Jack Whyte - Uther

The King nodded slowly, visualizing the situation and agreeing with the logic of his son's choices. "Good. Good for you, lad. You've a sensible head on your shoulders. And that reminds me, the lady's husband, Balin, wishes to receive you as soon as you may go to him. He is extremely grateful, and I believe you will find him more than generous in rewarding you for saving his wife's life." The King smiled again, this time at the new flush that swept over his son's face. "Come, now," he said. "You have earned the praise and the rewards, now accept them as your right. But if the thought appalls your modesty, you should go and get it over with now, as soon as you can."

On the point of dismissing that suggestion out of hand, Uther bethought himself and stood silent for several moments longer, musing on the pros and contras of an immediate meeting with the man with whose wife he had lain with so recently. Postponed, the meeting would grow no easier, he knew. Better perhaps to get it over and done with quickly, before the aggrieved husband would have time to dwell upon what might have taken place while his wife was absent—before she had been covered with her rescuer's tunic . . . Besides, Uther knew that his father would soon come to wonder why his son should be so reluctant to meet with a man who must be deeply in his debt. The King of the Pendragon was no man's fool and had not achieved his high station because he was short-sighted or stupid. Finally he nodded his head.

"You are right, Father. Best get it over with, although I did nothing heroic, so I would rather not be thanked. There is nothing commendable about sneaking up on two sleeping men and braining them in the darkness. All I had to do afterwards was cut the woman loose and bring her home . . . So I suppose I'll go and meet her husband now. Will you come with me?"

His father smiled and shook his head. "No, Uther, and if you think about it, you'll see why: the man will wish to show his gratitude and obligation to you. I am the King, and I'm your father. That alone obliges him to show impressive gratitude. My presence would place an intolerable burden upon him, adding to that obligation. I cannot do that to him."

Uther nodded, then looked about him, sucking in a great breath. "Well, I ought to go and see him now, d'you think?"

"Yes. He'll be waiting for you."

"Very well, then . . . I'll go . . ."

Thinking back on it years later, Uther would remark to his friend Huw Strongarm that he came very close to leaving his father's stronghold that afternoon and fleeing to Camulod to avoid the confrontation that his guilty conscience had assured him must take place between him and his father's honoured guest. It was only the awareness that in so doing he would be acknowledging a guilt of which no one had yet accused him that kept him from going. And had he left that day, he mused to Huw, then the entire development and course of the wars with Cornwall and its self-styled King, Gulrhys Lot, might have turned out very differently.

As it was, he approached the quarters that housed Balin and his wife with great reluctance and trepidation, and when he saw a smiling Mairidh waiting in the doorway to greet him, his guilt and fear grew to confusion and near-panic. Nothing in Uther's experience had prepared him for the sight of a carefree, smiling Mairidh, and although he knew with one part of his mind that he should be glad, he was not yet mentally spry enough, or perhaps not yet cynical enough, to adapt instantly to the unexpected sight of her unworried smile.

Unaware of his confusion, Mairidh grasped him gently by the wrist and turned away, pulling him with her as she moved directly to the closed door at her back, and Uther, his heart hammering in his chest, the softness of her hand burning the skin where she touched him, thought for one mad moment that she was abducting him somehow, pulling him into a private room to make love to him beneath her husband's very nose. In a complete panic, he began to pull back, tugging against her, but she had already knocked on the door and turned to face him, still smiling widely.

"Balin?" she called. "My rescuer is here. Shall I send him in?"

The door opened almost before she had finished saying the words, and Balin, a tall, elderly man with long, silver hair, stepped forward into the light of the doorway and inclined his upper torso in something approaching a bow, a courteous gesture conveying respect that included both Mairidh and Uther. "No need for that, my love," he said in a deep, quiet voice. "I am here to welcome our benefactor myself."

He extended a hand, waving it gently to usher Uther into his sanctum. "If it pleases you, Uther Pendragon, come into my world. You have already entered into it, and into my life, with your rescue of my beloved consort, so now it will please me greatly if you will accept my gratitude and my freely granted access to the remainder, which is but little when compared to all I might have lost. Come in, come in, and sit with me, talk with me."

Disarmed, flattered and thrown decidedly off balance by the charming manner and the unmistakable sincerity of the man who greeted him so amiably, Uther allowed himself to be ushered forward into Balin's chamber, and presently he found himself seated in front of a glowing brazier, holding a cup which his host was busy filling with yellow sparkling wine.

Mairidh had vanished silently into another part of the square- built house, which, though small in area, was rich in its amenities as befitted the dwelling reserved for the King's most important guests, and so bemused was Uther by the attention lavished upon him by her husband that he had not even been aware that she had not followed him into the room. What he could not have known, however, was that she now sat close by, on the other side of the wall closest to him and within two paces of where he sat facing her husband. There, secure in her own privacy, she sat in comfort in a thickly padded armchair, sipping a cup of the same wine the men were drinking and listening to the voices that came directly to her over the top of the wall-like partition that divided the large room into two equal halves. She heard every word of the conversation taking place in Balin's room as clearly as though she were sitting there herself.

Rapt now, Uther sat watching as the bubbling liquid reached the rim of his cup, and his host pulled the ewer away without allowing a single drop to spill. Balin's face was tense with delight as he peered at Uther, waiting for him to taste the wine, but Uther made no move to do so. He had tasted wine before, but never yellow wine, just vinum, the rank, sour red wine mixed with water of the Camulodian cavalry troopers. In his father's mountainous country of south Cambria, wine was seldom drunk, simply because it was seldom, if ever, available.

"Drink, taste the nectar of the gods." Balin filled his own cup and hoisted it to his lips, holding the ewer high in his other hand as he drank. Watching him, Uther drank too, but cautiously, sipping carefully and apprehensive of what he would find in his mouth, mindful of the gut-wrenching sourness that had almost sickened him on first tasting vinum. Instead of bitterness, however, he found his mouth filled with liquid sunshine, with a delicious, almost syrupy-sweet explosion of rich flavours that set his entire mouth tingling and his mind reeling as he sought to identify the tastes that blended and melded together on his tongue.

"Is it not wonderful? Have you ever tasted it’s like?"

Uther could only shake his head in wonder as he took another mouthful.

"It is from the very central regions of the lands of the wild Germanic tribes the Romans could never conquer, and the grapes from which it is made are grown on the slopes along the shores of the vast river they called the Rhenus, which marked the northeastern borders of Rome's Empire. This nectar that we drink is the greatest contradiction in the world, for the people who perfected the making of it are so savage, so ferocious, that they stopped Rome's legions and defied them entry to the farthest regions of their lands—the only people in all the world who ever did so, save only for the northernmost Caledonians, whose land is so unwholesome and infertile that the Romans felt no desire for it. And yet, in all their fury, these untamable Germanic tribes have the ability to make this magnificent wine. The grapes they grow on their hillside terraces are pale green, I am told, and very sweet, rich in sugars and perfect for the making of this nectar, which is found nowhere else." He stopped speaking and sipped delicately at the liquid in his cup, rolling it on his tongue and savouring it lingeringly before taking a second taste.