by Jack Whyte
Of course, Jonet knew, too, that no one would ever dream of voicing aloud any thought that Leir might be a murderer. He was far too powerful for anyone to take the risk of thus offending him. Jonet seldom thought about such things, but she had not the slightest doubt that he would kill her, too, if she were ever foolish enough to bring herself again to his attention.
So, on that day of the advent of the ninth wife, Jonet moved quickly away from her home into the forest before she could be noticed. She went almost without forethought, unaware that day that she would never return to her home village. With her she carried, as she always did, her small travelling pack containing the line sharp knife she had stolen the year before from a neighbour's house, together with a length of strong, stout twine she had pilfered months earlier from a visiting peddler and three barbed iron fish hooks she had found stuck into the clothing of a long-drowned man whose corpse had washed up on the bank of the river close to the southern end of the village when Jonet was eight and long since inured to the sight of violent death. The fish hooks had been rusted, but she had known their usefulness and had salvaged them carefully from where they had been securely fastened into the left foreshoulder of the dead man's tunic. She had then cleaned them patiently and carefully, rubbing them delicately with a fragment of a broken, fine-toothed file that she had found outside their local smithy's two years before.
Once safely away from the Druid's house that day, she walked less quickly, but still covered the ground at a good pace, trying not to think of the Druid or what his return entailed, forcing herself to dwell on enjoying the peaceful warmth of the day and listening to the singing of the birds until she gauged that she had walked ten miles, perhaps more. She was truly beginning to believe herself alone and safe when she heard and instantly recognized the discordant, squabbling voices of the boys who goaded her constantly, and so she ran from the path to hide from them, cursing her own stupidity. She had thought herself far enough from home to be safe from her tormentors, but they were ranging as far afield as she was this day, and the realization of that made her think about how everything in her life was tied to the starting point that was the village into which she had been born. Wherever she could go, anyone else from the village could go too—if she could travel as far as she had this day in the space of a single forenoon, why should she be surprised to find the village boys in the same place? The boys reached her hiding place, though they did not discover her, and there they settled down to rest and while away the afternoon, playing their noisy games and boasting and squabbling among themselves while Jonet crouched above them, high in a huge old elm tree.
By the time the boys eventually left, evening was approaching rapidly, dusky blue shadows were beginning to gather among the trees, and Jonet had made several important discoveries. The first of those was that it was already too late for her to return home that day, unless she wanted to run and catch up with the boys from whom she had been hiding all afternoon. The second was that it was almost too late for her to find a suitable stream and a spot where she could fish for something to eat that night. But the third discovery was momentous, and it involved the new awareness that if she failed to return home she would be able to start the next day's journey from wherever she had spent the night—far, far ahead of anyone else starting out that morning from her village. Her heart swelled and pounded with excitement as she made the next mental step towards acknowledgment that if she were to do the same the following day and the day following that, she would soon be so far from her village that no one, not even the Druid, would be able to find her.
Jonet travelled for several days—she soon lost count—and gradually, as she put more and more distance between her and the village, she became suffused with an easy, unaccustomed sense of well-being. Then one day while she was creeping through deep woods to check a snare she had set for rabbits, she came face to face with herself in a woodland pool.
Jonet had never thought to see herself so perfectly reflected anywhere, but the stark, bare, incontrovertible reality of what she saw struck her to the very soul, so that she could say or do nothing other than stare, immobilized and helpless, at her own face, noting and memorizing every flaw and imperfection.
Her eyes were small, and they were dull, lacking any spark or twinkle of originality or verve, and even she could see that they were set too close together on either side of the bridge of her nose. She bent her face closer to the pool, searching for a demarcation line between the blackness of her eyes' centres and the muddy brown darkness of their irises, but the two areas blended together so that each eye seemed to be no more than a deep, black hole set in a muddy, brownish expanse of white. Above the eyes, her brows grew together in a thick, heavy bar, with no visible line of separation. Her entire face seemed to hang slack and heavy, and her full lips appeared to dangle pendulously as she leaned forward on stiffened arms, staring down at herself.
Slowly, as she hung there looking at herself, a great ball of grief and sorrow welled up inside her, weighty and palpable as a physical growth, threatening to cut off her breath. And then she was on her feet, running headlong through the thick woodland, completely blinded by tears so that she ran with her eyes closed, her face whipped and lacerated by twigs as she increased her speed, miraculously avoiding trees and boulders until she reached the precipitous edge of a deep, rain-scoured ditch and plunged out and down, head first, stunning herself and driving every vestige of wind from her lungs with the jarring impact of her fall.
For some time after that, she was utterly confused, fluttering between consciousness and oblivion. She had landed face down, and the pain in her chest, born of the inability to breathe, was an agony the like of which she had never known. After a time her breathing began to return to normal, so that she was able to release the cross-grip of her arms on her own chest and to straighten her back and shoulders without increasing the pain that racked her. All of those ills were physical, however, and she could cope with and adjust to them. What caused her real concern and confusion was what seemed to be happening outside and beyond the cocoon of sudden, crippling pain that had enveloped her. There she saw, through eyes swimming with outraged tears, a boy looming over her, a strange face intent with . . . what? Something. Anger?
When next she opened her eyes, briefly, the face was gone and she was apparently alone, squirming in solitary agony. But then someone turned her over, and she felt strange hands—large, male hands—on her legs, pulling them straight and spreading them. She kicked out wildly, spitting and screaming because she knew what that portended, having seen it happen many times to others. But her flailing kicks were smothered effortlessly by stronger arms. And then there was another pair of arms about her shoulders, crushing her and pinning her arms to her sides as someone, some third person, knelt over her. Cold water splashed against her face and a cool, moist cloth wiped her eyelids free of whatever had been blinding them so that she could see.
For a moment she lay motionless, blinking up at the three shapes that towered above her. Three men—no, two men and a boy, all kneeling over her. The man behind her held her clutched against his lower body, her shoulders pressed against his thighs, her neck bent forward by the push of his chest against the back of her head. The man by her feet sat back on his legs, holding her more gently now, and he was smiling. Between these two, the boy knelt at her left side, holding the cloth with which he had wiped her face. All three were staring at her, but she had no thought of reading their expressions. Instead she began to fight again, kicking out strongly with more aim than before and squirming like one possessed to escape.
She almost succeeded, too, for the savagery of her attempt caught them unawares just as they had begun to relax, thinking her calmed down. The man holding her legs lost his grip on them and Jonet swung her right foot strongly upwards, aiming at his mouth, hoping to kick his teeth out. Briefly she saw blood on her own leg, much blood, and then the man reacted, blocking her scything kick with his forearm and clamping his great hand on her leg ag
ain, this time above the knee, digging deep and agonizingly with hard fingers so that her leg straightened involuntarily. As it did so, he caught her with his other hand, this time seizing her by the ankle and forcing her leg back down until he held it flat against the ground. Raging, she tried to kick out at him with her other leg, her left, but for some reason she could not make it move at all, and a sudden fear welled up in her. The man above her released the grip of his right hand above her knee and grasped her other ankle effortlessly, pulling it down and out until he held her still. She felt it move, but otherwise felt nothing.
'Talk to her," the man grunted, forcing the words out between gritted teeth.
"Listen to me!" It was the boy who spoke, the urgency of his tone cutting through the rage in her so that her eyes went without volition to meet his gaze. His face was tight with strain.
"Stop fighting us. We don't want to hurt you. You need help."
Jonet spat at him, her saliva spraying up and then falling back onto her face. The boy gazed back at her, looking right into her eyes and shaking his head.
"Spit all you want," he said then, "but listen to me. I don't know you. I don't know your name, and I don't care what it is, but we don't want to harm you. You've hurt yourself badly enough. I saw you running, just before you fell, and then you ran right off the edge of the ditch there, and fell down here. You landed on a fallen tree . . . smashed your head and gashed your leg on a broken branch. I tried to help you, but when I saw the depth of the hole in your leg and how much blood you were losing, I ran to fetch Garreth, and Glenn came back with us. Garreth will stop the bleeding and bind your wound, if you'll let him, but you have to stop fighting. Nobody's going to hurt you. I am King Ullic's grandson, Uther Pendragon, and Garreth is Garreth Whistler, the King's Champion. I swear you will not be harmed. But that wound is bad. You could die of it. Look at it. Look at it!"
The arms holding her about the chest relaxed so that she could move, and she looked down to where the boy was pointing. Both her legs were drenched in blood, but it was the left one, the one she had been unable to move, that looked so gory. There was a great hole torn high up on her thigh, and deep inside it she could see the gleam of pinkish white bone, but below the point where the bone was visible, bright red blood welled profusely. The sight shook her from head to foot, and every vestige of fight went out of her. The man behind her caught her as she sagged back against him, and then her head began to spin and she lost consciousness, the last thing in her awareness being the boy's face frowning down at her, his huge eyes bright and troubled.
For a time after that, Jonet seemed to hover between sleep and wakefulness, and sometimes she dreamed long dreams. Amid all of that, she knew she was in a hut, and in a bed, sheltered from the weather, which she also knew was foul, because every time she awoke she could hear the howling of the wind and the incessant pounding of driving, torrential rain. Two men were looking after her, one or the other of them always present when she woke up. The larger of the two men, she learned, was the one named Garreth . . . Garreth Whistler. The other man, smaller and quieter, was called Glenn. Neither of them spoke much to her, but neither of them showed her any cruelty, either. Whichever one of them was there when she awoke—and sometimes they had to waken her solely for this purpose—would change her bandages, removing the soiled dressing and setting it aside for later disposal, then washing her wounded leg in hot, stinging water before poulticing the wound anew and binding the whole in fresh, clean dressings.
In time, she seemed to sleep less often and for shorter periods, and in that same time the frightful hole in her thigh, its edges sewn together somehow by Garreth Whistler, scabbed over and began to heal, so that eventually the pain of it was replaced by an incessant itch that Garreth told her was a sure sign of healing.
She could not have said how long she remained there in that bed, in that small hut, but she knew that the boy did not come back to see her again. For a very long time she said nothing, telling herself she didn't care whether he ever came or not, but as time went by and he continued to stay away, she found herself growing angry again, and beginning to believe that he was just like all the other males in her life, hard and cold and uncaring. But then Garreth and Glenn were men, and they too had once been boys. And they had done nothing to hurt her or torment her. They did not say much to her, but they spent all their time looking after her.
And then one morning Garreth came early and proceeded to remove her bandages as usual, but when the poulticed dressing peeled away this time, it took the thick, black, shrunken mass of the scab with it, leaving her thigh clean and new-looking, the length and width of the newly healed wound showing as a bright, broad patch of shiny skin.
Garreth sat back and smiled at her. "There you are, good as ever. Now all you have to do is learn to walk again, and you'll be free of this place."
Jonet scowled at him, not because she was angry but because her face knew no other expression. "Learn to walk again? That's daft. I can walk."
His grin didn't falter. "I know you can. And you know you can. But your legs don't know. They're weak now, no strength in them, because you've been in bed for more than a month, and in all that time you haven't used them. You don't believe me? Very well, let's see."
He stood up and walked away from the bed, turning back to face her when he had gone three paces. Then he held out his hands to her.
"Come then, Nemo, walk to me."
"What?"
His head tilted to one side, unsure of what she meant.
"What did you call me? You called me something."
"Oh, Nemo." He laughed. "It's a Roman name, and it means 'No One,' or 'No Name.' We didn't know your name and we needed to call you something, so Nemo seemed right. Don't you like it?"
She swung her legs clear of the bed and sat there motionless, facing him, saying nothing.
"Nemo it is, then. Come on, stand up and walk to me. It's not far, see, and I'll hold out my hands. Don't be afraid. If you fall, I'll catch you."
Still she made no move.
"Come on, what are you waiting for? You can't be afraid, because I know you aren't afraid of anything. How old are you, ten or twelve? Big, strong legs. Come on, up you get, only three steps to me."
Jonet stood up—and promptly sat down again when she felt the floor buckling beneath her feet. Thoroughly frightened by the sensation, which was unlike anything she had ever experienced, she sat there for a time, clutching the bedclothes tightly and staring down at the floor. It was of hard-packed earth, swept clean, and in all the time she stared at it, it didn't move. Finally she drew a deep breath and tried again, this time managing to remain erect for three or four heartbeats while the entire hut swayed about her.! On her third attempt, she managed to remain standing, although her legs refused to move when she told them to. She had a brief, flashing vision of the way her wounded leg had refused to respond to her attempts to kick Garreth on their first meeting, and her belly heaved in panic. Her right foot left the floor and moved to complete her first step, and then her entire leg folded beneath her as it met the floor again, and she pitched forward face first, Garreth caught her almost before she could begin to fall and picked her up easily, spinning with her to lay her back upon the bed.
"Now do you believe me? Don't worry, it won't last. We'll try a few more steps again later today, and then tomorrow morning and afternoon, and by the following day you should be moving about quite normally. Uther will be back by then, too. He'll be glad to see you well again."
"Who?"
"Who what?"
"Who will. . . be back?"
"Uther. You remember Uther. He's King Ullic's grandson."
"The boy."
"That's the one."
"Where is he?"
"He's in Camulod. Has been since the day after you fell. But now he's coming back. He's due home tomorrow or the day after that, depending on the weather. No one would want to ride in weather like this if he didn't have to, and Uther doesn't have to. So they may w
ait until the weather breaks and then come up when it's finer."
She lay silent for a few moments, digesting that before asking, "Camel . . . What was that place you said?"
"Camulod."
"Where is it?"
"It's where Uther's cousin Cay lives, and his grandparents on his mother's side. Uther spends much time there with his cousin, living with the Lord and Lady Varrus, and then the two boys come back here and spend an equal period here in Cambria with King Ullic, who is also Uther's grandfather, but on his father's side."
And listening to his lulling tones, exhausted from her exertions, she fell helplessly asleep.
When Jonet awoke, alone now, she lay wondering at all Garreth had told her. The boy had not been to see her, but it was not because he did not want to come. He had been far away since then with his grandparents on his mother's side. She frowned at that, wondering what it meant. She had never had a mother, so she did not know what a mother's side was, let alone a father's side . . . Her own father, even had she felt like asking him, could have provided her with little insight, she felt. He had never given her anything that she could remember, other than the two things that had led jointly to her being here in this hut: confirmation that she deserved the name by which they called her—the Toad—and a final incentive to escape, to run far from her miserable home in the silent, unformulated hope of finding a better life.
She was beginning to realize that these men would not hurt her, and she wondered whether she ought to tell them her real name, but one night she had a vivid and frightening dream in which the Druid, searching for her, found her by her name, which she had casually given to a stranger. So, for now at least, she would be Nemo, and her real name would remain unknown. She, on the other hand, knew the names of one boy and two grown men who had done nothing to cause her any hurt or pain, and one of those, the boy called Uther, would be coming back the following day or the day after that. She decided that she would not learn to walk properly again until the boy came back, because if she could walk before he came back, she would have to walk away.