Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

“Watered wine,” Paisi said, sliding down off the bed. “There’s the proper cure for a troublin’ night and a howlin’ cold wind. Maybe wi’ just a little less water ’n usual, it bein’ late. What d’ ye say?”

“I’d drink it,” he said. And Paisi poured it, with only a little water, and they went back to the warmth of the hearthside and drank it, while Paisi heated coals in a bedwarmer, and took the pan to warm the sheets—there never was such a fine thing in Gran’s house, but then, Gran’s house was all one room, and the fireside never far, so their bed there never took such a chill as this one could, in its separate room. Paisi had a second cup, he added wine himself—which was very much hedging Gran’s strict instructions to keep the measure of water in the cup at two of water and one of wine—and they took themselves to bed.

To the same bed, there being ample room for both. It was the way they were accustomed to sleep at home in winter—all their lives were in that one room, the comfortable kitchen nook, their bed and Gran’s. No sleeping in the guards’ post for Paisi, though they mussed the bed there daily to make the servants think they had town manners, and laughed about it.

Tomorrow’s troubles for tomorrow, Gran would say, and Paisi very soon snored. Otter found the exact center of the warmed spot for his cold feet, in sheets otherwise smooth and fine as ice itself, and listened to the wind prying about the fine windows. No one stood guard over them, as bodyguards stood guard over the king and Prince Aewyn and every lord and lady under the Guelesfort roof. They themselves had no enemies except the general sort who fiercely deplored Amefin folk and Bryaltines, and none of those, Otter was sure, would care to risk the guards who stood watch over the Guelesfort. Or even raise their voices too much when he appeared with Aewyn.

So they slept, innocent, under the king’s roof.

iii

LATE TO BED, AND FAR TOO MUCH WINE, CEFWYN DECIDED, WHEN HE AND HIS queen, Ninévrisë, reached the sitting room. She had been more prudent at supper—but too long speech-making from the duke of Osenan and a tendency to moralize on the part of the Patriarch, on this eve of the holidays, had driven him to his old bad habits. He hoped no one had noticed.

And being far too heated from the desire to cut the Holy Father off short, he had smiled, and had a second dessert, which he regretted more than the wine.

“Tedious old man, the Holy Father,” he said to his queen, with a kiss on the cheek and a long embrace, which somehow alleviated the weariness. “I wish we were both in Elwynor. Or he was.”

“Oh, never afflict my kingdom with your priest,” Ninévrisë said, her hands slipping to his arms. Those wonderful eyes stared straight into his. “You tolerate him.”

“He’s an old, old man. There’s no mending him at this point. And the Crown needs no contests. Not now.”

“With this son of yours visiting, no, by no means.”

“Are you at ease with this? Are you truly at ease with him going to services?”

Those great eyes blinked, once, twice. And never wavered. “I held him when he was born. He had no choice in mothers. Of pity for her, however—I have little.”

“I have none at all. Nor would ever, ever offend you in bringing him to Festival. He could have gone home. He still might. Be sure. Be sure, now. Later—would be very hard.”

“I held him, I say. He looked like any baby.”

“The gods know what he is. He’s quick. He’s clever.”

“He’s Otter. And he could go on being Otter, if you sent him back… but that would be hard, now. What you do—what you do, be ever so sure of. For my own part—”

“What, for your part?” He had yearned for Ninévrisë’s true opinion on the matter of this son of his—and never felt he had it.

“He’s respectful, and modest. A good Bryalt lad.”

“If only he were onlythat.”

“Whatever he is, he makes our son laugh.”

“I have greatest reliance on the old woman. I believe her. But what I risk by believing this much in her—”

“It’s Tristen you believe in,” Ninévrisë said. “Isn’t it, after all? And Tristen said you should spare that woman, and he said you should take care of this boy. Me, he never advised in that regard… so I think my part is simply to watch you both and be on my guard. And I find he has a good face.”

“His mother’s eyes.”

“Oh, no such thing. They’re gray. Sihhë gray.”

“That didn’t come from my house.”

“That may be. But he has none of her wicked ways. Not a lie, not a prank—”

“Except our own son instigated them.”

Ninévrisë laughed the laugh that could cure his darkest mood and laid her head against his shoulder. “Daily,” she said, and looked up. “Wit and grace, both. Have you noticed? Aewyn has taken to books, under his influence.”

“More than his tutors ever managed. The last, I hear, went into cloister.”

“A good place for him.” Ninévrisë cast herself down in the chair by the fire, looking up at him. “He was dull and far too full of catechism. And the one before that was ambitious.”

“Ambitious, do you say?”

“Trust my word. Ambitious. I never liked him. Now he eels his way into the Patriarch’s service. He may be a good clerk, but what he writes I would never trust.”

“Efanor is too clever for him.”

“So was Aewyn.”

“That I have always maintained.” Cefwyn sank into the other chair, with the warmth of the fire instant on his outstretched feet as he folded his hands across his middle. “Otter. Elfwyn, as he is and will be—what would you think, Nevris, were I to send him to Elwynor to study?”

Brows lifted. “Take him from the old woman andour son?”

“A difficulty. An admitted difficulty. But he’s at that age. He has to find his way in the world. And he could rise in scholarly ranks, he well could. He has the wit, he has the skill, and he has the discretion to be very valuable to our son someday. Or to our daughter.”

Ninévrisë frowned, thinking on it—before a distant baby’s cry rose above the crackling of the fire. Aemaryen had waked. The nurse was with the baby, in the next room. But Ninévrisë rose from her chair to open the door and bade the nurse bring in the little princess—a red-faced and angry little bundle, who wanted her mother and generally got her way in the world.

Ninévrisë took the baby, and Cefwyn got up to touch the little face, which frowned at the light and squinted up at him—not half a year old, and already with her own notions of royal prerogatives. She was Elwynor’s longed-for heir. He would lose her entirely to Elwynor when she gained her majority, and she would spend more and more time in that land as she grew. Already he mourned that future, but it was for the peace, and for the future of both his children… all his children.

The tiny princess collected a kiss from her father and screwed up her face in protest, wanting less light and her mother’s attention.

“He might certainly go to Elwynor,” Ninévrisë said, finishing their former conversation. “With my blessing.” She offered a bent finger to the baby’s furious grasp. Pink, tiny fingers turned white, holding tight. “Hush, hush, Maryen. There’s a dear.”

Aemaryen shrieked.

“The Marhanen temper,” her father said ruefully.

“And Syrillas stubbornness in one,” Ninévrisë said, hugging the baby against her shoulder, which produced no diminution of the cries. “La, Saleyn, open the door.”

Conversation was over. Ninévrisë carried the Princess away, diminishing into quiet, and Saleyn shut the door, restoring peace, at least in the king’s chambers.

He missed the quiet evenings. He looked forward to the time, however brief, when the little princess would be up and about, eyes shining, finding wonder in everything new—he had had fifteen, now sixteen years between children, and Aemaryen their second and likely last, born when Aewyn was about to be a man. Everything they had learned with Aewyn they attempted with Aemaryen, and nothing quite applied. Aewyn had been so deceptively placid, well, until his young feet hit the ground, and this one—this one had come into the world demanding her way.

Perhaps she would become sweet-tempered once she could walk and do things with her own hands. Perhaps she would be the model of her mother, and that anger would be only at what she could not yet do.

Did it ever apply? he wondered. Were ever two infants quite the same?

This one would never, he feared, be a complacent child—this babe destined to be Regent in Elwynor, as her brother would be king over Ylesuin… and when this child reigned, Ylesuin might well award her the title of queen, the first ruler in her own name since the Sihhë kings. The peace he and Ninévrisë had tried to make would be all at risk in the generations to come, and everything rested on these two children and their affection for each other.

He hoped for reason. He hoped for a generation, in his two legitimate children, to knit their two kingdoms closer, so that there would never again be war between Quinalt and Bryalt, between eastern, fair-haired Guelenish folk, and the stubborn remnants of the Sihhë reign over the west.

And maybe, in this illegitimate son of his, this son whom Lord Tristen had advised him to hold easily in reach and treat generously—there was some unguessed key to the matter. If the boy they called Otter didmake a good scholar, he might become an advisor, traveling between Elwynor and Ylesuin, to counsel both a queen of Elwynor and a king of Ylesuin how to make that peace.

Maybe, with that honest goodwill of his, Otter who was Elfwyn, that unlucky name, would gain the trust of both kingdoms, or at least learn to walk the sword’s edge of policy and politics. Tristen’s advice always ran deeper than seemed. It came of seeing connections most eyes never saw, Seeing into things yet to come.

Am I right? Am I being a wise king at the moment, old friend?

Will my daughter be the queen we hope for?

What next, for my two sons?

Gods, that they be, none of them, like me…

He had had his misspent youth, out of which Elfwyn had come. He had been, himself, no great scholar, only adequate for a young gentleman. He knew his ciphers only because the Quinalt father in charge of his earliest education reported regularly to the king his father, Ináreddrin. Ináreddrin, a true Marhanen, had had his own temper—and his son had had his own to counter it. A king, being king, could have his son confined to his room if his son did not get a better report on his math—

And he had escaped out the scullery doors, gotten caught, and beaten. And did it twice and three times more, finally enlisting his brother in his schemes and driving off his tutor in as elaborate and long-fought a series of maneuvers as he had ever contrived.

Then his father had found Master Emuin for his two sons’ betterment. Emuin, a gray-robed Teranthine priest, had let him get by with nothing and had his own ways of getting a prince to pay attention to his books. Cefwyn, having found someone who listened when he asked that question that doomed him with other tutors, that deadly dangerous word, why?—and equally perilous, why not?—had launched off into old records and acquired a habit of citing them whenever he was angry at priests or nobles.

Contrarily, his father had then decided his elder son was too studious by far, that he had all the bookwork a Marhanen prince could possibly need. Ináreddrin had decided it was time for his heir to get the other half of a practical education, to learn not the theory, but the practice of the law, to understand not how bees made their hive, or what made the moon change her shape, or what the Quinalt practices had been before they limited the gods to five—but what the oaths were between the king and each province, and how to provision an army—he wanted his heir to have a practical understanding of how to keep his quartermasters from pilfering the stores, how to break a rebel or train a horse, how to read a map and, from his father’s example, how to hold an angry, unruly people in fealty—thank the gods, in those days, for his bodyguard, who had kept him alive, and for Emuin, who never left him, even when the lessons turned darker and more dangerous and less to his liking. _:

His younger brother, Efanor, however, had seen the storm clouds flashing with paternal lightning, and Efanor, having a religious bent, had become more religious before their father’s attention turned to him. For a few years Efanor had been insufferably righteous, estranged from sin, sinners, andhis elder brother. The army, subsequently, had sent back an angry elder prince with the habit of command, with less patience, not more; and things had only gotten worse between him and his father. Efanor had, at the same time, made himself the dutiful, the proper son, favored by the priests and ultimately by both their father and certain lords, sycophants who had had their way with the law and their father. Their father had formed a desire that Efanor should succeed him, and sent his heir to Amefel, a province rife with Elwynim assassins, in hopes of losing an argumentative heir and gaining an excuse for war; but it was Ináreddrin who had died, instead, trusting the wrong men.

Now Ylesuin was under his rule, Efanor was his right hand, and he had gained Elwynor not by war but by treaty and marriage. He had the difficult south bound closely to the Amefin, and the rebel Amefin, who were nearer Elwynim than not, bound to him in fealty and friendship, in the person of Lord Crissand—it was all a web of fragile threads they had made.

But in order to keep it together after him, Aewyn had to follow him, as Aemaryen would follow her mother, neither of them having seen the realm take shape, and they would have to learn their own lessons, how to mollify both sets of priests and how to keep their outer borders safe without letting any provincial lord build up a private army or exercise private ambitions.

Most of all they had to have the wisdom to understand who was honest, who was paying his taxes fairly, and who was skimming a bit off, that old pitfall of human wickedness. Blindness to corruption, thinking that just a little convenient corruption would do no harm, had led his father to disaster.

History. History, ciphering, and enough catechism to keep the king-to-be from saying the wrong thing to the wrong priest… this much he had gotten a priest or two to teach his unwilling son, thus far.

But now—now, too, remembering what a watershed the education of princes had been between him and Efanor—at the same time as he settled his illegitimate son in some useful and scholarly endeavor, he could not ignore this sudden bloom of interest in books that Otter had raised in Aewyn, this raiding of the library. He must not let that bloom fade or be the one to kill it, by stealing Otter away too abruptly. He knew Aewyn’s temperament, he knew its angers and its schemes and the softer elements of it, the vulnerable heart Aewyn guarded so secretly, and he knew he had to steer that stubborn Marhanen will in the right way and get him to copy Otter’s virtues…

Virtues acquired in a much harder situation, with far fewer prospects than the dazzling horizon of a prince. He had to get both his boys to ask the right questions, the whys and why nots of the world, and to come up with answers his own generation had failed to find.

Emuin would be the ideal tutor, once Otter went… wherever Otter must eventually go, for his own sake, and for his own happiness, for a few years. Emuin would be ideal. But Emuin, alas, had passed from the world years ago, simply, quietly vanished, before Aewyn had a chance to benefit by that wisdom. Emuin had been, even among the religious, that excellent thing in a royal advisor—too slippery to raise controversy in what he taught, no matter he belonged to neither major sect, simultaneously turning out a cynic of a king and a devout and cannily religious man in his brother.

If he knew where to lay hands on a Teranthine father these days, he said to himself, he’d hire the man on sight, unexamined. But he had no such resource. The Teranthines had quietly disappeared from their monastery and left a vacant shrine in Amefel.

He sat alone in the chair in front of the fire, watched it devour the wood, and waited for a particular coal to fall—if Emuin were here, they could lay wagers on it, and the old man would cheat. He was sure Emuin had cheated in such bets, having a Sight he lacked.

Whomever he found now to teach his son, it must be someone he could bring here, because it was impossible to send Aewyn away to study, twice lonely, parted from Otter and settled somewhere, worse, where he could have no idea what the boy was learning—or doing.

Surely there must be, in all the kingdom, some reasonable learned man he could hire to keep the boy’s nose in the right books.

Let them go together to Elwynor? The Quinalt priests would howl… theirMarhanen prince gone to learn from heretics.

There might be other disadvantages to that idea. Boys changed into men, and granted he could sunder them now by a decree, he was by no means sure yet what this stray son of his would become when he was a man.

Otter, now, the determined scholar—the Bryaltine fathers in Henas’amef had taught him his letters, but not Bryalt catechism: a royal order had settled that. And a royal request, once he understood the boy’s growing need, had had books sent down from Duke Crissand’s library, on loan for Otter’s studies in the Bryalt shrine.

If he did, however, let Otter slip to the Bryalt side and learn the catechism, the liberal scholars over in Ilefinian would feed that keen mind with a bolder understanding of the world than their timid brothers down in Henas’amef would have done. The Elwynim Bryaltines would, oh, so gladly make him one of their own—fit him for an orthodox Bryaltine priesthood in Elwynor, or, contrarily, fit him for some high administrative post in his half sister’s court in Elwynor, his half brother’s court in Ylesuin, or a trusted post in either treasury, or in law or even in the Dragon Guard or the Elwynim army. A bastard son could rise very, very high, by merits and wit, given the goodwill of his legitimate siblings, and given a clever mind, such as the boy had: incapable of rule, if his ambitions were still tied to the house of his birth, incorruptible, if those ambitions were adequately satisfied… he could be of great use. His own Commander of the Guard was a case in point.

Though Ninévrisë was right: sending the boy to Elwynor this summer might bring him under priestly influence, but it would remove him from Paisi’s gran, who had been a stabilizing force: lay it to the old woman’s account that that the boy had grown up knowing right from wrong and caring to do right.

Practical things the old woman had taught him, too: how to mend and make, how to judge the weather, how to feed himself off the land, things profitable for a young man to know: Paisi’s gran was an estimable woman, and not the least of her virtues had been her silence, keeping discreet silence on those things that, the more Otter went into the world, the more it was inevitable he know—those deeper details of his mother’s ambitions and the history of the Aswydd house of which he was the last direct descendant.

Of witchery, of her own craft, the old woman had likewise taught him nothing. That had been her choice, he supposed, if it had not been Tristen’s specific instruction, but the course she had chosen had kept Guelen doors open for the boy. She had also kept very much to her small grant of land, had kept the boy remote from the Amefin court—and consequently remote from the bitter sort of gossip the boy was otherwise bound to have had flung at him, where protection from higher authority was not so evident.

All credit to Paisi’s gran—where Emuin had not been available, Gran had done her best.

And best it was, or had been, until now, until it was time to settle a future on him, whether Otter would live the rest of his life in the country tending goats, a lad with a rare bent for scholarship—or whether he would stray out of those bounds when he had grown another few years. It was not for the boy himself to make all those decisions. It was Cefwyn’s obligation.

The slide toward decision had already started: Aewyn had started it, with his invitation. He had watched and made others. The first and easiest courses for a royal bastard were already unlikely: the military was not a likely choice: Otter was slight of build, not the soldierly sort, and he had never learned weapons or horsemanship, years behind other boys. Religious orders were less and less likely as a solution, once one understood that keen wit was prone to question what he was told as dogma: that curiosity would be troublesome for him, even for the Bryaltines.

The time for absolute decision might not be on them yet—but it was surely coming soon. The old furor about wizards and orthodoxy had died down, so reports said. The town of Henas’amef was quiet, mostly forgetting the prisoner lodged in its tower. Otter’s peers were not old enough to have witnessed the events around his birth, and their seniors had more discretion than to shout out the details in the streets. Lord Crissand sat in power in Amefel, with heirs to follow him, and there certainly was no desire on his part to disturb that situation. Time had healed all it could heal in Amefel and kept secret all it could keep. Nothing untoward had happened for over a decade in that province, and that was to the good, was it not?

Lord Crissand had interviewed the boy annually for the last decade and more, reporting him a well-spoken and earnest young man, grateful for his tutoring, anxious to please, asking only for financial advantage to the woman he called his gran. Otter had never once asked for gifts for himself, though he received, annually, at his birthday, a single small and well-chosen remembrance each year, be it a pair of boots or a new shirt from his royal father. Asked what he needed, the boy had said, from year to year, a new axe head, or a cooking pot, or a pair of geese to keep Gran’s yard weeded.

Gran now owned four goats, twelve geese, and, occasionally, though unsuccessfully, pigs, all the modest farm would support, and had avowed herself remarkably content with her wealth and with what she called her two boys. The offered cow the old woman had turned down as far too grand and eating too much for her household, and if she had any complaint, it was about the goats, which had been an occasional trial in her herb garden. That latter asset had brought her most notoriety and profit… he smiled, thinking of the meeting before last and the issue of the goats and the garden: the goats had left the bean rows much faster than goats ordinarily abandoned their intent, startling the Guard’s horses in their escape, and the old woman had been embarrassed.

A witch, a wisewoman in every sense of the word, she was kindly regarded by her neighbors and consulted not infrequently by Duke Crissand himself. Such practitioners and makers of charms were part and parcel of the old beliefs of Amefel—not quite officially countenanced by the Bryalts but not often spoken against, either. An honest and good hedge-witch she remained, despite royal attention, a witch whose cures worked. She probably carried a bit of the old Sihhë blood in her veins. And a peculiar advantage, that would be, in keeping Otter safe from his mother, and keeping Lord Crissand safe, to boot.

So complain as the Holy Father might about witchcraft rampant in Amefel, Paisi’s gran and her connection to the duke of Amefel remained none of the Quinalt’s business. The Quinalt in Amefel had indeed complained, all the way to Guelemara, incensed that a royal bastard was in Gran’s keeping—more incensed that the royal bastard was alive at all if they had told the truth.

But the Otter he had brought to Guelemara late in the year was the very best proof of the old woman’s good teachings, and he was well content with his choices throughout the boy’s life.

Sending the boy to Elwynor to study was the most probable course. He would have to hear Aewyn’s protests when he informed him. Worse, he would have to fend off Aewyn’s demands to go with his bastard brother, to whom he had attached such sudden affection, and who, as best anyone could tell, reciprocated.

He would grant permission for messages back and forth—maybe even allow the use of his couriers. There would be summer visits, holiday visits. He could promise all that. Boyish rivalry and Otter’s frequent letters from Elwynor might, who knew, habituate his heir to the Guelesfort’s library. He could imagine the growth of wisdom in both his sons. And Ninévrisë, whose virtue, whose compassion for her husband’s foreign bastard had made it possible, would be the boy’s official guardian while he was in her kingdom.

Oh, that would confuse the clattering tongues in the bower. His queen was fierce and forthright—oh, never challenge Ninévrisë in a cause she supported; and her simple goodness—

The bloody Marhanen, his grandfather, had taught him how to take and hold, had he not? But Ninévrisë had shown him how to loosen his grip and gain loyalty. It cost so much fear to trust anyone. It challenged his furthest limits of experience.

But two people had shown him how to loosen his hand and let things free to take their own course, and one was Lord Tristen, one was Ninévrisë Syrillas, and he knew he was the luckiest man alive to have had them.

The boys—the boys would benefit, would not lose their friendship, would grow well, even separate. Would become men of sober purpose—sooner or later.

Not too soon, he hoped.

iv

SLEET HISSED AGAINST THE WINDOWS–BARE DARK WINDOWS THAT SHOWED A storm haze above the spine-backed roof of the Quinaltine. Light from the banked fire, a warmer hue, sifted in from the other room, touching the edges of things, spilling across the wooden floor and the vine-figured rug.

It was a good night to be warm abed, and Otter had made himself a warm spot in smooth woven linen, when coarse wool and rabbit skins had kept them warm at home. The sheets had a wonderful feel to them; the pillows were several and soft. Paisi snored beside him, and the Festival and duties seemed far and unthreatening, part of the daylight, not the windblown dark. The windows held their own fear: such an expanse of glass, in little diamond panes, such a wonder to behold, from such warmth and softness.

In the cottage they would have had the shutters closed tight and barred against such a storm, and they would have stuffed the cracks besides, but the thin glass held out the wind and the cold alike—or most of it: the servants had advised they should shut the drapes to keep the cold out, but the glazed windows were such a delight to them both that they kept opening the drapes again and keeping them open at night, which they never would the shutters, except in summer. The sleet that fell now was too fine to see from where he lay. But if one defied the cold to get up and stand near the window, he was sure he would find the sill all snow-covered, and a ghostly snow coming down beyond, the whole sky aglow with it, and it haloed about the torch he could see from that window.

The floors were too cold tonight to tempt him. If he wanted to leave his warm spot, he ought to throw a log on the fire while he was at it—but he stayed right where he was.

When he shut his eyes to the window he recalled the high walls of the courtyard that afternoon, remembered soaked gloves, cold fingers, horseplay, and snowballs. He had caught Aewyn with his head up and gotten snow down his back, then Aewyn had pelted him with two, hard and fast, never minding being hit. Before all was done they were laughing too much to make more snowballs, and only raked it up and threw it with no art at all, showering each other at the last in a flurry of white.

It was the best winter, the best winter ever. All his life he had thought, what if my father should send for me? And what if he wanted me to serve in the court?

He had imagined being a servant, a clerk. He had never dreamed of such fine clothes, wonderful clothes, like holiday every day, and delicate food, as much as they ever wanted, with no chores to do. It was a strange feeling, to be at play all day long, every day, with no water to carry…

Except Paisi directed those who did, boys who trudged up high steps with full buckets of steaming water or pitchers of plain; or servants who carried up the trays of food and took the scraps down. Paisi had no chores of the ordinary sort, but it troubled him that his father’s largesse did not altogether encompass Paisi, for his sake. He wanted to protest that state of affairs. He tried to think what he would say to his father on that matter, if he had a chance, and feared he would lose all the words—and feared he would incur his father’s wrath by trying to tell him what to give and to whom.

As it was, Paisi had no chores, except to tell others what to do, which Paisi seemed to enjoy for its own sake. There was that to make him happy.

And Aewyn—Aewyn was every bit his friend, as he’d always been when his father would ride by Gran’s farm, and a blond, frowning boy would get down from the saddle—frowning, that was, and quiet, only until they could get off by themselves by the side of the cottage and get a few words between them.

“Papa says you’re my half brother,” Aewyn had said, in the first days when their voices had been high and childish: he could remember that curly blond head, that fresh, rose-touched face, and those blue, blue eyes staring at him. Otter, dark as Aewyn was fair, had dug his toe in the dirt, and said, faintly, conscious of the king talking to Gran around by the front door: “The king is my father.”

Aewyn had frowned, thoughtfully, and he had thought the blond boy would be angry to hear that, though it was the truth he told. He had been six, and Aewyn was still five, so he understood.

“So you are my half brother,” Aewyn had said again, then proceeded to show him his particular treasure, a toy he had picked up in town, a horse whose legs moved.

Otter had never held a toy Gran or Paisi had not made. Aewyn had given it to him, and left with one of his, a carved boat, which Aewyn said next year that he had lost in the brook while his father was hunting, and he was ever so sorry to confess it. So Paisi had made him another, which Aewyn still had, locked away, and never had sailed it.