Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"The child."

"Yes, the child."

Athol sucked air audibly through his front teeth. "What is the import of this child, Caius Merlyn? He has great influence, it seems, for a mere babe in arms. Who is he?"

"He is my ward. Who he is, exactly, will become clear as my story unfolds, but I have no wish to name him now."

He sucked at his teeth again, in a quirk I suddenly recognized as one he shared with his son Connor. "Something you said . . . you told Connor you had never seen or met his sister. How, then, could you assume this woman was my daughter? And how did you know that her name was Ygraine?"

I suddenly wanted this to be over. "I knew she was Ygraine, wife to Lot of Cornwall, because I recognized her."

Now the king's frown became a deep-graven scowl. I counted to fourteen before his voice grated, "There is a lie here, somewhere amidst all this. How could you recognize her, never having seen her?"

This was proving to be as painful for me as for my listeners. I swallowed hard, to dislodge the lump that had swelled suddenly in my throat, and when I spoke again my voice emerged as a whisper. "Because, save for the colour of her hair, she might have been the twin of my dead wife, her sister. . . your other daughter, Deirdre."

The stillness that struck the room was total. Athol stiffened, his eyes fixed upon mine and I watched his pupils widen. Connor froze in mid-movement, so that he hung awkwardly in his seat, appearing to be off balance and yet poised, almost comically, on one buttock, his right arm braced to drag the weight of his false leg to a new position. Only Donuil appeared unaffected, slouched against the right arm of his backless chair, chin down, his eyes upon his hands cupped between his thighs. As the stillness stretched, he looked up slowly, taking in the tableau presented by the three of us, then heaved a deep, audible breath and spoke for the first time.

"That is the truth, Father. Deirdre, whom we all thought long dead, was Merlyn's wife. I met her and knew her again, spoke with her often in our own sign language, lived in Camulod with her, and tended her grave there after she was killed." He raised one hand gently, palm outward, in a sign to forestall his father's questions, speaking calmly and with great dignity into the shocked silence. "We assumed her dead, Father, when she disappeared the second time, after her second fever. She never returned and was never seen again. She was dead to us. But the fact is, she lived, and travelled far. . ." He broke off and sighed, looking to me for aid. I stared back at him, expressionless. This part of the tale was his alone He sighed again and carried on.

"I had been in Camulod for many months before I saw her, because she had been assaulted, grievously—she was still mute and deaf—and Merlyn had hidden her to protect her from her attackers until she could identify them for him. The two of them fell in love while she was in his care, and one day, when he believed it safe, he brought her home to Camulod. That is when I saw her."

Donuil's father interrupted him at this point. "You are sure it was her, your sister?"

Donuil's surprise at the question was so great that he laughed aloud, biting the sound off immediately it issued from his lips. "Am I sure? Father, she was Deirdre, my loving little sister, and she flew to me the moment she set eyes on me. I told you, we talked long in our own private language of signs. Of course it was her." His father nodded acceptance and Donuil continued his tale.

"I asked her, of course, what had happened to her, why she had left us, but she had no more idea than we have. She remembered only awakening one day and being frightened by her own reflection, which was that of a woman, where she had expected to see a child. The years between what she expected to see and what she saw were lost. She was with people who treated her kindly enough, and who knew her well, but she did not know who they were or how long she had been with them."

"Madness." This was a whisper from Connor, and Donuil answered it immediately.

"No, Brother, not madness. There is a term for her illness, which I learned from my friend Lucanus, the surgeon of Camulod. It is amnesia. Deirdre had lost her memory, the result, he guessed, of the high fevers I told him had consumed the child. She was no more mad than you or I, or Father here. She had simply lost her memory of all that had happened to her. . . Anyway, there she was, alive and well and happy to see me again. Merlyn and I thought to bring her home here, to visit you after they were wed, but war broke out, and we were absent for a time from Camulod, and when we returned, she was dead, murdered by someone, with the babe she carried, while she was out of the shelter of Camulod. Merlyn knew nothing of it. He himself had lost all memory, his mind driven from him by the smashing of a swinging iron ball that should have killed him and would have, save for the skills of the same Lucanus I spoke of."

I watched the king struggle to control himself as he listened, attempting to come to terms with what was being thrust upon him. He had loved both his daughters, I knew this from Donuil, but Deirdre had been his favourite and he had grieved long and hard twice in the past, believing her dead. Now, as he learned that she had lived through all his grief, only to die again, by mindless violence in a far land, conflicting passions betrayed themselves, sweeping across his face, each in its turn to be dismissed and condemned and disallowed. I saw sorrow, compassion, anger, disbelief, suspicion, resentment and dismay each register upon his face and in his eyes, but after they had passed in a fleeting thought, his face grew calm again and he mastered himself. His eyes moved back to hold my own as Donuil continued speaking.

"Two years and more went by, and Merlyn knew nothing of his former life. But then his memories came back, and he believed that Uther, his cousin, had been the killer of his wife. He had suspected long before, though he could not prove his suspicions, that Uther had committed the first violence on her, the attack that led Merlyn to hide her far from Camulod. Now he believed in Uther's guilt and set out to find and kill him. Uther was at war, in the southwest, against Lot. By the time Merlyn caught up with him, Uther had been killed and his armour stripped from him. Merlyn knew nothing of his death, or of the theft of his armour, and so pursued the killer who appeared as Uther from afar. The chase led him to the beach where he found Ygraine, and with her the child Arthur, drifting off in the birney. He climbed aboard the boat but could not return to shore. Connor found them drifting that same day."

When Donuil finished speaking the king sat down, staring off into the middle distance for a long, long time before he eventually straightened his back, rose to his feet again and spoke to me in slow, deep tones.

"We will speak more of this later, Caius Merlyn . . . You are, in truth, my son by marriage?"

I nodded. "I am."

"And this child, this Arthur. He is yours? Yours and Deirdre's?"

"No, Sir King, he is not."

"I see." I heard first the regret, then the bafflement, plain in the old man's voice. "Then who is he? I had thought. . . almost hoped, for a moment there, listening to Donuil, that he might be my grandson."

I opened my mouth to speak, but the words congealed on my lips, and the words of my great-uncle Publius Varrus, unthought of for years, flashed clearly before my eyes; words he had written recalling the occasion when he stood beside my own grandfather Caius Britannicus and heard that noble man deny what he had always claimed to be his birthright, abjuring his Romanness and claiming British identity. As it had for Grandfather Caius on that long-past day, as it must at some time for all men, my own moment of truth had arrived. I overcame the surge of cowardice that had stricken me mute and forged ahead, unmindful of the threat to all my plans and those of all my kin, knowing all at once the rightness of my course.