“Why, gathering bluebells.” The wide innocence of her look robbed the words of pertness. She held them up, laughing at me across them. God knows what she could see in my face. No, she was not going to kiss my hand. “Didn’t you know I’d left St. Peter’s?”

“Yes, they told me. I thought you must have gone to some other nunnery.”

“No, never that. I hated it. It was like being in a cage. Some of them liked it, it made them feel safe, but not me. I wasn’t made for such a life.”

“They tried to do the same thing to me, once,” I said.

“Did you run away, too?”

“Oh, yes. But I ran before they shut me up. Where are you living now, Keri?”

She did not seem to have heard the question. “You weren’t meant for it, either? Being in chains, I mean?”

“Not those chains.”

I could see her puzzling over this, but I was not sure what I had meant myself, so held my tongue, watching her without thought, feeling only the strong happiness of the moment.

“I was sorry about your mother,” she said.

“Thank you, Keri.”

“She died just after you’d left. I suppose they told you all about it?”

“Yes. I went to the nunnery as soon as I came back to Maridunum.”

She was silent for a moment, looking down. She pointed a bare toe in the grass, a little shy dancing movement which set the golden apples at her girdle jingling. “I knew you had come back. Everyone’s talking about it.”

“Are they?”

She nodded. “They told me in the town that you were a prince as well as a great magician . . .” She looked up then, her voice fading to doubt, as she eyed me. I was wearing my oldest clothes, a tunic with grass stains that not even Cadal could remove, and my mantle was burred and pulled by thorns and brambles. My sandals were of canvas like a slave’s; it was useless to wear leather through the long wet grass. Compared even with the plainly dressed young man she had seen before, I must look like a beggar. She asked, with the directness of innocence: “Are you still a prince, now that your mother is gone?”

“Yes. My father is the High King.”

Her lips parted. “Your father? The King? I didn’t know. Nobody said that.”

“Not many people know. But now that my mother is dead, it doesn’t matter. Yes, I am his son.”

“The son of the High King . . .” She breathed it, with awe. “And a magician, too. I know that’s true.”

“Yes. That is true.”

“You once told me you weren’t.”

I smiled. “I told you I couldn’t cure your toothache.”

“But you did cure it.”

“So you said. I didn’t believe you.”

“Your touch would cure anything,” she said, and came close to me.