Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

"Good. Any broken bones?"

"No, and her eyes are fine, before you ask. But she is deaf, and mute, as we suspected. Here, come over here and hold this bowl for her. I have to make water."

I took the bowl and he went outside and I heard the gush of his urine against the wall of the hut. Up close, the girl's face was a sight to marvel at: it was one enormous bruise, from brow to chin. Her eyes were fixed on mine, and she made no move to resume eating from the bowl. I moved it slightly towards her, indicating that she should continue to eat, but she just stared at me and her eyes filled with tears, throwing me into a state of consternation. Women's tears had always unnerved me and, with this woman in particular, I was totally at a loss as to what I should do. I stared, appalled at the great drops of liquid that seemed to hang forever on her lashes before plummeting down her yellowed cheeks, and then, looking around frantically for something to dry them with, I found a cloth of some kind lying beside me and snatched it up, moving clumsily to pat the wetness from her face. She flinched at the contact and, as I realized how painful her face must be, I flinched, too, in sympathy, and then she smiled at me through her tears and my stomach turned right over.

I had never seen her smile before, nor had I ever seen a smile to equal this. It transformed her whole face, lighting it up from within, bruised and discoloured as it was, and changing it into a thing of ethereal beauty. I was undone on the spot. Even today, decades later, I can remember realizing that that tremulous, slow, painful smile had ensured that I would never seek a smile from any other woman. Even the fact that the movement stretched her tender, healing lips and made her wince again in pain did nothing to disenchant me. I was already lost. She dropped her eyes to the bowl I had abandoned, and I picked it up again and held it out to her. She began to eat again, or sip, as delicately as a fawn drinking from a pool. I lost all track of time and sat there, rapt, until the bowl was empty, when she tapped it with her spoon and smiled again, bringing me back to awareness.

"I thought you thought her ugly, boyo?" Daffyd's voice came from right behind me, but I didn't take my eyes from her yellow face.

"I did, Daffyd, but I had never seen her smile. I must have been blind."

"Aye, or preoccupied, perhaps. Anyway, from the way she's looking at you, she doesn't find your face too frightening."

"Hmm." I was gazing at her face. "Daffyd, how... How are her... other injuries?"

"Her body openings? They're healing. She will be fine, in her body, at least. In her mind...I just don't know, Merlyn. I've seen women who have been violated in war, some of them brutally. They've taken it in their stride, for the most part. But I have only ever seen two women who were treated like this before, outraged for no apparent reason with what had to be a mindless violence. Neither of them was ever the same afterward."

I felt a chill in the pit of my belly. "What do you mean? In what way? Who did it to them? Was it the same man?"

"No, no, the two were years apart." He moved away from the table and gave his attention to the fire in the small, open hearth, blowing carefully on the embers and then feeding in sticks one at a time until the fire was blazing heartily again. In the meantime, I sat staring at Cassandra who stared right back. Finally satisfied, Daffyd straightened up and turned back to me.

"The first man was really insane. Completely possessed. Threw himself over a cliff and killed himself and good riddance. The other one, years later, was never caught. Never knew who he was."

"How long ago was this, Daffyd?"

"The last one? Oh, must be ten years gone, now."

"You said the first one was possessed. Do you believe in possession?"

He looked at me severely, quirking one eyebrow. "Anyone who doesn't is a fool."

"Then you believe in evil." Aunt Luceiia had used the word to describe the priest Remus.

"Of course I do. If you believe in good, boyo, you've got to believe in evil."

I was uncomfortable with that, with his loose definition of the idea I was grappling with. I looked again at Cassandra. She was the antithesis of everything with which I was trying to come to grips. I shook my head in a qualified denial of what Daffyd had just said. "No," I said, "the opposite of good is bad, Daffyd. Evil seems to me to be far beyond mere badness. It's something else altogether."

Daffyd was looking at me strangely. "What are you trying to say, Merlyn?"

I could only shake my head. "I don't know, Daffyd. But this..." I nodded towards the silent girl on the bed. "It seems to me that anyone who is truly evil must be unfit to live."

"How many such people, truly evil people, do you think there are in this world, boy?"

'Truly evil? I don't know that, either, but there can't be that many. I've never met one." Something ticked in my memory. "Wait, though! I'm wrong. I have met one. One person." My memory was churning now, spinning out a long, connected series of images. "When Uther and I were boys, we met Lot, the son of the Duke of Cornwall. He and Uther fought, and tried to kill each other. I mean, it was no boys' fight, Daffyd. They went at each other with swords and both were wounded. My father dragged them apart before they could kill each other. Thinking of it now, I remember Lot as evil...profoundly, unbelievably wicked, through and through, for the sheer pleasure of it...almost mindlessly bad, but not endowed with the saving grace of mindlessness, for he knew exactly what he was doing."

"Hmph! Do you feel the same way about Uther?"

"Uther? Gods, no!" I was genuinely shocked.

Daffyd smiled slightly. "I'm glad to hear that, boyo. Lot of Cornwall, eh? Funny, now, you should pick him. You're not the first I've heard say such things about him. He's a bad one, all right. Calls himself King Lot now, he does. Rules out of that fort that his old father built himself after he saw your Camulod. Quite a place, they tell me."

I was intrigued by the tone of his voice at the mention of this fort of Lot's. "Have you seen it? The fort?"

He hunched in scornful dismissal of the suggestion. "No, never been down that way. Better things to do with my time, haven't I? But they built it right on the edge of the sea, I'm told, on the top of mi island that's cliffs on all sides. No way to capture it, they say. It's a stronghold, no doubt about that."

"Does it have a name, this stronghold?"

He shook his head. "Not that I know of, but then I don't care, do I, boyo? But by all accounts, it's an unusual place. Perhaps you'll see it for yourself one day."

"Perhaps I will, Daffyd, although I hope not. I should not be welcome there."

"Aye," he grunted, "I dare say you're right. Conquerors are seldom made welcome any place they go."

"Conquerors? Why would you say that? You've just told me the place is impregnable."

"No, boyo," he responded. "You're starting to forget all the lessons I taught you. You've forgotten already how to use your ears. What I said was, "they say there's no way to capture it," but who are they? And yet, if people want to pay attention to them, whoever they are, then nobody will even try and the place might never be taken at all, so it would be proved impregnable, wouldn't it? You see?" He was staring at me.

I nodded. "I think so."

"That's good, then, for what I said, and what you thought I said, were not the same thing at all. But I'll tell you one thing, and you should hear me clearly: there's not much good farming land down that way, and if Lot of Cornwall is as big a swine, or a king, as they say he is, he is going to come your way, sooner or later. He has people to feed, so I would say sooner is closer to reason than later. And when he does—notice I'm not saying if he does—you are going to have to teach him his place, you mark my words."