About six months after Gorlan’s visit, as we were coming through a cold February into the first budding days of March, Camlach began to insist, first to my mother and then to my grandfather, that I should be taught to read and write. My mother, I think, was grateful for this evidence of his interest in me; I myself was pleased and took good care to show it, though after the incident in the orchard I could have no illusions about his motives. But it did no harm to let Camlach think that my feelings about the priesthood had undergone a change. My mother’s declaration that she would never marry, coupled with her increased withdrawal among her women and her frequent visits to St. Peter’s to talk with the Abbess and such priests as visited the community, removed his worst fears—either that she would marry a Welsh prince who could hope to take over the kingdom in her right, or that my unknown father would come to claim her and legitimate me, and prove to be a man of rank and power who might supplant him forcibly. It did not matter to Camlach that in either event I was not much of a danger to him, and less than ever now, for he had taken a wife before Christmas, and already at the beginning of March, it seemed that she was pregnant. Even Olwen’s increasingly obvious pregnancy was no threat to him, for Camlach stood high in his father’s favour, and it was not likely that a brother so much younger would ever present a serious danger. There could be no question; Camlach had a good fighting record, knew how to make men like him, and had ruthlessness and commonsense. The ruthlessness showed in what he had tried to do to me in the orchard; the commonsense showed in his indifferent kindness once my mother’s decision removed the threat to him. But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power, that they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it. He would never rest until he saw me priested and safely out of the palace.

Whatever his motives, I was pleased when my tutor came; he was a Greek who had been a scribe in Massilia until he drank himself into debt and ensuing slavery; now he was assigned to me, and because he was grateful for the change in status and the relief from manual work, taught me well and without the religious bias which had constricted the teaching I had picked up from my mother’s priests. Demetrius was a pleasant, ineffectually clever man who had a genius for languages, and whose only recreations were dice and (when he won) drink. Occasionally, when he had won enough, I would find him happily and incapably asleep over his books. I never told anyone of these occasions, and indeed was glad of the chance to go about my own affairs; he was grateful for my silence, and in his turn, when I once or twice played truant, held his tongue and made no attempt to find out where I had been. I was quick to catch up with my studies and showed more than enough progress to satisfy my mother and Camlach, so Demetrius and I respected one another’s secrets and got along tolerably well.