The Winter Prince
Page 18

"How could you?"
"I lied to him," you answered casually, and commenced to brush your hair. "There’s a riddle for you, my virtuous child: Is it worse to deny the truth, or to hide it? I doubt you’ll hurry to set him straight."
I did not know what to answer. As I hesitated, the guards woman at the door entered; she said to me, "My lord, Caius is asking for you."
"Send him in," you told her.
"The rhyming!" I sighed. I had forgotten in my anger. "I cannot go dressed like this."
"Why not?" you answered. And Caius exclaimed as he came in, "Medraut, you look a prince!" He laughed, and slau="justcame to stand before me and clasp my shoulders as he admired my finery. "You need not change. You know the costumes were made to fit over our clothes."
"Even so."
"No fear, we’ll make it part of the performance. I’ll get you a cloak. No one must see you yet."
"Medraut!"
I turned back to you before I left the room. You said quietly, "Come bid me good night when all is over."
We took the pageant from door to door throughout the village, nameless, anonymous luck-bringers in our shaggy and shapeless costumes. Our small party had become a parade when we arrived back at the estate, for many of the villagers had followed us on their way to the feast at Camlan. Warm with the cider and ale of Elder Field, we burst shouting into the crowd gathered in the Great Hall, who returned our shouts for greeting. Then Gofan in his great voice called out the opening lines of the pageant:
"Way! Make way!
Yield the floor, clear the way!
We’ll mend all evil’s ill with mirth
On this Midwinter’s Day."
He commanded silence. The laughing crowd stood still.
"Under your green-girt beams we come
Neither to beg nor borrow;
Happy we play upon your hearth
To speed away all sorrow.
We are the season’s rhymers!
Cry welcome to us here!
Fortune we bring to field and fold
At the closing of the year."
Now our audience was rapt. The words were old and familiar, and it was too long since they had been spoken in this hall. Caius stepped forward into the small circle of clear ground, the red, holly-trimmed hood hiding his face so that the white linen mask beneath could not even be glimpsed.
"In come I, the Old Year,
Keeper of this fruitful land.
Your stout hoards of grain, ale, and meat
Are blessed beneath my hand."
A ragged cheer went up. They were apt words from the steward of the estate, but no one was sure that it was Caius.
"Here is your hope, here is your bread,
Your shield against the dark’s sharp blast:
Who boldly dares before me stand
To lay me low at last?"
Bedwyr answered him, the high king’s swordsman, gray-hooded and glittering with icicles of silver foil and mica.
"In come I, the New Year;
The snow falls at my word.
The black months wheel around ere Spring,
Ice-edged as my cold sword.
I am the one stronger than all
Who march in this parade:
Which of these gay retainers, lord,
Dare turn aside my blade?"
Marcus, in his crown of forced flowers:
"In come I, the Winter Prince,
Son of the Year that’s gone;
Green ivy, hawthorn, and holly I bear
For pledges of the returning Sun.
I will fight for the Old Year:
Though the grim Midwinter’s rod
Strikes the soil, soon the young Sun
Will stir the Spring’s triumphant sod."
Bedwyr as the New Year answered:
"Pull out your sword, young Harvest Lord,
Defender of the Sun!
As the Year dies, so you shall fall—
You and the Old Year both I shall have
Before I quit this hall."
Gofan brought forth the swords, staves bound with ribbons and green leaves. Half serious, half in jest, Marcus and Bedwyr began the ritual duel. Marcus cried out in feigned innocence: "The New Year has only one hand! How is he to fight me?" The audience laughed, full well aware of Bedwyr’s skill with a sword, and guessing his opponent to be untrained and woefully mismatched. Marcus retorted smartly to the good-natured jeers of the spectators; but when Bedwyr casually knocked Marcus’s staff aside with his useless arm, Lleu’s voice rang out above the rest in a peal of delighted laughter. Marcus whipped around to face him. "I suppose you can do better?" he challenged. He tore the wreath of flowers from his head, crying, "I’ve been killed eight times today already. Let the New Year fight one who can defend himself!" Faceless still, masked in white linen, he advanced upon Lleu and snatched away the golden circlet to replace it with his own. "A worthy champion for the Old Year!" Marcus announced triumphantly, dragging the protesting Bright One to the center of the floor.
"Pull out your sword, young Harvest Lord,
Defender of the Sun!"
Bedwyr repeated, as Marcus pressed his staff into Lleu’s hand.
Lleu swallowed his mirth and straightened the wreath he now wore, black hair tousled beneath blossom out of season, dark eyes glinting in a face white with excitement: he stood slender and solitary amid the costumed figures, a single human youth among savages or gods. He said to the audience in confidential tones, "You realize how unfair this is. They’ve been practicing all evening." There was some laughter at that, but it was hushed, for this would be a duel worth watching.
It went on, and on. Even Bedwyr, who had taught him, could not disarm Lleu son of Artos. The revelers cheered and laughed till they must gasp for bre s gawenath, feverish in their pleasure. Marcus shouted at last, "You’re supposed to let him kill you!"
"Why would anyone do that?" Lleu cried, without a gap in his defense.
"So we can get on with this foolish show and eat," Bedwyr grunted.
Lleu threw down his staff and held his arms out wide, in a comic gesture of frustration and submission. "What must I do, hurl myself upon your blade?" Bedwyr made as though to stab him, and Lleu fell dramatically, taking near as long to die as he had taken to be killed. "Have you finished?" Bedwyr demanded, and to the crowd’s delight Lleu answered distinctly, "Oh, very well." He closed his eyes and lay still.
Bedwyr breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief, and Caius turned to him in high fury:
"Wretched cur, what have you done,
So to dispatch my only son?"
Now he turned to the crowd.
"Is there a man so wise in art
That he can quicken fast the slain,
Defy the ordered season’s course
And wake this youth to life again?"
Gofan bellowed deeply: "Send for a Magician!"
Now until this moment I had been costumed as were the other rhymers, in a formless suit of leaves and straw, except that my mask was black. Hidden within a little throng of shapeless, faceless men, I had removed the shaggy coat to reveal the black robe underneath. At Gofan’s call I stepped into the open space; I held in my right hand the last of the fire sticks from Cathay. Its glittering white core poured heat-less sparks over the fierce golden dragon coiled around my wrist. The crowd fell silent.
Into the silence I said quietly, "I am the Magician."
So I stood, unmoving, until the fire stick flickered out. Then Gofan said, "Oh, are you?"
I answered modestly, "Well, some know me as a doctor."
A little breath of laughter rippled through the crowd, a relief.
"What ailments can you cure?" asked Caius, and Gofan added, "More than one or less than two?"
I made the answer.
"I can cure a thousand illnesses that are not there,
And heal a thousand wounds that never were.
I have been praised for miracles from here to Africa!"
Someone laughed.
"I have a bottle in my breast,
A liquor whose clear fire could turn
A glacier to a running stream.
One drop will save your stricken son.
"But first I’ll have my fee," I added. "Ten silver coins."
Caius asked of Gofan, "Have you any silver?" and Gofan retorted, "Only what can be scraped from the lead mines of the Pennines. There’s no ore her s;s e ye but copper." The audience laughed again. Caius turned to me and reported, "He has no silver."
"Then I’ll take copper." The ritual payment was made. Caius said with flourish,
"Now try your skill, Magician.
Grant that new life may follow old
When your spell weaves through this hall,
To thrive despite the cold."
I knelt and bent over Lleu, who lay smiling with eyes closed, waiting for the ritual words.
"Into your wounds the golden drops
I pour from out the healing cup—
He opened his eyes, and nearly choked at what he saw. I smiled down at him faintly, masked in black silk, my hand on his chest heavy with the gold I wore. I finished the verse:
"As death came to the Winter Prince,
So may the Lord of Spring rise up,"
and held my hand to him. He took it defiantly, ghost white, but smiling nonetheless. When the watchers applauded the mock miracle, Lleu turned a handspring and accidentally shed the rhymer’s wreath in a shower of red berries and white blossoms. Marcus laughed and handed back to Lleu his own circlet. We chanted the final lines of the pageant:
"Our rhyming is come to a close;
We mean to play no longer here.
May fortune fold this hearth and hold:
So welcome the New Year!"
Lleu did not speak to me again during the celebration that followed. He outdid himself dancing, and even managed to emerge triumphant from a spontaneous wrestling match that developed in a corner of the hall among a few of the boys and young men. He would not look at me, and in the wild throng of dancers and feasters it was simple enough for him to avoid me. But afterward, before I came to you, I found him sitting on the warm floor of the atrium near the brazier, playing with one of the cats.
The gold band he had worn earlier lay at his side, discarded. The low fire shimmered in the cat’s eyes and on a few silver threads in Lleu’s sleeves and at his throat; he sat alone, head down, very quiet.
"Good night, Prince," I said, for I could not pass by without acknowledging him.
"Medraut!" He let go of the cat, but it did not leave him: it sat next to him on its haunches, rubbing its head against his elbow.
"My lord?" I said, passionless, pausing to wait for his word.
"Medraut, I’m sorry." He ran a hand down the cat’s back and then traced the edge of the circlet with his finger, not looking at me. "I mean; for behaving so badly."
"Thank you," I said. I drew a sharp breath and said quietly, harshly, "But, my lord, your apology can do nothing to reverse what you said before your cousins this evening."
"Medraut, I’m sorry, I’m sorry," Lleu pleaded. "Surely they know?"
"They know s01C#x2 now," I said.
He rubbed his forehead and murmured, "I feel terrible."
"Oh, little brother, don’t waste your time," I whispered.
That silenced him. He gathered himself to stand up, the cat in one arm; he was only on one knee when he dropped it. Then he noticed the gold band on the floor, and bent to pick it up, but in the act of getting to his feet again he dropped that as well. It clattered tinnily on the tesserae, spinning round and around upon itself before it finally lay still. Lleu put an unsteady hand to his temple, as though confused, and again bent to retrieve the circlet. I took him by the shoulders and made him straighten. "Have you had too much to drink?" I asked.