The Winter Prince

But he read aloud over my shoulder, "‘I weep for you as well, though I can’t see you, imagining your bitter life to come.’"

I turned the pages over and wiped my eyes. "I beg your pardon, sir."

"I also have shed tears for the king of Thebes," Artos said. "My marksman: I have a task for you that I think you will enjoy."

I could feel my hands tensing with relief. I was wretched with the enforced idleness of the last month.

Artos said, "I want you to teach Lleu to hunt."

We took five hounds and rode south. The Mercian plain was at this time o kt tu tof year gray and brown, with clouds resting and tearing on the distant peaks that rimmed the horizon. There had been one or two light, insignificant snowfalls, and patches of snow lay unmelted here and there beneath the trees. The lake where the fisheries are was covered with a thin scale of ice, and our horses’ hooves sent a few pebbles skidding across the barely solid sheet as we rode by. The gravel made a surprisingly loud noise as it hit the ice, echoing and squealing like metal on stone. Lleu, who had scarcely spoken to me since our session with Artos, started at the unearthly sound like a nervous cat.

"You’ve nothing to fear, Bright One," I said lightly. "I’m not going to touch my bow today."

"You’re not shooting at all?"

"No. You are."

I thought: You are going to kill, my brother; you are going to take the life of another living being, and forever you will be accountable for that life. As I am for many lives lost, animal and man.

I added aloud, "For after all, it’s no little thing to feed yourself, my lord Prince."

Lleu threw me a resentful look and did not answer. He knew the purpose of our hunting together.

Before long we came upon a stag, full-grown but young. We could not get close to it at first, and soon we had lost both deer and hounds. We slowed our pace and halted. I sounded a long horn call and we heard the far-off yell of the dogs in answer, but Lleu made no move to follow. "Do you come?" I said impatiently. "Give chase!"

I reached out and pulled at his reins, then tore after him as his horse started suddenly away. We rode through a tangle of dripping trees, then burst into a cloudy brown clearing, silvered over with mist, to see the rusty deer bright bounding through the winter bracken. "Your bow!" I cried. "Now!"

Lleu obediently sent an arrow streaking just between the graceful antlers, harmless.

I pulled alongside him and reached out to snatch his reins again, bringing him abruptly to a halt. "You do it on purpose," I hissed. "That is the trouble, is it not? In practice you can hit a moving target at twice that distance. I told your father I would teach you to hunt, and if we must spend the rest of the night riding you are not returning to be petted and praised by the high king till you have killed. You have the skill." Lleu’s face was ashen. I added with cool menace, "I swear by the Wild Hunt if you do not bring down that stag at the next opportunity, I will make you eat its entrails when you do." The deer and dogs had already disappeared into the trees at the opposite side of the clearing. I struck Lleu lightly across the face with his own reins. "Now, follow!"

He tore away from me, riding blindly and furiously. I caught up with him among the trees, and we rode together in silence except for the horses’ hooves thundering hollow on damp turf. Ahead of us, the young buck was tiring visibly. "Now, Bright One," I said. "Strike."

Lleu bent his bow with reluctant hands. Despite his hesitation he took the creature with an arrow in its throat.

"Ha!" I drew my horse to a halt. "Beautiful!"

But he had not killed it. The lean, quick hounds leaped for it like gray flames. "No!" Lleu cried. He slid from his horse and threw himself among the dogs, snatching at the collar of his own. "Here, sir! Back!" Clinging to his strain kto . He sing hound, he shouted wrathfully, "Call off your horrible dogs!"

I called the dogs and dismounted. "Better that you finish than that they do," I said, and gave Lleu my hunting knife.

"Oh, I can’t!" he gasped. He knelt next to the fallen deer with one hand lightly resting on a short, proud antler, and his hound and Goewin’s whining at his shoulders.

"Would you have it die slowly, then?" I said.

He held on to the antler and moved the heavy head to stretch out the animal’s throat; its steaming breath was strangled and uneven. I began to say, "If you don’t—"

But he drove the blade to cut deep across the stag’s throat. And just as he looked up at me, another deer came through the trees toward us: not chased and so not running, a dark doe, almost black. Goewin’s hound darted after it.

"Take her, Prince!"

Lleu stood up and shot, elegantly and miserably. I laughed. "It’s true; you could have hit every animal you’ve ever aimed at. What a strange little idiot you are." I glanced at his gray, bleak face and said in a gentler voice, "Give me the knife, I’ll help you. If you are to be high king you will have to kill more than deer, eventually."

"I know," he said.

"There is some balance to all things, Lleu. The stag’s death gives us winter meat; and the power to kill, or to heal or to judge, carries with it a great weight of responsibility."

"I know." Lleu pushed his hair back from his forehead wearily. "I know. You are teaching me. Only don’t expect me to thank you for this lesson."

"You never do," I said, thinking of another beautiful stag, and the huntsmen buried beneath the hill.

X

Revelation

TEGFAN’S LEGS HEALED SLOWLY. At the end of the year he still could not walk. Though by now I was no longer confined to the estate and could come and go as I pleased, I was still idle; I was desperate to be given even the smallest of tasks. Close to Christmas, Caius sent me to the smithy with a mare that was to be shod. While Gofan worked over the new shoes, Marcus said to me casually, "Will you be rhyming with us this year, lord?"

"How do you know I ever did?" I asked. It had been eight years since my last rhymers’ pageant, the ritual Midwinter’s mumming at Elder Field. There had been no revelry the year of the famine, and that sobriety had also tainted the following Christmas.

"Caius tells me that when you were a boy you took the part of the Old Year’s son, the Winter Prince." Marcus grinned at me. "I, of course, have taken on that role in your absence, but you may try to wrest it from me if you like."

"No fear of that," I returned. "I think I am no longer suited to act the young hero. And I thought you’d stopped the play."

"We haven’t done it since you’ve been back," Gofan said. "But this year… for the most part this has been a golden year. It bears celebrating."

"There is a conspiracy abroad to cast you as the Magician," Marcus a nto . ars cdded.

Magician—I? The rhymers’ play is a pageant for midwinter, celebrating the return of the sun at the dark time of the year’s closing. The Magician is the bringer of light, the figure whose task it is to recall the murdered harvest lord to life. I thought it bitter irony they should see me fit for such a role. But Marcus tossed my objections aside, and even Gofan laughed. They said I was the most skilled healer the villagers had ever known, and that I was missed in the mines and the fields. I warmed to their friendship and flattery. So I came to join the informal and haphazard rehearsals for the play; I was once again made welcome by the high king’s friends and servants, at a time when I had a great need of laughter and companionship.

Christmas brought cold. The year’s end was marked by clear, bitter nights on fire with white starlight. There was no snow, only the biting, bone-deep chill that froze the little rivers solid and kept the African cats curled together on the warm tiles of the atrium floor. But the granaries were full, and the storehouses crowded with dried fruit and salted meat. The people of Camlan and Elder Field wrapped themselves well with wool and fur and laughed at the hard frost, for they were busy with the preparation of a joyous Midwinter’s feast. I was torn between full enjoyment of the celebration and my nagging, lingering burden of guilt for the tragedy I had caused in the early autumn. A Christmas of glitter and sweetness, which I thought myself unworthy to share in. And yet I could not help but share in it.

On Midwinter’s Eve I returned to the villa after a long day spent on the threshing floor in one of the village barns, where we had been making rhymers’ costumes out of straw and evergreen. All the family were at leisure in the atrium. Gareth sat in the window seat with one of the cats, while Gwalchmei played idly upon a small harp; Agravain, in an uncharacteristic fit of patience, was teaching Gaheris and Lleu an obscure dicing game. Goewin and her mother were arguing agreeably over a parchment spread on the table. I scooped up one of the cats and nuzzled it beneath my chin; its fur was the color of the dry savanna country of Aksum before the rains, warm. The cat shrank away from the chill of my skin, and I thought suddenly of Lleu when he was no more than five years old: allowed outside in winter for the first time in his life, laughing as he winced away from a handful of snow that I held against his cheek.

"It’s still so cold out?" Artos inquired from his couch.

"Cruel," I said.

"Did you see Tegfan today?"

"I did. He says the pain has stopped. I don’t want him walking yet, though."

"Wise, my marksman," Artos said. He stood before me to tease my cat beneath its chin. "I have said nothing, but I know what a trial this healing is for you. Your patience is to be admired."

His praise, only his simplest kind word, could kindle warmth in me. I said quietly, "Thank you, sir."

I put down the cat and began to take off my gloves. I had scarcely set them on the table before Caius came in and said to Artos, "There are pilgrims at the gate."

"Beggars?" Artos asked. "Who would be out on such a night?"

Caius pressed his lips together tightly. He spoke so that only Artos and I could hear him. "The boy who let them in says it is your sister."

"No," I said aloud. Artos glanced at me sharply. "You sent her back to the Or sack;

Artos shook his head. "She pled illness earlier in the season and requested that I allow her to postpone the journey. She is supposed to stay in Ratae Coritanorum, south of here, until spring."

"But, sir!" I exclaimed in outrage. "You did not tell me!"

Artos looked at me with eyebrows raised. "I have made no secret of her plans," he said. "Her children are always clamoring for news of her." Then his face hardened, and he turned to Caius. "Though I did not expect her here. She tries my patience." He beckoned to Ginevra, and Caius explained the matter to her in low tones.

"I will not have her here," I hissed. "I will not live in fear of her."

"It is Christmas!" Artos returned. "What would you have me do, send her back into this cold?"

"She chose to come!"