The Winter Prince

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  “Don’t send me to sleep,” he begged desperately, quiet and fervent. “I want to breathe, not to sleep.”

  “This will ease your cough, little one,” I answered. “It won’t make you sleep.”

  “Who are you?” Lleu asked abruptly. “Stay here.” He choked again, and clung to me.

  “I’ll call for someone to watch him,” Ginevra said.

  “I’ll stay. I don’t mind.”

  So she left us. I eased Lleu back down onto the pillows and sat on the floor next to the cot to wait for morning.

  Sometimes Lleu slept; sometimes I helped him to drink, or held him upright until he stopped coughing, or drew the covers up again when he threw them off. A servant brought me a blanket, and late in the night, when Lleu’s breathing grew less ragged, I could doze a little. But most of the night I sat and watched, until the gray dawn light came stealing from behind the cloth-covered windows, and I could hear that others in the household were rising. Then I could not bear to seneot beartay awake any longer and fell asleep just as I sat: on the floor next the bed, leaning on the mattress with my face buried in one arm and the other flung across Lleu’s waist so that I should know if he stirred.

  Not long afterward someone woke me and helped me to rise, and I found myself being led through the corridors in the direction of my own chamber. I felt dazed and stupid; it was a long time since I had let myself grow so exhausted. The girl who accompanied me explained that my room had been set in order for me while I had been with Lleu, and that I must feel free to come and go as I pleased within the villa. She was dark-haired, tall and long-limbed, with a somewhat hard face whose severity was tempered by humor. She seemed familiar, and at my door I asked her name. She stared at me, then laughed. I knew her then, and smiled with her, too tired to laugh. She looks more like Artos than either Lleu or I. “Princess Goewin. You must think me very foolish.”

  “No, no,” she said. “You’re half-asleep, and I have changed since I was eight. I recognized your pale hair.” She opened the door to show me in and said conversationally, “You saved Lleu’s life, didn’t you? I insisted they open your window, so it’s my fault if it’s too cold in here. I remember you almost always had the window open, and it needed airing badly.” There were wooden shutters instead of glass in my window, and I used to keep them open for light, not minding the cold. It touched me that Goewin had remembered. I went to the window and leaned out: the Pennines glistened clean and bare in the distance, and closer by were black trees and stone walls limned with white. “You’re not wanting to go out in it again?” Goewin asked at my shoulder, narrowing her eyes against the bright light.

  This time I did laugh. “No. I’m going to sleep. If Lleu gets worse, call me.”

  I ministered to Lleu for most of the winter. I was not so experienced as Aquila, but my knowledge of herbs and medicines reached far beyond his: for which, in all honesty, I must thank you, Godmother. Aquila, who worked with the calm authority of long years of practice, accepted me as a colleague and an assistant. No one spoke openly of my skill. Some were frightened by it; was it not madness to put the life of their young prince into the hands of the high king’s illegitimate son, who might know a thousand ways to poison him? But all that winter my own life centered around Lleu.

  He was barely strong enough to get out of bed, and could eat only soup and thin wine. All life else for him was only the constant struggle to breathe, or to sleep fitfully, or to stare at the coals in the brazier and listen to people passing in the tiled corridor. We made him eat and saw that he was as warm as possible, and kept him bent over steaming bowls scented with mint and mustard to try to ease his breathing. He fought and fought against his illness, as though it were a physical creature that he held at bay. For long hours I fought with him. His unconscious fear of being hurt by anyone who touched him fascinated me; as far as Lleu was concerned it was a fear without foundation, but there is no emotion I could have understood more completely. When I was so badly hurt the summer before, I used to lie in dread of falling asleep; and more than that I dreaded your visits, your touch, your long fingers testing broken bones or securing bandages. But I had reason to dread you, and Lleu had no reason to dread anyone.

  I knew so well how that game of fear might be played that I had to watch myself and guard against frightening him on purpose. Why is it such a great temptation to torment someone who is helpless? Lleu hated above all to be drugged into sleep, and I never allowed him to kterwed himnow whether the drugs I gave him would induce sleep or not. His terror at losing consciousness was so real that often he fought determinedly against nothing, against his own mind, to stay awake. I played upon his fear; though I did nothing to hurt him, nothing that could be noticed. At night when I woke sobbing or crying out against you I would vow to myself not to frighten him again. But Lleu had a sudden, imperious way of issuing questions that sounded like orders; he would demand, “Have you ever seen your real mother?” or “Tell me how you crippled your hand,” and I could not bear to let such careless cruelty go unpunished. Then I would casually remark upon an increase in his fever, or speak of dreadful cures for conditions he did not have, and watch the color drain from his thin, bewitching face.

  Oh, Godmother, once he asked if I had ever had a lover. What was I supposed to answer to that?

  Once he asked a question that I could at least answer honestly, even if I did not like to speak of it: Had I ever killed a man. I told him, “Seven.”

  And he, outraged: “You keep count?”

  It is a mystery to me how he manages to strike such crushing blows unintentionally. I tried to answer with dignity. He should never know whether or not he had shaken me. “I am not so callous or careless as to have yet lost track.”

  Chastened, he said quickly, “I’m sorry. Do you mind telling me? I can’t judge you. I’ve never killed anything.” I could not tell if there was envy or horror in his emphasis.

  “I’ll tell you,” I said, “and you may judge me, if you like.” He watched me through eyes brilliant with accusation, sitting elegantly upright against his pillows, his thin, pale hands resting quiet in the fur of one of the slim and regal cats that I had sent him from Africa. I thought how he must see me through those dark, accusing eyes: stronger and older than he, limping and dangerous. Healer and murderer. “The king—our father sent me to Brittany six years ago to deal with a Gaulish tribe that was rising against him. There was a small skirmish before the matter was settled, and I killed two of the tribesmen.” I stopped, and thought, and went on. “Two other men I killed when I was helping to defend a fishing village from Saxon pirates, in a desperate fight, no more than self-defense. Also in self-defense I killed a man who attacked me on a deserted stretch of highway. That was a peculiar, ugly incident.”

  “And the sixth?” Lleu prompted.

  “One of the men from the fishing village.” It is hard for me to speak of this. “He was very badly hurt in the attack and asked me to end his life painlessly.”

  And suddenly from Lleu, a flash of sympathy: “That would take more courage than the others, I think. You can’t help defending yourself, but to have to plan and think about a death, even a merciful death, must be terrible.”

  “Yes.” I said to finish, my voice level, “The seventh was an execution I was asked to perform.”

  Lleu’s pale face leached to chalk, not because he was afraid, but because that was how he registered almost any emotion. If, blameless and superior, he had demanded how I could do such a thing, I would have left him to entertain himself for the afternoon. But he said, “Who asked you to do that?”

  “The queen of the Orcades.”

  “Aunt Morgause? Your foster mother?” Though plainly disapproving, he was not wh, he wa surprised; Artos had not taught his children to look for any gentleness in you. Lleu gazed at me quizzically, and said at last, “But Medraut, you didn’t want to do it.”

  For one blank moment I thought he had seen that in my face. Then with less assurance he added, “Did y
ou?” It had only been a question, not insight.

  “No,” I answered frankly. “It was a man I had liked and trusted. There was no doubt as to his guilt, but I did not want to be his executioner.”

  “Why were you, then?”

  “In the end, because he requested it himself.” God, how cold-blooded am I? It chills me that I can speak of such a thing in idleness, without ever betraying what I felt then. I sat still and looked at Lleu directly, daring him to question me further. He said abruptly, “Your name means ‘marksman.’”

  “Yes. The Deft One, the Skilled One.”

  Lleu suddenly grinned a little, wicked and delightful. “Are you?”

  Driven by mingled pride and self-contempt, I said, “I’ll show you.” I went into the little dressing room next door where I found a spool of thread and a light, sharp probe made of bone; then I returned to sit on the floor next to Lleu’s cot. With the thread and a slender twig of kindling from the brazier I strung a makeshift bow scarcely longer than my forearm. The probe served for an arrow. I used to do this to exercise my hand when I lay bored and aching in the long hot days of the previous summer, before I was able to walk. It had been a diversion from illness and fear: so, too, for Lleu.

  “Choose a target,” I said.

  Lleu glanced about and suggested politely, “The green cushion on the stool.”

  “Even you could hit that,” I said. He caught the faint mockery in my voice; indignantly folding his arms, he challenged, “The eye of the middle fox in the tapestry over the door.”

  It was so specific and small that I think he expected me to laugh and ask for a reasonable target; or if I did not, to come close but miss, and afterward receive his condescending praise. I was too proud to do either. I never miss.

  “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.

  He spoke then of Lleu. I had not expected such confidence; it took me off-guard. I found myself shy and silent, and absurdly flattered. For he told me this:

  “You must know how I love Lleu. He is my youngest child, and a joy to me; but no one has ever expected him to survive to adulthood. This winter has been the worst, and I believe he is alive now only because of you. I will admit to you freely that I was afraid my sister might poison your mind against me and my queen’s children. Your devotion to Lleu these last three months has assuredly proved that fear to be unfounded. But Lleu’s illness has also proved that though I may still cherish the hope that he will live to be my heir, I cannot afford to be so blinded by love for him as to count on it.

  “And this is how I will shape the future of the kingship. So long as he lives, Lleu is my first legitimate son and my heir. When he becomes sixteen I will have him declared prince of Britain. He is well loved by his people, but as a child is loved, as a rare jewel is guarded, as a symbol—the young lion, the Bright One, the sun lord’s namesake. He is physically weak, he is soft of heart to the point where he will not even hunt, and he does not have the head for difficult
judgments. He has no real talent, nothing I can see in him that will make him into any kind of warrior or administrator.

  “But you are different. Medraut, I am going to train you in everything I know. I want you to be able to cope with the tax receipts and revenue reports, as well as the governing of the harvest and defense systems. You know you can never be called high king; if Lleu dies I must make Goewin my heir. Even if Lleu survives, chances are the real power will lie in your hands no matter what name I give him. And I would rather have you at his side, using your superior skill and strength and wisdom for his support, than plotting to overthrow him. I will name you regent, and you will be the backbone, the keystone to his kingship.”

  Through this I sat speechless with my hands clenched, quivering in delight and tension. My father’s praise meant more to me than I can say. And the regency, the captaincy, the responsibility to be mine—it seemed to me then that it could not possibly matter who received the title.

  “I had thought to start by giving you a shared foremanship in the copper mines at Elder Field,” Artos said. “There is a foreman in one of the more difficult tunnels who is also a landholder, and he cannot devote as much time to the seam as it needs. You can relieve him and still have half your days for your own pursuits and for learning the core of whatever else I must teach you. It is only a beginning, but your life and position will be secure. I will see to that. I know that you are capable of leading men, and of holding together what I have built. Will you accept the position in the mines?”