Free The Mer- Lion by Lee Arthur

ill-born as himself?
    Standing there, absently stroking a horse, Seamus vowed not to love his Lady Islean less but to attempt to love her husband more ... and to forgive the child his father. The child! Seamus, disgusted with himself for his self-pity and introspection, remembered why he was here.
    Down the line of stalls he went, to the big airy box stalls, three times the size of a standing stall, which each great horse needed just to be able to turn around. Each animal had to bear a full 700 pounds of man and armor while charging at great speed, turning with agility, responding with alacrity, not for just minutes or hours but for days on end. The bigger the horses were, Seamus had discovered, the more gentle they seemed to be, at least with him. Even those who knew to strike out on command with rear or forefeet at the enemy— and even to bite if needful—were, without exception and contrary to the other stablemen's belief, of the most even temperament. Even Dunstan, the famed stud named after the patron of horses, St.
    Dunstan of the twelfth century, was gentler toward a child than one of the Lady Islean's jennets.
    It was at Dunstan's stall that he found what he was looking for a small, black-haired child with astonishingly blue eyes. Perched on the edge of the feed trough, he was hand-feeding hay, one blade at a time, to this horse that needed bales of such per day just to stay alive. Yet the mighty Dunstan, gravely and courteously, took each blade when proffered and chewed it properly to the child's satisfaction before James Mackenzie, Master of Seaforth and Viscount Alva, picked another sprig from the large mound of fresh-mown hay before him and laid it across the palm of his hand for the stallion to mouth.
    "You don't fear that you overfeed him?" asked Seamus dryly, breaking the silence. "Oh no, Master Seamus, I'm being very careful." "I see what you mean."
    Seamus hitched himself up and onto the trough alongside the child. For a while the two took turns feeding the horse. When Seamus, out of pity, cheated once—offering the horse a good five pieces—a small hand knocked the offenders out of his palm and into the stall. Poor Dunstan went after it, but the child jumped down and picked up the five contrary pieces. Looking up in the moonlight at Seamus, his eyes were dark and his countenance grave.
    "Don't do that, Master Seamus. You, above all men, should know it's bad to overfeed a horse."
    Reaching down, Seamus gripped the young boy under the armpits. A disquieting memory suddenly came to mind, but he put it from him. Hoisting the boy back into place on the trough, he said, "And equally bad to underfeed."
    The boy digested that for a few moments. Then with a laugh he reached down and grabbed two handfuls of the grass and threw them into the air. As they came swirling down about the startled horse, Dunstan retreated. But hunger got the best of him, and freed from the restraint of his own good manners, he fell to eating heartily.
    The two, the little boy and the giant of a man, sat there in companionship watching the earl's favorite charger attack his food as if it were an enemy to be conquered.
    "Poor Dunstan," said the boy, "he won't eat heartily anymore."
    Seamus was puzzled. "Why is that, my lord?"
    "He'll have no one to exercise him. So we'll need cut back on his rations, won't we, Seamus?" And the blue eyes, so disconcertingly like those of the Lady Islean, challenged him to disagree.
    Seamus took his time answering. For the first time, he was looking at his lady's son. The child was beautiful. The head well shaped, the eyes large and fringed with thick lashes. The nose—his mother's—might have been more patrician, but Seamus felt certain that it would lose its upturned pertness with maturity. The mouth was generous, the lips neither thin or full, the chin determined.
    The body was that of a healthy animal. Vigorous, well exercised, and, except for legs a shade too long, well proportioned. Not an inch of fat