Jack Whyte - Uther

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."

Uther shook his head and heaved a great sigh. "Do you know, Garreth, that to this day I regret that night. But even at the height of it, while Merlyn and I were almost at each other's throats, I had no notion of how great the rift would grow to be between us . . ."

Garreth's voice, when next he spoke, was pitched low. "The two of you were at each other's throats?"

"Aye, almost, or I was at his. I was in a foul frame of mind that night, spoiling for a fight."

Garreth said nothing, made no move that might interrupt the mood as Uther continued, speaking as though to himself.

"That was the night Cassandra was attacked—raped and beaten so badly that she almost died, and for days everyone thought she would. You were in Tir Manha when that happened, not in Camulod. I can remember how glad I was to see you when I rode home. I was still angry, still bitter, still seeking to find blame in others for what I myself had done."

"That sounds ominous. What had you done?"

"Everything that I ought not to have done. I vented my anger on a little girl, for one thing. That was my first wrong step."

"I don't follow you."

"Cassandra, the girl. I abused her, treated her abominably, tried to thrash her. That's when Merlyn and I first locked horns. He knocked me down and pinned me there until the girl could run away to safety."

Garreth made no response to that, other than to raise his eyebrows in a silent, cynical query.

"On my life, Garreth, it is no jest."

"Hmm. Then I think you had better tell me about it. What did you do to the girl?"

"Ahh . . . well, it was . . . You know the kind of thing. Merlyn and I were in the games room with a few willing girls, and everything was . . . as usual. But then I noticed . . . I noticed Cassandra's mouth. She was there in the room with us. Watching us, watching everything." His voice tailed away into a long silence. "I noticed her mouth, and once I had noticed it I could not rid myself of the thought of how it would feel. . ."

"Sucking you."

"Yes."