“It stings.”

“Then it’s on the mend. The bruise is nought to worry you, it’ll go soon enough.”

It did, indeed, heal cleanly and left no mark. But I remember how it stung that night and kept me awake, so that Cerdic and Moravik kept silent in the other corner of the room, for fear, I suppose, that it had been from some of their mutterings that I had pieced together my information.

After they slept I crept out, stepped past the grinning wolfhound, and ran along to the hypocaust.

But tonight I heard nothing to remember, except Olwen’s voice, mellow as an ousel’s, singing some song I had not heard before, about a wild goose, and a hunter with a golden net.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER this, life settled back into its peaceful rut, and I think that my grandfather must eventually have accepted my mother’s refusal to marry. Things were strained between them for a week or so, but with Camlach home, and settling down as if he had never left the place—and with a good hunting season coming up—the King forgot his rancour, and things went back to normal.

Except possibly for me. After the incident in the orchard, Camlach no longer went out of his way to favour me, nor I to follow him. But he was not unkind to me, and once or twice defended me in some petty rough and tumble with the other boys, even taking my part against Dinias, who had supplanted me in his favour.

But I no longer needed that kind of protection. That September day had taught me other lessons besides Cerdic’s of the ring-dove. I dealt with Dinias myself. One night, creeping beneath his bedchamber on the way to my ‘cave’, I chanced to hear him and his pack-follower Brys laughing over a foray of that afternoon when the pair of them had followed Camlach’s friend Alun to his tryst with one of the servant-girls, and had stayed hidden, watching and listening to the sweet end. When Dinias waylaid me next morning I stood my ground and—quoting a sentence or so—asked if he had seen Alun yet that day. He stared, went red and then white (for Alun had a hard hand and a temper to match it) and then sidled away, making the sign behind his back. If he liked to think it was magic rather than simple blackmail, I let him. After that, if the High King himself had ridden in claiming parentage for me, none of the children would have believed him. They left me alone.

Which was just as well, for during that winter part of the floor of the bath-house fell in, my grandfather judged the whole thing dangerous, and had it filled in and poison laid for the rats. So like a cub smoked from its earth, I had to fend for myself above ground.