The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(40)

“Godmother?”

Still you said nothing, so I let you cling to me and quench your silent tears against my shoulder. I had never known you to weep at anything, ever. I said softly, “Godmother, speak to me.”

You raised your head and gazed at me with frightened eyes of darkling blue, the tear tracks glittering in the torchlight. “I did not think we could get this far. It is a week’s journey from Ratae Coritanorum, but it was warm when we left—the weather turned around midweek. I would never have attempted to come if I had known it would turn so cold. Oh, Medraut, Artos will not turn me away, will he? He must give me shelter tonight—I never meant to put myself at his mercy like this! I am so afraid—”

“You are not afraid of anything,” I said with a laugh. Your gloved hands tightened into fists against my chest.

“No!” you whispered, and buried your face beneath my chin. I was so well wrapped against the chill that I could not even feel your breath; it was as though there were no warmth in you at all. You whispered into my scarf, “But I am afraid now. I—I am no longer young, and I have no authority to speak of, and I do not want to freeze to death tonight.”

Then I saw that you clung to me for support as well as for comfort. I murmured, “You may stay, but Artos will treat you as a prisoner. Your things are to be searched, and you are to be guarded at all times. Will you submit to that?”

Your bent shoulders heaved as you wept soundlessly. “Yes. Damnation take my brother and his kingdom! Only let me be warm tonight.”

I looked up at Caius, who watched you with eyes of contempt and of sympathy. “Take her in,” he said. “I’ll see to her servants.”

Camlan spent the following day preparing for a shamelessly pagan festival. The Christian celebration was to be kept, more solemnly, on Christmas day, but now we fastened holly at the windows to ward off evil. The hearth in the center of the Great Hall was piled with faggots of slender birch logs bound with red ribbon and gold thread, and the villa was sweet with garlands of forced apple blossom. The day passed quickly, the shortest in the year. Once it was dark the household waited ready in restless excitement; the rhymers’ pageant would begin the revelry, but first we must perform from cottage to cottage throughout Elder Field. I sat and read as I waited for Caius to summon me to the rhyming, while your children and the twins sprawled on the warm floor of the atrium in their finest clothes. My small lamp cast myriad minute reflections against the frost on the old, intricate glass windowpanes. I pretended to be undisturbed by the expectant air of the young people sitting on the floor, but the night was already alive with magic, and my attention kept being diverted by Lleu’s clear, authoritative voice.

“What is this mosaic supposed to be?” Gareth asked. “Pass that taper here, Gaheris, so we can see it.” They all knelt on the floor around the central picture, and Gaheris and Goewin held candles as close as they dared in order to see without dripping wax on the glimmering tesserae. The stone and glass tiles glittered beneath the unsteady light. “These are different gods,” Lleu said. “I’m not sure what they mean. The bull stands for Mithras, and the lion for Lleu Llaw Gyffes, the sun god. Or perhaps the eagle is for him. The man is for the Christ.”

Ai, such ignorance. I could not let it pass. “‘And before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal,’” I quoted aloud, though softly. “‘And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures: the first like a lion, the second like an ox, the third with the face of a man, and the fourth like a flying eagle.’”

They all turned to look at me. “What is that from?” Lleu asked.

“Your mother claims to raise you as a Christian,” I said. “Have you never heard that, or read it? It’s in a book called Revelation.”

“Well, it doesn’t reveal anything.” Lleu laughed, sitting back on his heels and gazing at me with a touch of arrogance in the tilt of his head. Candlelight winked on the golden circlet that he wore, the circlet that set him apart from the others as prince of Britain.

“Those creatures in the mosaic aren’t pagan gods,” I said mildly, resting my book in my lap. “They’re symbolic representations of the four who recorded the life of the prophet you claim to follow.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he demanded.

“Little Prince, you didn’t ask.”

“I wish you would not call me that s cagn=",” he told me.