"We have lived through the end of an era. Nemo, you and I." Nemo made no response, and after a few moments Uther continued: "Do you know what an era is?" He turned to glance at her as she shook her head, and then he looked away again, gazing at the distant towers of Camulod's walls.
"An era is a period of time. Nemo—a long period of years or even decades, sometimes centuries—that can be measured from a clear starting point to an ending. They tell us the Roman general Julius Caesar came to these shores decades before the birth of the Christians' Christus among the Hebrews, and that the last of the true Romans, the Emperor Constantine the Third, left Britain in the year I was six. That means the Romans remained here in Britain without leaving for more than four hundred years. That was an era." He glanced at Nemo again and smiled, shaking his head gently. "You don't know what I'm talking about, but what I am saying is true. That fortress over there on its hill belongs to another era, a more recent one . . . an era that overlapped the Roman one, beginning before I was born, before my father had even met my mother."
He waved his hand towards the distant buildings. "Before my grandfather, Publius Varrus, came here, there was no fortress on that hilltop. There was no Colony, no Camulod. There was no cavalry here, no garrison and no alliance between Pendragon and these people. And there were no longbows among the Pendragon. Did you know it was Publius Varrus who was responsible for bringing the longbow to Pendragon? Well, it was. He brought a giant bow with him from Africa, and our people admired it greatly. They sought to make others like it. and our long yew bows were born. All of those things have come to pass since Publius Varrus married my Grandmother Luceiia almost fifty years ago. Their marriage, in many ways, marked the beginning of the era."
Uther's voice faded into silence, and Nemo sat staring at him, waiting for him to continue. He did not even glance in her direction. keeping his gaze fixed on the hilltop fort, and she sat on his right, less than half a pace to his rear, her close-set eyes fixed unblinkingly on the point of his jaw. watching for the tiny initial flexing that would herald his next words. She was, as always, content to wait upon his pleasure.
"It began with Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus; it grew with Ullic Pendragon and Picus Britannicus; and it ended with the deaths of the last of them, my Uncle Picus's short months ago and my father Uric's weeks ago." Uther hawked and spat. "Camulod will continue to exist, and it will grow and prosper, I've no doubt of that. Merlyn Britannicus will keep it safe and hale. But it will never be the same again, because the treachery and greed of Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall have brought about changes that were never foreseen. He has destroyed the calm of Camulod as surely as the serpent destroyed innocence in the garden the Christian priests talk about. And such changes can never lie unmade. And that means that Camulod—my own Camulod that has fed and nourished me since I was a boy—is ended."
He kicked his horse into motion, keeping its head directly towards Camulod, and Nemo's fell properly into step beside him, maintaining a half-length space behind him so precisely that Nemo had need of neither reins nor bit.
"And so now we must return to Tir Manha," he continued, speaking to her without looking at her. "And this time, I think, we will stay there. It is my home, after all—everyone delights in telling me so—and it has been yours, too, for so long that I'll wager you can't even recall where you came from in the first place. But I will tell you a secret. Nemo, that no one else in Camulod would ever suspect: I do not want to go back there, not to live, and especially not now that my father is dead. I have no wish to go back to what everyone else insists on calling my home . . . grim old Cambria with its harsh-faced people. I have no need of their ill-mannered glowering, and I cringe at the very thought of living with their foul- tempered and humourless dislike day after day, year after year. My father's death, far, far too soon, has taught me that a man is a fool to live in hopes of a better tomorrow. I have a thousand better ways today to spend what time remains ahead of me, and I have brighter, lighter and more pleasant places in which to spend it. . ."
Nemo glanced sharply at him then, her curiosity piqued as he made a noise in his chest that almost sounded like a smothered laugh. "You know. Nemo, I sometimes thank the gods that you exist, for if you did not—" He left that thought unfinished and then resumed again immediately. "There is not another person in the entire world to whom I could confess this openly in the absolute knowledge that it will never be passed on. So here is my dark and dire secret: I would prefer to spend my entire life here in Camulod, without ever having to return to Cambria and Tir Manha. That does not sound like such a massy secret, does it? And yet it is, for if that word got out among my friends, I wonder just how many of them would remain my friends . . . I could not tell that truth even to Merlyn, because I fear he might take it amiss and see it as a threat to his designs for Camulod, thinking that I might seek to undermine him here. And I would not. Nemo, believe me. I would not.
"But this is my life's centre. Nemo, this—" He stood up in his stirrups and waved his hand broadly, indicating the entire countryside that surrounded them and the looming towers of the fortress on the hill ahead of them. 'Tir Manha has a beauty that I can't dismiss and can't deny—the sight and smells of the land move me and stir up my blood in a way I can't describe. But Camulod has become my home, far more than Tir Manha has ever been. My father and my mother lived in Tir Manha, and so did Grandfather Ullic, and because of that I returned there every year . . . But it was my mother who insisted, first and most strongly and ever afterward, that I should spend as much time as I could in Camulod. And I have always, ever since my earliest boyhood, been eager to return to Camulod when the summer waned and the weather began to change.
"And why would I not? Even you, Nemo, must resent returning home each year. Think of all we relinquish when we do . . . Think of all the things we have in Camulod that people lack in Cambria! Baths, for one thing—and bathing is one mighty, all-eclipsing thing! Hand in hand with bathing, Nemo, in a scented, wondrous silence, walks a more than pleasant absence of revolting people smells.
"And then there are hypocausts—furnace-fed hot-air ducts—and heated buildings. Floors that are warm in winter and rooms that are high and bright because the warmth coming through the hypocausts allows you to live in them without having to block all the exits and shut out all the light. And space, Nemo! Think about space—high- ceilinged vaults and room to walk about upright and at ease. You can't do that in the gloomy, low-roofed huts of Cambria."
Nemo listened in wonder. She was used to hearing him speak, but she had never heard him go on like this before, not at such speed. His voice was far more forceful, it seemed to her, than she had ever noticed before, his words appearing to rattle one against the other as they spilled from his mouth. And then, quite suddenly, he was silent again, and the only sounds to be heard were the thudding of their horses' hooves and the creaks and jingling of saddlery. She waited, and just when she was beginning to think he really would say no more, he spoke again, his voice more normal now.
"Of course, you might be tempted to ask me, if you cared at all, why it should be that my mother, who had every intention, according to Garreth Whistler, of returning to Camulod after my father's death, should have changed her mind at the last moment and decided to stay in Tir Manha. If it is really such a dreary place as I believe it to be . . ." He turned to look at Nemo.