Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"My tale is brief, and soon told. My grandmother Riganna was half-sister to Enid, Uther's mother. Riganna was the firstborn female child of her father's first wife and Enid the last of his second wife. Fifteen years separated them. Riganna had a daughter called Bronwynn, who was my mother and first cousin to Uther. When I was fourteen, I visited Camulod with my mother and father. You met me then, but I was a mere child and you had just brought your young wife back to live in your aunt's house. Your aunt liked me because I reminded her of herself at my age, and she persuaded my parents to allow me to remain with her for a time in Camulod when they returned home.

"At that time, everyone in Camulod—you more than any other—was completely involved in preparing the embassage to attend the upcoming debate in Verulamium, and shortly after it had been arranged that I should stay you left the Colony. While you were gone, Lot of Cornwall invaded again, and my father was killed in the fighting. When you yourself came back to Camulod, you were gravely wounded. I helped to tend you, but you were unaware of me, or of anyone else." She smiled again. "In the years since then, you have had more to concern you than the servants of your aunt, and my duties have changed, keeping me far from your sight, so it is quite natural you should be unaware of me."

I gazed at her unspeaking, then asked, "You knew Uther?"

She nodded her head. "Very slightly. Not well at all. He knew who I was, and he treated me kindly, as a kinswoman."

"What about your mother? Is she in Camulod now?"

"No, she died soon after my father—of grief, I think."

"So now Camulod is your home." I turned to look towards Luke's recumbent figure and then returned my eyes to her. "But what are you doing here— tonight, I mean? And what about the bones?"

"She is a student." Luke's eyes were still closed. "We were studying the anatomy of the corpus humanus."

"Oh, you're awake, are you? You will admit, at least, Luke, that my curiosity on this subject has been admirably restrained."

"Hmm. I was beginning to wonder if you had even noticed, although you looked shocked to your soul when the skull rolled to your feet." Now he opened his eyes and sat up, shuffling himself into a comfortable position and coming to rest with his elbows on his knees, his face serious. "Much has changed in Camulod in recent years, Merlyn. Particularly in areas that have, I am quite sure, by their very nature escaped your notice."

"Like what?"

He cleared his throat and spat into the fire. "Well, the main one as far as I am concerned is in the treatment of our wounded." I waited for him to continue. "We've been at war now for five years and more. Most of the fighting has been done far from Camulod, thank God, but all of it has demanded much of our young fighting men and, by default, much of the work they used to do is handled now by women. Farming, and labouring, and working in the Infirmary."

"I knew that."

"Certainly you did, but you grew accustomed to it only after your first head injury. You retained no memory of the way things had been before. Your renewed life was one in which women played roles unknown to them prior to your injury." I realised he was right and held my peace. "Ludmilla here began helping in the Infirmary while you were first confined there. She enjoyed the work and became very useful to me, in spite of her extreme youth. As she grew older, she became more and more valuable, and I discerned in her the makings of a natural surgeon. This child is gifted with an awareness of human physiology the like of which I have never encountered, and so, about a year ago, I began to train her as my own assistant. She quickly assimilated an astounding knowledge and understanding of the musculature and organs of the body, and as her knowledge grew, my own awareness of the haphazard nature of the training I had been giving her grew commensurately. So I decided to complete her training properly, beginning anew and more methodically this time. I assembled a complete skeleton, and have been teaching her the entire, shall we say, mechanics of the body. The names and the functions of the individual bones, the major blood vessels and organs, and all the knowledge I have managed to accumulate over the years." He stopped and smiled across the flames at Ludmilla. "She learns more quickly than I am capable of teaching. She is a true descendant of Aesculapius."

I looked at Ludmilla with new respect. Lucanus had never been a man to toss out hollow compliments. He was speaking again.

"Anyway, in the past few weeks, the trickle of wounded returning to Camulod has swollen to a flood and we have been overworked, just as we were approaching a crucial period of Ludmilla's training—a period which, once entered upon, should not be interrupted, but should be completed quickly. I had decreed today a day of study. But it was the fourth consecutive day I had thus designated, and the previous three had been pre-empted by emergencies. The day dawned bright, and Ludmilla suggested we absent ourselves from Camulod, and from interruption, for the day. I remembered having spent a pleasant day with you here some years ago and decided I could find the spot again. We arrived long before noon and began working immediately, and time escaped us. You arrived as we were preparing to leave."

"Well." I found that I was able to smile openly now at the young woman opposite me. "Lady Ludmilla, I am honoured to meet you and to know you now, and I shall certainly never be able to forget you again. I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for my lapse of memory."

She smiled again and nodded wordlessly, and I felt better than I had all evening. The fire collapsed upon itself and I leaned forward to replenish it. "It's a warm night," I said. "I think we should sleep well, fed as we are, and rise early for a pre-dawn start. I can't wait to see Camulod again. Lucanus, you take the shelter, I'll sleep outside. Lady Ludmilla, you take the tent."

She would not hear of it, and went directly to the shelter. Lucanus took the tent. Before he retired, he glanced at me again. "About Uther. . ."

_

"Tomorrow, Luke. Another time, another place. Sleep well.

IV

As it transpired, a regular session of the Council of Camulod was scheduled for the afternoon of the day of my return, and that relieved me of any doubts I might have had about the swiftest and most appropriate means of confirming, officially, the rumours of Uther's death. I had pledged Lucanus and Ludmilla, upon the road that morning, to say nothing until I had made the news known to my Aunt Luceiia and the senior councilors, and it was then that Lucanus told me of the meeting.

On our arrival in Camulod, I had made my way directly to the home of my aunt. She absorbed my tidings of the death of her beloved grandson with self-possession and quiet dignity, surprising me in spite of the fact that I knew she had been prepared for the worst by the rumours. As I had had good reason to observe in the past, my great-aunt Luceiia Britannicus was a woman of extraordinary strength and resilience, and great perspicacity. She had known as soon as I greeted her that I bore ill tidings and had assumed, correctly, that they concerned Uther.

She sat in silence as I told her briefly of my discovery of Uther's body, and the primitive funeral pyre I had set to consume him. As I spoke, her eyes filled with tears, but her face remained calm and no drop spilled beyond her lashes. When I had finished speaking she sat motionless for a spell, then reached out distractedly and touched my hand, patting it tenderly as though to comfort me. I sat there beside her, awkwardly, wanting to put my arm around her to comfort her, yet fearful of intruding upon the reserves of strength that enabled her to bear her grief so stoically. After a time, however, she dabbed her eyes with the end of her shawl, sat up even straighter and cleared her throat.