Page 13 of Touched By Maen Llia
Catrin was always glad to escape the dining room. She normally waited until the Queen indicated she was free to go. Feast nights were different, for most people lingered in the big room until long past their normal hour of retirement.
Tonight, it was very late. The moon had already risen. Tomorrow, everyone would sleep late and the day would be an idle one.
But the air was cool, out here in the courtyard, and a mild breeze with a hint of the sea bathed her face. She paused to enjoy the touch of the wind, her hair ruffling. When Marcus stopped expectantly beside her, her heart thudded. Did she dare do this? Eira had been very explicit about not upsetting the court with her knowledge. She meant, though, that she didn’t want Ianto upset. Showing Marcus the gnomon would not upset Ianto. The mage hadn’t looked up from his intense conversation with Bedivere when Catrin moved through the dining room.
Catrin cleared her throat, feeling awkward. She had never shown anyone the clearing behind the orchard. “This way.” She moved across the courtyard, to the gates out of the palace. They stood open as they always did on feast nights, and the two guards barely shifted from their lean against the walls as Catrin and Marcus passed through. Likely, they were not the first man and woman to do so, this night.
Outside the gates, Catrin immediately turned to the right, and moved along the worn path which ran beside the high walls, to the far corner of the palace, where the bathing room with its high windows was located. Around the corner, the path continued. An owl hooted, somewhere ahead. A white owl liked to perch in the apricot tree in the orchard at night.
Around the second corner.
“Where are we going?” Marcus asked, his voice low. “Surely it is unwise to move too far beyond the palace at night. Haven’t you had trouble with Brycheiniog?”
“King Geraint made truce with them, some years ago,” Catrin murmured back. “I am not going far, and I have come this way many times, even at night. No one will know we are there.” She ducked under the bough of the oak tree which scraped the orchard wall and had been chopped short at least three times in the years she had lived here.
Beyond the oak was the clearing, made by a nearly perfect semicircle of trees which may have been arranged that way when they were acorns, many years ago. Catrin would ask Merlin that, if she was ever given the chance to speak to him again. If he really had liked to visit the orchard, perhaps he had also known about this place.
The moon was high enough that it sent its ghostly light into the clearing. There was no need for a torch. She moved into the very middle of the clearing, where the gnomon was mounted.
Marcus followed her over to the waist-high stick, then glanced down as the sound of his boots changed. He stepped back quickly. “There are markings on the ground.”
“You cannot disturb the markings,” Catrin assured him. “The ground was dug out and clay poured in, many years ago. The sun baked the clay and now the markings will never fade.”
In the moonlight, Marcus’ black hair shone with a silver nimbus. Combined with his black clothing and the grey markings on his armor, he was a dark warrior touched with an ethereal glow. His eyes, though, were shadowed beneath the thick brows, although she could see he was studying the markings. “What is this?”
“It is a way to tell the feast days,” she explained. “This,” and she touched the top of the stick, “is the gnomon. Each day, it casts a shadow, that moves around as the sun does. The shadow travels from here—” She moved to the west, then moved around in an arc that brought her to the other side of Marcus. “To here,” she finished.
“And the lines on the ground?” He was interested. He was not moving away from her with wariness in his face as she had braced herself for.
“Depending on the time of the year, the tip of the shadow the gnomon casts is either longer or shorter. On the longest day of the year—”
“The solstice…!” His tone was sharp. He’d already leapt ahead and worked out the rest of it.
“Yes, on the longest day of the year, the tip of the shadow touches this line, here.” She moved over to the summer solstice line and touched it with her toe.
Marcus moved over to look at the line she had pointed out, his head down. He turned slowly on his heel, examining the rest of the circle. “And what are these other lines for?”
“The other feast days,” she said. “Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasa. Mid-winter, and the two equinoxes.”
He nodded, his head still down. “How accurate is it?”
“It has never been wrong.”
“Until now.”
“It has never been wrong,” she repeated. “Ianto is wrong, although he will not admit it.”
“You told him so?” Marcus’ chin came up. She wasn’t sure what his tight tone meant. Was he alarmed?
“For all the good it did,” Catrin muttered. She shifted her shoulders as she remembered how her morning had started, and drew still once more as the bruises gave out a throb. If she held still, then they didn’t hurt.
Marcus studied her. “You are so brave…” His voice was low and deep.
No one had ever called her that before. Eira called her stupid when she was angry, and clever, but unwise, when she was in a patient mood. Everyone else used her name or ‘you’.
She grew aware of how close he was standing to her when he reached out and cupped her jaw. The touch of his big hand made her shiver. “Don’t…” she breathed.
“Don’t what?”
