The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(15)

When we walked inside together Lleu was sitting on the floor of the atrium beneath one of Ginevra’s pot-bound lemon trees, toying with an unfinished corner of the mosaic. The chips of colored stone glinted in the heavy afternoon sun that poured through the old glass windows. Lleu was absorbed and at ease, vaguely graceful even in the way he sat, head bent, thinking, motionless. When he noticed Goewin he leaped to his feet and whirled her in a short, wild dance across the tesserae, scattering a few unused tiles that clicked beneath their feet and shot across the floor like thrown stones skimming over ice. The twins half sat, half fell into one of the stone ledges set in the windows as seats. “What is it?” Goewin laughed.

“I’ve beaten Bedwyr,” Lleu announced.

“You’ve what?” Goewin said, hardly able to take him seriously.

“Four times today I disarmed him.”

Astounded, Goewin said, “Today? You di Cy?four times today?”

Lleu’s dark eyes sparkled and his face glowed. He nodded. He would never say such a thing if it were not true.

“How on earth did you manage that?” Goewin asked shakily.

“From learning all that tumbling. He didn’t know where I’d be—he couldn’t hold me. Oh, Goewin, we were so pleased!”

“Lleu,” Goewin said carefully, glancing up at me, “Bedwyr is considered the finest swordsman in the kingdom.”

“I know,” Lleu said softly.

“But you must be—Lleu, you can’t be that good in one summer’s training!”

“Ask Bedwyr,” Lleu said. “Anyway, it isn’t really one summer. I’d learned to use a sword before Bedwyr began to teach me. He teaches skill.”

“He couldn’t ever teach Caius enough skill to disarm him,” Goewin said. She stared at her twin. “You must be simply brilliant. And nobody ever noticed it!”

“I’ve never been well enough before,” Lleu said. “Oh, Goewin, I can’t tell you how”—he laughed—“how remarkable I feel. Aren’t I?”

Goewin tried to push him out of the window seat; but she could no longer best him in strength. She laughed instead. “Yes, you conceited creature, you are remarkable.”

But I could not laugh.

Artos was not in Camlan when this happened. He was making his seasonal progress through the south of Britain, checking defenses and supplies in the small towns and cities. Lleu wrote to tell him of the occasion, and Artos wrote back exulting: “Lleu, my Bright One, you will make a king, after all—think of it, the finest swordsman in Britain at fifteen!

“I’ll begin to train you as I’ve trained Medraut… Stay strong, grow wise, and I’ll crown you with pride in the spring.”

Such love in those words, such love and joy. It was never Lleu’s name that I envied.

On a November morning a few weeks later I walked with Lleu and Goewin to Elder Field to visit the smithy. It was the first day in two weeks that the sky was clear; the air was chill but not cold. The track across the surrounding fields that leads to the wooded Edge and the mines was so muddy that we almost had to wade. Men were out setting the hedges and cutting back the hazel coppices, glad for the respite from the rain. We kept close to the edge of the wood; the trees glittered with drops of water, and wet dead leaves clung to our ankles. When we arrived at the smithy, Gofan greeted us cordially, though shortly, and over the ringing din that Marcus was making indicated that we should stay out of the way. But despite the furious clatter and the heat they were producing, the two were not particularly hard at work that day. In this late autumn time of hedge laying and hunting they had set aside the constant repair and production of harness and yoke fixtures, scythe blades and plowshares that kept the smithy busy earlier in the year. Gofan was teaching his young apprentice a more intricate work, and they were making a gate or screen of wrought iron.

After a time the two men left their work quiet and came over to sit and talk with us. Sunlight streamed in across the floor from the open porch, turning to shadow now and again as the clouds moved across the sky, making the coals in the forge grow brighter for a moment. “W Cnt.adohat have you been up to in your Roman villa?” Marcus asked.

“Nothing so useful as your work,” Goewin answered.

“Lleu has been repairing the mosaics,” I said, running my hands over the cooling gate. It felt even more beautiful to touch than it was to see, rougher and more textured than a knife blade, but not harsh.