XXXVIII

I OPENED MY eyes in a new world, one in which I was a total stranger, a world in which I was to exist for almost two whole years.

When I opened my eyes the first time, this new world consisted of a single, white-painted room, containing four other people. I knew I was in a room. I did not know where. I knew I was in a bed. I knew that the people watching me were wearing coloured clothes: orange and green and blue and white. At least I think I knew that then. I might have simply learned it later and not remembered doing so. I did not know the people. I watched them look at me, and lean over me. I watched their mouths move. I did not know they were speaking. I did not know I was not hearing them. I did know I felt pain, I knew my head and my body were both filled with pain. Soon I closed my eyes again.

Sometime later, I was aware that the people in the room were different. Two were the same, a man and an old woman, but two were much younger. I knew none of them.

On another occasion the man, thin and dark-faced, leaned close to me, looking into my eyes. His hair was receding at the temples leaving a pointed peak, and as I looked at him I saw tiny holes high above his forehead where hair had once grown. Then his face wavered and became two faces, alternately overlapping then drifting apart. Pain pounded behind my eyes. I closed them again.

There came a time when I heard sounds before I opened my eyes. When my lids rose, I was looking at the ceiling of the white room, and the same thin, dark-faced man hovered above me, looking down. His mouth moved and I heard the sound of his voice. I knew it was his voice, but the sounds meant nothing. I became aware of movement to one side of me, but when I tried to look in that direction I could not move my head. It was fixed. Immobile.

I was aware of long passages of time, and of the pain either lessening or simply becoming more bearable.

Once I heard a bird singing somewhere and the sound of a heavy tread approaching me. I opened my eyes and found I could move my head as a large, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, heavily moustached man with blue eyes came to a stop beside me, looking down at me with a frown on his face.

“Merlyn,” he said. “Caius Merlyn Britannicus, are you in there?”

I felt my throat swell and wanted to weep. I had understood what he said! He remained there watching me for some time, and I made no effort to communicate with him. I did not know that I could. Eventually he left, and as he passed from my sight, I continued to wonder what he had been trying to say. Who was Merlyn Caius Merlyn Britannicus? And who was I? The sudden knowledge that I could not answer that question in my own mind filled me with a terror that was all the more frightening because I could not remember ever having felt that way before.

I learned very soon afterwards that I was Caius Merlyn Britannicus. The old woman told me, the woman in blue who was always nearby. I watched her as she passed my bed one day, and she saw me watching her. She stopped in her tracks, motionless, and looked at me for a long time, and then she approached me and picked up one of my hands, holding it between her own.

“Caius?" she whispered. I looked at her more closely than I ever had before, taking in the whiteness of her hair, the smoothness of the skin stretched over her high cheekbones, and the deep blue of her lovely eyes. I felt her hand squeezing my own.

“Caius, can you hear me?" I gazed at her.

“Caius, can you understand me?" There was a different tone to her voice now. “I know you can see me, and I know you can hear me, so if you understand my words, squeeze my hand the way I am squeezing yours.” Again I felt the pressure of her hands. “Squeeze my hand, Cay.” I tried, and she felt it, and her eyes filled with tears. She moved even closer to me, sitting on the edge of my bed.

“You can understand. I knew you could!" She smiled now, and such was the warmth of that smile, the love and the tolerance in it, that I felt my own face respond and my lips move to form an answering smile. Her face grew radiant.

“Do you know me? Do you know where you are?" No response. I didn’t know how to respond. Undeterred, she went on, “If you do know me, or if you know where you are, squeeze my hand again.” She waited until she was sure that I was not responding, then she tried again. “Very well, if you do not know me, squeeze my hand.” I squeezed, and she sat back with a short cry, but only for a moment. Then she was leaning forward again.

“Now listen to me, Cay. I am your aunt. My name is Luceiia. Can you say that?" Again, I understood her words and knew what she wanted, but I did not know what she wanted me to do. She moved again, so that she sat with her hip against me, her body twisted so she could look directly into my face. She moved her mouth slowly, speaking clearly: “Lu-cei-ia. Loo-chee-ya. Say that, Cay.”

I felt my tongue move but my lips were gummed together. They would not open. She was watching my mouth closely now and she rose and moved away quickly, returning with a moist cloth which she used to clean my lips, running her cloth-wrapped finger end into my mouth and around my gums. It felt wonderful. She tried again, and this time I repeated what she had said. “Luceiia.” It meant nothing to me, but it was obviously very important to her. I had learned my first word.

I learned very quickly after that, as a child does and, like a clever child, I had many willing teachers. The thin, dark-faced man told me that his name was Lucanus and that he and I had once been friends, but that I had lost my memory. He told me that my memory loss was complete, that I was an empty vessel, but that I might one day remember everything. In the meantime, he said, I could relearn all that I had forgotten. He was encouraged in this belief, he told me, because I was not a completely empty vessel. I could still speak and understand what was being said to me, which meant that, somehow, the damage done to me had not been unlimited. I remember that today, his way of phrasing that. He did not say the damage had been limited; it had not been unlimited. Even though that subtlety escaped me at the time, I also remember that I wondered what he meant, and asked him. He blinked at me, then paused for a time before saying, “You were hit very hard on the head with a large metal ball … a club with a swinging head.” That meant nothing to me, so he continued, watching my eyes closely all the time. “We thought you had been killed. Uther found you being guarded by young Donuil, your tame Celt.”

“Uther?" I searched my empty mind, seeking for a meaning. “Who is Uther?”

“Uther is your cousin and your closest friend. He has been here several times to visit you. A big, dark-haired fellow with blue eyes and a long moustache.” I smiled, remembering: Merlyn Caius Merlyn Britannicus. That had been Uther.

“Anyway, Uther had been tracking the invaders who ambushed you up in the hills, but he had not expected you or anyone else to come along, so you surprised him as much as your attackers surprised you. He had been plotting a trap of his own when you and your troopers sprung the trap in which you were hurt. By the time he was able to organize his forces and attempt a rescue, it was almost too late. He and his men drove off your attackers and brought you back here to Camulod. Do you remember Camulod?”

I shook my head, only then becoming conscious of the extent of things I could not remember. Thinking back to that time now, I see many things that I failed to grasp, let alone remember. When Lucanus told me, for example, of how he had bored a hole in my skull with an auger to relieve the pressure of blood built up in there and pressing on my brain, all the while fearing the attempt might kill me but knowing that I would inevitably die if he did not do something, I listened without surprise or disbelief, utterly oblivious that such things were not supposed to happen. Haematoma, he had called the pressure. He had relieved me of a haematoma by drilling a hole into my head while I lay unconscious, and the operation had been successful.

I spent many hours talking to Lucanus, and to many others throughout the years that have lapsed since then, about the phenomenon known to physicians as amnesia, although no one has known more about it than he did. I learned that it is a surprisingly common occurrence, stemming from a wide variety of causes, but that its very commonness of occurrence is the only common thing about it. No two cases that he had ever encountered, Lucanus told me long afterward, had ever been the same, or even comparable, apart from the single common point of memory loss. Some people lost only parts of their memories and never regained them. Others lost all memory, then regained it in a very short time. Some people’s memories returned to them slowly, over years, while others regained theirs in their entirety within moments. Some amnesiacs retained familiarity with their surroundings but lost all knowledge of their own identities; still others knew perfectly well who and what they were but lost all awareness of limited periods in their past. Mine was the most drastic case Lucanus had ever encountered. I had lost everything, including self-awareness, and had become tabula rasa, as he termed it: an empty slate.

As time progressed, I found out everything about myself. I met all my old friends and renewed many friendships. Their assistance and the good will they accorded me made the process easy. And yet it was never complete, because the relationships, old as they might be, had no personal significance to me beyond the point at which they began again. I identified with whatever it was that had occasioned these friendships originally, but I recalled nothing and no one. They brought the young Erse prince Donuil to see me and he spoke to me in his Celtic tongue and I understood him. He talked of the fight and how he had thought me dead after seeing me felled by my own flail. The man who swung it had been set to hit me again when Donuil killed him. I listened, responded politely in the young prince’s own tongue and invited him to visit me again, but I did not remember him. They told me of my father, Picus Britannicus, and I had no recollection of him. They showed me my grandfather’s books, and my great-uncle Varrus’s books, but to me they were meaningless, because, although I could speak my own Latin language and the Celtic tongue, I could no longer read and the names of the writers meant nothing to me.

They told me that Cassandra was dead, with her unborn child, killed by persons unknown while on a visit to her secret home, and I accepted the information without comment since it had no relevance to me, even when they told me she had been my wife and the unborn child was mine. I was not callous; I was unknowing. My mind was empty of knowledge of her name, her face or her appearance. I relearned the facts, but I could not resurrect the emotional involvements.

Finally I moved out of my sick room and into the life of the fort they called Camulod. Uther, who should have been my teacher, I was told, was away on campaign in the south somewhere, fighting an extended war against King Lot of Cornwall—another meaningless name, although I understood its implicit menace. In his stead, therefore, Donuil the Hibernian prince and the Legates Flavius and Titus began to teach me to ride again and to handle weapons. I took to these activities immediately and instinctively, mastering each of the tasks I was set as quickly as they were presented, but none of them occasioned any further or deeper awareness. I simply had a natural aptitude for such things.

The spring of the second year of my new life arrived and lengthened into a summer that was followed lazily by an autumn in which I was plagued with formless, gradually worsening headaches. Then, after the onset of an early winter, Uther finally returned to Camulod. I had been anticipating his return, because apart from the recurring headaches, of which I had informed no one, by this time I was almost wholly back to being the man I had been before, according to everyone who knew me, and there were many who believed that meeting Uther would be the final step in my regaining my sense of self.

He arrived at nightfall on the second to last night of November, and I remember how glad he was to see me waiting for him with the others in the great courtyard. He leaped from his horse and ran to me, his face split in a great, joyful grin, and swung me off my feet in an enormous hug. I smiled back at him and returned his embrace, but inside myself, where I had learned to conceal my confusion, I felt devastated. The sight of him brought no memories, and my head began to ache again.

I had made two solid, honest friends since my homecoming, starting afresh with each, although they both assured me we had been friends before. These were Lucanus and young Donuil. They accepted me now as I had become, not as I had formerly been, and I loved them both for that. Almost everyone else treated me as they did because of what, or who, I had been. I could see through that pretence instantly and no one was ever able to fool me. Only with these two did I feel whole, because neither made any attempt, ever, to prod me back towards being the Caius Merlyn everyone else was seeking. Their friendship, abetted by the wholehearted and unequivocal love of my great-aunt Luceiia, enabled me to survive a long and brutal winter with a degree of equanimity, enjoying what I had, rather than pining uselessly for whatever it was that I had lost.

Uther, however, laboured hard at accepting me as I was now. His treatment of me was at all times straightforward, open and considerate—sometimes, I felt, too much so. He was scrupulous in his efforts to treat me as his equal and his lifelong friend, but I could sense an awkwardness in him. It came to a head on a sunny morning in March the following year when, during a hard-fought bout with me, he suddenly sprang away from me and grounded the point of his sword. I grounded mine, too, but watched him narrowly; this cousin of mine was a doughty and crafty opponent. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his tunic, his breath heaving in his chest from the exertions we had been sharing, and I was astonished to see tears standing in his eyes.

“By God, Cay, I can’t stand this! You’re you, and yet you are not. It’s like playing with a ghost. You are complete sometimes, and I love the fight in you, and you were ever thus, and yet … and yet, much of the time now you are too different. My boyhood friend Cay simply is not here.”

I felt a lump swell in my own throat at the sight of the tears in his fierce eyes, and I stepped forward, arms spread wide to embrace him. Our breastplates clashed together as our arms went round each other and he snorted into my ear, half laugh, half sob, before pushing me away to arm’s length and looking me in the eye.

“I leave tomorrow, Cay. Back to the south. Lot is still alive and fighting fit in spite of all my prayers to the ancient gods to blast his benighted soul to smoke and ashes, and I won’t rest until I’ve cut the head, with my own sword, from his stinking neck. I wish you could come with me, but I doubt it would be wise. You are too gentle nowadays, Cousin. Stay here, and train, and try to find yourself. I hope when I return you will know me again.”

Four days later, missing him already and knowing I was unfit company for any of my friends, I mounted my horse and rode off alone, taking care to avoid being seen by Donuil, who dogged me everywhere, to the little valley my aunt told me I had called Avalon. There, I stood by the banks of the tiny lake, close to the wall of the small stone hut, looking down at the grave that they told me held my lost love and my unborn child. I had come here several times—once with Luceiia and once with Donuil; other times alone. And each time I came I felt guilt, crushing and hopeless, over my inability to grieve for what must once have been most dear to me.

Today my head ached abominably, throbbing so fiercely that I almost felt as though it moved rhythmically in time to the surging of my blood. I knelt by the foot of the grave and began the prayers I had been taught for the souls of the two people beneath me. How long I knelt there I have no idea, but the pain in my head swelled unbearably, and I eventually rose to my feet with great effort, knowing that the time had come to seek out Lucanus and tell him what had been happening to me. As I stood, my head seemed to spin and a dark, reddish mist swirled in front of my eyes. I thought I turned towards my horse, but instead I found myself facing the front of the hut, with its hanging, ruined door. My knees gave way and I felt myself pitch forward, seeing the edge of the door rushing towards my face.

I did not lose consciousness, and as I lay there with my face in the cool grass the excruciating pain inside my skull began to recede, to be replaced by a different, external pain. Eventually I was able to get up again, and then I discovered the source of my new pain. In falling, I had grazed my forehead against the door’s edge and gouged a cut that was slowly leaking blood down my face and stinging painfully. Moving with great caution lest I renew the agony in my head, I went to the water’s edge and knelt among the reeds there, scooping up the cold water to wash the blood from my face. The water felt wonderful, almost icy, and my head quickly began to clear, so to aid the process I leant forward gracelessly, bracing myself on my bent arms, and ducked my head completely beneath the surface, enjoying the sudden shock as the enveloping coldness chilled my scalp instantly and snatched my breath away. Feeling much better, I knelt erect again and began to flick the excess water from my short hair with my hands, and as I did so, I remember, I froze, motionless, my heart filling up with some enormous, nameless dread, my eyes dazzled by the brightness of the sunlight shimmering upon the waters ahead of me. I heard a drumbeat echoing somewhere, and only after long moments recognized it as the beating of my own heart. The sensations that swirled through me now were different from those caused by my aching head. These held the nausea of terror and the fear of turning my head to look at what I had no wish to see. I heard a ghostly, whooshing sound, the sound of ravens’ wings, and then my mind filled with the surging image of a prancing shadow horse, its death-grey, shrouded rider standing in the stirrups, swinging a weapon round his head, splitting the air with the same sound of wings until he swung it at me, hurling me, shattered, into the waters of the mere.

Donuil, my faithful hound, rescued me before I could drown. He had followed me, of course, but knowing I wished to be alone, he had remained hidden, content to watch me, concerned as ever for my welfare and safety. Almost recovered I might be, but to him I was far from myself and therefore I bore watching at all times. He pulled me out, lifted me across my horse and bore me back to Camulod unconscious.

Lucanus took one look at me, it seems, and drilled his hole into my skull again, quickly this time, since the original aperture was plugged only with beeswax. Once again I awoke to find myself immobilized and bound to my bed for months.

This time, however, no further damage had been done. No tabula rasa greeted them on my awakening. My memory was as it had been—complete but incomplete. I mended quickly, but had to swear an oath to Lucanus that I would inform him immediately in future of any aches or pains within my head. Even when I had promised him, he looked gravely concerned and warned me that he had only ever performed his haematoma surgery once on anyone. He had never heard, he said, of the procedure being conducted twice on the same person. He was obdurate in refusing to allow me from my bed before he was convinced that I was, in fact, healing normally. It took six more weeks to convince him of that, and each day and night of those six weeks I was haunted by the death-grey vision that had assailed led me by the lakeside. In vain I told myself it had been caused by the deep-seated pressure in my skull, but I could not rid myself of the conviction that something important had occurred there.

Within two weeks of being allowed to leave my bed, Lucanus permitted me to mount a horse, and from that moment on I fretted impatiently, waiting for Donuil to ride off on an errand to some neighbouring farm. As soon as he did so, I made my way directly to the valley again, dreading what I might find, but fearing even more the burden I would bear if I allowed my fear to stop me from going back.

Nothing had changed. The tiny grave was there, grown over now with weeds, since Donuil had been held in Camulod, tending to me. I walked to the water’s edge and found the spot where I had knelt that day, and I knelt there again, waiting to be assailed afresh, but nothing happened. I gazed across the surface of the tiny lake and saw only the trees on the other bank. My logic had been correct, I realized; the phantasms that had plagued me had sprung from the pressures in my head.

I became aware of the anomaly before I actually looked at it. It was merely there, present, a strangeness that attracted me by its very difference. Even when I focused on it, I could not see what it was. It lay just out of reach, a stick of some description, short and thick and absolutely straight, hanging vertically in the clear water between two clumps of reeds. I looked more closely, then realized it was too short. It did not reach all the way to the bottom but merely hung there vertically, waterlogged in some strange fashion. Idly, I splashed my hand towards it, trying to make it move. The water churned around it, but it hung there almost motionless, as though anchored. And then I saw the loop, floating almost invisibly just below the surface. I stood up and stepped into the water, sinking almost to the knees in the muddy bottom as I reached out and grasped the thing. It was slick and greasy in my grip, covered in algae, but it came to me easily as I pulled and lifted it. It was a man-made shaft, not a stick, and it ended in a fitted iron butt from which depended a length of chain and a heavy iron ball, rusted to the colour of the mud on the bottom. My flail! And yet I knew immediately it could not be, for mine was lying somewhere up in the Mendip Hills, wrapped around the skeletal wrist of the man who had last swung it.

If you don’t hit me with yours … The words rang clearly in my head and the voice was mine, but to whom had I said that? I looked at the dripping weapon in my hand and heard more words.

Uther! The other voice was Uther’s! But when had we said those words? I promise not to hit you with mine if you don’t hit me with yours … And then it came to me. It had been the morning of the day we set out against Lot’s first invasion, the last time I saw my father alive. And suddenly my father’s face was there in my mind, twisted in death as he sprawled in rigor mortis across his bed, and I felt a stab of agony as I remembered, not yet aware that I was remembering. Then, incongruously, I heard Aunt Luceiia’s voice: Her injuries were awful, as though she had been battered to death, her skull completely crushed … Then Uther’s voice again: The bitch! I’ll find her later and teach her a lesson she won’t soon forget …

The voice I heard screaming then was my own, as all the agony and grief, the sudden realization of my lost love, crashed down on me at once and I staggered round to look at—and this time really to see—the piteous, weed-strewn little grave that contained my beloved, my dreams and my life.

Publius Varrus remarked several times in his writings, and I have always agreed with him, that words, the strongest tool men have for communicating ideas, are hopelessly inadequate for the tasks we sometimes ask of them. This is most particularly, and inevitably, true when we find ourselves struggling to describe the most basic and fundamental human emotions: love and happiness; hate and bitterness; grief and anguish. I have no recollection of kneeling there by that graveside or of what thoughts passed through my mind. I only know that when I became aware again of the world around me, night was falling quickly, my thighs were quivering with exhaustion, and the grave before me had been plucked clean of weeds, its edges smoothed and its surface, bearing multiple imprints of my palms, patted flat. My mind was also filled with a decision made, and my breast was filled with a cold and reasoned, emotionless placidity that entailed an utter and complete knowledge of what I had to do.

Sometime later, still filled with that unutterable calm, I opened the door to Luceiia’s family room and stopped short on the threshold, stunned by the sight of her in the lamplight and suddenly aware, from a completely new perspective, of another dimension to all I had lost through my illness. She was no different from when I had last seen her earlier that day, but now I remembered the beloved Luceiia Britannicus who had ridden with me to meet Cassandra just two years before, and this was a different person. Those two years had wrought enormous changes in my aunt. She had shrunk, and looked tiny and fragile. And yet the same lively wit and beauty sparkled from those great, indomitable blue eyes as she turned to look at me.

She recognized the change in me immediately.

“You remember!”

I nodded, mute, still standing in the doorway, and she moved to me quickly, drawing me into the room, her eyes already awash with tears.

“Thank God, Caius, thank God! What happened? How? Have you told Lucanus? Does anyone else know?”

I shook my head, still wordless, answering all her questions with one gesture, my throat completely choked by a great, swelling lump of grief and misery. And then the dam broke and I was riven by a violent, wrenching sob and gave way completely to the pain inside, allowing it to overwhelm me. I felt my aunt’s arms go around my waist and I enfolded her in my own, feeling the smallness of her and the love and sadness that frailty brought me as I cradled her gently and allowed my tears to fall unchecked into her silver hair. When the paroxysm had subsided, she led me to a chair and pressed me down into it, then sat close to me and watched me until I had mastered myself again. She made no attempt to speak, waiting in wisdom for me to begin. I was in no hurry. I sat there, empty now, my eyes closed, and waited until I felt the resolute calmness I had previously felt re-entering my body and filling me to the point where I could speak again. Finally I opened my eyes and looked at her. Her own eyes were filled with love and concern.

“Auntie, when exactly did Cassandra … when was she killed?”

She gazed at me. “You have been there again? To the grave?”

I nodded. “That’s where I remembered. When, Auntie?”

She shook her head, a troubled frown on her brow. “We don’t know exactly, but it was soon after you left for Verulamium. She left here to return to your little valley ten days after your own departure. She was happy there, and lonely here. She was heavy with the child, of course, but she was healthy and blooming and still well short of her term, so I saw no reason to keep her here … not when her heart was so obviously there …" Her voice faded, then resumed. “I expected her to return within the week, but even when the week passed with no sign of her I was not concerned. The weather was clement, better than it had been all summer, and she had taken the little two-wheeled cart, so she was well stocked with provisions. It was only after ten days that I began to wonder, and so when Daffyd arrived that same day, I asked him to go and visit her, just to be sure.”

“Daffyd? It was Daffyd who found her?”

My aunt nodded, miserably. “She had been dead for some time by then. More than a week, Daffyd thought. Poor Daffyd. He found her, and he cleaned her, and he buried her. Then he came back and told us.”

I swallowed hard. “What about the baby?”

She looked me straight in the eyes and shook her head. “It was still inside her, if that’s what you are asking. They died together, intact.”

“Was she … Did he find her in the water?”

She nodded her head, her face drawn with concern. “Yes, yes he did. He told me at the time, but I had forgotten. The poor child was dead. Where he had found her made no difference to me. How did you know? Did Daffyd tell you?”

I shook my head, mute, recalling with horror how a human corpse could look after days of submersion in water. My dear aunt could have no idea of such atrocities. My next question was difficult, my voice almost defying me to make it utter the words. I had to draw a deep breath and hold it before asking, “Was Uther in Camulod then?”

She nodded. “Yes, he was. As a matter of fact, he had arrived on the morning of the day Cassandra left—" She bit off her words and looked at me in dismay. “Caius! Why did you ask me that?”

“Because I want to know, Auntie. When did he leave?”

Her eyes widening in horror, she shook her head in denial of what I was implying. “I … I … Caius, you can’t be—”

“When did he leave, Auntie?”

“Within a few days. You know Uther. He comes and he goes, always riding somewhere.”

“He was gone, then, before Daffyd came?”

“Yes, days before! But I can’t allow you to think what you are thinking, Caius. It is unjust, infamous! You suspected Uther before, but you know it was Remus the priest who committed that crime.”

“Remus is dead, Auntie, long since … and far from here, long before this crime was committed.”

“No, Caius!" The anguish in her voice was as keen-edged as my own.

“No,” I whispered, aware of how much I was hurting her. “Perhaps not. But I have to know, Auntie. I have to know!” Inside my heart, however, I did know. I spoke purely to soothe this woman I loved more than any other now alive. I drew another deep breath and changed the subject.

“Auntie, did anyone ever tell you about my brother Ambrose?”

Her expression changed to one of wonderment and she nodded. “Yes. Lucanus told me about him, although he knew few details. He said you were like twins. I would have sent for him, but I did not know where to look, or what to say to him.” She shook her head in slow, tacit acknowledgement of how little any of us know of others. “Twins … Of course, that could not be. He must be older than you, sired before Picus met Enid. Theirs was a hurried courtship, and I cannot believe your father capable of infidelity so soon after his marriage to your mother.”

Realizing only then that she knew nothing of the truth of what had happened, I told her the entire story as I had heard it originally from my father, and as I had reconstructed the later events for myself. She listened in silence and when I was finished she was smiling again, her concern over me and her grandson Uther forgotten for the moment.

“I must meet this Ambrose, and soon. I thought I only had one great-nephew.”

I stood up. “You will, Auntie. I am sending Donuil tomorrow to bring him here. I must leave Camulod immediately, and I don’t know when I will return.”

She stared at me for the space of several heartbeats, her eyes wide with renewed alarm.

“You are leaving Camulod? But why, Cay, to what end? Where will you go?”

I shook my head, unwilling to lie to her but driven to prevaricate for her peace of mind. “I don’t know, Auntie. Wherever my path leads me. But I must go. I cannot remain here. I need … time … Time to be alone with myself and to untwist my mind. I have lost years. I knew that yesterday, but today I see the import of what I have lost.”

She gazed at me without speaking as I continued. “My new-found brother Ambrose—if he will come, and I believe he will—should be here in my place. Camulod is as much his home as it is mine. I know you’ll teach him all he has to know. And he’s a warrior. Vortigern the King holds him in high regard and his own men of Lindum are proud to soldier with him. He is strong and bold, and the reports I have heard of him hold him to be just and fair-minded, clever and responsible. He will replace me more than adequately, I am sure, and Camulod has need of him, stranger though he may be at first. Titus and Flavius are too old to govern by themselves now, but aided by you and Lucanus, they can train Ambrose to take his rightful place here and await my return.”

My aunt accepted all I said, but still did everything in her power to dissuade me from leaving, and to influence my thinking in the matter of her grandson. We talked for a long time, but I was adamant. My path lay clearly before me. I took my leave of her at last and went in search of Lucanus.

It was raining heavily enough to have doused the torches on the walls as I made my way across the pitch blackness of the parade ground to Lucanus’s quarters, but I found him where I had expected to, not yet abed, writing in his sick bay surrounded by lit tapers, I paused before entering, struggling with myself and with my rage against Uther. Lucanus, I was determined, should have not the slightest hint of my renewed suspicions. This interview was crucial to my plans, central to my ability to walk away from Camulod and my responsibilities. Luke would fight me, I knew, if he suspected me of harbouring new doubts about my cousin. I reviewed the course I wished this conversation to take, then stepped into the sick bay.

Lucanus glanced up as I entered and nodded briefly. He held up a hand to indicate that he would be with me in a moment and waved me to a chair as I shrugged out of my rain-damp cloak, and I sat waiting in the shadows until he had finished writing. Finally he put down his pen and turned to me. “Well,” he began. “I haven’t seen you all day and did not expect to see you so late tonight. What’s on your mind?”

I plunged straight in. “How did you get back to Camulod after we left you on the road with the northern king … what was his name?”

He made a face of surprise then rueful dismissal. “Derek. Derek of Ravenglass. We returned quickly and directly, but not without trickery. As I’ve told you before, your friend Derek was a mixed benison. He escorted us to the meeting place, but then abandoned us in the middle of Lot’s army, which was short of wagons for transporting their supplies. He had to meet his two hundred men. I was glad, yet strangely sad, to part from him. I found him offensive, but his men protected us. After he left, I thought we would lose the wagons.”

“He was supposed to escort you through and past Lot’s army. That’s what the gold was for.”

Lucanus shrugged. “I know, but he changed the terms—" He broke off, his features sharpening as he gazed keenly into the shadows, trying to see my face. “Who told you about the gold? You and I have not discussed that.”

I nodded, acknowledging his acuity. “No one told me. I remembered.”

He was on his feet instantly, moving towards me, all of his physician’s instincts on full alert. For a while we sparred verbally, he trying to question me on every aspect of my recovery, and I to avoid being diverted from my purpose. I gave up eventually, realizing that I would make no progress until he was at least partially satisfied with my recovery and the cause of it. I told him of recovering my memory while kneeling by Cassandra’s grave, a minor lie, but one that was necessary to avoid approaching the matter of Uther’s guilt. He threw a thousand questions at me, and I attempted to answer all of them until I reached the point where I could take no more.

“Enough, Luke,” I told him finally. “I am fully recovered and that’s that. And not only do I recall everything that happened before I was struck down, but I recall everything that has happened since. There are no holes in my mind now, so leave off with your infernal, snooping, physician’s questions.”

“Surgeon’s questions.” He was grinning at me and I grinned back.

“As you wish. Surgeon’s … but I have some questions of my own that require answers.” I stopped, remembering. “You mentioned trickery a while ago. You said you came here directly but not without trickery. What did you mean?”

He grinned. “Deceit. I remembered the towns we passed on the way to Verulamium and our fear of plague. So I put it about that the men in our wagons were sick of some pestilence, not wounded. Derek’s people had gone by then, so there were none who knew anything different, and suddenly our wagons were undesirable. We cut straight through Lot’s army and moved ahead of them and safely back to Camulod.”

“I see. Inventive of you. And where was I when you arrived?”

“Abed and dying. In your aunt’s house. You had been there for several days. You were barely alive. As soon as I saw you, and the state of your head, I knew what had to be done, although I thought I might have come too late.”

“So you drilled a hole in my head.”

“I did, and let some of the air out.” He smiled again. “It was only a small hole, but I was amazed by the blood that came out of it. I have to tell you again, however, that I am still deeply concerned by the recurrence of that haematoma. I’ll be watching you closely from now on, since I can’t trust you to report your pain.”

“You can. I’ve promised you. I owe you my life now twice over, obviously.”

Lucanus shrugged, his smile still in place. “No more than you owe it to Donuil or Uther. Between us, in our different ways, we’ve managed to salvage you. How will you reward us, I wonder?”

The irony of his question made my heart leap in my breast as a voice in my head said clearly: Painfully, my friend.

To escape my sudden confusion, I stood up and moved forward into the light, pausing by his desk to run my fingertips across the papyrus on which he had been writing. “Tell me what happened to the army we encountered north of Aquae Sulis that time. They were poised to take Glevum, then Aquae, then Camulod. Obviously they didn’t, but why not? I must have heard at the time, but I was not myself and since then I’ve forgotten, until now.”

He smiled and grunted. “They killed their own threat, with no trouble to us. It was a small army, no more than four thousand men, it seems. They struck Aquae Sulis, but found nothing there worth having, so they demolished what little remained of the temple of Sulis Minerva, then marched north against Glevum. Lot, as usual, was not among them, and the `general’ he had sent to marshal them was killed in a squabble in Aquae, leaving them leaderless. Anyway, Glevum brought them less than Aquae had, and so they struck west, into Cambria, seeking the gold-mines at Dolocauthi. We heard no more of them.”

“I see. It seems God was on our side then. We were in poor condition to repel their attack, had it come.” Lucanus nodded in agreement, looking up at where I stood above him. I perched on the edge of his table. “I intend to send Donuil tomorrow at first light to carry a message to my brother Ambrose in Lindum, or in the kingdom of Vortigern if that’s where he is now. I am convinced he should come here. God knows, we have need of him. I would also like you to welcome him for me when he arrives and make him feel this is his home. May I rely on you for that?”

“Of course, you know that,” A tiny frown of curiosity ticked between his brows. “Where will you be?”

I shrugged. “Away, I’m leaving for a while. As I’ve already told the Lady Luceiia, I need to spend some time alone. There are too many memories here right now, and they are all too fresh, too new … too sudden.”

“Aye, I can understand that.” His voice was pitched low and filled with sympathy. “Where will you go? Do you have any idea?”

Loathing myself for the direct lie to my best friend, but fortified by that same, icy calm that had been in me all evening, I forced my face to remain expressionless. “No,” I answered, shaking my head to emphasize the unimportance of that. “Perhaps south, perhaps east. I’ll follow my nose. But it’s important that Ambrose be made welcome here, and that he involve himself to some extent in the destiny of this place. His grandfather and his father built it, so it is his legacy. And he has martial skills that we can and must use in any way we may. I’ve no fears of his not prospering here, and loving it, and Uther will like him.” Then, with the barest pause, as though the thought had just occurred to me, I went on. “Where was Uther headed, by the way? Do we know?”

“God knows!" Lucanus yawned and stretched. “To the best of my knowledge, or anyone else’s for that matter, he marched south and presumably to the west of us. It’s been months now, as you know, since we saw hide or hair of any Cornish forces in this region, and your belligerent cousin spoke only the day before he left of carrying the war to its last stage and burning out the nest of rats Lot calls a fortress.”

“Aye. What did he call the place?”

“Nothing, as I recall. I doubt it even has a name. Most people refer to it simply as Lot’s Nest.”

“Lot’s Nest, rats’ nest, there’s no difference, but it might take a deal of burning. How many men went with Uther?”

“Enough. Two full thousand, half horse, half foot. But you’re right. It could prove difficult to burn, and Lot might not even be there.”

“How so?" A note in his voice had struck my ear strangely. He returned my gaze evenly, allowing a short silence to stretch between us. “What do you mean?" I pressed the point.

Lucanus continued to stare at me for several more moments, then he shrugged his shoulders. “Simply what I said. When Uther came home at the start of the winter, when it grew too cold and treacherous for campaigning, you may recall he cursed Lot and his wealth very effectively. Do you remember?" At that moment I was able to identify the reason behind the peculiar look in his eyes. The physician was still looking for gaps in my memory. I nodded, as casually as I could, and he went on, apparently satisfied. “Well then, you’ll recall that Uther’s concern—and he was convinced, for whatever reasons, that he was right to be concerned—was that Lot would use the winter rest period this year to reinforce and strengthen his armies. He has the wealth to do it, if we are to believe what we have heard about his pirates, and the winter months when the snows blocked the hill passes gave him the time.”

I nodded again, remembering, and he continued, “Lot has that kind of wealth, and the mercenaries out there in Hibernia, and even in Gaul, know of it. By this time, for all we know, the entire peninsula down there could be jammed with new levies, primed for battle. With water on three sides, it’s easily supplied by sea with stores or men. Uther marched south—that’s all we know. He took the great road. He could have left it at any point and struck inland, to east or west, depending on what his outriders found before them.” He yawned and stretched hugely before concluding, “You know that as well as I do, if you would but think about it.”

I nodded. “I agree. He could be anywhere. I won’t keep you longer from your work or from your bed, my friend. I only wanted to say goodbye, since I intend to leave with the dawn, and to ask for your support in this matter of my brother Ambrose.”

He smiled. “You know you didn’t have to ask that, Cay, but I’m glad you told me of your intentions. But don’t leave yet. I am not tired, and I’ve finished what I was doing. I have some excellent wine here.”

“Can’t, Lucanus. I still have to find Donuil and instruct him on what I wish him to do. It is imperative that he leave in the morning. And besides, you yawn like a man deprived of sleep for days.”

“Nonsense! And why the urgency? Let Donuil rest. He’ll be deep asleep by now. Tell him in the morning.”

“Sick with an aching head?" I grinned at him again. “No, really. I told you I intend to leave at first light and I meant it. I also intend to leave clear-headed, so accept my thanks for the offer and my regrets. I agree with you about disturbing Donuil, however. I have to write a letter to my brother, and Donuil may as well sleep until I’ve done it. Good night, Lucanus. Sleep well.”

I had no sleep that night, listening to the thrashing rain, and the second hour before dawn found me walking, fully dressed save for my boots and cloak, through the darkened house towards the room that housed Publius Varrus’s treasures and his books. There, by the light of my solitary lamp, I toured the walls slowly, looking at the ancient weapons that hung there and remembering my great-uncle and the way he had loved and treasured these antique symbols of man’s dexterity and ingenuity. Reaching his great African bow, layered of wood and horn and sinew, I took it down from the pegs that held it and tested its spring in my outstretched hands. It was as supple and mighty as ever. Donuil had replaced it here after bringing me back to Camulod from the Mendip Hills, two years before. It had not been oiled or polished, I could see, in at least half that time, but it had evidently not suffered from the neglect. A quiver full of long, carefully fletched arrows hung beside it, and I took that down as well. A small drawer in the table directly beneath, against the wall, held a supply of bowstrings made from stretched sinew, each wrapped and tied with care. I took all eight of them, dropping them into my scrip, then crossed the room again to lean the bow stave and quiver by the doors, where I could pick them up on my way out.

Finally, unable to postpone the moment longer, I took down the wooden hammer keys and used them to uncover the long, polished case that lay hidden, coated with dust, beneath the floorboards. Moments later, Excalibur sat firmly in my grasp, thrilling me with its power. I sat there on the floor, my legs dangling in the hole at my feet, and raised the Sword above my head, watching the light from my lamp reflected in its glittering silver blade, and turning it this way and that to catch the ripples of refraction along its planes. Every detail of that magic, long-gone day, the first time I had seen this wonder, passed through my mind. I drew the hilt close to my eyes and examined again the perfect symmetry of the huge gold cockle-shell that was its pommel, and I flexed my fingers around the wire-latticed grip, made from the belly skin of a great shark. With the tip of my finger I traced the Celtic scrollwork on the broad cross hilt, trying in vain to detect the edges of the silver leaf covering that coated the bronze. And I heard again the voice of Publius Varrus from his death bed, instructing me in my duties concerning this wondrous weapon, which he had made with his own hands. As I listened to those words, whispered from the depths of my soul and my memory, so newly returned to me, the exhilaration I had felt seeped out of me to be replaced by a creeping nausea. I might never look upon this wondrous sword again. With the approaching dawn, I would ride out in search of vengeance, hunting the grandson of the man who had made it. Only one of us, and perhaps neither one, would return alive. But if I died, Excalibur, my sworn and sacred trust, would remain here, concealed from all eyes and therefore useless forever. That could not, must not be so.

Today I can find some tiny cause for pride—a very tiny cause, insignificant against the monstrous anger that consumed me at the time—that it did not occur to me to take the Sword with me. I could not even then, in my swamping bitterness, conceive of using the Sword Publius Varrus had made to kill the son of the child Publius Varrus had fathered. No matter how obscene I considered Uther’s sins to be—knew them to be—I would never have thought to kill him with Excalibur.

Slowly, and sick with the knowledge of what I had to do, I laid the gleaming blade gently in its sculpted bed, then closed the lid, hiding the Sword from my eyes again for what I felt might be the last time, and carefully wiped off the dust from the polished lid. That done, I lowered the case carefully back into its hiding-place and resealed it beneath the floorboards. Then I crossed to my great-uncle’s writing desk, where I used my lamp to light more tapers, after which I found pens, ink and parchment and began to write. By the time I had finished, although it was still darkest night, my fingers ached from the unaccustomed effort of holding the pen.

I wakened Donuil in the pre-dawn blackness, when there was still no sign of light in the sky to the east. He was surprised to see me up and about before him and I did not bother to explain. I placed my lamp on the table by the door of his sleeping chamber and perched on the edge of his bed, where I repeated the now familiar story of my coming odyssey in search of myself. I repeated the explanation of how I perceived the need for Camulod and Ambrose to be brought together, and explained to him why I wished him to go in search of Ambrose, wherever he was to be found. I also told him in detail the message I wished him to relay to my half-brother, and then listened while he repeated it back to me. I instructed him to take two companions with him, the centurion Rufio and Curwin the bowman, and to be careful on the road. I myself, I told him, would probably be gone for no more than a week or two, after which I must return to Camulod and to my duties. His search for Ambrose, on the other hand, might take months.

Finally, when I was convinced he knew what I required of him, I gave Donuil the letter I had written and with it my instructions, taking pains to make it clear to him that I was merely taking precautions against a premonition I had dreamed of, and no more than that. He would give the letter to my aunt in the morning, bidding her keep it sealed and safe. In the highly unlikely event that I had not returned to Camulod within a year from this date, she was to give the letter to Ambrose and remain with him while he read it. And if, for any reason, Ambrose had not come to Camulod, she was to do the same with Uther; failing Uther, with Titus or Flavius or the senior officer in command at that time.

Donuil was mystified by my instructions, but I did not enlighten him. In my own mind, I had done all I could do, and I had no options. My responsibility was clear. If Uther were here two years from now and I were not, then I would be dead and Excalibur, for better or for worse, would be rightfully his. If neither of us returned, this way at least the weapon would remain in Camulod and might, some day, fulfill its original purpose. I watched as Donuil locked the letter safely in his chest, then I made my way to the stables, where I took time to ensure that my various possessions, including Publius Varrus’s great bow, were securely stowed, fastened and wrapped against the elements.

In recognition of the foulness of the weather, I lashed a thin, tightly rolled, straw-filled palliasse behind my saddle, having wrapped it in a firmly bound length of the same material from which my foul-weather cloak was woven: dense-fibred brown wool, thick and springy, with a waterproof texture that was strengthened by a scraping of rendered wax. My great black war cloak with the embroidered bear on the back was folded in a pannier on the pack horse, protected by a covering of the same waxed wool and safe from rain, damp and mildew. Finally satisfied that everything I could do had been done, I mounted the big black that had once been my father’s, and as I clattered over the cobblestones and through the main gates leading the pack horse and an extra mount, two lonely, chilled, wet sentries were the only ones to mark my passing.