Page 61 of The Bear's Heart
Morbid fascination held me in its thrall. How could people who had been warm and alive so short a time before, be so cold and dead so quickly? How could life be extinguished with only the flick of a sharp knife? Had those girls really wanted this? I’d said to Ummidia that eventually it wouldn’t seem so bad, but she’d said they’d be better dead, and I’d walked away, unable to cope with their unfathomable grief. If I’d stayed, would this still have happened? Could I have stopped this if another day had passed? Or had she possessed the determination, whatever day it was?
My mind boiled with unanswerable questions. All I could think of was those girls as I’d first met them, half in love with my handsome husband, full of the joys of being teenagers in an age before that term ever existed, wondering if there were nice boys back in their home town of Caer Ligualid. And now– nothing lay ahead for them but the grave.
The news spread through the army like wildfire. Most of the men hardly knew Euddolen’s family, but anger bubbled to the surface as the men gathered around their campfires in the orchards just outside the farmyard walls. All the joy of their victory had died, the deaths of the three women heavy on the conscience of every man. Particularly on Arthur’s.
He walked away from us all. Still wearing his heavy mail shirt, his helmet discarded on the tessellated floor of the bath house, he shrugged off the hand I put on his arm and strode back down to join his men.
I went to follow him, but Merlin restrained me. “Leave him. Let him work through this alone.”
I looked up at him. He was dripping wet, a pool of watery blood around his feet from where he’d waded into the pool with Arthur. His brown hair clung damply to his brow, and his eyes were deeply troubled.
Beside him, Cei gave a shrug of resignation. “People die every day,” he said gruffly, in an effort to pretend this didn’t matter. “Casualties of war.” His blue eyes strayed down to the three bodies lying on the floor, limbs akimbo, blood-stained dresses clinging to them grotesquely.
“Not like this.” I was too numb for tears. This world was too harsh for me. A world where women could be violated so badly they felt their only way out was death. A world where the monsters who’d done this would go unpunished, and they’d go on living while their victims lay cold and dead. What was I doing here? Why had I chosen this life when I could have been in my own world, safe and untroubled, living the quiet, secure life of a small-town librarian? And yet I knew atrocities like this existed in my own world, too, even though they were beyond my experience. Just because I wasn’t a direct witness to the consequences as I was here, didn’t mean these things didn’t happen.
Caswallan spoke. “I’ll have them prepared for burial.” But there was hesitation in his voice.
“Where?” Cei asked. “What will you tell your priest?”
There was an awkward silence. I looked from man to man, puzzled.
“They’re suicides.” Merlin’s tone was one of deep bitterness. “Christian suicides. They can’t be buried on consecrated ground.”
I was horrified. “What d’you mean, they can’t be buried on consecrated ground? Why not?”
“They killed themselves.” Cei’s voice was low, as though he didn’t want to say the words. “It’s a crime against the sixth commandment which says ‘thou shalt not kill’. Those who take their own lives must be buried at a crossroads with a stake through their heart.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And then I could. Why was I so surprised by the primitive beliefs of the fifth century? I was a fool to have expected anything else.
“But we don’t know they all killed themselves,” I protested. “Ummidia said to me that they’d be better off dead. They may not all be suicides. We don’t know that she didn’t kill the girls herself. You didn’t see them. The girls were in some kind of a trance. Their minds weren’t working at all– they were shutting out the world. They couldn’t have done this to themselves.”
Caswallan raised his grizzled head, a new look of determination in his eyes. “You’re right. Their mother couldn’t stand the shame. She murdered her daughters while out of her mind with grief. The girls at least shall have a Christian burial.”
I looked again at Ummidia, her battered face wiped clean of suffering, and knew she would be happy with that. Her girls were what had been important to her. She’d killed them for love, and for love, she’d be buried by a lonely crossroads with a stake through her broken heart. But I was certain she’d still be going to heaven, if that place existed, and she’d be with her daughters and her husband once again. The God I half-believed in wouldn’t separate a loving mother from her daughters. Whatever was done to her body, it didn’t change the way she’d felt for her children.
*
Arthur finally cameto our bedchamber long after dark.
I heard him come noisily through the door, bump into the bench seat and curse under his breath. Having only been sleeping lightly, I was wide awake in an instant.
“Arthur?”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and I realized with a jolt that he was very drunk.
Sitting up in bed, I pushed off the thin covers. Through the open shutters, moonlight spilled in across the room, illuminating him standing beside the bench, head down, shoulders hunched. He’d shed his mail shirt and tunic somewhere and was wearing just his braccae and undershirt, but he’d not been back to the bath house. No one had. It was going to take a lot of cleaning.
I slipped out of bed and approached him warily. I didn’t have a lot of experience with drunk people, even after my years in university, and from the way he was swaying, he seemed to be very drunk indeed. He reeked of alcohol. A wine stain darkened his shirt front.
All my inbuilt motherly instinct rose. I put out my arms and he half fell into them, his head coming to rest on my shoulder, his body slumped heavily against mine.
“Come to bed,” I said, into his ear. “You’re exhausted and drunk, and you need to let me look after you.”
His body stiffened against mine, and after a moment he pushed himself away from me. “And who was there to look after Euddolen’s family?” His words were slurred. “I told him Cadwy had sworn not to touch them. I promised him his family was safe from harm. They didn’t want to return to Rheged. Their home was here.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said. “No one could have known what Cadwy would do.” I paused. “Nor let his men do…” My voice trailed away. Maybe we should have guessed. We all, me included, knew what Cadwy was capable of. That he’d left it till now to carry out his revenge was all the more surprising. Although I could guess that it was to provoke a reaction from Arthur that he’d killed Euddolen and taken his family prisoner.
I needed to distract him. “Tell me about the battle.” With gentle force I guided him to our bed and pushed him down on it. He smelled of wine and dust and sweat.
