The Winter Prince

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  “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.”

  “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.ȁ [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.

  “I would guess hemlock poisoning,” you said seriously, “if I did not think better of my brother’s servants.”

  Goewin said in disgust, “Who would do such a thing? He must have a fever.” She pushed past you toward Lleu’s bedroom, but I did not follow immediately. I asked you quietly, in the old routine, “What kind of fever makes one shiver?”

  “You need not be afraid,” you said. “I think he will recover by morning.”

  Lleu lay in bed, asleep. Goewin was drawing the tapestries across the windows when I came in, and Artos was lighting the brazier. I knelt by the bed and shook Lleu’s shoulder, saying lightly, “What makes you so tired, little one?” He pushed my hand away halfheartedly and murmured a few unintelligible syllables, but he could not be roused enough to sit up or to say anything coherent. Nevertheless his breath was even, and he was not so very cold after all. Artos came to stand by my side; he asked quietly, “What is it?”

  “Nothing, sir,” I answered. Hemlock? Perhaps a thimbleful out of a poisoned cup, but not enough to harm him. It could have been accidental.

  Then why should you think to suggest it?

  I finished, “Nothing, except that he seems unusually tired. I think it will pass by morning.”

  “He’s had no trouble breathing this year,” Artos said, “and he is much stronger than he used to be. Medraut, your skill as a physician is equal to Aquila’s; you’re certain there’s nothing the matter?”

  “Nothing sleep won’t cure. Truly, my lord,” I answered.

  We left it at that. During the next week the harvest began, and on days when I could help there I ate my meals in the open with the field-workers. Then I would return after dark, sunburned and exhausted, to fall into bed without speaking to anyone. Now even the mines frustrated me, for the shaft we were tunneling kept running into solid bedrock; we were unable to approach the vein of malachite that we felt sure was just beyond our reach. At the end of the week I sat at my desk, trying to draw up a plan for working around the bedrock, and I was too tired and too absorbed in my work to look up when Lleu came in.

  “What’s wrong with me?” he demanded. “You know. I’m sure you know. Are you drugging me?”

  “No!” I turned my head sharply, facing him. I said in anger, “I swore to you! And why should I?”

  “You don’t dare lie to me,” Lleu said fiercely.

  “I’ll dare anything,” I told him, hearing my voice as quiet and deadly as I have ever heard yours. “But I don’t lie.”

  We glared at one another in tense silence for a few moments. Then I sighed gently and propped my head ag [ed ter?inst my hand, leaning on the desk and looking at him. “Am I to understand that you are still so tired?” I asked.

  “Ever since the night after our game,” he said. “Medraut, I’m sorry; but you know more about medicines and herbs than anyone else here.”

  Not so.

  But he did not know of your skill, then, and I could scarcely believe you would risk your brother’s wrath with such glaring treachery in his own house. I looked down at the dolphins of tile forever chasing one another across the sea-gray floor. “I have been working in the mines and in the fields every day this past fortnight,” I said. “When would I find time to poison you? Why would I? God!”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated softly, and almost on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry. But I’m afraid, Medraut! What is happening?”

  “I can’t say,” I said slowly. “Is there anything besides the weariness?”

  “Not really. But I just fall asleep! I’m not ill; it’s like being drugged, it’s like drinking poppy, or too much wine.”

  “Do you feel it now?”

  “No,” he admitted. “It comes and goes.”

  “Does anyone else know?” I asked.

  “Only if they’ve noticed. I haven’t told anyone but Goewin. Medraut, you have to do something; you can’t just let me be mysteriously poisoned!”

  “You do not know that it is poison,” I said wearily, “and it may change. But I’ll watch you. If you sense it starting again, come to me at once, or else send Goewin.”

  So he left, reassured. I thought of the things you had said that first night, and wondered, and wondered.

  Goewin came for me just before dark, and early as it was I was already asleep. She shook my shoulder a little; though she rarely touched me at such times, for I slept naked beneath my blankets, and my nightmares disturbed her. And indeed, I was dreaming. Instead of waking, I snarled, “No!” and struck her full across the face.

  She stood staring, not really hurt, but too astonished to speak. I sat upright in silence, tranced. “Sir?” she said tentatively, while I stared back at her without seeing her. “Medraut!”

  “Princess?” I murmured finally, at last realizing where I was and what I had done. “Goewin?” We gaped at each other. “Forgive me. I—” I swallowed, shivering. “It was a dream, my lady. What do you want?”

  She looked at me long and hard. At last she said slowly, “Something is wrong with Lleu. It’s more than weariness; his wrists are chill as ice.”

  I listened with a still face, then swung out of bed and drew on a loose robe. I lit a candle and quietly searched my shelves for the vials I thought I would need. “Do you know what it is?” Goewin asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But if it is poison, it will be hemlock.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Can you help?”

  “I think. Go, light a fire for him. I’ll follow.”

  Goewin and I sat with Lleu late into the night, in part to comfort him, in part to minister to him, and in pa [im,dth="2ert to discuss together in low tones what was happening. More agitated than languid now, Lleu stirred the coals in the brazier and fidgeted restlessly with books and candlesticks, ornaments and games that lay about the room. He was unable to keep still. In the past two years he had reached his full stature and acquired a kind of wiry strength to match his natural grace; but now his gestures were determined and dogged, as though he had to concentrate and consider every movement he made. At last he sat on the floor next to the bed and for a moment collapsed with his face buried in his hands. Then he looked up and said, “Who is doing this?”

  I think Goewin had some idea of the answer to that question, as I did. But neither of us spoke. “Can you guess? Do you know?” Lleu cried softly.

  “I can guess,” Goewin said with grim confidence.

&n
bsp; “You can’t lay blame for such a thing without proof,” I said.

  “We can tell Father and have him stop it.”

  “No!” I protested. “It may be accidental.” I thought to make light of the threat, and to protect Lleu myself. “Think of the fear and anger that would spread through the estate if we spoke of poison. Lleu is not hurt.”

  “I am!” he said.

  “You’re not,” I answered. “You’re made uncomfortable, and you’re frightened. But you aren’t in danger.”

  Goewin argued in quiet fury, “How can you know? If it may be accidental, it may as easily be malicious, and because of your skill everyone will blame you, Medraut.”

  “I’ve already blamed you,” Lleu put in quietly.

  “Ai, Lleu, if you won’t trust me, who will? It would shatter me to have you approach your father with such an accusation! I won’t let any harm come to you.”

  “Medraut, I have never heard you so irrational!” Goewin cried. “All the food and drink in Camlan seems tainted when it reaches Lleu’s lips.”

  “Then we’ll get food for him from Elder Field,” I said, uncompromising. “Please, Goewin, help me to see this through, help me to keep Camlan from ugly intrigue and suspicion.”

  I think that Goewin finally agreed because she so wanted me to prove to her that I was to be relied upon, that I would assure all would be well. Reluctantly, the twins did as I planned. Lleu came out to the fields with me and ate his meals there. The first morning at the reaping he bound a square of damp linen across his nose and

  mouth and said apologetically, “The dust makes it hard for me to breathe.” But he worked as diligently as anyone else. Goewin shadowed him when he was at home, methodically and quietly making certain that he ate nothing from the house. Yet we remained on edge, not daring to trust that the matter could be finished.

  VIII

  A Game of Chess

  FOUR DAYS LATER WE woke to find the Queen’s Garden a riot of caged songbirds. It had been decorated before dawn at your whim and for your pleasure. Elegant cages of all different sizes and shapes stood on the walks and walls and hung from the little trees; colored ribbons and bells of bone and silver fluttered from the wicker bars. Ai, Godmother, how is it that for all your cruelty you have so keen an eye for beauty? It looked li ^romke a place for a wedding party.