Jack Whyte - Uther

"Now do you believe me? Don't worry, it won't last. We'll try a few more steps again later today, and then tomorrow morning and afternoon, and by the following day you should be moving about quite normally. Uther will be back by then, too. He'll be glad to see you well again."

"Who?"

"Who what?"

"Who will. . . be back?"

"Uther. You remember Uther. He's King Ullic's grandson."

"The boy."

"That's the one."

"Where is he?"

"He's in Camulod. Has been since the day after you fell. But now he's coming back. He's due home tomorrow or the day after that, depending on the weather. No one would want to ride in weather like this if he didn't have to, and Uther doesn't have to. So they may wait until the weather breaks and then come up when it's finer."

She lay silent for a few moments, digesting that before asking, "Camel . . . What was that place you said?"

"Camulod."

"Where is it?"

"It's where Uther's cousin Cay lives, and his grandparents on his mother's side. Uther spends much time there with his cousin, living with the Lord and Lady Varrus, and then the two boys come back here and spend an equal period here in Cambria with King Ullic, who is also Uther's grandfather, but on his father's side."

And listening to his lulling tones, exhausted from her exertions, she fell helplessly asleep.

When Jonet awoke, alone now, she lay wondering at all Garreth had told her. The boy had not been to see her, but it was not because he did not want to come. He had been far away since then with his grandparents on his mother's side. She frowned at that, wondering what it meant. She had never had a mother, so she did not know what a mother's side was, let alone a father's side . . . Her own father, even had she felt like asking him, could have provided her with little insight, she felt. He had never given her anything that she could remember, other than the two things that had led jointly to her being here in this hut: confirmation that she deserved the name by which they called her—the Toad—and a final incentive to escape, to run far from her miserable home in the silent, unformulated hope of finding a better life.

She was beginning to realize that these men would not hurt her, and she wondered whether she ought to tell them her real name, but one night she had a vivid and frightening dream in which the Druid, searching for her, found her by her name, which she had casually given to a stranger. So, for now at least, she would be Nemo, and her real name would remain unknown. She, on the other hand, knew the names of one boy and two grown men who had done nothing to cause her any hurt or pain, and one of those, the boy called Uther, would be coming back the following day or the day after that. She decided that she would not learn to walk properly again until the boy came back, because if she could walk before he came back, she would have to walk away.

Despite her wishes and her best resolve, however, she was thwarted simply because Garreth Whistler had been right. No one was keen to travel in the kind of foul weather that covered all of southern Britain at that time, and those fortunate enough to be able to postpone their travels did so. Among those was the party travelling from Camulod to Ullic's Cambria. They remained in the warmth and comfort of their home base for ten days before the weather broke, far longer than they had originally intended, and by the time they arrived in Ullic's territories, she had regained her full strength and moved out of Garreth's care, since she no longer had reason to stay. She did not stray far, however, for she had no desire to live alone in the woodland again, and since she had no intention of returning to her former home, the woodland would have been the only option available to her. Instead, filled with single-minded resolution, she set about making herself useful to the villagers, beginning with those who lived closest to Garreth's hut. These were the only people she had been able to observe—and she had watched them closely—during the final days of her recuperation. One of them, an old, bent woman, lived alone with no man to look after her, and Nemo had seen that Garreth treated the old woman with courtesy and kindness, carrying burdens for her and stopping to speak with her almost every time he passed her door.

On the first day of her new life, she approached the old woman and offered to work for her in return for a place to sleep. The old woman accepted her offer, but wanted to know her name, and Jonet, with barely a pause for thought, told her that her name was Nemo. The old woman then provided her with a pallet in one corner of her single-room dwelling, close by the fire. She was grateful, and even more so when the old woman spoke well of her to her neighbours. Within a matter of days, thanks to this kindness, she had managed to ingratiate herself with several other people, establishing that she was a hard and willing worker, providing real value for the pittance in food she consumed and the space she occupied at night. She was feeling better about herself, too, by that time, for the name Nemo had reminded her of her own mother's name, Naomi. She had never known her mother, but she liked the sound of the name, and it was close enough to Nemo to be remarkable to the girl, so that, in the quiet safety of her own thoughts, she began to call herself Naomi and to think of herself by that name—very tentatively at first, and then with increasing pleasure and confidence as she grew used to it. Naomi was a beautiful name, and she simply knew that no person with such a name could ever bear any resemblance to anyone known as Jonet the Toad.

Thus she was at hand, known to all the villagers as Nemo, when Uther Pendragon returned and came seeking Garreth Whistler, and she watched the boy, wide-eyed with surprise over how young he was. She had remembered him as being her own age or older, but in fact he was considerably younger than she was . . . almost as young as her disgusting half-brother Carthac, although bigger and far better-looking. Carthac had been damaged at birth, in the act of being born, and his entire skull was deformed, flattened on one side so that the features of his face were all askew. While she would freely admit that she herself was unsightly, there could be no question that Carthac's ugliness went beyond that: he was grotesque. Nine children out of ten would not have survived such a birthing, but Carthac seemed more cruelly strong and healthy because of the disadvantage with which he had to contend.

She sidled closer so she could see Uther more clearly. He waved a greeting of acknowledgment and recognition, smiling briefly at her before turning his attention back to his hero, Garreth, and she felt her face flush and prickle with a rush of blood that confused her sufficiently to make her hide herself again.

Nemo made her home in Tir Manha after that, and was accepted as a useful presence, willing to do the work that others thought unpleasant and tiresome. She was still, from time to time, an object of ridicule because of her appearance, but she was long accustomed to keeping her head down, and as time passed, these instances of cruelty and mockery grew less and less common. In any case, the only person whose opinion truly mattered to her was Uther, and his acceptance of her, even when it manifested itself as benign indifference, was like a balm to her soul. She was by now completely besotted and obsessed with him, and within the narrow confines of the world in which she lived and dreamed, she believed, without conscious thought, that Uther was just as aware of her.

Nemo was ever determined to be of service to Uther in return for the kindness he had shown to her. Sitting one day in her high perch in the Place of the Bows, she had heard Garreth telling King Ullic that one of the local boys, a hulking bully called Cross-Eyed Ivor, whose father was one of King Ullic's warriors and councillors, had taken it upon himself to make young Uther's life a misery since his return from Camulod, knowing his own father's rank would protect him from any grave consequences of his bullying. This Ivor, who was of an age with Nemo, almost two full years older than Uther and therefore much bigger, had gathered a large following of younger boys, most of whom were terrified of him and hoped that by toadying to him they might escape having his nastiness focused upon them.