Jack Whyte - Uther

Uther's grandparents had also brought Cay with them from Camulod to honour the dead King, who had been Cay's uncle- eldest brother to Enid, the mother Cay had never known. Cay now sat behind Uther, slightly to his left. A quick backwards glance over his shoulder revealed that his cousin was sitting with his eyes closed, and the thought occurred instantly to Uther that he might be asleep, tired out by the swift and unexpected journey from Camulod That thought then led to a ludicrous vision of Cay snoring aloud and startling himself awake, outraging everyone, family and Druids, and for a long time after that Uther had a hard time fighting an insane compulsion to laugh out loud. He had no wish to laugh, but the urge to bray out guffaws of mirth was almost insuperable, and he was terrified that he might give in to it and disgrace himself.

Desperately then, in a frantic effort to divert his thoughts, Uther stared at the bier and tried to think of all the ways he had heard of to dispose of a dead body. Everyone died, he knew, but it had somehow failed to register in his mind prior to this episode that "everyone" included all the members of his own family. Ullic Pendragon had been but the first to go in Uther's lifetime, but now, looking at his grandfather's bier, Uther realized for the first time that within Ullic Pendragon's lifetime he, too, had had to stand and bid this kind of farewell to beloved family members . . . his own grandparents, born more than a hundred years before King Ullic's death, and his own parents after that. He accepted, too, for the first time, that just as surely as Uric Pendragon was now mourning the passing of his father, Ullic, he, Uther, would one day have to mourn Uric and his mother, Veronica, and the kindly couple from Camulod who were his mother's parents. All of them were bound to die.

His mind reeling with the anticipation of so much loss and sorrow, Uther scrabbled frantically inside his mind for something to distract him from such thoughts and remembered that he hail been counting ways to dispose of bodies that had ceased to live and breathe. He forced himself to focus upon that again, willing himself to empty his head of everything but the logistical problems caused by death.

The fact that everyone died entailed the logical conclusion that everyone's body had therefore to be disposed of. This was a novel and astounding thought for Uther. He looked around the gathering assembled to say goodbye to King Ullic and made a cursory attempt to estimate the number of people there. It was well over a hundred, all of whom must die eventually. From there, he visualized the population of Tir Manha, as he had seen it at official festivals and functions. So many people, he thought. So much death. How could I have reached the age I have without falling over corpses everywhere?

Everybody died, and astounding as it might seem, those left alive were able to absorb the deaths and deal with the remains of those who died. And everyone, all of the peoples in the places he had known in his short lifetime, appeared to do so differently. He knew, because he and Cay had discussed it once a few years earlier, that in Camulod most people were buried according to the Roman military system. Individuals were usually buried standing upright, in the case of men, or sitting upright if the corpse was female. None of the adults he had asked, including his Grandfather Varrus, had been able to tell Uther why this should be so, but some of them, after discussing it among themselves for a time, had suggested that the custom of upright burial had come into being in the early days of the Roman Republic's foreign expansion and conquests, when the need to dig postholes for temporary fortifications, and sometimes in search of fresh water, had still been commonplace. For those purposes, army units had carried wide iron augers the breadth of a man's shoulders in their supply trains. These devices could drill a vertical hole into soft ground as quickly as two-man teams could twist the handles in a circle. And once the cylindrical hole was dug, a corpse could be dropped into it feet first, then quickly and completely covered, leaving a narrow, vertical grave that was less likely to be seen by enemy searchers than a horizontal one. That had apparently been important in early, pre-Christian times, when vengeful enemies would seek out and disinter dead soldiers, knowing that a desecrated grave would deny its soldier occupant access to the Underworld.

For burials involving larger numbers of people, Uther had learned, the Romans had used mass graves, and the bodies laid in those were covered in quicklime to aid the process of dissolution and to burn away the stink of rotting flesh.

In Cambria, he knew from experience and observation, most of the common people were not buried at all but were instead closely wrapped in cloth or leather bindings and hoisted up to lie on burial platforms among the branches of the sacred trees until their flesh had been consumed by the creatures and spirits of the air, and their hones polished by wind and weather. The noble families and the Druids, on the other hand, were usually burned after death, although exceptions to that rule were common, and the smoke and essence of their burning was offered up as a sacrifice to all the ancient gods of the Cambrian pantheon.

Great Chiefs and Kings, however, were treated differently upon their deaths. From time immemorial, Celtic Kings and Chiefs had been laid to rest in longhouses. These were dwelling places built entirely beneath the surface of the ground, then stocked with everything the occupant might require during his passage to another life and finally sealed protectively against the curiosity of living men before being buried under a high-piled mound of earth. Ullic Pendragon would be buried thus today, on the third day following his death, and the presence of his earthly remains, secure in his longhouse, would bring blessings on his people. He would be entombed in his finest clothing and armour, but he would be entombed alone, and his weapons would go into the longhouse with him. In the very ancient past, Uther knew, slaves and servants would have been killed and sealed into the longhouse with the King, to serve and protect him on his journeys through the Land of the Dead. Ullic's great war helmet, the Eagle Crown made for him as War Chief-—a rank that could only be won by physical prowess in battle and had nothing to do with the hereditary rank of clan Chief—would go into the grave with him too, to signify his rank and status to the spirits he would meet on his long voyages. No one else could ever wear it after Ullic's death, and the next War Chief of the Pendragon Federation would have his own Eagle Crown fashioned and built to fit his head alone, and that was as it should be.

The Druids were singing a mournful, undulating dirge, and the pungent smell of burning pine needles and green mistletoe made Uther catch his breath, drawing him out of his reverie. Across from him, on the other side of the King's bier, something flashed in the dim light and attracted his eyes. It was a golden pendant, resting on his grandmother's breast. Now he focused on the golden trinket and stared at it, until his gaze drifted up towards her shoulder and the shawl she wore to cover her long hair. The shawl was a strong, dark, vibrant blue, and the dress beneath it was a lighter, even brighter hue, so that each brought out the warmth and texture of the other and emphasized the brightness of Luceiia Varrus's blue eyes. Uther had no idea of his grandmother's age, but he was suddenly struck with the awareness that, old as she was, Luceiia Varrus was the most beautiful woman present at the King's funeral. Publius Varrus sat beside her, and as Uther looked at him, a quick thought enlightened his mind. Publius Varrus was dressed as he always was on formal or festive occasions, in one of the military-looking suits of soft and supple multicoloured leathers that were made for him by his own wife. This suit, sombre and sober, befitting the occasion, was made of pliant, dark brown leather, trimmed with a black key design, with a short, waist-length outer garment of thicker, highly polished plates of hide loosely and decoratively sewn together to resemble an armoured cuirass. Publius Varrus looked magnificent. Both he and his wife stood out sharply because of the clothes they wore and the way they wore them, and that realization slung Uther into remembering the guilt that consumed him every lime he returned to Tir Manha from Camulod. It always felt to him at those times that he was returning from light into darkness, from laughter into grimness, from carefree happiness into careworn anxiety and apprehension. Publius and Luceiia Varrus were like magpies among daws. They burned like beacons against the drabness of those surrounding them, including Uther's own parents, who were among the best-dressed Cambrians in the gathering. Uther allowed his eyes to move critically now across the spectrum of the gathering. He felt the tugging of old guilt again, but this time he was able to ignore it. Tata Ullic was dead, and he would never see him again, but it had not been as dreadful as Uther had feared it would be. It hardly hurt at all inside. And after today his grand lather would be buried underground, and everybody would go home again to their own homes, wherever they were. And best of all, he himself would return to Camulod with Cay.