Her husband spoke impatiently.
"What is it, woman? You're never grieving for the old enchanter? Whatever Merlin was to King Arthur and to the mainland folks with his magic, he's been nought to us here. He was old, besides, and even though men said he'd never die, it seems he was mortal after all. What's there to weep for in that?"
"I'm not weeping for him, why should I? But I'm afeared, Brude, I'm afeared."
"For what?"
"Not for us. For him." She gave a half-glance towards the cradle where the boy, awake but still drowsy from his afternoon's sleep, lay quietly, curled small under the blankets.
"For him?" asked her husband, surprised. "Why? Surely all's well for us now, and for him, too. With Merlin gone, that was enemy to our King Lot, and by all accounts to this boy of his as well, who's to harm him now, or us for keeping him? Maybe we can stop watching now in case other folks see him and start asking questions. Maybe he can run out now and play like other children, not hang on your skirts all day, and be babied like you've had him. You'd not keep him in much longer, anyway. He's long since grown beyond that cradle."
"I know, I know. That's what I'm feared of, don't you see? Losing him. When the time comes for Her to take him back from us—"
"Why should it? If she didn't take him away when the news came of King Lot's death, why should she do it now? Look, wife. When the king her husband went, you'd have thought that was when she'd see to it that his bastard went, too, quietly-like. That was when I was afeared, myself. When all's said, it's the little prince, Gawain, that's king of the Orkneys now, by right, but with this boy, bastard or not, nearly — what? — nearly a year older, there's some might say — "
"Some might say too much." Sula spoke sharply, and with such patent fear that Brude, startled, took a stride to the doorway, jerked the curtain aside, and peered out.
"What ails you? There's no one there. And if there were, they'd hear nothing. The wind's getting up, and the tide's well in. Listen."
She shook her head. She was staring at the child. Her tears had dried. When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper.
"Not outside. There's no folk could get near enough without we heard the sea-pies screaming. It's here in the house we need to watch. Look at him. He's not a baby now. He listens, and sometimes you'd swear he understood every word."
The man trod to the cradle's side and looked down. His face softened. "Well, if he doesn't, he soon will. The gods know he's forward enough. We've done what we've been paid for — and more, seeing what a sickly wean he was when we took him first. Now look at him. Any man might be proud of a son like him." He turned away, reaching for the staff that stood propped beside the doorway. "Look you, Sula, if any ill had been coming, it would have come before this. If harm was meant to him, the payments would have stopped, wouldn't they? So stop your fretting. You've no call now to be fearful."
She nodded, but without looking at him. "Yes. It was simple of me. You're right, I dare say."
"It's a few years yet before young Gawain will be troubling his head about kingdoms, and king's bastards, and by that time this one might well be forgotten. And if that means they stop the payments, who cares for that? A man needs a son to help him, in my trade."
She looked up at him then, and smiled. "You're a good man, Brude."
"Well," he said gruffly, pushing aside the curtain, "let's have an end to this. I'm going up to the town now, to hear what other news the sailors brought."
Left alone with the child, the woman sat for a while without moving, the fear still in her face. Then the boy's hand reached towards her, and she smiled suddenly, a smile that brought youth back, bright and pretty, to her cheeks and eyes. She leaned to lift him from the cradle, and set him on her knee. She picked up a crust of the black bread from the table, sopped it in a beaker of goat's milk, and held it to his lips. The boy took the bread and began to eat it, his dark head cuddled into her shoulder. She laid her cheek against his hair, and put a hand up to stroke it.
"Men are fools, so they are," she said softly. "They never see what's staring them in the eye. You'll be no fool, though, my bonny, not with the blood that's in you, and the way those eyes look and see right through to the back of things, and you only a baby still.…" She gave a little laugh, her mouth against the child's hair, and the boy smiled at the sound.
"King Lot's bastard, is it? Well, so they say, and better so. But if they saw what I see, and knew what I guessed at, ah, these many months past…"
She rocked the child closer, calming herself, sending her mind back to those summer nights two years ago when Brude, with a gift of gold ensuring his silence, had put out, not to his accustomed fishing ground, but farther west, into deeper water. For four nights he had waited there, grumbling at the loss of his catch, but kept faithful and silent by the gift of gold and the queen's promise. Then on the fifth night, a calm, twilit night of the Orkney summer, the ship from Dunpeldyour had stolen into the sound and dropped anchor, and a boat put out from her side with three men, queen's soldiers, rowing it. Brude answered their soft hail, and presently the thwarts of the two craft rubbed together. A bundle passed. The larger boat dipped away and vanished. Brude turned his own boat landward, and made all speed to the cottage where Sula waited by the empty cradle, holding on her lap the shawl that she had woven for her own dead child.
A bastard, that was all they had been told. A royal bastard. And as such a danger, somewhere, to someone. But some day, perhaps, to be useful. So keep silent, and nurture him, and your reward may one day be great.…
The reward had long since ceased to matter to Sula. She lived with the only reward she needed, the child himself. But she lived, too, with the constant fear that some day, when it became expedient to one or the other remote and royal personage, her boy would be taken from her.
She had long ago formed her own guesses as to the identity of these personages, though she knew better than to speak of them, even to her husband. Not King Lot; of that she was certain. She had seen his other children by the queen; they had Morgause's red-gold hair and their father's high colour and sturdy build. No such signs identified her foster child. The dark hair and eyes might, indeed, have been Lot's, but their setting, with the line of brow and cheek-bone, was quite different. And something in the mouth, the hands, the slender build and warm, clear skin, some elusive way of moving and looking, marked him, to Sula's constantly watching eyes, as the queen's child, but not the king's.
And, this once granted, other things became clear: the queen's men who had hurried the child out of Dunpeldyour before King Lot arrived home there from the wars; the subsequent massacre of all the town's infants in an attempt to catch and destroy that one child, a massacre attributed by Lot and his queen to King Arthur and his adviser Merlin, but instigated in fact (it was whispered) by King Lot himself; and the regular payments, in cash and kind, that came secretly from the palace, where, during the child's lifetime, King Lot had rarely set foot. From the queen, then. And even now that King Lot was dead, she paid still, and still the child was safe. This, to Sula, was all the proof that was needed. Queen Morgause, a lady not renowned for gentleness, would hardly so have nurtured her husband's bastard; a bastard, moreover, older than the eldest legitimate prince, and as such, arguably, with a prior claim to the kingdom.