Afterward they caressed, laughed, japed, spread two straw ticks on the floor that they might have real room to move about, played, loved, his head rested between her breasts, she urged him anew and yet anew, he swore he had never known the match to her and the believing of him was a tall fire.
The glass in the window grayed. Candles had burned down to stubs. The smoke of them drifted bitter through a chill that she finally began to feel.
“I must see you to your lodging,” he said in her arms.
“Oh, not at once,” she begged.
“The fleet leaves soon. And you have your own world to meet. First you will need rest, Svoboda, dear.”
“I am weary as if I’d plowed ten fields,” she murmured. A giggle. “But you did the plowing. You rascal, I’m hardly able to walk.” She nuzzled the silky beard. “Thank you, thank you.”
“I’ll sleep soundly on the ship, myself. Afterward I’ll wake and remember you. And long for you, Svoboda. But that is the price, I suppose.”
“If only—”
“I told you, the trade I follow these days is a bad one for a woman.”
“You come home from it after the season, don’t you?”
He sat up. His face seemed as gray as the light. “I have no home any more. I dare not. You couldn’t understand. Come, we must hurry, but we needn’t ruin this that we’ve had.”
Dumbly, she waited while he dressed and went to get her clothes from Rufus. The thought trickled through her: He’s right, the thing is impossible, or at least it would be too brief and become too full of pain. He does not know, however, why he is right.
Her garments were wet after washing. They hung clammily. Well, with luck she could get to her room unnoticed. “I wish I could give you the silk robe,” Cadoc said. “If you can explain it away— No?” Maybe he would think of her when it passed to some girl somewhere else. “I also wish I could feed you. We’re under time’s whip, you and I. Come.” Yes, she was hungry, faint with hunger and weariness and ache. That was good. It pulled her spirit back down to where she belonged.
Fog hazed and hushed the streets. The sun had belike risen, but barely, in the east that Svoboda had forsaken. She walked hand in hand with Cadoc. Among the Rusi, that simply meant friendship. Nobody outside would know when the clasp tightened. Few people were around thus far, anyhow. From a passerby Cadoc learned the way to Olga’s dwelling.
They stopped before it. “Fare gladly, Svoboda,” he said.
“And you,” was all she could answer.
“I will remember you—“ his smile twisted— “more than is wise.”
“I will forever remember you, Cadoc,” she said.
He took both her hands in his, bowed above them, straightened, let her go, turned, and walked off. Soon he was lost in the fog.
“Forever,” she said into the emptiness.
A while she remained standing. The sky overhead was clear, brightening to blue. A falcon, early aloft, caught the light of the hidden sun on his wings.
Maybe it’s best that this was what it was and nothing more, she thought. A moment snatched free, for me to keep beyond the reach of the years.
Three husbands have I buried, and I think that was release, to pray them goodbye and see them shoveled under, for by then they had wasted and withered and were no longer the men who proudly stood beside me at the weddings. And Rostislav had peered at me, wondered, accused, beaten me when he got drunk… No, burying my children, that was the worst. Not so much the small ones, they die and die and you have no time to know them except as a brightness that goes by. Even my first grandchild, he was small. But Svetlana, now, she was a woman, a wife, it was my great-grandchild who killed her in the birthing.
At least that was the final sorrow. The villagers, yes, my living children, they could no longer endure this thing that is I, that never grows decently old. They fear me, therefore they hate me. And I could no longer endure, either. I might have welcomed the day when they came with axes and clubs to make an end of the thing.