Ides of the May (Children of the May 2 - updates weekly)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Neave (part one)

I am bathing in the castle bathhouse when Mother speaks to me through the waters. Neave, she says, a man has strayed across the border. Wake him and send him away.

I’m bathing, Mother, I reply. Send Nemone.

The foolish girl has run away to Fulfarne.

Again?

Again. See to him.

Yes, Mother. Of course.

I climb out of the bath and conjure my robe. I can sense the man at the northern end of the Lake, under my mother’s sleep spell. He and his horse have come over the mountains. Typical. As far away from the castle as it’s possible to be. Going that way I’m sure to see the shrimp, unless he’s hiding away with the nuns. Why Mother didn’t simply do away with him when he was born has always baffled me. He was very clearly a mistake. Nerina and I had this conversation the last time Mother went away on her own.

‘If she admits one mistake, does that not put all of us in doubt?’ Nerina said. ‘If she gets rid of Drift, does she then start worrying over Nemone?’

‘Nemone is flawed,’ I said. ‘It would not be much of a loss to us.’

‘And then once Nemone is gone –’

‘She turns to you, Nerina, and that thing squirming in your belly. I am, after all, Mother’s favourite –’

Nerina patted her still-flat stomach. ‘You’ll want a baby eventually, Neave. Whether in a year, ten years or one thousand, you’ll want a daughter.’

‘Nonsense,’ I told her.

The blacksmith once suggested to me that Mother did try to get rid of the boy on the day he was born. ‘It was love that saved him,’ she said. ‘Much as your mother disguises it, there’s love for him in her.’

Which was nonsense, but then what would Martha know about how we think? She’s blinded by her own love for the ugly sprat. How ridiculous she makes herself, sneaking off to the hollow tree with food for him! As if we wouldn’t know! She should stick to steel; that she understands.

I go past the hollow tree on my way along the Lake, but there’s no sign of him. I wonder where he is today? I haven’t made him cry in a long while. In truth I grew bored of it, but today feels like a good day to relive the old joys. The sun is shining over the Lands of the Lake, and Nemone isn’t here to tease about that boy Balan, who does not love her, no matter how hard she pretends otherwise. How can she be so blind to things that are so clear, if only she’d believe her eyes and ears? There is something wrong with her.

Of course, if Nemone had any sense she would simply do as Nerina did to get her squirming tadpole – pretty Sir Perceval (Perceval the Pure!) will never know he is father to a daughter of the Lake. That whole month Nerina snatched out of his mind.

I reach the end of the Lake and walk past the nunnery. I find the intruder just below the tree line at the foot of the mountain. And he –

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.

I cannot breathe. There is a fluttering in my belly.

There he sits, upon his white horse, in golden armour that matches his golden hair. His heavy lids are closed in sweet repose. His lips inspire such longing in mine. A teardrop resides by his eye, the one lovely blemish in his perfection. He is a poem most beautiful. A prayer I did not know a moment ago.