I Am Morgan le Fay (5 page)

Nurse tapped my head with her knuckles to reprove me. Morgause said, “He's nice.”

I felt the fire dragon burning in my chest. Mother should put that ugly baby away and take me in her lap and hold me and kiss me.

Instead, she reached out and smoothed my hair, already escaping from its crown of braids to flop over my forehead.

“Come,” Nurse said, leading us away. We did not get to sit near Mother. We sat at a table off to one side, with Nurse between me and Morgause, of course, to keep us from whispering and pinching each other. Uther Pendragon sat by Mother in a golden throne; I wondered whether he kept one here or if he had brought it with him from Caer Argent. I wondered why he was here at Avalon, not in his own court. Was this castle more grand than his? It seemed quite grand, with the vaulted rafters carved and gilded into all sorts of strange things: griffins, fierce winged women, fishtail horses, stars and crescent moons, huge lily flowers. All the tables, even ours, bore white linen cloths broidered with gold, upon which stood sconces of many candles. First I stared at the golden carvings overhead, then the candles, then the many people—lords and ladies they must have been—in finery that made my ruffled blue frock look very plain. Such jewels the ladies wore, although Mother's rubies were the finest. I hoped I would be allowed to wear jewels before I grew too much older. I looked around for other children to see whether they wore finery or jewels, but except for that stupid baby I saw none. Only boring adults sat at my table; there was no one for me to talk with. I watched the candles drip.

After a while a man in red blew a horn, and everyone got silent. Then a lord got up and said things. The edge of my chair was digging into my legs because my feet did not touch the floor. I swung them.

“Sit still,” Nurse whispered to me.

It became a very long day.

Once, we all got up and bowed to Uther Pendragon and he stood and said things in his snarly voice and I rubbed the backs of my legs with my hands. Then I had to sit again. Sometimes servants brought things to eat, and some of them were good and some of them were awful but I had to eat some anyway to be polite. I liked the candied quail and the sweetbreads and the apple tarts and the marzipan. I did not like the spiced roast pork. In between things to eat there were tumblers, and I wanted to get up and try to do somersaults too, but I had to sit still. Sometimes the baby cried and Mother drew him up to her bosom and nursed him and I felt the fire dragon hissing in my chest. Sometimes I watched a nurse carry the baby away to diaper him and then bring him back. Sometimes I stared at Uther Pendragon, who never looked at me at all. Mostly I squirmed in my hard chair.

“Shh,” Nurse hushed me. “Only a little longer now.”

A minstrel in a ragtag tunic stood near the king. From his harp he strummed out a chord that rang like a hundred bells, singing a ballad about True Thomas, who saw a bright lady come riding:

She was the queen of Faerie, the otherworld, and she dared him to kiss her, and he did. In my childish mind I never thought otherwise than that the minstrel sang of Thomas the messenger boy I had met. I felt sure that he was true and handsome enough to kiss the queen of Faerie.

And then she told him that he must go with her.

They rode up the ferny hillside, the winding road to Faerie.

My breath caught, and I did not listen to the rest of the song, for I knew now that my father's blood ran through Faerie. And I knew that it had to be somewhere near where I lived, for they heard the roaring of the sea.

As the last chords rang away, there came shafts of silvergold light from somewhere, from everywhere, and a stir as all those jeweled courtiers turned to look, and—

“The fays!” the herald cried. “Welcome, people of peace!” And he blew a great blast on his golden horn.

They entered through no doorway, from nowhere and everywhere, as if they had been there all along, as if they were made out of foreverness and sun and moon and the light coming out of nowhere, no, coming out of the carved eyes of the golden winged women under the arches, and perhaps I was dreaming.

Uther Pendragon stood up to greet the fays the way we had all stood up before him. Everyone stood. I jumped on top of my chair to try to see.

“Morgan!” Nurse tugged at me.

“Be seated,” commanded a sweet young voice. Folk sat, but the king remained standing and I knelt on my chair, gawking. She who had spoken was a barefoot slip of a big-eyed girl, no more than sixteen, with primroses twined in her masses of chestnut hair even though it was long past primrose season. Her shining filmy frock did not cover either her arms or her legs, but she danced up to the high table just so, not caring who saw her. Behind her hobbled a bent, ancient crone supported by a matronly woman not unlike my nurse—but both had the same unearthly sheen as the girl's frock. Her skin and hair, I saw now, glimmered with the same fey light. Her lovely face shone with a subtle glow like starlight. In the middle-aged woman and the ancient one I saw remnants of her eerie beauty.

The three of them progressed past my table on their way to the dais, and I gasped, so struck by surprise that I grabbed at my chair for support: On the left hand of each of them, maiden and matron and ancient crone, shone a silvergold ring, and on each ring I saw just such a stone as the one that hung over my heart. A druid stone. Egg of the world serpent. A milpreve.

I whispered to Nurse, “Are they goddesses?”

She gave me a look full of silence.

More fays walked behind those three. I remember a fierce dark woman with the wings of a raven, a brown man with the horns of a stag, a woman who seemed to be all a flow of green water, a snow white man who carried a naked skull in his hands—I grew afraid to look any more. I hid my face against Nurse and listened to the voices.

“How shall the child be named?” It was the maiden's melodious voice.

“He shall be called Arthur,” said my mother in a low tone I had never heard from her before. I did not understand the shadow in her voice.

“Arthur,” said a fay; it might have been the ancient crone. “Princeling, I gift you with long life.”

“Arthur who shall be king, I gift you with dominion,” said another.

“Arthur, baby prince, I gift you with strength,” said yet another.

“Thank you,” murmured my mother's voice.

And so it went on. Courage, manliness, valor in battle. Uther Pendragon had brought Arthur to this place for his name-day just so the fays could come and gift him; Avalon is a magical place, and many such presences dwell there. And it is one of the ways of fays to give gifts to a baby prince. But as I listened, the fire dragon burned in my chest again, and fiercely, fiercely I wished that someday it would be in my power to inflict some ill upon this annoying baby who was a prince and everyone's darling when I was not a princess and nobody was paying any attention to me. I wished it, and I felt my secret stone turn hot against my skin.

“Morgan,” said a voice that was not Nurse.

Startled, I straightened and looked. The barefoot girl with primroses in her hair stooped to gaze into my face with laughing green eyes.

“Little oddling-eyed Morgan. And Morgause,” she said with a glance at my sister to include her. “And your good nurse.” She gifted Nurse with a secret, loving look I did not understand, then turned back to me. “Little Morgan fated to be fate, do you know why you are here?”

Fate
again. That word harrowed me with memory of fearsome Merlin, the haunted darkness of his eyes as he had spoken to me that day upon the moor. Whatever fate was, I didn't like it. Dumbly I gazed back at the merry-eyed fay, feeling Nurse's arm creep around me as if to protect me. I felt the snake stone burning against my chest.

“Why are any of us here? For luck for the babe,” the half-naked fay answered her own question. Her eyes were like cat eyes shining in firelight, like clover leaves, like green wells. I cowered, and my hand wavered up to cover my chest as if she might somehow see the milpreve under my frock. She smiled. “You're here because it would have been bad luck not to include you,” she said. “As if luck matters to fate. Bad luck! Ha! Ha!” She danced away, laughing wildly.

“True love,” the matronly fay gifted the baby Arthur.

“Thank you,” said my mother in that same low, strained voice, cuddling the sleeping baby in both arms.

I laid my head against Nurse again, closed my eyes and gave up trying to make sense of anything.

The next thing I remember is waking up in the bedchamber. It was dark, and I knew it must be mid of night by the snores of Nurse and others; Morgause and I shared that chamber with a couple of ladies and their maids, for there were many guests to be housed that night at Caer Avalon. Someone besides me was awake, for I heard women's voices whispering.

“Poor Igraine, having to give up her baby.”

“And she a queen. But I'd not trade places with her for all the riches—”

“No, not I either. Three months she's nursed that babe at her own breast—”

“And where is it to go? Is some other woman to give up her babe now to nurse this one?”

“It's a hard, hard thing to be a woman, queen or no.”

I felt wide awake—no wonder, as I had been sleeping for hours. And my eyes were making sense of the darkness now; I could see my way to the door. Softly I slipped from my bed and pattered out, my bare feet cold on the drafty floor. Whoever they were, talking, either they did not see me go or did not care.

I did not know where my mother's chamber was in this place, or why I wanted to find it—perhaps only to stare on mystery as before.

I wandered stony corridors at random. Once I heard the scuttling of a mouse, and once I sensed the swoop of a bat, but I saw no folk, heard no—

I stiffened and stopped where I was.

Somewhere, someone was crying. A woman. Sobbing, but choking back the sound. No one was supposed to hear.

Something swept down the corridor toward me.

It was so much like a huge darkness moving in, like storm clouds over the sea, that I froze a moment before I understood that it was a man. Then I heard his heavy footfalls, saw his starry, shadowy floating robes. I shrank against the wall, and Merlin, massive in his hooded mantle, strode past me with the blanket-wrapped baby in his arms. He did not look at me, but I saw his face, for on his forehead, above the terrifying blackness of his eyes, he wore a luminous band. And centered on that band shone a stone I recognized at once.

Long after he had passed I stood there trembling.

M
ANY YEARS PASSED BEFORE I SAW MY MOTHER again, far from Caer Tintagel.

I lost my home when I was twelve years old.

I remember that day well. At the time Nurse was trying to teach me how to spin, and I was sullcily at it in the solarium, producing yards of lumpy thread, when I heard the ring of cantering hooves on the cobbles of the courtyard. I jumped onto my chair so that I could see out the window, and my heart leaped: It was Thomas, on Annie.

I had seen him only a few times since that day he had fetched me down from the quoit stone and given me a pony ride. But I had not forgotten.

Instead, I forgot spinning forthwith. I ran out the door—“Morgan, where are you going?” Morgause called after me from the loom. Without answering I dashed down the spiral stairs to the courtyard. Thomas had already gone in to the steward with his message, but Annie stood steaming at the hitching ring. I did not mind her sweaty hide; I patted and patted her sweet gray face and arranged her forelock between her eyes. She nuzzled me, and I patted her sleek wet neck and stroked her mane.

Footsteps. I turned, ready to resist anyone who might try to drag me away from the pony, but then I forgot all about Annie. It was Thomas.