“The stories?”
“Le Morte d’Arthur, Historia Regum Britanniae, Chrétien de Troyes, and all that. Got half of it wrong, with writers more interested in a good tale than the truth. Camelot.” He snorted. “When that name didn’t even exist until the thirteen hundreds—”
“Rosier.”
“—which is when they wrote all that twaddle about the Round Table. Ha! It was a table of land where the Romans had a theater. Arthur used it for ‘discussions’ with his nobles, which usually degenerated into great shouting matches, so I suppose the acoustics came in handy, after all—”
“Rosier.”
“—and don’t even get me started on the grail, what a load of horse—”
“Rosier!” He looked at me. “What part did they get right?”
He blinked. “A surprising amount, actually, considering the tales were passed down orally for hundreds of—” He saw my expression and stopped. “Arthur, for one. More or less.”
“His name wasn’t really Arthur,” I said, thinking about something Pritkin had said.
“Of course it was. Well, one of them. People had all sorts of names back then. Roman names, Celtic names, titles, nicknames . . . but most people called him Arthur. And why not? Great bear of a man he turned out to be.”
“Golden bear,” I said, remembering the name’s translation.
Rosier nodded. “And they weren’t talking about a cuddly teddy. I saw that ridiculous Camelot on Broadway, and the mincing wuss they made out of Arthur—absurd! The only damn thing they got right was the hair color! The real man was a leader: decisive, ruthless, sharp as a tack—not an idiot led around by the nose by his adulterous wife! Why remember him at all if that’s the hash you’re going to make of—”
“And Pritkin? Did the legends get him right, too?” Because they didn’t seem to fit the man I knew.
Well, okay, some of them did. The over-the-top magic, the endless curiosity, and the put-upon grumpiness were all familiar enough. Plus the whole half-incubus-wizard-born-in-medieval-Wales-serving-a-king-named-Arthur thing. But other things . . . sometimes it had felt like I was reading about another person entirely.
Like the Merlin of legend hadn’t just switched names, but personalities over the years.
“Stop interrupting,” Rosier told me.
“Well, if you’d get to the point—”
“Which I would do, and faster, if you weren’t constantly intruding to pepper me with questions. Did no one ever tell you that’s rude?”
I sat back.
“All right,” Rosier said. “It’s story time.”
Chapter Sixteen
“There once was a king,” Rosier said. “His name was Uther.”
“Uther?” That sounded vaguely familiar.
“Well, not really. His name was Ambrosius Aurelianus, a Roman name for a Romanized Celt, but nobody called him that. It was Arthur’s given name, too, by the way; he was named after the old man. They were both descended from yet another Ambrosius, who was a cavalry officer under the Romans before they left Britain. Caused historians no end of trouble, it has, all those Ambrosiuses—”
“Rosier.”
“But Uther was the name his men gave him on the battlefield, meaning terrible or fearsome, and it stuck. And it fit. More so than the title he invented for himself: Riothamus, ‘king of all the Britons.’” Rosier rolled his eyes. “War chief is more like it, of a ragtag group trying to hold Britain together after the legions pulled out. Half his ‘subjects’ were at war with him at any given time, and the other half certainly didn’t consider him—” He stopped, seeing my face.
“There once was a king,” he said dryly. “His name was Uther.”
“Okay.”
“Like his son, he was a great warrior. But unlike Arthur, he lacked an appreciation for the subtler virtues, not to mention any and all social graces. The dogs used to congregate under the table, right where he sat. They knew he dropped enough for a dozen men. Ate like a wild savage, spraying it about.”
“And this is relevant?”
“Yes, in fact. Uther was a giant of a man, battle-scarred and weather-worn. His teeth were crooked and cracked from one too many fists to the face. He could barely see out of one eye, from the great scar running a hairbreadth away, which pulled it up as badly as the other lid drooped. It allowed him to leer and look perpetually surprised, all at the same time, which you have to admit is fairly impressive. And then there was that great cauliflower of a nose—”
“I get the picture.”
“I doubt it,” he said dryly. “Men don’t live that way anymore, don’t fight like it, either. Even soldiers don’t. Years of hand-to-hand with swords and knives, of hard battles and harder winters, of constant stress and a great group of savages who followed you only due to your being the greatest savage of them all . . . it leaves a mark.”
“So Uther was unattractive.”
Rosier laughed. “Yes, in the same way that a skeleton is svelte! He was one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen, even after all these years. Which didn’t matter to his men, of course, who were hardly the courtly knights of the storybooks. The local ladies were happy if they washed the dirt off once a month and remembered to only spit in the corners. But Uther didn’t want a local girl, did he?”
“Didn’t he?”
“Well, of course not! Or we wouldn’t have a story, would we?”
“I don’t know. You’re telling this.”
“I’m trying to,” he said pointedly.
I shut up.
“Of course, there were plenty of girls who would have taken him, scars and teeth and warts and all,” Rosier said. “And thought themselves lucky in the bargain. He was powerful and wealthy, by the standards of the day. Which meant you probably wouldn’t be raped by one of the Germanic invaders if you married him, and might have more than one dress to wear. But Uther didn’t want one of those girls. He might have, under different circumstances, the way you might want hamburger if you’ve never had filet—”
“Thank you for comparing women to beef. I assume you mean he met someone else.”
“Not someone, some fey. Igraine, daughter of Nimue, queen of what you humans call the Green Fey and the legends call the Lady of the Lake.”
“What? Wait.”
Rosier nodded. “That’s what I said. Wait. Let’s discuss this. But no, Uther didn’t want to discuss anything. Uther wanted the wife of Gorlois, Prince of Cornwall—or so he called himself. Everyone was a prince or king in those days, and who was to tell them no? Rome had gone and Britain was up for grabs, and it was winner take all, with the winner looking like it might be the Saxons until the local Britons got some help. But not from Rome. They’d written telling their old masters that they were being overrun, and Rome had written back telling them to join the club. Rome was dealing with Attila at the time—yes, that Attila—and couldn’t help, so the Britons turned to someone who could.”