The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [146]
"Very well." It was hard to keep my voice steady and grave. There must have been some note in it of what my heart felt, because, faint and sweet from the upper room, I heard the answer of my harp.
He had heard nothing. He was still braced, braving me, forcing himself into the role of suppliant. "Now you know the truth. I'm not the boy you knew. You know nothing about me. Whatever I feel, here in myself" -- a hand moved as if to touch his breast, but clenched itself again on the bundle -- "you may not think I'm worth teaching. I don't expect you to take me in, or spend any time on me. But if you would -- if you would only let me stay here, sleep in the stableplace, anything, help you with -- well, with work like that" -- a glance at the pile of hyssop -- "until perhaps in time you would come to know..." His voice wavered again, and this time died. He licked dry lips and stood mute, watching me.
It was my gaze that faltered, not his. I turned aside to hide the joy that I could feel mantling my cheeks. I plunged my hands wrist-deep in the fragrant herbs, and rubbed the dry fragments between the fingertips. The scent of hyssop, clean and pungent, rose and steadied me.
I spoke slowly, to the herb jars. "When I called to you by the Lake, I took you for a boy with whom I travelled north many years ago, and who had a spirit that spoke to mine. He died, and ever since that day I have grieved for his death. When I saw you, I thought I had been mistaken, and that he still lived; but when I had time to think about it, I knew that now he would be a boy no longer, but a grown man. It was, you might say, a stupid error. I do not commonly make such errors, but at the time I told myself it was an error bred of weariness and grief, and of the hope that was still alive in me, that he, or such another spirit, would one day come to me again."
I paused. He said nothing. The moon had moved beyond the window-frame, and the door where the boy stood was almost in darkness. I turned back to him.
"I should have known it was no error. It was the hand of the god that crossed your path with mine, and now has driven you to me, in spite of your fear. You are not the boy I knew, but if you had not been just such another, you can be sure I would not have seen you, or spoken to you. That night was full of strong magic. I should have remembered that, and trusted it."
He said eagerly: "I felt it, too. You could feel the stars like frost on the skin. I'd gone out to catch fish...but I let them be. It was no night for death, even for a fish." Dimly, I saw that he smiled, but when he drew breath, it came unsteadily. "You mean I may stay? I will do?"
"You will do." I lifted my fingers from the hyssop, and let it trickle back onto the cloth, dusting my fingertips together. "Which of us, after this, will dare to ignore the god who drives us? Don't be afraid of me. You are very welcome. No doubt I'll warn you, when I have time to be cautious, of the heavy task you're undertaking, and all the thorns that lie in the way, but just at this moment I dare say nothing that will frighten you away from me again. Come in, and let me see you."
As he obeyed me, I lifted the unlit lamp from the shelf. The wick caught flame from the air, and flared high.
In full light I knew that I could never have mistaken him for the goldsmith's boy, but he was very like. He was taller by a thumb's breadth, and his face was not quite so thin in outline. His skin was finer, and his hands, as fine-boned and clever-looking as the other boy's, had never done slave's work. His hair was the same, a thick dark mane, roughly cut just short of his shoulders. His mouth was like, so like that I could have been deceived again; it had the gentle, dreaming lines that -- I suspected -- masked a firmness, even obstinacy, of purpose. The boy Ninian had shown a quiet disregard of anything that he did not want to notice; his master's discourses had gone unheeded