“Yes.”
“So Snake would be a servant in your city, and be made to carry water for your bath?” He laughed in a high voice. “I must tell him so. He will find it very amusing. I hope to see your city one day, Luke. You have interesting customs.”
His tone, ambiguous before, was unmistakably indulgent. I realized with a quick flush of anger that Cymru—this prinked and perfumed monarch—was condescending to me, was regarding us as barbarians. The thought was bitter. I could not get up and go—the courtesy due from me as my Prince’s representative forbade it—but I resolved that I would speak to Greene and see what could be done about cutting short our stay. This King, this whole place, sickened me.
My ears had grown used to the chatter and laughter behind me in the throne room. The Wilsh were always gossiping and laughing about trifles; the din, even in so large and high a room, was enormous. Now it broke and died into a hush, and the silence seemed like a sigh. I turned my head to see the reason.
She was at the top of the marble stairs and had just started to descend. All faces were upturned to watch her. These Wilsh were proud of their possessions and did not hesitate to boast loudly of them, but in the stillness I saw acknowledgment of their finest possession of all. There was pride and love in it.
It was easy to see why. She was utterly different from the women of the court. For one thing, where they wore gowns of clashing colors, heavy with gold embossing, and brooches and necklaces and as many as a dozen bangles on their arms, her dress was of white silk, simply cut. She had no other adornment but a necklet of gold which showed how much finer and softer was the gold of her hair. The Wilsh were a swarthy people with a few red-haired and still fewer blond. But these last, compared with her, would look dark and coarse. Her skin had a fineness, a delicacy of pink and white, such as I had never seen even in a young child. She was halfway down the stairs before my eyes could take in the details of her features. And be further dazzled: she was beautiful.
I understood why we had met in the throne room rather than the King’s parlor. The staircase was a perfect setting for her entrance. It was what she would demand, from pride of beauty. I did not like her for that, but acknowledged it as just.
She came from the stairs and the crowd, still silent, parted to give her room. She reached the throne and curtsied to her father.
Then she turned to me. I smelled her scent—not cloying like the others but fresh and flowerlike. She put her hand out to me and I bent my head to kiss it, grazing its softness with my lips.
When I looked up she was smiling. She said, and even her accent was unlike the rest, more lilting and more musicaclass="underline"
“I have heard much of you, Luke. I am glad to meet you at last.”
I made some sort of reply, I am not sure what. Her smile held me. It was not proud after all, but warm and open. Her eyes were a deep blue, big and wide.
The chattering had started up again behind us. The Princess said:
“Come and sit by me, Luke, and tell me things.”
SEVEN
THE BAYEMOT
ONLY TWO ROADS LED OUT of Klan Gothlen; that to the east along which we had come and another that ran westward up the river valley. It was this we took when the court rode out to the hunt, postponed from the previous day because of the weather. There had been a little rain and some wind and it was cold, the King said, for the time of year. This morning there was patchy sunshine and the wind was less sharp. It blew into our faces, undoing the careful set of the King’s hair and beard, and jangling the bells on the reins of the jennets.
Yes, jennets. Because in the hunts of the Wilsh as in their banquets the ladies shared the pleasure of their men. This deepened my contempt for their idea of sport but offered a compensation. The King was ahead, behind his outriders, deep in conversation with his Chancellor, Snake. Ten yards behind them rode Edmund and I, and Blodwen rode between us.
It was not that I was any more at ease in her presence than I ever was with girls. I could not think of things to say and stumbled in my replies when she put questions to me. It was Edmund now who kept up conversation with her while I, for the most part, stayed silent. And yet I was entirely happy to be with her. Not just because of her beauty, though the sidelong glances I snatched dazzled me. There was something else in her—a quality that I seemed never to have encountered before, made up of warmth and liveliness and gentle goodness.
She wore a black costume as Wilsh ladies did to the Hunt—the men, even the flamboyant King, were dressed alike in scarlet jackets—but her jennet was pure white. She carried a small whip, for ornament only I guessed. These ladies did not sit astride their horses but sideways, with both stirrups against the beast’s left flank. It looked a poor way of controlling even a pony, but she handled hers well. Her small hands were firm on the reins.
In my concern with watching her I did not realize she had addressed a remark to me until she reached across, laughing, and tapped my shoulder with the whip.
“Woolgathering, Luke!” I looked at her directly. “Or brooding on some great project, from the fierceness of your gaze.”
“I am sorry, my Lady. What was it you said?”
She gently chided: “Not ‘my Lady.’ Edmund must address me so, not being of royal blood, but to you I shall be Cousin. Or Blodwen. Since you are son of a Prince and a Prince’s heir.” She looked from one to the other of us. “You are very different. How did you come to be friends?”
“Through fighting,” Edmund said.
Her brow creased in bewilderment. “Fighting?”
Edmund grinned. “Yes, my Lady. I insulted him and we rolled in the gutter together. And he beat me and after that we were friends. It is very simple.”
“But how could you fight when he was your Prince’s son? And how dared you insult him?”
“Our customs are different from yours. Rougher, perhaps.”
“True,” I put in. “But he has not told you he was a Prince’s son himself.”
Her eyes opened wider. “I do not understand.”
“Prince of the city before my father killed him in a duel and took his place.”
“Oh, no! Is that what happens in the south? Surely no one dare raise a hand against a Prince?”
“It is not usual,” Edmund said, “but it happens.”
“And after all this you are friends?”
“As you see.”
“I see,” she said, “but do not understand. It would not be so in our country. When a man makes an enemy it is forever.”
And what of friendship in this country, I wondered: was that as eternal as enmity? She had spoken seriously and I realized that many complexities must lie behind the masks of smiling faces which one saw all round one in King Cymru’s court. But she herself was different in this also. I was sure there was no duplicity in those bright and candid eyes.
She laughed suddenly, a lovely sound.
“But I am glad you are friends! And since your father was a Prince, Edmund, it is proper that you too should call me Cousin.”
“Thank you, my Lady.” She laughed again and Edmund joined in. “I beg your pardon, Cousin!”
• • •
We rode ten miles at an ambling pace to a spot where the valley widened at the junction of two rivers. There was none of the discipline of our southern hunts, and none, I thought, of the excitement either. The King from time to time called people up to ride with him, and the whole procession seemed more concerned with conversation than anything else. I already knew what great talkers the Wilsh were. Gossip which in Winchester might have passed a few idle minutes was here mulled over, sifted again and again to discover new subtleties.
At the river fork we halted. We had been followed at a discreet distance by a caravan of servants, and now they came up and erected a tent for the royal party and trestle tables on which food and drink were set out. It made a fine show. The tent was lined with blue and yellow silks and surmounted by King Cymru’s pennant, showing a golden eagle with outstretched wings against a field of azure. The tables were piled with a vast weight of dainties, or what the Wilsh called dainties. I allowed Blodwen to guide me through them but jibbed at some, particularly at what were plainly, by their shells, cooked snails. Edmund had some at her persuasion; he said afterward that they tasted of nothing much but required some munching.