Photo: Desmond Daly photography desmonddaly.foliopic.com
your word that you will do as I ask?”
His words had so filled me with excitement that I’d stopped walking and faced him. I’d
crossed my hands over my heart and sworn an oath that I would never let him down, and
that I would do all that he asked of me, and more.
My father had laughed then—not at me, but with relief, because he knew that I
understood the gravity of his charge. And I saw the love and pride that shone in his eyes
when he presented me to Uther, the High King, as his heir.
But there are other things I remember about that time. How Uther followed my mother,
Igraine, around his court, seizing every opportunity to take her hand and press it to his lips
for a lingering kiss. At the time I’d thought it a mark of his respect for us, but later I
understood that Uther loved my mother. I also remember the growing tension between my
father and mother that culminated in a bitter quarrel and led to our hasty departure from
London.
Just six months after that, my father is dead and my mother remarried.
I shake my glossy feathers into smoothness, as if I could at the same time shake myself
free of memories. Conscious of time passing, I look out over the battlefield once more, and
mouth an anathema against the man who caused my father’s death. Then, with some
trepidation, worried I may have lost the knack of it, I launch myself off the branch. I spread