Before Uther had even departed from the fortress, the hard-core training of both infantry and cavalry had begun, and the great plain at the base of the hill of Camulod was once more obscured by clouds of dust from dawn until dusk each day.
As soon as he returned to Tir Manha, Uther rode out again, this time to raise warriors from the westernmost territories of the Griffyd clans, where another young Chief called Dergyll ap Griffyd, who was not much older than Huw Strongarm, had succeeded Cativelaunus of Carmarthen. The old man had fallen into an icy mountain stream swollen with melting snow at the end of the previous winter and died. Uther and Dergyll had known each other very briefly during one boyhood summer long before and had formed a mutual liking and admiration at that time, so it was easy for them to get along with each other again after a gap of many years. The expedition was a great success, and Uther returned to Tir Manha accompanied by Dergyll himself and a large company of several hundred warriors.
He arrived, however, to discover that fresh word had come from Camulod and that his mother, Veronica, wished to speak with him immediately. Intrigued, he went directly to his mother's house, and she told him about how Merlyn's young wife Deirdre and the babe she had been carrying had been murdered. A courier had arrived from Camulod three days before, bearing a letter from Luceiia Britannicus in which she described the little that she knew about what had happened. She had known where Deirdre was, and in fact had planned the expedition with the girl, who had been pining for the solitude she had loved while living in her secluded valley for months, and so a week and more had passed without Luceiia being unduly worried. But when the younger woman had failed to return as promised during the second week, Luceiia had grown concerned and asked Daffyd, Merlyn's Druid friend, to visit the young woman and make sure that she was well.
Daffyd found a scene of carnage: Merlyn's young wife slaughtered, her unborn babe destroyed with her, her decomposing body floating in the lake, bloated and ravaged beyond recognition. By Daffyd's initial estimate, later confirmed by other findings, Deirdre had been dead for at least a week, perhaps longer, by the time he found her, and the cause of her death had been a brutal battering, administered by someone of great strength. Daffyd discounted a sexually motivated attack from the moment of his first objective assessment of the crime, judging by the fact that the corpse was still fully clothed, even to her loincloth and other undergarments. And yet robbery could not have been the reason, either, as nothing had been taken from the wagon.
Daffyd judged then that it would be best for everyone—he was thinking most particularly of Luceiia's sensibilities—if he were simply to bury the sad remains of both mother and unborn child as close as possible to where he had found them and to recommend them to the gods as creatures worthy of respect and kindness. Having laid them to rest beside the lake beneath the sacred trees— all trees were sacred in the eyes of Druids—he then searched the entire locality thoroughly and painstakingly, looking for signs or traces of the unknown assailant. He found nothing, however, apart from an area of scuffed and trampled earth that might have been torn up by the hooves of an attacker's horse or, equally likely, by Deirdre's own cart horse, which lay close by, dead in its harness.
He stood vigil by the young woman's grave that night, praying over her, and then, convinced that there was nothing further to be learned at the scene, he returned to Camulod bearing his tragic news.
Luceiia withdrew to her rooms, where she remained in mourning for two days, greatly distressed by the knowledge that word could not reach Merlyn in Verulamium in time to bring him home ahead of his scheduled return. By the time the messengers crossed the entire country to reach him, if they survived the journey at all, it would already be nigh on the time for him to set out for home on his return journey.
Uther sat listening in silence as his mother told him the story and read to him from his grandmother's letter. When she had finished, he rose to his feet and stood over her for a while, gripping her shoulder tightly with one hand, incapable of speech. Then he turned away and walked from the room.
Concerned by the look of him as he walked away, Veronica rose quickly and followed him, watching as he left the house and made his way directly to the cluster of long buildings that had been erected several years before as stables for his cavalry mounts. The sullen trooper Veronica disliked, the woman-man called Nemo, had been standing outside the house, waiting for him to come out, but he waved her off impatiently, and she instantly fell back and walked away, plainly knowing her superior well enough to gauge his mood and know she was not welcome for the present.
Veronica stayed back and waited and watched until her son emerged again from the stables a short time later, riding his huge chestnut gelding, and as he disappeared towards the main gates of Tir Manha, looking neither to right nor left, she turned and signalled to a passing trooper, bidding him find Garreth Whistler and bring him to her house immediately.
"Are you ever going to speak again?"
Uther turned his head very slowly and threw Garreth Whistler a long, considering look, then turned back and kicked his horse forward, down the sloping bank to where the narrow river bustled through its gorge.
Garreth dipped his head in a private gesture that said. Well, I tried, and followed horse and rider down the steep incline. He had caught up to Uther easily, within five miles of Tir Manha, because Uther had been making no attempt to move quickly, but he had made no effort thereafter to impose himself upon the King, content simply to ride along half a length behind him and wait to be noticed. Uther, however, had paid him no attention, apart from a swift glance to determine who it was that had followed him, and more than an hour had elapsed since then. Garreth could tell, however, that Uther was not displeased by his presence.
They had been sitting side by side for almost half of the past half hour, simply gazing down at the torrent in the gully below, and now Uther was approaching the edge of the fast-flowing stream and rising in his stirrups prior to dismounting. Garreth waited until he had dismounted completely and moved to sit on the trunk of a fallen tree by the riverside, and then he swung down from his horse, too, and dug into one of his saddlebags. From it he withdrew a cloth containing a cold fowl, a loaf of bread and a small, stoppered horn filled with salt, all provided by Uther's mother. He carried the bundle lo where Uther sat on the tree trunk and perched beside him, placing the cloth between them and untying its knot.
"Here, eat. Your mother told me what happened. She also told me you must be starved."
Uther glanced down at the food and shook his head, still apparently not ready to speak.
Garreth shrugged and ripped a leg off the bird, then sprinkled it profligately with salt and bit off a succulent mouthful. He chewed with relish for a while, then stuffed the meat into one cheek and spoke around it. "You're acting as though this was personal to you . . . as though you had known the woman herself . . . What was her name? Deirdre?"
Finally, Uther spoke. "Deirdre, yes, but she was Cassandra before that. You never knew about the fight we had, Merlyn and I, the night Cassandra was attacked, did you?"
"No, not really. All I know is that after a lifetime of seldom being more than an arm's length apart, you two spent nigh on a year without seeing each other."