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Tristram shook his head in some wonder, and then burst into unrestrained laughter.
“And at first I thought I would be doing such a good job of duly punishing you.”
“But you did,” she retorted.
“Oh, did I?” Tristram purred in turn.
“You know you did,” Judith answered with a smile.
She cupped his face, now looking intently into his eyes.
“And you can still punish me all you wish. Yet there’ll be no more hair shirts in this household. I meant it when I said I’d burn each and every one of them.”
He scowled at her.
“I swore an oath before God,” he said, now looking grim.
“Their God. Your cousin’s God of hatred. Not mine or yours,” Judith said quietly. “You know too well I’m right.”
He closed his eyes, knowing indeed men of his cousin’s ilk would think Judith’s words heresy. Still, he knew deep within himself that she had the right of it. He felt free of the penance. To him, it had been in truth a penance he’d upheld in order to punish himself for the love he’d lost. Yet now that love had been regained.
“Fine. No more hair shirts,” he found himself muttering.
Judith beamed at him and he cocked an eyebrow at her. Now, unlike other times, they found themselves in agreement, and he was no longer used to being in agreement with his wife.
“I begin to be half sorry we’re reconciled. Now it will be hard to find excuses to chastise you,” he told her with a smile which was half wicked and half wistful.
“You still love games, don’t you?” Judith countered, with a faint smile on her lips. “Don’t tell me you don’t. You always have!”
“So, wife, you’re saying you will wish to play that game with me? The game of chastisement?”
“I am!”
“Yet there will be not only pleasure, but also pain for you in it. I do not think I’ll be able to help spanking you hard. It may be sinful of me, but I’ve come to take delight in it,”
“Both pain and pleasure mingled,” Judith mused. “Isn’t that what life always is? Both pain and pleasure?”
“At times,” Tristram nodded.
“Then we should play the game at times,” Judith nodded in her turn. “Strange as it is, it is a game we have both come to enjoy. It is, after all, a game of love.”
Tristram smiled faintly, understanding she was right. It was a strange game. Yet love was strange at times.
“I suppose I knew I loved you from the first moment I heard your voice,” he said. “It is a strange thing indeed. Like the love philtre which compelled Tristan to love his Yseult. Something I simply felt from the start and could not ever help. But I suspect you didn’t love me from the start. Perhaps it was my own fault for not courting you properly. You were too young, and had not had time to get accustomed to things other than your home. And then misfortunes happened which prevented us from being with one another, and when at last we were together again, I found you pushing me away. Was it because you didn’t love me at the time that you sought to annul our marriage?” he asked.
Judith had promisedto be entirely truthful to her husband.
“I was in love with you from the first. Like a fanciful child. But I suppose that being in love is not the same thing as loving. I really learned to love you as time went by. And, in truth, I sought to annul our bond out of misguided jealousy. I thought you loved another. I simply couldn’t bear it and I didn’t even seek to ask you if there was true cause for my jealousy.”
Tristram sat up and looked at her in sheer puzzlement.
“Why would you ever think I loved another? I have always been true to you! Even during the year we were estranged. Even when I tried to think upon other women, I could not help it. I could not help always keeping faith with you!”
Judith felt even more wretched for having mistrusted her husband so. She now vowed she would make things up to him, and be forever the best of wives.
“It was wrong of me to misjudge you without giving you a chance to defend yourself. And we both know it is a grievous error you should chastise me for.”
She laced both repentance and teasing in her voice.
