The Saxon Shore cc-4

by Jack Whyte

  "Why? Because the possibility was there for the recognition and the taking. Christian clerics thought of it, and Romans before them, I would wager, but none of my people did, though they are no more stupid than any other." He stopped and cleared his throat with a great noise. "Well, at least we can begin to use it now. Again, my thanks, Lord Merlyn. I hope we will find something of equal merit with which to send you on your way when your visit here is ended. Two of my sons have befriended you, and I see much that moves me to commend their judgment."

  His words, and their unexpected warmth, filled me instantly and unexpectedly with writhing guilt and made nonsense of my earlier resolve to remain silent, for this night at least, on the other matters, completely unsuspected by him, that lay between us. I took a deep breath and glanced at Donuil, who was watching me closely, and then at Connor, who sat easily on my right, smiling slightly. Suddenly, for no good reason, I felt afraid for the outcome of my venture here in this alien land.

  "Suspend your judgment until you know me better, King Athol," I heard myself say in a tone suddenly distant and formal. "We are far more closely bound than you suspect."

  The king frowned slightly now, puzzled, the small smile still upon his lips. Then, in wary recognition of my sudden formality, he rose slowly to face me, settling himself firmly in an attitude of wariness, his weight distributed evenly on spread feet, his body seeming to lean slightly forward as though to resist the pressure of anything I might throw at him. All of us watched him as he did so, awaiting a further reaction, although for a spell he did not respond beyond rising, merely scanning my face, particularly my eyes, with his own gaze. I sensed then, rather than saw, Connor's body stiffen on my right, but a hand flick from his father, caught from the corner of my eye, albeit tiny and backhanded as though he waved irritably at a buzzing pest, forestalled any reaction or interruption Connor might have been tempted to make. The silence stretched, and the king's eyes left my face and sought Donuil's. Evidently having found nothing there to alarm him, Athol eventually spoke, in slow, even tones.

  "More closely bound than I suspect? How so?"

  I knew that my next words would be among the most important I should ever utter. A misplaced inflection or mannerism might bar Arthur, and me, from Camulod forever, confining him, or both of us, to this foreign place as prisoners. I stood up slowly and moved towards the hearth, placing myself so that its fire burned brightly at my back.

  "I know more of your family, Sir King, than you do. But before I tell you what I know, I must speak of two things. . . things I must say in advance of anything else, since failure to speak of them now might—no, they would— give Connor, if not you yourself, apparent cause to doubt my truthfulness hereafter."

  Even though my heart was galloping like a horse with anticipation of the unknown outcome of my course, I admired the old king's self-possession in the face of what he must have perceived as extraordinary and mystifying behaviour on my part. He merely nodded, maintaining his silence and indicating courteous patience. Connor sat leaning forward, his peg leg straight out before him, his left hand gripping his good knee, his right hand holding his ale pot as though to throw it. Donuil was rubbing his long nose with a forefinger, looking downward.

  "The first of these two things is this: I came here, into your kingdom and into your presence, fully resolved to speak my mind and tell you all that I will tell you now. Until moments ago, however, I had intended to speak to you of them some time tomorrow. Donuil and I were discussing that when you invited me here after the feast, and I had just finished telling him I have had no suitable opportunity to speak with you in private since we arrived, and these matters demand privacy, I believe. Now that has changed. We are here, in private, and I cannot, in conscience, hold back longer." I paused and tipped my head towards Donuil. "The major part of what I have to tell you will be attested to by Donuil, who has experienced the truth of it at first hand. The remainder, that which Donuil cannot personally verify, you must judge for yourself, based upon your own assessment of the matters I shall disclose."

  Athol nodded once again, concealing any signs of impatience with my hedging, and retaining his outward mien of good-humoured courtesy. He glanced briefly at Donuil, who nodded his head wordlessly. "I accept that," Athol murmured. "Though it sounds mysterious, even ominous. What is the second thing?"

  "I will deal with that now," I said, hating the stilted quality I could hear in my own words, yet utterly incapable of changing them. "It concerns the propensity that exists in all of us to cleave to that which we wish to believe, rather than to that which our senses indicate to be the unpalatable truth." I turned my gaze now upon Connor. "Connor, when we first met, when you hauled me out of the sea, I told you the truth. I recognized you, do you recall?"

  He nodded, plainly not knowing what was coming next.

  "We spoke then of Donuil, and the friendship between him and me. You chose to doubt my truthfulness—a reasonable choice under the circumstances—and decided to keep the child, Arthur, as hostage against the safe return of your brother to your father's Hall; a shrewd ploy, since you well knew the child to be worth more to me than my own life, although you knew not why."

  "Aye." Connor's voice was low-pitched. "I was wrong to doubt you, I know now. But I had no way of knowing it then."

  "I agree, and I harbour no ill feelings. You freed me thereafter to seek Donuil, and you yourself remained behind to await your sister, Ygraine, disbelieving what I said of that, too."

  Now his face flushed red and he moved to struggle to his feet. Again, however, he was restrained by a gesture from his father, whose own voice now betrayed a hint of anger. "What of Ygraine? I have heard nothing of this."

  Connor was glaring at me now and answered his father without removing his eyes from mine. "There was nothing to hear, Father. Mere rumours and foolishness."

  "Not so!" I turned towards the king, facing him squarely. "Connor refused to accept my word of Ygraine's death, but your daughter died in my own arms, King Athol, on the beach that day that Connor found me. She had fled her husband, Lot of Cornwall, days before, and she and all her women and her guards were slain in a fight I witnessed from afar. I was in pursuit of them, or of the man I thought to be pursuing them, but I arrived too late to be of any help. They were all dead or dying by the time I reached them. Very few of their assailants, a mere handful, had survived the fight. I slew them with my bow." I saw no benefit in adding that I had allowed the last of them, their leader, to depart unmolested.

  The king's face had whitened to a pallor resembling the beeswax candles that had so delighted him mere moments earlier, and he clasped his hands out of sight behind his back, closing his eyes with such concentrated effort that the skin tightened upon his face, the wrinkles on his brow smoothing out to show clearly against the paleness of his high forehead. I spoke on gently, attempting to lessen the pain for both men, father and brother.

  "I told Connor of this later that day, but he argued that the woman who died in my arms that afternoon could not have been his sister. And, by his lights, I will admit, he had strong room for doubt. I had told him myself that I had never previously met his sister, or even seen her in the flesh. Nor did we find her corpse when we returned to seek it. She, and all the others, had been washed out to sea by the returning tide before we could win back. We found one naked female, floating in the waves, a stranger, unknown to Connor or any of his men. So he reasoned that this woman I had cradled in death was another slain by coincidence upon the strand where he had sought to find his sister. It could not possibly have been Ygraine, he chose to believe, because her bodyguard of your own Scots was strong enough to safeguard her against any danger, as was their blood duty. His reasoning was sound enough, but flawed. His knowledge was incomplete. He had—he could have had—no notion of the carnage that had been wrought for weeks in the blighted Cornish lands through which I had been riding, too late at all times to achieve anything worthwhile in any matter."

  Silence, then in a
quiet, calm voice: "Yet, knowing that, you made no effort to convince him of his error."

  It was a statement, not a question, and I lowered my voice in responding. "No, I did not. I accepted his need to believe what he believed, and saw no profit in angering him. Besides, I had concerns of my own, which would have been endangered had I sought to convince him otherwise."

  "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.

  "He is."

  A pause, the le
ngth of several heartbeats, while the king looked at me, grappling with the meaning of my words.

  "What did you say?"

  "He is your grandson, born of Ygraine, your daughter, to my cousin Uther. Uther Pendragon."

  The king sat down again, subsiding suddenly back into his seat as though the strength had left his legs. Once seated, he turned immediately to Donuil, seeking verification, but Donuil merely shrugged and cocked his head, indicating ignorance. Connor, however, had shrugged off all restraint and now leaned fiercely towards me, clutching at the arm of his chair in preparation to rise and face me beard to beard.

  "Damn you, Merlyn," he rasped. "You told me none of this!"

  "Damn me if you will," I responded. "What other course lay open to me? You refused to believe me when I spoke of Ygraine. What would your reaction have been had I told you the child was her bastard, bred between her and her light of love, my cousin, whom I had been pursuing? And if you had believed me, what then? Would you have permitted me to keep the child, as I am sworn to do? I doubt that! More likely you would have fed me to the fishes then and there and brought the infant home with you. Am I not right?"

  He hung there, angry words trembling upon his lips, threatening to spill, and then he recovered himself and subsided, sniffing loudly and breaking eye contact with me. "Aye," he muttered. "Mayhap I would, at that." His father, however, had seized upon what I had said last, and now questioned me.

  "To what are you sworn, Caius Merlyn? What is the boy to you? Why would you claim any right to him and why would you even wish to, were he the son of the man who killed your wife and your own child unborn? Were I you, I should have killed the child out of hand, purely for vengeance, blood upon blood. Is that your intent, even now?"

  "Father!"

  "Quiet!" Donuil's protest was cut short by a peremptory slash of his father's hand. "I am speaking to Master Merlyn here."

  I turned my back to them, gazing into the fire, hearing the sound of Athol's angry breathing behind me as I sought the proper words. Finally I turned back and spoke.