“For him, Lady, yes, though I can tell you Arthur regrets the hurt he did you.”
She grimaced slightly. The subject was clearly painful, but she could not let it go, for Arthur’s rejection had changed Ceinwyn’s life much more subtly and sadly than it had ever changed his. Arthur had gone on to happiness and marriage while she had been left to suffer the long regrets and find the painful answers which, evidently, had not been found. “Do you understand him?” she asked after a while.
“I did not understand him back then, Lady,” I said. “I thought he was a fool. So did we all.”
“And now?” she asked, her blue eyes on mine.
I thought for a few seconds. “I think, Lady, that for once in his life Arthur was struck by a madness that he could not control.”
“Love?”
I looked at her and told myself that I was not in love with her and that her brooch was a talisman snatched randomly from chance. I told myself that she was a Princess and I the son of a slave. “Yes, Lady,” I said.
“Do you understand that madness?” she asked me.
I was aware of nothing in the room except Ceinwyn. The Princess Helledd, the sleeping Prince, Galahad, the aunts, the harpist, none of them existed for me, any more than did the woven wall hangings or the bronze rushlight holders. I was aware only of Ceinwyn’s large sad eyes and of my own beating heart.
“I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,” I heard myself saying, ‘and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.”
She said nothing for a while, but just looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression. “Has that ever happened to you, Lord Derfel?” she asked at last.
I hesitated. I knew the words my soul wanted to say and I knew the words my station should make me say, but then I told myself that a warrior did not thrive on timidity and I let my soul have government of my tongue. “It has never happened until this moment, Lady,” I said. It took more bravery to make that declaration than I had ever needed to break a shield-wall.
She immediately looked away and sat up, and I cursed myself for offending her with my stupid clumsiness. I stayed back on the couch, my face red and my soul hurting with embarrassment as Ceinwyn applauded the harpist by throwing some silver coins on to the rug beside the instrument. She asked for the Song of Rhiannon to be played.
“I thought you were not listening, Ceinwyn,” one of the aunts said cattily.
“I am, Tonwyn, I am, and I am taking a great pleasure in all I hear,” Ceinwyn said and I felt suddenly like a man feels when the enemy’s shield-wall collapses. Except I dared not trust her words. I wanted to; I dared not. Love’s madness, swinging from ecstasy to despair in one wild second.
The music began again, its background the raucous cheers coming from the great hall where the warriors anticipated battle. I leaned all the way back on the cushions, my face still red as I tried to work out whether Ceinwyn’s last words had referred to our conversation or to the music, and then Ceinwyn lay back and leaned close to me again. “I do not want a war fought over me,” she said.
“It seems inevitable, Lady.”
“My brother agrees with me.”
“But your father rules in Powys, Lady.”
“That he does,” she said flatly. She paused, frowning, then looked up at me. “If Arthur wins, who will he want me to marry?”
Once again the directness of her question surprised me, but I gave her the true answer. “He wants you to be Queen of Siluria, Lady,” I said.
She looked at me with sudden alarm. “Married to Gundleus?”
“To King Lancelot of Benoic, Lady,” I said, giving away Arthur’s secret hope. I watched for her reaction.