"Now that's very sad, Uther, because you are my King, and had I but a pinch of pity in my breast I would bleed for you. So speak to me, share the burden. Get this pus-filled sickness out of your mind and let your conscience breathe again. What is it, this enormous secret of yours, this thing that has caused you so much ill feeling?"
"This place."
"This place?" Garreth looked around him, frowning.
"No, not here. Cambria, and Tir Manha. It's not my kingdom, Garreth, although I am its King. It is not my home—not my true home, the home of my heart."
"That's Camulod."
"Yes, it is."
Uther reached behind his back with one hand and closed his thumb and fingertips on either side of the blade of the long cavalry sword that hung there, thrusting it upwards hard, so that it almost slid out of the ring between his shoulders, and as it fell forward he grasped it by the hilt, twirled it around and jammed its point into the ground, where it stood swaying gently. Garreth looked at it and said nothing.
"That was the start of it, right there."
"What was, a sword?"
"A cavalry sword, a long sword. Cavalry has always been my first thought of Camulod, Garreth. Every time I hear the name, I think of cavalry—tall men riding tall horses, all of them in armour. There could be no Camulod without cavalry, and without cavalry there would be no long swords like this.
"What I am trying to say, Garreth, is that Camulod and Cambria are like light and darkness to me. My memories of Camulod—all my memories of Camulod—are filled with light and laughter and enjoyment. The people there enjoy their lives! Here, on the other hand, we seem to live most of our days in darkness. Smiles are few and far between in Tir Manha, or anywhere else in Cambria. It is as though our people have no natural feeling for enjoyment. We seem to see it as a sign of weakness. We have no laughter in our souls, or if we have, we save it all inside us until we can laugh at someone else's misfortune, jeering at their pain. Our elders are stern, humourless and unforgiving; our women are dark-faced and lowering. Not always, not always . . . I'll grant that. But more often than otherwise.
"That year my mother had been sick, of some kind of fever, and had been confined to bed for weeks. My Grandmother Varrus was concerned for her. She had received word from my father that he, too, was worried. Anyway, my grandmother had suggested that I might want to return home to be with my mother, at least until she grew well enough to be up and about again, at which time she might like to return to Camulod with me for the remainder of the summer. Well, I resented being told what to do, especially by an old woman, even if she was my grandmother, and even more than that, I resented the implication that I did not know where my duty lay. I had decided that it would be impossible for me to return home; I was far too necessary to the welfare of the Colony simply to take a leave of absence and disappear for some indeterminate period of time. Anything might happen while I was away, and I was determined that no one would be able to say I had neglected either my duty or my military responsibilities.
"Of course, the truth was that I simply did not want to come home again to Tir Manha. My father's elders were outspoken in their disapproval of my lengthy absences—they saw it as misconduct. For my part, I dreaded the thought of being stuck here for any length of time . . .
"On the last night of our patrol, the night before the incident with Cassandra, I had a dream in which I saw my mother lying dead in her bed in Tir Manha while I was enjoying myself in Camulod. It was a terrible dream. I sprang awake bathed in cold sweat, not knowing where I was, forgetting I was on patrol and that we were miles from anywhere, surrounded by forest. I found it impossible to go back to sleep again, and finally, I gave up and rolled out of my blankets well before dawn, then went to inspect the perimeter guards. They must have thought I was insane, but all I was worried about was that they might have heard me crying out in my sleep.
"That dream, the memory of it, stayed in my mind all that day and was still there late that night while I was lying in the games room with those women, making a pig of myself. I was coupling with one of them, and a vision of my mother, lying sick and perhaps dying, sprang into my mind. I couldn't think about that and continue with the woman, so I started looking around for something to take my mind off what was troubling me. And that's when I saw Cassandra and noticed her mouth. That, effectively, is how the entire incident began.
"And now it has ended with her brutalization and death at the hands of persons unknown . . . again. Poor woman, it would seem she was fated to die by violence. And what do you think is the most ironic part of all of it?"
"I don't know, Uther, tell me."
Uther looked Garreth Whistler in the eye and smiled. "I was there again, Garreth. If what Daffyd the Druid suspects is true, then Cassandra—Deirdre, as they call her now—died on the first day of her visit to this secret place she shared with Merlyn, and I was there in Camulod the day she left. She had gone by the time I arrived, less than an hour before, as it transpired. But I was there in Camulod when Deirdre met her death. I wonder what my Cousin Merlyn will make of that?"
Garreth sat blinking at Uther for a long time, saying nothing, and then he looked down at his right hand, which still held the clean-picked bone of the fowl. He blinked his eyes, as though awakening from a dream, and then Hipped the bone into the river, wiping his hand on his tunic as he stood up.
"What should he make of it?" he asked. "There's nothing to be made. You weren't alone in Camulod, were you? The only person in the fortress?"
"No, of course not."
"Well, then, there will be people there who saw you and who can attest to your presence all that day and for how many more?"
"Three more."
"Aye, and what did you do during those three days?"
"Discussed strategy and tactics with the military staff."
"Good, so you could not have been doing that and riding off into the countryside to some unknown place to slaughter a young woman at the same time, could you? So now that we have settled that, may you and I return to Tir Manha and discuss strategy and tactics with our own military staff? We have a campaign to plan, and if I may remind you, you are supposed to be leaving to return to Camulod again within the week. By that time, all our arrangements must be firmly in place here, with Huw Strongarm, Dergyll, Owain and everyone else, including me, fully aware of who holds what duties and who is answerable to whom. Do we have time for that?"
Uther smiled. "Yes. We have time for that."
Garreth rewrapped the uneaten fowl and they remounted. He put his horse to the slope and Uther's followed, so that the conversation continued in a series of shouts.
"I am not the one you have to talk to, Uther . . . Merlyn, I think . . . needs to hear all that you have said to me today . . . most particularly . . . now that he has lost his wife." They gained the level surface again and were able to lower their voices and ride side by side.
"And you need to tell it to him, looking him in the eye as you do so. He'll need his friend back, and he will feel great guilt over what he suspected about you, I think, so it will be up to you to see that he forgives himself. Can you do that, think you?"
"Aye, I believe I can . . . What happens after that is entirely in the hands of the gods." He glanced up at the sky. "It's going to rain. Let's ride!"
Men make plans, but the gods decree the outcome, and Uther was never to enjoy the chance of commiserating with his cousin over the death of Deirdre. A month after his discussion with Garreth, Uther saw Merlyn again most unexpectedly. Uther had been working for days to bring about a confrontation with a large party of Lot's forces, harrying them constantly and eventually chasing them up into the Mendip Hills, where he had painstakingly set up an ambush for them. He never dreamed that Merlyn and his party returning home from Verulamium might ride into the middle of it and spring the trap. Spring it they did, however, and in the opening moments of the fighting that followed. Merlyn's party absorbed heavy casualties before Uther could come riding to their rescue. Thereafter, the cousins fought side by side in the grim conflict until, in the fury of the fighting, Uther saw Merlyn unhorsed and struck down by a killing blow from his own flail, swung by an enemy who had not known with whom he was engaged. The battle, little more than a skirmish, savage though it was, was won shortly after Merlyn's fall, and Uther then carried the unconscious, almost lifeless body of Merlyn Britannicus home to Camulod. There he lay for months, tied to his bed, his head immobilized while the surgeon Lucanus drilled a hole into his skull and saved his life. His life, but not his mind. From that day forward, Merlyn Britannicus won slowly back to life, but even when he had apparently recovered fully, in that he could talk and move and function normally in every way, his mind was destroyed, his memory erased as though no knowledge had ever existed in its depths.