“Do you want to hear what happened or not?” I asked her, amused in spite of myself.
Haggaia pulled a face, but it was no wonder that Dierna thought a daughter more important, living on the holy isle where the Druids were subject to the will of the Lady of Avalon. If there had been a Merlin, the authority might have divided more evenly, but the last had died shortly after I was born, and no one had inherited his powers.
“So what happened?” demanded the boy.
“The king loved his lady, and he told his counsellors to give them another year to have a child. And sure enough, before the year was over they had a little daughter—”
This was not the way the singer in my father’s hall had told the story, but he was no Druid to memorize the old lore exactly, and had often said that a bard must adapt his material to the taste of his audience. Encouraged by Dierna’s grin, I forged ahead.
“The queen had women to watch by her, but they fell asleep, and while they were all sleeping, the little princess disappeared! When the women woke up, they were terrified that the king would be angry. Now that same night the queen’s hound-bitch had given birth to puppies, so the women took two of the puppies and killed them and smeared blood on the queen’s mouth and set the bones beside her, and when the king came, they swore that the lady had eaten her own child!”
Now, not only were the children frowning, but Eldri had roused from her sleep and was staring at me with reproachful brown eyes, as if she understood every word.
“Do I have to please you, too?” I muttered, trying to think how I could save the story. “Don’t cry, Dierna—it will come out all right, I promise you!”
“Did the queen die?” whispered Haggaia.
“Indeed she did not, for the king loved her and did not believe the accusations, though he could not prove them wrong. But they did punish her.”
“They would have known the bones belonged to puppies, if she had been on Avalon,” Dierna declared. “But I am sorry for the mother dog who lost her children,” she added in apology to Eldri.
“She was not the only one!” said I, forging ahead quickly without worrying about the traditional form of the tale. “In the same country there was a farmer whose hound-bitch gave birth to one puppy every year that disappeared, just like the queen’s child. So the farmer stayed up one night to see what was happening—” I paused dramatically.
“Was there a monster?” asked Dierna, her eyes round.
“There was indeed, and the farmer swung his axe and cut off the claw with which it had the puppy clutched tight, and then he started to chase the beast he could hear rushing away. He could not catch it, but when he came back to the barn what do you suppose he found?”
“The rest of the puppies?” Haggaia exclaimed.
Eldri yipped approval, and I made yet another change to the story. “Not only were the puppies there, but beside them was a lovely little girl wrapped in an embroidered cloth, and she looked just like the queen!”
“And they took her back to her mother then, didn’t they, and they were all happy—” Dierna was bouncing with pleasure as she provided her own ending to the tale. “And the puppies too, and they all grew up together, just like you and Eldri!”
I nodded, laughing, as the little dog bounded to Dierna and leapt up against her, licking her face enthusiastically. The little girl fell backwards and child and dog rolled over and over across the grass. At the noise, Becca began to stir, and I went to pick her up.
“Is this how you fulfil your trust?”
I looked up in alarm, blinking at the dark shape that stood between me and the sun. I scrambled to my feet, holding the baby tightly, and realized it was Ganeda, her worn features set in a frown. But that was nothing new. The High Priestess usually frowned when she looked at her sister’s child.