“Go on,” Lleu said, waiting.
“Watch closely,” I said. “There’s hardly any strength in a bow this small; the probe will probably bounce off the cloth when it strikes.” Lleu’s gaze flickered dubiously from the stiff and scarred fingers of my left hand to the target he had chosen: but what is my hand weighed against my name, my nature? I drew back the almost invisible bowstring, and shot; the sharp little sliver of bone struck straight through the minute black knot of embroidery, and pinned the cloth fast to the door.
“Oh, well done!” Lleu cried. He sat up straight, white and thrilled, and the startled and offended cat stalked away from him. Lleu stared hard at the door, then shivered and turned to stare at me. “I have to trust you utterly, don’t I?”
What made him say that, what made him aware of that? I shrugged as if I neither minded nor understood what he m
eant; but I was making light of what was true.
II
Equinoctial
I DREAMED OF YOU, Godmother. When I was traveling I slept deep and sound; oncer e back in Camlan I found myself stricken with frequent and unsettling dreams, always of you, always hateful. They were the final scars you left on me. I tried to ignore and forget them as I did the marks you left on my body; but like those, I could not always hide them. By chance, one night, when Lleu was terrifying the household with his panicked gasping, someone sent Goewin to wake me. I have no idea what I revealed to her that first night, for when I woke I could not remember the dream. Goewin would not repeat what she had heard me say, not even to me. But after that night if I was needed she came for me without being told. She would wake me carefully, rarely touching me, with a low word in my ear or a light in my eyes. Sometimes I mistook her for you, and then she would speak to me quietly and steadily until I woke and knew otherwise. There were those who thought me treacherous: what blazing fuel to that fire if Goewin had repeated the oaths and protests I made to you in my sleep. But she never told anyone else.
I tried to lock you out of my mind. I let the empty calm of the snowbound fields envelop me. I cared for Lleu or rode alone; sometimes I visited Gofan at the smithy, or read, or helped stoke the fires under the granary floor that kept the corn dry. By spring I could walk without limping, and my ruined hand did not ache so much with the cold or damp. The dreams I bore, hating them, as I bore and hated Lleu’s careless arrogance.
Spring did not come gradually, with indistinct changes in the air and earth, but all at once. One morning the snow was gone. Artos came back barely a day later. The winter must have been as dreadful for him as for any of us, knowing or guessing at his child’s illness and being held in Deva by cold and responsibility. All Camlan was cheered when he returned, and Ginevra held a mock banquet in his honor. We dressed in our finest clothes and brightened the dark beams of the Great Hall with garlands of holly that Goewin told me had never gone up at Christmas; the small ration of bread for the meal was twisted into individual loaves in the shapes of birds, flowers, and fish.
In the evening before the feast Artos took me into his study as he used to do, to talk with me in earnest and in private. When I was younger the hours spent there had been a privilege and an honor, and the room itself still seemed to offer me the promise of authority and fulfilled ambition. It is one of the smaller and darker chambers in the villa, but familiar and comfortable: it is Britain and Artos in essence, peculiarly his people’s and his own. The dark wood cabinets are stocked with tax receipts and harvest reports from all the islands and from Brittany, and there are shelves and shelves of Ginevra’s precise and careful maps. Artos and Ginevra share the drafting board and stencils, straightedges and measures; but unique to Artos himself is the clay model of the city wall at Deva, and the entire wall behind his desk is covered by a linen tapestry intricately embroidered with the floor plan of his beloved villa. With her unerring eye for distance and contour, Ginevra made it for him twenty years ago, after he had so painstakingly rebuilt the vast old house and settled the heart of his kingdom at Camlan. On countless evenings as a child I sat or stood here before my father, telling him of the exciting or trivial events of my days; and here six years ago Artos gave me the first real chance to prove myself worthy of his trust, when he sent me to Brittany to exercise a strict yet merciful disciplinary expedition in his name.
On this night we talked at length of my travels, and of the distant places I had seen and the people I had come to know. I spoke with esteem and affection of Kidane, the merchant I had stayed with when I served as an ambassador to the African kingdom of Aksum, and of his daughter Turunesh, who had become my dear friend. Artos asked me an os askeonce if I would speak of the time I spent with you, but I would tell him nothing except that I had left you estranged. It was then that I advised him to send for your younger children to foster himself. I knew your lord King Lot of the Orcades would be pleased to have his sons reared at the court of their uncle the high king, and that you would be powerless to prevent them from coming. I was cold, speaking of this. Artos did not press me further concerning you: he hides dark memories enough of his own.