Notwithstanding all of that, a secondary reason for my failure to confront Uther with Cassandra was the fact that life in Camulod quickly returned to normal, which meant that a messenger arrived, begging our help against a raiding party of Saxons to the south-east. My father had just returned from a patrol sweep, and so I was sent out with a flying column to do what I could against the raiders. They were long departed, safely back at sea by the time we arrived, however, so after remaining for a day with the villagers, doing what we could to help put their lives together again, we headed back to the fort.
Uther had returned during my absence, offering no explanation of where he had been, but accompanied by twenty of his father's bowmen, and had already left again, this time on a routine sweep of our territories in the southwest. I was glad to have missed him by several hours, for even with my reasonable doubts established, I still did not relish the thought of meeting him face to face with my remaining concerns unresolved.
"How was he?" I asked my father.
'The same as ever, just Uther. No guilt in evidence, if that's what you mean."
"That's what I mean. Did you tell him the story?"
"I did, yes."
"How did he react?"
"Shock, and concern. Both, I felt, quite genuine. But he didn't believe the story of her magical disappearance. He knew you had something to do with it."
"How could he know that?"
"He didn't know anything, Cay. He merely said it smelled like one of your tricks."
"What tricks?" I remember the injured innocence in my voice before the next thought occurred to me. "You didn't tell him how we did it, Father? Did you?"
"No, I did not, nor did he ask me."
"I wonder if he asked Titus?"
"I asked Titus that. He didn't."
"So," I shrugged my shoulders, hitching my armour so it hung more comfortably, "shock, concern and no guilt. Good for Uther." I shook my head. "I'll be glad when this affair is over, one way or the other."
The next day I rode out to the valley to check on Cassandra, hoping to find her much improved. She was. I could see that the moment I opened the door of the hut. She was sitting up against the wall, feeding herself with a spoon from a bowl that Daffyd held for her. I looked around the interior of the tiny room.
"Hello, Daffyd. Where are the boys?"
"Hello, yourself, Princeling. They are gone. I sent them home days ago. They were driving me mad, cooped up in here like a couple of randy weasels."
"How is she?" She was staring at me over Daffyd's shoulder and her eyes were enormous, far bigger than I remembered. The bruising had begun to heal, and her whole face was now a mottled, yellow colour, tinged with blue in places. There were a couple of small scabs on her eyebrows, and around her mouth where her lips had been split open.
"She is recovering. Don't you think she looks better?"
"Aye, she does. How are her teeth?" I did not know what had prompted me to ask that.
"Oh, she'll bite again. They are all still there. Two were a little loose, but they are stiffening. She's young and she's healthy and mending fast."
"Good. Any broken bones?"
"No, and her eyes are fine, before you ask. But she is deaf, and mute, as we suspected. Here, come over here and hold this bowl for her. I have to make water."
I took the bowl and he went outside and I heard the gush of his urine against the wall of the hut. Up close, the girl's face was a sight to marvel at: it was one enormous bruise, from brow to chin. Her eyes were fixed on mine, and she made no move to resume eating from the bowl. I moved it slightly towards her, indicating that she should continue to eat, but she just stared at me and her eyes filled with tears, throwing me into a state of consternation. Women's tears had always unnerved me and, with this woman in particular, I was totally at a loss as to what I should do. I stared, appalled at the great drops of liquid that seemed to hang forever on her lashes before plummeting down her yellowed cheeks, and then, looking around frantically for something to dry them with, I found a cloth of some kind lying beside me and snatched it up, moving clumsily to pat the wetness from her face. She flinched at the contact and, as I realized how painful her face must be, I flinched, too, in sympathy, and then she smiled at me through her tears and my stomach turned right over.
I had never seen her smile before, nor had I ever seen a smile to equal this. It transformed her whole face, lighting it up from within, bruised and discoloured as it was, and changing it into a thing of ethereal beauty. I was undone on the spot. Even today, decades later, I can remember realizing that that tremulous, slow, painful smile had ensured that I would never seek a smile from any other woman. Even the fact that the movement stretched her tender, healing lips and made her wince again in pain did nothing to disenchant me. I was already lost. She dropped her eyes to the bowl I had abandoned, and I picked it up again and held it out to her. She began to eat again, or sip, as delicately as a fawn drinking from a pool. I lost all track of time and sat there, rapt, until the bowl was empty, when she tapped it with her spoon and smiled again, bringing me back to awareness.
"I thought you thought her ugly, boyo?" Daffyd's voice came from right behind me, but I didn't take my eyes from her yellow face.
"I did, Daffyd, but I had never seen her smile. I must have been blind."
"Aye, or preoccupied, perhaps. Anyway, from the way she's looking at you, she doesn't find your face too frightening."
"Hmm." I was gazing at her face. "Daffyd, how... How are her... other injuries?"
"Her body openings? They're healing. She will be fine, in her body, at least. In her mind...I just don't know, Merlyn. I've seen women who have been violated in war, some of them brutally. They've taken it in their stride, for the most part. But I have only ever seen two women who were treated like this before, outraged for no apparent reason with what had to be a mindless violence. Neither of them was ever the same afterward."
I felt a chill in the pit of my belly. "What do you mean? In what way? Who did it to them? Was it the same man?"
"No, no, the two were years apart." He moved away from the table and gave his attention to the fire in the small, open hearth, blowing carefully on the embers and then feeding in sticks one at a time until the fire was blazing heartily again. In the meantime, I sat staring at Cassandra who stared right back. Finally satisfied, Daffyd straightened up and turned back to me.
"The first man was really insane. Completely possessed. Threw himself over a cliff and killed himself and good riddance. The other one, years later, was never caught. Never knew who he was."
"How long ago was this, Daffyd?"
"The last one? Oh, must be ten years gone, now."
"You said the first one was possessed. Do you believe in possession?"
He looked at me severely, quirking one eyebrow. "Anyone who doesn't is a fool."
"Then you believe in evil." Aunt Luceiia had used the word to describe the priest Remus.
"Of course I do. If you believe in good, boyo, you've got to believe in evil."
I was uncomfortable with that, with his loose definition of the idea I was grappling with. I looked again at Cassandra. She was the antithesis of everything with which I was trying to come to grips. I shook my head in a qualified denial of what Daffyd had just said. "No," I said, "the opposite of good is bad, Daffyd. Evil seems to me to be far beyond mere badness. It's something else altogether."
Daffyd was looking at me strangely. "What are you trying to say, Merlyn?"
I could only shake my head. "I don't know, Daffyd. But this..." I nodded towards the silent girl on the bed. "It seems to me that anyone who is truly evil must be unfit to live."