Chapter TWENTY-SIX
For more than a week Uther kept his distance from Ygraine and the other women, although he kept himself precisely informed of their well-being and their morale through his intermediaries. The only woman who saw him in all that time was Morgas, because he came to her bed each night. He made no attempt to speak to her about any of his plans, however, nor did he respond in any way to her questions of him. He came only to rut with her, and he rutted magnificently, which pleased Morgas immensely, since her lustful appetites matched his own. When he was sated, however, as he eventually was each night, he would rise and seek his own cot, and on the two occasions when Morgas sought to follow him and question him, he left the tent and went to sleep elsewhere instead. Morgas was angry at first, but then she accepted the situation. All things change, she knew, and she was confident that, given time, Uther would come to confide in her. She informed Ygraine that Uther was entwined in her clutches, but remained vague about what they discussed in bed.
Then, on the tenth day after the capture, came word that threw the King into a towering rage, a fury so overpowering that he knew he would have to leave the camp in order to rid himself of the temptation to do violence to the Queen and her women. Owain of the Caves had brought him the ill tidings that a party of envoys sent to Gulrhys Lot on the first day of the Queen's captivity had been received by Lot and then butchered out of hand as soon as they had delivered their message. Owain and a squadron of bowmen had accompanied the envoys—a mounted squad of Dragons under the command of a gifted young decurion called Lodder—but had remained nearby, securely hidden, when Lodder and his men rode forward openly to attract Lot's attention.
The "messengers from Camulod," as they were being called, had been received courteously and permitted to keep their weapons. Lot had been unable to meet with them immediately upon their arrival, having other duties and responsibilities that demanded his attention, but had invited them to present their case to him later that night at a banquet to be attended by his Chiefs and senior allies.
Lodder had delivered his King's message that night, explaining that the Queen, Ygraine, was Uther's captive, and then going on to outline Uther's terms of ransom, and when he had finished making his presentation, Lot had questioned him closely on the specifics, asking about the Queen and her escort, and about the ambush in which they had been captured. When questioned about the actual details of the skirmish, however, including its location, Lodder demurred, and Lot flew into a short-lived but highly spectacular fury. By the end of it, Lodder and his ten men were dead, hacked to pieces by the other diners.
After the slaughter that he had incited in his own Hall, Lot made a jest of the dead men and their mission, and then confiscated their horses and equipment, appropriating them for his own use. He drank a health to his hapless and unfortunate Queen, publicly swearing to do all In his power to win her back from Uther's clutches, but in his own way, and not at Uther's invitation or upon Uther's terms. His last words on the topic were a scathing and scornful condemnation, delivered in front of all his drunken, bloodstained crew, of what he called the inept and cowardly role played by the Lord Herliss in the loss of the King's wife, and in order to rectify that, he appointed Herliss's son, Lagan Longhead, to lead an expedition immediately to locate and rescue Queen Ygraine and her women. In the doing of that, Lagan was also to rescue and then arrest his father, Herliss, and bring him home to Herliss's own fortress of Tir Gwyn, there to stand trial for traitorous conduct and cowardice. In order to ensure that father and son would both return to Tir Gwyn, Lot then took Lagan's wife and son into what he chose to refer to as "protective custody," although everyone hearing him knew they would be held as prisoner-hostages against Lagan's return.
It had taken Owain four days to piece together the details of what took place that night, for he had had to prise the information with great care from a variety of sources and informants, permitting none of them to see or even suspect that he was being inquisitive. Now, he could report that Lagan Longhead was out scouring the hills to the south and far west of Uther's current position with a large army of mercenaries. He had already been gone for two days by the time Owain got the word, and he had begun his search by striking down into the far southwest corner of Cornwall's territories, since that was the region wherein his father held the largest tracts of land and property.
Uther listened to all of this in silence, although the fury growing in him was plain to be seen in his eyes and on his whitened face and in the spastic clutching of his hands as he held himself otherwise motionless. When Owain had finished and sat staring at him, the King opened his mouth to speak, but then snapped it shut again as though afraid of what might emerge. Finally, after a long, long period of utter silence, he raised one hand and pointed a commanding finger at Owain.
"Say nothing. Nothing . . . of any of this. To anyone. Before I return." With that, he turned on his heel, moving as if in a dream, and stalked away.
Owain followed him at a distance and watched the King saddle his horse and prepare to leave, and then he turned away to find his longbow and quiver, prepared to follow him wherever he might go. As he bent to pick up his arrows, however, he heard Uther's voice from above and behind him.
"Stay here, Owain, and don't try to follow me. I'll be riding hard and far to let the wind blow through my mind, and I'll come to no harm. I just need to be alone." With that, Uther swung his horse around and rode out.
By the time he had returned to camp, having spent long, solitary hours among the hills digesting all that he had been told, night had long since darkened the encampment. Heedless of the hour Uther went directly to Huw Strongarm's tent and summoned Owain, Garreth Whistler and Huw himself to join him there.
Speaking in terse, clipped sentences, Uther told them everything that Owain had told him earlier. It was evident, he said, that Lot had no fear of Uther's wrath. He had demonstrated that by his almost casual execution of the envoys, although it might be argued that his flamboyant cruelty was merely the token gesture of a braggart, since he had called them "Camulodian messengers," indicating that he might not know with whom he was really dealing. Either way, Uther had decided, the cost of that crime would be the loss of Lot's own skin, flayed from his living body on the day he became Uther's prisoner.
Equally clearly, Uther continued, Lot cared nothing about what became of his Queen, Ygraine, and the women unfortunate enough to have been in her company when she was taken. Had it been otherwise, he would have handled everything differently. The Queen was a mere woman and a chattel, bestowed upon him in a marriage of convenient alliance with a King who now lacked importance or significance. So he was careless of her fate, and that was unsurprising and expected in a man like Gulrhys Lot. What was far more significant, however, was that he should be so uncaring about the other twelve captured women. Certainly, he had sworn a public oath to find and rescue all of them, including Ygraine, and had dispatched an army to do that, but that had been no more than a token gesture of hand-wringing hypocrisy. The army he had dispatched was a rabble of mercenaries, and its leadership was questionable at best—a son forced into service against his own father by a threat against his wife and child. Ten of the Queen's women, he pointed out, were Cornish, the other two having come from Eire with their lady. But those ten Cornish women were all daughters of Lot's supporters, the wealthiest and most powerful of Cornwall's Chiefs and warlords, and some, if not all of them, must have value in their fathers' eyes. What, then, did this blatant unconcern say about Lot's dealings with his own most senior and powerful people? How could he afford to be so openly uncaring of what they thought?