“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?”