“I was bored, and it seemed like cheating—no one had any idea where I was.” He stared at me. “You tracked me there? Then you have been—” He stopped, and repeated fiercely, “I won’t run from you.”
I said, “Little lord, I won’t make you run from me. You can run from your cousins.” Then I raised my hunting horn and sounded a long call. “Are you fit enough to outrun them all the way to Camlan?”
“Damn you!” Lleu cried. “Damn you, Medraut! I’ve been running all afternoon!” He pushed past my horse, but after going several paces turned back to look at me. I laughed and blew another horn call. He tore down the slope away from me.
I followed in his wake at a leisurely pace, triumphant and exhausted by the terrible hairline precision of those five wasted arrows. What did it matter to me if Lleu managed to reach the Queen’s Garden ahead of his cousins? He did outrun them, after all: he must. He was fully aware that he had lost to me and was determined not to lose to them.
The game should have ended there.
But during the course of the day Lleu had left his youngest cousin bound hand and foot somewhere on the Edge, and, thoughtless idiot that he was, he had forgotten. Gareth is best natured of any of your boys, and when we found him he considered himself to have been fairly beaten; this despite having been trussed up all afternoon with Lleu’s sandal straps.
You were not so forgiving.
That evening at supper all four of your boys were still talking of the day’s game, and you listened to them with amused and indulgent laughter. But as we were rising to leave the meal you drew Lleu aside and said to him softly, “But, my prince, you won’t be so neglectful of my youngest child again, will you?”
“Of course not, my lady,” Lleu said readily. “Gareth wasn’t ever in any danger, th Sny >
And you to him: “Perhaps you ought to be punished.”
“That is for my father to decide,” Lleu answered, purposefully regal, “not you, Aunt.”
“I will suggest it to your father,” you said directly to Lleu, though Artos himself sat by, watching your performance with silent contempt.
“I will consider it when you do,” Artos said, rising slowly and standing poised with one hand on the table, like a wary forest creature gauging a potential enemy. “Punishment and revenge are two different things.” You held Lleu with one hand on his shoulder and he stood still, waiting for you to release him.
I do not trust your nails so close to anyone’s eyes, and with a sudden, abrupt movement I freed Lleu from your hold. Ginevra spoke curtly, voicing my thought: “Don’t touch him.”
You turned to me and laid
a hand against my own cheek in Lleu’s stead. A gentle, tender touch, and I thought it to be mocking. “Or me,” I said, turning your hand aside. You smiled at Lleu mildly and said, “An apology is not always enough. But never mind, this time.”
VII
The Queen of the Orcades
THE FOLLOWING DAY IT rained, but a few of us still sat on the colonnade after supper rather than in the atrium. The evening was warm and light, the stone and tile porch a pleasant place to sit and breathe the rich, fresh smell of the wet gardens rising around. Artos and I played draughts, and between us Goewin concentrated on the moves we made. It should have been a quiet interim of rest. But you came out to the colonnade to join us; you stopped behind me to examine the game, and as you stood there you brushed the tips of your fingers against the back of my neck. Such a curious thrill of mixed delight and repulsion ran through my body that my arms broke out in gooseflesh. Instinctively I tried to cringe beyond your reach. Artos said to you mildly, “You’re interrupting.”
“Oh, I can find better sport than this,” you said lightly, and sat behind Artos on a chair by the edge of the porch. When Lleu came out a few minutes later you called to him, “Stay with me. Speak to me,” and he was too polite and not enough in awe of you to think to do otherwise. “You’re cold,” you said to him in a normal voice. “Talk to me, and I will chafe your hands.” Lleu sat on the tiles at your feet, and let you breathe on his hands and rub them gently as the two of you spoke together. I bent scowling over the patterned board as though I could not see you.
But your idle chatter ceased after a time, and at last Goewin attracted my attention with a scant, quiet gesture of one finger. Lleu was asleep: sleeping just as he had been sitting, on the floor at your feet, leaning with his head propped against your knee and one hand still resting in your lap. As I watched, you moved a thin hand to wander over his hair. When you noticed my slow glance you clasped Lleu’s hand firmly between your own, mocking, challenging, tempting. The playing piece I was holding suddenly snapped between my fingers.
Steadily I set the broken pieces on the board before me and rose from my seat, while Artos swung around on his stool to see what it was that so intrigued me. I bent to you and whispered past your ear, “What can yo Vny > whilu possibly want of Lleu?”
You smiled, unruffled. “What do you mean?” I whispered in anger: “You are unusually affectionate.” You laughed outright. When you spoke your words were directed at me, but your voice was pitched to include Artos and Goewin. “Here and now you scorn my affection, though when you were small you too crept to me for comfort after I had you whipped.”
I snapped, “What has that to do with Lleu?” and then tried hard to check my anger. I stood looking down at you with my hands resting unclenched on my hips. “You have not had the prince whipped, and he has not crept to you for comfort.”