Art grinned. “If only he’d confine himself to the village,” he said. “He’d have travelled all the way up here with us if Ector had let him. He doesn’t beat me with a birch rod, but he does tell me things. About what will happen to my immortal soul if I don’t toe the line. So Ector made him stay at home, to give me a break.” His smile faded. “Because if it were… only a case of getting a child, that’s been seen to.”
Lance felt an odd twitch of shock. He and Art had compared notes, and although neither knew his exact date of birth, had concluded that they must be more or less the same age. “A boy?” he asked tentatively, and waited until Art nodded. “Where is he?”
“In Ireland with his mother. I, er... I went to a Beltane fire.”
“Oh!” Lance couldn’t hide a grin. Children from the May Eve rites were a foregone conclusion. Father Tomas had made half-hearted efforts to repress them, but even up here on the moorlands, before the great winter had come, the early summer nights had been too sweet. “Was she nice? The girl, I mean?”
“Yes. Unfortunately she was also my half-sister, Modron.” Art twisted round to face Lance, urgently, as if afraid of his judgement. “I didn’t know her, I swear. She’s Ygraine’s first daughter, by Gwrlais. She was six when the Merlin took me away, and I’d never clapped eyes on her since.”
Lance sat still and quiet. In some ways, as his mother’s son, he was worldly enough. “Well, was the child… all right?” Art nodded again, his eyes still downcast, his handsome face strained in the dappled light. “You were lucky, then. Listen, Art, don’t let the Christian priests tell you you did anything worse than take a risk. My people—my mother’s, anyway—took consorts from amongst their brothers, time out of mind. The bloodlines are sometimes too close when the children come, that’s all.”
Arthur looked up. His brow had cleared a little. “Is that true? Father Marcus berated me so, I thought I’d be blown off to hell on the next high wind.”
“I don’t think so.” Lance smiled. “Not for that, anyway. How old’s the boy now?”
“Two this coming winter.” He shuddered. “Priests aside, Lance, it doesn’t feel right.”
“Will you acknowledge him? When you become king?”
“I’m… under pressure to do so, yes. No-one can deny his blood is royal. His name is Medraut. I wish Modron would let me see him, but she’s taken him off to Cell Dara—Kildare, I think they call it here. The sanctuary of Bride.”
“Oh. Is she a priestess?”
“Yes, although nobody talks to Marcus about it.”
“Then… did you ever consider that it might have been arranged?” Lance leaned forward, reaching for his discarded shirt, and gave Arthur a look of sympathy and mischief mixed. “After all, how dead-out-of-luck would you have to be—to pick the one girl in a Beltane crowd who turned out to be a relation?”
Arthur snorted with laughter. “If only there’d been any picking involved,” he said. “They gave me a draught of poppy wine, and I woke up flat on my back in the greenwood, with Modron sitting over me, and...”
Lance blushed from the marrow of his bones, diving into his shirt to hide the reaction. “All right. I get the idea. But in that case, itdoessound deliberate.” He emerged, fringe in his eyes. “My mother said that a priestess can take whomever she chooses for her consort—her brother, and after that, if she so wishes, even the son of their union.”
“Shetoldyou that?”
“No. It was one of the moon rites, and I was eavesdropping. But it sounds as though the women of your family might have their own ideas about who should be king after you.”
“Wonderful. I haven’t been king yet myself. You do know, I hope, that all of this depends on my getting horribly slain in battle, poisoned, struck down by disease or...” He paused, eyebrows rising. “Wait. What on earth have the women got to do with it?”
Lance was briefly too surprised to reply. Art had grown up among men, he supposed—Roman men and soldiers at that. “Well—nothing, maybe. Not if the priests of Christ have their way. You sneaked off to a Beltane, though, Art. You call on the old gods when you’re upset, not Christ. And you wear...” He reached for the sun sign again. Picked out in silver on its reverse was a gleaming crescent moon. “You don’t wear that for nothing. In my home, before the raid, my mother made decisions about everything.”
“And your father allowed this?”
“Of course. They were comrades and friends.”
He thought he had managed to swallow down the tremor in his throat. Lights of comprehension filled Art’s eyes, however, and he put an arm around Lance’s shoulders. “I can’t imagine how that must have been,” he said. “I’m fond enough of women, and you don’t have to dose me with poppy to get me into bed with one. If I have a choice, though...”
His voice scraped to silence. Lance became aware, as if he’d climbed a steep hill and his ears had popped, of the breeze-washed stillness all around.If I have a choice...If Lance missed this, let these words with their load of longing and hope blow away on the wind, his loss would be greater than the northern earth’s when the summer had failed to come.
He would miss out on the springtime of his own life. “If you have a choice,” he whispered, sinking his fingers into the moss for purchase on one side, letting his weight ease against Art on the other. “What would you choose?”
For answer, Art put a hand beneath his chin and gently raised his face. Lance closed his eyes. A moment later, a warm mouth descended upon them: left, right, swiftest moth-wing touches. Then the prince of Cerniw was holding him most fiercely and tenderly still for a kiss.
Too much. Lance’s world had been too narrow to hold the idea of such rushing joy. He knew about hunger, winters, ice, not young sun gods come to earth to plant honeyed fruit-flesh blessings on his lips. He jerked away, shuddering. “No.”
“No?!”
Lance would have laughed if he hadn’t wanted to weep. What a face! How many times had anyone been fool enough to turn him down? His astounded disappointment cut Lance to the quick. “How can I?” he asked roughly. “You’ve bedded Goddess knows how many girls—priestesses, at that. Boys, too, I should think.”
“Of course. I’m not one of Father Marcus’s slack-cocked saints. What difference does that make?”
