Afterwards, as the flesh healed, the shape and depth of the injuries had resulted in the grotesque facial mutilations that now set this man apart. The entire left side of his face was a sight to frighten children, with a leering, empty eye socket set above a ropy network of scars leaving no discernible trace of normal humanity. Above the edge of his mouth, emphasizing the terrifying differentness of this face from all others, a circular hole the size of a fingernail showed his eye tooth and the gum that held it.
He was staring at me intently, waiting for me to say something that would betray my revulsion. But I felt none.
"Yes, you're right. The marks are plain. Four drops—two small, two larger, one of them huge. At least you still have your teeth."
He glared at me for a moment, and then his face creased into a huge grin. He finished chewing the food in his mouth and swallowed, before sucking at a tooth on the right side of his mouth and rubbing his lips with the back of his hand.
"Huw told me you wanted to talk to me. What was it about?"
"I told you, I want to offer you my thanks, but Huw warned me you would accept no gratitude. Do you still work with iron, or—"
"Did the experience frighten me away?" He laughed, a single bark. "No, I kept at it and I'm an ironsmith now, save when we're at war. Then I'm a Pendragon, first and foremost, and so I fight."
"An ironsmith."
"Aye, you might say iron's a part of me." He laughed again. "It certainly consumed a part of me, but I'm more careful now, by far. Do you know anything of smithing?"
"But little. When I was a boy, I had a favourite uncle who was a master of the craft. A man called Publius Varrus. He taught me something of forging and shaping iron."
Llewellyn stood slightly straighter. "I know the name. You own his great bow now, do you not?"
"I do. How did you know that?"
"Huw told me about you, and I've seen the badge he wears, the one with the arrow nicks in it."
I nodded, remembering with pleasure the time I had matched shots with Huw. Both of us had landed arrows side by side within the tiny circle of the brooch his wife had give® him, filling the space so closely that our arrowheads had left parallel nicks in the upper and lower edges of the silver bauble's inner rim. Huw wore the brooch as proudly as a Roman centurion, might have worn the corona on his breastplate. Another thought occurred to me.
"Tell me, how did you know the Cave Man's next arrow would have been for the boy?"
"I didn't, until Huw told me what you said."
I looked straight at Llewellyn now, assessing the man, gauging his mettle. "And have you any idea why he tried to kill the lad, even before me?"
"Aye, he thought him someone else. Young Arthur Pendragon."
"Hmm. And what do you know of Arthur Pendragon?"
Llewellyn twisted his mouth up in what might have been a lopsided smile, except that it exposed the tooth beneath the hole in his cheek. "He's Uther's son, they say. Sired upon Lot of Cornwall's willing wife."
He took another bite from the leg he held in his hand, and I distinctly heard the juicy sound of the meat ripping away from the bone. "Is there any left where that came from?"
"Aye, or there was when I left the fire. Come." He led me back, and as we approached, the two men who sat there yet stood up.
Llewellyn waved his hand from me to them. "Gwynn Blood-Eye and Daffyd, Merlyn of Camulod. Daffyd's our cook, and better than any you have brought with you, I'd wager. Gwynn Blood-Eye's here because he's the only whoreson in this place who's uglier than me! Sit you."
I nodded to the two men and sat down on a rock, gazing at the whole, spitted carcasses of two fowls that still hung above the fire, the grease from them dripping onto the coals beneath and flaring in small, furious bursts of fire. A large pile of bones lay on a square wooden platter close by Daffyd's feet and a half eaten carcass clung to another spit. As I sat down, the man called Gwynn Blood-Eye, who indeed had one eye that was the deep red of blood, with no discernible iris or pupil, reached down to his side and passed me a wooden board like the one that lay by Daffyd. I thanked him and balanced the thing on my knee as Llewellyn reached across the fire, deftly lifted off another spit and then slid the carcass of the bird free of its spike and onto my platter.
"Eat," he said. "It's duck, basted with pig fat. You'll like it. There's some salt there, in the clay pot." He returned to his own fowl as I began to rip mine apart, heedless of the searing heat of it. I raised a dripping thigh and crunched my teeth into it, burning my lips with hot fat, yet utterly uncaring as the delicious flavour of the hot meat filled my mouth. For a while, there was no more talking around our fire, until I had stripped the bird's bones clean. As I finished it, throwing the last of the remnants into the fire, Llewellyn handed me a cloth to clean my hands.
"You were ready for that"
"Aye, it's the first real food I've eaten in the past two days. I didn't know how hungry I was until I came outside to look around and met you, with that leg in your fist."
"Here." He reached down and handed me a clay pot filled with ale, and I drank deeply. The taste of it was quite unlike anything I had ever tasted before. When I had slaked my thirst, I lowered the pot and looked at him.
'That, I believe, is the finest ale I've ever drunk. Where in the name of God did you get it?"
"You're the stranger here, Merlyn of Camulod. We live here. And that ale was made not five of your Roman miles from where we sit now." As Llewellyn spoke, Gwynn Blood-Eye and Daffyd both rose to their feet, nodded to me and left the fire, heading in different directions, Daffyd carrying the last remaining spitted bird.
I looked inquiringly at my host. "Where have they gone?"
"Who knows? They have things to do and they know we have matters to discuss. You were asking me about the boy, Arthur, before your hunger got the best of you. Had you finished with that?"
"No." I blinked at him, surprised at how he had redirected me to our former conversation. "You had just finished detailing his parentage, which I had thought to be a secret. Where did your information come from?"
"About Uther and his lady love? It's common knowledge."
"Is it, by the Christ? I was unaware of that."
"Well, it's a common rumour, let's say. Few, if any, know the truth of it. When our men returned from Cornwall, after Uther's death, they brought word of his exploits and of his love for the woman. She had a baby son, that much was known. As to whether the brat was Lot's or Uther's, that was anybody's guess. And as for what happened to him, that was totally unknown, to most folks. But then, a few years ago, the rumours sprang up again. Some said he was in Camulod, with you, all along. Others said that you had fled from Camulod and taken the boy with you, and that you were living among the Scots, across the water. Some said the boy was dead, killed in his infant years. I knew nothing and cared less, in those days, because I was too caught up in my own miseries to care about any other's.