by Whyte, Jack
His eyes were now moving over the boxes. "How many of them are there?"
"Too many. Eight that I can see, but there's probably a score more of them around all four sides and the top of each box. There wouldn't be any on the bottom."
"How do we get them out?"
"Cautiously," I said. "One at a time."
I used the point of my knife to dislodge the thorns, and I handled each of them with great respect, thrusting them, one at a time, point first into the packed earth of the stream's bank. Eventually, the task was complete and the boxes were safe to handle. Uther wanted to open them immediately, and so did I, but I had doubts. The care with which the outside of these things had been protected worried me. Anyone patient enough, and knowledgeable enough, to work his way through the maze of thorns, chains and locks around these boxes would be ill advised, it seemed to me, to simply throw open the lids without further precaution.
We carried the boxes intact to the racing cart and took them back to Camulod, where, in spite of the curiosity and impatience of the others to see what they contained, I stored them in my quarters until such time as I could approach the problem they presented calmly and examine their contents with an open mind.
XXVII
I waited for two weeks before opening the chests we had recovered, and then spent the following weeks in a state of absolute fascination as I examined, item by item, the contents that lay revealed. Had anyone been watching me, observing my behaviour as I first opened their lids, he might have doubted the soundness of my mind. I had had the chests moved into the main smithy, and had then banished everyone, sealing myself inside with my prize. As soon as I was alone and safe from interruption, I set to work immediately to open them. They were big, and heavy, one slightly larger than the other, perhaps a handsbreadth longer and a span higher.
A maul, a cold chisel and an anvil made short work of the chains, but each box was sealed by a spring lock that required a key. Publius Varrus had been a master lock- maker, and when I was a boy he had explained to me the action of spring locks. I crossed to his old work space by the main forge and opened the battered, much-stained wooden box that he had used to hold his collection of keys. They were all still there, dozens of them, coated with rust. I found only two that seemed as though they might fit the locks on the warlocks' cases. A few moments scraping each with a fine file to remove the rust, a few drops of oil, and the lock of the first box, the larger of the two, clicked open in response to my gentle pressure.
Letting out my breath in a hiss, I turned to the second box and unlocked it, too, with only minor difficulty. Now I drew my sword and, leaning backwards as far as I could, used its point to attempt to raise the lid, knowing that when I did anything might happen. The sword was too short to permit me enough leverage from a safe distance. There was a javelin leaning against the wall, and I used that instead, at arm's length, crouching low as I placed its point against the front flap of the lid and pushed it up and open. Nothing happened, although I flinched at the clatter of the lid as it fell backward. I opened the second box the same way, with the same result. I waited, motionless, while I counted slowly to one hundred and then, finally convinced that no poisonous vapours were to be released, I stepped forward cautiously and looked at what I had uncovered.
The interior of the first box was beautifully made, rimmed by a scored, wooden edge as wide as my hand, with the central portion divided into a grid of twelve square compartments, four long by three deep. Leather thongs lay piled, apparently haphazardly, on top of the contents of the compartments. I leaned forward and probed die thongs cautiously with my fingertip. They seemed to be plain leather, with no sharp points hidden among them. I made to pick them up, and then I realized that they were handles, one attached to each side of each section of the scored wooden frame. The wide, scored border was a series of nested trays, made to fit one into the other, each growing progressively deeper, but each offering complete security and safety to its contents.
As I progressed slowly and with care with my examination of the contents, I put aside some of the more baffling objects for further study. Some of these were, and were to remain forever, mysterious. Others, however, were more easily identified, and still others I was soon able to classify. All of them, I found without great surprise, were dangerous, capable of dealing death in one way or another. I discovered, for example, four oblong clay boxes, glazed inside and out, with fitted, sealed, similarly glazed lids, containing an oily, pungent, greenish paste that turned out to be the venom used on the poisoned arrows. I spread some of it on metal, and as it dried it left a scaly, crystalline residue that I recognized as the same that had coated the arrowhead with which I had executed Caspar.
Other jars and boxes, phials and glass tubes held a wondrous range of substances, all strange to me: crystals and powders; pastes and crushed mixtures of things that had been ground down by mortar and pestle; unguents and oily substances that seemed to have been rendered over fire; bunches and boxes of dried berries, grasses, leaves and even seeds or nuts. The colours of many of these materials were astonishing: bright and dull greens; glowing reds from cinnamon to crimson; rich, startling blues and yellows; one glossy, almost radiant black; and a full range of whites, darkening into pale and dark browns.
All of these I inspected with great care, melting them, if they would melt, to see how they would react; mixing them in water; exposing them to air and fire; testing them in every way I could think of, including feeding them to animals, most of which died, and keeping copious notes on my findings.
One of them astounded me, and although to this day I have no knowledge of what it was, I used it sparingly for long afterwards until I had exhausted it, once I discovered how it worked. I found a box of it, almost full, hidden at the deepest level of the larger chest and tightly bound with twine. It was a blackish, granular powder of no distinction that I proved harmless immediately by feeding small quantities of it to three rabbits with no ill effects. Having determined it was not a poison, I tasted it. It was unremarkable, tasting like charred ashes, save for a saline tang that I could not define. I mixed it in water, stirring it well and watching it to see how it dissolved or altered. It did neither. Discouraged, and on the point of pouring it out, I remembered whence it had come and reasoned again that the Egyptian sorcerers would not have kept it so securely among their clandestine treasures unless it had value of some kind, so rather than pouring it onto the floor to waste, I strained it through a cloth, twisting the fabric tightly until it contained only the original pinch of powder. That done, I spread the moist powder on a piece of tin and held it over a candle flame. It dried out slightly from the heat, but nothing more. Disappointed, and by now losing interest,! shook the residue back into the scrap of cloth through which I had strained it, balled it up carelessly, and threw it into the fire of the forge, where it exploded with a great whoosh of flames and billowing black smoke that caught at my throat and brought me choking to my knees, eyes streaming and heart palpitating in panic.
When I had regained my breath and my composure, I placed another pinch of the powder carefully on the top of the bench and touched it with a burning taper. As soon as the flame touched it, the powder, whatever it was, ignited with a flaring hiss of intense flames, emitting great, rolling clouds of bitter, blinding smoke. Fire powder! Within an hour I had established that it was the most combustible substance I had ever found. No flame was required to ignite it—it reacted with equal violence to the heat of a spark. Amazed and mystified, I packed it away again, safely out of sight, wondering how I would ever find a use for it.
I had been secretive about the boxes and their contents, and Uther had forgotten their existence within days. Donuil did not forget, but he disliked the boxes and avoided them, trusting me to find out what I could about them. No one else knew of their existence. And as I worked with them, fascinated by their contents, it never crossed my mind that the mere possession of them might change men's perception of me, in the years ahead, from soldier to sorcerer.
/> Towards the end of my third week of study, however, I was forced to lay them aside for other matters. News came from die north-west of another sudden, overland attack, this time on Uric's lands by hostile, unidentified forces from the north-east, reinforced by more of Lot's people from the south who had attempted a seaborne invasion from Lot's north Cornish territories. The invaders, we were told, had been driven back on both fronts after harsh fighting, but Uther's father Uric had fallen, slain by a poisoned arrow.
My cousin Uther was now King of the Pendragon.
He took the news less than well. In fact, he collapsed, hit far harder by grief than I would ever have suspected he could be, and it surprised me deeply to discern that his grief sprang from a deep and obviously genuine love for his father, an affection I had never suspected. This realization astounded me, and forced me to a drastic re-evaluation of my uncle Uric, by whom I had never, frankly, been impressed;
Among all the strong and forceful characters who made up our family—and many of them seemed superhuman— Uric, king though he had been, had seemed one of the least remarkable, overshadowed, to my mind at least, by almost all his relatives. Yet here was Uther, my wild, unmanageable cousin, weeping openly over the death of his father in a way that I, who had loved my own father deeply, had been unable to. Prompted by guilt, I suppose, and an urge to reexamine the life of this uncle whom I had obviously not known at all, I tried on several occasions to entice Uther to talk to me about his father, but I was almost totally unsuccessful until one afternoon, days after the arrival of the news, when we were alone together in Uncle Varrus's Armoury.
We had been discussing Uther's plans. He was about to leave for his mountain kingdom to claim his inheritance and see that all was in order. After that, he intended to raise some levies and to lead a retaliatory strike against Lot. We had just agreed on a plan to augment his mountain forces with a strong contingent of infantry and cavalry from Camulod. These would march under the nominal command of one of our junior commanders, a brilliant young Celtic cavalryman called Gwynn, until such time as they could join up with Uther.
I was seated at Uncle Varrus's old desk by the open window, and Uther had just stood up from where he had been leaning against the arm of one of the big couches by the wall. He was on his way out, opening the heavy doors, when I made some comment or asked him something about his father. To this day I have no recollection of what it was I said, but Uther swung around to face me, his face black with sudden anger, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. He stopped short, however, expending visible effort on biting back die words that had sprung to his tongue, and finally, after an obvious struggle for control of himself, smiled at me strangely—a tight, small, regretful smile—before shaking his head and starting to turn away from me again.
"No!" I snapped, "Stop right there. Let's have this out."
He stopped and turned back to face me, his eyes guarded now, empty of any sign of the sudden hostility that had overtaken him. "Well?" he asked.
I cleared my throat, suddenly at a loss, and then asked him directly. "What was all that about? That display? What were you going to say?"
He stared at me for the space of several heartbeats, blinking his eyes slowly, and then he sighed a sharp, impatient sigh and turned away again, only to check himself and swing back towards me. "No, dammit," he said, "It's time someone told you."
'Told me what?" I asked.
He looked at me and I could see him hesitate as he searched his mind for the proper words to use. Finally, he moved back and sat on the arm of the couch again, his eyes fixed on mine as though pinning me to my place.
"Cay," he said finally, his voice pitched low, but in a tone that suggested he would brook no argument. "You are an amiable fellow. You are a good friend and can be an enjoyable companion when you want to be, but you can also turn my stomach at times.
"You are always so right. Are you aware of that, Cay? Aware of how predictable, and ultimately how infuriating that can be? You are always right! You are always so...so correct, so decorous, so proper, so courteous, and you know all the correct things to say on any occasion, and that's all very well, but there are some things in this world you know nothing about!" He stopped, took a very deliberate breath, ignoring my stunned expression, and continued. "Judgments, for example. Let's talk about judgments for a moment/You're a great judge, Cay...Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a great judger! You find it very easy to pass judgment on practically everything and everyone, based on the relevance of that thing or person to your personal values, and its performance according to your criteria."
I stood wide-eyed, stunned by his sudden eloquence, so out of character for a man I knew to be generally only semi- articulate. I felt both my feelings and my pride hurt, although I had not yet had time to absorb Uther's attack on me. The martinet in me told me he was overreacting to something, obviously something I had said. But what had I said? As these thoughts were flashing through my mind, he drove on without pause.
"And that's another thing, of course. You also have set criteria for everything—for every conceivable circumstance under the sun or moon—so you never lack a standard for any of your judgments—" I started to interrupt his diatribe, but he shouted me down, telling me it was time for me to hear some home truths. I subsided as he continued. "I was talking about judgments and I had not finished. You are forever making judgments, Cay, and the frightening thing about that is I don't think you are even aware of it. Everything has to be either black or white in your world. Everything has to fit within a category, and only you are allowed to designate the categories. You did it to me, with that silly child Cassandra, or whatever her name was. Someone thrashed her. You decided I was the one because I had been angry at her, angry and vengeful, so your verdict was guilty!
"And my father. You judged him, too, and found him lacking. You judged him a nonentity. Don't interrupt me!" This last was hissed at me as I moved to speak and, abashed by his vehemence, I subsided again as he went on. "I know my father was no Publius Varrus and certainly no Caius Britannicus...He knew it, too. He wasn't even an Ullic Pendragon. But by the Living God, he was a Pendragon and he was a King, and he was a good man, a kind and considerate father who loved his children and was not afraid to show that love, even when the children had grown..." His voice faltered and grew quiet.
"I never spent much time with my father, Cay, but the time I did spend with him was among the best I ever spent with anyone. I could talk to my father in a way I could never have with you, or anyone else. Sometimes we didn't even need words. We were happy enough simply being together..." His words died away completely, and by this time I had absolutely no thought of stopping him.
Eventually he continued, his anger swelling again. "Look at you! You're astounded that I can show any feelings of grief or love, aren't you? I know you are, because for years you've had me categorized as a profligate, a fighter, a soldier and a savage, with little of your education and few of your refinements. My prime concerns, in your mind, are wine, women, horses and fighting, isn't that so? Of course it is. I know that!" He stopped abruptly and looked at me, soberly.
"Well, hear me, Cousin Caius. I loved my father, Uric the King, Uric Pendragon. And I intend that my sons should say the same of me, when I die. I want them to say, with pride, 'I loved my father, Uther the King!' If I am correct, and your judgment of me has been wrongs take note of that. It will not be the first time your judgment has been wrong in the eyes of others. And yet there is no sin in being wrong, Cousin. As long as we can admit our errors. We learned that long ago, you and I, from old Bishop Alaric. The tendency to error is what makes us all human, but only the capacity for compassion exalts a man beyond the merely human."
He paused and stood there for a few moments before continuing in a more reflective tone, almost as an afterthought, "You have a need for more compassion, Cay, and that means you must try to be more human. Learn to evince a willingness to make more errors—if you can. Perhaps then you
might find, deep inside, some tolerance. Try it. Cousin. You will improve by it, believe me."
With that, he spun on his heel and strode from the room, leaving me with much to think about, although in the time that passed immediately after his departure I was unable to think at all. My self-esteem reeled in the wake of such a brutal, unexpected attack. He was distraught, I told myself. His father's death had unhinged him, making him say things he neither meant nor believed. But even as my mind formed the words I saw the lie in them. Uther had said what he said because he believed it. He saw me as a self-righteous prig, disdainful of anything that did not bear my own, personal imprimatur. He believed my attitude towards him and his father was one of condescension, condemnation and disapproval. I stopped, chilled by a tiny, barely identifiable tic of recognition buried somewhere deep down at the back of my consciousness. And as I examined it, the chill grew, raising goose-flesh as I thrilled with the horror of perceiving, and admitting, that my cousin was right . Having felt that—or perhaps merely suspected it—I could go no further without confronting it fully, and so, in all ignorance, I set about what I later—often ruefully and sometimes even bitterly—had to acknowledge to be one of the biggest follies of a life that has sometimes seemed drowned in folly: I took myself to task without the slightest thought of the enormity of what I was about. I set out to break down whatever it was that made me myself— to divide it into segments comprehensible to myself, determined to arrive at a complete knowledge of myself and to discover my own true beliefs and attitudes about the people around me and the life we all shared. I can recall the callow, arrogant ignorance with which I took up this task that day, the foolish boastfulness with which I assumed that I would be able to plumb the depths of my own character in the space of a day or so, and arrive at a means of changing myself completely—for the better and for ever! I was completely unaware that I was throwing myself into a lifetime's task, and a heart-breaking, painful process that, once begun, would become impossible to abandon or even to neglect.
