And this was all because of a woman. That information taunted her, spinning slowly in the air slightly beyond her grasp. An unknown woman was threatening all that Nemo held to be of value. A complete stranger, a creature who had sprung out of nowhere and was completely unknown to Uther Pendragon, whose world she was about to destroy by depriving him, for her own selfish reasons, of his lifelong friend and closest companion. By destroying Merlyn's trust in Uther, which she had evidently begun to do already, this woman would surely demolish Uther's ability to trust anyone else in future. By stealing Merlyn's friendship away from Uther, with neither reason nor provocation, this woman had demonstrated that, whoever she might be, she was a self-centred and remorseless thief.
Nemo had spent her entire adult life among rough and violent troopers, and she had heard all of them talk at one time or another, some with cynical amusement and others with angry scorn, about how a woman—any woman—could divide and alienate the best and oldest of friends and set brothers at each other's throats, all because of that terrifying thing called love. A hundred times and more she must have heard those tales, and she had always doubted them, taking them, as men say, with a grain of salt to help her swallow them.
Now. however, she had no choice other than to face this reality, and so she began to plan. She had never been in a similar situation before, but she was not completely without direction on how to proceed, for one of the first and best-learned lessons she had absorbed from Garreth Whistler, while he was teaching it to Uther Pendragon, was that no one, no commander of any rank or stature, should ever commit his resources to a fight or a struggle without first finding out everything there was to know about the forces against which the fight would be waged.
"Know your enemy." As soon as Nemo remembered the instruction, she immediately began to wonder where she might start digging for information on this Lady Deirdre. No sooner had she asked it of herself, however, than she answered it with a response that surprised her with its simplicity. Nennius the masseur would know everything there was to know about Merlyn Britannicus's new wife, simply because that kind of information was precisely what Nennius thrived upon. The woman was young, pregnant and newly, suddenly arrived. Nemo was sure of that, because there had been no sign of anyone resembling a Lady Deirdre the last time she had been here bearing dispatches from Uther to Camulod, and that had been less than four months earlier. So, this Deirdre had sprung out of nowhere and captured the love of Merlyn Britannicus. Where could she have come from? And when could he have met her? Nemo knew that Nennius would have done everything in his power to satisfy his insatiable curiosity on such important points.
Moments later, she was striding towards the bathhouse again, her fingers fumbling with the clasp of her cloak as she prepared to throw it off, along with the rest of her clothing and her boots, and to pass as quickly as she could through the intermediate pools to the rear room that held the stone-built plinths of the masseurs. As she shed her clothing she made her way to the steam room, calling for Nennius to alert him that she would have need of his talents.
It turned out to be more difficult that she had thought it would be to simply lie there quietly, saying nothing while Nennius kneaded and belaboured her like a large lump of dough, talking all the time as though his tongue and his breathing were irreversibly interconnected. Several times, Nemo had to restrain herself forcibly from turning on him to rend him with her tongue for fear that this time he might take offence and refuse to speak to her again. She was burning with the need to talk to him about what troubled her, but she knew that would be the worst thing she could do because, Nennius being who and what he was, she could afford to give him no slightest inkling of a suspicion that she was even remotely interested in Merlyn Britannicus's new wife. Accordingly, she gritted her teeth and tried to shut out what he was saying to her. Occasionally, she grunted with pain for, kindred spirit or no, Nennius was being anything but gentle with her. Nemo recognized that he was punishing her, albeit very slightly, for her earlier discourtesy.
On arriving, she had grunted an apology to him, muttering that she had had important matters on her mind. Nennius had waved that aside as being of no importance, and had then launched into his normal chronicle of news and information from all over Britain, collected from every conceivable and available source to which he had access. Nennius was very proud of what he called "my people," the network of informants who kept him supplied with information, and he liked to convey the impression that if he did not quite know anyone and everyone who was worth knowing, he at least knew someone else who did.
It had been no accident that she had apologized for her rudeness by asserting that she had important matters on her mind. Nennius was well aware that Nemo was King Uther's most trusted personal messenger, and that every time Nemo came alone to Camulod, it was to deliver dispatches from Uther to Merlyn. He had never been able to gain the tiniest insight from Nemo in the past regarding what she carried or what her dispatches might portend, but Nennius was a creature who lived in hope, and this was the first time he had ever seen or suspected Nemo to be disgruntled with any aspect of her tasks. Finally, and with what he imagined to be great subtlety, Nennius manoeuvred the conversation to the point where he could ask, with the disdainful tones of utter disinterest, what it was that had upset Nemo so visibly earlier that afternoon.
Nemo grunted and turned her head to look up at him. raising an eyebrow, openly intimating that the question was impertinent.
Nennius then shrugged and went on to point out that he had no interest in the specifics of anything, but was merely curious as to why his friend Nemo should have been so put out that she could then be rude to a perfectly inoffensive friend who merely happened to be passing by and waved to say hello.
Nemo nodded at that, muttering that Nennius was right and that there had been no call for her to be so rude. She had been angry, she- said, because she had gone to call upon Commander Merlyn at the administrative building and had been kept waiting for the longest time because the Commander was closeted with some young woman— some woman on the verge of having a child. She would not normally have minded being kept waiting. Nemo said, but she had arrived only a short time earlier and had gone directly to deliver her dispatches.
which she had been told were urgent. What that urgency might imply, she had no idea, but King Uther had been specific in his instructions. Nemo had been told to waste not a moment in delivering the wallet containing the King's messages into the hands of Merlyn Britannicus. And she had found it galling that, after riding day and night through foul weather to carry out his orders, she should then be forced to stand around and wait for such a length of time while Commander Merlyn took his pleasure with some young wench.