I was running along the edge of the water before the stone hit the surface, uncaring that I wore breastplate and greaves. She was there, across the lake, and she was making sport of me. As I rounded the far end of the lake, just before I plunged into the dense greenery of the trees and bushes, I caught another glimpse of movement high on the hillside above me and heard what I took to be a whoop of delight and excitement. Grimly, yet wanting to sing aloud in exultation, I charged onward and up, knowing that she would hear the noise and speed of my approach, and then suddenly becoming crushingly aware that she would not. In mere moments, it seemed, I was close to the top of the steep bank, pulling myself at every step by the stems of the saplings that grew thick among the larger trees, aspen and birch. I stopped and listened carefully, but heard nothing. The silence was profound. I began to move forward more cautiously now, feeling the need to be more circumspect. A pheasant exploded almost from beneath my feet, startling me so that I slipped, lost my balance and sat down heavily, rolling legs over shoulders backward until I came to rest against the bole of a birch tree. This time I distinctly heard a feminine giggle from somewhere above and ahead of me.
Again I gave chase, but that was the last I saw or heard of my quarry, save for the impact of one hard-shot, well- aimed stone that clanged against the back of my armour, pulling me back from the edge of the hilltop surrounding the valley and directing me towards the dense bushes on the hillside at my back. An hour later, frustrated and angry, I gave up the search and made my way back to the hut. My horse was still grazing by the door, but his saddle and blanket had been removed, and now a thin haze of smoke drifted upward from the chimney hole in the roof. Mastering my offended pride and dignity, I drew a deep breath and slowly opened the door.
The hut was still empty. A small fire blazed in the brazier in the hearth. Cassandra had eaten. Now the platter, knife, cup and jug were arranged for my use on the side of the table closest to me, along with the remnants of the bread and sausage.
I ate slowly, smothering my resentment, resolved to wait her out in patience. But she did not come. Eventually, as the day began to turn to evening, I gave up and went outside to saddle my horse. A small posy of yellow flowers lay, bound in a sprig of grass, in the centre of my saddle's seat. I picked it up and sniffed at it, breathing deeply of its fragile, sweet aroma, then laid it aside as I resaddled my mount. I picked it up again before climbing into the saddle and then sat there for a short time, rubbing the silken petals against my upper lip. By the time I nudged my horse forward to make my way home, I felt at peace, satisfied on a number of points, though without proof of any of them: Cassandra was nearby, watching me; she was self-sufficient and it would be pointless to make any further attempt to find her; she would appear to me when she was ready to do so, irrespective of my desires; she was not unkindly disposed towards me; and she had no intention of leaving the valley. I whistled all the way home to Camulod.
Nothing I have to say will begin to do justice to the love, the joy or the private splendour of the short years that followed. In the earliest days, Cassandra became my life and all I wanted out of life, and I was hers "and all she seemed to need. Responsibility, however, is an inescapable burden of manhood and I had mine, which my conscience would not let me ignore. Although she and Avalon comprised my secret life and all my private world, there was also the world of Camulod, which I could not neglect. Cassandra knew each time when I must return and she never tried to detain me, but each time I had to leave her in our valley of Avalon, the parting grew more difficult for me.
I tried to take her with me only once. I mounted my horse and lifted her up in front of me and as I placed my arm around her waist to keep her safe, a vision of Uther holding her just so made me cringe. This was the day I had sworn to myself I would find out the truth, for Uther was at home in Camulod and I had come to Avalon to see this confrontation effected. She leaned back into my arms as my mount climbed the narrow, tree-lined path from the valley floor, and there she remained content until we were clear of the bushes and mounting the rim of the hollow that concealed her home. But when she saw the distant towers of Camulod on its hilltop, miles away across the valley, and realized that I was bound that way, she stiffened and grasped the reins, bringing my horse to a stop. Gently, she prised my arm from around her waist, and then slipped smoothly to the ground, where she stood gazing up at me. Surprised, and slightly put out, I gestured to her to climb up again, trying to indicate that this was important to me, but it took only one look into the calm, slightly stubborn resolve of her gaze to convince me of what I should have known. Cassandra had no wish to go to Camulod, or even to see it on a distant hill. My heart was filled with love for her, and shame for what our Camulod had come to mean to her.
I decided then and there that Uther's guilt or innocence was not important. It had happened in another lifetime. If I were to face her with him now, and he were guilty, I might be ripping the scab from a barely healing wound. If, on the other hand, he were not the one, I would only have put her in needless mind of what she had endured, and possibly even have placed her in danger once again from the true culprit. She had no need of any of this. I dismounted and left my horse to graze by the side of the path and I held her close as we walked back down the winding, hidden path to Avalon, where she was content to be alone.
And yet, as we walked back down that sheltered path, another thought squirmed, guilty and fully formed, in my mind. If, as I had now come almost fully to believe, Uther was in fact innocent of any violence upon her, I had no wish to expose her to him, or him to her. When I had thought her ugly, she had been fascinated by my gallant cousin and I had been uncaring. Now that I was lost in her beauty, I could not bear the thought of seeing her look at Uther as she had before.
As was my invariable habit on leaving the valley, I turned my horse to leave by the back of the hill, keeping its bulk between me and die fort, making my way around to the south-east. This added another hour to a one-hour journey, but I was more determined now than ever that no eye should ever follow me to Avalon or mark me coming from it. On that particular day I had completed my detour and was approaching the last copse of trees between me and the open valley when I heard a noise that shocked me and made me kick my horse to a gallop within paces.
My father always knew where I was, whenever I was not in Camulod, and we had devised a signal by which he could summon me immediately, if the need arose. There were three high hills around the plain of Camulod. Both he and I knew that there was only one of them that interested me, but we had no wish to betray the fact that I could always be found close to the same spot, so the plan was that in emergency he would send riders to the tops of all three hills each one carrying one of the shrill screaming stones on a string that Vegetius Sulla had used to silence a noisy Council long before I was born, the singing or screaming stones the barbarians beyond the Rhine used as missiles.
The signal had never been used before, and it was never used again, but when it sounded this time I was already more than two-thirds of the way back to the fort. I put my heels to my horse and was soon galloping up the hillside road, and as I rode up, soldiers came pouring down past me to join the ranks of the army already assembling on the great campus, or training ground, at the foot of the hill. They came in squads and troops, already in formation from the courtyard of the fort, and so I knew that whatever had caused this tumult was momentous. I turned my horse and put it to the hillside, leaving the road to the descending squads, and as I climbed I looked off to my right and saw cavalry approaching from the villa and from the direction of the outlying farms.