The Winter Prince

VIII

A Game of Chess

FOUR DAYS LATER WE woke to find the Queen’s Garden a riot of caged songbirds. It had been decorated before dawn at your whim and for your pleasure. Elegant cages of all different sizes and shapes stood on the walks and walls and hung from the little trees; colored ribbons and bells of bone and silver fluttered from the wicker bars. Ai, Godmother, how is it that for all your cruelty you have so keen an eye for beauty? It looked li ^romke a place for a wedding party.

You spent the day there, admiring the songbirds and feeding bread crumbs to the peacocks. Fascinated as a moth courting a candle flame, I came home from the fields early and wandered about beneath the graceful cages. I tried to stay apart from you; but the Queen’s Garden is not very big. I forced myself at last to approach you where you sat on the grass among the peacocks, collecting the luminous and iridescent breast feathers that lay about. "When are you leaving?" I demanded.

You looked up with eyes the deep, sad gray or blue of a winter evening. "I will leave when the harvest is in," you said, pulling a stalk of lavender to strip the buds from it one by one, crushing them between your fingers until the air around your hands was sweet with their sharp scent. "I will go to Venta Belgarum to see my mother and then back to the Orcades.

"Only be patient," you added, stretching languid and catlike. "It is so gentle and warm here. It reminds me of the Summer Country in the south, where I grew up. It is cold in the Orcades."

"Twenty miles to the east of here lie the High Peaks, and the country there is as cold and cruel as anything in the north," I said.

"Ah, but you like the cold." You brushed a peacock feather across my wrist and mourned, "Medraut, why did you not send me a pair of those beautiful African cats?"

"Oh, let be," I said mildly, and turned toward the house. Lleu was walking down the steps from the colonnade, looking about him in wonder. He too had left the fields early.

"No. Stay. Sit by me." You slipped your thin hand into mine to draw me down, and said conspiratorially, "I have been waiting for him. He’ll like it, don’t you think?"

Lleu made his way slowly from tower of hazel to palace of willow, slim brown hands brushing aside the snapping pennants, dark head bent or tilted skyward that he might mark each different bird. "I didn’t come down here this morning," he called to you over his shoulder. "I only looked out through the atrium windows."

"Do you like it, Prince?" you asked.

He walked across to us slowly, looking about him with shining eyes. "It’s lovely, Aunt!" he answered. "How did you think of it?"

"It’s easy enough to think of entertainment when you are idle as I am," you said pleasantly. "Would you like me to tell you the names of the birds?"

"All right," he said, but continued his own slow tour of the garden. Finally he made his way back to us and held out his hands to you that he might help you rise. You took them gratefully, gracefully, peacock feathers fluttering from your fingers. But as you rose one of your fingernails tore a raw scrape across the inside of his wrist.

"Oh, pardon!" you exclaimed, snatching Lleu’s hand to your lips so you might kiss the scratch.

He stood still and looked at you steadily. "My lady," he said in quiet, "what did you mean by that?"

"An accident only," you said.

"It was not an accident!" I cried, and made to stand. You halted me with one hand pressed to my shoulder, a silent order not to move. "Softer, my marksman, softer," you said. "I can hear you."

Th c="j noe breath of lavender hovered about your hand, and your red-and-black enameled bracelets clicked and clinked close to my ear. "You don’t do anything by accident," I protested, but your hand on my shoulder held me powerless.

"Very rarely," you agreed. Lleu stood before you, shorter than you, slight and dark. The peacocks milled about his knees. "Why, Prince, you have gone pale as salt!" You laughed.

Lleu swiftly turned away from you. He diverted himself as best he could, and ran his fingertips over the shining blue-black feathers of a peacock’s neck. Shy and ill at ease, he bent so that we could not see his face. I looked up at you and threw open my hands in an angry and silent query, but you did not even turn your head. "You are beautiful, Prince," you said quietly to Lleu; "beautiful. I have never seen anyone so darkly beautiful."

"Go away," Lleu whispered without looking up. "Let me be. Why do you want to hurt me?"

"Dancer, swordsman," you said. "Black hair and eyes so deep, so dark: prince of Britain, first and foremost in the high king’s sight. Are you not in every way my opponent? But for you, my son should have been heir to the high kingship."

"Godmother, must you?" I interrupted in disgust

Lleu said irritably, "Medraut doesn’t want the high kingship."

"I thought you might guess whom I meant," you said smoothly. "Have you ever asked him?"

Lleu rubbed his wrist and said irrelevantly, "I hate these peacocks."

"And me?" You smiled your incomplete smile.

He could not look at you directly. "I didn’t think I did," he said. "But you seem to hate me."

"Of course not, ridiculous child," you answered. "Come, I will walk with you up to the villa." You offered a supporting arm to him, and he took it as though in a bewildered dream. "I shall tell the king," he said desperately.

"What shall you tell him?" you said. "You have nothing to tell him, Bright One." You turned his wrist over and ran your fingertips across the scratch you had given him. "Shall I salve this for you?"

"Oh: don’t touch it," Lleu said. He pulled away from you and almost ran inside, stumbling a little. I scrambled to my feet and started to follow, but you caught my sleeve and held me back. "I said to stay," you repeated. "The little sun prince can survive a while without your protecting hand over his head."

I said sharply, "Indeed, why did you hurt him?"

"He neglected my child cruelly. I am only trying to punish him a little."

"It was a game. He has asked forgiveness and been forgiven. Why must you go on and on?"

"You thwart me, Medraut," you said quietly. The caged birds chattered and fluted over our heads. "You turn my threats aside."

I said through my teeth, "Godmother, I am struggling to keep peace in this house, and I hope you do feel thwarted."

You laughed again, and did not answer.

I found Lleu later, asleep on one of the wide windowsills in the still sunshine of the atrium, curled with c, c width="2e his head cushioned on his hand and one of the cats dozing in the bend of his knee. Lleu asleep: and we had not been in the fields a full day. I bent to wake him, asking, "Nothing’s wrong?"

He sat up stiffly, and the cat leaped away. "There couldn’t be," he said. "I haven’t eaten our own food in four days."

"But you’re still so tired." I sat next to him on the stone sill.

"I think it is Morgause. I think her very touch must be poisonous," Lleu said, angry and weary, rubbing his wrist. "Could one do that?"

I smiled. "In hunting some people do use poisoned darts or spears. But a touch will not suffice; the skin must be broken."

My words caught in my throat, and for a still moment Lleu and I looked at each other in a kind of mute horror. Then Lleu slowly turned his wrist over and held it before me. Shadows cast by the dull lead traceries of the window and light from the stippled, glinting glass panes mottled and slashed his bare arm. The narrow scrape there was barely deep enough to have bled, but the skin around it was red and hot to touch. I took Lleu’s hand and held the scratch to my lips. "It smells of lavender," he said. "That wouldn’t put me to sleep."

"No, it wouldn’t." It smelled of aconite. The lavender did not hide it.

Lleu rubbed his eyes, and murmured, "I am very tired of this."

"I too." I snorted a little, wanting to sneer. Poisoned nails! You are exquisite, Godmother.

It was too late to go back to the fields, and there was no way for us to avoid eating supper with the rest of the family. We had scarcely been seated before you turned your slate-cold gaze on Lleu as he lifted his cup to drink. I leaped forward to knock his hand aside, and sent his cup flying across the atrium to smash against the windowsill in a storm of earthenware and cider.

Artos started up and struck the table with a blow that rattled the dishes. He thundered, "What the devil is the matter with you, Medraut?"

No answer came to mind. I stood before Artos without any excuse for my conduct.

"Medraut must think the cider’s bad," Goewin said suddenly, breaking the awkward silence. "One of the bottles was off this morning."

"That’s not true," I protested weakly.

"I tried it myself," Goewin insisted with careful and precise deliberation, looking directly at me as she spoke. "Though I may have been mistaken. Why take the chance?"

I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking. It was as close as I had ever come to lying. Ginevra said gently, "You’d better clear away the mess, Medraut."

Naked to the waist after a day at the gleaning, I climbed among the red stones of the Edge far above field, village, and estate. I came upon Lleu drinking and washing his hands in the Holy Well, the shadowed stone trough high among the trees and rocks. The water was so dark I could not see his hands in it. "Need you come this far to drink?" I asked, and he answered me, "I think our well is poisoned." He drew his hands out of the spring, but the water that dripped from them was deep red, not clear. "You’re bleeding!" I said, but he did not seem to hear. I made him turn around to face me, and his skin was white: not pale, but a dead, c bu1D;unreal white, like quartz or the moon. When I reached to take his hands his touch was cold and lifeless as stone. "You’re dying," I whispered, and as I spoke he crumpled slowly to the ground.

Someone spoke my name in a low and urgent voice. I did not turn around, though I knew you stood behind me. "Medraut," I heard again, and a touch on my bare shoulder. I shook you off. "Godmother, no," I whimpered. My name again. Your touch.

Then a streak of pain fierce across my shoulder, as though I had burst into flame.

I cried out, "Curse you, lady!" and found myself in bed in my own room in the villa, risen on an elbow with one hand pressed to my shoulder. A dream. Only a dream. But the burning pain—

"Medraut, it’s me," Goewin said. "Goewin. Goewin—not who you think."

I stared, only half-awake. Goewin stood a few steps away from me; when I woke she had shrunk back, startled. The little earthen lamp she held quivered in her hands, and lamp oil, cool now, was smeared across my shoulder. I thought she had burned me on purpose, to waken me. "You grow ruthless at last," I breathed. "I had not thought I must answer to two sphinxes: there is only supposed to be one."