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For as long as it lasted, our childhood was happy.
Despite Dafydd's warnings, the Pendragon's shadow remained at a distance from our borders. We grew, Rhys and I, secure in the knowledge that while the world outside might change, inside our lands we were safe. For all that both of our parents were dead, we did not lack for guardians. Mairi, our nurse, mothered and scolded us in turn. Dafydd and Brychan, our stable master, played the part of a stern father.
And we had each other. That was enough.
When I remember our childhood, not one day stands out to me as special. Instead, they were a host of special days, blended and mixed into a golden haze of sensations.
The chill of lake water as we splashed with the servant children in the pool below our fort.
The dense sweetness of Mairi's honey cakes - stolen, of course - and Rhy's sticky smile at me from across our loot.
The swirl of fresh air, as good as a drink of cool water, on Hywel's Hill, screwing my eyes up against the ache of a winter's sun to see as far as I could.
Smiling faces and the clatter of applause as Rhys and I performed the Lughnasa rites on our fields and blessed the pilgrims who travelled so far to see the children of Modron's line.
Those first ten years of our lives were considered a blessed time in the history of Albion. Wars and pillaging between the kingdoms dwindled. Harvests were plenty and even the poorest smallholder greased his knife with rich fat.
Uther's priests described this time as the Christian God's sign of approval on the Pendragon's rule. Those loyal to the old ways marked it as a sign of resurgence in the power of the Mother Goddess, Cerridwen and prophesied that soon the Roman religion would be driven from our shores.
For me, it was simply my childhood and a happy time.
Our time was not all spent on games and rituals. We were trained for the adult world from the time we could toddle. The importance of our position in the hierarchy of Albion's kings was stamped into our minds every day. Sword-play and politics, languages, history, etiquette. How to read men's intentions in a glance and how to conduct ourselves amongst the chieftain as befitted our heritage and birthright.
And, of course, lessons in magic from the druids, the two of us learning, together despite disapproval.
My brother - even now my heart falters to think of it - my brother, on first hearing that he was to learn his magic alone, that I was to be confined to knot-chants and kitchen herbs with the women, threw himself into such a temper, his unchecked magic shook the walls of our home. Pockets of stone tumbled from the walls. The wooden shutters clattered in the windows and in the Great Hall, the fire flared with an unearthly blue light, so high and fierce, the dozing hounds skittered away to the back of the hall, yelping with fear.
