“Has he not?” you said, ruffling Lleu’s hair. “My company must be uninteresting; I seem to have put him to sleep.” You looked toward Goewin and Artos, and said, “Medraut has not changed. Even as a child he found me suspect, always contradicting me, stubbornly at odds with me. He seemed to dare me to be strict with him. I sometimes had to have him punished for things Gwalchmei had done.”
“I only regret you were burdened with such a child for so long,” Artos said coldly. “I would have sent for him sooner if I had known.”
“Once he was beaten so severely that he was burning with fever when he came to me,” you continued relentlessly. “It was because he had accused me of lying. Do you remember, Medraut? You were only ten.”
“I was seven,” I said through my teeth, quietly.
You shrugged. “No matter. Young enough. But even then you would not admit afterward that you were wrong.”
I rapped out in exasperation, “Who cares what I did? It was almost twenty years ago.”
“Two years ago you were even more abject before me,” you said, gently stroking my damaged hand. “And still are, I think.” You took hold of the scarred fingers and kissed them.
I pulled myself free and choked, “You will not—”; but I broke away without finishing and turned to walk heavily down the stone steps into the rain and the dripping gardens.
I will never go back again, I thought, I will never again go creeping back to beg for your forgiving hands on my hair. I walked blindly away from the house and stopped at the stone wall on the edge of the estate, facing away and toward the hills. There I stood shaking with anguished, angry sobs, hardly aware that I was driving my knuckles so fiercely against the wet stone that I was tearing the skin.
Goewin followed me. She stood next to me for a long time, leaning against the wall without speaking, waiting for me to grow calmer. Finally she laid her own hand over my blighted fingers, and said, “She can’t control you now.”
“She can,” I gasped, “she can. Oh, God, I wish she’d never come. Why doesn’t she leave?”
“Why should she?” Goewin said reasonably. “She may never see her boys again. She talks idly, and stirs evil memories, but she is powerless here.”
I turned to look at her, measuring her with my eyes. She watched me, worried, wondering. Even then I was afraid to tell her, to tell anyone, but I must confide in someone or go mad. I said at last, “It was she who ruined my hand. The fingers were broken in a hunt, as I told you, and she was called in to set the bones. She twisted and broke them beyond repair, on purpose. Later they had to be broken [ to a hunt again. I reset them myself.”
“Why?” Goewin breathed in soft disbelief. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“To teach me a lesson, just as she said,” I spat. “To teach me not to break all my bones hunting. God help me, she was so angry—they carried me in torn and broken, flesh bled white, filthy with dust and stinking with stag’s blood. She was so angry. She cursed me for an idiot under her breath all the while she was mending the splintered bones in my legs and wrist.”
“Medraut, I have seen you hunt,” Goewin whispered. “Why would you let yourself be so terribly hurt?”
“We were on foot, with spears, and I went against a full-grown stag with my dagger,” I answered, knowing that such a response explained nothing. “That she should fondle Lleu’s hands like that, all the while thinking of what she has done to mine! She is so unpredictable, and so cruel—”
“She hasn’t hurt us,” Goewin said.
“And so strong,” I finished, pushing the wet hair back from my face. “Even after she destroyed my hand I still clutched at her for comfort, just as I did as a child. I went back to her, trembling, every time.”
“But why should you be so afraid of her?” Goewin persisted.
“When I resist her she invokes our dark secret, that she is my mother, and I must obey.”
“Is it so secret?” Goewin asked. “You call her Godmother.”
“No one knows. Only those few who were sworn to silence at the time of my birth, and now you and Lleu. It is why Artos would never make me his heir, even if I were his only child. There is nothing I count more shameful. I could not bear for her other children to know.”
“But why, Medraut?” Goewin insisted quietly.
“What do you think?” I replied in equal quiet.
She looked away. She wanted a straight answer, and I would not give her one. “Tell me what you think,” I repeated. “You have heard me talking in my sleep, you have seen the scars across my back. Surely you have made a guess.”
“All right,” she said in grim determination. She still pressed her hand over mine, trusting and intimate and infinitely courageous. “This is what I have guessed, Medraut. I think that you were like all the rest of us, ignorant of your parentage, and that you and Morgause were lovers. And when you found out she is your mother you set out to destroy yourself.”
I said nothing. Goewin asked at length, “Is that right?”
“No,” I answered bitterly. “You could hardly think worse of me! But you’re wrong. I have always known she is my mother.”
Goewin stared at the wall, her jaw set, frowning. We were both drenched through. “She has no power here,” Goewin said at last with stubborn certainty, to reassure herself as well as me. “You told her so much yourself. Lleu wasn’t punished. She can do nothing.”
“I lack your courage before her,” I said. “I have brought down a king of stags with my bare hands and a hunting knife, but she can bring me down with a few words and an idle kiss.” Once more I pushed damp hair out of my eyes, and smiled ruefully. “Ah, God, I’m dripping wet.? [ng
Goewin smiled with me. “I too. Come back inside.” Calm now, we walked up through the silver and green and gray gardens. The colonnade was empty.
We met you in the hall. The lamps were not yet lit, and in the half-light of rain and evening it was too dark to see your face. “The prince is gone to bed,” you told us softly. “You might step in and see that all is well; he is very cold, and Artos had to carry him in because we could not wake him.”
“Could not wake him?” Goewin echoed in alarm.