There was a feast that night in Nyneve’s honor. King Lothe sat at the center of the raised table, Nyneve at his right hand, cutting her meat daintily with her golden dagger. I sat near the end, by my mother, Queen Morgause, so that she could see to me. I wore a blue woolen tunic that she had found for me and blue breeches bound about my legs with crisscross strips of red leather, and I felt strange and grand even though they were only faded old clothes of Garet’s—I had two brothers, I found, Gawain and Garet, both older than I was. Gawain was thirteen, far too much a man to take any notice of me; he sat at his father’s left hand. Garet was nine, and sat beside me, glowering. There had been other children, Nyneve said, daughters, but they had died. I wondered whether Queen Morgause had cried when they died. I looked at her smooth, closed face and could not imagine her crying for anyone.

I ate little of the roast mutton with currant sauce, the baked marrows, the quail pie. I slept little that night in my fine feather bed in my own small stone chamber. In the morning I followed Nyneve out to the courtyard where her gray steed awaited her and I begged, “Take me with you.”

She said only, “What was that sound?” and she looked around. I thought at first that she was mocking me, but then she stooped, and from under a furze bush growing by the wall she drew a small white whimpering thing, soft and round, a brachet pup. She cradled it in both hands and regarded it quizzically. “Why, Mordred, this must be yours,” she declared, and she gave it into my arms. “I will see you again before too many years pass. They will teach you here what it means to be a prince. Fare thee well.” The white pup squirmed warm against my chest as she rode away.

So I stayed at Lothian.

That was long, long ago. Most of those days I do not remember, yet the days I do remember appear to me sharp and bright, like jewels lying in snow:

The castle cook, as I stood before her with the white pup in my arms, roaring at me to throw it into the pot—but then giving me milk for it to drink.