The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(37)

I bowed my head. Behind me, I heard Lleu say, “And I?”

Artos answered gently, “I think such an experience has been punishment enough for you.”

I looked up sharply at my father, and challenged: “Is Lleu not old enough to choose where he will or will not go? Is he never to be given any responsibility, not even for himself? Can you ensure that he never kills anyone by accident, any more than you can protect him from being struck by lightning?” I stopped for breath, my heart racing. Words came to me out of the dark, out of memory: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Artos did not move. He said in deadly quiet: “You will return to your room.”

The following week was the blackest period of my life. I could not walk for several days, and I had sufficient leisure to imagine a half dozen ways I might have avoided so great a disaster; I sat at my desk for hours with my face in my hands and could think of nothing else. Artos allowed me to join the sad and bleak little funeral service held at the mines. But most of the week I was confined to my room, alone.

As I began to accept that for all its horror the ordeal was over, and irreversible, I tried to think of other things. I distilled oils for Ginevra, exotic but harmless essences such as cinnamon and vanilla; and I read. I read over again almost all the books I own, and some others I found in my father’s study, abandoning myself especially to those that are not true: Irish legends, Roman poetry, the few Greek plays that I have in Latin translation. One evening in November Artos discovered me over one of these, weeping in still and stricken silence. At first I did not even notice he was there, standing behind me, until he laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. Startled, I could only stare at him in inarticulate shame that he should find me in tears over a fiction.

But he read aloud over my shoulder, “‘I weep for you as well, though I can’t see you, imagining your bitter life to come.’”

I turned the pages over and wiped my eyes. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

“I also have shed tears for the king of Thebes,” Artos said. “My marksman: I have a task for you that I think you will enjoy.”

I could feel my hands tensing with relief. I was wretched with the enforced idleness of the last month.

Artos said, “I want you to teach Lleu to hunt.”

We took five hounds and rode south. The Mercian plain was at this time o kt tu tof year gray and brown, with clouds resting and tearing on the distant peaks that rimmed the horizon. There had been one or two light, insignificant snowfalls, and patches of snow lay unmelted here and there beneath the trees. The lake where the fisheries are was covered with a thin scale of ice, and our horses’ hooves sent a few pebbles skidding across the barely solid sheet as we rode by. The gravel made a surprisingly loud noise as it hit the ice, echoing and squealing like metal on stone. Lleu, who had scarcely spoken to me since our session with Artos, started at the unearthly sound like a nervous cat.

“You’ve nothing to fear, Bright One,” I said lightly. “I’m not going to touch my bow today.”

“You’re not shooting at all?”

“No. You are.”

I thought: You are going to kill, my brother; you are going to take the life of another living being, and forever you will be accountable for that life. As I am for many lives lost, animal and man.

I added aloud, “For after all, it’s no little thing to feed yourself, my lord Prince.”

Lleu threw me a resentful look and did not answer. He knew the purpose of our hunting together.

Before long we came upon a stag, full-grown but young. We could not get close to it at first, and soon we had lost both deer and hounds. We slowed our pace and halted. I sounded a long horn call and we heard the far-off yell of the dogs in answer, but Lleu made no move to follow. “Do you come?” I said impatiently. “Give chase!”

I reached out and pulled at his reins, then tore after him as his horse started suddenly away. We rode through a tangle of dripping trees, then burst into a cloudy brown clearing, silvered over with mist, to see the rusty deer bright bounding through the winter bracken. “Your bow!” I cried. “Now!”

Lleu obediently sent an arrow streaking just between the graceful antlers, harmless.

I pulled alongside him and reached out to snatch his reins again, bringing him abruptly to a halt. “You do it on purpose,” I hissed. “That is the trouble, is it not? In practice you can hit a moving target at twice that distance. I told your father I would teach you to hunt, and if we must spend the rest of the night riding you are not returning to be petted and praised by the high king till you have killed. You have the skill.” Lleu’s face was ashen. I added with cool menace, “I swear by the Wild Hunt if you do not bring down that stag at the next opportunity, I will make you eat its entrails when you do.” The deer and dogs had already disappeared into the trees at the opposite side of the clearing. I struck Lleu lightly across the face with his own reins. “Now, follow!”