Uther cc-7

by Jack Whyte

  "The boy."

  "What about him? He's the Druid's apprentice."

  Nemo shook her head. "No, no, he's not."

  "Come on, Nemo, of course he is. He's an ugly whoreson, but an apprentice is probably the best thing he could be, with that face of his."

  Nemo frowned. "He's my brother, Carthac. My brother. And the Druid's name is Leir. He is my father."

  Uther sat down beside her rather suddenly, as though his legs might have given way, and sat staring at her for what seemed a very long time, while Nemo kept her eyes fixed on the emptiness ahead of her in the middle distance. Finally she heard him snort, and from the corner of her eye she watched him draw up his knees and wrap his arms around them.

  "The Druid is your father . . . What did you say his name is? Leir? Your father?" Nemo made no response, and he continued as though talking to himself. "Very well, then. And the boy is your brother." There was another long pause, and then he moved again, turning himself sideways so that his legs hung out over the cliff like hers. He slipped his hands flat, palms downward, between the backs of his thighs and the hard stone of the ledge.

  "Why did you run away?"

  Nemo thought about that for a moment. "Because I was afraid of him. He came home with a new wife, and—"

  "No, I don't mean then, I mean today. Why did you run away from him today, from Tir Manha?"

  Nemo sniffed and turned to look at Uther. "Because he had found me. He—"

  "He had not found you, Nemo. He had no idea you were there. He still has no idea."

  "He would have asked for me."

  "What would he have asked about, then? A runaway daughter? A child? A slave? If he had wanted to find you he could have done so easily, long before now. He is a Druid, after all . . ."

  They sat silently for a time, and then Uther asked, "You hate him, don't you?"

  She nodded, and he nodded back. "Aye, I can see that. But why? What did he do to you? Did he beat you?"

  She shrugged her shoulders. "Sometimes. Mostly he frightened me. I knew he was going to kill me one day. He killed my mother, and he killed all his other wives, too. Nobody ever spoke of it, but I knew . . ."

  Uther sat staring at her again, and then he reached out and squeezed her shoulder. "Well, look, Nemo, here's what we'll do. We'll wait him out and tell no one where you are. You stay here, and I'll go back to Tir Manha and fetch you enough food to last you for a day or two. This Druid won't stay long, you'll see, and he won't be looking for you. He probably thinks you died in the forest somewhere. I'd wager he has even forgotten that you ever lived."

  "Someone will tell him my name."

  "But what did he call you when you lived at home? He didn't call you Nemo, did he?" She shook her head, on the point of telling him that her real name was Jonet, but he was charging ahead. "Of course he didn't. I know that's not your real name. So how could this Druid ask about you? D'you see what I'm saying?"

  Responding to the tone of his voice, Nemo looked at him, then sniffed loudly and even managed to smile, tremulously, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

  "Good, then bear this in mind from this moment forward. The Druid might be your father. There's not much you can do about that. But he is not your keeper, so stop worrying about him coming back and claiming you as some kind of slave. I won't allow it. And if I have to I'll complain to my father about him, and to Daris, the High Priest." He broke off, grinning at her. "On the other hand, there's nothing much I can do about your brother. You're stuck with him, I'm afraid." The grin faded from his eyes. "He's a nasty little brute, though. He had a dead rat in his scrip. I saw him take it out when he thought no one was looking, while his father was talking with another Druid, waiting to see Daris. He took this thing out of his scrip, then cut one of its legs off and dropped the rest of the carcass back into his scrip. Then he started playing with the severed leg, trying to skin it with his lingers. Filthy little toad."

  Uther was completely oblivious to the shudder that shook Nemo when she heard him use that expression. His mind was still busy with thoughts of young Carthac.

  "What happened to him, anyway? What happened to his head?"

  "He was born that way. It happened during the birthing. Everybody thought he would die. But he didn't." Even as she said the words, Nemo recalled seeing Carthac earlier that day and thinking immediately that he looked far worse than she remembered.

  Uther was rising to his feet. "Well, he's an unsightly little monster, and not so little either. How old would he be?"

  Nemo shrugged. "Younger than me. Younger than you, too. I think I was three when he was born . . . that's what I remember being told."

  "So, if I'm two years younger than you are, and he's a year younger than me, he's nine . . . He's huge for a nine-year-old."

  Nemo shrugged. "Yes," she said, "he's big."

  No more was ever said, but Uther's stature as her guardian, protector and benefactor was forever fused into Nemo's consciousness that day. He had soothed her and relieved her of her fears without either scorn or ridicule, and he had personally guaranteed her safety, offering to enlist his father the King, and even the Chief Druid, on her behalf. Nemo thanked him simply and accepted the truth of everything he had told her, and eventually her life resumed its normal round.

  Leir left again shortly afterwards, following a stay of mere days, leaving Carthac in Tir Manha with Daris, the High Priest. Before he could return at summer's end, word came back that he had fallen prey to a sudden, raging fever and had expired within a matter of days, frightening everyone with fears of plague and pestilence. Carthac was left an orphan, and no one was quick to offer to lake on the responsibility of looking after the misshapen boy. But word passed among the people, subtly reinforced by the authority of the High Priest, that as the son of a Druid, the boy was entitled to a measure of support from the clan at large, and lodgings were eventually found for him until he could be apprenticed to another Druid. The waiting period was short and unhappy, but Carthac was placed with another Druid from the north and soon moved on.

  Chapter FOUR

  In her entire life prior to arriving in Tir Manha, no one had ever taken the time to speak civilly to Nemo, so it had quickly become one of her greatest joys that the boy Uther would often talk to her, sometimes for hours on end, looking her directly in the eye from time to time and speaking urgently and for her ears alone, without a hint of cruelty or derision. No one observing the two of them at such times would ever have thought to call what passed between them conversations, for Nemo never said a word, never made any attempt to respond to anything Uther said. She was content to listen and to enjoy the recognition in being spoken to, and it would never even have occurred to her that Uther spoke to her thus out of any feeling of fraternity or equality. She simply accepted the situation and enjoyed it, knowing that the boy spoke to her only because she remained silent, listened avidly and made no effort ever to interrupt him. Whenever he felt the need to hear himself think aloud, she was there, willing and available to serve as his audience.

  Uther had been born into a family wherein the men were accustomed to thinking aloud and did so all the time. His grandfather and his father were both celebrated, among a people who placed great value upon such things, for their oratory and the soaring music of their voices. In matters of debate and dialogue, in argument, arbitration and level-headed negotiation, they were renowned talkers, powerful persuaders and manipulators of multitudes.

  Young Uther had known, however, from the earliest days of his childhood, a truth that most people did not: that the liquid flow of persuasive urgings that spilled from the mouths of the male elders of his family was anything but spontaneous. The sweeping, seemingly fluid exhortations to their clansmen and kinsfolk were carefully and painstakingly structured, then rehearsed and polished for days prior to being delivered. Uther's childhood had been filled with instances of seeing his grandfather, especially, pacing the floor for hours, shoulders hunched in concentration as he muttered for his own ears th
e words and arguments he would later pour out for the attention of his assembled people. It had taken Uther a long time to realize and accept that the passionate flow of eloquence spilling horn King Ullic's lips was made up of the same words to which he himself had been listening for the previous few days or sometimes weeks, whispered or muttered almost inaudibly as the King moved from room to room, or from corner to corner, deep in concentration.

  When the time came for the words to be said in public, however, all of the repetitive work of stringing them together in the first place came to fruition, so that the speaker, knowing the words fluently, could concentrate upon delivering them to maximum effect, using tone, pitch, rhythm and cadence to sway his listeners. Once he had learned that lesson—and he had shivered with an overwhelming rash of gooseflesh when it finally sank home to him— Uther had been stricken with awe at the combined powers of words and forethought. From that moment forward he would never lose sight of the importance of knowing in advance exactly what he would say when presenting an argument or defending his opinions on a particular topic.

  Uther came to seek Nemo out more and more often, until what had begun as a whimsy had become a habit. The habit bred a strange form of dependency upon her presence, so that after a relatively brief period of time, Nemo, in a strange and uncritical way, had become Uther's Witness. She became a part of his audience, openly or in concealment, every time he had important things to say to anyone, and since in those youthful days that usually meant to his family— particularly to his father and his grandfather—it also meant that Nemo had to listen from some hiding place. Neither of those two august beings, Ullic and Uric, would have been likely to accept the presence of a common urchin like Nemo. And so it came to pass that Nemo became an expert at concealment, hiding herself securely far ahead of time whenever she had to witness Uther speaking out on anything important. Uther, in turn, had come close to the point of losing conscious awareness of her presence, even when they were alone together, and he frequently spoke to her as though he were musing aloud to himself.

  Never again would Nemo be open to such a profusion of lessons to learn and profit from. Every day she spent watching Garreth Whistler and his friends or listening to Uther, either in private or in public, brought her new awareness and important knowledge of the world in which she now lived. Thus it was that she learned of Uther's insecurity over the regard in which he was held by his Grandfather Ullic. Uther walked in absolute awe of the King, and for a long time Nemo found that puzzling, since she could see nothing awe-inspiring about the old man. Ullic was big, certainly—bigger than any other man Nemo had ever seen—and even among a proud and warlike people whose facial hair could be intimidating, his great, wild beard made him look ferocious enough to frighten anyone. But she had never heard anyone complain about the King's ill temper, and she had never seen him beat anyone. Indeed, she could remember no single instance of complaint about his behaviour. Ullic Pendragon merely looked ferocious; he did not behave ferociously. And he was old, his beard shot through with streaks of grizzled, wiry grey hair.

  Through Uther's commentaries, however, Nemo soon came to see the Pendragon King in a different light. The boy loved his grandfather deeply, to such an extent that he was almost afraid to approach the old King too closely, lest he do something boyish and ill-considered—and Nemo quickly discovered that Uther believed he had a natural talent for such things—that might displease the great man. Uther always strove to keep himself close enough to be able to watch and see, hear and admire the King's feats, his opinions and judgments, formal and informal, and yet he remained far enough removed from the proceedings most of the time to be able to slip away whenever he wished, without having been noticed.

  It took her a longer time, however, to realize that Uther had a deep-rooted and very real fear that his grandfather, his beloved and revered Tata, disapproved of him. This confounded Nemo, for even she could see, as unobservant and incurious as she was, that Ullic Pendragon, not the kind of man to dote on anyone, was fiercely proud of Uther. Uther himself, however, was absolutely incapable of seeing or believing anything of the kind. In his own eyes and for his own reasons, he judged himself unworthy of his grandfather's respect and admiration, and so he condemned himself to a life without either. He believed his grandfather disliked him, and he hurt himself so badly with this misguided conviction that he found himself driven constantly to attempt impossible things in order to win recognition and approval from the old man.

  Because he was yet very young, however, Uther invariably failed to see the vainglorious aspect of all the wild things he tried to do, and because he never liked to talk about anything he found even slightly discomfiting, let alone embarrassing, he seldom spoke to anyone about what he was trying to achieve at such times. As a result, what his father called "Uther's escapades" usually ended in failure and dejection, the pain of them amplified because invariably King Ullic saw only what he believed to be the harebrained results of his grandson's mercurial nature.

  One such incident occurred in the early autumn of the year Uther was ten. He had returned from Camulod sooner than was usual that year, and for some reason, unknown and unimportant to Nemo, Cay had not come with him. Uther had been different when he came home that year: he had grown considerably during the summer months and was far bigger than he had been when he left, but Nemo also noticed that he was more confident, and that was not quite so readily apparent to others.

  He came home that year enthralled by several things he had learned from the craftsmen in the Colony, and one of these was the phenomenon of lines of cleavage, the almost magical divisions known only to jewellers that exist between the planes and structural elements of natural crystals, enabling a knowledgeable man to split a precious stone into smooth-faced, multi-faceted portions with one sharp, well-placed tooled edge and a few gentle taps.

  Uther, who had always been a creature of great burning, but short-lived, enthusiasms, had seen this feat performed by a veteran craftsman called Murdo, a native from some far northern clan who made silver jewellery and decorated it with bright yellow and purple stones, clear as glass, that he brought from his homeland. Before seeing the man himself, Uther had seen a sample of Murdo's work, a large, circular and splendidly imposing brooch with a huge yellow jewel at its centre, and he had dismissed the jewel as a pretty but worthless piece of coloured glass. One of his companions had corrected him, however, insisting that the decoration was, in fact, a real jewel that the craftsman had cut from an ordinary stone and faceted with his own tools.

  Uther's rejection of such an outrageous claim was instant and raucous. Any fool, he said, could see that the jewel was made of glass, the same kind of glass that had been used to make the yellow drinking cups owned by his Grandmother Luceiia Varrus in Camulod, and he had seen for himself how those were made when his grandfather took him to the glassmakers foundry. The glass was beautiful, but it was made in a furnace and then rolled and shaped while it was soft and ductile—he had used that word impressively, taught its meaning by his Grandfather Varrus, the smith, although none of his friends had paid it any attention—but at no point in its production did anyone cut it or split it with a blade. His friend was adamant, however, and totally unimpressed by Uther's vehemence, refusing to be shouted down and insisting that he had heard his father tell how Murdo the Bauble-maker had learned his craft as a boy, at the Emperor's court in Constantinople, and had then come home to Britain to practise his craft for more than twenty years in Londinium, prior to the departure of the legions.

  Such a spirited defence of Murdo, with its absolute defiance of Uther, constituted a serious challenge and called for an absolute resolution one way or another. And so the entire troupe of boys, nine in all, went directly to Murdo's hut and demanded that he show them one of his rough, unpolished stones, and then show them how he split and shaped and polished it to make such a jewel as the one in the brooch.

  Watching as Murdo did what they asked—he was only too happy to reward their interes
t in his skills—Uther found himself totally engrossed in the procedure that unfolded before his eyes. From the moment the dour-faced Murdo first produced an ordinary- looking, rough-textured pebble the size of his fist and held it up beside a much smaller, many-faceted jewel of what appeared to be blazing yellow glass, claiming the two were one and the same substance, a material called topaz, Uther's imagination was in thrall to what he was being told and shown. He watched, spellbound, as Murdo cleaned the rough stone of surface impurities, immersing it time and again in a bath of some bubbling, caustic fluid, then withdrawing it, using long, tapering pincers, and vigorously rinsing it clean in water. In the intervals when nothing particular seemed to be happening and waiting was all there was to do, he asked Murdo, insistently sometimes, about the sources of his skills and knowledge. The man sought to avoid and deflect the boy's questioning at first, but Uther Pendragon's was not the kind of personality that accepted dismissal easily, and the craftsman's reluctance, once overcome, soon gave way to the pride every artisan takes in explaining and demonstrating his abilities to people who are both less gifted and genuinely intrigued.

  Uther's friends were not interested, beyond the first novel and introductory stages of the cleansing process, and they soon drifted off to amuse themselves elsewhere. Even Cay went away with the others, unimpressed by what he had seen to that point, but Uther remained behind, his attention focused entirely on what Murdo was doing, and under the boy's watchful gaze, the jewel-maker eventually buckled down to doing real work, rather than simply seeking to amuse the lad. As Uther watched, frequently holding his breath with the intensity of his concentration, Murdo unveiled some of the true secrets of his craft, gripping the rough, uncut stone securely in the jaws of a jeweller's vise and then cutting the stone to expose the glowing treasure at its heart, working roughly at first in the initial, shaping cuts, and then refining his approach and the size and temper of his cutting tools as he approached the finer elements of his task.