by Jack Whyte
"My tale is brief, and soon told. My grandmother Riganna was half-sister to Enid, Uther's mother. Riganna was the firstborn female child of her father's first wife and Enid the last of his second wife. Fifteen years separated them. Riganna had a daughter called Bronwynn, who was my mother and first cousin to Uther. When I was fourteen, I visited Camulod with my mother and father. You met me then, but I was a mere child and you had just brought your young wife back to live in your aunt's house. Your aunt liked me because I reminded her of herself at my age, and she persuaded my parents to allow me to remain with her for a time in Camulod when they returned home.
"At that time, everyone in Camulod—you more than any other—was completely involved in preparing the embassage to attend the upcoming debate in Verulamium, and shortly after it had been arranged that I should stay you left the Colony. While you were gone, Lot of Cornwall invaded again, and my father was killed in the fighting. When you yourself came back to Camulod, you were gravely wounded. I helped to tend you, but you were unaware of me, or of anyone else." She smiled again. "In the years since then, you have had more to concern you than the servants of your aunt, and my duties have changed, keeping me far from your sight, so it is quite natural you should be unaware of me."
I gazed at her unspeaking, then asked, "You knew Uther?"
She nodded her head. "Very slightly. Not well at all. He knew who I was, and he treated me kindly, as a kinswoman."
"What about your mother? Is she in Camulod now?"
"No, she died soon after my father—of grief, I think."
"So now Camulod is your home." I turned to look towards Luke's recumbent figure and then returned my eyes to her. "But what are you doing here— tonight, I mean? And what about the bones?"
"She is a student." Luke's eyes were still closed. "We were studying the anatomy of the corpus humanus."
"Oh, you're awake, are you? You will admit, at least, Luke, that my curiosity on this subject has been admirably restrained."
"Hmm. I was beginning to wonder if you had even noticed, although you looked shocked to your soul when the skull rolled to your feet." Now he opened his eyes and sat up, shuffling himself into a comfortable position and coming to rest with his elbows on his knees, his face serious. "Much has changed in Camulod in recent years, Merlyn. Particularly in areas that have, I am quite sure, by their very nature escaped your notice."
"Like what?"
He cleared his throat and spat into the fire. "Well, the main one as far as I am concerned is in the treatment of our wounded." I waited for him to continue. "We've been at war now for five years and more. Most of the fighting has been done far from Camulod, thank God, but all of it has demanded much of our young fighting men and, by default, much of the work they used to do is handled now by women. Farming, and labouring, and working in the Infirmary."
"I knew that."
"Certainly you did, but you grew accustomed to it only after your first head injury. You retained no memory of the way things had been before. Your renewed life was one in which women played roles unknown to them prior to your injury." I realised he was right and held my peace. "Ludmilla here began helping in the Infirmary while you were first confined there. She enjoyed the work and became very useful to me, in spite of her extreme youth. As she grew older, she became more and more valuable, and I discerned in her the makings of a natural surgeon. This child is gifted with an awareness of human physiology the like of which I have never encountered, and so, about a year ago, I began to train her as my own assistant. She quickly assimilated an astounding knowledge and understanding of the musculature and organs of the body, and as her knowledge grew, my own awareness of the haphazard nature of the training I had been giving her grew commensurately. So I decided to complete her training properly, beginning anew and more methodically this time. I assembled a complete skeleton, and have been teaching her the entire, shall we say, mechanics of the body. The names and the functions of the individual bones, the major blood vessels and organs, and all the knowledge I have managed to accumulate over the years." He stopped and smiled across the flames at Ludmilla. "She learns more quickly than I am capable of teaching. She is a true descendant of Aesculapius."
I looked at Ludmilla with new respect. Lucanus had never been a man to toss out hollow compliments. He was speaking again.
"Anyway, in the past few weeks, the trickle of wounded returning to Camulod has swollen to a flood and we have been overworked, just as we were approaching a crucial period of Ludmilla's training—a period which, once entered upon, should not be interrupted, but should be completed quickly. I had decreed today a day of study. But it was the fourth consecutive day I had thus designated, and the previous three had been pre-empted by emergencies. The day dawned bright, and Ludmilla suggested we absent ourselves from Camulod, and from interruption, for the day. I remembered having spent a pleasant day with you here some years ago and decided I could find the spot again. We arrived long before noon and began working immediately, and time escaped us. You arrived as we were preparing to leave."
"Well." I found that I was able to smile openly now at the young woman opposite me. "Lady Ludmilla, I am honoured to meet you and to know you now, and I shall certainly never be able to forget you again. I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for my lapse of memory."
She smiled again and nodded wordlessly, and I felt better than I had all evening. The fire collapsed upon itself and I leaned forward to replenish it. "It's a warm night," I said. "I think we should sleep well, fed as we are, and rise early for a pre-dawn start. I can't wait to see Camulod again. Lucanus, you take the shelter, I'll sleep outside. Lady Ludmilla, you take the tent."
She would not hear of it, and went directly to the shelter. Lucanus took the tent. Before he retired, he glanced at me again. "About Uther. . ."
_
"Tomorrow, Luke. Another time, another place. Sleep well.
IV
As it transpired, a regular session of the Council of Camulod was scheduled for the afternoon of the day of my return, and that relieved me of any doubts I might have had about the swiftest and most appropriate means of confirming, officially, the rumours of Uther's death. I had pledged Lucanus and Ludmilla, upon the road that morning, to say nothing until I had made the news known to my Aunt Luceiia and the senior councilors, and it was then that Lucanus told me of the meeting.
On our arrival in Camulod, I had made my way directly to the home of my aunt. She absorbed my tidings of the death of her beloved grandson with self-possession and quiet dignity, surprising me in spite of the fact that I knew she had been prepared for the worst by the rumours. As I had had good reason to observe in the past, my great-aunt Luceiia Britannicus was a woman of extraordinary strength and resilience, and great perspicacity. She had known as soon as I greeted her that I bore ill tidings and had assumed, correctly, that they concerned Uther.
She sat in silence as I told her briefly of my discovery of Uther's body, and the primitive funeral pyre I had set to consume him. As I spoke, her eyes filled with tears, but her face remained calm and no drop spilled beyond her lashes. When I had finished speaking she sat motionless for a spell, then reached out distractedly and touched my hand, patting it tenderly as though to comfort me. I sat there beside her, awkwardly, wanting to put my arm around her to comfort her, yet fearful of intruding upon the reserves of strength that enabled her to bear her grief so stoically. After a time, however, she dabbed her eyes with the end of her shawl, sat up even straighter and cleared her throat.
"So Uther is gone, irrevocably. May God look kindly upon him. I knew the truth of it as soon as I first heard the rumour, although he had always seemed so invulnerable." She looked directly into my eyes now, and her gaze was clear and sharp. "I mourned for him then. Sadly, there is no time to mourn further now. How are you, Nephew? And what prompted you to search for Uther? When you left, you said merely that you had to be alone for a time, to come to terms with yourself, that you had no idea where your wandering
s might take you."
There was no censure in her voice, and I knew that she yet harboured no suspicion of the vengeful anger that had driven me in pursuit of my cousin. I saw no need to mention it now and cause her further pain, so I merely shook my head and evaded her question.
"I am well, Auntie, but sickened by what I saw in Cornwall and the south, the appalling waste of life and young men. Lot of Cornwall is dead, too, did you know that?"
"No, but I am glad to hear of it. He was an evil man. Are you sure of his death, or is it a report?"
"No. I found him myself, and cut him down from the tree where he had been hanged. Who hanged him we may never know, but it was effectively done. His hands and feet had been severed and hung in a bag about his neck. A richly worked bag that bore the arms of Pendragon. I would have ascribed the death to Uther personally, but that one of the severed hands yet wore the seal of Cornwall and I cannot see Uther leaving that for the Fates to dispose of. He would have taken it as proof of lot's death, if for no other reason. So would any of his men who sought to impress Uther with his zeal and loyalty. It is a mystery, I suppose, that will never be solved."
"Did you remove it?"
"Aye. I have it here, with Uther's own." I pulled the small leather bag from my scrip and passed it to her. She untied the drawstring and tipped the contents into her palm, immediately setting aside the seal of Gulrhys Lot with distaste upon a small table and fingering the great gold signet of Pendragon with its dragon crest, holding it close to her face to admire the intricacies of the dragon inscribed deeply into its flat oval crown.
"Who will wear this now?" she mused, and then looked up at me and offered it back. "It must be returned. Uther has no heir, so his crown will be assumed by some other, by acclamation or inheritance. It has probably occurred already. He had many uncles and kinsmen. This should belong to one of them."
I drew a deep breath, and spoke softly and clearly. "No, Auntie, both of those rings belong to Uther's heir." She glanced at me sharply, pain in her eyes now, prepared to reprimand me. "He has one," I continued.
Her face went blank, then her eyes took on a new awareness, an excitement. "Where?"
I grimaced. "In Eire, among the Scots, with Donuil's people. He is their heir, too. His name is Arthur."
"Their heir, too?" She paused for the space of three heartbeats, her piercing bright eyes scanning my face. "You have a tale to tell me, Nephew," she said then, glancing around to make sure we were alone. "And I think you have no wish to speak it aloud for other ears. Am I correct?"
I rose and crossed to the double doors of her quarters, leaning out to make sure that no one was nearby before I drew them closed and crossed the room swiftly to ensure that the other door was firmly closed and we were quite alone, and then I returned to share her couch and told her the entire tale of Uther, Ygraine and their son, Arthur. She listened closely, making no attempt to interrupt me while I went on to describe my own adventures with Connor and his Ersemen, and my loss of the child. When I had finished speaking, she stood up and moved to a table against the wall, where a white cloth covered a jug of wine and a bowl of fruit. She poured wine for me and brought it back, and as I accepted it she said, "So this child Arthur is related to you both by blood and marriage, the son of your wife's sister, and the son of your own cousin."
"Aye. Nephew and cousin."
"And heir to Pendragon, and to Camulod."
"More than that, Auntie. He is also heir to Cornwall."
She frowned immediately. "How so? Lot was Cornwall's king, and Arthur is Uther's son. His mother was Hibernian. The child has no claim to Cornwall."
"True," I said. "But only we know that. I am splitting hairs, here, being a sophist, I suppose. But to good purpose. Lot acknowledged the child, publicly at least, as his own, according to Popilius, and left no other children. The child has possession of Gulrhys Lot's own seal. Furthermore he is grandson of the king of the Hibernian Scots."
She gazed at me steadfastly for some time, then nodded. "A potent mixture," she murmured eventually, her voice sounding far away, as though she saw great distances ahead of her.
"Aye, the same thought occurred to me when first I saw him. He is a fine, lusty child, Auntie, and his eyes are yellow gold, as were your brother's." I paused, then smiled as I went on. "I could be wrong, of course, but I fancy the resemblance to Caius Britannicus might run even deeper. The boy's nose is large, even for a babe."
"What? He has Cay's eyes and nose? What of his hair? What colour is that?"
I smiled. "His hair is dark, with a baby's darkness that could change as he grows. Not black, though, Auntie, more a deep, dark brown."
"Dark brown plumage, gold eyes and a Roman beak. You describe a golden eagle, Cay." I merely nodded, smiling still. "How will you get him back, Cay, and more to the point, when? I should like to see this child before I die."
I embraced her, slipping one arm around her frail shoulders. "You will, Auntie, I promise. As soon as Donuil returns from Northumbria or wherever he is, we shall leave for Eire. Has there been any news of him?"
"No, not a word. Will you seek him now?"
I shook my head. "Where would I start? He could arrive from a direction other than the obvious route from the northeast. What point in riding off without knowledge of his whereabouts? He could pass unseen within half a mile of me at any time. I have no choice other than to wait here for his return, in the hope that he will come soon, remembering his five-year sentence has elapsed. His uncle promised to come seeking him at the end of that time. I should hate to end one war and plunge directly into another simply because I could not produce my hostage on demand."
My aunt frowned at that. "Is that likely, Caius?"
I grinned at her and shook my head. "No, not at all, Auntie. I told you, Connor holds the child and knows how highly I value its life. He and his people now have a hostage to my good behaviour."
"How, a hostage? You said he was their heir. You think they might harm the boy, their own kin, should you fail to appear with Donuil?"
"They do not know who he is, Auntie. I did not tell Connor the babe was his sister's. Even so, I doubt that they would harm him. Connor is not a cruel man, and he loves children. I could see that from the way he handled the boy and spoke of his own. When we parted, he gave me a month to deliver Donuil home, alive and in good health, in exchange for the child. I told him then that Donuil's absence on my own behalf might make it impossible for me to meet that expectation, and now it looks as though I was correct. . . but I have no fears of Connor's taking vengeance on the child, lacking real proof of Donuil's death. When Donuil returns, we will journey to Eire. The boy will be safe until then."
She was gazing at me strangely now, a trace of troubled shadow in her eyes. "You have not told me everything, I see, Cay. Why would you not tell this Connor who the infant was? Surely, for the child's safety, that would have been prudent?"
I dipped my head, acknowledging the truth of that. "It would, of course, Auntie, but there were other matters to be taken into account, equally important to the child's safety. The matter of his blood, more than any other. As grandson of Athol, King of Scots, they might have taken him and kept him, thinking his place should be in his grandfather's Hall. I see it otherwise. As the son of Uther Pendragon, his place is here in Britain, in his paternal grandfather's Colony and in his own mountains. That is his heritage. To that end he was born."
"What do you mean? To what end?"
"He will fulfill the Dream, Auntie."
She frowned again, perplexed. "What dream?"
"The Dream of Caius Britannicus and of Publius Varrus. The unification of two peoples, Roman and Celt, beneath one leader."
"Nonsense!" Her voice was sharp with asperity. "My brother and Publius Varrus dreamed of survival, and they dreamed well, but their dream was of this Colony of ours, not of two entire peoples. Those two could never be that grandiose. You forget I knew both of them far better than you and for more years than you have yet lived."
"One people, Auntie. The Britons." I had arrived at a decision, without forethought and purely on the spur of the moment. "Among the last things Uncle Varrus told me on his deathbed was that I would be true to my trust and would recognize the one I awaited the moment I saw him. For a time, I thought it might be my brother Ambrose, but now I know I was wrong. It was the child. I knew from the instant I set eyes on him."
She sat staring at me as though I were a stranger, and when she spoke again, her tone was wondering. "Caius," she said, "my beloved nephew, I have no idea what you are talking about, and I find that rather frightening."
I rose to my feet, holding out my hand to her, and she pulled herself up wordlessly and followed where I led.
Moments later, I leaned my back against the closed, bronze-covered doors of the Armoury, watching her as she stood gazing around the walls of the room her husband had built and furnished with such love.
"I seldom come here now," she said. "It hurts to be here. I am reminded too strongly of the man I loved and have lost. And yet it is a wonderful place. It seems filled with the very essence of my husband."
"Par more than you know, Auntie," I said softly.
I seated her in Uncle Varrus's favourite chair, beside his writing table, and she watched silently as I took down the wooden hammer-keys from the wall and used them to unlock the secret hiding-place beneath the boards of the floor. Silent too, I stooped and drew out the long, polished wooden case that lay concealed there, wiping the dust from its surface with my sleeve before carrying it to the table and placing it gently and reverently before her. Wordless still, she stretched out her hand and traced with her fingertips the outlines of the falling star inlaid in gold and silver in the lustrous wood of the case's surface. The case seemed solid, one single block of wood unmarked by seams or joints.
