Inside, I bled for him. They were a boy’s words, taken from minstrel tellings, a lad’s imaginings of something he had never experienced. The innocence of his passion blazed in him, and his idealistic expectations shone in his eyes. I tried to summon some withering crudity worthy of the role I had chosen, but could not force it past my lips. The Fool saved me.
‘Badgerlock!’ Lord Golden snapped. ‘Enough of this. Just cook the meat.’
‘My lord,’ I acknowledged gruffly. I gave Dutiful a sidelong sneer that he refused to see. As I picked up the stiff rabbit and the knife, Lord Golden spoke more gently to the Prince.
‘Does she have a name, this lady you so admire? Have I met her at court?’ Lord Golden was courteously curious. Somehow the warmth in his voice made it flattering that he would care to ask such a question. Dutiful was instantly charmed, not only despite his earlier irritation with me, but perhaps because of it. Here was a chance for him to prove himself a well-bred gentleman, to ignore my crass interest and reply as politely as if I did not exist.
He smiled as he looked down at his hands, the smile of a boy with a secret sweetheart. ‘Oh, you will not have met her at court, Lord Golden. Her kind is not to be found there. She is a lady of the wild woods, a huntress and a forester. She does not hem handkerchiefs in a garden on a summer’s day, nor huddle within walls by a hearth when the wind begins to blow. She is free to the open world, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes full of the night’s mysteries.’
‘I see.’ Lord Golden’s voice was warm with a worldly man’s tolerance for a youth’s first romance. He came to sit on his saddle, next to the boy and yet slightly above him. ‘And does this paragon of the forest have a name? Or a family?’ he asked paternally.
Dutiful looked up at him and shook his head wearily. ‘There, you see what you ask? That is why I am so weary of the court. As if I cared whether she has family or fortune! It is she whom I love.’
‘But she must have a name,’ Lord Golden protested tolerantly as I slid my knife blade under the rabbit’s hide and loosened it. ‘Else what do you whisper to the stars at night when you dream of her?’ I peeled the hide from the rabbit as Lord Golden stripped the layers of secrets from the boy’s romance. ‘Come. How did you meet her?’ Lord Golden picked up the wine bottle, drank delicately from it, and then handed it to the Prince.
The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden’s smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed towards the small fire that limned his features against the night. ‘My cat took me to her,’ he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. ‘I had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, I just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If I say I will ride at dawn, I arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If I say I will walk in the gardens after dinner, I cannot turn a corner in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It’s stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, I do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. Had I the privilege of freedom, I would leave it.’ He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around at the night. ‘I have left it,’ he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. ‘I’m here, away from all that pretence and manipulation. And I’m happy. Or I was happy, until you came to drag me back.’ And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.
‘So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady …?’ Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.
‘I went out hunting with my cat and –’
The cat’s name? Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency.
I grunted mockingly. ‘Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. “Neverspeakit.”’ I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn’t like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering, but to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest’s edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say.
The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. ‘I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it.’
‘I’m not a “Piebald”,’ I asserted gruffly.
Dutiful ignored me. He took a breath and spoke earnestly to Lord Golden. ‘And the same is true of my lady. I do not need to know her name when it is her essence that I love.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Lord Golden comforted him. He hitched himself closer to the Prince and went on, ‘But I would hear of your first meeting with the fair one. For I confess that at heart, I am as soft a romantic as any court lady weeping at a minstrel’s tale.’ He spoke as if what Dutiful had said was of no consequence. But a profound sense of wrongness washed through me. It was true that Nighteyes had not immediately shared his true name with me, but the cat and the Prince had been together for months. I turned the sword, but the rabbit flopped around on the blade, its body cavity a loose fit, the seared side turning back to the flames. Grumbling, I pulled it out of the fire and burnt my fingers jamming it more firmly onto the weapon. I thrust it back over the flames and held it there.
‘Our first meeting,’ Dutiful mused. A rueful smile curved his mouth. ‘I fear that has yet to happen. In some ways. In all the important ways, I have met her. The cat showed her to me, or rather, she revealed herself to me through the cat.’
Lord Golden cocked his head and gave the boy an interested, if confused look. The lad’s smile widened.
‘It is hard to explain to someone with no experience of the Wit. But I will try. Through my magic, I can share thoughts with the cat. Her senses enhance my own. Sometimes, I can lie abed at night, and surrender my mind to hers, and become one with her. I see what she sees, feel what she feels. It’s wonderful, Lord Golden. Not debased and bestial as others would have you believe. It brought the world to life around me. If there was some way I could share the experience with you, I would, just so that you could understand it.’
The boy was so earnest in his proselytizing. I glimpsed the quick flash of amusement through Lord Golden’s eyes, but I am sure the Prince saw only his sympathetic warmth. ‘I shall have to imagine it,’ he murmured.
Prince Dutiful shook his head. ‘Ah, but you cannot. No one can, who is not born with this magic. That is why all persecute us. Because, lacking this magic, they become filled with envy and it turns to hatred.’
‘I think fear might have something to do with it,’ I muttered, but the Fool shot me a glance that bade me shut up. Chastened, I turned away from them and rotated the smoking rabbit.
‘I think I can imagine your communion with the cat. How wondrous it must be to share the thoughts of such a noble creature! How rich to experience the night and the hunt with one so attuned to the natural world! But I confess, I do not understand how she could reveal this wondrous lady to you … unless she guided you to her?’
How pleasant to feel her filthy claws raking your belly!
Shush.
Cats noble creatures? Spitting, carrion-breathed sneaks.
With difficulty, I ignored Nighteyes’ asides and focused on the conversation while appearing to be engrossed with the rabbit. The Prince was smiling and shaking his head at Lord Golden, totally enraptured now with speaking of his love. Had I ever been that young?
‘It was not like that. One night, as the cat and I moved through a forest of black trees, lit to silver by the moon’s radiance, I perceived we were not alone. It was not that uncomfortable sensation