by Jack Whyte
Kiss my father for me. I will write to you again as soon as I may after your grandson is born. I hope all is as well with Enid as it is with me.
Your loving daughter,
Veronica
Chapter ONE
Even when he was a small boy, no more than four or five years old, Uther Pendragon knew that everyone around him believed that his mother, Veronica, was different from everyone else. They even had a special name for her: the away one. It didn't make sense at first. After all, his mother had never been away from him. Veronica was and had always been a constant in his young life, along with his nurse, Rebecca. Those two women, between them, had made their presence absolute in everything young Uther did during his earliest years, while he was yet too young for his presence to be noteworthy to others. In the beginning, there were only those two.
One of the very first newcomers to join this tiny group was a woman called Henna, who had been assigned by Uther's grandfather, King Ullic Pendragon, to cook for the newcomers at the very outset of Veronica's life in Ullic's stronghold, eight months and more before Uther was born. Henna had quickly warmed to the King's new daughter-in-law, despite the younger woman's alien upbringing and Outlandish behaviour, so that, for one reason and another, she had never stopped cooking for her new charges and had been completely absorbed into their new life as a married couple. By the time Uther grew old enough to look about him and observe his surroundings, Henna the cook was a fixture of the household in which he lived. And after he had learned to run and to talk, he quickly learned that if he ran and talked to Henna, she would give him wondrous things to eat.
Henna was the first person Uther ever heard using the term the away one to describe his mother, and although he did not know then who the cook was talking about, he knew that there was no slight or disparagement intended in the strange-sounding name. He understood right away that the away one was a woman, unfortunate or afflicted in some way. And as he grew older, and he heard the name repeated more and more often by people who thought he was too young to be listening, he soon came to understand that this mysterious woman was different in some important respect from "normal" people. He knew that all of the women who gathered in Henna's kitchen liked the away one and held her in high regard—that was plain in the tone of their voices when they spoke of her—and he knew, too, that they all felt sorry for her in some way. But for a very long time he was unable to discover the woman's identity.
On one occasion, frustrated by something particular that he had overheard, he even asked his mother who the away one was, but Veronica merely looked strangely at him, her face blank with incomprehension. When he repeated the question, articulating it very slowly and precisely, she frowned in exasperation, and he quickly began to talk about something else, as though he had never asked that question in the first place.
Despite having broached the question with his mother, however, he had never been even slightly tempted to ask Henna or any of her friends, because he knew that would have warned them that he was listening when they talked, and they would have been more careful from then on, depriving him of his richest source of information and gossip. And so for long months he merely listened very carefully and tried to work out the secret of the away one's identity by himself, looking more and more analytically, as time went by, at each of the women with whom he came into contact in the course of a day. He knew that there would have to be something about this particular woman that set her noticeably apart and gave others the impression that she was never quite fully among them; that her interests held no commonality with theirs; that she was someone who was not wholly there.
He floundered in ignorance until the day when, in the middle of talking about the mysterious woman, Henna suddenly hissed, "Shush! Here she comes"—and his mother walked into the kitchen. Uther was stunned by the swiftness with which the truth dawned upon him then, because it was immediately obvious that Veronica met all of his carefully defined criteria. His mother did not associate with Henna and her people in any capacity other than that of the mistress of the household, aloof and set apart, issuing commands, expressing her wishes and expectations and occasionally complaining and insisting upon higher standards in one thing or another. And yet it was plain that they all liked her and that they respected her integrity and her natural sense of justice.
Uther had developed the ability to reason by the time he was five and now, having discovered at six years of age who the away one was, he felt immensely proud of himself for having solved the mystery all on his own. His pride, however, was short-lived, because within the month he overheard another conversation in which a newcomer to Ullic's settlement, a weaver woman called Gyndrel, asked Henna why they called the mistress the away one. Henna, a woman who loved to answer a question with a question, promptly asked Gyndrel why she thought they would call her that. Gyndrel's first response was that the name must have come from Veronica's obviously foreign background, from the fact that she came from someplace away from Cambria, but Henna snorted with disgust almost before the words were fully out of Gyndrel's mouth. Veronica, she pointed out, might have begun her life as an Outlander, but she was now the wife of the King's eldest son, and no one in the entire Pendragon Federation would dare to insult or defame her nowadays by hinting that she might be anything less than acceptable. Henna then told the woman, her words dripping with disdain, to stop drivelling and use her mind for once.
Sitting on the far side of the fire from the women, concealed from their direct view by a pile of firewood, Uther nodded smugly to himself as Gyndrel eventually answered with all the plausible reasons he would have given in her place. But his head jerked up in shock when Henna dismissed all of them with a scornful laugh.
Nah, she scoffed, pulling her shawl tightly about her shoulders and shifting her large buttocks in search of comfort. When Gyndrel grew more familiar with this family and what went on under this roof, she would soon learn that the away one meant simply what it said: the mistress was all too often away in a place of her own within her own head, far from Cambria.
That dose of information gave young Uther much more to think about than he had ever had before, and he began to watch his mother closely, examining her behaviour for any sign of these "absences." but of course it was useless to attempt anything of the kind, because his mother's behaviour was no whit different than it had ever been, and he had never seen anything strange about it before. Nevertheless, he remained alert after that for signs of awayness in her.
After that day, he took special pains to safeguard and protect Ins virtual invisibility in the kitchen while the women were gossiping, removing himself from view whenever the conversation promised to be especially enlightening, and he never failed to keep one ear cocked for any mention of his mother's "other" name. He learned much over the course of the ensuing four years, and he began to recognize the "away" intervals in his mother's behaviour, but he never did learn anything in the kitchens about the underlying cause of Veronica's supposedly strange behaviour, and he eventually became convinced that Henna herself did not know the truth, no matter how hard she tried to appear all-knowing.
The first plausible explanation that Uther ever heard came years later, in a conversation between his father and his mother's father, Publius Varrus. It took place in Camulod in the early spring of one year. Uric had brought his wife to visit her parents, Publius and Luceiia Varrus, and to collect his son, who had spent the entire winter in his grandparents' home with his "twin" cousin, Caius Merlyn Britannicus. The two boys had been born within hours of each other on the same day, albeit miles apart, one of them in Cambria and the other in Camulod. They were very close—in blood if not in temperament—and they had been the best of friends ever since they had grown old enough to recognize each other. Caius's father, Picus Britannicus, had once been a cavalry commander—a full legate—in the Roman legions under the great Flavius Stilicho, Imperial Regent and Commander-in-Chief of the boy emperor Honorius. When his wife was killed by a madman, shortly after giv
ing birth to their only son, Picus's Aunt Luceiia, Uther's grandmother, adopted the infant Caius as her own charge in the enforced absence of his father.
When the two boys were very small, barely able to walk and run, Uther's mother Veronica had insisted that they spend as much time as possible in each other's company, for both their sakes and for the good of the family, and so it had become normal for Uther to spend much of each winter down in Camulod, and then for Caius—or Cay, as he had come to be known by his friends—to return with him to Cambria for much of the summer.
On this particular afternoon, Uther was once again playing the role of invisible listener, his eavesdropping skills long practised and honed by his years of hiding in Henna's kitchen. It was a dismal, rainy day, and the boys had been playing indoors in the old Villa Britannicus, once the ancestral home of Caius Britannicus, Caius Merlyn's grandfather, but now used as quarters for visiting guests, since the family had moved up to live in the new fort at the top of the hill less than a mile away.
Uther had been hiding from Cay and his other friends, well concealed behind a curtain in his grandfather's favourite room. When he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, he remained utterly still, believing it was his companions come looking for him. It wasn't until he heard his grandfather Publius begin to speak that he realized his error, and he began to emerge from his hiding place, but almost immediately, perhaps by force of habit, he hesitated.
Uther's father had followed Publius into the room, and his grandfather asked his first question without preamble. It was suddenly too late, and so Uther remained where he was and listened.
"You can tell me to mind my own business if you wish, but there's something wrong between you and Veronica, isn't there?"
Uther stood motionless, holding his breath as he waited to hear his father's response. The silence that followed seemed to last for an age. Then Uther heard the sound of slow footsteps and the scraping of wood on stone as someone moved a chair.
"Has she said anything to you?" his father asked.
"No, she has not. . . not to me or to her mother . . . but neither one of us is stupid, Uric, and Veronica is not a facile liar, even when she keeps silent. The trouble's not ours, for all that we love our daughter . . . it's yours and hers. A daughter and a wife are two distinct and very different creatures, coexisting in a single woman. But, as I said, if you don't wish to talk about it, I'll respect that."
Another long silence stretched out and was shattered by the brazen clash of a gong, making Uther jump, so that for a moment he was afraid he might have betrayed himself. Nothing happened, however, and as his heartbeat began to slow again, he heard another voice, this one from the far side of the room.
"Master Varrus, what may I bring you?"
"Ah, Gallo, bring us something to drink, please. Something cold."
Gallo must have retired immediately, because the silence resumed, and then his father spoke again.
"I don't really know what to tell you, Publius. Something definitely is wrong, and it has been wrong for a long, long time. There's a part of me that thinks it understands, but even so, it doesn't really make sense even to me, so how can I explain it to you?"
It was some time before his father spoke again.
"Not that we are unhappy, you know . . . It's simply that . . . well, we sleep together and behave as man and wife, but I know—" Uric Pendragon broke off and then continued in a rush. "She won't have any more children. None, Publius. And I don't mean she is incapable of having any more. I mean she will not have them. Doesn't want them, won't hear talk of them. She takes . . . she takes medicaments and nostrums to guard against becoming pregnant. Gets them from some of the old women who live in the countryside beyond our settlement, the ones who are supposed to be the priestesses of the Old Goddess."
"The Old Goddess? You mean the Moon Goddess?"
"Aye, the greatest of all our gods and goddesses, Rhiannon. She is very real and very present out there among the people of the mountains and the forests."
"Why on earth would she go to such lengths to avoid having children? That does not sound like the Veronica I know. All she ever dreamed of as a girl was having a brood of children of her own. You must have—" Varrus broke off and cleared his throat. "Damnation, it's difficult to say some things without sounding wrong. I'm not blaming you for anything, yet . . . Have you any idea what happened?"
Uther heard his father sigh, a great, gusting breath.
"It has to be connected with that first night we arrived in Cambria, newly wed, and the debacle that took place there, the deaths. By the time I discovered what was going on, it was already too late to prevent it. I tried to hide it from her, to take her away and protect her from it, but I couldn't, and I know it frightened her badly . . .
"But then, over time, once all the excitement had died away, she seemed to settle down and gradually grew more calm. I tried to explain it to her—all the whys and wherefores of how it happened. But she merely listened, and finally I stopped talking about it altogether. We never spoke of it again. I thought she had forgotten it at last."
They were interrupted at that point by the return of Gallo, evidently accompanied by another man bearing a tray of drinks. Uther felt his bladder stirring faintly and resolutely ignored it, concentrating instead upon the muttered, indecipherable mumbles of small talk and the clinking of dishes. Moments later, he heard the sound of liquid pouring from one container into others. He translated an inarticulate grunt from his father as a wordless acknowledgment of gratitude, and then someone—he assumed it was his grandfather because it was he who spoke next—replaced his cup audibly on a surface of some kind.
"So, you were saying she recovered from her horror, eventually . . ."
"Aye, I thought she had. She was terrified at first. I think she believed that the things she had seen were common—probably thought we burned all our enemies alive. There was a time afterwards when she was so . . . I don't know . . . so gone from me that I was afraid I had lost her and her love forever. Then Uther was born, and we were lost in the wonder of watching him grow stronger and more beautiful each day.
"Months went by, then years, and I began to fret over her failure to have another child. It was not for the lack of trying, and so I began to worry and to question myself. She'd had no trouble conceiving when we were first wed . . . in fact, I believe she caught with child on our wedding night. But then when I began to harp on that to her, wondering why it should be so, Veronica reacted strangely. She grew hostile and refused to speak of it, turning away from me each time I raised the subject. And that was when I began to be aware that something was badly wrong between us . . . That would have been . . . what? Four years ago? No, closer to five. I knew I had done nothing to cause any such wrongness . . . nothing harmful . . .
"I've never doubted that she loves me, but there is a deep, deep sadness in her all the time, Publius, a well of grief. And I feel powerless to help her. As I said, she won't even consider having any more children. Not at all."
"And you don't know why?"
"No, I do, it goes back to that first night, the night of the fires. The last time we fought, she said she would never bring another child into this world to be betrayed and blackened by the Druids."
It took his grandfather some time to respond to that.
"I think, Uric, I would like to hear what really happened on that occasion. By the time we learned anything about it in Camulod, it had all been over for months, and everyone was trying to forget it, stepping over and around it and saying as little as possible. I know there was an uprising of some kind among the Druids and that many of them were killed, and I know that several other people died in a fire. But what did Veronica actually see that night?"
Another long silence ensued, and Uther stood motionless, trying not to breathe too loudly lest the sound of it be noticeable to the men on the other side of the curtain. Every time they paused, as each man thought deeply before saying what he had to say next, it left a silence into w
hich he was afraid the sound of his breathing or his heartbeat might easily intrude.
Finally his father spoke.
"She witnessed a burning."
"A burning . . . What does that mean? Are you telling me it was deliberate, that she saw someone being deliberately burned to death?"
"Aye . . . more than one."
"How many more, in God's name?"
"Thirty-two."
"By the Christian Christus! Thirty-two men? She was barely sixteen years old! You allowed her to watch thirty-two men being j burned alive?"
"No, of course not! I allowed nothing. But there was nothing I could have done. Even my father was powerless to stop it. We arrived in the middle of things, with no warning."
Another long silence and then the sound of footsteps pacing up and down When his grandfather's voice came again, Uther could imagine him looking out and away, with his back to Uric. "And what was going on, Uric? Tell me about it now."
"There's not much to tell. It all came to a head while we were here in Camulod for the wedding feast, but it had begun a long time beforethat—a plot born and nurtured in secrecy, protected by blood oaths and the fear of visitation by demons. What forced it into prominence, however, was sheer circumstance and coincidence. While the King and his strongest supporters were away in Camulod making merry, a force of Ersemen raided our southern coast. Four boatloads of them. By the merest chance, we had a force of our own down there at the time, under the command of Powys, one of my father's best captains. By the time Powys learned of the enemy presence and caught up to them, however, the raiders had burned four settlements along the coastline. Powys fought them as soon as he found them. Caught them away from their boats and cut them off, then slaughtered them—or most of them. Not enough of them, as it turned out. We found out later that Powys had been spending time in the company of certain of our Druids, and because of that, instead of simply killing the raiders out of hand as he ought to have, he brought them back as prisoners."
