“How wouldyouknow? You don’t have a hole that bleeds!”
“No, but I did have a mother. She would boil up dried mugwort leaves and drink the potion hot, and the rest of the water she’d put into a stone flask, and lay it to her stomach.”
“Did that help?”
“Better than silence and sewing, I should think.”
“And… may I have these things?”
“Of course. I’ll fetch them for you myself.”
“No, no. Clap your hands. My handmaiden will come.”
Somehow she was queenly despite her matted hair and running nose. Lance passed her a square of linen from the tabletop. “You have a handmaiden?”
“Of course. I’m a bloody princess, I am. That’s what Ardana told me to say, if anyone asked—a princess from a tribe in the far north, selected to be Arthur’s bride. Go on—clap.”
Wonderingly, Lance did as he was told. Promptly the ivy rustled and parted to admit the little Anglian girl from the dragon’s cave. Unlike her mistress, she was impeccably turned out in neat linen tunic and apron. Something in her pale blue gaze unnerved Lance to the core. “What’s your name, child?”
“Aedilthryd, sire. Like my mother.”
“Go to the kitchens, please. Have a tisane made up of mugwort—artemisia, they might call it here, or wormwood. The root or the leaves will do. And have them fill a stone bottle with hot water, and bring these things here as soon as you can.”
The child dropped him a curtsey, mechanical and perfect as if she’d been in service all her life. She whisked around and pattered off. Lance watched her go, frowning. “She seems helpful. Did Arthur give her to you?”
“Not exactly. He wanted me to have one of the girls Ardana offered. But I already knew the Anglian child, you see.”
“Did you? Do you remember?”
“I think I used to dream of her. She was hungry and lost, deep in the coils of my cave. I would bring her whatever I’d caught that day—a cow, or a sheep, or… or a man, and when I’d satisfied my hunger, I’d blow fire from my mouth to cook the remains for her. She and her brother would sit at my feet and gobble up the scraps. They weren’t afraid of me. Itwasa dream, wasn’t it? It must have been.”
She began to weep again. The lonely sound of it pierced Lance to the quick. Gently he laid a hand on her head. “Dream or no dream, the girl’s provided for now. Her brother, too—Art promised.”
“Is he a good man, Lance?”
“The best of men. You’ll be all right.”
Suddenly she sat up. She pushed her hair back from her face and fastened upon him a direct brown-eyed stare. “You love him.”
Truth. There would never be room for anything but truth between Lance and this woman. “With all my heart. My life’s his for the asking.”
“Then… what ismyplace here? Why was I pulled out of the earth?”
“To do what you said, Guen. To give him an heir, and bring life back to the land.”
“Those words were just a dream too.”
“In that case… In that case, all you can do is learn to love him.” Lance shivered, tried for a smile. “You won’t find it hard.”
“If I’m to marry him, he must sleep in my bed, not yours.”
“I believe that’s the usual arrangement, yes.”
“Oh, Lance! What are we going to do?”
Did she mean herself and Art? All three of them, perhaps, caught as they were in this sudden thicket of magic and fate. “I don’t know. Right or wrong, though, this marriage has been sanctified by the Merlin and the priest, in the sight of all Art’s knights and soldiers. As he is dear to me, so is his honour, Guen. It’s my whole duty to preserve and guard it.”
She put out her hand. Lance took it, and because it was painfully cold, he folded it between both of his. A stillness came over him. The chatter and bustle from the hall faded out. Time began to slip past, only the shift of the leaf-shadowed firelight to pick out one moment from the next. He closed his eyes, and even that demarcation was gone.
