guess,’ he said dully. ‘I don’t mean the vision of the eyes, but of the heart. The special dream I spoke of, and which I’ve never had, comes as part of the young men’s rites. You have to undertake some kind of quest for vision, so I’ve heard. And now – in truth – I lack a man’s vision of his proper path. Some say the paths of Metod are curved, some say they’re straight, but I just can’t make ’em out at all.’
‘But you have just told me a remarkable dream. And Yabeth herself has appeared to you twice!’
Swin made no reply.
‘And is not this the present work on which we are engaged, in our talk and our lovemaking? Is that not why you are here? The true desire, the vision of a man’s path – are they not one?’
‘Only men can do the work of initiating younger men,’ he answered sulkily.
‘Then take heart. For the King of this land is your kinsman, and he knows of your arrival: he will send for you, and then no doubt he will teach you many things. Maybe your lack, as you see it, will be made up.’
Swin grimaced. ‘That wasn’t what I wanted to hear!’ he said.
‘What did you want to hear?’
‘Oh, that – that – oh, that I am free of all obligations, since I was not properly brought up to fulfil them!’
‘Poor little Eofor,’ she murmured with soft irony.
‘Your desire, on the other hand, still seems to wish to lay obligations on me!’
‘It does not. And here, at Caras Gulwen, you are free of all obligations.’
‘So you say: and I understand that that is true, within measure.’
After a pause, she went on: ‘I begin to understand how close you were to that Priest, and why it was necessary that you be separated from him. You do not yet believe in your desire.’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Then what is it? Having me naked with you, having satisfied your lust and need, having me all defenceless and yours to command, to use as you will: what, Eofor Guma’s son, do you truly desire?’
He shuddered at that, wincing away from her with closed eyes.
She waited for his answer.
He sat naked on the bedside, turned away from her, back in his hunched world of pain.
‘It’s another thread of my memory,’ he said at last, addressing the opposite wall, ‘and this one hurts horribly when I touch it. I remember that I asked Fëaruk just the same question: “What do you really desire?” He thought I was asking him a feeble sort of riddle. And I thought I was just insulting him as hard as I could – what we call “flyting”. But now I wonder – maybe – maybe, at that last moment, I was questioning my own destiny? My weird? His face was the last thing I saw: I even saw myself reflected, my own reflection in his eye! And it’s strange but true, that he and I are now in agreement about something. We share a common thought – that the true riddle is embodied within me. I wonder if his true riddle is the same as mine?’
He turned back to her, and for the first time she felt afraid: for his eyes were dark, his smile ugly.
‘You trust me far too much, Bryd.’
‘No.’ She pulled the drawstring tight and placed the bag at the end of the bed. Then she knelt opposite him. She gently took hold of his face, clasping his cheeks in her palms. She glanced down at his prick, which had recovered and was standing up for the third time, stiff and red. She gazed into his trapped and sneering face, and her own eyes were full of compassion. ‘I am under obedience,’ she replied, ‘and you must do as you will.’
The room was stiflingly hot, the damp sheets rucked into uncomfortable folds. ‘Then get down on the floor, damn it,’ said Swin. ‘On your hands and knees.’
She complied. He knelt behind her. He spat on his hand, anointed himself with spittle and laid his hands on her buttocks, urging her to spread them wider. Submissively she opened herself. He looked down at the darkness, the entrances. Then his hands clamped onto her hips and he thrust forward. Her body tensed with shock, and she screamed, not being prepared for such an invasion. ‘No!’ she cried, ‘No I can’t! You’re too big!’
‘Shut up,’ he said coldly, and smacked her thigh, using some of his strength. ‘No!’ she screamed, ‘No! No!’ ‘Quiet,’ he said, ‘or I’ll hit harder. Now let me in.’
She hung her head down, moaning and sobbing and doing her best to comply, while he forced his way up her back passage. As a bodily thrill it was, for him, rather more painful than pleasurable, never mind the hurt that he was inflicting on her! He felt the constriction give a little, or perhaps tear, and immediately heard her draw in her breath with a loud hiss. There began to be a foul and intimate smell. But the lust of dominion, of make-believe, of exploring hidden realms, was so strong in him that his excitement was undiminished. For five minutes he continued to abuse her with harsh cruel fucking. He plucked the bitter fruit of a small dry satisfaction; he pulled back, unceremoniously withdrawing from her, and stepped away. His prick was all smeared with blood and shit. He had no desire to wash, only to be covered. He ran his eye round the room, spotted his nightshirt and quickly put it on. Then he stood in the middle of the floor – despairing, unrepentant, a little light-headed – and awaited what might follow.
She was still grovelling beside the bed, shuddering and weeping into the coarse brown carpet as if unaware that her ordeal had ended. Her rump was stuck up in the air, her arsehole helplessly gaping and ringed with blood. She became still, as if she was listening to something, and then stood up without any more ado. Silently, and with very great dignity, she came towards him on her bare feet. How beautiful they were! She came right up to him, the tears still pouring down her cheeks; she put her hands on his folded arms. Unsmilingly, somewhat unwillingly, he looked into her face. Her mouth was bitter, her eyes a little swollen, and the stanchless tears continued to flow down and to splash on her breasts; but her voice, though it sometimes shook, was strangely level amid her weeping.
‘Don’t you see now, Swin? Do you not see? The anger and the violence? The condemnation of your tribe? Was not this act, this abomination, what we must talk of at our first meeting, because the little folk could not understand it? I’m sure they’ve learned to understand it well by this time! O you kings, you ambitious men!
‘But come. What you have done is a violation, and well deserves the name of rape. Yet I myself goaded you to the point – and I received you in obedience – not to you, but to Her – and I discern, even now, that your greater desire was neither to hurt me nor to harm me. And so – and so –’ Here came a great gush of tears, and her hands trembled on his arms; but her eyes never left his – ‘And so you are forgiven. Only think, my dear: Swin, do but think. Can you not see your truth in this, your agreement with the Dragon, the dark lust of dominion, the greed of conquerors? Am I not a woman of the Forhoth, whom the Kings of Thandor have been raping for so many years? Are they not being betrayed into deeper slavery even at this time? What cruel sodomies have you been inflicting on us for so many years, O you mighty kings!
‘Swin, look. See, there is no obligation: but for yourself, in honesty, do you not perceive the resemblance? You have made me a thing for your use – in truth of desire you have done so – a vessel, a mere lump of hollow flesh – and for this I blame you not, I judge you not, I condemn you not, for here is none of that! Only go forth, knowing the true nature of kings, being true, being true to yourself! Oh, oh,’ and now she came closer, embracing him round the small of his back, so that he, startled, did the same for her; her breasts were pressed against him as she spoke passionately into his ear: ‘Swin, dear man, have you heard me? Have you understood? She’s coming and you’ve got no time left! Own it, own it, own the –’
Desire?
Truth?
Anger?
For a second longer they stood embracing. Then Swin heard what she had heard previously: the sound or the vibration of a heavy tread, approaching upwards from deep below, just as he had heard it in his second dream of the Goddess. Bryd tore herself away. He watched her perform a rapid hasty toilette, drying her face on a sheet and struggling into her dress. He had the fleeting thought that being dressed and decent might, after recent doings, be considered a rather unnecessary formality; but he went to help her with her buttons. Meanwhile the footsteps, though slow in their unbroken steady pace, were coming nearer very quickly. All of a sudden they sounded hollow and wooden, as if between one step and the next the climber had magically leaped all the way up the stone spiral staircase. Bryd was frantically combing her hair. Swin did up her top button and absent-mindedly kissed her cheek. He thought he understood what she had tried to say to him; there was a lot of force and truth in it, but was it, after all, the whole story? Might there be a deeper meaning yet? The heavy steps, in another easy leap, had come to the top of the landing. They were approaching along the passage. Another thought crossed Swin’s mind – something he thought he had to remember – ah yes, the little bag. There it was on the bed.
Shaking the house, the footsteps crashed along the passage and came to a stop outside the door. Not knowing what he could do, or would do or should, but knowing with certainty that this confrontation could not be avoided, Swin stood facing the door. His knees were wobbling. In his mind he said to himself: I have done the abominable thing. I am accursed.
Bryd ran to the door and opened it.
There stood the Witch, tall and terrible, dark in herself and radiating darkness as a fire sends out heat. Beyond the windows the bright noon became wan; a shadow filled the room and the passageway behind, so that her features were hardly visible. But the dishevelled hair was familiar, and the black robe, and the huge feet – and, ah, the long, pale-glimmering knife that she held in her left hand. Even so, in his confused vision, had Swin glimpsed her on Midsummer Night: even so, in reality, had Erum seen her before being lifted and bound to the stone. Standing opposite her, looking up at her, rooted to the spot, Swin felt nothing but a terrible perplexity.
The impulse that then came inside him was a tiny thing, a ridiculous little thought like the weakest of pushes. Perhaps Lord Dryhten’s most authentic pushes are also his weakest. Puny as it was, however, it had a quality that unmistakably called for ‘owning’ or recognition.
He acted on it. He stepped forward, knelt down in front of Fuindis and laid the bag before her feet.
There was no response. He dared to look up. He could see her face now: the heavy eyes looked down at him in cold appraisal, and the mouth was wry; he did not know whether he was being condemned or pardoned. Slowly the Witch raised her knife. He bowed his head, offering the back of his neck, accepting what must come.
The blade descended. It tapped him sharply and precisely – flat, not edge – first on the left shoulder, then on the right.
‘Rise up,’ said the voice of Fuindis.
This is the end of Part Seven.