It was the longest night of the year but for one. For some time Dunstan had been feeling that his summer love was dwindling with the daylight, though he fought against the dark as his pagan ancestors had, with the artificial light of great fires. His were lit not by brands but by the tip of his pen.
The tragedy was that his beloved could not read his poetry, no more than a blind thing, and the glow of his fires across the wide darkness was nothing to her. His summer love only knew light by the warmth on her cheek.
She had kept him waiting so long that his own cheeks were numb with cold, but at last she appeared, slipping like a dark, swaying spirit between the trees.
Dunstan opened his arms wide, and the drapes of his heavy cloak hung down like wings. Anna hesitated a moment before stepping into them, but she wrapped her arms around his body beneath his cloak, as he had hoped she would.
“I missed you,” he whispered.
“Me too,” she giggled.
Dunstan beat back the urge to correct her English. Anna was far from poetry indeed.
She held her head so tightly against his shoulder that he could only kiss the side of it, on her soft, cold hair. When she finally lifted her head, it was only to let go of him and step away.
“I’m sorry if I made you wait,” she said, “but you know, I had to wait for Mag’s father to fall asleep.”
It sounded like a scolding, as if it were his fault not only that he had to wait outside in the cold, but also that she had to wait for her friend’s father to sleep.
“It’s no trouble,” he said.
“So, what did you want to tell me?” she asked.
“Tell you?” he smiled. “I don’t know. I could tell you many things. I didn’t want to tell you something. I only wanted to see you.”
“Oh.”
“I haven’t seen you in so long. Over a month. Can you believe it?”
“I just saw you this morning, silly.”
“I know, but only to tell you I’m home. I mean see you: truly see you, silly.”
“I know,” she giggled.
He tried to pull her closer to kiss her – to truly see her, as he meant it – but she leaned her head away from his.
“Anna?” he murmured, bewildered.
But this was what he had been feeling and fearing for some time: the sun drawing slowly away from the earth until its watery light had not even the warmth to melt snow. The last time he had seen her she had been chilly, but now she had gone quite cold.
“I’m cold,” she complained.
“Well, let’s go somewhere warm,” he said.
“I can’t. I have to hurry back.”
“But – you only just arrived, Anna.”
“I know, but I told Mag I wouldn’t be long.”
“But…” It was an absurd thing to have told her friend: of course she would be long if she was going to see him. And Mag’s father was presumably sleeping.
She turned her face away from his, as if ashamed. “I thought you only just wanted to tell me something.”
“Perhaps you only just want to tell me something.”
“I don’t know,” she muttered.
Dunstan sighed in weariness. Even his little eight-year-old brother had outgrown the habit of saying “I don’t know” at every moderately perplexing occasion. Anna seemed to produce it as a reflex, as a lazy alternative to thought.
“Anna…”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” she cried with sudden indignation. “I can never see you. You don’t even live here any more. I had to stay with stupid Mag in her stupid dirty house just to see you.”
“What do you mean: what are you supposed to do?” he asked gently, hoping it would calm her. “What am I supposed to do, Anna? I can’t see you either, and it’s killing me slowly.”
“I know, Dunstan, but what am I supposed to do? Die slowly? You’re never going to marry me.”
It was more than an assertion: it was a challenge, but he could not rise to it.
He had already tried; he had already dreamt up and discarded a hundred desperate plans to bind himself to Anna forever. He might have known how to say to his father: “I am no longer your son,” but he could not have said it to his mother. Nor could he have said to his mother: “This is now your daughter.” As much as he loved Anna, he loved his mother more.
“We have always known that, Anna.”
“I know, so what shall I do? Grow old waiting for nothing?”
He had already accepted that she would never be his wife, but other dukes and kings and lords had solved the problem of political marriages by taking lifelong mistresses. His mother’s own cousins Godwine and Magnus were sons of King Harold’s mistress, whom he had so loved that he had had “Eadgith” tattooed on his chest, directly below the word “England.” And these sons were recognized as Harold’s successors above even the sons of Queen Aldgyth. Such things could be.
But Dunstan had never known how to say this to her.
“What have we been doing all this time, Anna?” he asked, trying to reason with her. “You have loved me all the same, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but what am I supposed to do? Stay at home and never have any fun because I can’t see you?”
“Anna!”
“Besides, my father knows about you. Someone told him. So I don’t think – ”
“Who told him?” he cried.
“I don’t know who,” she muttered.
“I think I do,” he growled.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter, Anna. Listen – ”
“So,” she interrupted primly, “what I think you are trying to say is that it is best we do not see each other any more.”
Dunstan’s mind reeled. This was so far from what he had been trying to say that he could not comprehend it at first. Then he understood that it was what she was trying to say herself, and that she intended to cast the disagreeable words onto him.
“Oh, Anna,” he whispered.
“But what? I want to have a house and a hearth and some children some day, you know. And you aren’t going to give me that, are you?”
“If that is what you want, I should like nothing more than to give it to you,” he murmured.
“What?” she gasped. “Will you marry me?”
He could not reply.
“Oh, I see!” she said. “Well, you know, I’m not that sort of girl. I may not be fine enough to be a Duchess, but I’m not that kind of girl.”
“But, Anna!”
He wanted to explain to her that the mistress of a duke was not the same thing as the unwedded lover of a blacksmith, but his tongue was unaccustomed to pronouncing such coarse words.
“So, if that’s all you wanted to tell me…” she sniffed.
“I didn’t tell you anything!” he cried, finally out of patience. “I only came here to see you, and to hold you, and to spend time with you. If you want me to tell you something, I shall tell you I love you in a thousand different ways. But I shall never say what you are trying to say to me now.”
“Well, I think that is very selfish of you. I want to get married, just like any other girl.”
“To any other man,” he snapped.
“Not any other man…”
“Oh? Do you have one in mind?”
“No.”
Dunstan snorted. He did not believe she had not at least asked herself the question.
“So, if that is all you wanted to tell me…” she began again.
“I love you, Anna. That is all I want to tell you. You may go now.”
She hesitated only then. “I’ll miss you,” she said softly.
“It is kind of you to say so.”
“I mean it!”
“Thank you, Anna. Goodbye.”
“Do you want to kiss me?”
“No.”
“No?” she gasped.
“The last time I kissed you, I was happy,” he said mournfully. “I should like to keep that kiss for the last.”
“Well. Fine then. Goodbye, Dunstan. I shall be happy to speak to you if I see you at market.”
Dunstan grunted.
Anna slipped away again, shadowlike between the shadows of the snow-laden pines.
Chapters
So, did I scare anyone with that title?