Solitary Love

by twistedshipper

Summary:

She knows it is wrong, and yet Morgana cannot help but fancy her brother. 🕯

Watch the trailers here and here.

Chapter 1

There is a legend down by the Lake of Avalon, where the waters meet the shore lapping the sandy stretch with their breadth, that here in this mystic place any wish once whispered may one day come true.  And for centuries, from the days when the Old Ways reigned supreme throughout the land to the time of the Great Purge when such practices were all but ousted from the land, many had come to these waters wishing, hands clasped and heads bent in prayer, for the waves to work their magic and grant for them their deepest desires.  Some returned from the lake believing they had received what they had asked for, while others stood by the waters waiting for the answers that they knew would come one day if they only kept on praying.  But whether the wishes in their multitude were ever granted or denied, no one could say for certain.  Yet that uncertainty did not dissuade the parishioners.  Still they came down by the waters, wishing for their hearts’ desires, not knowing for certain, but in faith, whether or not their prayers would be fulfilled by the magic of the waves.

 

---

 

PROLOGUE: Under Those Dark Locks

Morgana beheld herself in the mirror on her vanity, saw her same face staring back at her, as she drew the bejeweled comb through her dark locks until it ran smoothly through the strands.  She kept staring at her face in the mirror, gazing deep into the emerald irises of her eyes and the flecks of brown that rimmed their edges.  Her pupils dilated in the dark of her chambers, the only light filling the room with warmth being the solitary flicker of a candle burning in the corner of the vanity’s tabletop.

 

She wished she could calm herself, but her breath kept ravaging in her chest, even as she combed her hair, a simple act that usually eased her anxiousness.

 

But she could not stop running over in her mind the scene in the dining hall just an hour ago.  The way her father had slammed the table startling her so bad her heart nearly leapt out of her chest.  The way Arthur had kept his eyes downcast, staring at his barely eaten plate of food as he turned over what remained over and over again with his fork, never daring, not once, to look up at her even as their father had berated her for what she had said.  She stared at herself in the mirror, worried, watching her eyebrows uplift with the emotion.  Had she lost her brother’s favor then, after so many years spent avoiding him like the plague, that he no longer considered it his priority to defend her from Father in his bad temperament?  She shook at the thought.  Perhaps she had played her side in things all too well, pretending to hate Arthur because, because…

 

No, she would not dare say it.  She dropped the comb from her hair and twirled it in her hands, watched as the dim candlelight caught the blue studded gems causing them to shine faintly as she passed the comb over and over from hand to hand.  Her heart thudded in her chest.  She started to cry despite herself, drops of tears welling in the corners of her eyes.  She wiped them away ashamed, but not before she caught one fall down her face in the mirror.

 

Then she laid the comb back down on the vanity, reaching for a drawer instead.  She pulled it open, the first one to her right, revealing a small leather-bound book and a rosary.  With one last fleeting look at the book, she took up the rosary and shut the drawer.  She ran the beads in her hands, thinking to herself, reminding herself of just the kind of sinner she was.

 

“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” she intoned from memory.  “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.  Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.” 

 

She spoke the words three times, thrice for the number of beads before the crucifix, but the words did naught to soothe her conscience and even less to lift the burden of her soul. 

 

It was a grave sin, she knew, far worse than any the priests preached of during Sunday mass and the far more unthinkable than the breaking of any of the ten commandments she had memorized as a girl.  For it was not theft nor adultery nor murder that lay claim to her heart, poisoning her with the terrible desire that pulsated through her veins, but a sin of a different sort, a sort no person with a natural mind would even conceive of, let alone conduct in the privacy of her chambers. 

 

She sighed a breath of relief.  At least, she had not acted upon her desires.  Not yet anyhow.  That had to count for something, as far as her soul was concerned, right?

 

Morgana did not know, but what she did know, knew all too well, was that no amount of praying to God ever seemed to help her wish away the desire.  Always, it came back, laying claim to her mind and body like some chronic disease.  She feared she would never be rid of it, even if she gave in and sinned just as the desire yearned for her to do, still, she believed, it would be with her, haunting her at the back of her mind where it had first festered.  She swallowed, staring at the beads her fingers rolled over unconsciously.

 

But she would never let it come to that, she swore to herself then as she had done before on many a similar night when she grasped at her rosary and pleaded to God to show her mercy and lift from her the burden, not ever. 

 

She feared too much what people would think in that event she acted upon the abomination in her mind, the desecration in her heart.

           

Yet here she was still, contemplating that dark secret bound to her chest.  

 

Morgana loved her brother.

 

But not as a sister should.

 

Chapter 2

—PART ONE—

NIGHT

 

CHAPTER ONE: Tourney

While Gwen fixed her hair, Morgana could not help but hum.  She could not help it, in part, because she had not realized she had been humming in the first place.

 

“You’re in a good mood today, Mi’lady,” Gwen remarked, catching Morgana off guard.  “Did you sleep well last night?”

 

“Oh!” Morgana exclaimed, surprised at Gwen’s sudden question.  “Well, I guess I must say as well as is usual for me,” she said, which meant not so well at all.  She paused, considering her thoughts a moment, thinking back on her night of fitful sleep and the conclusion she came to upon waking with the dawn.  There will be no more hiding, she told herself.  No more days spent alone in this very room, denying what I... she cut the thought off, looking up in the mirror at Gwen’s placid face watching her own.  “Do I, do I seem well rested?” 

 

In truth, Morgana rarely had the pleasure of a good night’s sleep, even though she slept on the finest silk and satin in all of Camelot; poor bedding was not the woman’s problem.  Rather, her sleep deprivation was due to an affliction of the mind: of eerie dreams that visited her subconscious in the dead of night, causing her to wake up screaming.  She sought tonics from the Court Physician Gaius for her sickness, but even they did little to alleviate her plight; they only worked at best to allow her to sleep the night through uninterrupted by spurts of waking while the strange dreams still took and ran their wild course within the confines of her mind with herself having no choice but to experience their terror until she, at last, woke with the morning.  The dream the night before had been most terrible—well, she would not think of it now—and yet it had driven her to her sudden decision, the reason for her disparate outward bubbling joy.  Within it, there had been a great fire, raging and ravenous, threatening to consume her for the very lie she lived, for the very truth she kept locked and contained within her black beating heart, just as above the choking smoke rang out the hallowing sound of bells, the clangor of judgement at dawn…

 

Gwen flushed, realizing her error.  “Yes, Mi’lady.  But I had only meant, Mi’lady, that you seem happier than usual.  Not that you aren’t usually happy, Mi’lady,” she quickly amended.

 

“Oh, Gwen,” Morgana smiled, shaking away her thoughts, the lingering memories of the dream beneath her anticipation for the day, and gave Gwen’s sleeve a playful tug.  “If you must know, I’m excited for the tournament this afternoon.”

 

“The tournament, Mi’lady?” Gwen asked dumbfounded.  It was unlike Morgana to find pleasure in sporting events.

 

“Yes, the tournament.  Does that surprise you?”

 

“Of, of course not, Mi’lady,” the maid quickly recovered.  “I hope you have a good time.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana smiled and appeared lost in thought.  “Actually, Gwen, how would you like the day off to come watch the tournament with me?”

 

The brush paused midway through Morgana’s hair before pulling free of the dark locks.  “I would be very grateful, Mi’lady.  Thank you.  But may I ask you what has you so excited for the tournament?”  Surely it was odd that Morgana anticipated seeing a dozen sweaty men charging each other with swords and maces, especially since she showed no interest in such entertainment before.  And then there was this sudden day off to figure in, a first as far as Gwen could remember.  All that Gwen did know was that the Princess Morgana had woken up in a very good mood this morning despite her lack of restful sleep.

 

“Why, Gwen,” Morgana said, and here she bit her lip to contain the upward smile growing on her face, “don’t you know that Arthur is competing today?”

 

---

 

Knights from each of the five kingdoms scattering the British isle had arrived in Camelot for the tournament, this the last to be held of the year before winter, all yearning to prove their worth before their High King, a discerning man by the name of Uther Pendragon, and win for themselves a moment of glory that would in turn cause their names to be written in song for the generations to revere and remember them by.  King Uther had also promised the winner a fair sum of gold.  A thousand gold pieces to be exact, which in itself proved greater inspiration, perhaps, to the knights who were not so simply satisfied by the prestige alone of having their names written in the songs as reward for the feats they would accomplish this very day.

 

Morgana had forgotten the pageantry of the tournaments her father the High King would host, having not bothered to attend one in years, not since the times when she had been just a girl.  She had forgotten the swarm of people massing in the stands, talking to each other boisterously in anticipation of the matches.  She had forgotten the stunning array of motley insignias that stood out boldly upon each knight’s shield and his accompanying kinsmen’s banners, each boasting a figurine of some sort to recall them by against the vibrant backdrop of his house’s colors.  As she gazed at the magnificent color schemes—royal purple alongside deep blue, brilliant yellow against stark black, blaze orange interweaved with scarlet red—and the substance of their emblems—lions and serpents, griffins and hawks—Morgana reckoned the Pendragon crest outranked them all with its gold-leafed dragon standing daringly against a field of crimson.  She prayed that it would come out victorious this day for it was the most worthy of them all of the honor to be bestowed by the High King himself no less, and then quickly convinced herself that she would find no other outcome for the day’s matches, since the man who bore the fate of Camelot’s good name on his sword and shield was none other than her dear brother, Prince Arthur, and she knew, better than anyone, just how deft her brother was when it came to maneuvers of the sword.

 

Several minutes before the tournament was about to begin with the first round boasting a faceoff between Sir Valiant and Sir Ewan, Morgana found her seat beside her father’s booth in the first row of stands.  To her right, sat her maid Gwen, who had filed in after her.

 

Gwen turned to Morgana.  “I have to thank you again, Mi’lady,” she said, “for giving me permission to attend today.”

 

Morgana smiled at her.  “It’s no trouble, Gwen.  You’ve always proved your worth working hard for me.  You’ve earned this day off.  I hope you enjoy yourself, as much as I will.”

 

“Of course, Mi’lady,” Gwen replied, perplexed at her lady’s last comment.  She could have sworn Morgana did not care for tournaments one bit.  In fact, she recalled an earlier instance from a few years before when she had inquired as to whether Morgana would be attending a similar tournament that her brother and some of the kingdom’s knights had been participating in, to which Morgana had responded with a quick, sharp “No” as if the very prospect of attending had pained her in some deep, unfathomable way.  Gwen had dropped the subject then, noting to herself to never broach it to her lady again.  So why this sudden change in interest?  Morgana had mentioned something about Arthur participating this time, but had he not always participated in tournaments, at least since he came of age?  She could have sworn so, for how could she forget the golden-haired prince striding out to face his opponents in his silver armor as it gleamed in the sun, his hand ever at the ready, hovering over the hilt of his sword at his side?  How could she forget the perceived gallantry of such a man as he entered his stage of skill, that, even as she hated to admit it, some part of herself found so alluring, even as she knew it naught but feint pretense?  And what of it if Arthur participated?  She had always thought Morgana resented her brother for she never spoke kindly of him; she would always scoff the moment Gwen would mention his name, which she thought, though she dared not say it, was quite rude and nonconciliatory given Morgana’s upbringing as the royal princess.  So, what was she to make of this sudden change in her lady’s demeanor?  Perhaps, Morgana had a soft spot for her brother after all?

 

Her thoughts were interrupted then as she heard the hush of the viewers behind her silencing each other as they peered her way towards King Uther, who now stood raising his hand to signal for the people’s attention as he called the tournament to begin. 

 

---

 

From the stands, Morgana watched the first match between the Knights Valiant and Ewan with feigned interest.  As the match drew on with both men showing no sign of falling before each other swords, she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, anxious for the bout to end and the next one to begin.  It was not so much that Morgana found tournaments tedious, as Gwen falsely suspected, but rather quite the opposite.  In the days of her girlhood, Morgana had yearned to see such spectacles of strength and skill with the men participating appearing so gallant in their shining armor.  Given the years that had passed since she had witnessed one, before the time she vowed never to attend one again—for reasons deeply personal of her own—Morgana should have been watching this match with a keen eye, but alas she could not concentrate on the adept swordplay, and, for her, the quick, skilled movements of the knights were but a blur of rasping steel amongst the field, for her head was already beset with another battle, plagued with the frets and doubts for what she had set in her mind to do ever since waking from her foreboding dream earlier that morning.

 

It was a brave thing, she allowed herself to think at last, what she intended to do; as brave as it was undoubtably wrong.  Even in the moment she wondered at how it all came to be, how it came that she had fallen so irrevocably in love with her brother.  In the end, after a time of circuitous thinking, roundabout and round again, she did not know the how nor the why, only that she had.  And in her knowing, she reckoned she would be damned for feeling what she knew to be a terrible sin, one worse than murder, for even killers could at least hope to seek absolution. 

 

Except Morgana was done with the days spent alone in her chambers, dreading the love she felt for Arthur even as she desired him, for had she not sinned already for having thought the thought of loving him in such a way in the first place?  Loving her brother not as a sister should seemed to Morgana a crime she could not confess to one of her father’s priests and find herself forgiven.  No, in her mind, she figured she was already damned for feeling the pangs she felt for her brother and allowing herself to feel them.  So why should she keep on spending, as she had, her days and her nights berating herself in her chambers for feeling what she could not help but feel, as much as she wished to suppress it?  What good could possibly come out of her halfhearted yearning for repentance?  She still dreamed of her brother and in her dreams, she loved him as a wife would her husband, taking him to her bed and loving him there.  She should have woken up in a drench of sweat for having dreamt such sinful dreams and yet when she dreamt of her brother it was the only time she slept well through the night untroubled by the nightmares that usually plagued her in the ineffable silence of the night.  But to most people that would be the nightmare, Morgana told herself each and every time she woke well-rested and open-eyed from her dreams of him, as the new day sun shone slanting through her window, bathing her in its light. 

 

The thought had troubled her, at first, until she learned to live with its constant presence throbbing from within the recesses of her mind, and Morgana wondered what it was that was so foul inside of her that it allowed her to think as she did.  Sisters do not love their brothers, she would tell herself when she had locked herself in her room alone, over and over and over again, more forceful with each utterance, but the repetitious words did naught to correct her mind.  Morgana reckoned something had broken deep inside her to make her think as she did.  How else could she think such terrible things?  It was all that she could do not to act on the terrible thoughts when they came to her like they had that one day at breakfast when she sat with her father and brother while eating their morning meal.  All that morning while she ate her bread with honey, she could think of nothing but the same thought to lean over and kiss her brother with her sticky honey lips.  The only way she had managed to stop the thought from possessing her into action was by biting her tongue along with the sweet bread.  She had asked to be excused right after when both her father and brother had looked up from their plates at her with confusion.  She had gone to her room red-faced and ashamed that day, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself onto her pillows, burying herself deep in the soft silk.  And the rest of the day, she had hardly wanted to come out of her room for the shame of the thoughts she had, not that anyone knew them.  She just felt like everyone knew them, knowing just how terrible she was.  She had only been a girl then.  Then the thoughts had been easier to dissuade.

 

Now that she was woman grown, they were nigh on impossible to refuse.  The only way Morgana coped with them was by spending the duration of her days locked away in her room to ponder them over in the safety of her solitude.  It was not a pleasant time, thinking of him longingly while reminders of her certain damnation, if ever she did anything to realize her fantasies, lurked at the recesses of her mind.  No, far from it.  She would spend her afternoons sprawled out on her bed indulging in her dreams of him, creating in her mind’s eye different lives for the both of them, ones where they were not brother and sister but the lord and lady of different kingdoms with separate families to call their own.  In her dreams, Arthur would travel to her homeland to take her for a wife instead of the other girls she enviously watched flirt with him at the feasts held within Camelot’s walls.  No, in her dreams, Arthur would choose her and she would choose him and they both would end up happily ever after together, riding their horses together along the lake of Avalon, their horses’ hooves trailing the waters lapping the shore.

 

It was a pretty picture, Morgana would think with a longing sigh, each and every time she dreamt the dream to its conclusion, knowing, in her heart, that it would never come to pass.  Then she would rise from her bed to sit before her dressing table.  Her hand would stray over the brush, lingering for a time, until she would finally draw the courage to pick it up in her hand and turn her face before the mirror.  Pictured in the mirror would be her face.  She thought it a sad face, no matter how comely it shone, white alabaster skin framed by her midnight locks.  Then she would set her eyes to watching the brush as she pulled it through those locks.  Anything to avoid looking at her face, at her sad eyes.  Was this to be my fate? she would ask her herself, as she beheld herself in the glass.  Never to be loved by the one I love?  It was a sad thought, but more so a mad thought.  What kind of woman was she to love her closest of kin?  The thought would hang there unanswered, hovering like the ax above her white neck, if ever anyone found out how she truly felt about the man she called her brother.  Sometimes, she saw his face swinging the grisly iron down and then she would squeeze her eyes shut, pleading to God to lift from her the curse, so that she could walk the world clean without the thoughts of her brother’s hands on her every time she passed him by.  Not that God ever answered her prayers, for each day she saw her brother, she loved him all the more.

 

That love had grown into resentment over the years.  Sometimes Morgana hated Arthur for being her brother.  Sometimes the simple sight of him—the way he would fixate his blue eyes upon her from afar so that they widened with what she believed to be dreaded recognition—caused her deep excruciating pain, instead of pleasure.  So, she would keep away from him, to protect him, she told herself, from the thoughts in my mind, but she knew, deep down, she was safeguarding no one but herself.  She was scared of him, the boy who had been her brother, now the man who made her dream unthinkable things in the night.  What a stranger he has become, she would think to herself when she passed him in the hall, the only time, beside dinner, when she ever saw him.  And that was what they were now, strangers glancing at each other from the far side of rooms, neither one of them wanting to break the distance to approach the other.  Once they had been so close.  Once.  But that was yesterday, before the time when Morgana came to think of her brother as other than he was.  Now, with the thoughts blurring her mind to distortion she could not dare near him, for his sake, as well as her own.  

 

Until now, after bearing the dream in which she burned alive for what she believed to be the greater sin of her hypocrisy—of loving her brother and yet keeping him afar, distant from herself—she now found herself seated in the jeering stands before the tournament her brother would most surely win.  She could see him now entering the field from afar, dressed in his finest armor, the sunlight glancing off the silver metal in gleams, his crimson cloak billowing in the wind.  As he approached his opponent, the leading Sir Valiant, he hoisted his helmet above his golden head, covering it with harsh steel.  All around her, the stands roared with applause at the sight of him, Camelot’s golden Prince.  Morgana kept silent.  This was to be the last match of the day, and whoever remained standing at its end crowned the tournament’s champion with a feast to be held later in his name.  Suddenly, the crowd’s uproar shushed into silence, as each viewer beheld the Knight and the Prince taking a starting stance.  Morgana bowed her head, whispered a prayer for this day’s glory to fall to her brother, where it rightfully belonged.

 

When she raised her eyes to the field, it was to the clash of swords.  Arthur had parried the incoming strike to his chest, meeting Valiant’s blade with his own in a ring of steel.  Gasps flew from the crowd.  Morgana stiffened in her seat, her eyes scanning the two men’s swordplay frantically.  She braced herself as she caught Valiant sprinting for another attack, this time into Arthur’s right side, but sighed a breath of relief as her brother defended it gracefully.

 

As she watched, Morgana felt her hands tightened around the edges of the bench she sat upon, slick with sweat.  She was as rapt as the crowd now, her eyes not straying from the match as it played out before her in a dance of swords.  Here Arthur lunged to disarm Valiant, only for Valiant to block his attack effortlessly and then lead with a stab of his own.  Morgana clenched her teeth, waiting.  But she was sick of waiting.  All she ever did was sit by waiting, as time rushed on by without her.  How many days had she spent alone in her room, staring at the same face staring back at her?  How many days, and how many more nights?  NO MORE, she wanted to cry into the crowd, out unto the field, standing from atop her bench so they all could hear her protest her fury for the days wasted praying to the God who did not love her to wash her feelings away and leave her cleansed, purified, whole as she had been, once, as a child.  No more, the cry stilled inside of her to silence, like the dying clangs of steel fading once they pierced the air.  Was she crazy?  She could not just stand and confess her love, perverse as it was.  She was Camelot’s Princess; what would her people think of her?

 

But, in a way, that had been the purpose of this venture, had it not?  No, she had not inclined to speak the truth, twisted as it was, before her people, but Arthur.  She must speak it to him; she could not go on much longer without him knowing the truth in full, the real reasons she kept away from him during the day and longed for him in the dead of the night.  Not once had she witnessed her brother fight in a tournament for fear of her feelings, but she came this day knowing them true, knowing them to be hers and not the machinations of some spiteful god.  But if she told him, after the tournament, after he won his day’s glory, what would he say to her, let alone think of her?  It was impossible that he could feel pangs for her as abhorrent as the ones she felt for him.  So, what did she hope to receive in return for telling him if not a look of unabashed horror upon his face? 

 

She shook the thought away.  Perhaps, she would not tell him.  She had come here this day for him after years of absence.  Would that not be enough to appease him and her yearning heart?

 

Morgana returned her mind to the combat before her, her eyes catching Arthur’s daring sweep of his sword as he dodged Valiant’s thrust to his side, spun, and landed a blow against Valiant’s sword arm, causing his opponent to drop his blade.  It clattered to the ground to a look of astonishment on Valiant’s face.  Arthur saw his chance and took it.  He came running up to Valiant and jabbed at his head with the hilt of his sword, knocking him to his knees and then out cold, as he passed out on the arena floor.

 

The crowd cheered.

 

Morgana grinned at him, her brother.  Arthur took off his helmet, revealing a similar grin, although he smiled at no one in particular, merely soaked up the glory that was his, bestowed upon him through the cheering of the crowd, that is, until his eyes locked onto Morgana’s in the stands.  At the sight of her seated beside their father, Morgana saw Arthur’s smile vanish for a second, as if in dumb shock, before he recovered, and it once again paved way over his inscrutable face.  No one would have noticed the slip, Morgana thought, except herself.  Suddenly, she felt unsure about her presence at the day’s event.  Had the look Arthur given her meant something more than the surprise that she had come to watch his championship match?  Was it that he had not wished for her to be there, after missing so many such tournaments and tourneys of the past?  Morgana felt her face go ashen with the thought.  By some chance, had her presence caused Arthur some unseen injury?  She had thought he would have been happy to see her there, watching and supporting him after so many years of absence.  She never would have imagined that it could have been the other way around.

 

“Mi’lady,” Gwen spoke beside her, “Mi’lady, are you well?  You seem rather pale.”

 

The voice of her maid brought Morgana out of the vicious cycle of her mind and back to the present; she was safe—her secret was safe—still sitting in the stands.  “Oh, I’m quite alright, Gwen.  I’m just not used to this sort of commotion.”  All around them, spectators were still crying out praise for their Prince.  “I will admit I was a bit nervous for Arthur during the match.  But I find that I’m quite fine now.  Thank you.”

 

Gwen nodded, turning back to the field, and Morgana returned her stare to her brother.  She hoped to catch his look once more, to try to apologize to him with her eyes alone, but he was staring out elsewhere, past her, through to the rest of the crowd.

 

Beside her, she felt her father stand to make an announcement, and at his sight, the crowd stilled their shouts to listen to their King.  “It appears,” he began, once all was quiet, “that the title of this year’s tournament goes, once again, to my dear son, Arthur.”

 

Arthur walked over to the end of the stadium where their father now stood, towards herself, Morgana now realized, overwhelmed as to how she should best greet her brother and explain to him the reason for her presence here at the day’s tournament when he knew she never bothered to attend in the past.  As he stepped closer, she could see his exhaustion in the way he lumbered over to the stands, drawing and exhaling breath.  Even though, in the end he had bested them all, Valiant and the other participating knights had put up a good fight.  But although his body was spent from the matches, his eyes still shone bright with triumph at his victory, like the dawn of a new breathtaking day. 

 

A second wave of embarrassment washed over Morgana as she fretted at just what she would say to her brother in front of her maid’s suspecting eyes.  It was silly really, this fear she had.  It was not as if Gwen could guess at the twisted secrets pressed deep into her heart, but still, Morgana could not take the chance.  Gwen had already been curious as to the reason for their attendance at the tournament today, and she would not give her any more reason to think back on this day as something rather out of the ordinary.  She turned to her maid, the excuse she would give her already clear in her mind, beckoning on the tip of her tongue.  “Gwen, could you please return to my chambers to ready my things for tonight’s feast?”

 

Gwen looked askance at her lady, startled to hear her speak.  “Of course, Mi’lady,” she recovered her initial surprise.  “But won’t you need someone to accompany you back to your rooms?”

 

“I’ll make do,” Morgana asserted, definitively.  “Just head back quick.  I don’t wish to be late for the feast.”

 

“As you say, Mi’lady,” Gwen answered, turning to make her exit from the stands just as Arthur was approaching them.  Morgana sighed a breath of relief.  That was close.  But now the real trial begins, she thought, hearing her brother’s voice address their father and thinking back on their wordless exchange on the field.  For the first time in her life, she knew not what he thought of her, and her heart hammered in her chest at that acknowledgment.   

 

Morgana turned to watch Uther embrace his son, a twinge of jealousy swelling in her rapidly beating heart.  Here, once again, Arthur had won the praise of their father, and perhaps, of more significance to herself, his attention, while the King had made no notion to speak to her all afternoon, even as she sat beside him through the entire duration of the tournament.  She shifted her gaze onto her brother, feeling her body go warm from head to toe.

 

“I’m proud of you, Arthur,” Uther said quietly, so only those close enough to him and his son could hear. 

 

“I know.”

 

“You fought well,” he went on.  “You’ll make a fine king someday.  Isn’t that right, Morgana?”  This was his first attempt to address her all day, even as she had sat by his side for the last several hours, and, of course, the question phrased concerned Arthur. 

 

Morgana, taking her eyes away from Arthur, looked up at her father.  “Oh, yes,” she agreed quickly, almost eagerly, even though a sting could be heard in her voice.  “I believe he will.”

 

“Morgana,” Arthur said, turning towards her, laughter in his eyes.  “I’d never reckoned to see you at a tournament a day in my life.”

 

Morgana smiled, unbeknownst to the way Arthur’s eyes traced the gold embroidery on her plum dress.  “Well, there’s always a first time for everything,” she said, fidgeting with her hands as she shifted uncomfortably.

 

He looked back up at her, studying her with his eyes.  “Hmm, I guess there is.  But will this first time become habit, I wonder?”

 

Morgana felt the heat rush to her face, causing her cheeks to redden with shame.  “You,” she started, then stopped and swallowed, gaining for herself a moment to regain once more the stoic demeanor with which she was now used to regarding her brother these last few years.  “You’ll just have to wait and see.”  The comment had a bite to it, sharp and cold, lacking the loving warmth she had initially intended.  Oh, what was she doing here, trying to talk with her brother after so many years spent avoiding him for his protection as well as her own?  Even if she could manage to have a pleasant conversation with him, it was not like she could come out to him about her feelings, misguided as they were.  So, what was the point of continuing this uncomfortable conversation that left her feeling even more awkward and estranged—she, Camelot’s Princess!—than before when like a smart girl she had kept to her room, confining herself and her feelings there to those four walls.  And, moreover, what was the purpose of the dream if she could not do as it begged of her and speak her mind?  How could she be twice-damned—once for loving her brother and once for lying to him about the nature of that same love—by God in his high heaven above?  Despite her initial optimism for this moment, this very chance to bridge the rift she caused between herself and her brother since the day she realized she loved him and, for his sake as much as her own, could not love him, deep down, Morgana wished for nothing more than to end this conversation and carry herself dejected once more back to the safety of her chambers, where she would be once more collected and secured, her twisted feelings once more contained.

 

“Arthur, Morgana,” Uther interjected, jolting Morgana out of her wayward thoughts, “I best see to it that our guests are invited to dinner tonight.  In your honor, of course, Arthur,” he quickly added.

 

“Yes, Father,” Arthur answered, like the dutiful son he was.

 

“See to it that you both are properly dressed for this evening,” the High King said, as he headed off towards the castle with his armed guard.  “We would not want to give a bad impression.”

 

“No, that we would not,” Arthur muttered under his breath.

 

Morgana bit her lip, stifling a nervous laugh.  It was not the knights nor the noblemen gathered at the feast tonight whom she hoped to impress.  “Arthur!” she scolded him, playfully, as if they were but children, no, just like as when they had been children.  “What if Father heard you?”

 

“But he didn’t.”

 

She could hear the pangs of her own heart beating, steadying itself once more to its rhythmic pulse, through the heavy linen of her gown, and wondered if Arthur could hear it too.  “But he could have,” she said with a smirk, quieting the irksome thought that lingered at the back of her mind.

 

Arthur shook his head, his brow furrowed with puzzlement.  “Why are you being like this?”

 

Just as she thought it was returning to its normal pace, Morgana swore she felt her heart stop altogether.  There was a silence—one in which she thought she was about to die—until she heard once more the steadying beat.  “Like what?”  A twinge of apprehension hung on the question’s end.

 

Her brother watched her pale, but not unpretty face carefully.  “Friendly,” he said, as if settling on the word.  “Do you know how many years it’s been since you smiled at anyone?”

 

Memories flashed back before her eyes of the days she spent as a girl studying before mistresses set on imparting to her the decorum of the Court as the kingdom’s sole Princess; and of that long list of rules and manners she found herself committing to memory time and time again by the commands of such mistresses, the one most often repeated that its very phrase seemed branded on her skull was that she “greet every gentlemen and his lady with a perfectly poised smile.”  Ever since receiving that lesson, there was not a time when Morgana left the confines of her chambers without such a smile, lifted and wry, painted on, not radiating from, her lips, as if one wrong look and touch of the hand could wash it, the façade, away.  Usually that look, that misguided look that wiped away even her most controlled smiles had come from the eyes of her brother, a look at first brimming with innocence that over time, as Morgana spent less and less time with him, making sure to avoid him as best she could, turned dark and scornful.  Morgana felt slighted; Arthur, with his princely duties, learning the art of combat being just one of these such gallant charges, had never understood the domestic tasks left to her as the only woman in the royal household.  “I smile!” she asserted stiffly, feeling at the back of her mind her mistresses’ cold disapproval at this blatant accusation that she did not do as they instructed her. 

 

“Fine,” he acquiesced, “then you never smile at me anymore.  Except for just now, when I saw you in the stands.”

 

“Oh.”  It was all she said, all she felt capable that she could say.  She cast her eyes downward, feeling momentarily struck dumb.

 

“Oh?” he repeated.  “Oh?  That’s all you have to say is ‘Oh?’”  His face darkened in the way she abhorred, for she found that it was her fault—all this time spent avoiding him, neglecting him and all because she loved him, as a sister, as a, no she would not think it—that it came to darken at all.  “Morgana, why are you here?  You’ve not come to watch not even one of my tournaments in the past, but now, after all your absences, you have.  Answer me that.”

 

She raised her head to look up at him, at the frown on his face, her own vision blurring with tears she dared not cry, not yet, not here.  I should have never come, she thought, wishing herself back in her chambers with some small knife to stab herself with for her foolishness.  Oh, stupid, stupid Morgana!  What did you think he would say to you after the wrongs you did him?  Yes, that had been necessary to protect him, you’ve convinced yourself of this, but what of that other matter?  Can you imagine just what he would have to say to that?  When he learns this little secret of yours and discovers just how sick your little mind really is?

 

She was shocked to find herself wrapped in a hug just then, her body warm against that of her brother’s.  This close, she could smell the sweat in his hair and the faint earthly scent of dirt from the field.  How long has it been since I touched him like this?  Years ago?  Back when we were children, when Mother had died, and he had cried for her all throughout the long night after her passing and I had gone to him to provide what comfort for him I could?

 

“I’m sorry, Morgana,” he whispered.  “I hadn’t meant to make you cry.”

 

She pulled herself, reluctantly, away from him to better look up at his face, awash with heavy-handed guilt.  “There’s been no harm done,” she said, blinking, finding her vision once again clear. 

 

“I know you have your reasons for doing what you do,” Arthur was saying.

 

She put up a hand to stop him from saying anything more.  “No, you deserve an answer, Arthur.  Actually, that’s why I came.  I meant to tell you…the reason why I’m here.”

 

“Which is?” he asked with a raised brow.

 

She looked about herself at the people in the stands, some leaving to prepare for the feast later that night, others lingering to catch a look at the day’s Champion.  With all eyes on Arthur, there would be no privacy here with which to speak to him about those private matters of why she had never attended a single one of his tournaments in the past, of why his eyes meeting hers when they passed each other by in the hall would erase the smile off her face, and of other heftier matters, like the secret she held tight to her chest with not a soul the wiser to its foul contents.  Here may not be an opportune place to speak of such matters, but was there such a place?  And if there was, could Morgana release for herself there the very burden that dared to suffocate the breath in her lungs and stop the blood flowing in her still-beating heart by telling its secret to the very one it concerned?

 

“Not here,” she said quickly, quietly.  “I will tell you, Arthur, but someplace…someplace where we can be alone.”

 

Arthur nodded.  “Alright,” he said, more curious than confused.  “I think I might know a place.  But we must wait for Merlin.  He’s the one,” he added with a self-deprecating smile that only worked to enhance his charm, “that usually gets me in and out of my armor.”

 

“You still can’t undress yourself?” Morgana snipped, falling back into the old way she used to banter with her brother in the time before her feelings for him changed, her lips quirking into a smile.

 

Arthur’s face flushed.  “I’ll have you know that it’s not as easy as it looks,” he said derisively.

 

“Come now,” Morgana said, smiling as comely as her instructors once trained her, “lead the way, and I’ll help you with that armor of yours.”

 

“You?” Arthur said, his eyes widening.  “What about my servant.  Merlin, must be around here somewhere.”  He scanned the crowd and then the field for him to no avail.  “Dammit, I told him I would need him this afternoon.  Where the hell is he?  If he’s in the tavern again, I swear to God I’ll—"

 

“He left the tournament early to help Gaius find some herbs,” Morgana lied, thinking quickly.  “Gaius told me himself.  He also said that Merlin was going to send in a replacement for the afternoon.  He’ll be back by dinner.”

 

“So, where the hell is he, this replacement?”  He was also wondering why Gaius had sought to tell this pivotal information to Morgana as opposed to himself. 

 

“I don’t know!” Morgana exclaimed, her pulse quickening.  She did not want to find herself caught in her own lie, so she quickly peeked over her shoulder to make sure Merlin was nowhere in sight, which he was not to her relief.  “Do I look like I have all the answers?  Just come on already,” she urged, taking his hand.  “I’ll help you out of that god-be-damned armor.”

 

Arthur looked at his hand held in his sister’s a moment, then pulled himself free. “Morgana,” he scolded, and his voice was thick with warning, “if Father heard you talking like that…”

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Morgana caught the servant boy Arthur spoke of, that ill-timed Merlin, heading up the stairs on the side of the stands opposite them, making his way over to where the Prince stood, intent on following through with his sire’s orders.  “Maybe, on second thought,” she urged hurriedly, “I’ll watch you try to get yourself out of that armor yourself if you don’t shut up and start walking!  Then when you couldn’t get it off Father would be so pissed at you for showing up at dinner a big sweaty mess!”

 

Her brother leveled his gaze towards hers.  “Fine, Morgana,” he said, turning down the stairs with her following directly behind, “you win.”

 

---

 

When Merlin reached the spot where he could have sworn just a minute ago his liege had been standing, he was left looking to and froe, wondering just where Arthur had gone and if he had, by chance, misheard after all, as he was wont to do, his orders to undress the Prince out of his tourney gear and ready him for the evening’s feast held in his honor.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER TWO: Testimonies

Arthur took himself and his sister around the field where the afternoon tournament had been held, up toward the castle proper.  Knights and their pages, noblewomen and their maidservants, all passed them by each with an inquiring stare at the Pendragon siblings as they walked together up the castle steps.  The looks did not last long, but merely served as acknowledgement of how well the two looked together—Arthur leading the way in his silver-gleaming armor, sunlight glinting off his golden hair, and Morgana following him in her violet gown, her raven locks whispering in the breeze behind her.  Not a soul paid them any heed but to remark, amongst themselves, upon how each sibling’s characteristics contrasted sharply with the other—one light, one dark—despite comprising of the same inherited beauty that marked all the Pendragons in blood as well as name.  It was suffice to say, however, that any thoughts of a fouler sort about the siblings and their seeming regard for one another, such as those swimming within Morgana’s mind that very moment as she followed her brother up the walk to the castle doors, were far from the minds of those who saw them there together that splendid afternoon, the last breath of autumn warmth before the cold days of winter made their drudging march upon the countryside. 

 

“In here,” Arthur said to his sister beside him when they reached the set of wooden doors that led to his private chambers.  He turned the latch, beckoning to her with his hand to enter. 

 

Morgana shot him a look of surprise but behaved as she was directed.  It had been years since she found herself alone with her brother, and in his chambers especially, not since, well, she could hardly remember when the last time she had come here was, but surmised it was in the days before she realized her feelings for him and the exact nature of their waywardness.  She could hardly have been fifteen years of age then, she reckoned, and that was nigh on eight years ago. 

 

The place had changed considerably since then.  Everything appeared larger, manlier, more ornate than she remembered, and she found herself thinking upon stepping within the doorway that this here was a room fit for a future king, if not the future High King of Britain.  Unlike her own chambers, which were substantially smaller, Arthur’s chambers were split into a few rooms, the first, upon entering, containing a long table for dining and others sporting his various equipment; helmets and shields, swords and spears sat upon a smaller end table beneath a window.  This overlooked the courtyard, displaying a view similar to her own, as—if she found herself remembering correctly—she believed her brother’s chambers to be situated just above her own.  Across the room over stood two arched entranceways, the left leading into a study, for she spied a writing desk within its shadowed interior, and the right, currently curtained off, she presumed led to her brother’s bedroom, where, she thought with a note of heated anticipation for being just mere feet away from it, her brother would fall fast asleep after each long, tiresome day spent training in the field. 

 

There was a small thump, and Morgana turned swiftly toward her brother as he latched the doors behind them.  “Are you sure?” she said, feeling quite self-conscious to be here, of all places, alone with him.  “This is your room.”

 

He smiled at her.  “You wanted privacy, did you not?  With Merlin out gathering herbs for Gaius, and his replacement nowhere in sight, we should be alone here.  At least till one of them gets it in his thick head to come here, which should give you plenty of time to tell me what’s on your mind, dear sister.  Why you came to see me today.”

 

She swallowed the thickness in her throat.  Suddenly, alone with him in his chambers, his bedroom, his bed just behind the carmine curtain, she felt her head swimming, her stomach heaving with the heaviness of what she had set in her mind to say to him, the very nature of her sin, which needed making known to him after the seven long years of tortured silence. 

 

“Arthur—” she gasped, her voice low in her throat.  Dare she spit it out now and be done with it?

 

“But before we get into that,” he continued, seeming to not have heard her intrusion or else ignored it if he did, “you said you would help me out of this godforsaken armor.”

 

She stared at him, mouth agape, then remembered herself.  “Oh, of course,” she nodded.  “Of course.”

 

Bowing her head, she crossed the room to where he stood.  “Why don’t,” she said after an awkward pause, “why don’t you sit at the table?”  She pointed with a hand toward the chair at its head.  “Make yourself comfortable.”

 

Arthur gave her a look she could not describe, then heeded her words and sat, looking up at her, waiting. 

 

Morgana swallowed her nerves, determined to see this test of her self-restraint through, and moved behind her brother first to avoid meeting his eyes as she undressed him—that idea alone running through her brain setting her heart aflutter—and second to have easier access to the straps that held his armor in place.  Her hands shook as she laid them on the pauldron, the plate of metal that bound his shoulder, even as she willed them to still their trembling. 

 

“Is something wrong?” Arthur said, startling her out of her thoughts.

 

“What?  No.  No, I’m just thinking.  Sorry.”  With a heavy breath—and on the inhale she breathed deeply the scent of his own sweat, a musk so utterly male that it made her dizzy with longing for him—she slipped her hand beneath the plate and loosened the strap that bound it.  Taking the armor piece into her hands she turned to lay it gently on the table in front of him.

 

Arthur watched her do so placidly, then with an inquisitive stare as she returned back to her place behind him without so much as a look at him.  He frowned, wondering if he had done his sister some wrong or another in the short time they had been alone together in his room to cause her sudden aloofness, but then surmounted it to be nothing more unusual than one of his sister’s sudden shifts in mood, which he had been on the receiving end of many times the last several years, ever since they, no longer children, started growing apart.  A part of him felt compelled to ask her why she remained so cool, so silent as she bent about her work, removing each piece of armor, almost dutifully in her intent as if she were but a servant to him and not a princess herself, from his shoulder and arm and setting it upon the table in front of his steady gaze, but after careful consideration he too said nothing, fearing such a direct question would break this miraculous magic that held them both together, for the first time in he knew not how long, alone in the same room.  Instead, he contented himself with watching her silently as she moved about him, catching a scent of lavender upon her, which he assumed to be a perfume.

 

Morgana moved her hands deftly over the rings of chainmail that safeguarded her brother’s chest, downward to the belt fastened about his waist.  She paused here, upon a thought, suddenly unsure whether it was proper for her, her brother’s sister, to continue, and, in her indecision, her hand lingered a moment too long on the buckle until, as if bitten, she yanked it away.

 

It was unclear to her whether Arthur noticed the mishap or simply chose to ignore it.  Instead he looked up at her almost approvingly, a smug look on his face.  “I’m impressed,” he stated.  “Who would ever have thought that my sister, the Lady Morgana ever knew a thing or two about armor?”

 

Morgana’s heart skipped a beat at the way in which he addressed her, at the very stress he placed upon her name and title.  The context of his comment, however, did not.

 

“Oh, come now,” she snapped at him, her nerves momentarily forgotten, just as she would have when they were but children, when he was just her younger brother and only that and had just done something to irk her.  “I’ve been around enough of these silly little tournaments to realize how to remove your shoulder armor, Arthur.”

 

“Actually, if I am recalling correctly,” he said with the easy smile he reserved only for his opponents in conversation when he was about to be right about something—Morgana felt her cheeks grow warm partly in anticipation of what he had to say to her in retribution and partly for the way that that conceited smile brightened his handsome face—“You haven’t, Morgana.  Which brings me to why we’re seated here in the first place.  Well,” he added on second thought, “I’m seated, you’re standing, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it?”  His eyes darkened then to match his storminess as he threw at her the allegation he had prepared for her the moment he saw her seated in the stands upon his victory that afternoon.  “I have not seen you at a single tournament since I’ve come of age,” he declared, the sentence given.  “Not one.  Except for today that is.  So, I ask you, why?  Why this change?” 

 

Morgana flinched.  What could she say?  Surely, not the truth, even though it was the truth in its horrific abnormality she had been meaning to confess to him here this day in his very room.  The truth that he made her feel all sorts of things she could barely understand in the dead of the night, when she laid awake and alone.  Such things she could not allow herself to think, let alone put into words. 

 

“It, it was a nice day,” she recovered with a lie—again, the lie!  Will there ever come a time where she could find the courage to live by her truth?  “I decided to spend it out with Gwen, my maid.  She’d been asking for some time off to go, and she’s such a hardworking girl, I thought—”

 

The words uttered from his lips were cold, crisp as the autumn air outside.  “You’re lying.”

 

“Arthur, please,” Morgana pled, her heart hammering in her chest.  “Don’t be, don’t be ridiculous.  You and I both know you were never good at figuring out whether someone has been lying to you.  As a girl, I used to tell you all sorts of rubbish just so you would leave me alone.”

 

He laughed caustically.  “That’s not true and you know it.  There was a time when you always cared to have me at your side.  Don’t you remember the days we spent at Avalon, swimming in the lake, gathering apples by the shore?  Or am I the one making things up now?”  

 

 “Arthur.”  Her voice was thick with some emotion, some hurt she could not name—she remembered those days with him by the lake in summer, spent wading in its waters and picking apples from the trees, biting into their sweet flesh as the juice ran down their chins, as if they were but yesterday and not a lifetime past, but—and at once she stopped the thought, swallowed the thickness, the pain, down her throat so as to regain what control she had left over her fraying composure.   

 

 “No, tell me, Morgana,” he railed, “why are you helping me now?  Tell me why we are even talking to one another outside of the courtroom formalities!  I,” he sucked in a deep, relishing breath, and, exhaling, an eerie, pressing calm came upon him, cooling the tone with which he regarded her.  “I,” and here he spoke almost in surrender, “I had thought you had grown to hate me all this time.”

 

Her eyes softened.  Hated him?  Her?  Had she really kept the act up so well?  She did not have even a smidgen of hatred in her heart for him who was her brother.  How could she?  All she felt for him was love.  Love, no matter how misguided, how misplaced.  Every figment of her being, of her soul, wanted to go before his window now and shout it out to the world down below.  But alas, she could do no such thing; in all aspects, regarding this, the twisted beating feelings in her heart, she must show restraint.  No, this was one secret that must stay buried with her, she reckoned, sealed up and locked deep within her heart, never to see the light of day.  No matter now what the dream had bid her do in coming here.

 

But now, now that he had admitted to the pain he had suffered all because of her, it was too much for her to bear.  How can I keep on denying him?  For years he never wanted anything more than to see his older sister acknowledge the man he has become.  And what have I done? Made excuse after excuse.  Told him to leave my sight.  How could I have been so selfish?

 

“I-I never hated you,” her voice broke, as the tears welled a second time that day in her eyes.  “You’re my brother.  How could I hate you?”

 

Seeing Morgana cry caused Arthur to start.  He could not remember ever seeing his sister cry before this day, not even after their mother passed when they were young.  Morgana had always been the strong one, his elder sister who had always been there to calm him down when he had been the one pressed to tears.  They had such a strong bond in those days, they were nearly inseparable.  What changed? he wondered.  And was it my fault?  Where did I go wrong?  It was hard to believe now that the two of them rarely talked during their teenage years, the years when they probably needed each other most, given the closeness they shared in childhood, each one proving the other’s comfort in the mourning time after their mother’s death. 

 

Arthur remembered the trepidation he had felt the morning of his first tournament.  There had been so much pressure for him to succeed or else he would have risked putting their great family name to shame.  He had hoped to see Morgana in the stands that day, cheering for him in that quiet way of hers, with an encouraging smile.  But she had not been there, and he had lost.  The defeat he faced that day changed him.  And that night, when his father had left him in one of the dungeon cells so that he could learn the “true meaning of defeat” or so he said, Arthur had vowed to never lose again, for to lose was to prove his human weakness, and he could not afford to be fallible, he was to be the future High King of Britain; his country depended on him.  He would train harder, he promised himself, sitting on the dirt-strewn floor of his cell, starting at dawn and ending only at dusk.  He told himself he was going to grow stronger to please Father, inspire his people, but in truth, he had done it for no other reason than to spite Morgana.  His pride was not the only thing to wound that ill-fated day, but his heart.  Her absence had shaken him to the core.  How could she? he had thought.  Didn’t she know that Father and all the other kings would be there watching me?  Not to mention the other knights?  His eyes had looked up at the stands every so often, waiting, watching for her to come.  No, what Arthur had vowed to himself in the quiet stillness of his own castle’s cells that night was that he no longer needed Morgana.  He did not need her strength.  He would be his own strength.  Besides, what sort of king to be was he that he had to crawl to his older sister every time things went south?  Would the people follow such a man as that?  One who relied on the placations of a woman?  They would laugh, just as surely as Father had laughed at him.  Noblemen, it appears I have a girl for a son. Those words had only tightened Arthur’s heart, furthered his determination to turn his back on his sister, the woman he had so adored and, dare he say it, loved. 

 

Now a coldness filled his heart that he had erringly deemed the strength he garnered.  It made him implacable to his sister’s current plight, this interrogation he so heartlessly cornered her with—or perhaps it was brought about by those bruised and once tender feelings of his heart?—for, to him, her presence at this day’s tournament was several years too late. 

 

“Is this another act, Morgana?” he laughed.  “Cause I’m not falling for it… Not again.”

 

“No, it is not!  I swear it!” she peered at him beseechingly, hand on heart.  “Arthur, I’ll admit to you that I wasn’t speaking so truthfully before, about the excuse I gave as to why I showed up at your tournament after years of absences which I find unforgiveable now, but not about this.  I never hated you, not once.  Please, you must believe me that.”

 

He snorted, then stood up to better face her.  “Please believe me?  Oh, Morgana, that’s just pathetic now, even for you.”  But he caught an urgency in her eyes that told him otherwise.  This was the real Morgana, he realized, not some proud, aloof princess, but a scared bottled up child just like he was.  All this time he had never thought about her.  What insecurities had Father pressed down her throat?  He had used to look to her for strength when Father had been especially difficult, but who had been there for her when the summer skies turned dark with cloud?  When Mother died?  Who had been there to hold her hand?  Even though she was a few years older than him, she had still been a child when she had died, and in no place to help him.  And yet she had.  Perhaps, all this time she had remained strong just for him.  Perhaps, it had been all to help him get through it; he was the heir, the one with the future, a great destiny awaiting him at every turn, never her.  Perhaps, she had been just as scared as he was.  Perhaps, she had hid her tears from him so as to convince him that everything would be okay. 

 

The bitterness he felt at his sister’s betrayal all those years ago began to lift ever so slightly in his heart.

 

“I believe you,” he said at last, watching her eyes.  “But why?”  

 

Why did you abandon me? his words seemed to say to her now, stretching out across the distance between them and luring her in.  Did she possess the strength to answer such a question?

 

Morgana choked back a sob, smiled through her tears.  “Arthur.  I-I don’t know what to say…”  She rose a shaking hand to her face, freezing midway.  “I, I was afraid.”

 

“Of me?” he said, and there an equal sorrow in his eyes, one that mirrored her own.  “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

 

“No,” she said, swallowing thickly, wiping with her hands at her eyes, “not of you, but…no I cannot say it!  I can’t!”

 

He rested a hand that was meant to be comforting on her shoulder, which only caused her to stiffen involuntarily.  “You can,” he said, and the way he looked at her then, gazing right into her eyes, it was as if he dared her with his eyes alone to convey to him whatever darkness it was that stormed and raged within her still beating heart.

 

She covered her eyes, shaking her head frantically.  “No!  Arthur, I can’t.  I can’t!” 

 

“Shh…”  His lips brushed her ear, as he stepped towards her.  “It’s okay…Morgana.  It’s okay.”  He gathered her into his chest, holding her close.  Even through the chainmail, Morgana felt his warmth and leaned into him closer as if by some primordial instinct that knew not the dogma of sin.  It felt so right to be hugged like this after all those years pent up in her chambers alone.  Even though, back then, no, before then, it had been her holding him.  In all that time, the years spent alone in her room without another to confide her darkest feelings to, Morgana had forgotten what affection had felt like.  Forgetting had made her grow cold, it was almost as if another person, one consumed by fear and grief, had inhabited her body the last several years, and only now, with Arthur, her true self was set free.  Arthur rubbed her back reassuringly until her cries softened into short gasps for air, for breath.  She found that with him she could breathe again.   

 

“It’s alright, Morgana, I, I feel it too,” he muttered sometime later, ever so gently kissing her forehead.  “It’s probably why I’ve never forgiven you all these years.”

 

Morgana pulled away from him.  “Feel what?”  Her eyes looked about him with speculative wonder. 

 

“That I…,” he paused, searching for the right words to say.  “That I never want to let you go.  You belong to me, Morgana.  Just as I belong to you.”

 

Morgana could not believe her ears.  No, this must be some trick.  He had not meant…not like that…  “You’re not saying…” her voice trailed off.

 

He took her hands in his.  “I saw the way you looked at me after the tournament today.  I did not understand then, but now I, I think I do.”

 

Morgana lowered her eyes.  Her cheeks began to flush with shame.

 

“And it’s the same look that you were just giving me now,” he continued.  “Perhaps, it’s time we stop lying to each other?”

 

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “this is some joke, a joke.  You’re just messing with me to get back at all the times I pushed you away.  Erm, I mean—”

 

“It’s no joke, Morgana.”

 

“No!  I won’t hear this!”  She stood up, pushing her brother’s hands away, and crossed the room over to where the window stood.  Down below, outside it, nobles and peasants alike scurried about their business oblivious to the confession taking place in the Prince’s chambers a few floors up.  If they knew, Morgana fretted, watching them, if they only heard—suddenly, she was a lonely girl again, lost in her chambers, the mind prison she built for herself, for the sin she felt wittingly, willingly...  She turned back to her brother standing before her but failed to meet his eyes even as she accosted him for his words, the words she feared he meant, wishing he did not mean them, hoping that he did. 

 

“You, you don’t possibly mean that,” she whispered, watching his face for the lie aimed to hurt her swift and sure as an arrow to the heart, only to find nothing but the truth written there.  It scared her.  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said frantically then, a last-ditch effort to dissuade him from this ill-met path for her sake as well as his own.  “If you did, you would not speak so…”  But when her voice trailed off, the rest of her sentence faded into the still air about them, and she glanced up at him, the man who was her brother, he remained unmoved.  So, it was true; he would have had to been either an idiot or some naïve fool not to take her meaning for what it was and correct her for her misinterpretation of his words, if that is what she had done, and Morgana knew her brother to be neither stupid nor naïve.  She wanted nothing more than to scream at him then in her anguish, in her girlhood fear, “You cannot possibly love me, Arthur Pendragon!  No, not like that.” 

 

She could have sworn she had only thought the cry in her head, but here was Arthur now standing before her grinning like an idiot she wanted to think, but no, that was not quite right; he looked more a penitent man who had just been granted salvation from God.  All that was left for him to fulfill the part now was to fall down on his knees and cry his gratitude, but he did neither.

 

“Did I just say that aloud?” Morgana asked, raising a trembling hand to cover her quivering mouth.  “Please don’t tell me I just said that aloud!” she cried, feeling her face burn with flustered embarrassment, her stomach lurch with sinking shame. 

 

“Why, Morgana,” Arthur teased, looking less now, she thought, a repentant man and more a sardonic angel, “who could have thought your face could turn so red?”

 

She peeked at him out of the corner of one eye.  He was still there.  Did that mean…?  Had he understood exactly what she had just let slip?  Her secret, that foul burning desire…could it really have been his secret too all this time?  And she never knew it.  Suddenly, her heart lifted from the cumbersome burden of her fear now realized, she began to see the clearer picture.  It had not just been her all this time keeping distance from him, he too had stayed away from her for, unbeknownst to her, similar reasons of his own.  It was just that she never saw it as such until now, this very moment, the confession she could not be sure whether she would live to regret. 

 

“You can’t be serious,” she laughed uncomfortably, knowing full well that he was being just that.

 

“Morgana,” he broached not so much to her but as to the closing distance before them as it shortened, “what do you think I did when you sent me away with the excuse that you needed to retire for the afternoon?  Do you really think I took no for an answer?  I’m still your brother after all.  I couldn’t do just as you said.”

 

She watched him quizzically.

 

“No,” he went on, somewhat uncertainly, “I stole away after you to your chambers, hiding around the hall’s bend until I heard your door shut and knew you to be safe inside.  Then I,” he looked away as if embarrassed and ashamed of himself, “dear God, I can’t believe I’m even admitting to this.”

 

“What did you do?” Morgana asked incredulously.  This was news she found hard to fathom.  She could hardly believe that all the days she spent lying on her bed fantasizing of him, he had been just outside her door.

 

“I imagined you,” he said at last.  “Your body, clothed and unclothed, wet from swimming in Avalon, flushed from a winter’s fire, your hair windswept from riding, your eyes green and shining, you, just you, in all your multitudes.”

 

“You dreamt of me?” Morgana laughed.  A part of her, the part that was royal princess finely bred, should have been shocked to hear such a confession from any man let alone her own brother, but Morgana found she did not mind, perhaps in part because she was thrilled to be described so by him and partly because she also knew just what sort of secret thoughts lied still in her own mind from that time.  “And then what?” she asked, her heart pounding.  “How long did you stay there without me knowing?”

 

“Not long,” he answered.  “Only a few minutes.  To have stayed longer would have only caused to arouse suspicion, and I could not afford that.  What twelve-year-old boy stands waiting outside his sister’s chambers?  People would have found the situation rather queer.  It was enough for me then, in those early days, just to spend a moment or two outside your room when I knew you inside, so close and yet so far.  I could not dare knock to enter; you would have had my head.  And besides, it was improper at my age anyhow to be so dependent on my sister.”

 

Morgana watched him bewildered as the narrative of her life, of that dark secret that had been hers to bear alone, unraveled and frayed before her eyes.  In those early days, she recalled him saying, he had stood without her chamber, fantasies of her dancing before his eyes as her own daydreams of him played out across her own.  She wondered then what he had done to cope later on, in recent years, with his desire for her unabated but her mind blanked out and she found she lacked the courage to ask him, fearing she was prying too deep into what she knew to be an intimate matter and would be rebuked.

 

“I felt guilty about it,” he continued.  “I mean, how could I not?  You’re my sister.  I thought there was something grievously wrong with me and so I prayed every day for God to make me stop feeling this, this way about you, Morgana, but He never did.”  He sighed, ran a hand through his hair.  “I thought I was going to Hell.  So, when you eventually closed yourself off to me, I thought it was for the best.  Perhaps, I could finally get over this, this sickness of mine.  But it wasn’t like I could completely keep away from you.  You still lived here, after all.  I was bound to see you, in the hall, at dinner, and countless places besides.  I also began to think you knew the, the way I felt for a long while and that was why you kept away from me.”  He shook his head incredulously, adding “And to think you felt the same the whole time.  It must be one of God’s cruel jokes.”  He fixed his eyes upon her then, and she flinched.  “You know, whatever doubts I have now about God—for what sort of Creator would allow us to feel this way about each other?—I still think I’m going to Hell.”

 

Her eyes softened.  Strange as this conversation was, this admittance of forbidden feelings better, most like, left unsaid, the logical side of her mind that grappled with the ideation of sin and its consequences rationalized, Morgana could not help but pity her brother, knowing now, that he had suffered for as long and as cruelly as she had.  “That makes two of us,” she said, and when she spoke her voice was quiet, as if still unsure whether she was safe to disclose what she was confessing having done.  Still, no matter the danger, and it was real, she knew, just thinking of the people strolling in the courtyard down below—if they heard, she thought, shuddering, but no, they could not listen to them in the privacy of her brother’s chambers, that notion alone was ridiculous in and of itself, unless they were behind the door with magic to aid their hearing, but then again magic was banned in Camelot, she knew that—it was a relief to finally give voice to her troubled feelings and confide in someone about them.  She never would have expected all those years spent agonizing alone in her chambers that that someone would be her brother and that, even more extraordinarily, he would be the sole person to understand them.  “But for the longest time I didn’t understand, Arthur,” she said now, giving voice to those troubled memories she once thought she would take with her to the grave.  “I couldn’t wrap my head around the way I felt about you, and I wouldn’t let myself.  I knew it was wrong what I felt, but I couldn’t help but feel it anyway.  I was scared, scared that God would make me burn in Hell just like Father burns the sorcerers he sentences to death.  I would never want to die like that, let alone spend an eternity like that, so I…I pushed you away.”

 

“You don’t have to anymore,” Arthur said, a longing in his eyes that Morgana never noticed before, so carefully he had kept it hidden from her when they passed each other in the hall, when they sat with Father at dinner.  Now though, completely unveiled, it was a look that made his eyes wild with a hunger she saw he could barely tame.

 

“I’m still scared,” she said, looking down at her hands, cold and clasped.   

 

“Of God?  Who knows if He is even real, Morgana.”

 

“No, of Father.”

 

Arthur chuckled.  “Well, you do have a right to be afraid of him.”

 

“How can you laugh?” she asked him with furrowed brows.  “If he found out how…how we feel about each other what do you think he would do?  Surely, he won’t ring the wedding bells!  And the Court—”

 

“Damn the Court!” Arthur said, his voice rising.  “Morgana, I love you.  And I’ll be damned if I’d let any nobleman, even Father, keep me away from the woman I love, the woman I have always loved.  How many years have we wasted keeping our feelings from one another?  Now that we’ve finally admitted them, I’m not about to go back and pretend this never happened!”

 

Morgana shook her head.  It sounded so wonderful from his lips, especially that admission of loyal love, but she knew in her head that it was just a fool’s fantasy.  It would never be real.

 

“Not if you want to be High King,” she said, speaking what they both knew deep down inside to be true.  “And Arthur, I know you won’t give that up.  Not for me anyhow.”

 

Arthur made a sign of protest but fell silent.  After a moment he said, “You’re right.  You’re always right, Morgana.”  He sat back down on the chair and ran his hands over his face.  Morgana moved to stand beside him.  “Still,” he said, absently twirling one of her brown locks in his hand, “that’s a long way’s away.  I mean Father must be gone for that to even be a consideration.”

 

“But even without Father,” she reasoned, “there’s still the Court.  They won’t react well to you courting me, Arthur.”

 

Arthur smirked at that.  “Well then.  I always thought it a grim matter to wait for Father to pass before we, well, before I asked you to marry me as I planned.”

 

“You thought of marrying me?”

 

“Didn’t you?” he deflected, “You’re a woman after all.  There’s little else for you to dream about.  But, yes, I thought, when I was young, perhaps naively, I see it now, that once I was High King there would be no one to stop me from taking you as my wife, not even you yourself.  I would take you, under due force if necessary, and make you my Queen.”

 

Any other woman so propositioned by a man, let alone her own brother, would have had the instinct to run away for her freedom, but Morgana, whether as an attribution to the sickness that had seeped into her mind, spreading within her like a disease, or not, found the way her brother fancied her, his own sister, apart from all the women in the country—she knew he could have any one and all of them, if he liked—highly flattering. 

 

She suppressed a smile at the thought.  “But, surely, you do not think so now?”

 

“Of, course not.  It was a foolish thought.  Impossible.  But to a boy of fourteen years it had held promise,” he paused, as if reconsidering something.  “Well, even if we cannot marry one another properly, that does not mean we cannot be more than brother and sister to one another, surely?”

 

At first, she thought she had misheard him, but then when his face did not change, realization of what he had implied dawned on her.  “But Arthur!” she yelped.  “There’s still Father to reckon with, and the Court, and countless others besides!”

 

“We just won’t let them know nor give them a reason to find out,” he said smoothly.  “Now,” he changed the subject as if the matter at hand was done and decided, “will you help me out of the rest of this chainmail, love?”

 

“But—” she spluttered, a faint blush on her cheek, only to fall silent and do as she was told, moving to take off his chainmail. 

 

Arthur watched her every move, and as her fine hands, soft as silk, undressed him he grew more and more infatuated with her.  How had he managed to keep away from her so long?  And what kind of fool was he to have done so!  Here was a woman who could please him in every way; she could do him no harm—even if she kept him prisoner to the end of his days, he would be forever happy to be contained so under her watch.  He only regretted that he had not found the courage to have made her his first and only.

 

Morgana’s nerves were on end.  This was what she had always dreamt of, while alone in her chambers, staring at the mirror back at her own face.  Those countless hours spent sealed away, constructing a fantasy that she could never have.  And yet here she was.  This was real.  Arthur loved her.  Was she happy?  She could not be sure…  She still felt uncertain about this new dynamic she shared with her brother.  Arthur, with whom her trust ran deep.  Yet, that is precisely what scared her.  What he proposed just now, it would be to see what was once just a fantasy to her turn into her reality, a feat that terrified her to the core.  All those dreams in her head, where she thought out each and every word she would say to come across coy and coquettish, crafted just so to turn her brother on were now worthless to her.  She knew Arthur, yes, even more than she knew herself, but she knew him as her brother, not a…lover.  And so, she was scared, scared that her little girl daydreams of him and her together were something he would consider childish.  What does he want from me?  Morgana thought to herself, suddenly self-conscious as she lifted Arthur’s sweat-stained shirt over his head to reveal his bare chest.  Her heart beat faster and she felt the color rise on her cheeks.  Now what?  Am I supposed to kiss him?

 

“Morgana, you look as if you never saw me without a shirt a day in your life.”

 

“Well,” she retorted, “the last time I did, you were twelve.  That day we went swimming in the lake,” she clarified only to pause, her thoughts lingering on the memory.

 

“How could I forget?” he said with a smile on his face.  “That was the summer you became a woman.  Come here, Morgana.”  He beckoned her to sit on his lap and she did, resting her head against his shoulder.

 

“You mean to tell me you were eying my bosom through my soaked shift, Arthur Pendragon?” she asked through a smile of her own.

 

“Guilty as charged.”

 

“Mmm.”

 

“Although, it was nothing then compared to what it is today,” he said, lowering his eyes to her breast, and then back up again at her.  Morgana exhaled breathlessly. 

 

This is it, she told herself, closing her eyes.

 

“Do—” Arthur began, only to be silenced by Morgana’s soft lips pressing against his own.  Arthur had not been ready for the kiss, but he had not the thought to care.  His only thought was on how his and Morgana’s mouths met with that restrained yearning of one’s first kiss.  Sparks burned within Morgana, and she felt a confidence, a rightness, she never knew before.  As she kissed Arthur, she learned, and in learning, became surer of herself.  Perhaps, in tasting Arthur for the first time like this, she stole a bit of his own impulsiveness.  Perhaps, that impulsivity was in her all along, and only needed someone else, someone close of kin, to bring it out of her.  Either way, she loved the new her—the she that was in control and coerced Arthur to follow her own lead.  This was who she was supposed to be.  Not some passive princess safely secured in her chamber room, but an enchantress of men, free to roam the night and chart the stars and act upon her own will.  Arthur was right about one thing: she would be damned if she let men like Father tell her what to do. 

 

Arthur grinned up at her when, at last, their mouths parted.  “You know, I was saying something.”

 

“Were you now?” Morgana said, surging with newfound confidence, as she played along.  She rose a hand to stroke his hair.

 

“Yes,” he said, watching her, “not that I minded the interruption.  Would you like to do that again sometime?  Preferably sooner rather than later?

 

“As in now?” she said, starting to giggle.

 

“As in tonight,” Arthur countered.

 

“Tonight?” she questioned, her brows furrowing.  “Why not now?  You said it yourself.  We’re here now.”

 

“A bit eager, are we?” he smirked, then grew serious.  “Yes, here and now when at any minute we can be called to dinner with Father, the Court, and all the visiting knights and ladies,” Arthur said reasonably.  He rose a hand to her cheek, caressed it gently.  “If I’m going to get caught with you, Morgana,” he continued, lowering his voice to a whisper, “so be it, but let’s not make it before we’ve had our full in fun.”

 

“What sort of fun?” Morgana asked suspiciously.

 

“Come to my chambers tonight.  After everyone’s asleep.  I’ll pay off the guards somehow.  Oh, and come alone.  Don’t tell anyone.”

 

Morgana’s heart raced.  Tonight.  So, Arthur did want her that way.  “Not even Gwen?  She’ll be the one undressing me after dinner.”

 

“Not if you can help it, Morgana.”  Besides, he thought snidely to himself, I’ll be seeing that you’re undressed tonight.

 

“But Arthur,” she said, recalling her former worry, the people outside, harmless enough now, but who would soon be invited to stay the night within the castle walls, “there’s a danger in this.  With so many noblemen and their ladies, knights and their servants sleeping here tonight, there will be a heavier guard patrolling the castle.  Won’t someone see me out of my rooms and question me about where I am heading at such an hour?  And besides there’s still Gwen,” she added hastily, in the anxious demeanor of one about to partake in some grave sin, thinking all who passed her by to suspect her of committing the unsavory act.  “She’s already suspicious of me, I know it.  I mean she questioned why I was going to the tournament.”

 

“What did you say?”

 

“Why to see you of course!  It’s the truth after all.  I mean who would think I meant anything more than supporting my brother?”

 

“But the fact that you’ve purposefully missed all of the tournaments I’ve participated in until now makes you a little less innocent now?”

 

“Oh, Arthur, don’t be so sour about that.  It’s in the past now.  I’ll go to every one of your tournaments from now on until the day I die.”

 

He laughed.  “So like you, Morgana.  Once someone catches you in the wrong what do you do?  Instead of saying ‘I’m sorry, Arthur, for being such a terrible sister’ you do just what they originally wanted just to hide that you erred in the first place.”

 

“Arthur, maybe we should talk a little less about your wounded pride and perhaps bring this back to the more pressing issue of how I’m going to get to your goddamn room without alerting Gwen or the guards.”

 

“I told you I would deal with the guards.  But you already know how, Morgana.  Just do it.  For Christ’s sake, no one, not even Gwen, is going to think anything of you coming to see me.  We’re brother and sister, what are we possibly going to do?” he laughed at the irony.  “But not if you start acting like you’re guilty of a crime.”

 

“I know!  I just can’t help it!  This,” she said, as if in one last chance to sway him from the path he had wittingly embarked upon, as if she no longer wanted to traverse it with him, which she did, she thought she did.  “This is wrong.”

 

“It’s so wrong it’s right,” Arthur corrected her, discarding her worries without so much as a care.  “Don’t disappoint me, Morgana.”

 

“Oh, I won’t.  I’m going to give you a night you’ll really remember, Arthur Pendragon,” she said, shooting him a sultry grin.  “But now,” she added in a rush, rising from his lap out of a sudden compulsion she now felt to run and far away from him, the source of her confused thoughts, mismatched feelings—it is wrong, her mind reasoned, it is right, her heart cried, it is, she thought, and I can do no more about it but come here and play out my fate— “you must excuse me for I must ready for dinner and have no wish to be late.  Don’t look dismayed,” she said slower now, watching his face, “I’m sure that half-wit servant of yours will be here soon anyhow as it is.” 

 

And with that Morgana left Arthur seated there on his chair half-dressed and bemused, as she strode to the door, exiting his chamber yet with the pride and grace of a Pendragon.  Once the door shut behind her, however, Arthur lost his composure.  A night he would really remember, she had said.  Given what he had in mind, there was no way he was ever going to forget it. 

 

---

 

In the hall, Morgana walked back to her chambers with her head held high, despite the disarray of her thoughts therein.  She had failed to realize until now that her afternoon dalliance with Arthur had made her appearance somewhat unkempt.  She prayed to God that no one noticed.  Her heart was still pounding, so much so that she thought it might just burst out from her chest, and her mind now fretted with the knowledge of the night she was about to spend with her brother.  Finally, her act—that confident demeanor she had somehow cloaked herself in—would become apparent as just that: an act.  Assuming Arthur thought herself to be the pure, well-bred woman she was, she knew deep down that he reckoned she had not an inkling about such nightly affairs.  Yes, she realized that he wanted to lie with her—she was not born yesterday after all—but…  I’ve never done this before, she panicked.  Not with anyone.  And that frightened her just as much, if not more, than the risk she would be taking to reach his chambers alone and spend the night with him there.  Arthur was about to see a part of her that only a future husband may dare see.  Not that Morgana was getting married anytime soon; her father never paid any attention to arranging for her a comfortable future since all his focus was on Arthur, his perfect son and chosen heir.  Was that a stab of jealousy in her heart?  Yes, she believed it was. 

 

Just another strange twist to her and Arthur’s strange love affair.  As siblings there was the rivalry, the vying for their father’s attentions, and yet there was also the understanding—neither of them had to speak to know it was there—it was just given that as much as they each tried to outperform the other, they also bonded in the face of their shared tragedies: the death of their mother, which caused Father’s heart to harden into stone, so that it was, as children, in the dead quiet of a somber night, Morgana who dried Arthur’s tears and Arthur who made Morgana laugh in place of their father, whose love for them, if he felt it at all, they did not know.  Those were the last days of childhood, the last days spent in careless wonder, the last nights Arthur and Morgana spent together without a thought to the greater mysteries of man and woman that they, unbeknownst to them then, would later play a part in—together.  The time before the undisclosed secrets, the pangs of a perturbed lust and the disquiet of spending night after night alone in their separate chambers, in their separate beds, while wishing for the other to be there: an unlikely bedfellow to lean against, a trusted companion against the hollow of the darkened night. 

 

There was nothing Morgana wanted more and nothing she wanted less. 

Chapter 4

CHAPTER THREE: The Craven Knight

Sir Agravaine took the utmost care in the way in which he dressed himself for the champion’s feast that evening.  Having a certain lady in mind whom he wished to impress, he selected his finest tunic—a rich verdant silk adorned with silver stitches—and a cloak to match.  However, even as he stood watching himself fasten the cloak’s clasp in the mirror before him, he had yet to feel that surge of confidence that all the other knights he knew always wore about themselves as if surety in itself pervaded from their thick skins. 

 

In truth, Agravaine was none too alike the other knights of Uther Pendragon’s Camelot.  Yes, he bore a noble name—he was the second son of King Cenred of the northern lands of Essetir, and more extraordinarily, though often overlooked, was the fact that he was nephew to the High King himself through his mother Queen Morgause, sister to the late High Queen—yet that in itself had not been enough for him to break through the ranks and make a name for himself among his fellow knights.  All the knights in service to the Pendragon were of noble blood, and while he recognized that some had been borne in a higher status than others, himself included, he knew for a fact that in his case the claim of blood alone, even, thereby, with his apparent kinship with the High King himself considered, would never be enough to prove his knightly worth, not when heroics played a part as well.  

 

That was right.  According to the code of chivalry, a knight had to not only be borne of noble blood but be noble of heart.  A knight had to be strong, stalwart, and sure of himself.  But above all else he had to be brave.  And brave, Agravaine was not.  He cowered before the drums of war, was the only man in his troop known to bow his head at news of battles that needed fighting in regions across the country.  Once, during an ambush with the Saxons on the eastern shore, he spent the duration of the strife hidden under an enemy corpse.  His comrades had nearly killed him that day, thinking him a wounded Saxon, still alive after they had secured for themselves their victory.  That day, although he had been most thankful to be alive, knowing in his head that that was all that ever really mattered, Agravaine returned to Camelot ashamed.  What would they all think of him, his fellow brothers in arms, when rumors of his cowardice became common knowledge?  How would he ever be able to show his face at the feasts, before the High King, and his father, infamous war chief in his own right?  How could he face his father, if ever he did return home, bitter place that it was?  And, worse than even that, was the thought of meeting his mother face to face for the loathing distaste, he reckoned, that would most certainly be burning in her all too disquieting eyes.  Nevertheless, almost paradoxically, he admired her, loved her even, for the shrewd way she dealt with him, always encouraging him with a sardonic grin to do better, be better, to become the noble son she was proud to call her own; he had no wish to bring his shame back home to her to pity, while his father raged in the background, “Why could he not have been like his brother?!”

 

But no one had ever found out about that incident in the field.  His fear for his secret shame had been snuffed out before it could consume him, like rain douses an untended campfire before it engulfs the land in blaze.  And there was only one man he had to thank for that: his older brother Gwaine.  Unlike himself, Gwaine had taken after their father, was built strong and lithe just like him.  Yet in all their similarities, Gwaine differed from Cenred in one particularity—Gwaine was pure of heart.  For it was Gwaine who had urged the knights in his younger brother’s contingent not to utter so much as a word about the reality of Agravaine’s cowardice that fateful day on the field; and to Agravaine’s same-time grief and relief, they had listened.

 

So now, as Agravaine beheld himself on that same still pane of glass, he wondered what kind of man his chosen lady would see.  The coward within himself or the gallant man in the mirror, tall and splendid in verdant green? 

 

For a long time, he pondered this.  And while his nevertheless overinflated pride deemed himself most worthy of his lady’s gaze, a small part of himself—that truthful, self-deprecating side—knew wiser.  That no lady could ever come to love a man like him.

Notes:

So with this chapter you can see I decided to diverge even more from BBC Merlin's canon in favor of sticking closer to the legends. In the myths, Morgause marries Lot of Lothian and bears for him four children: Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth. Hence, I chose to have Gwaine and Agravaine be brothers in my story with Morgause as their mother (as strange as that may be to imagine, knowing the characters from the show 😅). I chose Morgause to be married to Cenred instead of Lot (and Cenred to be the father of Gwaine and Agravaine) just to stick towards keeping the characters from BBC Merlin (although I eventually break this rule, as more characters from Arthuriana in general do show up later on). Likewise, Gaheris and Gareth don't make an appearance in the story here.

I really don't know where Essetir is supposed to be in relation to Camelot, but decided for the sake of this story for it to be located in northern Britain as to replace Lothian like I replaced Lot with Cenred.

Also, sorry this isn't the feast chapter quite yet (that's to come next) and then there's the night Arthur and Morgana hope to spend together. 😉

Edit 06/14/20: I forgot to mention that the idea of having Igraine and Morgause as sisters comes completely from the book The Mists of Avalon, since I really enjoyed their relationship in that book. (Also The Road to Avalon, now that I think of it.) Usually in the legends, Morgause is Igraine's daughter, making her Morgan/a's sister.

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FOUR: The Champion’s Feast

Morgana threw open the door to her chamber room and, stepping inside, slammed it shut again with a shuddering breath. 

 

“Mi’lady!” Gwen exclaimed from beside the great canopy bed, where she had been laying out a gown for Morgana to wear to the evening’s feast, upon sight of her ladyship in such a harried state, raven hair unkept, loose strands straggling in the open air.  “Mi’lady!  Has something happened?”

 

“Happened?” Morgana repeated breathlessly, as if she found the air itself a scarcity, altogether lacking in substance to breathe.  Her nerves still tingled on end from her previous encounter with her brother and the promise she made to visit him later that night in his chambers after the feast when all the guests would have returned to their rooms for sleep.  Nothing’s happened, she thought, not yet anyhow.  Then, suddenly, regaining her composure with a single sigh, she strode over to where her maid stood beside the bed, looked down at the gown laying there with its indigo long sleeves and floor-length skirt colored bright burgundy, and stated, “What is this?”

 

Gwen looked up at her lady timidly, as she did whenever she suspected the princess to be in one of her intemperate moods.  “Why, Mi’lady, it’s your gown for this evening.  For the feast,” she added hastily, fearing she had done some wrong, when she had only selected the gown Morgana usually chose to wear for such occasions, assuming, apparently erringly this time, that it would please her ladyship to wear it again to the feast held this evening.    

 

“Isn’t it,” Morgana said, her voice tight with contempt, “a bit modest?”

 

“Well,” Gwen began, paling, “I hadn’t thought…I mean, if it’s not to your liking, Mi’lady, I can select another.”

 

“Don’t bother,” Morgana said testily, storming over to her wardrobe and throwing the doors open.  “You must think me still a girl of fifteen to have me wear that.  I’ll pick out my own gown,” this said, as she riffled through the racks of dresses in their radiant hues, trying to find the one.  “I think I’m quite capable.  After all, I am a woman of two and twenty summers.”

 

“Yes, Mi’lady,” Gwen answered, contrite. 

 

“Ahh!” Morgana gasped a second later, her hand landing on the scarlet piece she had been searching for.  She pulled it off its hanger, and, turning, held it up to her chest in order to display it in its full splendor before her maid.  “Now this is more like what I had in mind.”

 

Gwen’s mouth fell open.  “Mi’lady, pardon me, but it is a feast for your brother the Prince that you’re attending.  There will be—”

 

“Plenty of chivalrous knights and noblemen there to see me in it?” Morgana chirped in answer.  “All the more reason to wear it then!  Now, Gwen, if you would please quit your gaping and help me into it, I would be most appreciative.”

 

---

 

The Great Hall was abuzz that evening as everyone invited gathered there to speak of the events of the tournament—the participating knights of their victories (they skimmed over their inevitable losses) to the younger, unmarried ladies of the Court (and some of the wedded ones as well, their husbands being in conversation elsewhere about the grand room were continuously checked that they remained so occupied), the noblemen amongst themselves of the tactics performed during each bout, and the petty kings (some with their wives and some without) imparting their congratulative respects before their High King and his son, the tournament’s lone victor and champion of the kingdom—before the celebratory dancing and feasting began.

 

Above the din of animated conversation, a manservant, standing beside the hall’s great entryway, was announcing each invitee by name as he made his stately entrance into the hall’s festivities.  After proclaiming the last pair to walk through, a nobleman and his becoming wife, he turned to face the next guest he must introduce to his bewildered eyes.

 

“Mi’lady!” he gasped under his breath, his vision seeing nothing but red and gold and skin. 

 

The lady gave him a simpering smile.  “If you please,” was all she said in reminder to him of the duties he had momentarily forgotten, and then she was stepping past him into the heart of the Great Hall. 

 

Recalling himself and his occupation, he moved to shout above the throng of voices mingling before it was too late and the gathered attendees noticed her before he could cry out her name and give her what acclaim was due to her that night in beauty.  “I present to you the Princess Morgana!”

 

The chatter died down, not completely, but substantially, as one by one the heads swiveled round to gaze and gape at the woman walking in stride down the center of the hall before them with all the elegance and grace fitting of a Pendragon for that was her noble name.  The silent gasps soon turned to questions of “Who is she?”—answered by “The High King’s daughter”—followed by “No, it cannot be!  She always appeared so morose to me at such functions of the past, dressing in dark cloths.  But, dare I say it, looking again, I believe you to be right!” as the ladies, having identified the Princess, began to evaluate the details of her gown: a sleeveless dress of carmine red that bared her shoulders and was adorned with a gold leaf sash about her waist, its scarlet skirts rustling as she walked, brushing the floor she stood upon.  The men, on the other hand, continued to gape at her, before the braver ones of the lot started conducting bets on who among them would be privileged to share a dance with her later that evening. 

 

The conversation in the hall rose to a high it had not been before Princess Morgana’s entrance into the room.  Noticing the change amongst her guests, Morgana smiled to herself, knowing that the groups of men and women she saw mingling together were discussing nothing but the particulars of the gown she wore to outshine them all this night.  She was now certain that she and her dress would be the talk and gossip of this evening’s feast—not to say that she would have failed to win attention of a sort that evening had she not worn it thanks to her royal name, but, since she had, on this special night, she looked forward to the chance of overshadowing even her brother in acclaim on his day of glory, a feat she never once accomplished in the past.

 

But, ultimately, rising the Court of Camelot into a stir was nothing for Morgana but a fringe benefit.  Her true ambition this night was to make Arthur dizzy with lust for her, all in her mistaking the pangs of desire for the fonder feelings of love.  Hence, her chosen gown.  Not only was it ideal for controversial conversation given its revealing design, but it was all the more perfect for turning her brother—and consequently all of the other men at court—on to her.  For that was her true motive: to make Arthur weary with love for her during the very feast held in his honor.  It was only payback, she figured, for the way he had made her equally weak, as if she was starved not of hunger, but of affection—which in truth she was—earlier that day when she watched him from the stands, when she undressed him of his armor in his chambers, when she had promised him, despite her better judgement, to meet him later in those very rooms.

 

I’m going to give him a night he’ll really remember, she thought to herself, reiterating in her mind, the words she had spoken to him in the quiet of his chambers only mere hours ago, yet, somehow, they felt a lifetime past.  It seemed a new age had dawned for her, she marveled—so much had changed—one where she relinquished the prior role she had played her whole life through of the scared, sin-fearing girl hiding beneath the covers of her bed in her chamber room in order to become the bold heroine of her own story.  It was a glorious, freeing thought to at last be her own woman, and at it, Morgana felt a smirk splay wide on her lips. 

 

---

 

“Is…is that your sister?” Gwaine nudged Arthur, his elbow catching the Prince in the gut a bit harder than intended for Gwaine’s gaze was still fastened on the voluptuous curves of Morgana, his cousin, in her satiny red dress. 

 

Arthur startled and looked toward the entrance of the hall where sure enough his sister, the Princess Morgana, whom only hours ago he had been shamelessly kissing within the confines of his chambers, was walking head held high toward the high table to greet their father, as per tradition.  He watched her silently in awe as she spoke formally with Uther, widened his eyes when she briefly turned her head to look at him from across the room with a wink, only to return her eyes toward Uther and her lips once more to her conversation with him.  At that one sparse look, Arthur felt himself grow warm and his heart skip a beat.  That was his sister in that brilliant gown red as the desire he felt for her and gold as the glory he would surely feel once he had her.  He let out a shaky breath, forgot to breathe again when he noticed her bare shoulders, white as ivory. 

 

“She’s absolutely astounding,” Gwaine observed, just as—unbeknownst to him—awed as Arthur.  “I knew the Lady to be beautiful, but not like this!”

 

“God have mercy,” Arthur muttered under his breath in agreement.  Realizing a split second later that he had, in effect, spoken aloud, he quickly checked himself just in case Gwaine, or anyone else for that matter, had heard him. 

 

“Did you say something?” Gwaine asked, despite only half-listening for his liege’s answer.  His eyes remained focused on Morgana.

 

Arthur startled.  “Oh, nothing.  But that’s my sister,” he said, laughing uneasily.  “Always having to steal away my thunder.”

 

Gwaine chortled.  “Haha!  And that she has, Sire.”  He gave Arthur a knowing wink, only to remember a second later that at this feast, which had been held in the Prince’s honor and before all the ladies and gentlemen of the Court as well as a few chosen of Britain’s petty kings, such relaxed conversation between that very same prince and his guard, no matter their family ties, was perhaps a bit of poor taste on his part, regardless of the quality of his friendship with the Prince.  Especially if that unsuitable conversation highlighted the aesthetic appearance of the Prince’s sister, the Princess herself.  Gwaine made a mental note to remember this for the duration of the evening, even though he knew it would ultimately be to no avail, given as he was to drink and drink there would be aplenty this night. 

 

But it seemed, to Gwaine, that Arthur had failed to notice his discourtesy.  He searched Arthur’s face for potential shock—although given Gwaine’s habit of speaking his thoughts aloud and out of turn, there was little that could possibly alarm Arthur at this point, so many years into their inevitable friendship—or a frown of censorship but found neither.  Actually, he noted, Arthur’s eyes had remained fixed on his sister.  It was as if he had not heard Gwaine speak at all.

 

How odd, Gwaine thought to himself, only to shrug and forget the matter altogether.  A servant had come around to offer them drinks, and he gladly accepted the cup closest to him. 

 

“And for you, Sire?  Could I interest you in a drink?” the servant asked Arthur, who was still staring at Morgana, watching her animated figure as she talked with their father.

 

“Hmm?” Arthur came to as if awakening from a dream and turned to face the servant and Gwaine.  The look of bemusement on his face soon shifted into one of amusement once he noticed the drinks displayed before him.  Like Gwaine, he selected the one closest him and with just a wave of his hand sent the servant off to wait on more guests.  Raising his cup to Gwaine in acknowledgement, Arthur took a long deep drink from his cup, the wine burning his throat with a familiar warmth.  He knew he needed to get himself quite drunk this night in order to get through the painstaking formality of the feast and closer to that later, richer prize—Morgana, all to himself, throughout the long night.

 

Although, in afterthought, he reasoned that his intended drunkenness may just lead him into another onslaught of problems, such as the potential mishap of spurring him into producing a flirtatious comment about his sister’s dress to her very face in the Great Hall while it was full to brimming with his own guests who had eyes to see and mouths to talk and were surely not intending to be as drunk as he.  How else though am I going to get over my initial anxiety about being with her? he thought, frowning at his cup.  It’s wrong.  Oh, God it is wrong.  And I’m to be damned for it surely.  But the alternative…this keeping of the distance between us, I can’t take it anymore!  I need her.  I want her.  Must that, then, be so wrong?

 

“You seem troubled, Sire,” Gwaine said moments later.  “Is the wine not to your tastes?  Or is something on your mind?”

 

Arthur shook his head.  “It’s nothing, Gwaine.”  He gave his friend a wry smile.  “And the wine is just what I need.  What I like.  I mean, it’s just how I like.”

 

“Sire?” Gwaine questioned his cousin, brows upturned.  Is it me or is Arthur really not himself tonight?

 

“Ahh!” Arthur exclaimed all of a sudden, regaining his usual outgoing demeanor out of seemingly nowhere.  “Look at all these beautiful women around us, Gwaine!”  He raised his cup in emphasis.  “We are strapping lads.  So why do we only converse with ourselves?  Surely there are women more than happy to speak with us.  And, well, do more with us than speak.”

 

Gwaine laughed, pushing aside his previous concerns regarding the Prince, relieved as he was to find Arthur behaving as himself once more.  “I only hope, Sire.  In my case that is,” he added as an afterthought.  It would not have gone over well for him to have suggested that the Prince of Camelot was incapable of wooing a lady into his most private of chambers, for Arthur was more than capable of doing so on the basis of his title alone, his natural good looks—a gift from his mother and her golden-haired lineage more so than his father and his stern physique—notwithstanding.  Gwaine sighed.  For Arthur, the harsh truth of the matter remained that all women, from the young maidens to those twice his own age, would do anything just for an approving look from their most glorious Prince.  Knowing that, it was hard to conceive just how much they would be willing to lay down and sacrifice just to spend one private night with him, and harder yet for Gwaine to find some way to compete against his cousin and friend for a woman fair of face and hand.

 

And unfortunately, as only time would surely tell, Arthur knew this as well as Gwaine.  Perhaps, even more so. 

 

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Gwaine,” Arthur smirked, leaving Gwaine and his mishap unremarked, as he caught the eye of a copper-haired lady gazing right at him from the other side of the room. 

 

“And how is this evening fairing you, my Lady?” he asked as he stepped before her, giving the woman of his affection a mock bow.

 

The copper-haired lady turned away from her friends, who were now, giggling amongst themselves obscenely and, to that effect, catching the ears and eyes of every lord and lady the room over, including those of Uther Pendragon the High King and his daughter Morgana, who was, by her sharp intake of breath at the scene before her, evidently displeased.  She plucked a grape from the table beside her and chewed it to mask the grimace on her face, finding it all too sour for her tastes.

 

“Oh, heavens me!” the lady exclaimed, suddenly noticing and taking in the form of the Prince standing before her, who had crossed the room, leaving his gentlemen friends aside, to speak with none other than herself, no less!  “Why—did you say something, your—your Highness?”

 

Her friends erupted in another wave of giddy laughter.  Morgana ate another grape.

 

“Your name,” Arthur said, knowing just how to play his women.  “I would be forever indebted to you if you told me it.”  He smiled, reassuringly, and the lady could not help herself but trust him instantly. 

 

“Sophia,” she said easily.  “Sophia of Tir-Mor, your Highness.  I am staying here in Camelot the week through with my father Aulfric for the tournament.” 

 

“And have you enjoyed yourself thus far, Sophia?” Arthur said, still smiling.  He took a sip of his wine.

 

“Well,” Sophia said, beaming at the Prince’s outwardly sincere attention.  “I surely have, your Highness.  Thank you for your hospitality.”

 

“Well, it’s my pleasure to attend to one such as you,” he said, taking her gentle hand in his own, to Sophia’s open gasp and the other girls’ squealing, albeit envious delight.

 

From what Morgana could tell, from her side of the room, it went on like that for quite a while.  Arthur would flatter the fair Sophia, and Sophia, being nothing but a dim-witted little brat (according to Morgana; surely the girl had some virtues, some measure of intellect) would blush and flutter her eyelids at his every word.  The two of them quickly became the talk of the room, and patrons from every party attending the feast would glance over to see just how the two of them progressed in their conversation.  Even their father looked on approvingly.  Morgana pretended not to care about their apparent acquaintanceship, telling herself that Arthur’s outward display of affection for this simple girl mattered naught to her in the slightest, even as the scene filled her with unease and quiet loathing.  Here she was in her brilliant red dress—the color of desire—she bristled, and Arthur was making heart eyes with some girl he only just met.  

 

Although, it now dawned on her as she surveyed the hall, perhaps it was not safe for Arthur to admire her here where any onlooker could see and observe the two of them together.  Perhaps, it was for the best that Arthur occupied himself with the trivial attention of this senseless girl.  Still, even as she realized that Arthur merely entertained her due to the brutal necessity of keeping up appearances (it would have seemed the odder if Arthur had abstained from flirtation altogether after his champion win at the feast held in his honor, a notion rather out of character for him) and his own feelings for herself a secret—and secret it must stay, at all costs—it maddened Morgana to see him so preoccupied with any woman other than herself.  And in that moment, she felt more than a twinge of jealousy pierce through her aching, longing heart.  She yearned for the feast to be over, for the chance to slip away unnoticed into her brother’s chambers, safe within his loving arms at last.

 

But in the meantime, for she could not escape this post-tourney torment, she decided to play fire with fire, and so set about amassing around herself as many men as Arthur had women, which proved simple enough given how magnificent she looked in red.  Given the nature of the whole affair, ‘twas sibling rivalry at its finest—as sister envied brother his lot of false lovers, so too, brother came to envy sister her own winnings in matters of the heart. 

 

---

 

Not everyone had their eyes on Prince Arthur and the ditzy Sophia that night, as Morgana so came to believe.  Far from it.  There were some guests, mostly men, present there in the Great Hall who, once beholding their Princess’s grand entrance, could not take their eyes off her.  Perhaps of this lot the most obsessive and far more discrete of the Lady’s secret admirers was none other than the cowardly Sir Agravaine, whom Morgana had noticed not one day in her life, despite sharing kinship with the ill-named knight through her mother’s family.

 

After glimpsing her magnificent stride into that great room, her body sparking with the adorning cloth of red and gold draped just rightly so over her gleaming polished skin, and watching her, his eyes not straying from her, through the duration of the evening to follow, Sir Agravaine dreamed and hoped and dreamed again of contriving some means by which to converse with the Princess Morgana, the lady of his affection.  He imagined just what he would say to her, how he would ask after her, and how she, in his fantasy, would laugh at his jokes, smile at his charm, attentive to every word he would say to her. 

 

At several points during the evening, after running through such practice conversations in his mind, all of them concluding well with Morgana grasped tight in his arms, Agravaine thought he had mustered up the courage to seek her out from across the room and speak with her.

 

But, for whatever reason, whichever excuse he gave for his chickening out—she was either too deep in conversation with her father the High King and he had no wish to disturb them or, later, speaking far too enthusiastically with the more esteemed of the knights who had participated in the day’s tournament and he too embarrassed to make himself known to her before their like—each time, he was wrong.

 

But then something rather marvelous happened.  Something rather unanticipated indeed, and impossible to predict.  A bewildering turn of events that he never would have expected, let alone dreamed even in the wildest of his fantasies.  The Princess Morgana asked him, Agravaine, the Coward, to a dance.

 

It happened somewhat like this:

 

Morgana, in that exquisite carmine dress of hers, fawning over all the knights hovering about herself and their unwavering attention, signaled one particular knight, a boy, on the younger side with the fuzz of a skimpy first mustache covering his upper lip, by the name of Lamorak, to refill her wine glass for the second or third time.  Lamorak, eager to please the lady, since she singled him out amongst the dozen or so knights circling around her who he, like Agravaine, deemed superior to himself in skill and honor, and win her affection, dashed off at once with the glass haphazardly in hand to heed her command. 

 

With the young Lamorak amiss from the growing crowd of suitors, a space opened before Morgana, allowing Agravaine a most treasured opportunity to gaze at the Princess in all her dazzling beauty.  What he never imagined was that the lady herself would meet his stare head on, gazing back at him with those emerald eyes, shining like the sea.  Agravaine felt his cheeks grow red at her look, sensed a sultry warmth wash over him in waves.  Here she was, his Princess, viewing him and him alone—he was certain of it—for the first time.  Suddenly, nothing else mattered.  Suddenly, his life as he knew it had changed, shifted from the stark reality that named him a coward in the field into the scape of his dreams where even a timid man such as he could be named a hero.  Alone in the crowd of knights far above his rank in knightly deed, he met the stare of his one sole love and knew, in his deepest heart, that this special night would mark the start of their destined romance as if it had been forewritten in the stars above.  Tonight, Agravaine would not be Agravaine the Coward, but Agravaine the Conqueror, known from this night forward solely as the man who wooed and subdued the much-besotted Lady Morgana.

 

In that instant, Lamorak returned, Morgana’s now full glass of wine clasped tightly in his sweaty hand, and Agravaine felt his hopes fall as the young knight reached out to hand the glass over to the princess.  But Morgana, eyes still locked with Agravaine across the room over, pushed Lamorak to the side, toppling the wineglass meant for her, causing its contents to spill in a red cascade all over the poor boy. 

 

“My Lady!” Lamorak gasped, to the amusement of the other knights.

 

But his cry fell on deaf ears, for the Lady Morgana was already walking across the room toward Agravaine the Coward, dressed to impress her in his verdant green.  Perfect, Morgana thought to herself then, catching in her peripheral vision Arthur with Sophia.  What better way to get under Arthur’s skin than to make him think I prefer the attentions of this here lowly knight, my cousin, over him?

 

“Sir Agravaine,” she said, all pretty in red.  “Would you care to join me in a dance?”  She curtsied before the knight to his bewildered eyes.

 

Would I? Sir Agravaine thought to himself.  Have I found favor with God?  Princess Morgana wishes to dance with me and I, I didn’t even have to ask her!  He gulped down the sudden panic bulging at the back of his throat, and made to accept her proposal, lending her his outstretched hand.  “It would be my pleasure,” he answered with a bow, sweat beading at his brow.

 

She smiled up at him, a flash of white teeth against painted red lips, and took his hand in hers.

 

The two of them, awkwardly at first, moved across the floor with a grace unmatched by all gathered there in the hall that evening.  Agravaine led her, the Princess Morgana, his and his alone that night—or so he falsely assumed—stalwart as a tower, and Morgana, as she twirled in spirals of crimson red, allowed herself to be led by him, her Agravaine, the bravest man in all the Court to have so swiftly taken up her offer.  As they danced, ladies and their gentlemen parted, heading for the perimeter of the room so as to sneak a better look at the marvelous scene before them.  In moments, the Court fell to a hush, as all eyes, even those who had been viewing Arthur with Sophia, turned towards the greater couple in their dance of complimentary colors.  Never was there a more perfect match made they thought, momentarily forgetting Agravaine his past cowardice and Morgana her impetuousness at stealing the glory of the night from its proper place at her brother’s feet.  Even Uther smiled as he saw them, mesmerized by their exchange of hand to the synchronicity of song.

 

Arthur was not so easily amused nor tricked by this dance of illusions.  He watched his sister with a flat gaze, as she soaked up all the attention of all the eyes that should have been on him that night, given that it was he, not her, who had won the tournament and had been crowned champion.  And they definitely had no right to be indulging in the rather stiff moves of that Agravaine, the knight who failed to advance to the second round of the tournament and was reputed to be even less of a man in battle.  And yet here they were, adoring them.  Well, let them be adored, he thought nastily to himself.  Do they think I care?  This is a rather pleasant turn of events they have given me, after all, a night free of all that constant pestering.  To be my own man for one night, why what a strange idea that is!

 

“Sophia,” he said after a pause as he set his drained cup down on the table next to him, hoping she too had not fallen into the enchanted trance.  “Let us have our own dance to rival that of my sister’s.”

 

Sophia’s eyes widened like a doe.  “You wish to dance with me, my Lord?  Why, I am most gracious, I—”

 

But Arthur stopped her midsentence, sweeping her up in his arms and leading her across the floor.  He smirked at Morgana, who lost her smile at seeing him profit on her idea, engaged with Sophia as he was in his own dance.  As the two of them, one golden, the other with flaxen hair, fleeted across the floor with delicacy and moves more intricate and lithe than the steady gait of the droit Agravaine and his sumptuous partner, Arthur felt the eyes turn back toward him, where they inevitably belonged, and, with a sigh, he grinned before them, allowing himself the chance to enjoy this victory, this night.  The eyes on him now, the jealous eyes of his sister too, he imagined, he knew she could not look away at such defeat, it was as if they mattered more to him now than the cries and cheers at the announcement of his tourney win against Sir Valiant earlier that day.

 

Morgana, feeling for the second time this night, rejection, pouted, suddenly losing interest in her dance with what-was-his-name?  Oh, right, Agravaine. 

 

Unfortunately for her, Agravaine took her pause, for an invitation for conversation.  “My Lady,” he said, hardly knowing what to say, he felt so happy to finally have her, his Morgana in his arms, “you dance magnificently.  I only wondered, hoped really, that, well, if you have enjoyed this dance as much as I have this night, that, perhaps, only if it fancies you, well, perhaps, we might try it again some other night?  At some other feast?”

 

Morgana frowned, not making sense of any of his words to her.  For Christ’s sake, why is this man blathering to me?  Can’t he see that Arthur has once again stolen my moment?  Oh, Arthur.  She longed to be like Sophia, spinning in his arms. 

 

“My Lady?” Agravaine asked, unsure of the sudden change in his cousin.

 

“Get your hands off me!” Morgana shouted, pushing Agravaine back a step to his stark surprise.

 

“My Lady!” he said, astonished at this sudden turn of events.  Had he said something wrong?  Had he made his proposal too soon?  What a fool he had been!  This had only been their first dance together, he should have asked her about the evening, complimented her on her choice of gown, conversed with her about her thoughts, her opinions before making his feelings so plain.  Most like he startled her with his advances; princesses such as Morgana were, after all, quite fragile things, delicate, innocent, simple to break at the slightest wrong touch.  He would have to tread more carefully with her next time.  Next time?  Where was she going?  He called after her again, but she was now scurrying off the dance floor and through the hall doors, slippers in hand.  As she ran her hair fell to her waist in a cascade of dark curls.  They, flinging across her left shoulder, were the last Agravaine saw of her, as she vanished through the doors, surprising the attentive guards posted there with her distress.  

 

Agravaine stared at the space between the archway and the floor where Morgana had been only seconds ago, wondering why she had left him like that without a word.  He worried that he had done something to displease her, but soon realized the truth to his small delight.  She is unsure, he convinced himself, I have moved too fast.  She needs time to process what has happened between us this night.  She will come back.  He smiled to himself.  And I will be waiting right here where we left off for the next time, until the next time.  After all, he had all the time in the world to wait for a woman as the likes of her. 

 

---

 

It was not until Arthur had finished his spurious dance with Sophia that he realized that Morgana was nowhere to be found in the hall.  He chuckled to himself at this fact; it was so like Morgana to flee when bested and bested she had been. 

 

As the two of them finished their dance, to raucous applause, Sophia bent to whisper in her Prince’s ear.  “Thank you, my Lord,” she said.  Arthur noted her breath was soft and warm; it tickled his ear.

 

“It is nothing,” he replied, smiling down at this simple girl, so easily overwhelmed and awed by his presence.  “It is I who must thank you for being my dancing partner.” 

 

Sophia blushed.

 

The old him would have asked her not to leave him just yet, but rather proffer that he would be delighted if she would join him in his chambers later that night, when everyone had already adjourned the celebrations for the evening, leaving the hall for the comfort of their own rooms, when all was quiet about the castle and discrete.  But tonight, tonight was the dawn of the new him, and he already had a woman waiting for him—that is if she was not too riled at his behavior this evening.  He knew her well, or at least he assumed he did, and was not overly worried about the situation.  He knew that whatever hurt he had inflicted upon her this night, if he had at all, she would easily mend later at his simplest touch. 

 

“Oh, Sophia,” he added, since he saw in her wide eyes that she had been expecting something rather more.  “Perhaps, tomorrow, we may dine, you and I, for breakfast here in this very hall.  Would you care to join me then?”

 

The smile on the girl’s face widened, parting her pink lips to a gleam of perfect teeth.  “Would I?  Oh, my Lord, I would be much obliged to be so indulged by your company.”

 

“And I, yours,” Arthur said.  He made a bow of seeming deference to the young lady that to the trained eye of the ones who knew him well was nothing but a display of his arrogance and his self-assured surety where women were concerned.  “Goodnight, Sophia.”  And with that he excused himself from the Great Hall to cries of protest from the lords and ladies of the Court, exiting through the same doors Morgana had run through only a few moments before. 

 

---

 

Catching Arthur abandoning the feast in his own name caused Uther to pause and frown deep in thought.  Where is he headed?  It isn’t like my son to turn in early from a feast, especially his own and after he won the tournament too with that pretty girl at his side...  Then it dawned on him and Uther smiled to himself with the thought.  That’s where your son is going, you old fool.  To meet a girl.  He laughed to himself, at his own idiocy.  He knew his son; he knew him so well because Arthur took after him when he was that age.  He remembered the times after winning a joust and how the ladies had all flocked around him, each one begging to be favored over all her seemly friends.  He realized that Arthur probably faced that same amusing entertainment this night, only he had assumed, and wrongly so, that the lady of his choice would have been the lovely Lady Tir-Mor, gentle and fair, given how much attention he showered her with this evening.  Poor girl, he thought.  She doesn’t even know that she has been overlooked by another.  But whom? 

 

It was during this reverie of his that the young knight Agravaine, his nephew, slowly approached Uther to the High King’s surprise.

 

“My Lord?” Agravaine asked, falling to one knee in due respect before his King.

 

“Hmm?” Uther sounded, failing to notice at first the man kneeling at his feet.  “Yes, Sir Knight?”

 

“Agravaine,” he reminded his uncle glumly, dispelling, albeit briefly, the boldness he felt after his dance with Morgana.  Suddenly, he wondered if what he had set in his mind to ask the High King was such a wise idea after all.  The old him would never have been brash enough to speak before the King without the King’s request, especially since the High King always seemed to forget about him the younger son of King Cenred of Essetir, despite their kinship.  “I wish to ask a favor of you, my King,” he said staring at the floor’s stonework.

 

“Well, get up then,” Uther grumbled.  “This is a feast, not a time to petition before the King.  I am sure we can come to an understanding while standing.”

 

“Yes, my Lord,” Agravaine said, blushing a bit as he rose to his feet.  “I only wished to ask, even though I believe it is not my place, and yet I wondered still, my Lord, if I may ask you—”

 

“Yes, get on with it.”

 

Agravaine took in a deep breath.  “I only wish, my Lord, to ask you, given the ease with which we moved together on the floor moments ago, for permission to pursue Lady Morgana, the Princess herself, and court her here in Camelot.”

 

Uther gawked.  Yes, he recalled now that he had seen Morgana with this knight as they danced throughout the hall, but surely, he knew Morgana, and surely, she did not love the likes of him, no more than a forgettable face and unskilled sword-hand incapable of winning a single match in a tournament.  “Sir Agravaine,” he said, addressing the knight with respect and dignity nonetheless (he was his flesh and blood by marriage after all, he remembered then, his late wife Igraine’s nephew, and a knight, if only in name), “if my daughter, the Princess Morgana, deems you worthy of her companionship, then so be it.  You have my permission.”

 

Agravaine could not believe his ears.  Have the fates aligned for me? Perhaps it was written in the stars for Morgana to one day become my wedded wife after all no matter my doubts, all starting with the dance we shared this very night, the last before winter.

 

“Th-thank you, my Lord, I am most gracious—”

 

Uther waved him away.  How many blathering fools, he thought, must I speak to in a given day?  

 

---

 

Morgana dashed up the stairs and through the halls back to the corridor where she resided for the majority of her lackluster life, clenching the red velvet slippers she had worn to the feast to her chest as she ran.  Her bare feet came down hard against the stone floor without a so much as a sound as she scampered away to her room to hide.  What had she been thinking?  To challenge Arthur like that?  Oh, she had a been a fool, a fool!  Why ask that godbedamned man Agravaine to a dance when she knew how much just from his eyes alone he savored being able to hold her?  Ugh!  The last thing she needed now was to incite the attentions of a man she had no yearning for.  She had the sickening feeling that it would come back to haunt her one day, the way she played Agravaine like the way Arthur played all the ladies of the Court she knew he took to his bed.  She did everything she could to relieve it, swallowing it down like the lump that was rising in the back of her throat. 

 

When she finally came to her chamber, she motioned for the guards to unlock her door and then promptly, she entered and slammed the door on their faces.  Once safely inside with nothing but the quiet and stillness of her chambers, her time held true safe haven, to keep her company, she sighed and threw herself on her bed.  It was remarkably tough being the Princess of Camelot. 

 

Especially… She let her thought drift off, trying to just forget herself for a moment in the comfort of her bedding, but then she remembered with a bit of alarm that this night was far from over yet.  She had promised Arthur she would go to him.  At the foreboding thought of what was to come, she felt a trickle of trepidation dampen her temple.  She rubbed her eyes, begging herself to stay present and not to think too much about the held off future, not so far off now.  Still her vision blurred before her as she thought and tried to suppress her thoughts and as, when she inevitably could not beat them, she punished herself for thinking such terrible thoughts in the first place with a hard slap to her thigh.  She was heaving for breath, for air, and, choking on the crisp draft blowing through the open window, she soon realized that she was panicking, but why?

 

She laughed to herself.  Was she that dense?  Who would not panic at the mere thought of what she promised to do?  She had to find a way to sneak out of her chambers unnoticed and undetected from all the guards and guests and, most importantly, her own father, who surely had spies a plenty roaming the castle on a night like this when so many from each of the five kingdoms had come to spend the night within Camelot’s own walls (and not to mention, the guests in turn must all have spies as well).  It was too much.  Especially, with what she had set in her mind to do: to go to her brother, obedient as a dog to its master, and let herself be taken by him.

 

She thought about what it would be like, having him as her first.  It was strange, highly unethical, and yet that was what made it so exciting for her.  Her skin tingled, as if by imagining him he had, in actuality, caressed her there; she felt his imaginary lips brush her skin, and grew wild by the thought.  Her hands tangled her own unkempt hair.  She stared at herself in the mirror across the room and saw with her mind’s eye him reflected there as well, standing bedside beside her naked, whispering in her ear of all the naughty things they would together do. 

 

---

 

An hour or so later, Gwen returned to her lady’s chambers to check up on the Princess and dress her for bed.  She was surprised not to find Morgana at her vanity bible in hand, rereading the same dogeared pages (though she knew not which parts), but sitting erect on her bed, twisting her hair in knots. 

 

“Mi’lady!”

 

“Oh, Gwen,” Morgana gasped, coming out of her frenzied dream.  She dropped her hands at once from her once done-up hair.  “I, I got tired,” she said sheepishly, motioning at the state of her hair.  “And tried to take out the jewels myself.  Would you please comb it out?”

 

Gwen frowned.  The explanation, quickly given, made some sense and yet, when Gwen had entered the room, she had not seen Morgana’s hands trying to unfasten the gems that decorated her hair but pulling on the strands themselves.  Why Morgana would tie her own hair up in knots and lie about it was beyond Gwen’s comprehension and a question far above her pay to ask.  She simply filed the information away as one of the many baffling enigmas that made up the Princess she served.  “Of course, Mi’lady,” Gwen sighed, resigned to the difficult task, grabbing the comb from the dresser and setting about doing as her lady asked. 

 

“There has been much talk this evening of your dance with Sir Agravaine,” Gwen said mindlessly after a time, as the comb started to glide once more through her lady’s dark hair. 

 

“Oh, has there?” Morgana replied, absently, still dreaming of another man whom she hoped was still waiting for her, if he was not already busy enjoying the Lady Sophia. 

 

“Yes, Mi’lady.  There are questions as to what prompted you to share his dance, as to whether you fancy him.”

 

“Are they your questions?” Morgana said coldly.

 

The comb stopped mid-brush, then was pulled free.  “No, Mi’lady.  I was just making conversation.”

 

“Well, I’m not in the mood.”

 

“Yes, Mi’lady,” Gwen acknowledged, continuing to comb Morgana’s hair in silence.

 

“Thank you, Gwen,” Morgana said, when the maid finished, her voice easier this time, as she rose from the bed.  She pointed to her open wardrobe.  “Now hand me that gown there.  No, not my nightgown, the purple one beside it.  Yes, that’s the one.  Now come here and help me into it.”

 

“But Mi’lady,” Gwen protested.  “Don’t you intend to turn in for the evening?  Where else could you have to go?”

 

“I’ll have you help me out of this dress, Gwen, exquisite as it is,” Morgana said, leaving her maid’s inquiry unanswered.  She pressed her hands against the red fabric, traced her fingers longingly over the gold leafed stitches that ran across her middle with a twinge of regret.  Her eyes flickered closed for a moment and she glimpsed a vision of Arthur tearing this red dress from her body, exposing her pale skin beneath.  But Arthur had asked of her to be discrete, and there was nothing in the slightest discrete about this dress.  She could not hope to roam the halls at such a late hour in that dress unnoticed, without trouble—especially after the stunt she pulled at the feast earlier in the evening, amassing all those knights about her, who would be guests in the castle this night; she would have to change into something more subtle and subdued, yet still prone to heighten her brother’s desires.  She thought the purple gown with its translucent sleeves and crimson skirt would do the trick nicely. 

 

“Where are you really going, Mi’lady?” Gwen asked, once she finished tying the sash about Morgana’s waist.  “You never leave your chambers at this time of night.”

 

Can I lie? Would she even believe me if I did?  No, Arthur said not to raise suspicion, and any lie I could possibly tell would sound more suspicious than the naked truth could ever be.  “I’m going to visit Arthur, Gwen.”

 

“At this time of night?”

 

“Yes.  Will you stop pestering me, Gwen?  We wish to talk for old time’s sake.  It seems the two of us have had a misunderstanding all these years and we wish to reconcile that.”

 

Gwen looked away from her lady’s unyielding gaze down at her own clasped hands.  “Well, I will not pry further, Mi’lady.  Whatever it is between you two, it must be important, or you would have waited till tomorrow to address it.”

 

“Thank you for understanding, Gwen,” Morgana smiled.  “Now I’m afraid I must go.  I don’t want to annoy him by dallying any longer.  He already thinks I take too long to dress as it is.”  She sighed a breath of relief and headed for the door.  That wasn’t so hard, was it?  And yet her heart was pounding so loud she feared Gwen could hear its rapid beat from across the room. “Oh, and Gwen?” she added, as she peeked back into the dimly lit chamber, “That will be all for the evening.  You’re excused to go home.  I don’t want you waiting up for me to undress me for bed when I return.”

 

“That is…kind of you, Mi’lady,” Gwen said with an uncertain smile.  “Thank you, but you’re sure you won’t be needing any help later?  Surely, this conversation with the Prince will not take so long that I cannot wait.”  When Morgana said no, she did not, that she did not know when she would be coming back to her chamber and had no wish to keep her later than usual and then dipped out of her room, gently shutting the door behind her, Gwen laughed aloud at her lady’s thinly veiled excuse, thinking, Why she must be rather in love with Sir Agravaine to make up some silly story about visiting her brother at such an hour.

 

---

 

Back in his chambers, Arthur started to pace, walking the length of his room over and over again, waiting, as the evening wore on to night.  Where is she? he wondered.  It should not take her so damn long.  How hard could it be to tell a girl of a maid that she would not be needing her help undressing this night? Cause I’ll be the one undressing her, Arthur mused as he paced, as if the event of his near future and all that entailed had suddenly dawned upon him, though, in truth, the thought of the affair had been on his mind, as if imprinted there, the moment he saw his sister enter the Great Hall draped in that stunning cloth of red and gold, her ivory skin glowing in light of the candles’ flames.  His pace quickened with the memory, sweat dappled at his brow, and he ran his hand through his hair as he walked.  Doubt toyed at the corners of his mind, undermining his arrogant demeanor, a demeanor made to match the very father who placed on his shoulders the weight of a kingdom.  What the hell am I doing? Do I really mean to lie with Morgana? 

 

It was not disgust at the sin that gave Arthur his sudden cold feet, but intimidation.  He was no virgin, having lain with several of his father’s whores.  Of course, no one knew that except himself, the girls, and Father: Father who made him do it, saying he would not have him be inexperienced in such matters on his wedding night.  And no one else was to know that.  Arthur had exhibited some reluctance, in part because he had been afraid of these lecherous women who lived by night—with his father—as opposed to day and, in part, because he had so desperately wanted Morgana to be his first just as he always fantasized she would be since that fated day at Avalon when he beheld her swimming in its waters, soaked gown sticking to the curves of her body, herself seeming more sea nymph than girl, a vision of her that visited him thereafter night after forlorn night tempting him, taunting him until one night he came, in ignorance to the changes in his boyish body, for the first time in his sleep.  And since that night he awoke in subconscious pleasure—his first sin unknowing—from his dream of Morgana still whirling in his head, Arthur began to understand, putting the pieces together on his own, the very nature of his up till then mysterious feelings regarding his sister.  That Morgana was precious to him no one who saw them together could deny—but to the extent of that preciousness with which he regarded her all were blind, herself included; not a soul was to come to know, let alone understand that Arthur, the High King’s son and heir, loved his sister in ways a brother never should, and in that nighttime ritual in which he loved her in body and mind alone, they were not to know just how much he wanted every part of her for himself.  He had her as a sister, yes, as a friend and confidant, once, and perhaps, even as a second mother as well, given how Igraine—the only other influential woman in his life—had died when he was so young, leaving him motherless in that time of greatest need, it had been Morgana who raised him as best she could for a child just three years elder than he.  Now Arthur desired her as his lover and, as he dreamt in his deepest fantasies, as his wife.  No thought stirred Arthur’s heart faster than the thought of seeing Morgana as his bride; how he would stand at the altar beside her and lift the white veil from her flawless face, unblemished like porcelain, and bear witness to those green eyes flitting up at his, before he would inevitably bend to kiss her tender lips.  That was how the young and naïve Arthur always imagined it would be.  Before he grew up and stood by as his father snatched that dream of his and crushed it in his stoic fist unknowing.

 

In truth, Arthur wished himself virgin for Morgana this night.  He coveted the ignorance in which he could learn alongside her, as he assumed, not erroneously, that tonight, with him, would be her first time.  With him to guide her.  Now that idea did wonders for his pride, working to elevate his exalted ego even higher.  He hated himself for it.  It, his vanity, was the aspect of his character he most loathed about himself, but even as he found himself so repulsed by it—detesting himself for what it made him believe, abhorring himself for what it made him do—he knew it to be a cause that could not be helped.  He had been bred for this after all.  This was who he was, the vainglorious son of Britain’s High King, charged with one day ruling the greatest of kingdoms after him, perfectly molded into the image of his father’s making as if the High King had had him cut from stone.  His innocence gone—if it had ever been there to begin with—shaved away, dispersing, with a hand, like dust on the wind.  He had been chiseled to princely perfection in all ways but one, that single mistake that was not so much a mishap on the deft sculptor’s part, but a detail overlooked, being his feelings for his sister Morgana.  Of his easy bliss-filled days, in the time before his father began grooming him for the destiny he was to inherit, only a memory remained: of him and Morgana playing in the apple grove beside Avalon, back when it had been simple, back when they had Mother, back when there had been no need to gaze at one when the other had been looking away.  A time without shame.  Without guilt.  Without need even for need.  All simply was and all that was existed in that paradise man knows only once in his short life in the time of childhood, in the time before he inevitably grows curious enough and bites the apple his hand picks, an act thereby expelling him from the realm of his own Eden.  If only he could go back and be once more the boy he had been.  Then he would not have to live with himself, watch himself, as if detached, cause his own ruin. 

 

He did not want to love Morgana, and yet he did.  He could not live without her for her very being nested deep within his soul, tormenting him to commit the most grievous of wrongs and the most sacred of rights.  It was destiny he reckoned, not the destiny his father outlined for him, that he should love Morgana in such peculiarity.  But just as it was peculiar, it was lovely.  Never before had there been such a pair, such two perfect fitting halves for a whole.  He and Morgana redefined soulmates—for they were first mates of blood and of bone.  Who could contest to that?  The earth of flesh and dirt and coursing waters was their realm, not the realm of mist and air, of Gods and Kingdom Comes.  They were the now—a tragic tasty now doomed, perchance, to be a then.  While Arthur knew in his heart he could not live without Morgana, he knew even more so that he could not live with her for the very laws of God and men he found written and proclaimed in the Bible he tucked away in his writing desk.

 

But ultimately—in the battle of thoughts that raged within his mind (to be, or not to be, as God had fashioned him, for if everyone was created in His image, then surely, his unnatural love for his sister was part of that grand design?)—Arthur knew one thing for certain: he wanted to lie with Morgana.  In this sole way, he had to prove to her the man he had become at the behest of their father. 

Notes:

I just wanted to note a few things here. The first that Sophia isn't one of the Sidhe here; she's just a noblewoman in my story, simply because one of my favorite episodes in the show is the one where she appears (1x07 The Gates of Avalon) since I love the ArMor moments in it (what with Morgana fearing for Arthur's life due to her visions and then him essentially making fun of her concern) and since I generally really like the exchange between Sophia and Morgana where Sophia accuses her of being jealous of her and Arthur when Morgana tells her she knows of her plans to harm Arthur. I just really wanted to include her in my fic for that reason, making what she said of Morgana in the show quite true here, whatever we are to make of her accusation in the show. (I like to think Morgana was slightly jealous there as well. 😉)

The second thing was the part where Morgana amasses about herself an array of the knights that participated in the tournament in order to make Arthur jealous of her. This was completely inspired from Gone With the Wind, where Scarlett O'Hara fawns herself over all the young men at the Wilkes' barbecue in order to draw the attention of Ashley Wilkes, the man she fancies.

The last thing is about Agravaine's infatuation with Morgana and his desire and ability to court her. For the sake of the story, courtship and marriage between cousins is not frowned upon in Camelot like a brother/sister relationship such as Arthur and Morgana's would be. This is me simply making sweeping generalizations from what I know of history that cousin marriages did occur whereas sibling incest was generally considered sinful (not to say that it did not occur). I will admit I did not research this in the slightest, until I actually sat down to write this note, and it turns out that cousin marriage wasn't permitted under Roman Law during the time in which this fic is set, although I am unsure as to whether those laws were followed in the post-Roman Britain of the Dark Ages, where I decided this story to be set. (There will be more said on the history of Britain within the fic later to come where I essentially mix and match BBC Merlin with several histories I've come across in Arthurian novels retelling the legend. It's all fiction though, so please don't look towards any of this as historically accurate.) I hope I can be forgiven for these anachronisms because when working with the Arthurian legend and its various timelines with centuries of discrepancies from tale to tale, it's quite difficult to write a retelling that is entirely faithful to one timeline without giving up something of another timeline that feels essential to the story. In end, I chose to include what I did for the sake of the story I wanted to write, historical accuracy taking a back seat on this one.

Anyway, that's all. I hope you enjoyed. Next chapter is the night to come, I promise. 😉

Chapter 6

Notes:

Okay, I know I've been putting this off for a while, but here it is at last, the big night in full. Now I'm going to slink off and hide. 😅

Edit 12/03/22: When I published this chapter originally, I thought I had written it to be the best it could be, but now that it's been a few years, I feel that some aspects of the smut could have been handled better and so I have now revised it one more time to repost here. The chapter is more or less the same regarding the dialogue and everything that happens; I just expanded upon what was originally there. My apologies to my readers for the changes, but I hope you guys do enjoy this version all the more. Thank you as always for your interest in this story.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER FIVE: Midnight Interlude

Five hours after darkness fell, blanketing Camelot in the heavy covers of the night, when all the waking world outside the castle—the merchants, the blacksmiths, the farmers, the aristocrats, their families—had turned down their beds for sleep, and long after the attendees to the Champion’s Feast had abandoned the revelry to return to their own respective chambers within the castle for the night, with only the courtesans, their patrons, and the long-lost lovers waiting up in the pitch—alone or otherwise fed by untamed desire—it was then that Arthur, likewise estranged from the steady call of sleep as he paced about his chamber room, his brain lit with worry, heard a slight knock at his door.  At first, amongst the whirlwind of his thoughts, he thought he imagined it, that knock, sounding softly like a cup placed down upon a table gently, in spite of the silence that pervaded the room heavy as the morning brume that would rise at dawn off Avalon Lake, like it always did come the dreary month of November, which would be upon them once more, and soon—to leave its dour mark upon the landscape, though this time he did not fear its coming.  He paused to listen, to hear if he had, perhaps, been mistaken.  But then it came again, louder this time, hasty, urgent, as if a plea.

 

He strode for the door, clearing his head of his anxieties, even as they bubbled up in his mind, one by one, only to fizzle out as a new thought took command of his brain: Just who is behind the door?  His heart raced; it had to be her, and yet, just as easily it could be one of his guard returned early, though he had sent them away for the night, had given them the strict order that he be obeyed, which he had no reason to think he would not be, as, to his fortune, he had given similar commands on the nights of feasts past whenever he invited a lady to his room in an effort to pretend, and making this fact plain to his guard, they had heeded him then his every word, though not without their snide stares, which they tried so hard to mask, but Arthur saw their mirth anyway, hating himself all the more for what he called a weakness, the base needs of his flesh, which were so starved and hungry in their lack of wanting, missing—her. 

 

Arthur exhaled his rushing breath.  His hand on the latch of the door, he felt the coolness of the metal, and with a thought grounded himself, pressing his hand harder against the cold latch till it started to turn.  He knew who he was, knew who he must be this night, that being, nothing short of himself, just himself—was that small feat so impossible after the way he had confined that very nature that made up all that he was, suppressed and regulated as if to the closet of his room, out body, out of mind, while the shell of him played so well the part of the charming, bachelor prince?—it hung there, that shame, and what he intended to do this very night, he prayed, would lay it at last to rest.  A moment—one still second, an eclipse of ego, ushering forth the primal id—he cleared his throat and opened the door.

 

“You came,” he said, a look of surprise crossing his face when he saw her.  She had given her word and yet still he had fretted whether she would show, and it was late, just an hour before midnight, he had thought she had been detained or, even worse, had simply changed her mind about coming and backed out, though if she had, he would not have blamed her.  He eyed her up and down, glad she had not, taking in her elegance in the violet robe she now wore with its translucent sleeves that graced her body, displaying and hiding just enough for the sake of decorum and imagination both.  It was not the red dress she had worn earlier that evening, and for that he felt a small twinge of pity, but still very becoming. 

 

“What?  Did you think I was going to leave you here alone to jerk off until you’re nonsensical?” she teased under her breath, inviting herself into the room as if with practiced ease, though he saw that her cheeks had flushed at her coarse remark, the good girl he considered her to be seemingly embarrassed at her own jest, and he, well, thinking her ignorant in such matters, never expected where she had heard such things, but nevertheless he appreciated the joke at his own expense.  He closed the door behind her.

 

He laughed, that damn infectious laugh that sent a thrill up Morgana’s spine.  “No,” he said, recovering himself, “I just thought that you had second thoughts.”

 

“Well, for a moment there, I did,” she said seriously; there was no mask of humor in her voice.  She looked away from him.  “I’m sorry.  I mean, it’s not like I don’t want this, it’s just…are we doing the right thing?”

 

“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I spent the last few hours wondering the same thing.”

 

“Hours?” Morgana questioned, with a raised brow.  “I would have laid money down that you were still preoccupied with Lady Tir-Mor.  You two seemed to have gotten on so well tonight.”

 

Arthur sighed at his sister’s inquisitive look.  “That is already forgotten.  And nothing compared to the stunt you pulled!” he bristled, remembering.  “Agravaine?!  What were you thinking?  You must see how the man ogles you!”

 

“Does he?” she asked.  “I hadn’t really noticed before this night, but then all the knights had their eyes upon me at the feast,” she added with a triumphant smirk. 

 

Arthur shook his head.  Had she realized what she had done?  “Don’t you get me started on that dress!  Did you want all of Britain eying you?”

 

“I thought you would have liked it,” she said coyly.

 

“That’s beside the point,” he said testily, face flushing at the memory.

 

“Oh, so you did like it,” she smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the complexion of her cheek rosy, and Arthur wondered if it was only from the wine she had been drinking that painted it so, that delicate, pubescent pink.

 

He turned away only to swivel round to face her again to find her still smiling at him, as innocent as a cherub, though he knew she was not so; the simple fact of her presence in the room, his room, was truth of that.  “God damn you, Morgana!”  He ran a hand through his hair, then said, quietly this time, like a little boy, “Why did you change?”

 

Morgana stifled a laugh.  “You told me to be discreet, remember?  I would have been noticed in the halls had I worn that, and besides, Gwen would never have let me visit you, as I told her, at such an hour so scantily clothed.  She is always one to look after me, bless her heart, and that would have appeared rather queer, don’t you think?”

 

“I guess,” Arthur conceded, not entirely convinced. 

 

Morgana frowned, a new thought clouding her mind.  “Are you displeased?”  Then, a second later, the frown deepening: “Why so much grief about a dress?  Is it that you no longer find me comely dressed as I am?  That you see not a woman you wish to love but a sister standing before you once more?”—then rather hastily, as comprehension dawned upon her face like a morose sun—“I understand.  You must be disgusted with me.  You were bored and I merely a passing fancy worth considering after the heat of the tournament, but now you see sense, while I, I, I—"

 

“Goddammit Morgana,” he said, stopping her in her tracks as he snatched her hand in his, causing her to look back up at him, eyes affright at his sudden display—though of what, she could not be sure, was this affection?  What it meant to be adored?  “The dress is nothing but some added excitement.  I want you, dammit.  Do you even know how many nights I’ve spent wanting you? thinking this moment would never come?  I’m not about to go back now, not now that it’s so close that I—”—can touch it, she finished for him in her own mind, feeling the truth of his unspoken words, for the way he grasped her hand in his own, touching her, at last! touching her—“Unless,” he said, voice trailing off, breaking the moment, “…this isn’t what you want.”

 

She opened her mouth to speak—what could she say? what words were there that could possibly be uttered at this apex, the apogee of the years she had spent locked away in her chamber, dreaming away her girlhood, the scenarios played over and over again in her mind so that she memorized every outcome, his every call and her response, and yet she had never foreseen this very moment, never expecting the truth that she would come to live it, what, pray tell, could she say to that?—then paused—her thoughts quieting, as she watched, studied him for the clue to the unconscious question: what next?  “It’s what I want,” she said, as boldly as her unused voice could muster, her eyes not once straying from his, not even to so much as blink—

 

“Then come with me.”

 

Morgana followed Arthur as he strode over to the curtained-off chamber, as he led her by the hand, yanking aside the crimson drape to reveal, as she had surmised earlier, the bedroom that lay behind it.  She was surprised to find the room rather quaint with an array of candles lit beside the great canopy bed, enough to brighten the space from the pitch of darkness.  With an inclined look, he prompted her to sit down on the fine sheets, already upturned for sleep.  Although there will be little time for that this night, Morgana mused half with anticipation, half with dread.  Then she thought of a different time, spent in the room they had shared as children, in the time right after Mother’s death, when she would tell Arthur stories before bed just as Mother had done.  Is this still Camelot?  Can this room really be a part of my childhood home?  The room felt alien to her, almost intimidating, as she sat on the great bed, swallowed in pillows and sheets, despite the warm glow of the candles beside, their reassuring flicker.  It had been years since she thought of Camelot as her home, as opposed to her prison.  She thought of the endless nights, the years behind her wasted in wallowing in her own bedchamber, for the fear of a solitary sin, leading to this sin, this night, and shuddered.  In her mind, she crossed herself, begging for someone, anyone to tell her what came next, for she was only a girl still, with only the words of gossip, the brief snippets in story—for answers, which amounted to nothing, she now understood, no more than trails of mist and vapor, no more tangible than an inkling.   

 

“You’re tense,” he said, as he, seating himself beside her, pulled her into his lap, held her side to her startlement, the heat of his hands pressing through her sheer gown to her waist.  She had not felt his weight joining her upon the bed.  “You can trust me, older sister.”

 

“I do trust,” she murmured against the encroaching fear she did not want to feel, but remained there, stark between them—only for her heart to jump straight out of her chest, when he—“—ah!  What are you doing???”

 

Arthur had pulled back her skirts and was running his hand up her inner thigh, just slightly so, his fingers skimming the bare flesh that answered his advance with raised goosepimples.  “Shh,” he commanded her.  “Just relax.  That’s it dear.”

 

As her brother ran his hand along her thigh in soft circling motions, Morgana felt herself involuntarily lean back against his chest, giving in to that trust, as she nestled her body beside him, despite the thoughts whirling in her mind pleading her otherwise that this was unimaginable—he was touching her, a man, and her own brother—she was allowing him to do it—and the passages she had read so closely at fifteen in her worn bible, hunting for their meaning, came back to her, that this was a sin incomprehensible that once committed she could never take back, her reputation ruined, her character forever stained, with no chance for absolution—Hail Mary, she began, reciting in her mind the prayer she had memorized as a child, not thinking why, only that it was habit, because he was touching her, somewhere against reason, and it felt good—like when she had as a girl so desperate with want, and not understanding, came to explore herself, the secret places of her body that she knew God forbade she even think of, naming them contraband, her own body, either it was a house for the holy or something nefarious nestled here, contaminating her from the inside out, until she was foul with sin—and was therefore bad, she was bad, for enjoying the feel of his hand, as he moved it further upward, her heart hammering all the while wildly in her chest—

 

Though his touch had at first frightened her, she found the way his hand brushed against her naked skin placating, even pleasurable, and soon, she felt her initial nerves dispelling, easing away with each stroke, like waves meeting the shore of Avalon; she had a memory of the way she had dipped her toes in its waters, testing, cautiously, to see if it was too cold for a swim.  Now though she was hot, her body burning, quivering with an odd excitement, a strange warmness seeping within and through the space between her legs; it felt so good to be touched like this, to be adored, worshipped even, and she wondered if this feeling coming up and over her in waves, crashing against her, was this what it felt to be touched by the divine and therefore proclaimed sacred?  Before, while she sat thinking of him within the safety of her own room, preparing herself to go to him, pondering just what was in store from the fragments of similarly spent nights she once heard whispered about the halls as a girl, she had figured, erroneously it would seem, that he would have been too eager to get on top of her to spend so much time just now content just to touch her, to let his hand trace such delicate patterns upon her skin, touching each nerve and sending it aflame—although where his hand stroked her flesh was taboo enough for them both, being unmarried to each other as they were, let alone siblings of blood and bone, knowing the same mother and father and God above, and in turn, each bearing the same resolute name. 

 

As he caressed her, Morgana watched his hand creep dangerously closer to her sex, a thrill lighting her mind as she watched him move steadily upward, herself no longer abashed, her halfway uttered ‘Hail Mary’ forgotten, replaced with a new thought, one that sang through her soul with revelation—for so long she had thought this evil, her wanting him, fearing the temptation and the transformation that would come over her if she bit into its ignominious fruit, that she would be just like Eve and know herself suddenly naked, herself exiled from the Garden—but God had not struck her for permitting her brother to touch that was not his to have—they were clothed, and instead, He had allowed them to continue in whatever this was, and that was rapture—she was enraptured, brought back to life from the caress of his hand, more swiftly than the trumpet call on the would be Day of Judgement—and then !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! his hand was there, smoothing over the dark hair that grew there and pressing against her with his thumb, revealing her secret wetness.  Morgana whimpered.  She had had no impression in her life previously—those empty lonely-ridden nights spent touching herself in ignorance, a futile attempt to alleviate the unholy desires she harbored for the man now beside her—that her body could respond so readily to a man, let alone her own brother, and the sensation, warm and tingling to her flesh—that was indeed the revelation, that truth that girls can feel pleasure after everything she had been told.  To her stupefied wonder, she felt then Arthur beneath her, his member, she realized with a blush—but there was no shame here—growing hard against her through his pants, her skirt, as he continued to rub her sex, for that was what he was doing, she realized, to her most profound delight.

 

His hand now slicked with her wetness Arthur slipped two fingers up and inside his sister.  “Ar—” she took a deep intake of breath at the sudden sensation, her body tightening up at his unexpected penetration, for a moment resisting him, only for him to shush her qualm and lay his other hand upon her shoulder to steady her as he began to push up inside her deeper with his fingers.  Ever so slowly, he started to work them back and forth inside her, only to quicken his pace, moving them faster and faster, reaching them deeper and deeper until at last he felt her body shudder against him as she tore with a sharp outward gasp. 

 

It was sudden, painful, and yet as Arthur continued to push his fingers inside her, grasping her body tighter, finding what she learned was that sweet spot and pulsing his fingers against it in a rhythmic motion, Morgana found that she soon forgot the shock, forgot the pain, no, the pain—was it better named shock?—was disappearing, melting into something else, something deeply gratifying and pleasurable and wondrous, something warm and sweet, something so !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she could not describe the joy it caused her as if her body was a sonnet, a symphony, scripture! in all its innate glory; this was something glorious that she had yet to perceive in her twenty-two years of life!  Suddenly, she started to feel good, really good, unlike any sort of good she had ever felt before, and it was then that that epiphany sang within her that something so pure as this could not be sin, could not foul, could not be worse than murder and theft and taking the Lord in vain—that was all blasphemy, while this, this—She fell backward, her body melting against Arthur, her limbs nerveless, as he continued to move his fingers inside of her, making her feel all kinds of things she never once dreamt possible, her back arching so that she came to rest her head gently against his chest, tucking herself in the nape of his neck, nestling herself there in the haven that was him, her protector against those who would not understand them even if they could, but there was no need for that now, the fear was gone—for she was safe in his arms, guarded and at last—loved.   

 

“Is this good, my love?” he whispered heavily in her ear, though his fingers softened inside her.  He bent closer, and she felt his need, his member so stiff beneath her, a strange comfort, as if she were indeed his muse, as he murmured softly, his words pronounced darkly: “Because when I take you, I want you ready for me.”   

 

“…don’t stop,” she breathed, agreeing, her voice small in the dark, as if carried away on the waves of bliss she was coasting, as if she were the tides and he the moon causing her rhythmic movement—thinking herself already ready and there, wanting him, thinking now of the idea of him, his member inside of her, doing what his fingers were, at that moment, still doing.  She had not thought then that it could get any better than this, the sense of him pushing up inside her, but then it did, she came, sending an undulating wave of pleasure throughout her overwhelmed body, a cascade so pure and unadulterated that all thought and feeling blurred together in one cohesive whole, approaching the infinite—Then, as was inevitable, when she at last came down from the high, her limbs falling limp with relaxation, her excited breath and hammering heart slowed once more to their normal cadence, that easy rhythmic beat.  Held in her brother’s arms, her exerted body fell against him, languid, her spent mind finally at peace.  In the stillness after, Arthur slipped his fingers, now slick with his sister’s juices, out from within her, wiping them casually on the bedsheet.

 

The two of them were now lying on the bed beside one another.  Morgana shifted to look at Arthur, feeling a sudden and deeper understanding regarding the love she had always felt for him.  Even in her fantasies, which had been rather naïve, she realized, compared with how he had slid his hand within her just now—did that still constitute as sex?—she had never quite imagined what it would have actually felt like to be with him in such a private and personal way as this, and more than that, she never thought it to have been so enjoyable (no matter how much she wanted it all the same), as from what she had overheard it said as a girl that mostly it was so only for the man, unless she be a tramp, and she certainly was not that, for this was her first time, her first time, she mused, and with her brother no less.  She wanted to thank him for this, for allowing her to feel something again other than the dread that always filled her days with gloom, and in her gratitude, she stirred herself from her stupor, rising up on her arms and leaning her head over his own to line his face with a trail of sweet kisses, from forehead to chin.  Touching him now, she felt a sudden desire to make him feel just as good.

 

After several of these kisses, Arthur pushed Morgana off him.  “Who would have thought that all it would take is one fuck for my sister to go mad?”  Though he said it derisively, he was in fact quite pleased with the eagerness with which Morgana had responded to his advances.

 

Morgana burst into a fit of airy laughter, her voice chiming sweetly, sounding otherworldly that for a moment Arthur thought he had brought a changeling to his bed by mistake; it was not until she started to tear at his clothes, started to tug at the belt that held up his pants that he remembered she was his sister still, and he was in the heat of making love to her. 

 

While her brother appeared nonchalant, watching her with impassive eyes and a knowing smile as her hand rested upon his belt, her thumb perusing the buckle, Morgana knew he was probably dying to get his cock inside of her.  The way he had teased her sex earlier had been a way of pleasing her, of making her want him.  Whatever doubts had been in her mind before, whatever fears of blasphemous sin once committed could never be undone, they were far gone now. 

 

Feeling daring, she unbuckled his pants and slipped her hand inside of them, thinking to touch him in that forbidden place where he had approached her.  Arthur watched her from where he lay on the bed, a shiver of anticipation passing through his body, making his hair stand on end.  Morgana was slow in her exploration, partly out of trepidation, and partly to tease him just as he had teased her.  Her hand caressed his thigh, gentling smoothing over his leg hair, and then, swallowing her apprehension—

 

She touched his hard-as-ever cock, smiling devilishly up at him as she did so, for its quick response to her hand’s touch, so firm and lively in her hand.  He grunted, tried to keep from coming right then and there like when he was a boy, unable to control himself, the memory of his first lay with that woman of his father’s flashing before his eyes; she had merely laid a hand on his crotch, and he had come shamefully in his pants.  Morgana made him feel like that now, like the boy who had not a clue about sex, except it was something he knew the horses did, and people apparently too, who had been afraid to touch and be touched by his father’s duplicitous, knowing whores.

 

But Arthur was a boy no longer and the man in him his father had bred wanted to take Morgana for himself and ravage her, no matter how unseemly the thought, no matter how much he wished to be gentle for her sake, for her being no other than his dearly beloved sister; so long he had waited, restrained himself in her presence only to jerk himself off and rough with loathing once he was alone in his bedroom, thinking of her sleeping in the room beneath his own, as he fondled his erection in the night, calling up the mere memory of her, her sweet voice, the dark waves of her hair resting against her cheek, the way she hid behind those locks, and the way she had comforted him as a child—his own dark, bright Madonna, his own personal vice. 

 

“Mor-gana,” he breathed heavily.

 

“Is that good, Arthur?” she spoke, echoing his own words, her voice thick with unnamed emotion, with the dark, incomprehensible thought that this was her brother, her younger brother, she was fondling, as she ran her hand slowly across his length from base to tip.

 

In answer, able to contain himself no longer, he gripped her tight by the arms and threw her against the bed.  As Morgana felt herself hit the cushion of the mattress, her body rebounding from the impact, she gaped at her brother in openmouthed surprise.  Arthur now loomed above her, wearing her devilish smile. 

 

“Are you going to fuck me, Arthur Pendragon?” Morgana huffed, the blood rushing through her veins.  She would never admit that his sudden aggression, so unlike the careful way he had held her earlier, had scared her senseless, and yet she found herself intrigued at his response—he wants me, she thought, her body warming, squirming beneath him at his touch, instinctively hitching up her hips at the thought, in response to her own desperate want to meet him. 

 

“Till you’re hysteric with lust,” he purred in her ear, himself cognizant of the way she was moving under him, readying herself in her own heat to be penetrated by him, which only boldened him further, spurring him onward toward his own private madness if he could not thrust himself inside her that very instant—“When I’m done with you, Morgana,” he said, his breath fast and mind dizzy, “I’ll have you crying my name.”

 

She moaned beneath him, reaching her hands up to cradle his face.  “…please, Arthur,” she breathed, her hand slipping on the sweat drenching his body, dripping off his bangs and into her eyes, as she likewise lied drenched, her body already shivering with fearful anticipation.  She needed Arthur inside of her, as if they were any other man and wife and not brother and sister, as much as the desire frightened her, as much as it had crippled her her whole life.  And in that moment of stillness before, as she felt more than saw him throw down, in haste, his pants, readying himself, she closed her eyes, thought out a vain prayer—

 

Lord, judge me not.

 

—and then Arthur was no longer holding himself above her on his forearms, but on top of her, crushing his body against her chest.  His hands frantically tore at her bodice, clumsily unlacing the knots in his need, so that Morgana dropped down her hands to help him fumble through the fastenings.  He was cursing his ineptness, almost laughing as he did so for he had done this a dozen or so times before, but still, never with his dear sister, and when he spared a moment to look at Morgana, feeling her hands upon his own, guiding him, he surprised to see her smiling at him as she helped him untie the last knot, and then as she slid out of the bodice, the look of satisfaction upon her face, as her breasts laid open and bare for him in the dancing candlelight to see. 

 

“God have mercy,” he breathed, unbeknownst to Morgana, for the second time that night, taking her in, the two mounds with their dark areola, the perfect size to fit in his cupped hands.

 

Morgana heaved, taking in a hasty breath as she watched her brother reveling in her naked bosom, wondering, and guessing, at the thoughts running through his mind, seeing her so exposed.  She whined at the thought.  “Go on,” she murmured, feeling his devious eyes upon her, feasting on her flesh, the look alone just enough to cause her nipples to harden with lust.  “Touch them.”    

 

“God,” he muttered again, running a hand over his eyes, as if to shield them, only to steady his resolve the next moment, becoming once again certain of himself, as he tentatively lowered his hand to touch ever so gently her teat, easing his hand into its softness as if it were a cushion or pillow. 

 

Upon the pressure, Morgana exhaled slowly, as she watched him explore her.  “Well?” she asked, as nonchalantly as she could muster, praying he did not feel her shivers. 

 

“Christ,” he whispered.  “You do not know how long I’ve wanted to do this.” 

 

She caught an impish grin on his face, as he fell upon her again, this time nestling his head between her breasts as he kissed them softly, then more hungrily, Morgana, her body arching in response to his worship.  She grasped at his head in her hands, tugging at his hair, pressing him close to her.  “I may have an idea,” she said, as she eased her legs about him, holding him closer. 

 

She knew he must be close, feeling his erection against her legs; it was more than time, she thought, herself unable to bear the wanting much longer, wondering at how he had possibly foregone it for so long.  

 

“Enter me, Arthur,” she urged, sighing against him, unsure if this permission were the small mercy she wished to grant him, or herself, and in a strange way, absolve them both for the need that had pressed them over the years, running through them, draining them dry, until they were parched with thirst. 

 

He heard her, for up came her skirts for the second time that night, and Arthur eased her legs apart, prompting her to open them to receive him, though he met no resistance.  Herself acquiescing to his need that was in truth her need, her body surrendering, she felt him enter her with an urgency neither she nor he had before known, let alone supposed in those days of their adolescence, pleading for this moment they thought would never come.  Morgana cried out.  It was not pain she felt, but pleasure of the highest accord, the pleasure of his passion, alive within her.  The joy of Arthur, her brother, moving inside of her with each burning thrust, grasping her shoulder and breast so hard she could cry, as he buried his head in her chest, kissing her again and again and again so that she could hardly gasp the air to breathe—

 

And in her ecstasy, she grasped at his back, her hands pulling him downward, urging him onward.  Arthur increased his pace, trying desperately not to come right then and there, so as to await his sister’s climax, his groans echoing her moans.  At last though, he could not hold out any longer, and he came with a cry, Morgana shuddering as he did so beneath him, overcome with the pleasuring waves of her own orgasm, his name whispered on her tongue. 

 

“Arthur…Arthur…”

 

Afterward, the two of them, still entwined, fell into a dreamless, listless sleep.

 

---

 

Arthur awoke sometime later to find Morgana cradling him, just as she had done when he had been a mere boy in their child’s nursery.  Except this time, he lay against her naked breast, the two of them burrowed under the covers of his bed.  Suddenly, he felt a strange desire to call her Mother; he suppressed it.

 

“You’re awake,” she said with a smile, running a hand absently through his hair. 

 

“How long…?” he asked, looking up at her, his older sister, and blinking away the sleep from his eyes.

 

“Not long,” she said in that soothing voice of hers.  It had been years since Arthur had heard it—not since the day he had fallen from an oak tree when just a boy, and Morgana had been there to calm him in spite of the sprain to his ankle he had received—and now he found himself lulled by it once more, as if all the years of stoic fronts and curt words they had shared and spouted in between were nothing but a waking nightmare within a delicate dream. 

 

Morgana continued riffling his hair.  “You breathe heavily in your sleep, you know,” she added, thinking with a pang of sorrow that some woman or another must have remarked upon this before to him. 

 

But whoever she was, if she had, Arthur did not make it known to her.  “Do I?” he asked musingly instead.

 

“Yes,” she said, smiling down on him only to stiffen at a new thought.  “Is it…is it always like this for you?  Afterward…you sleep?”

 

Arthur sighed.  “Morgana…”  He shifted out of her embrace, choosing to lie next to her instead, all the better to watch her with his eyes.  “Don’t do this,” he whispered, sensing the intent of her words, their implication.  His fingers coiled a lock of her dark hair, like black silk in the dim lighting of his chamber.  The lit candles flickering incessantly on the bedside table caused her hair to shimmer as if she were still water under the brightness of a full moon.  “Don’t go and make this awkward for me.  Not now; not after—” 

 

“Awkward for you?” she asked, suddenly struck once more with the severity of what they had done.  “And it’s not for me?”  She slapped his hand away, and looking down, her eyes caught a dark stain on the once white sheet.  She trailed her fingers over it, trembling, incomprehension numbing her mind, until she realized with a start that the dark splotch, black in the dim lighting of the room, was her own blood.  A distant memory, once thought forgotten, overtook her senses, a snippet of what had seemed merely trivial courtroom gossip to a young girl who had not yet had her first bleeding as Morgana had been when she had overheard it, but now echoed her foretold doom.  A bride must bleed upon her wedding night to prove her purity, else her husband know her wanton and put her aside to her family’s shame.  Shame, disreputation. What had she done?  She was not to be married yet, but one day, one day surely soon, Father would arrange for her a union with some noble lord or another in a kingdom far from the protective walls of Camelot.  What was she to do then?  She had already lain with a man, and not just any man, but her own brother, and had lost her maidenhead to him.  Amongst the excitement of the day, the fervor of the night, she had forgotten this small detail, the existent price for her actions, which contained likewise a physical marker connoting the nature of her transgression; and here she had thought, the price would only be the condemnation of her soul, something that could not yet hurt her in this life, but would follow her into the next one. 

 

Arthur followed his sister’s bewildered eyes to the blood staining the sheet and swallowed, mistaking her frightened gaze for pain.  “Morgana,” he said gently, “I’m sorry if I hurt you.  I didn’t mean to.  This is just what happens to women on their first time.  The other times won’t be like this.  I promise.”  He moved to lay a placating hand upon his sister’s shoulder only for her to push him away.  

 

“It’s not that,” she said her voice thick with strain.  “It’s…It’s…God, Arthur!  Why didn’t my nurses, my maids, someone warn me that if I lied with you, I would be no longer deemed worthy of marriage!”  It should not have mattered to her then this criteria for her to wed—what mattered, she knew deep down, was that she was now with her brother and had been loved by him—but matter to her it still did for reasons she could only grasp at, not fully come to hold secure in her hand; she felt lied to, betrayed, a fool for her own ignorance while the entire world knew what she had not, blinded by her own desire as she had been.  Somehow, she had not thought of this other matter when she decided against reason to come this night, as she had, to her brother’s chambers, intent on lying with him.  Her mind had only been on the present, locked on her deep-rooted fear of being discovered with him; she had not spared a thought to the future, a future which seemed now all the more fraught with danger, given as she was to understand that Arthur could not simply wed her himself to redeem her tarnished honor.

 

Arthur laughed uneasily.  How could it be that his older sister had not been spoken to, had been left, by the contrary, sheltered as if she were a child too innocent to be told such matters, while their father had seen fit to expose him, the younger one, to the intricacies of sex at the tender age of fourteen?  “They would never have known, Morgana, let alone guessed, that this is what you intended.”

 

“Then why didn’t you???” 

 

“I…” he said helplessly, “I thought you didn’t care.”  Although that was not the full truth if he were honest with himself; he had thought of it, the injury he would do her in taking her as he had, but he had put the concern behind him, failing not to mention it, fretting what she would or would not do if he had, if only for his boyish eagerness to finally couple with her.  And so, he had said nothing.    

 

She wiped at her eyes.  “Don’t feel bad,” she said, giving him a wry smile, thinking then only of him.  “It’s not your fault.  I’m just remarkably stupid, stupid, stupid.”

 

“My sister could never be stupid,” he said, wrapping her in a hug, as he rubbed her shoulder soothingly.

 

She laughed as he consoled her, feeling oddly safe and secure in his embrace.  Was this how he had felt when she had held him as a child?  “But I am!”

 

He kissed her forehead.  “There are ways around it, you know.  Not every man cares to be a woman’s first.  And arrangements can be made for someone of your standing.  You’re the High King’s daughter.  A lord no matter how lofty would be a fool not to take you for his wife.”

 

“Are you certain?” she asked.  “How do you know all this?”

 

He sighed.  “I have spoken with the noblemen of the Court and the petty kings of Britain.  I know their ilk.  Though they may be egotistical, they are even hungrier for power.  They crave any arrangement that brings them closer to the High Kingship, and you, my dear, give them that.”

 

“No, I don’t.  First there’s Father and then you.”

 

“But if we both die—” he suggested, wondering if he had now taken her worry too far into supposition, one that may upset her.  Certainly, he could not promise such things, men being what they were. 

 

“Then the throne would go to your heir,” she said.

 

“But I don’t have any heirs,” he reminded her, smiling despite himself. 

 

“But you must have—” she started only for her face to turn crimson.  Arthur’s arms about her tightened, and it was as if he knew what she had been about to say.  “Never mind,” she said, face paling once more.  “Forget I spoke at all.”

 

He exhaled.  Then said, surprisingly calm, “I don’t have any bastards either.”

 

Morgana laughed uncomfortably.  “How do you know?”

 

“I don’t,” he said honestly.  “But call it ego, I think any woman carrying my child would be eager to tell me if only to ensure her own welfare.”

 

“The noblewomen, perhaps,” Morgana agreed, “unless they’re already married.  But then again,” she said on second thought, “maybe then too.”

 

Arthur chuckled.  “What kind of man do you take me for?”

 

“The kind that gets what he wants,” she said softly. 

 

“No,” he corrected her, running a hand absently through her hair, “tonight is the first time that has happened.”

 

“You mean to tell me, Arthur,” she said disbelieving yet at the same time flattered, “that you never wished to lie with a woman before this night?”

 

“Don’t pretend to know my experiences,” he said with a harsh laugh to cover the cold abruptness of his voice. 

 

His affect startled her into silence.  Suddenly, even though he held her close to his chest, she felt him close himself off to her.  But why? she wondered.  He is a man.  What pain is there for him in this?

 

“I’m sorry if I struck a nerve,” she said simply, after the silence as they remained so close, at least physically, grew unbearable for her.  “I didn’t mean—”

 

“It’s forgotten,” he said quickly.  “But, you have wounded me”—now returning to the earlier subject—“through all your talk of concern of your future marriage though not a single proposition has been put in place, into thinking that I’ve just swayed you from your sense of what is right, and in convincing you to share my bed have caused you not pleasure, but unhappiness and regret.”  

 

Upon his words, her mouth stood open, agape, in a silent protest of the way he had misinterpreted the concerns she had divulged to him, twisting them and her character into a picture of hypocritical wantonness.  She had known and acknowledged that lying with her brother was a sin far too grave to ever seek absolution from her Holy God, and having succumbed to the sin, held no yearning for forgiveness, let alone, having erred, to see it undone, her innocence restored.  Her only worry, regret he had called it and perhaps that in itself was true, was of a practical nature only, and not of the realm where the ideas of God and sin and absolution were concerned.  It was a selfish worry, one that had undermined his pride, she now realized, but also one that was not entirely her fault but the fault of society at large, who upheld in illogical hypocrisy that a man could lie with a woman out of wedlock whereas a woman could not. 

 

“You misunderstand me, brother,” she said at last, turning to kiss him on the cheek.  “I have no regrets.  I went to you willingly and would do so again even if—” her voice trailed off, leaving him guessing at what she had been about to say only to think better of uttering.  “All that matters,” she said instead, “is that we are at last together.”

 

As if to sign his agreement, Arthur gently nudged her chin, prompting her to look up at him with her wide green eyes that watched him darkly in the dimly lit chamber.  Reflections of the candlelight flecked her irises, imbuing her otherwise impassive eyes with specks of light.  Moved by her beauty, he bent to kiss her lips, smoothing her raven hair with his hand as he held her.  Morgana maintained the kiss that felt almost chaste in comparison to the frenzied passion they previously undertook, refusing to part from her brother, until he at last broke his lips from hers.

 

“I am sorry,” he said then, “for the way the world is.  But I can do nothing to change that.”

 

“You can when you are High King,” she said quietly, her eyes boring into his.

 

He looked away.  “It may be too late then, and I may prove too weak.”

 

“For me?” she asked, bemused.

 

“For us,” he said, giving her hand a soft squeeze. 

 

“Arthur,” she said, his words falling upon her rapt ears, the weight of them sending a sharp chill down her spine, as she pondered their multifaceted implications.  She entwined her fingers with his, as she swallowed and drawing breath, began again.  “Now that we’ve at last had this moment together, what is next?  You speak of ‘us’ as if, as if we were any other pair of lovers meeting in the secret shadow of the night, but we are far from that.  What future can there be for us beyond this night, sweet as it is?”

 

“Morgana,” he gaped at her wide-eyed, then drew her close to his chest, content in the face of the unknown morrow just to hold her a moment longer.  “My sister.”  When he at last released her, he raised a hand to tenderly graze her cheek.  Morgana leaned into his touch, closing her eyes.  A single tear rolled down her cheek falling to the bedspread with a dull pat.

 

She could hear him swallow.  “When I spoke of us, Morgana, I spoke of a boy’s dream,” he began unsteadily, as if a part of him was still unsure he could trust her with the darker, more unseemly feelings of his heart, as if they were more intimate than the way he had lied with her a mere hour before.  “I told you how I used to fantasize about marrying you before I learned the way of the world and realized that even as the High King I would face many dissenters to the notion, would risk jeopardizing my rule and the kingdom if I were to act on my feelings and take you as my wife.  But,” he added carefully, “if it is written in the stars that holier version of us can never be, there must be a middle ground we can tread.”  He broke off, watched her helplessly with his eyes for response—she gave none—until he at last brought himself to the inevitable conclusion.  “I have no intention of spending just this one, solitary night with you, Morgana, if you will have me.”

 

Morgana gaped at him, stunned into silence.  It was a proposal he had made to her, and yet at the same time it was not.  He had not fallen to his knees, ring in hand, before her, but had still made his feelings plain to her as they sat hardly clothed on his bed in the flickering candlelight.  What could she say?  She knew what she wanted, but was it wise?

 

“Arthur,” she said, then stopped herself, only to exhale her held breath and begin again.  “Earlier when you told me to meet you here tonight, I told you it was fraught with danger, and already,” she added deprecatingly, thinking of her lost virginity, “I have glimpsed that danger.  But,” she continued, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder, growing confident as she thought of last night’s dream and how it had compelled her to go to him and make her feelings known leading to this very night they shared, “just as I fear what the future may bring, I also know I have no wish to go back to spending those cold, restless nights all alone in my chamber, scared to love you and desiring to love you still.”

 

He was about to speak when she said, “So, yes, my brother, I will have you, however I may.”

 

He laid a hand atop her own upon his shoulder.  “Bless you,” he said smiling at her like the boy he had once been.  “I don’t think I could have borne it if you said ‘no.’”

 

“You really thought I was going to say ‘no’ after that speech?” she laughed, incredulous.

 

He wiped a hand over his eyes.  “You had me going there.  For a second, I didn’t know what you were going to say.”

 

“I love you,” she said, and the most beautiful smile graced her face.

 

“I love you, too,” he said, rather automatically, the tension in his body lightening. 

 

She laughed.

 

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

 

“It’s just such a relief!” she exclaimed.  “To finally be here, like this, with you.  I never thought—”

 

“To be this happy?” he finished for her.

 

“Yes, yes that’s exactly it.  Happy.  It’s been years since I’ve felt happy.  I had hardly remembered what it felt like.”

 

“You’re not the only one,” he said, reaching his arms about her waist to pull her down squealing next to him on the bed.

 

“Arthur!” she yelped, slapping him playfully.

 

Now it was his turn to laugh.  “Will you quit that?”

 

“No!” she said, burying her face in the soft pillows, only to turn and peek a suspicious glance over at him, and erupt into laughter once more.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“I hardly know,” she said, resting her head on her elbow.  “All I know is that I hardly care.”

 

He shook his head, not even trying to understand, as a thought returned to him.  “You know, something’s been bothering me,” he said, lifting his head from the pillow and resting it on his arm to watch her the better.  “Of all the men in the room, you had your pick in that red dress, you knew that, and you pick Agravaine?  Agravaine?”

 

She simpered at him, twirling a lock of her hair about her finger.  “You ask as if you don’t know why, but I know you do.”

 

He snorted.  “You meant to mock me, is that it?”

 

“A fringe benefit, brother.”  She dropped the lock of hair to trail her hand along his arm.  “I only meant to make you as jealous as you made me.  So why not Agravaine?”

 

“I take it you didn’t like my little chat with, what’s her name now?”

 

“Sophia,” Morgana answered.  “And no, I did not.  You belong to me, remember?  You just said so yourself.”

 

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair as he answered her.  “I did, that is true,” he admitted, “but I belong to an entire kingdom, Morgana.  Not just you, as I much as I wish it were so.  At least one day I will.  So, you can hardly expect me to not welcome my guests to the feast held in my honor, can you?”

 

“I believe they overstayed their welcome,” she replied lightly.  “And, if I might add, that that was not your original intent.  You feared you couldn’t control yourself dressed as I was, so you placed your attentions elsewhere.  Admit it.”    

 

“Yes, well, I do think I can agree with you on that, sister.  They did linger far too long for my liking,” he said in answer to her first point, leaving the second unaccounted for as he returned to his initial question.  “But why did it have to be Agravaine?  Anyone else would have been a safer pick.  You know how fond he is of you.”

 

Morgana startled.  “You said that earlier, but Agravaine fond of me?  Surely, you’re joking, Arthur.  We’re cousins.”

 

He smirked.  “I’ll let you find the irony in that statement.”

 

“Oh, haha.  But, seriously, Arthur, you’re joking.  You’re just teasing me is all.  Very badly I might add, but still.  Agravaine the Coward is not secretly in love with me.”

 

“Coward, now?” he answered.  “That was supposed to be a secret.  No one was supposed to know about the day he hid beneath a corpse instead of facing the enemy in battle.  Gwaine urged everyone who knew not to tell a soul.”

 

“Oh, please,” Morgana said.  “Everyone knows about that.  I knew about that.  That’s why I asked him to dance with me in the first place.  What better way to make you jealous!  To think I’d rather dance with him than anyone, even you.”

 

“Two points,” Arthur said, holding up two fingers.  “One, you could never have danced with me in the hall with everyone watching.  And two, not for one second, did you have me believing you.  My sister, preferring that wannabe knight to me?  Not in a million years.  Not if he was the last man on this earth.”

 

Morgana laughed.  “You know that’s really mean.”

 

“You’re telling me?” he asked dumbfounded, laying a hand on his chest in emphasis.  “Me?  I’m not the one who asked him to dance just to spite the brother I secretly lust for.  God, the poor fool probably thought you genuine too.  He’s now all alone heartsick over you now that you’re here with me, not that he knows that, but that’s beside the point.  Or worse yet, he believes now you truly love him back.  Good-going, Morgana.”

 

Morgana slapped her brother, guffawing.  “You better not do anything, anything I tell you, to make him think I like him, or I’ll kill you!”

 

“Ow,” Arthur replied, rubbing his arm touchily, as he thought.  “You know,” he said, “as funny as that would be, it’s too late for my influence to matter, Morgana, since you already asked him to dance with you.  He more likely than not thinks that you do fancy him now, regardless of what I say or do, so don’t get mad at me.”

 

“Well, you could have warned me!” she exclaimed.

 

“When?” he asked incredulously.  “You approaching him like that was the last thing I expected you to do!”

 

“Well, then you didn’t have to go and start it by talking to that Sophia what’s-her-name!” she insisted.

 

“I think this brings us back to my point about not ignoring my guests,” he reflected.

 

She threw her hands up in the air.  “You’re impossible!  But, honest to God, what I am supposed to do now that he thinks I like him back?”

 

“That’s easy,” Arthur said, sitting up.  “Just ignore him.  He’ll get the hint, as long as he isn’t as smart as he is brave.”

 

Morgana giggled, then shoved her brother back against the bed.  “Stop making me laugh at the man’s expense.  The poor man is in love with me, while I, I,” she wheezed, unable to finish her thought.

 

But she did not have to.  Arthur, being her brother and knowing her as well as she knew herself, could finish it for her.  “While you’re fucking your brother.  It’s a strange world we live in, isn’t it?”

Chapter 7

CHAPTER SIX: Breakfast and Contrivances

Morgana woke with a start to shafts of daylight streaming through the closed curtains.  She rubbed her eyes, looked again at the unfamiliar room around her that was not her own, and then down at the bed she lied in, likewise not her own, only then remembering with another start as to why the growing light outside, so faint as to be just yet early dawn, filled her with such sudden dread—she must be away, back to her own chamber before Gwen arrived there for her day’s work, thinking her still fast asleep and needing to be woken for the breakfast they were to share with the visiting kings and lords, their knights and ladies, before each troop set off for their return trip home later that afternoon.

 

She glanced to her side, spying her brother still locked in the thralls of sleep, lying on his chest, naked beneath the crimson covers, murmuring peaceably.  She had no wish to wake him but held even less desire to leave him without saying good-bye.  It was a foolish thought, she realized.  He was her brother; she would see him later at breakfast surely, and it was not as if he was one of the traveling knights bid home after the tournament and its festivities were done; his home was in Camelot with her, but even as she knew all these things to be true, she also realized that the night they had spent together was far too precious to go unremarked now that the new day had dawned, separating them once more.  Once again, he would be the Prince of Camelot destined to one day sit the throne, while she remained the High King’s daughter, forgotten and tucked away in the confines of her chamber room where she could commit no sin and conduct no trouble.  Without the safe haven of the night, they would no longer be able to speak to each other except where the courtroom etiquette require they do so, and it would be as if the confession and consummation of their love had not been at all. 

 

Though she knew that with each passing second, the sun was rising higher, higher in the sky, calling the earth and its people to wake and stir from the thralls of slumber, Morgana had no wish to bid the night farewell just yet and bent to shake her brother awake with an urgent hand to his shoulder.

 

Arthur woke with a grunt.  He ran a hand over his face, blinking his eyes blearily.  “What…?” he muttered, then with self-awareness, “Morgana, what time is it?”

 

“It’s early morning, sleepyhead,” she said softly, as she caressed his shoulder.  “The bells have not yet rung, so I figure most of the castle is still asleep, but not for long.”  She paused.  “I must be away and soon.”

 

Arthur sat up and Morgana dropped her hand to the bedspread.  “No,” he said, coming to his senses after his stupor of sleep.  “Morgana…” he begged sheepishly, like a boy, “I don’t want you to go.”

 

“I know,” she said, kissing his cheek.  “But I must.  If Gwen goes to my room, finding me not asleep in my own bed, and with all our guests still within our walls, the castle will be quite astir with accusations and speculations abound come breakfast.  I have no wish to cause an argument Father must deescalate between himself and the visiting kings with their armed men situated in Camelot, let alone be forced to reveal where I really was last night and whom with.”

 

“You’re right,” he sighed regrettably, “and each second I keep you here with me, the more you risk being discovered later in the halls, and what sort of convincing excuse would you be able to give, if so discovered roaming about them, to explain away why you were up and about before even the sun?”

 

“Right,” Morgana agreed forcibly, as she willed herself out from the comfort of the covers and crossed the room, picking up her discarded dress off the floor and hastily slipping it on. 

 

Arthur watched her dress, marveling at her naked body’s curves—curves he had hazily glimpsed in the flickering candlelight of the night, that now seemed to him divinely defined in the dawn’s fractured light—until she clothed them once more.  As she hurried to tie the lacings, fingers frantically looping strings into knots, he stopped to ask her the urgent thought pressing on his mind, “When will we meet again?”

 

Morgana stopped her tying, looked up at him and smiled.  The way he had worded his question, it was as if they were two lovers from separate kingdoms pitted against one another in strife, never quite knowing when each would see the other again, or if at all.  The comparison pleased her, and she found it not all too dissimilar to their situation. 

 

“I don’t know,” she said quickly for lack of time.  “But at breakfast, let us both find the chance to slip away and discuss it then.”

 

“Alright,” he said, as Morgana bent to retrieve her slippers, sliding them one by one on each foot.  Once she had them each set in place along with the dress, her image of the dutiful, unerring sister in effect restored—this, Arthur observed with a note of private curiosity—as if their night’s lovemaking had been nothing but a dream within a dream, he said to her, urgently, “Now, go,” with the loving tenderness of one who has no wish to see his lover depart and yet must for her sake as much as his own.  “Before someone sees you.”

 

She nodded stiffly her assent, but when she turned to go, she stopped herself, then swiveled back to face him.  He was about to question what she was doing—his mouth hanging open agape—to insist that she do leave for her own well-being, when without thinking, she, winking at him, blew him a kiss in silent farewell, and then without so much as a word from her mouth, she raced from the room, throwing aside the curtain partition, as she ran for the door and the rest of the castle beyond its threshold. 

 

Arthur watched her go, amused, feeling the lingering trace of the kiss she blew him upon his cheek as palpably as if her lips had in effect touched him there, which thankfully they had.  For him, the breakfast could not arrive soon enough, as already, he found, knowing her absence only a short while, he missed her deeply.

 

---

 

Morgana was safely abed, eyes closed, her breath easy, when Gwen entered her room with a knock half an hour later.  Upon seeing her lady so seemingly peaceful in her sleep, a state that was uncharacteristic of her even with Gaius’s more potent tonics, Gwen had no reason to think, let alone suspect, that her lady had been hurriedly scampering down stairs and darting through halls, only slowly her pace to a leisurely walk, her head kept down and eyes lowered, when she passed an early bird servant about some important task or another, to reach her chambers unnoticed.  Nor did she have the reason to imagine her hastily stripping herself of last night’s dress only to rummage through her wardrobe frantically for her nightgown to no avail before realizing with a curse that it was not there but resting upon her bed, already laid out for her, as if it was still waiting for her like a patient lover to at last come to bed.

 

“Mi’lady, time to get up, Mi’lady,” Gwen spoke quietly as she neared the bed, surprised to see her lady’s eyes flutter open, recognizing her instantly.

 

“Gwen!” Morgana exclaimed, as she sat up, then added with a mild frown as she noticed the room to be bright with daylight, “You’re later than usual.  I sent you home early.  I did not mean for that kindness to be taken that you could also arrive late.”  She would not let on that she was in fact quite relieved at her maid’s late entrance this morning.  Of all mornings, she thought silently to herself, thanking God for this small mercy even after she had defied Him in her sin.

 

Gwen blushed.  “I’m sorry, Mi’lady.  The fault is mine.  I arrived at the castle early as per usual but thought since you were up later with the Prince last night, you would wish for more time to sleep this morning.”

 

Morgana’s heart skipped a beat, thrilling at the simple regard with which Gwen mentioned the time she had spent with her brother.  The little she does not know will not hurt her, she mused to herself with a smile. 

 

“Mi’lady?”

 

Morgana came back to the present, falling out of her reverie, focusing her eyes once more on her maid considering her puzzledly.  “Ah, yes.  That was thoughtful of you, Gwen.  I apologize for my quick judgement.  It seems I simply misunderstood.”

 

“Are you well, Mi’lady?” Gwen asked, her brows creased with worry.  It was not like Morgana to apologize, even when she was in the wrong.  As Gwen understood it, and she was not wrong in her discernment, it, along with the tournament watch, Morgana’s late night visit with her brother, the time off these things afforded her in turn, was a first in the last few years she had spent serving as the Princess’s maid.  It was not like her to show such strange, beguiling compassion to anyone, let alone her maid. 

 

“Why do you ask me that?” Morgana asked, unbeknownst to Gwen, her heart thumping all the while. 

 

“No reason,” Gwen said carefully.  I do not believe for one moment that this strange behavior is because of her brother as she tells me, she reflected to herself then.  She says she went to speak with him last night about some misunderstanding they had and yesterday she professed wanting to watch the tournament, when she loathes tournaments, in order to see him, but I cannot buy it.  At the feast, she had danced with Sir Agravaine, and Sir Agravaine had participated in the tournament, although he lost in the first match.  Could it be that it was him she wanted to see at the tournament and then once again last night?  They make an odd pair, him the less than stellar knight and her the kingdom’s Princess, and yet what other explanation can there be?  Then a thought struck her with cold clarity.  When I came to wake her this morning, she appeared much too calm to have been asleep; usually when I wake her, she is flailing under the tow of her dreams.  Which asks the question: did she even sleep here, if at all, last night?

 

“I just worry about you is all,” she amended, adding as a cover to her suspicions, “Have you been sleeping alright?  I know you sometimes receive tonics from the Court Physician…”

 

“Oh, is that all?” Morgana said.  “Come, Gwen.  I can see what this is about.  You feel guilty about leaving me to undress myself last night and now you’re worried I forgot to take—” as she was about to say the tonic that helps me sleep, she remembered with a start, the tonic!  She had not brought it with her when she had gone to her brother and in her haste to return to her bed this morning, forgot to rid herself of it as well.  If she turned her head, though she dared not look, she knew she would find it still sitting on her nightstand, waiting to be taken like her nightgown had been waiting for her to wear.  Sweat beaded at her brow. 

 

Gwen’s eyes fell to the nightstand, where the undrunk tonic inevitably sat.  “But it seems you did not take it last night, after all, Mi’lady,” she said lightly, even as she filed away the evidence in her mind.  “It seems you do need me with you at all times.”

 

Morgana forced a laugh.  “You’re quite right, Gwen.  It seems I, too, am forgetful.”  She smoothed her hair back, surreptitiously wiping away the sweat that cooled her flushed skin.  Her heart raced, and she could not help but wonder if there was some other implication in her maid’s otherwise benign statement.  But surely, in her nervousness, she had merely imagined it?  She had only forgotten to imbibe a tonic after all, and given how she had told Gwen she would be returning late to her room anyway, surely it was believable that at the late hour she did return it had merely slipped her mind to take it?  At least, that was what she reassured herself Gwen would believe. 

 

“Well, we must be grateful that you slept so well without it,” Gwen said, smiling.

 

“Yes,” Morgana answered, a curiosity striking her.  In fact, now that she thought about it, she had slept well the last night she spent in her brother’s bed with him lying beside her.  Why, it was the first night since she was a girl, probably since the days when Mother was alive, that she had slept so well that she in effect slept the night through bereft of dreams of any sort.  How odd, she mused to herself silently, for I did not even take Gaius’s tonic.  She could not fathom how this could be, for the only thing that was different about last night as opposed to the others when she had yet to be treated for her dreams with such medication, was that she spent it with Arthur, curled up beside him in his bed…  She wanted to think longer on the happenstance, to point out the reason for the peculiarity, the sole deviation from the nightmarish terror that usually set upon her in sleep, but Gwen was watching her oddly as she thought, and so to her maid she said simply all that she could say on the matter, despite the irony, “Yes, I am grateful.  Thanks be to God.”

 

“Indeed,” Gwen agreed solemnly, herself seeming lost in thought, only to then clap her hands together as a new thought struck her with an earnestness that startled Morgana.  “But we don’t have a moment more to waste,” she added, suddenly changing the subject.  “Surely, you must remember the breakfast you are to attend with the visiting kings and their knights later this morning?  We must make you ready for it!” 

 

Yes, breakfast, Morgana thought, and then of her plans to speak with Arthur.  Arthur.  She smiled delightedly as her thoughts lingered on his name. 

 

She slipped out of bed, looking up to find Gwen already searching through her wardrobe. 

 

“But what are we going to have you wear?” her maid mused as her hands landed lightly on a comely blue gown. 

 

“That one’s nice,” Morgana said, standing behind her.  Gwen jumped.

 

“It is, isn’t it?” she recovered, watching her lady uncertainly.  Just yesterday Morgana had snapped at her for selecting the wrong gown, but now she was politely agreeing with her choice?  She wanted to leave the uncomfortable contrast as just part of the mystery of Morgana’s many moods, but given what she thought she knew now, she was not so sure.

 

Gwen slid the dress off the hanger.  “Let’s make a spectacle out of you then.”

 

---

 

Arthur strode into the Great Hall later than he intended that morning for he could not decide upon which outfit to wear to the occasion in order to best impress his sister after the stunt she pulled last night with that exquisite red dress she wore (in the end, after much prevaricating, which Merlin received the brunt of, as he had to make several trips back and forth from the Prince’s wardrobe after each exasperated “no, this simply won’t do” he gave, he decided upon, thinking himself rather original, his gold studded red coat and brown pair of breeks), rubbing his eyes blearily for he was still somewhat sleepy from the late night he had spent with his sister and by his reckoning it was much too early in the day for any sort of celebration involving the Court let alone his father’s guests from all across the kingdom. 

 

When he entered the grand room, the lords and ladies of the Court were already mingling, astir with the conversations they were continuing eagerly from last night’s feast.  The din quieted to a hum of frantic whispers then as one by one the noblemen and their ladies soon took note of him, their Prince, walking so leisurely amongst them.  Arthur gave a slight nod to each man as he acknowledged him, and a subtle smile to each lady (feeling as fine as he did in his attire) when each nobleman inevitably looked away.  The women smiled coyly at him in return to Arthur’s dry amusement.  He had just given such a smile to the Lady Elaine, who, unlike the others of her sex, had merely dipped her head out of respectful acknowledgement to him—it was rumored she had only eyes for Arthur’s close friend Lance and saved her smiles for him alone—when Arthur caught the stern look of his father watching him out of the corner of his eye, which deflated any sense he previously had of his own invulnerability that day. 

 

Arthur grimaced, understanding what his father had communicated to him with his gaze alone.  Arthur, how dare you disgrace me and this family with your late arrival when you knew all our allies, the kings of Britain, would be here to meet with us, watching you as much as myself for indication of the sort of future I, and then one day you, will bring to Britain.  From across the room, where Uther stood conversing with Britain’s kings beside the high table, Arthur could feel his father’s glare leveling his shoulders with the burden of the High Kingship that would one day be his to bear alone. 

 

Was it not enough that I won the tournament? he thought derisively.  But he knew his father better than to ask him that directly to his face, assuming he could delve up the courage to do so in the first place.  High King Uther Pendragon was a man discontented in all aspects of his life, most notably where his children like his subjects were concerned, and he treated them as such, always expecting them to perform better, to serve better, to be better, though better was never better enough.  Maybe once, he was a man contented in his rule, having ousted magic, and his family, having secured his heir, but that complacent pleasure, if it had ever truly lied within him at all, dried up within him like a small brook in the summer heat, the moment his wife caught a grave illness and died an untimely death leaving him widowed and scarred with wounds that ran deeper, left him courser, than any he had suffered in the countless charges he once championed on the fields of battle. 

 

Arthur shrugged his shoulders as if to shrug off the weight of how he had this morning once again failed his insatiable father, his mind straying, thinking back with a surge of inward pleasure on just how his father would blanch and balk if he had only known just how he had spent last night, entwined in his sister’s arms, his sole act of defiance to the one man who would offer him the world he never wanted.  

 

The man who had brutally fashioned him into a man of his own image. 

 

For Arthur knew as well as if it had been seared onto his skull that he was no better a man than his father, despite the countless, innumerable ways he tried to prove himself otherwise.  He had had his way with Morgana after all, had convinced her against her better judgement to lie with him, and in doing so wrecked what little future she did have for a life outside Camelot.  While his father may not have lied with his own sister if he were to have one, it was in his father to take whichever woman so pleased him.  And so, as it would happen, was the case with his son.  Uther had personally seen to that.

 

Pale now with his own shame, Arthur was about to go to his father and plead him to forgive his tardiness, an act that would humble himself before the realm’s lesser kings, when a girl stepped in front of him, halting him in his path. 

 

“Go,” he said, hardly recognizing her.  “I must speak with the High King, my father.”

 

“But, my Lord!” the girl exclaimed, reaching for his hands, even as Arthur pulled away from her, shaken at her sudden advance.  “Last night, after we danced, you asked me to accompany you at the morrow’s breakfast.  It is the morrow.”

 

Recognition dawned in Arthur’s eyes.  Sophia Tir-Mor, he mused, then incomprehensibly, why, that promise I made her—did I make that? What was I thinking?—last evening feels a lifetime ago, and I, a different man now than then. 

 

“Sophia,” he said gently then, not wishing to sadden her.  “I will arrange for you to sit beside me.  I give you my word, but now I must go to the High King, whom we all, myself included, must answer to.”  He did not add aloud, only silently, the perhaps, me most of all. 

 

Sophia curtsied.  “Of course, my Lord.  Please accept my apologies for keeping you from him.”

 

Arthur was about to tell her to get up, to stop making a scene, that it was no trouble, really, when he glimpsed above her head the impassive look of none other than his sister watching him with this inane girl from the hall’s entrance.  He met her gaze, questioned what she was saying to him with her eyes.

 

But the moment was too short.  Sophia rose once more, obscuring his view of Morgana in a silk gown cerulean as the waters of Avalon itself. 

 

Arthur grunted, coming back to himself, leaving the airy realm of memory to the past.  “If you will excuse me,” he said to the young girl before him, whom he found ignorant of her own naivety, thinking that she could ever appeal to him when his sister stood across the way, before turning to the dais where the high table, the kings, and his father stood. 

 

“Arthur, my son,” Uther called to him as he approached.  “You will have met King Rodor of Nemeth, I imagine?”

 

Arthur frowned at his father—it would seem he would hear the extent of his father’s displeasure at his tardiness later in private once they were alone, their guests and their many ears and eyes far from the walls of Camelot; Uther was always preoccupied with image where his family and kingdom were concerned and would much rather pretend that he intended for Arthur to present himself late to the convention (for the breakfast was a meeting of allies as much as a morning celebration for the Court) than make public the shortcomings of his son before Britain’s leaders—then he turned to the aging man at his side, assessing him.  “You know,” Arthur said, raising his hand to his chin in thought, “yes.  But it was many years ago now.  You came, I believe, to fight in a tournament like the one we held yesterday, am I not mistaken?”

 

Rodor smiled at the future High King, then gestured towards his current liege.  “It would seem, Uther, your son does have quite the memory.  Yes,” he said, turning back towards Arthur, “I visited Camelot perhaps more than ten years ago now to participate in such a tournament.”  He studied Arthur a moment, appraising him.  “But you must have been no more than a boy then, a far cry from the deft man I saw on the field yesterday, besting every opponent who faced him.  Already at your age you have proved more skilled and courageous than I when I last attended a tournament as a grown man, and dare I say performed twice as well as me.  Uther, you must be proud of him.  He has the makings of a fine king in him.”

 

Arthur lowered his eyes as he felt his father’s gaze considering him in light of Rodor’s generous assessment. 

 

“Yes,” Uther agreed, and Arthur’s head shot up to look at his father in surprised anticipation of what praise he might deliver next on his behalf.  “One day,” his father amended with a knowing look at his son—Arthur swallowed his disappointment.  “He may be gifted with a sword, but he has much to learn yet about governing a kingdom.”

 

“You must put him to the test,” Rodor suggested amiably.  “Let him sit on your councils, hear his own conclusions before putting forth your own, and when war comes, as it just may if there’s any truth to the rumors of the Saxons banding together in the east, let him lead your men into battle.  He is old enough surely.  Were you not his age when you began fighting under High King Ambrosius’s banner?”

 

Arthur could see his father the High King mulling over the lesser king’s advice, turning it over in his mind like wine in a glass, before he at last said musingly, “Yes, I was of his age then.”

 

Rodor chuckled.  “You see, Arthur?  You have the blood of a military commander in your veins in addition to the royal bloodline.  In time, we will all be witnesses to your greatness on the battlefield as much as we were yesterday in the stadium.”

 

Arthur’s eyes lingered on the Nemeth king.  “I thank you, Rodor,” he said then, “for your kind words.  I only hope that I may one day live up to them.”

 

“I am sure you will,” Rodor replied, watching Uther with a steady eye.  “There’s no telling what I would give to have a man of your promise for a son.”

 

“But surely you must have worthy sons of your own to make you proud?” Arthur said to reassure the old king, frowning.

 

Before Rodor could open his mouth to answer, Uther turned to his son and said, “Arthur, you may leave us.  Go enjoy the feast.”

 

Arthur staggered backward, shaking his head at his father incomprehensibly.  Why had his father called him over to the high table, made sure to reacquaint him with Rodor, only to send him away while they were still conversing?  Could it be on the account of his question to Rodor about his sons?  Had he made some error on his part, assuming the king had a blood heir when he did not?  Or was this yet another of his father’s games?  Was his father the sort of man to call his son forward to show him off before the petty kings only to shoo him away in self-conscious shame just to prove how he alone commanded him still, that it was up to his sole jurisdiction whether or not he would be allowed to hear praise of his own deeds?  Yes, Arthur reckoned his father was such a man, and to save himself the grief of trying to ascertain his motives further, he simply stepped down from the dais to the lower floor where the rest of the Court was stimulating with conversation.

 

At least now I will have the chance to speak with Morgana, he thought to himself, as he scanned the room for his sister.  He found her at last seated at one of the lower tables full with guests and members of the Court alike, with none other than Lady Elaine of Astolat and—No, it cannot be, he thought—dared he say it, Lady Sophia Tir-Mor sitting beside her.  Damn my eyes if that’s not her.  He knew that flaxen hair that glittered like bronze in the candlelight.  What is she thinking, sitting with her?

 

As if she sensed his approach, Morgana suddenly turned to face Arthur, and seeing him walking up to her with a less than thrilled look, gave him a winning smile.  “Oh, Elaine, Sophia, it looks like we ladies have a guest to entertain,” she said cheerily to the other women before shifting to face him, a coy slyness glittering in her eyes.  “Welcome, dear brother, have a seat, if you please.  I’m sure we can make room.”

 

“My Lord!” Sophia said all of sudden, as she spun around to see the Prince standing before her, realization of just who she was sitting amongst dawning in her eyes.  She hopped out of her chair in an instant.  “Please, my Lord, you may take my seat!”

 

Arthur smiled dangerously at his sister, a smile that said I will kill you if you make this any worse for me, so help me God, before turning to address Miss Besotted standing fervently at his side.  “Please sit, Sophia,” he said with a sigh, “I will not take a lady’s seat.  And besides,” he added with a sharp look at Morgana, “I was merely coming over to say my ‘good morning’s.’”

 

“But—” Sophia stammered, having seated herself once more. 

 

“Never knew you to be so chivalrous, brother,” Morgana said, plucking a grape from the fruit bowl in front of her into her mouth.  As she chewed it, she lifted her finger, as if to indicate she had more to say. 

 

“Yes, my sister?” Arthur asked, not bothering to mask the mockery in his voice.

 

Swallowing the grape, Morgana wiped her mouth with her napkin and tossed it down on her plate.  “If you will excuse us, ladies, I believe there is something my brother and I have to discuss.”  And with that, she stood up from the table, and said with a proffered hand, “Shall we, then?”

 

Arthur rolled his eyes at her theatricality but still followed her lead out into the room beyond. 

 

Sophia gaped at the two Pendragon siblings as they left the table, appearing rather miffed as she turned back to face Elaine across from her.  “He promised me breakfast!” she said indignantly.

 

“I warned you about him, didn’t I?” Elaine said, hiding her amusement.  “He never stays with one lady, and why should he?  He’s the Prince of Camelot.  The future High King.  He will be breaking hearts until the day he’s married.  Just don’t get your hopes up that it will be you he weds.”

 

“You’re very cruel,” Sophia sniped.  “I bet he scorned you to make you so cruel.”

 

Elaine rose a hand to her mouth to the hide the smile growing on her lips.  “You ladies are all the same, dreaming of Prince Arthur, while I,” and here her smile widened beyond what her hand could contain, “I am in love with the noblest of men, the most chivalrous of them all.”

 

---

 

Outside the Great Hall seemed so still, so silent in comparison to the clamor of the celebration within.  Morgana welcomed the quiet after the din.  She found herself almost lost in the stillness, a serene stillness as opposed to the loud silence of her chamber room, where she fretted day after day, night after night about sins considered but left undone, unfinished until last night, the wee hours of this morning.  It was so still, only echoes of conversation spilled through the closed great oak doors, no words she could make out, only muted sound.  Morgana closed her eyes and almost thought herself alone—

 

But she was not alone.  Arthur, her brother, dressed in his fine attire, was with her, as well as the two posted guards standing beside the Great Hall’s closed doors. 

 

She spoke quietly for their sake, so they would not hear the crime she spoke of and wonder with their small minds whether to go before her father, the High King, and warn him of her treason.  Was it treason, she wondered wistfully then, to have lain with my brother as I have?  Was it a crime not only to God but to the High Kingship as well?  She shook the thought away, praying, as if God would still listen to her after what she had done, that she may never learn the answer to that question.  “Arthur,” she whispered, studying his face with her eyes, as the heavy thoughts receded into the back of her mind where they always lingered just below the surface of her consciousness. 

 

“What were you thinking, Morgana?” he whispered back, though urgently.  “Inviting Sophia to sit next to you?  What has gotten into you?  First Agravaine, now this?”

 

Morgana smiled deprecatingly.  She did not add what her brother had so obviously forgotten, she thought it purposeful: the time she had spent with him last night, which was more out of character for her than either of the actions he had named—what had gotten into her indeed?  “I wanted to know what attracted you to her,” she said simply.  “I was curious.”  Perhaps, I can learn from her and all the others like her, she added silently, how best to please you.

 

“I am not attracted to her,” he professed, though he flushed with embarrassment.

 

“Ah!” she pointed at his face.  “You are blushing, Arthur Pendragon!  So, you do fancy her!”

 

“You should be thankful that you’re my sister or else you would be dead right now,” he warned her.

 

She laughed and was about to reach for his arm, before she stopped herself.  “I am sorry,” she said then, not in response to his teasing threat, but in what she had been about to do.  She could not touch him here.

 

“It’s alright,” he said quietly, shifting his eyes surreptitiously to look at the guards posted at the door.  “They aren’t watching us.” 

 

Morgana swallowed, then nodded her relief.  “When shall I meet you next?” she whispered, her near faux pas causing her to return to the reason for their meeting outside the Great Hall’s doors, before someone else thought to open those doors for a little quiet, a little air, and find them standing there together whispering in secret like lovers in a tryst.  Not that the onlooker would have ever suspected them to be such to one another. 

 

“Tonight.  An hour after dark,” he whispered back, sounding to her ears rather eager, which she thought was a testament to how well the last night had gone between them and was perhaps a praise of her own performance; she found she could not help but smile slightly then at that hidden compliment.  “In my chambers.”

 

That was all the information she needed—there would be less of a guard tonight with the visiting parties returning to their homes this afternoon, easy enough for her to evade—so she turned to walk back to the guards standing attention before the hall doors.  Arthur caught her sleeve before she could move more than a foot, and she swiveled back towards him, brows furrowed with question.

 

“I’ll be waiting, Morgana,” he said. 

 

She nodded, pulling her arm out of his grasp.  He had touched her in view of the guards, while she had stopped herself midway from reaching out to him.  She peeked over her shoulder to check the guards just to make sure they had not seen what Arthur had done, and she was surprised to find that they continued to look on straight past them into the halls and rooms beyond for any threat of danger that may be coming their way.  They were blind, she realized, to the intimacy of her brother’s gesture, or, if they had noticed it, they had simply rationalized it as a brother’s affection for his flesh and blood sister.  See? she thought to herself.  No one could ever suspect this, the truth, even if it stared them in the face!  But if that was the case that still failed to answer why she still felt so worried, so set on edge at every movement of another and of her own, knowing that she could see them while she too was seen.    

 

Yet, even despite her fears, or perhaps in spite of them, she had no thought to disappoint him.

 

“I’ll be there,” she whispered back, then stepped up before the guards, entreating them to let her reenter the Great Hall, her perfect-poised princess guise slipped on once more. 

 

As Arthur watched her step through the doorway, indigo skirts rippling with her movement, even he could not believe she was the same woman who had occupied his bed the night before. 

Chapter 8

CHAPTER SEVEN: Dinner and Setbacks

That evening at dinner, the first dinner Morgana shared in company with her brother after they had so surreptitiously consummated their love for one another, was uncomfortable to say the least, as is to be expected when one has no choice but to sup across from the brother she just slept with when her father is also present at the table.  Still, given the situation, ripe as it was for the exchange of furtive looks and twofaced statements, Morgana remained cool that evening, keeping her composure tight about herself as the corset pressing into her stomach, making it difficult for her to eat let alone breathe, the latter which was proving to be quite a feat in itself already, as Arthur was wearing his red coat, the one studded with gold.  And, as Morgana noted, Arthur always looked brilliant in red.

 

For a time, the Pendragons dined in silence, after amiable discussion of yesterday’s tournament and feast, the morning’s breakfast and their guests’ departure met its inevitable end.  (Most of the guests who had left Camelot for their respective homelands that afternoon had done so with a most joyous, uplifting humor, given their enjoyment of the week they had spent in the country’s capital under the High King’s hospitality. All except the Lady Sophia that was, who was rather vexed that she never did have her promised breakfast with the Prince, given how his attention was lured elsewhere that morning and toward his sister no less, a travesty which she lamented about to her father Aulfric during their several days’ ride home to Tir-Mor on the western coast, all the while blissfully ignorant of the real reasons for the slight toward her attractive persona. After just the first day of their travels, Aulfric begged her to stop her crying but to no avail.) All that could be heard in the hall was the clanking sounds of forks and knives scraping plates as they feasted on roasted boar with garlic and onion, grilled artichoke, sweet chestnuts, and warm bread, with a cup of wine each to swallow it all down.  In between bites, when their father was not looking, Morgana would watch Arthur as he ate, as if daring him with her eyes to look at her.  He never did.   

 

Morgana stabbed a chestnut with her fork and brought it to her lips, chewing it so carefully so as not to make a sound.  “Pardon me,” she said, as she coughed on the bits of chestnut too finely chewed that inevitably stuck in her throat.  Arthur looked up from his plate, watched his sister covering her mouth with her napkin as she recovered herself with concern.  Morgana looked away. 

 

“How old are you now, Arthur?” Uther asked suddenly, causing both Arthur and Morgana to start upright in their seats.

 

“I’m nineteen, two months shy of twenty,” he answered dutifully, though unsure as to why his father questioned him now on this matter of all times.  He wondered if it had something to do with what Rodor had said earlier that morning about allowing him more freedom to oversee the affairs of the people, to lead men into battle, while allotting him the responsibility that went hand in hand with that freedom.

 

“Ah, so I figured correctly,” Uther mused, and then added, mostly to himself, “Well, then it is time enough to consider it.”

 

Arthur frowned.  “Consider what, Father?”

 

Uther turned toward his son, the beacon of his pride.  “The name of the woman you will marry.”

 

Morgana dropped her fork.  “Marry?” she asked, stupefied.

 

Uther looked at Morgana.  “Yes,” he reaffirmed.  “Why are you so surprised, Morgana?  Don’t you think it’s time for your brother to have a wife?”

 

Morgana took a sip of her wine before answering her father.  “Forgive me, Father,” she said, clearing her throat.  “It just comes as a surprise.  But I do,” she added, forcing herself to say the words, even as her breath caught in her throat worse than when she had been watching Arthur eat, “think it proper time for Arthur to have a woman to love.”  She gave Arthur an apologetic look, as Uther turned his eyes back to him.

 

“What do you say, my son?”

 

“I—” he stuttered, trying to recollect himself.  “I am most grateful, Father.  Do you,” he cleared his throat, “Do you have a match in mind?”

 

Uther chuckled.  “I do,” he said casually enough as if they were talking over some simple matter like what to have for dinner.  “A couple, actually.  There is the daughter of Lord Godwyn from Gawant for one, he and I being old friends, it seemed a suitable match, but then King Rodor, whom you spoke with at breakfast this morning, broached me, knowing that I have been inquiring lately for potential arrangements for you, with a possible match between you and his daughter.”

 

Morgana frowned.  Rodor?  Why was that name so familiar to her?  Perhaps, her father mentioned the king before or perhaps she had merely overheard the name in fleeting conversation over the last couple days, since the king had apparently stayed in the castle for the tournament.  She had had more pressing matters on her mind then—namely, what to do about her sinful feelings for her brother—to give the man’s name much thought even if she had heard it mentioned once or twice. 

 

“I see,” Arthur said, straightening in his seat.  “So that is what Rodor meant about wishing to have a man of my promise for a son.”

 

Morgana shot him a wary look, which he avoided. 

 

Uther hesitated, closed his hand into a fist.  “Yes,” he admitted after the slight pause—so short, and yet just passing long enough that Morgana thought it rather intentional on his part, though she knew not why nor its purpose—as he relaxed his hand once more.

 

“Have you sent word to Lord Godwyn?” Arthur asked.

 

“I have not yet,” Uther answered.  “I was in the process of doing so when Rodor made his proposition.  Now I think I will take up his offer.  Gawant and Camelot have been allies as long as Godwyn and I have been friends, and I do not foresee that alliance breaking, so Nemeth may prove the greater asset, especially if we are to believe these rumors of the Saxons stirring once again in the southeast.  Through such a marriage we may be able to combine our forces against them, driving those barbarians off British shores once and for all, if the time for such force comes and proves necessary.”

 

Arthur cleared his throat, wiped his sweaty palms on his pants below the table discreetly, so as not to alert his father to how this sudden news of his future marriage unnerved him.  Sweat dappled at the nape of his neck.  “It would seem you have given this much thought, Father.  Is it to be King Rodor’s daughter then, the woman I shall marry?”

 

Uther took a sip of his wine.  “Yes, I believe so.  Nothing is certain of course as of the moment, as Rodor and I only discussed the matter this morning, but I think so, yes.  Tomorrow I will deliberate with the Council to hear what they will have to say on the matter and if they see the sense of the arrangement, as I believe they will, I will send word to Rodor of my acceptance of his offer and start making arrangements for the wedding from there.  Of course, we will hold it here at the castle.”

 

Morgana spoke up.  “Father, with all due respect, is this not too soon?  Rodor just spoke with you today about the matter after all, a matter that benefits both his daughter and himself.  Could there be an alternative motive to this proposal?”

 

Uther chuckled.  “Morgana.  I believe I know the man’s motives better than anyone, surely better than you.  He simply wishes to climb the ladder, as do all men who hold a little power; they hunger for more.  He also wants to secure a future for his daughter.  And it does not matter so much what he gains from this arrangement than what we do.  We will have the strength of Nemeth at our beck and call.  Besides, did you not agree that it was time enough for Arthur to have a wife?”

 

Morgana set her fork down on the table, eyes intent on the gleam of the silver.  “No,” she said, her voice thick with strain, “I said it was time for Arthur to have a woman to love.”

 

Arthur swallowed uncomfortably in the silence that followed.  He could feel the tension in the room thicken.  Morgana always had a way of pressing their father into one of his silences, and silence, he duly noted, always indicated that he was far angrier than if he had been shouting.  He reached for his own wineglass, thoughts racing for a way to dispel the agitation between his father and sister.  It was a skill he had learned far quicker than any trick with a blade.  “If the match pleases you, Father, it should be fine with me,” he said despite himself, once again playing the mediator between them.  He gripped the glass so tightly, he feared he would shatter it.  Sweat dappled now at his temples.

 

Morgana looked over to Arthur, concerned, her defiance deflating in an instant.  It was just like Father to surprise them both with this sort of news, without confiding in them first.  Or, rather, he did confide in them.  This was just simply how he did it, by dropping his best made plans over them at dinner, where they could do naught but nod along with his every word, else risk appearing as inconsiderate and ungrateful thoughtless children, who, no doubt, could not make reasonable decisions of their own accord, as her father just communicated to her.  

 

“Good, good,” Uther said, relaxing into his meal once more now that he had heard the agreement he desired from his son, his qualm with Morgana already left to the past, but not forgotten.  “It will be done then.”  He snapped his fingers at the servant presiding over their table, the silent listener to their conversation, beckoning him closer.  “Now will you serve me another slice of boar?”

 

---

 

Arthur may have agreed with Father’s proposal to his face in the dining hall, Morgana noted when she snuck into her brother’s chambers later that night, but in private he made his displeasure well known to her.

 

“I cannot believe Father!” Arthur shouted so loudly for a moment Morgana feared that potential servants passing through the halls outside could hear him through the walls, but of course that was a silly thought, she chastised herself, as it was well past dark and all the servants would be safely abed at the current hour; she had nothing to fear, nothing except her father’s plans for her brother.  “Who does he think he is arranging for me to marry this Nemeth girl or whomever he deems worthy of my title?”

 

“More like who comes with the wealthiest dowry,” Morgana muttered, “but I get your point.”

 

Arthur shook his head, still fuming as he paced about his room.  Morgana sat on his bed, blinking at him as he strode back and forth in front of her like some crazed man on the brink of revelation. 

 

“Still,” he said, speaking mostly to himself, “there should be some aspect of love in the arrangement, should there not?  I mean he wants me to marry this girl and expects me to be excited about it, except I haven’t even met her!”

 

“Don’t worry,” Morgana sniped, thinking broodingly of her brother’s experience where women were concerned, “I’m sure you’ll be plenty excited about it when it happens.”

 

Arthur stopped his pacing, frowning at her.  “Are you even listening to me, Morgana?”

 

Morgana sat up abruptly.  “Oh, yes, my brother!  I am hearing you!”

 

He looked at her a moment and then continued his walking back and forth.  He ran a hand through his hair.  “Still, I think I should be able to meet her first, so I can have some say in the matter myself.  And on that thought, why not invite all the eligible women across Britain to Camelot so that if I must marry one of them, I will be at least satisfied that the decision was mine!”

 

“Yes, why not,” Morgana said, rolling her eyes.  “I know why.  Catfight!”

 

Arthur turned toward her.  “Morgana, you really aren’t helping.”

 

Morgana rose from the bed, took Arthur’s hands in her hers, and wheeled him over to sit down on the bed beside her.  “Look,” she said, exasperated, “Father will marry you to whomever he finds most suited and that’s this princess daughter of Rodor’s.  I tried to help you at dinner, I did, but you went and agreed with Father even after my protest!”

 

Arthur grimaced.  “And what good did your little protest do?” he said.  “You almost pushed Father over the boiling point is what you did.  I had no choice but to agree with him.  You know how he hates anyone defying him, but especially you.  If I hadn’t intervened when I did, who knows what he would have done?  Thrown you in the stocks?  Force you to sleep in the dungeons for a night?  Once you made him so furious, he hurled the dinnerware off the table and forced you to clean up the shattered fragments.”

 

Morgana swallowed, recalling the unpleasant memory as if it had not occurred years ago when she was just a girl, and Arthur younger still, but a mere few hours past.  Her fingers trembled, and she clasped them together so as to contain their trembling.  “I’m not some fragile princess you’re sworn to protect,” she said quietly.  “I’m your sister.  If there’s anyone who can handle Father, it’s me.”  But when she looked down at her clasped hands, she did not see the smooth, flawless skin, but the blood oozing cuts that had covered them when she had knelt on the dining hall floor all those years ago to gather up the split shards and pieces.

 

Arthur watched her carefully.  “I know,” he said.  He had no wish to wound his sister’s pride.  “I just worried for you and acted, hardly without thinking of the consequences at all.”

 

She looked up at him, her inward look replaced with a sympathetic one.  “You don’t have to do that,” she reassured him, reasserting her earlier statement.  “I’m not the one at Father’s mercy right now, you are.”

 

He laughed despite himself.  “And you say that, hoping it will somehow make me feel better about the situation?”  He raised an eyebrow at her quizzically.

 

“No,” Morgana sighed, “so you will stop worrying yourself about me.  And your marriage,” she added, “for that matter.”

 

“You mean to say you really don’t care that Father just dumped on me the fact that I’m going to be getting married to a girl I don’t even know whether I like it or not just so he can forge an alliance with another kingdom for generations to come!”

 

Morgana bit her lip.  “Well, I will admit I am a bit miffed at it all.”

 

Arthur looked at her as if she were insane.  “A bit?”

 

“Yes,” she said, “this had to come right when we were just starting to get reacquainted.”  She pouted at him.  “I’m sad, can’t you tell?”

 

“You’re unbelievable.”

 

“No, I’m being reasonable.  Look, Arthur, there’s nothing to worry about.  We both knew Father was going to arrange for some girl to marry you someday, God have mercy on whomever that girl may be,” she added, crossing herself.  “It was all a matter of time, really.”

 

“A matter of time?”

 

“Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t me Father decided to marry off to some lord or another, given how I’m older than you.  But hell, Father has never remembered me anyway, which comes as a blessing now for the first time in my life.  Can you imagine if it was me, he wanted married?  Then I would be carted off to some faraway kingdom and I would never see you again!  Isn’t it better this way, since the girl will have to come to you, to us?”

 

Arthur raised his eyebrows and looked at her.  “So, you don’t find my imminent marriage to Rodor’s daughter not even a problem in the slightest?”

 

“No,” she said simply, having already thought the matter over.  Yes, when Father first mentioned the idea at dinner, she had been shocked, then dismayed, but now she saw no reason for either emotion.  Arthur had proposed first to her, and she believed nothing, surely not this girl from Nemeth, could negate that holy oath.  “We love each other, Arthur.  What’s to stop us from continuing to love each other?” she added with a coy smile, batting her eyelids coquettishly.  “Surely not some girl from a faraway kingdom.  And besides, you can’t expect me to be that upset about having to share you.  I knew this would happen someday.  You’re to be the future High King.  There was always going to be the need for you to have a future queen at you side.”  She pushed his shoulder playfully when he did not speak, only gawked at her.  “Come now, what’s a little adultery compared to our sin?”   

 

“Right,” Arthur swallowed, his face still stark white.  “I still don’t like the idea of this whole marriage thing.”

 

“Well, me neither,” Morgana put in, “if you’re asking me to be perfectly honest.  But it’s not like we can change the circumstances, so we might as well make the best of them.  Anyway, the way I see it, I have nothing to fear.  It’s not like you’re going to fall madly in love with her.  And I don’t see why you can’t keep making love to me while married to her.”

 

Arthur eyed her skeptically.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said, suddenly self-conscious. 

 

“Really?  You wouldn’t be the least bit upset?” Arthur asked.  “You tend to be a very jealous woman, Morgana.”

 

“Hmph.”  She crossed her arms; her winning smile turned upside down.  “If you say so.”

 

Arthur smirked.  “Well, I did see you at the feast last night, and you did not appear none too happy at the sight of me with what’s-her-name?  Oh, right, the Lady Sophia was it?”

 

“You’re full of yourself,” Morgana said simply, tossing a pillow at Arthur’s face.

 

Arthur caught it before it hit him.  “That may well be, my Lady, but don’t tell me you didn’t appear as a woman quite peeved then, so peeved I might add that she decided that she had no other choice but to dance with that oaf, Agravaine.  To think such a pick of a dance partner could make me envious.”

 

“But it did,” she said, making a grab for the pillow, but Arthur held it high out of her reach.  “I could see the fury in your eyes, Arthur, last night.  To see me, the woman you cannot live without, in the arms of a man you think quite lowly of.”

 

Arthur threw the pillow aside, reached an arm about Morgana’s waist and pulled her in close to him.  He kissed her forehead fondly.  “That I can agree upon,” he said softly against her hair.  “I cannot live without you, Morgana.”  His eyes softened and he tilted her chin up to look her in the eyes.  “Nor with you, it would seem.”

 

“Arthur,” Morgana said in a shallow breath.  “It won’t be for a while yet.  Father has yet to send word to Rodor, let alone hear back from him.  For all we know, something may happen, and nothing will come out of it at all.”

 

“I know,” he said.  “It’s what I’m praying for.” 

 

As if God would heed my prayers, after what we’ve done, he thought snidely to himself, not daring to voice this one concern of his aloud to his sister. 

Chapter 9

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Vase

The sun had barely peeked over the horizon and Merlin, quite regrettably (he would tell you), found himself already shaken awake by Gaius and sent off by him to the completion of his daily tasks with little more than a simple breakfast of porridge to fill his stomach.  The sun had hardly risen and already Merlin was up and about, heading down to the stables to muck out the stalls, as he did every lackluster morning via the Prince’s orders before heading to his sire’s rooms to wake him in turn.  One of these days he was going to ask him for a day off, he determined then, as he trudged half-asleep to the stables.  One of these days, he was going to get the chance to sleep in. 

 

But not today, he sighed with a groan as he peered into the stables, observing that they were in a worse state than usual and reeking of foul manure, most like because of the recent tournament which caused many more a horse than usual to be held in the very precinct.  “Oh, joy,” Merlin muttered under his breath, reaching for the pitchfork, as he prepared himself mentally for the task ahead of him, cursing himself all the while for saving the Prince’s life.  If only he had not intervened when that witch had hurled that dagger straight at Arthur’s heart in retribution for the son she had lost at the High King’s justice, pushing him aside just in the nick of time, maybe then the High King would not have ‘rewarded’ him with the much ‘coveted’ role as his son’s manservant.  Some reward.  Merlin grumbled, although he did admit that deep down he secretly enjoyed the work he accomplished on Arthur’s behalf.  Just not the part that involved mucking out the filthy, stinking stables. 

 

Well, at least there were ways of getting around the stinky bit at least, Merlin remarked to himself, peeking over his shoulder as he raked away the old hay and tossed in the new to see if he had any passersby who could potentially catch him in what he was about to do.  Thankfully, he spied no one, but then again, who else would be up and about this early in the morning?  None but poor Merlin whose destiny it would seem was mucking out stables for the ‘great-king-to-be’ while the rest of the world was sleeping.  Some destiny.  It was in these moments that Merlin grew rather homesick for Ealdor, the village in the northern kingdom of Essetir where he had grown up in the relative peace and quiet of rural life until knowledge of his more extraordinary ‘gifts’—or so his mother called them—became apparent to his neighbors.  His mother, in an act of selfless love and a desire to see him safe and secure, had sent him off then to Camelot with nothing but the clothes on his back and a pack of necessities, along with a note essentially begging the Court Physician appointed in the castle there to take him under his wing and name him his apprentice, which was precisely what he had done to Merlin’s surprise the moment he had knocked upon his door when he arrived in the city a couple weeks later.  Merlin could not have fathomed then how a man in such high standing amongst the High King’s Court as Gaius could have any want let alone need of a trouble-finding boy such as himself, but it soon became apparent to him through the physician’s own telling that he possessed a secret kin to the one that had caused Merlin no choice but to flee his former home and make a life for himself in Camelot. 

 

What remained a mystery to him, however, was how his mother came to be acquainted with the physician in the first place, seeming to have founded such a bond with him that she had not only learned of his abilities, but could be so sure as to be certain that the man would accept him as her only son for tutorage based on her word alone without given so much as a penny in return for his efforts.  Merlin had wondered whether Gaius had perhaps been indebted to his mother in some way, though the notion of anyone, let alone a man of the High King’s Court, owing his mother anything seemed rather absurd to him.  One bright summer afternoon, a time when he found himself especially reminded of his mother and their cottage home, he asked his mentor precisely this, to which he merely replied, “It was a different time in those days.”  Merlin had waited anxiously for the physician to say something more, any tidbit to explain the mystery of his mother’s past and her relationship with him, but Gaius had only turned back to his work powdering herbs, and Merlin felt he had no other option but to let the matter drop. 

 

Sensing no one around him now to catch him in the forbidden act, Merlin uttered the mystical words under his breath, as Gaius once instructed him in the privacy of his chambers during one of their many lessons spent there.  Suddenly, his nostrils cleared of the foul stench of horse dung, finding in its place a pleasant aroma of fresh-cut flowers.  Merlin inhaled deeply, savoring the new sweetness in the air.  The practice of magic was punishable by death under the High King’s law, but nevertheless useful, Merlin found.  One just had to take care not to get caught in the act of summoning the power, or so Gaius was always telling him.  Merlin could see the physician scolding him now for this rather ‘frivolous’ use of his abilities—Gaius’s words, not his own—if he only knew what he had done, calling it a ‘unnecessary risk of exposure,’ and a slight smile paved its way across his face at the thought.  Even he thought Gaius would have at least considered using a bit a magic if he happened to have no other choice but to oversee the maintenance of the stables given their particularly abominable state this morning, or at least he liked to think so.  It was all rather unfortunate though; if the practice of magic had not been outlawed, it would be even more handy yet, for all Merlin had to do was say the words and he would find the stable cleaned out for him without himself having to lift so much as a finger.  Ah, well.  It was a shame that such magic would catch the attentions of the local guard (though dolts all of them), else Merlin would have utilized it by now to expedite his daily chores.  Perhaps, one day, one day when Arthur was High King, maybe then the practice of magic would return welcomed once more within the walls of Camelot, or so he hoped, however unlikely.  Arthur was shaping out to be just like his father Uther, or so the people said.  Well, at least, he took and followed the High King’s orders without question and that, Merlin found, did not prove a promising sign for the break with tradition the kingdom so desperately needed in his honest opinion.       

 

Merlin soon lost himself in his work, humming along to one song or another stuck in his head, as he raked in the new haybed.  As he neared one of the horses while he worked, a restless roan that was stamping its hoof irritably, snorted in his face the moment he drew the pitchfork too close.  Merlin jumped back a pace, half expecting the horse to rush at him.  Thankfully it did not, choosing instead to sniff at him disdainfully, with a wrinkle of ears and an impatient toss of its tail, once he retreated far enough away onto the other side of the stable.  Merlin sighed a breath of relief.  Even with his discreet use of magic clearing out the foulness of the place, there were other reasons why he really despised mucking out the stables.

 

“Good morning, Merlin!  I see you’re up early!”

 

Merlin started at the sound of his name being called from an unseen spectator, although he could have sworn, he recognized the voice.  He had been leaning on his pitchfork, admiring the work he had accomplished for the moment when the voice accosted him.  Now he turned from the new bed of fresh golden hay, resting his pitchfork against the wall, and walked out towards the main avenue where all the merchants sold and bartered their goods.  It was a Saturday and while it would be much later before the markets teemed with throngs of people out in the good day’s weather to buy their goods, many merchants would already be awake setting up their shops’ displays for the day’s business.

 

But the voice that called out to Merlin was no merchant nor just any passerby.  He looked up to find a dashing young man with a head of dark curls dressed in the attire of a knight.  He grinned at the man for he knew him instantly.

 

“Lance!  It’s nice to see you!  How are you?” he called back, as the knight approached him.

 

“Quite well, quite well, Merlin,” Lance said, clearly amused at the display of Merlin up so early and already hard at work.  “I was just about to head out for a morning ride on this fine day,” he added, gesticulating to the clear skies above them, a rare occurrence so late in the autumn season as it was, “but by the looks of it, I’m probably having a better time of it than you, dear friend.”  He shot Merlin a knowing look, his brow arching before falling flat again.  “Looks like Arthur wasted no time sending you to muck out the stables.  But then, of course, he probably ordered you ahead of time.  Everyone and their mother knows Arthur’s not one to wake at the crack of dawn.  He’s more the type who needs someone to drag him out of bed, as I’m sure you know quite well.”

 

Merlin sighed, thinking of all the mornings he brought the Prince his breakfast, which was usually received with a fit of tossing and turning accompanied with much grumbling.  “Yeah, that’s Arthur for you.”

 

Lance smirked.  “Perhaps, I could send him word that he’s working you too hard.  Suggest that if he keeps pushing you, he’ll no longer have a perky servant ready at his beck and call, but a passed-out lackey with not so much energy as to wish a fellow ‘good morrow.’”

 

Merlin smiled.  If there was anyone who could sway Arthur’s mind, it was Lance, his second in the High King’s guard, with the perhaps more significant position of being his best friend as well.  The two had grown up together and had been fast friends ever since childhood.  “You would do that for me?” he asked nonplussed.

 

“Of course,” Lance answered, patting Merlin a few times on the back.  “What are friends for?  Besides, Arthur does need a lesson or two on how to treat those who work for him.  You are not his slave after all.”

 

The comment reminded Merlin of why he liked Lance so much; not only was he good-natured and congenial with just about everyone he met, but he was also quite respective of people regardless of their station, which was something rather rare to find in a man so highly placed in the King’s guard.  Given his title one would think Lance to be an arrogant prat (like another man Merlin had pleasure to know so well) not likely to come down off his noble steed, but that was far from the case.  Lance was gracious and humble, perhaps a bit over-popular with the ladies, who would always swoon and sigh before him whenever he stepped into the courtroom (somehow, he had refrained from gaining some sweetheart or another, so politely he denied each and every one of them their advances), but even that failed to go to his head.  All and all, he was a remarkably modest man with all the grace and aptitude of a fine knight, perhaps the finest Camelot had ever known, and for that he was much beloved, and justly so, by all who laid eyes upon him. 

 

“It’s great to hear you say that, Lance.  I would tell Arthur myself, but I fear he’d have my head for it.”

 

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Lance chuckled.  “But really, he is too fond of you, Merlin, to even suggest something like that as much as he would love for you to think it of him.”

 

The two fell into a silence for a moment before Merlin broke it, scratching his head.  “That was some tournament the other day, wasn’t it?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” Lance said.  “Valiant stood no chance against Arthur.”

 

“Only because you weren’t participating.  We all know that if you had entered, it would have been you against Arthur in the finals and you would’ve had him on his knees in a heartbeat.”

 

Lance eyed Merlin suspiciously.  “You only jest surely, Merlin.”

 

“No, not at all,” Merlin said rather earnestly.  “I’ve seen you practice, Lance.  There’s none greater than you.  Not even Arthur can compare with your skill with a sword.  If you had entered you would have won, I’m sure of it.”

 

“No, I would have lost,” Lance said.

 

“Only on purpose then,” Merlin suggested, “so as not to cause an upset.”

 

“I would have lost, Merlin,” Lance restated keeping his voice level, betraying nothing as always.

 

“Ah, well if you say so.  But if you ask me, it’s not fair that Arthur’s always expected to win.  It should be the best man.”

 

“Which is Arthur.  He is our Prince.”

 

“You know, you’re really no fun at all, Lance,” Merlin said, laughing.

 

Lance cracked a smile.  “So, I’ve been told.  I am much too serious.”

 

“Yeah, you are,” Merlin agreed, but he spoke mostly to himself, for Lance was hardly listening, his attention turned to the passing of another walking by the stable.

 

He caught a glimpse of her then, the girl he had seen time and time again hastening about the castle halls as she went about her work for the Princess Morgana.  He did not know her name, only her position, for he would watch her approach the Princess’s chambers, giving the most tentative of knocks upon the hard frame door before she was inevitably bidden entrance by the Princess, he assumed—he never actually saw her come to the door—with a tray of breakfast or basket of fresh laundry for her held in her gentle arms, whenever he caught sight of her as he made his knightly rounds about the castle.  Whenever chance would have him come upon her, he always stopped to marvel at her grace and beauty. 

 

Today was no exception, and in that fleeting look he felt compelled to turn to view her in full, so unearthly was she even as she seemed composed of all the glorious aspects of the earth.  Autumn crocuses dotted her brown curls that bounced as she sashayed down the stretch of markets, carrying a basket of the same purple flowers in her open arms.  Her dress was plain, a maid’s garment, but its lavender color complimented so prettily the crocuses she had weaved into her hair and those she carried in her wicker basket that Lance hardly noticed her dress was not sewn of the finer silk the ladies of the Court usually adorned, but of spun linen. 

 

She was a maid, yes, not the high-born lady a knight of his stature was expected to court, but that was of no consequence to Lance, not before when he, struck speechless, first took notice of her in the hall, nor now as he saw how the morning sunlight danced upon her bronze skin, bathing her in its autumn warmth, a warmth which he presumed to be of no equal to her own inner radiance, should he dare to take the leap, the plunge, and try to speak to her, get to know her.  And on that warm Saturday morning, birds cawing overhead, he decided to take a leap of faith and do just that.

 

Needless to say, he neither heard nor remembered Merlin babbling to him about this matter or that.  He was removed from this realm, the realm of mundane folk such as he, for he found himself lost, displaced, in his awe of her, happy as a parched desert wanderer led to a pool of cool water, to be lone supplicant to the presence of her innate divinity.

 

But then cruel reality called him sharply back to the world of mortal men and sounds of the earth returned to his ears, wakening him in a jolt from his trance.

 

“…But really, I think you should try to get Arthur off his high horse.  He’d listened to you.  If there’s anyone he’d listened to it’s you,” Merlin was saying.  “Or perhaps, this daughter of King Rodor’s once she arrives.  Did Arthur tell you?  The High King plans to marry him to her.  He was saying so just at their dinner last night while I was serving them.  Can you believe it?  Arthur, married!”

 

“Merlin,” Lance interrupted him, not having heard an iota of what he was going on about.  “Merlin.”

 

Merlin startled.  “What?”

 

“That girl,” Lance said.  He pointed down the walk a way’s across from a merchant setting up some painted pottery.  “Do you see her there?”

 

“Girl?” Merlin frowned.  “What?  Where?”

 

“There!” Lance said, more forcefully than he intended, pointing his finger toward where she headed almost out of view up the walk to the castle.

 

“Oh, yeah,” Merlin replied, nodding.  “What about her?”

 

“Do you know her?  What is her name?”

 

Merlin squinted.  “Oh, yeah.  That’s Gwen, I think.  Why do you ask?”

 

“Gwen?” Lance asked, making sure he heard the lady of his affection’s name right.  “You said her name is Gwen?”

 

“Yeah, short for Guinevere,” Merlin said.  “She’s Princess Morgana’s maid.  I’ve run into her a few times while working for Arthur in the castle.  She’s a nice girl.  We’ve talked some.”

 

Lance stared at Merlin, dazed.  “You’ve talked to her?”

 

“Well, yes,” Merlin said, perplexed.  “A few times.  Nothing much really.  Just about work, and then the occasional ‘hello’ when we pass each other in the halls.  Why?”

 

“Hold that thought, Merlin,” Lance said.  “Guinevere,” he spoke her name as if spellbound.  “You said her name was Guinevere.”

 

“Yes,” Merlin asked, puzzled as to the knight’s sudden interest in her.  He scratched his head, trying to recollect what he had been saying, something about Arthur, but the second he remembered, Lance took off down the street after her.

 

“My Lady!”  Lance cried, running at breakneck speed, praying that he would catch her before she rounded the bend.  “My Lady!”

 

Gwen, unaccustomed to being addressed as a ‘Lady,’ and otherwise lost in thought about the flowers she had picked early that morning and hoped to bestow upon the Princess Morgana as a thoughtful gift, only turned around, her skirts rustling with the movement, to face the man barreling down the street behind her because he had startled her near to death with all his senseless yelling when the morning had been, by contrast, so tranquil and quiet.

 

“My Lady,” Lance breathed one last time, as he neared her, just a foot a pace from where she stood staring bewilderingly at him.

 

“Can I help you, Sir?” Gwen asked, recognizing the man instantly for a knight for the armor he wore.  As to why he had gone through all this effort to flag her down, she was utterly baffled.

 

Gwen’s question gave Lance a much needed second to catch his breath, as he wondered, now that he was here before her holy presence, what he could possibly say to her.  That was when a flash of purple on the ground caught his eye and he bent to pick it up—a lovely crocus blossom held in the palm of his hand. 

 

Lance cleared his throat, summoning as much of his noble decorum as he could manage after running down the road shouting like a madman only a few seconds before.  “I believe you dropped this, my Lady,” he said, with a bow, and then bent, not to return it to the basket, but to weave the flower into her hair among the others situated there upon her head like a crown.

 

Gwen’s eyes rose skeptically.  “I don’t believe that is the reason you flagged me down, good Sir Knight.”

 

“You don’t?” Lance questioned, feigning shock.  “I will tell you, my Lady, that I have excellent vision.  I could have seen that blossom a mile away if it had so fallen.”

 

Gwen remained dubious, although a slight smile began to pave its way on her lips at the knight’s talk.  “I’m sure,” she said, playing along for the moment.  “But if you will excuse me, Sir Knight, I should be heading up to the castle.  I have some work to attend to there, and these flowers to deliver.”

 

Lance was not ready for their conversation to end so prematurely.  He knew where she was heading, and that the work she spoke so lightly of was no mere excuse on her part to be rid of him, at least not entirely, but still he feigned his ignorance about the details of her daily duties.  He hoped the flowers were not for a lucky beau she was sweet on.  “But, my Lady, what if you go on your way and some of these flowers haplessly fall to the ground without your knowledge?  If you will allow me the honor, I could accompany you throughout your rounds, to make sure each remains in its proper place in your basket there.”

 

Gwen laughed.  “I thank you, Sir Knight, but I must assure you that I am most capable on my own.”

 

“Are you certain, my Lady?” Lance interjected.

 

Gwen opened her mouth to speak, then paused.  “I hate to be the one to break this to you, Sir Knight, but I am afraid you must have me mistaken with someone else, your excellent vision notwithstanding.”

 

Lance bit his tongue to keep from smiling.  To complement her great beauty, the lady also had a quick wit; he could admire that in a woman.  “And why is that, my Lady?”

 

Gwen’s eyes widened at the knight disbelievingly for she found her statement rather self-explanatory given her modest appearance.  “I only mean,” she said, “that I am not the ‘Lady’ you believe me to be.  I merely work for one.”

 

“Nonsense,” Lance said, looking at her with eyes struck with wonder, “you are a woman.  That makes you a Lady.”

 

Gwen laughed.  “A lady, perhaps, but not a ‘Lady.’  Surely, you know the difference, Sir Knight.”

 

“I do,” Lance replied with a smile.  “But with you, perhaps, I need some reminding.  Because to me, you are unmatched in beauty by even Camelot’s dear Princess.”

 

Gwen turned scarlet.  “You mustn’t flatter me so!  If Mi’lady heard you saying such—”

 

“Wait, you mean to say…” Lance said in spite of himself.  He had no wish just yet to inform Gwen that he already knew which lady she spoke of, that the Princess Morgana was the lady she served, and that he had come by this knowledge by following her with his eyes to her labor’s destination every time she passed him making his rounds in the hall outside the Princess Morgana’s door. 

 

“I serve her Ladyship, the Princess Morgana, as her maid, yes,” Gwen finished for him.  “So, I would watch your mouth the next time you feel so provoked as to complement a girl like me by insulting her.”

 

Lance was chuckling now.  “Well, then, my Lady, please refrain from telling her what I just told you now, though I must say I meant the Princess no injury.”

 

“If only you refrain from calling me all these ‘my Lady’s,’ Sir Knight,” Gwen quipped.

 

“Very well,” he conceded.  “But what am I to call you then, my—er, surely you are called by some name?”

 

Gwen smiled at him.  “I am not telling you which I call myself by.”

 

“Well, then I believe we are caught at a most unfortunate impasse for the time,” Lance said.  “Would it help if I told you mine first?  It is Lancelot.  Lancelot du Lac.”

 

Gwen paled at the reveal.  Lancelot? she wondered, uncomprehending how she failed to put two and two together.  But to be fair, she had never paid much mind to the knights surveying the halls in the few years she had spent working in the castle, never bothering to put together faces with names, so intent she had always been on her tasks for Morgana, though she had heard plenty of hearsay from the other servants about their supposedly noble deeds to know the name of Sir Lancelot; they said he was the noblest of them all.  The Lancelot?  Second to Prince Arthur?  Most formidable of all the High King’s Guard?  And he finds me, beautiful?  And not only that, he deems me fairer than Mi’lady!  She gasped once, the implications of just who she had been bantering with fully realizing themselves in her mind.

 

“Is there something wrong?” Lance asked.  “You seem distracted.”

 

“No, not at all,” Gwen recovered herself.  “I was talking with you, Sir Lancelot, but I must be going now!  I meant to arrange these flowers for Mi’lady and set them in her room for when she wakes, and now it’s getting quite late!  She may already be awake, wondering where I am!”

 

So, the flowers are for Morgana, Lance thought relieved, not for some other man, more fortunate than I, although, this proves nothing; she still could have a special someone all her own.  His thoughts flashed back to Arthur’s manservant Merlin, Merlin who had spoken with the lovely Gwen not just once, but on multiple occasions.  A wave of jealousy overcame Lance then, flooding him momentarily with foul emotion—which was rather unusual for him, never before had he felt so of any man before, let alone a servant, and surely not because of a woman—until he told himself, convincingly, he was merely jumping to conclusions.  Merlin had not sounded as if he had feelings for Gwen; he had sounded, rather to the contrary, that he hardly paid her much heed at all, something that, perhaps contradictorily, infuriated Lance now that he thought of it.  

 

But at the moment, he had more pressing concerns.  Gwen was about to leave him standing there in the market street without so much as a ‘farewell,’ unless he thought of something fast.  He reached a hand out, as she began to turn away, latching onto her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks.  She swiveled back to face him, apprehension in her eyes.

 

“Not before you tell me your name,” he said pleadingly.  “It is only fair.”  He had had her name from Merlin, but he longed to hear her say it herself, to hear it uttered, given voice, from her own lips.

 

“Fair to you,” Gwen said, “but if you insist, I am called Guinevere.  Gwen, by my friends.”

 

“Guinevere,” Lance said, repeating the name out of awe for the woman it belonged to, standing before him in the market street.  He bowed his head.  “Good day to you, Lady Guinevere.  May the fates allow us chance to meet again,” he finished, bending to kiss her cheek.

 

Gwen looked after the man called Lancelot quizzically as he trotted back the way he had come, her eyes trailing his diminishing figure until she lost him in the crowd amassing about the market street.  Then she raised a hand to her cheek, where a faint blush was painting it rose pink.  Could he really have meant all the flowery words he had said to me?  Surely, he was only being courtly, she reasoned, chastising herself, though she knew not why.  Perhaps, it was for hoping where a serving girl like her had no reason to hope.  Don’t be silly now, Gwen, she told herself.  He’s a knight, while you are only a serving maid.  But still, his kiss and his words beleaguered her with unfinished promise for the days to come.  What would happen when she surely chanced upon Sir Lancelot du Lac again?  Would he remember her so called fair face?  Or would he fail to pick her out from the crowd?  She figured, reasonably, that it would most likely be the latter, but still that thought did not squash the seed of hope from sprouting in her heart and growing, tingling, along her veins until she grew warm with anticipation for their second meeting, come whenever it may, if at all. 

 

She exhaled a tentative, pent-up breath, letting those little hopes of hers go by the wayside for the moment, and turned her eyes toward the castle up ahead.  Maybe there would come a time for her dreams to realize themselves, perhaps one day, out there soon, but for now there was a princess abed toiling with her own dreams—the nightmarish variety—who desperately needed the cheering up only Gwen’s basket of dew-dropped crocuses could provide.

 

---

 

Morgana’s eyes opened in a flash, her vision blurring against the incoming rays of sun streaming now through her bedroom window, lighting the curtains.  She rubbed her eyes.  Had she heard something?  She could have sworn she had, and that there must have been some noise, some disturbance or another which caused her to wake.  She shook the thought away, turning on her side toward Arthur where he was still sleeping beside her. 

 

The two of them had agreed, hastily and late into the evening, their talk of marriages unwanted and unplanned at a standstill, to return to Morgana’s chambers to spend the rest of the night, for, as Arthur suggested, he had yet to lie in her bed, while she had the privilege to sleep in his own.  At first, Morgana fretted at his plan, thinking, What of the guards?  We cannot possibly both be seen entering my chamber room at such an ungodly hour without raising suspicion.  But Arthur had insisted, for the added thrill it provided him, and she soon found herself acquiescing to his desire (if only because she thought he needed a change of scenery after the dreadful news their father laid upon them earlier at dinner), for shortly thereafter, she was creeping alongside his steady, unflinching gait out through his chamber door, into the hall, and down the stairs to her room situated below his.  And, as luck would have it, or perhaps by some machination of Arthur’s doing, which she considered more likely, even though every hair stood on the back of her neck and shiver after nervous shiver crept down her spine, not a single guard was posted in the hall to catch them in their tryst.  

 

“See?  That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Arthur had said to her, once they were safely inside her room and he had shut the door behind them.  She had admitted that he had been right, that she was just anxious was all, still, about their sneaking around in the depth of night, not that she would have it any other way, she just feared they would get caught.  That was what she had told Arthur, and it was true, mostly.  He responded that as long as they were careful, they had nothing to worry about, which helped assuage her fears, at least partly.  She did not voice to him the peculiar notion she had just then, however, that, deep down, a part of her thought they deserved to be caught, and then appropriately punished for the obscenity of their transgression.  

 

Her worries placed aside, Morgana, urged by her brother’s serene sleeping face, ran her fingers through his hair absently, distractedly, watching with mild interest as the strands rose and fell, until he awoke, his eyes opening to fixate on her, head of dark hair a fit of tangles and body completely naked behind the light sheets, but still utterly beautiful, he thought, still his Morgana.

 

“Morgana,” he said, his voice cracking from his being still half asleep.  He rose to kiss her on the lips, and she kissed him back gently.

 

“Good morning,” she said.

 

“Yes,” he said, feeling rather pleasant, as if he had not a care in the whole wide world, as if he was not going to be married in time to a woman he did not know and had never met.  “It is.”  He rubbed the sleep away from his eyes and groaned.  “I really don’t want to get up.”

 

“Aww, poor baby,” Morgana cooed, sitting up and throwing her hair back.  “How does it feel to—”

 

She jumped at the sound of something fragile crashing on the floor in the distance ahead of her and peered into the shadows by the door, shocked to find that that door was, in fact, wide open and that a figure of a young girl stood there watching her, watching them, her eyes wide with astonished incomprehension.  Morgana recognized her instantly.

 

“No, Gwen!” Morgana screamed, seeing her standing there in the now open doorway, mouth agape.

 

“M-M-M-Mi’lady—” she stuttered.

 

“What?” Arthur said, as he came to his senses, sitting up now himself and then jumping when he saw Gwen standing there in the doorway.

 

Arthur jolted to his feet, now wide awake.  “I’ll handle this,” he said to his stunned sister, tearing off one of the bed sheets and wrapping it around himself haphazardly as he rose from the bed.  He crossed over to where Gwen was standing affright, shut the door, and took her shaking hand in his. 

 

“It’s alright,” he paused awkwardly, never having spoken to Morgana’s maid before, and surely not in a circumstance such as this.  He had little inkling of how she would react to him, to Morgana, to the sight of the both of them abed together as she had just seen them, once the initial shock and horror of it all wore off to be replaced with he knew not what.  “Just sit down,” he instructed her, prompting her to sit in the chair accompanying Morgana’s dressing table, while he racked his brain for what words he could possibly say to ameliorate the situation, coming up with nothing.  

 

“But, Sire!” she protested.  “That’s Mi’lady’s—”

 

“It’s quite alright, Gwen,” Morgana said, attempting to keep her own voice steady despite her body’s trembling.  “Just sit.  Please.” 

 

Gwen heeded Morgana’s command unthinkingly and sat down on the chair, despite the perceived wrongness she partially ascertained of her body seated upon its soft cushion that belonged to Morgana, not herself—she had no right to be sitting in it, a part of her voiced silently, even as the rest of her mind still failed to make sense of the scene before her.  The Prince, the Princess, unclothed and in Mi’lady’s bed?  But that is—in her astonishment, she could not bring herself to think the word.

 

“Now,” Morgana added, looking toward her brother for support, “we can explain this.”

 

Arthur sighed.  “No, we really can’t, Morgana.”

 

“Arthur!  I’m trying to make it easier for her.”

 

“And how can you possibly do that?” he accused her.  “Look at us!”

 

Suddenly self-conscious, Morgana raised the covers higher about herself.

 

“Now explain to me how she got in here this early!” Arthur demanded.

 

Morgana’s eyes widened, dawning with questions of her own.  “Gwen,” she said softly to mask the tremor in her voice, “is today not Saturday?  Normally, I would not have expected you for another hour.”

 

Gwen watched them both helplessly, then cast her eyes to the floor where what had once been a pretty porcelain vase lay smashed and broken amongst a heap of strewn flowers. 

 

“I’m sorry, Mi’lord, Mi’lady…” she cried, shaking in the chair.  “I only meant to do something nice…a surprise…”

 

“It’s not your fault, Gwen,” Morgana said.  “Arthur can’t you see you’re distressing her with all your yelling?  Do you really want to cause more of a scene?”

 

Arthur shut his mouth irritably.  “No,” he muttered.  “But goddammit, Morgana!  How could you let this happen?  She’s seen us.”

 

“It’s my fault,” Morgana said pathetically, accepting the blame that, if any of them were culpable for the present situation, was least of all hers to bear.  “I should have known it was not safe to come here.”

 

Arthur ran an impatient hand through his hair.  “Yes, and now what are we supposed to do?  We can’t have her knowing.”

 

“Stop talking about her as if she’s not here,” Morgana snapped at him before gesturing apologetically to her maid.  “You won’t tell anyone, Gwen, right?” she asked her softly.

 

Gwen’s vision swam, the image of her lady’s concerned face blurring before her eyes.

 

“Gwen?”

 

“Good God!” Arthur said.  “The girl’s in shock!”

 

“Because you keep yelling at her!” Morgana said.

 

“Or maybe,” Arthur snipped, “it’s because she saw us, Morgana!”

 

“Either way, you’re still not helping!”  Morgana turned back to her maid now, wishing there was some way she could release her from knowing what she now knew about Arthur and herself.  Suddenly, she was stricken again with shame at what she had done with her brother, a feeling she had not felt since after the first time she had lain with him—had that really only been two days ago? she wondered dazedly—and had hence chosen to ignore given the sheer pleasure she felt when she was with him in this way, ineffable as it may be, but now, through the eyes of her dear, sweet, innocent maid, she saw it once more as the grave sin it was. 

 

What must Gwen think of me? she wondered equally affright and amused that she now concerned herself with the opinion of a maid.  She had always believed Gwen looked up to her and respected her, but now, she realized those had only been assumptions on her part.  She did not know Gwen, her family, nor her beliefs—although it was probably safe to assume that incest was not among one of her values—and the thought struck her that she did not know her own maid simply because she had never bothered to get to know her in the first place.  If only I had, she thought regrettably to herself.  Having Gwen for a friend would be rather nice right now instead of just demanding her loyalty.  Could she be this loyal to me?  To have seen my brother in my own bed and not take that information straight with her to the High King?  She prayed, with all the goodness left in her heart, that this was so.

 

“Mi’lord, Mi’lady,” Gwen said, rising from her seat with a curtsy, her eyes downcast, fixated on the shattered vase on the floor.

 

“No!” Arthur shouted as he ran before the door, barricading Gwen from making a simple exit.  “Don’t think you can just leave now!” he said, his heart hammering.  “Not before you swear to us that you will not tell anyone, do you hear me? You will not tell anyone of this!”

 

“I won’t, Sire,” Gwen said, sounding scared and small after being so scarred.

 

Arthur stared into her eyes, searching for the lie therein, the false promise behind those easily recitable words.  “Goddammit, Morgana!  I can’t just let her walk knowing what she knows!”

 

Gwen whimpered, falling to her knees.  “I’m sorry, Sire.  I didn’t mean—I won’t tell—I’ll clean up the mess—” she added pointing at the dropped vase, the scattered flowers.

 

“I don’t care about the damn vase,” he said.  “I must have your word, because if you tell, I swear to God it will not be pleasant for you.”

 

Morgana had had enough of this interrogation.  She cleared her throat, and when she spoke, her voice was, eerily, cool as the steady calm of Avalon’s waters beneath a mist-shrouded dawn.  “Arthur, will you stop threatening her?  Gwen, come here.  It’s alright.  I trust you.  I trust you would never betray me nor my brother.  Am I correct in this assumption?”

 

“Y-Yes, Mi’lady,” Gwen said, blinking as she rose to her feet.

 

“Good,” Morgana replied, looking now at Arthur, “so let’s be civil about this now.  Arthur, she’s given her word.”

 

Arthur rolled his eyes.

 

“You may go, Gwen,” Morgana said kindly.  “Come back in an hour or so.  And if anyone questions you just say that I am still resting.  I just want to have a word with my brother first.”

 

Gwen curtsied, still frazzled and unsure, and then dropped to her knees to collect the broken pieces of porcelain.

 

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Gwen,” Morgana said.  “I’ll pick it up.  Just go.  Take some time for yourself.”

 

Gwen nodded.  “T-Thank you, Mi’lady,” she said, bestowing the Princess one last look—she did not glance at Arthur—before she turned to hurry out of Morgana’s chamber, opening the door only the needed sliver for her to slip out and then shutting it, quietly, once more.

 

“Great, Morgana,” Arthur said, turning back to his sister, “she has given her word but how do we know whether she plans on keeping it?”

 

“We’ll just have to trust her, Arthur,” Morgana said.  “Gwen has never betrayed my confidence in the past, so I do not have reason she would do so now.  She has given us her word, so we must believe her.”

 

“I don’t believe this!  She could tell anyone!  She could tell Father for Christ’s sake, Morgana!”

 

Morgana nodded.  “And in that event, brother, we will be there to counter her statement.  Do you really think our father would believe her word over ours?  Think about it.  It’s in her best interest as well as ours for her not to mention this again because in the event she does speak of what she has seen here she would be signing her own death warrant.  No one would believe that we feel this way about each other; they would think she was spreading some foul false rumor and for that, once Father got wind of it—you know he wouldn’t like such gossip—he’d have her killed.  You know that as well as I.”

 

Arthur opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it, realizing that his sister had spoken true.  “You’re right,” he said pathetically, only to fall silent.  “I still don’t like it though,” he added a moment later.

 

“Neither do I,” Morgana admitted.  “But Gwen’s a smart girl, she wouldn’t dare tell.”

 

“I pray to God you’re right about that,” Arthur said, coming to sit next to his sister on the bed once more.  “Because even if no one was to believe this, this rumor, it still bears the seed of truth, and a seed like that once planted in the minds of the people will inspire some to investigate further for themselves.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, “but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

 

“Why?” Arthur questioned.

 

Morgana looked away from her brother.  “The moment I saw her standing there I knew what you were going to suggest, and no,” she shook her head, “I couldn’t have you do that to someone who has been naught but kind to me my whole life.  Especially when the fault was not hers to bear but mine for being so negligent—”

 

Arthur took his sister’s hands in his, massaging them with his own.  “You thought I would have her killed,” he said and then laughed.  “You’re right, I did think it, and the thought scared me.  To think I was this close to killing some poor girl just to protect you…I,” he looked at her helplessly, “God, Morgana, it scares me to think of just what horrors I could—would—commit just for you.”

 

Morgana nodded.  It scared her too.  Just how far would Arthur be willing to go on my behalf?  If I hadn’t been here to stop him, no, she would not let herself think of what would have happened then. 

 

“Now go,” she whispered to him.  “Get dressed.  I have to clean this mess up.”

Chapter 10

CHAPTER NINE: Of Shards and Discarded Flowers

To say that Morgana was uncertain if Gwen would ever come back to her after witnessing what she had seen that morning in her chamber would be an understatement.  For the rest of that hour, as she toiled on her knees picking up shards of porcelain—the action stirring within her some distant memory—careful not to cut herself on the sharp edges, the thought that her maid would never be able to view her in the same vein again, with the formal respect every maid reserved for her princess and every princess came to expect of her maid, plagued her beyond worry.  She grew anxious, wondering what she could possibly say now to Gwen in explanation for her actions, so she would not come to see her as a freak of nature, something (rather than someone) to abhor, but still as her noble, preeminent lady. 

 

But as much as she gave the matter thought, turning it over whichever way in her mind, she could hardly think of a single, plausible thing she could say to ameliorate the situation before her, and put both her mind and her maid at ease.  The whole situation was futile, Morgana came to think, so utterly inescapable that she may as well be a prisoner confined to a locked cell with no light to see the way out by, if there even was such an exit.  This frustrated her, and in her exasperation, she thought to take the porcelain shard in her hand and slit her wrist in an act of selfish punishment for her own wearisome foolishness.  She came close to completing her vengeance, and brought the shard near her flesh, pressing it close against her skin, but at the last second, relented and dropped the piece clattering to the floor.  She knew not what stopped her; perhaps, it had been another, though smaller, concern of what Gwen would think, if she ever came back to the room, and saw Morgana sitting on the floor, streams of crimson blood running down her arm.  Morgana shook the image away from her mind.  It upset her greatly to realize now that she cared so much what her maid thought of her.  What had happened, she wondered, to the Camelot Princess inside of her who did not give a damn about what others thought?  Was she nothing but a mask to be worn, an air to put on for the Court?   

 

But, no, she realized, as she scooped up the tiny white shards in her open palms—hands that never worked a single day in her life—she had never been a Princess of sophistication, high above the simple ilk of the commoners, immune to the effects of slander.  No, she was still just a girl, a scared, sniveling, little girl whose own mother had just died, with no one to comfort her in the time after her passing, a mourning time ripe for the breeding of a sin too dark to name.  Was that the answer?  Though she bore a regal name, that did not mean that she did not still yearn for acceptance and love, no, it meant she only yearned for love all the more because the love given her from her people was only the exalted kind of love, the love of duty, never the loving sincerity of the heart.  It was the fear of death at the High King’s justice that made them love her so much, she realized now, not because of the contents of her character.  Did she even have a character?  To them, was she even a person?  She did not know.  But, perhaps, Gwen had seen some shard of her worth loving, some aspect of herself that was true and not some façade presented for the masses, and what had she done?  She had gone and thrown it away.  Gwen would never view her in the same light now, that was if she had ever seen her in that light to begin with, as opposed to the craven darkness where she knew she rightfully belonged.  No, Gwen would see her for the disturbed, lonely woman she truly was.  The illusion she had painted for herself of the admirable love she felt for her brother had come crashing down, just like the vase, all shards of sharp porcelain so capable of cutting her hands as she picked them up, piece by whetted piece.  How had she been so unaware of its secret weapon?

 

There came a knock at the door, followed by a timid “Mi’lady.”

 

Gwen! Morgana jumped.  She is here so soon, too soon, or has the time flown by already?  She left the shards in a pile on her vanity beside the bright flowers she had lain there, and quickly donned her nightgown to cover herself.  “C-Come in,” she stuttered to Gwen on the other side of the door, feeling rather foolish that she now feared seeing her maid.

 

Gwen opened the door a crack, peeking in, then slipped into the room once she saw that the Princess was properly clothed.  She closed the door behind her softly.  For a moment all she and Morgana did was look at one another, neither one of them knowing exactly what they were supposed to say or do.

 

Eventually, Gwen spoke.  “There was something you wished to speak to me about, Mi’lady?” she prompted.

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, her face flushed scarlet.  “Yes, there was, is.  There is.  Oh, do you make yourself comfortable first!”

 

“Comfortable, Mi’lady?” Gwen asked, surprised once again at the change in Morgana’s demeanor.  But this time, she felt she could not pinpoint its cause to just another part of the enigma that was the Princess’s many, ever-shifting moods.

 

“Yes, please just sit,” she said, offering Gwen her chair once more.  “And that’s another thing,” Morgana said surprising herself even as she said it.  “That’s enough of you addressing me as ‘My Lady.’  I have a name and you are free to use it.  Please, just call me Morgana.”

 

“But Mi’lady!” Gwen protested, only to correct herself.  “Morgana, I mean,” she said uncertainly, tasting the name, foreign as it was familiar, on her tongue.

 

“Good,” Morgana said before Gwen could object further.  “I think we are a great deal more to each other now than just lady and maid, Gwen.  It would be good for us to be on a name-to-name basis, don’t you think?”

 

Gwen nodded, though she was still unsure.  But if it is what Mi’lady wishes, who am I to argue?

 

“Right, now,” Morgana muttered to herself.  God, what am I supposed to say now?  She clasped her hands together, squeezing them tight until her knuckles shone bone white, only to then ease the pressure on them.  “Forgive me, Gwen,” she said, looking not up at Gwen but down at her own intertwined hands.  “You, whether you wished for it or not, and I hope not, are privy now to a deep, pertinent secret of mine, and I hardly know what to say about it.”

 

Gwen swallowed.  Beside her seat, she smelled the scent of the crocuses she had picked that morning, finding them now sickly sweet, even, dare she think it, repulsive, a far cry from her well-meaning gesture that had brought her in arms’ distance of the greatest knight to ever lend his service to the High King.  The flowers had brought her, by accident, to Lancelot, and they had likewise brought her accidentally—or was it fate?—to discover in this wretched room a truth too foul to name.  Lancelot, she thought wistfully then, could I really have met you on such a hapless day?  What would you do now, Lancelot, if it were you, not me, to discover that your Lord and Lady were not as they seemed?  

 

“It’s alright, Mi-Morgana,” she said, even as she felt far from alright.  After Morgana had asked her to step out into the hall beyond, Gwen had unraveled the pretty flowers from her hair and casted them away with disdain, not bothering to look back to see where they had so haplessly fallen out the window and down to the ground below.  She had wondered, when she tossed them away, if Morgana had even noticed that she had worn them so prettily in her hair that Sir Lancelot himself had felt so moved as to stop his doings and speak with her.  But that blissful morning, brimming with such gilded promise was already a lifetime ago, nearly forgotten and now replaced with the dire demands of the present.  “You have my word,” she vowed.  “I wouldn’t dare tell anyone.  I swear it.”

 

“I know that, Gwen,” Morgana replied easily, “it’s just—” her voice trailed off.  She began again, “It’s just I, now that you know, I had hoped I would be able to confide in you about it.”

 

Realization dawned in Gwen’s eyes.  “Oh,” she said.  Oh.  Her secret is my secret now in every sense of the word, and it will be as if I, not her, had lain with Arthur Pendragon.  A blush crept on her cheek.

 

Morgana misunderstood it.  “Yes,” Morgana said nervously, looking at her hands, then amended her previous statement.  “It’s not that I wish to go into detail about me and…and Arthur, just, I had hoped, rather, that you could help me, help us, keep our secret?  That I can count on your friendship?”

 

Gwen thought to herself for a moment before speaking.  “You will always have that, Morgana,” she said.

 

Morgana smiled sadly.  “Please, don’t feel the need to say that because of your position as my maid.  I wish to be friends, Gwen, truly.”  I have no one else, she added silently, keeping the thought to herself, not trusting herself to voice it aloud.

 

“You have my friendship then,” Gwen repeated, and Morgana did not know whether she meant the statement genuinely or whether she said it out of obligation.  In that moment, she wished more than anything that she were just some commoner, maybe then she could know the truth as to what those around her thought of her, and would be able to separate it from the well-meaning lies they spoke.

 

“Thank you,” Morgana answered her friend, figuring that her outward vow of friendship was the best she was going to get for the time being.  “Do you…Do you have any questions for me?”

Gwen shook her head silently.

 

“Come on,” Morgana pressed, “surely you must be curious about, well—”

 

“Yes,” Gwen said honestly, the blush returning to her cheeks, “but I wouldn’t know how to ask you.”

 

“And why not?”

 

“I am still your maid, Morgana,” she stated firmly, “regardless of this new arrangement between us.”

 

“But I’m asking you to talk with me as a friend!” Morgana interjected. 

 

“Which makes me uncomfortable as of now, Mi’lady,” Gwen said, slipping back so easily into the old formality.  “But if it eases you, please know that I will always be right by your side no matter what and this…thing that I walked into this morning unexpected doesn’t change that one bit.  I will always be loyal to you and be your friend, but please do not ask me to give an opinion on this matter.  That’s all I ask of you if you are to be a friend to me as I am to you.”

 

Morgana nodded, her body stiffening.  “I see, so you object to me and Arthur.”

 

“I never said that, Mi’lady,” Gwen said tiredly.  “Please do not put words in my mouth that I never uttered.”

 

“But you disapprove?” Morgana said, feeling a pang of sadness in her heart, and here, so foolishly, she was hoping to win an ally to her lost cause.  Someone she could trust to share her love of Arthur with, so she would not have to bear it all on her own in those dark moments of the days she spent without him.  That silly dream, however brief it lived, too, was gone.

 

“I said I am your friend, Mi’lady,” Gwen spoke softly.  “That I will never hurt you.”

 

“But you do so now, Gwen,” Morgana said.  “I-I had hoped you would understand.  I love my brother,” she added helplessly, hoping that the desperation in her voice would make her see the truth in those few chosen words and come to understand them.

 

“I know,” Gwen replied.  “And I promise to help you as much as I can, Mi’lady.  I promise to keep your secret safe.”  As if it were my own to safeguard, she finished silently, suddenly seeing, with an involuntary shudder, herself naked beside the Prince on her lady’s bed, her lady having thrown wide the door, her mouth agape as she sighted them together sprawled in their pleasure.   

 

The pain in Morgana’s heart began to ease with Gwen’s admission, the revelation behind it finally sinking into her mind.  Gwen is offering me her loyalty and her friendship even after seeing me with Arthur…Can I really hold it against her for not understanding why I lie with him?  Then the thought struck her: Can I really ask anyone, for that matter, to understand that?

 

“I see now,” she said, looking up at her with a sad smile, eyes full of knowing.  “And I think I understand.  Thank you, Gwen.”

 

Outwardly, Gwen dipped her head and smiled.  Inwardly, she hurled from her mind thoughts of Arthur Pendragon like the flowers she had pitched over the wall just an hour ago.  She would come to find, in time, that of the two, the crocuses even in their vibrancy were the easier to dispatch.

Chapter 11

Notes:

Hi guys! Sorry it's been so long since I last updated. A year has nearly gone by since I last posted a chapter, and I never meant for that to happen, but life happened, I guess. I'm so sorry. I hope at least some of you are still around and willing to read this next installment. Just know that while I'm posting this chapter today that does not mean going forward there will be any schedule for new chapters like last year when I was trying my best to update every other Saturday. I'm still working on the fic and revising further along in the story, which is my main goal to finish my revisions before I start updating regularly. Currently, I'm just posting chapters as little rewards for myself for making progress with my editing and hitting my short term goals.

Anyway, with all that said, I hope you enjoy this new chapter!

With love, Jo <3

CHAPTER TEN: Deprecation, Prevarication

In her spare time, which was very sparse and hard to come by, and therefore all the more cherished, Gwen would return home to visit her father Tom and her older brother Elyan at their small cottage located within Camelot’s city walls.

 

That was where Gwen was headed now after Morgana so thoughtfully rewarded her the afternoon off for the “event of the morning” she had suffered, as Morgana had called it, “with grace and a generous heart.”  Gwen had protested, feeling little, if anything, of the sort, but Morgana had insisted nevertheless, and Gwen had concluded that her lady most likely needed some time to herself to consider what was next for them after their serious conversation.  She would never tell the Princess directly, but secretly she was gladdened by the early dismissal, for the distance it granted her from Morgana gave Gwen the chance to come to terms herself with everything she had seen and heard that morning.

 

It was never Agravaine.  The thought came upon Gwen suddenly as she strode through the market street, head bowed with her internal queries.  And Morgana was telling the truth the entire time.  She had spoken true when she admitted that she had wished to attend the tournament to see her brother fight and once again when she confessed that that it was he she would be visiting the night of the feast held in his name.  How clever of her!  She would have known I would have looked past the truth, mistaking it for a lie.  How blind I have been!  But then again, how was I to guess that such a horror could lie behind such a well-seeming truth? 

 

For, to Gwen, that was exactly what this was.  Utter blasphemy to Nature and to God, a sin too foul to name—and somehow, by a stroke of misfortune or as punishment for a crime she knew not she committed, she had not only become privy to the hidden obscenity, but entrusted with the safeguarding of its secret, as if she herself had been a willing participant in the act.  She shuddered, just thinking about the two of them sprawled indecently together on that bed sent waves of shivers upon shivers down her spine, so many that she thought she would chill to the bone despite the autumn day’s unusual warmth.  To think Morgana had harbored such a, such a lust—Gwen dared not name it love, though Morgana had used the very word—all this time for her own flesh and blood was bewilderingly incomprehensive to her. 

 

As the Princess’s maid, Gwen had thought, and erroneously so, that she had known, even understood the lady she served, figuring her to be like the other noblewomen of her kind: spoiled, contemptuous, even dissatisfied in the opulent life she led with every luxury and convenience at her beck and call (as long as there were servants to order about to do her bidding that was), yet without the daily sense of purpose necessary to truly call her life her own.  That was why, Gwen had supposed, that Morgana spent so many days alone in her chamber; she had penned it to boredom, utter apathy with the goings on of the world around her, and was precisely why she graciously suffered her less than noble behavior whenever she was in one of her more tempestuous moods, attributing them, her sudden changes in demeanor to just that, moods.  Now, in the matter of an ill-fated morning and all because of some late-blooming flowers so innocently picked, Gwen knew more about the workings within the recesses of Morgana Pendragon’s mind than all her years of presuppositions and guesswork combined, and the truth frightened her to the core.  Never would she have presumed that Camelot’s Princess could shelter within herself such a sickness—there was no other word to describe it, what Gwen had seen of the siblings and what she had heard directly from Morgana’s own mouth.  Sickness, it was a sickness, that was how Gwen came to understand it, perhaps, partly out of the childlike naivety that a sickness could potentially be cured.  She only failed to fathom how such a sickness could develop within the mind of Britain’s noblest lady and come to roost there.  Surely, such wicked doings were left to society’s depraved?  And Morgana was a princess, destined to one day marry a king of Britain with her own country to rule at her husband’s side.  Why jeopardize that future to lie with any man, but above all her own brother?  But, Gwen paused, remembering, Morgana was a woman of twenty-two summers now, several years past the appropriate marrying age, and yet not a single arrangement had been made by the High King to grant her such a future, as was proper for a princess as royal as she.  And without marrying some king or lord, what else did Morgana have? 

 

Still, Gwen wondered morosely, why did she choose her brother?  If she were lonely, she could have picked any of the knights with whom to spend her nights if she so chose.  And why—and perhaps this fretted her most of all—why did Prince Arthur reciprocate her twisted feelings?  She wondered for a moment if perhaps he had been bound to her by a spell of wicked magic but tossed the thought aside for its absurdity.  Morgana, the daughter of the High King, a sorceress?  Surely, not.  But then, she thought, and a chill laced her spine, I did not think her capable of incest either.

 

Gwen came upon her family’s abode, sighting its humble appearance amongst the other similarly modest dwellings beside it.  She breathed a deep breath, and exhaled, clearing her mind of the Pendragons, their shared depravity, and set her mind to the comforting thoughts of home and family, preparing herself to enter the familiar space once more. 

 

When no one answered her steady knock upon the door, Gwen turned from the house to peek into her father’s forge next door, finding not him, but her brother working away on some project or another.

 

At hearing her approach, Elyan looked up from his work, and greeted her.  “Gwen!”

 

“Elyan!” she answered with a smile.  Never before had the sight of her own brother filled her with such relief and comfort.  Seeing him standing there at their father’s forge, tempering a new blade from steel with hammer, heat, and anvil, a task so ordinary as to be commonplace, served as the reminder she desperately needed to know there was a right order to the world.  Her family was so, so ordinarily uneventful to be almost boring, and she would not have it any other way.  She did not know whether she would laugh or cry at the sight of such promising normality.

 

“Tell me, sister,” Elyan said as he worked the steel his father left for him that day, “how goes it with you up in the castle?  It seems an age since Father and I saw you last!”

 

At his question, an image of Morgana bending to kiss Arthur’s lips flashed across her mind, but she let the thought die therein, not daring to give it life by her voice.  She had, after all, made a promise to them both to never speak of that kiss again, and she intended to keep that promise, even if that meant telling her brother a small lie.

 

“The same as ever, brother,” she said with a faint smile.  It was strange, lying to him; the two of them were so close, she never fathomed having to withhold the truth from him before, and would not have if not for that fevered, calculating look in the Prince’s eyes the moment he had said, She has seen us. We can’t have her knowing.  “But Princess Morgana did ask me to attend the tournament, the one Prince Arthur duly won, with her two days past.”

 

Elyan nodded.  “Really?  How was it?  Father went and he said it was quite a good time, especially that last match between the Prince and Sir Valiant.  I had thought to help him here in the forge, so I didn’t go.”

 

“That was kind of you, Elyan,” Gwen said, dodging the question, fearing any further discussion of the tournament might make her nauseous.  “I’m sure Father appreciated all that you are doing around here for him.”

 

“Thanks, Gwen.  At this point I’m just doing everything I can to make up to him after leaving you both.”

 

Gwen nodded.  After their mother had passed, a few years ago now, Elyan had ran off on his own rather than stay home with her and their father in their grief.  It had been a trying time, the finality of their mother’s death hovering over them like a dark fog, and then the news of Elyan’s disappearance caused further distress for their father and Gwen.  Not knowing where Elyan had gone off to and with no word of how he was fairing, the two of them grew quite worried for his wellbeing and for themselves, since money was not coming in like it used to.  Father had no extra help in the forge.  That was when Gwen decided to try her hand at being a lady’s maid in the castle, and with her ever-placid demeanor she quickly rose within the ranks until she became the maid of Princess Morgana herself.  It had been arduous in the beginning, working for the Princess, as she was quite particular about how she liked things done about her chamber (and that was when she was in her nicer temperament) but Gwen had found a way to work with her and now, just today, she had become more to Morgana than just her servant, but her friend, a trusted confidant permitted at last to address her to her face by name.  But that thought brought back unpleasant memories of the morning, and Gwen had rather not think of Morgana Pendragon and her troubles now.

 

“You know everything is right now between us, Elyan,” she said.  “Really, there’s no need for you to worry otherwise.  Father and I both have forgiven you many times over now for leaving when you did.  And we understand why.  There’s no reason to keep beating yourself up over it.  You should’ve felt able to join him in the entertainment.”

 

“I know,” he said, “but I still can’t help it, feeling this way, like I have to pitch in any way that I can.  I do it for you and Father mostly, yes, but in a way, I also do it for myself.  Staying behind, working at the forge, it assuages my guilt and brings me peace.  When I was gone, I missed my only chance to say goodbye to Mother at her funeral and that I deeply regret.  I feel like I failed her, you and Father for leaving you to bury her alone.”

 

“Don’t say such things,” Gwen said quickly.  “She loved you.  She still loves you.  We all do.”

“That’s just like you, Gwen,” Elyan said musingly, “So sweet.  So capable to see the good in a person no matter the gravity of his sins.”

 

“Stop it now!” she replied, more seriously than she intended.  “You, Elyan, are not a sinful man!”

 

“Perhaps,” he said with an inward smile.  “I’m just saying it’s no wonder the royals like having you around.  You never have a bad thing to say about anyone.  You know if I was there at the castle, I would have a hard time keeping my mouth shut and just doing what they told me.”

 

“I can’t really see you being anything but difficult,” she managed.

 

He laughed.  “You’re right about that, Gwen.  But you know what?  I wish I could be a part of their world sometimes.  Hell, it would be a lot easier don’t you think?  I mean what do they have to worry about?  Everything is taken care of for them!  They get waited on all day!  Can you tell me being so close to Princess Morgana what it is they have to be so concerned about?”

 

If only I can say, she thought despairingly, to share with him this burden I never wanted, but she would not dare expose Morgana now, not even to her own brother.  For a secret of this magnitude it was better to never speak it at all, even though the thought of keeping it all to herself left her feeling cold and lonely, like a solitary candle guttering out before a wintry wind.  She could not even tell Morgana how when she saw her lying next to Arthur on the bed, a chill had crept down her spine.  What they had done was something so foul, so sinister, it sickened her to her core, and yet she had to protect them, for not only was it her duty to do so, but, as she quickly ascertained by the urgency of Arthur’s accusations that morning, her very life depended on it.  Loyalty had never been a hard feat for Gwen in the past, and she had no qualms about following any of Morgana’s prior orders, but now Gwen found herself faced with a test that would prove whether her sense of duty could possibly outweigh the basic morality she adhered to just like every common person granted life on God’s earth.

 

“I think it’s harder for them than it would seem to us on the outside,” Gwen began carefully.  “I don’t know about you, Elyan, but I for one would not like the scrutiny that comes with having as much prestige as they do.  Everyone knows every facet of their lives and then there’s the criticism that comes out of having the kingdom know who you are and what you have done.  I think that would be very hard to withstand.”

 

“You have a point, Gwen,” Elyan said, “but they have armies and knights to defend them in that event so it’s only words, and words can never hurt you, not like actions can.”

 

Gwen was not so sure about this.  Did the Bible not tell us to mind our thoughts for they become our words, and our words become our actions?  She thought of the porcelain vase of crocuses she had neatly arrayed, bringing it to her lady’s room, hoping to set it on the sunny spot on her bedside table.  Another well-intended thought that caused its own rippling of action and chain reaction—only one question remained: where would it end?

 

“You know, perhaps, I wouldn’t want to be some prince with the responsibility of ruling a kingdom someday weighing heavily over my shoulders like some great ominous shadow,” Elyan remarked as he went back to his work, “but I would love to be a knight and win glory with a blade in war.  That would be impressive and meaningful, but alas, the way the High King stands about that bloody tradition of only inviting knights from noble houses to participate in his guard, I will never get the chance to prove my worth to him.  That, my sister, is not fair.  A man should be judged on his skill with a sword—and I have practiced quite a bit with one given that I make so many of them for this godbedamned kingdom—not because he bears a noble name.”

 

“Careful, Elyan,” Gwen said, looking over her shoulder in case some straining passerby was close enough to overhear them.

 

Elyan sighed exasperated.  “You know I am right, Gwen, but you’re just too damn loyal to that family to admit it.”

 

Gwen’s breath caught in her throat.  There was an irony to his words, and they caused her unease.  But they were merely words spoken, and if he was right, they would not hold within them the power and the brevity to pierce clear through the mien of her scruples she had so piously fostered her life thus far into the inner chamber of her well-meaning heart.

Chapter 12

Notes:

Hey guys. Sorry for the hiatus. It was longer than anticipated, and for that I'm sorry, as I've been a bit distracted by one of my other fandoms that I was feeling inspired to create fanvids for on my youtube channel. That's pretty much where I've been the last couple months, but now that those projects are done, I feel ready to come back to this fic. I've spent the last few days revising this chapter and filling in the gaps in it with the hopes of getting it ready in time for Halloween, as an extra treat to myself but also to you! I hope you all enjoy it. You all wished for more Arthur and Morgana since it's been so long since I posted a new chapter about them, and let me assure you this one is entirely about them. I hope it doesn't disappoint. 😉

Thank you all so so much for your continuing interest in this story. It means the world to me. I hope to be better about posting updates from here on out. *fingers crossed* With that being said, I wish you all a Happy Halloween or Samhain if you celebrate either holiday. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Much love, Jo ❤

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Forward or Back

The rest of that day, Morgana was restless, on edge.  Their secret, her secret was out, exposed to her maid in a debauched display that even left the likes of her feeling shamed and disgraced at the mere memory of it.  Now that Gwen was gone, as she had sent her home for the day, a mercy she imagined they were both thankful for given the strange circumstances they both now found themselves in, Morgana paced about her room, thinking hard about what to do next.

 

She needed to speak with Arthur, as the morning had not allowed them a proper chance to discuss what they were to do now that the threat of their secret becoming common knowledge about the castle, nigh the kingdom, loomed before them.  Yes, she had from Gwen her word that she would not dare tell a soul, but could she truly trust her?  Arthur had put the fear of God Himself into that poor girl, she knew, but still, the right incentive and a good heckler could make anyone talk with the proper motive, and there were plenty who would give to have such filth as this on her if only to better themselves, if not to cause her family irreparable ruin. 

 

Morgana exhaled a heaving breath.  The right thing to do would be to call it off with Arthur, their brief, but bright affair.  End it now, before another soul, one less innocent than Gwen, and certainly, more malicious, learned of what went on between them behind closed doors, because if they had messed up this once, and so soon, it was bound to happen again; she knew it in her soul, absolutely.  It would certainly be the wise route to take, ending things here and now, and even an act to repair the damage she had done her soul in participating however briefly in such a sin.  Just three days prior, after all, she had been determined to take the dreaded secret that she loved her brother to her grave, so certainly, she could return to that life, keeping to her chamber, as she had for years, and away from him out of a desperate act to protect both him and her.  Certainly, such devout isolation would put to rest any rumors of their true regard for one another if ever they were to surface.  It would be a sacrifice, yes, but it would keep them both safe, and was she not always one to say better safe than sorry?

 

But that was just it.  That had been in the days before, if she could call three days ago and beyond a lifetime—it certainly felt so—she had had her taste of him, his body joined with hers, and now, even if the mere thought, let alone the act, damned her to hell, could she simply give that up again?  For years she had been living starved and hungry, and now she had at last been fed, and like a man living solely on bread and water before a grand feast, and though she had her full, a part of her, like that man uncertain when his next meal shall be, she wanted more.

 

Either way, whatever she decided, she figured she must speak with Arthur at once.  Just hearing him speak, his voice alone, she hoped would bring her comfort in this time of grave uncertainty, where their futures—together or apart—lied in jeopardy.  As Morgana picked her discarded shawl from the night before off the floor, wrapping it loosely about her shoulders, even she noticed the fervor with which her hand trembled, and a part of her, deep down, knew this need to speak with her brother was nothing but a front to soothe the disquiet of her mind, as her world, the worldview she had fashioned for herself while she had sat through the years idle at her vanity, emptying her mind of decadent thought after thought, came tumbling down, falling down to the ground in splinters.

 

Who was she kidding?  She knew what she wanted.  She was just hoping he would talk her out of it.

 

---

 

Her hand was still upon the old oak door, the knock resounding, when it opened, revealing he who was her love and he who would be her undoing. 

 

He took one swift look at her, his eyes passing over her from head to foot—What does he see? she wondered, a part of her childishly, hoping his thoughts complimentary, perhaps, insipidly so given the danger they were in—and at once, appearing none too surprised that she was there standing without, ushered her within, careful to close the door behind them without a sound.

 

Morgana glanced about the antechamber anxiously, noting upon the table the breakfast plate, hardly touched, the meats and cheeses sitting expectantly, as if waiting to be of use.  It was unlike her brother to forgo a meal, or so that was her understanding of him, having never the pleasure to share a private breakfast with him since he was a boy and she herself still young, innocent—or, perhaps not so, she recalled, remembering the taste of honey on her lips and how she had desperately wished to share that taste with him—and yet, she understood his lack of appetite, realizing only then herself she too had failed to eat, herself not having the stomach to do so, not that she could have if she had possessed the desire because Gwen never did deliver the breakfast platter to her room that morning, unusual and traumatic as that morning had been. 

 

“I suppose your boy was here,” she ventured, her heart in her throat.  The ease she had felt with him the night before was gone, and in its place an uncanny disquiet.  For some reason she half-expected him to turn and strangle her, as if it had been she, not Gwen, to walk in on them this morning, and she the true culprit deserving of the punishment for their shameful discovery. 

 

He flashed her a look, one she could not quite describe, but lingered between mischief and violence.  “Yes, Merlin was here,” he said then, easily enough.  “He came to bring the breakfast and tidy the room.  He was only mildly curious as to why I had ‘gotten the notion’ to both make the bed and dress myself before he could arrive, in yesterday’s clothes no less.”  He laughed, shaking his head. 

 

“Arthur, he does not suspect—” she braved, fearing the worse, but knowing she must know it still. 

 

He turned back to face her.  “No, don’t be silly.  This is Merlin, we are talking about.  I told him a slanted truth, and the idiot that he is, he bought it, hook, line, and sinker.” 

 

She sighed, one worry, for the time being, dismissed. 

 

“But enough of him,” Arthur said, waving away the topic with his hand.  “I want to know what you discussed with Gwen.  I suppose that is what you wish to talk with me as well, or else, knowing you, you would be hiding in your room right about now, unable to even look at me.  Look at me, Morgana.”

 

She looked up, shaken by the fervor of his voice.  “Yes, that is why I came,” she spoke then, holding her hands tight, clasped together, to keep them from shaking, to hide the fact that they were still shaking. 

 

“But not the only reason,” she said, finding her voice.  “Arthur, what are we doing?” she accosted him.  “I questioned you before we began this, whatever this is between us, and now, one person knows the truth.  She has vowed to not tell a soul, and I believe her, I do, but how long until another knows what we feel for one another?  And what if that person has a desire to cause us harm?” 

 

He looked at her carefully, and she feared he would spy the truth behind her cloaked words.  “Are you saying you want to go back to the way things were?” he asked. 

 

“Do you?” she braved.

 

He shook his head.  “I had forgotten that you do that.”

 

“Do what?” she asked.

 

“You want me to decide.  You want me to put an end to this, so you don’t have to live with yourself, knowing that you threw the best thing that ever happened to you away just so that we can go back to living our old lies, deluding ourselves.”

 

The grip on her hands tightened; she swallowed her heart, even as it beat a loud, thrumming drum in her throat.  “Either way, we’re still living a lie,” she said, standing up to him.  “What good is it to be honest with yourself, only to deceive the world?  Does that not only a liar make?”

 

“And around we go,” he said.  “Alright, have it your way.  I don’t want this to end, Morgana.  Not at least until I have no other choice.”

 

“And what of me?” she asked, her voice small and diffident.  “When is it that I have no other choice?” 

 

“You tell me,” he said. 

 

She waited, expecting him to say more, only to find him studying her, silently, with that look that scrutinized her very soul. 

 

“I love you, Arthur,” she said quietly.  “I don’t think I’ll ever stop, no matter what happens.”

 

A stillness as loud as the beating of her heart; she released her hands, the nerves stilling, the tremors smoothing, back to grace, and she knew that she had spoken true.

 

Arthur came before her, and, taking her into his arms, kissed her nice and soft and long on her mouth, and Morgana felt the pleasure and the warmth light in her brain.  This is goodness, she told herself then, trying not to cry, trying to believe it. 

 

When he broke his lips from hers, as she knew he inevitably must, he muttered softly, “I suppose this is what you want.” 

 

She nodded, feeling herself grow dumb with the sensation of him.  What did the future matter?  What did her life matter?  If now, what she had was him?  Whatever blight that may come, would, she reasoned.  Was it not better to stop fretting and live? 

 

The lie, her mind shouted back from the happy void that was her head empty, but full of him.  But it can only be that, she voiced back to the reason—or was it conscience?—in her brain.  And if it is all I can have, I will take it, tend it, and call it my own, until I take unto myself its falsehood for the living truth. 

 

He was watching her expectantly, and she realized he was waiting for her consent. 

 

“Yes,” she breathed, feeling a pang in her stomach.  If one meal, nay a feast, were enough, she would have had her satisfaction and walk contented away, but as it was, one must continue to eat to continue living. 

 

“Good answer,” he said, bringing his mouth back to hers.

 

She stopped him, put a finger to his lips.  “But one request,” she said, watching the puzzled look on his face.  “If we keep doing this, let it be here.  I have no wish to spend another night in my chamber.”

 

“That can be arranged,” he said with smirk, about to bend his head to kiss her once more, when an impromptu knock came at the door. 

 

In an instant, they jumped apart, Morgana watching Arthur wide-eyed with surprise, and Arthur frowning, with a note of curiosity at the door. 

 

“I better answer that,” he said, then to her, “Quick, hide yourself behind the curtain.  This shouldn’t take long.”

 

Without a word Morgana darted behind the drapes, her heart galloping in her chest, as she masked her skirts in its folds. In the distance she heard Arthur give a shout for the visitor to come in and the door opened.  Morgana fought every temptation to take even the briefest peek at the unbeknownst voyeur to their tryst, but reason and her already heightened nerves compelled her to remain hidden within the folds.  Yes, she realized she was willing to undertake the danger that came hand in hand with pursuing an illicit affair with her brother, but even she, despite her sensibility, did not expect to meet it head on again so soon after the last mishap.  God be good, she prayed silently then.  Do not allow this visitor to stay long, and pray save me from being discovered by whoever he or she may be.  If she had not already lived through the morning’s scare, perhaps she would have noticed the humor in such a plea made to an infallible God who would deem it His every right to rain fire and brimstone down upon her for her actions as opposed to granting her shelter from the consequences of her sin.

 

“Ahh, Merlin.  Back again, I see,” she heard her brother say so amiably and without care, even she felt their charged conversation to have been a time ago, as opposed to mere moments past.  She tilted her head to listen all the better.  “Didn’t I tell you I have no need of your service today?” 

 

“Yes, Sire,” Morgana heard Merlin reply, sensing an urgency in his voice.  “That is not why I have come.  Your father, the King, he wishes to speak with you in his chambers.”

 

“Now?” Arthur asked, sounding incredulous.

 

“That’s what I was told,” Merlin said simply.

 

A pause.  “Did he say whatever for it is about?”

 

“That was not specified,” the servant said.  “I have only the notion that the matter is rather important.”

 

“You have ‘the notion,’” Arthur mimicked to himself, miffed.  “Very well, Merlin, you are excused.  I’ll go and see what my father wants.”

 

“Sire.”

 

Even though she had heard the door open and close once more, and she presumed Merlin was once again without, Morgana remained transfixed behind the curtain, not daring to come out from behind its folds, in the event, as was her luck today, that it was still unsafe to do so.

 

“Oh, will you come out from there already?” she heard Arthur say, exasperated.  “He’s gone.”

 

Pushing aside the drapes, Morgana stepped out into the room, watching her brother with a worried look.  “You don’t think—” she began, only to stop herself, not daring to finish her thought aloud.

 

“What?” Arthur asked. 

 

“That he knows, somehow,” she said, her words stilted.  “About us.”

 

Arthur took a breath as if he were to say something, then stopped himself, only to think better of it.  “I did,” he admitted.  “For a moment.”

 

“But then—” she prodded.

 

He laughed to himself.  “I don’t know why, but I have the impression if Father had known that about us, he would not have sent Merlin of all people to tell me he wished to speak with me.”

 

Morgana released the breath she had been holding.  “You’re sure?”

 

“Yeah,” he said easily.  “I’m sure it’s nothing more than issues of state or new intel on the Saxons landing on the eastern shore.  That’s all rather important but has nothing to do with us.”

 

She sighed, relaxing.  “You’re right.  I’m just being paranoid,” she said, laughing now at herself, at her own inanity, though still uneasy, as she fidgeted with her hands.

 

“Hey now,” he said, stepping before her and resting his head against hers.  “Are you okay?  Do you want to back out?”

 

She leaned into his touch, pressing her forehead against his, savoring the warmth of him beside her.  She heard herself laugh, then she shook her head.  “No,” she whispered, then pulling away to look up at him, “I want this.”  She reached for his hand, took it in hers.  “I want you.”

 

“Okay,” he said, smiling, then dropped her hand.  “I’m going to go find out whatever it is Father wants, and then, maybe tonight, we can meet back here?”

 

A grin spread on her face.  “I’d like that, yeah.”

 

“Good,” he said.  “Me too.”  He gave her a parting kiss on the cheek, then turned for the door, for whatever awaited him outside of it.

 

Morgana watched him go, supposing that once he was long gone, she too would turn back for her own chamber, lonely and desolate as it was, compared to here, despite how she had no wish to go back there, unlike her brother’s chambers, to which, she was always willing to return. 

 

Though she saw the truth in Arthur’s words, that whatever it was that their father wanted it had nothing to do them, she could not soothe the nagging sense of doubt that crept up her spine, chilling her despite the unusual warm autumn day, that it did, it did.

 

---

 

“Morgana,” his voice wavered uncertain, later that night, sounding muffled as he spoke her name against the softness of the pillows.  This was the first he had spoken, since she had arrived outside his door an hour before, more than ready to be invited into the comfort of his chambers, the warmth of his bed, after spending the remainder of the afternoon locked away in her room, attempting to stitch a tapestry to distract her all too idle mind from straying toward thoughts of him, and what he had inevitably discussed with their father.  Despite the meticulousness demanded of needlework, the task had failed to occupy her mind, and she found that with each thread she pulled, her mind strayed back to him, her incessant worry, though she told herself it was nonsense, and in her mind, she was overtaken with the image of their father, not Gwen, standing within her chamber room beholding the each of them, son and daughter both, sprawled indecently upon the bed.  She had gasped when the sight had overtaken her mind, and her hand had slipped, the needlepoint puncturing both the cloth and her smooth, pale skin, drawing a drop of blood at her fingertip.  After that, she had put the embroidery away, content to allow her mind to wander to every whim it would, until it was time to ready for dinner, and then, later still, to meet him here in his chamber. 

 

When she had come to his room, dressed in her evening gown, he had greeted her with a kiss opposed to words, and she had felt at the once the urgency of his mouth upon hers, understanding instantly the need of his desire, and she told herself that whatever had transpired between he and their father could wait until after they had first fed themselves.  

 

Now that they were both sated, herself lying naked beside him beneath the covers of his bed, Morgana wondered if it was that conversation that he intended to relay to her now.  She turned her head to look at him with questioning brows. 

 

Sensing the hesitation in his voice and fearing what it could mean, she clasped her hands in his and pressed herself closer to his body, as if to safeguard him as much as herself from whatever he was about to say.  He felt warm, the heat of his body like a single fire in an otherwise cold house.  “What is it, Arthur?” she asked him, her voice soft, yet raised with concern.  She did not know when she caressed his hands, whether she was trying to reassure him that he was safe to speak, or herself that she was safe to listen.

 

He paused, as if unsure how to say whatever it was, she knew, he had troubling his mind.  He had seemed distant to her earlier that evening at dinner—even though they rarely talked to one another in such public settings, in sight of their father, regarding each other only with what the appropriate courtroom formality demanded of them—and he had seemed even farther away, as if grappling some sort of demon in his mind, when he took her to his bed just an hour ago, despite the intensity of his passion, the rough way in which he had handled her that caused her to cry out in pain as much as pleasure when he entered her.  

 

Morgana wondered fretfully what it could be that had her brother so concerned.  Could it be the situation with Gwen from early this morning? she thought, dodging her first fear that had clawed at the back of her mind, taunting her all afternoon and well into the evening.  But she had told him she had spoken to Gwen, had assured him that her maid would not tell a soul about their affair, and though he had seemed reticent at first, she had, or so it seemed, managed to assuage his anxiety regarding their discovery, and besides, he had seemed none too worried about it when she spoke with him again later that morning.  Then, it had been she who had been struck with worry, not him.  It must not be the Gwen fiasco then, she thought wearily, knowing in her gut what it must be then, and yet he had assured her that it would not involve them and would amount to nothing.

 

At last, when she could not bear the wait any longer, her mind already treading to dark and darker places still, he said, his tone flat and level, “You know I went to speak to Father today.”

 

“And?” Morgana asked at once, lifting her head in alarm.  “What did he say?”  At the mention of their father and the conversation they had shared, a pang of dread struck her heart and she looked up at him with worried eyes, fearing she knew what her brother was about to tell her even before he drew breath to speak.  But Arthur did not meet her gaze.  Instead, lying on his back as he was, he stared intently at the ceiling, veiled in the semi-lit darkness, above them.

 

He answered her absently.  “It seems it is decided.  I am to marry Rodor’s daughter.  Father convened the Council and they agreed, unanimously.  He sent the dispatch to Nemeth thereafter.  He did not waste a moment, not even to tell me first the good news.”

 

Marry.  At that awful word, Morgana found herself suddenly without breath.  All the afternoon and all the night after, her mind had fretted about this impromptu meeting her father and brother had shared, fearing the worst, that their father knew the truth about them, when of course that could have never been, else she could not possibly be lying beside Arthur just now in his bed.  “No,” she choked, as she watched her brother’s expressionless face.  “Arthur, you can’t possibly—”

 

He swallowed hard.  “As you said last night, it was only a matter of time, Morgana.” 

 

“Yes, I know, but…” she let her voice trail off, not knowing what her refutation of his simple truth might be, herself still dumbfounded that she had been so daft to forget this, what with the incident earlier that day, this other unseen threat to their happiness.  The rational part of herself knew that Arthur was right, although she had feared for this moment despite the air of nonchalance she had put on the evening before when the two of them had stood here within her brother’s bedchamber discussing the consequences of their father’s then proposed arrangement, knowing it would eventually come to pass.  But then she had figured, wrongly so, that they would have had more time than this: a few, solitary nights before autumn gave way to the brink of winter.  But then again, what need had she to worry?  Like she had said last night, it was not like Arthur was leaving Camelot; he would be here, even if he was married to this woman who would be his wife, and there were ways they could employ yet still in order to be together in the quiet hours of the moonlit dark, the only time when it was safe for them to be so, the particulars of his wife notwithstanding.  It was a complication only, not a devastation of their plans.  She understood this, and yet despite this sensibility, she could not help but feel deep within her bones, despite the warmth of the bed she now shared with him, a creeping, latent chill at the mere thought of this marriage now that it was not merely words spoken as idle dinner chatter, but rather words in writing, traveling swift and sure with a purpose to Nemeth’s borders as they spoke.

 

“Did you ever learn from Father her name?” she asked quietly then, the thought suddenly overtaking her, imparting to her its importance, as if the revelation of the name alone could possess the power to skirt away or ensure disaster, her voice small in the fathomless dark as she spoke.

 

A wry smile forced its way onto Arthur’s lips.  “Mithian, he called her.  Princess of Nemeth.  She is Rodor’s only child, his only card to play, his sole gift to the High King’s throne.” 

 

Morgana fell silent, struck dumb to at last know the identity of the woman her brother was to marry for the fact that she knew this princess her brother spoke of personally as well as by name.  She recalled that she remembered Mithian quite well from when she was yet a young girl.  Her father—that was why his name had sounded so familiar to her now, she reckoned—had travelled to Camelot on several occasions to participate in Uther Pendragon’s infamous tournaments.  This had been before Rodor had assumed his own throne as king and he had brought his young daughter along with him, aware that Uther Pendragon had a daughter of his own, hoping the two of them would become fast friends.  Morgana recalled now the few days she had spent with Mithian during those tournaments, how the two of them had toyed with Arthur, giggling ceaselessly whenever he fell for one of their many tricks.  It had been years since Morgana last saw Mithian, let alone heard any news of her.  Now it was set in writing that Arthur was to marry her.  

 

“Well say something,” Arthur said, suddenly agitated.  His sudden outburst interrupted Morgana’s reverie like a castaway stone ripples the once steady surface of a lake. 

 

“I…I don’t know what to say, Arthur,” she said helplessly.  “Mithian.  Mithian,” she repeated the name as if forcing her disbelieving ears to fathom the cruel truth Arthur’s contrite mouth spoke.  Why did it have to be her of all the eligible princesses and ladies across the five kingdoms?

 

She did not voice her concern.  Instead, she turned to accuse her brother, “I take it you don’t remember her then.”

 

He frowned, considering her, the sudden raw coldness in her voice.  “You know her?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Morgana sighed.  “From a time ago, when we were but children.  Her father came to attend the tournament, and we played down in the apple groves near Avalon.  Don’t you recall?  But perhaps you were too young yet to remember.”

 

Arthur sifted through his memories, upturning them in his mind.  “No.  Well, maybe, yes.  I remember there was a girl you played with one summer.  Was that her?”

 

“Yes,” Morgana answered, her heart faltering.  

 

He swallowed hard.  “That’s it.  That’s all you’re going to say?”

 

“Well,” she paused, prayed God would keep her levelheaded and calm.  “What left is there to say?  It was a time ago, and hardly matters now.”

 

He sighed, the tension beginning to dispel from his body.  “I don’t know,” his voice cracked.  Then his bottom lip wavered, and a lump rose in his throat.  “Don’t let him do this to me, Morgana,” he pled to his sister, as she callously watched him struggle with the cruel turn of hand fate had dealt them.  For the first time she felt powerless, unable to placate him, to dissipate for him his burden.  She felt the lump rise in her throat also, but quickly swallowed it, realizing for the first time, where this matter concerned, it was herself, not him, she pitied.

 

She squeezed his hand.  “Arthur, I know you.  I know that whatever happens you will do what is right and just, just like you always have.”

 

He broke his hand from her grasp, ran it down his face.  “Oh God, I don’t want to lose you to her.”

 

“You won’t,” she said softly.  “I’m right here.  And I’ll always be right here, waiting for you, whenever you need me, no matter what.”  She smiled despite herself.  “I mean what kind of elder sister would I be if I were to suddenly abandon my younger brother?”

 

He forced a grin at that.  “A terrible one.”

 

“And could you imagine me being so terrible?” she said, her voice sultry and low.

 

“Oh, Morgana,” Arthur said, looking at her with sudden desire, the reality of his hardship already slipping from his mind.  “Why did you have to be my sister?  Why couldn’t you have been just some other king’s daughter in a faraway land?  So, I could know you rightfully as my wife.”

 

“I know,” she said softly, cradling him against her.  “I know.  Just as I wish you were a visiting prince, come to woo me for my hand.”  She gave him a sad smile.  “But maybe, then, we would have never met or could have never found love with each other as we do.  Perhaps we would have been completely different people, you and I, if we never grew up together.  Have you ever thought of that?  I don’t think I would be who I am today if not for my having you for a brother.”  Her voice rang with sudden revelation.  “Maybe the fates aren’t so cruel after all.  At least they have allowed us to have each other in this way.”

 

“But at such a cost,” he muttered miserably.  “I cannot have you, Morgana.  And that eats away at me.”

 

Morgana let out a deep breath, surrendering her own internal worries in favor of savoring the present she had. “I’ve had enough of this talk, Arthur.  We are free now, and I want to live freely.”

 

At that he looked at her.  “You mean you would like to make love again?”

 

“Well,” she began, moving to sit on top of him and straddle his crotch.  “Once, surely isn’t enough.”

 

Arthur smiled pleasurably, feeling himself starting to grow hard again at her touch.  “I love you,” he said.

 

“I know,” she replied back.

Chapter 13

Notes:

Since I just updated last week, I don't have much to say right now about this chapter. Only that I hope you enjoy it. Thank you all so very much for reading!

With love, Jo ❤

Chapter Twelve: The Bleak Midwinter

The weeks sped by, the warm autumn days fading into the cold brisk of winter.  Leaves fell from the trees, whistling with the chilled wind that blew through Camelot.  The harvesters picked the last apples to grow in Avalon’s apple grove, sold them at Market, and the townspeople met their curfew early, returned to their homes just before the sun dipped below the horizon in premature slumber.  And all the while, the world was slowing down, as if waiting, stilling itself for the harsh blow to come, that icy depth of winter that tore through the landscape, raking it bare, until the spring thaw. 

 

Up in the castle, the Pendragons too stilled themselves in their waiting, not for winter’s exposing face to pass them by unharmed (it was rather warm up in the castle with many hearths to heat its stone rooms and servants aplenty to light them) but for the news that would determine whether the chosen Nemeth princess would one day sit the empty gilded chair beside the High King’s throne.  Uther made a habit of hearing his messengers each and every day, hoping to at last learn that Rodor had submitted his agreement to the proposal and was preparing the wedding party for its march to Camelot come early spring, once the roads became clear again and passable.  Meanwhile, Arthur and Morgana, strangers by day, lovers by night, steeled themselves for the inevitable news, fearing the worst: that King Rodor would bring his maiden daughter to Camelot’s walls dressed for her wedding in virgin white.  

 

Perhaps it was this unfavorable future yet indeterminate which lent the haste and the urgency to their couplings whenever they met under the cover of the sheltering dark, for they made love each night as if they were starved of bodily touch and physical affection, as if each night they spent entwined in each other’s arms was one less to experience thereafter, like sand from an hourglass falling, falling until there were no grains left to fall, no time left to spend.  During this time, whenever she woke anxious in the quiet of the night as Arthur slumbered peacefully beside her, Morgana would assure herself she had no reason to worry about Princess Mithian’s arrival, if she were to come at all, for she knew of nothing, not even this hastily proposed arrangement, which could prevent Arthur from loving her as he did.  Still, even as that knowledge worked to ease her mind, she would still clench the sheets in her sweat-dappled palms, shut tight her eyes and beg for sleep.  Some nights, sleep came for Morgana, with their promised dreams of visions she had yet to understand—usually there was a woman within them, brown of hair, pale of skin, was it Mithian? she would wonder—and some nights, Morgana would grip the sheets close to her naked body until the listless dawn shown through her eyelids, and she would, exhausted, open them before the daylight’s cold glory.

 

A month after Uther convened the Council and sent his swiftest messenger to Nemeth with his acceptance of Rodor’s proposition—if it still stood—the High King received the word he had been anxiously awaiting.  It was decided, the envoy related wearily, for Uther had summoned him to the council room the moment he had been spotted by the guard reentering the castle gates, forestalling until he relayed to his majesty the eagerly awaited news the time to recuperate from his taxing journey.  The short of it was that King Rodor, pleased by the High King’s agreement that Prince Arthur should marry his beloved daughter, sent the envoy straight back to Camelot that same day with a missive for the High King, detailing that come the first snowmelt, he, his daughter, and an escort he arranged would travel to Camelot for the betrothal and forthcoming marriage.  The messenger had hardly finished giving the High King the good news himself when word spread like wildfire throughout the castle halls and in the town below of the royal marriage to be, and it was spoken by those present in the council room that day that Uther was so elated by the prospects of his son’s future married life and what it meant for Camelot specifically that he even graced the poor, taxed errand boy with one of his rare smiles before sending him off to rest after a job well done.

 

But not everyone was as delighted as Uther Pendragon that galling winter day when the news came from Nemeth as swift and true as an arrow to the heart.  Morgana wore a frown when Arthur visited her in her chambers that afternoon to tell her, stoically, that their fears had at last been realized. 

 

Morgana, who had been at work stitching a small tapestry, one of those soft, feminine patterns showcasing spring flowers in bloom, stitched songbirds circling above the knitted petals—it was one of the few womanly arts allotted her to pass the winter drudgery by—dropped her needle mid-stitch and let the tapestry fall dejectedly into her lap at her brother’s foul news.  “So, it’s to be you and Mithian then,” she said, not unaccusingly.  She glanced downward at the incomplete tapestry, glared at the bright flowers mocking her in their springtime delight.  Spring, she thought petulantly to herself.  No good would come of spring.  Suddenly, she yearned for blizzard and storm, eternal snows and driving winds to bar Camelot at its towering gate, to dissuade the unwanted Nemeth travelers from ever trekking the weeks’ distance to her home’s front door.  What did it matter if the land laid in winter unending?  She would have Arthur to herself, without having to share him with another woman, a woman who had once been dear to her in childhood.

 

“So, it seems,” Arthur said quietly.  “So, it stands.  Morgana, I am sorry.  I tried speaking to Father, I did.  I asked him to reconsider the arrangement.  I knew I couldn’t sway him from my marrying altogether, and it would seem rather queer if I did not marry at his request, so I asked for it to be Princess Elena instead, as he and Godwyn are friends, would it not be more proper?  But he would not listen to me.  He is set upon this path, and I must follow it.”

 

“You?” she asked, exasperated.  “And what of me?”  Must I sit by and watch you, as I always have, chart the path of your destiny?  She wanted to shout at him, to draw him close to listen at how he had always been the favored one, and she, herself, the forgotten child, confined to the very chambers they now stood in as if she did not exist beyond its four stone walls.  But she relented.

 

“I have no wish to marry Mithian,” he said.  “I have no desire to hurt you in this way.”

 

She threw down the tapestry and rose from her seat.  Oh, his arrogance.  “You assume it hurts me.  And I tell you it does not!”

 

He frowned.  “Doesn’t it?  You told me you two were once friends.  If you were in my situation, and I was in yours, and say, you were promised to Lance, I believe it would grieve me a great deal to see you two wedded.  It would be a betrayal that I could hardly blame Lance for, him not knowing the truth about us, the way we feel.  And I could hardly blame you, since Father would have forced you to it.”

 

“Oh, enough!” she cried.  “Arthur, please, for the love of God, stop, just stop.”

 

“What is it, my love?” he asked, drawing closer to where she stood hands in fists.  He reached for her hand, but she yanked it away.  “Have I upset you?”

 

She sighed.  “No.  But what does it matter, Arthur?  All this back and forth we’ve been doing these weeks gone by, will Rodor reconsider? Will he not? Now that we know, it still isn’t set in stone.  First, she,” she did well not to utter her name, “must journey to Camelot, then you will have to court her here to see if the match is a good fit for both Father and Rodor, as well as you and her.  Then, you will have to propose to her, and she accept, for her to truly become your wife.  And that is key, Arthur, for your sake.  As long as you hold your ground and refuse her, none of this matters.  None of it.  You have the power to do what is right here.  I’ll let you decide what that is.”

 

He frowned.  “You make it sound so easy, Morgana.  But this is Father we’re talking about.  It is no easy feat to defy him, once he has set his mind to something.”

 

She watched him steadily, impassively.  “I’m sure you will be able to find a way.”

 

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair.  “Alright,” he said, then shifted the subject to the evening’s dinner, how he would see her there in the hall amongst the other nobles of the Court for their father was arranging a special celebration to mark the news’ occasion, the day his son’s future marriage was affirmed in writing, and how he would speak with her later when she came under the cover of darkness to visit him in his chambers.

 

Morgana responded to him cordially enough despite the tension freezing her body not too unlike the wintry gales whistling outside the window, cloaking the landscape with snow and coating Avalon with a glistening sheen of ice.  The ice that froze over Avalon Lake come winter’s depth was never quite thick enough for an adult to walk upon—a child perhaps, but neither a man nor woman full grown could traverse its surface without watching horrified as the glasslike layer splintered and cracked below his steady weight.  Morgana wondered if her body, so stiff with trepidation, was as fragile as that sheen of ice upon Avalon’s waters, that if some weight, some heavy burden, fell against her, she too would crack and shatter into a thousand glistening pieces at even the gentlest touch.  She closed her eyes a moment, surprised to see behind them not Avalon in its winter’s glory, but the vase of flowers Gwen had been carrying to her chambers when she caught them, the porcelain slipping from her nerveless fingers to land in a deafening rain and crash of pieces upon gilded pieces on the stone floor. 

 

She opened her eyes.  “I will see you at the feast, Arthur.  And then later,” she added, calmly, though she knew it was not necessary.  He knew as well as she that she would be there, waiting outside his chambers, eager as always to be invited in and loved therein by him.  She had a thought to bring up the Mithian matter again to him then but decided against it.  Enough was enough, she had said.  There was no sense in pursuing the matter in circles unending, and the truth of the matter was that she was not within Camelot’s walls just yet.  And Morgana Pendragon would not stoop so low as to begrudge a woman who had yet to traverse her halls and wrong her in her home.  And besides, she would not let on to Arthur that the impending marriage grieved her as much as he, now that she knew the identity of the woman he was to wed. She had determined she would put on a brave face for him. 

 

It was not until after Arthur made his departure to freshen up for the evening’s dinner that Morgana realized that he never did say what he intended to do regarding their father’s arrangement to marry the Nemeth princess, her childhood friend.  She had urged him to do what was right, and he had conceded that he would, but she was left none the wiser as to what that right course of action would be.  Her heart knew that in the end, he would choose herself, even if he could not foresee the way to do so without upsetting their father.  She had faith in him.

 

But that faith, that unwavering certainty did little to alleviate the uneasy chill creeping all over and down her flesh.

 

Morgana shifted uncomfortably, turned with a shock to the window that lent view to the snow blustering outside.  It was open, just a crack, but enough to chill the room.  She had not remembered opening it before, when she sat to work on her embroidery.  Perhaps, Gwen had opened it earlier to let in some fresh air and forgot to close it.

 

Eerily relieved, Morgana went to the window and latched it shut.

 

---

 

Gwen was carrying a basket heaping with Morgana’s dresses, fresh from the laundry, back up the stairs to her chamber when she caught wind of the news that was blowing through the walls of Camelot swifter than the snow outside. 

 

She had been about to turn down the alcove where her lady’s chamber was situated when she was accosted by a voice that she knew all too well, though its suddenness nearly stopped her heart.

 

“It’s been a while since we’ve spoken, Lady Gwen.  I was beginning to fear you’d forgotten our chance meeting in the market street.”

 

For a moment, she forgot how to breathe.  Then she quickly drew up the courage to swivel round and face him, the noblest knight in all the land, who had not, or so it seemed—no matter how inexplicable its seeming—let slip from his mind that hapless day in which they met, two different people from two distinct worlds, him adorned in his gilded armor and herself dressed in her humble maid’s wear.  She had surely thought he had forgotten her since that day, for she knew herself to be nothing remarkable.  The only reason she reckoned he had even stopped to take notice of her was for the purple crocuses she had woven into her hair, and even then, she had figured she held no more interest for him than a passing fancy ever did for a bored knight on an uneventful Saturday morning patrolling the city.  She shivered, not because of him so much as thought of those crocuses she had stupidly thought to pick, if only for what happened afterward. 

 

Because of them she had become privy to a most terrible secret.  Because of them she had become complicit in the perpetuation of that secret, as much as it grieved her to do so, no matter the uneasy understanding she now shared with the very woman who had all but begged her to keep that secret.  But what other choice did she have?  She could not tell anyone, not even this most esteemed knight—or so he was spoken of by the people, she had little reason to think him any holier than the others—here; to do so would be to suffer death.  The Prince himself had alluded that, and she took that gated threat as a promise.  She could trust that he meant his word.

 

“Likewise,” Gwen replied succinctly, shifting the clothesbasket in her hands as she watched him.  Perhaps she had not noticed before for the surprise their first meeting affronted her, shocked as she was to learn the name of the man she spoke with in most uncourtly fashion, but she noted it now that Sir Lancelot had a distinct handsomeness about him with his head of dark curls and his deep brown eyes she could lose herself in.  They regarded her warmly.

 

“Why haven’t you spoken to me?” he asked.  “I’ve watched you in the halls, and I know you’ve seen me watching you.  Yet you remain aloof.  Why is that?”

 

Gwen sighed.  “Good Sir, perhaps you do not remember our last encounter as well as I.  Let me remind you then.  I am a lady’s maid for Princess Morgana.  I have no business gallivanting with knights of the High King’s guard.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work that needs attending to.”

 

“No,” he said, grabbing her arm before she could turn away.  “Wait.”

 

She stopped herself, watching him flabbergasted as she waited for him to speak.

 

“There’s something different about you, Gwen,” he said at last, his dark eyes pouring deep into her own.  “Last time I saw you, you were radiant as summer’s last hurrah, a smiling girl with flowers in her hair.  Now I see a sadness upon you, as if winter’s drudgery has beaten you down.  Is everything alright?”

 

Gwen gaped at him, too stunned to speak.  His question hung suspended in the air between them—Is everything alright?—waiting patiently in the stillness that befell them both just to be answered.  How could she answer it?  Of course, everything was far from alright, despite the gingerness with which Morgana now regarded her, treading about the subject of which they were both now privy as if she were an uncomprehending child, whenever she excused her early by the day’s end—they both knew without speaking the reason for this and where she was going—but she could hardly tell him that without confiding in him the why.  Besides, the deftness of his perception, the uncanniness with which he had scrutinized and marked her from a distance having only spoken with her just the once and, even then, for just a short while left her at a loss for words.  She owed this man no such explanation for her apparently perceptible inwardness these last several weeks (and to be quite frank, she had thought she had masked the burdensome thoughts on her mind better than that and was quite peeved that a stranger such as he could see right through her façade); she hardly knew him. 

 

And yet somehow, inexplicably, it was as if he knew her.  It frightened Gwen, to be known, to be spotted and singled out from her fellow maidservants and marked with identity.  Was this how Morgana felt? she wondered.  To lack private anonymity as she goes about her days?  She belongs to the people more than herself.  How could she even know herself with so many eyes watching her, analyzing her, prying where they do not belong in the chance to understand her?  But Gwen was getting ahead of herself.  She did not belong to a people; she did not mean anything to them, except for this solitary wayward man, who knew her in ways she did not even know herself.  I do not belong to him either, she vowed, her sense of self fragmenting like the vase she dropped in Morgana’s chamber, its porcelain pieces singing as they splintered on the floor like bells chiming out of sync, out of tune. 

 

“Why, yes,” she found herself saying.  “Everything is fine.  Just fine.  I may have, perhaps, fallen under some winter blues, but everything is quite well.  My family is well.  What have I to worry about?”  She made sure to smile at him then, just to sell to him that notion that yes, everything is fine, thank you for asking. 

 

Lancelot nodded, and said, as if hearing words she had not spoken, “I will not pry.  But if you say you are well, Gwen, that is reassurance to my ears.  I trust you not to discount such matters.  I only wish for you to know that if some issue does make itself known, you can come to me.  I will listen and see what I can do to right the matter.  I know that Arthur is known to mistreat those who serve him from time to time.  Perhaps, Princess Morgana behaves no differently to you?”

 

“Sir!” she snapped, the blood draining from her face as he drew so dangerously close to the truth.  “I do not care your position in the High King’s guard.  You have no right to speak about Princess Morgana in such an uncouth fashion, especially when she only has the word of her maid to defend her!  But as her maid, I will tell you that the Princess has been nothing but kind to me all the years I’ve held the privilege to serve her!  And that is that!”

 

The knight chuckled.  “Forgive me my poor choice of words, Lady Gwen.  I only spoke so out of concern for you.”

 

“I understand that,” Gwen said testily, “but it is not your place to worry yourself over a maid such as me.”

 

“Actually, it is,” he countered.  “Most of my fellow knights may have forgotten their pledge, but I have not.  My duty is to protect the High King, yes, just like the rest who swore their oaths to his service, but it’s also to Camelot.  And Camelot is not just the castle and the kingdom, as many falsely believe.  It’s the people, and you, Gwen, are one of the people.  So, as I understand it, I serve the Pendragon just as much as I serve you.”

 

She laughed.  “You speak like a troubadour, but one that has confused his sources.  Knights serve the noblewomen of their king’s court, not the maids of those noblewomen.” 

 

He dodged addressing her understanding of the matter with a question.  “And I see you are quite occupied serving your noblewoman now.  Is one of those dresses for the feast held tonight in the Prince’s honor?”

 

She frowned.  “There is to be a feast?  You mean one the Court will attend?  But there is no holiday to mark the occasion.”

 

“Ah, you have not heard?  And here I thought the women of your position the first to learn of such matters.  Let me say it plain.  The High King has just heard word from King Rodor pf Nemeth agreeing to the High King’s proposal that Rodor’s daughter marry Prince Arthur.  The wedding will be held this spring in Camelot.”

 

“My,” Gwen said, shocked, “that is soon.”  She had heard rumors about the castle about the arrangement but was uncertain herself whether anything would come out of it, or even if there was any truth to the rumors, as she did not feel capable of asking Morgana herself about them, though she reckoned she of all people would have known the truth.  Now, she wondered if just perhaps this pending marriage was an answer to her prayers. 

 

“Yes, quite,” Lancelot agreed.  “Hence, the feast tonight.  The High King is very pleased by the notion and wishes to celebrate.  Although, he may be the only one.  I’m sure the unmarried ladies of the Court are quite dispassionate to learn of the Prince’s forthcoming marriage.  And from what I can see Arthur is not particularly enthused by the idea as well.”

 

“Oh, is that so?” she asked, feigning surprise.  Whatever hopes she may have had of escaping Sir Lancelot’s odd conversation were gone with the wind howling outside the castle walls.  Suddenly, she wished for nothing but to continue speaking to him, if only to learn just what he and potentially others knew about the Prince, the purpose of his hasty betrothal, and his reasons for finding it so unconscionable.  Although, most likely, she knew those reasons better than anyone.

 

Lancelot was about to respond when Gwen sighted another knight coming up from behind him, drawing closer to where the two of them were congregated.  Her face flared with embarrassment, her initial qualms about speaking with Lancelot returning to her once more.  She had had no desire to speak with him, let alone be seen by another, least of all one of his fellows, conversing with him.  She thought to make a run for it, then thinking that herself scampering down the hall would only cause more of a scene and draw more of the passing knight’s attention to them, froze in her tracks, praying to God above that the good knight would continue walking and pass them on by without saying so much as a word.

 

But that humble prayer was too much to ask of God just then.

 

“Lancelot!” the knight cried as he came upon them, slapping Lance playfully on the back.  “How fairs it?  Everything as should be on this side of the castle?”

 

“Well, enough, Gwaine,” Lancelot said, turning to acknowledge him.  Gwen thought he did so reluctantly, as if he was as uncomfortable as she to be sighted speaking to one another.  So much for all his talk of chivalry, she thought derisively.  He is humiliated to be seen standing next to me.  See, he is no different than other men of his class and higher.  Except for Arthur.  Arthur had seen her not as a mere girl, but as the threat she was: competent, calculating, puzzling the pieces together—not some pretty maid with flowers in her hair.  Unlike this Lancelot, who thought to woo her with false words and empty gestures.  She would not be so taken advantage of by such a man.    

 

“And who is this extraordinary lady you’re speaking with?” Gwaine asked, laughing.  Gwen detected a hint of mockery in his voice, though she knew not whether it was directed at Lancelot in jest or at herself for being seen conversing with him.  “You’re not one to speak to girls as far as I recall, as much as they tend to flock about you.  Like that Elaine.”

 

Lancelot sighed.  “Please for the love you have of me, Gwaine, do not bring up Elaine.  There is no need to bring up old hurts.”

 

“But you’re the one who caused her such injury!” Gwaine remarked.  “Winning glory by day and breaking women’s hearts by night, that is you, Sir Lancelot the Bachelor!  Until now, so it would seem.”

 

“It is nothing, Sir,” Gwen interjected, just as surprised of herself as the two knights before her, her cheeks burning.  “Sir Lancelot here merely offered to help me with carrying the Princess’s laundry to her chambers, is that not the truth of the matter?”

 

Lancelot choked.  “Yes, that is precisely right.  I was merely helping the girl with her duties.  Nothing more.”

 

Gwaine clapped Lancelot on the back.  “Of course, of course.  Here, I am, once again, jumping to conclusions, my good fellow.”

 

“It must be the mead,” Lancelot agreed.

 

“Yes,” Gwaine confessed, “the tavern.  How did you know I just came from there?”

 

Lancelot chuckled.  “When are you not at the tavern, Gwaine?”

 

“I’m not there now.”

 

“Yes, well, I can see that.”

 

“I suppose you can,” Gwaine replied, a knowing smile on his lips.  “Well, I best leave you two to your mission.  That looks like one hefty basket, and one full of the Lady Morgana’s clothes, I presume.  Would you mind, Lady Acquaintance of Sir Lancelot du Lac, if I touched one?  Just that purple one on top.  It’s the closest I’ll ever come to laying hands on the Princess herself.”

 

Gwen gaped at the intoxicated man, studying him, assessing the situation at hand.  He was a knight, a man of a higher class than hers, one not to be disobeyed, and yet, she could not simply concede to his request and allow him to demean Morgana in such obscene fashion, no matter the nature of her own obscenities.  What would Morgana think of her when she answered her question as to why she could not wear her chosen dress to the feast this evening for the stains of the knight’s greasy palms lingering on the linen?  She would have a fit, fall into one of her dark moods, and accuse Gwen of betrayal.  Gwen, who possessed not a single treacherous bone in her body.  Gwen, who vowed to take Morgana’s dark secret to the grave or else perish at her brother’s hands.

 

Gwen opened her mouth to reply, fearing the knight’s rebuke, when Lancelot stepped in front of her, safeguarding her and her basket of silks from Gwaine’s approach.  “You are drunk indeed, Gwaine,” Lancelot said, his voice drawn and dark.  “Of course, you will do no such thing.  And certainly, you would never have suggested such a thing if you had your wits about you.  Now, go about your watch and leave the poor girl alone to work in peace.”

 

“Sheesh, Lance,” Gwaine said, running a hand through his hair.  “It was only a jest.  I never meant any harm by it.”  He shrugged.  “But if you want me gone, so be it.”  He snorted and trudged off in the other direction from whence he came.

 

Gwen exhaled a pent-up breath. 

 

Lancelot turned back to face her.  “I am sorry about him.  He means well but gets out of hand when there’s alcohol in him.”

 

“Should he be patrolling the castle in such a state?” Gwen asked warily. 

 

“Probably not,” Lance sighed, “but he gets away with it because of his relation to the High King.  Don’t worry though; work will sober him up.  With that one, if he’s not working, then he’s at the tavern.  Not that I blame him.  If I had his upbringing, I, too, would drink myself into an early grave.”

 

Gwen felt her frustration at Sir Gwaine’s indecency start to soften.  She wondered what a man such as he with a noble lineage to boast of could possibly have endured to seek forgetfulness in his cups.  But then again, she was beginning to realize that nobles were not so polished perfect as their outward appearances might suggest.  “Now, you have me feeling sorry for the man.”

 

“We all have our fair share of memories we would rather forget,” Lancelot said.  There was a musing quality to his voice.  Gwen waited for him to elaborate, to open up to her about his own tragic shortcomings his statement implicated, but he said nothing of the sort.

 

“Well, that basket does look heavy, now that I look at it,” he said suddenly, interrupting Gwen’s thoughts.  “Would you like me to carry it for you the rest of the way?”

 

“What?”

 

“Would you,” he began again, “like my help?”

 

“Oh,” she said, watching him, studying him as she did Gwaine and Arthur and Morgana, waiting for the façade to fall away and the second shoe to drop.  Perhaps, this man was not so false as she once presumed.  He seemed to speak his thoughts and mean his word, which, Gwen wondered, may prove to be the greatest enigma of them all in a castle where everyone seemed to hide his past and cloak his words in double meanings.

 

“Yes,” she found herself saying, an easy smile lighting her face.  “I thank you, Sir.”

 

He returned her smile, lifted the basket from her hands.  It seemed light and infinitesimal in his steady arms.  “Please, call me Lance,” he said. 

 

---

 

Morgana was staring at her unfinished tapestry with absent eyes, her thoughts otherwise occupied, when a gentle knock came at the door.  She almost did not hear it.  “Come in,” she called, a moment later, concerned that her would-be visitor was no longer standing behind the door, since she took so long to respond, when the door fell open at last.

 

Morgana did not look up from her stitchery to greet her visitor with her eyes, but when she felt more than heard that the person standing within the door had not moved to enter her chamber, she looked up, saying, “I said you could—”

 

She stopped herself, a look of surprise flashing in her eyes.  She had not known whom she was expecting, perhaps Arthur come back with the news that Father had canceled the feast because he broke off the marriage proposal with Rodor (a wishful thought) in favor of Lord Godwyn and his Princess Elena or perhaps, in the event the marriage was still happening as planned and thereby the evening’s feast, Gwen come to dress her for the occasion.  She did not expect the man she saw standing in the doorway, carrying a basket of her finest dresses no less.

 

“Lance?” she said, rising from her chair, discarding once again the tapestry.  “What do you mean by coming here, and with my clothes, no less?”

 

“Princess,” he answered, “Morgana.”  He sounded to Morgana’s ears almost awkward, which was rather unusual for him, she thought, what with his being the most eloquent of the knights.  He always knew what to say to the ladies of the Court, and she he knew better than them, given how she, he, and Arthur had all grown up together within and without Camelot’s walls since before a time they could all remember.

 

“I saw your maid in the hall and thought to assist her with her task,” he was saying to Morgana’s bafflement, when, as if to prove the story true, Gwen stepped into the room from behind him, wearing one of her bright smiles, which happened rarely as of late. 

 

“It was very kind of him, Sir Lancelot, to do so, Mi’lady,” she said, thinking it best to address Morgana so while in his presence.  “But I believe I can manage from here,” she added, turning to the knight and proffering her hand to receive from him her charge, “thank you.” 

 

Morgana watched Lance return it to her, shifting her eyes from him to her and back again, as bemused, if not more so, as when she first observed him by himself standing in the doorway. 

 

“Well, I thank you, Lance,” she said, “for helping, Gwen, and through her, me.  As Gwen said, it was most kind of you indeed.”

 

“Any time,” he responded dutifully as ever, but Morgana felt the sinking notion it was not to her he spoke.  “My Lady,” he said then, studying her before turning to leave her chambers.  It was brief, only the faintest look, but Morgana glimpsed it with her own foreseeing eyes, the way Sir Lancelot tore his eyes from her to gaze at Gwen beside him and Gwen, in turn, to return his look, before he stepped through the threshold of the door and disappeared into the hallway beyond.

 

Gwen scurried to shut the door and place the basket down beside Morgana’s wardrobe.  As if spooked by some uncanny presence, she set about hanging up her laundered clothes, sliding each dress onto its hanger and hooking it on its designated place within the closet. 

 

She was hanging an emerald green one, when Morgana said quietly, but not without purpose: “That was rather chivalrous of Lance to help you, Gwen.  But you must know he was only helping you as a knight helps anyone he sees in need of his aid.”

 

Gwen froze, then finished setting the hanger in place.  “I was not aware there was any other reason for a knight to help a maid,” she said dispassionately.  She kept her eyes fixed on the dresses hanging side by side within wardrobe.

 

Morgana smiled to herself.  If she had interpreted that look of Lance’s correctly, and she thought she did, she found she could not bear it if it turned out, as she assumed, that Sir Lancelot, her father’s best knight and her brother’s closest friend, doted on her maid, who may just as well come to fancy him in return.  It was petty, it was cruel, but Morgana could not be made to suffer and watch as Gwen found love and affection in open daylight, while she herself must wait to know love, to hold affection, until night descended upon Camelot with its cover of blanketing darkness to safeguard her and Arthur both from the people they loved and equally would see them ruined for the love they together shared. 

 

Morgana did not think then, as perhaps she should have had, or at least noticed the eerie similarity, that Guinevere could by no means lie in love with her Sir Lancelot any more than Morgana could with her flesh and blood brother, for in Camelot, it was prohibited by High King Uther’s law for a knight to marry a woman outside of his class, and likewise, for that matter, for a maidservant to marry a man outside her own.  So, by what reason did Morgana envy Gwen her budding romance, when she, of all people, should have been commiserating with her?  It was unclear even to Morgana herself, as she speculated later that night in the quiet darkness of her brother’s rooms, the reason for her sudden spite and the engulfing guilt she felt thereafter for her barbed, pitiless words, but it was rather safe to assume that it had something to do with Mithian, Mithian, the unseen arrow in the dark.  Morgana could not see when it would strike, but she could hear its coming, slithering through the air, steady on the wind, direct and swift and true to the walls of Camelot.  But whose heart would it penetrate?  Her brother’s, like a shaft from Cupid’s bow, striking him with false infatuation?  Or herself, struck cold and numb and dead, her blood spilling and pooling as her body fell, hit the ground with shock, and all by that sole primed and lucky shot?  What would it be like, Morgana would wonder later that night, to die from the steady hands of a friend who knew not what she did? 

 

But, in a way, she would not be able to blame Mithian.  Mithian was only the arrow, and swift and true as she may be, she was not the archer who flung her free, projecting her in the space between Morgana and Arthur.  For all Morgana knew, Mithian may hold even less desire to be offered up to her brother in holy matrimony, as he was to lend himself to her.  She would have considered Mithian’s sentiment so, if not for a distant, tucked away memory that now tugged at her brain incessantly, like a ghost rising from the grave.

 

“Good,” Morgana said softly.  “I see you have sense, Gwen.  Enough not to see yourself hurt.”

 

Gwen shivered.  “Yes, Morgana,” she heard herself answering, as if apart from herself, herself abstracted, as she had learned to be these last few weeks when she worked for her.  She continued with her work, reaching down to select another dress for its hanging.

 

“Well, are you here to dress me then, or just to put those things away?” Morgana asked hastily, abrasively, feeling the sudden urge to change the subject for the fear of the second thoughts and regretted actions clotting up her brain. 

 

Gwen turned from the wardrobe.  “If you would like,” she said evenly as a pressed skirt.  “I can always put these away later while you are at the feast.  Oh, the feast,” she mumbled under her breath, shaking her head to clear it, reminding herself of what she learned from Lance out in the hall about the evening’s dinner, the reason for it, and what it meant for Morgana and her brother, the Prince.  Suddenly, her lady’s harsh words did not hurt her so much anymore.  No longer hail to pummel her down into the ground and make a mess of her, they were merely soft raindrops, cool at first touch, only to warm at the heat of her flushed skin and slide, rolling down her back harmless to the ground.  “I am sorry, Morgana,” she said and feared she meant it.

 

Morgana nodded.  “It is decided that Arthur will marry,” she stated stiffly.  “After all.”  

 

“I know,” Gwen answered.

 

Morgana said nothing.  The room fell so quiet then, both women, even with their disparate ways of observing the world around them, thought the sound of the snow drifting on the wind outside the stone walls and shuttered windows to be deafening. 

 

“Look,” Gwen began to interrupt the humming whirl of snow without those walls and the suffocation of speech within them, “how about I select a dress for you tonight?  Would that not make it easier on you?  Morgana?”

 

“I don’t want your pity, Gwen,” Morgana said, studying her fingers.  “If I could,” she added then as she dropped her hand, not understanding why it was to Gwen of all people she was relaying her deepest feelings, and why now, after the month she had spent keeping them more or less to herself, hiding them even from Arthur when they laid together late at night, naked beneath the covers of his bed, when she should have felt safe and encouraged to confide in him, but each time she had felt the words on the tip of her tongue, about to give them breath, she had swallowed them instead, “I would wear black from head to foot.  That would give my father a most descriptive account of how I truly feel about this marriage he and Rodor have concocted.”

 

Gwen smiled sadly.  “I fear you do not possess a single black garment.”

 

“And that’s precisely what’s wrong with the world!” Morgana exclaimed with a derisive laugh, feeling a strange sense of elation as she confided in her maid, herself having felt too scared and humiliated to have done so the past few weeks, as much as she desired her companionship, if only for her promise of her ensured confidentiality.  “Nobles expect their ladies to dress in regal purples and reds.  Well, what if I don’t want to?  What if I wish to forsake their courtroom decorum and live as a black-clad spinster in the woods?”

 

Gwen laughed despite herself, feeling the tension between them these last few weeks start to lessen.  “I’m sure you would hate that, Morgana.”

 

“No,” Morgana said, shaking her head.  “Perhaps, that’s exactly what I need.  To escape Camelot and its restrictive ordinances.  I would be free.  I could do whatever I pleased!  Can you think, Gwen, of anything so wonderful as that?  But you know, you have your freedom.  And, oh!  Arthur could always visit me there in my shelter in the woods and we would be safe there.  We would no longer have to fear being found out and discovered; we could have each other in our own unique way.  No more lying, no more pretending before Father and the Court to be persons we are not.  It would be wonderful, Gwen, truly wonderful.”

 

“You would still be in hiding though, Mi’lady,” Gwen said quietly.  She took a step toward Morgana, reached out with a tentative hand and ever so gently brushed a lock of her raven hair.  “Could you really give up Camelot, your royal blood and name, to be an unremarkable woman in the woods?  It’s in your flesh and blood to be a Pendragon.  You cannot simply wish it away.”  Gwen lowered her hand.  “Mi’lady,” she added a heartbeat later, the blood surging in her own indistinct veins at her boldness.

 

Morgana swallowed palpably.  “You misunderstand me, Gwen.  But you are a servant, so that is to be expected.  You must crave my life with its seeming monotony of luxury.  But I can swear to you this: being a Pendragon is nothing but misery.”  She swallowed again, the lump growing in her throat rising as if to choke to her.  “Do you honestly think that we are happy?”

 

Gwen sighed.  “I find happiness is something you choose, Mi’lady.”

 

Morgana’s brows furrowed in astonied disbelief.  It was a moment before she could speak; the weight of repressed grief engulfing her mind in a deluge of foul memories, eradicating in its wake any semblance of reason.  She could see herself once again as a child in her self-imposed prison, the same four stone walls that surrounded her now as a woman of two and twenty summers.  And, what for?  A twisted yearning, she once hoped fleeting?  Oh, how she prayed at her vanity night after lonesome night clutching her rosary for the wickedness of those yearnings, but did God reprieve her of them?  No, He did not.  She had been left to take matters into her own guileless hands.  Why ever for, do beautiful princesses in waiting lock themselves up in their own high towers?  Hide themselves even from the noble princes determined to set them free?   

 

Morgana stared at Gwen, her look wavering.  “You think, you presume, that I did not choose hard enough?”  She gasped, a moment’s respite, a breath of air.  “I confined myself to this room, Gwen,” she said, voice breaking, “because of Arthur, to protect him as much as me from what I felt.”

 

“You…fought it?” Gwen asked incredulous.  She never once considered that Morgana may have resented herself for her waywardness; she had always thought herself entirely complicit in and culpable of her sin. 

 

“Yes.  For years.”

 

“What changed?” Gwen asked breathlessly.

 

“A dream,” Morgana answered.  “A nightmare,” she clarified.  “I felt what would happen to me if I continued resisting…the way I am,” she decidedly finished. 

 

Gwen said nothing.

 

“It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it, Gwen?  To know this about me?” Morgana asked quietly.  “Well, I understand.  I do.  Believe me, when I say I understand better than anyone.  And, I’m sorry for it.”

 

“It’s not easy,” Gwen admitted.  “But I am trying, not to understand, exactly.  I don’t believe I ever will be able to do that, but I am trying to keep it from altering my opinion of you.  And I have kept your secret.  I hope that that shows that I am loyal to you, no matter what.”

 

“I—Thank you, Gwen.”

 

“And, I meant it,” Gwen added, thinking that this at least was safe to say aloud to the woman in question, “when I said I was sorry about the Prince.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, her eyes softening.  “I wasn’t sure then if you did, but I thank you for telling me you are now.  It’s a most disheartening thing.”

 

Gwen nodded.

 

“But there’s not much more I can do than try to grin and bear it,” Morgana added self-deprecatingly.  “Come now, Gwen.  Why don’t you fetch the white gown, the one with the draped sleeves?  If I am to sit this inexorable feast, let us pretend that it is I who will be Arthur’s bride come spring.”

Chapter 14

Notes:

Hey guys. Sorry for the longer break between chapters this time round. I really tried my best with this one, and while I feel like it probably could use more work, I'm at my wit's end trying to edit this and wanted to give you an update, so I've decided to post this. I hope you enjoy. Also, Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow American readers if I have any. Hope you're having a nice holiday. If you're not from the U.S. or just aren't celebrating, I hope you're doing well. As always, much love, Jo ❤

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Royal Party Met

Spring came.  

 

It did not arrive with a loud clang of color, green grasses and fresh flowers bursting from the earth with their blades and petals boasting of vibrancy, of life, as if laughing at the mortal men and women who had endured the harsh dearth of the winter come to past.  No, spring crept in silent, slow, so slowly in fact that even the birds in the wood knew not its coming, and in their unknowing, refrained from lighting the early morning sky with their song, which was said amongst the townspeople of Camelot to be the only sure first sign of spring that could be relied upon, the songbirds singing.  So, without the birds to guide them, Camelot and its denizens hunkered down to what was turning out to be a remarkably long and arduous winter.  And in the castle, the High King paced and fretted about his hall whether spring would arrive in earnest and make ready once again the roads from Nemeth to Camelot.  And, as if to counter their father’s hopes and thus, negate them, Morgana and Arthur prayed each day when they found themselves alone in their separate chambers that the long winter would never relent, give up the ghost, and harken spring.  Neither sibling voiced his or her prayers aloud to the other, believing that to do so would end the spell that had seemed to besieged Camelot with immovable snows several feet deep.

 

However, unbeknownst to Camelot and its citizens, while the winter there seemed to drudge onward unstopped and unrestrained, to the south several weeks’ ride away in the capital city of Nemeth, King Rodor observed one fine March day as he rode out with his men into the countryside, the first signs of the spring thaw.  “It is time,” he spoke to himself with a laugh, as he noticed the snow melt pooling beneath the shrinking drifts under the heat of the midday sun, and then he gave the order to his men for them to return to the city at once in order to prepare himself, his daughter, and the kingdom for their long journey ahead to Camelot.   

 

---

 

It was the last week of March, then the first week of April.  The birds started to chirp in the morning, ushering in the new day sun with their song.  The storms that came were fewer now, and the snows they left behind melted after a day in the strengthening sun.  For all extensive purposes, spring had made itself known in Camelot.  Even the grass started to green beneath the last of the slush and muck, and the ice that coated Avalon in a sheen of glass cracked and thinned, showing in some places the blue waters that gleamed beneath its frozen veil. 

 

During this time, Morgana woke more often than not sick in her chamber room bed.  She had reason to believe her sickness was due to her irksome worries regarding the late thaw—she could not, it would seem, pray away spring after all—and the inevitable arrival of Mithian and her father that winter melt determined.  It troubled her that her concerns regarding Arthur’s forthcoming marriage nauseated her to such a palpable degree that she found herself more often than not incapable of even eating the breakfasts Gwen brought her in bed every morning.  She tried her best to nibble at them whenever Gwen was in sight, so as not to worry her over her well-being, but on more than one occasion when Gwen left the room for a moment, Morgana would find herself running to her chamber pot to hurl up everything she tried so hard to scarp down therein. 

 

She found, upon intense reflection, she could attribute the cause of her physical ailment to not only just her worry over Arthur, and herself for that matter, given the approaching Mithian arrangement (Morgana felt she could hear the hooves and wheels and feet of the Nemeth party approaching Camelot by the day, chiding herself for the stupidity of the notion, only to gaze out her window just in case such an entourage seemingly decided to arrive that day—none ever did), but to her dreams as well.  Vicious things, her dreams were in that time, despite the tonic she drained each and every night before sleep as Gaius instructed her to do.  She had visions of running to Camelot naked except for her shift, her bare feet scampering over drifts of freezing snow trying to make it there in time before the cold seeped into flesh, chilling her to the bone.  But every time she thought she was just in sight of Camelot’s walls the castle would recede further into mist and the clouded night would descend obscuring it from her view.  She would wake from such dreams, drenched in sweat and hyperventilating at the recurrent sensation that she could never, for all her trying, find the way to come back home.  It frightened her into thinking that Camelot had never truly been her home at all, but this thought, disconcerting as it was, she found senseless when she then remembered Arthur, sleeping still most like, in the room above her own.   

 

It was the same dream that besieged her night after solitary night she spent alone in her chamber room (on those nights she did not go to Arthur and he not come to her, which were becoming more frequent as of late than the time when she had her courses, given Arthur’s increasing anxiety regarding Mithian—when would she depart? when will she arrive?—and Morgana’s own qualms concerning her worsening health because of such worries), though not without its variations.  In all the dreams she was clad in her thin shift running barefoot in the depth of winter to a Camelot fading before her eyes, but in some versions of the nightmare, she would glimpse a flickering candle at the window of her brother’s room, knowing him (in that dream logic) to be inside.  So, she would call out to him, say his name over and over again, begging him to come down from his high tower, open the gate, and take her through the door she feared she could not pass through into the security of the castle, where all was warm and safe.  Sometimes, she would cry until her throat gave out without hearing a single response in return, and the candle would burn down until it snuffed itself out, leaving her in darkness.  Other times, Arthur would hear her cries and come before the window and look down upon her, but when she thought him just about to speak her name, he would blow out the candle and draw the window shut, and she would be left to watch as the castle disappeared into the black of night, before awakening. 

 

While each variation the dream did present Morgana in her prison-sleep was upsetting in and of itself, none was as terrible, as downright despicable as the version that haunted her the night last.  It began the same as always: Morgana running in the winter cold to reach Camelot, her safe haven, only to watch as the castle shrank farther away from her, deeper into the mists settling around its strong walls.  She had the thought to call to someone, anyone to help her, when she noticed the warm glow of a candle burning at her brother’s window.  At last, she thought she was saved!  Arthur would invite her into the castle she feared she could not enter on her own, so she sought to call out to him for his aid.  But just as she opened her mouth to shout, she saw a shadow, then another move in front of the open window.  “Arthur!” she called, knowing it to be him, “Arthur!”  And she gasped, for it was him, but he was not alone.  At his side stood the silhouette of a woman, and she had her arm draped around him and she was laughing, saying “Arthur, who is that woman?”  “Who?” her brother responded from up above.  “Why, that woman in the snow!”  Arthur peered down and Morgana met his eyes, knowing that this must be all some sort of mistake, Arthur did not love this woman; now that he saw her, he would come to his senses and escort her safely inside the castle where she belonged.  He would bring her home.  But Arthur only laughed and said to the silhouette beside him, “I don’t see any woman, my love.  Come, let us to bed.”  And Morgana watched mouth agape as he blew out the candle, latched shut the window and drew the curtains closed to the weather outside, the gales of winter howling in her ears.    

 

Morgana woke with a cry, sharp and slight.  She gazed through the near darkness at her surroundings, her mind racing to put a name to the shadowed place she was seeing with her eyes wide open.  She was not outside, it was not cold, and, to the contrary, the skin of her hand as she grappled it felt flushed to the touch with warmth. 

 

She frowned, then looked down and felt more than saw the weight of the bed covers upon her taut legs.  Then the thought struck her, she was in her bed.  One more glance around the room confirmed her notion for, though they loomed with shadow, her chair, her vanity, her wardrobe all stood in their usual places, which meant—

 

“It was only a dream,” Morgana breathed.  “Just a dream.” 

 

She trembled with relief, but the relief was slight.  The dreams were getting worse.  Could that mean…?  She brushed the thought away, naming it foolish.  They were only dreams, no more real than her daytime fantasies.

 

And yet, a part of her snickered, her fantasies of Arthur had proven true. 

 

“But I had made them so,” she affirmed quietly to herself.  “Of my own free will.  That is different.”

 

You only did so because of a dream, the voice in her mind countered back. 

 

Lacking a response to her own duplicitous thought, Morgana tore off the covers and hopped out of bed.  She strode to the curtained window, pulling the curtains aside to gaze at the night scene above and below.  The moon shone full among a backdrop of stars, its light glancing down on Camelot’s twisting streets and homes. 

 

“See, it’s not even winter anymore,” Morgana said, touching her hand to the glass as she watched the city in its slumber.  She had meant to reassure herself, but the thought only saddened her.  Winter was gone, which meant Mithian was coming to Camelot to win her brother’s heart.  Arthur’s frantic inquiries came back to her then: “Would she have departed by now? When will she arrive?”

 

Morgana knew not the answer, not then when he had pressed her, nor now, as she stood beside her window, torn from sleep. 

 

She wondered what it would be like to see her dear friend again in such a manner.  What would they say to each other?  And, what possibly could be said?  There would be no telling on Morgana’s part of what had happened in her life since last they parted thirteen—was it really thirteen?—years ago, for the only answer she could give would belong now to Mithian.  Could she trust her friend with the keeping of him?

 

She was being foolish.  She would not lose Arthur, even if he married as Father wanted him; in each and every way, he still belonged to her, if only because she was his first, his only that ever really mattered, that must mean for something.  It was only a shame that it had to be Mithian, the girl Morgana befriended at a tournament in summer in the year following the sad time of her mother’s death, who would wed him.  It seemed unfair to Morgana that a friend who had brought her such pleasure after the grey months of grief would now be the one bringing her pain.

 

But what could be done about it?  

 

Morgana crawled back into her bed, nestled herself once more in the sheets.  She had no wish to try to sleep the rest of the night through for the fear that her dream would pay her another unwanted visit, so she just lied awake, stared out at the lightening dark, waiting for the dawn to spear the awful night asunder. 

 

She vowed to spend the next night, if graced with the opportunity, wrapped in Arthur’s arms.

 

---

 

Despite her best intentions, Morgana must have drifted off to sleep (thankfully this time, a dreamless sleep) for she woke, blinking her eyes open, to the voice of Gwen carrying on about some matter that must be rather important since maidservants, as per custom, were not to wake their ladies prematurely from their slumber unless the matter be one of utmost urgency. 

 

“Say this again, Gwen?” Morgana said, as she wrested herself from beneath the bed covers.  “Something about men?  Arriving in Camelot?”

 

Gwen nodded, setting the breakfast tray down on the nightstand for Morgana to access.  “Yes,” she answered, “I believe so.  There was such a stir in the kitchens when I went to fetch your breakfast about it.  One of the girls there swore she saw Sir Leon himself welcoming them into the city on her way to work, a tad later than usual for she overslept, that’s how she saw, I reckon.  According to her, they only just arrived an hour ago.  Most like, she says, Sir Leon is bringing their master to meet with the High King as we speak.” 

 

A spike of dread went through Morgana like a lance point.  No, no. No! No! No!  This was not happening.  The party could be the entourage of any petty king her father most likely forgot to mention to her and Arthur both, as he was warranted to do, would be residing at Camelot for a short while.  There was nothing for Morgana to fret herself about.  Clearly, some treaty or another needed revisiting, or perhaps a call to arms against a Saxon attack?  King Rodor and his daughter had not just arrived in Camelot, that was certain, Morgana reassured herself.  It was much too soon for them to come given how the last of the snow melted just four days past. 

 

Still, Morgana could not contain herself from asking the question she knew all of Camelot would be asking.  Her voice trembled even as she tried to mask its trembling, so when she put the question to Gwen, she said it thus, a tremor coursing through her body, as she did so: “Did the girl note the standard they bore?  The emblem?  The colors?”

 

Gwen paused.  “I’m not sure she did say, now that I think of it.  I only caught part of the conversation—wait, you don’t think—?”

 

Morgana exhaled.  “It’s what I fear,” she admitted, scrambling out of bed.

 

Gwen stared at her.  “But it can’t be them,” she said, voicing the thought Morgana had already considered.  “Spring has only just come.  The roads only just thawed.  If anything, they would be leaving Nemeth now.”

 

“Whoever they are, I have to know for sure,” Morgana avowed, heading for the door, before doubling over with a grimace, her hands to her stomach.

 

“Morgana!” Gwen yelped, running to her.  “Are you alright?  Come, sit back down on the bed.  You’ve strained yourself with all this worrying.  And besides you can hardly go before the High King dressed in your nightgown!”

 

Morgana acquiesced to Gwen’s plea, allowing her maid to guide her back over to the bed.  She gave an exasperated sigh as she sat down, burying her head in her hands.  “Oh, Gwen,” she said, looking up at her, “Forgive me.  I don’t know what came over me just now.  Another dizzy spell, I fear.”

 

“Should I send for the physician?” Gwen asked, concerned. 

 

“No, no,” Morgana said, smiling wanly.  “It’s nothing.  I’ve just worked myself up over the news is all.”

 

“Why don’t you drink something?” Gwen said.  “Here,” she offered her the glass of water she had carried in with the breakfast still left untouched.

 

Morgana accepted the glass and drank till it was half-empty then handed it back to Gwen.  “Thank you.”

 

“Do you have a mind to try some of the breakfast?”

 

Morgana eyed the breakfast sitting so prettily on the tray and thought she just might be sick all over again.  “No, not now,” she told Gwen.  “I have a mind to getting dressed and heading down to speak with my father to find out what all this commotion is precisely about, however,” she affirmed.

 

Gwen opened her mouth to confess that she thought this a poor idea given Morgana’s near collapse mere minutes before, only, thinking her concerns would fall on deaf ears, to relent with a tepid “if you insist.”

 

Morgana graced her with a bright smile.  “I’m fine, Gwen,” she stated, though she truly felt nothing of the sort.  “You have no need to worry about me.  Now, will you help me dress?  The blue gown, if you please?”

 

---

 

As Morgana made her way toward the throne room, where she assumed her father to be seated at the early hour with such prominent guests to receive, she overheard voices.

 

“My, this is a surprise, though a welcome one,” she heard her father’s voice sound.  “To think the roads passable so early in the season, it’s nothing short of a godsend.  Another indication that our intentions here are but the best for Britain, I daresay.  I trust you had a good journey?”

 

“Yes,” replied a second voice, one belonging to a man Morgana did not recognize.  “It went rather smoothly, not a hardship to bear.  Which I also take in good faith, my King.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it,” said her father.  “Why, you must regale us with the telling of it at dinner tonight, amongst the details regarding our present arrangement.  For now, I trust you and your daughter both to be weary from your travels and will be wanting some time to rest before then.”

 

“I thank you for your consideration, your Highness,” answered the man reverently, a reverence gone unnoticed by Morgana’s ears, her blood had run so cold with shock and fright.  Daughter? she repeated as if transfixed.  Why, that means… That can only mean…

 

As if to confirm her worst suspicions, Morgana heard at last her father say the words that were like a sword thrust through her heart, stopping it dead: “Rise, Rodor.  And please, address me by my name.  We are to be like family you and I, just as your daughter will be to my son.”

 

Morgana felt her breath catch in her lungs, feared her legs once set to trembling would give out beneath her and she would be left crumpled on the stone like a white linen soiled and tossed aside, but she remained standing, inhaling a steadying breath, though otherwise she felt numb and cold and senseless—

 

“My father and I thank you for your hospitality, Uther,” came a woman’s voice sonorous and soaring through the hall of the High King’s court and the blight that had descended upon Morgana.  She gasped at the sound of it.  Dearest, can that be…? 

 

“My, Rodor, I must remark upon the beauty of your daughter.  When you spoke of her, I thought her fitting for my son, but now that I see her standing so before my eyes, why, all your descriptions pale by comparison.”

 

“You are most kind, Uther,” Rodor answered, “to speak of my Mithian so.  I only pray that Arthur shares your sentiment.”

 

Morgana felt her legs go taut, stiffened with shock.  Mithian…she thought, beleaguered.  She is here... And she is beautiful.

 

“If he has a brain in his head, I am sure he will find her most exquisite indeed,” her father confided then to laughter from Rodor, utter dismay from Morgana standing just outside the hall.  If she dared, she could turn her head around the corner and peer into the room where she would find Mithian and Rodor standing before her father seated preeminently on his throne.  Then she would catch a glimpse of Mithian herself, and, from a distance, determine for herself the extent of her splendor.  She decided against it, not out of fear per se that she would fail to rival her loveliness of face, but because it hardly mattered what she thought of her one-time friend; all that mattered was the thought turning itself over and over again in her head: Would Arthur find her comely?  Then, the next thought: Comelier than me?   

 

“But come,” her father was saying, “Sir Leon here will escort you to your rooms.  Sir Leon, if you will?”

 

“Sire,” Leon replied aptly.  “Right this way, Sir.  My Lady.”

 

It took Morgana a second to register that in order to conduct Mithian and her father to their guest chambers, Leon would have to lead them out of the throne room into the hall in which she now stood.  She had no desire to subject herself then in her shock and dismay to a rather impromptu reacquainting with her dear friend, so, at the sound of their footsteps, she dashed off to the hall’s end and up the stairs to where else but her brother’s chambers.

 

---

 

She rapt furiously on his door.

 

“Merlin!  Will you stop your blathering and go answer the door?” she heard him shout from behind the wood.  “It could be important!”

 

Merlin must have conceded to her brother’s wishes, for not even a second later the door opened revealing the dark-haired servant. 

 

“Oh,” he said upon sight of Morgana standing outside in her blue finery, her face pale as snow, as if he expected to answer the door to anyone in the castle but her. 

 

“Hello, Merlin,” she said.  “May I come in?  I must have a word with my brother.”

 

But before Merlin had the opportunity to answer, Arthur came up beside him, throwing a shirt over his head.  “Morgana?” he asked once he pulled his head through.  “Morgana, what are you doing here?”

 

“I take it you have not heard the news,” she said coolly. 

 

Arthur turned from his sister to Merlin and glared at him.  “Merlin!  How many times must I tell you, you are to notify me when something’s happened!”

 

“Sire—” Merlin spluttered, about to air his excuse that he knew not what this supposed ‘happening’ was when Morgana stopped him with her hand. 

 

“I will explain,” she said, “I fear I have learned now the gist of it, after all.  But to Arthur alone.  Merlin, if you’ll excuse us.”

 

Knowing better than to argue with the Princess herself, Merlin trudged out of Arthur’s chambers, resigned, his morning duties left undone for he had yet to take away Arthur’s half-eaten breakfast, make up his bed from its current state of disheveled disrepair, and Arthur himself remained to be properly dressed for the day as befitting of his title as Crown Prince.  Currently, he wore a pair of trousers and the white shirt he just donned.

 

“You will come back and clean this mess straight up!” Arthur shouted into the hall after him, but before he could await Merlin’s reply, Morgana stepped into his room and shut the door behind her.  Arthur watched her curiously. 

 

“She’s here, Arthur,” she said quietly.

 

“What?” he asked, perplexed.  “Who’s here, Morgana?”  Only for it to dawn on him: “You mean Mithian.”  Then he lowered his voice, speaking just as quietly as she had, “Mithian is here?  In Camelot?”

 

She nodded, bit her lip, thinking.  But she was sick of thinking!  All she did was think and muse and wonder what she would do come this day, and what had all that thinking got her?  The day had come.  “Oh, Arthur,” she said morosely.  She held the most tremendous urge to throw herself into his arms just then but contained herself.

 

“Did you see her?”

 

“I…”  She looked down.  “No, I did not.  But I overheard her and Rodor talking with Father.  I was listening to them from outside in the hall.  Gwen told me when I woke this morning that a party had arrived in Camelot, but she knew not who, so I, fearing the worst, thought it best to go to Father and ask him who it was.”

 

“Did you speak with him?”

 

“No.  They were already talking with him when I went down.  I had no mind just then to interrupt them and cause a scene.  What would I have said then?  To her?  I didn’t trust myself to be hospitable just then, so I just listened from outside in the hall.  And when I heard Father ask Leon to bring them up to the rooms they’d be staying in, I ran so they wouldn’t catch me eavesdropping outside.  From there, I came straight here to tell you.  I wanted you to learn from me first, if I could.”

 

Arthur paused, shook his head.  “Well, I’m glad you thought of me at least.  It would have been a rather rude surprise indeed to learn she was here by running into her in the hall face to face.  You would think Father would have sent for me to greet them when they arrived.”

 

“I don’t think he expected them, like us, so soon,” she said.  “The winter snows have only just melted.  They should be leaving Nemeth now.”

 

“I don’t have an explanation for it,” he said.  “Perhaps, the winter did not hit as hard in the south as it did here in Camelot, so they left earlier than we anticipated.”

 

She sighed, crestfallen.  “I believe you’re right.  But, oh, what a fool I am to think the winter would have bought us more time.”

 

He smiled wanly at her.  “It means nothing.  You know that.  I still—” 

 

She looked up into his eyes, clear and blue as Avalon.  “I know,” she said, a faint smile uplifting her lips.  “It’s just…I wish I didn’t have to watch you marry her.  Any other woman I could stand, but not her.”  She had admitted it to him at last, the qualm she had kept hidden to herself that nonetheless came between them in the seclusion of the night whenever they laid together in his bed, haunting them like a ghost.  Perhaps, it was this jadedness set within her, deep in her aching heart and weary bones, that had caused them to choose solitude over each other’s company at times the last few months.  For the truth was though she had then yet to arrive in Camelot, Morgana had allowed the ghost of Mithian, the girl she had once cherished and called friend, to come between them when she was with her brother in his bed, the unseen, but nevertheless felt specter of her joining them in their couplings.  Now that she realized that she had been the one to bring her there into that sacred space with them, she wondered whether Arthur had known her to be there with them as well.

 

He must have felt at least an inkling for what he said next.  He reached for her hands, took them in his own, his fingers caressing her palm.  She watched him inhale a steadying breath, then, exhaling, he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze.  “Tell me, Morgana,” he said softly, “Why does it grieve you so that it is her?”

 

Morgana started, dropped her hands from his, pulled back, an incredulous, disbelieving look in her eyes.  “I-I can’t answer you that.”

 

“Morgana,” he said gently, stepping towards her.  “She’s your friend, right?  Or at least, she was?  When you were children?  She must be a good person then, right?  For you to have befriended her?  Then who better for me to wed?”  He shrugged.  “I have given it much thought these last few weeks whenever I woke with the matter pressing on my mind.  And I’ve determined that if I must marry her, if it must come to that, why, it would be the closest thing to marrying you.  I love you, Morgana, so in a way marrying the friend you loved in childhood will be like having a part of you.”

 

She stared at him, mouth agape.  “Why would you say such a dreadful thing as that to me?  How could you?  Do I mean nothing to you?”

 

He frowned, taken aback at her scorn.  “Of course not!” he said, his face flushing with anger, with embarrassment.  “Morgana, Morgana, I only meant to reassure you that I will be at least wedding someone you trust!  Someone who is kind, so you will have no reason to worry over me.”

 

“Oh, is that so!” she snapped.  “You think I live my life, Arthur Pendragon, thinking of your well-being before anything else!”

 

“Why,” he spluttered, dumbfounded that he could make her so angry when he had only meant to console her and himself both, “you did when Mother died.”

 

“You were a child!”

 

He swallowed.  “I only meant to reassure you, Morgana,” he put in.  “Forgive me if that is such a sin.”

 

She roared, “It’s all about you, isn’t it?  Do you think of anyone but yourself?  Do you?  Oh, don’t worry, Morgana,” she railed, mimicking his tone, “loving Mithian will just be like loving you.  Oh, will it be, I wonder?  Just know that when she disappoints you, as she surely will, don’t you dare crawl out of bed with her and expect to come find me willing!”

 

He laughed uneasily, looked away.  “Morgana, please.  Wait.  Can we discuss this civilly?”

 

“I think I’ve had enough of you for one day, brother, and it’s not even noon,” she retorted, strutting for the door. 

 

“Morgana,” he tried one last time.  “Please, come back.  I’m sorry.”

 

“Hmmph!” she snorted, throwing open the door and slamming it on his bewildered face.

 

Arthur stood there a moment, staring at the door, wishing she would have a change of heart and ask to be invited in again.  She never did.  He went to his unmade bed and sat down, burying his face in his hands.  What is with Morgana? he thought to himself.  I only mention Mithian and she goes into hysterics.  Does she honestly think this marriage is a picnic for me?  I don’t want this anymore than she does, but at least I’m trying to make the best of a worst situation.  Then, almost musingly: It’s almost as if something happened between her and Mithian. 

 

He sighed, looked around at the state of his room lost in disarray.  “Well,” he muttered, “since I can’t do anything about her now,”—silently adding, Morgana does take time to cool off—“I might as well call Merlin in to fix up this room.  At least that I can do right, assuming, of course, that Merlin does his fucking job.”

 

---

 

“Oh, Morgana!” Gwen said, peeking her head up from her work the moment she heard the door to her lady’s chambers swing open revealing the Princess.  She had been busy tidying the items on Morgana’s vanity, and having just finished dusting the handheld mirror, its jewel studded handle now shone brilliantly in the sunlight that bathed the room with gold.  “Did you speak with the High King?  Did he tell you the identity of Camelot’s mystery visitors?  Morgana?  Morgana, is something the matter?”

 

Gwen dropped her cloth on the vanity to find Morgana rummaging frantically through her wardrobe.  She took a tentative step towards her lady, fearing an outburst or perhaps another dizzying spell like the one earlier, she knew not which.  “Morgana, has something happened?”

 

Morgana turned from the wardrobe, a cloak of green velvet draped in her arms.  “Oh, Gwen,” she said, her eyes brimming with emotion.  “It is as we feared.”

 

Gwen gaped at her.  “Princess Mithian is here?  In Camelot?”

 

Morgana nodded.  “So, it seems.”  Without another word, she slipped on the cloak, pulled up the hood to cover her long locks of raven hair, and made for the door.    

 

“Morgana, where are you going?” Gwen called after her, an unaccustomed worry settling in her stomach.  She had the thought that Morgana should not leave her side, let alone the room, at the moment given her present impassioned state that the foul news most surely set in her, knowing for having been on its receiving end how easily Morgana could be overcome by the flux of her own emotions and the devastation that usually ensued whenever she was so swiftly overcome by them.  “Won’t you rather stay here,” she offered, “where it’s safe to talk?”

 

“Not now, Gwen,” Morgana answered distractedly.  “Right now, I want to go out riding.  I, I just need some time alone.  To think.”

 

Gwen nodded, found herself acquiescing.  “I understand, Mi’lady.”  Perhaps, Morgana is right, she thought in a lukewarm attempt to dismiss her own internal fears—no matter her lady’s sins, no matter what she thought of them, she was still her charge and so she could not help but worry for her—and a short ride would do her some good.  I hope.  Oh, God, please don’t let her do anything rash she might live to regret. 

 

“Just, be safe,” she added, just as Morgana slipped out the door.  As she stood watching the door close behind her, she wondered if her lady had heard her, and whether she would heed her wish if she did.

 

---

 

Once outside in the fresh air, Morgana sighed a breath of relief.  She had not run into either her father or brother or anyone of the Nemeth party while she snuck down the stair bannisters and scampered through the halls to reach the outdoors unseen and unobserved, and for that she was thankful, considered herself lucky, despite having taken the roundabout way through the castle that led through the kitchens to the back ally, where she and Arthur once played as children, for that very purpose.  Now breathing in that cool open air with relish, as the spring breeze ruffled the hood of her green cloak, Morgana noted that she was at last alone to do as she pleased, without father or brother or maid to sway her whichever way fit their selfish machinations.  Well, maybe not selfish on Gwen’s part.  Morgana did feel a tad sorry to have left her, a part of her yearning to have stayed back in her chamber and talked the whole wearisome matter of Arthur and Mithian over with her.  But then again, it was not in Morgana’s nature to discuss her feelings with anyone; even with Arthur it was challenging for her to speak about matters of her heart.  She had proved incapable of doing so that morning, sure enough, but what temerity he had possessed to have asked her that question! 

 

As she turned out of the ally along the backroad to the stables, she wondered at Gwen’s last words to her—be safe—and felt a stab of guilt as she played them back over in her mind.  Was Gwen actually worried about her?  Because of the ordeal with Mithian?  She almost could have laughed.  To think Gwen had sympathized with her in this matter of her brother’s marriage was too ridiculous beyond measure.  What had happened to the innocent maid who had stumbled affright upon her liege and lady abed together?  Was Gwen beginning to understand just how Arthur could be her brother and yet mean so much more to her?  Morgana could have sworn Gwen would have been relieved to learn of her father’s arrangement that Arthur should marry the Nemeth princess, and perhaps, in a way she was, but Morgana had not imagined the worry she heard just now in Gwen’s voice the moment she asked if Mithian was in Camelot.  Perhaps, Gwen truly was starting to see the whole ineffable affair from Morgana’s eyes!  What a queer thought!  Still, Morgana would have laughed at Gwen’s misplaced concern then, free as she was in the fresh outdoor air, the mantle of Princess falling off her shoulders with every step she took toward the stables and freedom, if she were not already consumed by and wearied from her own taxing body of jumbled thoughts and misconstrued feelings.   

 

The truth of the matter was that Morgana had never worked through this business that brought Mithian back to Camelot.

 

Oh, God, is this to be my punishment? Morgana thought to herself.  To relinquish my hold over Arthur and give him up to the friend I once held equally dear to me, and perhaps still do?  She found herself thinking back to the dream she had the night before she confessed to Arthur her feelings; perhaps, this was the true meaning of the dream, of that bright burning pyre she found herself chained to as it engulfed her in its blaze.  Perhaps, the dream had never been a means of encouraging her to make her feelings plain to Arthur; perhaps, it was a warning of what would happen if she did, a testimony to how she would lose him, her love for him reduced to nothing but smoldering embers, ashes on the wind. 

 

But I have not lost Arthur, she reminded herself.  Not yet.  I just need only share him with my friend, and friends, true friends anyhow, share their treasures.  So why do I feel like I’ve lost him?  He loves me still.  He said it himself.

 

A ride would be good for her, she reckoned, to alleviate her worst thoughts from pressing too close within her mind.  It would do good for her to lose herself in the motion of the ride, to forget herself in the sound of the wind stirring about her ears and the rhythmic cadence of her horse’s hooves hitting ground—earthly signs both to remind her that she was still herself, alive and a part of this same insane world, where she was forced to accept the reality, however harsh, that she and Arthur could never be more than a secret in the dark.

 

In a matter of minutes after she retrieved her horse from the stables, paying the stable boy a well-mannered “hello” as he readied her horse for her, she was off, riding out of the city, across the great meadow and down through the forest, the continuous thudding beat of her horse’s hooves echoing in her ears.  She knew not where to she rode, nor for how long she would keep going once there, she only paid heed to the wind whistling against her hood and the thud of her horse’s hooves beating the yet barren earth into submission.  For the first day since her father first broached them about the prospect of Arthur’s marriage, she felt some peace.

 

Then, as she rounded past the lake, still covered in some places with the ice of winter, her memory betrayed her newfound tranquility and she fell into reverie of the summer when she was just a girl of nine.

 

“There’s your brother!  Quick hide!” Mithian giggled as she tugged on Morgana’s sleeve, beckoning her to run with her deep within the grove of apple trees, knowing they would be able to find asylum in the shadow of their great boughs.

 

“Whatever for?” Morgana laughed back.  “It’s just Arthur and Lance!  If we say ‘hello’ I’m sure they’ll let us play with them!” 

 

“No!” the younger girl squealed.  “If we hide here, we can watch them,” she said, obstructing herself from the boys’ view behind the trunk of one of the trees.  She waved for Morgana to follow her lead.

 

Morgana ran to her side, laughing harder herself.  Once safe next to Mithian, she peeked out at Arthur and Lance playing knights in the clearing.  They were fighting each other with sticks, each one trying his best to disarm the other.  A part of her yearned to be fighting with them, and her heart panged conflicted.  She looked back at Mithian, thinking of all the silly girl things she wanted to do, and thought how nice it was to finally have a girl for a friend, even if she was a year younger than herself.  She decided she would stay with Mithian, hidden in the shadow provided by the canopy of trees.

 

“What are you doing?  Don’t look!” Mithian squealed, as she doubled over in another fit of giggles.  “They’ll see you!”

 

Morgana turned back to her friend.  “And what’s so terrible about that?” she asked all serious.

 

“I can’t have your brother knowing how much I like him,” she said simply.  “And you can’t let Lance know either!”

 

Morgana frowned.  Lance?  Oh, right, she had told Mithian she had a crush on Lance, but that had only been since she kept pestering her to reveal a beau of some sort.  To be honest, Morgana did not spend much time thinking about which boys she liked and which ones she did not, or rather, which ones she fancied in that romantic way or not.  To be frank, Morgana did not really care about romance, not that she would tell her new friend Mithian that, else, she feared, she would ruin their friendship.

 

“But if Arthur never knows you like him,” Morgana said now to Mithian, being a year older and all the wiser, “you will never be with him.  What will you do then?”

 

“What I’m doing now, silly!” Mithian said through her giggles, her face pink with embarrassment.  “I’ll watch him like this!”

 

Morgana failed to see the logic in that.  Wasn’t it better to be with the person you loved than to wait forever for him to figure out he loved you back?  She watched Mithian as she gazed at Arthur, her eyes alit with an eagerness she could not comprehend.  Then she looked at Arthur and wondered something innocent enough then, but which she would later look back on from within the confines of her chamber with shame.

 

They stood there, two girls hidden in the trees, for a while, watching the boys as they played, as nearly every time Lance bested Arthur at their game of sticks.  Every time Lance beat him, Arthur would fall over and laugh about how Lance had killed him.  Morgana smiled.  Perhaps there was something magical about this grove of her childhood, just as Mother used to say to her in the stories she would tell her before tucking her safe into bed.  That had been when Mother had been alive, when all was right in the world.

 

That was when, thinking of her mother and hoping to share a part of her with her new friend, Morgana turned to Mithian and told her the legend of Avalon, of the magical apple tree grove they now stood in, and the mystical waters of the lake nearby.  She told Mithian, and her eyes lit up as she heard this truth whispered in her ear from Morgana’s lips, that whatever one wished for here would, one day, come true. 

 

Mithian turned to her then excited.  “I wish we were sisters,” she said.  “You’re my best friend, Morgana, and while that is something dear, I wish we were sisters, because if we were sisters then I would never have to leave Camelot once the tournament is finished.”

 

Morgana smiled.  Oh, Mithian was so silly, but she loved her all the same.  “But if we’re sisters, Mithian,” she said, looking back at her dear brother, “then Arthur will be a brother to you like he is to me, and you can never fancy your brother.”

 

Mithian frowned at that, taking that new information in.  “Well,” she said after a pause, “I guess that would be alright.  After all, I know next to nothing about boys.  But I do care a lot about having you for a friend.”

 

After that the two girls left the boys to their game, heading off to the lake to play in its waters.  Morgana thought Mithian was right; it was nice having a friend.

 

Morgana came out of the memory, her eyes welling with tears.  She blinked them back and they stung against the sudden harshness of the wind, no longer a quaint spring breeze.  Why did I ever tell her that? she thought bitterly to herself.  Had that been the day I realized how I felt about Arthur?  The day I started riding out to this lake to make wishes of my own?

 

But none of it mattered now, did it?  Here Mithian was come back to her at the last, like a woman through a faery ring of standing stones from another time.  Morgana heard her dear friend’s words again as if she had just whispered them in her ear: I wish we were sisters.  She had wished for it too, then, for Mithian had brought some sort of happiness back to her and her family that had vanished with the passing of her mother.  But she never imagined that innocent wish to come true, surely not like this: as sisters in law and in matrimony, not in friendship as it had been all those years ago, when they were but children and everything so simple.  Oh God, how she envied Mithian, how she hated Mithian, now that she possessed at her fingertips the everything Morgana only could when the world was asleep and covered in shadow.  Morgana could never have her brother to hold in the light of day.  She could never speak of her love of him there either; no, for her, it had to remain a secret relegated to the inscrutable darkness of the night. 

 

And for that, Morgana could not even begrudge Mithian the pain, the anguish she unwittingly caused her for arriving in Camelot as she had with the prospect of winning not only Arthur’s hand in marriage, but his heart as well (she had fancied him that summer day at Avalon, Morgana recalled, so what could stop her from wanting him now, now that he was all but hers?), in her ignorance of Morgana’s own wayward affections for him—she had always been there first, his first, Morgana, but her love for Arthur was invisible, uncontainable, like water gathered in one’s hands, always slipping, spilling free, never to be mastered.  Neither could she raise her voice to protest this godawful marriage their fathers proposed together as kings in their council chambers without a care whom they hurt of the persons involved, when upon the citizens’ ears it was a cause for joyous celebration.  She could not speak her dissent because that would require her to explain the reason for her opposition of the marriage and she could never do that, even if her life depended upon it—for the day she made her secret twisting feelings for her brother known would be the day of her ruin.

 

Staring at the frozen lake and the apples trees, their branches now brown and bare and bereft of fruit, around it, Morgana found she was alone in her grief.  Not even Arthur could understand her misery.  For deep down, she still yearned to see her friend again and laugh with her like they had when they were but children on the shores of Avalon in summer.

 

She only wished she could have met her for this second time, now that they were both no longer children, but women grown, on different terms.

Chapter 15

Notes:

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you've all been well and have been safe this season. I wish you all the best to you and yours.

I'm sorry for the brief hiatus. I would have posted this chapter sooner, but I was busy making edits for an ArMor event I helped host with my friends on tumblr. I'll be posting a couple video edits as well for that tomorrow to spread some Merlin and holiday cheer, along with this chapter today, which I'm glad I finished editing just in time. *Whew* It's a pretty big moment for the characters, as this is where, finally, Morgana, Arthur, and Mithian meet for the first time after the decade they had spent apart. I hope you enjoy!

With love, Jo ❤

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Merry Meet, Merry Part, and Merry Meet Again

Late that afternoon, as the sun began to dip for its evening rest, Morgana returned from her impromptu outing, climbing up the backstairs by the kitchens to her chamber room.  She was weary and unkempt from riding; her hair had knotted in the wind that had turned tempestuous on the ride back and the bottoms of her skirts streaked with mud.  But her mind was the worse for wear.  Her ride had held the opposite effect upon her than what she had intended.  She had hoped the ride would have eased her anxieties and steadied her wherewithal to approach the inevitable meeting with Mithian that awaited her with the evening’s dinner, but it had left her worn out and dejected instead.  Her head throbbed from having spent several hours reflecting on the past and pondering about the future where she, Mithian, and Arthur were concerned, and, still, even with all that circuitous thinking, she lacked a single answer as to the circumstance she now found herself unwillingly trapped in.  What can I do? she thought wearily to herself.  I can’t possibly sit by as my friend marries my brother, can I?  It seemed she would have to.  Oh, how she wanted to smack herself for laughing off her father’s plans to have Arthur married before, thinking it would be later, thinking it would be someone else he was to marry whom she did not know so intimately.  If it had been any other woman, perhaps then she would not have bothered to care because she would have found it easy to despise the woman and love Arthur anyway, but Mithian?  Her dear friend?

 

Stepping into her chamber, Morgana heard Gwen call out to her, nearly causing her to trip over her own feet out of surprise, so lost in her own labyrinth of thoughts was she.

 

“Morgana!” Gwen called, her eyes surveying her, taking in her lady’s disheveled state, and widening at the sight of her.  “What have you done to your clothes?  Come!  I’ll get you washed and dressed in something more suitable for this evening,” she said, taking a rather stunned Morgana’s hand in hers and practically pulling her across the room to the center where she had a bathtub waiting steaming with warm water, as if she had expected Morgana to return from her outing soiled and dirty.  Or perhaps, Morgana wondered, she had thought a warm bath to be just what she needed given the difficulties of the day; the simple gesture pleased her, to think Gwen had thought of her in this small way, given everything she had thus put her through, especially that.  Either way, Morgana thought a hot bath would be rather nice.  Perhaps, if she failed to lose herself while out riding, she could find a moment’s forgetfulness in the scalding water of the tub.

 

Gwen lifted her hands to hastily unfasten the knot that held Morgana’s cloak in place, allowing the green velvet to fall with a mild thump to the floor.  “What were you thinking?  Being gone for so long?  You had me worried sick that something happened to you!  You know about the feast, right?  That you’ll be expected to attend, as much as I know you don’t want to?  Thank goodness you came back when you did.  We’ll only have two hours to get you ready, but I think it should be enough time, if we hurry, to make you look presentable.”

 

Why? Morgana thought bitterly to herself, as she let Gwen undress her, when my brother will be looking at her this evening?

 

“I’m sorry,” she said to Gwen instead.

 

“It’s fine,” Gwen said, not meeting her eyes. 

 

“You are very good to me, Gwen,” Morgana added.  “I’ll have to remind myself to treat you better.”

 

This at least earned a smile from her maid.  “Just get in the tub.”

 

Morgana acceded her wish, settling herself into the steaming water.  She had the thought as she washed herself that it would be all the more pleasant of a bath if Arthur were there to join her, despite her irritation at how he had behaved to her that morning when she had gone to tell him about Mithian, her arrival in the castle; she found, though she would die first before making it so plainly known to him, that she could never stay angry with him for long, no matter the severity of what he did to upset her—she found that quality about herself loathsome, unheroic, perfectly weak of will, and yet that was the way things were for her when it came to her brother, the sway he held over her, so there was very little to be done about it.  Perhaps, she could conceive a way for Gwen to bring him to her rooms someday so that they could bathe together, rinse the day’s dirt and dust from their skin and come from the water clean for their lovemaking.  Morgana felt herself go warm at the thought, knowing the sensation not to be caused from the water for it had already begun to cool. 

 

But as of now it was a consideration for another time, if ever it could happen.  Right now, there were unwanted guests in Camelot whom Morgana must meet head on and match, if not surpass, in splendor.  She had the wish to appear as lovely at dinner for Arthur as she knew Mithian would be for him.  The other part of her yearned to be beautifully unsuspecting for her friend.  Mithian must never know the claim I already hold over my brother’s heart.  Let her think she can win him; let me watch her try.

 

---

 

Outside the dining hall, which, being significantly smaller than the Great Hall, was reserved for those dinners which necessitated a quiet ambiance for more private and therefore all the more intimate conversation amongst the royal family and the few guests of their choosing—it was there that Morgana and Arthur dined with their father each night the High King did not host a court-wide feast amongst the city’s nobles that would require the Great Hall to accommodate all invited—Arthur awaited the worst such dinner of his life.  He was dressed for the foreboding occasion in full chainmail and cloak, his golden Prince’s crown about his head.  It was his father’s idea that he display before their Nemeth guests the strength of the High Kingship, thus promoting the suitability of the proposed union between Nemeth and Camelot.  (Arthur, for his part, did not find this entirely necessary since, well, it was King Rodor who had propositioned his father about the marriage in the first place, and what kind of fool would he be to go back on his word now?, but he did not voice that thought to his father, knowing the reprimand he would most certainly receive if he did.)  All in all, despite hearing that he looked “rather fine” for the evening affair (from Merlin, he must admit, and knowing Merlin, most like he was merely complimenting his own abilities to dress him according to the courtroom pomp and circumstance and Arthur’s own boisterous demands that he adhere to them) and that the Princess Mithian would “most certainly be besotted with him after just one look” (also from Merlin, who Arthur was almost certain knew absolutely nothing about women), Arthur felt a fool, Arthur who always knew what to say around women, especially the noble ladies of the Court.

 

But this was different.  This was the woman he was going to marry, one day soon, to have by his side for the rest of his life, until death parted them.  There was something about that ‘until death do us part’ aspect about this marriage that unnerved him, found his suave remarks dried up in his throat, his charm equally deflated.  He chided himself that he could smooth talk his way into any woman’s bed, but the mere thought of conversing with the woman who would be his wife sent his heart a-patter with unearthly dread.  It did not help things that Morgana would be there to watch him stumble over his words and gestures, as he feared at this rate, he most surely would with all the mounting pressure placed on him by his father.  She would say nothing to embarrass him during the dinner of course—she was not the sort of sister to cause him such ungodly humiliation—but the moment they were alone in his chambers that night, she would laugh at him, tell him what a fool he had been, but that he was her fool and no one else’s, assuming of course that he could manage to sneak her back to his bedroom with all the commotion about the castle.  He sure hoped so.  The only thing that would see him through this godawful night, aside from the drink, was the blessed notion of forgetting himself and his worries in his sister’s arms.

 

“Ahh, here they come now,” his father said from beside Arthur, jolting him out of the rather tactless daydream he was having about Morgana.  “But where is your sister?” he added coarsely under his breath.  “She should be here by now.  I won’t have her make a poor impression of this family by arriving late.”

 

Arthur turned to his father, saying quietly, “I’m sure she’ll be here, Father.  Morgana is nothing if not punctual.”

 

“Yes, well, today she is proving otherwise,” he said gruffly before, in a sudden shift of his composure, he moved to greet their approaching guests with a welcoming smile.  “Ahh, Rodor, well of you to join us this evening.”

 

Arthur turned from his father to look at the Nemeth king approaching them, recognizing him instantly for the man who had conversed with him and his father the morning after his tournament win the late autumn past.  How was he to know then what the two men were secretly plotting?  To the dinner tonight the aging man wore a coat of brown fur over his dark tunic.  “As am I to be dining with you,” he said now to Uther, adding, with an arm about the shoulder of the woman standing beside him, “as is my daughter.”

 

Though he knew the woman standing so graciously beside Rodor to be precisely that, his daughter, and hence, why he had avoided meeting her gaze all the while he felt her eyes studying him, taking all of him in, in all of the first seconds of their meeting, Arthur felt himself compelled then to look up at this Princess Mithian, a woman he must have met once before as a boy when she had been just a girl herself but of whom he had no recollection.  It was an odd sensation he felt stirring in his body as he laid his eyes upon her after so long, so many years as to be a lifetime ago, for here was the woman of his future, who had played a part in his past he could not remember (and Morgana had not been forthcoming in the least about her), whom he met now as if for the first time in this most tentative, unaccustomed present moment.  He had the thought to wonder if his impression of her would have been different if he had only remembered her when they were children, but the thought fell away from his mind like the gentle oblivion of snow falling to ground. 

 

The truth was he felt dismantled by her.  She watched him with eyes sharp and inquisitive as a hawk all the while he surveyed her from top to bottom, noting the gold silk of her dress, its low cut exposing her bosom in the evening fashion—should he feel ashamed that that was the first part of her to catch his eye?  But it was not so, not really.  First, he had noticed her face framed by locks of chestnut brown, and why, he had never seen before a woman so fair of face, her skin so pale as to be freshly fallen snow.  And in that unblemished face, a set of eyes now regarding him warmly, though without losing their acute gaze.  He thought, and felt himself afraid, she is a woman who misses nothing, a woman who must know her own mind and intends to keep it whatever the cost.  That was intimidating.  Arthur was intimidated by this woman, but he also sensed a kindness about her, a well-meaningness that must have served her well in her girlhood.  He wondered if it was that innate kindness set, for so it seemed, in the angle of her bones and the shape of her eyes which Morgana found so becoming in childhood.  And yet, something must have happened between his sister and this Mithian before him, else Morgana would not have so much reason to begrudge his marrying her, would she?

 

Beside him, his father chuckled.  “I believe my son is at a loss of words, Rodor, so exquisite is your daughter.”  He laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, clapping him roughly.  “Arthur, allow me to introduce you to King Rodor’s daughter, Princess Mithian of Nemeth, your betrothed.”

 

Arthur, who had done his utmost best to maintain a placid, if not stoic, face as he stared at the comely Mithian, now felt his face flush at his father’s unnecessary reminder that she was, in fact, his wife-to-be, as if he could possibly forget.  “It’s a pleasure, Mithian,” he said, dipping his head, as much as out of respect of her as to avoid her sharp gaze.  He had the sense that she could glean the very thoughts in his mind just from her eyes watching him alone.  It unnerved him, and he told himself abruptly, Whatever you do, do not think of Morgana.

 

“As it is for me as well,” Mithian spoke, her voice demure to Arthur’s ears.  She offered her hand to him, and Arthur felt he had no choice but to take it in his own, so he did.  She squeezed his hand gently, as if she meant to reassure him, him, the Prince of Camelot!, and Arthur looked up at her, surprised bemusement coloring his face.  He opened his mouth to speak, to say something more to take the lead of the situation as was proper for him as not only Camelot’s Prince, but as a man, when Mithian surprised him once again, by saying softly, “But I believe we have met before, Prince Arthur.  Once, long ago in this very hall.”

 

Arthur dropped her hand.  “Yes,” he said, swallowing thickly.  “I remember,” he lied, not knowing what else to say, then realizing he would most like get caught in such a lie, clarified, “Well, I don’t suppose I remember, but my sister does, and she’s told me much about you.”  He could have punched himself.  What good was there in exchanging a lie for another lie?

 

But Mithian’s eyes brightened at his casual mention of his sister.  “I’m glad she has such kind words to say about me,” she said.  “We were very close, she and I, during my short time here, and I remember her fondly.  Is Morgana well?  Will she be joining us for dinner?”

 

“She should be here, yes,” his father said, irritation slipping through his charitable façade.  “But there is no sense in all of us standing without waiting for her.  Come, Rodor, you must be tired yet from your journey and in need of a chair to sit down in.”

 

“Uther, I believe I can manage waiting a moment for your daughter,” Rodor said as to dispel the tension of the situation.  “I am sure, she will be just down.”

 

“Nonsense,” Uther replied.  “You’ve told me yourself you’re not as young as you used to be, I insist.  I won’t call for the meal to be served until Morgana arrives, if that will appease you.  Just come in and rest a while.  Arthur can wait outside for her to come.  I insist.”

 

Rodor smiled.  “Well, if you insist,” the king said amicably, then moved to follow his liege into the dining hall and the comforts to be had therein.

 

Left behind to idly await Morgana’s appearance, Arthur knew not what to say to Mithian, who remained beside him, instead of following her father to a seat at the table.  At last, thinking of nothing better to say and cursing his sister for causing him to be uncomfortably alone with the Nemeth princess, he said, as he turned to her, running a hand through his hair, “You are more than welcome to go with your father, you know.”

 

“I know,” she replied.  “But I am keen to greet Morgana myself.  And besides, if you and I are to be courted, it would be more proper for us to go in together, don’t you think?”

He felt his face burn at her easy admission of the truth of their situation, of what they now meant to each other, though they were hardly more than strangers both.  “Quite,” he responded civilly. 

 

Mithian turned away from him, a smile on her lips. 

 

Despite himself, Arthur found his interest piqued, watching that smile just so.  “What, pray tell, is so amusing?”

 

Mithian glanced in his direction.  “Just you.  Me.  This courtship.  But you, most of all, you.”

 

Arthur raised his eyebrows uncertainly.  “I amuse you?”

 

“Yes, you do,” she said succinctly, only to explain, “I know you don’t remember me from when we children, but I remember you, Arthur Pendragon, and is it forward of me to confess that I am quite thrilled to see how you’ve grown up?  I thought of you and your sister from time to time over the years, always wondering if I would ever be graced with the chance to visit you in Camelot once again.  But as the years went by without so much as an opportunity, I found my hopes for our reunion dwindling, until I put my thoughts of you both behind me.  I thought that was the end you know, that I must content myself only with my memories, but then, when I least expected it, my father returned home from a visit to Camelot with the most exciting news.”

 

“And now you’re here,” Arthur stated.

 

“Yes,” she answered, “now I’m here, back in Camelot, after all this time.”

 

“Forgive me,” he said, “but it is challenging for me to feel as thrilled.”  He shook his head.  “I’m sorry, that came out not as I meant it.  I only meant—”

 

“That it is hard for you to relate to someone who knows you, but whom you have no memory of?” she finished for him.  “I understand.” 

 

He looked up at her curiously.

 

“But it’s not as if I do know you,” she amended her initial thought.  “Not really.  Yes, I knew you as a boy, but you are a man now, and I am sure you are much changed, as I have changed since I was that young girl visiting with her father the great castle at Camelot.  So, in a way, we are equally matched, you and I.  Having newly met again, we both have yet to know each other.”

 

Arthur shivered.  Her scrutiny, the way her eyes had taken him in and accessed him so accurately as to know the very thoughts in his mind, the words he meant to say, sent his skin to tingling.  And she, like she admitted, hardly even knew him.  He did not know then whether to be frightened or intrigued by her uncanny ability.  All he knew was that there just as may be something about the Princess Mithian worth getting to know.

 

Lost in his estranged reverie, his eyes only on Mithian as he tried to assemble the pieces of her in his mind, Arthur failed to notice the perturbed woman on the stair, her long locks shadowing her face darkly, so that she appeared one with the shadows enveloping the stairwell.  One arm laid against the railing, the other held taut at her side, the woman descended the staircase to the floor below, her long dress of emerald green—green as the irises of her eyes—trailing the steps behind her as she walked with an apprehensive gait.  Reaching the final stair, she glanced anxiously upward from her feet, at which she had fixated her gaze during her descent as if to ground her nerves and steady her footing on stairs she had walked a thousand times over, to the royal pair before her, bedecked in complimentary shades of red and gold.  She knew her manner hardly proper, and yet she could not conduct herself into a semblance of gracious decorum, so distraught was she to see her brother with the woman who stood across from her now. 

 

Then that woman, the young woman standing beside Arthur, turned to catch the woman on the stair staring at her and her eyes flew wide on her white face with recognition.  She stepped away from her betrothed in a heartbeat, taking a certain step toward the woman before her.

 

“What is it?” Arthur said, turning toward Mithian, only to have his question go unanswered.  He answered it himself a second later when his eyes caught the awful presence of his sister looking down on him from the stairwell.  Seeing her look, one of utter dismay, sent a wave of guilt down his spine, but Mithian, he saw, was not perturbed.  She took another step closer.

 

“Morgana!” she exclaimed.  “Why, Morgana, is that you?  It has been long, my dear friend, far too long since we’ve laid eyes upon one another!  How are you?  Please, tell me that you have been well.”

 

“Mithian,” Morgana said, surprised to find at the sound of her dear friend’s voice, if not the sight of her, so familiar to her now even after all the time passed between them, her lips find their way into an upward smile, and the tension in her body start to dispel.  Perhaps, a small part of her was relieved, even glad, to see her after so many years spent apart, but however true that may be, the greater part of herself cautioned hesitancy.  She’s here to marry Arthur; she’s here to steal him away from you, never forget that, she told herself, the affirmation hardening her heart.  She shook the troubling thought away as best she could, yet it retreated somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind where it would eat at her until it bore a hole into her very self, a dark depression she could never hope to fill again.  Nevertheless, in the moment, her heart still lifted at seeing her friend, and out of a joyous impulse, she moved to embrace this woman before her who had been her sole confidant in childhood, at the same relishing and loathing the physicality of her being, the warmth of her, the closeness.  No longer was she a distant memory, the specter of a ghost to come between her and her brother when they made love in the still hours of the night.  No, she was flesh, she was blood and bone incarnate, as real, as tangible and as permanent as the vow that would bind her to Arthur, as binding as the wish she had made as a girl of eight upon the wave-strewn shores of Avalon.

 

“I am well,” she said simply, breaking the hug a moment later to get a better look at her friend, not knowing what else to say to her, what else she could say.  Surely, she could not speak of what she had been up to these last thirteen years, for that would involve Arthur, only Arthur, and she would not speak of him to her, even if she could find an appropriate way in doing so; she would safeguard those memories of him for they were hers alone and she intended to keep them that way.  “But how are you?” she asked, shifting the subject from conversation about herself.  “You’ve changed much since we last saw each other when we were but girls.  You were pretty then, but now…” her voice trailed off as she gazed at Mithian standing before her, why she could hardly believe her eyes that she was seeing the same girl from her childhood grown for she was every word and more of what she had overheard her father say of her in the throne room, exquisite, beautiful, she was these things and more, she was…“breathtaking,” Morgana finished aloud.  

 

Mithian flushed as becomingly as the hawthorn in spring.  “Oh, Morgana, you flatter me!  What is this talk of me, when you are as lovely as ever.”

 

Morgana felt her face redden, but not out of modesty.  “Don’t praise me like that!  You embarrass me!”

 

“Only because it’s true, my friend,” Mithian said.  “Oh, I am so happy to see you after so long!” she said, reaching for Morgana’s hand and clasping it within her own.  “This is going to be such a wonderful time, my stay here in Camelot.  Why, it will be like as when we were just girls.  Have you thought about that?  With me courting your brother and all, why it’s just as we wished as children!  Don’t you remember those days spent by the lake wishing we were sisters, so we wouldn’t have to part after the tournament finished?  Why, it’s a dream come true!”

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, forcing a smile.  She pulled her hand away.  “It is.  We’re most fortunate.”  Her eyes shifted from Mithian’s over to Arthur, who was standing stiffly, as if deeply unsettled about the conversation at hand, his face drawn and pale.  Morgana snorted.

 

Mithian failed to notice Morgana’s wavering attention, continuing to speak.  “Perhaps, it’s just as that legend you told me, do you remember?” she confided softly, so Arthur could not hear.  “That whatever you wish for by the waters of Avalon will come true someday?  I wished for us to be sisters and here we are about to be so to one another.”

 

Morgana, turning back toward her friend, blanched at her observation.  Surely, her nine-year-old self had meant it when she wished Mithian her sister, a sister of her blood, but she had only wished it once.  How many more times thereafter had she wished for her brother instead to be not her brother at all, but rather the man she would one day come to wed?  The lost gods of old did not hear her prayer then any more than God in his heaven heard her weep each night thereafter she went to bed alone, wishing that she may wake the next morning with all her wicked fondness for her brother washed away like unrepentant sinners in the flood.  So much for the mystical magic of the waters of Avalon.  They were nothing but a curse, waves that cascaded against the rocks, battering them with the cruel tidings of fate that could not be swayed by the futile cravings of man.  

 

“It’s a happy day,” Morgana said, taking Mithian’s hands back in her own, all the while looking past her to fixate her eyes upon her brother, he who resembled all that she held dear in this life and all she had left to lose, and all because of the woman standing before her, hands clasped with her own.  

 

Meeting his sister’s stare, Arthur cleared his throat.  “Now that you’re here, Morgana, we should be at dinner,” he said gravely, lacking the women’s exuberance.  “Father’s waiting.  Not that I want to keep you both from your reminiscing,” he added as an afterthought.

 

Morgana dropped Mithian’s hands at once.  “Shall we to dinner then, old friend?  I am sure you must be famished given your long journey here.”

 

“Your hospitality is most appreciated,” Mithian replied graciously, then fell in line with Arthur once more.  “After you,” she said to the siblings both.

 

Morgana smiled at her brother, fluttering her eyelashes.  “Lead the way, brother,” she said.

 

Arthur shot her a look, as if to say not now, only to heed her wish.  “Alright,” he said to his wife-to-be, “come with me.”

 

Arthur led Mithian the short distance from the stairwell to the dining hall, Morgana trailing morosely behind the couple, praying not to gag upon sight of them together during their meal.  (If she did so, she thought to blame it on a bite of food that had simply gone down the wrong pipe.)  Two men bearing the Pendragon sigil, a golden dragon emblazoned against the red of each of their tunics, stood guard outside the hall.  Morgana watched Arthur nod to each of them, and without a moment’s hesitation, they opened the doors to the feast table enclosed within.  Morgana then saw her brother offer his hand to his, one day, Queen-to-be and watched with disdain as she took it so demurely.  The two of them then entered the hall and took their respective seats beside one another.  Morgana followed suit.  Her father already occupied the head of the table, as was his right as High King, and Rodor, as the guest of honor took a seat at his side across from his daughter.  That left Morgana no choice but to sit across from Arthur, whom she wanted to see least of everyone present this night. 

 

She swallowed hard, but took her seat with poise, nonetheless, allowing her hands to fold into her lap to appear almost comfortable to the watcher’s eye, even as she felt them stiffen with apprehension at just what would ensue this night. 

 

“Ah, now that we are all seated,” Uther chimed, “let me call for a toast to mark this special day amongst friends.”  He inclined his goblet, half-full of a dark red wine, to his guests, saying, “To our dear friends, King Rodor and his daughter Princess Mithian, who by their good grace have made the long journey here these last weeks on the behalf of a most holy union.  And to my son Arthur, may he one day succeed me as King of Camelot and High King of Britain, God permitting, for being everything I have ever desired in a son and more.  Let us drink.”

 

“Let us drink,” Rodor echoed, lifting his glass in cheer.

 

As Morgana brought her glass to her lips and drank, she watched Mithian as she sipped at hers.  Then she cast her eyes upon her brother across from her who drained his, watching the apple at his throat bob as he drank.  Yes, let’s drink to this, Morgana thought sardonically.  But pray heavens, aren’t we forgetting someone, Father?

 

“This union,” Rodor began, setting his glass back down on the mahogany laden with savory entrees, “will be most fortunate for our respective kingdoms and for Britain as a whole.”

 

“Yes,” Uther agreed.  “With the strength of Nemeth and Camelot joined, the Saxons will think twice before rising to rebellion.  They will know their place.  Vortigern may have welcomed them here in his rule, but that was upon our terms as Britons.  What say you, Arthur, of the uprisings you quenched?”

 

A table of eyes, Morgana’s included, followed the Prince where he sat.  Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “That I did, Father,” he said, his left hand grazing his silverware, adding, “with the help of my men.  Last summer we defeated several such rebellions,” he recited, and as he did so he met all the eyes watching him in turn—except his sister’s—only to linger on Mithian’s placid face, “scattering the Saxon hosts.  I am wont to think they won’t band together again, at least for some time, after receiving the heavy losses they faced.  And it is likely enough they won’t sack the realm once they hear of our strong alliance with Nemeth.”  His eyes left the princess to look upon her father.  “I thank you King Rodor for suggesting this match.  You have my gratitude, as does my father the High King for agreeing to it.”

 

Morgana eased back into her seat.  Well, said, brother.  They think you most grateful now for how they chained you to a girl you hardly know, whom I hardly know anymore.

 

“And I trust you will make a fine husband to my daughter, Prince Arthur,” Rodor intoned.

 

“That he shall,” Uther concurred, taking a drink from his goblet.  

 

“And I mean to be a good wife to him in turn,” Mithian spoke from across the table.  She looked toward Arthur with her doe eyes, Morgana saw, and Arthur gave her an awkward nod of acknowledgement in return.  She could see the trace of a smile on his lips. 

 

Morgana clenched her fist beneath the table, her fingernails digging crevices into her palm.  It is just an act, she told herself.  Arthur is merely playing the game Father has thrust upon us.  He doesn’t know her.  He doesn’t love her.  He doesn’t even remember her.  But could he still find her alluring? her mind japed at her, taunting.  Her father’s words came back to her then—she is a beauty, exquisite, my son will surely find her so if he has a brain in his head—and Morgana squeezed her fist tighter, fearing her nails might break the skin of her palm, only to care not if they did.  Whatever joy, however slight, she had felt at seeing Mithian once more, she now wished her gone for good from Camelot.

 

“That you most certainly will, my daughter-to-be,” Uther said, nodding towards Rodor, “If there is one man I can trust in, it is surely your father.  In the time of the new Law of the land, when the heretics had been going freely about practicing their dark art, I called upon your father more than once to bring them to the High King’s justice.  His service to Britain in her time of need helped rid this country of devil worshippers and sorcerers alike.  And now Britain stands all the purer for it.  We worship only God now, and we will be one step closer to uniting this country as one nation, instead of five, thanks to this union.”

 

“I will lend you Nemeth’s strength if ever the Saxons reassemble their force upon Camelot’s walls, my King,” Rodor asserted, “or on the day worse foes form rank outside the city’s gates.  You will have me then.  Only send word and I will raise my war banners to your aid.”

 

“I will keep you to your word,” Uther replied, sipping at his drink.  “My son and your daughter only need seal it on their wedding day.”

 

“Speaking of the wedding,” Morgana found herself saying, as her fingers toyed with her glass, curling and uncurling about the stem, “when will the happy occasion take place?”  She tried to keep her voice light, cheerful, without a thread of the utter dismay she felt.

 

The table fell silent a moment, as if no one heard Morgana speak, and while she waited for an answer to her seemingly benign question, she stole a look over at her brother, who had eyes only for his plate.

 

“Well,” her father said, thinking as he chewed his food, “that I have left up to Arthur.  Since this marriage was my and Rodor’s idea, I thought it best to give him some time to first meet and get to know his bride before the ceremony takes place.  I would have him ready,” he continued as if Arthur were not present in the room among them, “so this union is a successful one on all fronts.  But, in answer to your question, Morgana, I suspect in a week or two, two at most.  It will also give us time to prepare for the celebration.”

 

Two weeks?  Perhaps, one?  That was the only mercy to be had from her father, how typical, Morgana mused, if one could consider that mercy. 

 

“Well, that is much quicker than I thought,” she laughed.  “Arthur, are you sure you’ll be ready to be a husband in so short a time?”

 

Arthur looked up from his plate, shot her a quick, unforgiving look, then recollected himself.  “I have faced many an enemy in battle; I think I am more than equipped for marriage.”

 

This earned hearty laughs from both Rodor and their father.  Morgana bit her lip, thinking snidely to herself that her brother had always been skilled with his sword.  From across the table, Mithian simpered, but this time, Morgana noticed, the delicate smile she had been wearing through the duration of the evening as if fixed there seemed sad.  Suddenly, she wondered if perhaps her friend was less eager than she initially seemed to be marrying her brother. 

 

She was a child then, she told herself, when she spoke so fondly of Arthur, telling me she had eyes for him.  Perhaps, that infatuation died with the many years between us we spent apart.  And then the thought struck her cold—Perhaps, her excitement in coming here was never about marrying Arthur, maybe it was all about having me once more for a friend, no, more than a friend, as a sister.  But the realization, instead of fostering a sense of lost camaraderie with her friend as it should have done, sparked in its place a blaze in Morgana’s heart, which sang with cold fury. 

 

“Of course,” Morgana simpered at her brother, humbling herself to blush.  She took a sip of her wine, then, growing bold, cast her eyes over to Mithian, who out of everyone at the table seemed lost and distant.  “How about you, my friend?” she asked gently.  “After hearing that rejoinder, are you ready to wed my brother?”

 

Mithian looked up at Morgana, her placid smile returned.  “Yes,” she said with an honesty that surprised Morgana.  “I believe Arthur”—and here speaking his name, she cast her eyes upon him, brimming with their mellow warmth, and he, Morgana noticed sharply, returned her gaze, as if enraptured—“and I will be very dear to each other.  Just a moment ago, when we were waiting for you, my friend, out in the hall, we had the loveliest conversation.  I believe that conversation was the start of a loving partnership.  Marriages all are with their challenges, as ours will be at times, I imagine, but it is a most pleasurable challenge, one I am ready to partake in.”

 

Arthur broke away from her stare, looked down at the plate he had barely touched, then busied himself with pouring himself another cup of wine.  This he sipped at, despite his urge to down the glass.  After Mithian’s admission, he wanted nothing more than to be right proper drunk.

 

Morgana suppressed the smile paving its way onto her lips, then turned her attention away from her brother and back at Mithian.  “A pity then,” she said, “to waste such fine, well-meaning words on my brother.  I’m afraid he knows very little how to please women.  You will do well to wed elsewhere, unless your heart is set on becoming one day the High Queen of all Britain.  I’m afraid that is a title only my brother can give you.”

 

“Morgana!” Uther snapped.  “Is this how you speak of your brother in front of his betrothed?  Behave yourself.”  Then turning to Mithian’s father, “My apologies, Rodor.”

 

“Father, it was only a jest,” Morgana attested.  “I meant no harm by it, and I’m sure Mithian took no offense by it.  We’re old friends, she and I.  I’m merely teasing her.”

 

“And Arthur?” her father asked impatiently, unwilling to accept Morgana’s remark merely as an ill-timed joke.

 

“It’s fine, Father,” Arthur spoke, sighing.  “Morgana is simply being, well, Morgana.”

 

“That may be,” Uther said, taking a bite of his food, and chewing angrily, “but if I hear so much as a foul word out of her throughout the rest of dinner, she is to go to her room.”

 

Morgana’s face flushed scarlet.  Does he think me a child he can scold and send to bed without supper?

 

“Now apologize to our guests, Morgana,” her father said.

 

Her face paled.  She searched about the table.  No one was looking at her, except her father, and he was watching her intently to make certain she did as he commanded her, and yet she felt as if all their eyes were upon her, scouring her skin with their stares.  Morgana swallowed hard.  “Forgive me, Rodor, Mithian.  I don’t know what precisely came over me.”  Then she stood up, threw her cloth napkin on her seat.

 

“And where do you think you’re going?” her father spoke with the authoritative voice of the High King.  “Sit and finish your meal.”

 

“I wish to be excused, Father,” she said coolly.  “Before something else flies out of my mouth, I just might regret.”

 

Her father watched her with his hard eyes.  She braced herself for his brash temper, recalling the time when she, as a girl, angered him into hurling the tablecloth full of dishes onto the floor, and how her fingers had bled when she tried to pick up the smashed pieces.  She exhaled steadily.  Her only solace was that they had guests present; her father would never think to cause such a scene in front of them, else risk Rodor reconsidering the marriage for his daughter.  She was safe; her father could not touch her, not here, not now. 

 

“Then go,” he said, giving the ultimatum with an impatient wave of his hand. 

 

A surge of relief cascaded over her shoulders and down her body.  She felt like one of her father’s rare prisoners, returning from his trial with an unlikely pardon.  “Thank you.  Father,” she spoke reverently and bowed her head, thinking the gesture might just humor him, and she needed him in good humor for what she planned to do next.

 

Without so much as a look at her guests, and only one brief glance at Arthur, who did not look at her, Morgana pushed in her chair until it touched the wood of the table, then strode for the closed doubled doors at the room’s end and out into the hall beyond.

Notes:

A word on this chapter's title: the phrase 'merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again' is a greeting and farewell used by Wiccans. I really didn't know what to call this chapter that would convey the essence of its mood, when I thought of this phrase, and found it fitting for the way it relates to what is going on for Morgana and Mithian in this chapter. As children Morgana and Mithian met and parted as friends (hence, 'merry meet, merry part') and it is only now that they were able to meet again. The question though is whether this reunion is a merry one. I'll leave that up to you to decide.

Chapter 16

Notes:

Happy New Year! I hope you're all well. I don't have much to say this time, just hope you're safe. Thank you as always for reading.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Witching Hour

It was not until late that evening that Morgana left the privacy of her chamber to where she had returned after her grievous mistake at dinner.  She did not go to her brother’s chambers.  Gwen had asked her, in a roundabout way, if that was where she was heading, assuming she would be given the late hour, presuming that the fact that Arthur’s bride resided now within the castle walls was not reason enough to dissuade the siblings from their nightly tryst. 

 

“Then where are you going?” Gwen had asked, exasperated, but not uncurious. 

 

“To speak with my father,” Morgana answered confidently.

 

Gwen frowned at this startling development.  Just when she thought Morgana could no longer surprise her—for what could be more surprising than to learn of the way in which she loved her own brother?—here was Morgana doing precisely that. 

 

“But,” Gwen began, fearing that as close as she was becoming to understanding the Princess she served, there were still many more parts of Morgana that left her yet utterly baffled, “I thought you said he snapped at you at the dinner.  Why, whatever for, would you like to speak with him now after that?”

 

Morgana sighed.  “I have to make him see that this match between Arthur and Mithian is a poor one.  I didn’t realize it myself until I made my comment at dinner, and I admit it was rather petty of me, at first, to make it, but now I see that maybe I can sway him from his decision to have them married.”

 

Gwen shook her head.  “He’s the High King, Morgana.”

 

“And I’m his daughter,” Morgana affirmed. 

 

“Has he ever listened to you before?” Gwen asked.  “Taken your advice on other matters as serious as this?”

Morgana paused.  “Well, no,” she admitted.  “But then, I’ve never asked him to before, so who knows?  I have to try, Gwen.  For Arthur’s sake.”

 

“Or for your own, I wonder,” Gwen muttered.

 

“What was that?”

 

“Nothing,” Gwen said.  “I just…fear for you.”

 

“Well, I thank you for your concern, Gwen, but I’ll be fine.  I know my father.  I know exactly what I’ll say to him.  What he needs to hear.”

 

That was how she left the matter with Gwen, telling her to go home for the evening, that she would not be requiring her services to undress for the night since she knew not how long she would be speaking with her father, and held no wish to keep her up waiting for her to return. 

 

Now Morgana was plodding down the hall to her father’s rooms, worry lighting her brain, fracturing her composure.  What was she thinking?  She could not go to the High King and demand he consider her thoughts regarding the matter as his daughter!  Would he even stop to listen to her reasons to forgo the wedding arrangements?  Most likely not.  Gwen was right.  When had he ever heeded her words before?

 

Still, Morgana resolved to try.  What other choice did she have?  Arthur’s life depends on it, she thought passionately to herself.  My life depends on it.  There is a chance I can rewrite our futures, and I must take it.  Even if my odds are one in a million, I will place my bet.  I only lose by remaining passive, by doing nothing at all.  I cannot just sit by and watch him marry her.  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did.

 

She stopped in front of the large double wooden doors that marked the entrance to his rooms, took in a deep breath, and knocked. 

 

There was a silence that sounded long and drawn out to her apprehensive ears that, just when she thought to give the matter up and return to her rooms to try again on the morrow, was followed by a muffled, “Come in.”

 

Laying a tentative hand on the door’s iron wrought handle, which felt eerily cool to her touch, she pulled open the door and stepped inside the room she had not been within, she realized, since the time when her mother was alive, when she had been a girl of seven years of age.  The room looked no different to her wiser eyes.  There was the fire crackling in the same fireplace, the great bed that seemed no longer so immense standing opposite its glow.  Before the windows stood the two chairs, even after all this time, positioned to lend the sitter a view on the courtyard below.  She had a memory of her mother sitting there bent over one of her many books, the recollection causing her eyes to brim with sadness.  As a child she had been welcomed into this room, a welcomed part of her parents’ lives.  But that had all changed when her mother died.  Her father had hardened himself after her death, and it was as if he had sealed the last bit of his lovingness away with her in his grief. 

 

She blinked the unshed tears away, and stepped toward her father, who was standing his back toward her before the window, looking out on the descended night.  She squeezed her fist in determination.  It was now or never.  Speak up or turn back, never to bring up the matter again.    

 

“Father,” she spoke, surprised to find her voice steady and clear.

 

The High King turned to face Morgana beseeching him, startled to see her standing there within the room.  What possibly could she want of him at the given hour?  He could see desperation pleading on her face, brimming in her eyes, and wondered what warranted such womanly wantonness, wondered if perhaps she had come to apologize to him personally for her poor behavior at the dinner, if it was remorse at her own misdeeds that he saw present in her eyes that could not come out her mouth.  But instead of answering her the question she spoke in his name or proposing his own to her, he looked away back towards the books lining the shelves along the far wall, their gold inscribed spines gleaming in the light cast by the crackles of the fireplace.  “It is late, Morgana,” he said at last.  “The midnight hour will soon be upon us.  We should all be abed and asleep.”

 

He thought that truth acknowledged would quell her insistence, but, as he turned back to where she stood on the carpeted floor, staring at him with defiance in her eyes, he could see it did naught to dissuade her from her path.  It was clear she intended to speak with him this night about something that nagged at her deeply, like the clawing of some personal beast.  The way she stared at him, why, it was almost the way she looked at him when she was but a child—resolute, determined—but that was in the time before…and no, he would not think of before.

 

“What will you have of me, Morgana?” he asked then, knowing he could not simply shoo her off to her room like a little girl scorned.  She was a woman grown now; he must remember that.  “Our guests have been escorted to their chambers, most like asleep, and yet you stand before me begging my attendance.  What is the plight?  It’s not like you to apologize for your errors without being prompted, so I think that’s not why you’re here.”

 

“No, it is not,” she said admittedly, frightened that he could figure her out so easily.  She had always thought he knew nothing of her nor her mind, but now she was not so certain.  What else can he see of me plain as day? she wondered, her thoughts frantically returning to the many dinners she sat with just him and her brother for company ever since she first confessed to Arthur last autumn the extent of her feelings for him, and he likewise his affections for her.  Surely, her father did not suspect what in truth lied between them, else he would have said something to them both about how it, whatever it was, could not go on for the family’s sake, for Britain’s sake.  And besides, she and Arthur had been careful not to display in front of him the mutual fondness with which they regarded one another in private.  At dinner, they hardly spoke to one another beyond the idle goings-on of their day to day lives; mostly they just answered their father his own thoughts and questions respectively, without so much as a word to one another in-between. 

 

There is no way he knows, Morgana reassured herself, certain, and yet still felt as she studied him that creeping chill lacing her spine.  She blamed the feeling on the room; there was something about it, though it remained the same as it had in her childhood, not a book out of place on the shelves, the same bright tapestries hanging on the walls, that seemed different, wrong, as if love and warmth themselves had shriveled up and died herein, and in their place a cloud of darkness, thick and brooding.  She resisted the urge to retreat to the coffin of her own chamber.     

 

Uther sighed.  “Of course not.  But whatever the matter is, I am sure it can wait for the morning.  Your brother was duly honored this night, and we have a long week ahead with the celebrations to plan.  You should be pleased, and asleep.”

 

Morgana felt the urge to ask, then why are you still up, my father, hovering like a ghost in this room? but suppressed it, fearing it would only anger him, and she would get nowhere at all with her query if he was angry. 

 

“It is just that, Father, my King,” she said, deciding to be brave and out with it.  It was now or never.  She decided it to be now.

 

When she spoke, Uther noticed her voice was low, but not quiet, remarking silently, how well it commanded the listener’s attention.  Just like those heretics I had put to the stake in the courtyard all those years ago, Uther remembered, shivering slightly at the eerie resemblance.  Before him, Morgana possessed the same fire in her eyes as the fire that lit the eyes of those screaming soothsayers.  It is wise for men to beware the eloquence of women’s words, he thought, recalling himself, and not fall under their influence.  I must tread carefully with Morgana.  I shall not bow to whatever whim she desires.  And I will see she respects my power as High King.  She will not speak insolence in my presence.

 

He studied her, as she implored him with her eyes, so wide and green, to be almost innocent, he thought, and then, for all her supposed eloquence, she asked her question bluntly.

 

“Why must Arthur marry?  Why now?”

 

Uther chuckled.  “Morgana, come.  It is late.  Can’t such a discussion wait for the morrow, when there is sunlight to talk by?  I fear you’ve had too much wine this evening.  It has dulled your wits.”

 

“My wits are just fine, Father,” she replied stiffly.  It was just like him to think her intelligence meager to his own.  “And as I see it,” she added, continuing with her point undismayed, “we have no time to wait.  Our guests are here under our roof, and I am sure King Rodor does not intend on leaving before seeing his daughter wed.”

 

“I see you take offense?” Uther questioned.  “And why is that?  I told you both at dinner months ago that I intended to accept Rodor’s proposal.  And besides, it is high time Arthur marries.  He is a man grown.”

 

“He is of merely twenty winters,” she countered, “with his whole life ahead of him.  And by custom, he need only take a wife once he takes the throne.”

 

“As it was for me, yes, I see your point, Morgana.  But there is more at stake in this day than then.”

 

“What?” she asked, throwing her arms, not caring if she made a spectacle of herself.  “You’ve suppressed the sorcerers, those who would practice the Old Religion are all dead, gone, burned in your fires.  And the Saxons are quashed, disbanded.  What threat are they now, to Camelot?  To Britain?”

 

“You speak of kingly matters and yet you are not High King, Morgana,” her father reasoned.  “I do not expect you to understand.  Even as we speak, the city still crawls with those who would practice witchcraft.  Do not be so foolish as to believe they are all dead.  No, evil is not so easily rooted out, Morgana.  I sent many of that ilk to the flames, yes, but there are some that escaped my grasp.  But I digress.  If you were High King, you would understand this.  As for the Saxons, there is always the threat that they may band together again.  And if they do, now we will have Nemeth’s strength allied with ours, so we can devastate them once and for good.  Your brother’s marriage to Rodor’s daughter assures us this.”

 

“Yes, Father,” she conceded, “but from my understanding, Nemeth already owes us their arms, if it comes to war, since they’ve sworn their allegiance to you as the High King along with the other kingdoms of Britain.”

 

Uther sighed.  “That is true, Morgana, but a marriage seals this in ways sworn fealty cannot.  The four kings under the rule of the High King may give their oath to lend Camelot their might whenever Britain’s borders are attacked but will be less inclined to do so when it is not their own kingdom being overrun with enemies.  The kings have never been wonted to agree on much anything, and their sworn word to obey the High King means even less when it comes time for action.”

 

“Then why don’t you force them to heed their oaths, Father?” she asked, both parts perplexed and enraged that her father could speak as one man and act as another.  While she disagreed with her father on some matters, like this predicament regarding Arthur’s marriage, she still admired him for his strength as the bulwark to which Britain turned in times of need, and here he was behaving counter to that childlike image she had fashioned of him as a girl, at that young and tender age after her mother’s death, the time when she needed him as a father, her father, more than anything—where had he been then?  “How can you expect to be High King of Britain if the kings will not listen to you?”  The words were out of her mouth before she could rethink them, change them into something softer, barbed with a daughter’s concern instead of high treason, and regret saying them she did—at once. 

 

Uther’s hand tightened into a fist, the knuckles shining white in light of the fire’s flame.  “I will not have you address me as such, Morgana!  You will know your place!  I am the High King!”

 

“And I am your daughter,” she said quietly, tears stinging in her eyes, “who loves you though it seems against her better judgement.  You do not care for me.”

 

Uther released his fist, the tension spilling out of his hand and body.  “That is not true,” he said, his voice suddenly low, almost gentle, in stark opposition to the way he had just raised it as if in war against her.    

 

“But it is,” she said, blinking away the tears.  She would not have him see her cry; she would not give him the satisfaction.  “Else you would realize that I am not your enemy and would refrain from treating me as such.”

 

“I don’t understand,” he said then.  “You come to me at this late hour to argue over my decision to see Arthur married to the daughter of one of Camelot’s allies.  Why?  What does it matter to you?”

 

She gaped at him, her mind dazed with dread.  So, he does suspect something at least, for why would I be here before him now, if there wasn’t something?  I, who has never asked him for anything; I, who never dared to.  What can he see behind my eyes?  What truth can he possibly know? 

 

“It doesn’t,” she lied, quickly, unconvincingly.  She felt the urge to cover her tracks and muddle them, fearing that if she did not, just whom they would lead him to, and what.  And what he would do once he knew the truth. 

 

“But it does,” he said, echoing her own statement.  “Else you would not be here, Morgana.  Come, you can tell me.”

 

Could she?  “Alright,” she said, seeing no other way out of the predicament she trapped herself in.  “If you must know…I am worried about him.  I’m afraid he’ll get hurt.”

 

“Hurt?” Uther asked, bemused.  “And why is that?  What gives you that impression?”

 

“It’s just,” her voice trailed off as she thought.  “It’s just I know Arthur, and he’s more of a lover than you may realize.  He, he may not take well to marrying a woman not of his own choosing.”

 

“Are you saying there is something about the Princess Mithian that makes her unfit to be Arthur’s wife?”

 

At the question, at the way his eyes devoured her as he asked it, searching her for the lie she would try to pawn off to him as truth, she fell silent.  What could she say?  There was nothing unseemly about Mithian as far as she was aware, and she could not fabricate some gossip to indicate that she was unsuitable to be Arthur’s bride.  Her grudge was personal, something Mithian herself was not even aware of; she could not make it plain to her father no matter her desire to be rid of her, and any lie she could give would only come back to haunt her in the end.   

 

“Morgana,” her father pressed again, “if there is something dishonest about her, you must tell me.  I am aware that you two were friends growing up, so you must have an inkling of her character.  Tell me, is she all that she seems?”

 

Morgana frowned, the lie ready at the tip of her tongue.  She sighed.  “That’s not what I meant.  She’s a good person.”

 

Her father nodded, as if that was what he had thought all along and was only forcing her now to admit it herself.  “Then what am I to make of your concerns about Arthur?  Do you agree Mithian will make a good wife to him?”

 

“I,” she spluttered, her objective derailed, yet she herself still searching, like a madman falling to his death reaches out for a handhold, for some logic to latch onto, to pull herself up by, and salvage her argument through so that her father saw only reason in her words, acknowledged her judgement sound, and heeded her this, her one desire: that he listen to her.  “Yes,” she confessed, her mind rattling, Yes, Mithian would be a good wife to him. One far better than me. Are you happy? Are you happy? I admit it! Are you happy? It’s why I—“But that’s not—” she exclaimed, “Oh, I just worry that he’s not ready!”

 

“He’ll be fine,” Uther attested.  “You have nothing to worry about, Morgana, besides having little time for sleep this night.  Go on now and get yourself to bed.”

 

“But Father—” she begged. 

 

“I will hear no more of this, Morgana,” Uther said, his patience tried.  “My decision is final.  I made up my mind long before you came into my chambers beseeching me to listen to your doubts and reservations.  Your brother will marry the Nemeth princess and that is that.  It’s the best I can do for him and for Britain.  Your concerns change nothing.”

 

“You’re wrong,” she spat, her mind too overwhelmed with emotion, with desire lost and desire found, and below them both, in the depths of her heart, an endless, insurmountable longing for she knew not what, to speak reasonably, civilly, steadily.  The grief poured out of her, her innocent father, perhaps the blame for it all, for those empty lonely years spent locked away in her chamber in self-punishment, the target.  “He will resent you for this for the rest of your life!” 

 

His glare scoured her.  “I think not.  You would have me believe, Morgana, that he put you up to this, when I know this is entirely your doing, for purposes I do not understand.  My son would never be so ungrateful.”

 

Morgana’s lip trembled.  “Only because he’s afraid to speak up against you.”

 

“And you are not?”

 

The direct question threw her off guard.  “I am here,” she managed at last.

 

“So you are,” her father said, chuckling to himself now, though Morgana wondered what he could possibly find so amusing in her statement.  “But unlike you,” he was saying now, “Arthur knows his duty.  He would never begrudge me for setting him on his path of succession.  You must understand this.”

 

Morgana shook her head.  “You don’t know him, as well as I do.  There are things more important to him than the High Kingship.”

 

“Like what?”  

 

Her mouth clamped shut.  Between them the hearth fire sparked, a single popping crack sounding in the otherwise still room.  In the stillness, her father’s words seemed to echo over and over in her ears, carving patterned valleys in her mind: like what? like what? l i k e w h a t ?

 

Me, she thought silently to herself.  But she could not say the small word aloud, for to do so would be to shine a light onto a secret best kept secluded to the hidden dark. 

 

“I cannot say,” she said at last.  “Only because you wouldn’t understand, Father.”

 

“No?” he said.  “Well then.  I will let you keep your secrets, Morgana, for they are of no concern to me.  And I will ask you in return to drop this matter, never to bring it up again.  Understand?”

 

Morgana’s brows furrowed.  “I understand you will do nothing to postpone Arthur’s marriage.  That I can see plain.”

 

“Good, we have an understanding then.”

 

“So, it would seem,” she said, as she turned her back on him.  She stopped herself, waited a moment for him to bid her ‘goodnight,’ but when he did not speak, she kept on walking across the room and then out the door, her skirts trailing behind her, rustling softly in the darkened quiet. 

 

A second later, the door slammed shut, a startling juxtaposition, and she was gone, leaving Uther alone in the stillness of the night, with only the crackling of the fireplace and his own thoughts for company.  And then, out of the quiet din, like the ghost of a memory he once prayed forgotten, he heard the soft tick of the clock striking twelve, signaling that the witching hour of old was upon him, and then after, the new dawn.

Chapter 17

Notes:

Hello everyone! I don't have much to say this time. Just thank you for continuing to read this story as I very slowly get it out to you. It means so much to me. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter.

With love, Jo ❤

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: By the Waters of Avalon

Morgana slept fitfully that night. 

 

In her dreams, she saw Mithian, her full face, brimming with light.  She stood before the altar, dressed in pure white, her hands entwined with Arthur’s, as he murmured his vows before bending to kiss her lovely lips.  But before his lips met her own, the dream shifted, changed, the throne room with its applauding onlookers exchanged for Arthur’s bedroom cloaked in a private darkness. 

 

There was Arthur upon the bed, naked as his name day, beneath him Mithian, still clothed in her white dress.  He was showering her with kisses, a trail of them lining her neck, her cheek, and she was laughing, pushing him away half-heartedly with her hands.  “Stop!” she said, a fit of giggles, “Stop!”  But Arthur did not pay her any mind, continued to kiss her, reaching down now with his hand to uplift her dress.  “Stop!” she said, grabbing his hand.  Her eyes met his.  She was not laughing and he saw she was serious.  “What is it?” he asked, his eyes searching hers for some inkling of what he did wrong.  “You’re my brother,” she said then.  “I love you too much to do this to you.”  He frowned, as if this was a new revelation to him.  “I don’t mind,” he said, running a hand up her thigh.  “But I do,” she countered, stopping him.  “You’re my younger brother.  I can’t abuse you like this, even if you want it.  What kind of sister would I be, if I did?” 

 

From there the dream shivered, blurred into distortion, and Morgana woke slowly to daylight streaming through her curtained window and the sensation of her thigh being caressed, Mithian’s muted cries of “we can’t, we can’t, we can’t” echoing in her ears.

 

She jumped up in her bed, rubbed at her eyes, went to the wash basin and splashed water in her face, rubbed them again, anything to make sense of the visions muddying her brain.  She pulled open the curtains, revealing the new day sun’s light, allowed the water droplets to roll down her face drip-dripping to the floor, as she looked outside at the honest morning before her.

 

“What was that dream?” she whispered to herself, after she grounded herself in this fashion.  Mithian and her brother lovers?  Mithian, her brother’s sister?  It made no sense, yet it left her uneasy, as if a part of her had failed her brother, which was unfair, though not entirely untrue.  It seems even dream Mithian would conduct herself better than me in my situation.  She did not know what to make of that observation.  

 

Behind her, Morgana heard the door to her chamber open.  “Morgana, you’re awake!  And so early!  How did it go?”  

 

She wiped hastily with her sleeve at her face to dry herself, before turning to greet her maid.  “Oh, Gwen,” she said, staring at her standing at the other side of the room, breakfast tray in hand.  At the sight of the breakfast, she felt her stomach go queasy, hindering her thoughts.  How did what go?  She could think of nothing but the nauseating smell of breakfast sausages coming from Gwen’s tray and the way Arthur had kissed Mithian in her dream, with a passion she could not remember him ever kissing her with.  And then she thought, Arthur!—Mithian!—Arthur’s forthcoming marriage to Mithian!  And then it struck her, colder and harsher than the water she just threw on her face—her conversation with her father. 

 

“Not well,” she confessed, flustered at the memory. 

 

“Did he listen to what you had to say?” Gwen asked, setting the tray down on Morgana’s nightstand.

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, “not that it mattered any.  He told me he made up his mind and there was nothing I could do to change it.  He told me not to bring the matter up to again, so I left.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

She sighed, drooping her shoulders, as if in acceptance of her defeat.  “Thank you,” she said, smiling at her maid sadly, though a part of her did wonder to what extent Gwen had meant her words.  But no matter—at least, even if the entire world was against her in this, she still had Gwen.  At least, she alone could be relied upon to lend her a listening ear, a supportive hand, even if it was only out of a sense of duty, even though she too failed to understand like all the others most certainly would if they ever found out the truth why Morgana felt so compelled to lie in love with her own flesh and blood brother. 

 

“What will you do now?” Gwen asked. 

 

“I don’t know,” Morgana admitted.  “What else can I do?  They’re to be married within the week, two at most.  Just long enough for him to get to know her.”  She thought again of her dream.  “To choose her over me.”

 

“You don’t really think that?” Gwen asked carefully. 

 

“No,” Morgana said testily.  “Most like Arthur will come crawling out of bed with her and into bed with me.  If they marry,” she added hastily.  “I’ll just have to content myself with sharing him until I know for sure.  That’s all.”

 

“I’m sorry I brought this all up,” Gwen said, deftly shifting the subject before Morgana dropped some revelation she could not bear yet to hear, “but how about you try some breakfast, Morgana, before it gets cold?  You hardly ate any yesterday with the news of their arrival.  And you left the dinner early last night.  Some food would do you good.  It would ease your stress.”

 

Another wave of nausea swept over Morgana at thought of breakfast.  What was wrong with her?  Was she truly making herself sick with all this worry over Arthur and Mithian?  She smiled wanly at Gwen.  She could not go on alarming her by refusing to eat, as much as the idea of food revolted her at the moment.  “Alright,” she conceded, trying to keep her voice light, “I’ll try some.” 

 

---

 

The rest of that morning was calm, still; Morgana spent it eating her breakfast at the table, trying, stopping, and then trying again to scarf it all down in a timely enough matter so as not to alert Gwen as she tidied the room, arranging the bed covers and then setting out her clothes for the day, a purple gown with blue satin sleeves.  Morgana was surprised by the choice, but then reminded herself it was spring now.  Perhaps—she did not know for sure for not having gone out of doors herself—the day was warm enough for her to traipse about the castle dressed in soft silk meant for summer.  Summer.  Her life would be duly changed by summer.  If all went to plan, Arthur would have a wife, and she a sister.  Suddenly, her food was less appealing than before, and she left the last third unfinished on her plate to grow cold. 

 

Once dressed, Morgana extricated herself from her chamber and Gwen’s watchful eye to go for a walk about the castle to clear the thoughts jumbling up her mind.  It was a mistake.  For once out in the hall, she overheard the whispered gossip, which always fell to stark silence whenever she drew too near the guilty passersby, only to start up again once she passed them.  The talk was of Arthur—she did not need to hear his name spoken to know it was about him—and their new guest, the Princess Mithian.  They were only rumors, surely, no truth to them, an excited maidservant’s eager telling of her own misconstrued observations of the pair, or at least that was what Morgana told herself, they were nothing worth thinking on, let alone believing.  Yet she could not help but listen intently to the words exchanged—Oh, didn’t you hear our Prince is smitten with his betrothed?—He’s taking her out riding today; said he would picnic with her down at Avalon; I heard it from one of the kitchen girls who heard it from the servant who attended their dinner last night, isn’t that romantic?—She’s so beautiful, I caught sight of her this morning, why, they would make the most lovely couple!—I also heard that last night before he bid her goodnight, he commented on the loveliness of her eyes!—oh, to be so loved!—and place them side by side with her own perception of her brother.  She found herself wondering, Would Arthur say that?, until she would scoff at herself, telling herself she was acting the paranoid wife, that she was being entirely ridiculous.  Arthur loved her.  Their father may have coerced him into courting a princess from one of the kingdoms, but that courtship did not require Arthur to compliment her at every turn.  Surely, he would not betray her in such a way!    

 

She had just reassured herself of this, that all her worries were nothing but suspicious nonsense, when she spotted Arthur coming down the stairs, dressed in his brown vest and breeks for riding.

 

“Arthur!” she said, taken aback.

 

He looked up, hearing her say his name, then spotting her, frowned.  “Morgana,” he said, stepping towards her.  She was about to ask him what he was doing there dressed as he was when he suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her off into an alcove outside the hall.  At once, he dropped her arm, as if simply touching her could burn his hand, scar his skin, even though she remained appropriately covered, if not just barely so, with her thin satin sleeves.  What would he have done if it were my bare skin he touched?

 

She looked up at him expectantly, waited for him to explain himself, his suspicious behavior. 

 

He took a breath, lowered his voice.  “You didn’t come to meet me last night.”

 

She frowned.  So, this is what it’s about?  He’s upset I didn’t go to his bed?  “I don’t think this is the best place to be discussing this,” she said quietly.  “People might see us.”  She gave him a meaningful look.  Perhaps, hear us too that look said. 

 

“I don’t care,” he said.  “Why didn’t you come?”

 

She swallowed, turned her head to look about them at the servants and guardsmen passing by in the hall without.  One or two turned to look their way for a moment, but most busied themselves with whatever tasks they had at hand, saw them standing together, brother and sister, then kept on walking to their respective destinations.  She looked back at Arthur.  “I went to Father to speak with him, and I forgot,” she answered.

 

“Even after he yelled at you?”  She wished he did not look so surprised.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why?  What did you have to say to him?”

 

She sighed, wishing she did not have to bring the matter up again after hashing it out with Gwen, but understanding that he had the most right to know out of everyone; it involved him after all.  “I went to ask him to rethink the arrangement.  I told him I thought you were too young to marry and that I was worried for you.  He wouldn’t listen.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Morgana,” he said.  “Don’t you think that Father would find that strange, you worried about me marrying?” 

 

“Don’t be upset with me,” she said.  “I did it for you.  And besides, Father bought my concern.  He just,” she looked away, “…didn’t care.”

 

He laughed.  “Don’t pretend you did this for me when you really did it for yourself.”

 

At that, she glared up at him.  “What are you saying?  Do you want to marry her?”

 

“No,” he said, as if this was obvious, “but I don’t want to cause trouble with Father either.  You could have alerted him onto us, Morgana, going to him like that, I hope you realize that now and don’t do something stupid like that again.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” she said.  “There’s no way he would suspect.  You’re overacting.”

 

“Am I?”

 

That caused her pause to think.  She too had been worried while speaking with their father, feared he had seen past her half-truths for the full truth behind.  She shook her head, one thought still troubling her.

 

“So, are you taking Mithian out riding today?” she asked, changing the subject.  “At least that’s what I heard.  The servants can’t seem to stop talking about the both of you; they said you offered last night at dinner.  After I left.”  She did not hide her displeasure that he had sought to make such a gesture to his betrothed only once she had left the room, as if—though she knew this was not true—he had felt compelled to go behind her back to be with her.   

 

Arthur sighed.  “Morgana, I don’t want to hear it from you.”

 

“Well, are you going?” she pressed, needing to know.  “You’re dressed for it.”

 

He sighed again, ran a hand through his hair, as if he wished to be anywhere but here with her and her inquisitive questions.  “Yes,” he admitted at long last, “we will picnic near Avalon and then I will take her riding and show her the lands.  It’s been a while since she’s been here, though not much has changed in that time.”

 

“Just don’t enjoy it too much,” Morgana muttered.

 

Arthur sighed again.  “You know I would take you instead if only I could, Morgana.  So, stop being so petty with me…and with her.”

 

Morgana studied him carefully to see just what sort of game he was playing at.  “Alright,” she said at last, “with you, sure, with her, no.  Not a chance.”

 

“Morgana, it’s not her fault,” Arthur said.  “She didn’t ask for this anymore than I did.”

 

“Actually, she did,” Morgana countered.  “I was there.  It happened when we were children.  She wished upon Avalon for us to be sisters, and here we are about to become just that.”

 

Arthur rolled his eyes.  “You know that’s just an old story Mother told us.  There’s no truth in it.”

 

“It’s an odd coincidence,” she said thickly.  “You have to admit.”

 

He shook his head.  “You can’t use that, an innocent wish when you were little, as an excuse to hate her, Morgana.  She’s your friend.”

 

“You like her, don’t you?” she asked then, fixing her emerald eyes upon him, watching him bristle under her stare.  “Clearly you do if you’re taking her to where you and I used to spend our days as children.”

 

Arthur sighed.  “I never said that,” he said, leaving the second accusation unanswered.  “I think she’s a good person undeserving of your wrath.”

 

“When have I been anything but kind to her?” she asked flabbergasted. 

 

“Last night at dinner you insinuated she only wished to wed me so she could one day become High Queen.”

 

“Well, it’s the truth!”

 

“No!” he said a little too sharply, and a head or two turned their way before walking out of sight around the hall’s bend.  “Look,” he said, quieting his voice once more.  “You have to stop this, this loathing, Morgana.  It’s not like you.” 

 

Easy for you to say, brother, she thought maliciously to herself.  You’re not the one who has to stand by and watch as the one you love goes on and weds another, not just any other, but the one person who was once your only close friend.

 

“Alright,” she said, forcing her lips to upturn in a smile.  “But only if you promise that you will spend this evening with me.”

 

Arthur chuckled.  “Even after you forgot to spend last night with me?  You should be glad I don’t form grudges so easily.”  He quickly peered about the hall to make sure they were alone, then bent over to whisper in her ear, “But, of course, my love.  I will await you tonight.”  His breath tickled at her ear and Morgana felt herself grow warm at his words in anticipation.

 

With that the two of them bid each other adieu and headed in opposite directions to prepare for their separate days: Arthur to the guest chambers where Mithian was staying to retrieve her for their afternoon outing and Morgana back to her own chamber to, well, what did Morgana have to do today except to feel wearily sorry for herself?

 

As Morgana entered her chamber, closing the door behind her, Gwen peeked up from where she was dusting items on her vanity and said, “Oh, Morgana!”

 

“Yes?” Morgana asked, her heart skipping a beat.  She knew that tone of Gwen’s.  “Has something happened?”

 

Gwen dropped the cloth she had been using to dust the handled mirror.  “Well, yes,” she said, sounding uncertain.  “Though you may be none too pleased about it.”

 

“If it’s about Arthur taking Mithian on a picnic, I already know about it,” Morgana said.  “I caught him in the hall, and he told me himself.”

 

“Well, no,” Gwen said uneasily, “it’s not that exactly.  Well, I guess I must tell you, but please don’t be too upset?  Princess Mithian stopped by wishing to talk with you.”

 

“Mithian was here?” Morgana asked stupefied.   

 

“Yes,” Gwen answered.  “I told her you were out, so I told her I could take a message for her for you.”  She exhaled.  “The gist of it is, once she returns from her picnic with the Prince, she invited you to her guest chambers to talk and work on some embroidery.”

 

Ah, that was what Morgana had to do today.  Very well.

 

Morgana opened her mouth to retort she would do no such thing when she remembered the promise she had made to her brother.  Perhaps, he was right.  Hating Mithian would not solve anything, would not alter the circumstances she found herself so inextricably placed in.  “Send word, Gwen, that I look forward to seeing her and that I am most grateful for her thoughtful invite.”

 

Gwen gawked at her.

 

“Is something the matter?”

 

“Yes, er, no, Morgana,” she said, quickly recovering her surprise.  “I will go now.”

 

---

 

The sun shone bright glinting off the Prince of Camelot’s golden hair as he rode his steed in line with the Princess of Nemeth’s mare.  The wind faced them, sending a cool drift of rush through their hair as they rode, Mithian’s brown locks flown back behind her windswept face.  Arthur braced the gale head on and found himself enjoying the ride, losing himself in the freeing sound of his horse’s hooves drumming the ground only to bound into the air once more.

 

After a time, he reared his horse to a stop, a short distance before the apple groves, which were still bare after the long winter, and he signaled to Mithian for her to stop her horse as well before the magical spot, where mere feet away, down the hill and through the trees, lied the shimmering waters of Avalon.

 

For a time, Arthur watched Mithian as she gazed at the apple trees yet without their fruit and glimpsed a spark of light behind her eyes, as she recalled them from the last time she had been here amidst the peak of a golden summer.  He caught her smile at the memory and found himself reminiscing fondly as well of his own childhood spent at Avalon, and in his remembering realized, now that he knew her, he did recall some aspect of the Nemeth girl who had visited them that one gilded summer. 

 

He recalled the days he spent here playing with Lance, he and his friend trailing not too far behind his sister and her new friend, whom he now knew to be the Nemeth princess.  It had been Lance’s idea to follow them—perhaps because he had a secret crush on the Nemeth girl or Morgana, Arthur did not know which—and Arthur had agreed because, though he would never have admitted it, he still feared being parted from his sister for long, although two years had gone by since their mother’s death.  Only his sister carried the magic to make him feel light again, at ease with himself as if he had not a care in the world.

 

To be frank, he barely remembered Mithian at all from that time, so enamored as he was with Morgana, and yet here he was beside her after more than a dozen years spent apart, reunited here and now at the last for no other reason but their fathers’ prospect of their joint union.  He felt awkward.  What was he supposed to say to her?

 

Thankfully, he had not need come up with words to say, for Mithian broke the silence.  “It’s beautiful,” she said, turning from the trees to gaze at him, “not like I remember it, for it was summer then, but otherwise it’s the same.  The trees are all still here and the sun shines brilliantly through their branches.”

 

Arthur found himself smiling despite himself.  Perhaps it was because of the pride he felt for his home and having someone at last to show it off to, or perhaps, though he would not dare admit it, a part of him was beginning to like the Princess Mithian.  There was, after all, no harm in just liking her, right?  Would it not make the whole prospect of marrying her all the easier?  Still, something in the back of his mind tugged at him, cautioning him to remember that his loyalties remained and always would remain, as they should, with Morgana.  Morgana, the love of his life.  

 

But he could never have Morgana.

 

He shook that thought away, choosing to converse with Mithian instead.  “It is,” he agreed, “though perhaps a quieter beauty than in the summertime.  Come,” he said then, dismounting from his steed, as it snorted.  Without thinking, he took Mithian’s hand, helping her down from her own mount.  As he did so, she smiled at him.  He felt his face flush a light pink as he registered her smile and felt her own soft hand in his.  “Let me show you the lake,” he recovered quickly, though his heart was now beating all the faster.

 

“Please do,” she replied delicately, as she allowed him to lead her through the apple grove over the slight hill and down toward the lakeshore.  On a day like this, with the sun full and bright, the lake waters shone between the floes of remaining ice like a sea full of sparkling diamonds and Mithian gasped as she beheld it from the hillside.  “Oh, my Lord, it is spectacular,” she exclaimed.

 

Arthur grinned.  “Isn’t it?  I thought you would like it.”

 

Mithian dropped his hand to walk closer to the shore, careful as she stepped over the roots of the apple trees.  “Why, it’s just as I remember it,” she said.  She shifted back toward him to find Arthur following her down to the waters.  “Your sister brought me here to play when we were girls,” she added fondly, as the wind swept through her hair.  “It was a magical place then, and I can see that it has lost none of its grandeur over the years.”

 

Arthur nodded.  “It is a special place, Avalon.  My sister and I, too, have fond memories of coming down here in the summer to swim in its waters.”  He frowned.  “By any chance, did Morgana tell you the legend of this lake?”  The words were out of his mouth before he could rethink them.  He knew the answer, heard it from Morgana herself just a few hours before, so what had prompted him to ask anyway?  Could it be, perhaps, that he wished to hear spoken from Mithian’s lips the very myth he had so rudely dismissed when uttered from the mouth of his sister?  

 

Mithian’s face flushed, as she thought of the wish she had made that day with all its present ramifications, but she kept her voice cool.  “Yes, in a matter of fact she did, something about wishes coming true here?”

 

“Something like that,” Arthur answered, blushing now himself. 

 

“Did you ever make one?” she asked once she recovered herself.

 

“Plenty,” he laughed, “not that any of them came true.”  He kicked at a root.

 

Mithian smiled, drawing closer to him now.  “But what would the Prince of Camelot have left to wish for?” she asked with a raised brow.  “What could you possibly want for that you cannot have in an instant?”  She traced his hand with her own, causing him to look up and meet her eyes.  “Who was she?” she said then, interlocking her hand with his, “the woman you loved?”

 

Arthur choked, stepped back from her touch.  “Uh, it was nothing like that, Princess,” he said, as he peered into her eyes.  “Although, you are right,” he managed.  “It was the love of a woman that I lacked most in my life, but no amount of wishing could ever bring her back.”

 

Mithian’s eyes softened.  “Your mother.”

 

Arthur nodded.  “Like I said it’s just a legend.  If there was any truth to it, we would all have what we wanted, wouldn’t we?”

 

“Yes,” Mithian said breathlessly, almost to herself, almost forgetting that Arthur was there beside her. 

 

“What?” he asked.

 

But she did not hear him, lost in her own thoughts and the magic of Avalon.  “What is it that you want, Arthur Pendragon?” she asked him with a sidelong glance.

 

The question took him off guard.  “What everyone wants, I guess,” he said without thinking.  Then he added, after he thought about it a moment, “to be a good king after my father.”

 

Mithian looked at him almost sadly with her sharp eyes.  “Is that all?” she asked.

 

Arthur shook his head.  “All, what do you mean—?”

 

She took his hands in hers, spoke to them.  “What I mean is,” she said, tracing his hand with her fingers, “I know what it means myself to be the good daughter, to do what is right by my father and the memory of my mother.  That, in a way, is why I’m here, right now with you.  And yet it is not the reason, not the reason I tell myself anyway.”  She smiled wanly, looked up at him.  “You know in the game of pleasing fathers and winning kingdoms, I would give it all up in an instant just to know that I, not my title nor my lands, was what the man at my side cherished most.” 

 

“Mithian…” he protested, pressing his lips together.

 

She drew back, dropping his hands from hers.  “I am sorry, my Lord, if I have been rather forward.  I just wanted to…let you know that, in whatever this is between us exactly, whether affection or duty, I am willing, but I pray what we may have will be more of the former.”

 

“I…thank you,” Arthur said, forcing a smile.  He bowed his head.  “Forgive me.  I am at a lack of better words to say.”

 

“There is all the time in the world,” she placated him, “there’s no need to rush.”

 

“Right,” Arthur said, watching her curiously.  If everything went to plan, they would have the rest of their lives to converse so with one another.  But can I marry her? he wondered to himself, just as the image of his sister swam up from the recesses of his mind, her evergreen eyes imploring him not to—he quashed the thought, the picture of her dispersing like smoke on the wind.

 

“What is it?”

 

“You…” Arthur paused, searching for the right words, realigning his mind with the image of the woman before him.  He shook his head.  “You’re different…”  He was about to add “from the women I’ve known” but thought better of it.  He did not know Mithian well and feared her response if he confessed openly to her that he had been with other women before her, even though he reckoned she most likely presumed that he had.  Still, there was a truth to the words he said and the ones he stopped himself from saying.  Mithian was a different sort of woman—not a girl like the Lady Sophia (and so many other girls of the Court), eager to praise and please him, giggling profusely at his every word just because he had given her attention, but neither was she like Morgana, his only other frame of reference as far as his experience went (aside from the foul memories he wished he could repress of the nights his father coerced him into bedding his own whores as a warped initiation for the onset of his manhood), although he could not dare name what it was exactly that caused Mithian to be so unlike his sister, only that the unlikeness was there, an obvious presence in his mind telling him, as if by shouting at him, that what he did here with Mithian was wrong, sacrilege…  Perhaps, he mused, it was that Mithian appeared so cool and collected, her tenderness for him a deep reservoir of still water, something contained and certain, never to dry up or be swept away, while Morgana’s more tempestuous affections raged at him like the flame, devouring him even as their scorching licks kept him equally warm and fed.

 

“Different?” Mithian repeated.  “I will take ‘different,’ my Lord.”

 

“Oh, and that’s another thing,” he said.  “Please, just call me Arthur.”

 

 “Of course,” she said, bowing her head.  “But only if you call me Mithian.”

 

“Haven’t I?”

 

She shook her head.

 

“Then let me make amends, Mithian,” Arthur said, watching as his betrothed’s lips upturned in a soft smile at the sound of her name uttered on his tongue.  He returned it, adding, without so much as a thought to the woman who waited for him at home, “Would you like to picnic here?  I can go fetch the food from the horses.”

 

Mithian turned from where she was gazing at the lake and its diamond surface to face him.  “I would, Arthur.”

 

---

 

“So,” Morgana broached, finding herself rather disinterested in her stitching, the same spring tapestry with its unfinished flowers and birds.  “Did you enjoy your afternoon with my brother?”

 

Mithian dropped her needle to look up at Morgana, considering her question.  “Well, yes.  We had a nice time.  He showed me the lake, Avalon, and we ate there beside the water.”

 

“Ah,” Morgana replied, knowingly.  “It’s a magical place, Avalon…but you know the story.”  She smiled knowingly at her friend.  “Did he kiss you there?”

 

“What?” Mithian said laughing, her cheeks flushing a faint becoming pink.  “Oh no, it was nothing like that.  We talked a bit.  To tell you the truth, Morgana, I think he was rather nervous.”

 

Morgana snorted.  “That’s Arthur for you.  He acts like he knows all there is to know about love and wooing ladies, but really he hasn’t a clue.”

 

“I wouldn’t go that far…” Mithian said.

 

“You like him,” Morgana said, eyeing her friend.  “I can’t see why but it’s good that you do.”  She swallowed hard.  “Arthur needs someone who can love him, who will always stay beside him come hell or highwater.  Perhaps, he told you how he struggled after our mother died.”

 

“In not so many words, but yes, I got the sense,” Mithian said.  She put her hand on top of Morgana’s.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll be there for him.”  She paused, then added softly, “And I don’t just mean out of duty as his wife.  I have a mind to love him as well.”

 

She said it so confidingly, meant it so reassuringly, her pledge of love for Arthur, and Morgana had no choice but to smile.  “I know,” she said simply, but on the inside she was screaming, her heart tearing between her deranged love for her brother and her repressed love for her friend, leaving her frightened, that in the end, she would be the one to end up all alone, left with neither one.  “You’re very loyal, Mithian.  My brother could not dream of taking a better woman for his wife.”  She wiped at her eyes with the soft edge of her sleeve.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know what has come over me.  I’m just so h-happy for you, for Arthur, I—”

 

“It’s alright,” Mithian soothed, giving Morgana’s hand a faint squeeze.  “And it is understandable for you to be overcome, Morgana.  To you, he’s your little brother still, and you’re his older sister just looking out for him.”

 

Morgana bit her lip, nodding.  “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

 

“We can talk about something else, if you’d prefer it,” Mithian said, as thoughtful as ever. 

 

The kindness pouring from Mithian’s mouth in words thick and sweet as honey nauseated Morgana, and without thinking, she laid a hand over her stomach, as if to quell her unease, which was ridiculous because no matter the pain Mithian unwittingly inflicted upon her by coming to Camelot for the sole purpose of marrying her brother, it could not possibly make Morgana physically ill, could it? 

 

But then again, Morgana thought, cruelty done in ignorance leaves the deepest marks.

 

“Alright,” she said, masking a grimace as her mind rose above the wave of nausea sweeping through her body to answer her friend.

 

It was the only answer she could give.

Chapter 18

Notes:

Hey everyone. I hope you're doing well and are safe. This is just a little update, as it made the most sense to end the chapter after this one scene, but it is an ArMor centric one so I do hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading! 😊💕

Jo

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Bedroom Blues

That evening, after another discomforting dinner with their guests, in which Uther and Rodor discussed both stratagem and wedding plans (although only one day had passed since the Nemeth party’s arrival in Camelot) mostly to one another but sometimes calling upon Arthur or Mithian when a matter of the celebration concerned their opinion as if the marriage was already set in stone despite the fact that Arthur had yet to propose to his intended, while Morgana remained silent as ever, only picking at her food with her fork, her stomach qualms still causing her unease, the Pendragon siblings reaped their joint reward for their separate ordeals—Arthur, his outing with the Nemeth princess and Morgana, her visit with her thereafter—by spending the rest of the night at long last in each other’s arms.  Morgana was pleased that Arthur kept up his side of the promise (she had worried that he would have forgotten about her after spending the afternoon with Mithian), having invited her into his chambers after just one knock, as if he could not bear to be away from her a moment longer, and for a moment, whatever misgivings she had about the forthcoming marriage disappeared.  Arthur, however, upon seeing his sister in her same blue and purple dress, looking at him with longing in her eyes as she stood in the doorway, wondered if she had held up her, admittedly, more difficult side of the bargain. 

 

Whatever hopes he had held that Morgana had put aside her qualms about his marriage and her aversion toward his future wife so that they could enjoy together this night they had to share dissolved and shattered the moment he escorted his sister from the main room into his private bedchamber.  Therein, she had strayed from the bed to stand before the window, looking onto the night scene below, and he had followed her there, drawing the curtains closed with his hand, intrigued by her behavior.  He had expected her to fall upon the bed, begging for him to fall on top of her, yet here she was, standing aloof before the window.  What had caused her to become so cool?  He had a thought to warm her and her body into a passion, so came up behind her, ran his hands over her shoulders and down the small of her back, and bent to kiss her at the nape of her neck once, twice, then again, and again, and again.   

 

Secured now in her brother’s bedchamber, the outer door locked and barred, Morgana felt the lingering touch of Arthur’s lips on her neck as he covered her skin in a trail of kisses, felt his eager hands searching her shoulders and back, but she did not respond to his fervor, her body standing stiffly before the window he so thoughtlessly curtained off.  Or was it thoughtful of him?  Was she in such a mood as to wish to be caught with him?  Just like she had spotted him standing before this same window with the other woman of her dream.  Who had she been that woman?  Mithian, she thought wordlessly, thinking only of her face, not her name, but no, it could not be her.  The dream had plagued her before Mithian had arrived in Camelot.  But if not Mithian, then whom?  She dismissed the uneasy thought at once, though remained troubled by its cadence as it weaved and whirled down deep into the recesses of her mind, where it would wait until some catalyst prompted it to spiral up out of hiding to the forefront of her mind once more.

 

Through a sliver of an opening, she gazed out at the grounds below, at the people, less of them now that it was late evening, hustling home to their families.  She could not make out their faces from so high up in the castle, and with it being so dark out, but she could catch their forms when they passed into view of a torchlight, only to lose them once they stepped out of the flame’s glow and reentered the succumbing shadows of the nightfall that had descended upon the city of Camelot.

 

Arthur stopped lathering her neck and shoulder with kisses, realizing that she was not registering him his advances, that they had proved futile in wake of whatever it was occupying her mind, and he had a sinking hunch he knew just what.  “What is it, Morgana?” he asked anyway to break her silence.  He pressed his hands into her shoulders, felt the ripple of the muscles beneath.  “You’re tense.”  He took her hand and pressed the weight of his own into it, hoping she would turn around and answer him if not in words, then with a kiss.  But she did nothing.  She just stood there, staring at the curtains colored crimson blood, motionless as stone.

 

“Morgana?”  He waited.  Still nothing.  “Morgana?”

 

She put her hand on top of his.  “You took Mithian to Avalon.”  She said it so flatly, it was almost as if she was accusing him of a crime.

 

“I—well, yes, I did,” Arthur said, frowning, “but I told you I was going to.”  He paused.  “Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re getting at—”

 

“I know,” she said, dropping his hand.  She clicked her fingernails together impatiently.  Then she said, looking down at the floor, “she told me.”

 

Arthur shook his head.  “Morgana, I thought we came to an understanding about this.  You said you would put aside your hard feelings.  This thing with Mithian,” he said, gesturing with his hands as if, in effect, grappling for the right words, “even if I am to marry her, nothing will come out of it.  I love you, and only you.  You know that.”

 

“Right,” she said sarcastically, turning to face him, only to scour him with her eyes.  “If that is true, why did you take her to our spot?  To Avalon?  How could you take her, Arthur, to the place where for us it all began?”

 

“Morgana—” he wavered.

 

“No.  Save it,” she said.  “I don’t want to hear your excuses.  You meant to give her a part of us, a part of me, so when it comes time for you to wed her, you can pretend it is my face beneath the veil, not hers.”

 

Arthur hung his head in defeat.  “Perhaps, you’re right, Morgana.  Perhaps, I’m just trying to make the best of an unsatisfactory situation.  Because you know, you’re not the only one to hurt now that the ax has come to fall.”

 

She looked up at him then, curiosity melting her glare.  “Arthur,” she spoke, her voice cracking, “Arthur, I didn’t mean—”

 

“I know,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.  “I wish it wasn’t real, just as much as you do.  I wish we could go back to the beginning, and relive our lives, always secure in the idea of you and me.  How much more time we would have had then!  Perhaps, we could have thought of a way to stop the responsibilities of law and duty from crushing what we are to each other, this love we share, what we were always meant to be.”

 

Morgana turned to him, leaned into his touch.  “I just don’t like it, Arthur.  It’s a sense I have, foreboding, on the edge.  No good will come out of this if you marry her.”

 

“Do I have a choice?” he laughed morosely into her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her, of sage, lavender, and thyme. 

 

“I suppose you do,” she said then, swiveling to look up at him.  “You alone could put an end to this, whereas I could not.” 

 

“How?” he asked, stupefied.  “I can’t just defy Father.”

 

“No,” she agreed, “but perhaps you can dissuade Mithian from accepting your hand, convince her that the two of you were not meant to walk this life arm in arm until death.”

 

He snorted.  “Yeah, right.  She—” he opened his mouth to say what she had said to him down by Avalon, that professing bit about craving love and how if he desired it, he would have all of hers, to confess that intimate declaration to his sister, only to fear what she would do with the knowledge if he did.  Was there an end to her one-sided feud with Mithian?

 

“She what?” Morgana asked.  “What did she do, Arthur?  Tell me.”

 

“It was nothing,” he said, retracting the start of his statement, though he knew it was already too late; Morgana had heard from his lips everything she needed to know to keep on blaming Mithian anyway, no matter what he said, so what good was there now in safeguarding his betrothed from his sister’s wrath?  “She only,” he stopped himself, paused, started again, “she only made it known to me that she would stand by our fathers’ arrangement.”  He sighed, pushed himself to utter the final blow to them both, to dissolve once and for all the meager hope they had been living on these last few months, that somehow they would come out of this whole and unstained.  “She does not intend to go back to Nemeth, Morgana.”

 

“Then we must find a way to force her back!” Morgana cried, watching his face for a sign, any sign, that he supported her in her crusade.  She found none, just saw his eyes watching her passively back, the light in them already dead, gone, defeated.  “Arthur,” she begged, “Arthur, please!”

 

“Morgana,” he said, the one pleading her now.  “There’s no stopping this.  No matter how much you may want it.  Mithian will be my wife.”

 

“You’re wrong,” she said, her voice tight with strained emotion.  “I know you, Arthur Pendragon.  And if you’re any bit that man, you would not marry a woman you do not love, even if your very life depended on it.”

 

“Morgana,” he said helplessly, running his fingers steadily through her long locks, the very tresses of midnight.  “I fear you place too much trust in me.  Father—”

 

“You were always a better man than him,” she avowed softly, catching his anguished gaze with her own.  She reached up for his hand, pulled it free from her hair, gave it a slight squeeze.  “I trust you will do what is right.”

 

I trust you will do what is right.  The affirmation, put by her so certainly, as if indisputable, filled his head with echoes resounding here with clarity and there with falsehood muddled, followed by his own thought in disjointed reply, sounding sharp and clear like the warning bell from the city watchtower: But just what kind of man am I? 

 

To that question he would muse the rest of the night long and the morning after, only to deduce that to that question he lacked a proper answer, one that would satisfy her and absolve him both. 

 

He smiled at her wanly, squeezed back her hand.  “Come,” he said.  “Let us to bed.  I’ll show you just what sort of man I am.”

Chapter 19

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Gilded Dream / the Double Bind

The long winter had been a challenging time for most of Camelot’s citizenry, noble and common folk alike, but for Sir Agravaine it had been especially trying.  He had gone into the dark season full of hope of having found his life’s love at long last requited, what with her father the High King’s permission that he may pursue her favor after she had so ardently graced him with that dance they shared the night of the feast, only to spend the days that followed incapable of drawing near enough to speak with her blessed self.  Each time he thought he came close to it, whenever he sighted her in the hall, he either lost the courage or she passed him on by without so much as a glance his way.  At first, he thought the distance she maintained between them a result of his overzealousness at the feast, when he had asked her to dance with him another time at another such occasion.  He worried he had scared her off with his admission of his intentions then, recalling that, yes, the prospect of the two of them coming into courtship was perhaps a scandalous notion, what with his being nephew to the High King, her father, and thus, kin to her. 

 

Not that it was uncommon for cousins to marry from time to time—the High King had granted his approval that he court his daughter knowing full well their relation—but perhaps the notion of the two of them sharing familial blood caused her trepidation so that she lowered her eyes whenever he gazed with longing her way.  Morgana, Agravaine had thought, is a delicate creature.  I must take my time with her so that she understands that what we are to each other is God ordained.  If I am careful, then in time, she will come to me and confess to me her feelings.  That image of her confession warmed him during the winter’s coldest days, when it stormed and snowed without pause, the skies overcast and grey; he saw her then in his mind, reaching for his arm, pulling him into a secluded corridor off the hall where from her lush lips he would hear her admission of loyal love for him and him alone.

 

It was that fantasy played over and over again in his mind that was the torch that carried Agravaine through the bitterest winter to ever besiege Camelot’s walls in living memory.  Yet, in all that time, convinced as he was of Morgana’s affections for him, certain that she would one day, one day soon, come round and make to speak with him, Agravaine did not once accost her, and in the days that passed by, each one bringing foot upon foot of falling snow, so did the distance grow between them, accumulating like the frozen drifts outside, reaching high, seemingly insurmountable.  Still, regardless of that extending distance, Agravaine loved Morgana from afar, and made sure to smile at her, albeit shyly, each day he passed her in the hall, even though she never made to acknowledge him in return.

 

But now it was spring; the long winter at last come to an end.  Outside the snowdrifts had dwindled to puddles and slush, and the fields had started to green again, the trees to sprout new buds.  If there was ever a time for Morgana to come to him and admit her love, now was the time, he was sure of it.  After all, he, along with the rest of the castle, had heard word of the royal family’s new guests, knowing full well that the visiting Nemeth princess had come as the Prince’s bride, and why, pray tell, would Morgana sit by as her flesh and blood younger brother found love without making a move to claim her own?

 

This was what Agravaine had been pondering as he stood at attention waiting for his turn to combat Arthur, the Prince himself, in the training field amongst his fellow knights.  Normally, the notion of facing his liege in a match caused an uneasiness to settle over Agravaine, starting in his stomach, then flaring his nerves so that he saw sunspots in his vision and tasted blood in his mouth from the anxiety of it all, but this time Agravaine felt a lightness fall over him, descending upon him like a daze as his mind strayed to thoughts of Morgana, his lady, his love, and his body fell into a tranquil stupor.  

 

So dreamy was he, he hardly heard Arthur call his name to say that he was next to face him; the knight beside Agravaine, Sir Percival, had to nudge him on the shoulder, once, then a second time, harder, jarring his arm by the gesture, to get his attention before the Prince started in on him, yelling at his dalliance in addition to his past complaints about his ineptitude when it came to matters of the blade.  Agravaine was not necessarily cumbersome with a sword—he knew the basic maneuvers—he was just subpar in skill when compared with the Knights of Camelot’s high standards.  The only reason he had even been named a knight was because of his close kinship to the High King; to not knight him would have been an insult to not only himself, but to his father King Cenred of Essetir, not to mention his mother Morgause, the late High Queen’s sister. 

 

Realizing, albeit belatedly, that he had been ordered to meet the Prince on the field, Agravaine hurried over to where his liege was standing in its center, sword and shield in hand. 

 

Arthur gave him a cursory glance, drawing his own sword, Excalibur, from its sheath.  “How’s your training coming along, Agravaine?” he said amusedly, swishing the air with his blade.  There was a dark glint in his eye.  “Are you ready to face me?”

 

“I-I believe I have improved, Sire,” he managed, his nerves returning to him at sight of his liege’s easy maneuver.  He maintained his gaze on Arthur; he did not dare look around him at his fellows watching him from the sidelines, knowing the derisive smirks they would be wearing on their transparent faces. 

 

“Then let’s see you put that skill to the test!” Arthur said boisterously to an eruption of laughter from both the already tried and still waiting knights regardless if they had held their own in their own test against the Prince. 

 

“Yes, Sire,” Agravaine assented, as he readied himself in a starting stance, sword clenched in his hand and held out in front of himself defensively. 

 

In his peripheral vision, Agravaine saw Sir Leon set the hourglass that marked the duration of the match—he only need last as long as it took for all the sand to fall to the bottom of the glass to prove he could hold his own in a fight and redeem his reputation, though it would be even better if he could manage to defeat Arthur in that time—and not even a second later, Arthur, spinning Excalibur in his hand, moved to meet him on the field.

 

It was over in a manner of seconds.  After a few hurried exchanges, adept thrusts from Arthur which Agravaine blundered to block, yet accomplished somewhat successfully, the Prince, in one swift motion, attacked Agravaine’s sword arm, dislodging his blade from his tense grip, in effect, disarming him.  As if detached from his body, Agravaine watched his sword fall to the muddy field with a sharp ring of the metal as it hit ground, then in the brief silence to follow braced himself for the jeering laughter that would befall his ears.  The fact remained that although he had lasted longer against his liege than ever before in past tests of the same sort, he had still been defeated in a shorter time than all of his fellow knights, who were now present witnesses to his failure.  

 

But no one so much as stirred, and Agravaine was startled to turn around from where he bent to retrieve his blade to catch the Prince studying him carefully.  One moment it was there, that cold, calculating scrutiny on his liege’s face, only to be replaced, when Agravaine did a doubletake, with the Prince’s usual look of smug conceit.  “Well, Agravaine,” he said loudly so the other knights could hear, as he came round to clap Agravaine on the back, “it seems you haven’t much improved.  Off day, perhaps?” 

 

This earned a snort or two from his fellows and full-on guffaws from the more raucous of the knights, Agravaine could not say whom, nor did he dare look for that matter, merely kept his gaze focused on the Prince.

 

“I trust you’ll train harder for the next time you are to face me,” Arthur added, his eyes glinting with a malice Agravaine could not comprehend—arrogance, he had expected to find in those light eyes, but malevolence? Aimed at him no less?  What had he ever done to cross the Prince, his cousin, except prove lacking with a blade? And besides, that usually caused him so much mirth, being able to defeat him so easily—then he moved to clap him on the back again, as Agravaine continued to watch him equal parts stunned and bewildered, finishing with “not that you’ll do much better then.” 

 

With that Arthur called for the next knight to come forward and the next match to begin.  Agravaine trailed off the field, looking back at his liege every few feet, still bemused, as one of the younger knights, who was practically still a boy, by the name of Lamorak ran up to meet the Prince, his challenger in the field’s center. 

 

What the hell happened? Agravaine thought to himself, shouldering past his fellows, without so much as looking up at them, to watch the rest of the matches from the sidelines, not that he intended to watch them.  He heard Sir Leon call for Lamorak’s match to begin, saw him turn over the hourglass once more, but then his vision blurred and it was not Lamorak he saw throwing himself into every parry and thrust, but Arthur watching him with eyes as callous as cold fire as he rose from picking up his discarded blade.  Why that look? Agravaine asked himself.  Why that piercing stare?  What have I ever done to vex him, except be a poor swordsman, one he would be ashamed to call his kin?  For a moment, he considered whether he had simply misunderstood it, that stare; perhaps, he had not been its target, but someone else instead?  But no, that could not be.  He was the only one in line of Arthur’s sight, he was sure of it.  Then perhaps, it was something on his mind he was contemplating, he reasoned, which caused him to—and here, Agravaine shivered unconsciously—look toward me with eyes unfeeling.  He shook his head.  No, he was looking at me, I am sure of it.  But why?

 

“Hey,” a familiar voice sounded beside his ear. 

 

Agravaine jumped, so lost in thought he had been, he failed to hear the speaker’s approach.

 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, brother.  I just wanted to say you did good out there.  Arthur’s a tough fight and you held your own for far longer than you ever did in the past.  Don’t listen to what any of these fools say.  You should be proud.  Most of them couldn’t defeat our Prince in the designated time either, you know.”

 

Recovering from the initial startle he suffered, Agravaine turned to face his elder brother, smiling wanly.  “Gwaine.  I should have realized you were here.  It’s no wonder my humiliation was not worse.  They never laugh as hard when you’re around.”

 

“Except for Maleagant and friends,” Gwaine said with a sigh, glancing over in the burly knight’s direction.  While Lamorak’s match had ended, seemingly in defeat, by the look on the lad’s face as he left the field, another match had started between Arthur and Sir Pellinore, which Maleagant seemed to be criticizing amongst his equally faultfinding friends.  “There’s one man who’s not so easily threatened.” 

 

“Don’t bother with him,” Agravaine said.  “I don’t want you getting in any more trouble on my behalf.”

 

Gwaine smirked.  “Yeah, well, I guess he can wait.  I have a mind to have a talking to Arthur though.  Doesn’t he realize he can’t talk to you, my brother, like that and get away with it?”

 

Agravaine exhaled uneasily.  “He’s the Prince, Gwaine.”

 

“Yes,” his brother said, “but you’re his cousin, son of a king, yourself.  He should have more respect for you.”

 

Agravaine laughed deprecatingly.  “Not parrying as I did, he will not.”

 

“Yeah, well, he should.  And besides,” he said giving Agravaine’s shoulder a playful nudge, “you’ll get better.”

 

“It sounds like you’ve spent the night in the tavern again,” Agravaine said dryly.  “Only a drunk man would put so much faith in my abilities.”

 

“Well, maybe I was,” Gwaine said with a knowing smile at his brother.

 

Agravaine studied him to see whether he was merely jesting or not.  He could not tell for certain, but the past told him that most like Gwaine had spoken true about his drinking habits.  “You really shouldn’t be doing that, Gwaine,” he said out of fear for his brother as much as concern for him.  “Not while we’re here away in Camelot.”

 

Gwaine heard the implication in his tone.  “I don’t need you to look after me,” he said, casting his eyes away from Agravaine and back onto the field where Pellinore managed to impede Arthur’s oncoming blow.

 

“Well, neither do I then,” Agravaine said testily.  It was just like Gwaine to push him away the moment he showed concern for him; as his elder brother, Gwaine could follow Agravaine everywhere he went, trailing him so close as to be his own shadow, waiting in that shade just in case some harm or danger befell his way to then be there to thwart it when it reared its ugly head, as most certainly it would, but he would never accept the same dedicated treatment from his younger brother.  No, in this world, Gwaine walked alone without another to safeguard him, the role of protector of his kin, his alone to bear.  Agravaine sometimes found himself surprised to be on the receiving end of that love—that was what it was after all, Gwaine’s protection over him, his younger brother, his way of expressing his love unspoken for him—given how he knew his brother resented their parents both, their father for the arrogance that ruled his head, their mother for the schemes that were inextricable from her own.  Of the two, Agravaine knew Gwaine to detest their mother the more, a truth that tasted like betrayal in his mouth whenever he found himself reminded of it, for Agravaine loved his mother with a boyhood adoration that did not dry up and leave him in the years it took for him to grow into a man.   

 

“Why don’t you get going anyhow?” he asked Gwaine now, his patience for his brother and his self-destructive ways drying up like the well of the Perilous Lands, sobering him up to the stone cold truth that he could not wish a better life for his brother any more than he could for himself, as far as they had come from those bleak days in Essetir to the renowned Court of Camelot, as long as they both refused to face the demons plaguing them still from those dark days and change.  Change.  He could change.  He could become a skilled swordsman—Gwaine had said he could, albeit, with practice—and become then the man Morgana, his lady, his love, would be proud to openly court and call her own.  “I can watch over myself you know.”

 

Gwaine eyed him skeptically.  He did not say a word; he did not have to.  His eyes said it all, the doubt, the assured disbelief he had for his brother and his abilities his mouth could not speak.  He looked away from Agravaine back onto the field where the match between Arthur and Pellinore was ending in a standstill, the time run out, the Prince congratulating the courageous knight with a clap on the back.  Should Gwaine count it amongst his sins that he believed deep down his brother incapable of that sort of timeless glory?  That and the drinking.  Even he did not excuse himself for that, but who could blame him? 

 

His brow furrowed as the memory rekindled itself in his brain, branding him with the trauma he sought to repress.  There was his father watching him hotly with his dark eyes as he guided his child’s hand before the fire’s licking flames and then down a breadth from the blaze itself.  There was a moment of nothing but quiet apprehension running through his body, as his nerves braced themselves for the reckoning to come—what had he done to warrant this? He could not say, he could not remember—and then the pain, sharp, hot, and engulfing, and the stench of his flesh burning in the flame.  When his father at long last pulled his hand away from the blaze a second later, itself feeling a lifetime, saying that he had learned his lesson and suffered well, he looked not at him, his child, but to the fair-haired woman sitting in the darkened corner, a slight smile simpering her lips.  “Are you satisfied, Morgause?” his father had said to his mother where she sat luxuriantly on her throne, “He has borne his punishment well.”  “Well, enough,” she had said, and Gwaine, delirious with pain as he had been, turned to look at her, his mother, lounging on her gilded throne in her fine silks, and saw the fire mirrored in her eyes, two twin sparks razing judgement.  She smiled down at him, then turned once more to her husband, placating, “But don’t you think it unfair to the other hand?”

 

Gwaine pulled himself away from the memory.  It did not matter now, far as he was from the land of his birth and the parents who had reared him.  He was in Camelot, an esteemed knight of the King’s guard.  What matter was his upbringing now?  He had toiled night and day to master the ways of the blade so that the next time someone thought to harm him wrongfully—or otherwise—he could fight back.  Agravaine, he thought bitterly, begrudgingly, and then scolded himself for thinking so viciously of his brother, the only kin he still called his own aside from the Pendragons and the found family he discovered in the rank of knights who served them, knew little if anything at all of swordsmanship because he had never known firsthand brutality he could not escape, being their mother’s precious, favored child.  She had not sought to scar his hands.  And Gwaine wondered how it could be that he could dote on such a brother, the child his mother chose to rescue from her own wrath.  Yet he knew it was not Agravaine’s fault.  He had not chosen to be spared from the flames, any more than Gwaine chose to succumb to their terror. 

 

“I know,” Gwaine said, returning from the land of myth and memory, to answer his brother, though he did not believe the words he spoke.  He did not say what it was that compelled him to always look after him, something about the sight of him reminding him of his own self at that age, his body already scarred from a childhood of neglect.  And that was just his body; what could be said of his mind?  

 

But Gwaine said none of this, the matter weighing heavily upon his mind, his personal ghost.  He merely tapped his brother on the shoulder, gave him a reassuring look, and moved off from the field, past the other waiting knights, and into the streets beyond. 

 

Agravaine watched him go, wishing he knew the words that could have caused him to stay.

 

It is no matter, he thought to himself.  Let him go.  I know now what I must do.  And that he did.  Starting at the morrow’s dawn, he would rise early and head for this very field to train, all for the opportunity to better himself, not for himself, but to win his token lady.  He was flooded then with the image his brain culled up of her smiling at him from the stands as she watched him disarm her brother with just one flick of his blade in the tourney’s championship match.  The crowd would be going wild, chanting his name, but he had no thought for that, had no thought at all but for her eyes of emerald green gazing wistfully into his own.  He did wonder though what sort of bewildered look would be in Arthur’s eyes then the moment he, Sir Agravaine the Coward Turned Brave, brought upon him his defeat. 

 

For now, it was just a fantasy.  But upon the morrow, he would strive to make real the dream.  

 

---

           

The hours passed quickly for the men training in the field under the afternoon sun, and soon the skies dimmed into the lavender light of evening, bidding them time to call it quits for the day, pack up their gear and go home to their suppers, all except Arthur, who alone of them all lacked the will to head on to dinner, although of the lot he would most like be granted the best meal—perhaps, understandably so given the guests he would be expected to entertain there alongside his father and sister, namely that one who was soon to be his wife—and Lance, whom Arthur more or less begged to linger alongside him on the training field for just one more match, this time between just the two of them as old friends.  Lance, being a man of honor, of course, forewent the warm meal awaiting him, despite the rumblings of his own stomach, and appeased his friend with the single match he craved. 

 

The clinking of steel scraping steel echoed throughout the field as Arthur and Lance sparred, their swords weaving to and froe as if in a joint dance, though not a soul was around to see the movement of their blades, let alone hear the ringing clangs when the metals met.  Arthur was already quite weary from a day of combating his men on the same field, testing them to know their strengths, glean their weakness, and moreover, ascertain where and to what extent he needed to press them to train harder so as to turn them, in name as well as deed, into the greatest knights of the realm, to prove much contest against Lance, whom, renowned as Camelot’s greatest knight to ever live, even Arthur admitted was a far better swordsman than he himself.  And that was on a good day, when Arthur was well-rested and had yet to overexert himself in a dozen such training matches; now, in his current exhausted state, he was hardly any competition for his friend at all.  The only reason he suspected he was still standing upright sword in hand at all was because his dear friend was going easy on him out of pity, he reckoned with a slight grimace. 

 

Lance swooped low to get a hit at Arthur’s gut, and Arthur, registering the assault a moment almost too late, manage to parry the attack just in time, meeting Lance’s blade with his own.  It went on like that for a time, Lance attacking, throwing his force behind each one of his deft thrusts, and Arthur defending, swiveling to and froe on the balls of his feet, his body anticipating his friend’s next assault more from memory of the past skirmishes they shared, and the tactics Lance employed therein than from sight of his sword arm in motion.  In the end though, when both men were tired and beyond hungry from exhorting themselves in their heavy chainmail, having spent the day in like fashion under the warm sun to boot, they made to lower their blades and sheath them as if in joint agreement to call the match at a standstill.  That was when, in a sudden blur, Lance lunged himself at Arthur side and slapped his sword away with the base of his own.  Stunned, Arthur watched as his blade landed a few feet away from his side.  He gaped at Lance, who grinned mischievously at him.  Then Arthur found himself smirking as well.

 

“Well, Lance,” he teased, throwing off his helmet and wiping the sweat from his face, “it would seem you have bested me by yet another one of your tricks.”

 

Lance laughed, now sheathing his sword.  He removed his own helmet, freeing the mane of dark hair that covered his head with a bounce of curls.  He held the helmet in his hands.  “So, it would appear,” he said with a sly smile.  “Or perhaps you find yourself distracted, my friend, for that last assault of mine was one I’ve used against you before on other training days.  If you had been paying attention you would have seen my attack coming seconds before you figured I had given up.”

 

Arthur sighed.  “Perhaps, you’re right, Lance.  I do have a lot on my mind as of late.  But also consider this: in the last four hours, I just faced and defeated a dozen of my men, some of my finest too, while you spent the day training in the new recruits.”

 

Lance grinned.  “That may be well and true, Arthur, but”—and here he shook his finger at him reprovingly—“you must always remember the first rule of combat: think only on the man in front of you, regardless of how many men you just defeated and how many more lie in wait just up ahead.  The only man that matters is the man you’re facing.  Always.  Think on any other and you’ll be a dead man for sure.”

 

“Alright,” Arthur said, sounding more irritated than he was.  “Do you have any more tips for me, Lance?”

 

Lance had the humility to blush.  “No, Sire.  Not that I can think of.  And I know that was a cruel trick I pulled on you at the last.  I knew you were already worn-out, like you said, from a day of such matches, and I know that if you were fresh, you would have seen through my ploy easily.  Perhaps, I would have been the one disarmed with a blade aimed at my own throat.”

 

Arthur shook his head, laughing.  “You were going easy on me, even then,” he said, fastening the knight with a knowing look.  “Admit it, you bastard.  You’re the best of my father’s knights, nigh, the best in the entire kingdom.  There’s no way I could have held out so long against you in my current state as I did otherwise.  So, give it up, why don’t you, and confess.”

 

“Haha,” Lance chuckled only to frown as he considered Arthur’s request.  “Only if you confess to me, Arthur,” he said then, a wry smile on his lips, “why you called me alone to stay late with you just to spar when we both know you are the one with a dinner to attend and a princess waiting for you and little time as it is to clean yourself up and get to both?”

 

Perhaps, he should have expected him to ask, for it was obvious he was avoiding something with his impromptu demand that Lance train with him a while longer when he had more pressing matters to attend to such as the evening’s dinner with his father’s esteemed guests, yet the direct question took Arthur off guard and the wind out of his sails.  He had spent the greater amount of the day attempting to put aside his thoughts of Mithian and Morgana and what he should do about his forthcoming marriage, hoping to lose himself in the passion of the fight only to be reminded of his sister, the way she had implored him last night to do what he believed to be was right, the right thing in her mind being to call off the betrothal altogether, the moment his cousin Agravaine took the field against him.  That goddamned Agravaine.  Arthur saw red whenever he caught sight of the man whether he spotted him feasting in the Great Hall or stumbling at swordplay on the training field or simply whenever he passed him by for all he could think of when he spied him was how he had held his sister so gingerly in his arms when he had danced with her the night of his own champion’s feast.  It should have been Morgana spinning in my arms that night, Arthur would think to himself in those moments, a stab of pain piercing his heart, lacing his veins with anguish overstayed.  He long forgave Morgana for her part in the incident of the dance, knowing she had only sought to make him mad with envy, and envious he fully admitted he had been that night, seeing her in that coward of a knight’s arms, but Agravaine he came to resent for his share of the affair, knowing the man to be practically enraptured with his sister, a stance that simply would not do.

 

But Arthur could say none of this to Lance now, friend or no, no matter how much he trusted the man, and trust him with his life he did—just not his secrets; those were best kept to himself.  Yet he must say something of the matter in part because Lance asked him to, yes, and he could not lie to his friend, also yes, but more pressingly because he thought he just might die if he did not at least confess to someone the black well of feelings drowning his heart. 

 

He took a breath, exhaled, looked at his friend glancing at him curiously.  “Alright, Lance.  You’ve seen right through me.  In truth, if you must know, I have no desire to dine with Mithian this night, tomorrow night, or any other night for that matter.  Nor do I have any wish to marry her.”

 

Arthur looked at Lance, waiting for shock or dismay or horror to pave way over that placid face, only to find that Lance seemed not in the slightest one bit surprised, let alone aghast at his stark honesty. 

 

“Well, say something!” Arthur begged.  “Tell me I’m rude, inconsiderate, selfish, ungrateful, I don’t care what, just something.”

 

“Alright,” Lance said quietly.  “You might not want to hear it, but you aren’t any one of those things.”

 

Arthur gawked at him.  “I’m not?”

 

“No,” his friend replied.  “It’s perfectly understandable for you to feel hesitant toward the princess, though pretty and kind and well-mannered she may be.  You do not know her.  Nor did you choose to marry her.  Your father did.  You can’t expect yourself to be compliant in a choice you did not make, especially one of such magnitude that it will affect the rest of your life, and not have any hard feelings at all about it or toward the person in question.  That would be ridiculous.”

 

Arthur scoffed.  “You mean to tell me that I am not reprehensible in the slightest for begrudging my soon-to-be wife?”

 

Lance met his gaze.  “Yes, that is what I am saying.”

 

Arthur studied his friend a moment as if to ascertain the chances he was merely teasing him, making an ass out of him and his predicament for the way he had so rudely slighted the princess her company—if it had been his father to hear him speak of her in such a matter, he shuddered to think just what might happen to him then—but he knew Lance, and he would never make light of such a serious matter as this, of that he was almost certain, yet to be sure he asked just as solemnly, “And I’m not equally to be blamed for resenting my father for putting me up to this without my consent?”

 

“Correct,” his friend said simply. 

 

Arthur sighed.  “Well, then.  That’s a relief.  Here I was, thinking I was being rude to Mithian, ungrateful to my father, and selfish in all regards, when none of it is my fault!”  He laughed, then grew grim once more.  “But even as you have relieved me of my guilt, Lance, that does not take away my duty.  My obligation still stands.  I must marry Mithian for the greater good of Britain.”

 

Lance nodded, betrayed both his friend and the flutter rising in his heart, as he squashed the thought of the one who alone moved his steadfast self away from duty toward that tender feeling the poets named love.  He was a knight; no matter the extent of his feelings, he could never come to court the maid Guinevere.  “We all have our duties, Sire,” he said stiffly. 

 

“So, you call for me to do mine, though I may not be happy about it, is that it?” Arthur asked him shrewdly.

 

“I—” Lance stuttered, fell silent only to begin again.  “I’m only saying that it’s your destiny, Arthur.”

 

“To rule Britain one day as her High King, perhaps,” Arthur stated, smiling wryly, “but to marry Mithian?”

 

“What turns you against her?” Lance asked carefully.  “Is it simply because the High King picked her out for you?  I never knew you to go against your father before, nor do I see that as your motivation now.  Surely, you must find the princess comely, so what is it?”  He paused, then asked the question he would later wonder as he woke in the middle of the night whether in asking it, he had truly meant to pose it to himself.  “Is it a question of love?”

 

Arthur choked, reminded instantly of how the princess had posed to him in different words the same question.  Who was she? her words echoed in his mind. The woman you loved?

 

“Love?” he asked, bewildered, then laughed as if to shrug off and deflect the imposing question.  “Lance, you know me.  When have I ever spoken of love?”

 

“There must be a reason you have no wish to marry her,” Lance insisted.  “That you can’t even will yourself to go to dinner with her as we speak.”

 

“Yes, well,” Arthur said, running a hand through his hair, as he backtracked his previous admissions.  “It’s not that I don’t want to marry her exactly, because of her, you know.  I like her.  I do.  She’s pretty, courteous, smart.  There’s nothing not to like about her, from what I can see anyway so far—”

 

“Then what?  You seemed rather adamant against the whole affair a moment ago,” Lance acknowledged observantly.   

 

“I just…” Arthur held up his hands helplessly.  “I just wonder if it is the right thing for her, for me… This is marriage, Lance.  It’s for life.  What if, what if I can’t prove a loyal husband to her?”

 

Lance raised a brow, considered that last question, but refrained himself from commenting upon it.  “I see,” was all he said.

 

“What do you think I should do?” Arthur asked him desperately. 

 

“In the event that a time comes when there is another, you mean?” Lance asked questioningly.

 

“What?”

 

“You’re worried that you won’t remain faithful to your wife, come the day you meet the one you truly love, is that not so?”

 

The way Lance studied him, gauging him for a response, Arthur felt compelled to look away, at the castle walls and windows—he spotted a maid lighting a candle in one such window, signaling that the evening was drawing on fast; he should be away, preparing himself for the evening’s meal, yet here he was discussing his future with Lance—at the trampled grass at his feet, at the fading sunlight glancing off Excalibur from where the blade laid forgotten on the ground, anywhere but at Lance’s knowing eyes.  How close his friend came to the truth!  Arthur had worried how he could go ahead and marry Mithian and remain faithful to her, but not out of fear of a mystery woman he had yet to meet, but of the one he already knew and loved.  If he married Mithian, how could he prove loyal to her and his sister both?  They were opposite sides of the same coin—one side heads, the other tails—and no matter how many times he flipped it, he could not look upon, let own possess, both sides at the same time.  It was to live a lie to attempt to love both women simultaneously, a life full of falsehoods and hidden truths.  What kind of man would that make him then?  A hypocrite?  A liar?  How could he lie with his wife and remain faithful to his sister, and how could he lie with his sister and remain faithful to his wife?  It would be to make him a living paradox wrapped in a double bind.  There was only one answer, and Morgana had said it: to call off the betrothal.  He could go the rest of his life without coming to know Mithian, but life without Morgana, he could not live without Morgana.

 

He had his answer then, or so he believed, perhaps foolishly so, without thinking of the consequences.  He did not think then, if not Mithian, then surely there would come another match arranged for him by his father to take her place, another such woman to come between him and Morgana, and once again he would be in the same conundrum where he could not love both and keep faith.  And, even more significantly, he did not think that to call off his betrothal to the Nemeth princess would be to face his father’s wrath, and Arthur, when push came to shove, was never one to disagree with his father. 

 

“Something like that,” Arthur said to his friend.  He bent to pick up Excalibur from the grass, hefting the sword in his hand, staring a moment at the dying light refracting off its blade.  “But I see now it was a foolish worry.”  He returned his gaze toward his friend.  “Come.  Let us go in.  I have a dinner to attend.”

Notes:

Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Even I laugh sometimes at my decision to have Gwaine and Agravaine be brothers like they are in the myths because a part of me has a hard time separating my version of their characters from how they're both portrayed in the show, so if you laughed too reading their conversation it's okay, you can tease me about it. 😂

That's all. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Thanks as always for reading. 🙏

Jo

Chapter 20

Notes:

Hey everyone. I hope you're doing well. I don't have much to say this time other than for once it didn't take me that long to post again from the last update, so I hope that's a good thing. 😂 I'm getting pretty excited since the chapter after this is a heavy duty one and I really can't wait to share it with you. For now though, I hope you enjoy this one. Thank you as always for reading.

With love,

Jo ❤

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Betwixt Light and Shadow

“There you are!”

 

Arthur spun round from where he stood, dressed still in his mail, to find Morgana traipsing down the hall after him.  “Morgana?” he said, incredulously.  “Shouldn’t you be at dinner?”

 

“That’s where I was,” she snapped, casting her eyes over him disapprovingly.  “Until Father sent me to come find you.  Where the hell have you been?  I searched the entire castle for you!  Even talked to that servant of yours, not that he was any help!” she finished gruffly, crossing her arms over her red gown, not the one she had worn to the feast held in his honor last autumn, Arthur observed disappointedly, though still pretty. 

 

“I was out in the field, training with Lance,” he said simply, slightly stunned at her outburst.  What did it matter to her whether he was at dinner or not?  But then again, he knew his father, knew how he could be when he was mildly inconvenienced, let alone irritated.  Perhaps, he had drove her to her own frustrations at his absence.   

 

“Well, I could have guessed given the sight of you.  You’re not even dressed!”

 

“Morgana, it’s alright,” he said quietly.  “I’ll go apologize to Father right now for my tardiness.  I’m sure he won’t mind too much my being still in my mail.  Most like, he’ll spin the whole affair into a display of how serious I take my training, always putting Camelot first and the like—”

 

“You’re so obnoxious,” she said.  “You think everything is about you, don’t you?  Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not!”

 

Arthur frowned.  “What’s gotten into you, Morgana?  Did Father say something to you?  It’s me he should be angry with, not you.  It’s not your fault I’m late—”

 

She sighed, exasperated as if he were too simple to understand her train of thought in their jilted conversation.  “It’s nothing to do with the dinner,” she said, taking a breath to steady herself.  She pulled him off toward the side of the hall, looked round to make sure they had no eavesdroppers, then lowered her voice.  “Mithian came to talk to me today,” she said.  “She told me how you complimented her at the luncheon this afternoon.  What did she say?  Oh, that you told her that her gown suited her, something about how it brought out the color of her eyes?  And she was just tickled!”

 

“I might have said something,” he admitted sheepishly.  “But it was nothing like that.”

 

“That’s not the point!” Morgana said obstinately, as if she wanted to hit him over the head with a mace.  “The point is that you didn’t talk to her about calling off the wedding!  I thought we decided last night that you were going to talk to her to try to stop it.  And what have you been doing all day?  Training!”  She threw up her hands. 

 

“Morgana,” he said, reaching for her hand and grabbing it with his own.  This sudden gesture stopped whatever accusatory words she was about to spew at him next and she fell silent, simply watching him.  “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said once he won her attention.  “I know I spent the day training, but I needed to…to make sense of my thoughts.  I just discussed the matter over with Lance, and,”—he caught the look in her eyes, and he thought to quickly clarify—“no, not what’s between us, but me and Mithian, and I realize now that I must speak with her.  That I will speak with her.  You’re right.  It’s the only way out of this.  For the both of us.”

 

She frowned, considering him.  “I thought you already came to that conclusion?”  She shook her head.  “But I guess it’s no matter, as long as you do talk to her.  After dinner, would be a good time,” she added as an afterthought.  “When you see her back to her rooms for the night.”  She gave his hand a gentle squeeze.  “Will you do that?”

 

“Yes,” he said, forcing himself to smile at her. 

 

“Good,” she said, returning his smile with a grin, as she dropped his hand.  It lit up her face so brilliantly, he could not help but smile at her in earnest.  “Now let us to dinner before Father decides to have us for his meal.”

 

---

 

The dinner went smoothly, all things withstanding.  Morgana, Arthur noted, kept her calm, her temperament even, even as she found herself seated beside her rival, which he knew to be no easy feat given the animosity she felt toward her friend for the very circumstances which brought her here to Camelot.  She even seemed to smile genuinely here and there at a comment the Nemeth princess made, her lips curving upward in silent mirth when the conversation dictated such a response.  While Morgana could have fooled Mithian, Rodor, even their father, with her show of happiness into thinking her newfound delight intrinsic to his forthcoming wedding, Arthur knew the true reason for her sudden pleasure—a far cry from her quiet if not uncouth demeanor the two nights prior—to be his decision to dissuade Mithian himself tonight from accepting his hand as both their fathers wished. 

 

It’s so like Morgana, he thought then, watching her as she simpered at their father over her cup of wine over some remark he made about the wedding plans, to come out of her unhappiness, the moment I do just as she asks.  The notion irritated him.  In that moment, he found her intemperate like a child, and like a child, only consolable when granted her heart’s passing fancy.  Except her fancy was him, and that was one craving unlikely to ever be satisfied even while there was still breath in his body and his body receptive only to her.  Now, why must she perk up only now that I’ve agreed to her plot?  Has she not the decency to remain polite when denied the very thing she desires above all else?  The way she had spoken of Mithian with that loathing she would not allow him to reproach her for, and the malice that shone in her eyes whenever he spoke her name aloud, something about that pettiness in her bothered him to an extent that he was not unable to admit it to himself.  Part of him wanted to punish her for her misbehavior, at the way she so coldly undermined her former friend—for how could she kid him into thinking that they were still friends after all she had said and done?—though the subversion of his future marriage was what he wanted too, and here he was, ready to do what she wished because, deep down, he wished for it too.

 

He tried to ease his guilt by telling himself that most likely Mithian herself held no desire to marry him either but was only here in Camelot prepared to be walked down the aisle and be his bride because her father wanted it of her in a chance to tie his family name with that of the High Kingship.  That was all, only the promise of glory bestowed and glory attained, that bound him and Mithian together.  It was not fate nor the tender pangs of love which determined their most holy union, but the necessary profanities of alliance and strategy.  For Mithian was a valuable chess piece, a swiftly dealt card promising a winning hand for Britain and her High King—the High King that he would one day be—that was all, and Arthur recognized that Mithian herself must know this too, that neither of them were here for love and love alone, but duty, and yet, and yet as he escorted her back to her rooms from the meal they shared, he could not help but think on yesterday afternoon when he brought her to Avalon and she had said to him that she meant to love him if only he would let her in. 

 

“Arthur,” she said now, jarring him out of his thoughts.  “We’ve reached my chamber room.  Shall I bid you goodnight?”

 

He looked up in surprise at the double doors—could they really be here already? the evening already at an end, his burden set upon him at the last?—then turned to face her.  His eyes fell over her, drinking her in, her comely face and hair and gown of green she wore—the colors of her kingdom—which shaped her fine figure, lent grace to the curves of her body.  He shook his head.  He had no right to be thinking of her in such a carnal matter, though she was to be his wife, but not for long if he was to do as his sister bid him.  His shoulders slumped as his thoughts returned to Morgana and what he must do to save them both, and perhaps, in some small way, Mithian too. 

 

“Mithian,” he said quietly, though an edge remained to his voice. 

 

Mithian heard that solemn point to her name and asked, though warily, “Yes, Arthur?”  Without realizing it, she reached a hand down to clutch a fold in her gown.

 

Arthur caught the motion and stopped himself for what he was about to say, reconfiguring his words, softening their initial stab.  Later, when he lied awake abed alone that night, his troubling thoughts possessing full reign over him his mind, he would wonder how such a subtle gesture from a woman he had yet to know and understand could cause him to feel such shame at his attempt to hurt her just to shield her from himself.  He could not allow her to marry him, knowing full well that his body, mind, and soul belonged already to his sister—what kind of life would that be for her? to be to him but a shadow to Morgana’s light?—and yet there was something about her that drew him in, something like an open honesty he never knew with Morgana, their love being reduced to secrets best kept in the secluded dark; with Mithian though, he could step out of the shadow of secrets and perhaps find affection, if not love, in the light of the common day. 

 

He shook the thought away, unaware his head moved likewise, then turned back toward Mithian, who was now watching him quietly, her hand fallen from her skirt to her side.  Her eyes seemed to ask the question he desperately wished he could ask of himself: What is it, Arthur?  What ails you so?

 

He clenched his fist, and began again, resolute this time in what he was doing.  It was for Morgana, he was doing this, out of his unfaltering love for her, so why did he feel so awful, as if he were about to be sick?

 

“Mithian,” he managed at last, straining to keep his voice level, almost apathetic, unfeeling.  “Is this right what we’re doing?”

 

“What do you mean by this?” she interrupted him, her voice rising.  She knew what he meant, of course she knew, and yet she felt compelled to ask, to coerce him to put the matter plainly into words.

 

Arthur sighed.  “Our fathers have decided that the best future for Britain lies in our marriage, and while that may be, I can’t help but wonder whether that is what is best for you.  And so, I ask you, Mithian, do you truly wish to marry me?  Be honest.  I’ve gone my whole life hearing only what others expect I wish to hear, but in this, from you, I would like the truth.”

 

Mithian looked up at him, her eyes shimmering.  “I like you, Arthur,” she said simply.  “And no,” she added quickly, “like I told you down by the lake, I am not saying that because of some fantasy of becoming one day High Queen.  That is my father’s dream for me.  While he may have those grand visions, mine are simple, but, perhaps, not the easier to bestow.  All I wish, all I’ve ever wanted since I was just a girl, is to be loved and to know love.  You’re a good man, Arthur.  I can see that plainly.  And so, to answer your question, if I am to speak honestly as you wish, I do see a future for myself here at Camelot with you, and I want every part of it, if you will have me.  So, yes, I will marry you—gladly—but only if it’s your will as well.”

 

Arthur swallowed hard, looked away from her probing eyes.  “How can you be so sure of me?” he asked softly.  “You don’t know me, Mithian.  Whatever we were in childhood, we’ve only known each other these last three days.  How can you promise yourself to me in the faith that I will do good by you when I know I can hardly do good by myself?”

 

“It’s alright if you’re frightened,” she said, taking his hand in her own.  “I was too on my journey here.  I hardly knew what to expect outside of my memories, but I kept faith that all would be well, and it has been.  You’re a good man, Arthur,” she said again, “and I know you will do what is right,” she added, her words sounding so similar to Morgana’s that Arthur found for a moment he could not breathe, “whether that’s marrying me or following your own heart.”  She paused, dropped his hand, studying his breathless face.  “Are you alright?”

 

“Fine,” he managed to choke out, recovering himself.  “Just fine.”  He paused, then said, “You’ve given me much to think about, Mithian.  For so long I saw my life on a certain trajectory, and now, with you, I’m not so sure.  All my life, I knew I would one day be High King, but I never gave much thought to the woman who would rule come that day at my side.” 

 

It was a lie.  He had thought of such a woman in the dreams of his boyhood, thinking her in deluded fantasy to have always been Morgana.  He did not recall exactly the moment of his life when he had realized it could never be his sister at his side, but the reality of the notion struck him now to the core.  What was he doing?  Even if he managed to convince Mithian to walk away from him, from Camelot, from the High Queen’s throne and go home to Nemeth where she belonged, though it was uncertain now after her moving speech whether she would be so persuaded, he still could not wed Morgana.  If he did not marry Mithian, his father would just find another princess to take her place, and he would be back where he started, unable to possess and love two women at the same time.  And would he be so lucky the next time to have a bride who loved him not for his title, but for himself?

 

Mithian simpered at him.  “I’m glad I could help,” she said.

 

“Yes,” he said breathlessly, as he found himself watching her as he never looked at her before. 

 

“It is late,” she said, the smile still curved on her lips.  “Perhaps, it’s best, I bid you goodnight,” she inclined her head, “Arthur.”

 

“Of course,” he said awkwardly.  “Goodnight Princess.”

 

He stood standing there in the hall moments after she turned her back on him and retreated to her room, the door falling quietly shut behind her, and wondered just what he should do now.

 

---

 

That night, Morgana did not go to her brother’s chambers.  She thought it best, for the both of them, to give him and herself time apart to be alone with their thoughts to think, though she was quite eager to learn how his little discussion had faired with the Nemeth princess.

 

As she curled into bed, bidding a surprised Gwen goodnight for the evening—Gwen had questioned why she had not gone to Arthur to spend the night in his rooms and Morgana had to dismiss the peculiarity on her part as “simply not feeling up to it,” despite being “quite well,” all the while thanking her maid for her concern though it was not “necessary”—she wondered if perhaps it was more reluctance than consideration which prompted her to stay the night in her own room. 

 

It was not as if she doubted Arthur would speak with Mithian as she asked him to—she knew he would, especially after she implored him to do so when she found him in the hall before dinner—but she would not lie and say that a part of her did not fret that the conversation had not gone to plan.  So many things could have been exchanged between them after all, she reasoned, and Mithian had been besotted with her brother as a girl.  What if her feelings for him never changed after all this time? 

 

She shook the thought away, reached across the covers to her nightstand for her nightly prescription, the tonic Gaius prepared for her each day to take right before sleep to ward off the nightmares she encountered in slumber.  It helped, but not much.  As of late, it did little to prevent her from dreaming, but at least when she did take the remedy, she managed to sleep the night through, which was otherwise an impossibility if she did not down the whole vial, accustomed as she was to wake terrified from her dreams. 

 

One odd thing she noticed these last few months she spent with Arthur was that whenever she slept at his side her nightmares failed to visit her.  She knew not why nor how but each night she slept beside him, she would wake in the morning refreshed, restored, and free from her troubling dreams.  When she made the connection a couple months back, she had been delighted, then intrigued at what it could possibly be about Arthur that kept her dreams at bay.  She had thought the matter over time and time again, looking at it from one angle and then from another, but in the end came away with no answers; there was no one she could go to with her questions.  She could not tell Gaius, for one, of her breakthrough for that would be to confess to the physician that she had been lying with her brother, and she could by no means do that.  So, in the meantime, she kept taking his prescribed drafts, thankful to have them on the nights she could not go to him because of her monthly bleeding—speaking of her courses, she was due for them any day now, which foretold a long week spent away from her brother’s bed.  Perhaps, she thought, downing the vial, she would have done well to have gone to him tonight after all. 

 

“Oh, well,” she murmured, as she returned the glass to her nightstand and settled back into bed once more, nestling her head against her pillow for comfort.  She had taken the tonic, so sleep would come upon her soon, heavy and thick—it was too late now to change her mind and go to him, she would collapse in the hall if she attempted the trek, the medicine being quick to take effect and potent, to be later found in the morning comatose on the floor, which would definitely raise questions, if not suspicion, about where she had been heading when she was inevitably knocked out cold—and perhaps, bereft of dreams. 

 

They were only dreams, she would tell herself as she lied down to sleep, and then again, when she woke the following morning after experiencing a terrible bout of them.  They could not hurt her for they were not real; in truth, they were nothing more than the distorted figments of her imagination, mangled visions of her hopes and fears playing out in her head.  They did not mean anything.  She would tell herself this, whispering the words to herself again and again before sleep and then again after waking as if in affirmation, and yet, the fear of them never subsided.  The trepidation lied with her deep in the hidden recesses of her mind, lying dormant during the day just beneath the surface of consciousness, only to emerge from its hollow, creeping through her thoughts darkly clad like a shadow, like some dark pitch in the night, until it broke through the surface of repression and entered the stasis of her current contemplation. 

 

It was with her now, lingering behind her lidded eyes, triggering the nerves and synapses throughout her brain and body to burst with dread.  If she were not already so listless, so tired, she would get out of bed and attempt to run from the sensation, set her mind and body free in her flight in one last futile struggle to save herself from herself—but it was too late now, she was already gone in the undertow of sleep, where her dreams awaited her, hungry.

 

---

 

“Rise and shine, Sire,” came the voice of his servant followed by the swish of the curtains being pulled aside to allow for the light of day to shine through the great windows.

 

Arthur stirred from sleep—surprised to reckon he had in fact slept, at least somewhat, through the long night last he spent mostly awake with only his thoughts for company—at the incumbent noise, groaning into the velvet of his pillows.  “Merlin,” he grumbled, “what time is it?”

 

“Time enough for you to get up and greet the day, sleepyhead,” Merlin replied cheerily.  There was a clatter and Arthur turned his head, blinking and rubbing sleep from his eyes, to find Merlin setting down his breakfast of ham, cheese, and warm bread on the table beside his bed.  The sight and scent of the food alone caused him to sit up, though regrettably.  He wanted no part of this fine day Merlin was going on about, feeling as if he had not slept a wink during the night—for understandable reasons—and met the face of his manservant with a glare.

 

“Well, at least you didn’t manage to drop the platter on my head this time, Merlin,” Arthur snipped, snatching a slice of bread with his hand, and tearing into it with his teeth.  “This is actually pretty good, fresh from the kitchens, is it not?”

 

Merlin rolled his eyes while Arthur was not looking, consumed as he was with his food (he was now trying a rolled slice of ham).  How he would love to feed his arrogant prat of a prince days’ old bread, gone hard and stale, but feared what he would throw at his head if he did.  Last time Merlin upset him by spilling his breakfast all over both the royal bed and his highness (but that had not been his fault because he had just so happened to trip over one of Arthur’s castaway shirts that had fallen just beside the bed where Merlin did not have the chance to see it and thus, prevent his tripping), Arthur had hurled his iron helmet at him in response which made direct contact with his head and felled him in an instant.  And then, once Merlin regained consciousness, if that was not bad enough, Arthur insisted he polish said helmet he so senselessly chucked, but to see to picking up the spoiled breakfast first.  Neither of them was quite pleased that day, to say the least, and Merlin had been left once again wondering why he even bothered with keeping after the spoiled Prince, as he could easily find enough work to fill his days without adhering to his lord’s princely demands—perhaps as Gaius’s full-time apprentice, he thought, marveling at the idea—though of course, even with all the Prince’s faults, he knew why he continued keeping so close to Arthur’s side to be his own shadow.

 

“Well, it’s only the best for the future High King,” Merlin said, trying his hardest not to sound facetious, adding, “and during an important time like this, too, it’s good we feed you properly.”  He grinned then, forgetting Arthur’s grumpiness.  “Have you made up your mind about the Princess?”

 

Arthur choked on his ham.  For the idiot he knew his servant to be, sometimes he held the most uncanny ability to know just what he was thinking, in truth, this time, what he had laid awake nigh on the full night considering over and over again in his mind.  Now that it was morning, and he had managed to at least get some sleep, or so it seemed, he admitted to himself that he still did not know what he was going to do about Mithian and Morgana.    

 

“Merlin,” he said, swallowing his food, “this is not a matter I should be discussing with my servant—”

 

“I thought you might say that,” Merlin answered readily, “but you must be nervous?  Excited?  Nervously excited?  Anticipating what she’ll say?  She could refuse you, you know.”

 

“She won’t refuse me,” Arthur insisted through clenched teeth.  “A match with me would better her country.  And besides,” he added, sounding almost rueful, as he thought on her, the last conversation they had shared, her words coming back to him as if she were within the room saying them to him now—You’re a good man, Arthur. I know you will do what is right—overlaid with his sister’s, so that the words he meant to say to Merlin slipped from his mind.

 

“And besides, what?” Merlin prompted him, jarring Arthur from his reverie, back to attention.  

 

“Oh,” Arthur said, seeing Merlin’s stupid face before him once more.  “Just that most would consider it an honor to marry the future High King.”  He tried his best to sound confident, if not arrogant, as if he was truly glad that this was so, when in actuality, all he felt was misused. 

 

The effect seemed to have worked for Merlin snorted.  “You’re not High King yet,” he said, laughing.  “Your father still lives, you know.”  Then, after a beat: “So, you’ll marry her?”

 

Arthur stared at him, the uneaten half of his ham slipping from his fingers back down onto the plate.  “I never said that,” he said faintly, regretting the admission for its brute honesty the moment the words flew out of his mouth, unthinking.  He wished at once he could take them back. 

           

“But all your talk of honor, Arthur,” Merlin said, looking right at him as if in challenge.  “Surely, after all the times you’ve spoken to me of chivalry, you won’t go back on your solemn code now.”

 

Arthur had to look away.  Merlin’s eyes, it was as if they were looking not at him, but through him, as if they were, in effect, peering directly into his soul, where his most unconscionable secrets lied buried.  He wondered then if Merlin knew about him and Morgana, if he could see the truth of the matter through the pupils of his eyes.  The thought was ridiculous of course, and he told himself this.  Only Gwen knew of his true relations with his sister, and she would not dare tell a soul; he had made sure of that when he had threatened her there in his sister’s chambers.  He thought of that warm autumn day, the look on her scared face the moment she sighted them abed together, the way the porcelain vase had dropped from her shaking hands to shatter upon the floor.  There’s been so much damage already because of me and Morgana, he thought.  How much more am I willing to risk?

 

“I was talking about her honor, Merlin,” he said, finding himself at long last able to look up again at his servant.  “Are you daft?”

 

Merlin sighed.  “So, you aren’t going to marry her.  What will you tell your father?”

 

“I didn’t say that either!” he yelled suddenly, startled at his own outburst perhaps more so than Merlin.  He did not know what drew it out of him; perhaps, Merlin and his pestering questions he had no wish to answer, perhaps, because he had lied awake most of the previous night, even tired as he had been, unable to sleep through the duration of it, perhaps, given how he spent said night awake, because he kept thinking on the situation before him, finding it, no matter how many times he went over it, to be one he could not solve, perhaps, it was because of Morgana and her bitterness, perhaps, Mithian and her willingness to love, perhaps, his father for setting on his shoulders the weight of an entire kingdom, and at the end of it, perhaps it was none of those things, but him and his inability to separate his head from his heart.  

 

“I,” he said then softly, biting his lip in meek apology, the best he could give Merlin, “I don’t know what I’ll do, honestly.”  He gave a short pause, then glanced up at his servant, beseeching him with his sleepless eyes.  “Merlin, what do you think I should do?”

 

“You’re asking me?” Merlin asked, pointing at himself, surprised.

 

“I can hardly reject her,” Arthur was saying, not making it known whether he heard Merlin.  “It would be to throw our fathers’ agreement in their faces and do Mithian great dishonor, but to ask her to marry me—"

 

“Is there a reason you’re deliberating?” Merlin asked.  “She’s a pretty princess, smart and charming.  What’s not to like about her?  Unless, of course—” he said, stopping himself short.

 

“Unless?” Arthur asked, looking sharply at his servant.  In his veins, his blood ran cold.

 

Merlin swallowed, chose his next words carefully.  He lowered his voice, even though it was but the two of them in the room with not a soul close enough to hear the words they exchanged.  The words came gently from his lips.   

 

“Is there someone else?” 

 

“Someone else?” Arthur asked, recalling that Lance had posed to him the same question the afternoon prior, his face paling, as his thoughts drifted to just that other, a woman of ivory skin and raven hair and eyes the green of forest leaves and was counterpart to him in more ways than one.  With the deftness of a skilled practitioner in the art of masquerade, he left his thoughts of Morgana to where they belonged, in the depth of night, and cleared his mind of the sinful guilt to face his servant with conscience clean and cleared.  “Who else would that be?  Merlin, if there was someone else, surely you would know.”

 

The way he looked at him, with eyes so wide and blue and seemingly honest, Merlin almost found himself believing the words his Prince said, taking them for the truth.  But Merlin knew, better than anyone, the look of one with a secret to guard, and he could have sworn he saw that look on Arthur.  “Right,” he answered, still watching Arthur, finding himself nonetheless chilled to the bone with dread.  “So why do you prevaricate?  What keeps you from proposing?”

 

Arthur answered impulsively.  “Is this to be my future?  To decide matters for the benefit of Camelot, my father, and all of Britain, before myself?”  His voice quieted then, and again Merlin sensed the lie he was being told.  “Maybe, now, there is not someone else, but what if there is someone else, someday?  The bonds I make to Mithian, once made, are permanent and cannot be unbound.  What if I come to love someone else someday, someone other than my wife?  How could I live, knowing that my marriage has been built upon a lie, and that the woman I do love I cannot obtain?”

 

“And Mithian,” Arthur added, “would it be fair to her to wed her, and bed her, out of duty instead of love?”

 

“That depends,” Merlin said, thinking.  “Does she love you?”

 

It was on the tip of his tongue, what Mithian had confessed to him last night, about wishing for nothing in this life but to be loved and know love in return, but in that moment, Arthur found her words too personal to share with Merlin, a part of him wishing though he knew not why to keep them to himself. 

 

“I think she’ll do her duty when asked of her,” he said succinctly instead. 

 

“Then you have no reason to feel guilty,” Merlin said sagely.  “Since neither of you are acting out of love for the other, but only after Britain’s best interest, there is no way either one of you is playing false before the other.  And who knows?  With time, you may come to grow fond of each other, even love each other.”

 

“No, Merlin, you aren’t listening,” Arthur said, shaking his head.  “I can’t do this—” It was not the voice of the high and mighty prince Merlin knew so well, but a boy.

 

“Arthur,” Merlin said, swallowing hard, “if you want to know what I think, it’s that you can’t go on prolonging your destiny just on the chance that you might meet someone else someday.  Life is now, and you owe it to your people to marry Mithian if it means bettering their lives.”

 

Arthur swallowed.  “I hear you, Merlin, but aren’t you forgetting something?  You speak of what I owe to the people, but what about what I owe to myself?  Don’t I deserve to marry the woman I love?”

 

Arthur may not have noticed his slip, but Merlin did, and he feared just what it could mean.  Could Arthur deny the High King his father, he thought, for something so, so…?  No, he would not think it.  Even Merlin knew what it was like to keep such shameful secrets, the kind that seem pleasant in the still darkness of the night only to haunt in the bright glory of the day, but this…

 

“And who is that, Sire?” he heard himself asking, though he himself felt faraway.

 

“No one,” Arthur said at once, too fast.  “Just a thought.  A dream.”

 

“Mithian is a real breathing girl,” Merlin found himself saying.  “And she is yours.  Go to her, Arthur.”

 

Arthur sighed, resigned but not defeated.  “Merlin, you are just my servant, and yet sometimes you speak of such foreknowledge that I could almost think you wise…  You’re right of course.  I can hardly deny my father’s wishes.  He is High King after all, and I am his son.  I must stop evading and do my duty.  And besides, if not Mithian, then it will be some other girl from some other kingdom I must marry.  That is what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes,” Merlin said, shivering with relief.  “Britain needs you, Arthur.  It is your destiny to be the greatest King she has ever known.  Marry Mithian, uniting Camelot’s strength with Nemeth’s, is just the first part of realizing that destiny.  You must not risk it for some dream shade in the night.”

 

“What did you say?” Arthur asked, his hand gripping the covers so tight the knuckles shone bone white in the warm sunlight drifting through the window.

 

Merlin startled, having already forgotten that he had spoken, that his eyes had witnessed not the royal room about him but a vision of kings and blood and fire sweeping before his mind.  What did it mean?  Had it been a prophecy? he marveled.  But no, he thought again, it had not.  The words he spoke had not matched the array of scattered images that had pressed so sharply into his mind, so jumbled and fractured to paint a full picture of the future before them.  What he told Arthur had been truth in part; he would make a great High King someday, just not with Mithian at his side as his High Queen.  So, what happens to her? he wondered.  Death in childbirth, perhaps?  For I am certain I have persuaded him upon the course that will see him do his duty and take her for his wife as the fates have allotted for him. 

 

Perhaps, a part of him should have pitied this Mithian the fate that awaited her, whether tragic death or vain removal—whatever it was that marked the empty seat in his vision, for that was what it had been, he realized, a vision—for his part of driving Arthur, and therefore her to that shared destiny, and yet, at the moment, his only thought was of himself and the fear of that dark, lonesome night, his moment’s weakness which had cost him already more than he could bear.  He had to do right by what he knew, and this, whatever fate that loomed over Mithian, was the lesser of two evils.  There would be no guilt on his conscience in that.

 

“It is nothing, Sire,” he lied.  “Call it delirium.  I know not what I said.”

 

Arthur frowned, then after a moment’s thought his brows softened.  “Yes, well, for a moment there…” he began then stopped himself. 

 

“Yes?” Merlin asked, fearing just what his Prince would say, no, reveal.

 

“Nothing,” he said then, continuing to watch his servant warily.  “Only,” he started again, perhaps, realizing, Merlin thought, that he could trust him after all, “you spoke of a shadow, Merlin, a shade in the night, and I thought…well,” he flicked his hand as if to illustrate how he felt about this point, “you said it was nonsense, so it must be of no consequence, yet…”  He paused, then added quietly, “You would tell me if it was important, wouldn’t you?”

 

Merlin took a step back.  “Of course, Sire,” he said frankly.  “But I can assure you, I was only babbling as you know me to do.”

 

“You do babble,” Arthur agreed, something he accused him of on many an occasion, yet this time Merlin feared he sounded not entirely convinced.  “Right, then,” his Prince said.  “You’re excused, Merlin.  I have a lot to ponder now while I finish my breakfast.  You’ve given me much to think on, and now, I do believe I’ll be able to come to the right decision.”

 

“Glad I could help,” Merlin said stiffly, earning a curious look from the Prince.  “Sire.”

 

And with that, Merlin left his liege to his silent meal, a creeping chill sliding down his spine, as he too mused over this matter of the shadow, the shade in the night.  Squeezing his eyes tightly shut did naught to prevent his thoughts conjuring up her face in his mind.

Chapter 21

Notes:

Hi guys. This is it. The long chapter where things come to a head. I am at my wit's end editing this and so I'm just going to post it now as is. I know it's not perfect, but it's the best I can do, so I hope you can find some enjoyment in this, if that's even the sensible response to this chapter. 😅 Thank you all so very much for reading.

With love,

Jo ❤

CHAPTER TWENTY: And then it rained, though the sky was bereft of storm and cloud

Morgana woke to sunlight streaming through her curtained window, the sound of rain still pattering in her ears.  It had not rained the night last—she knew this when she went to the window, drew aside the curtains, and looked down at the dry ground below—but she had nevertheless dreamt of rain. 

 

She had been lost in the rain, traveling towards a destination she did not know (was it Camelot?), running from she knew not what (or was she running from home?).  She was only aware of the steady gait of her feet as she leapt across sunken ravines and gaping ditches, every step kicking up mud that splattered her drenched white shift, as above thunder roared and lightning ripped across the darkened sky, as everywhere the rain fell.

 

In the thick of it all she held the lingering sense of being pursued by some strange entity, hovering in her peripheral vision like some dark shadow.  But every time she turned her head to chance a look at the nebulous form, lightning would flash, blinding her vision for mere seconds, yet long enough that when she glanced back again the entity—or whatever it may be that she sensed following her—would be gone, her eyes glimpsing nothing but the streaming sheets of rain falling all around her. 

 

She started to shiver as she ran, the stinging wet of the rain chilling her to the bone, her drenched shift sticking to her skin in the damp.  Her teeth chattered, her legs trembled from exertion, and yet she felt she must keep running or else be caught by the being tracking her like a bird of prey.  Inevitably her legs gave out, her feet slipping on a particularly muddy stretch, and she fell to the ground, like the rain, tumbling over herself and rolling down, down the hill then off the cliffside and down into a fathomless black below—

 

She woke as she hit the murk, the lightning igniting the sky in a flash of brilliant white before she went under.  Her ears rang not with the roll of thunder, but with the sound of a single voice spoken so softly as to have been breathed into her ear like life itself: “There is one who walks in your shadow.  He is your destiny, and he is your doom.” 

 

Doom?  She wanted to know more, wished for more time to ask the disembodied voice who this man was, the shadow at her side, the presence she felt in the rain, haunting her, stalking her, knowing her every step before she took it herself, but the lightning was so bright, so piercingly white, she felt compelled to lift her head from the dark and open her eyes—

 

It was only daylight, she realized then, blinking open her eyes.  Just the splendor of the morning sun, strong enough to shine through the draperies.  Gone was the rain, the earsplitting thunder, the murky depths, all replaced with the quiet comforts of her bedroom.

 

She exhaled a breath of relief.  It was morning, and she was safe in her room; the trials of the night were past, though unusual in their occurrence they had been, leaving a more remarkable disconcertion than what she had come to expect in her brain.

 

“My destiny?” she murmured to herself, raising a hand to her head as she recalled the dream in full—the rain, the storm, the thunder, the voice—the meaning of it all escaping her.  “But whatever nonsense is that!” she exclaimed, not one to believe in such matters, trying to laugh off the uneasiness that now washed over her as she remembered the finer, and all the more troubling details of the dream, most especially the acute experience of being followed by a darkness she could not name, let alone view. 

 

She shivered, pulled the covers up toward her chest.  What could it all mean? she wondered silently, as she crossed herself as if in fear of the presence of some dark magic or another.  It was a ridiculous notion; it had just been a dream after all, a particularly bad one perhaps, but nothing so sinister in nature to be the work of magic, she was sure, and yet she suffered the urge to turn over her pillow to look for some carefully placed pouch or another such seemingly harmless object that could be marked and identified as a witch’s ill-wish.  Her father had lectured her and her brother about the danger of such objects when they were children to instill in them a healthy fear of sorcery and the reasons for which he had outlawed the maligned practice across Britain as her High King, so she knew just what she was looking for: a cloth bag full of dried herbs, a poppet stitched in her image and poked with pins, even a lock of her own hair—sorcerers utilized many methods in order to wreak havoc upon their victims—she only wondered who could possibly wish to harm her?  There was no sign of such foul magic within the premises of her bed, however; she checked prudently, once under her pillows, twice under the bed, and a third time between the mattress and the bedframe, her hands reaching and grasping, but coming away with nothing but air. 

 

“It was a dream then,” she told herself earnestly, sitting upright upon the bed once more.  “Just a dream.”  She told herself this again and again as she stared around at her sunlit room, the light slightly muted by the closed curtains.  See? There is nothing out of the ordinary here, her bedroom seemed to say, no sign of foul play or magic, and yet she could not put the question out of her mind the voice from her dream had caused her to pose: just who walked in her shadow and held the key to her doom?  The answer alluded her like a ghost, invisible from sight and impossible to grasp, and for the moment she thought it would haunt her like a specter into an early grave.

 

The door to her room opened then to reveal Gwen coming in with her morning breakfast, and Morgana nearly jumped out of her skin at the interruption.  Just one look at Morgana huddled in her quilts, however, caused Gwen to hurry over to her side, setting the breakfast tray hastily down on the nightstand on her way, her eyes lit with worry. 

 

“Another bad night?” she asked, sounding slightly hopeful that this was not the case and that she had only misinterpreted the look on her lady’s face, but then Morgana drew up the covers tighter around herself, a small movement which told part if not the whole truth.  It had been a bad night indeed.

 

Morgana tried to laugh it off.  “You’re too good to me, Gwen,” she said.  “Always looking out for me.  Come, what have you brought me to eat today?  Anything particularly good?”

 

Gwen looked uncertainly back at the plate.  “Ham, cheese, and bread,” she replied, feeling disconcerted by Morgana’s confident front, sensing more than knowing that she was withholding something of particular note from her, though, as curious as she was to glean precisely what that was, she felt herself unwilling to pry further at the moment.  “It’s still too early yet for fruit, I’m afraid,” she confessed simply instead, thinking it best to keep the conversation on the topic at hand, that being the breakfast.   

 

“It’s no matter,” Morgana said easily, even as her stomach churned.  She thought she could at least stomach the bread and picked up a slice, set her mind to chewing it slowly. 

 

“Are you alright, Morgana?” Gwen asked suddenly to a look of stark surprise on Morgana’s face.  Gwen cursed herself silently.  Perhaps, she had erred in asking her question so bluntly, yet the way she just observed Morgana tentatively eating her bread amplified her growing amalgamation of worries for the Princess these last few weeks, what with the way in which she had appeared to be skimping out on her morning meals as of late. 

 

Morgana returned the unfinished bread slice to the plate and laid her hand over that of her maid’s, as she looked up at her with eyes still wide with past fright.  “Gwen, if you must know,” she said, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze, “I was troubled by a set of particularly bad dreams last night, but all is well now, I assure you.  They’re just nightmares, nothing I can’t handle with time.  They might have given me quite the shock last night, but they’re powerless now that it is day.”

 

Gwen’s brow furrowed.  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, “although I am sorry for it, for your bad dreams that is.  Does Gaius’s tonic really not help any?”

 

Morgana shrugged, pulled her hand away.  “I at least feel rested.  God knows that was an impossibility before I started taking his prescription for me.”

 

“Oh,” Gwen acknowledged.  “Well, that’s good at least.  No, what I meant was, I’ve noticed you haven’t been eating as much as normal, and well, it’s starting to worry me.”

 

Morgana blushed, thinking of the past breakfasts she had heaved up into her chamber pot when Gwen had been out of the room and she herself alone.  Had she noticed after all?  Or was it merely the bits of uneaten food she left on her plate that she had observed?  “It’s nothing,” she said now to placate her maid.  “I just have no appetite what with everything that’s going on right now.”

 

Gwen nodded.  She knew if not understood how much Princess Mithian’s arrival had distressed Morgana what with the threat her friend posed unwittingly to her secret relationship with her brother.  Gwen thought that if she were in Morgana’s shoes, though the thought was most discomforting to think, she imagined she too would lose her hunger if someone she knew came between herself and the man she loved.  Luckily for her there was no such man.  Then her thoughts drifted to Sir Lancelot, their last conversation as he insisted on helping her carry the basket of Morgana’s clothes to her chambers, the look they had shared when he had left her with Morgana, and her face flushed crimson. 

 

“Gwen?”

 

“Oh,” Gwen said, coming out of her thoughts.  “Forgive me, Morgana.  I was just, you only reminded me, well, it’s no matter now.  I am sorry though.  About everything.  I only wish there was something I could do.”

 

Morgana nodded sadly.  “Yes, well, thank you.  I thank you for your sympathy, Gwen, as I know it’s hard for you to understand truly what I’m going through.”  She dropped her gaze down to her lap where she had clasped her hands together as if in silent benediction to God and the angels of his high heaven.  Gwen found herself wondering if God did hear the prayers of Morgana Pendragon, given the nature of her sin, and whether He chose to answer them. 

 

“And yet it may all turn out well,” Morgana said, looking back up into Gwen’s eyes.  “Last night I bid Arthur speak with Mithian to ask her to walk away from this betrothal while she still could.  I intend on speaking with him today about how it went.  I have high hopes.  I don’t believe he will disappoint me.”

 

Gwen forced herself to smile at the news Morgana related to her.  “That’s good, Morgana,” she said, “I am overjoyed for you.”  It was a lie, and a poorly conceived one to boot; she felt no sort of happiness, let alone joy, at such a turn of events.  She had hoped when Morgana first relayed word of the Nemeth princess’s journey to Camelot to become her brother’s bride that that arrangement alone would be enough to terminate the secret understanding between Morgana and Arthur for both their sakes.  While Gwen made an outward show of supporting Morgana the alternative life she lived by night, she did so only out of a sense of duty as a maid to the lady she served, that was all.  On many an occasion, Gwen found herself thinking, that if it had been any other woman to come to her boasting of such crude secrets, she would have reported her to the High King to receive his justice.  She could hardly have done that with Morgana however for her being the High King’s daughter, not to mention for the way in which Prince Arthur had threatened her life in the event she did speak up about their relationship to anyone, and then for the reason of her occupation, for her sheer promise to serve the Princess as faithfully as she could, no matter the circumstances, as her duty dictated of her. 

 

It seemed the circumstances had shifted once more, and Gwen, whether she liked it or not, was going to have to reacclimate herself with the notion that nothing on earth could prevent Morgana Pendragon from finding a permanent place in her brother’s bed. 

 

“You’re such a bad liar, Gwen,” Morgana said, biting into the bread again.  Gwen opened her mouth to protest, but Morgana held up a hand to silence her reply.  “You don’t have to say anything,” she said, her mouth full.  “I get it.”  Swallow.  “There may have been a time when I had been foolish enough to think you could understand, but now it’s enough just to have your silence.”  She ripped off another piece and plopped it into her mouth, chewing it deliberately.  “That’s all I need after all.  I know it’s too much to ask for someone to understand me, and I don’t need anyone to.  I have Arthur for that.  Arthur, who’s going to put an end to this dreadful marriage so he can come back to me in full.”

 

A wave of revulsion passed over Gwen.  Even with what she knew about her lady’s habits, Gwen had never once felt disgusted with Morgana, but now, now she did.  There was something about the arrogance, the entitlement, the way in which she demanded her brother to put aside the woman who was about to be his bride and who would love him faithfully—lawfully—just for her own selfish, wayward interest in him that infuriated her.  The fact that she was the High King’s daughter was not reason enough for the world to change its makeup just to serve her and her twisted desires.  It was not fair, Gwen realized then, that Morgana expected her to keep silent about the debauchery she committed just because she served her as her maid.  Was that not an infringement on the trust they were supposed to share as friends?  Morgana had asked her to be her friend after all, and friends were supposed to give to one another equally, yet in this relationship Gwen was giving everything of herself and Morgana, she was taking every ounce of love she offered her in her well-worn hands, draining her dry.  How far would Morgana go, bleeding her in this way, and how much more could Gwen take and still claim that she was her own master?  In many ways, it was as if Morgana had already possessed her will as her own.   

 

Gwen lowered her gaze down to her own fidgeting hands.  She played with them whenever she grew unsure of herself, became anxious, but now she felt nothing but a quiet rage burning within her steady as a flame. 

 

“You can’t expect everyone just to do as you wish.”  The words were out of her mouth and suspended on the open air before she could even dare think of taking them back. 

 

“Pardon?” Morgana asked, arching a brow.

 

“Arthur,” Gwen continued, dauntless despite her fear of what she had done.  “He’s his own man.  You can’t possibly expect him to act just as you desire.  It’s not right.”

 

Morgana chuckled.  “You honestly have the temerity to tell me of all people that I am not owed my brother’s loyalty?”  She shook her head, laughed again.  “Careful, Gwen, or I’ll begin to think you’re fond him yourself,” she mused.

 

“I am not!” Gwen said perhaps a bit too forcefully.  “I only mean,” she said, recovering herself, “is that he’s the Prince.  You shouldn’t prevent him from following his destiny.”

 

At that word, Morgana’s heart skipped a beat and the blood in her veins seemed to run cold as ice, but she quickly shook off the uncanny fright that had passed over her and gave out a loud snort in return to her maid’s contrary remark.  “Here’s something you should know about my brother, Gwen,” she said.  “He’s smooth.  He’s good.  He knows the words to say to a woman to make her fall head over heels for him, but what he’s less than good at is staying by her side once he’s won her.  He gets bored easily, is always searching for that next thrill that will set fire to his veins.  How do I know all this?  From what I’ve overheard the ladies of the Court speak of him over the years, unaware that I was listening.  Anyway, they have a point, somewhat.  What they don’t know is that all the while my brother was winning and breaking their hearts, playing with them like dolls, he was really just trying to alleviate his feelings for me.  My brother loves me, Gwen, and me alone.  I did nothing in asking him to send Mithian away that he would not have done himself given time.  So, don’t begin to think that you can lecture me about my brother and what is right for him, got it?”

 

Gwen swallowed the lump that had risen shamefully in her throat.  She hated confrontation on most occasions but was most especially distraught at the thought of being at odds just now with Morgana.  “I’m sorry, Morgana,” she said, dipping her head in meek apology.  “I don’t know what came over me.”

 

Morgana’s eyes softened at her maid’s display of remorse, understanding it at once to be genuine, as was everything, in truth, about Gwen.  “It’s alright, Gwen.  I forgive you.”  She bent her head, then added gently, “You’re a loyal friend.  Only a friend would have spoken up as you did, asking me to reconsider my actions.  A servant would have said nothing.” 

 

Gwen smiled sadly at her.  “I hope you don’t mind overmuch, Mi’lady.”

 

“No,” Morgana said reflectively.  “It’s what I asked of you, after all, all those months ago, that you be honest with me.  Oh, do cheer up.  I’m not angry.  That’s better.  Now, why don’t you be a dear, and fetch my purple chiffon.  I’m afraid I don’t have much of a stomach for breakfast as it is.  But don’t you fret.  I will eat plenty later.  I just need to hear from Arthur the good news first.”

 

---

 

As misfortune would have it, it was not Arthur Morgana met in the hall on the way to his rooms an hour later once she was preened and proper in her violet gown, the same one she had worn to his chambers that first night they had slept together after his champion’s feast the autumn before.  She had been walking down the hall head held high, her long raven locks swaying with her gait, and she herself lost in deep thought regarding the future she just knew her brother had won for them, for her, yesterday eve when a woman’s voice accosted her, breaking her vision of just how she intended to honor her brother with her body later that night out of repayment for his good deed. 

 

Morgana startled to come out of her idyllic reverie to find Mithian of all people striding opposite her in the hall.

 

“Oh, Mithian!” she exclaimed, taken aback and almost affright at the sudden apparition of her person, though she was quick to reorient herself, squaring her shoulders with confidence, as she quickly surmised that she was about to glean from her former friend’s lips the news of the victory that was all but promised her.  “What a lovely surprise!” she remarked, for the first time since her friend’s arrival in her home meaning the words she spoke.  “I thought you would be out traversing the grounds at this hour.  It is a nice day after all.  Too fair to stay indoors, surely.”

 

“That it is,” Mithian said lightly.  “I had a thought this morning to ask Arthur to join me, later, on a walk after the luncheon this afternoon.  Actually,” she clarified, her cheeks now flushing a delicate pink, “I just came back from asking him when he—” she looked down shyly at her hand, currently bereft of ornament, then back up at Morgana with a smile that seemed to light her eyes.

 

“When he what?” Morgana asked dumbfounded.  She hardly imagined that Mithian would be so pleased as to be practically iridescent to have been presented the option to break off the engagement with Arthur.  She had thought it would have taken some gentle coaxing from her brother to make her see sense, that tears would have been shed, but in the end, she would have been relieved to be granted the escape from such a permanent union of their fathers’ making.  Just now she did not think she spied any redness about her eyes however, so perhaps, it had not come to tears then.  Perhaps, Mithian had relished the choice Arthur had given her in the matter, and she was now besides herself with happiness.    

 

“Well,” and here Mithian laughed to herself, played with her hands, “we had agreed to make the announcement later at lunch, after first telling the news to the High King your father, but I don’t see why I can’t tell you, Morgana, with you being my most remarkable friend.”  She looked up at Morgana, pausing a moment, as if still determining whether she could say what she intended.  “Well, I don’t know what else to say but to be out with it,” she said then, teetering on her toes, practically dancing with nerves or excitement, Morgana could not tell which.  “Arthur has asked me to marry him,” she confessed, beaming openly now, a rose hue coloring her cheeks. 

 

The words were a blow to Morgana’s ears, an arrow to her heart.  For a second, she thought she must have misheard her friend.  Either that or her ears had jumbled up her words in her eagerness to go to her brother and hear the good tidings from his lips.  “Excuse me?”

 

“I know, I was just as surprised as you are, Morgana,” Mithian replied.   “I thought it would take much more time for him to come round to the idea of having me for his wife,” she explained, her words coming out in such a rush, she hardly had the time to breathe between sentences.  “Especially after our conversation last night.  He was so hesitant before, you know?  But then this morning when I asked him to join me for a walk about the castle gardens, he just dropped the question.  It was so sudden, I thought I misheard him, but then I realized he had gone down on one knee, so it must be true what I thought I heard him say, and I was just flooded with emotion, Morgana, for both him and myself—the prospect of our joint future—and then my thoughts turned to me and you.  Can you believe it, Morgana?  What we wished as little girls, as foolish as we were then, it’s now practically come true.”

 

Morgana felt the blood drain from her head, and she thought she might just fall to the floor and faint.  Arthur has asked Mithian to marry him? she wondered obtusely, as if detached from her body, the words failing to add up in her dizzy brain. And she said ‘yes’?  A stroke of comprehension then, and suddenly, she thought she would either keel over on the floor from lightheadedness or vomit what remained in her stomach of the little breakfast she had ending up eating that morning to appease Gwen on the same stone walk they stood upon. 

 

“Morgana, are you well?” Mithian asked, reaching for Morgana’s hand to steady her as she began to sway.  “You look rather pale just now.  Should we find you a spot to sit down?  Come, by the windowsill.  Here, let me help you.”  She took her hand, started to pull her off to the side of the hall, when, in a stroke of lucidity, Morgana yanked her hand free. 

 

“I’m fine,” she said stiffly, commanding her shivering body to still, her stomach to settle.  “It’s just a lot to take in, all at once.”

 

Mithian frowned.  “I thought you would be happy for us, dear friend.”

 

Morgana choked, pain lighting her senses, then reaching for air, made to recover herself quickly.  “I am, Mithian,” she said forcibly, taking her friend’s hands in hers, giving them an earnest squeeze.  “I am breathless with happiness for you, and Arthur, and myself—”  She smiled and her eyes glinted with emotion.  “We’re to be a family like we always wanted, you and I—” her voice broke off for fear of the pain she would mangle with the words, obliterating their meaning in favor of the truth that lied in shadow just behind their façade.

 

“As kin,” Mithian finished for her, squeezing Morgana’s hands in return.  “As sisters after all this time.”  She shook her head as if she could hardly believe it herself.  “Perhaps there’s truth to your mother’s story after all.”

 

Morgana felt her breath catch in her throat at her friend’s mention of the legend she had been enamored with as a girl, always begging her mother to give life to its tale with her words, her breath, the telling becoming their own hallowed ritual, of the sacred lake and its surrounding apple grove, and the wishes once wished upon the waters there that would inevitably, with time, come true.  How dare she speak of Avalon, she thought, and that foolish child’s wish we made when I had spent many more a day standing before those very waters wishing I could have my brother to hold freely, to love openly for the entire kingdom to know and adore.  Why were my prayers left unanswered?  And why was hers heeded?  What sort of divine reckoning is this that my own brother would put aside our hopes, my hopes, in place for hers?  And what, pray tell, have I ever done that is so decrepit to deserve such punishment as this except to know my brother kin and to love him despite it?

 

“It is,” Morgana forced herself to agree.  It was all she could say. 

 

“So, you are content?” Mithian questioned, her voice hesitant, strange, and Morgana looked up at her with wide eyes, wondering, if like Gwen, she was not as good a liar as she thought.  “You do not begrudge me this, Morgana?”

 

Morgana gaped at her, momentarily at a loss for words.  “Why would I?” she said at last, finding them, more lies to cloak herself in, for with to hide herself, warm yet fleeting as a mother’s embrace.  “How could I?  After you have so kindly relieved me of my fears?”  She clutched her hands in hers, as if to impart onto her, the sincerity she wished she could instill within herself. 

 

“You see,” she began again, as she dropped her hands, finding her place within the act, her vantage point from which she could speak honestly—and therefore mask the lie—to Mithian not of Mithian’s virtues nor of their friendship, but of those she herself had mastered, of those tender reservations she had once contemplated while alone in her bedchamber as she sat seated at her vanity, her hands grasping at the beads of her rosary, turning them over in her hands, each bead a silent benediction: ‘Am I fit to love him? / Is he the one I adore?’—“I had fretted at the news of your betrothal to my brother, as I feared for what was best for him.  I know my brother best out of anyone.  He would be wont to admit this, but Arthur, he needs not an obedient wife at his side so much as a woman who will understand him and do her best to love him despite how hard for her this must be.  I wasn’t certain where your affections lied—how could I after all this time we’ve been apart?—whether you only meant to love him out of obligation as his wife as opposed to that genuine heartfelt feeling, so I confess I worried whether the match would be good—for the both of you,” she added carefully.  “Now I can see I was wrong to worry at all.  It is evident to me now that you do care about my brother and will be the one most capable of keeping him grounded, as God knows he will need to be if he intends to lead this country one day as is his birthright.  Why, I—” here she stopped for effect as opposed to a grappling for words, though her fingers unconsciously clutched at the invisible beads; “I am speechless, Mithian, with joy for you and for him.  Truly, and I mean this, I don’t believe there is a better woman to wed my brother.”  She simpered at her friend, one last trick to sell the point home, all the while pleading with God above to dry for her the tears welling in the corners of her eyes, the only authentic part of her display, even as all the while her heart broke and toiled, and she wondered if the last words she spoke in fabrication had been, in actually, the veritable truth—that Mithian could love Arthur better than she.  Even if her friend would only take her tears as a sign of her happiness for her, she would not suffer her pride to cry in front of Mithian.  Not now, not today, while she won the battle, she knew not she participated in.  Only time would tell, however—and this Morgana vowed as she stood in rapture before her rival, too proud to admit her defeat, that she had in fact been bested—who would win the war.

 

Mithian glowed.  “Thank you,” she said, stepping forward tentatively to kiss her friend on the cheek, putting aside her prior concern.  “It means the world to me to have you as a friend in this.  It is hard enough as a newcomer to navigate the Court—yes, I had to in Nemeth, but it was much smaller there than here in Camelot and my homeland besides—and harder yet to do so without so much as another woman to confide in, what with the other ladies’ jealousies of me.  It seems quite a few women had their hearts set on wedding Arthur, and I am not liked here because of it.  Luckily, I have you, my friend, through it all, to guide me as I find my place here in this new home.”

 

“Of course,” Morgana said pleasantly enough, swallowing the bitterness rising in her throat at Mithian’s last words—although perhaps, her reaction was unwarranted, as neither of them would find such shelter within the castle walls to call it home, perhaps for a lack of love or perhaps because of it—as she simpered with practiced ease at the other woman, although all the while her insides were screaming at her, Witch! Harlot! What did you do to him? He had not eyes for you before! He was going to get down on his knees and beg you to go home to Nemeth where you belong, never to set foot in Camelot again, not wed you!  Her thoughts rudely turned then to the reality that lied ahead of her if Arthur and Mithian were truly bound by that dreadful holy bond of marriage as they seemed fated yet to be, and if Mithian came to undertake her part in the duties of that blessed union wholeheartedly.  She saw then in her mind’s eye Mithian, her belly swollen with Arthur’s firstborn, being the center of the Court—at least as far as the women were concerned, forgetting how Mithian just spoke of the ways they loathed her—and Morgana, as Mithian’s gracious sister-in-law would be left with no choice but to coo over the woman’s pregnancy and the future heir she would come to bear.  The thought made her stomach lurch, a sensation she found so familiar as of late, and her throat tightened with disgust.  And so, I must pretend, play the friend when I deem her foe.

 

But she said instead, “Good tidings these are indeed.  I will speak to Father at once and ask for him to arrange a great feast in honor of this happy day.”

 

“Thank you,” Mithian said with a smile.  “I will speak to Arthur of it, and of your happiness for him.”

 

“Yes, why don’t you go back and tell him,” Morgana said, feigning a grin.  “Tell him, I could not be happier for him.  And for you.”

 

Mithian nodded and turned away with an easy smile, back around the bend that led to Arthur’s chambers from whence she came, a light skip to her gait as she left Morgana standing still in the hall, her eyes following her bright form until she disappeared around the corner, leaving her at last alone with only the misery of her true feelings for company.  For a time, she lingered there in the hall, moving only to stare out the window at the sunlit sky above.  It mocked her, that blue sky without a cloud in sight.  If only it would rain, Morgana thought, wishing for a sign, any sign to acknowledge her pain, only to then shudder as she was reminded of last night’s dream.  Was Mithian the shadow stalking her in the storm, lying in wait before every step she took?  She felt as if she were.  But no, Morgana thought then, remembering.  The voice had spoken of a man.  A man who was to be her destiny and her doom…  Arthur? she wondered then despite herself.  It was a thought, but a ridiculous one for the dream meant nothing—this she reminded herself earnestly—it played no part in the pain dealt her by Arthur, by Mithian, by fate, by—   This pain that I have wittingly inflicted upon myself, she concluded at last, seeing the truth now for what it was.  It was she who had gone to her brother after all; it was she who had started the whole affair, knowing full well how it was to end.  Why should I lament now what was only destined to come if I traveled this ill road, as I have done?  I knew, I knew… 

 

And that she had.  She had known taking Arthur as her lover would only come to tears…or worse in the end.  It was for that knowing after all that she had hid from his sight, abstained from his touch, having contented herself for years only with her fantasies of him as she laid awake in her bed, all alone.  And it was, likewise, for that reason, that she had fretted herself silly with intangible, scrupulous thoughts as she grasped her rosary in muted prayer at night for years before ultimately succumbing, like the priestesses of old in Beltane rite, to Arthur’s body. 

 

However, in those first days of their nighttime affair, she had not worried Arthur would forsake her.  No, then her mind only raced with the fear and the thrill—yes, in a way, she had come to love the danger of it all—of more troubling possibilities than this, than the harsh reality that Arthur would someday be required to marry another, as she, being his full-blooded sister, could never come to rule at his side as his wife and High Queen; not even the day Arthur would ultimately assume the throne himself, and rule as High King undisputed and undebated by all, could he dare ask for her hand.  For what laid between them on those long quiet winter nights was sin too terrible for even a king—a man closer to God than even the most faithful of his subjects—to ever hope for atonement.  And it was a shame, since in the days of old—or so Morgana once heard as a girl spoken in rumors and idle gossip in the idle streets, though she had not understood then their meaning—before the armies of Rome ever touched British shores, incest was not a crime, but a way of keeping the family blood strong, a practice of honoring the old gods.

 

But that was in the days of the Old Religion.  If she had voiced that thought in her father’s presence, he would have struck her and been right to do so.  There was no place now for such backward ways in Camelot—in the far-reaching lands of Britain, perhaps—but not here in the city of the High King’s seat.  They worshiped the Christian God now, and for the better; her father had seen to that, along with the long lineage of Roman blooded kings to come before him. 

 

Oh, Arthur is right, a part of Morgana’s mind agonized.  We are damned.  By God in his high heaven, we are damned.

 

But then Morgana had concerned herself with more practical consequences than the fate of her soul or that of Arthur’s.  No, what troubled her as she stowed away silently through the castle’s halls toward her brother’s chambers at night—as if she were not Princess of Camelot but only a vagrant escort—and when she returned from them after a long night’s worth of sinful pleasures, secretly creeping back towards her own room before the sun rose and ate her safeguard of shadows away, was the numbing dread of being found, caught in her tracks in her lover’s bed—as Gwen had caught her, caught them—and having the kingdom discover her for who she truly was: a whore and a harlot.  A woman whose scruples were better named debauchery, that she would bed her own brother willingly and then be depraved enough to enjoy it.  Who would, who could, respect her then?  Her name—oh, her good name—spoken in whispers, in courts and taverns here and far, would be synonymous with the lechery, with sin.  And that would be how they remembered her, not as their kind Princess, but as the woman who made love to her closest of kin.  Never in the history of Christian Britain was there a woman as foul as she.  And so, she would come to her end in the passion of adultery, in the arms of the man she loved.  Who was to say how her father would react if he knew?  It was at that unforeseeable possibility more than any did Morgana shudder. 

 

So, no, never in her wildest nightmares was it so that she had perceived this coming of events, that it would be Arthur and not necessity that pushed her aside and casted her away.  A part of her rationalized that it had been her father that had pressured Arthur to propose and not Arthur’s free will at all, but Mithian’s words haunted her still.  If this was Father’s doing, I would have heard of it before now.  That man never could contain himself and keep a matter quiet when it came to Arthur.  If he had demanded of Arthur that he propose, he would have made it known throughout the kingdom…No, this is not his doing. 

 

And then she was struck again with the same disbelief, just like old Caesar when his close friend stabbed his side...  So, this is Arthur’s doing, her mind raged with unspeakable hurt.  This is his treachery.  Then sorrow took hold of her and, blindly, she wept, the tears rolling untamed down her cheeks and onto the marble floor, striking like drops of rain.  But why? she wondered, distraught.  We were in love.  He said I was the only woman he had ever truly loved…

 

She took in a heaving, shuddering breath—

 

Why, Arthur?

 

---

 

High King Uther did not learn word of his son’s proposal to the Nemeth princess from Morgana as she promised Mithian tell him she would do, but from Arthur himself.  The Prince had just received from his betrothed his sister’s well wishes for their marriage when he took it upon himself, albeit with a stroke of guilt on behalf of Morgana and his betrayal, to go in attendance with his bride to tell his father the happy news and receive his blessing.  When he had finished relaying the good tidings to his father, having found him remarkably alone in the council room bent over a pile of papers he had been previously reading, now looking about his son quite pleasantly surprised, Mithian had cut in, saying, “But surely, Sire, Morgana must have told you already.  I broke the news to her earlier when I saw her in the hall, and she said she would come straight here to tell you herself.”

 

“Morgana?” Uther had asked stupidly.  “No, I have not seen her.  But it’s no matter.  We shall hold a great feast tonight in your honor,” he said, turning back to Arthur, “The entire Court shall be invited.  I will send a messenger to spread the word at once.”

 

“Thank you, Father,” Arthur said gravely, declining his head out of respect for his King as much as in shame of himself. 

 

“You have my gratitude as well, your Majesty,” Mithian responded in turn, curtsying before Uther.  “But I must say,” she said, as she rose once more, thinking to press the matter one more time, “is it not odd that Morgana did not come this way to tell you herself?  Has something happened to her, I wonder, to detain her coming here?  It may just be my terrible imagination at play, but I worry for her.  Now that I think of it, she did not seem quite herself earlier when I spoke to her.”

 

Arthur laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.  “There’s no need for you to worry, Princess,” he said despite himself and the guilt he felt wrenching in his gut as he spoke.  “I’m sure she’s alright.  Morgana…can be forgetful at times.”

 

“I never knew her to be—” Mithian began only to trail off when Sir Leon entered the council room announcing her father’s presence without.  At once, Uther gave the command to usher Rodor within and all thought of Morgana was put aside for talk of the joyful celebration to be held that night.

 

---

 

Morgana had been walking back to her chambers, carrying herself away dejectedly from her place by the window looking down on the terraced gardens below, as of yet just sprouts of green growth, when she met the second person whom she had no wish to see that day.  That was not entirely true, however; in the morning, she had wakened desiring to seek him out.  Now though, upon seeing him, as he strolled almost leisurely to her eyes ahead of her, she realized that, despite everything he had done, done to her no less, she yearned for him still.

 

Perhaps, I am wrong to judge him before hearing the way of things from his own mouth first, she thought then, followed by a second thought, which thrummed within her like hope—perhaps, Mithian had lied—only to still again when she realized that that could not be.  She knew Mithian, knew her well enough to sense that she could never be a liar such as herself.  And besides, what would she have to gain for it?  Arthur would only have to say he had in fact not proposed to her for her word to be disbelieved; such a lie would negate, if not revoke the arrangement between them.  It would prove Mithian’s intentions for the marriage to be one rooted in a hunger for the High Queen’s seat, and Morgana could not foresee her father allowing Arthur to marry such a woman regardless of the strategy such a match with Nemeth posed.  But then again, she recalled once, as in a shadow of a forgotten memory, how her father once named Rodor, Mithian’s father, as a man who craved to align his family’s name with that of the High Kingship.  Perhaps, such ambitions did not faze him in line of the greater prize the alliance with Nemeth presented.  

 

But that was nonsense, she told herself.  Mithian had not lied to her, she knew that as well as if she could feel it in her blood, but that did not mean there was not another explanation for Arthur’s actions.  She had to know the truth of it all and know it now before illusive speculations ate at her and devoured her whole.  And beyond that, knowing what had happened last night, this morning, she had to know what the new situation meant for her.  She recalled once, months ago, the evening their father broke the news of his intended betrothal for her brother, how she had said, and felt it to be true now, that she would be willing to share Arthur with the woman who was to be his wife.  She had not reckoned then that that woman would be Mithian, but if it came to a choice, she realized she would rather share Arthur with her friend then not have him at all.  Now, she just needed the confirmation that he felt the same way about her. 

 

Her decision made, she picked up her pace after him then, determined to confront him and demand of him a fuller explanation than what Mithian had given her.  Arthur, hearing someone hastily striding behind him then, turned his head to look over his shoulder at his pursuer.  Seeing that it was Morgana and that the look on her face was not a comely one, he increased his pace, hoping she had not seen him steal a look back at her.

 

Of course, this was a foolish hope of his, since Morgana had caught him glimpse her way, all the while pretending not to see her.  “Arthur!” she shouted to get his attention, then more softly: “Wait.”

 

Arthur sighed and stopped in his tracks, realizing that it was probably best just to face Morgana rather than evade her.  After all there was no way he could possibly keep on avoiding her as he had intended after what he had done; she was his sister after all.  And, as he knew her best out of anyone—with a familiarity only a close sibling could have, or perhaps a lover—he figured it would be better to face her fury now than endure the cold indifference she would most definitely regard him with at the feast later that evening, although what he meant to tell her would be difficult.  At least this way, she would have a few hours to calm down and ready herself to talk amiably with him and his bride.  Although, Arthur thought to himself, she will make it known to me this evening exactly how she feels once she hears what I have to say.

 

He turned to face his sister.  “Yes, Morgana?” his voice cracked with fearful anticipation.

 

Oh, good, he is nervous, Morgana thought.  He knows I’m upset with him and just exactly what it is that I’m angry about, the guilty bastard!  Although, he’ll pretend not to know at first.  “Don’t give me this ‘Yes, Morgana’ nonsense!” she spat under her breath.  “Not when you know exactly what you did.”

 

Arthur paled.  “Morgana, maybe this isn’t the best place for this.”  Where they stood just paces apart from one another, a servant—or worse yet, their father—could pass them by at any moment and Arthur was not willingly to risk a passerby overhearing such secrets as theirs, secrets that would talk the greatest gossips right out of the kingdom, not to mention ruin the trajectory of their lives.

 

She was about to snap at him again but stopped herself short before she blurted out another juicy bit of slander.  She sighed, realizing the urgency of her brother’s caution, “You’re right.  There must be somewhere where we can speak more freely.”

 

He nodded.  “Come with me,” he answered her, grabbing her hand, and leading her up the stairs to his chambers.

 

Once they were safely inside his room, Arthur latched the door behind them.  He took one look at her, met those round green eyes that did not seem so sharp and fiery now but rather wide with anticipation, and dare he think it, dread.  He looked down at the floor, ashamed, but no less determined.  “Morgana,” he said, deciding to just come out with the conclusion he had reached earlier that morning after his conservation with his servant.  “I know this is not what you want to hear, but we have to end this.”  Each word pronounced from his lips fell with a dull thud from his mouth.

 

Morgana frowned, and then shook her head in confusion.  What?  End this?  What was this that lied between them, and how could it possibly be drawn to an end?  “No,” her voice wavered, uncertain.  She thought of her room, waiting for her like a lonely prison, its walls great jaws ready to swallow her whole.  That was what waited at the end of this.  “No,” she said again more strongly now, realization at what he meant dawning on her.  “I’m not going back.  I can’t go back—”

 

“Morgana,” Arthur sighed, as if incredibly wearied, which in truth he was, having hardly slept the night before, turning over his predicament again and again in his mind as he had.  He wondered now if he was thinking clearly at all.  “You know we can’t go on like this.  I’m your brother.”

 

“When did that ever stop you, Arthur?” she gasped, not understanding this sudden change in him.  She had expected him to explain why he had decided to propose to Mithian after everything she had done to convince him otherwise, after he had promised her that he would try to coax her back to Nemeth, not this.  “As far as I remember, it was you who convinced me that what we did was our concern and no one else’s.”

 

He bit his lip.  “Yes, but…” he paused, searching for time, for the right words that would soften the blow of what he intended to say, and convince her the need for the decision he had reached.  He thought of what Merlin had to say to him that morning, of his destiny as a great king, the greatest Britain would ever know, and how he could not forsake that destiny on the behalf of some dream of future love, let alone the woman now standing before him, facing him head on, the sole opposition to his regal fate. 

 

Morgana saved him the trouble, whatever grace she had gathered about herself to hear out her brother his side of the story before jumping to judgement and conclusion fraying like a withered rope, the sole lifeline holding her composure together.  “But now that you have a princess to marry and future heirs to beget, I guess it really doesn’t matter what I want.  You’re right, how could I be so selfish!” she scathed, her grip on herself splitting.

 

“Don’t be petty, Morgana,” Arthur said quietly.  “It doesn’t become you.” 

 

Morgana gave him a wry smile.  “Does it now?” she said.  “And what would you know of becoming things, Arthur Pendragon, man who fucked his own sister?”

 

Morgana could see plain on his face that that last comment of hers got beneath her brother’s skin and it was due to a large amount of restraint on Arthur’s part that he did not give into anger and slap her right then and there in the very room where months prior he had held her so gingerly as she came in his arms.  In the corner of her eye, she caught him clenching his fist, but as soon as he did so, he relaxed it, dispelling the tension. 

 

“Oh, what?  Were you about to strike me, noble Prince?” Morgana scorned, and mocking him further said, “And I once thought you chivalrous.”   

 

“Don’t test me, Morgana, or I just might,” he said seriously. 

 

Seeing that her taunts failed to goad him in the manner she desired, she threw her arms up in frustration.  “Oh, drop the act, Arthur!” she shouted.  “Why won’t you just take me here and now and prove to me where we both know your affections truly lie!  I forgive you for Mithian if that is what you want to hear.  I say I forgive you—”  She would not dare voice the thought that entered her mind after that, knowing how pathetic it would make her seem, but it was there on the tip of her tongue, begging to be given breath and air in the growing distance between them—‘please, don’t leave me.’

 

He smiled briefly at her.  He had to make her understand for her own sake as much as his own. “Because, Morgana, we have to end it.”

 

Morgana frowned, dropping her performance entirely.  “Y-You can’t be serious,” she said incredulously.  And then she spoke the question that had been a weight upon her ever since she had the misfortune to meet Mithian in the hall that morn and learn from her the ugly truth: “Why, Arthur?”

 

“Because,” he spoke levelly, his demeanor beguiling calm for a man about to cast aside his only joy and pleasure, or so Morgana presumed herself to be to him, “as you most likely know already, I am getting married.  A week from tomorrow to be exact.”

 

“From tomorrow?” Morgana repeated, choking on the words.  So, the wedding will happen then just as Father, Rodor, and Mithian want.  I just never thought Arthur would want it too.  “Well,” she began once she recovered from her initial shock, “I can’t see why that matters.”  And then in a fit of desperation, she pressed herself close to Arthur’s chest and whispered sultrily in his ear, “I’m sure you will have time enough for your wife and me both, love.”

 

Arthur pulled away from her.  “I can’t forsake my wife to lie with you, Morgana!”

 

“Come now, Arthur,” she laughed despite herself and the strange intensity of his paroxysm, not quite believing her ears.  To her just now he seemed not himself.  “You’re not afraid of a little adultery now, are you?  What is that compared to what we have done?”

 

He stiffened.  “It would be a complete betrayal of her trust,” he said in a low voice.  “Not to mention…no, I cannot do this.”

 

The smirk fell from Morgana’s face.  “So now, you concern yourself with what is right.  Well, isn’t that grand of you, Arthur, to lure me into hellfire with you only to save yourself when the first opportunity appears!”

 

“Morgana…”

 

“No, Arthur!” she yelled at him.  “You will listen to what I have to say!  How dare you?  It was one thing to ask for Mithian’s hand of your own free will, before Father forced you to it, and without even telling me about it, even after you promised me you would try to convince her to leave Camelot.  But this?  Throwing me away as if I’m nothing but your whore?  That I will not stand.  Especially since you have the nerve to cast me aside now that you have had your way with me.  If you were not my brother, I would demand that you marry me at once since it’s not likely that even one of Father’s vassals would have me now!”

 

Arthur turned white as a sheet. 

 

“Well, say something!” Morgana snapped. 

 

“What can I say?” he said pathetically, illusions of future grandeur far from his mind, and for a moment he almost questioned Merlin, the future he proclaimed, but no, he trusted his servant, and his vision.  “I have wronged you, Morgana.  And for that I am sorry.”

 

Morgana waited.  There must be more he is going to say, to make any of this mean a lick of sense.  But then, as the silence stretched out over the distance—and yes, for the first time since that day when she had gone to him to help him out of his tourney gear, when they had made up after the years they had spent apart, having kept to themselves and their mutual feelings secret out of a need to protect each other from themselves, and that first blissful night they had slept in each other’s arms, Morgana could feel the distance between them, felt it with a pang of dread—she realized that that was it.  Arthur had no more to say to her. 

 

“I love you, Arthur,” she said softly then, in one final desperate attempt to turn his mind away from the road he had chosen, a road she could not follow.  “So why are you doing this?  Help me understand.”  When her voice, soothing as the murmurs of leaves rustling in the wind, and low like the humdrum of a summer rain dripping from the window eaves, faded into silence, Arthur stood memorized, and for a moment, he recalled all that he dared forsake this day.  And it was as if the sands of time had withdrawn into the waves of the mystical Lake of Avalon, that they, having been washed away, no longer held any meaning here and Arthur rested once again in the lap of his dear sister, just as he did as when he was but a child…at ease once more in the embrace of the only mother and only lover he had ever truly known…

 

In his delusion—or was it akin to the dreams that sometimes troubled Morgana long and deep into the night?—Arthur spoke aloud his sister’s name, felt the unshakable need to return to her breast and be as the child he had once been, knowing her as Mother.  He realized then that his memories of his actual mother Igraine were like ashes upon dust, falling through his clenched fists like grains of sand and the terrible sense of time lost, fading into the air like vapor in the wind, impossible to contain, let alone grasp.  Who was she to him, this forgotten mother who had borne him?  Who was she compared to the woman now standing before him, who, when he was first introduced to the sorrows of this seemingly fair world, had held him dear to her, saying in that soothing voice: “It will all be well yet, Arthur.  I love you.” 

 

That had been Morgana.  That had always been Morgana…  He felt deep in his heart, like an aching in his chest, the need to return to her, and yet…  I cannot, Arthur thought forcefully, regrettably, as the spell that had so suddenly come over him just as quickly vanished without a trace, leaving space for the harsh reality that so guided his thoughts and determined his actions to bear down on him once more.  Although it had not a hold on his heart, which now repeated Morgana’s words, beat them in time with his pulse and resounding in his head and body like the pounding of a drum…I love you, Arthur…so why do you do this?

 

He swallowed hard, deciding at last to push away the foolish yearnings of his heart in his last chance to save her from himself, or perhaps really, he was not doing it for her, even as he told himself he was; perhaps, he was doing it for no noble reason at all—though he believed in honor and that vision his father held for him since the day of his birth—but to save his own skin.  But if that were true, he thoughts echoed, then from what?  When at last he could speak, he answered Morgana, but not in the way she hoped.

 

“Yes, as a sister should.  And as a sister you will see me married within the week.”

 

Morgana’s eyes widened at his words, mirrored the pain he had so senselessly inflicted upon her.  “How can you do this?  After everything!”  She took his hand in hers, met his grim eyes with her own weary green.  “We belong together.”

 

What have I done?  Arthur thought, as he gazed fretfully at his sister, at the tears starting to brim in her eyes.  She only wants to be with me still.  She had not even reproached me for my marriage, only that I had kept my intentions secret from her, that she had to hear it from Mithian’s lips and not my own…  But still, I cannot do this.  To be with her and Mithian both is unconscionable, though what right have I to speak of what is good or ill? 

 

For a fleeting moment, looking into her eyes, at how wrought she appeared before him—was that the dress she had worn to his rooms that first night they had lain together?—he had the vain thought to take it all back, every word he had said, and take her then and there on the floor of his chamber—the urgency was so strong within him—but then he remembered the better part of the last several months, ever since his father sat them down to dinner and uttered his plans for him that he wed for the betterment of their country, for the betterment of himself, and how Morgana had sulked and plotted all the while, at how downright nasty she had been to a woman who had been nothing but kind to her throughout her life, and he realized as much as he yearned for his sister, or at least the tender sister of his memories, she never did have anyone’s best interests at heart, except for the ones she possessed for herself.  If what she felt for him truly was love, she would have let him go by now, telling him to be the man he was born to be and live out the destiny promised for him, not cling to him like a wraith, draining him dry like the shade Merlin had spoken of, which had strangely struck a chord with Arthur unlike his servant’s usual nonsense.  What they had, he understood now, was not love, not truly, but a queer infatuation in which they both craved to be adored; it was a carnal pleasure, a way of finding comfort throughout the long night for two grieving souls, and nothing more.  Morgana only loved him because he had been all she ever had, as he had wrongly assumed she would be the only woman he would ever have to love.  For the first time, their shared desire made sense to him, and strangely now disgusted him, not for the nature of the sin—he did not know whether he even bought into such notions—but rather because he had allowed it to consume him for so very long.  He had been a boy with a boyhood crush on his sister, innocent enough as a child, looking up to her, but now he found he had suddenly become a man and he did not need her any longer; simply put, he had outgrown her in the months she had wallowed beside him in his bed, fretting at the news of Mithian, dear Mithian, who was wholly good, unlike him. 

 

Perhaps, it was for that sense of goodness he glimpsed in his betrothed and the lack thereof he now saw in his sister that caused him to push away from her as he now did, saying, “No, Morgana.  We don’t.  We never have.”

 

The words given air from his lips hovered between them like the ax of their father’s executioner above the throat of a man he deemed fit to condemn.  The silence after—the moment steel separated flesh.

 

Morgana’s breath caught in her throat, suffocating her heart’s protest. 

 

But for what Morgana lacked in voice became apparent in her eyes, and Arthur, he had to look away.  The disbelief written within them was too much for him to bear.  Here was Morgana, the strong one, never to show a weak face, shaking before him.  And all because of what he had said in his frustration that she was not who he had once thought her to be, and perhaps because a part of him shamefully wanted her despite it. 

 

Still, no matter his vexation with her, she was still his sister and it hurt him now to see how his words so callously spoken had caused her grief, and without thinking he said her name, his voice sounding so tender that Morgana looked up at him with hope rekindled in her eyes.  Perhaps he does not mean it, she thought.  Perhaps, he will come back to me after all.  

 

He could not allow that.  It had been wrong of him to lead her on this long, though perhaps he was not necessarily to be blamed for that as he had not understood his own thoughts regarding her until this very moment, when without a grain of respect for him and her both, she had debased herself to lure him back to her.  It was then that he realized that he had to do this for her betterment, ending their relations, so that she would give up her childlike fancy for him and mature into the woman she was meant to be.  Perhaps, it was tough love, but he loved her still and even though he knew walking away right now as he intended would hurt her, it had to be done for her sake, as well as his own.  It is the only way she can move on, he told himself.  The only way he could move on. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he was.

 

As soon as he spoke, she turned away from him, now knowing her cause vain and any further words of hers powerless to sway him; his mind was made up, she understood that now, though she still could not fathom how he had come to his decision, let alone the reason for it, knowing that he still loved her as he did.

 

She left his chambers then, closed his door softly behind her, unsure why she did so—was it because part of her would always feel tenderness for him, or because of the practical reason, that she had no desire to make a scene?  Out in the hall, tears welled in the corners of her eyes, then streamed down her face.  She took a deep, shuddering breath, exhaled, and, with heavy shoulders, returned to her own quarters, silent as a shadow.

 

---

 

Time strode on.  For a moment, in the stillness as Arthur watched Morgana depart from his chambers, her hopes crushed, dreams shattered, and he the killer of her dream, he almost thought time itself to stop its steady march, halt its stable gait, freeze, and dissipate into the nothingness he felt about him, taut against his neck like a noose.  How many more seconds did he have?  Could he inhale just enough air for one last sighing breath?  It was the question on his mind then, as he watched her out the door; a genuine concern overtaking his consciousness—Is this how I am to die then?  Not in war or conquest, but by my own hands, at the call of my own doing?  He had been prepared to draw that final breath, the last second before time itself would be no more, but then the door had shut, not with a bang, but with a soft creaking whimper, and he found he could breathe not once, not twice, but three, four, five times, in and out and in again.  It seemed time marched on—it was not the end of everything—and if time could continue, it seemed he could too and follow its steady beat, taking one step into that treacherous unknown, that uncertain future promised him that he had chosen over his boyhood dreams of her. 

 

Just as long as he did not look back.  One look back and it would all be over for him; his resolve would collapse to dust and ashes, and he would return to the one who had been in more ways than one a drug to him—a drug that he craved against his better judgement (still craving her), and that no matter how many times he indulged in could not sustain his cravings—and that lesser state of living—for that was what it had been, he understood now; living solely for the time they could spend together under the cover of darkness, as he had, it had made him half-alive, wasting away his days, his future, always anticipating the night, and he reckoned it was far better that he get a grip and try to move on without her in a chance to realize that future promised him, one for which most would envy him and his father had spent his whole life preparing him for—he owed it to him he thought.  In his mind it was final, done and sealed.  He had resolved that he would not go back to her because to do so would be to do more harm than good where they both were concerned, though he knew she could not, and would not, see it that way now.  Simply put, he was not good for her, as she did not bring out the best in him, and this, he thought, their separation, was to make amends for the error of their ways and the spoiled children they had been.  He had never told her this during the months they had spent wrapped in each other’s arms, but he still harbored guilt for the way he had threatened her maid that hapless day she had caught them abed together and all on account of his confused affections for her, mistaking them as he had for love, though love her fiercely he did. 

 

And what of love?  Was it not enough that he loved Morgana enough to let her go?  To protect her from slander and worse if ever they were found out?  To allow her the opportunity to grow into her own person, separate from her misplaced affections for him?  He thought that must count for something, even if she could not see it now.  In truth, he had done what he had done for her just as much as for himself; he had tried to make her see that, but her eyes were clouded, hazed with hatred for the other woman, the one who was to take her place.  Oh, how he rued the day that had brought Mithian to Camelot the first time.  Perhaps, it would have been easier for them both now had she arrived this second time a stranger.  Perhaps, Morgana would not have grown so bitter.  Perhaps, he would not have felt sympathy then for her friend.  But in the end, no matter how he shifted the circumstances and wondered at each possibility granted and inevitably denied, it did not change the outcome.  He was always to marry not for love but out of a sense of responsibility towards his kingdom, his people, and Morgana was always to see him wed—for the problem started and ended with them: there had simply never been room enough in this cruel, calculating world for a love such as theirs, whatever it had been. 

 

He had always known that, had been a fool to forget it in those nights of winter bliss, and prayed only that Morgana would one day see it too and learn to forgive him for his treachery, which was only in truth just as cruel as the ways of the world they found themselves in. 

 

“We were brother and sister first,” he said quietly to no one, just the silent stillness of the room.  “Perhaps, it can be enough to be so once again.”

 

Then there was a knock at his door and his servant entered.  “Ah, Arthur, I hear congratulations are in order,” he said.  “So, you decided to marry the Princess after all?  Swell.”

 

Arthur blinked, then glanced towards Merlin who wearing his usual bright smile.  He did not grimace at sight of him.  Time moved on and so would he. 

 

“Yes, it seems so, Merlin,” he said agreeably.  “I take it you are here to dress me for the evening feast?”

 

“Oh,” Merlin chittered, “it seems you’re getting ahead of yourself, Sire.  First there’s the luncheon with your guests, then a training with your men, and then you are to come back here so I can help change you into clean armor, that I just finished polishing might I add so you’re not allowed to wear that to the training whatsoever, and then there’s the feast.  I only came to fetch you now for the luncheon.  Your betrothed is wondering where you’ve been this last hour and well, you should be glad I thought to come looking for you here first…”

 

---

 

His betrothed—he found he still needed getting used to considering her as such even though the wedding was to be held in a week, a week and his entire life as he knew it would change—nudged his shoulder gently to draw his attention away from the guests he was speaking with, thanking them for their attendance in his honor and the congratulations they gave him on his behalf, for what Arthur assumed to be a quick word she must have with him.  Clearly it could not wait until he finished conversing with Duke Cador of Cornwall and his wife, so he excused himself from them both with an apology, saying his wife-to-be needed him, it would only be a moment.  Cador only smiled at him then and said something to the effect that he understood how needy wives could be, flashing a look at his own wife standing beside him.  Arthur left then with a nod following Mithian away from the throng of guests helping themselves to many a delicious dish off to the side of the hall where they could easily view the rest of the celebration.  He found himself wondering at Mithian’s behavior, his own excuse, and Cador’s comment.  Perhaps, this was to be a part of married life then, exchanging a quick word or two with the woman who would be at his side at similar feasts of great import.  He decided he must lend credence to whatever she was to say to him in secret because for him she was not only his wife-to-be but his partner in the kingdom he would one day rule.  Her eyes were his eyes, her ears his ears, as much as he was concerned, and if they had told her some wisp of warning, then he must know that thing as well.

 

Off in their alcove, he turned to face her, all the while keeping an eye on the festivities.  “What is it, Mithian?  It must be important or else you would have let it wait.”

 

She looked up at him then out towards the feasting, then down at her own clasped hands.  Arthur noticed a line of worry at her brow.

 

“Mithian?”

 

“It’s Morgana,” she said at last, looking back up at him.  “I haven’t seen her since this morning, and she’s not here at the feast.  Don’t you think she should be here?”

 

Arthur gawked at her.  “Morgana’s not here?”  He looked out at the crowd mulling about and between the tables searching the faces for a mere sight of her, and yet he saw every noblewoman but her.  He moved back towards Mithian and sighed.  This was his doing, he knew it.  To spite both him and his betrothed she decided not to show up at the feast in his honor, which was just like her.  He only marveled at how he had failed to notice her absence.  Had he been so preoccupied with acclimating to the new life thrust upon him? 

 

Mithian took his hand, pressing her weight into him.  “No, there’s no point looking.  She’s not here.  I already searched for her to no avail.”

 

Arthur studied her then.  “You’re worried about her?”

 

“Aren’t you?” she asked, raising a skeptical brow.  “First, she did not go to your father the High King to speak of our engagement like she said she would, then she wasn’t at the luncheon, now this.  Do you think she could be ill?  But then in that case why wouldn’t she send word to let us know?” she paused, shook her head incredulously.  “Why are you looking at me like that?  This could be serious.  This isn’t like her.  You must admit that.  You’re her brother after all.  You know her better than anyone.”

 

Her words cut into him—you know her better than anyone, you’re her brother—and he swallowed the guilt clambering up his throat.  Did he know Morgana?  Once, perhaps, before this jealous streak took hold of her; part of him still could not believe that she could spite him like this.  Could she not see that he had had no choice but to propose to Mithian?  But then again, her qualm with him had been about more than just his sudden proposal.  He raised a hand to scratch at his head as he thought and sighed.  He had to believe he had possessed no other option with no way out in sight.  How else was he supposed to sleep tonight?  “Look, Mithian,” he said, “I’m sure she’s fine, okay?  Maybe, she came down with something like you said and word didn’t get to us with all the commotion in preparation for the feast.  And speaking of the feast, I am not about to watch you sulk through your own engagement party just because of my sister, and that’s that.”

 

“I am not sulking!” she snapped at him in a harsh whisper so as not to draw heads, though nevertheless surprising him with her sudden change in demeanor, a first he had seen in her.  “I am merely concerned for her well-being as anyone should be!  But if I must enjoy myself as you wish then so be it.  I will have a marvelous time all on my own!”  She gave a slight harrumph, inclined her head, and turned away from him to join plain Elaine of Astolat and her friends at a table at the far side of the hall.

 

“Mithian…” Arthur said helplessly, hoping she would hear him and come back to him, but even that it seemed for him to be in vain.  “Women,” he muttered under his breath.  So, it seemed his betrothed possessed an attitude akin to Morgana; no wonder they had been friends growing up, he thought.  Perhaps, this, their first quarrel, if it could even be called that, was what he had to expect in marriage.  He wondered then if he had chosen well after all, but quickly shook away the thought for it caused him unease. 

 

But what of Morgana?  He was not about to let Mithian’s half-thought concerns worry him now, and yet what if there had been some truth to her alarm?  Surely, if it was simply a matter of his sister being under the weather, conveniently in time for his own engagement celebration no less, she would have let their father and him know beforehand?  But what other explanation was there? 

 

He knew of course, even though he hated to admit it.  In fact, he had busied himself silly with that list of to-do’s Merlin had come to his chambers to notify him of just to escape thinking about it, but what good had that done him?  It was still there at the back of his mind, festering, what he had done that morning.  Just because he had stopped actively thinking about it did not make it any less true.  He had said what he had said and meant it when he drew up the nerve to tell Morgana that whatever it was that lied between them, it was over and done.  She would have to accept him as just her brother or turn her back on him for good.  He would marry Mithian and be faithful to her and that was the end of it. 

 

He remembered how quiet she grew when he had told her his mind, how she left without so much as a word, quietly shutting the door behind her as she left as if in apology for the space she took up in his life.  A chill laced his spine.  It was so unlike Morgana, he should have saw then, to retreat, to leave without attempting to win the last word.  He had hoped to make her understand his position, but what if he had done more than that?

 

His thoughts began to race, blur and distort themselves, as he went over that fateful scene in his head over and over again in his mind, and then ran away with him as he imagined what his words could have prompted her to do.  If it was true what Mithian had said about how she had not seen a trace of her since her meeting with her in the hall, then it was very likely he was the last to see her, and that could mean…  He counted back the hours on his hands; six, seven, eight, eight hours it had been since he saw her last.  That could mean anything.  She could be anywhere.  Would she, could she, in her anguish have fled Camelot?  He did not think it likely.  Someone would have seen and recognized her.  Then, perhaps she never left the castle?

 

His blood ran cold, his breath shallow.  He saw in his mind’s eye his next thought in pictures, and the images of her lying still wrists slit, head stuffed in a pillowcase, body floating in lukewarm tub of water—he was not sure how she had done it—obscured his vision, set his body to trembling.  What had he done?  And all the while he had thought time to stop, that he had caused his own death, when he had only brought about her end.  How could he have been so selfish?

 

He shook his head to free himself of the terrible sight within his mind.  No, he was jumping to conclusions.  He held no proof, just some hearsay and his own guilt at his own actions.  That was all.  For all he knew, she could just be safely abed.  All could be well as of yet, yet he had to know for sure.  He could not go another moment at this stupid feast without knowing for certain whether in his foolish pride he had killed her.  There had to be a way he could know for sure, without himself leaving the hall to pound on her door, raising at once suspicion at his foreboding foresight of her plight and causing a scene for all his proclaimed guests.  No, there was no way in tact and duty he could abandon these people in their misplaced praise for him and go to her this ill-fated night.  There would have to be another way.    

 

That was when Arthur saw his answer filling wine goblets at the other side of the hall.  He made to swallow his pride and go speak with her, knowing that she could trespass that hidden sanctuary where he was no longer welcome.  He only wondered whether she would find his presence welcome, given their last encounter and the harsh sentence he had passed over her then. 

 

See, Morgana? part of him wanted to ask, the other half willing to wait to know first whether his question was an appropriate one.  Wasn’t I right to end it just to spare another hapless serving girl like her?

 

---

 

Gwen startled at the hand upon her arm as she moved to fill the empty wine pitcher she had up till then been totting around for all the evening’s esteemed guests to snag a refill from only to turn to find that the hand belonged to Prince Arthur.  She gawked at him, setting the pitcher down on the table next to her, as he stared at her with his wide, innocent seeming eyes.  But she, of all people, knew him better than to be fooled by such charm, surely better than the noblewomen at this feast whom she watched speak their well-wishes for his engagement to his face only to despair amongst themselves that he was to wed another.  Likewise, surely too, she knew better than to find him without sin this day, even as it was sin itself he had decidedly moved against by accepting the Princess Mithian as his bride.  Moreover, she reckoned he knew she knew it too.

 

“Sire,” she said stiffly.  “If there is something you wish of me, you must need say it.”

 

Arthur, his face pale, now flushed with embarrassment—though Gwen suspected his high color to be from drink, thinking the Prince unsusceptible to such states of flusterment—and dropped the maid’s arm in haste.  “Yes, quite,” he said, eyeing her uncomfortably.  He paused a moment or two, Gwen watching him keenly, until at last he said, as if he might burst if he kept silent much longer, “Have you seen Morgana?  I’m told she’s not here.”

 

Gwen frowned.  Morgana had been rather quiet when she returned to her chamber room that afternoon, a sure enough sign of her distress, Gwen had thought, reluctant to push the matter further, though she had a hunch it was about her brother’s sudden decision to marry Princess Mithian after all, a rumor which she had overheard from the kitchen cooks after returning Morgana’s breakfast dishes to them—the breakfast very hardly touched since Morgana had failed to return to her chambers to partake of it as she said she would—that had proven true it would seem.  And then later, she had been quite sullen and silent when Gwen had broached her gently that she must ready her for the evening’s feast, but to Gwen’s surprise Morgana had allowed her to dress her in one of her finest gowns and do up her hair to suit it best without so much as a complaint.  She had excused Gwen after that, telling her to make her own preparations for the celebration; she would come down when the feast began.  That was what she had promised and yet, a few hours into the banquet or more—Gwen did not reckon how much time had passed given her work serving the guests and then her encounter with Lance, she blushed now, just thinking of it, the way he had called her his Lady Gwen as he begged of her a cup of wine and she humored him by pouring him a glass—and it seemed Morgana had not made an appearance whatsoever.

 

“No,” she said, suddenly dizzy with an array of troubling thoughts.  “She told me she would come down,” she insisted then, incomprehensibly.  “She promised she would be here for you.”

 

Arthur blanched, then said with a grimace, “Do you think she’s still in her chambers?”

 

“I,” Gwen started, “I believe so, yes.  I can’t see where else she could have gone if she’s not here.”

 

The Prince sighed hastily.  “I need you to go to her, Gwen.  I need you to go to her and tell me that she’s alright.”

 

Gwen lifted a wary brow.  She had been about to ask him, her liege, why it was that he could not go to her, if it was he who was so concerned for her, only to realize that of course he could not go; this feast was held in his and his betrothed’s honor, to leave now would cause insult to Mithian and to his family.  But this is a matter of family, she thought then, until a second more disturbing thought came to her.

 

“Why wouldn’t she be alright?” she asked, fearing the answer.  She looked up into the Prince’s eyes, hoping to find it there, some semblance of what caused Morgana to stay away this night, but saw nothing within them but a clouded haze.  It frightened her.  She knew not why, but sensed, rather than understood that the look in those eyes was akin to the way he had looked at her months before in the last days of autumn, the morning she discovered him abed with his sister, the moment he had threatened her with death if she told a single soul about them.  Gwen shivered.

 

Arthur misunderstood the movement and laid his hands on her shoulders reassuringly.  “I cannot say here,” he said, inclining his head toward the guests flitting about the room to make her understand; she did.  “I just need you to do this for me, Gwen.  Go to her.  Tell her,” he swallowed hard, “no, don’t say anything.  She won’t want to hear anything from me, not now, after what I’ve done.”

 

“Sire?” she asked.  She felt her pulse quicken at her throat.

 

He dropped his hands from her shoulders as if in defeat.  “Just go,” he whispered, and with that walked away back towards the party.

 

Without a second to spare, sensing the urgency in his command, Gwen ducked out of the Great Hall and made for the stairs, racing up them as fast as her legs could carry her.  

 

---

 

“He’s gone, he’s gone,” she whispered in a shaky breath, as she cradled her knees to her chest and buried her head in her lap.  Crouched atop of her bedspread, holding herself close—for there was no one else left to comfort her—Morgana seemed but a child, deathly pale under the sliver of the waning moon and unbearably alone.  She was alone.  Again, she was on her own, and just as before, there was no one at her side to shelter her from the dark.  Suddenly, she longed for her mother.  There’s no sense in mourning it now.  He is gone.  This is nothing new.

 

But still, as she huddled alone in the darkness, she was short of breath and gasping for air as if she had been savagely punched in the gut.  And in a way she had been.  Arthur was gone, gone to marry another in her stead, a woman he barely knew and had not eyes for, but had been her friend, all for the sake of being their father’s dutiful son.  And all that she had become, all the power she had amassed during those past few months was now gone with him.  No longer was she an enchantress of men, a supplicant to nature’s rites.  No, she was nothing now, nothing but that scared, frightened child she had always been.  The little girl who had cried desperately for her mother, only to be answered with the cacophony of the silent dark. 

 

You knew this would happen, her mind berated her, so why do you cry for yourself now?  He was never going to stay; he had always been promised to this fate.  Not to you.  Never you.

 

Yet her heart still failed to understand.  She had not been begging him to turn away from Mithian in favor of herself.  No, all she had asked for, at once knowing and recognizing the necessity of this mismatched union regardless of her personal sentiment, was for him to keep on loving her.  What she needed from him was not stability and a supporting hand, but the quiet respite, the lull late at night, when it had been just the two of them tucked safely beneath the covers, hidden from the scrutiny of the light.  Where they had been free to commit every wrong and consecrate it right, where they had been free to just be Arthur and Morgana. 

 

It was not his tenderness she missed, as desperately as she needed air, but the weight of his body crashing down on hers.  It was the escape he provided, not the companionship, that had her drawn toward him like the addict to his opium, always wanting, needing more—danger disregarded—until, finally, the body gives way to be at long last consumed and dies.  And here she was now, suddenly cut off from her drug—withdrawal screaming in her brain—left to recall all alone those painful memories of her past.  Oh, what she would have given for just one more night: to love and to be loved, to forget and be forgiven.

 

But no.  She was forsaken.  Alone and wide-eyed, two dilated pupils peeping out into the fathomless dark. 

 

Mother!  She wanted to cry, but the word, being futile anyway, caught in her throat.  So, she cried for the closest she could ever come to that one irreplaceable need.

 

“Gwen,” she choked, finding her own voice suddenly rough, unfamiliar to her ears.  “Gwen,” she called again since the first cry had been left unanswered.  “Gwen!”  She cried again and again for her maid until her throat was raw with crying, and she thought she could cry no more, when at last the door to her chambers opened.

 

“Morgana?” came the anxious voice of her maid from the door.  “Morgana?  Are you here?”

 

Morgana remembered herself, her name, and looked up toward the stream of light within the open door, saw Gwen aglow in the light of the candle held flickering in her hand.

 

“Oh, Gwen,” she muttered breathless, only to realize she should have spoken louder to have made her presence known.

 

But it mattered not for Gwen now entered the sealed room, bathing its once seemingly permanent darkness with light, its barren coldness with grateful warmth. 

 

Recognizing Morgana at last thanks to the candle in her hand, which she set gingerly on the bedside table, Gwen spoke her lady’s name once more, this time with affection.  “Oh, Morgana!  I am glad that you are alright.  We were all so worried when you didn’t come down to dinner.  Arthur sent me up here to check on you—”

 

“Arthur?” Morgana gasped.  “Why?  Why would he send you?”  Then a voice eerily calm in her mind stilled the next protest in her throat, suffocating it into silence—he is your destiny, he is your doom—and her last night’s dream came back to her in full.  The rain, the storm, the darkness—was Arthur the one who walked in her shadow?  Was he the one to consign her to her own downfall like the voice in her dream had warned her?  But no, it was only a dream, just a dream, it could mean nothing more…and yet, it could be no coincidence that Arthur decided to go behind her back and propose to Mithian her friend when he had promised her, he would do no such thing.  He had promised me he would persuade her to leave Camelot and this engagement behind, but what did he do?  He proposed to her!  And, and, she could not think her next thought for it would be to acknowledge the blow she had been so cruelly dealt by Arthur, by fate, by the voice in her dream, she knew not who or what or why, only that she was tired, so very tired, and could care no longer.

 

“He was worried for you,” Gwen answered, then thinking, added carefully, “we all were.  But why are you huddled up here alone in the dark?  You’ll catch a cold without a fire at this late hour!  I’ll send for someone to light it at once!”

 

“None of that now, Gwen,” Morgana said, her voice tired and tried.  “Just…just sit next to me.”

 

“Are, are you sure Mi’lady?” Gwen wavered. 

 

“Yes.  Just hold me, Gwen.”

 

Not knowing what else to do, Gwen conceded to her lady’s wishes, wrapped her arm hesitantly around her shaking waist and held her close.

 

“T-that’s better,” Morgana said a moment later.  “It’s nice to feel another person’s warmth.”

 

Gwen frowned.  She knew something was wrong, thought it due to the feast proclaiming Arthur’s proposal to Mithian, which Gwen would admit even surprised herself, but knew that that could not be all.  If it were only the proposal troubling Morgana and the feast held to celebrate it, she would have sulked and raged the day out, not sequestered herself to her rooms in the dark.  And then there were Arthur’s words to her to consider, something about a thing he had said or done which had caused Morgana to lock herself up in her room and prevented him, she now reckoned, from coming here to see her.  She had thought down in the Great Hall he had meant the proposal as his crime, but now, seeing Morgana in her state, was not so certain.

 

“Are you alright, Mi’lady?”

 

“Alright?” Morgana laughed wryly.  “Have I ever been just alright?  Maybe once.  But that was a long time ago, when Mother was alive.  When everything was simple.”

 

Whatever answer Gwen expected, if she could even say she anticipated one, it was not this.  She opened her mouth to respond, but fell silent, choosing instead to let Morgana tell what she would—as she always ended up doing in the end. 

 

“Arthur,” Morgana said after a time, and Gwen felt her tremble as she spoke his name, wondering why she did so.  “It is Arthur if you must know.  I have learned now that he truly is our father’s son.”

 

Gwen waited for something more—there must be something more, she thought—but Morgana remained silent for the rest of that night. 

 

And then for the following week.

 

***END OF PART ONE***

Notes:

Okay, now that that's done, I can understand if you hate me at this point and want to give up on this story. 😅 I hope you won't, even though I can't promise it gets better.

Chapter 22

Notes:

Hello everyone! I hope you're well. First of all, a huge thank you to those of you still interested in the story after the last chapter. Here we are at the start of the second act. I really hope you enjoy this first chapter that sets the stage for this part of the story.

With love,
Jo ❤

—Part Two—

The Passage Through Which We Reach the Day

 

CHAPTER ONE: Another Complication  

Days passed, and then weeks.  Morgana stayed in her chambers.  Gwen was her only company, her only visitor to make sure that her every need and want was met, even though Gwen would say, if she were asked, that there was little left in the world for Morgana Pendragon to want, yet nevertheless everything for her to need—she hardly ate or drank or spoke throughout the days that passed as much as Gwen had begged her to try a bite here, a sip there, say something—and it was only Gwen who knew the truth, the reason for her lady’s self-imposed confinement and her own closed-off despair. 

 

In the days following the engagement feast, she had managed to pry the answer from Morgana’s reluctant lips, in fractured pieces, perhaps, but when placed alongside each other, the words caught in fragments here and there proved more than enough to tell the whole of what had happened that sorry day the Prince had gone down on his knee and proposed to his chosen princess.  As it were, the sinking suspicion Gwen had felt that night of the feast that some rift between Morgana and her brother had taken place beyond his unexpected proposal had proven true: Arthur, it seemed, had at last decided to end his relations with his sister in order to be true to his new wife—or so she would be to him come the day of their wedding—and Morgana, in her rejection, that vain dismissal, had found a permanent place wrapped within the coverlets of her own bed, now too heartbroken to rise from it even to draw aside the curtains with each morn that passed to welcome in the light of the newborn day as it glinted gladly through the windowpanes.  

 

After a day or two of this, Gwen had offered to pull aside the drapes for her, thinking some natural light would do her good, but Morgana had only rebuked her generous suggestion, saying she would “have none of it,” and so in the days that passed into the weeks that followed, Morgana spent her time abed in her somber chamber, as alone as could be—if one were to discount Gwen her presence there, who in fact appeared more ghost than girl to the Princess in that time—in a room as gray and dim and bleak as the clouded, muted skies come November, when the days laid down early to rest and the night reigned supreme—those blissful nights of near winter that Morgana had cherished amongst the happiest of her life, not knowing that they were numbered, though of course they must be so, as with anything concerning time—when all the while, elsewhere throughout the castle, nay the kingdom, the people busied themselves excited for the increasing days of April, the joy of an although late, but nevertheless returned spring—and with it a royal marriage to prepare for—promising an abundant summer to come.  Morgana did not share their sentiment, herself huddling up in the dark of her room, craving that impossible return to that time when she had had all that she ever wanted, and so perhaps that dreadful ache she felt as if a weight upon her chest, her lungs, played more than part in her reasoning for keeping the curtains closed, the light dim, hardly a candle lit in sight, despite the sunshine without, in an attempt, no matter how futile, to recreate her memories of those winter nights in which he had held her so tenderly in his arms, a smaller, more truthful side questioning whether her boycott against the sun had something to do with the way it had already gone the moment he, just as brilliant—perhaps more so—had spoken to her his ultimatum: that she had no part in his life hereafter as nor did he in whatever life she had left to live. 

 

She did not speak of her feelings aloud, but the sense of them Gwen had gathered from her actions—or rather lack thereof as she remained motionless beneath the bedcovers, herself and her room stuck in the same solitary sadness so that day and night appeared indistinguishable as they passed from one to the next—and never before in her life did Gwen ever feel so relieved and guilty for her relief and sorry as she did then to know such tidings as this that could bring the high born lady she knew so wearily low.    

 

But that was far from the whole story.

 

A week to the day exactly Mithian had imparted to her that she had accepted her brother’s hand, the marriage took place just as Arthur promised her it would, and so it was that on one fair spring morn, Morgana sat witness to the ceremony that saw her brother wed—the envy blossoming like an ashen rose upon her cheeks as she watched him dip his head, lean in to kiss his bride at the altar tentatively—and she, dressed so elegantly in white, return his kiss—from where she remained seated in the throne room’s front pew with the best seat in all the hall for which to view the lovely couple as they made their vows, as each slid the ring emblematic of them upon the other’s finger, though of course she dissented to their happiness.  It had been the only time she had left the quiet solitude of her chambers during the days of her bedriddenness, knowing full well that the occasion of her brother’s marriage was one she could not simply choose to miss as much as she had desired to skip it, and it was for that very reason that she met it shoulders squared and head held high and likewise clothed in white—a subtle gesture which she hoped would not go unremarked by her brother—so not a single guest present had any reason to think she was in fact surviving the second worst day of her life—the very worst, of course, being the ill-fated day of her mother’s passing. 

 

Though the morning had passed achingly slow, the ceremony itself being quite drawn out and tedious by the clergyman who officiated it, so that more than a few heads nodded as he droned on speaking into the afternoon by the time he was finished, Morgana, in spite of her true feelings regarding what was to her a most drab and miserable occasion, ended up by some miracle mustering forth the grace for with to wish her new lawful sister well at the banquet held in her and her brother’s honor thereafter, and this she did most splendidly, though it had left her deeply wounded, so that Mithian returned her kind remark with good cheer, herself entirely unsuspecting of her old friend and now sister’s true sentiment regarding her novel status as her brother’s wife.  As for Arthur, Morgana had avoided meeting his eyes during the ceremony and then later at the feast, as she found she could not bear to face him just then, for it was all rather too soon for her heart to bear, though she did believe even if an eternity had passed it still would not be enough time to heal the sore in her chest, weighing down her lungs with each breath she took, to see him wed as she had to another in her stead, thereby snipping like a thread her ties she once thought inextricable to him.  Although she had made an effort to evade eye contact with him, she had ended up sneaking a look at him a few times during the afterparty, the temptation in itself being too great for her to resist, and each time she had found his eyes glued on another, either their father or one of the noblemen of the Court congratulating him, but still she noted how odd it was that each time he did not feel her stare nor break away to look across the room up at her, standing so emblematically in a gown that so palpably made her point known that she did not know what he thought of her childish scheme to remind him of her, the one he had cast aside and lost to his better judgement, or lack thereof—it all depended on perspective—and just as strange it was, she noted, that neither in the moments she watched him did he look once at the dear woman at his side. 

 

It was not long thereafter that she had retired quietly to her chamber, though it was hardly evening, herself still done up to make a statement that she did not know whether she had in effect communicated, and without more than a necessary word or two, she had asked Gwen to undress her, failing to respond entirely when her maid had asked worriedly whether she had eaten a bite at the dinner, which of course she had not, and then once back in her ghost of a shift, without another word, she drew forth the covers of the bed not for comfort nor to sleep but just because it was the most sensible place to deposit herself while her mind plodded on with unwanted memories of the past and of him now that the worst was said and done. 

 

It was there that Morgana stayed when Gwen had bidden her a reluctant ‘goodnight’ that evening when her work for the day was done and then in the days that followed the ceremony, refusing altogether to rise except when time came to relieve herself, until one strange morning a week later when she woke more ill than she was accustomed to in her beleaguered state.

 

At first, she thought it was nothing new.  For the last month or two she had woken some days with an uneasy stomach, thinking the cause to be her concerns for the arrangement of her brother’s upcoming marriage.  But now that he was wed, the ceremony over and done, she found herself surprised to wake with such nausea, for there was nothing else for her left to fret about, her worst fears had just been realized: Arthur had married Mithian and had forsaken her for her sake.  What else could possibly happen to her now to cause her grief?

 

This cause dismissed, she ascertained the reason for her discomfort to be due to a sort of stomach sickness she had given herself what with all her failing to eat very much at all in the days of her despair, hoping against hope in those first few days that he would change his mind and come back to her, though he never did.  That was when she realized she simply could not go on like this, sequestered to her bed, refusing food and drink, she was destroying herself, and while that destruction had felt good for the pain she wanted to inflict upon herself, as much as Arthur, for being such a fool as to think he would always love her and choose her before anyone, even himself, she understood there was no sense in such self-annihilation.  Arthur had not come to her one day of the two weeks she had spent locked in her chamber room, so busy she imagined him being with his new life ahead of him and his precious wife to share it with (and speaking of Mithian, for all their friendship, she too had failed to pay her even a single visit), so her self-starvation had proved fruitless; she could not threaten him with her own demise in a last ditch attempt to coerce him to come back to her and cherish her once more, so she decided, to Gwen’s delight, to devour her entire breakfast that morning, hoping that that simple act of self-preservation would ease her stomach’s churning.

 

It had opposite effect, and Morgana had possessed no choice but to run to her chamber pot to heave up all the food she had finally managed to scarf down into its basin right in front of Gwen to her stark embarrassment.

 

“Morgana, are you alright?” Gwen had asked as she ceased making up the bed, the first time she had done so since the wedding, to rush to her side, her own fright for Morgana’s well-being these last two weeks returning in an instant.  She rested a gentle hand upon her lady’s shoulder as if to comfort her.  “Should I send for the Court Physician?”  She had asked the question throughout the weeklong, though each time Morgana had dismissed her, as she did now. 

 

“No, Gwen,” Morgana croaked from above the pail.  She wiped a stubborn hand at her mouth.  “I’ll, I’ll be alright,” she said, trying to sound strong, even as her voice wavered, as it had done throughout the week in those all too few moments when she had decided to speak after all.

 

“I’m going to get him,” Gwen said definitively, this in effect the last straw.

 

“No, Gwen!” Morgana gasped.  “I’m fine.  Truly.  There’s no reason to trouble him.  I just ate too quickly is all.”

 

“Yes, Mi’lady,” Gwen agreed, although she herself was not so easily convinced.  “Um, would you like me to save the rest of your breakfast for later?”

 

Morgana took one look at the breakfast tray on the table and felt another wave of revulsion.  “No, no thank you, Gwen.  I think I better lie down for a moment.” 

 

She made to rise from where she was crouched upon the floor, took one step, and felt her body sway, her legs about to buckle beneath her.

 

“Morgana!” Gwen exclaimed, catching her before she collapsed to the floor.  “Are you alright?”  When Morgana, forcing her eyes open, gave a slight nod in answer, even as her head spun with another dizzying wave, Gwen said, “here, let me help you over to the bed.  That’s it.  Just lie down now.  Rest.”

 

Morgana allowed Gwen to lead her over to her bed and then felt her ease her body down onto the mattress.  As she tucked her in beneath the sheets, Morgana felt her consciousness slipping, falling into the delirium of lightheadedness, her head felt so heavy, the pillow beneath her so soft, and all around her, her thoughts swirling and whirling, spiraling down and down and down into…

 

Morgana woke sometime later to the scent of a gentle breeze stirring about her, and then a crowd positioned about her bed, their figures unintentionally shadowing her view of the sunlight now streaming through the far window which one of them must have opened and un-shuttered, she thought, to allow into the sealed room the fresh air she smelled with its traces of hellebore and narcissus and the daylight playing tricks on her vision.  She blinked open her eyes as her vision adjusted to the new light to find the shadowy figures huddled before her shifting into that of Gwen, the Court Physician Gaius and his assistant Merlin, and then off to the side standing a foot or so away, another figure to her stark surprise—no it cannot be, she thought, but there he was, standing in her room although she thought he had deemed himself no longer welcome there—Arthur.  As she scanned then their faces, they all appeared deeply concerned, but Arthur, perhaps, she noticed, most of all, as his brows were drawn and heavy in a look of such seriousness, she considered it uncharacteristic of him.  

 

“What is all of this?” Morgana frowned, shifting her head to search their faces—all except Arthur, who looked away from her when she tried to meet his gaze, his eyes downcast upon the floor—only to land on her maid as the instigator of the guilty party summoned before her.  “Gwen!”

 

Gaius spoke first.  “Gwen came to get me, and it’s a good thing she did.  She feared you were seriously ill when you had that fainting spell and when the two of us came to your chamber, we found you still unconscious.  I sent Merlin to tell the High King of your illness—”

 

“He was caught up in negotiations with the council, so I told Arthur instead,” Merlin continued.

 

As for Arthur, he froze shock still the moment Merlin mentioned his name, calling him at once back to the scene before him and his responsibility for why his sister lied where she did and in precisely such a bedridden state.  From his brief glimpse of Morgana before she awoke, in the moment when he had entered her chamber, he could tell she was far from well.  Lying on the bed, she appeared paler, thinner than she had when he had seen her last at his wedding a week now past, the bones of her face etched out beneath her flesh, her cheeks sallow, dark circles beneath her eyes. 

 

He could have throttled himself then, seeing her like that, to think that he had caused this; he should have known, should have thought to check up on her when he noticed her absence about the castle halls the week leading up to and after his wedding and at the feasts held each night in his and his wife’s name.  He had not, only because Gwen had come back to him the night of his engagement to notify him that Morgana was well, just fast asleep in her bed.  She had told him he had nothing to worry about, that she had kept to herself that night, yes, but had found it in her heart to forgive him all the same.  Why would she say such a thing as that, he wondered now, when it’s clear now she must have been far from fine that night?  For there’s no way this could have happened to her overnight.  She hardly looks like she’s eaten at all, and it’s all my fault.  I should have known. 

 

He did not think Gwen capable of lying to him or anyone and thought then that perhaps Morgana had tricked her as well.  He knew not how; Gwen was Morgana’s maid, she would have been around her at all times of the day, every day for the last two weeks, surely, she would have noticed something amiss about his sister in that time, and yet, he could not find it in his heart to hold her accountable, let alone blame her for his sister’s weakened state.  This confused him, for several months ago, he had been quite willing to believe she would have sold both him and Morgana out that fateful morning she discovered them abed together.  Still, she had proved loyal then, so he could not blame her for her remissness now; in the end, he felt he could only truly blame himself, which perhaps was the true reason for his sister’s current state.  It had been due to a nagging sense of guilt he had felt over their last conversation and the decision he had made—though he still stood by it, or so he told himself—after all which had caused him to relish in his sister’s absence about the halls the last couple weeks, and as she was out of sight, he found he could put her out of his mind, or at least he found the trying easier, so that he did not think her lack of presence a cause for alarm, as nor did he once think to check up on her, not that he thought she would welcome him if he had.  To ease his conscience on that point, he had had Gwen’s word after all that all was well.    

 

“I had to come as soon as I heard,” he said at last.  He found it was all he could say to Morgana with the others standing so close by.  It was the first he had spoken to her since the day he told her that whatever it was that they had had, it was over between them; he had made up his mind to marry Mithian.  

 

“I guess married life hasn’t kept you so busy after all,” she said then, only for her cheeks to flush a faint pink once she realized what she had in effect spoken out loud.  She covered her mouth with her hand.  “I mean—”

 

Gaius and Merlin looked at Morgana, then at Arthur, and then at each other.

 

Gwen took in a sharp breath.

 

Arthur swallowed.  “Clearly, it was remiss of me to forego visiting with my dear sister since the wedding,” he said quietly.  “Is—is there any way I can mend this wrong?”

 

Morgana smiled wanly at him.  Arthur wondered what the smile meant.

 

Gaius interrupted the awkward moment, clearing his throat as he did so.  “Morgana, we are all deeply concerned about your health.  Will you please let me examine you for illness?  Gwen tells me that you have been skipping meals and I believe that may just be why you feel so faint.”

 

Morgana shrugged.  “I never wished for you to have to get involved,” she said simply, shooting a look at Gwen who flushed crimson, before turning back to the physician.  “But since you’re here now, why not?”   

 

“Good,” Gaius said.  “Now how about a little lunch in the meantime to get your strength back?  I’m afraid it’s too late to want breakfast.”

 

At the notion of lunch, Morgana grimaced to herself.  But to the physician she said, “I’d love that, Gaius.  Thank you.”

 

Without wasting a moment, Gaius shooed Merlin off then to the kitchens to fetch Morgana some food.  He himself left a moment later to prepare her a tonic to quell her nausea so she could eat whatever Merlin brought back.  That left Gwen and Arthur at Morgana’s bedside.

 

“Now when do you go about starving yourself just to get back at me, Morgana?” Arthur asked once it was just the three of them.  “How is that fair?”

 

“Fair?  Fair!” Morgana railed, though there was a strain to her voice.  “I’ll give you fair, Arthur Pendragon!  And for the record, I haven’t been starving myself.”  It was blatant lie, and she knew he saw right through it, so she said instead, clarifying, “I mean at first, I didn’t want to eat, but that was before!  Now I can’t keep any food I eat down!”

 

“I’m guessing you’re saying that’s my fault as well, huh?” he snipped, at once berating himself for being so nasty with her.  He did not know why he was arguing with her, when in truth his heart was breaking for her just by watching her from where she lied upon the bed, but, perhaps, it was because he was only angry at himself, at the demands of his own godforsaken pride and legacy that had caused him to turn his back on her like some common whore in the night as she had accused him of doing.  It was only made worse by the fact that he knew, even in her current bedraggled state, he could not bring himself to go back to the way things had been before his father had breathed a word of Princess Mithian of Nemeth and his future.  He owed it to her not to.  He only wished that she could see it too.   

 

“Well, what you did certainly didn’t help any.”

 

That caused him to stop a moment.  At last, he said gently, “You know as well as I, that it was for the best.”  

 

Morgana laughed.  “Maybe for you.  You have so much after all.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“You know,” she said, giving him a taste of his own astringent medicine.  “Still,” she laughed despite herself, changing the subject.  “Call me a fool, but I really did think someone would have asked after me given my absences—not father, for he never cared a scrap for me, and not you, but perhaps your dear wife, I did think she would come at least, asking, but she never did.” 

 

“And would you have welcomed her if she had?” he asked then pointedly.

 

“Well, no. I would have made some excuse and sent her away,” she said honestly, “but you see it’s the thought after all.”  Her eyes brimmed with something; dared he think it pain? 

 

“Well, for what good it is, she wanted to,” he said not so much in a need to clear her name, knowing full well that the more praises he spoke of Mithian and of all her virtues would only serve to harden his sister’s heart against her further, but rather, he thought, irrationally, to deal himself some wound, for the part he had to play in the rift now opening between them, blooming sweet and wild like a rose.  “But I shushed her worries,” he admitted, possessing enough grace to appear ashamed.  “And then you appeared at the wedding.”  Here he seemed to chuckle inwardly to himself, though he felt far from humorous then.  “She told me that you wished us well, and that eased her fears a bit, until they started up again two days past.  I lied and told her I saw you, that you were well; I know not why,” he said helplessly, shaking his head.

 

Morgana watched him from where he stood struggling and had no thought to rescue him.  Perhaps, it was that petty side to her, a part that wanted to inflict pain where it was duly dealt, but for whatever reason, she remained silent, oddly becalmed by the fact that it was not her father nor her brother, but Mithian who had thought to come to her in her hour of need, not knowing that it was she who was the seed of all her woes. 

 

A knock came at the door then, disrupting the lukewarm silence.

 

“Mi’lady, should I—” Gwen faltered. 

 

Morgana looked away from Arthur.  In the moment before when she had spoken with her brother, it had been as if she were not there in the room alongside them.  She sighed, exasperated, whatever strength left in her shriveled and drained.  “Yes, yes.  That’s fine, Gwen.”

 

Gwen unlatched the door and came back with Gaius, who held a vial in his hand.  “For you, Mi’lady,” he said as he offered it to her.

 

“Thank you, Gaius,” Morgana said, accepting what she presumed to be the tonic he had prepared just for her.  She inspected the small bottle in her hand, eyed skeptically the dark liquid contained within.

 

“You’re most welcome,” Gaius replied.  “But if you don’t mind, Mi’lady, would it be alright if you and I talked for moment?”

 

“I don’t see why not, Gaius,” she said, looking up from the bottle to the physician.

 

“Alone?”

 

Morgana frowned, then recovered herself her surprise.  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”  Then turning towards her brother, “Arthur.”

 

“Morgana,” he responded, with a look that stared into her soul, and left her chamber.

 

“Should I leave also, Gaius?” Gwen asked after the Prince was already gone.

 

“No, Gwen,” Morgana answered for Gaius, sensing she might need her just then.  “It’s alright for her to stay, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes,” Gaius replied, “She may need to hear this.  I just wanted Arthur out of hearing…”

 

“Gaius?” Morgana fretted, suddenly alarmed that she was about to be told something sinister like she was dying and her only chance for survival being the small vial she grasped in her hand, for why else would Gaius ask for Arthur to leave the room?  “What’s wrong?  Am I sicker than I once thought?”

 

“No, Mi’lady.  You don’t appear sick at all actually.”

 

“Not sick!” she exclaimed.  “Well, that’s a relief.  But how do you explain this?”  She gestured at herself with the vial still contained in her hand.

 

Gaius’s expression fell flat, and with a low voice he asked, “Mi’lady, I would like you to be honest with me… Have you been seeing someone?”

 

She looked up at the physician quizzically.  “Seeing someone, Gaius?”

 

“A man, Mi’lady, one of whom you are quite fond.”

 

“W-What are you saying?”

 

“I believe you already know that.”

 

Morgana’s heart skipped a beat.  She looked from Gaius to Gwen and then back at her own tightly clasped hands and the bottle held between them.  “…Yes,” she whispered.  “Well, I did, er, was…”

 

Gaius nodded gravely.  “I don’t know how else to tell you this, Mi’lady.  But when Gwen came to me telling of your symptoms as she best she could, I knew them to be of no stomach illness.  They are the early signs of pregnancy, however.”

 

The words hit Morgana like a stone wall, a moment of dumbfoundedness, as her thoughts grasped at comprehension, and then just as quietly as the words fell into place, started to add up, and make sense in her head, she felt herself slipping, her mind reeling as if she had just tripped over the cliffside in her dream, plummeting deep into the unfathomable black below that awaited her.  Suddenly, she felt very cold and small, and terribly alone. 

 

“I’m pregnant?”  Her voice seemed faraway and hardly her own.  She was about to say how that could not be, but she stopped herself.  Of course, it could be.  What else did she think would happen?  Even if he was her brother, he was still a man, fully capable—

 

Her hands shook, and the contents in the vial shifted with the movement, her mind replacing initial shock with registered danger.  “Gaius, Gwen…I entrust you will keep this secret,” she said, as she gathered about herself her regal composure in the face of threat, an act so instilled within her by years of practice as if set in the very marrow of her bones, though she felt a far cry from noble then, and far lesser than the two subjects standing before her now—no, she was far worse than they and their humble occupations; she was mortified, embarrassed, and felt in that moment so incredibly stupid, and yet for all her absurdity, she was still a Pendragon and would not make her blunders known.  She stilled her hands, commanding presence, and when she spoke her voice was level.  “No one else may know—especially my father.”

 

“Our lips are sealed, Mi’lady,” Gaius answered for them both.  “But I would like to offer you a solution if I may.  That vial there that I have given you, it’s a concoction of mugwort and pennyroyal that, if taken early on, may terminate an unwanted pregnancy.  Now, I don’t want to steer you into any direction, but—”

 

Morgana looked away from the physician down at the vial in her hand containing the dark liquid and shivered when she should have gasped with relief.  Here was Gaius offering her a way out, a way that would keep her good name intact, but in that moment, she could not bear the thought.  If what Gaius was saying was true—and part of her felt in her body that it was true—then she now carried Arthur’s child in her womb.  Arthur’s child, but also her child.  Perhaps, if God had not allowed her the man, He would give her this?  A child more perfect than she could have ever dreamed of.  All hers, to raise and to love.  Could she rid herself of such a child?

 

It was a wild thought, and yet she was a woman who had lost everything, so she asked herself what was one more risk even if it was almost certain to cause her ruin?  She had craved the excitement after all, the dreadful thrill, of the those sultry nights she had gone in secret to his chambers, allowing herself to be loved by him, and since the moment he had forbade her entrance there, cutting her off from the source of her exhilaration, it was as if the once steady flame within her had sparked and died, and here she was nothing but smoldering embers waiting, begging to be relit again.  And yet all the while, as she had wallowed in her bed, desolate and alone in her cold room, another fire had burned within her against her knowing, of a child of her own making, something palpable, something tangible that she could one day possess as her own.  Her own.  She had thought she had lost everything, and yet, perhaps, this small miracle growing within her was living proof that there was reason yet for her to go on, in itself a great purpose recalling her back to life, causing her veins to alight with that tense creeping thrill, she had missed so dreadfully.  She had no room then in her body to be afraid, though in truth she beheld the abomination, for what woman was she that she could marvel at the thing that lived within her, knowing it to be bred of the same blood that was her brother’s blood mingled with her blood that gave it life—and yet she did, a giddiness rising from within as she did so with a tremor, with the exultant pangs of fervor, of ecstasy, of the sublime in its most prime and terrible form.  Oh, there would be a reckoning—she would be shunned for its birth, ridiculed for its rearing, and yet, it would be her keepsake of the man she loved against her better judgement, the only part of him she could grasp untainted from the touch of the one she was now to call ‘sister,’ who would now have him as she had had him, and the thought caused her most joy, to know that she had one upped Mithian in this. 

 

“I know the dangers of keeping it, Gaius,” she said at last, even as her pulse quickened.  “I know this baby will ruin me and that I’ll live a wretched existence for it, but I—I cannot do as you suggest.”  She moved to set the amber bottle down on her nightstand decisively, itself sounding with a definitive clatter, then dropped her hands to her stomach, as if to sense, if not protect the new life growing within her.  “I cannot forsake what is mine.”

 

Gaius watched her carefully, and Morgana did not know whether he was disappointed in her quick decision or relieved.  “We’ll just have to think of another plan, Mi’lady,” he said a moment later, although he did not move to take back the vial. 

 

“What?” Morgana asked dumbfounded.

 

“We aren’t about to leave you to the mercy of the Court,” Gwen butted in, as she turned over her hands.  “I’ll see to it that you have new gowns, loose enough to hide your stomach when you start to show.  Gaius will bring you tonics to ease the morning sickness to help you eat.  No one will ever have to know.  And when the time comes, we’ll find a place where you can give birth in secret.”

 

Morgana smiled; she felt warmed by the generosity of Gaius’s and Gwen’s offer, knowing full well that they too could face consequences for helping her if ever someone found out about this child she bore out of sin.  Never in my life have I known such kindness.  “I, I don’t know what to say,” she said now.  “Thank you.  Both of you.”

 

“It’s our pleasure to help you,” Gaius remarked, with a respectful nod to Morgana.  “But now if you’ll excuse me, Mi’lady, I have to find where Merlin ran off to.”

 

“Of course, Gaius.”

 

Once Gaius had gone, Morgana beckoned Gwen over toward her.  “He doesn’t know, does he?” she asked her maid in a frantic whisper.  “That Arthur is the father?  I’d reckon he wouldn’t be so kind to me if he knew.”

 

“No,” her maid answered quickly.  “For all he knows, you’re smitten with one of the knights.” 

 

“Oh, God, Gwen,” she said, the initial thrill dissipating, as cold consequence filled her mind once more.  “What am I going to do?  How long can I keep this secret?” she asked, covering her flat stomach with her hands.  “People are going to question.  They’re going to talk.  And if by some great miracle no one does find out, what will happen after I have the baby?  I can’t just raise a child within the halls of Camelot!”

 

“We still have months to figure all that out.”

 

“Yes, but what of Arthur?”  Now that she had a moment to make sense of the truth of her condition—if one could even say she had done that given how little time had passed—she found her thoughts turning to him not with rage, but sympathy, though she reasoned she ought to be furious, for here again he was, causing her another complication that she alone would bear.  And yet, she did not have anger in her heart then for him, but an awed curiosity.  “What should I do about him?”

 

“You wouldn’t dare tell him, Morgana,” Gwen said gravely, her face uncharacteristically pale.  “If that’s what you’re pondering.  Just think what it’ll do to him.  He’s to be the future High King.  The entire kingdom can’t know that he happened to have a b—I mean, a child with another woman, especially since you’re that woman.”

 

Morgana nodded, understanding at once the meaning behind Gwen’s carefully placed words, spoken to advise, but not offend.  She understood better than anyone the subject about which Gwen had trodden carefully, having known it herself rather intimately, ever since the day she came to know the wayward feelings she possessed for him who was her brother.  Lying with him as she had on more than one occasion—though it had only taken one of those occasions to cause her current condition—had been an act of incest, a capital crime and sin now that she carried the proof of those illicit unions in her womb.  Her child, though conceived naturally, was not natural, and there would be those who would gladly do it harm if they knew the truth of its parentage, just as they would do her harm if they knew she had conceived of it from her brother’s seed.  And what of Arthur?  Such a child could prove his bane, Morgana reasoned, now that her passions had started to cool, and she was thinking clearly—that was what she supposed Gwen was cautioning her.  Though she was prepared to accept ignominy at the hands of her father and the Court for the bearing of a child out of wedlock—or at least that would be the extent of their knowledge regarding her transgression, she vowed—could she risk Arthur his regal fate, his promised future that was all but guaranteed that would be his as the next High King of Camelot to follow in their father’s footsteps?  He had certainly forsaken her on behalf of it, that gilded crown, and a part of her wished to go to him then and speak of the gift he had left her with, this child, this tax, this burden which would ensure her fall from grace; she wanted to make it known to him if only to see the look on his face when she did, when he knew what he had done to her in his carelessness—but it was too late.  He had already wed Mithian, most likely consummated their holy union, and so the child could not prove a bargaining chip to win him back to her side and send Mithian away.  It was too late for that.  So, telling him now would do nothing but cause him shame, or pain, she thought—perhaps both—and while a part of her wished to injure him so as he had injured her, she could not see the good in it.  Perhaps, she was not in her right mind just then, but a part of her wished to shield him from the knowledge of his child and keep the matter hush, secret to just herself and Gwen, the only one who knew the truth.  It would certainly protect him, his ignorance—that was what Gwen was telling her—and perhaps, in a roundabout way it would spare her too, assuming she could keep her condition secret—but for how long?  Even if he did not suspect then there would most certainly come a time when he would—for even if she could hide her pregnancy, she could not so easily conceal the child once she borne it—so what then?  She did not know.  Still, there was another wisdom to Gwen’s words: tell and she could not untell; hold back and she could speak later when it was safe to do so.  She chose caution.    

 

“You’re right, Gwen,” she said, her voice sounding soft and still in the quiet of the chamber.  “Like always.  Though I wish things were different.” 

 

She did not have a chance to elucidate upon that point further, to speak plain of which facets of the hand fate—or more wisely she reasoned—she herself had dealt her that she would have altered if given the coveted opportunity, for at that moment the sound of a steady knock came at the door, signaling with it the arrival of Merlin carrying in the lunch. 

Notes:

Edit 5/30/22: Oh, I forgot to mention that I have a couple vids posted now to go along with the fic. You can find them on my youtube channel if you're interested. My channel name is twistedshipper, same as this account. The first is a general trailer and the second is a vid that follows the story more or less up to this point. Thank you in advance if you do check them out. ❤

Chapter 23

Summary:

Hey guys. Sorry for the couple months' hiatus since I last posted. After finishing the first part I was in need of a break to reset in order to prepare the next part to the story. And here I am finally posting the second chapter to that part. I hope you enjoy. Thank you all so much for your continuing interest in this story. It means a lot to me.

With love,
Jo ❤

CHAPTER TWO: Such Fragile, Broken Things

The revelation of the child growing in her womb brought Morgana out of the depths of her despair, perhaps beguilingly so, given everything, and as the spring mornings wore on to the golden days of summer, she felt if not happiness (for she still had her losses), a certain set of contentment, no, purpose—that was it— she had not known before.  The people of her kingdom were alive and well, busy about their usual goings on, tending the fields and selling their wares on market days, and she, she had now a responsibility of her own. 

 

She found that for the first moment in her life, since the old times at the ages of five and six and seven when she would accompany her mother through the city streets to better get to know the people she once said it was their family’s duty to serve (rather than vice versa), Morgana found she could join them, her countrymen, thinking at last that she belonged amongst them in some small, unknowable way—her strange, secret hardship somehow akin to theirs—and so for the first time in over a decade she would leave the confines of her chamber, taking the time to greet them each day—whereas before she had simply looked the other way about the hall, along the terraced gardens, wherever she went, never leaving the castle proper—when she and Gwen rode out of the castle gates for their new lunchtime routine of picnicking along the shores of Avalon, something she had not done since she was a girl and then only with Arthur at her side, now that the weather was fairer.  During these outdoor lunches, which proved remote (Morgana knew a secret place or two from her childhood), where they feasted on fruit, cheese, and bread snatched fresh each day from the castle kitchens, they planned the future of Morgana and her unborn babe, certain as they were that no one would be in range of overhearing them where they sat amidst the apple trees now springing with budding fruit by the lakeshore. 

 

And each time they sat to talk and eat as the good friends they now regarded themselves to be—no longer to each other just the noble lady and her modest maid—the sun shone above them and the apple grove about them came alive with the songs of wrens and sparrows flitting here and there from tree to tree.  Even the fact that Morgana had rarely spoken with Arthur since the fateful day she had learned she was carrying his child in her womb, outside the abrupt manner in which she had notified him that she had indeed recovered from her illness and hence, now well, told him that he possessed no further need for concern on her behalf (which was more a half-truth, Morgana supposed, than a downright lie), was not a weight to pull her down out of her fragile bliss. 

 

He had moved to question her though, a part of him, she assumed, finding her succinct report, the direct manner in which she gave it, unsatisfactory, but when he opened his mouth to speak, whether to inquire further about her ailment—whatever it had been, though he appeared relieved to see her more or less recovered, that she had gained back some of the weight she had lost in that time—or to apologize for his hand in it, she cut him off at once before he could make out even a word, saying, “Forgive me for my curtness, brother, but you made your choice, and although, perhaps it took me some time, I’ve come round to see the necessity of it, as you said I would.  Therefore, let us go back to the old ways—me hardly seeing you; you hardly seeing me—if that were what you would have of us, for to pretend siblings is too much for me just now, when we both know we are more than that to each other.”  And so turning from his chambers on one odd tranquil day in May, an afternoon summer drizzle rattling against the windowpanes, Morgana gave Arthur the ultimatum he had given her, the same phrasing more or less, just flipped on its head—Arthur had wished for them to be brother and sister still, and she in one quick breath had denied him that, for to her, she was learning she valued herself more than his fickle needs, and so she decided he would either accept all of her, the part that loved him not as a sister should, or have none of her at all, and that was that.

 

She had done it, leaving him gaping at her looking punctured, and herself gliding out of his chambers with a smile upon her face, herself feeling as refreshed as the scent of earth after a summer storm, for the sake of her pride, yes, to hurt him as he had hurt her, well perhaps—but then again, she had done it to protect him, this distance she thus enacted to keep them safe, as in the days of her girlhood, when she had gone to her rooms in private, to do the things she could do to herself to relieve her body and mind of the way she craved him—although this time was different.  She could not afford to allow him to see her, for else that was to risk the chance that he might start to get thoughts of his own, and those thoughts lead to dangerous questions; for the sake of his future, the future he had chosen over her, which though it had broken her, caused her to spend weeks abed in mourning, the draperies closed, the windows shuttered, she understood it now, its importance, Britain, its people to care for it, that was his responsibility; she had been such a selfish little girl, but now she had something to look after too; something that was relying solely upon her, and Arthur, though her brother he may be, could not ever be allowed to come to guess that he had in fact a child waiting to be borne within the autumn of the year.  And that she supposed, if one were to tally the evidence, weighing her actions against her intent, was as sure a sign as ever that still, after all that he had done, and she too having played her part well in their undoing, that deep down she loved him still. 

 

Perhaps, others would have seen it differently, as cruel, and perhaps, it was cruel, but it was the only way to keep the secret safe; such a delicate thing it was, as fragile as her composure, even on the good days, which were fair enough, skies blue without a cloud in sight.  It was on these days especially, stirring some awful memory, that Morgana wondered despite her better self, whether her brother’s newly wedded wife was in the same delicate condition she was.  She hoped not, but understood that such things were only a matter of time, as it had been with her.

 

---

 

During this time, herself first witness to the above noted ‘remarkable transformation’ of Camelot’s first princess, Gwen came to respect Morgana as not only the lady she served, but as a woman in her own right.  Not to say that she never used to respect her—she had always honored her title and position within the royal family, having done nothing short of her best to attend to her—but in those days it had been sometimes difficult for Gwen to see Morgana as more than the spoiled princess she proved on countless occasions to be, the fickle woman who needed her hair combed and her dresses fastened each and every day, multiple times per day.  Now that had all changed—in Gwen’s eyes, Morgana had if not put those frivolities behind her, then had placed them to the side for the more pressing concerns that weighed heavily now upon her mind.  It was a subtle shift, yet one Gwen noticed immediately, in which the arbitrary demands the Princess used to make of her as her maid hired to serve her in her each and every need and want transformed into Morgana asking Gwen politely for not only her assistance with the usual daily tasks such as dressing and the like, but also her guidance and counsel as her only friend and confidante in the matter of the burden she now carried within her body, the stain upon her soul. 

 

For Gwen, this sudden change, if rather late in coming, was a welcome one, in which she observed Morgana at long last dropping in front of her the shallow façade she had always worn before her as royalty to then display before Gwen her true self, which Gwen realized with a start had always been there, as if peeking out from beneath the surface of that mask she had worn all along, if she had only known how to look, how to see pass the enigma she used to dismiss it as.  Now Gwen could see that Morgana possessed a character in her own right that was built on the stuff of substance and hardship she once thought only found innate within those like her of the working class, and void in the class she served for the simple, yet glaring, difference of their opulence which saw their each and every need in life met.  It had been through Morgana in the days since she learned her to be with child that Gwen had realized that this simple dichotomy was not so easily defined, Morgana, who at the age of two and twenty summers, had at long last left the safety of the chamber room she had known since girlhood behind for an uncertain future where the very standing of her good name lied in jeopardy simply for the sake of the child she now carried in secret.  Morgana had entered the real world, Gwen supposed, and finding it laced with consequences to be faced at every twist and turn, now understood what Gwen had always known about such truths in life as how a blessing one day could become a curse the next.  Perhaps what surprised Gwen the most in this sudden, welcome change in the Princess and all its ramifications was how Morgana was taking the newest turns of her life: the man she loved had married another (not that he could have ever married her anyhow) and instead of succumbing to jealousy and hatred she had decided to move on, content with the fact that the baby she now carried within her womb would be her only keepsake from those sultry, winter nights spent with him.  In a couple months’ time Morgana had grown up, or so it seemed to Guinevere.

 

But while Gwen returned Morgana’s trust and confidence that did not mean that Gwen necessarily understood the woman she served.  Morgana was still a mystery wrapped in an enigma to say the least.  The fact that she had freely lain with her own brother, and on more than one occasion, was stranger than strange.  Frankly, Gwen could not wrap her mind around the appeal.  As a thought experiment she once tried to think of her brother Elyan in the same light as Morgana thought of Arthur and the thought had only caused her to feel as if she might retch up, like Morgana, the breakfast she had just eaten, except she was not pregnant, and certainly not with her brother’s child, thanks be to all the goodness in her.  It was disgusting, the notion that brother and sister could come to love one another as Arthur and Morgana had, not to mention morally abhorrent, and Gwen could not fathom how Morgana could find it so romantic. 

 

And then there was Arthur for Gwen to try to understand as well.  While Morgana had explicitly told Gwen her feelings for Arthur, Gwen had never heard from Arthur how he felt about Morgana.  Did he reciprocate her feelings?  Or was lying with his sister some twisted fantasy of his that he got off on?  Since the hapless day Gwen had walked in on them abed together and found out about their secret, it had become increasingly difficult for her to look at the two of them together in the same room, which, fortunately, she seldom had to do now, as they rarely entertained each other’s company as of late.  The last time she had seen them together had been challenging enough, that day when they had shouted at one another and accused each other of being the blame for Morgana’s illness, both yet ignorant of the eerie truth of their accusations.  Gwen had possessed a sinking suspicion then when she saw earlier how Morgana had heaved up her breakfast that morning and her brief fainting spell thereafter that she was pregnant; she had not wanted to believe it yet knew better than to kid herself otherwise.  She knew that Morgana had been going to her brother’s chambers to lie with him for months, so, in truth, it was only a matter of time—she was surprised though that it had taken her so long to get with child.  Perhaps she had been trying to be careful?  Not that she really wanted to think long on the matter; it caused her great discomfort to do so.  She had been only grateful that she had been able to get Gaius in time and that it had been him not herself to tell Morgana the truth she was too naïve and stubborn to see.  And yet, Gwen had watched her take that knowledge the physician granted her in good faith, choosing to keep the child and bear it even when Gaius offered her his remedy, his emmenagogue that would slip the unborn baby from her body along with her monthly moonblood, thereby leaving none the wiser to the child’s existence in the first place and, furthermore, the reputation of her good name intact.  It had not taken Gwen much thought to guess why Morgana had decided to keep her child; she knew that after her brother’s rejection she would want to keep whatever part of him left to her, and it seemed, so Gwen supposed Morgana thought, that it had been God’s will that she carry his child, whether that offspring prove to be a son or daughter.

 

But even as Gwen had lent her loyal support to Morgana that fateful day, she had been initially torn when she had run to Gaius earlier that day for his aid and then later that afternoon when he laid bare before Morgana and herself what she had in her heart suspected to be true all along that Morgana was pregnant with her brother’s child.  It was not an issue of morality that tore into her—she knew the right thing, as always, to be to stick by Morgana and remain true to her; she owed her that at least in service to her—but a problem of having yet another foul secret to keep on her behalf.  The first one she had been forced to keep that hapless morning when she had thought to surprise her lady with some fall flowers to her grievous regret had been challenging enough for her scruples as much as her wish to keep her own life.  Tell a soul then that the Pendragon siblings fancied one another, and she would be dead; Arthur had threatened her that.  But had he also considered then that if someone else found out she knew what she knew about the both of them and had not come clean to the High King and his Court about it that that would most likely mean her head as well?  It was a fine line she walked, danger all about her if she strayed from that one path of protecting herself at all times.  She had decided to protect Morgana’s secret then because it had been in her best interest to do so as much as it was in line with her belief to serve as best she could her lady.  But now with this second secret of the child to be borne out such debauchery, she was in far too deep.  Now if anyone found out about her lady’s secret, there would be no way for her to feign her ignorance of the matter as her maid.  And it scared Gwen to think what would happen to her if ever anyone did find out about the child her lady carried out of sin.  She would be just as damned as Morgana, she knew; she, who had not partaken in the sin itself, but had only turned a blind eye as it had happened, again and again.  Some days, when she felt the magnitude of it all threatening to suffocate her like a noose, Gwen wished, and pled God His forgiveness for that wish, that Morgana had listened to Gaius and aborted the child when she had had the chance. 

 

Gwen had been considering this qualm silently to herself when Morgana, watching her maid carefully after she failed to respond to her question about the dresses she had commissioned, said, presuming her to be in deep thought, “You seem distracted, Gwen.  Is something the matter?”

 

Half hearing her name spoken, Gwen startled to attention to find Morgana looking at her keenly from where she sat opposite her on the grassy bank, shaded by the apple boughs overhead.  “No,” she answered, unsure whether this was the appropriate response, “What?  I’m sorry I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”

 

Morgana selected a ripe strawberry from the basket between them and bit into it.  She tossed the green stem aside to the ground, and reached for her handkerchief, a cloth napkin she had stitched when just a girl, very poorly she might add if she were to be honest, and yet she still felt compelled to keep it with her because of the way Arthur had once praised the skill with which she had embroidered the pattern of birds and flowers that adorned its edges.  This she used to wipe her hands free of the berry’s sticky juice before setting it down beside her once more.  Then she looked back at Gwen, a genuine smile lighting up her face with a gentle glow.  “It’s alright, Gwen,” she said.  “I only asked if the rest of my dresses will be ready soon,” she said looking down momentarily at the dress she currently wore, a purple brocade with a wide skirt that deftly hid her stomach’s slight bump now that she considered herself to be three months pregnant—a guesstimate she figured roughly by counting back the days since her first bout of morning nausea—and was just starting to show.  “It was so clever of you to have gone to another seamstress who was not so familiar with my usual measurements,” she added, laying a hand gently atop of Gwen’s.  “You’ve done well.  I really appreciate that and all you’ve done for me these last couple months.”

 

Gwen nodded stiffly.  “Yes,” she said, feeling suddenly guilty for her last thoughts as she looked down at Morgana’s hand atop her own.  “Yes,” she reaffirmed carefully, only to add self-deprecatingly, truthfully, “I only do what I can, Morgana, and I fear sometimes, most times really, that it’s not enough.”

 

Morgana pulled her hand away to brush back a lock of hair that had fallen forward obscuring her face.  “Nonsense,” she said, tucking the loose strand behind her ear.  “I would be quite the worse for wear without you, Gwen.  You must know that.  You’ve been a treasure to me in, in this time, well, I must say I realize now that you have always been so to me.”  She laid a conscious hand upon her stomach.  “You’ve been here for me unlike anyone else, and that means so much.”

 

“That’s not true,” Gwen spoke, riddled as she was with guilt and doubt and something she thought to be subterfuge.  “Gaius has—”

 

Morgana dismissed this counter to her claim with a wave of her hand.  “Gaius has been a help, yes, but Gaius does not know the full extent of the situation, now does he?  Only you do.  You know my baby’s father.”

 

Gwen choked, then covered herself with a mild cough into her hand as she cleared her throat.  Yes, she did know, knew all too well that Arthur was the child’s father and that he did not know even as she did, she the sole guardian of Morgana’s secret, entrusted with its safekeeping.  She did not think she of all people deserved to know it, and yet it seemed fate’s design that she did, that ever since she accepted the position within the royal household of the Princess’s maidservant, her life had been intertwined with that of Morgana’s.  She recalled thinking that first day of her posting that wherever Morgana went she was bound to follow in her footsteps just ever so slightly behind, and now, more than ever, she realized how true that sentiment had been.  Where Morgana led, she possessed no choice but to follow, as it seemed very much the case with the matter of the child she now carried in her womb.  Gwen held no choice but to safeguard it as best she could. 

 

“Yes,” she forced herself to agree with her lady, seeing no other viable answer she could give.  “I understand you now, Morgana, you are right, and I thank you for your kind reflection of me.”

 

“It’s nothing,” Morgana said, only to fall silent as her thoughts drifted off to other matters Gwen could hardly guess.  Then she came back to the scene before her and the conversation at hand, only to revert to an earlier subject she had been hoping to discuss.  “Oh, but Gwen!  You never did say what of the dresses?  How long until they’re finished?”  She rested an easy hand over her stomach as if to embrace the child growing within her womb, although as of yet she could sense no inkling of its presence within her.  She knew very little of childbearing, but what she did remember from what she had once overheard as a girl from the older pregnant ladies of the Court was that in a couple months’ time from now, she would be able to feel her child stirring within her and the thought caused her to still with merry wonder.  It was a miraculous thought to her that she could shape something so intrinsic to her into something that moved and thought and felt of its own accord.  A part of her yearned to be that far along in her pregnancy already just to know it, that tender feeling of her child moving within her, and yet there was a danger to that wish because that would mean her stomach showing past what her commissioned dresses could contain.  “I don’t know how much time I’ll have, but I am afraid that I will start needing them soon.”

 

Gwen looked up from where Morgana’s hand rested on her stomach up to her inquisitive face, swallowing.  “I just spoke with Yanna about them this morning and she says she should have them done within the week, a week and a half at most.”

 

Morgana raised a hand to her heart, sighed a breath of relief.  “That’s good news,” she said.  “I was beginning to worry.  While I am grateful for the three she’s made for me already, they are not enough to rotate throughout the week without causing the entire castle to wonder why I am only wearing a few items from my wardrobe, even as I intermix them with my regular clothing.  I was afraid I was going to have to continue doing that for the month to come and I worried how much longer I could reasonably go on wearing my old dresses without giving anyone reason to suspect, but a week and a half, I can manage that, I believe.”

 

“I’m relieved as well,” Gwen said simply in response. 

 

“Yes,” Morgana smiled, then frowned, her brows furrowing darkly.  “But even with the new dresses, I will only gain what two, three months?  After that it will be obvious.  Even the dresses won’t be able to hide my stomach then and then what will I do?”

 

“We still have time to consider that,” Gwen said earnestly. 

 

“Perhaps, Gwen,” Morgana countered, “but I recall you saying that a month or so ago, once I had regained my strength, and here we are still meeting here and still without a plan.  The dresses only buy us time.  What good are they when it comes time for me to give birth?  Do you know of a place I can have my child in secret?”

 

“We’ll think of something,” Gwen asserted.  “Don’t you fret, Morgana.”

 

“I can’t help but fret!” Morgana exclaimed, laughing despite herself.  “I mean the world is against me in this, Gwen!  And no one, not even Arthur knows!  What am I supposed to do with that?  How am I supposed to have his child without his knowing, and dare I say it, without his help?”

 

“You were right not to tell him, Morgana,” Gwen said, wondering why she felt so confident on this particular point.  “Don’t you ever doubt that.”

 

“It’s just not fair!” Morgana continued.  “If Mithian were with child, she would have the support of the entire Court as much as Arthur, while I, the one he actually loves, may I remind you, and this kingdom’s first princess, have no one but you!”  She looked askance at her maid.  “No offense, Gwen.”

 

Gwen sighed, ran a hand over her face.  “It’s alright, Morgana.  There’s been no offense taken.  But, Morgana,” she added then, “it’s no good for you to get upset at what should be.  Life isn’t fair.  And this isn’t doing you any good comparing yourself to your sister-in-law if your situations were reversed.  Not to mention we don’t even know of her condition.  Best not to speculate, hmm?”

 

Morgana grimaced.  “Please,” she said, shutting her eyes momentarily as if that simple act could cause her to unhear what Gwen had just said, “don’t call her that.”

 

Gwen gave her lady a knowing look.  “I thought you made your peace with her and all that.”

 

Morgana chortled.  “If only.  How was I supposed to do that exactly when I can’t even mention to her the ways in which she has wronged me?”

 

In truth, she had been civil enough with her sister since the wedding, if that was now what she must consider her to be.  Although, Mithian had not arrived once at her door during the days of her supposed illness, due to her husband’s own shameful deceit, though in her heart, if she had known the truth of her affliction, or what it had then erroneously thought to have been—a self-imposed starvation caused by a melancholic sadness—she would have been there at her dear friend-called-sister’s side in an instant.  But alas, Arthur had lied and Mithian had been left in the dark grasping at pieces, until the fret over Morgana’s absence, of which she could bear no longer, spurred her to act, and so it came to be that she visited Morgana on a clouded morn, the last of April, what those in the yesterdays of the Old Religion once named Beltane eve, before the hallowed day and its celebrated rites were ousted by the Christian kings to conquer the land, remaining forbidden into the days of High King Uther’s reign.

 

The knock at the door had been slight, and the visitor welcomed, mistakenly thought to be Gwen, who had stepped out a moment to fetch the laundry, or Gaius, perhaps returned with another helpful tonic or tea to soothe her morning sickness so that she could eat with relative tranquility.

 

Morgana had opened the door herself, surprised to behold of either suspected, Mithian in a summer chiffon, colored a pale daffodil yellow, and witnessing her, standing there without, though she had faltered a moment in her disbelief, Morgana, forgetting a moment her past hurts, rushed to hug her friend, oddly grateful that it was she standing outside her door and that she had not forgotten her after all.

 

“Oh, Mithian, I don’t believe I’ve ever been so happy to see you as I am now,” she had said, surprised at the depth of feeling in her words as she spoke them, uncharacteristically soothed by her touch. 

 

“And I you,” Mithian had said, breaking away from the embrace, tears shinning unshed in her eyes, causing them to sparkle a warm amber golden.  “Arthur said not to worry, and yet I had to come, to see for myself that you were well.”

 

Morgana had looked down at herself then, relieved that the week past, thanks to the knowledge she now had and Gaius’s medical expertise, she had managed to regain some of the weight she had lost from the time she spent bedridden to her own misery; her skin no longer ashen, but her accustomed pale, her eyes which had been drawn out and hollow, regaining that effervescent spark signaling that her living soul was once more at home behind the emerald irises.  And Morgana was grateful, though she knew not why.  A part of her had relished Arthur beholding her in her sickly state, but Mithian, she was gladdened that she was witnessing her recovery instead, though at the end of the day, were it not all Mithian’s fault that she had languished as she had? 

 

“I suppose you deserve the truth,” Morgana had spoken softly.  “But don’t blame my brother.  He wanted to spare you this until I was up and on my feet again, and here I am,” she said, gesticulating unnecessarily about herself.  “The truth is,” and here she told it in part, “I caught a dreadful stomach illness, that left me weakened, my mind dizzy.  I could hardly rise or eat, which was why I kept to my chamber for so long, though I did do my best to attend the wedding for as long as I could.”

 

“For me?” Mithian asked.  “Morgana you shouldn’t have.  You should have let me know.  We could have postponed it all, the marriage, until you were well.” 

 

Morgana reached for her hand then and clutched it within her own.  “It’s no matter now,” she said, her voice sounding small in the gray room.  “I’m well, as well as I’ve been in a long time.  I’m only sorry that I wasn’t myself when you arrived here in Camelot.  I must have been coming down with the ailment then and so the things I said, I was not in my right mind as I am now, and for that I’m sorry.”

 

“You have no need to apologize,” Mithian answered.  “I understand, completely, utterly.  Will you now forgive me?”

 

Morgana shot a confused look at her friend.  “For what?”

 

“For failing to notice,” she said humbly, “and then noticing, failing to act.”  She looked down at their intertwined hands. 

 

Flushing with an emotion she could hardly name, let alone understand, Morgana felt a wave of panic, dropped her sister’s hand.  “It’s not your fault, don’t you see?” she said.  “Arthur—”

 

“I should have questioned him,” Mithian spoke, raising her head to meet Morgana’s wide-eyed look.  “The truth is, Morgana, you were unwell, and I have been punishing myself for in my brief happiness, I overlooked you, and then when I saw the signs, I didn’t press harder.”  She shook her head.  “I should have known you were not yourself the moment I arrived, for you and I are no mere acquaintances, we were once the dearest of friends, and I miss that.  I miss that, dreadfully, Morgana!”

 

Morgana shrugged, swallowed down the strange emotion coming up over her.  “People change, Mithian,” she managed.  “Grow apart.  Did you honestly expect in coming here we would both be the same girls we were at eight and nine?” 

 

There was a glimmer in the princess’s eyes.  “Perhaps, I am a fool,” she stated simply.  “To think I could recreate the past.  I did not account for all the years between.  And how time and distance changes one in such ways that she can hardly name them in herself, these subtle shifts, let alone see—”  She paused, drew breath.  “Once you were the world to me, Morgana.”

 

Morgana’s hand twitched at her side, her fretful fingers curling and uncurling in and out of a fist.  She snatched up the fitful hand with her other to cease its erratic movement—was she trembling? 

 

“You’re not the only one who has changed,” she spoke tactfully, wishing she could say her name, but it suddenly tasted all wrong on her tongue, something sweet, something sour, something overripe and nauseating, like a worm-eaten apple, felled and rotting on the grass bed beneath the grove at Avalon. 

 

“But it was a time ago,” she said, as if she too were not plagued by those memories, had fixed them within her mind, as unchanging.  She too had yearned for their reunion in her girlhood days, imagining what it would be like, two girls racing barefoot in the woods playing at knights and ladies, splashing their muddy toes into the lake, hiking up their skirts as they did so, laughing and screaming, as girls are wont to do.  She too had not foreseen this, the distance between them; they were all but strangers, but strangers bound as kin, with a boy come between them no less.  Was that not in the stories how all the girl loves died?

 

“It was,” Mithian agreed somberly.  “I just—” and here she stopped herself, so that Morgana never knew what she had intended to say, what she might have outright said if they both were still at that curious, forthcoming age of eight and nine. 

 

“Just know that I take it back,” she said instead.  “My wish.  I never knew that having you so close would mean losing you like this.” 

 

Morgana had frowned, hearing only the part she herself was concerned with.  “You regret marrying my brother?”

 

To that she received no answer, which perhaps would have been answer enough if Morgana were better posed to listen instead of fraught with her own misgivings, so caught up as she was with the narrative she thought this was with herself the lone, spurned victim, and Mithian excused herself from the room without so much as another word, herself too aggrieved and unable to speak the heavy thoughts on her mind for she knew one thing now and that was that her dear friend was no longer the girl she remembered from that long ago stay at the great castle at Camelot, her sole reason for returning a decade later, too late. 

 

To say that she did not come visiting again in the weeks to follow was a truth that Morgana had relished, although Morgana soon forgot why it was so, and in the absence of the one she called her enemy, well it only caused her heart to grow harder, for there were still reminders of her everywhere about the castle, and Mithian possessed too fine a heart not to greet her on those small occasions when they passed each other by, though divulge in her private life she did not, for which Morgana was grateful, not wishing to share her own secrets in expected payment in return. 

 

Neither girl could be what one would call happy, though they pretended well enough to have the other fooled, such fragile things, if each knew where to look, glimpse the cracks and crevices splitting the fine perfection, that they were, and realize the way, they, such hurting things, had harmed each other in their self-imposed ignorance.  Perhaps, if they had still been those girls of eight and nine, so eager to speak their minds and be known, so ready to recognize themselves in each other, why, perhaps, that would have prevented the devastation to follow in the end. 

 

Gwen opened her mouth to respond only to think the better of it.  She knew Morgana did not want to hear what she had to say, and yet a part of her felt she must say if only to show her a view of the world where she was not its center.  “Maybe,” Gwen began, gathering the courage to continue with her thought, the one she knew better than to think Morgana would have any desire to know and yet knew she must say nonetheless, “maybe, you’re thinking of this all wrong, Morgana.  Mithian has hurt you, yes, but is she really the instigator in this?  It was not her choice to come here to Camelot; nor was it her decision to marry your brother.”

 

Morgana snorted.  “You really don’t have to speak so plain to me, Gwen.  I know who is really to be blamed for it all, my bitterness.  It’s just a comfort to accuse her, and part of it is her fault, you must admit, for accepting his hand,” she remarked snidely.  “It’s her I can bring myself to hate after all.  Although, it hardly matters now.  For all her love of me, we hardly speak these days, and I haven’t the slightest rationale why, though it’s for the better.”

 

“I’m glad of that,” Gwen said evenly, although truly she wished Morgana could find some way to reconcile with her friend.  She thought it would do her some good.  “As opposed to whom, then?” she asked instead, playing dumb.  She could not bring herself to speak so insolently of the High King, whom she knew deep down to be responsible for Morgana’s misfortune.  It had been his decision that Arthur marry Morgana’s friend after all despite the Prince’s reluctance, or so Morgana had once explained to her. 

 

Morgana laughed bitterly.  “You know there was a time when I thought I could trust my brother.  Do you know what he said to me when we lay together for the first time?  ‘You can trust me.’  And I did, trust him that is.  What a fool I was to think he meant it when he said he pledged himself to me that night saying that there was no one else he could ever bring himself to love but me.  Then I believed him, thinking that whatever this was between us we were at last in it together.  But I was wrong.  Whatever promises he once made, he has betrayed them now, and I have no one else to turn to when the day turns to dark.  But I guess that was to be expected all along.  In this life we live you can’t really expect someone to stay forever at your side.  No matter how close you are, something always separates you both in the end.  For the fortunate ones, it’s death; for the rest of us, it’s ourselves.”

 

“Can you blame him?” Gwen ventured.  “Surely, he must have faced as much pressure from the High King as you have to have acted as he did.”

 

“Pfft.  If by ‘pressure’ you mean being Father’s favorite, then yes,” Morgana said.  “But you are wrong, Gwen.  Father has always been harder on me.  It was up to me to care for Arthur after Mother died.  I was the one who had to comfort him, who had to dry his tears and tell him everything would be alright, when I was just a child too.  I had to look out for him, but who was looking out for me?  Who was there to tell me it would be alright?  Who was there to hold me while I cried alone in my room each night?  Not Father.  Not anyone.”

 

“You resent Arthur?”

 

“No, I love him,” Morgana responded without a thought, without so much as a doubt, her body trembling, as she picked up a fallen apple blossom, its petals a delicate white.  “No matter how hard I have tried to hate him for what he’s done,” she said, playing with its petals, “I have only ended up loving him the more.”  She tossed the blossom in the air, watched it float down before her nose, smelling sweetness, before it landed, resting amongst others, indistinguishable, in the grass.  She gazed up at her maid, a wry smile lighting her disparate face.  “I love him, Gwen,” she vowed, this spoken with all degree of solemnity.

 

“Yes, I believe you do,” Gwen muttered, alarmed by Morgana’s sudden disclosure of secrets.  Just now, she did not seem to be in her right mind, and Gwen wondered if the time had come for them to adjourn for the day and ride the horses back to Camelot.  She was about to suggest this, along with a bath she thought to draw up for her lady once they returned so she could refresh herself before suggesting she lie down for a bit, when Morgana spoke again.

 

“It’s Father whom I hate,” Morgana said, a shiver rippling through her body.  “Even though, with time, I’ve come to understand why he has always put Arthur first before me.  Arthur is special, he knows that, and so do I, for I have watched my brother grow up.  One day he will be the greatest High King this land has ever known; I am certain of it.  And with him, he’ll bring a new age for Britain, an age of light where we are ruled not just by decree, but by what is just and what is good.  Perhaps, then,” here she paused, but when she spoke again her voice fell soft, quieter than the frantic urgency with which she had spoken before—it stirred something in Gwen, the softness of her voice, like something she knew she must have herself misplaced and left half-forgotten, if only she could remember what it was— “he will welcome me back, and I will be accepted for who I am.  He never gave much credence to the thought that once he comes into what’s promised him, we could be together openly or together at all, for that matter, but I—you must think me a fool, Gwen—I still possess the naivety to believe.” 

 

“There are many things I have considered you, Morgana,” Gwen said quietly, “in the time when I thought I knew you and now in the time that I believe I do, but a fool was never one of them.”

 

“Then what would you call me, Gwen?”

 

It was a simple question, forthright and to the point, and yet it took Gwen off guard.  She allowed herself a moment to think to prepare her answer then suggested confidently, “I would say you are brave.”

 

“Brave.”  Morgana tasted the word on her tongue.  She nodded.  “I like that.”

 

Gwen was about to reply when one of the horses set to graze whickered nervously.  The other rose its head from the tussock it had been chewing, its ear twitching at whatever phantom sound that had seemed to spook the first and gave an impatient stomp. 

 

“The horses—” Gwen threw in.

 

Morgana nodded, coming back to her senses.  “Someone’s coming.  We best be going, Gwen.  Here I’ll help you pack up the lunch.”

 

Gwen nodded her assent, then bent to pick up the saddlebags.  As she worked clearing the plates and packing up the leftover food, she found herself thinking back on Morgana’s comments concerning her father and brother, the only family she had left, and yet the very family that left her feeling so estranged in this peculiar world.  Her father, if he even did love her, hardly considered her, that was clear, and Arthur, well, he did love her, Gwen supposed, just more than he should.  Was that why he had ended things so abruptly with her, choosing to remain faithful to his wife instead? Gwen wondered.  Was that decision of his Morgana so readily labels his betrayal just an act of love meant to spare her future pain? 

 

Gwen thought so.  Not that his decision to call off the affair had done her much good.  It was too little, far too late, for Morgana was already hurt—and still bitter, Gwen realized—and pregnant besides.  If anything, Arthur’s decision now to cut ties with his sister had only caused her more grief, as she considered now how best to navigate her new set of circumstances, he so unwittingly thrust upon her.  That had been her own fault in this, Gwen supposed.  She had been the one to dissuade Morgana from telling Arthur about the baby.  She had hardly known why then she had felt so strongly upon the matter, but now, she thought, it was something to do with protecting Arthur.  For whatever reason, she still believed despite all evidence to the contrary, that what had brought him to share his sister’s bed, it had been entirely Morgana’s doing.  Perhaps it was because she felt she now knew Morgana and could discern the twisted machinations of her mind when they were at play that she considered her fully reprehensible for initiating the affair.  Perhaps it was for the simple fact that it had been Arthur who had then decided to end it that she felt Morgana was completely responsible.  But beneath the realm of rationale, deep down in the stirrings of her heart, Gwen reckoned it was neither of those things, but the simple earnest wish on her part to be able to think well on the man she longed to see as Britain’s next High King.  

 

“Is that everything, Gwen?” Morgana called a moment later, as she mounted her mare, allowing Gwen to set the last of the saddlebags upon her own horse.

 

“I believe so,” Gwen answered, securing the final strap of the last bag.  She hopped up onto her own horse’s back.

 

“Then let’s head back,” Morgana said.  “Come, I know a different way off the main road we can travel.  That way we’ll miss whoever is coming this way.  Few people know of it, so we may even be safe to continue our conversation.”

 

Gwen nodded her assent to the idea, and Morgana kicked her mare into a steady trot.  Gwen urged her horse to follow suit, and soon she was following Morgana deeper into the apple grove.  It seemed they were to follow the lake for a time before turning back onto the main road once more down past the villages to the walls of Camelot.  Whoever had been about to approach their sheltered spot by the lake would be a league away from them by the time they rejoined the main road once more.

 

Yet even with the sheltered sanctuary the apple trees provided them as they rode in still quiet, neither Morgana nor Gwen voiced a word to the other, so preoccupied they both were with their own dreaming reveries.  Both would have been surprised to know that the other was considering the same subject as herself, that subject in question, even more unexpected to them both if they were to know it, the very traveler about to enter their abandoned spot in the apple wood. 

Chapter 24

Notes:

Hey guys. I'm surprised that I managed to get this out to you this soon. I'm excited to finally be able to share this chapter, as in it we do get a better understanding (at least I hope) of Arthur, his backstory when it comes to his lifelong love for Morgana, and just more of his perspective on things since he married Mithian, which I hope is somewhat satisfying. That is to say, I hope you enjoy this update. It's a bit of a long one, so please bear with me. Thanks for reading.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER THREE: The Handkerchief

What Gwen did not realize was that Arthur had his own fair share of twisted.  That each day of his boyhood from those sparse and fleeting memories of the time when his mother was alive through the long years spent grieving after her death to the age when he finally grew into the man he was destined to become, he had always felt a strange attachment to his older, wiser sister Morgana.  It was something, he realized, as the days went on by and the years, he could hardly explain, let alone understand, and yet it was there, had always been there, a present force pounding at the back of his mind, not all that unlike the headstrong waves crashing their cascades along the shore of Avalon on those most desolate, overcast of days, come the gray of November and the harsh dearth of the ending of the year—

 

Morgana.  When he thought of her, he thought of the tender way she had held him, offering her protective shoulder for him to cry against when they had learned that Mother had died.  He remembered, being too young to fathom death and its finality, finding some comfort in the presence of his sister’s embrace.  For him she marked something of this world of the flesh that was still tangible, that could and would shelter him from that world beyond the veil where ghosts and spirits roamed hauntingly, hungrily craving that impossible return, back to the world of the flesh and the living.  Protected in the haven of his sister’s arms, Arthur could hide from them, especially her, the lost spirit of his dear mother, who threatened to come back to him when he dreamed alone at night.  For many nights he awoke after her death, shrieking, terrified and afraid as he recalled the glassy look in her eyes the moment life had left them.  There was something about those eyes that at the same time saw everything and nothing that petrified him so that he stood stock-still in place, too scared and shuttered up to even shiver with fright.  Here was his mother as he remembered her in life, every pale strand of hair in its proper place, and yet the spark of life that had made her herself had fled, vacating the room, leaving her body eerily still and vacant.  That was what had scared him about those eyes.  They were now vacant when before they had housed her soul.  Where had her soul gone?

 

Morgana had only been a few years older than him at the time and yet she had understood.  She had answers for Arthur that even Father did not have.  She told Arthur that Mother had gone on to Heaven because the angels called her there for being such a good person.  They could not have waited for Mother to be old and gray like they usually do, she had said, because God was too impatient to meet her, that was how good she was.  Somehow that explanation made it easier for him to understand—and he never questioned whether his sister was right about what had happened since he knew she was always right in her way—even though it did naught to prevent the image of his dead mother and her lifeless eyes from searing his memory.  Not a day after her death, for the rest of his life, did he not at least once picture her staring out at him with those empty eyes, void of comfort and feeling.  But at least, when he shuddered at the memory, he had the second image of his mother as she had been, full of love and life, seated next to God and the angels up in Heaven.  He saw her smiling as light danced in her eyes.  He had that comfort thanks to Morgana.

 

It was not until he was much older however, a boy of twelve about to grow into a man, that he learned not from his father as he supposed would have been proper nor from Morgana most likely because she had been like himself much too young to recall the matter fully as it happened, but from the Court Physician Gaius the details of the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death.  It had been a disquieting year for Camelot, Gaius had told him, marked by a pestilence that had run rampant throughout both the city and castle, taking with it many lives, peasants and nobles alike.  In an attempt to secure the castle and its inhabitants, his father had made the difficult decision to close off the lower town in a last attempt to halt the illness’s spread from reaching the citadel, but this was to no avail, as he, his father’s son and only heir, contracted the illness when just a boy of four.  His mother had been so distraught to learn that he had fallen sick that she insisted on tending to him herself even against Gaius’s better judgement.  She would not hear of his concerns for her life, his warnings that the disease had proved most lethal on many accounts, as there were many of his patients he could not save, and neither would she be swayed by his father to allow Gaius and several of the castle maids to seek to his care in her stead.  In the end, she had had her way and succeeded in nursing him back to full health—it had been a miracle, Gaius said, since he had been so young and children it seemed were the most susceptible to dying from the disease—but not without paying the price of her own life, as a week after he recovered she fell ill, and that was all left to tell, the story of how she had been lost and he had been saved, the tragic end to both his mother’s life and what little he remembered of his happy childhood. 

 

He had left Gaius’s rooms in silence that day he learned that awful truth, himself straining not to break down and cry in front of the kindly physician, as he told himself he was much too old for such childish things as tears, especially if he was to follow in his father’s footsteps and become Britain’s next High King.  He could not shame himself by crying about such matters when there was nothing he could do; his mother was long dead and gone, his tears could not bring her back any more than his childish wishes he once made for her down by the lake of Avalon to return to him.  He had scolded himself then for his melancholy, assuring himself that his father would never have cried had he learned of her death as he had, his father, whom he partly questioned why he had not sought to tell him about his mother himself, but had chosen to go through Gaius and have the physician tell him for him.  He only wondered on the thought for a moment before the guilt settled in; it had been nightmare enough to have lost his mother at such a young age, but it was another horror altogether to have learned that he himself was the one responsible for her death.

 

He had felt the urge then to do as he had always done when troubled by thoughts less than desirable, and that was to go to Morgana for the solace she provided him with her answers she always had for his every distress.  Without so much as another thought, himself decided, he bore himself down the stairs and through the hall all the way down towards her chamber room—she and he now being old enough to have each their own room—himself just outside the door, his hand about to give a tentative knock on the oak wood, when he stopped himself in his tracks.  He could not go to Morgana now, he realized, for that would be to tell her what he knew, and he knew that she did not know the truth about their mother, his responsibility for her death.  He knew this simply because he felt in his heart that she would never have had told him that softer story about Mother and God wanting her to have a seat beside Himself and the angels up in Heaven if she had known then the true circumstances of her death, that it had been all for and because of him that she had died, not simply because God had been so eager to meet her.  He knew then he did not possess the heart to break and shatter the gentle, earnest narrative his sister had dreamt up to help her, he now reckoned, as much as himself understand their mother’s passing.  Besides, he had thought, what good is there in the both of us suffering from this truth?  It’s my fault she’s dead, so it shall be my burden to bear, not hers.  It is settled then.  I will spare her this, the truth, my guilt, all of it, if only to spare myself from seeing her face if I were to tell her she was wrong.

 

He gave out a laborious sigh then, his decision made to maintain the burden himself alone, and then carried himself back through the hall and up the stairs to his own chamber room that was situated just above her own.  It was not until he was in his room, thinking on his sister, wondering if she was down below him as he ruminated on his shattered, fragile self, and what she was thinking about, when a thought occurred to him that perhaps, just perhaps, there could yet be a truth to Morgana’s reasoning for their mother’s passing. 

 

He knew now that she had died trying to save his life, yes, but did that not prove the innate goodness in her?  That she had been willing to lay down her own life to salvage his own must have been a virtue to God in His High Heaven above.  So, did that not lend credence to Morgana’s theory that God had reached down, scooped her soul up, and taken her away to be with Him for that very goodness in her?  Could it not have been that her illness, painful but mercifully brief, had been His means by which to carry her toward Him all the sooner?  Perhaps, Morgana is right in a way, he reasoned, fretting then where that placed him in the matter.  But by that logic, if God had coveted his mother so, then that would mean he could not be any more to blame for her death; the blame, he reckoned then, swallowing nervously, laid then entirely with God Himself. 

 

God is to blame for my mother’s death, he thought then, equal parts astounded and horrified, and once more Morgana’s story was not so light and loving.  It seemed to him then that God was selfish, thinking only on His own wants.  He himself had only been a boy of four when He had taken his mother from him.  He honestly wanted to ask God, not that he had ever heard Him answer his qualms in the past as much as stories in his bible related this happening often enough in the days of yore, whether He honestly deemed a boy such as himself capable of growing up all well and good without his mother.  But in the end, as much as he deliberated on this point, he did not bend his head, clasp his hands in solitary prayer, hoping for some answer, terrified to be at last met with one or silence, he knew not which would be worse.  In the stillness after, his mind spent from spinning thoughts and double-crossed revelations, his conundrum currently placed on hold, he decided to hide beneath the covers of his bed, which being the bed he would have once he was fully grown was much too big for him at the moment, curled up under the duvet and sheets, and determined at last that sleep would have the final answer, the solution that would save him from the waywardness of the divine.  It was the first time in his life, but far from the last, that Arthur had ever come so close to the epiphany of unbelieving. 

 

The other times rampant and strewn across his adolescence were because of Morgana, the sister he had always dearly cherished as a boy.  Morgana, who had possessed all the answers he had needed and more, who had been there with him during that hard time after their mother’s death when their father secluded himself to the dark of his chambers, drinking and forgetting he still had children to care for even if Mother was gone.  Morgana, who had not forgotten him.  She who had consoled him at night when his fears were greatest, who had cradled him softly against her chest as if he had been her child and she, his mother.  Morgana, whom he came to identify with the soundest form of safety a boy could know.  It was because of her that Arthur lost all faith in God.

 

As he grew older that safe feeling, innocent enough, that enveloped him whenever she was near matured into a deeper, more inexplicable love, a love which would prompt his inevitable turn against God the moment he succumbed not as a boy, but as a man to the draw of her flesh.  At the age of twelve, he no longer regarded her as a replacement mother for the one he had lost, but that revelation did not cause her to go back to just being his elder sister.  She was, in effect, someone different now, meaning something different to him.  Something other than either or, between the two and neither one all at once.  And it was not until he started to grow into the man he now was that he began to understand the strange fixation he had when it came to her.  Whenever she walked into a room sporting a new dress, her hair resting in dark waves against her cheek, he would gasp inwardly just as all his boyhood friends would joke about how beautiful she was.  It was in that moment that he felt God’s dark judgement, His divine punishment for the sin he knew not yet he had so grievously and wholeheartedly committed.  They could admit it, his friends, that quiet radiance that she alone possessed while he, he had to sit there in silence, keeping it to himself and yet unable to possess it, for he knew then, he could never come to take his sister’s hand and bend to whisper in her ear about just how lovely she truly was.  It was not for him to say, God had mandated that with His Word—he had looked it up in his bible, tearing through the pages with a fiendish frenzy to find the exact passage which forbade what he felt he knew to be true for him, his unutterable yearnings for his sister, his unspeakable desire to have her to touch and to hold like a man would only the woman arranged to be his wife—and yet he feared as he grew older still that his friends would one day take that chance for themselves, and worse yet, he dreaded the day Morgana would smile back at them in turn.  It was a reality that frightened him greatly, keeping him up late most nights, his body creeping with jealousy and paranoid lust, that one day a man other than himself would take Morgana’s hand and wed her, causing her utmost joy and happiness, while he had no choice but to do as God commanded him and sit by and watch her walk down the aisle to that future with that man, if he cared an inkling about his soul that was; he was not sure he did, but Morgana, if he broke down and told Morgana how he felt, he feared her response, her rejection, the unabashed horror that would most surely show in her wide eyes, her view of him forever tarnished and changed.  It had pained him, that vision, all these years, and yet, now, even after he had betrayed God, told his sister how he felt, and found his feelings despite reason requited, that was exactly what he had done to her.

 

Having arrived at last at his destination, the one place that always called out to him whenever he was in need of a little soul-searching, Arthur dismounted from his horse and, leaving it to graze in the shade of the apple grove, strode on foot the rest of the way down the little pass between the knee-high grasses to the lakeshore.  Stepping down from the higher ground of the grove unto the sandy stretch of beach before the water, he simply stood, watching the lake for a time, the sheer blue surface glittering with speckles of light in the afternoon sun, before, as was now unconscious habit for him, he reached down to pick up a forgotten, mislaid stone.  He smoothed over the gray rock in his hand, running his fingers over the glossy surface, then without another thought threw it far out into the lake and watched as it disturbed the once sheer surface of Avalon into a dozen ripples.  It had been a couple months now since he had married Mithian and he had come down to the lake to sort out his thoughts, most of which dealing with how unhappy he had become since his decision to put Morgana aside. 

 

I have forced her to live my nightmare for me, he thought miserably to himself.  He had seen the hollow look in her eyes as they both watched, or pretended to watch, since they had really been sneaking glances at each other, Mithian walk down the aisle of the throne room to meet him that day of his wedding.  He had been in a trance that fateful day himself, absently sliding the golden ring onto his bride’s finger, wearing a false smile as he did so, but Morgana, Morgana had been the worse for wear.  She just looked so void, and it pained him to know that it was all because of him.  Sure, she would not have been joyous to see him marry Mithian upon any circumstance, but if he had still promised to keep meeting with her at night when they were safe under the cover of darkness, she would have been able to put up a fake pretense just for his sake.  She had understood, after all, that he would have to marry someone else someday; she had only asked that he would continue to love her alongside his wife, whomever she may be.  But he had forsaken her.  And why?  Because he feared being disloyal to the woman he was to wed?  Yes, and—

 

He had been a fool, thinking—what had he been thinking?—that she could possibly find it in her heart to forgive him for what he had done, severing their ties with that air of finality as he had, the words he had intended to say to soften their blow twisting on his tongue, jumbling up in his head, and that weight of dismay cascading over him, having firsthand witnessed the change in her, understanding then for the first time the change in him, the exasperation of that difference, which could not be unmade, and finally, his willingness to sacrifice the ardor of his body that craved her wholly, devoutly, as he knew hers did him, if only for the understanding that it would not serve them both further down the line, wherever this affair would end—and he was a fool to have thought it over then that day he swore her off to save both her and him, Gwen and Mithian, and how many more innocents there could yet be in this, if only to spare them, this wretched depravity they had shared—it had not ended, oh no, for he was finding out as he once knew so well that the heart only yearns all the harder in the absence of the adored.

 

While she had gone to him a month past speaking of her acceptance for his decision and her recovered health (for which he, by no means a religious man, uttered a small prayer in thanks), saying to the effect that she understood the reasoning, it was no pardon that she gave him nor clemency, for her words were stiff and cold and lacking in affection when she told him in one swift jab that stole the air out from his lungs and left him standing there gutted that she had no wish to look upon him as a brother if he had no wish to see her as the one he loved.

 

Perhaps, it had been the punishment he had deserved, that harsh sentence, cruel in its severity—and oh so very like Morgana when she was vexed—and yet it proved to him that she had not understood why he had acted as he had, promising himself to Mithian in her stead, though it would not make him a happy man.  Could she not see that there was no other way for them?  He had been weary the day he had made his decision, knowing full well it was not what she had wanted to hear and yet it had been out of his own damned selflessness that he had given her up, knowing that he would not stoop so low as to make a periodic mistress out of her in those moments when Mithian pleased him no more and his body could starve away no longer, too desperate to be fed.  He would not do that.  He loved her too much to do that, and she needed to know that her life had more value than that. 

 

And yet it had hurt him, the last word that she had in effect had, a sharp flare in her eye as she delivered it, for him to learn this was the way of her love now, not unconditional as it had been when he was a boy, but contractual, stipulated with terms and conditions and a fine print which had imprinted upon him that he had no value to her unless she could have what she wanted of him, that it was not enough that he was still there, wanting to support her in the aftermath, to help her lead her away from better things than him.  He should have known that in this he could not by any law or logic be consoler and assailant both, and yet he had possessed the vanity to think that she loved him more than that, that she would still need whatever part of him that was left, as he needed her still.  That much was rather plain, though he had done his best to steel himself against her, telling himself otherwise, that he had no need for her, that she and her incessant fancy disgusted him when nothing could be further from the truth—if anything, he had only been upset with the callous way she had treated her friend, and in a way, repulsed by himself for his inability to shake off the enduring grip she had ensnared upon his very soul, despite her nastiness—even as he had watched her waste away before his eyes.  If he was so selfless as he thought, how could he have stood by that day in her room witnessing her bedridden and gaunt and not pledged her heart’s desire if only to rescue her back from the very depths of despair his act of love had sent her?  Why had he not been moved? 

 

Finding this question impossible or perhaps too painful to answer, Arthur bent to pick up another rock sitting unsuspectingly at his feet and hurling it, this time farther than the last, watched impassively as it plummeted into the serene surface of the lake with no more than a soft sploosh.  In the distance, a wren, taking fright at the sound he supposed, darted past into the sanctuary of a stately oak farther off down the lakeshore.   

 

Perhaps he did know after all, and that was what ate away at him most, delving up some deep unpleasant memory, an uncanny déjà vu.  Her emaciated form beneath the bedcovers, sickly in the spring day’s light, casting a ghastly sheen, it was almost as if…and then she had opened her eyes, so slowly, her pupils searching at the huddled forms about her and then landing upon him, the dead look within, it reminded him at once of his mother, the last look when either God had taken her or he had killed her in his ignorance—would he ever know?  As a boy of four he had stood there shuttered before her and then in that room with Morgana he had frozen too, fearing what may in a matter of days, weeks, hours—he had been beyond reason in that moment—come to pass, and he, unable to bear it, too cowardly to own up to it, his part in her demise, had hardened his heart against the pain, against her, knowing that if he were to lose her now it would be the end of him, and out of fear, his alarm had turned to anger. 

 

That call to anger and then meandering bewilderment as he evaded the issue staring stark plain before his eyes, unwilling to believe, even as his mind grappled to make sense of it and come to some logical conclusion, something that he could say to make her better in that instant that was not also an admittance of failure on his own part, of how his decision to end their relations, for better or worse—he had been naïve to think it for the better—though no matter how sound the reasoning, how good the morality, had been in itself an act of cowardice. 

 

That was right, though he still deemed himself no coward, for to do so would be to thrust him back to the days of his boyhood and his first tourney matches, attempting to prove to his father the man he wished in his name to be—and failing, quite desperately, with the excruciating humiliation of a night in the cells, huddled up all alone on the mildewing straw floor as the eternal punishment seared upon his memory—he, the Prince of Camelot and its future High King, though he was wont to admit it, had acted cravenly, no better than that fool Agravaine who dared call himself a knight, in the matter of his heart, forgoing his sister as he had.  Oh, how his blood had boiled that night she had asked him for a dance!  He had known she had only done it to make him envious that he could not ask her the same, but still!  Nevertheless, she should have known better than to stoop so low for it was obvious, Arthur thought, to anyone who had eyes that the knight had eyes for his sister, eyes that once besotted would never look away. 

 

Nothing has come of it, that dance, he told himself reasonably, and yet that truth did naught to assuage his fears where his cousin’s infatuation with Morgana was concerned.  To put it plain, he did not trust the man, despite the present fact that he had not even attempted, to the best of his knowledge, to approach Morgana in the half years’ time since that dance they had shared the night of his champion’s feast, and felt against reason that he must take it upon himself to keep an eye out on him where his sister’s well-being was concerned—call it intuition or his own jealous paranoia, he knew not which, only that he must scrutinize him and her both—and yet how exactly was he supposed to do that when he had, by a husband’s expected duty, to spend every moment with his wife?   

 

His wife, that was the last piece to the puzzle, now, was it?  The reason he had so swiftly turned his back on Morgana?  He told himself so he could sleep at night beside her in his bed—his bed which he never knew before could feel so cold and barren even with another occupant residing so soundly within it (does Mithian feel that same creeping chill as I? he would wonder as he lied awake late at night with her curled up at his side)—that it had been only to protect and better Morgana from himself that he had cast her aside, but while that was true in part, if one were to overlook the dishonest only—he did fear what would happen, to her most of all, if they were discovered together, but it was not his only reason, if he was honest with himself, that he did what he had done—he also knew deep within himself in that sinking, candid part of him that remained self-deprecating, yet truthful that he had parted ways with his sister as he had to protect her, yes, rescue her, perhaps, but also to safeguard Mithian, her faith in him, and perhaps even more than that, to defend his own warped sense of pride and honor, and in a way the trust he had in himself.  Simply put, he could not remain faithful to two women at once, cold logic told him this as much as his sense of what was right and what was wrong, and nor would he allow himself to love more than one at a single time.  For all his life, he thought that one love he possessed, nestled deep within his heart as if a beating part of him, was his unattainable, irrevocable love for his sister Morgana, and he would be right still, for to this day, the very moment, despite everything he had done contrary to that grand ardor he felt for her, his heart yet yearned for her and her alone. 

 

As a boy he had never come to suppose, let alone believe—not even in his wildest dreams, or nightmares (perhaps, that was the more accurate term), not even then—that he would one day come to realize the love he felt for his sister, and even more implausible then was the notion that he would one day willingly give up that love he shared with her for the lesser sort of passion, the gentle affection of a loyal wife and nothing more, and yet he had.  And what for?  What, pray tell, had been his reason?   Because of a sense of goodness, he thought erratically then, staring out at the glittering sheen of lake water beneath the summer sun, thinking of another time, another trip down to Avalon in spring, when the ice was still thick yet upon the surface, and the way his betrothed had reached for his hand, clasping her fingers within his own—their first subtle touch, connoting in him another sense of confidence, other than what he felt he knew and knew he felt—oh how the matter conflicted in his head—speaking of love as she had been, and had said in other words, You have all of mine if only you let me in.  Arthur shuddered, watching the diamond surface of the water, despite the steadying heat of the day.  Was it for that sense of goodness I thought she spied likewise in me, he meditated quietly, something worth pursuing, that I—he stopped the thought before it continued to its disillusioned end.

 

He what?  If he had seen something worth chasing after in her, some likewise sense of goodness she had observed in him, something gone in Morgana the moment she turned bitter at her expense, then why did he feel now so closed off and cold—to her, the world, himself?  Could it simply be despite the very goodness of her nature, or perhaps because of it, that what turned him off from her now that she was all his to possess was the simple, queer fact that he understood, deep down, that she did not belong to him in that carnal, intimate way Morgana had?  That way which, for all its waywardness and keen desperation, had in effect been more akin to his true nature, which, if he were honest with himself, was all jagged pieces of wrongness and quite the opposite of the noble image Mithian had glimpsed?  Had it been for that image, that mirage, so indefatigable and aspiring, that he, in his selfishness, had truly turned his back on Morgana with hardly a word for explanation, wishing to be abashed in its tender light, so akin to the subtle slant of sun cascading down on him on the floor of his cell from the barred window above, as he wallowed, huddled up alone, wishing to be adored and not judged by a father who had forgotten how to demonstrate, if he had ever known, what was only a tender feeling, and named tender, for it bruised? 

 

Tired of throwing castaway stones into the stupid lake, Arthur bent down to his knees, like a parishioner begging penance, though he genuflected before no altar and knelt in no church, and splashed the cold lake water over his drawn face, which seemed rather haggard as of late, a permanent crease at his brow, dark circles etched beneath his eyelids.  Staring at himself in the mirror of the lake’s surface, the water trickling down his forehead like a failed baptism, he startled to think himself suddenly aged ten years, when only a month or two had gone by since he had called things off with Morgana and took Mithian to wed. 

 

“Married life getting you down?” came a voice from behind him, shocking him senseless so that he nearly lost his balance and tipped over into the shallows of the lake.  Thankfully, he recovered himself just in time, and wiping his wet hands on his pants, rose from his crouch to face his observer, alarmed to find he had in effect an audience when he had thought—erroneously so, it would seem—himself alone at last to commune with just himself, his thoughts and the lake water.  When he turned around to face his perceptive voyeur, Arthur was surprised to find him to be none other than Lance dropping down from his steed to greet him.

 

“Ah, Lance,” he said, rolling his eyes at the state he was currently in, water droplets dripping into his eyes from his wet bangs.  “You know just when to find me.  At my brightest moment too.”  He dried his face with his sleeve.

 

Lance laughed.  “I do have a way of that, don’t I?” he said.  “Still Avalon is such a nice place to come to get some peace when you need it.”

 

Now it was Arthur’s turn to laugh.  “And whatever ails you, friend, that you must find peace?” he asked steadily.

 

Lance’s face darkened.

 

“Have I touched something personal?” Arthur asked.  “You needn’t answer me.  I only jest, as you did me,” he added carefully, struck by how accurate his friend’s assessment had been.  If he only knew how so, Arthur pondered to himself, then shook himself of the thought. 

 

“No,” Lance said more to himself than to Arthur.  “It’s a rather unique situation.  I…I think I’m in love, knowing not what to do about it.”

 

Arthur chuckled.  “Love, Lance?  I didn’t know you as the sort.”

 

“Yes, well,” he said somewhat pathetically, “neither did I, until I saw her, and I was struck by just how beautiful she is.”

 

“Well, I can’t imagine that’s such a bad problem to have,” Arthur said, thinking of his own situation.  He lifted a brow in accusation at his friend.  “Unless you can’t be with her?”

 

“That’s exactly it, Arthur,” Lance said, dropping the formality for they were, the two of them, childhood playmates before they ever grew to be knight and liege.  “She is not of my class.”

 

Arthur eyed him suspiciously, then gave a short pleasurable laugh.  It felt good to laugh at his friend’s expense then, no matter how guilty he would feel for it afterward when he took the long road back to Camelot with all the time at his disposal to mewl over this shortcoming of his; it was a relief, he reckoned, to find mirth in someone’s, anyone’s pain besides his own, even Lance’s, though he was far from proud to admit it.  “Who is this princess you speak of?”

 

Lance laughed.  “Oh, she’s not a princess…”  He paused, rather awkwardly, as if deliberating whether to add something further, when he, inching closer to Arthur, conferred to him, rather quietly, “She’s a maid.”

 

“A maid?” Arthur laughed, harder this time.  “Are you making a fool out of me, Lance?”

 

“Hardly,” Lance replied so earnestly that Arthur knew he was speaking the truth.  “I saw her in the market some time past now carrying flowers and she,” he flushed, “she smiled at me.  But of course, it started before then, when I would watch her go from task to task about the castle as I made my daily rounds.”

 

“Just how long have you been harboring this?” Arthur asked, amused.  He did not think Lance the sort to keep secrets, as he always was one to speak whatever thoughts he had, himself, of course, being quite privileged, Arthur thought, to have only good ones one would not be ashamed to speak aloud.  “Does this maid have a name?” he added, his interest piqued now.

 

“Gwen,” Lance answered easily, avoiding the first question, “I believe she is your sister’s maid.”

 

Arthur stared at his friend; a chill laced his spine.  Gwen.  Flowers.  Those two images and he was instantly brought back to the day poor Gwen had stumbled upon himself and his sister abed in Morgana’s chamber, the vase of crocuses she had held crashing to the floor with a shatter.  He had no wish to think of that now, even as a part of him did wonder if Lance had chance met Gwen in the market that same day.  Besides, Lance was waiting patiently for him to say something in return, and he had to think of some way of responding, even as a part of him, a part he could not wrap his mind around, felt a strange twinge of distaste to think that his friend could have a special relationship with Gwen, the Gwen he had come to believe was loyal to only him and Morgana.  “So, you mean to tell me you’re in love with my sister,” he said for a lack of a better thing to say since he had just been thinking on the matter of his boyhood friends and their crushes on Morgana in their youth, a wrong of which Lance had never confessed to Arthur and yet, he had always wondered whether he was ever guilty of, praying that he was not, given how fond he was of the man.  “Figures, Lance.”

 

“No—” Lance professed at once, hurt, only to recognize the error of his response.  “I mean, Morgana is a lovely woman, but, ahh, you’ve put me in a bad place, Arthur.”

 

Whatever tact he lacked before Arthur possessed the grace now to flush at the sheer stupidity of the comment he directed at his friend.  With one callous remark he had managed to dismiss his friend his affection for the woman he admired, and for what?  He could not be sure.  If anything, it should have been a relief for himself to know that Lance did not covet Morgana like his cousin did—because he did not think he could bear it if he did, perhaps, a bit like how Morgana could hardly withstand his marriage to Mithian, he now realized, ashamed—but for some inexplicable reason it was not.  Was it simply because he was envious of his friend his innocent admittance of his feelings for a woman he regarded well and loved?  Because he knew he himself could not speak so freely his feelings for Morgana?  He was not sure, but he felt rather stupid to feel it, the envy, and the frustration, yes, at being forced as he was to part with Morgana as he had, though it had been his decision to make, but something else too, something he could not put his finger on, let alone name.  It irked him.

 

“You’re speechless,” Lance said.  “That’s not good.  Now I wish I never said anything at all.”

 

“No,” Arthur said quickly, perhaps too quickly.  Still, he needed to make his friend understand that he was sorry for the rude way he just dismissed him, without directly apologizing that was, because Arthur never apologized, not for anything nor to anyone, unless she be Morgana.  “I think I understand,” he said carefully.  “It’s hard loving someone you cannot be with, and Gwen,” he paused, then said, his voice thick in his throat, “Gwen is a kind girl.”

 

Lance stared at him, watching him carefully.  “Arthur,” he said casually enough, though on the inside, he was wavering, wishing to hell and back again that he never opened his mouth to confess his private feelings to the man he thought his friend because he knew better than to do so from years of knowing him; display a skill he had and Arthur would find some way to try and best him, mention some interest he had and Arthur would take interest as well, so it led by rather cruel logic and surely followed the pattern that state the name of the woman he loved and Arthur, he would do his damnedest to possess her too. 

 

“You almost speak as if from the heart,” he said, swallowing thickly, even as he attempted a lighthearted jest.  In everything, he had always done his best to stand by Arthur, not only for the better traits he saw in him of courage and valor, but because he had pledged his loyalty to him and his family; so in this, this private matter of his heart—he closed his eyes, gave out a sigh—he did think if it was required of him, he could give up Gwen for him too, if he so desired her.  “Dare I say it,” he spoke quietly, thinking back on an earlier conversation he had shared with him one fine spring evening on the training field, the both of them spent from combating the other, yet Arthur had begged him to stay a little while longer because he had held no wish yet to go into the dinner awaiting him along with Princess Mithian.  It struck Lance like a sword to the heart then, the realization.  It had been back then, even then, he saw it now, that Arthur had claimed first the woman he so desperately loved; try to deny it as he could, and deny it he would, Lance knew it now, the truth for what it was.  He looked steadily up into his friend’s eyes, and said, his voice clearly pronounced, “Have you met the one who would pull you away from duty, but toward love?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arthur said frankly, himself already forgotten their past conversation that day on the training grounds, its significance, for it mattered not to him now.  He had chosen, and he had chosen wrong.  Now, all that was left for him was to live with the decision.

 

Lance chastised himself silently.  Why did he bother trying to expel the truth from Arthur?  He knew he would never admit it, even if he begged him to tell him plain whether he himself had already taken Gwen, like he knew he did the noble ladies of the Court, and desecrated her.  Did he really just think that of Arthur, the liege he pledged his sword to, his childhood friend?  Yes, he believed he did, and yes, if he was to be honest, and an honest man he was, he did not think it past him, this taking advantage of Gwen, her kindness, as he noted of her, by convincing her to share his bed.  He did not think it past him, perhaps, but what of Gwen?  Whatever he thought of Arthur just now, and it was poor enough, sedition in his mind even, he could not believe that Gwen, his Gwen would give herself up so readily.  No, she had smiled for him that day in the market; her heart, it must surely belong to him.  And yet he could not belong to her, like Arthur could, or any of the knights for that matter, for he possessed no carnal urge to lie with her even if she was willing, unless he could do so as her husband as was proper, as was good, as once the Knights’ Code sanctioned.  What had happened to those days of chivalry? he had always wondered, although a part of him, the wiser, shrewder part learned in the ways of the world, reckoned that those glory days had been nothing but a bedtime tale to tell young boys like him to foster in them that burning, insatiable desire to pledge their lives to the service of all in need, unbeknownst to them then that the ‘all’ in question was the fleeting whims of their king and country. 

 

“There is someone,” Lance said softly enough then, though his gaze on Arthur hardened.  “You may not want to admit it, but there is.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lance,” Arthur repeated, doing his utmost to deflect the memory of the one implied in his question, though of course, nothing, no thought or will of his own was quite formidable enough to prevent conjuring up the ghost of her in his mind. 

 

“Sure, you don’t,” Lance said, laughing wryly now in spite of himself, laughing, he supposed later when he thought back on the painful memory, because otherwise it would have been tears he shed in front of his friend that balmy summer day at Avalon, and he could not have borne that.  A part of him wanted to push Arthur further into a full confession, but thought it unwise at the moment, perhaps mostly because he could not fathom then how he himself would react, he who never broke his calm composure when facing the enemy in battle on the front lines, let alone in conversation with any man he found himself in disagreement with, to such a deliberate act of personal transgression on his friend’s part, so he changed directions altogether.  “But come now,” he said then, “why have I found you here, old friend, by the waters of Avalon, throwing that very water on your face no less?”

 

“Why are you here?” Arthur countered with a frown, ignoring the question.

 

“I came to say a prayer,” Lance confided quietly without embarrassment, another secret freely given to the man he served though he knew not why he gave it.  “Or rather a wishful thought, an ask for guidance, you know, to God or whoever listens here, watching over this place—” he paused, then added in quiet contemplation, as if speaking to no one but himself or perhaps the lake spirits rumored to have once dwelt here in the grove beside the shore in the days before High King Uther and his conquest to civilize the land itself and tame it into submission, “Almost like that old legend Morgana told us when we were young.  But now I see there’s no need for that,” he added stiffly. 

 

Arthur rolled his eyes, the accusation going clear over his head.  “Oh.  Well, you would be right in that.  Avalon and wishes coming true, it’s nothing but an old wives’ tale, surely.”

 

“And yet here you are all alone throwing that water upon your face,” Lance replied pointedly.  “I would have thought you would be very happy as of now, married to a beautiful woman as you are, unless she is not the one, like you once confessed to me that night we sparred on the training field to forestall you having to go into dinner with her.  I thought you had a change of heart since then, that coming to know her the better, you had changed, and had perhaps married for love as much as out of need, but now I can see that I was wrong.”

 

The memory rushed back to the forefront of Arthur’s mind at once from where it lied buried in the half-forgotten recesses of his consciousness.  He remembered that day, his reluctance to dine with his then betrothed, and the way his talk with Lance had convinced him of the belief that he could not condone himself to love two women at once, albeit with the opposite conclusion; that late afternoon Arthur had made his choice between the two women before him and he had chosen Morgana, so confident in his decision he had been that of the two it was she he could not live without, and he had been right, he could not live without Morgana, and yet what did he go and do?  He gave her up in one single act of selfishly selfless love and took her friend to wed in her place, knowing he could not have her properly as he wished.  Arthur gave his friend a stern look; he possessed no desire to think any longer on his lamentable decision Lance’s mention of the day stirred up within him to the man’s ignorance.  “Just drop it, Lance,” he said then, an edge to his voice.  “I have a lot on my mind.”

 

“Okay,” Lance said softly, before turning his back on his friend—he felt he was done speaking with Arthur then, that there was little if anything left that could be said between them, that they were in effect at an impasse now, Lance possessing no other choice but to allow Arthur to live his life as he knew he would while he on the other hand was left to salvage what parts remained still beating of his hurting heart—and returning to his horse to mount it once more.  “Just remember, Arthur,” he called back, out of a sense of pity then more than anything he supposed, from where he sat upon the saddle, reins in hand lending to the notion Arthur held watching him that in a moment he too would be gone, his dear friend exited from Avalon, and he himself alone, alone once more—suddenly, he did not crave the quiet—“there’s nothing you can’t talk to me about.”  And with that he stirred his horse into a trot and trudged back the long distance towards the walls of Camelot.

 

Arthur looked after his friend for a time until he was swallowed up in the darkness of the grove’s undergrowth, becoming one with the shadows of the trees.  No, he thought to himself, you’re wrong, Lance.  There are some things I can never speak of, not to you, not to anyone.  He sat down on the sand, rubbed his face in his hands, and mewled over that thought, the fact that he could not, upon any circumstance, trust his deepest, darkest secret to the safekeeping of anyone but himself…and Morgana, not that he could talk to her now.  

 

And then, though he wished it not, he found himself lost in a reverie from times past, the tender summer days of his childhood. 

 

Morgana had been laughing.  He had always loved it when she laughed.

 

---

 

The sun had shone bright over the lake of Avalon, causing its waters to gleam with an airy light that seemed to dance over the body’s surface like the glittering of a thousand speckled shards of glass.  That was what the monks in the monastery on the island off the shore had named their abode, Arthur recalled as he remembered, Glastonbury, the Isle of Glass, for the way the light played upon the waters surrounding it.  Watching then the water, Arthur lifted a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the brilliant light reflecting off the lake, marveling in its beauty, a treasure that only became more profound with age. 

 

He listened carefully to the sound of the water lapping the shoreline, a soft swooshing beneath the cries of the wrens circling the sky overhead.  Everything else was still, and Arthur found that stillness, the calm evenness of sight and sound which always pervaded Avalon from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn again, to be a part of the mysticism of the sacred place.  To him, Avalon felt out of sync with the rest of the normal time continuum that held sway over Camelot, the city he called home and knew so well, and the rest of Britain, as he only supposed it must for it sounded right by his reckoning.  Just that day, the wind’s low hum coupled with the echo of the water touching the sandy stretch of beach created the illusion for him that time itself here ceased to exist as it should.  Here, a second could last an eternity, he was almost sure of it.

 

But the peace he felt was soon interrupted by the splashes of his sister running into the lake.  From atop the hill that rose before the lakebed, he watched her pull up her skirts as she tested the water with her feet.  It was only early summer, and he imagined the water would be cool to the touch.  He could almost feel the squish of the mud between her toes, the droplets of water running down her legs as she wadded a bit farther into the crystal-clear waters.  He saw her turn her head back toward him now, her long raven hair framing her beaming face.  Both her teeth and her eyes sparkled with the grin paving its way on her face and both were equally blinding as the water’s surface as it glittered in the sun. 

 

“Come in, Arthur!” she called out to him.  “The water’s nice!  Not too cold!”

 

Arthur found himself not entirely convinced.  As long as the lake was not covered in ice than it was perfect swimming conditions for Morgana.  For himself, he preferred the water to be a little warmer and he usually found himself waiting until midsummer before he stepped a foot into the mere.  But something about Morgana’s exuberance as she wallowed in the waters altered his mindset.  If she was happy, he was more than willing to feed off that happiness, even if that meant taking a dip into the cool lake.  He soon found himself untying his boots, pulling off his socks, and rolling up his pant legs.

 

In the distance, he heard Morgana clap excitedly.  “What’s this?” she cried teasingly.  “Is my little brother actually going to join me?”

 

Arthur walked down to the shoreline, passing through the tall grasses and reeds.  “Hey!  I’m not so little!” he shouted back.  And he was right.  He was a boy of twelve winters now, a far cry from the little kid he had been, always running to his sister for consolation for his troubles.  Now he was about to be a man.  He had no need for his sister’s help.  Well, maybe only to tell him when it was safe to swim.  And only then.

 

He was about to place a tentative foot in the lake, when he second guessed himself, letting his toes grace the water’s surface only to recoil and pull them away.

 

Morgana shook her head.  She was practically swimming now.  Clearly, she no longer cared about staying dry.  Her dress was soaked through, and Arthur observed the way its wetness highlighted her body in a way he had never noticed her body before, hugging the curve of her waist and—his cheeks flushed—breasts.  Peering closer, he could see the raised nipples and his heart rammed in his chest for the noticing.  Suddenly, he felt woozy and warm, not at all as he should, given the coolness of the lake before him.

 

“Come on, Arthur,” she berated him, rolling her eyes.  “It’s not that cold!”

 

“Right,” he said, “but Morgana, you’re like a fish.  The water never bothers you.”

 

Morgana spat lake water in Arthur’s face like a fountain spout.  “Come in,” she said, “Or do I have to make you?”

 

Arthur wiped a hand over his face.  He sighed, resigned.  “Fine,” he said, taking a step into the water, “if you insist.”  The water, though chilly, was not as cold as he expected.

 

He was about to put a second foot in when, out of nowhere, Morgana tackled him, causing him to collapse into the water with a loud splash.  Feeling the surge of water hit his body like a chilled wind, he leapt to the surface, spluttering.  “Morgana!” he shouted, unamused, as he flung his wet bangs out of his eyes.

 

Across from him, his sister had a hand clasped to her mouth as she chortled into it.

 

“You think you’re so funny,” Arthur said, scathing, flinging water from his hands.  “But you’re not.  More like a little child, as I assume this is how a child would behave,” he finished.

 

Morgana laughed harder.  “Oh really?” she asked through a grin that only served to prove her guilt.  “Are you implying that it is me, not you, who is truly the immature one here, Arthur?  Or am I mistaken?  Because I’ll have you remember that I have three years on you.”

 

Arthur did not need the reminding; he could tell, just by looking at his sister, at the way her body curved when years ago she had been just as scrawny as himself.  He felt his face tinge with pink.  Why was he so embarrassed?  Morgana had only grown up in the last few years.  As a girl of nigh on fifteen summers, she would be nearly a woman now, and so it was only fitting that she would appear as one.  Nevertheless, this change, no matter how natural, unsettled him.  It was only worsened by the fact that he did not know why.

 

“Right,” he said, avoiding her eyes, even as he felt her fixating them on him.  Without looking, he saw them, the way they shone bright with the green of the forest.

 

“Oh, don’t concede so easily,” Morgana snarked.  “How are you to be High King one day, Arthur, if you give in to someone who opposes you just because she happens to be older than you?”  She eyed him knowingly, cocking her brow, then burst out into a fit of giggles.  “I’m only messing with you,” she simpered.  “Will you relax already?  Why won’t you look at me?”

 

Arthur looked and, without a plan of what to say next in his head, felt struck by his sister, the way she gazed at him, it was almost…no, he was imagining things surely!  She was only his sister, his annoying, older sister, that was all.

 

But either way, Arthur felt compelled to draw in a deep breath before answering.  He felt himself about to say that he could not hope to look at his sister for fear of wanting to gaze at her, but something in him stopped him for uttering the words aloud.  Instead, as the blush dissipated from his cheeks, he found himself avoiding Morgana’s question altogether by offering up one of his own.  “Morgana,” he asked, suddenly feeling small, like a little boy, “do you think…” he paused, then forced himself to finish, his words rushed in a single breath, “do-you-think-I’ll-make-a-good-King-one-day?”

 

Morgana frowned at him a second for the question had thrown her off guard, but then her eyes softened.  “Arthur,” she said, drawing herself from the water and stepping a few feet to reach his side.  She looked deep into his blue eyes, the color of the lake when the sun shone down on it.  “Of course, I do,” she said, her own unanswered question long forgotten, not unlike how a vivid dream loses its definition once the sleeper wakes.  “What makes you ask that?”

 

“I just…”  Arthur did not know what to say.  He had asked the question to avoid Morgana’s own, the one which had made him deeply uncomfortable for some reason unknown to him, but now that he thought about it, he was worried about his future.  Someday he would have to rule as High King after his father was gone and the idea frightened him greatly.  How could he carry the weight of thousands of lives upon his small shoulders?  How could he govern them all so that every single soul lived in peace and harmony?  His father had done that, the moment after the Great War when he ordered every practitioner of witchcraft and magic executed for their crimes against the kingdom.  That sole mandate had brought about a new age for Britain, one in which its people could live without fearing the dark, enigmatic pull of black magic, the blight that had encumbered the kingdom for far too long.  But even then, with magic ousted, there were still traces of its practice every now and again, which his father had no other choice but to stamp out the moment the practitioners reared their ugly heads.  And aside from that there were the daily squabbles of common men.  His father oversaw jurisdiction to those petty crimes and brawls as well with great success.  Arthur only hoped that he could do the same one day, a day when he would not have his father around to provide him with much needed guidance.  He did not know what he would do without his father and feared the eventual day of his kingmaking as one dreads that day one passes from this earth, knowing himself to be powerless to stop its coming. 

 

But, turning to look up at his sister, Arthur knew he did not wish to burden her with all that.  Yet, she looked at him curiously now, and he figured he owed her some sort of explanation for his sudden self-doubt.  “I just wonder sometimes whether I’ll amount to a great king like Father,” he confessed, “whether I’ll know what to do and say when the time comes.”

 

“You will, Arthur,” Morgana said, and her voice bespoke with confidence.  “I know you will.”  She lowered her eyes from his, grazed her hand against the surface of the water, rippling it in circles that broke against her waist.  “And,” she added then, her voice ringing with music to Arthur’s mystified ears, “even though Father will not be there, as Mother has not been here to see us grow up, I will be there.”  She looked deep into his eyes.  “And you can count on me always being there, steady at your side, come whatever may, no matter the difficulties you may face.  I will stand by you, my brother, for I believe in you.  And I believe you will bring about a gilded, golden age, grander than the one Father now holds over Camelot.  You know I’m never wrong,” she finished, smirking somewhat impishly.

 

Arthur stared at her dumbfounded, mesmerized by her words, her stout belief in him, and the way the lake water glistened upon her pearly white skin in tiny shimmery droplets.  He nodded.  “Thank you.”  The words left his mouth in a whisper, but he reckoned she heard him, nonetheless.

 

“Now will you stop your fretting for a moment and join me for a swim?” his sister pressed.  “It’s the first warm day of summer and I would not have us waste it with all this talk of futures spent ruling kingdoms!”

 

“Okay, Morgana,” Arthur conceded, and lugging himself into the water after her.

 

Afterward, when they both had swum their full, Arthur recalled their journey back to the castle.  The daylight had started to wane, the sun, beginning its descent below the horizon, touching the surface of the water in crisp streaks of orange rays, when they both agreed it was past time for their trip home.  Arthur pulled his sister from the water, her skirts swirling before her as she exited the breadth of the last wave and coming to rest at her side in a sloshing, dripping heap.  He smiled at her, tentatively, the last light of the sun gleaming upon his face as he did so, and Morgana returned her brother’s smile, smoothing back a damp lock of ebony hair from her face.

 

“Shall we?” she ventured, taking a step onto the sandy shore.

 

Arthur nodded.  “I left our horse tied up at the apple tree up there.”  He pointed to the top of the hill where the grove thickened once more.  He dropped his sister’s hand from his own, walking a pace, then bent to gather his boots.  Morgana found her own misplaced shoes.  Then the two of them, carrying their footwear for their feet were too covered in sand to bother with the hassle of putting their socks and shoes back on, walked the short distance up the hill to where the horse was waiting, patiently, as Arthur promised she would be. 

 

He untied her from the tree that held her captive, giving her a fallen apple in gratitude for the long wait she had endured on their behalf, as Morgana climbed up upon her back, letting her feet dangle off of one side of her grey flank.  Arthur drew up right behind his sister, taking the reins in his hand.  “Are you comfortable?” he asked Morgana.

 

Morgana opened her eyes, waking at the sound of her brother’s voice.  She had been leaning against his chest, having nearly fallen into a listless sleep against him after all the exertion of the day.  “Very,” she replied, her voice sounding sleepy, and closed her eyes once more.

 

He had taken that to be a sign that they should be on their way and so nudged the mare into a steady trot.  She took them through the cover of the trees, their leaves lit with the last light of the setting sun.

 

---

 

Arthur came out of the memory watching the lake water as it glittered and shone in the summer sun just like it had that day at Avalon just over eight years past now.  Where he sat, it was the same spot where he and Morgana had played too many times to count in their youth, that afternoon he reminisced on being one of the last of those happy, carefree days they had spent together here in that fashion.  After that trip, something had changed between them.  He had known that on his part, it had been not too long after that particular day at Avalon that he realized with a leveling shock to his mind and body the feelings he had been harboring for his sister, perhaps, his whole life long.  He knew them immediately to be unnatural of course, his desires for her, and yet as much as he had tried, admonishing himself many, many times, he could not sway the hold they held so fixedly over his mind.  The only solution that presented itself, the only way he thought to cope with them, his wayward feelings, was to remove himself from his sister’s presence altogether, as it began to pain him most excruciatingly to be so near and yet so far from her physically, given how they shared most of the same living spaces and yet no matter how close their proximity to each other, he could never simply just reach out and touch her for the fear of what she would think.  And so, in the weeks following that last excursion down to the waters of Avalon, he started to distance himself from his sister, surprised to find that she likewise never seemed to go much out of her way on her own to seek his company.  That should had been a telling sign to him then that perhaps what he had felt, whatever it was exactly, she felt it too, the need to separate herself from him as much as he knew he did from her, and yet the abnormality of her behavior slipped past him unnoticed.

 

“That had been the beginning,” he said softly to himself, watching the steady calm of the lake’s surface, so uncharacteristically still when compared with the shallow waves that day of his memory.  “Of eight years,” he continued likewise to himself, “where we each suffered in silence for what we each felt, never knowing in all that time to have an unexpected ally in the other.  What would have happened instead, I wonder, if we spoke our hearts then?  Would it have changed anything?”  He paused, trailed his hand across the sand in an attempt to shelter his mind from the answer he knew deep down inside himself, then looked up at the sun—it was lowering in the sky, preparing to set for a night of slumber, of rest.  That made it early evening, he reasoned.  He should be going and soon, if he wanted to make it back to Camelot before dark, before Mithian would start to worry for him, as he knew she would. 

 

He wondered then if she, the woman who laid claim to his heart, if she had missed him during his absence, then clarified, if she had even noticed he was gone at all.  He reckoned she did not, for they rarely saw each other these days, outside the courtroom functions.  In a way, it was quite poetic, he thought wryly to himself then, that after the winter they had spent together wrapped in each other’s arms as they had been, for them to go back to the old ways of the formal decorum with which they now regarded one another, as she had wished.  It seemed no matter how much they had each thought they had changed, that old habits died harder.  It was easier, he supposed, for them both to go back to avoiding the other, though he had hoped to salvage the easiness they had once shared as children, being brother and sister still, if only to give the pretense that the heartbreak they rendered upon each other never occurred at all, but then it was a two-edged sword, the distance they reformed between them, because, while it enabled them to forget if not forgive the painful jabs of the past, it also had the unintended effect of causing them to disremember truthfully the good times they had together experienced.  And, perhaps, that in itself was worse than the solitary pain, the anguish they had so insensitively, unthinkingly inflicted upon each other—Morgana in her inability to forgive and he in his willingness to do right.

 

Arthur rose from the sand, not bothering to dust off the granules that clung to his pant legs.  He was about to walk up the lonely hill into the apple grove where his horse waited for him still, or at least he hoped, when he looked down and noticed a cloth of unblemished white lying on the sandbank.  He bent to pick it up, to scrutinize it more closely, when his heart caught in his chest mid-beat.  The patterns upon it, an embroidery of birds and flowers done in a less than diligent hand, he knew this work instantly—it belonged to Morgana, he remembered how she had worked on it as a girl, one of her first better attempts at stitchery; she had been so proud of it, this handkerchief, and had showed it to him most boastfully, even after she had complained to him about it the duration of the week she had spent crafting it at her governess’s request.

 

He smiled to himself looking at it, but then wondered, how did it get here?  By the look of it, so clean and white, with just a faint pink blemish coloring its edges, it had not been here long on the sand; otherwise, it would have been damaged.  So that only allowed him to think that it had been left recently, even earlier today, perhaps, by its pristine condition, which only meant that—

 

“Morgana was here,” Arthur said to himself, shaking his head at the coincidence, only to then realize that it was no such thing.  The two of them were blood; it made sense that they would both think to come down to Avalon from time to time.  But on the same day?

 

“Why had she come here?” he muttered softly to no one, himself not expecting an answer to his question even as he listened for one in the eerie stillness of the grove.  He was answered then with the call of a culled wind, its sudden, inexplicable draft sounding with a restless keening, but Arthur, unable to speak its language, knew not what it had in effect conveyed to him, if there was any meaning to be had at all.    

 

Shivering, he slipped the handkerchief into his pocket; that at least felt like the right course of action.  Whether he would return it to her or keep it for himself as a precious memento of her and the childhood they had shared was another question, one he could not answer just of yet, itself as elusive as the keening wind, it too a ghost of the days gone by, which could not be had again, for right now, it was getting on to be much too late for such ruminations and he, he had yet a few miles to ride before reaching home and the quiet discomfort of his wife’s arms.

Chapter 25

Notes:

Hi guys. I know a week hasn't even gone by since my last update and here I am posting again. But to be honest, this is a very short chapter after the monster that was the last one, more of an interlude, or a coda to Arthur's experiences described in the last one, as well as a call back to the prologue of the story. I hope you like it.

Thank you all so much for engaging with this crazy fic of mine. It means a lot to me.

Jo ❤

Interlude: What lies within, which cannot be expressed without

Summer. Eight years prior—

 

When she had returned to her room later that afternoon, Morgana had latched the door behind her, and leaning beside it, took a deep, shuddering breath, reveling in the fact that, her maid nowhere in sight, she was completely and utterly alone.  Her eyes shifted about the room, gazing over the bedplace to her left and the dressing table across from it out to the windows etched into the far wall that overlooked the courtyard below, giving view to all sorts of people—nobles and peasants, servants and soldiers—as they hustled about their busy lives, which were remarkably filled, Morgana imagined, unlike hers. 

 

It was the same room, the room which had recently been bequeathed to her now that she had reached the onset of her womanhood—a gift perhaps not so much for her and her growing up, having outgrown her child’s nursery and the prattling of her governess, but rather because her father had deemed it unfit, she supposed, that she continue to share space with her brother, as he was in need of rooms of his own, the ones he must inhabit, she supposed again, now that on his last birthday he had been named Crowned Prince, their father’s only heir, and thus proclaimed a man; her needs and this gifted chamber, she gleaned then, were only secondary to his—and yet now, for the first time, she saw it with a spark in her eye, as if before now, this day, this moment, she had been living in a world of muted shades only to find that the world hummed and thrived in such vibrant hues of color unadulterated, and that color, the first the human eye did see, that carmine tone so fiercely bright to stop the heart upon its sight, and in its shedding, bleed.  She drew in another breath and gasped for there—

 

There it was—the revelation.  Morgana could see it there, hovering, like the dust floating in the filtered sunlight pouring through the slants of her shuttered window.  She raised a shaky hand to her lips, pressed the tips of her fingers to the sensitive skin there, flushed with that same delicate red, thanks to the blood rushing there, as if—  The thought escaped her, dissipating before her eyes, vanishing in the filtered dust, that ghostly play of near-light and all-consuming shadow that left her all but abject in its silence to wonder: How—how it had been that she was so blind before that she could not see what was so visible to the touch, aptly known within the body (for the body knows what the mind cannot even pray to grasp) and earnest in the eager thrumming in her veins, as her heart beat and pumped the blood within them, the blood that was her lifeforce, keeping her alive, and yet itself the origin of her secret shame?  How, how it had been that she did not know when in her soul she had known the truth of it before the world was made and he the maker enter her life?  She had held him as a babe, as a little child, the miracle in her arms, babbling before her with a smile upon his face, as she, only a few years elder, looked down upon him in holy wonder, like the Virgin Mother upon the lit eyes of God.  How she had not known then, when she had first laid eyes upon him, that was the wonder to her now as she stood erect in the silence of her chamber, and even stranger yet was how she had finally come to understand after this warm summer day together spent swimming in the Lake of Avalon, picking and biting into the tender, yet still unripe, fruit that grew upon the trees residing in the grove along its fabled shore after they had washed their bodies clean of the dust and dirt enmeshed upon their skin in the purifying waters.  And yet now she knew, knew it as surely as the rippling water of the lake licked the sandy shore each morn, washing away their footprints in the sand so that no other trespasser to the Lake, their sacred place, could ever know that they had once been there, themselves made ethereal, the memories of them etched upon the place, dissipating like the mists shrouding the holy isle at its center did with the new day sun.

 

Rattled like she had never once been poised in her pew on Sunday morning, Morgana moved both her hands to her chest, listening to the unsteady draw of breath as it rattled in her lungs, and rested them there above her thrumming heart in a graceful clasp.  She dipped her head to pray then, listening now to the beating of her heart, the way it hammered without falter within the confines of her small ribcage—whereby it would go on pumping the blood that fed her body until the day she died—and closed her eyes, recalling the story of her short life thus far.  Images of the day, of the Lake, the two of them splashing heedlessly in its waters, calling to one another, flashed before her mind, and others too, those of a gnarled oak tree from where a boy once fell, a boy she held in her arms as he complained of a sprained ankle, others that transpired into another time from long ago when she had held him tight all through the long night, drying his tears with the soft sleeve of her nightgown, promising him that their Mother had met God that night because she had been too good for this world, too pure and unadulterated.

 

She opened her eyes, her head swimming with the memories, and saw not her bedroom before her but visions of the times before, hearing not the stillness of her chamber, with its tricking light, but the cacophony of voices from the past rising, rising to be heard again, begging her to yield to their one cohesive thought:

           

                    Don’t do this.

                       

                                     Turn back.

                                               

                                              If you love him, look away.    

 

                                                                                 Look away.

 

“But I love him,” she had said, hand over heart, professing, at the last, the truth as if to some unseeable god who would strike her for the sincerity of her words.  She fell to her knees beside the door, crestfallen and cast asunder for all the glory of the transcendence before had gone and she was left knowing it was impossible.  Impossible.  The word swelled in her chest, daring to suffocate her beating heart, and slowing until it stopped the carmine blood within, carrying with it the nature of the sin and sacrilege.

           

He was her brother.

           

She could not love him.  Not ever.  Not, at the least, how she desired to love him.

 

With all the telling blood in her heart, as it pumped and pumped, a vain testimony in her chest.

 

---

 

The afternoon next, Morgana had asked her maid, a girl younger than herself with worn and blistered hands by the name of Drea, to leave her to herself in her chamber, that she would not be requiring her presence any further, not this afternoon.  Drea had risen silently from where she had been washing the floor, nodded to her lady, for she rarely spoke except when necessary, and took up the wooden bucket and worn cloth she had been using to scrub the stone spotless, clean.

 

“Is it alright if I finish the washing tomorrow, Mi’lady?” she had asked politely as ever.

 

“Yes, yes,” Morgana said, anxious for the girl to leave, even though her presence had never bothered her before, and she did do good work.  “Now go.  I’m tired and wish to be alone.”

 

“Yes, Mi’lady,” Drea had answered with a slight bow of her head.  She exited the chambers immediately, taking the bucket and cloth with her.

 

Morgana had sighed a breath of relief then, and hearing Drea’s trailing footsteps down the hallway outside her room, signaling that she was indeed going as she had asked, rushed to the door to latch it shut, and sturdy the iron bolt firm in place.  She found comfort in the lock, an extra precaution in the event someone was to interrupt her here, despite its excessiveness; all who came before her door would have the propriety to knock and wait for her answer before entering; that evident for her being the castle’s princess.  Herself privileged, she had no need to concern herself with possible intruders to her privacy, and yet, given what was plaguing her mind, she did.  She rose a shaky hand to her lips, rubbing her fingers together nervously as she did so.  No, claiming she was worried was an understatement, a serious one, given the way her mind now fretted with a ringing clangor unmatched by even the worst bouts of anxiety she had been accustomed to throughout her life despite her relatively ordinary childhood, ordinary until yesterday that was when the revelation had come rippling across the forefront of her mind, from wherever it had hidden her lifelong, seemingly out of nowhere at all...

 

Still, gathering courage for the inquiry she was about to embark upon, Morgana sat herself down at her vanity, staring at the first wooden drawer to her right.  She stared at it for quite some time, watching the mahogany gleam with the light pouring through the window, until, at the last, she mustered up the courage to open it.  Inside, against the panes of wood, her rosary and Bible stared back at her, seeming to know her malintentions.  Nevertheless undaunted, she reached a hand into the drawer to pick up the leather-bound book encased within the dark wood not all unlike, she thought strangely, a stillborn babe within a small coffin.  She brushed off a soft coat of dust on its cover, sweeping her hand across the book until the words HOLY BIBLE shone clean in etched gold upon its surface and the dappled light from the window, which was opened wide to let in the sun’s splendor.  With trembling fingers, she laid the book upon the table, opened its cover, turning its pages to the portion she wished to read with a deftness that came from studying its contents since ever she first learned to read the alphabet.

 

She found the passage she sought in Leviticus, and as she read, her heart palpitating with a deafening fright that seemed to echo in her chest—itself leaping within her as her heart beat its fluttered pace—she found herself reaching back in the drawer for the rosary, the fingers of her right hand fumbling with its beads in search for some sort of comfort when in her mind she knew there would be none for the likes of she.

 

She read the words silently at first, her eyes skimming for the judgement she knew would be written on the page, etched in ink.  Then she read them to herself a second time, in an unintelligible whisper, one barely audible even with the stillness of the room, and with each word her heart tightened in her chest and her palm gave way to beads of sweat:

 

“You shall keep my statues and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live; I am the LORD.”

 

She skimmed for the relevant part, the one that pertained to her, and her body turned cold with dread.  The words screamed at her from the page, the inky blots boldened in the sharpest black.

 

“You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, begotten by your father, since she is your sister.”

 

And then a page later, the words crackled across the page in anger:

 

“If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people; he has uncovered his sister’s nakedness, he shall be subject to punishment.”

 

Punishment, the divine judgement.  The word pierced her heart like an arrow, swift and sharp and true.  She closed the book, badly shaken.  To incur God’s wrath in this foul way would be her undoing, she knew it.  She had read further, the promises of death unto those who lied willingly with their kinsmen, death by burning, like the sorcerers she knew and witnessed time from time her father sentence to the mercy of the flames.  She closed her eyes, imagining God’s anger if she overlooked this, His ordinance, felt the lick of the flames of the raging tempest she knew she would come to experience if she heeded the inner desires laced upon her skin, lurking darkly in the blood below. 

 

She reopened her eyes, and her eyes flew open with the regulation.  This she would not allow to come to pass.  Not now, not ever.  She would bundle up these feelings of hers, cinch them with a knot, and lock them away, never to be felt again, even if deprivation of them numbed her body into a colder stone than the figure of Christ hanging splayed upon the crucifix before the altar of the Mass.  Better yet she would throw away the key, throw it sky high over the Lake of Avalon, where it would inevitably plunge deep into its waters never to be found again, or else risk the temptation of retrieving the feelings once more when she was weak and senescent from lack of love.  She would never love.  To do so would be her death, her demise, which awful enough, was of little consequence compared to the ruin her brother would face, forever cut off from his people, the people he was born to someday rule as High King.

 

All because of her and her twisted feelings.

 

Something was not right about herself, Morgana knew.  To come to love her brother in such a way, so twisted and wayward that God demanded punishment for any who practiced it with His Word, why she only prayed, and pray now she did, grasping at the beads of her rosary like a sinner at the end of her rope, as if the taut cord already pulled against her neck threatening to break it, that she would not face that punishment for merely having thought the thought and felt the feelings.  God must see her goodness in choosing not to act upon them, surely?  Surely, He must then forgive her for having known them to begin with at the beginning?

 

Morgana did not know, herself but a child still, though in a woman’s body, herself unwise in the matter of the soul, unlearned in the ways it can spoil like blood ripe with disease, and so she prayed and prayed for absolution of having thought what she thought and having felt what she felt, and above that, she pled for a reprieve from the sin written in the book and conjured before her eyes: her brother, as he had always been, right there, her sole companion in this weary life down the trodden path to the lake water, whose cleansing properties could not wash her grasping hands clean.

 

---

 

As Gwen washed her in the copper basin she occupied now that they had arrived back in Camelot and her chamber, spent from their afternoon aside the lakeshore, this was to where Morgana’s mind had wandered, to the keenly eager and abashed girl she had been, clutching at beads and pressing shaking fingers to pages, hungry to know what could not be uttered, and feel unberated for the cravings impressed upon the veins beneath her skin. 

 

Her skin that hid it all, the legacy of blood and with it the laws of kinship.  It could be washed, this skin, adored and made reverent, and likewise it could be cut, until the blood oozed out from underneath, trickling down in dark rivers at her feet. 

 

But something told her that no matter how hard Gwen scrubbed her bared breast and shoulders just now, they would never come away clean.

Chapter 26

CHAPTER FOUR: The Encounter at the Door

“You seem quite well today, Mi’lady,” Gaius remarked the following morning when he came bright and early to Morgana’s chamber room.  The visit paid, which was becoming a matter of day to day routine these last few weeks, was more an opportune chance undertaken by the physician (on the given pretense of being a set of follow-up appointments in which he monitored Morgana her body’s response to the new treatment he said (in private to the High King) to have administered her for her nightmares, a sudden flareup, should anyone find reason to question the daily visits he made to her room, the princess’s night terrors being a notable rumor about the castle precincts, despite Uther’s attempts to keep them under wraps) to discretely check up on the princess in her pregnancy, allowing him the opportunity to note how she was fairing, as well as to adjust the medication he had previously prescribed her for any changes he might have to make upon the chance the tisane he prepared for her proved ineffective regarding her present bouts of morning sickness—occurring still as of yet even as she was a few months with child, which was all quite normal, he assured her, to her relief—than it was by any means a social call.  He did not doubt the efficacy of the tea nor his abilities as a physician, and yet he knew as only a doctor with an outstanding practice could, that even the best and most revered remedies did not necessarily treat each patient indiscriminately, as he saw time and time again with the patients he served; each required a treatment unique to her own needs.  He did not think the daily tea he gave Morgana of ginger and peppermint to quell her nausea would do anything other than cure this issue, let alone prove harmful to her or the unborn child, and yet he still felt it his physician’s duty to inquire after the tea’s effects on his patient himself, as he did now.  “Is the tea I’ve prescribed for you still quelling the nausea you’ve been feeling?” he asked.

 

“Oh, yes, Gaius.  I am all the much better for it,” Morgana answered at once from where she sat upon her bed, as of yet still clad in her shift, a smile on her face as she bent her head to sip from a steaming mug full of said tea which she held gingerly in her hands.  “I only feel a little queasiness,” she added after swallowing the hot liquid, its heat soothing her throat on the way down to her stomach, which it thereby relieved of its uneasiness, “when I wake each morning, which your tea dispels as soon as I drink it.  Thank you.  I don’t know where I would be without it.  Do you know, it’s actually a pleasure to eat breakfast again?  Gwen doesn’t even have to try to force it upon me much anymore.”  At this she gave a short, cheerful laugh, expressing clearly both the relief and gratefulness she felt for the physician and his miracle prescription.   

 

“I would say you are better than that,” Gwen laughed nervously from where she stood beside the bed, now setting down upon it a breakfast tray of fresh bread and preserves she had just brought up fresh from the kitchens specifically for Morgana, as she recalled her past conversation with her lady just yester afternoon when they had picnicked together at Avalon.  Then, Morgana had appeared out of sorts and perhaps, not in her right mind, as she slandered and praised her brother in one breath, at once blaming him for her current predicament and acknowledging him as her sole savior, if ever the day came when he would rule from that infamous High Seat and welcome her back wholly at his side, his wife unaccounted for in her deluded reverie.

 

It seemed the impromptu bath she had administered for her the moment they had returned to her room after their long ride home had done her some good, Gwen mused, thinking it may have had some cathartic effect, the soothing motion of her hand smoothing the sudsy cloth upon her body and the new life contained within (which had troubled Gwen, to have laid her hands so close to that unnatural progeny), as she rinsed away the day’s dust from her skin.  Morgana had not spoken so much as a word during the bath, and her eyes had seemed heavy, herself in a state of abstraction, Gwen thought, in some dreamplace or another.  Perhaps, she had made peace with the conflict upon her mind, the part that loved her brother still, as much as she clearly envied him, his freedoms as a man and as their father’s son, or else, if not then when she was subsumed in the heated water, then perhaps afterward, when she had tucked her beneath the bedcovers for an early sleep, it being still twilight, the sunburned violet hues of a summer nightfall not yet upon them.  The tonic drained, she had seemed to have had a relatively easy rest, at least until the sky fell to night and Gwen had left her to her dreams, wishing them to be pleasant ones, and perhaps she had had sweet ones, which would explain the rather benign mood she was in when Gwen came to her room early this morning, the troubles of yesterday far from her mind as she greeted her, so that for a moment, Gwen had been left wondering if she had perhaps misremembered their last exchange at the lake after all.  

 

It was precisely these dynamic shifts in temperament which had a way of frightening Gwen into agreeableness, as she fretted just ‘which’ Morgana she would be met with next, and it was precisely for this reason that she said naught but congenial pleasantries before her now during Gaius’s visit, careful to observe that the princess appeared not just well but was “practically beaming.”

 

Morgana turned away from her maid briefly to mask the blush warming her cheeks upon her remark as much as Gaius’s tea was warming her core but knew that Gwen was right in her observation.  She was happier as of late—disregarding the occasional melancholy that came over her at times without so much as a warning, as it had last night, when her thoughts had trailed upon the self-admonishments she had inflicted upon herself as a girl out of fear for her personal sin, as she once studied it in her bible, asking God for the strength not to act upon it, though now, years later, she had done just that and more—so much so that even she herself had noticed it, and this despite the unpleasant way things had ended between her and her brother a month or so before, and she knew that sudden shift in her demeanor on all fronts to be utterly due to the new life growing in her womb.  She had not needed Gwen’s observation to tell her this; she had seen visible proof of it whenever she sat before the mirror on her vanity, taking in the characteristics of her face, which seemed so incomprehensibly different to her now, as opposed to the girl she had been growing up in this same chamber room, all the while sheltering a dark secret within the confines of her chest.  That girl had been withdrawn and ghostly pale, a wide, fearful look set upon her eyes, and a hand that shook tremulously whenever she raised it to run a brush free and through the dark strands of her hair.  Now though, when she sat at her dressing table watching her face, she was struck by how different she seemed in comparison to the scared girl she had been—not to say that she had surpassed the overbearing emotion; she was still frightened, if not deep down terrified about the future of herself and her unborn child whatever that may prove to be, but for once the fear was not of sin and divine punishment; she had already committed it—the sin, her sweet sin—the fight for her soul was over, she had succumbed, and in succumbing had in effect freed herself from the self-doubt that had plagued her throughout her life without a mother to teach her to trust herself her own feelings and with a father who discounted each and every thing she said or did.  Now when she looked upon her face full in the mirror, she saw a young woman—not a girl—with a brightness in her eyes like gilded stars and a rosy complexion to her cheeks.  The change startled her the first time she noticed it one evening as Gwen set her hair for dinner, so much so that she could not believe she was actually viewing her same face.  I am glowing like a candle flame, she thought delightedly to herself then, seeing no difference between the sparks of light that lit her chamber in comforting semi-darkness and herself.  It is true what they say, she thought next, a change truly does take over a woman with child; she beams with the steady burning fire of her own creation, radiating from the inside out.   

 

Instinctively and by no thought of her own, Morgana now laid a hand across her belly, which showed slightly through her shift now that she was well into the fourth month of her pregnancy—if her guestimate of days since she conceived could be trusted; she had figured it to have been sometime in late February, recalling the weeks before as the last she had had her courses—as if to caress her child-to-be, resting her tea mug on the bedspread beside her as she did so.  A tinge of warmth waved over her body at that unthinking touch, turning her cheeks a healthy roseate pink.

 

“Yes, well…” she said, smiling down at her hand resting on her belly, as she registered it, its involuntary presence there.  “It’s a rather marvelous thing, isn’t it?”

 

“That it is,” Gwen answered innocently enough, a set lightness to her voice, so that she hoped the Court Physician did not suspect her of knowing something more about the child, the nature of its conception, and think to ask her if she knew, as most maidservants did from the ladies they served if they be in the same delicate condition as Morgana was—unmarried and pregnant—just who the father was, even as her stomach churned with that same unspeakable knowledge she alone possessed outside Morgana herself.  It is unnatural, was her next thought, to say nothing of immoral.  To think a child, an innocent child, shall be so borne of such foul sin.  She shivered despite herself and the warm summer morning with the sunlight slanting happily through the cracked window, praying no one noticed her reaction; looking about herself, she realized thankfully, that no one did.

 

But at least Morgana is thriving from this pregnancy, she thought—more or less, she amended, thinking again of the day they had spent at the lakeshore.  Without this child to preoccupy her heart and mind who would know how she would have taken her brother’s decision to marry the princess?  But she had known that, had been first and sole witness to the despair his impromptu proposal had set in her the moment she learned from his own lips that it was over between them.  She had sequestered herself to the dark of her room then, never eating, only sleeping, drawing close the curtains to shut out even the light of day.  Only Gwen had entered her room in that two weeks’ time, begging her to eat, to drink, to say something, even as she watched her body failing, weakening (why, it was a miracle, she thought now, that she had not lost the child in that time, given everything), how scared she had been then that she went to Gaius to plead his help, and the miracle, the travesty, Gwen knew not in right conscience what to call it, the revelation that had brought Morgana from the brink of death, the very knowledge Gaius granted her, and she had suspected, of the child growing in her womb.  Morgana is like a different person, she thought, or a different variation of persons, she reconsidered, knowing from experience quite well that nothing was ever quite consistent when it came to the princess, because of that child she now carries.  It’s nice to see her now, regardless of the circumstances, she could admit, if not content, then persevering against all odds, and a far cry from those dreary weeks in mid-April.     

 

But as if to spite Gwen’s well wishes, the positive outlook she outwardly conveyed, Morgana’s brow turned into a frown, the smile splayed on her lips flipped upside down. 

 

“Well, for a month more or so at least,” Morgana muttered, voice low and grave.  “Then it may just as well be a curse.”

 

“Don’t say that, Mi’lady!” Gwen exclaimed, fearing this sudden change in her and the onslaught of another potential descent into despair or madness, she knew not which, as she ran over to her side, and took her hand.  “We’ll figure a way out of this.  Just you see.”

 

Morgana’s eyes closed momentarily, as she drew inward toward the inner recesses of her mind where even Gwen as she held her hand in her own, in effect creating a sort of telepathic link between them, knew not where she went, only for them to flick open once more, this time with a welcoming softness that belied the hard, focused stare she had worn just previously when contemplating aloud her ruinous fate.  “Thank you, Gwen,” she said gently, a simple reply to a pathetic attempt on her part, Gwen knew, to console her lady. 

 

Regardless where her own values stood in regards to Morgana, her affair with her brother, and now the child conceived out of that affair which she was to bring to bear for him in his ignorance, Gwen’s heart ached for Morgana; she wanted more desperately than anything to erase for her the problems that seemed to lie hazardously in wait for her on the horizon, to wish away for her the travails that would most surely lie around every turn and bend just waiting to trip her up with the morrow.  And yet, as much as she wished for it and herself considered it, an easy solution to her lady’s conundrum, she had failed to come up with a plausible plan they could take—she had thought of the dresses, yes, but that was only a means to buy them time, not an answer in itself—and she felt all the sorrier for it, the fact that she could do nothing more than attempt to soothe and placate Morgana with her positive words of empty encouragement.  In the end, they both knew how useless they were, despite Morgana being so receptive to them, so grateful for the way Gwen had generously offered them, meager scraps unfit for a princess accustomed to better fair, and yet Gwen continued to offer them for they were all she could give; she was only grateful herself that Morgana accepted them, her empty sounding words of encouragement, which provided for them no viable outcome, and yet fostered in them both, she thought, the wherewithal to not give up hope just yet.    

 

“That’s just what I came to talk to you about today, Morgana,” Gaius said, interrupting the two women their moment, and in effect causing them both to look up at him in surprise.  “Well, aside from hearing the effects of the tea.”  He paused, as if unsure how to best broach the subject he wished to convey, then, seeing no way around the difficult matter but through, said simply, “I fear marriage is out of the question.  It’s much too late for it now, even if a match could be hastily arranged.”

 

“Marriage?” Gwen asked, looking from Gaius to a reserved Morgana.

 

“Yes, Gaius,” Morgana noted in reluctant agreement, herself understanding at once the physician’s line of thought.  “I have no suitors.  It would seem Father never thought it a cause worthwhile to provide for my future,” she added, sniffing derisively.  “And now, even if I could find a suitable man who would take me, I am too far gone with child for him to ever believe that the babe could be his once I give birth.”  She gazed back down at her belly and the child hidden therein, now more or less invisible beneath her commissioned dresses when she wore them about the castle, but for how much longer?  “And now for this,” she said, sliding her hand once more—protectively, lovingly, regrettably—over her unborn babe, “I will be ruined.”  She looked back up at Gaius, the choking pain she tried so desperately hard to mask raw and bare in her eyes. 

 

“Not necessarily, Mi’lady,” Gaius said slowly.  “There is another way.”  He paused, then said carefully, “How long has it been since your Aunt Morgause stayed at Camelot?”   

 

Morgana’s brows furrowed.  She had not the faintest idea what Gaius was about to suggest, and even if she had, her aunt in remote Essetir was not likely to be one of them. 

 

“Why, not since Mother’s death, I believe,” she said, the smile returning to her lips as the implication of Gaius’s question began to dawn on her.  “From what I’ve heard, she is not wont to leave Essetir, for much of anything.  She surely did not come when Uncle Cenred brought my cousins to serve my father as knights of Camelot several years back now.”    

 

“Is it not time that you visit her then?” Gaius asked.  “Perhaps a stay of a few months at least, if I may suggest, so as to have time enough for proper catching up after such a long time apart?” 

 

Morgana grinned, and rising from out from under the bedsheets, she threw herself at the old physician to his surprise in the warmest of hugs.  “Oh, Gaius, thank you!  I would very, very, very much like to visit my dear Aunt!  It’s been far too long, regardless of the long journey to Essetir.  And I would very much like to be in her company.”  This said, though of course, she had not the faintest inkling of the sort of woman her mother’s sister was, with nothing but the foggiest of memories to go on of the time when she had last visited Camelot and the castle when it and its people were shuttered up and clad from head to toe in mourning her mother, the late High Queen.  She herself had only been a girl of seven then, and what image she still yet possessed of her aunt from that brief stay was overshadowed by what remained in her mind of the likeness of her mother, their both being blonde, like her brother, causing the two to converge in her head so that she could not recall either well enough to recognize one sister from the other, but she did think just then that her aunt, for having been kin with her mother, whom she had loved well, would be someone in whom she could entrust the knowledge of her child when it came time for that, as Morgana now realized, it most certainly would. 

 

“Well, Mi’lady,” Gaius said, holding the princess back a pace, smiling now himself because of Morgana’s infectious good humor, “then it is settled.  I shall speak to the High King at once, asking for his permission for a long stay in Essetir and, if he grants it, for him to then send word to your aunt inquiring about the possibility of such a visit.  I will tell him that I think some time away from Camelot will do well to combat your nightmares along with my current prescription.  And I will ask if I may be allowed to go as well—no, that won’t do,” he amended, shaking his head.  “The King would never agree to permit me leave from my station here for such a long visit—although I had wished to have helped you, Mi’lady, throughout the pregnancy—and I myself don’t think I could leave Camelot for such a long time, given my other patients… Ah!  I’ll see if I can send you with my assistant Merlin!  He’s quite a marvelous boy, that Merlin, and skilled in ways of healing.  Albeit he is a bit of a fool at times—”

 

“That’s all wonderful and well, Gaius,” Morgana interrupted, “and I thank you again for your trouble.  But I would like to speak to my father myself if I may.  I believe he needs to hear it from me, my reasonings for leaving Camelot at such a strange time with Arthur just married and all—” she stopped herself, surprised at the easy admittance falling out from her mouth of her worst nightmare come true—Arthur married as he was, and to her one-time friend, no less—and wondered, frightened a moment, that Gaius would hear the underlining truth within her pronunciation of her brother’s name, that it was he who caused her desperate need now to flee to remote Essetir and the tender care of the aunt she hardly knew.  Watching the physician as she was for any pang of dreadful realization upon his face, she found he seemed rather unperturbed by her casual mention of her brother, and for this she felt a wave of cool, sweet relief, which left her the moment she caught the brief flash of trepidation upon Gwen’s usually composed face.  She prayed then to God in His High Heaven, if He would even hear her prayers now, so fallen from grace was she, that Gaius did not turn just then and see the horror and the truth written plain as day on Gwen’s face, and by the grace of God, or some kindlier power, she knew not whom or what to which she must give her thanks, he did not. 

 

“I understand, Mi’lady,” the physician said, only watching her face then, himself hardly registering Gwen standing still beside them, with a sudden curiosity that he kept to himself, safely masked.  “Just as long as you don’t intend on telling him the true reasons for your visit that is.  I’ve served Uther quite a long time now, and in my time of knowing him, I’ve found that he can be a very hard man, not one much prone to displays of sympathy and acts of charity.  I know he is your father, but I fear greatly on your behalf just what he would do if you gave him the truth.  Simply, I beg you not to.”

 

Morgana gaped at the older man, hardly believing her own ears the words he just spoke to her.  Gaius, one of the most revered of my father’s men, and reputed to be devoutly loyal to him in all respects, is telling me not to trust my own father?  She did not know whether to laugh or cry to think that Gaius thought she was under the naïve, childlike impression that she could in sound judgement trust her father with a secret of this magnitude and convey it to him, when she knew him better than anyone, having grown up under his rule and roof.  Whatever the nobles, the peasants, the knights and the ladies said of her father as High King, she, and Arthur she supposed, alone knew what he was like as a man, and that was someone, she could not trust in the slightest with her secret, even if she left out the most terrible shocking bit about the identity of the man who had gotten her with child.  She thought then in a frenzied fantasy what it would be like then to go to her father and confess him the truth all of it, how she had gone to his son, her brother, lain willingly with him, and now found herself four months gone with child from the very seed he spilled inside of her.  Would that be all that it would take for her father, her brutal, uncompassionate father to have a stroke and die?  She shuddered inwardly at the thought.  She did not want her father to die, not really; all she wanted was for him to care for her as he should have done when they had lost Mother instead of locking himself in his room as he had and bidding her to take care of Arthur as much as herself in his place.

 

“Whatever you know of my father, Gaius,” Morgana said dryly, “I can assure you that I know it too, perhaps as well as you.  Don’t worry.  I never intended on telling him the truth.”  She looked down involuntarily at her stomach, then back up at the physician.  “Simply,” she said, swallowing thickly, “he doesn’t deserve to know.”

 

Gaius nodded.  “I’m glad we are on the same page then, Mi’lady,” he said, his voice lending no sign of what he precisely thought of Morgana’s forthright response to his warning.  “I trust you will go speak with the High King soon?  I’m afraid we don’t have much time to waste.  Trips like these take time to plan.”

 

“I will speak with him presently,” Morgana answered him assertedly.  “But first,” she added, sitting back down upon the bed as her stomach gave an audible, rumbling pang, “breakfast.”   

 

---

 

At the sound of the door latching shut in front of him, Uther looked up from his manuscript to the poised figure standing before him.  Instantly, he recognized his raven-haired daughter, elegant as always in her purple kirtle, although this appeared a newer one that she sported, despite the shadow of dark circles he thought he glimpsed lingering beneath her eyelids.  To the casual observer those dark rings may have signified nothing more than symptoms of a poor night’s sleep or perhaps would have gone unremarked altogether given her fair beauty, but Uther was no such observer, having been informed by his physician of the way Morgana had relapsed the month past concerning the nightmares that used to plague her as a girl.  He knew his daughter—or at least he assumed he did—thus, causing him to wonder what exactly it was on her mind, the nature of these ill-reputed dreams that were troubling her so, as to leave such dark marks etched beneath her eyelids.  He did not understand what could possibly cause the dreams to return with such force to cause her many a sleepless night, for it had been many, many years—the last time being when she was just a girl sometime after his wife had died—that she had come to him out of a need for solace from those night terrors that plagued her so incessantly and he, still lost in his grief as he had been then, had turned her away in her sole moment of need for a father’s gentle embrace, knowing now the absence of her mother’s, and had handed her off to Gaius instead for consolation and treatment both.  Since Gaius treated her still to this day for these upsetting dreams and he placed his utmost trust in the physician’s abilities, he felt no personal concern for Morgana where her dreams were concerned, thinking, that even with this most recent relapse, the matter, if not neatly solved and done with soon, would in time be cured with tonics and teas, and no longer an issue for which he must preoccupy himself, a matter for which he was greatly relieved given that he had more pressing issues of state to attend to, and of that aplenty; so, no, in short, he did not think it to be a matter of dreams that caused his daughter to seek his presence now, no matter her present troubles—if that were the case, she would have gone to Gaius instead, himself being the medical expert after all—but something else altogether, or at least, that was what his intuition told him, though he could not presume what that could be, having the wherewithal to know that Morgana generally avoided his company if it could be helped, and he hers as well, if he were honest with himself.  Still, if he knew his daughter as well as he claimed he did, there was no point in his pondering the subject any further, for if Morgana had presented herself before him despite their mutual disagreeableness, surely it was for no other purpose than to speak of what was causing her so much evident unease. 

 

“Morgana,” the High King said, beckoning her forward into the room, just before where he sat at his desk, quill in hand.  He set the quill down on the parchment before continuing.  “Daughter,” he tried gently, “what is it that troubles you so?”  He had no wish to make known to her his knowledge of her dreams, their sudden comeuppance, partly because he did not think them cause for her sudden entrance upon his chambers just now and partly due to how those night terrors, though Gaius assured him their cause to be entirely medical in nature, reminded him of the wretched women, those with the ghastly seer’s power, he once sentenced to burning in his fires.  Sometimes, though it disquieted him, he thought he saw that same burning pyre with those same women tethered and tied, screaming as the flames danced beneath them mirrored in the irises of Morgana’s eyes.  He chastised himself before he could think the thought through to its dissolute end, knowing it would do him no good to think of it now, and foolish besides, given the rather ordinariness of his daughter, nightmares and all.  “You, I, and all the Court have just seen your brother married to a woman matchless in beauty and poise, and just the month past our Nemeth guests have returned home with a flourish.  This should be a happy time.”

 

That was true, the wedding festivities over and done, Mithian’s father and the rest of the wedding party that had accompanied her to Camelot, with the exception of her maid, who would remain within the citadel to wait upon her in her new household, had bid them adieu one fair morn in May—the flushed sunrise just lightening the sky at the hour of their departure—to set off for their return trip to Nemeth.  Morgana stiffened, recalling the memory, the way she had been ushered out of her room at dawn at her father’s ordinance to stand alongside the rest of the Court in the yard as if in silent ovation as they sent their Nemeth guests off with well wishes and parting gifts for their journey home.  She had stood poised that day with an air of civility wrapped about her like the cloak she had worn against the mists that had risen with the sun that morn as she spoke her farewells to Rodor, thanking him not only for his stay, but for having made the long journey to Camelot, the gratitude she expressed falling from her mouth in empty, hollow words, though no less polite; she assumed Rodor had taken them well.  But then again, the Nemeth King had been wrought by another good-bye, his eyes choked with tears as it came time for him to part ways with his beloved daughter, the only family remained to him, and yet, by the cause of his own doing, his need to put politics before blood, he had in effect been the one to sever that last tie, leaving Mithian to fashion a new life in Camelot, whatever that may be, on her own, as he alone possessed the privilege to make the journey homeward himself. 

 

Though their tearful exchange had intrigued her, masked by the summer mists dappling all who stood out of doors that morn their cheeks with rain, Morgana had possessed the propriety to look elsewhere, leaving them to the privacy of their last solitude.  Her eyes had flicked towards Arthur in that moment, catching him at their father’s side looking dignified, yet strangely abject, in his brown coat, the light mists dampening the bangs overhanging his brow.  Thinking back, she could not recall what she had thought of him then, but if her memory served, it had been later that afternoon, the Nemeth party already a league on their way homeward bound, and the faint mist turned to a pleasant summer drizzle, that she had gone to him in his rooms and spoke her proclamation, severing in one breath what he had hoped would yet remain for them, their earlier tie as siblings raised together from birth—she had thought to hurt him then, as much as to protect him, as he had hurt her, with that ultimatum, and perhaps she had, but she was realizing now that the tie of blood was a bond too thick to truly dispel.  He was her brother; not a day could go by, no matter what had been said and done between them, where she did not yearn for him in some small, deprecating way, in both her body and soul. 

 

Coming out of her moment’s reverie, as she saw once more her father seated before her, watching her with a careful eye, Morgana’s nerves alighted in her body, their prickliness setting even the fingers of her hands to tingling.  She had been so eager when Gaius had pronounced his solution on her behalf, but now she understood, to visit Morgause in the northern Hebrides of Essetir, to undertake that long journey north and stay there for a time indefinite, would mean parting ways with Camelot, the only home she had ever known, and with that, Arthur.  It was foolish, she hardly spoke with him as it was the last several weeks, and yet, it had been a comfort to her in that time, as his child grew in her womb unbeknownst to him, to know that he too still resided within the castle walls, a mere flight of stairs the length of the path it would take to reach him, if ever the time came that she would need him, or else, if ever she lost the resolve she had amassed about herself and broke down and confided in him the whole truth, all of it, utterly—

 

But to go to Essetir, she would be alone with a retinue not of her choosing, with just the boy Merlin and perhaps Gwen at her side for company, alongside the elusive figure of her aunt who, though her kin, was all but a stranger to her.  Though she understood the necessity and craved the escape the travel would grant her, was she brave enough to undertake such a journey?  To leave the home that had not been good to her, and yet was the only home she had ever known?   

 

“And it is,” she amended brightly, forcing a smile as she returned to the conversation at hand, pushing her fears aside to answer her father, which were mingling with the anxiousness that rose within her whenever she was to ask something of him, it in itself a situation she had learned throughout her childhood to be avoided at all costs.  “I am…very happy for Arthur.”  She clasped her hands tight, willing herself to quell their trembling, so her father would not catch a glimpse and see her present anxiety clouding up her mind at the prospect of the discussion she thought to have with him, a stroke of realization overcoming her then amongst the nervous fog that she possessed no plan nor words to put her request before him so that it seemed sensible to his disapproving ears.  “But that is just it, Father,” she went on, putting on a brave face, finding an explanation in a slanted version of the truth, the credible explanation Gaius had intended to say on her behalf slipping from her mind in her state of worried apprehension.  “I fear I am getting in the way of Arthur’s and…Mithian’s happiness.  They need to be able to spend some time here…without me.”

 

“Nonsense,” Uther chuckled to himself.  “You mean to tell me that this is what is troubling you, my dear?  That you could possibly distract Arthur from his comely wife?  Come now!  What is really the matter?”

 

Morgana swallowed.  “Just that, my Lord.”

 

“Now,” he said impatiently, ready for her to be out with it, the true reason she had come to his rooms begging an audience with him and taxing his patience, “before you waste my time further, what exactly do you propose I should do about it?”

 

“Just your permission for some time spent away from here, my Lord.”

 

Uther shook his head, resisting the urge to laugh at his daughter’s game.  There was something she wanted from him, of that he was sure, but he highly doubted it had anything to do with her respect for Arthur; he noticed the two of them hardly spoke as it was, so why would Morgana feel the need to give her brother this “much needed” space after his recent marriage?  So, what was the real reason then that she craved some time away from Camelot?  Could it be that she had perchance a lover whom she wished to meet in secret?  He did not think such a tryst past his daughter, where her scruples were concerned, despite the innocent façade she always wore before him; she was a woman after all with her own feminine machinations—he would do well to remember that.  “And for how long will you be gone?” he asked now, sensing the game she sought to play with him, and himself desiring to win it.  “And where to?”  He would be damned if he let Morgana have her way and extricate from him what she desired without speaking it to him plain first.

 

Morgana paused, drawing up every ounce of her strength.  This was the hard part.  Perhaps she should have just let Gaius do the asking for her as he had offered.  “My Lord,” she said, “if it is not too much to ask, I would like to request the summer months away from Camelot for an extended journey to Essetir to visit Aunt Morgause.”

 

Uther frowned then at the rather casual mention of his sister-in-law.  He knew Morgana had not seen Morgause, and perhaps with good reason on both his and her parts, since the time she had come to Camelot for Igraine’s funeral and thought she would hardly have remembered her from that time, given how young she had been, to request before him now, fifteen years later no less, to grant her leave to pay her an extended visit.  So, it must be a man she thinks to run off with, he thought reasonably to himself.  Perhaps, this is my fault.  She sees that Arthur is settled and happy with his wife, and now craves a spouse of her own.  I should have sought out a match for her much earlier, it seems, to have thwarted long before this predicament that now stands before me.  Clever of the girl to think of Morgause, but no, it will not do; I will not have such gossip in the Court such a visit will most certainly evoke among the nobles, regardless of whether Morgana’s request be pure or no. 

 

“Whatever for?” he asked, studying her carefully for the answer she would give.  “You have not seen your aunt in years and yet, in all that time, you have never spoken of her, until now that is.”

 

“I,” Morgana began—it was a stab in the dark, she knew, and yet it was a revelation at the truest, deepest part of herself—then paused, only to start anew, “I am rather lonely, Father,” she admitted at last.  There was that truth, the reality of her childhood, the reality of those long days and longer hours spent alone in her chamber, alone with no one to confide in but her own reflection in the mirror on her dressing table and the harsh words contained in the book resting in the drawer of that same vanity.  “Ever since Arthur married, I—I know this sounds selfish of me—but I feel as if I have no one to converse with, to spend my days with.  I do not wish to sound ungrateful, Father, but all I do is sit here, waiting, while my brother begins his new life.”

 

Uther nodded silently, her words unintentionally confirming his suspicions.  “I see, Morgana.  Perhaps I have been unfair to you.  You see, I have focused all my concerns on Arthur, making sure he would marry a woman fit to be the future High Queen, and in the process, I have become blind to the fact that you are now a woman grown, and in need of a marriage yourself to a lord of a noble house.”

 

“Father, I—”

 

Uther waved his hand, silencing her at once.  “It is settled, Morgana.  There is no need for you to travel so far away from your home.  If it is company that you seek, then I will make arrangements at once to host a tournament.  It’s high time we’ve had such sports again after the last winter we endured.  I will invite only the men from the greatest houses with the noblest of names.  The winner will be your husband.”

 

Morgana lowered her eyes to hide the shock present within.  At worst, she had expected her wish to be denied; she had never thought that her father, the father who had never paid her a moment’s attention in his life, would actually come round to planning for her the very marriage she long thought herself never to know—well, that part, about her wedding whomever came out victorious in a tournament, that was exactly like something her father would do, she supposed.  There would be no selective process for her as there had been for Arthur, it seemed, and while she expected no more of her father where her future was concerned—perhaps in a way, she had expected much less, and a part of her wondered why he even suggested such an arrangement for her at all—it still hurt her to know that he intended to cart her off to whoever won her in a game of chance and skill, as opposed to the man of the highest prestige and honor.  But in a way, that was, had always been, her lot and Morgana mostly accepted it…but marriage?  Now?  Why, that would be the easy solution, but, alas, she was too far along in her pregnancy for her to pull the arrangement off without stirring later questions and rumors once the babe was born to her husband much earlier than expected. 

 

She could hear the whispers already, see the way the women of the Court would catch her eye only to duck back into their circle of mindless chatter, as was their tendency whenever something juicy and of substance walked on by.  “Oh, didn’t you hear?  The Princess Morgana wedded to Lord Such-and-Such just four months ago and already has given birth to a healthy son?  Can it be?”  Internally, Morgana shuddered.  But she could not afford to let her father know that she would inevitably deny this marriage, at least not now.  Let him have his tournament, she thought determined.  She would only deny the winner her hand.  Or perhaps, by some odd error, there would be no winner at all, and she would be at a standstill, safe for the moment.  But that would do me no good in the end; it would only buy me more time for the moment.  And soon enough the entire Court will know of my misdeeds.

 

Morgana curtsied before her father the High King, wearing a smile like a mask upon her face.  “Thank you, my Lord,” she replied as easily as she could muster.  “I am much obliged by your thoughtfulness.”

 

Uther waved her away without another word, and she exited his chambers, walking with a poise that misconstrued the rapid beating of her fluttering heart.  And in an attempt to solve one problem, I have found myself locked in another, she thought solemnly to herself.  How am I ever going to get to my Aunt Morgause and have this child now?

 

---

 

When Gwen invited herself into Morgana’s chamber later that evening to ready her for bed, her steady knock upon the old oak door gone unanswered, she startled to find Morgana nowhere in sight.  Panic caught hold of Gwen as she beheld in light of the candle she gingerly held in her hand, as much as the fading daylight permeating the room, the empty chair at her lady’s vanity where she had expected her to be seated, waiting for her to come attend to her as per usual given the late hour, and then ran away with her, once she turned and spied the state of the bed, its sheets in a gnarled twist of disarray, as if someone had lied there thrashing with nightmare or fever.  “Morgana?” Gwen called in a short, nervous voice, hearing nothing but silence in reply all around her in the eerie stillness of the room.  She could feel then the summer breeze drifting through the wide-open window, causing the curtains to billow and drift, and her next thought chilled her to the core despite the season’s warmth.  Morgana never left the window open more than a crack, she recalled, especially at the between times of dusk.    

 

That was when Gwen heard the muffled sobs coming from the darkness behind her lady’s dressing screen, and she rushed to where she heard her lady weeping. 

 

“Mi’lady!” Gwen exclaimed, taking in the form of Morgana in a huddle upon the floor, cradling her knees to her chest with shaking hands, tears silently streaming down her face.  “Morgana?” Gwen said, this time with an uncertainness to her voice, as she addressed her lady without her title.  Morgana did not seem to care that Gwen had at first employed this old formality only to then drop it, or even noticed that she had used it in the first place before going on to address her by name, as she once said, a time ago now, she preferred.

 

“Gwen?” her voice wavered, as she stared up at her maid incomprehensibly with blurry eyes.

 

“I’m here, Morgana,” Gwen said, frightened by how disheveled Morgana appeared, curled up on the floor, knots in her hair.  Never had she seen her lady appear so unkempt in her life, well maybe then again, she had seen her before in such a state—that dreadful day a month and a half back came instantly to mind, when Arthur had begged her in the middle of his engagement feast to go to her room to check up on her in his stead and she had found Morgana similarly distraught upon her bed.  It had taken days of coaxing for Gwen to hear from Morgana then what had happened to provoke such anguish in her to cause her rudimentary silence and she had learned that it had been all because Arthur had ended their relationship against Morgana’s consent.  But since that dreadful time, Morgana had risen out of the fog of the despair that breakup caused her, thanks to the child—Arthur’s child—she learned she now carried in her womb.  So, what could it possibly be that would have her so distraught now? Gwen wondered in lieu of the scene before her.  She sat beside Morgana on the floor, set the candle down between them to illuminate the dark space in the shade of the dressing screen, and in a quiet voice said, “What happened?  I left you to go down to dinner…and now this.”

 

Morgana bit her lip, forcing a smile at her maid, the one person she knew she could trust with her life, and that dark secret that hung about her soul like a noose.  “Oh, Gwen…whatever did I do to deserve someone as kind as you?  When I’m—”

 

“Don’t,” Gwen interrupted, finding it painful to watch Morgana be so raw and vulnerable.  “Tell me what I can do to help.”

 

Morgana’s mouth quivered, twisting the forced smile on her face.  Dark circles ringed her eyes, hollowing them out as if they were not eyes but the pits of two unearthed graves.  Peering deep within them as Gwen now did, it was as if Morgana’s soul was not there, in her eyes, but had departed, vanished toward someplace else, somewhere distant—gone like a ghost locked outside the veil of space and time. 

 

“I can’t do it, Gwen,” Morgana said at last, feeling the weight of those words about her heart, like a rope cinched tight about a hanged man’s throat, and the new beating heart of her unborn babe. 

 

“Do what?” Gwen said incomprehensively, until it dawned on her as she studied Morgana’s grave face.  “Have this baby, you mean?” she asked, continuing to watch Morgana for any inkling that this was what had upset her into such a state of disrepair.  Thinking it so, she laid a reassuring hand on her lady’s shoulder, caressing her gently.  “You can, and you will.  I know it.”

 

“No,” Morgana choked through sobs, pulling away from Gwen’s placating touch.  “I can’t.  He didn’t permit me leave—” 

 

“What?”  Morgana had told her earlier as she dressed her for dinner that she had been unable to speak with her father just yet about her plans to visit her aunt for the extended stay which would provide for her the much-needed escape to birth her baby in secret.  When Gwen had questioned her upon this point of her story, she had merely said that he refused to see her, him being preoccupied with more pressing matters of state than to deal with the whims of his daughter.  But apparently, she had lied about the whole matter and had indeed gone to him to ask his permission, and he had refused her?   

 

“I can’t go to Essetir, Gwen,” Morgana said, the desperation cracking in her voice, showing clear in her eyes in light of the candle’s darting flame.  “And it’s more than that,” she continued forcefully, at last relaying the secret she kept to herself all that day.  “Father, he plans to host a tournament where the winner will be my husband.  He told me today.  I can’t have this baby, Gwen,” her voice broke, as she shook her head despairingly.  “They’ll know, all of them, once I’m married, that the child isn’t my husband’s and what will happen to me and my baby then?”   

 

With alarm, Gwen noticed that in Morgana’s hands, which she held wrapped about her legs, pulling her knees close to her chest, she gripped tight a small vial of sorts containing a dark amber liquid that glowed bronze before the flickering candle flame.  “What’s that?” she asked suddenly, and when Morgana did not reply straightaway, said more forcefully, “Morgana, what is in that bottle?”

 

Morgana swallowed, cast her eyes down at the vial clutched in her hands.  “It’s the abortifacient Gaius gave me,” she confessed.  “I kept it amongst my things.  I don’t know why.  Perhaps, I always had a sinking sensation that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it and—”

 

“Did you take any of that?” Gwen asked, her thoughts racing.  It would have been a risk a month ago for Morgana to have imbibed the emmenagogue, but now, now that she was four months gone with child, it would most certainly kill her and the babe both to do so.  “Answer me, honestly,” she said.  “If you did, I’ll have to get Gaius.  Immediately.”

 

Morgana looked up at her friend, at the fear present in her eyes.  “No,” she croaked, shaking her head.  Then more strongly, “No, there’s no need, Gwen.  I-I didn’t drink any.  I was too afraid what would happen.”

 

Gwen sighed a breath of relief, this concern, at least momentarily, abated.  “Why would you even consider it?” she asked, suddenly angry, not at Morgana, but at herself, for not foreseeing this possibility and not being there to protect her lady in the moment she had deliberated upon it, the unsanctioned abortion, the grim solution to all her troubles.  Maybe once, a month ago when the risk was calculable and the physician present in case anything went wrong, Gwen had wished Morgana had done away with her illegitimate offspring in such a fashion, but not now, certainly not now when the stakes were so high and the chances of her bleeding to death so imminent.  “Morgana, you could have died.  And how would that have solved anything?  Do you really mean to tell me that sparing yourself some gossip is worth such a risk to your own life?”

 

Morgana stared at the vial in her hand, as if still considering it, the chance, however slim, of salvation its contents could grant her, until her eyes blurred with tears, and she wept.  “What would you know, Gwen, of what it’s like to live at Court?  You’re just a maid!” she railed, gasping in short paroxysms of sound.  Inhaling a deep breath to steady herself she continued, “You have no idea how cruel these people can be!  I was afraid all my life what would happen to me if they found out about how I felt about my brother, and then I was all the more terrified of them finding out once I was with him!  And now look at me!  Look!  The proof is in my body!”  She rubbed a hand over her face to wipe away the tears, the new ones brimming in her eyes as much as the wet stains on her cheeks, then turned to gaze sharply at her friend.  “What do you think they will do to me once they find out?  Once, my father finds out?”  She choked out a miserable laugh.  “They will find out now.  All of them.  My father has seen to that with this marriage he plans for me out of nowhere!  He never cared to see me married and happy before when I was sixteen as is only proper, but now, now that I’m three and twenty he finally thinks it’s time to see me wed?  Now that I’m pregnant!  And can’t afford to be married off!”  She wanted to scream, but contained herself, if only for that same unconscious fear that someone would hear her cries through the walls, no matter how unlikely, and discover through them the abhorrent, self-incriminating truth.  “So, yes!” she said, breath heaving.  “I thought of it!  Can you honestly blame me?”

 

“No,” Gwen said softly, her voice barely audible above a whisper.  “Morgana, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am.  But that’s your baby.”  That’s Arthur’s baby, she thought silently, not knowing why her meandering thoughts stressed upon this sole point.  “And I know you would never give up on your baby.”

 

Morgana whimpered, smacking her knees with the bottle still clutched in her hand.  “I know,” she said.  “That’s what stopped me.  I-I was about to take it, the medicine, I mean, and that’s when I felt him, inside of me for the first time, and,” she turned toward her friend, the fear and the anguish wide in her red-rimmed eyes, “I couldn’t, Gwen, I couldn’t—”

 

“It’s okay, Morgana,” Gwen said, wrapping her tight in a hug.  She pried the unopened vial out of her lady’s hand, surprised that she relinquished it to her so readily, and set it an arm’s distance away from them on the floor.  “You’re safe now.  You and your baby are safe.”

 

“What’s going to happen now?” Morgana asked quietly after a time, between tears, into Gwen’s shoulder, praying she held an answer for her, like she knew her own mother, had she been yet alive, would have had for her as her wayward, cornered daughter, who had thought to master the game of love and in the end had only played herself.  “When I have this baby—if I even live to have this baby, it’s still uncertain, Gwen, you know it is—the Court will know him fathered by another man other than the one chance it seems will see me wed, yes, but won’t they also see as plain as day who his true father is?  Won’t they be able to look at him and then at my brother and back again and know the truth?  I’ve heard it once said from ladies of the Court that babies, especially firstborns, tend to take after their fathers.” 

 

Gwen pulled away to look Morgana in the eye, considering her concern carefully, how best to answer her so as not to belittle her qualm.  “Who could expect that?” she said genuinely, giving her lady’s arm a gentle reassuring squeeze.  “Morgana, if the resemblance is there, they’ll say it’s because you are so close of kin.  When they look at your babe, they’ll say, ‘he looks just like his uncle,’ and mean nothing more by it.”

 

Morgana gaped at her maid, at her words, shut her eyes briefly as if in pain when her lips had uttered the word ‘uncle,’ the two of them aware of the two-faced reality—Arthur was both father and uncle to her child, it was true—then nodded with understanding, saying, “Of course, you are right, Gwen.  I have no reason to worry.  Who would expect this?”  She looked down at her stomach with a breath of awe, cradling it and the child stirring within her womb therein with her hands.  “What I should be worried about is my reputation,” she went on, swallowing stiffly, as she tore her eyes from her hands upon her stomach and up toward her maid.  “What does it matter that my babe’s father is my brother?  Or a knight?  Or a serving boy, for that matter?  No matter the identity of the man who gave me this child, I will be damned.  The only difference is the degree of that damnation.”

 

“It’s not fair,” Gwen admitted quite pathetically.

 

Morgana blinked, willing herself not to cry for her own sake any longer; she would be strong, resolute, for herself, for her child.  “No, it is not,” she agreed.  “If Arthur had bedded a serving girl and gotten her with child, nothing would come of it.  But if I claim to have done similar with a man beneath my station in order to protect his godforsaken name, then I will be forever shamed.  No, it’s not fair, Gwen.  But what the hell can be done about it?”

 

Not waiting for an answer, knowing now Gwen could not possibly provide her with one, Morgana went on, “But still, I believe I owe it, not to him, but to myself, and more importantly this child, to give him a life, no matter the consequences and what’s to happen now to little old me.”

 

Gwen looked sharply up at Morgana, then smiled as it dawned on her that her lady was pledging to her as much as herself that she would not be giving up on her child, not just yet, no matter the gravity of the circumstances threatening to suffocate them both. 

 

“Morgana,” she said, feeling for the first time, despite reason, her words light and full brimming with hope, “there’s not going to be any consequences.  Not for you, not for your child.  We’ll find a way out of this.  I’m sure of it.”

 

Morgana closed her eyes, thought out a prayer—not to God in His austere heaven—but to the Virgin, entreating her to cloak her and the child growing in her womb in that swathe of tranquil blue, to see herself and her child both sheltered and likewise safe from the encroaching blight of the approaching day that threatened them their secret’s exposure with its rays of piercing truth.  She wondered then whether Mary ever possessed a moment’s passing doubt for the child she had so dutifully, so lovingly carried for God, and smiled to herself at the thought, thinking, If she could do it…

 

Morgana opened her eyes, exhaled her fears, watching them go with her breath.  “There’s still time,” she said at last.  

 

---

 

Outside the Princess Morgana’s chambers, a dark-haired boy paused mid-knock, having heard the voices on the other side.  Slowly, he let his hand drop from the door to his side, his other hand grasping the sedative he forgot to deliver to the Princess earlier that day as per Gaius’s request.  One that he hoped would not be missed, not now.  For a moment, in his shock at what he had the misfortune to hear, he froze, continuing despite himself to listen to the words spoken beyond the door.  They were much softer now, not the sharp cries from before. 

 

At first, he wondered if he had heard correctly, but then again, he had heard peculiar things before outside of doors, just like this, when he was out delivering Gaius’s remedies or when, like that one late autumn night of the Champion’s Feast, he had passed by his sire’s rooms, surprised to find the guards not posted there at the late hour.  He had stood outside the doors just a moment in his query—it was rather odd, he remembered thinking, for the guards to have not been at their duty that night given the number of guests staying within the castle, and his next thought was to then take it upon himself, if the guards were so lax or otherwise occupied, to make certain all was well with the Prince within—and yet it had proved a moment too long in retrospect, for that was when Merlin had overheard the sounds coming from behind the door which prompted him to linger there a little longer in his curiosity.  The noises, which any other passerby that night would have failed to overhear through the thick oak wood, sounded loud and clear to Merlin’s ears.  He heard the creaking of the mattress, the shifting of the sheets, the panting breaths, and smiled to himself, thinking that his liege was merely entertaining one of the visiting ladies—perhaps, the one he had been seen dancing with in the Great Hall earlier?—and that was why the guards were not present and had been most likely dismissed, to protect her identity, Merlin assumed, himself growing all the more envious of the chosen girl. 

 

Checking to make sure the dim hallway remained clear of other late night passersby like himself, so he would not be questioned for his behavior the following day, Merlin thought to tarry a while longer just outside his sire’s rooms to enjoy himself with a voyeur’s pleasure this version of the Prince he served—naked and needy—imagining in his mind’s eye that it was himself not the spoiled girl in the bed beside him.  It was the closest he would ever come to knowing him intimately, despite the fact that it was he alone who dressed his hard-lined body each morning he rose from that same bed and drew the bathwater for him whenever he requested it after a particularly exerting day training the new recruits in the field.  It was his secret that he fancied the Prince in a way a man should not come to adore another man, the only one he possessed—and his to bear alone—outside of his ability to perform magic that was, and of the two, the one he feared the more someone discovering, despite the fact that both were equally punishable under the High King’s Law with death. 

 

This thought pressed aside, Merlin eased into his fantasy, feeling Arthur’s lips upon his own, his body pressed against his own, the pure unadulterated bliss as he touched him in his mind to the sounds of his lovemaking behind the door, when at last he heard the climaxing gasps therein, and then the names—and the vision dissolved in an instant from his mind with sudden fright.  There in the stillness of an ordinary autumn night was the Princess calling out for her prince and the Prince for his princess.  If only he had been one of the visiting knights’ serving boys, Merlin thought then, struck dumb by this sudden revelation as he was, and ignorant of the Pendragon family tree—perhaps then he would have sat back and enjoyed himself the rest of this welcomed surprise—but alas, he was not, just as he did not tarry a moment longer outside his sire’s door that night, finding himself gruesomely disturbed as he raced back to his own quarters he shared with Gaius.  It was that night, as he lied in bed too shocked for sleep, uncertain now about his affections and loyalties, where they lied, the extent of them—if they remained—wondering just how deep they could run within him, testing him—could he excuse what he had now learned by accident?—that he swore in his abandonment never to linger outside of doors again, and from that night on, promise made, he had always sped away from each and every room he delivered tonics to, in constant dread of discovering similar twisted goings-on amongst the denizens of the castle, though, of course, he never did.

 

Now, Merlin crept slowly back from the door, a dark revelation on his mind.  He thought he was going to throw up.  Or give away his cover with a gag.  Thankfully, he did neither and walked down the hall away from the sickening reality behind him, carrying the tonic meant for the Princess clutched tight in his hand.  One thought plagued his mind above all others: Should I tell the High King?  Should he, indeed.  But then it would be his word, the word of a serving boy, against the word of the Prince and Princess of Camelot, and Merlin, having had time to think, could not find it in his heart to betray the man he likewise craved beyond reason still, despite the ill ways in which he treated him, or perhaps because of them, he did not know—but either way, it was because of them, of those likewise illicit feelings he possessed for the Prince, that in Arthur, he found along with the revulsion, some small semblance of unique sympathy.  He decided then to keep his mouth shut, prepping himself to attend to his sire as if it were any other night, wondering all the while if he possibly knew that his sister was carrying his child.

 

If only he had stopped by earlier to give the Princess her much needed potion.

Notes:

Hey guys. After posting the last chapter, I was reading ahead in the draft to figure out where the best breaking point for this chapter would be (I'm splitting the story up into chapters as I go), when I realized it must end with that terrible revelation contained in the scene with Merlin at the door (which actually features in the fic trailer I've posted on my youtube channel, if you're curious to see it), and so I was really eager to edit the chapter one last time in order to get it out to you all this soon. Assuming that you read it before jumping down to the end notes, I hope you enjoyed it. 🤗

Also, I must confess I meant to mention much earlier about Rodor and what happened to him after the marriage but I sorta forgot him in lieu of everything else happening between Morgana, Arthur, Mithian, so I made sure to note that he has in effect gone back to Nemeth at this point in the story, thus leaving Mithian alone to navigate the Court of Camelot and her new life as Arthur's wife, which as we will find out in future chapters is not quite as it may seem to Morgana. Stay tuned. 😂

Anyway, thank you all for reading this story. It means so much. <3

Chapter 27

CHAPTER FIVE: Secrets and Lies

Merlin returned to the tower nook he shared with the Court Physician well on time that night, lending credence to the notion that it was just an ordinary summer night for the castle with no troubles on the wind, but when Gaius heard Merlin come in, closing the door behind him without so much as a clatter, the vial intended for the Princess still contained in his fist and a furrowed, troubled look at his brow, he knew something was quite far from alright. 

 

“Ahh, Merlin,” he said gently though, making a mental note not to startle the boy with any sudden questions regarding his incomplete delivery—although he had them aplenty—which he knew would only cause him to clam up and reveal nothing whatsoever.  He wondered what it had been to have kept Merlin from delivering the tonic, knowing that while the boy could be forgetful at times, the rather uneasy look on his face just now indicated that something of rather import had just happened, which had either distracted him from his task at hand or prevented him from completing it in the first place.  “I expected you a bit later.  Did Arthur give you leave early?”

 

“Oh,” Merlin said, stopping short in front of his mentor as if suddenly noticing him seated at his desk where he usually sat most evenings bent over a pile of leather-bound tomes.  Behind him a small fire crackled in the hearth over which a kettle had been set to boil, steaming with some brew or another, most likely concocted from an assortment of dried herbs contained in the neatly labeled jars and vials displayed on the shelves found throughout the physician’s entry chamber.  Against the far wall, in a shady corner, and safe out of line of the sun’s light if it were day yet still, fresh batches of said herbs, bundles of rosemary, sage, and thyme, recently picked from the castle gardens, aired to dry from their twine hangings. 

 

Shifting his focus away from the array of earthy aromas wafting about the room back on Gaius, who, still seated amongst his books, the open one before him appearing to be a rather well-referenced tome on herbal remedies, was eyeing him most curiously, Merlin made to scratch his head, as he contemplated what to say next—what he could say that was after what he had the most misfortune to have overheard mere hours ago—only to then realize that hand still gripped tight the Princess Morgana’s tonic, of which, without so much as a better idea at his disposal, he quickly slipped into his pocket to mask the evidence of his negligence. 

 

“Uh, yeah.  There wasn’t much for me to do.  It seems, well,” he added, blushing a bit, as he struggled with his words, “it seems he and Princess Mithian, erm, well—” he gave a boyish shrug, “Arthur didn’t need my help undressing tonight,” he finished, face flushed.  In truth, Arthur’s words to him had been much more tactful than that.  He had merely said that he and his wife were going to try for a son this night, the future heir to the High Kingship they desperately needed to produce for the sake of the Pendragon dynasty, dismissing Merlin without so much as another word.  On his way out from his sire’s chambers, Merlin had spared a brief look to study the Prince once more as he stood intently before the hearth as if in deep thought about some matter, wondering all the while whether when he took his wife to bed later that night in their attempt for a child, he knew that he already was a father-to-be, having sired the next generation of the Pendragon bloodline with his own flesh and blood sister. 

 

Looking now for any excuse to change the subject, before Gaius could prompt him into revealing more than he would like about the matter, Merlin pointed at the open book on Gaius’s desk, which he had presumably been reading before he entered the study.  “And what do you have there?”

 

“Oh, this?” Gaius asked, glancing down at the book, himself unperturbed by the news regarding the Prince and his wife, which he supposed was not really news at all given how it was to be expected with most marriages, theirs included—or perhaps more so given their royal duty—that they would have started trying for a child the moment they had spoken aloud their wedding vows that spring.  He was merely surprised that the dear Nemeth girl was not with child yet, or so it seemed, given what Merlin had just relayed to him, although he figured in time she most certainly would be, and he would be called once again to look after a princess’s pregnancy (though this last thought he kept strictly to himself). 

 

“Just a bit of herbology,” he answered, only to pause before saying, “I was looking into another remedy for the Princess Morgana where her nightmares are concerned.  Did you give her tonight’s tonic like I asked?”

 

Merlin opened his mouth.  “Yes.  Absolutely,” he replied, nodding his head, himself so relieved to be granted this reprieve from discussing Arthur’s relations with his wife, and the other fouler things that subject caused him to inopportunely recall, that even he found himself convinced of his own lie, and he typically a poor fibber.  His relief was short lived however, as a new thought occurred to him, causing him to frown with inquiry.  “But, Gaius, why are you preparing another tonic for her,” he asked, “when we have yet to find out whether tonight’s is a success?  Surely, you can’t concoct another remedy without hearing first how the Princess fared with this one?”

 

“Because,” Gaius answered carefully, turning a page over in his book from a passage on valerian to one on vervain, before looking up at Merlin once more, “it’s a physician’s duty to know his options as best he can ahead of time.  The more familiar I am with the herbs at my disposal, the better I am to provide a solution in times of duress.  Sometimes, as you will learn, Merlin, a tonic must be crafted and administered immediately, so it’s best to always have an idea of which ingredients to use for a given ailment before the emergency even occurs, especially as all herbs are given to their contraindications.”

 

“I see,” Merlin said, still frowning, a question on his tongue he was unsure whether he could ask.  He had heard word, well rumor really, about the castle that Gaius had been altering his treatment for Morgana the last few weeks given a sudden increase in the nightmares and their intensity she suffered—it had been the reason for his daily visits to her room each morning—and yet, Merlin could have sworn for all of Gaius’s talk of testing new prescriptions, it was the same tonic he always gave him to deliver to the Princess each day with little to no variation—not that he was an expert when it came to this particular potion, as Gaius always made sure to prepare it himself privately—leaving him to wonder whether there was another reason for the routine visits he made her.  Given what he now knew about the Princess, he thought it a possibility, and yet the larger part of him could not believe that Gaius would attend to Morgana so if he knew the true circumstances regarding her condition. 

 

“How long have you been treating Morgana for her nightmares?” he asked instead; it was a question he had always wondered with a kindred curiosity since he first learned of the Princess’s ailment in the days following his arrival in Camelot and the start of his apprenticeship under the physician, though he had been much too shy to raise it to him in the past, given how he was to secrecy where the matter was concerned, always prepping those potions at first light before Merlin was even awake to ask about the contents, let alone his methods, but for whatever reason, perhaps to distract his mind from the troublesome discovery downstairs, he found the courage to ask it to him now, given how that other question on his mind was hardly utterable.  “When did they start?”

 

Gaius looked up from his reading toward Merlin’s inquisitive face.  “Oh,” he said very matter of fact, “since she was a young girl.  They began not too long after the High Queen died, and only grew in their frequency and the terror they caused her, until word of them came to the High King and he asked me to start treating her for them.  Now, she sleeps through the night, granted she takes the tonic before bed.  Well, up until, just recently, that is,” he quickly amended.  

 

Merlin swallowed.

 

“Why this sudden curiosity?” Gaius asked, watching his apprentice with a careful eye.

 

“Oh,” Merlin paled, “I was just wondering whether you thought—did anything come out of her dreams?” he asked suddenly, finally out with what he deeply wanted to know. 

 

“Come out of them?  What do you mean?”

 

Merlin sighed.  “You know, Gaius.  I mean, what she dreamt about, did any of those things ever come to happen?  Is she,” he paused, “is she like me?”

 

Gaius closed the book.  “Merlin,” he said, “no one is like you.”

 

Merlin rolled his eyes, grasping that point quite well given how Gaius was always warning him that no one, not a single practitioner of the Old Ways he had by chance or ill-luck crossed paths with, and certainly none of the ilk burned in Uther’s fires, had ever possessed as natural abilities such as he.  Typically to perform magic, those who practiced the old art needed tools and spoken charms to work their will, ordinary things such as poppets and sachets, wax figures and candle flames; it was a learned skill, not one inherited through bloodlines, and so, it was highly unheard of that magic could be performed without scripted verses and planetary squares stitched into a scrap of cloth here, laid under a bottle there, all in keeping with the lunar rhythms, and yet, Merlin could enact all sorts of whimsical happenings, without such implements, regardless of the season, simply by directing the thoughts in his own mind to his intended target, shaping, as it would seem, out of nothing, the entire outcome.  It was why Gaius told him to heed his gifts, and perhaps why his mother had urged the physician to take him in under his wing the moment their village neighbors started to grow suspicious of his strange habits, though none could say what in turn they were; such abilities, while glorious, themselves being nothing short of a miracle, a godsend, the way they had manifested inside of him, could prove quite a literal danger in a Godfearing land such as this with a dogmatic, astringent King at its head no less, or at least so Gaius kept reminding him. 

 

“I know that, Gaius.  What I meant was,” he explained, lowering his voice to a whisper, for he understood better than anyone the rumor that practitioners could hear words through closed doors as clearly as if they had been breathed into their ears, “does she have magic?  Can she see the future through her dreams?”  

 

The physician shook his head.  “I know very well what you mean, Merlin, but no, about Morgana, no.  There were a few instances when she was young, but nothing conclusive, and that was years ago.  It’s been years since she’s spoken to me of her dreams, and besides, if it were magic of the sort of power you have, my tonics would do little if anything to cure it.”

 

“Right,” Merlin said, his brows furrowed.  “But now, Gaius, you’ve said her nightmares started up again, so maybe—”

 

“Is that what’s troubling you, Merlin?” Gaius asked suddenly, in effect cutting his apprentice off midsentence.  He peered at him carefully through his spectacles. 

 

Merlin paused, bit his lip as he gathered his thoughts.  He hated lying to Gaius like this, yet he could not dare voice what he knew about the Princess, especially now, even in the chance Gaius already did know.  “It’s just, hypothetically, I mean, do you think someone is to blame for doing something terrible just to thwart something even worse from happening?”

 

“That’s an odd question,” Gaius observed.  “Are we speaking hypothetically or of the Princess Morgana?  Or of you for that matter?  What do you know, Merlin?” he asked then, rapping his fist upon the book.  “What is it you aren’t telling me?  When you walked in, I knew something was troubling you, I knew it, and now I’ll have you tell me this instant!”

 

“N-Nothing, Gaius, I swear!” Merlin asserted, all but begging to be believed.

 

Gaius fixed his apprentice a hard look.  “And yet you failed to bring the Princess the tonic like I asked.  Why?”

 

Merlin glanced up at the physician, then upon his narrow look, fished the vial out of his pocket, where he had shamefully hidden it.  “I,” he began, looking down at the amber bottle, wetting his dry lips, as he attempted to think of a reason beyond the truth, beyond the dark secret uttered in the chamber floors below, a private exchange between lady and maid which had never the intention of falling out of doors, before his sharp ears, “I had reason to think it wasn’t safe to give it to her.”

 

“And why was that?”

 

“Because she’s,” Merlin paused.  “Because she’s pregnant,” he blurted out.  “I overheard her talking to her lady’s maid and I feared whether the herbs in the tonic you prescribed for her would be bad for the baby, and I couldn’t dare speak to her about it, since that would be to let her know that I had overheard.”  He sighed a pent-up breath.  “I would have told you outright, Gaius.  But I thought it was her secret given h-how—”  It was a lie, a lie wrapped in a half-truth.  He had not thought to worry a moment on Morgana’s behalf, if he had done then as Gaius asked and given her the potion.  He had left then, the small vial still clasped in his clammy hand, not for her sake or her unborn baby’s sake, but for the perversity he felt for being yet again a witness to her sin, a sin that rivaled his own.  Was this to be his punishment?  To have such an intimate knowledge of the mind of the woman who happened to love the man he adored and understand her?  Neither of them could now possess Arthur, his mind, his body, his heart and soul—and the both of them were just as well damned in God’s book where their feelings for him were concerned, that much was rather certain. 

 

“How she’s unmarried, yes,” Gaius answered, himself quietly relieved.  “Yes, it’s quite alright, Merlin.  I’ve known about this for quite some time.  Don’t worry.  I’m not upset.  You’ve done nothing wrong.  If anyone is to be blamed, it should be me.  I should have realized I could have trusted you, of all people, with the Princess’s secret, knowing how you have your own to keep.  It would have been much easier than all this going behind your back I’ve had to do this past month.”

 

“It’s okay, Gaius,” Merlin said, though with a shiver at the secret he did not know, nor anyone for that matter, and Merlin damned to keep it such, still uncomprehending how his mentor could speak so easily of the matter, unless of course, Morgana had only divulged to him the necessary bits regarding her pregnancy; certainly, she would never have revealed the identity of the man who had gotten her with child, at least wittingly, he thought swallowing hard.  As it was, he figured Gaius did not know the truth as of yet, the full of it that was, and he reckoned what the physician did not know would not harm him, not like it would most certainly hurt Morgana.  Would Gaius even tend to her if he knew?  He was afraid to find out the answer to that question, so thought it best to let it die on his tongue unspoken.  

 

“But what is this about her nightmares?” he asked, raising an accusatory brow.  “Is she suffering from an especially bad bout of them?  Because I watch you make up your prescriptions from afar, Gaius, and, though you think me sometimes a fool, I am almost certain that the tonic you concoct for her each day is the same.”

 

“The nightmares were a pretense,” Gaius confessed.  “Morgana does suffer from them, that part is true, but ever since I started treating her as a child, I’ve managed to get them under control so she can sleep through the night at ease, or so she tells me.  Once I found out she was with child, after her maid inquired after her health, I wanted to keep a watch over her, and yet I knew daily visits to her room where we could speak in private would only cause nothing but speculation and gossip, unless of course I created a suitable explanation for my visits.”

 

Merlin nodded.  “That makes sense.  You knew people would gossip anyway so you thought to give them a rumor that would cause just enough intrigue as to keep the true reason for your visits to the Princess under wraps.  I have to say, that’s rather clever.”

 

“Yes,” Gaius allowed.

 

“But what about Morgana?” Merlin asked, now worried for her sake, though he knew not why.  Perhaps, it was because a part of him felt a kinship towards her, if only because they shared a sin, and suddenly because of that same sin, that meant he was not as utterly alone as he once thought himself to be.  He felt the need now to make things right for her.  “I mean I failed to give her the tonic, Gaius.  Won’t she need it this night?  You just said how it helps her sleep.  Should I go back to her rooms and give it to her?”

 

The physician looked out at the darkening sky beyond the open window, at the few stars pinpricking the black blanket of the night with specks of silver gleaming light, below which the townhomes and cottages nestled in early slumber, their hearth fires smoored for the night.  “I’m afraid it’s much too late for that now,” he said.  “Most like, she’s already asleep.  I’ll speak my apology to her when I visit her in the morning, however.  I’ll say nothing of you, Merlin, just that with the new tea I was prescribing her for the baby—that was what I was researching just now, if I mean to be honest with you—I forgot to make it.  There’s nothing for you to fear.  I’m sure she’ll understand.  And besides, this will be a sort of test to see if she still needs my remedies.  As of now, she’s just taken the tonic out of nightly habit; it could very well be that she’s outgrown these night terrors after all.”

 

Merlin followed the physician’s gaze out the unshuttered window, past the curtains shifting in the night breeze, toward the sky’s fathomless pitch of black, and the stars that gave faint light to that darkness.  “I pray you’re right, Gaius,” he said, meaning his words more fervently than he could have possibly then had the sense to convey.

Notes:

Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed this latest installment with a little more insight into Merlin's mind, and also finally some exposition on how magic operates in this au! (And what this can all mean for Morgana. 👀) I have an immense fascination with witchcraft and so thought to incorporate some of the folk practices I've come across in my readings of the subjects that I've found myself gravitating towards as a practicing witch myself. This was just a bit of a tease here of what's to come as far magical practices go in the fic, but I hope you like how I'll end up implementing them.

Also, I wanted to let you know, that I have made recently yet another trailer for the fic that's up on my youtube channel twistedshipper. It's by Ethel Cain's song 'Family Tree' which served as the inspiration for the interlude I wrote a couple chapters back. Please check it out, and thank you in advance if you do!

But more importantly, thank you for continuing to read this story as I very slowly get it out to you all. When I first started writing this fic in my college apartment six years ago, I never would have dreamed anyone would actually come to read it, and yet here you are. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You all mean so much to me.

Jo ❤

Chapter 28

Notes:

music: August Underground - Ethel Cain
Can't Pretend - Tom Odell

These were the tracks I played on repeat while completely rewriting parts of this chapter. If you can, give them a listen. They add so much to the story. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading. 🖤

CHAPTER SIX: Through Sleepless Eyes, Darkly  

That night, despite Gaius’s medical estimation (though perhaps he had leant too hard on supposition, borderline experimentation, as opposed to sound reasoning) and Merlin’s surest (yet nevertheless honest) wishes, Morgana, bereft of the tonic, whose somnolent properties drugged her body to sleep the night through until the cold light of morning greeted her once more, insisting she wake, dreamt with a fervor she had not before known, not even in the darkest days of her girlhood, those lonesome, restless nights in the aftermath directly following her mother’s death, in the fraught time before she came to be treated for those very dreams, the black hole visions, with their rare glimpses of truth, scouring her brain as they perverted her from the inside out. 

 

Gwen had bidden her a reluctant goodnight late that evening, insisting even as Morgana had shooed her out the door with an equally persistent “I’ll be alright now, thank you, Gwen,” that she stay the night making a bed upon the floor with the extra blankets from Morgana’s closet, just so that she could be near her in case her lady had need of her sometime during the night after having suffered her latest ordeal.  Morgana had understood her concern, a part of her even longing for the extra company herself this night given her own qualms about facing its depth alone after having just contemplated in a fit of fear and panic the abortion of her own child, Arthur’s child—a part of her still worried she would have a change of mind and go through with it after all, despite Gwen’s assurances that they together would think of another way she could give birth to her babe in secret, now that the route to Essetir was closed to her—and yet, she could not bear to ask any more of her maid this night. 

 

Her mind made up, herself hoping her rationale sound, her composure steadily intact, Morgana excused Gwen, and with her gone, undressed herself for bed.  She hung up her day’s dress upon its hanger, hooking it in its place within her wardrobe, then withdrew her shift and threw it on.  Her nightgown donned, she turned next toward her vanity and set about brushing out the tangles in her hair, which were particularly stubborn after her earlier manic frenzy, but even that was over and done with rather more quickly than she would have liked, and she figured quite regrettably there was not much else for herself left to do but to retire for the night, and pray to God that she could find peace from the day’s terror in her dreams—not that she was particularly blessed where they were concerned, but still she had no other course but to hope, even when hoping seemed beyond reason.    

 

She snuffed out the candle on her vanity, then drew herself however slowly closer to her bed, staling as much as she could all the while as she took inventory of all the little keepsakes and trinkets in her room—the bejeweled comb she inherited from her mother sitting in its place upon her dressing table, the hung tapestries (the better ones) she had stitched as a girl which she recalled Arthur once praising (but that in itself was a lifetime ago), and of them, most especially the one with the border of birds in flight, each lark seeming to chase the nightingale in front of it—Morgana greeted each item in turn, reminding herself with each acknowledgement that each object contained a portion of herself, a fragment of her story, and with them surrounding her, she found a material consolation that readied her for the travails of sleep.  Standing now before her bed, she gave a weary sigh, relenting to that carnal need, then lifted her hand to draw down the covers with care.  Still finding herself ill-ready for sleep, she bent to puff the pillows.  Then, that meager feat accomplished and herself unable to think of another thing to do but face the god-be-damned dark and try for sleep, she remembered the most important part of her bedtime routine: the nightly tonic Gaius prescribed for her.  With a breath of relief, and another prayer to God that this night of all nights, sleep may find her but without the dreams, she tucked herself into bed and reached her hand across her nightstand for her prescription—

 

A wave of alarm passed through her body then, as her hand grasped air and she realized that the tonic was not there upon her nightstand as it had been waiting for her each night for the last sixteen years.  Where could it have gone? she thought, herself beginning to fret.  Could I have left it on my dressing table by mistake?  But no, if the vial had been there, she would have seen it sitting beside her jewelry box when she sat there just a moment ago as she combed out her hair.  It was not there; she was sure of it, and yet where else could it be? 

 

She took the burning candlestick upon her nightstand in hand and hopped out of bed, thinking to conduct a brief survey of her room just in case she did happen to set the tonic somewhere else by mistake.  In the end she searched her entire room twice over and yet the small vial was nowhere in sight.  Morgana returned to her bed, set the candle back down on her nightstand, biting her lip.  It seemed, somehow, she had lost her medication, and now, given the late hour, there was little else she could do but attempt to sleep without it.  Suddenly, she deeply regretted her decision not to take Gwen up on her offer.  Right then, another human body sleeping within the vast, empty room would have given off at least the semblance of comfort, as it had been when she had spent her nights with Arthur, so that Morgana could hope to feel herself secure enough for a sleep greeted by dreams, such as her rest this night would most certainly be without the tonic at her disposal.

 

But that was not an option; she had dismissed Gwen, and most like her maid had returned to her own bed in the servants’ quarters given the late hour.  Morgana drew a deep, steadying breath, and, resigning herself, blew out the candle on her nightstand, the last light still burning in the dim room, consigning her chamber to the thick impenetrable darkness of night.  She squirmed under the covers, laid her head down upon her pillow, her eyes wide and staring at the pitch above her.  There was little else for her to do but try to relax and sleep, and pray this time to whoever was listening that her dreams did not come find her, not this night, after she—

 

She felt him, her unborn babe, stir inside her, himself the only reassuring presence she knew this night, her constant bedfellow of the last four months and at his movement she felt her body’s tension ease.  She may not have had the tonic that maintained her sleep, even if it did little to dismiss her dreams, but she would not be alone this night; she had her child with her. 

 

She closed her eyes, shutting out the external dark for the internal abyss within.  She knew she would not go alone into that pitch of unconsciousness for her babe was with her most like with dreams of his own.  She eased into the pillow, her eyelids closed, her body sinking heavier into the mattress with the knowledge of that comfort that she was not alone—and greeted sleep. 

 

---

 

Without the tonic pulsing in her veins, Morgana noticed at once a clarity to what were before her often confused and fractured dreams.  Everything she saw within her mind that night was so bright, so crisp, so clear in picture and sound and touch that she thought herself awake, reliving a memory perhaps, or so she would have thought, if only what she saw and heard and felt had transpired once before her living eyes, ears, and hands.  

 

She saw her brother.  That was nothing new; she had had dreams of him before, especially in that dark time of her adolescence when she went to her bed longing for him just as much as she dreaded the desire for the terror of committing in thought that gruesome, solitary sin—but this dream was different, burning with a certain vividness—she knew not how else to describe it—that convinced her it was something other than any dream she had had of him in the past.  She was viewing him atop his bed, like often she dreamt of him during those nights she found herself most lacking his touch, pining for him the most, but, unlike those nights, this time he was not alone.  Beside him sat Mithian, and she was speaking softly to him in the candlelit dark of his bedroom.  Morgana startled.  Not because the two of them sat upon his bed in the stages of undress, but because she could hear their voices so clear as if she were in the room with them as they spoke to one another.  And even odder yet, when they did speak it was not with the curiosities of dream logic, she had known in her other dreams of them in the past, which acted as the usual tell-tale sign that she was dreaming.  No, this was different.  This felt wholly real.

 

“Mithian,” Arthur was saying, as he reached his hand to brush her cheek, trembling as he did so.  “Are you sure this is what you want?  My father is still High King.  There is time—we can wait—”

 

She laid her hand atop his, steadying its faint tremor.  “When I agreed to marry you, Arthur, I did not mean only in name.  I meant to be your wife in every meaning of the word.”  She inched closer to him across the bedspread, easing herself beside him, as if eager for his touch, and continued softly, her voice gentle in the secluded dark, and Morgana was left to wonder in that moment if she had even registered that her brother had flinched. 

 

“I appreciate the time you’ve given me, given us to acquaint ourselves first with one another, but I feel there was never any need for that, at least for me.  Please understand me.  I appreciate what you’ve done, trying to make me comfortable as if I am still your guest, thinking I was roped into this with little choice of my own, like so many other women arranged to be wed, but I wasn’t.  I am no child bride, but a woman grown with thoughts and feelings of her own, and I want to be known as such by you, as my husband.  Do you understand me?  We have been wed for months and yet you hardly look my way, let alone touch me, Arthur—and when you do, it’s like this,” she added, pressing into his hand to halt its erratic movement.  “—as if you are a boy scolded, having done something wrong to upset his mother.  Why do I frighten you so?” 

 

Arthur looked down at her nightgown, his half-lidded eyes tracing its untied laces that bloomed a creamy gold like a crocus at midsummer in view of the candle’s fickle flame.  “You said it’s high time we do this,” he said, a strange tone to his voice, Morgana thought, as if it were laced with accusation.  “Let us do our part then and be done with it.”

 

Mithian dropped her hand, a flash of skin, departing to rest once more against the darkness of the bedspread at her side.  She swallowed, as if a thickness of honey, so sweet and so pure lodged at her throat, and Morgana tasted its sweetness upon her lips, the memory of her girlhood-self wishing to reach across the breakfast table and press the stickiness against her brother’s cheek surfacing in her mind’s eye, and then vanishing into the dim that was her brother’s chamber. 

 

“I did not mean for this,” she said honestly.  “First Morgana, now you.  The both of you, so hospitable when I arrived, only to close yourselves off, to retreat to that place where I cannot go.  Will you tell me what I missed in the years I was away?  What happened here?”

 

Morgana watched Arthur, the transformation across his face, as if he had been struck and was reeling from the blow, the brows furrowing, crinkling with years of emotion unnamed, unfelt, bottled up, and locked away.  She understood that look, knew it most intimately herself.  How dreadfully close this dream Mithian came to the truth, she thought, and yet she was blind to it, like an observer staring straight into the sun, black holes dancing upon her vision.  There would be spots in her sight, and she would be disarmed by it, that golden truth, too immaculate for average eyes as hers to glimpse, but then the ungodly recognition, as the holes filled in once more, and she saw what Gwen had seen—good thing she was already seated upon the bed, her hands grasping nothing delicate but her own worrisome hands, nothing sharp and twisted that could break if suddenly she lost her grip, though her grip was indeed loosening. 

 

What happened next surprised Morgana—she thought she knew her brother, even her dream version of him, but this dream was strange and hardly forthright in what it was trying to tell her. 

 

First, he had dropped his hand from her cheek to clutch tight at the bedclothes.  “Why would you want to hear such a sorry story as that?”

 

At that, Mithian had looked up at him, her eyes softening, melting golden in light of the tricking flame.  “To help me understand.”

 

So, I don’t go mad here, Morgana finished, as easily as if the words had been her own, but she knew somehow that they had been the words Mithian had been too afraid to utter aloud against the uncanny quiet of the room.

 

“Well, then,” Arthur said.  “But if I tell it to you, there will be no understanding, only pain.”

 

A flash then—a memory Morgana could not recall of a fair spring day in the leafless grove, two grasping hands and the secret glimpsed in a fractured light—the woman you loved—the words conjured themselves in Morgana’s mind against the sunspots in her vision, the two people, just silhouettes beneath the bare branches, who were they?  And what had become of them?

 

“This is the story of your mother,” Mithian said, understanding now.  “I too lost mine, and it was a sad time, for both my father and me, but I was much older, able to move on with the comfort of my memories,” her voice trailed off, remembering.

 

“Though still it was lonely,” she said, looking up and into Arthur’s eyes.  “To lose someone so close to you, someone you cherished.  I do understand that grief.  But at least you had Morgana.”

 

“Morgana,” Arthur answered, knowingly.  “Yes, I had her.”  That is the secret, again the words came to Morgana though he had not in fact spoken.  She watched him run his hand across the bedspread, trace his fingers along its threads, meandering the distance until they reached the jutting outcropping of his wife’s angled knees.  Upon this very bed.  Morgana saw those knees then, a sharp image of them bruised and bleeding, as she knelt upon the floor of some empty chamber, muffled cries sounding, reverberating with a restless keening, and then nothing, only silence—she was back in her brother’s bedchamber, Arthur seated beside Mithian on the canopy bed.  She had missed moments of their conversation when she had been away, or so she thought, and came to this: 

 

“If we do this,” he was saying, “snuff out the candles.”  Let it be dark, so I can pretend.

 

There was a stir, Mithian sliding out of her dress, until it fell with a muffled thump upon the floor.  At once, Morgana could hear the pages fluttering, and saw suspended in that inky black print, the words she had once scoured for that ill summer day of her adolescence—he has uncovered his sister’s nakedness, he shall be subject to punishment—she wanted to shield her child eyes from what was about to take place, to maintain her innocence, but the child—the fruit of her sin, completed—already grew within her, as Mithian wished to beget a child this night, thinking the act godly, thinking it the sole pursuit of her womanhood.

 

Morgana spied Mithian’s nakedness in the dim, saw her go to Arthur, on her way pinching out the candle flames so they each sparked and died against her touch, each with a sharp crack, the light fading with each pinch—Morgana’s fingers ached, they were so tender just now—but that too was forgotten once the dark settled in and she could not see neither here nor there, the hands before her eyes nor her brother where he sat upon the bed, but she heard the creaking of the mattress, the shifting of the sheets, as Mithian laid down her body, the fertile field waiting to be sown—for a moment she thought she was lying there too, suspended over Mithian (was that how I had appeared when I laid with him?), and then she was there for Morgana felt his touch, tracing patterns over her flesh that rose to greet him in all the places that remembered him from those mellow winter nights spent as his lover, her soul tethered to his—it seemed the bond had not broken in their time apart—his lips were upon her and they were hungry, feasting on her flesh, and Morgana responded earnestly (or was it Mithian?), ushering him within, the earthy depths of her body, each sigh against the stillness, she had one thought then—this was heaven or perdition—and she did not want to know which.

 

She had the sense that she was watching with eyes wide open—her brother as he fucked her with a fervor she did not recognize, as if he could not contain himself any longer—this self-imposed abstinence he had erected crashing down in a fit of need and want—he did crave her still after all, after all he had said and done—there would be bruises upon her skin to show for it by the morning, when the pale light of dawn lit the bedchamber once more, bathing the decadent scene in God’s glory—and she was left wondering where God had gone this night—did He watch them? had He seen? them as they were, sprawled in their pleasure—her body was trembling from desire, and so was he.

 

Until the illusion, the mirage, the vision, whatever it had been, fractured, splintered into pieces—Put a baby inside me, Arthur, she had said—but it was Mithian who had spoken, her voice delicate despite the abuses she endured—the welts that would show upon her skin with the new day sun, this midnight hour, the betwixt time, the passage to reach that gilded day, when all that occurred obscured in darkness would be revealed once more in light—with a woman’s knowledge that her duty would be fulfilled, her body conceive, that, its greatest triumph—and whatever trance her brother had been in ended, unceremoniously with his tears, spilling over her skin—it alone, the atonement for the sin—and Morgana felt herself expelled from Mithian, no longer one with her body, but elsewhere, hovering like a specter in the corner of the room—I’m sorry, he had said, and got up, too distraught to mask his shame, and Mithian, no—there the dream dissolved into nothing, and Morgana—

 

woke, whisked away—though her eyes were open, had been open the night long, though she did not recall waking until this moment.

 

Morgana sat up with a start, raised startled hands to grapple at the laces of her nightdress—they were still tied, the delicate bow cinched just so in place—but something, some sticky substance coated them, and checking, she felt her bodice too—Honey?, she had thought strangely, against reason, but no—she raised a searching hand to her face, touched blood, she believed it was so, yes, she was bleeding, her nose was bleeding, how strange, for she was not accustomed to such afflictions and the night air, it being just days after midsummer, was hardly dry—yet here she was, not yet alarmed, but growing worried.

 

She rose from her bed to step towards her wash basin that stood near the window, careful not to trip in the dark.  Her thighs ached, another odd occurrence, but she paid them no mind, finding herself grappling for a cloth, wrenching it in the cool water from the bowl, then passed it over her face, savoring the damp touch against her fevered brow—so flushed she felt just now, she felt solace in the water against her skin, as it stole away the heat of her body.   

 

Her heartbeat slowed to its steady cadence.  She was aware that it was dark, and she could hardly see, except for the moonglow lighting through the sheered curtains, but she did her best to wipe away the blood, to staunch its slow trickling, the carmine drops falling down into the basin, one by one, tinting the water red, or so she imagined it would be. In the dark, the blood appeared black as ink, black as—

 

the dream came back to her in an instant, and she dropped the cloth at once, hearing it plunge deep into the basin.  She gripped the sides of the table it stood upon, staring wide-eyed as the pictures returned to her, the strange series of images of her brother and Mithian seated atop his bed in the room above her own, she thought frantically, as she strained to listen, but heard nothing, except the shallowness of her own labored breathing—she had suffered a lifetime of strange dreams, but nothing so peculiar as what transpired in the time just after she had laid her head down to sleep this night, the undrunk tonic resting someplace else—What the hell had that been?

 

It was, no, she did not understand it, and yet, there was no other way to describe what she had experienced in the time while she was away, asleep—where had she gone?—had she slept walked down the corridor and up the stairs, turning the lock on her brother’s door and been bidden entrance there?—himself thinking her Mithian, a strange, but honest mistake?—when he took her like a whore upon the covers of his bed?  But that’s—  

 

Impossible?  Morgana splashed the soiled water upon her face, shaking herself back to reality, the droplets dripping down her cheek, pale as porcelain.  “You stupid girl,” she said then, forcing herself out of the trance, even if the abrupt disruption caused her to break, herself just another casualty to shatter upon the floor in a thousand jagged shards and splintered pieces.  (Oh, how her hands had ached trying to pick them up one by one that hapless morn in her chamber.)  “One night you misplaced your medication, and the dreams came back full force is all.  It had been so long, and you had forgotten how deep you used to find yourself lost in them.”

 

Lost—she had been confounded by them as a girl, thinking them to mean something more with a child’s certainty, something other than what they had appeared to be, what Gaius had professed to her they indeed were when he had held her upon his knee.  It’s just a bad dream, he had told her, Here, take this, it will make it go away—but they had not gone away, in truth, only fell dormant beneath the reaches of her consciousness each night she drank the tonic as he directed, so that by the time she woke and readied for the day, she forgot them more or less, their details, their bright shining artifices that just peeked out of the corners of her eyes each time she thought she spied a shadow dance before her vision—the tonic diluted her ability to recall them, with time at least, that was true, though the traces of them still lingered before her sleepless eyes, but even then, no, even as a girl, before she came to be treated for them, she had never known the nightmares to be as brightly tangible as this. 

 

If only she could find a match to strike to expel the darkness from the room, she thought next, feeling that very darkness deep within her body, consuming her as if from the inside out.  Her stomach lurched then, and for a moment she thought herself possessed by some entity that wanted out of her flesh, when she recalled in a flash of lucidity that it was only her babe that she felt stirring within her, as she had first felt him earlier that evening (was it yesterday now?), the moment she had thought to imbibe the emmenagogue after all and be rid of all her burdens. 

 

Her burdens that were only multiplying.  Stiffly, she removed herself from the wash basin and strode over toward the bed, sitting down once more upon the mattress.  There would be no more sleeping this night, she swore to herself, for she could not bear another vision—Was that truly what it had been?  Her girlhood self would have certainly thought so, before the insight had been coaxed out of her by men much older and wiser, who thought they knew better than she what occurred in her mind and body. 

 

She prayed not, but knew better than to waste her breath just now voicing such petitions to God in his High Heaven, for it was most certain He had disowned her, given the waywardness of her actions, her thoughts, her inclinations—to have loved her brother as she had, craving him against the better judgement, that was why she was so forsaken, left to be mother to a child she could hardly keep once she had given birth to him, if she did not die in the birthing—oh, how forlorn was she! that was why He had punished her with this dream-vision, whatever it had been, granting her a taste of what she had lost and still coveted—her brother, a place once more alongside him and his wife in his bed, that was why her body had merged with Mithian’s in the dream she supposed, so that it was her hands that had grasped her brother’s back as he came within her, as much as Mithian—in the darkness, they could pretend it was just the two of them once more as it had been—her past presence in that room nothing more than the ghost haunting the wedded couple and their marriage—a floor down, perhaps, while she remained slumbering in her own bed, yes, with eyes that did not close, as if her spirit floated someplace elsewhere, no longer content, her body meanwhile wasted beneath the sheets, as still as death. 

 

Morgana tore at her eyes, wishing she had the courage to gouge them out for what they had seen, the sin in the book as it was written, but knowing better, that it was senseless, and herself without some sharp implement, stopped herself in her tracks.  Her nose had stopped bleeding, she realized, a small relief, but when she reached her hands towards her face, brushing them against one another, they felt clammy and cool to the touch, not feverish as from before, as if—

 

As if it had been I who had lain with my brother this night, not Mithian—how queer the thought, how awful and disquieting to the mind, and yet, rationally, it was absurd.  She was a simple girl, no matter her affections; it was impossible for her to project herself there as she had slept under any circumstance—she was no sorceress, no witch capable of midnight flight, and besides she had remained in her bed, asleep the whole time—It was a dream, she told herself, just as Gaius had once conveyed to her as a girl of seven, a strange, vivid dream, but a dream nonetheless and nothing more—if one discounted the blood, her fevered skin that turned in an instant clammy cold with dread.    

 

She could feel her baby stirring; he too was scared, she thought, or perhaps, eager.  The thought frightened her, herself not knowing from whence it came, she who had not before given thought to the being she would come to bear, a child of incest, a sin so unutterable, why had the thought not struck her that he could be something other than what she thought?  That precious keepsake and memento of him, something at last belonging strictly to her when all else she had reached for—like Icarus flying against his nature on artificial wings, too close the sun, the splintered light, the sunspots dancing—had dissolved in a flash, left to burn and crash asunder?

 

“What have I done?” she whispered against the stillness of the room.  Suddenly, the black silhouettes marking the placements of the furniture loomed at her darkly, the larks on the tapestries transforming into crows of carrion, and it was as if the nightmare had continued into her waking present.  Morgana pinched the flesh of her arm, so hard she almost broke skin—Yes, still present; still alive, she told herself.  Not sleeping. 

 

She lied down, hugged the sheets about her chilled body.  She would not sleep the rest of the night, that was for certain, but just think the matter through, weighing reason and past explanations against the fright she felt that this had been indeed real, as vivid as any lived experience, as much as she needed it to be so—for what told her with a sinking suspicion that she had in some sick way been with her brother this night was the way in which he had preferred the room to be dark as pitch, all the candles snuffed, every trace of light extinguished, as if he could not bear in his soul to lie with Mithian—and he could not, she had seen that plain on his face if the dream could be trusted, and not mistaken for another lie (who had sent the vision?), for he had flinched the moment she had reached to console him, her poor baby brother who had been made to suffer before the advances of women other than she at the demand of their father’s ever present whims.

 

The thought was an eerie comfort to her.  All this time, she had fretted that Arthur had placed her aside out of a sense of newfound devotion to a woman he hardly knew, whom she hardly knew anymore, but the nightmare had proved otherwise where his loyalties truly lied, with her, as she knew they always had been. 

 

It was the salve to nurture the wound upon her black heart, to learn that he was just as miserable as she, just as wrought and wretched, his body likewise spent and insufferably weary from the walls he had himself erected against her protests to shut her out—

 

—so as to step into that uncertain future destiny all but handed him. 

 

A man like that.  No wonder she craved his company. 

Chapter 29

Notes:

Hi guys. It's been a few weeks, so I thought I better get back to revising the story in order to share the next chapter with you all. This one pretty much just sets the stage for the next part, although there are still more events that will take place first in part two before we get there. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading. 💗

Also to my fellow American readers, I just wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving if you're celebrating. 🦃

Jo ❤

CHAPTER SEVEN: A Step, Towards the Light

When Gwen arrived at Morgana’s chamber the following morning, a bit earlier than expected, given her own worrisome concerns regarding how her lady had faired the still night past alone after coming so close to performing a dangerous self-induced abortion in a frantic fit of equal parts desperation and need—which Gwen had successfully dissuaded her from, thanks be to God—an apprehension that had kept her tossing and turning in her humble servant’s bed throughout the muggy night until at last she fell into a crumpled, exhausted sleep—she surprised to find Morgana already up out of bed and dressed no less in one of her commissioned gowns.  While her mind debated, in her fatigue, the moot point as to how she had managed to tie up the dress’s fastenings on her own and without any help, her intuition told her this strange deviation from the Princess’s normal routine was a foreboding sign that the night had not gone as uneventfully well as she had previously hoped.

 

“Morgana!” she cried at once, seeing her standing before the window so, where she had drawn back the curtain, her fingers cradling its smooth fabric, to gaze out at the dawn shrouded scape below and the moist stone walk, still damp after the night’s sporadic shower, “You’re up!  And the sun hardly risen!  Is something the matter?”

 

Something clearly was amiss for when the Princess turned to greet her from her lookout, Gwen noticed at once her red-rimmed eyes, the dark circles beneath them that stood in such contrast to her pale flesh. 

 

“Morgana,” she said again, gentler this time, as she went to comfort her.  “What happened?  Not the baby—”

 

Morgana stopped her with a hand.  “No, not the baby,” she relayed to Gwen to her outward relief.  She paused, glanced dazedly at her maid as if her eyes could not focus upon her, then said, “Gwen.  When you left my room last night, did you happen to take my nightly tonic by mistake?”

 

Gwen’s eyes widened, comprehension hitting her full force.  “No,” she said, raising a hand to her lips.  “Oh, Morgana,” she said, laying a hand on her lady’s shoulder, only to pull back affright herself when she flinched, thinking that a strange reaction, one quite unusual for Morgana, who tended to covet such reassurances—something had happened during the night, of that she was certain.  “I’m so sorry.  Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t sleep at all the night last?”  It seemed that would make two of them. 

 

“I tried,” Morgana said, her voice sounding tired, as would be reasonable from the little Gwen knew of the Princess’s affliction, but even then, the way her voice broke against the silence, there was a note of some other emotion, connoting some experience from the night before that Gwen, herself spent from that same night of worry and listless sleep, could not quite put her finger on just then, but knew it to be something of rather grave import.  “But the dreams—” she shook her head.  “Never mind.  It hardly matters now.  I must speak to Gaius.  Maybe he knows what happened to my medicine.  I’ll remind myself to ask him about it when he comes in later this morning.”

 

It turned out Morgana had no need of such a reminder for the physician arrived at her very chamber less than an hour later in full apology for his negligence.  He had been preoccupied with the testing of a new tincture, he told her and Gwen both, and had forgotten to prepare the tonic he prescribed for her to aid her sleep in his occupation.  It had been such a hectic day around the castle, he confessed, between the new tincture sample and Merlin (“brain like a sieve that boy”) having mixed up two deliveries by mistake during his afternoon rounds about the palace, which needed immediate correcting for the sake of the patients involved, that he only remembered that he had forgotten to prepare her medicine when he woke this morning. 

 

“I’m terribly sorry, Mi’lady,” Gaius said solemnly.  “I can see my forgetfulness has caused you pain and for that I owe you my apology.  I only hope you can forgive an old man such as myself.  Here,” he added, handing her an amber vial, “I prepared tonight’s tonic for you first thing this morning and thought to deliver it to you myself personally just to ensure that it got to you safe.”

 

“Thank you, Gaius,” Morgana said as she accepted the bottle, holding it protectively in her hand.  “It’s rather unlike you to have forgotten,” she said simply, without motive.  “But we all have off days here and there, I suppose.”  She smiled wanly, her eyes, albeit tired, and something else, Gwen thought, observing Morgana as she watched the physician with marked fondness.  “You have nothing to fear.  Of course, I forgive you.”  This said, though genuinely, with a note of unease, or so her voice had sounded to Gwen’s knowing ears.  What had she dreamt last night? she wondered.  The change in her, it was almost as if she was frightened, but then again, she had appeared in such a state, no a worse one, the evening last when Gwen had rushed into her room to find her in a wretched heap, cradling that vile bottle and her stomach behind the dressing screen.    

 

Gaius nodded.  “Very well.  But I suppose that now that I am here and the three of us alone, I must ask, did you speak with the High King regarding my suggestion?”

 

If Gwen noticed before the pallor of Morgana’s face, then every last bit of color drained out of her skin upon this inquiry of the physician’s, turning her cheeks ashen as a corpse.  Gwen knew all too well the thoughts now running rapid fire through Morgana’s mind that that question had so innocently triggered—her discussion with the High King, her father’s refusal, her near-attempted abortion—she wondered which story she would give the physician, the full of it, every last upsetting detail, or just the necessary bits, the part where the High King, with not so much as a care, had shot to dust the only viable plan they had for her to bear her ill-begotten child in relative secrecy, far away from the Court and its base gossip that would do her harm.

 

“Yes,” Morgana forced herself to say, attempting to remain as stoic as possible, but one look at the physician’s face and she broke down, whatever had transpired the past night for a time forgotten.  “Oh, Gaius!” she cried.  “I tried to talk to him I did, but he-he wouldn’t listen!  Instead of allowing me to visit my aunt, he decided that I am to be married!  To the winner of a tournament no less!”

 

“There, there, child,” Gaius said, drawing Morgana close to him and wrapping her in a secure embrace.  “Don’t fret,” he said, patting her back, “shh, everything will be alright.”

 

Morgana pulled away, jolting back from his touch.  “How can you be so certain?  Gaius, did you not hear what I just said?  I am to be married off, and I am too far gone with child for my husband, whoever he may be, to believe, let alone accept, the child as his own!”

 

“Yes, I understand,” the physician responded.  “And it is unfortunate timing, it is.  If the High King had proposed this tournament three months ago, this situation would have been the answer to your prayers, but now…Tell me, Morgana,” he said then.  “What did you say to your father exactly?”

 

Morgana stared at him uncomprehendingly.  “What did I say?  Gaius, I told him I wished for some time away, that it would do me some good to be gone from Camelot after, after—” she stopped herself rather suddenly then, an open-mouthed silence that caused the physician and Gwen both to study her with marked curiosity.  “I only meant,” Morgana said when she recovered herself, “that with all the fuss about the castle these last few months, I said I wanted some time away, and that was when he proposed all of a sudden the notion of this ridiculous tournament!”  She turned to face the physician, beseeching him.  “Gaius, what am I to do?  I couldn’t just deny my father his will to his face, and yet I have no desire to see this marriage through.  It would ruin me!  And besides, marriage or no, he refuted my only chance to bear this child without slander, so what is to happen of me when the time comes for me to give birth?”

 

“Shh, Morgana,” Gaius said.  “You did well.  It would have been most unwise for you to try to refuse the High King, even as his daughter.  But take heart, all is not lost.  I will go with you right now before him and perhaps we can work out an agreement of sorts to allow you to visit your aunt after all.”

 

“But, Gaius, what if he doesn’t listen?” Morgana asked, still worried.  “What then?”

 

Gaius sighed.  “If it comes to that, we’ll think of that then.  But right now, I have a case I mean to press before your father, and your sleepless night, as sorry as I am for it, may just be the evidence we need to sway his mind.”   

 

---

 

Of all the people—councilors, guardsmen, servants and the like—who could possibly come knocking on the door to his private chambers so very early on that humid summer morning, Uther least of all expected to grant admission to Gaius, the Court Physician.  Yes, the physician did tend to his needs every time and again whenever an old battle wound of his would flare up every now and then with pain, but as of late his scars had not been troubling him, and he could not think for the life of him what else could possibly bring the physician to his door and at the early hour no less.  He certainly did not recall requesting his presence, but he knew the man well and intuition told him that if he was standing outside his rooms, it was for something rather pressing indeed. 

 

“Enter,” he said, from where he sat before the oak table where he broke his fast—this morning’s meal a lavish dish of smoked ham, fresh bread, and blackcurrants.  “Ahh, Gaius,” he said, setting down his napkin, as he looked up from his plate and took note of the physician, only for his look to sharpen when he spied that the man was not alone.  Behind him, in the shadow of the closed door stood Morgana in a sage green gown, her eyes downcast and solemn.  Uther would have never admitted it to either of them, let alone another soul, but the sight of her, body so gravely pale in the shade caused him to momentarily startle as if he had borne witness to a ghost.

 

“What is this all about?” he said, pointing his knife from Gaius to where Morgana stood behind him.

 

“I came to ask a favor, Sire,” Gaius said placidly, “on behalf of your daughter.”

 

“Not this nonsense about Morgause, I hope,” the High King said dismissively.  “I already told Morgana yesterday, I will have none of it.”

 

Gaius took a breath.  “That’s precisely it,” he affirmed. 

 

Uther returned his knife to his plate.  “Well, let me save you the trouble, Gaius, of whatever my daughter has clearly roped you into.  She will not be leaving Camelot and that is final.”

 

From where she stood in the shade, Morgana bent her head so that the High King could not glimpse her reaction to his refutation of her will in her eyes.  He expected her bodily response of hiding her face, as only a little girl who has just received a harsh scolding would do, to be no more than a front to incite him to grant her whim, like the spoiled little girl he still imagined her to be would have done, failing to see her as she now was.  He was blind to the grown woman that stood despondently before him, ignorant of the relief his simple allowance of her request would give her.  Perhaps, if there had been such an understanding between them, a gentle space to allow for those tender pangs of love to flutter, like a dove, once more, it would have saved them both the grief that was to come of it all, in the end.

 

“Morgana has told me of your plans, Sire,” Gaius began carefully, glancing back at Morgana behind him before turning back to the High King.  “She tells me she looks forward to the tournament you wish to hold in her honor and her future marriage to the proclaimed winner.  She is very grateful, Sire, that you have thought of her so.  My only concern though—”

 

“Your concern?  Whatever for do you have anything to be concerned about?”

 

“As to that,” Gaius continued cautiously, “I have been watching over Morgana these last few months, as you well know, and her health is not as it should be.  She’s had a hard time sleeping as of late, even with my usual remedy, as I’ve informed you.  Simply, and it takes much humility on my part to admit this, Sire, the tonic I’ve prepared for her since she was a girl at your initial request, is no longer helping her sleep.  I’ve tried new remedies since and none of them have been of any use.  Frankly, Sire, I’ve quite run out of ideas on how to cure Morgana’s ailment, so when she inevitably broached to me her inquiries about visiting her aunt, thinking some time away from Camelot would do her some good for her troubled sleep, I couldn’t help but agree.  So, I come before you now, asking on her behalf, that you grant her leave to go for some time at least.  It’s the last thought I have left to try that may just help your daughter.”

 

“I see,” Uther said rather stoically, almost consideringly, even as his hand belied his tone by crushing the napkin he held into a tight fist.  “But Gaius,” he went on, having thought his thought through, his fist relaxing its hold on the scrunched-up cloth, “certainly, as a physician of your caliber, you must have other remedies you have not yet tried at your disposal?  Surely there must be an easier solution to be found here you have not yet considered than sending her off on her own to face the dangers of the road just to visit her aunt for an indeterminate amount of time, or so I suppose this visit is to be?”

 

“I agree, Sire,” Gaius answered, “that a solution should be made here first.  But Morgana is not happy here.  Some time away would help her, as well as the cold air of the Hebrides.  She looks forward to the tournament, but with all its necessary preparations, it will be months and months away.  She needs something to look forward to now.  And that something could very much be a visit to her aunt.  Morgana has not seen her since the death of her mother.  It’s more than time that she sees her again.”

 

“Yes, she has said as much to me,” Uther relented, “but I cannot believe she is as unhappy here as you say, these nightmares notwithstanding,” he added, fixating his eyes on his daughter in the distance, only to turn back to address the physician.  “Camelot is the only home she has ever known, and I hear that she picnics often near the lakeshore, just as she did as a child.  Does that sound like an unhappy girl to you?”

 

“Unhappiness is sometimes invisible to the eye,” Gaius affirmed.  “I believe Morgana exerts a significant amount of effort pretending that all is well with her.”

 

Uther chuckled.  “You believe, Gaius?  But where is your proof?”

 

“Right here,” Gaius asserted.  “I ask you, Sire, to just take one look at your daughter and then tell me if you think everything is as it should be.” 

 

The High King sighed in his seat, a mere moment’s deferment before his eyes glanced over at the specter of his daughter, her hollow eyes, the dark circles beneath, and met defeat.  He had known, deep down, the moment she stepped solemnly into his chamber that she had suffered another of her night terrors, perhaps the worst, as it seemed to him, since the dreadful ones she used to experience as a child, and now, even with Gaius’s array of tonics at her disposal...  Perhaps, there is some truth to this matter, he thought then, a part of him irritated for even reconsidering it at all since his mind had been made up, and once he made it up, he was not wont to change it again.  It was not the verity of Morgana’s affliction that kept him from giving his consent to this, in his mind, deranged solution, but the nature of the remedy itself.  There was a reason he and Morgause had not spoken since the days following his wife’s death, for there was little love between them to be shared despite their kinship.  And a part of him feared his sister-in-law’s influence upon what he believed to be his daughter’s impressionable mind, not that he took much stock in the rumors said of her.  But still, though a hard man he proved to be, he could not just sit by while Morgana suffered, if the suffering could be alleviated and helped…

 

Uther drummed his fingers on the table, as he glanced at Morgana then Gaius and back again at Morgana, pondering the dilemma before him.  “It is,” he began slowly, turning his eyes toward the physician, watching him with care, “in your medical opinion that she should go for a time?  You think I should allow her leave?” 

 

“You have heard my view, Sire,” Gaius voiced.  “It is up to you to decide.”

 

“I have all my evidence,” Uther said sternly, then, without taking his eyes off the physician, stated, “You are excused, Morgana.”

 

Morgana’s eyes went wide, her body rigid, at the sound of her father the High King uttering her name, and she froze a moment in the shadow of the doorway where she had thus far silently stood, sole witness to the council that would determine her fate, her mind and body a second behind her ears in interpreting her father’s command and inspiring to action. 

 

“Y-Yes, Sire,” she said in a chided voice, feeling her father’s hard stare upon her for having not moved as he wanted.  She gave him a short nod, clasped her hands to keep them from shaking with nervous tremors, and, with a last fearful look towards Gaius, departed the chamber without so much as a sound.

 

Uther cleared his throat.  “Well, Gaius,” he said then, now that the two of them were alone, and free in his mind to speak of the matter unheard, “while I don’t like it, perhaps you are right.  It is no secret that Morgana is not well.  I know you have been trying your best to treat her, and if you say there is no cure to be found here, then I suppose I must trust your judgement.  But say, I let her go?  What then?  Would you go with her?  I don’t think I can spare you for that long.  For a short trip, perhaps, but not something spanning several months’ time.  That’s how long she wanted to be gone for, was it not?”

 

“Yes, Sire,” Gaius answered steadily.  “I have thought of this dilemma already when Morgana first brought her worries to my attention.  I knew such an absence on my part would be an issue for the Court, and so thought of sending my apprentice, Merlin, with her in my stead, if you would consider it.  He has proved quite capable in my field of study and has assisted me in the preparation of Morgana’s tonics time and again.  I’m sure she will be just fine in his care.”

 

Uther nodded.  “Very well then, Gaius.  As you present me with no other option, it is settled then.  Tell Morgana she shall have her wish.  I’ll have Arthur put together an escort of his finest men to accompany her on the road to be assembled once the rest of the plans for her departure are made.”

 

“Will you send word first to Morgause of her coming?” the physician asked.

 

“I suppose I will have to,” Uther said, slightly disgruntled at the notion.  “Morgause and I have not spoken in quite some time.  Not since Igraine’s death, herself not being much wont to leave Essetir, not even when Cenred escorted his sons here to take up their knighthood.  I can only wonder what she would think of this visit.  As to whether she would even agree…”

 

“I’m sure she will welcome this chance to host her niece under her roof,” Gaius said.

 

“Perhaps,” Uther said, unconvinced.  “But one never knows with Morgause.  Of the Tintagel girls, she was the least forthcoming.  No one could ever be certain what went on in that mind of hers, behind those eyes—” he added, reflecting, pausing now as he thought back to the days of his youth and the beautiful pair of golden-haired girls he had met outside the seaside keep on that signature military excursion he had commandeered in the name of High King Ambrosius, the man through which he had inherited every claim to his name, from the crowned high seat to the very woman he would ultimately take to wed; he supposed he had him to thank for her as well for sending him the long, dreary road south to Cornwall, to tame the lands aside the Cornish Sea, purging them of sorcery.  He did not reflect long; feeling the physician’s eyes on him, he came swiftly back to the present.  “She had grown so cool to me ever since I married her sister,” he said, remembering.  “Do you remember her well, Gaius?”

 

“I remember her, Sire.” 

 

Uther nodded, pondering.  “Yes, well, she certainly has done well for herself, having come into the rule of a kingdom of her own right through her marriage to Cenred.”

 

“There are some who say she is the true ruler of Essetir,” Gaius said carefully.

 

“Well, I don’t think much of that,” Uther chuckled to mask the sudden sense of unease washing over him in a cold wave, as cold as the ones that would break against the rock-strewn cliffs of that very keep.  “And certainly, Cenred wouldn’t either.”

 

“Of course, Sire,” Gaius said. 

 

Uther nodded, though he hardly heard Gaius answer him.  His mind was drifting, now adrift in the vast sea of the past, whose fathomless waters threatened to devour him whole in their depths, with an intensity akin to the waves that bludgeoned the walls of Tintagel, as they did each day in his memory of his brief time spent there.  And with the memories washing over him, he prayed that he was doing right by Morgana, and himself for that matter, so that the secrets in the waters remained so buried beneath the waves, never to be located, and uncovered to rise up once more to the surface, breaking its stillness for all to know and see. 

 

It was a moment before he registered that Gaius had addressed him.

 

“If that is all, Gaius,” he said then, remembering himself, “you are excused.  Tell Morgana for me that I have allowed her this visit of hers.  If you insist upon it, she shall have it.  But not only that.  Tell her that while she is away, I will be making arrangements for this tournament to be held for the autumn following her return.”

 

“The tournament?” Gaius asked despite himself.

 

“Yes,” Uther said, rather impatiently.  “Did you not say that she was looking forward to it?” he asked, a snide grin transforming, then masking his face. 

 

“Ah, yes,” Gaius answered, cursing himself silently, “that I did.  But I just presumed, Sire, that with Morgana’s trip to Essetir, the tournament would be called off.”

 

“Called off?” Uther repeated, uncomprehendingly.  “Whatever for?  You said yourself that it would help Morgana to have something to look forward to, so now she has two things.  A holiday, and a husband.  What else could a girl of her age ask for?  If it were up to me, she would just have the latter, but I must trust your judgement on this, old friend.  And that is why I have allowed this visit of hers.  So, I ask you now to tell her she shall have her wish.”

 

“Of course, Sire,” Gaius conceded, unwilling to push the matter further, sensing Uther would not be swayed again.  Morgana will be able to give birth without scandal now thanks to you, he told himself silently, so be thankful for that and go while the offer still stands.  “Please forgive me for my misunderstanding.  I will do as you ask.  Thank you,” he added, after a slight pause, and gave a bow of respect to his ruler before taking his leave, although it concerned him deeply that Uther, for the sake of his stifling pride, had not backed down from his initial farce that would see the Princess wedded off in such a barbaric fashion.  He knew enough to sense his reason for it, this debauched pageantry as if she were borne Helen in the epic poems of the Greeks’ making, but that was not enough for him to speak out against his liege’s uncouth jest, or so he assumed this forthcoming marriage was to be, himself with other worries, namely, Merlin.  For his sake, he could only risk so much.   

 

Morgana, please forgive me my failure, he prayed silently as he stepped out of the door’s shadow into the light of the hall beyond.

 

The poor girl had suffered quite enough for a lifetime at her father’s bruised and calloused hands.    

 

---

 

“Gaius!” Morgana exclaimed the moment she saw the physician exit her father’s chambers, after the door fell shut behind him.  “What did my father say?  Is everything a loss?”

 

“No,” he answered her, gazing at her as she teetered on her toes, and yes, his mind silently voiced back once he recovered his initial surprise at seeing her standing there in the hall.  He had assumed that after Uther had insisted that she leave, she would have returned to her own chamber to await the verdict he himself would inevitably bring back.  He admired her bravery, to have waited outside the room in which her very fate was being determined, as he imagined that it could not have been easy and could see that it had not been so for the ghostly pallor of her cheek.   

 

“No?” Morgana repeated, her heartbeat quickening.  “What do you mean ‘no?’”

 

Hearing Morgana’s question, Gaius recalled himself and realized he had spoken neither the good news nor the bad, so intent was he on beholding Morgana in her sleepless splendor.  Beautiful though she still was, she did not appear well in the slightest thanks to the restless night she had underwent because of Merlin’s negligence, and perhaps in some small way, because of his own.  He could have carried the tonic to her door himself yestereve and yet he had refrained to satiate his own curiosity, or perhaps inflate his own sense of pride, assuming if all had gone well as he hoped that he had in effect cured her of her affliction, that in itself a tremendous feat, and for that, having failed that small miracle, he supposed he would face a punishment, but no matter; it had turned out right in the end, for Morgana now had her wish with himself as the sole witness.  Uther had agreed.  Seeing her standing before him as drawn as a ghost, he thought to escort her back to her room that very instant for some rest and a good cup of tea for the sake of her health and to raise her spirits, but supposed that nothing could cheer her up more than what he himself had been instructed to say on the High King’s behalf—the good part that was—he just better be out with it.   

 

“Just that,” Gaius said.  “Uther has agreed to let you stay in Essetir with Morgause.”

 

“Truly?” Morgana asked, laying a hand over her heart in disbelief.  “Gaius!  That is divine!  How did you manage it?  I could have sworn once he had me leave, he would have denied your request.”

 

“So did I,” the physician answered.  “But it seems Uther has seen reason.  He will send word to Morgause and intends to have Arthur assemble an escort of Camelot’s finest men to take you there.  Of course,” he added, nervously, “word must come back from Morgause first, saying she’s accepted your father’s request that she take you in for some time, before you are set to leave, but since Uther is the High King, there’s little chance she’ll refuse, and—”

 

“Oh, Gaius!” Morgana said.  “Enough with the ‘what-if’s!’  This is best the news I’ve heard in a long, long time.  Thank you,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes, as a brilliant smile lit up her face; seeing it, Gaius almost thought her the young girl she used to be.  “I mean it.  Truly, thank you.  I couldn’t have done it without you.  Although,” she added more solemnly, “I do regret you had to lie on my behalf.”

 

“No need to thank me, Mi’lady,” Gaius answered guiltily as he thought of the rest he had yet to tell and could not bring himself to tell at that moment for the fear of having himself reassembled her broken heart only to shatter it once again to pieces.  “It was nothing.  Now, come,” he said, eying her up and down.  “Let us take you back to your room,” he said, offering her his hand.  “While I’m glad this good news has brought back some color to your face, you need rest, and plenty of it.” 

 

“I suppose you’re right,” Morgana replied, accepting, but when she raised her arm to interlock hands with the physician, the lace cuff of her sleeve drew back and there Gaius caught sight of a dark bruise, black as night, spread an inch wide in the sensitive inner flesh of her arm, before her hand cinched tight with his and the sleeve fell back in place again, covering up the mark, so that he thought in the disorder of the day, that he had only imagined it, that mark, either an innocuous bump, as he only reasoned it to be, or something otherwise, the signature mark of a witch. 

 

“Now that I know this sweet relief,” Morgana chittered on, as they strode down the hall arm in arm to her room, delirious, “I realize I am so very tired.” 

Notes:

Edit 12/03/22: As an aside, I ended up revising the smut chapter (ch. 6 on ao3) between Arthur and Morgana because some details of the lovemaking were bothering me as I felt I could do a better job with it now, so that's what I worked on the last week or so and it's up now in case you guys would be interested in rereading it. I didn't cut anything really; if anything, I just expanded upon what was already there. Everything still happens more or less the same way and most of the dialogue in the following scene is identical to the original. Just wanted to mention this to let you know that that chapter has been altered, whether you're interested in reading the new version or not. Thanks. <3

Chapter 30

Notes:

Hi guys. While this chapter could probably use one more read through, I've decided to just post it tonight and be done with. 😅 I hope you enjoy this rather strange chapter (there's been a few of those recently, and sorry if they're not to your liking).

I also wanted to mention that I have a separate oneshot up on my account for this fic that takes place on Christmas Eve (Christmas only being a few days away after all) in case you didn't see it. It's a more or less happy piece and quite different from the rest of 'Solitary Love' and so I thought to point it out if you are in the mood for something a bit more festive involving our dear Arthur and Morgana. Thanks in advance if you do decide to check it out. :)

As another year comes to a close, I just want to thank you all for your interest in this story, as I am still every so slowly getting it out to you. 🙈 It means a lot to me that you're all here. I want to wish you a very happy holiday season and of course a happy new year too, as this will most likely be my last time posting in 2022. ❄

With love,
Jo ❤

CHAPTER EIGHT: Addendum

The following weeks drifted on by in the lazy, languid way of summer without incident. 

 

From that day he came in humble apology to her chamber onward, Gaius delivered Morgana’s tonic himself when he made his daily rounds to her room to check up on her in her pregnancy—outwardly, to avoid another error, but truly, the physician supposed (if he were asked), he made the errands personally to spare his apprentice further involvement in the Princess’s affairs, at least as far as could be helped for the time being.  Morgana was entering her fifth month and her child—praise be to God, whether He answered her prayers or no—appeared as healthy as could be, at least according to the physician’s pronouncement based on the answers the abashed Princess gave him to his many inquisitive questions, the ones she could answer openly at least.  If all continued to go well, she would with luck give birth in four months’ time to a healthy boy or girl. 

 

As for Morgana herself, she was quite worried.  Three weeks ago she had humbled herself to go before her father to beg him leave for a sudden visit to her aunt in Essetir for an indeterminate length of time, which he had not only denied her, but had countered her offer with the hosting of a tournament come the end of the year to which he would see her married to its winner, thereby leaving her with no escape from Camelot to bear her illegitimate child when it came due, or so she thought her fate to be until Gaius took it upon himself to talk the matter over with her father on her behalf and had, by no small feat, managed to convince him to grant her this stay on the account of her health.  (Or at least that was Morgana’s understanding of the situation.  She still did not have yet from Gaius, for the fault of his own, the part he had purposefully left out when he had met her in the hall after discussing the matter over with her father about the minor issue that the tournament proclaiming the name of the man she would inevitably wed was indeed still on at the demand of the High King himself; instead of being canceled, it had just been merely postponed until after Morgana was set to return from her visit.)  That same day a message from the High King had been sent to Essetir requesting permission for his daughter’s visit, and still Morgana had not heard word from her father whether her aunt had sent a reply missive accepting her request or no.  All the while she waited, she fretted to herself, and to Gwen when she attended her, as each day came and went without a reply from Essetir, as she herself, if these last few weeks were not telling enough, was not getting any smaller any time soon.  She did not know how much time she had left—mere weeks, a month, maybe two—before her stomach would start to show past even the most forgiving of her commissioned dresses, and she feared greatly that everyone in the castle, the city, the kingdom would come to know of her misdeeds before she even heard her aunt’s response to her inquiry, if she ever would.

 

Where her rest was concerned, Morgana slept through each night with her prescribed tonic at her disposal, and her dreams, although still somewhat troubling, returned to their unfathomable, distorted state—dreamlike in every sense of the word—which was all well and good as far as she was concerned, if only because it was what she had come to expect of her nights since she came to be treated for her affliction as a child, at least the nights she spent now alone in her own bed away from Arthur, just as it had been in her adolescence with her brother sleeping in the room above hers.  Morgana dreamt of him still, and even of Mithian sometimes, but her dreams of them lacked the definition and the odd clarity that they had that night she attempted to sleep without her medication.  As far as that dream was concerned, Morgana, after a somewhat good night’s sleep the following night, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion, did her best to put its puzzling peculiarity out of her mind.  The only explanation she had had for it—that it had been due to drug withdrawal—Gaius had confirmed for her, and so she thought it best to just leave it to the past and try her best to forget about it altogether, that of course discounting the way it unnerved her still when she momentarily thought of it from time to time, when a brief glimpse of what she had witnessed transpired in replay again before her eyes: the secluded room, its candles pinched and snuffed, all light displaced and in its place an eerie gloom—

 

In such moments, she would squeeze shut her eyes and pray to think of something else quick before the nausea overcame her and she thought of hurling up with whatever she had just eaten, which she thought a strange callback to her days of morning sickness in the spring.  Thankfully, the bouts passed quickly, and on she was to the next task at hand for her in her uneventful day, which usually meant knitting and the like.  Such domestic chores used to unsettle her in her girlhood, with the way they left her mind free to wander whichever which way idle thought directed, but as of late, she felt she needed a needle and cloth between her hands to steady herself and ease her growing worries, which seemed to be only multiplying by the day.  All of this, she dealt with silently, neither voicing her concerns to Gaius or to Gwen for the fear of alarming them to something that escaped even her, and perhaps most unsettling of it all was the inexplicable presence of the small bruise she had discovered upon the inner flesh of her arm the morning after her strange dream.  The appearance of the welt when she had encountered it changing herself in light of the morning sun had caused her to tremble with such fright, though she hardly grasped why.  As far as she recalled, she had not injured herself, and yet the dark mark remained pressed upon her skin, persisting into the days that followed without so much as yellowing.     

 

In time though, she grew accustomed to it, that mark, and it was to her like any other characteristic of her body, as innocuous as the mole on her left calf and unremarkable as the birth mark upon her shoulder, and of the dream that had plagued her sleep, with each day that passed since that awful night, she had more or less forgotten it, so preoccupied was she with thoughts of Morgause’s reply that she was certain would, no, must, arrive any day now in Camelot, or so she thought anyhow until one calamitous evening in late July which brought it back to her in due course with all the alarm and dread she had felt when she had first experienced it. 

 

It had been a fairly ordinary day so to speak up until that point, uneventful even.  She had been heading from her chamber room, freshly dressed in a red robe, down to the Great Hall for the Feast of Saint Anne, mother to the Virgin and grandmother of Christ, dreading the social occasion with all its fuss (if only because it meant seeing her brother in his fine attire, which always sent her heart into summersaults no matter that she and he were no longer on the best of terms, not that she was wont to admit it) when she was stopped in her tracks by a hand grasping for her arm from behind, fingers pulling at the satin of her sleeves, so sharp as to almost tear the fabric.  Startled, she spun around to find that the hand belonged to none other than her sister-in-law and former friend—not that she knew that she regarded her as such—Mithian, her brother’s wife. 

 

“What are you—” Morgana spluttered, taken aback at the sight of her. 

 

“Shh, I need to talk to you,” Mithian replied, her eyes wide, a wild look within them, marking quite the juxtaposition, Morgana thought, with her usual serene composure. 

 

“Now?” Morgana countered.  “Before the feast?”

 

“Yes, now,” Mithian whispered, pulling on Morgana’s arm.  “Come, here.  And quickly.”

 

Curiosity more than any sense of sisterly duty caused Morgana to comply, and so she followed Mithian down the corridor into the library nearby of all places, which was empty, except for the shelves upon shelves of books all neatly arranged and cared for.  Their caretaker and the only man known to frequent the place, Sir Geoffrey, was nowhere in the vicinity, though the spot where he typically sat—a table laden with manuscripts and illuminated scrolls denoting such relics as lineages of the noble houses and other matters Morgana thought most tedious (and for a moment, she recalled how grateful she had been as a girl to not be tasked with such learning as it had been deemed most necessary for Arthur’s schooling to prepare him for his future role as High King)—showed signs of his recent presence.  Morgana supposed his absence meant he was already enjoying himself at the celebration, which reminded her that that was precisely where she ought to be herself, despite her previous reservations regarding the occasion with all its people (no, namely one person, not that Morgana was ever particularly sociable), instead of cramped amongst the tomes with Mithian (i.e., the other person she had no desire to acquaint herself with, at least certainly not at this hour). 

 

“Alright, out with it,” she said, prying out of her grip.  “Why did you bring me here?”   

 

“So, we can talk alone,” Mithian said.  “I have to tell you something,” she added unnecessarily, shifting her hands almost nervously.

 

“What?” Morgana asked, and she was surprised to find that she was genuinely interested in her sister-in-law’s answer.  Whatever it was Mithian intended to tell her, she figured it must be a matter of grave importance and a secret both since she had made certain that they were utterly and truly alone before conveying it to her, and no matter her hard feelings towards the woman for her part in the unraveling of the understanding she once had with Arthur, Morgana did find herself eager, if only for curiosity’s sake, to listen to her gossip.

 

“I know we haven’t talked much the last month or so, and I realize I am to blame for this, for the way we left things when you were ill, but you’re my only friend here, my only true friend that is, and I need to confide in someone to tell me what to do…”

 

“What is it?” Morgana asked again, her voice trilling with impatience, not that she desired to be anyplace else at the moment, aside from maybe her own room with only Gwen for company. 

 

“I’m…” Mithian began, paused, stopped herself altogether, then, with a breath, began anew.  “…I’m with child,” she whispered softly, but the words sounding from her mouth rang as bells in Morgana’s ears tolling judgement, the End of Days, or perhaps, the commencement of one of her father’s many executions.  “Or at least, I think I am.”

 

Morgana exhaled shrilly.  Whatever she had been expecting Mithian to tell her in the dark space of the library, amongst the shelves and tomes neatly filed, the candelabras lit, it was not this.   

 

“Morgana?” Mithian asked, uncertainly. 

 

“You…think?” Morgana said, her mind holding on to that slight, nebulous hope, despite what she knew in her bones to be undoubtably true; Mithian was no fool after all, unlike herself, and would know better than she of such matters.  She shook her head.  “Forgive me.  Tell me everything.  From the start.  How do you know?  For certain.”

 

“I’m not sure,” Mithian said, blushing faintly in the dim of the room.  “But it’s been a week since the dark moon, and I have yet to have my bleeding.”

 

Morgana nodded, mentally counting off the days.  “Have you ever been late?”

 

“Only rarely,” Mithian answered.  “I know, it’s early,” she amended.  “Too early to tell, but I thought, maybe…”

 

Morgana took in a sharp, steadying breath.  “When did you sleep with him last?” she asked, exhaling.  There was no need to make known the ‘he’ in question. 

 

“The only time you mean?” Mithian said dismissively.  “Three weeks ago, exactly.  Can I truly be sure, if I am pregnant, this early?”

 

Morgana frowned.  “Only time?  Whatever do you mean?  And three weeks ago…” her voice trailed off as she counted the weeks since the wedding, which was over two months ago if her calculations were correct.  She looked curiously at her sister-in-law, her brows arched with suspicion.  “Mithian, what are you saying?  The wedding was two months ago—”  Another intangible thread of hope, the unexpected possibility.  “Are you saying that you never consummated your marriage the night of your wedding?”

 

Mithian turned scarlet.  “You mustn’t tell anyone, Morgana.  Please, I beg of you.”

 

“Shh,” Morgana said, hearing the plea in Mithian’s voice and feeling herself inexplicably soften.  “It’s okay, I won’t, I promise.  But Mithian, what happened?” 

 

“I don’t know,” Mithian confessed.  “He said he wanted to give me time to get to know him better, even though I was ready, and I wanted him.  Every time I tried to explain to him that it was alright, he would make some excuse and turn away from me, and I, oh, Morgana, you do not know how hollow I felt to be so plainly unwanted by my husband.  How humiliating it was.  I was so ashamed,” she said then, burying her head in her hands. 

 

Morgana tensed, watching the faltering of the woman she once considered more put together than herself, herself unable to comprehend it.  A part of her, shocked though she was, relished this quiet victory, that Arthur had not found it in himself to go onto the woman he had married the night of his wedding ceremony and consummate that holy oath, knowing for what it was, a sure sign that his heart still belonged—despite everything he had said and done—to her.  Not that she knew what to do with this sort of useless loyalty.  What good was her brother’s restraint if he would not permit her to warm his bed alongside him as she once had done during those tranquil days of winter?  What good was this knowledge, this evident proof, that he loved her still when he refused to demonstrate that fervid ardor with the touch of his body against her own?  If anything, knowing this was an empty prize, a hollow win, and Morgana found her heart splintering beneath the weight of rejection all over again.  Except this time, she was not alone.  In it, she had an unlikely bedfellow—the last person on this earth she expected to ever commiserate with—and yet here she was, feeling sorry for the woman who had stolen the world out from under her, causing her to stumble and fall, until her hands were wrought, her knees scraped and bleeding, because she too knew what it was like to stagger for the misplaced affections of a man, to weigh her love against his pride and come out unbalanced, his needs surmounting her own in the end.   

 

“No one knew,” Morgana said quietly, surprised to hear herself speak.  “I surely didn’t.”

 

Mithian swallowed, and Morgana thought she appeared rather uncomfortable, though for good reason. 

 

“What happened though,” Morgana began gently, reaching out to lay a hand upon her shoulder, uncertain why she did so if only to console her just now—she was the enemy after all—“to make him change his mind?”

 

Mithian startled at her touch, only to then ease into it, as if grateful for her presence there within the quiet of the room.  “I…I convinced him we should try,” she said at last, half of herself there in the library with Morgana, half lost in memory.  “Though I am not proud of the way I did it, shaming him like that…but I did not think of him then, only my own pain, at the way he always seems to flinch whenever I am most near…as if I wound or frighten him simply by being his wife.”

 

At that phrase, so distinct, so strange, Morgana felt the wind go out of her lungs at once, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe.  It was a déjà vu she was experiencing—she knew it in her bones that this had all happened before, but when?  And why?  And how so?  The circumstances eluded her, and yet she recalled them plain as a clear summer day bereft of storm and cloud, the horizon spotless, unmarked as far as the eye could see with not so much as a blemish, or a stain—though the night had been dark indeed, black as pitch, a violent rain that left the flagstones dampened with the rising of the new day sun shrouded in mist.  If we do this, her brother had said, his voice cryptic in the semi-lit dark of his bedchamber, Mithian sitting tense at his side upon the bedspread.  Snuff out the candles.  Let it be dark, so I can pretend.  No, he had not spoken those words, had not given voice to them with his breath, but nonetheless they had been communicated to her, while she lied reposed half-asleep, eyes wide open as she lied comatose in her own bed directly beneath his—had it been as this scene was taking place?—yes, she thought so for how she had felt him, the heat of his body pressing against her own, the way he had ravaged her, entering her with a rage, no, Mithian, no, she was losing it, that image, the tender sensation, except for the bruises she knew would lie upon her skin with the morrow, and it had done so, that black mark on the sensitive patch of skin within the curve of her inner arm, still it stood there peerless, that dark welt, that brand of sin.  She had been at a loss for its sudden appearance, and yet how could she forget that ill-begotten night, the blood as it seeped from her nose drip-dripping down and coating the laces of her nightgown, the clammy touch of her chilled skin, the way the world reconfigured itself with her waking, so that night was day and day was night, and herself at an inexplicable loss, knowing her brother gone from her and yet tethered to her still.  And she could see them, the two of them half-dressed upon the bed, put a baby inside me, Arthur, she had said—Mithian, the voice to break the trance, her brother crying, the dream vision vanishing, herself waking in another bed, her own bed, another time—he had—by God, he has, Morgana thought now in her estranged bewilderment, the dream dissipating once more before her eyes, fractured like the vase upon the floor of her chamber, each whetted piece proffering explanation, each promising a shred of truth, that escaped her still, the shards sharp as they were, so fixed to cut the tender skin of her searching hands, grappling upwards.

 

But—(the dreadful but)—Mithian was only telling her this bit of story now, and to that end, how could she have known of this moment between them, so private and secret, before she even heard word of it from her sister’s lips?  And not only that—how could she picture the moment within her mind so clearly, as if she had been there in her brother’s room the night of their lovemaking, as if a ghost haunting them—the specter in the room—no, that was not entirely accurate, it had been as if she were the one he had fucked raw and tender, not Mithian, though it was Mithian coming to her now speaking of a child, the child they had conceived together, that night, while she lied abed, a-slumber, tormented by dreams and visions.  Unless, by the grace of God, unless—

 

Morgana’s eyes went wide, and she drew a hand before her gaping mouth.  It was clear to her now, every last perfect detail.  She had been in that room, that full moon night, the first after midsummer, that dreadful night she nearly aborted her own misbegotten child she secretly carried, the day Gaius forgot to craft the tonic that aided her rest—she had been there, yes, she was sure of it now, herself sole witness and accomplice to that unholy consummation—her gut told her so, that it was true, and she believed, despite all that was good, that it was. 

 

The hard part to accept though, as impossible as it sounded, it being just as incomprehensible to her now as it had that night when she woke grasping at its dreadful implication, was that she had been there in that dark room erstwhile her own exhausted body had been sleeping fitfully in her own bed.  A fact which she knew to be unfeasible, and yet, by some act of God, or otherwise nefarious power, it had been so.  She had been in that room while she had been asleep, her vision of Arthur and Mithian converging so that the dreamscape behind her eyes became, in effect, reality, and reality a facet of the dream. 

 

“You convinced him,” Morgana said, her voice a near inaudible breath, a cold accusation, sounding just as sharp as it was intentionally cruel.  “And he took you to his bed, as he should have when you were wed.”

 

Mithian looked up at her friend.  “…Yes,” she said simply, then looked away.  “Yes,” she repeated, with a hardness Morgana had not heard in her voice before.  She turned to face her head on.  “I thought I had broken through to him, and for a moment I had, but it was not enough.  We spent that one night together in the guise of a married couple…”—and though she did not speak then of what precisely had transpired, Morgana could feel the memory of her brother’s hands upon her skin, the madness that undertook him that night, and for a moment, she mused over what it had been like for Mithian, the harshness of his hands, pressing against her fragile frame, so brutal as to be lacerations, a kind of deranged penance, and the way he had crudely pulled out from her as he came, as if in shame for what he had done, the moment her soft spoken words had reminded of him of who and what he was, an incestophile just like her—“…but we woke with the morning as strangers.  Whatever regard he shows me in public, it is just for show.  In private, he barely even looks at me, and I feel his disdain, though I hardly understand it, let alone know if it is warranted or what I have done to deserve it.  He is the man—he should be the one to want me, and I learn to tolerate his presence.  That is the order of things, isn’t it?”

 

These last words of hers, pronounced with such pity for the self should have moved Morgana to her friend’s plight, but it was not of Mithian her mind went then, as if back in time, but toward her brother, recalling in an instant a similar exchange she once had with him, that first night he took her to his bed, the way she had so casually asked him to divulge his past experiences with the women who came before her, thinking of the encounters with only a mild curiosity, only to be met with an abruptness to his tone, a cold, stark shift to his outward mien, and she had known the past to be met with pain, thinking him foolish, her baby brother, for complaining of his privilege, for having the temerity to complain of his spoils as he took them so apathetically.  Now though, her heart ached for him, and she wished to go to him, to erase with her hands and the taste of her mouth, the touch of those former women, and Mithian now, the ones that broke him, as much as he had carved them raw, and unwavering. 

 

“That is why I came to you, my friend,” she said now that her defeat had been made plain.  “You know him better than anyone.  And so, I ask you, how shall I tread next?  Do you think, if it is true that I now carry his child as I feel is so, that such knowledge would, could cause him to break that critical look?  If I give him this,” she paused, looked down at the stone floor at the shadows dancing, casted there from the candelabras above, unable, Morgana realized, to meet her eyes, though if she had, she would have glimpsed her pain mirrored, “do you think it possible for him to love me?” 

 

“You have not told him.”  It was a statement rather than a question, one loaded with unspoken irony of the most amusing sort, if one were an outsider to the spectacle, not caught as they each now were in the web the fates wove, tying a thread here, snipping one there, cinching the whole amalgamation tight—all to weave that grand picture—or perhaps, more accurately, in the game men played with the women in their lives, thinking them not persons, but objectives to be had in the grand design. 

 

Why, that makes two of us, old friend, Morgana thought, resisting the urge just then to lay a hand over her own child by the same man as he moved in her womb, as if stirred now from rest by the knowledge of this newfound companion who would walk with him arm in arm into this dreary life—with all its hardships, with all its thorns. 

 

Mithian shook her head. 

 

“It’s okay,” Morgana said, unsure whether she meant to soothe Mithian now, or herself, or neither—perhaps, it was only empty, hollow words she spoke.  “If you’d like my advice, this is it.  You have time.  Use it well.  First, be certain.  I know what you want more than anything is to hear him say he cares for you, but going into that hall now and telling him this, before you even know whether it’s true or not, will only make a mess of things.”

 

Mithian swallowed uneasily.  “You’re right,” she said.  “Of course, you’re right.  I should wait a month just to be sure.  But what then, Morgana?”

 

“What then?” Morgana repeated, thinking quietly to herself of her own set of what then’s she had been forced to consider and conquer these last few months in her own right; though it had been easy for her once she came to terms with the harsh decision reality had faced her with—she would take her secret to the grave, even if the silence consumed her from the inside out, and she died a frail old woman upon her bed—if the birthing bed did not kill her first, that was—not even then if he lived to see the day would she speak plain the truth, give it voice as much as she yearned to whisper it into his unsuspecting ears.   

 

She shook her head, the image of her own end dissipating from her mind’s eye.  “I may have grown up with my brother,” she said, “but I realize now there are many things I will never understand about him, although,” she added, when Mithian looked abject away, “I’d like to think my brother would be enthralled to learn that he was about to be a father.”

 

Morgana watched Mithian look up at her then, a look of rekindled promise brimming in her eyes—and Morgana could see all at once within her own mind what Mithian now saw pictured in her own: an image of herself with her child—son or daughter, Morgana thought it a son—and Arthur, looking upon them both with pride ignited in his eyes.  It was the same image Morgana saw when she closed her eyes before sleep late at night, but with herself present there instead of her former friend, before the dreams had their way with her and distorted the picturesque vision, and it was no more accurate than a comforting supposition, no more real or tangible, but an inconsequential what if that could never in truth come to pass; it existed only in the recesses of her imagination, and to that end carried an uncanny power to carry her through the punishment for the crime committed that would haunt her throughout the rest of her days.  She supposed it was strange, thinking then, for her to have given Mithian this hope, when she had denied herself the same with her sworn secret.  Arthur would never know of the child she carried for him, and she thought she had made peace with that fact, however coldly obtained, the grandeur of this small mercy, but now, now beholding Mithian in her place, witnessing in her mind’s eye Arthur at long last bestowing upon her the adoration she craved, the same Morgana craved, suddenly, the pain was ripe in her heart once more. 

 

“Thank you,” Mithian breathed.  “I pray more than anything that you are right, Morgana.  No,” she said on second thought, “I trust that you are.”

 

Morgana swallowed, gave a curt nod.  “I’m glad I could be of help.”

 

Mithian smiled wanly.  “You always are, my dear friend,” she said, and here, she gave Morgana’s hand a soft, reassuring squeeze—though it was she needing the comfort, not Morgana, unless she suspected…but no, of that she could not, Morgana knew with sweet relief—a small action to which she responded in turn with a wan smile of her own. 

 

“What, say you,” she said then, “we head down to the feast?  I think I have detained you long enough for the sake of my troubles.”

 

Morgana stared at her friend. 

 

“Don’t worry,” Mithian said, misinterpreting the look and the reason for it.  “I won’t do anything unnecessary.  I promise.”

 

Morgana exhaled the breath she had not realized she had been holding.  She shook her head.  “Of course, you won’t,” she said then, recovering herself.  “You never do.”  Unlike me, she thought then.  How different we are, Mithian, the two of us consigned to our separate fates.  She could see the weeks ahead for them both, a similar path that diverged onto two separate roads.  She was certain Mithian was pregnant, like herself, able now to see the early signs for what they were: a rosier complexion, a brighter look in the eyes that seemed to dance with the reflecting candlelight of the study.  Had I looked like that? Morgana wondered, but she pressed the thought aside, seeing now Mithian telling Arthur the good news in the weeks to come, his initial shock, then joy, and the celebration that would inevitably follow when they took it upon themselves to announce the good tidings before the Court.  She will be fawned over, adored, her baby beloved and blessed, while what waits for me and my child around the bend?  She closed her eyes, and saw within them a dozen scattered images: here a caravan carrying her down a mist-shrouded path, here a salt sprayed fortress by the sea, here herself staring out at a cloud obscured night, one hand over her womb and the other on the ledge, as if in waiting (but for what?—it escaped her), and here in the firelit dim of a chamber, against a sweat-soaked bed, a labored breath and a cry as a newborn is thrust in her open seeking hands— 

 

She opened her eyes—that was what awaited her.  Mists and hushed secrets, and a child who should not have been, unlike Mithian’s child, who would grow up most beloved and wanted, one day with a golden circlet about his head.  While what for my child? Morgana asked, but her sight narrowed, dimmed into darkness, and she saw nothing but black pitch, though her ears picked up a whistling of wind and a crash of waves against rock, the cries of gulls overhead, piercing against the silence.  She supposed that lone sound would have to suffice as answer.

 

“Morgana,” Mithian called her back. 

 

“Yes?” she answered, and then looked down in surprise at her friend’s hand clenched tight in her own.  She dropped it at once, unaware she had even been holding on at all, let alone that hard, as if she was holding on for dear life from the precipice of that lone seaside cliff.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know what came over me.”  Oh, but I do, I do.

 

“It’s okay,” Mithian said.  “But let us go now, Morgana, before we are missed.  I am sorry I detained you this long.”

 

“It’s fine,” Morgana answered—though she felt nothing of the sort—only to pause a moment.  “But will you be alright, Mithian?” she asked, the same question she had become used to asking herself.

 

Now Mithian paused in thought.  “I think so,” she said, laying a tentative hand briefly over her stomach.  “You have given me hope that all is not lost.  Arthur,” she allowed her voice to drift off, before brightening, “he may come around after all.  Thank you for helping me see that.”

 

Morgana swallowed, then nodded.  “Of course.  It was my pleasure.”

 

“And will you do me the pleasure of accompanying me to the feast?” Mithian asked lightly.  “Usually I would arrive with Arthur, but I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that.  No, I’m glad,” she said then with a laugh, having a sudden change in outlook, “as it’s you who warms my life.” 

 

Morgana’s heart tightened in her chest.  And how many times must I be sacrificed for account of you, Mithian?  Is this the penance I must do for loving your man as I should not?  For he is my brother and your husband.  And God, she thought then, her eyes trailing momentarily upward, as if to directly address what lied above, if He was even there, listening all the while to her secrets as she confessed them, the small degradations of her heart—when will the day come when I’ve paid enough? 

 

She sighed, shook her head, then in an act of humility, offered up her hand for Mithian to take.  “Anything for you, my friend.”

 

---

 

That night, after she had returned later than usual from the feast—later because a part of her had been reluctant to depart altogether from the revelry, if only for the much needed distraction it had provided her from the troublesome thoughts now mired in her brain, those involving herself, her brother, his wife, and the nasty snarl that had them now all entwined more firmly than ever before, as if they were all flies caught in a spider’s web, to which, Morgana thought, added a rather grim note to the circumstances—and undressed herself for bed, bidding Gwen an insistent ‘goodnight,’ a hurried ‘see you on the morrow’ with the promise that ‘all was quite well’ despite her objections as she turned in, Morgana dreamed once again as nightfall descended, though this time whilst the tonic’s sedative flowed still through her veins, thus distorting what she glimpsed behind her otherwise closed eyes—and as it turned out, all was far from alright. 

 

She dreamed of a child quickening in a womb, as she felt her own child stir within her own reposed body, in that listless stage of sleep just below consciousness.  She knew this child, and in her dream, she rested her hands around him as if to safeguard him from some outside, unseen force that meant him enmity—he just a child—as he grew within her, more fully formed with each moment that passed them by. 

 

And when she touched this child growing in her womb, she knew she loved this child, instantly, and without doubt.  Rather, she did not have to think the thought that she knew, she just understood it, as if she could feel in her blood that it was true, this enveloping sense of love, at that one single touch.  It was all she needed to be certain, and she was certain, for a fact, indisputable.    

 

Then the dream changed. 

 

First, there was the emptiness, the gaping nothingness, as if a void had suddenly opened up within her, and she gasped in her sleep near to the point of waking, if not for the sedative holding her down in the undertow of the unconscious realm of dreams.  At once her body knew before her mind what was missing—the child, her precious child, was no longer within her, sheltered in her womb—and at the thought she started, jumped up into momentary panic, alarm signaling through her brain, through the nerves in her limbs, sending her into a frenzy, a mad longing, for who was she without him? 

 

Scared, she cried out for him.  Somehow, she did this, despite not knowing his name or how he preferred to be called. 

 

To her stark surprise though, and then weary relief, he answered her—

 

“Mother!”

 

Upon hearing his voice, that was when she remembered, in that reasonable way of dream logic, her child was a grown boy of eight years, no longer a vulnerable babe, tucked within her body, but a living, breathing boy with a mind of his own, and a will to transform thought into volition.

 

That was when she turned to watch him, as he came sprinting towards her outstretched arms, open in their gesture to receive him.  He was laughing, and she could not help but laugh in return at the sight of him and his mirth, so benign, and she so unaccustomed to such fickle things. 

 

She held him in her arms then, smoothing over the blond strands of hair that fell over his forehead with care, as she bent to look at his face.

 

“Wasn’t that fun, Mother?” he was saying, still laughing as if at some secret joke that only he was privy to, only to speak again, when she did not immediately answer, this time sounding uncertain, hurt almost. 

 

“…Mother?”

 

His face.  She saw him in full then and a shadow fell across her own, a worry tingling in her veins, turning the blood within cold as the Lake of Avalon in spring, the snow gone, but the ice floes still present, drifting above its blue shining waters. 

 

This is not my child, she thought then.  Then fright.  Where is my child?

 

She looked down at him in horror again, studying the face, realizing that she did not have to scrutinize the face closely to know that this boy in her hands was his child—for he was the replica of him at that innocuous age from her memory, the same golden hair dusting his head, as if a halo, the same crystal hue of his eyes and well-built body, though still small, that would grow fit for any sport, jousting, tourneys and the like, all in all the manner of a King’s son—but not her own.  No trace of her darkness was expressed in him, and therefore did not dwell below in his blood, curdling him from the inside out, so that he did not spoil, was not proclaimed inherently rotten as a son of her making ought to be. 

 

She jerked backwards.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “You must be mistaken.  I am not your mother.”

 

“Yes, you are,” the boy said, as if this were the response he expected, as if it was all part of that secret joke that he was in on, leaving her to guess at the inevitable punchline, that he must surely be out with in time or else spoil the mood, as her temperament was indeed worsening—

 

“Come here if you don’t believe me,” the boy continued, and he pulled on his supposed mother’s hand leading her down and down through nothingness and the world all at once, until they were standing upon a sandy stretch of beach before the lake water, the same breadth she knew so well from her own childhood spent here with his father.

 

“Look there, if you don’t believe me,” he said insistently, his face beaming because he knew himself to be right.  “And tell me you are not my mother.”

 

She took a breath to calm herself, then a step, and another until her feet, now bare, touched the water, so chill and so clean.  A wave kissed her toes, and for a moment she was still, resigning her will, letting it go, to be awash in the lesson here, even if understanding was still just out of her reach.  Or so she thought until she looked and saw, saw to her terror, her abject horror, that the woman reflected back at her on the water’s surface was not herself, not her pale face half-obscured by her long locks of raven hair (like she had worn it as a girl), but Mithian, the full moon of her face exposed, with its lithe bones beneath, lending a grace of the highest accord. 

 

Mithian standing by the waters of Avalon with her son.

 

Arthur’s son. 

 

And what of her child?  What about her?  The dream shifted one last time, so quick, so brief, Morgana could hardly hold the moment long enough to possess it, let alone process it in full, what she witnessed, the dark red stain emerging between her own legs, the lifeforce spilling down between them, staining her skirts carmine, the ichor of the sin—No, she thought then, aghast, caught between dream-state and oblivion and the dark recesses of her own thinking mind—no, this could not be the punishment tolled for the crime of loving her brother as she ought not to have done, for being the woman who enticed him to sin, who led him there all the way down, pressing him down against the mattress of the bed and out of the kingdom, exiled, cut off from his people, if only they were to know the truth as it thrummed in her veins, pulsing, thriving against all opposition—IN SORROW THOU SHALT BRING FORTH CHILDREN—the ordinance He had spoken, the fee for her womanly desire—and lose them, she thought next, with an inward whimper, so soft and hushed, she had not understood at first that it was not her face that she had gazed then upon the waters, but rather—

 

had woken in a cool sweat, beads dripping at her brow, her body shivering beneath the covers of her bed, whose linen was still spare and white and clean, and likewise her nightgown, smelling freshly still of the laundry.  Such a heavenly scent, so domestic, so simple, it brought her back to what was real once more, and so it was another moment before she could gather her thoughts, recall the dream in full—each exacting detail, a sharp knife meant to wound and do so personally—but she knew it had been only a nightmare, just a nightmare, and then again that it had been anything but—

 

“…Mithian,” she spoke under her breath, not that there was a soul within the room to hear her speak out aside from herself—though she had herself to fool—as she thought back over their conversation in the library, coinciding uncannily before the feast.  “So, it is true, what I felt.  You will bear my brother’s baby.”

 

Her room answered her accusation with silence, and then in that solitary quiet, Morgana felt her own child kick stubbornly within her, as if to remind her that he lived too, unlike what the dream foretold, if it could be trusted, if it could deliver truth.  But if the first had—

 

Morgana cried out at the sensation, fearing she would lose him, even though she too had once thought to play God with his life, and wearied, thought with a sharp pang of guilt, as if she had in fact took a dagger to her folds, what sweet relief it would be to lose him, her burden, the existent price upon her soul. 

 

But no.  She could not bear that, no matter the cold logic, the dark need for such survival; the motherhood instinct was much too strong for that, and she was nearly there, half a mother herself, half an underdeveloped girl—this was the task of her life as a woman, to bring forth the life of another, as Mithian had prayed for, and now, for the first time she realized that she was not ready, wishing herself to be that girl of seven once more, the girl she was still in her mind, able to run and hide her abashed face in her mother’s skirts, if only—she had lived to be here now, present, the confidante she craved most desperately, and yet, it was a disquieting thought to think what her mother would think of her if she knew the affections she possessed for her immaculate son—and Morgana wondered whether her dear mother forgot her too now, looked away abject in shame from where she resided up in Heaven—if she saw her now, what would she say of her wayward daughter? 

 

Something had stopped her the night she thought to imbibe the emmenagogue and be rid of the fruit of her sin—it had been him, his slight stirring—and for him, that she had put the bottle down upon the floor where it had remained as she cried holding herself, promising herself she would do everything in her power to give him life against the odds, as her own mother must have done with her, the odds which seemed now so bleak and disconsolate—for if she had dreamed the future once, could she do it again?—and she such a fool to have compared her task to that of Mary then, what the clergymen would think of her blasphemy! to have regarded her own conception on the par with the stuff of miracles, what a sinner was she, low in the dirt, her hands stained and streaked with the ramifications of what she had done not in ignorance but wittingly, fully cognizant of what her hands were touching when she erred, herself no more remorseful than a heretic vainly denouncing God—and so was it God now that would deem it justice and mercy both to punish the child she bore for the error of her ways?  Leave her to bleed out upon the birthing bed before it came time for her to deliver?  An undeveloped child thrust into her arms, stillborn and silent as the absolution if she survived?  Was this penance?  Was this fate?  And of the reckoning, was she truly powerless to stop its coming? 

 

Throwing the troubling thought out of her mind, like a castaway stone dashed upon the lake water, skipping then sinking beneath the depths, Morgana tore her mind elsewhere to the present concern grappling her, rendering her likewise, splintered and inept. 

 

“I know, baby,” she murmured softly, reassuringly, as she laid a hand protectively over her womb.  “You will have a younger brother come spring.”  Again, the ugliness of that season. 

 

The thought curdled in her blood, for even if she were obtuse in some matters, in others, she understood perfectly well, and this matter was rather simple for her to understand.  If she came to bore her own son without issue, then most like she would be forced to forget him in Essetir, leave him there for fostering, unbeknownst of she who gave him life, to her Aunt Morgause, with herself left to return to Camelot emptyhanded, her breasts heavy, spilling milk, in lack of the child she was meant to nourish, and if by some miracle she could carry her son all the way from the Hebrides to Camelot’s walls, she could not surely name him her son, as nor could she allow him to grow up such friends with Mithian’s own child when it came time for her to give birth, no matter their inevitable tie and blood relation.  It could not be.  Not while the world operated in the manner it did.  Morgana could never admit that she had borne a child out of wedlock without that truth bringing upon defamation to her own name, forgoing for the moment that of her family, and surely not without, more importantly, informing Arthur that the child in question was his own.  She had promised herself she would never tell him, even if that meant carrying the secret to her grave as she intended for his sake, for the sake of his future rule he had chosen again and again before her, as much as it had pained her, and that of their child, their poor innocent child, who could never know the profane nature of his own begetting or else, or else, she feared he would abhor them both—

 

It was the only way to keep them all safe.

 

But Mithian…  The thought of her sister-in-law plagued her.  She would give Arthur a healthy son, a son he could love and call his own.  Morgana did not understand the nature of her dreams, nor why they came to her as they did—half-lies, half-truth—but somehow this future knowledge had been ordained within them.  She would be a fool indeed if that realization did not scare her, and frighten her it did, and yet, in the quiet of her bedchamber, as she pondered over the details of the dream in light of the waxing moon, she knew, if not by whom or for what purpose, that she had been gifted this knowledge—for this she was certain she had—that she was meant to do something because of it. 

 

And that something was in her power to bring to fruition.  So, what did she want?  If she asked herself, honestly?

 

The old she would have run scared to Gaius’s chambers begging him for a cure.  Now she knew that if she must suffer with foreknowledge from her dreams—if that was indeed what this was, herself unable to think in that moment at any further implication—then she would use that knowledge to her own gain, to level the playing field once and for all. 

 

“Too much has been taken from me,” she voiced her complaint to the silent dark, and a shiver passed through her body at her next thought.  But she spoke it aloud anyway, and in a way, in doing so, she uttered her intent into existence. 

 

“It’s time I take something back for myself.”

 

And then all at once it struck her and she knew what she had to do. 

 

It was simple really; the circumstances already laid out and set, as if this machination of hers had not been conceived in her own mind but written in the stars, in the book of fate. 

 

Without wasting a moment, though it was still dark except for the light of the half-moon illuminating her chamber room, Morgana crawled out from under the covers of her bed and stepped out onto the stone floor, which was cool to the touch of her bare feet.  With a single-minded purpose, she crossed over to the far side of her chamber, quiet as a mouse, where her vanity stood, its trinkets glistening like dark silver in the moon’s light.  She paused a moment staring at the tabletop, her eyes momentarily drawn to the handheld mirror resting upon it and the fractured moonlight reflecting her own face back at her, half of it visible, half shrouded by the curtain of her hair.  She took a moment to study herself in the glass, as if mesmerized, or rather, she would tell herself to better remember herself in this moment, the moment she took charge of her life and reclaimed it for herself, an act of opposition against the punishment she had been dealt for her single crime that was love and love solely. 

 

She tore her eyes away from the glass—she had a mission still, and she had to be certain she had not misplaced it by mistake—and drew her hand lower to the first drawer to the right.  That private place that was hers alone truly, that she forbade every servant, even Gwen, from trespassing when she came to tidy her chamber each morning. 

 

She pulled open the drawer, and at once caught the gleam of her bible, the illuminated book gleaming gold in the moonlight.  She swallowed a sense of trepidation at the sight of it, that single reminder of her guilt.

 

But the moment passed—she was a changed woman, a grown woman, and her childish fears of sin and consequence would not thwart her now; she had seen and done far too much for that—and her eyes passed over the heavy book without heed, settling instead on a patch of darkness farther back. 

 

She reached a hand in and grasped the object she had sensibly saved, securing it in her fist, then closed the drawer and drew herself over toward the window, all the better to see by.  Standing in the moonlight, she opened her fist and there in her open palm rested the swayer of her fate: a small amber vial containing a dark liquid.  She gave the bottle a shake and watched as the contents bubbled upward.  Such an innocent looking thing, she thought then, and yet…

 

And yet it had the power to quench life before it had even begun. 

 

All I must do is pour some into her tea and it will be done, like magic, Morgana mused, only more gruesome.  And no one would expect a thing, as women lose babies all the time in the first month or two of pregnancy, she added, thinking back on the conversations she had heard as a girl, eavesdropping on the older ladies’ gossip, wishing herself to have been old enough to be in their predicament, to have been somewhere else, a woman married, faraway from Castle Pendragon and the reason of her girlhood sorrow, for loving the brother she should not have, if she were wise.  

 

Morgana smiled sadly.  “We will have our revenge,” she spoke softly to the bottle and to the child she felt stirring in her womb.  She laid a hand over her stomach, and at once, at the simple touch, she felt him ease. 

 

“I won’t see you shadowed by another child,” she said then.  “Even in ignorance; even if you never grow up to learn of your true parentage.  My child, my son, you shall be, only to me.  Only to me,” she said again, staring wistfully out at the night sky, the stars like pricks of light etched out against the clouds, and the moon, half full, half nothing, like a guiding beacon, a ghost of the sun against that stark pitch of darkness beyond, the infinite night. 

 

If God had ordained it, if He had been the one to send the dreams and dreadful visions, then this was her counter play, her move against Him and His unshakable Will.

 

So let it be metered out, so let it be done, that if she be incapable of bringing her own son to bear, then neither should Mithian bear hers.

 

A son for a son—such was the price for playing with the heart of a scorned woman.

 

And so let Arthur be left to grieve for them both, if he ever came to find out what had been taken from him, discover what was found missing from his otherwise fortunate life. 

Chapter 31

Notes:

I hadn't planned to update again this year after the last chapter, but I've been in the revising mood as of late and this chapter turned out to be quite brief based on where it made most sense to break it off, so here it is, another chapter. 😅 Hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading. <3

CHAPTER NINE: Malaise of the Heart; Thy Falsehood Muddled

The next day, with an air of graciousness about her (as Gwen dressed her for the day, cinching tight the fastenings of her corset, tying the laces in a subtle bow) no matter how put upon, however forced, feigned and unseemly the donning of such a pious mien—as if an abbess’s attire—in contrast to her rather oblique character, Morgana took it upon herself, with that same delicate air, that impartial attitude, to ask her sister-in-law to tea—almost convinced herself, that her invitation lacked even in the slightest, the artifice of deceit. 

 

She did not trust anyone else with the missive, not even Gwen, and perhaps especially not Gwen, who knew all too well her animosity towards her former friend, and so, for that reason, she selected herself for the excruciating task at hand, thinking no one else more suitable in accomplishing the meager, but nonetheless necessary, feat. 

 

“It will all be worth it,” she muttered under her breath as she lumbered up the stairs and down the hall toward Mithian’s chambers, the ones situated just beside her brother’s.  Reaching her door, she gave a short knock, then a second when the first was left unanswered. 

 

The door soon opened revealing a maidservant.  “Mi’lady,” she said, taking in a breath at the sight of Morgana in a gown as white as snow.

 

“May I have a word with the Princess?” Morgana asked, trying to look past the maid and into the chamber, but to no avail, for the serving girl pulled the door closed behind her as if to safeguard her mistress—if she was even there, tucked away within the room, as if an unloved dress within a closet—or perhaps, it was only her private keepsakes she wished to protect from sight, which was no obtrusion to Morgana either way.  “Is she in?”

 

“No, Mi’lady, I’m afraid not.  She left an hour or so ago to walk the castle garden with Lady Elaine.  I could take a message—”

 

“There’s no need,” Morgana said abruptly.  “Thank you, Sefa, but I will go to her myself.”

 

---

 

Morgana gave a slight harrumph as she left Mithian’s quarters in search for her elsewhere, most presumably, if Sefa’s word was of any worth, and could be trusted, amongst the fragrant blooms of lavender, vervain, and yarrow, along with other such useful herbs Gaius employed for his remedies, that populated his medicinal garden in neat, well-tended rows.  At first, she considered it rather unfortunate that her sister-in-law was not alone (supposedly), figuring she must choose her words most carefully then in Elaine’s additional presence, only to think as she exited the castle, fluttering down the steps from a side entrance—the most direct route to the garden—skirts billowing behind her in the slight breeze coming off the lake, she supposed, from the west, that perhaps it was all the better that there would be a witness to her modest request.  It would certainly make it seem the more innocuous if she asked Mithian out to tea in front of one of the noblewomen of the Court.  Not that she thought that her dear sister-in-law would suspect her invitation to be anything other than a desire for sisterly companionship; but still, it would serve to imply that the tea and conversation they were to share if Mithian so graciously accepted her offer would be nothing of a more serious nature to suggest a need for confidentiality if Morgana simply asked her forthright in front of Elaine, and so, as she turned down the hedge-lined walkway into the garden, ivory skirts rustling behind, that was what she had set in her mind to do.

 

It was not long before she caught sight of them—there not being many others in the garden aside from a couple of weeders tending to an overgrown crop of comfrey, and Gaius’s own apprentice who seemed to be gathering miscellaneous herbs for the physician’s use, as was his habit (or at least Morgana often sighted him there on her walks with Gwen, collecting samples from the plants in his master’s care)—Mithian walking head bowed alongside with Elaine beside a patch of foxglove on the garden’s far side, and Morgana said a silent thanks toward Sefa for her good word, which had proven most trustworthy after all.

 

Spotting them, she did not rush over to them at once, but rather, careful not to draw their attention, moseyed her way around the blossoms, stirring up their fragrance as she slipped past, so that the moment they did turn around to look her way it would seem by chance as opposed to by design that they had likewise spotted her in turn.  From her vantage point beside a crop of lavender, Morgana turned her head slightly to better study the pair.  Elaine was saying something and laughing, bringing up a hand to her mouth as if to control her giggling.  Mithian, on the other hand, wore a slight frown, as if troubled—she hardly seemed to be paying any mind to Elaine’s congenial conversation, or so it appeared to Morgana, as she then watched her turn to study a foxglove blossom, its color a deep purple.  Mithian inched her hand forward toward one of the bells, creeping closer as if to touch the shallow veins of its petals. 

 

Without thinking, Morgana sprung out from beside the lavender rows, rushing towards her sister-in-law’s side.  “Don’t touch that!” she exclaimed, coming up beside her.

 

Mithian jumped, dropping her hand away from the flower at once, then turned to see Morgana approaching her. 

 

“Heavens me!” she said.  “You gave me a fright, Morgana!”

 

Morgana blushed, outwardly in a semblance of bashfulness; internally, she was cursing herself for not waiting a second longer as Mithian brought her hand down to touch the plant most known of the Court Physician’s herbs for its ability to cure dropsy—at least in measured doses—but alongside that useful property, it was likewise quite toxic if handled heedlessly and without gloves.  It would certainly have made her plans all the easier if Mithian had in fact poisoned herself before coming to give birth to her son, even if she did not die from her error.  Perhaps, Morgana wondered, that fatal touch alone, if she had not a change in conscience—however ironic, given what she intended to do—and had permitted her the moment’s chance to reach out and brush her fingers against the venomous bells, perhaps that alone would have been enough to slip the babe from her womb, thus making her plans for the emmenagogue obsolete and quite unnecessary.  Truly, a pity indeed that she had cried out when she had.    

 

“Forgive me for startling you so, sister,” Morgana spoke, recovering herself quickly as she brushed these half-hearted regrets from her mind, “but you’ll thank me in a moment.  That plant there, that’s foxglove, the Witches’ Fingers.  One does well not to get too close to touch its petals, as they’re quite poisonous.”

 

“Oh my,” Mithian said, raising a hand to her heart, as if to steady its erratic beat.  “That was certainly a close call.  Thank goodness you came by when you did.  Right, Elaine?” she said turning toward the brunette beside her.

 

“Quite,” Elaine said, her cheeks redder than Morgana’s.  “Forgive me, my Lady, for not having realized in time to stop you myself.”

 

“It’s alright, Elaine,” Mithian said.  “There’s no need to trouble yourself.  I just had a little scare is all.  No harm done thanks to Morgana.  And besides, it was my idea we walk the gardens after all.  I should have known better that not every flower, even one as beautiful as this one here is safe to pick,” she said easily, almost too easily, Morgana thought with a strange suspicion.

 

“What brings you both here?” she asked then, curious.  She would admit she had been intrigued as to what had brought Mithian here of all places the moment Sefa had told her of her supposed whereabouts. “These gardens are for the use of the Court Physician.  They aren’t usually traversed for their aesthetics.”

 

“Oh, well, no reason really,” Mithian said.  “I was out on a stroll with Elaine, and I was always curious about this garden and wanted to take a look.  Clearly, I should have known more about the herbs and flowers grown here before coming myself,” she added rather sheepishly, but the casual admittance only heightened her gracious charm. 

 

“Of course,” Morgana said, as if that simple explanation was answer enough, although a part of her remained skeptical.  She remembered the girl Mithian had been when they were both young, the spirited look in her eye when she had brought her down to Avalon and told her of the legend there at the seat of its waters.  No, this girl who cherished intrigue and mystery, and above all else, possessed an astute mind, she definitely did not believe her circumstantial tale.  She had come here for something.  But what?

 

Mithian frowned.  “But why are you here, Morgana?” she asked.  “Like you said, this is the Court Physician’s garden, somewhere we all best not be it would seem.”

 

And so, just like that, it was time to set the trap, like a fly lured to an open jar of honey.  “I came looking for you,” Morgana replied honestly.  “I went to your rooms, but your maid, Sefa…” she shook her head.  Sefa had specifically said that Mithian had intentionally gone to the castle garden with Elaine, while Mithian had sounded as if the two of them had haphazardly stumbled upon the place, which in that case, Sefa could never have known that they were in fact here, and Morgana had no reason to doubt the maid’s word of the two… “She said you were out and I sought to find you myself, when I caught sight of you here.  It’s nothing really.  I just wanted to ask you to tea sometime, just the two of us, if that is alright?  My pardon, Elaine.”

 

“Why, that sounds lovely,” Mithian said.  “I would like that very much.  Just the two of us, like old time’s sake.”  She shook her head, then raised a hand to her forehead, as if to quell a sudden dizzy spell, and Morgana fretted a moment whether she had indeed touched the Fairy’s Glove after all. 

 

“Mithian, are you alright?” Morgana asked carefully.

 

“What?  Me?” Mithian asked, dropping her hand.  “Yes, why yes of course I am,” she said.  “Forgive me.  I’m just tired.  I’ve been out too long in the sun…But yes, the tea sounds nice.”

 

“Good,” Morgana said.  “Let’s plan for it then.  How does the end of the week sound?  Friday.  You could come to my chamber room.”

 

“Great,” Mithian said with a smile, recovering herself, though she still held a hand to her head, as if cradling it from some awful ache.  “I’ll be there.  But for now, could you and Elaine help me back to my rooms?  I feel so lightheaded just now and I think I need to lie down.”  She took a step backward, and Elaine caught her arm just in time to keep her upright.

 

“There you are, my Lady,” she said, helping her back up.

 

“You didn’t touch the foxglove, did you?” Morgana asked, concerned despite herself and what she intended to do.  “Or any other herb you don’t know for that matter?”

 

Mithian stared at her friend.  “No,” she said then, blinking a moment as if to order her thoughts, “No, it’s nothing like that.  I’m just tired, and this heat is getting to me.  There’s no need for you to worry.  I promise I’ll be fine.”

 

“Alright then,” Morgana said, eerily relieved, though, she noted, the day was far from sweltering.  “Here, let me help you”—this she said to Elaine, as she took Mithian’s other hand, and the two of them escorted the princess out of the garden where none of them were supposed to frequent, through its iron-wrought gate back up to the castle proper.

 

Amongst the hedgerows, snipping here a sprig of rosemary and there, that of thyme, Merlin looked up from his day’s work, curiosity getting, once again, the better of him at the sudden outburst from the Princess Mithian, as she stood standing with the Princess Morgana at her side beside the foxgloves, watching now as she and another lady helped carried the said Princess out of the garden’s precincts, his task far from his mind as a sense of foreboding overshadowed him as he watched them leave, all three, wondering, as he was prone to do, what had brought the three women to this sheltered spot of all days, of all seasons. 

Chapter 32

Notes:

Sorry, this part is full with such long chapters, but I try to break them where they make the most sense. I hope you enjoy this nevertheless. We have reached a major turning point in the story, as we near the end to the second part. Thanks for reading.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER TEN: The Window Opens

The week passed without interest, and most devastatingly for Morgana, without word from her aunt in Essetir.  With each day that came and went without so much as a sign that her father’s request had been approved or denied, her worries only worsened, so that the nagging concern she felt as if a tear upon her weary soul, clawed at the back of her mind as she set about her daily tasks, here knitting a small handkerchief (to replace the rudimentary one she had somehow misplaced these last few weeks, thinking the symbolic act would cause it to inexplicably turn up, but alas, it did not) or there perusing through a book of poems (those of a rather sordid sort, fit for her desolate mood), which proved too small and insignificant to provide much distraction from her mind as it wandered whichever way it would down paths, if she were wise—and alas, she was not—she would do well not to turn down, knowing them nothing but tracks off the beaten path, leading off the trail—the great fate of her life with its domestic duties—into the depths of the forests beyond, that dark, unseen territory with its terrors and unfathomable mystery that both her father and God the Father in her worn bible warned that a woman such as herself should not pursue, and yet here she was going down those very deer trods and into the thickets, analyzing at all angles the nature of her precarious person, thinking what it meant to be a woman yet unwed, but betwixt the place of motherhood and maiden, impregnated no less with her brother’s seed, her body at work, while her mind slipped dazedly on by with such fixations, fashioning a child in his image, uncannily like, she thought, the boy in her dream that had been Mithian’s son, or so she imagined her own son to likewise be if the day ever came that she be struck weak with pangs, laboring upon the birthing bed, gritting her teeth through each contraction as it overwhelmed her taxed body, in the small mercy tasked upon her that she usher him forth, this child, this innocent, into this irresolute world with that unfortunate gift that was life and life solely. 

 

With such thoughts upon her mind, troublesome, yet uniquely beautiful, she rose with the morning sun, breakfasted, dressed herself with Gwen’s aid, underwent Gaius’s daily questioning about how her and the babe were fairing now that she was near to entering her fifth month, all the while praying quietly to herself in hushed undertones that a messenger would arrive soon at Camelot’s door with news from Morgause.  In the afternoon, if she did not spend the day in her chamber fretting herself sick (as the memorized prayers dried on her tongue, lodged in her throat from ceaseless uttering, so that the words slurred most unintelligibly from one to the next), she would ride with Gwen down to Avalon to clear her head, relishing the chance to talk with her freely there, as she always did wonder if the stones of the castle walls were thick and sound enough to impede her words from reaching the ears of others walking just without about its halls. 

 

And with such inclinations weighing her down most laboriously, she dined each night with her family, those by blood and marriage both, in the private dining hall just off the Great one.  Of her daily tasks assigned to her, dinner was the worst.  It was there that she could not avoid, as she likewise had managed rather thoroughly these past summer months, the one she had no wish to see, but not for what he had done to her, by forsaking that tender oath he had promised her that late autumn night, the last before winter, as one well versed in the narrative of her relatively short life might expect.  That had been a different time, an easier time, if ever their lives had been easy.

 

Rather, it was difficult for her to be so close to Arthur in that sequestered chamber, so small and stifling compared to the lavishness of the Great Hall that could seat the whole Court in its entirety, and especially so as she had no choice but to sit across from him, with their father at the head of the table, as was his place, and Mithian at his side, and, as difficult as it had been, in those first few days of his marriage to Mithian, sitting in the same, present arrangement, it proved only more grueling for Morgana with her newfound knowledge of the child Mithian most certainly, not unlike herself, carried for him.  It made their outward affection for one another, however questionably felt by Arthur himself, all the more excruciating for her to witness and bear.  She told herself it was an act, on Arthur’s part at least, but a part of her, a part that nagged stubbornly, insistently at the back of her mind wondered if perhaps it was true from his heart what her brother seemed to outwardly express for his wife.  It was what Morgana feared most, that Mithian had broken down and told Arthur the truth about their child, propelling Arthur to see the light and at long last welcome her into his life, as Morgana had foretold he would in the solitary stillness of the library the week before. 

 

But she sensed, at those uncomfortable dinners, all the more squashed and intimate now in Rodor’s absence (as he and Uther had been wont to converse the whole meal through, saving her the trouble of making conversation), that she was not alone in her distress, and that Arthur too found them unbearable to suffer through as well.  She could tell simply by the way he refused to look at her, unless she spoke, and he had no choice but to be polite and acknowledge her presence in front of his wife and their father ignorantly both, but even then, in those moments, she remarked however astutely, how he did everything in his power not to meet her eyes. 

 

A part of her was satisfied with this, finding in his discomfort a quiet, if not unpleasant, victory.  She did not like to be witness to his pain, if truth be told (feeling a jolting jab of it in his look within her own body as if they were not separate persons but in fact twins conjoined), but, a part of her, did feel vindicated by it—Oh, you see, Arthur? she wanted to say, but refrained, biting down her tongue to keep her composure and tasting blood, thick and sweet, as she did so, This is what happens when you forsake the one you love; was it what you expected?—if only to keep herself sitting proud and upright like a vexed cat at that dining table in that all too small and suffocating room.  At least outwardly.  On the inside, watching her brother’s strained affection for his wife did nothing but echo the emptiness she too felt like a rift in the void of her still beating heart, though beat it still did with an infuriating exactness, no matter her perfunctory hopes that it just stop altogether. 

 

On the night before the day she was to have tea with Mithian, she had to excuse herself from the table earlier than was her habit just on the account of a coerced phrase from her brother’s lips.  It had just been an empty nothing really, pretty words lacking meaning, shape and definition, but still the way they fell off his tongue caused her such stark grief, for a moment she wished herself gone, away from Camelot, safe in Essetir with her aunt, where she would never have to look upon his face again as he lied to her, to Mithian, perhaps himself most of all.  That was what she could not bear, the lies.  He loved her.  She knew that; he knew that, and yet he still professed his love lied with Mithian and her alone each night they ate together as a family.  Normally, she could bear this front, however difficult, but this night, perhaps because her mind was already occupied with what she had already set for herself to do regarding Mithian and her unborn child, it was impossible. 

 

Arthur had announced, however reluctantly, to their father upon his inquisition at the table, herself a casualty caught in the crossfire, that he and Mithian were trying for a child.

 

Morgana had known this, from Mithian’s own admission, and yet she had been stunned to silence all the same.  The reason for her shock lay with the way Arthur had said it.  Mithian had told her that she had lied with her brother once in but one fleeting moment of weakness on his part, but Arthur’s statement sounded as if their couplings were frequent, passionate, something desired equally by the both of them.  This version from his own lips, while most like another lie, was enough to catch Morgana’s breath in her throat, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe, let alone swallow her shock.        

 

They were brother and sister after all.  It was impossible for her to witness Arthur’s pain and not feel a similar chord strike within her own bruised, misused heart.

 

And in that moment to follow her father’s lauding acclamation echoed in Mithian’s flushed cheeks and Arthur’s awkward deflections, Morgana knew in her blood, her bones and body all, what she must do.  The whole week she had been prevaricating, not out of a sense of sudden conscience, but out of fear, a deep-set worry, that somehow, no matter the times she went over the plan in her mind, she would make a mistake, miss her chance, and it would come out not just to her sister-in-law but to the whole Court the nefarious nature of her machination.  Now though, she was determined to see the plan through to the end because of what she now understood.

 

She could not bear to see Mithian give Arthur the child she herself could not and then live the rest of her life watching as Arthur adored that child and reared that child to one day follow him, while her own child, his other child, if her aunt ever accepted her request, most likely, she now realized, she would have no choice but to leave behind in Essetir, motherless, fatherless, an orphan without even his true name to know himself by, that was, if all fared well with the birth and she did not lose the child, as she had so awfully dreamt near a week past.  That too haunted her through her days, and nights, as she lied down to sleep, wondering if she would see him behind her closed eyes, still—unformed and bloody, and herself weeping over his small body as she held him in her hands, cradling him against the heaviness of her chest, the only touch he would know, and one too late at that.    

 

So as the evening wore on, she excused herself from the table, earlier than was her wont, but not too soon as to raise suspicion (all the while fearing the truth of her sentiment was written plain over her face), and most unfortunately, not before she had her full of her father’s excruciating praise and well wishes for the young parents to be.

 

She went back to her room, still awash with daylight from the setting summer sun.  Gwen was surprised to see her back so soon, and inquired whether she was feeling alright, if perhaps something was wrong with the baby, but Morgana waved away her worries with her hand, saying that all was well, she was just tired and without so much as another word bid her maid goodnight. 

 

That was when she sat down to work, going over the plan one more time in her head.  She took out the small vial from the private drawer where she had thus kept it stored, staring at its dark contents as she gave the bottle a good shake.  Mugwort and pennyroyal, that was the herbal concoction Gaius had crafted to secure her future.  She had opted out then, but for some peculiar reason she could not quite understand, she had saved it, even after that terrible day Gwen had found her on the floor in tears, scared and desperate, about to use it.  At the time it seemed like such an awful little thing, and yet now it was the means of her salvation.

 

She had no qualms about using it on the friend she had once held dear to her like no other, or, for that matter, reservations about what it meant for Arthur, to have his child ripped from him in such a grisly manner (she supposed, if he were to know the truth of her meddling, he would not have blamed her for her ire, even if he outwardly admonished her for her wrongdoing, imagining him to be likewise relieved of his duty, no matter what she had told Mithian of his eagerness, but then again, she was not privy to the thoughts in her brother’s mind, let alone the means by which he came to his rather absolute decisions).  What she did have was a case of jitteriness and nerves, or perhaps more fitting her state as she would describe it, was a sense of anticipation for the afternoon to come when she could finally stop all this waiting and put her plan into action once and for all. 

 

The easy part was asking Mithian to tea.  The hard part would come during that time when they took tea together for somehow Morgana had to discreetly slip the contents of the vial into Mithian’s cup unnoticed by her sister-in-law, yes, but also any servants attending them.  While she had worried over this point the week long, wondering which method was best—should she spike the tea altogether and refrain herself from even having a sip or should she focus solely on Mithian’s own cup, pouring in the contents when she looked away?—she at last came to a decision.  When the servant came to her chamber—whoever it may be for she would relieve Gwen of her duties for the day to not raise her suspicions—she would excuse him or her at once and pour the tea for her and Mithian herself.  Since it would be the first time Mithian would be visiting her chamber, she suspected she would ask after some of the items in her room, and that would be when Morgana would interest her in the hung tapestries, some of which she herself had stitched, and while Mithian was thus occupied looking at her handiwork, she would uncork the vial and pour the deadly concoction into her cup, careful to return to her seat before Mithian saw a thing.  And just like that it will be done, she thought to herself.  It truly is that simple.

 

Morgana returned the vial to the drawer, placing it behind the bible she had turned upside down so as not to glimpse its illuminated cover.  It was growing dark, and she thought to turn in for the night, a dark night that it was now that the clouds had come to cover it, obscuring both the moon and stars in its dank, bilious folds; she wondered if their presence portended rain, slanting sheets of it thundering down from rooftop to flagstone, but let the thought pass her by, unconsidered.

 

She smiled as she closed the curtains and drew down the bedcovers, remembering to take her own medicine, a hope for a dreamless sleep.  It was not the only thing she remembered.  As she lay down in the darkness, in the soft comfort of her bed, she recalled the stories she had once heard as a girl from wetnurses of nights like this, without a moon to light the sky.  Stories of witches incanting spells to manifest whatever desires they possessed which would come to fruition by the time the moon turned full once more.  They were only old wives’ tales surely, crude accounts just meant to frighten unruly children into obedience, and hence without much credence, but still, they filled Morgana with a sense of wonder, perhaps inexplicably so, given her upbringing, and the all-too-real lectures she had received about such wicked matters.  Normally she would find such stories alarming, like she did as a girl when she first heard them, but this night was different.  Perhaps, it was because there was a scent of promise in the air of something good to come this way—for once—like a whiff of rain after weeks of only dreadful sun, and it all had to do with that vial in the drawer of her vanity; she was certain of it.

 

Either way, truth, or fable, she passed the story over in her mind, choosing sleep instead.

 

There were no witches left in Camelot after all.  Her father had seen to that.

 

---

 

The new day dawned, and Morgana rose at once with it, sensing anticipation in the air, though the clouds had weathered during the night, dispersing without so much as releasing a drop upon the parched ground below.  Morgana was likewise eager to get moving.  She could hardly sit still in her bed waiting for Gwen to arrive to wake her, as she normally did most mornings, and while the thought crossed her mind to dress herself for the day in her excitement, she thought the notion too conspicuous and would only lead to Gwen asking her more questions when it came time for her to suggest that she take the rest of the day off to use at her own leisure.  So instead, though her nerves were pricks of fire and frenzy, she rolled out of bed and strolled over to the window, all the while still dressed in her shift, where she drew back the curtains to greet the welcomed rays of the new day sun.  Looking out at the castle grounds, the buildings here half shadowed, here half radiated with golden light, she thought the day to be a promising one, and determined, even as a jolt of expectancy laced her veins, that everything she had gone over in her mind the night last and week prior would go exactly according to plan. 

 

She could not have been more wrong.

 

It started well enough, the day, as she stood waiting for Gwen in the sunlight, allowing its warm rays to shine down upon her as if she were a designated heroine in a bedtime fable, the chosen one with a cause to her name and mission (and perhaps, in a way she was), and the morning to follow passed by more or less smoothly.  Gwen arrived a few minutes later, albeit somewhat surprised that Morgana was already up and by the window, but this she reduced to just another curiosity that was part of the enigma of the lady she served, and so she set about her daily tasks as usual, first delivering the breakfast tray, which Morgana gladly helped herself to, now that she was well past the morning sickness, perhaps in an effort to ease her nervousness, if not in an act to appear rather ordinary, to belie the wickedness set upon her mind (which truth be told, the display was), and then secondly, once she finished, she began helping her lady dress. 

 

It was not until Morgana was dressed and fitted in the day’s gown and Gwen was running a brush through her hair that Morgana made the suggestion. 

 

“A day off?” Gwen repeated, nonplussed.  “Morgana, you hardly ever suggest that I take some time to myself.  And in my coming to know you, you only do so when you have some grave notion upon your mind.  Why now?  Why today?”

 

Morgana sighed, an exaggerated effort to keep up appearances, and perhaps to mask the slight, involuntary flutter her maid’s frank observation caused her.  Was she really that obvious?  “As a thank you, Gwen,” she replied easily enough.  “You’ve done so much for me these last few months, staying at my side, always loyal, keeping my secrets…how have I ever repaid you?  And besides,” she said with a slight smile as she rested her hand over her maid’s wrist, “it’s been some time since you visited your family.  I’m sure your father misses you.”

 

Gwen laid the brush down on the vanity.  “Exactly, my point.  My father?  Morgana, when have you ever cared about my father?”

 

“Since now,” Morgana asserted, slightly uneasy.  “Oh, come on, Gwen.  It’s a lovely day!  And you deserve it!”

 

Gwen studied her carefully.  “Alright,” she said suddenly, her mind made up.  “I will accept this day off, but only if you promise me, you are not up to something.” 

 

Morgana gaped at her.  “Fine,” she said all of a sudden, “you have me there, Gwen.  If you want the truth, then so be it.  I am to tea with Lady Elaine, this afternoon at her suggestion, are you happy?  She asked to meet in my chamber, swearing me to secrecy.  She wanted the occasion to be private.  I think she wants to confide in me about something, God only knows what.  And I could not just not help her, whatever it may be.  She’s a kind girl, after all.”

 

Gwen frowned.  “Oh,” she said, raising a hand to her face, “forgive me, Morgana, I didn’t realize—" 

 

“It’s alright,” Morgana said.  “I know you worried for a moment I was going to do something rash about the baby, but I swear on my life that is not so.  You can trust me, Gwen.”

 

Gwen nodded, though a part of her remained unsure about that last point. 

 

“I can take it from here, thank you,” Morgana said.  “Just don’t tell another soul what I told you about Elaine.  I’m certain she wouldn’t want anyone else to know.”

 

It was not until Gwen left to enjoy the delightful summer day to herself that Morgana relaxed the tension she had not realized she had been holding in her body.  The half-truth had saved her, and she reckoned she had seemed earnest enough that Gwen would not inquire further regarding her made-up date with Elaine on her own.  Or at least she hoped. 

 

Well now that that is done with, she thought then to herself, greatly relieved, the rest should go more or less smoothly. 

 

But it did not. 

 

At a quarter past eleven, she received a visitor supposedly sent by Mithian herself, asking that she take tea with her in her own private chambers, as a slight change of plans.  Hearing the message, Morgana nearly choked on her own breath, but she recovered in just the nick of time, to agree, politely, that that was just fine. 

 

“Did my sister say anything as to the reason for this change?” she then asked the maidservant who had brought the message before she turned to go.

 

“Oh,” the maid replied, shuffling uneasily.  “No such reason that she expressed.  But she did insist.”

 

Morgana excused the maid, and once she trotted off down the hall, her mission complete, she shut the door, and gave a cry of exasperation.  It seemed that today, despite the resplendent morning dawn, was not fated to be her day after all.  So be it, she thought.  Everything will still turn out alright.  I’ll make sure of it. 

 

And so, when the sun reached its zenith, she stole the vial containing Gaius’s concoction, stuffing it into the pocket of her skirts, and, with a newly crafted plan set in her head and an indrawn breath, went to visit her dear sister-in-law.

 

---

 

Standing outside the door to Mithian’s private chambers, praying her brother was out, occupied with training the knights or whatever princely duties required his presence, Morgana gave it a steady, determined knock.  She could not remember the last time she had been inside this particular set of rooms, probably not since the time when she had been a girl, she supposed.  In those days it had been an unused guest room for at least the greater duration of the year, disregarding those special occasions, the tourneys and banquets, when visitors stayed within the walls of Camelot for a short time.  Usually, the guests that had occupied it had been knights from prestigious families hellbent on winning honor and glory at one of her father’s great tournaments, and at other times it had housed some lesser king or another here in Camelot to sign a peace treaty ending some trivial dispute amongst the kingdoms.  It was only once, Morgana recalled, before now that was, that it had housed a princess. 

 

Morgana remembered her instantly, her golden locks and fair face with a voice as sweet as honey cakes, her gowns of pearl white and aquamarine that brought to mind the qualities of her homeland along the North Sea—she had been called Lady Vivian, and Morgana remembered more than anything the way Arthur’s eyes had combed every trace of her, as if he a zealous merchant set on acquiring her as part of his wares.  She had been his first liking, as far as she remembered, his first obsession, she once thought, but now knew better.  She supposed now it was time to let go of that old stubborn hurt, that summer when she was just turned seventeen, as she now found herself thinking that perhaps the way his eyes had fixated on her was nothing more than an act of compensation for what he had forced himself not to feel, for whom he had compelled himself not to love, and two more different women there could not be, though perhaps that had been the point.  But whatever the truth, no matter what it might be, he in his adamancy that summer had managed to convince their father to situate the girl in that empty guest chamber, normally reserved for knights or kings, that just so happened to sit right beside his own. 

 

And in all that time since that summer it had remained, more or less, unoccupied, empty.  Until three months prior, on the day of the royal wedding, when the servants had diligently moved Mithian’s things, the few trunks containing the dresses and well-chosen trinkets she had thought to bring with her from Nemeth for her stay in Camelot, to this room as befitting her new role as Arthur’s wife and one day Queen.  An unmarked guestroom for a future High Queen.  Morgana would have found the notion amusing, and most certainly would have laughed at it, if not for the obtrusive fact that she was not leaving like that poor sniveling Vivian, not anytime soon nor ever. 

 

The door opened revealing Sefa in her grey homespun.  “Do come in, Mi’lady,” she addressed Morgana just so.  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

 

“Apology accepted,” Morgana replied, stepping into the chamber, “but there is no need.” 

 

“Of course, there is every need, sister.”

 

Morgana turned to see Mithian strolling toward her, dressed in a summer gown as pink as the roses upon the vase on the sill at the room’s far side.  The color of the dress brightened the color of her cheeks, which appeared just as rosy from this distance, no longer the ashen they had seemed that day in the garden, and for this Morgana felt an odd thrum of relief; her hair she wore down but pulled back from her face. 

 

“Mithian,” Morgana said, swallowing.  “You look lovely.”

 

“Oh this?” her friend replied, brushing away the compliment with a grace only she wore well.  “It’s nothing.  I can’t compete with your beauty in red.”

 

In all her rush and hurry to arrive here, at this moment, and with all the turns gone wrong between, Morgana had forgotten that she had chosen her carmine dress for the occasion, not the sleeveless gown she had worn to her brother’s feast so many moons ago, but a much more modest piece that nevertheless with its rich color rivaled the former gown’s splendor.  It was a dress to make a statement surely, to be donned in the colors of her house; certainly, an odd choice for having tea with an old friend, and perhaps, better suited for a call to arms, but then again, to Morgana that was precisely what this was. 

 

“But come,” Mithian said, proffering her hand towards a set of chairs beside the far window, spilling sunlight.  “Sit.  Make yourself comfortable.”

 

“Alright,” Morgana said, slightly uncomfortable, but did as she was told. 

 

“Now what do you have in mind for tea?” Mithian asked once they were both seated.  “I’m thinking something rather light, as my stomach cannot handle much these days,” she added, looking down a moment before she met Morgana’s eyes once more, a gesture Morgana immediately understood.  “Would you be alright with a blend of mint and rosehips?  I apologize to be so particular, but I find it soothing, and easy on the stomach.”

 

Morgana gaped at her friend, though not for a lack of understanding her unique request; pregnant, as she suspected herself to be, Mithian would prefer a tea to quell the morning sickness she almost certainly was experiencing now and again, if not daily, and so such indirect admission of her condition was hardly surprising to Morgana, let alone anything she would outright balk at, having likewise drank many a cup of similar infusions at Gaius’s prodding.  The issue was that a mint tea would have a distinct taste, cool and refreshing.  Morgana only hoped that when she seized the opportunity to add the emmenagogue to Mithian’s cup, the mint flavor would be enough to mask the taste of the herbs therein, so that Mithian did not come to suspect something off with her cup and would continue to drink it until every last drop was gone.  She reckoned then with a pang of regret that she should have asked Gaius when she had had the chance more about the nature of the herbs that he worked with to make his medicines.  It would have been well of her to have known their properties, what made them work in conjunction with each other and on their own.  Now that opportunity missed, she had to rely on what faith she had that she would succeed with her plan, undaunted. 

 

“That is well with me,” Morgana said at last. 

 

“Then it’s decided,” Mithian said, and then turning toward Sefa addressed her.  “Sefa, will you be a dear and head down to the kitchens to brew us a pot?”

 

“Of course, Mi’lady,” the maid answered.  “You will be well in the meantime?”  A question which caused Morgana to look uncertainly at her sister-in-law.

 

“Yes, quite.  I have Morgana here with me after all.  There is nothing for you to worry about, Sefa.”

 

Taking that truth as a sign that all was well enough for her to leave, Sefa gave a short curtsy and left to fetch the tea, leaving Morgana at last alone with Mithian and with more questions on her mind than answers. 

 

“She’s such a dear, Sefa, always looking out after me,” Mithian said simply, turning back to address Morgana.

 

“What was that about?” Morgana asked.  “Are you not well, Mithian?” 

 

Mithian sighed, exhaling a tired breath.  Watching her, just a foot apart, Morgana noticed once more the ashen pallor beneath the rosy sheen of her cheeks, and the grey circles that rimmed her eyes.  They had not been pronounced from afar, but this close, in view of the sunlight streaming through the window, they were apparent.  Clearly, she had not quite recovered from whatever had ailed her that day in the garden, a week gone now, and Morgana wondered despite herself whether it was possible for a woman to appear so frail while with child, the morning bouts of nausea notwithstanding. 

 

“That is why I asked you here,” she said.  “Instead of meeting you in your own quarters as we had arranged.  I wanted to be close to Sefa.  She’s a good girl, I can trust her, but not with everything,” she added pointedly, and Morgana raised a brow in return.  “Not like I can trust you, sister.”

 

“Go on,” Morgana said.  “You know you can tell me anything, Mithian.  That I’ll always be here for you.”  She swallowed, then voiced her suspicions.  “Are you truly with child as you believed a week past?”

 

“I think so, yes,” Mithian replied, smiling slightly, but it was a weary smile.  “I wasn’t sure when I told you my hunch, but now I’m almost certain.  I am exhibiting all the signs, I think.  The nausea, the lightheadedness.  That day when you met Elaine and me in the garden, I had a bit of a fainting spell.  Thankfully you both were there to guide me back to my rooms.  I’ve been rather careful not to go out much since, and certainly not unattended by Sefa.  I don’t want to cause alarm in anyone, and I absolutely don’t want anyone guessing my secret, not yet anyhow.  I just told Sefa that I’m prone to such dizziness at times in the summer heat and she seems to accept it.  She’s a good girl, Sefa—doesn’t question much.”

 

“So, you’ve told no one?” Morgana asked, frowning.  “Not even…”

 

Mithian laughed uneasily.  “No, I’ve most certainly not told him.”

 

“But why not?” Morgana asked, immensely curious.  “Just last night I thought you would have after the way he said you both were trying…Why did he say that?” she asked, forgetting herself.  “I thought you told me you only were together the one time.  Did something change between you?”

“Yes,” Mithian said, and there was something in the tone of her voice that Morgana took to mean not for the better, although, perhaps, better was relative. 

 

Morgana waited for her to continue. 

 

“Last week,” she said, swallowing, a breath to draw courage, “he summoned me to his rooms.  It was the night of the feast, the day I told you what I thought I knew, and he was not himself.  He had been drinking, at the feast, which I didn’t think anything of, since he usually drinks, just like everyone.  But…this time was different.  It was more, I don’t know, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary regarding his behavior at the feast, but when he called me to his chambers, he was drunk, I know he was drunk.  Because what he asked me,” she shook her head.  “No, I can’t repeat it, not to you, you’re his sister.”

 

“Shh, Mithian,” Morgana spoke without thinking, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder.  “You can tell me anything.  Don’t think for a moment that I won’t believe you.” 

 

“Even if what I say maligns your brother?” she asked, a dread in her eyes. 

 

“Even then,” Morgana said quietly, drawing back her hand, perplexed by her own certainty. 

 

“Alright,” Mithian said with a breath.  “He asked me how badly I wanted a child.  I had been about to tell him what I suspected, I know you said to wait, but I couldn’t, I felt so happy that night thinking that he’d finally see me when I told him the news, but then when I saw he was not himself, I couldn’t say a word.  When I didn’t answer him, he grabbed me, all of a sudden like, and my mind blanked.  I’ve only seen him be gentle with me, hesitant.  I had never seen this side of him before and it—scared me.  I didn’t know what was happening or what to think.  At last, I managed to tell him that he wasn’t well, that it would be better if I just left.  But then he locked his hands into me, so I couldn’t move, and that’s when he said something so strange, I didn’t understand.  I still don’t understand what he said.”

 

Morgana had her hand at her throat.  “What did he say exactly?”

 

“He spoke of you,” Mithian said, drawing back in her seat.  “Or at least that’s what I believed I heard,” she amended, shaking her head, as if to remember.  “Something like how unhappy you would be if I gave him a child.”  She shook her head, to clear it, this time.  “Why would he say something like that?” 

 

The breath caught in Morgana’s throat, lodging there.  She nearly choked before the air found its way down into her lungs and out again, a clarifying respite in what otherwise felt like a room choked with smoke and mist.  In a need to steady herself, Morgana felt her hand reach for the seat of her chair, as the other tightened into a fist on her lap.  At the movement she could feel the small amber vial shift in her pocket.  It had felt so light, nearly invisible to her senses a moment before, but now it felt as heavy and dense as lead. 

 

“I don’t know,” Morgana said quietly, her heart thrumming, the pulse of it echoing in her ears.  “I don’t know,” she said again.  “Are you sure that’s what you heard?”

 

“No,” Mithian said, swallowing.  “I asked him to repeat what he had said, and he told me to forget it.  So, I asked him why he brought me there, to his chambers, and he said to do our duty.”

 

Morgana looked up at that.  “Did you…?” she asked.

 

Mithian shifted uncomfortably.  “I didn’t want to,” she confessed.  “Not while he was like that, and of course, fearing the harm it could cause, if I truly am with child as I thought, but he was insistent and…” she looked away.  “Anyway,” she said, swallowing ostensibly, “the next morning, when I woke, he was surprised to see me there.  He didn’t remember any of it, how I got there, what he said, what we did.”  She shook her head.  “He seemed so distraught, so when he inevitably asked what happened, I lied.  I told him that we both had had too much to drink at the feast, so one thing led to another, and…well, you get the point.”  She sighed.  “He seemed to accept my story, and not only that, he seemed receptive to me, even sober as he was, and after the way he touched me the night before, I grew hopeful.  So, I pushed my luck.  And I said that he told me that he wanted to try to have a family with me.  He looked surprised at first, but then he accepted this too, which seemed so strange to me after what he had said the night before.  So, I asked him if he was comfortable with that, and he said he was.  Can you believe that, Morgana?  For months he would hardly look at me, let alone want to touch me, then after getting drunk one night, he’s ready to take our wedding vows seriously?”

 

“I…” Morgana began, only to stop herself.  She could not think straight; her mind was spinning with cause and consequence and the catalyst that was her brother.  That, and a plaguing sense of déjà vu. 

 

The door opened welcoming Sefa and the brewed tea.  She set the tray containing the pot and the two cups and saucers down on the table between them.  “A freshly brewed pot, just as you asked, Mi’lady,” she announced with a beaming smile.  “Was everything alright while I was gone?”

 

Mithian turned to address her maid.  “Just fine, Sefa,” she said.  “Thank you.  Now if you’ll excuse us.  There is something I wish to convey to my sister in private.”

 

“Oh,” Sefa said, surprised, and Morgana wondered if it was a rare occurrence that the maidservant was left to her own devices.  “Why, of course, Mi’lady,” she said a beat later.  “I’ll leave you both to your tea then.”  She gave a short curtsy to each of them and without so much as another word, exited the chamber.

 

As Morgana watched the girl leave, Mithian set about pouring the tea.  She had filled both their cups by the time Morgana watched the door fall shut, causing her to turn back to look at her former friend.  “Thank you,” she said politely, as she picked up her cup and took a cautious sip. 

 

Mithian retrieved her own cup and sipped with the same exacting care.  Then she set the cup back down on its saucer.  “Pardon the interruption,” she said, smiling wanly, “for I do believe you were saying something about my predicament?”

 

“Oh.”  It was Morgana’s turn to look surprised.  “Well,” she said, taking another sip to stall for time as she thought—what had she been about to say? What, for that matter, could she say?  Now it struck her why the room, the conversation had felt so familiar to her.  She had been here before in this room, six years ago to be exact—it had been the last time she had been here, she was certain of it.  She had been sitting in this very chair, and opposite her, where Mithian now sat, had been a woman, the Lady Vivian.  How could she have forgotten?  Of course, then, she had called Vivian a liar, that easy harlot, who could win men’s hearts just as easily and break them just for sport.  Now, though, she was ready to believe Mithian her story.  What had changed in her since that day when she was herself newly turned seventeen?  Was she simply wiser when it came to the way of the world now that she was three and twenty?  Or perhaps, it had been because she could now count herself amongst the women.  She realized with a jolt of astonishment that she was no different than Vivian, than Mithian, as much as it pained her to admit it.  She had listened to the promises he had spoken in her ear, and she had later watched as he broke them one by one. 

 

The only difference, what separated her from these poor women, was that he loved her, she knew that.

 

But could she be certain?  Was it love for him to have forsaken her just to marry another in her place?  And her childhood friend at that?

 

“My brother,” Morgana spoke quietly, but not without a marked insistence, “is a damaged man.  No less lovable, but all the harder to contain.”  She shook her head, realization dawning upon her, filling her body with light, slipping into the darkened corners, the uninhabited edges.  “He’ll never find contentment in the arms of a woman,” she said, and she did not know whether she spoke to Mithian out of sympathy or to herself plain fact, as if begging herself to pause and listen to the very words she spoke, to take them in, ingest them, mewl them over, and see them for what they were, the living, unadulterated truth.  “It’s simply not enough for him.  He was born and bred for a greater fate.  My father saw to that.  And you, as much as you try to love him, you cannot spare him that great trajectory that is to be his life.”

 

“I know,” Mithian said, her voice cracking as if beneath an inexorable weight, one she carried most devoutly, and for which Morgana supposed she owed her some respect, if not, equal measures compassion.  “Why do you think I went to the physician’s garden that day you found me there with Elaine?  I was going to end it, either the pregnancy or my own life, I didn’t care which, I was so struck with grief and madness.  I was about to touch that sprig of foxglove, but then you found me, sister, and I remembered that there are more things to life worth living for than the illusive love of a man.”

 

Morgana felt the weight drop in her own heart.  “You were going to kill yourself?” she exclaimed, reaching a hand to wipe at the tears brimming unbidden in her eyes.  “Why, why would you even think of such a thing?”  But then she too had done strange things on account of his love, or rather lack thereof—sequestering herself to her chamber, refusing food and drink in the wake of his rejection; just now she realized what would have become of her if she had gone on like that, if not for the intercession of Gwen, if not for the miracle of her child—most certainly she would have died upon that bed, the curtains closed, the windows shuttered, her body nothing but a corpse buried sixth feet under, unable to feel the glinting rays of light that danced now upon her as she sat across from Mithian, awestruck at her own survival, savoring their illusive, all-too-fleeting warmth—

 

“I don’t know,” Mithian said.  “I wasn’t thinking clearly.  Oh, please don’t cry, sister,” she said, reaching a hand to caress Morgana’s shoulder.  “It’s okay.  It was just a moment, a terrible moment, a fleeting weakness, but it passed.  And besides, if I had been thinking clearly and wanted to be done with it, it would have been all the wiser of me to pluck a strand of oleander than reach for the foxglove, that is if I wanted to ensure my death.  But anyhow, you came, snapped me out of my trance, and then I realized it would have been much cowardly to do away with myself in such a fashion, let alone my child.  I’m to be a mother.  And you, my child’s godmother, I’m sure of it, I’ll name you so when he is born.”

 

Morgana stared at her, confusion written all over her face, unable for the moment to take in this last part.  “But why?  Answer me that, Mithian.  Why would you even consider it?  Even for a moment?”

 

“Because of that night,” Mithian said, swallowing.  “But not just that.  Because when we tried again when he was sober the night after, he would not look at me, except for one moment when I caught him unawares, and in his eyes, I could have sworn,” she shuddered, “I don’t know what was in his eyes, whether it was revulsion or hatred or a combination thereof, but I knew I wanted to punish him for it, for all the hurt he inflicted upon me unaware, even if that meant ridding myself of my only chance at joy.” 

 

“I understand,” Morgana said.  She could not say that the hatred she had glimpsed in his eyes was not for her as his comely wife, but for himself, for acquiescing to her touch, his need, while in the room below them, the one he truly loved slept uncomfortably alone. 

 

“How can you?” Mithian asked. 

 

Morgana opened her mouth to speak then stopped herself.  “Because those are the eyes my father would gaze upon me,” she said simply.  “Where do you think my brother learned that from?”

 

“I see,” she said, and the two of them fell into an uncanny silence where it seemed they could speak without words, or had no need for them.  Before them their tea cooled untouched, forgotten. 

 

“Well, at least we have each other,” Mithian said, disrupting the quiet.

 

“Yes,” Morgana said.  She could still feel the vial in her pocket and the knowledge of it, of what she had intended to do in this room, to this woman hung about her like a noose, she could not escape.  Go ahead with her plan like normal, as if their conversation had never happened, and she would be not only a monster, but a redundant one.  How could she punish the woman by the same means she had attempted to mar herself?  In what world was that justice? 

 

No, the better poison was to allow the fates the reins and to trust in the cards they dealt.  Morgana had thought she had been dealt a bad hand, while Mithian’s boasted of blessings. 

 

Now she was not so certain.  And she was even less certain whether she wanted to curse Mithian for those shallow blessings she had so eagerly received, even as she continued to crave them for herself. 

 

“I’m glad you didn’t go through with it,” Morgana found herself saying then.  The words just fell out of her mouth, and she was surprised to find that she meant them. 

 

“Me too,” Mithian said softly, fingering her teacup.  “I could do without the morning sickness, but to think, Morgana, a child to call my own—” she paused, as if carrying off the rest of the sentence privately in her thoughts, then she smiled to herself, knowingly, and her face reflected her inner radiance, the very sense of grace Morgana envied and prayed she could one day acquire of her own accord. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Mithian said then, laughing.  “Sometimes, I do that.  I find I’m about to say something but then I get lost in my thoughts, where I start thinking about the future, about what fortunes are in store.”

 

“So, you forgive him then?” Morgana said, treading cautiously.

 

Mithian eyed her carefully before opening her mouth to respond.  “I don’t know,” she said at last.  “I suppose it doesn’t matter to me much.  I feel as if I’ve a second chance at life.  Things are a bit strained between us as of late, though we do our best to keep up appearances.  But that is nothing new.  And perhaps, I was a fool to expect anything different out of an arranged marriage,” she added, laughing despite herself.  “I am mad,” she said then, growing more serious again, “and hurt, but perhaps he is as well.  He did not ask for this.  He has made that point clear to me without ever so much as putting it into words, but…oh, I don’t know.  He is trying, I suppose.  And I guess, I should be thankful for that.”

 

Morgana watched her friend as she spoke, finding her own thoughts turning inward as she listened.  Could she learn to forgive just as easily?  Not just her friend, for the wrongs she committed against her out of ignorance, but Arthur as well, for that sleight of hand he pulled?

 

“I think you should tell him,” she said then.  “I know it’s the last thing you would want after the hell he’s put you through, and I can imagine it must be easier for you keeping it secret, but I think it would do you both some good.  And you know, I can attest to what I told you in the library.  No matter my brother’s faults, I’m certain he’d be happy to know he’s about to be a father.”

 

Mithian smiled.  “Yeah?” she said.  “Well, if truth be told, I was thinking of telling him, but then I wasn’t so sure.  But if you think so…”

 

“No, I know,” Morgana affirmed, swallowing the lump in her throat.  “And besides,” she added with a self-deprecating laugh, “if it gets you out of nights of awkward sex, then what do you have to lose?”

 

Mithian turned scarlet.  “Morgana!” she exclaimed, raising a hand to her chest, taken aback at her unseemly jest, which was so rather uncharacteristic of her understanding of her. 

 

Just one shared look and they were both howling with laughter, and it was as if they were mere girls again, teasing each other about the boys as they played at knights down by the shores of Avalon.  Morgana had to wipe at the tears now falling freely from her eyes, dampening the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief. 

 

“Are you alright, Morgana?” Mithian said, once she found she could speak.  “Wait, are you actually crying?”

 

“I missed you,” Morgana said inexplicably.  “So much.”

 

“It’s okay,” Mithian said, frowning, even as she moved to stand beside her, laying an absolving hand upon her shoulder, as if she too felt the depths of her friend’s words, knowing them as intimately as if they had been her own confessional thoughts, and perhaps in a small way they were so, the same ones replicated that she too had kept bottled up inside herself ever since her arrival in Camelot, wishing she could speak them aloud, fearing what would happen if she did. 

 

So instead, she spoke what she could, uttering an ounce of truth of that great depth of feeling she reserved her lifelong for her friend and she only, praying she understood the love behind her intent, and did not come to loath her for it. 

 

“I’m here, Morgana.  I’m here.”

 

Morgana took one look at the woman before her, seeing in her the girl she had been, so sincere and earnest and ready to be her friend—and the thought struck her that she was all of those things still, while what could be said of herself?  She who had just been about to harm this woman, who had been her dearest friend, not just her unborn child, but also most like she herself.  And for what?  A hurt so twisted and deep, the years could not numb it, and nor could this vengeance if she had so taken it, numb its terrible aching.  She saw that now, plain as the sunrays surmounting the room in gold.  Her grief and misery had blinded her for so very long, but now the veil was lifting, the clouds dispersing, and she found she could glimpse the clear sky for what it was, a blessing bereft of storm and senseless, irreparable wounding.  She could see again, and my, how close she had come to grief all over again, this time at her own hand.  Was it to be the only constant in her life?

 

Morgana looked up at her fair friend, the sunlight from the window dappling her head with a heavenly glow and sobbed for the girl she had lost and the girl she had been.

 

---

 

In the end, Morgana returned to her chamber that afternoon alone, her mission not so much abandoned, as intercepted by—she did not know what to call what had happened to her in that room, an intervention? an intercession?—neither word sounded just right, but she supposed, if she had to name what had happened there, she would say that there had been a divine change of plans, a great reconfiguring, where while she had entered the room a broken, misused woman, she now walked out of that chamber, no less broken, no less abused, but somehow, inexplicably healed of a most terrible wound.  And all she wanted to do was cry for the days lost, and the nights, she had spent suffering, thinking herself alone, telling herself she was the only one in the whole wide world to come to grief for the love she had felt for him.  Keeping him to herself in that way, so obsessively, so errantly, that secret she thought to take with her to the grave, she had once thought it the salve to that open, garish wound, even as it festered and decayed inside her—it alone had kept her company! in the eerie quiet of a lonesome night—and now, to learn she was not alone, that she had never been alone, but had company—if she had only known how to look with her eyes and listen to the words her fellow women spoke to her—it was beyond what her poor sore heart could bear. 

 

While her tears had dried in Mithian’s chamber, and she had left her friend’s room with herself more or less composed, her dignity seemingly intact, the rage and the weariness overcoming her in waves did not abate as she trekked the short distance down the hall and stairs to her own chamber, but magnified, so that once she was secure in her room without a witness, she screamed, and snatching the small vial from its secret place in her pocket, dashed it without so much as a care against the stone wall of her chamber room. 

 

In her grief, she did not hear it shatter when it met the stone, but she saw the splintered shards of glass, the dredged herbal contents splattered on the floor and the sight instantly recalled her to that day Gwen had come to her room wishing to surprise her with flowers only to let go the vase in her abject horror at seeing the two of them sprawled indecently so upon the bed together.  Now, looking at the remains of the emmenagogue spewed upon the floor, Morgana finally understood the moment from Gwen’s perspective. 

 

She fell to her knees and did not raise a hand to dry the tears that streamed afresh down her cheeks. 

 

She had almost killed her friend today for Arthur just as Arthur had almost killed Gwen for her.  And that was not that long ago, though it felt a lifetime, that Gwen had come to this very room that hapless morning and found them there together.  She had felt mercy for her then, when he had seen only cruel necessity.  And now, not even a year later, she had been ready to spill blood herself on account of him.  Where did she go wrong?  What had happened to her compassionate heart to make it blacken, turn rotten and twisted?  Could she really say that she had been ready to harm Mithian, who had done nothing wrong herself so much as be in the wrong place at the wrong time, on account of the love she felt for her brother?  When it was he who neglected her?  When it was he who forsook her?

 

A knock came at her door, startling her out her mental frenzy, and she looked up from the shattered fragments of glass, their sharp jagged edges, lying, refracting light, upon the floor.  She turned toward the door, and in that motion, stopped halfway abruptly, once she saw her own image reflected on the looking glass—it caused her heart to stop a moment—as she gazed at her red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks—Is this truly who I am without him? she thought, Is this the woman I have become for love of him?

 

The knock came again, though no more insistent.

 

Morgana tore her eyes from the mirror, and drying her eyes, blinking back the unshed tears, went to open the door.

 

“Yes?” she asked in the most nonchalant voice she could muster.

 

The maidservant standing without merely blinked at her, and for a moment Morgana thought the poor girl had merely knocked upon the wrong door.  That was when she noticed the sealed letter held tightly in her hand.

 

“What is that?” Morgana asked, this time with authority.

 

“It’s a missive,” the maidservant said quietly, dipping her head, “It arrived today.  Along with one for the High King.”

 

“So why aren’t you bringing it to my father?” Morgana asked, staring at the unbroken seal.  “Surely, it concerns him.”

 

The maidservant shuffled nervously.  “Because the messenger who arrived today, slipped it to me, saying that I must make certain to give it to you.”

 

Morgana looked from the letter to the girl and back again.  “Hand it to me,” she said, peeking her head out into the hall to make certain they were not being watched. 

 

The maidservant proffered the noted gingerly and Morgana snatched it from her hands and withdrew into her chamber once more, shutting the door on the girl before her cry of “Mi’lady!” could be heard.

 

Safe inside her chamber room, the door locked and secured, Morgana tore open the wax seal, boasting no family crest she recognized, and in light of the late afternoon sun spilling through her window read its contents.

 

My dear niece, it read.

 

I have received your father’s petition on your behalf that I allow you on the account of some “most troubling” nightmares stay within my home, for a noticeably indefinite amount of time, for he did not state how long you intend your “visit” to be, stating only that it take place as soon as time brought you my response would allow. 

 

I have sent him a letter accepting his request, which I know must bring you great relief.  But now you must be asking why I have chosen to write you directly?  Of that, all I can say is that you are my sister’s daughter, blood of my blood, and that leads me to suspect that you share her gift.

 

I regret that I cannot say more here but it is a risk to impart so much onto paper. Just know that I have sent an escort of men I personally selected to guide you the long journey here. I trust you will be safe with them, but even then, I implore you not to reveal the true nature for your journey to anyone but myself.

 

Your loving aunt

 

The note ended there, without a proper signature of Morgause’s name, which Morgana supposed was only for precaution in case the note fell into the wrong hands.  After rereading the letter again, she noticed that Morgause did not give any names at all, whether they pertained to people or places, her missive was vexingly vague to someone without prior context, but then again, it was just as vague to its intended recipient.  Morgana found herself perplexed by the note, not its details, but the reason for it, the line of which her eyes kept falling upon—you are my sister’s daughter, blood of my blood, and that leads me to suspect that you share her gift. 

 

What gift could Morgause have possibly been alluding to?  She was under the pretense that the so-called reason for her visit were her nightmares, which she suffered from since a girl, since the time of her mother’s death no less, not the true reason, the need for her escape from Camelot to bear her child in relative secrecy.  It only followed that the gift Morgause spoke of were her nightmares, as much as Morgana grappled to believe it.  She had been told her whole life long that they were nothing but bad dreams, from her father, from Gaius, as much as he sought to treat her, and she in turn growing up told herself just that before lying down to sleep each night, fraught with terror—they are just dreams; they cannot hurt you; they mean nothing—and yet, what if they were something more?  What if they had always been more? 

 

The thought pulled at her, and then she recalled in an instant her strangest point of evidence: the dream in which she beheld her brother abed with Mithian, herself somehow suspended there amongst them, only to discover from Mithian’s own lips that she had in fact lied with him that same night and was now with child.  That synchrony, she could not name it coincidence as much as she wished to do so, had haunted her the past few weeks, following her like an unholy shadow, to the point where she had gone to Mithian’s chambers this very same day intent on killing what was to her the aberration, the fruit of that most ungodly union.  But she had found someplace deep within herself forgiveness for Mithian, finding the blame shifted from her to Arthur where it rightly belonged all along, if only she had been less self-absorbed to have recognized it—her worldview in a sense flipped upside down.

 

Now it had been flipped over again and dashed to dust besides, less than splinters and pieces and remains like the vase and the vial, the strewn herbs and flowers, the veil she and others had placed over her mind, whispering to her and convincing her of empty nothings, had been blown away and now she saw what she always knew deep within herself, the truth, where the scary impartial things her intuition told her lied, and they were telling her now that all of it, the nightmares and the terror, had been for a reason. 

 

A reason the aunt she hardly knew may just be able to explain to her, and more astonishingly than that, was the notion there in black, black ink that her own mother too had shared this oddity, which Morgause had named not a horror but a gift. 

 

When one door shuts, a window, somewhere, opens. 

 

Morgana took one last fleeting look at the letter in her hands, memorizing its contents word for word, and then, this done, strode over to her vanity, where a single candle burned lit.  In a decisive moment, she brought the bottom corner of the missive down to the searching flame, allowing it to ignite, catch flame, and then she went before the hearth and tossed the paper in, where it blackened and burned to nothing.

 

She had done her time in Camelot, and it had brought her nothing but grief.  And in grief and fright, she had thought she would be leaving the confines of the city walls for a semblance of safety for both her and her unborn babe.  Now though, she knew shelter for her was nowhere to be found, not that it mattered much, not while she had been selected for some higher purpose, however unknown.  She was done being a frightened little girl, too scared to love, too scared to sleep; now, with this illusive truth lit upon her mind, burning bright like a torch against the dark encroaches of the night, inciting her to courage, she would take charge of her life once and for all and meet whatever future the fates metered out for her, craving some answer, no matter how horrific, and if those answers lied upon the wave-strewn shores of Essetir, the cries of lonesome gulls circling overhead, then so be it. 

 

Morgana wanted those answers, and she vowed not to leave Essetir unless she got them.

Chapter 33

Notes:

Hi guys. This update is just a short one. I know it's been ages since Arthur and Morgana have talked face to face, but they will in the chapter to follow this one, I promise. I hope you enjoy this next installment nonetheless. At least in it, we get a little bit of Arthur. Thanks for reading.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Emboldened Knight

It was a late summer afternoon, like any other—the days passing lazily, languidly on by; how slow it had crept up on them, the Camelot denizens, soon to be gone in a flash, that terrible summer (or so it was to our heroes; to all else it was quite fair and spry), give up the ghost for fall in all its auburn glory, the trees painted a sunburned streak of red and gold, the skies dimming to sheets of grey, as the earth prepared for its inevitable return to rest and slumber—and Agravaine found himself patrolling the castle halls as was his duty at this time on this precise day. 

 

Not much ever happened on his afternoon rounds.  He would pass servants and nobility alike, each either engaged with his task at hand or his next destination to pay him much, if any, heed, so that Agravaine found he, as a less than distinguished Knight of Camelot when contrasted with his peers, could walk the halls more or less unnoticed, practically invisible, despite being in plain sight, for anyone who had a thought to care, to behold him in his mantle of crimson, bearing that noble insignia stitched in gold, the Pendragon crest which had in all but his heart replaced the heraldry of his homeland up north against the sea-battered crags of Essetir, that remote outpost, the last scattering of lands marking the edge of the Five Kingdoms, but to all else, the end of the world.   

 

Not that the persons he observed going to and froe, down the hallways, ducking into corridors, were of much report either.  There were the maidservants carrying baskets of fresh-pressed laundry, the councilmen out for a stroll to clear their heads after a lengthy assembly discussing politic and stratagem, and his fellow knights and guardsmen on their own patrols, among others more ordinary and unremarkable still. 

 

That was the extent of his job, watching ordinary people go about their ordinary lives, and this day, the high summer sun lighting the halls in an amber glow, was no different.  More than once, Agravaine felt the need to stifle a yawn, warmed into a drowsy stupor as he was beneath his layers of cloth and chainmail thanks to those resplendent rays bathing him in light.

 

It was not boredom that caused him to feel listless and weary.  He had been up at it again, this time before the crack of dawn, now that the days were growing shorter once more, training.  Ever since that day Arthur had disarmed him on the field to the laughter of his fellow men, Agravaine had risen from his bed in near darkness, and dressed in chainmail, walked down to the practice field to study his swordsmanship.  This he had done each day as the sun rose, pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into each thrust against the training dummy, his sole companion on the field, and then later, once word got out amongst the others of his morning ritual, against some of his fellows who were curious to see how he was progressing, if only to snicker at his banal attempts.  Those earliest to seek him out on the field at dawn went out of a need for a good laugh and to boost their own egos as they best him again and again, but as the days drew onward, some of those first scouters trekked off the field heads bent with their own shame, as they in turn were bested by the man they had once taunted and jeered as Agravaine the Coward.   

 

Those first few wins against the less skilled of the knights, those willing to meet him on the field at that ungodly hour, did much to bolster Agravaine’s courage, and so even when he was weary from an evening patrol the night before, he woke just as early with the same urgency to go down to the fields and train until his arm burned and he could parry no more.  In those moments, when he thought he would succumb to exhaustion, all he had to do was attune his mind to that vision of his goal, that smile he would see on his love’s face when she beheld him bedecked in glory, as he disarmed opponent after opponent in the tourney ring in her name, her hallowed name… 

 

And yet, no matter how much he improved, no matter his matches won (he still had not bested Arthur or any of his best men), he still felt leagues’ away from ready when it came to approaching her in the Great Hall when they feasted together, but tables away, on saints’ days and other notable occasions for such revelry and mirth, making plain his feelings to her.  It was not that he did not want to, desperately, to tell her what she meant to him—he did, and he did earnestly—as he watched her decked in gowns of carmine and gold, her long raven locks flowing over her shoulders as she nibbled at her food most demurely, it was only that he was afraid, devoutly, that if he opened up to her too soon, before his reputation truly changed for the better, as it was beginning to do so (less and less of the men laughed at him as he walked by, and some ladies of the Court even smiled his way from time to time), he would humiliate her the moment he wore her favor to the High King’s next tourney and lost to another man, more skilled than he.

 

So Agravaine waited, biding his time until the moment he knew for certain he would win her favor and his fellow knights’ respect, that moment being of course, the day he bested Arthur himself on the field.  In truth, he was many a morning’s practice away from that moment, if he was honest, but he felt it in his blood, that that day was drawing ever nearer.  Perhaps, with luck, by the time of the autumn harvest he would have his victory, and if not by then, then surely with all the hours he had put in, by the time of the High King’s last tourney before winter, he could catch Arthur off-guard in some rudimentary mistake and disarm him to gasps of shock and cries of praise all around.  It would be quite fitting, Agravaine thought with a smile, and planned to make the late autumn date his goal, remembering with a fondness how it was a year past at a similar tourney that Morgana had first spoken with him, asking him to that dance, he recalled with every fondness in both his mind and body.

 

As was his habit on his patrols, his mind, not otherwise occupied, wandered to thoughts of Morgana, the way she had appeared that night at the Champion’s Feast held in Prince Arthur’s name bedecked in red and gold, the colors so inextricably tied to her family name, and not just that night, but also all the other days thereafter when he passed her by in the halls, himself silent, but watchful as ever as he noticed every detail of her presence, the curls of her raven hair, the flash of her emerald eyes, the deep red of her carefully poised mouth.  (Oh, how he wanted to kiss that mouth and yearned to be kissed by that mouth in return!)  And in those moments, he would recreate her from his memories, so that he could almost trick his vision into thinking that she was indeed standing beside him, listening to his thoughts as he shared them with her, always smiling, always nodding encouragingly, in agreement, her eyes fixed on him with rapt attention.  Sometimes, he found himself so lost in his fantasy, he would forget his surroundings, his duty to be on guard for any troublemakers no matter how nefarious the motive and become convinced himself that she really was there beside him, keeping him company during the languid afternoon hours of summer when things of interest rarely, if ever, occurred. 

 

This time was like all the others, and so he had to do a doubletake when he saw her one moment beside him dressed in burgundy, and the next hurrying past him without so much as a glance his way in a gown as red as a briar rose.

 

The Morgana from his memory of that night at the feast faded from his vision, and his eyes caught sight of the Morgana before him now, as she hastened past him farther down the hall.  Looking at her, he noticed she seemed not herself.  By her gait, he thought her to be running from something unbeknownst to him, something unpleasant.  Perhaps, a suitor who had hurt her?  He prayed not, and thought not, for the High King himself had given his permission for him to court her.  He had only been waiting to prove himself first, so he may be truly worthy in her eyes, and he knew her to be a patient, loyal creature, who would not go looking elsewhere for a man’s attention while he was most certainly there for her.  So, what could it be that had her so upset? 

 

Agravaine, feeling a momentary surge of courage emboldened by the distraught overcoming him after having glimpsed her in such a harried state, thought to walk after her to perhaps catch her alone and ask her if anything was amiss when suddenly, a shadow stepped in front of him obscuring his vision of the one his heart so adored.  With a moment’s surprise and then fright followed by hesitation, he noticed the shade to be none other than the Prince himself—Where had he come from?—and his expression was far from kind.

 

“What do you think you are doing?” the Prince asked, still blocking his path, and then again Agravaine noted that dark glint in his eyes, the very same look he had fastened on him that day when he had disarmed him on the field, and every day afterward for that matter.

 

“I…my Lord…” Agravaine spluttered. 

 

“I ask again, what is your duty here, cousin?”

 

“I was…” Agravaine balked, his thoughts escaping him.  “I was merely on patrol,” he admitted most feebly at last for better words to signify what he had been doing escaped him at that moment and at any rate it was the truth, feeling the Prince’s hard stare upon him, buckling the courageous resolve he had possessed just seconds before.  “As usual.  This hall is my post.”

 

The Prince gave him a steely look.  “Then keep towards your post, Sir.”

 

“—Yes, Sire!” he hastily agreed, but then said, perplexation and the surprise of being caught unaware contorting his face into dismay, “But S-Sire, I don’t rather know what you mean—”

 

“Oh, I think you do,” Arthur said with an austere look, his voice likewise callous, that Agravaine understood at once would mean bodily harm to his person if he did not heed his command.  Arthur jabbed his forefinger at his chest, causing him to step back apace an inch, teetering nervously on his toes.  “Stay away from my sister.”

 

“But, Sire—I didn’t—”

 

The Prince’s jaw tightened, the fist at his side clenched, but then, almost instantly, he relaxed them both, though his eyes remained just as dark and steely.  “Don’t think I don’t see you.  The way you look after her at feasts and banquets, the halls—anywhere she moves your eyes are upon her, undressing her, I know the look, and I will save you the trouble.  Look away.  She will never be interested in the likes of you, man who can’t as much parry a blade.  You’re a disservice to the Knight’s Code, and my father would have you ousted from the ranks if not for our relation and the respect by which he honors your father, my uncle.  The pathetic thing is that you know this, and yet here you still are, trying.” 

 

Agravaine found himself trembling, his body shaking at the affront.  He had not been under any illusions that Arthur thought highly of him, not even in the slightest, knowing full well what the men under his command whispered of him behind his back when they thought he could not hear, and even then to his face besides, but hearing the Prince speak so stark of his failures was another matter altogether.  His lips quivered in shame, recalling the past harassments he had endured by such men who had pledged themselves to nobility and honor both, thinking them hypocrites all, even this man he stood before now, and for that alone, to be the better man, he determined to take the higher road.  “S-Sire, with all due respect,” he said, “that is why I try to better myself each day.  T-To be worthy in her eyes.”

 

Arthur gave him a passing look, one Agravaine knew all too well from the likes of his peers.  He felt instantly low, less than the very dirt his liege walked upon.  (At least the mud and dust, he gave consideration, if only to bark at his manservant to have his boots scrubbed clean of the filth.)  “Even if you trained at every hour of every day, you will never be a creditable knight, let alone worthy of her affection.  I tell you this as a mercy.  Give it up.  Let her go.”

 

Agravaine felt the tremor rise in his body, that old familiar acquaintance, the only friend he had ever known, who walked with him as his childhood playmates on through the years to his peers in the ranks jeered at him and cursed, “Agravaine the Coward, Agravaine the Craven Knight,” as their raucous laughter closed in on him, and he felt like falling to the ground in a cowering heap, proving their taunt exactly right—oh, how he had grown comfortable with the newfound respect he had received; oh, how quickly he had forgotten that rising heat of humiliation and how now unaccustomed he felt to surmounting it in that needy desperation and persistence to survive, no matter the costs, and in spite of them. 

 

But somehow, despite it all, despite the feelings of unworthiness clogging his brain, which as a child only his mother could soothe away with a placating hand to his cheek, or perhaps Gwaine with his kind, encouraging words that one day he ‘would show them all,’ he kept his wits about him and said in as strong a voice as he could muster, “And yet, Sire, she chose me.”

 

The Prince appeared taken aback at this sudden declaration of truth, knowing instantly what he had so boldly referenced, that most resplendent eve of the feast held in his honor, the night his sister, the Lady Morgana had took him by the hand and led him between the tables to the dance floor, his heart thrumming all the while as he had held her spinning in his arms on that most glorious night he ever did witness, the very best in his life so far and since—and Agravaine glimpsed the look in his liege’s eyes when he indirectly spoke of it to be bewildered as a wounded beast, and he could not understand how with his words, and not a blade, he had dealt such an injury, and yet there it was. 

 

Arthur swallowed, shook his head.  “No matter,” he said, regathering himself.  “What I said still stands.  Stay away from her.  I order you.” 

 

He did not understand the sudden change in himself—perhaps, it was the way he had unintentionally gotten under the Prince’s skin, even hurting him, which he would admit pleased him most sensibly, a sort of small retribution, although he did not quite understand how he had done it; perhaps, it was thanks to his days spent training, bolstering his courage; perhaps neither, perhaps both—but whatever it was, Agravaine found himself with unaccustomed boldness lacing his veins, challenging the Prince in that moment, reveling that heady rush, and decided to trump him once and for all. 

 

“Then you will have to take that up with the High King, Sire, for he has granted me permission to court her.”

 

The blood drained out of Arthur’s face, the light in his eyes deadening to darkness.  “What?”

 

“The night of the feast in your name,” Agravaine explained, feeling a certain giddiness bubble up within him at how he had unmanned Arthur, not with a sword, but with his words.  “I asked him, and he gave me his consent.  I have only been trying to better myself, as you say, first to be truly worthy of her.  But really, she is promised to me.”

 

Arthur staggered.  “You lie,” he said, then with a laugh to recover himself.  “My father would have never agreed to that.  He never would have sold Morgana off without her say.”

 

Agravaine frowned, though he cared not for the Prince’s words, their implicated meaning.  “What is it to you?” he asked, finding his anger replaced with a strange curiosity.  “I know you have never cared much for me—you have made that plain, as so many others,” and in truth, he wondered if perhaps, the insults he had received throughout his adolescence in Camelot, ever since his father had brought both him and Gwaine here for fostering, and then through his years as a knight in the High King’s army, had truly originated with Arthur, the others just following his lead as the laws of nature inclined men to do, “—but why intrude on a matter, which, frankly, does not concern you?”  

 

The knight saw his liege’s eyes widen with what could only be described as horror, which at first he assumed to be on account of the out of turn manner with which he had just addressed him, and perhaps, foolishly so, but then the look stopped, seemingly almost shuddered, as if the Prince had seen his very life pass before his eyes, as if he were the enemy with his sword pressed against his throat, oozing beads of blood, prone and ready to sever—and then, just like that, the vacant look veiled itself once more and that fiery spark that had blazed within his eyes died, like a snuffed-out candle upon the gales of a November wind. 

 

“…It’s nothing more than a brother’s concern for his sister,” Arthur answered, swallowing then with marked difficulty, as if something lodged most painfully in his throat, or so Agravaine observed, perplexed at the thought.  “I—” his voice cracked.  “I just want her to be happy.”

 

“And she will be,” Agravaine promised, suddenly pitying the man if that was all, his small concern, and wishing to give him some reassurance. 

 

“With me,” he finished. 

 

Arthur, appearing rather choked, as if in that moment all the air in his lungs had left him, gave his cousin one pained, soured look, and without so much as another word darted down the hall into the shadows around its bend, defeated.  Agravaine watched him go, feeling himself confused and puzzled at his latest encounter with the Prince, amongst so many others in the past that he counted just as uncanny, himself too confounded to appreciate his quiet victory.  He had never liked the man, and it seemed all his life, he likewise spared little regard for him, but now, somehow inexplicably, he found a strange sympathy for him.  Clearly, he loved Morgana and wanted only what was best for her, just like he himself did, and that lone redeeming trait stirred him to pause and wonder how the two of them, made enemies, could possibly be alike in this. 

 

And he could not say why that same devotion he himself felt when coming from Arthur left him feeling deeply unsettled, nay, sick.

Chapter 34

Notes:

Sorry for the delay. Here at long last is the chapter where Arthur and Morgana talk again. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks as always for reading.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Last Night

That night, for like Morgana, he too had received a missive, thinking himself the only one, its writing plain and to the point, conferring no hidden secrets, the High King Uther Pendragon took it upon himself to arrange for an impromptu feast to be held amongst his closest kin along with the head of the escort his sister-in-law had dispatched directly from Essetir for the sole purpose of retrieving his daughter for her indefinite stay in that backwards northern country. 

 

Uther was still not accustomed to the idea, but as Gaius had earlier professed, there seemed to be no other option left untried that could be procured within the walls of Camelot to cure Morgana of her night terrors, and so off to Essetir to visit Morgause and the fresh highland air for a time seemed not only the best, but the sole viable option available to them.  Not that Uther trusted Morgause much—that was why he had arranged for this last-minute feast, as a way to wish Morgana off for all outward appearances, yes, but truly as a chance to question the man Morgause had sent in charge of the guard tasked with escorting Morgana the couple weeks’ journey it would take to Essetir.  So far, the guardsman, a burly, stoic man of few words by the name of Lot seemed up to the task, in that he clearly had the prowess to protect Morgana from any ill trouble on the road (and so, Uther assumed, could his men), if they, God save them, came by bandits and the like; so yes, for all ostensive purposes, an obvious choice.  What was less obvious to Uther was the reason Morgause had responded to his own letter with such a prompt escort, of her own men no less, those reporting to her, not Cenred (as would have been more proper), instead of merely sending a messenger with a note agreeing to their arrangement, by which it would be then thrust upon him to see Morgana escorted by his own guardsmen the long distance to Essetir.  The whole situation stunk of Morgause’s wiles because Uther did not believe for one moment that she had merely sent her own men out of the goodness of her heart, but even then, her gesture had saved him quite enough trouble, and precious resources no less, and for that he was begrudgingly grateful, putting whatever remained of his suspicions to an end.

 

“You mean…you are to go, Morgana?  Just like that?”  It was Mithian who spoke, her voice uncertain, but betraying nothing of the afternoon the two of them had shared just mere hours before the call came for them to dine together this one last time.

 

Morgana looked up at her friend, once former, with whom she now regarded her ‘friend’ anew.  “Yes,” she said, then looked down momentarily at her lap, raised a hand to clear her throat.  “My health is growing worse.  Gaius has tried everything he knows to no avail.  He thinks there can be help for me in Essetir.  Physicians there with alternative remedies, given their access to flora that doesn’t grow so steadily here.  Also, just the quiet, and the fresh salt air.  We will be near the sea after all.  He says it might do me well.”

 

Before her friend could reply, Morgana stole a quick look over at Arthur, who alone remained uncharacteristically still and mute this evening around the table.  She could not imagine the thoughts running through his head at that moment, as for Arthur to be silent was a sure sign he was worried about something, and that worry gave Morgana much cause for alarm.  More than anything she feared he would doubt her reasons for going (for when had she ever left these imposing, sheltering walls they both called home?) and for so soon, without first speaking to him, as she had done when she was young, of her nightmares.  She had told him nothing, and for that fact alone she feared he would suspect the lie for what it was.  But then again, perhaps, he was punishing himself now, telling himself that she would have gone to him, spoken to him about her troubles if he had only remained true to her as she had wished for him to be.  She supposed that while it was a far different trouble causing her departure, she would have confided in him about it if only—  But it was too late for ‘if only,’ she told herself now, and in the blink of an instant, her life flipped on its head, it hardly mattered anymore.  She had made her peace with Mithian, and just like that, because of that, God had granted her that secret missive, promising security, promising answers, promising a future—and once more she heard the crash of waves against rock, the gulls crying, circling overhead against that wide expanse of sky, blue as far as the eye can see.  My son will be borne by the sea, she thought, and it was a comfort.  She would not allow her mind to think about the inevitable return trip she would have no choice but to make alone, not just then at least; there would be time enough for that later, on the road, and then when she at last step foot on that northernmost land, the wind tossing up her hair, whistling in her ears with the old hymns singing of choices vainly made leading to lives full of regret.  But, whatever came of it all, she would not regret.  She simply did not have the choice to.

 

Mithian smiled wanly.  “Write to me then?  If you can?”

 

“Of course,” Morgana replied easily, meaning it.  “I will every chance I get.” 

 

It was growing late, the lit tapers nearly melted down.  Most plates were bare; Arthur had hardly touched his.  It seemed such a strange time for good-byes and yet there they were, seated in silence together feeling the moment that this would be that last night for a long span of nights to come when the entire Pendragon family would sit down together to dine.  And in moments like these, marking for some an ending, and for others a fresh start, there was the unspoken acknowledgement that not the one of them wished to leave that table too soon, nor before the rest, however odd that might sound to the reader since these few solitary persons, bound by law and by blood, collected here could not have been more isolated than strangers, their present company the source of afflictions and sorrows too marred and deep to speak aloud, and yet in spite of all that, those they each saw seated beside or across from them they acknowledged as belonging to them, as theirs, their people, and that is at its core what family is and what family does come the inevitable time of separation—you cannot stay, and it hurts to go, so you linger there just a moment, a second and another, just a little longer more because even as they hurt you, they are all you know, and without them, how can you possibly know yourself?  So, with those sentiments crowding the room, expressed in sighs and wayward glances, without so much as a word between, suffocating the silence, it took a near stranger to call the night for them. 

 

Slamming down his downed goblet to startlement all around the table, Lot gave a grumble that could only be interpreted as satisfaction.  He turned toward Uther on his right.  “I thank you, good King Uther for your hospitality tonight, and for providing for my men.  But the night grows on and us men early to rise, so I must retire, same as you, dear,” he said speaking of Morgana.  “We ride at dawn.”  With that he rose from his seat, gave a nod in direction of Arthur and Mithian with a short, “my Lord, my Lady,” and exited the hall without so much as a nod of approval at his abrupt dismissal. 

 

The rest of them rose then, stammering some excuse or another about the time, the need to turn in for it was to be an early morning, for all of them, the last goodbye.  Now was merely the murmured ‘goodnights’ that lingered on a tad longer than was the norm, but not too long as to be the pained ‘good-bye’ of the morrow.  Mithian moved to give Morgana a hug, which Morgana met with a kiss on her cheek instead, so as to safeguard the delicacy of her condition.  (It was one night more for her in Camelot, and she did not mean to take such chances now, not with her escape with her honor intact to come with the new day sun.)  From there Mithian turned to her husband, himself bone white in the candlelight, seeming almost a ghost amongst spectators.  Behind him, Morgana saw her father give a nod before exiting the hall himself.  So that was to be the nature of the ‘goodnight’ she was to receive from him; how characteristically brief—she should have known—but to her just then, it was simply a delayed expectation and nothing of consequence; she was going far away where he could no longer hurt her, so who was she to cry at this one last failure on his part to admonish her with love? 

 

Morgana turned her attention back to her brother, the other heartbreak, looking him over.  He would be there to wish her off come the morning when she was to embark upon her journey in the carriage arranged to carry herself, along with Gwen and Gaius’s apprentice Merlin.  She knew this—without a doubt—so, she supposed this was not farewell just yet, and yet somehow, she felt the need to mark the occasion.  She studied him, from head to foot, memorizing every detail of his face and body, as if she could possibly forget, the boy, the man, her brother, who since the cold winter morn their mother labored to deliver him into this fair world was her virtue and her sin.  She would not run away to bear their child without committing first to memory the way he watched her tormented that last night standing before her shuttered at what she imagined was only the knowledge of her ‘going’ which clearly had come to him more as a shock than surprise what with his fallout-quiet—that if he had only chosen her, as he had back at the beginning, could have been one of many such nights of such dinners spent together, quietly masking their ardor for one another, yet resolute in their affiliation all the same. 

 

At last though, she found she must speak, and so said in as disinterested a voice she could muster, “Goodnight, Arthur.”

 

She watched him a moment receive the words, and the look in his eyes he repaid her with made it seem she had not spoken to him a sweet nothing but had hung a noose about his neck, knotted tight.  He was merely waiting now for the ground to be knocked out beneath him.

 

She did not deliver.

 

She did not wait for his response.

 

Instead, she hurried out of the dining hall into the dark gloom ahead, not once looking back, not at him, not at the past, not at anything. 

 

In the distance though, she heard Mithian speak, “Come, let us to bed.” 

 

Morgana was hastening down the hall in the opposite direction and had shut her eyes to stifle the tears lining them, but still, she saw as plain as daylight in her mind the way Mithian took his hand in hers and led him slowly step by step the other way.  She imagined her friend taking a dinner taper with her to light their way back through the nooks and crannies of the castle halls, that all too familiar territory neither of them could any longer call home.    

 

---

 

Morgana, wiping dry her eyes, returned to her chamber room surprised to find it dark when she remembered with a cry of alarm that she had this very morning given Gwen this day off so she could go about her business regarding Mithian in relative secrecy.  And now the two of them were supposed to be packed and readied so as to head for Essetir by first light.  My, how the world can turn upside down in a mere day! Morgana marveled, then grumbled to herself, knowing she had limited time to set her mistake to rights.  But then she remembered that she was a Pendragon, and she herself did not necessarily have to do much of the setting.

 

She turned out of the room, spoke to one of the nearest guardsmen on patrol.  “Fetch me one of the kitchen girls.  Anyone will do.”

 

The guard stared at her.

 

“I meant today!” Morgana snapped, and just like that he was off on the errand tasked upon him.

 

The guard did not return, but a moment later a pretty blonde thing came up to Morgana, lit taper in hand.  “Mi’lady, you called?  H-How may I assist you?”

 

“Do you know Gwen, the Blacksmith’s daughter?”

 

“I believe I may, yes.”  The girl stared at her in confusion.

 

“Do you know where her father lives?”

 

“I think—”

 

“Good, go fetch her for me.  I told her she may have the day to spend at her own leisure, but it appears I will be needing her immediate assistance after all.  Say to her to come packed for a journey.  Tell her my deliverance has come, and to bring warm clothes.  We will be going north on the morrow.  Now quickly!  We don’t have a moment to waste!”

 

The girl nodded nervously, and Morgana wondered if she understood a single word she had said, when she replied, “Of course, Mi’lady,” and was about to sprint down the hall to her mission, when Morgana lifted the candle in its holder from her hands.

 

“I’ll be needing this though.”

 

And with the girl gone to her undertaking, Morgana returned to her chamber to light the tapers upon her vanity and bedside table, returning the candle in its holder to a prime spot on her breakfast table.  As she moved to place the holder, she felt more than heard a crunch beneath her feet, and in a moment of alarm, stepped back and in view of the candle flame beheld the glow of the amber shards of the vial she had hurled earlier that evening at the stone wall of her room.  Still, it lay there in a shattered heap, the floor beneath stained, but dry, the liquid contents having evaporated in the hours she had been away.  All that remained was the glass shards and clumps of herbs.

 

“Oh bother,” Morgana muttered to herself.  She would have to see this cleaned up herself so as not to raise any questions.  It was only unfortunate that it would have to be on the night before she left Camelot, but no matter.  This broken bottle was the least of her worries now that her prayers had finally come to fruition, no, been delivered upon.  She did not know who to thank the most, Gaius for swaying her father against his obdurate nature, Morgause for her speedy reply, or God Himself in His High Heaven, as much as Morgana disdained thinking of Him just now, thinking Him the reason for her estranged circumstances, and yet it had been He who had granted her this salvation, she who no longer felt remorse for her actions.  

 

Morgana accepted her penance at least for the divine mercy cast down upon her and bent down on her knees to pick up the shards and fragments, careful not to cut her hands. 

 

It was then that a knock came at her door.  Gwen?  Already?  She had told the girl to be quick, and she had been, but if it was Gwen, then most like she had come with only the clothes on her back, sensing the urgency of the situation.  Still, Morgana yearned to see her, to have with her again the sole person she could confide in regarding the day’s events, excepting the afternoon she had spent with Mithian.  Plus, on a more practical note, she could help her clean up the mess she had made, an added bonus.  (There was only so much penance Morgana could reason doing herself on any given day, let alone the midnight hour before her planned escape!)   

 

“Come in,” Morgana called, rising to her feet, setting the shards down upon the table, in their place, taking the candle to hand.

 

The door creaked open slowly, a tall figure—too tall to be Gwen surely—shadowed in the entryway standing there looking at her with a moment’s hesitation.  Morgana raised the candle higher, and her breath caught instantly in her throat. 

 

Arthur was standing in her doorway. 

 

“May I come in?” he asked, his voice even tempered, belying the pained look he had worn just mere moments ago in the dining hall.

 

“Y-Yes,” Morgana fumbled.  “Yes, of course, come in.  Just shut the door behind you, please.” 

 

Her brother did as she bade him and then he took a step closer before her.  “It’s been so long since I’ve been here, especially at night,” he mused, and she wondered whether he was merely reflecting or rather attempting—rather poorly at that—to find some common ground through which to reach her, wherever it was that she now stood regarding them; to that, she did not know—the events of the afternoon spent with Mithian had shaken her up; she had thought herself angry, but now, facing him alone at last after weeks of avoidance, in such privacy to boot, all those strong emotions, she felt seeping out of her like dwindling raindrops pattering from the tree boughs after a sudden summer storm, the gale of her fury knocked out of her, spent, leaving her vacant, and hopelessly weary.    

 

“What—are you doing here?” Morgana said at last, the words tight in her throat.  The way they fell out of her mouth, each syllable a stilted staccato, she wondered if he thought her upset, guarded at the sight of his sudden presence, to which she supposed in a way she was, after this summer of hurt, but no that was not quite it, perhaps moreover a symptom of the deeper wound, which wound itself tight about her heart like barbed thorns, cinching snug about the organ as it beat its unsteady beat, puncturing her here and there, short involuntary gasps, until she bled internally bright, bright crimson. 

 

She tried to refocus her mind, her approach, the revision to the narrative she had been convincing herself of since this afternoon, trying to move herself, however soundly, to believe it.  He was the one to blame, not Mithian, not Vivian, him, and perhaps, in a small way, she thought then, epiphany wracking through her like a lightning bolt, she herself too. 

 

He did not answer her, just took another step closer and another step, this time around the table, and then before Morgana could stop him—crunch—his booted foot crushing to dust the amber shards of the vial. 

 

Morgana watched the look of surprise light up his face as he removed his foot to examine the remains.  She watched him do then an uneasy double take, and then she, knowing him as well as she knew herself, understood what he was thinking of, that first (and last) night they had spent in her chamber room together and the morning after when Gwen arrived with a vase full of autumn crocuses—that pretty purple flower that bespoke in the floral language ‘my best days are over’—the cry, the gasp, the inevitable crash that littered the floor with petals and shards, and shock all around amongst the three of them, wide-eyed, opened-mouthed.  Then had been the beginning, the beginning, she now saw it, of the end. 

 

“You have a strange humor, sister,” he said then, looking up at her, to watch her carefully for her response. 

 

Morgana gulped.  “It was just an accident—I dropped one of my perfume bottles.”

 

“Of course, you did,” he said, laughing to himself, and Morgana breathed a sigh of relief that Arthur was not familiar with the knowledge of herbs and their usages, taking her fib for truth.  Otherwise, he would have great reason to question why that particular bottle lay shattered at his feet. 

 

She inhaled a steadying breath and returned to her previous unanswered question.  “What are you doing here?” she asked again, this time easier, her voice gentle, or trying to be, as if in invitation.  Do come in; sit down; make yourself comfortable; go ahead now, ruin my life.

 

The laughter died on his face then, as he looked up at her, a mask of seriousness falling upon him once more, and studying him, she thought he was weighing whether to speak his purpose, the reason he came now to her at this penultimate hour before her journey, or no.  Taking a breath, he asked at last, “Why are you really going, Morgana?”

 

Morgana opened her mouth to speak then stopped herself.  “What is it to you?” she asked, herself not angry, rather void of anger was she, and in its place a strange curiosity, as if this were a new side to him she simply wished to understand.  “You made yourself quite clear in the spring,” she went on, not to blame, but to state plain fact for what it was, “that we have separate lives now.  So why shouldn’t I go if I so please?”    

 

He looked up at her face aglow by the flickering candle she held secure in her hand, studying her a moment, the lit eyes, pupils dilated in the dim, the flame dancing reflected within, bright white against the dark.  “Because I don’t believe—” he began only to stop here himself, and Morgana felt her heart quicken apace, frightening at once at what truth waited to be pronounced at the end of his statement.  But then with a breath, he tried again, and she relaxed just so.  “If you were suffering, truly suffering as you did when we were young, as children, why didn’t you come to me?  Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

She stared at him, and for a reckless moment, as she watched him, standing a few feet away from her looking desolate, a war-strewn wasteland, she almost came to confess before him the truth, to give him that momentary relief that he had not spared her.  And what then? she thought to herself.  How would telling him of his child, their child, prevent her fleeing the only home she had ever known?  How would telling him secure that child’s future?  No, it was better this way.  She saw that now, even though a small part of her imagined his reaction if he did know.  Would he pack up his things and steal away with her like a thief in the night, abandoning kin and home?  Where would they go?  Would he give up his claim to the High Kingship that was granted his the moment he was born?  Would he do all that and more just for her?

 

No, she told herself.  Mithian herself was proof enough of that.  It seemed that for him the duties of God and Kingdom came before his love for her.  She saw that now, and though it pained her, grieving her with a hushed anguish, nothing she said or did would ever cause that part of him, destined for greatness, for the histories, to ever so much as humble himself to live out a modest life, unremembered by the chroniclers, but cherished however briefly by she herself on whatever time she had borrowed left on this earth; for him, love, her love, was simply not enough and never would be because she alone could not immortalize him, being made of flesh and blood and all the decaying things, unlike that gilded crown, that exalted high seat—the things men worshipped when they bent their heads in prayer each night before they laid themselves down to sleep, genuflecting not to God but to the divine right they claimed from Him to ensure their mutual legacy. 

 

She had been a fool to trust him once, that empty promise when he swore his love for her and her alone that late autumn night they had shared, the last before winter.  She would not be a fool to do it again.

 

“Oh,” she said with a deprecating laugh, satiated at his worry and desiring to toss it back up in his face, make a spectacle of it.  “Forgive me, Arthur, but what could you have done?  You are no physician.”

 

He staggered backward a foot at that, flummoxed at her words; she wondered if he had comprehended them, this easy admission that he was not the omnipotent ruler of her person, despite the blows his very presence, or rather lack thereof, had dealt her health throughout her adolescence and into her adulthood as well. 

 

“…No, I suppose not,” he said at last, and she could sense his helplessness, herself feeding off it, like a starved beggar before an opulent feast.  “I could have—” he began, but whatever he meant to say trailed off unspoken, forever the mystery that would haunt her late into the nights she would spend at the keep in Essetir, keeping her up as she wondered what he could have done to save her if matters had been different.  Perhaps, that was the problem in way; she still wanted him to be her savior. 

 

“Besides,” she added, as more fuel to the fire, even as it burned a small tempest in her hand, yearning now, inexplicably, to hurt him, to repay his concern with the very wound he had inflicted upon her, now that she knew, thanks to her dreams, where his true sentiments lay.  “Shouldn’t you be with Mithian?  She is your wife, after all.  Not me.  I don’t need your patronizing; I can take care of myself.” 

 

He exhaled unsteadily at that.  “Morgana, please,” he said, misunderstanding, she presumed, her intent, behind the times as he was, thinking her still vexed at his wife, though she was innocent, “leave her out of this.”

 

“No, Arthur,” she said, shaking her head, the bitterness gone from her voice, and in its place a quiet dignity.  “I mean it.  She needs you now more than I ever did.  If you could only focus your mind and choose between us, truly choose as you chose her, no exceptions, then you would see it too.”

 

“What on earth are you talking about?” he asked, his voice rising at the discomfort she had forced him now to endure.  Perhaps, in coming here, he had meant to forget the present and take a step back in time, to the days when it had been uncomplicated between them, when he was just a boy and she his older, wiser sister; she would not let him, as she understood now more than ever that what was done was done and that he needed to accept the reality he had fashioned for them both.  “Morgana, why must you concern yourself with her, when you’re leaving to God-knows-where for God-knows-how-long?”

 

She smiled briefly to herself, then looked up at him, her hidden trump card at the ready. 

 

“Mithian’s pregnant.”

 

“—What?” he said stupidly, taking a step back, the look on his face momentarily bewildered, before frowning with reason.  “No, Morgana, that can’t—”

 

“It’s true,” she said.  “She told me herself.”

 

He gaped at her.  “But, no,” he said, sounding younger than his years, and she relived the images flashing through his mind at that moment, the fractured sequences from the dream; he had not finished that night, having pulled out of her distressed, and so it was a mystery to her as much as to him now how Mithian had conceived, but all that mattered to them both was the fact that she had. 

 

He stood there, looking as if he would bend over sick and heave what little of the dinner he had eaten hours before.  Such a boy still he is, she thought, resisting the urge to go to him and hold him close as she had done when they were young, when he awoke affright in their children’s nursery in the nights following their mother’s death. 

 

“I don’t know what to say,” he managed at last, braver words never spoken. 

 

Would you know what to say, brother, if I told you that I too carried your child? she wondered softly to herself.

 

She smiled at him wanly.  He had made his choice, and so had she.  Now it was up to them both to live with the cost of those decisions, however absolute in their making.  “Go be a husband to her, Arthur,” she urged.  “—And let me go.”

 

He shook his head as if to clear it, himself witnessing, realizing, what he had lost now that it was going, gone, too late, too late.  “Morgana, no!  Please!”  Then hearing the urgency of his voice, he softened it, as if embarrassed at his lost composure.  “—Wait a moment.  Just tell me truthfully.  Are you going because of the nightmares?  Because you haven’t complained of them for so long, so I thought…”

 

“You thought?” she asked, her pulse quickening in fear of what he might say next, frightened it may be the very nature of her secret. 

 

“I thought you were going to punish me,” he said, the anxiety spilling out of him now; a boy crying for his lost mother.  “It’s bad enough that you won’t allow us to speak as it is, but now I can’t see you either.”

 

She swallowed hard.  “Arthur,” she said, keeping her voice stern, but not ungentle.  Here she was again forced to make another choice, and this time she vowed not to let the bitterness win.  “Yes, I’m going for the nightmares,” she confessed, trying to sound as honest as she could, this time as a mercy, this time to spare him that near fatal blow, the truth that would kill him if he ever were to find it out, that the reason for her swift departure lay, ultimately, with him, whether she meant to punish him or not—no matter her prior feelings, so misplaced, so displaced within her—now she was not certain whether she wanted to hurt him for what he had done by rejecting her, by toppling her entire worldview over and dashing it to dust besides.  “They started up again.”  That was true.  “Can you really question why?  But that’s not the point,” she said, with a heavy breath.  “I gave you an option, Arthur.  And you made your decision.  For the both of us,” she added.  “I wanted you.  It was you that didn’t want me.”

 

His voice broke.  “That’s not—Morgana—”

 

“No, Arthur!” she said.  “You made your choice.  Now you must live with it!  And you must allow me to live mine.”      

 

He hung his head, defeated, as if taking in for the first time the severity of what she was saying; that this was it, the two of them once inseparable, now set upon different paths, going parallel, but in the opposite direction, never fated to meet again.  She heard him swallow in the quiet, shifting on the shards he still stood upon, as he moved to look up at her again. “Alright,” he said, agreeably enough, having heard her.  “I’ll still be there though to see you off in the morning.”

 

It was not a question, a suggestion or a promise; it was a threat, or at least that was how she understood it.  She nodded her consent.  And then I will be done with you, and this.  There was no more left to be said. 

 

He did not linger but saw himself out, the door opening on its hinges a brief, momentary second before falling shut softly behind him, creaking like the wailing of a ghost.

 

It was as if time itself had stopped—

 

—and then continued, the moment he was gone, Morgana exhaling at his absence the breath she had not realized she had been holding so tightly within her lungs, her chest, like the candle gripped firm in her hand.  She returned it to the table, and found herself, this done, sinking down to the floor beside it.  She buried her head in her hands, expecting herself to cry now that it was over—for a second time—but the tears would not come.    

 

Sometimes the open window is just an illusion.  It mattered not where she went, whichever direction she ran in, desperate for an exit.  She was still trapped in the room, her room, that prison of her heart—she knew it well—the door, the way out, securely locked behind her. 

 

---

 

The moment the kitchen girl finished relaying her message in excited gasps, leaving Gwen to piece together the information from the fractured fragments she heard them in, she kissed and hugged her father and brother both farewell, and made for the castle at once to assist Morgana as she had called for her in her hour of need.  Once she had seen her lady readied for her long journey come the morrow, only then would she return to her own quarters within the castle to pack herself for the trip.  It seemed to her what was to be a relaxing evening spent with her family was now to be a late night indeed, and she was grateful that Morgana had so kindly afforded her the day off to spend with them, which was now to be the last for quite some time, with the news come this day from Essetir of their leaving with the morning.  It was moments like these that Gwen sometimes wondered, although she chided herself for the silly thought, whether Morgana had the second sight. 

 

As she hurried her way to the castle under the cover of darkness, for the summer sun had set, with only the lights from the townhouses to light her way, she said a silent prayer of thanks also for the good news for Morgana’s sake.  She was grateful too that she would have this provided escape to bear her child in relative secrecy, assuming word of Morgana’s condition would remain hushed and undisclosed in the remote region of Essetir, where few visitors traveled and it was rumored that the land remained wild as ever with the practice of magic, it being far removed from the civilized locale of Camelot and High King Uther’s reign.  Gwen hoped it would be a quiet place, where word would not travel quickly for Morgana’s peace of mind, yes, but also for her own, as she was coming to grow surprisingly fond of the Princess, now that she was beginning to understand her better, despite her peculiar ways.  She also hoped they would not hear of any practice of magic during their stay there for the idea frightened her very much, even as she scolded herself lightly for falling prey to what were certainly only fictitious tales meant to enthrall young children of that northernmost kingdom by the sea.   

 

She was now approaching the castle gate through which she would ask permission to be admitted to the guards posted there this night, when a man’s voice accosted her, seemingly out of nowhere.  She recognized it instantly. 

 

“Lance?” she asked, sounding, however, uncertain.  “Is that you?”

 

She heard him say to the guard at the gate beside him, “Grant her entrance.  She’s the Lady Morgana’s maidservant.”

 

The door creaked open, and Gwen entered the courtyard.  She was about to shout him her thanks when suddenly she saw him coming down from his post at the gate tower to meet her.  Her heart fluttered at the sight of him, the way he appeared so noble and dashing in his cloak and mail in light of the torch he carried, and a part of her thrilled to see him abandoning his post if only for a moment to speak with her.  The other part of her, the larger, more rational part, was eager to be away to help Morgana, even though the idea of an evening chat with the knight that had once mistaken her for a noble lady herself seemed rather lovely indeed.    

 

“Gwen, I have assumed you have heard the news,” he said, coming up before her. 

 

“Yes,” she answered him quickly.  “And that is why I must be away.”

 

She saw Lance swallow imperceptibly at that.  “So, you are to go with the Princess then.”  It was more a statement, a sorrow laden admittance, than a question. 

 

“Yes,” she said again, for the first time feeling the sorrow herself.  Camelot was the only home she had ever known, having lived her whole life within its walls.  She would miss it, her family and friends dearly, and maybe also a part of her, this knight as well, though he was neither quite friend nor family.  “She’s my lady.  I must go.  It’s my duty.”

 

Lance nodded understandably.  He knew a thing or two about duty.  “Very well,” he said.  “I can see that if she is to go, then you must as well, but please, dear Gwen, be careful.  There are strange tales spoken of the north.  It’s not a place where a good girl like you should go.”

 

Gwen nodded, touched at his concern, though she did not smile.  “Thank you, but I’ll be alright,” she said stiffly, trying, if only, to sound certain.  “There’s to be a guarded escort for Morgana and me both.” 

 

“An escort, yes,” Lance said irritably, “but not the knights of Camelot.  These men who will take you there, you don’t know them, and they don’t know you.  What trust is there in that?  I only wish that I could be at your side protecting you along the way and back again.”

 

Gwen felt her heart skip an anxious beat.  “I’ll be alright, Lance,” she said evenly enough, belying her nerves and the fears her imagination was playing out for her.  “Thank you for your thoughts, your kind regard as always, but I don’t need your protection.  I can manage myself.  And besides this is the Princess’s own family we speak of.  How can there not be trust?  Now if you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the Princess now for it grows late.”

 

Lance sighed dejectedly, then gave a curt nod.  “Godspeed, fair Gwen.”

 

She blushed, thankful for the darkness to mask her involuntary response at his decorum, and then threw him a meaningful look, for she had not the words to convey to him that she too wished he would be well and safe in the long time she was to be away.  By the smile in his eyes, she assumed he interpreted her gesture just right. 

 

“Goodnight, Sir Knight,” she said with a smile of her own, remembering her old title for him from that time before she knew his name, and without so much as another word, she trotted off toward the grand stairs ahead to be let inside by the guards posted there, each step one closer to her fate.  What would destiny see fit to throw her way on the road?  In Essetir?  Only time could tell. 

 

In the shadow of the gate tower, illuminated by the torch in his hand, Sir Lancelot the Noble watched her take each step of the stairs up the way until she reached the great door and was given entrance by the men posted there, slipping through the space between until she was gone, out of his sight, the great door shut once more behind her. 

 

And during that time, the agony of which he saw her march onward brave as ever toward fate or chance, he did not know which or either, he yearned to be walking alongside her, each step of the way, wherever, no matter, that way went. 

 

---

 

Half an hour after her brother had left her chamber, and she had just finished cleaning up the remains of the shattered vial so as to busy her mind from her more worrisome thoughts, another knock came at the door, and Morgana knew at once that this time it was Gwen, constant Gwen, the only one who ever remained faithful to her as always.  And in anticipating her, she rushed toward the door to open it before she could knock a second time, herself unable in her anticipation to keep her waiting another instant. 

 

“Oh!” Gwen exclaimed, her hand poised in midair to knock again.  “Morgana!”  She was surprised to see her lady standing at the doorway, already bidding her entrance into her chamber room.  Normally, she called for her to enter from the seated luxury of her bed, or perhaps at the seat before her vanity.  Never, not once, did she appear ready at the door to invite her in, not as a servant, but almost like a guest, a friend, a fellow confidant, which she supposed in many ways she was coming to be.  Come the morrow they would be traveling to a new land and, in that event, would be all each other had.  For that alone they must be each other’s friend, if they were to survive the journey at all.   

 

“Yes, do come in, Gwen,” Morgana said, ushering her at once inside and shutting the door and barring it once the two of them were secure within the room. 

 

Morgana turned back to Gwen.  “Right, Gwen, I’m so terribly sorry for this short notice.  Have you packed?”

 

Gwen shook her head.  “I thought to help you first, Mi’lady.  I was going to take care of myself thereafter.”

 

Morgana nodded.  “Good,” she said.  “I suppose that’s best.”

 

“Right,” Gwen said, shaking her head to clear it.  “Very well,” she said, and with that hastened to the wardrobe to comb through its contents.  “You said to prepare for colder weather,” she said, talking to Morgana as much as to herself, to keep her mind focused on the task at hand, and not the nervous thoughts lighting at the back of her mind about the morrow, their journey, and Sir Lancelot’s warning.  Even if she could not trust the men in the escort, not knowing them, or the path ahead, never having taken it herself, she could trust in the touch of each garment she selected, knowing at once its purpose for their trip, and being confident in each decision she made, just as she could trust that she had Morgana and Morgana had her, and as long as that were true, the neither of them would go through this great, arduous undertaking alone, and for that she felt a semblance of courage rush through her veins, encouraging her ever onward.  “So that means we should take this dress here, and this one,” she said, her hand landing on a violet velvet gown, “but we should also take your newer dresses too, especially for while we journey, so as to better hide your pregnancy, and—”

 

“Oh, Gwen, stop it!  Stop it!” Morgana cried out. 

 

Gwen turned from the wardrobe, several dresses held haphazardly in her hands.  “Morgana, what is it?”

 

Morgana fell upon the bed, her head resting between her hands, as she stared down at the floor wide-eyed.  “What am I thinking?” she muttered to herself.  “I can’t do this.  I can’t just leave Camelot—”

 

Gwen rushed to her side, throwing the dresses down upon the bed, and coming to sit down beside her.  This was precisely what she feared, that somewhere deep down she must find that inner courage to carry them forth, and it seemed that she must be brave enough for the both of them.  “Yes, you can, Morgana.  If anyone can do this, it’s you.”

 

Morgana shook her head, the tears, before unbidden, now falling between her closed eyes.  “I don’t know, Gwen.  I’ve never left before, in all my life, I’ve never once been to any of the other kingdoms, let alone rarely outside the city border.  Father took Arthur of course on many excursions to tournaments and tourneys, treaty signings, but never me.”  She looked up at her friend then, a paranoid look in her eyes.  “This is my home.  The only home I’ve ever known.  How am I supposed to just leave it?”

 

Gwen laid a hand on top of hers, giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.  “I know exactly how you feel,” she said, looking into Morgana’s eyes.  “I’ve called Camelot home as well, and I’ve never been outside its walls.  So, you are not alone, Morgana.  You have me, and I you, and we can do this.  Together.”

 

“You think so?” Morgana asked uncertainly.

 

“I know it,” Gwen answered, trying to sound confident.  “Now, I need you to trust it as well, so I can pack.  We only have so much time.”

 

“Right,” Morgana said, nodding, her eyes no longer brimming, but dry.  “It’s just, Gwen…  I can’t leave him.  I thought I could but…”

 

Gwen frowned.  “You mean—”

 

“Arthur,” Morgana finished for her.  “He came to me, Gwen, begging me not to go.” 

 

“But, Morgana, if you don’t go…”

 

“I know!” Morgana cried.  “I have to.  It’s for the best, for my child’s sake, but oh, I’ll miss him.  Never mind everything he’s ever done to hurt me, he’s still my brother, my baby brother, and I’ll miss him.”

 

Gwen sighed.  “We’ll be back, Morgana,” she said.  “This isn’t exile.  This isn’t forever.”  She spoke as much to reassure herself as much as her lady.  She too would see her father and Elyan again.  She knew it. 

 

“You don’t understand,” Morgana said, shaking her head.  “If I go and bear my child there, the only way,” she paused, her voice breaking, “the only way I can come back is if I return alone.  Don’t you see?”

 

Gwen did see, and she wished, desperately, she knew some way in which she could comfort Morgana in this. 

 

“We don’t know that for certain yet,” she said, trying her best anyway.  “Perhaps, once you tell your aunt the truth, she may be of help.  There can still be a way out of this, Morgana.  Don’t give up hope before we’ve even tried.”

 

Morgana exhaled a heavy breath, then sighed herself.  “I suppose you’re right, Gwen.  I just—” she began only to break off, the rest of what she had been about to say hanging in midair, unfinished, never to be spoken between them. 

 

Somehow though, as Gwen watched her then tenderly lay the hand she had held in solidarity over the slight roll of her stomach, she understood.  It seemed Morgana must make another choice.  It seemed she could have the man, her brother, or her child, never both, and yet at the same time, she could possess in truth neither one of them.  And in that moment, she felt the veil that was the enigma of Morgana Pendragon lift from her eyes, and for the first time, she truly saw the woman as she was, heartbroken, bereft, a woman with the whole world at her fingertips, yet unable to latch on to anything tangible of worth.  She thought it must be a lonely life. 

 

Gwen shook the thought from her mind, refocusing on the tasks ahead of her, as a good maidservant, on what she could accomplish for the lady she served.  She went back to the wardrobe selecting dresses to pack, sliding them off their hangers and folding them to place secure in the trunk at her feet; all the while, Morgana sat still upon the bed, and Gwen thought she must be sifting through her memories of home, of her brother, memorizing them, before the long journey and stay in a foreign land caused them to fade altogether into the mists they were traveling towards, closer with each passing second. 

 

“You know, for what it’s worth,” she said after a time, unsure whether her words would prove any use, “you’re quite strong, Morgana.  I’ve never seen you back down from anything, and so if anyone can get through this, it’s you.”

 

For a moment her declaration hung in the air, displaced in silence, but then, ever so slightly, she heard the bed shift, and a soft, but nonetheless resolute, voice say, “Thank you.”

Chapter 35

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Leave-taking

That night, the last the two of them were to spend within the castle walls they, up to this point, called home, sped by in the blink of an eye, as evenings tend to do before a great change to come with the morning sun.  Morgana did not retire until late, well past the witching hour, and Gwen, after she bid her goodnight and returned to the servants’ quarters to pack her own sparse things, came to bed even later.  Both women, spent as they were from their anxious preparations, their fretful minds at last catching up with their exhausted bodies that were now, given the late hour, too tired to so much as worry about the fast approaching morning—what it would bring—let alone give much thought to inventorying just once more their provisions for the journey, fell into a deep, somber sleep the moment their heads hit their respective pillows, one of the finest silk to be found within the five kingdoms and the other of plain cloth, more ordinary still, so that it seemed, just like that, the moment they laid their heads to rest, it was morning, the summer sun alighting the curtained windows with a faint, pale glow, bidding them to rise with a start and face the day.  Therefore it came as no surprise, but rather belated expectation, that when Gwen arrived soon after waking at her lady’s chamber, taking only the time to don her humble homespun—this her buttercup kirtle worn over a cream blouse—her small knapsack of necessities in tow, she found Morgana already awake and dressed herself in her green riding cloak for the journey they were to undertake in a matter of moments. 

 

“Are you ready?” Gwen asked her, feeling her own heart quicken at the thought.  “Could you sleep?”

 

Morgana smiled at that.  “You know me and sleep, Gwen,” she said amiably enough, belying her previously expressed worries from the night before, “but yes, I’m ready.  Or at least I suppose I am as ready as I’ll ever be.”

 

“Good,” Gwen said, then looking about the room, noted, “I see the guardsmen have already come for your trunks.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana said simply.

 

“Then I suppose we must go,” Gwen acknowledged when Morgana did not elaborate, an admittedly rather large part of her wishing she had trailed off onto some tangent or another, if only to delay the inevitable, their rushed and fast approaching departure from home for lands stranger still up in the far north where neither of them had ever set foot but had only heard the most remarkable tales spoken of the moors and stretches of pine forest to be found there where fabled beasts roamed and magic flourished unchecked by the laws of God and man—or so it was said, sightings and speculations murmured in hushed tones in taverns over cups of mead or from performative peddlers talking up their goods with earnest just to line their pockets in the city streets; either way each fellow happened to know a fellow to travel there, retelling the stories secondhand with only a mark or trinket for proof—  Why, in that moment though, Gwen tried to fling such untoward thoughts from her mind for they were only rumors lacking credence, praying all the while that she sounded confident enough for them both, knowing Morgana would greatly need her strength for the weeks and months ahead of them.  But Morgana failed to notice the tremor in Gwen’s voice if it was even there, so preoccupied with her own mind was she. 

 

“Right so,” she said, determination in her tone despite the falter, and then gesturing toward her maid with an outstretched hand, said, “Lead the way, Gwen.”

 

Gwen laughed at that, a part of her doing so out of nerves and a part out of anticipation (she did reason that despite her doubts she was perhaps a tad bit eager for the excursion), but all the same she strode for the door, as her lady commanded, holding it ajar for Morgana behind her to follow suit, take that irreversible step through the threshold and out into the greater world that was surely expecting them by now.  Better not be late! 

 

“Morgana?” she asked when she saw her lady still standing in the same spot, unmoving.

 

“You know it’s odd,” Morgana mused to herself more than to Gwen, “for years I’ve spent my days in this room, hating this room, and yet now the moment I am to leave it, I think I shall miss the place.”

 

“You and me both,” Gwen said.

 

It was Morgana’s turn to laugh, and she did so gasping for air.  Then with one last look about the place, as she committed it to memory—the bedplace, the vanity, her chest of drawers, the far window which she always recalled gazing out transfixed as a girl, marveling at the townspeople striding on by in the courtyard below set about each task making up their remarkable lives, while she languished her adolescence alone in this room for days on end to grimmer tomorrows still, but No more, no more!, she thought for this too had come to an end like all things must with time—she sighed, and said at last, “Alright.  I’m coming.” 

 

---

 

They were all there standing as the Camelot guardsmen assisted the Essetir men in loading her trunks, along with Gwen and Merlin’s few belongings, into the carriage, her father, Arthur, Mithian, Gaius, various lords and ladies of the Court—those who deigned to rise this early for the likes of her at least—and then the townspeople in the distance, standing apart from her closest kin, but nonetheless willing to watch their Princess, the woman they had adored since ever she was a girl when her mother used to take her out into the town to visit with them, teaching her that it was her duty to pay them her respects as much as they did her—that such was the way to good governance and happiness all around—no matter how her father had frowned upon the excursions (although to Igraine he could never say ‘no’); they too came out in droves to pay their respects, as word of her leaving the kingdom spread amongst the Lower Town overnight.  Seeing them all, as she stepped out onto the grand staircase and down the steps, standing together, as if in vigil, just for her caused Morgana to stop a moment, for she feared the tears would come again unbidden.  Ever since her mother’s death, Morgana had not known the castle and the outlying town she called home to be a happy one—her father kept to his chambers in his grief growing sterner by the day, she herself alone to cry herself to sleep at night after putting her young brother to bed in their shared nursery—let alone a place where she felt loved, and yet now seeing all these people standing before her in the courtyard for her, why, she did feel loved, or at least the afterthought of love, where one is only missed when she is about to go, and she supposed that she would accept this sort of belated affection, if only because it was the only sort she thought herself ever likely to receive.   

 

That moment, brimming with melancholy sweetness, too soon came to pass, for she was blinking back the tears before she shed them, and placing one unsteady foot in front of the other until she stepped off the last stair to the stone ground of the courtyard below where the carriage that would take her to her next destination stood at the ready; all it needed was for her to entered its dark wood doors and take a seat within—then they would be off! with poor Camelot left dwindling in the distance behind them.

 

“Sister.”

 

It was Mithian.  Morgana turned, and her raven locks swayed with the movement, to see her dear friend approaching her from where she had previously stood next to her father and Arthur.

 

“Mithian,” Morgana smiled beholding her dressed in a gown as gold as honeycomb, her chestnut hair falling over her shoulders.  “Look at you, dressed fit for a queen to see me off.”  Like a princess rather, she thought then, realizing it was true.  Mithian would be Camelot’s sole princess now that she was near gone and going.  “You’re radiant.”   

 

“I have you to thank for that,” she answered cryptically, though a light flush tinged her cheeks. 

 

“And why is that?” Morgana laughed, eyeing her friend curiously for any giveaway sign, finding none. 

 

Mithian took her arm, and the two of them walked a stretch from the carriage, finding some semblance of quiet beside the stairway.  Once they were out of the ears of any potential eavesdroppers, Mithian turned back to face Morgana, and said with a smile, taking both her hands excitedly in hers, “I told him!  Can you believe it, Morgana?  I actually told him!”

 

Morgana stared at her a moment, uncomprehendingly, until she remembered their conversation yesterday afternoon, the one that had ended not with her slipping Mithian the emmenagogue as she had intended but with Morgana wholeheartedly telling her to go to her brother and tell him the news of their child to be.  Except, and here thinking this Morgana frowned an imperceptible moment, it was she not Mithian who first gave Arthur the good news, or ill—it all depended on the matter of the perspective of who regarded the subject at hand.   

 

Recovering herself however, she interjected, “Oh, that’s delightful, Mithian!  Truly!” 

 

“Yes,” she said, smiling contentedly to herself.  “And you were right of course.  He was pleased.  I thought he would have been shocked, worried that he may have been dismayed, but none of that!  He’s actually happy.”

 

Morgana nodded, coerced a grin, as her thoughts carried her away to the night before when he had come to her room begging her not to go and she, instead, maintaining her resolve, had told him to go onto his wife for she was with child, his child, and he had been less than thrilled, hardly committal.  I don’t know what to say, he had said, and that was it, before turning back to her, and why was she going again? 

 

“I’m pleased for you both,” Morgana said simply, as memories of the night before, the way she had fallen in a wretched heap the moment he had gone, unable to cry for them both, flitted from her mind. 

 

“Yes,” Mithian said, her voice growing solemn.  “I just wish you could be here with us, Morgana.  To share in this good news.” 

 

“I know,” Morgana answered.  “And I wish it too,” she forced herself to add.

 

“But I do wish with all my heart,” Mithian said, taking Morgana’s hands in hers and kissing them softly, “that this visit with your aunt causes you to find some peace, dear sister.  I wish for it, and I pray for it.”

 

“Thank you, friend,” Morgana spoke, a tad curt, as she drew her hands away from her sister-in-law’s grasp.  If only you knew how much your words mean to me in this, she said silently, debating whether to voice the thought aloud when a bearded man bedecked from head to foot in mail approached them.

 

“Princess, it is time,” Lot said.  “Your provisions have been packed and we must be on our way while the day is still young.”

 

“Of course,” Morgana answered him, and then with a fleeting look toward Mithian, the two of them followed the Essetir man back to the carriage. 

 

“Now say your goodbyes, so we may go,” Lot said abruptly in Morgana’s ear before moving to mount his own horse along with the rest of his men who were to ride the distance with them, they returning home, whereas she was leaving hers.

 

Morgana swallowed hard as she stood facing them all again: Gaius, Mithian, her father, Arthur—

 

She rushed toward the elderly physician first, her eyes already brimming.  “Thank you, Gaius,” she said.  “For everything.  You’ve been such a help these last few months.  I wouldn’t be here without you.”

 

The physician fished out a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her for her to dry her eyes with.  She did so, thanking him again. 

 

“There’s no need, Mi’lady,” he said then.  “Everything you say I have done, what little that is, I would have done twice over for the likes of you.  I am only sorry I am unable to go with you.  But I trust my apprentice,” he said, gesturing to the youth Morgana now saw speaking with her brother, “Merlin, will be everything you could ever wish of me and more so.  He is quite the prodigy.”

 

Morgana laughed through her tears.  “Is he now?  Well, I’ll be happy to have him.”  Then she lowered her voice so only he could hear.  “He doesn’t know of course?  You have not told him the reason I go?”

 

She saw him hesitate a moment before saying, “He knows only what he needs to.  The rest you must tell him.”

 

She nodded, frowning, then turned down the row of faces watching her, their idle chatter dying as they noticed her, there in the distance the librarian Geoffery, and here, with a smile, Elaine.  She waved goodbye to them all, until she came toward her father.  Then she dropped her hand to her side, her smile wavering at once with expectancy. 

 

“F-Father,” she spoke, her voice cracking.  She did not understand the emotion overwhelming her, but she supposed that even with all the times he neglected her, or perhaps because of them, there was still in her heart a deep-rooted fondness for this man, perhaps, coming from the days when she was young, when Mother was yet alive, and he himself, strong and stubborn, but unhardened.  That was the difference, she supposed, but it mattered not to her poor heart for today she was mourning her home and home was her father before the grief broke him down and built him back up again a different man. 

 

“Yes, child,” he answered her, and for a moment she thought he must have felt it too. 

 

“I’ll miss you,” she said despite herself, like the child he addressed her as, and a part of her, however foolish, wished to throw herself into his arms and be adored as that child still. 

 

But then she watched him pause a moment, speechless, and she waited, imagining what he might say to her now.  Would he too ask her not to go like Arthur had?  Would he beg her forgiveness? 

 

“Lot is an impatient man,” was the ultimatum.  “Best not to make him wait.”

 

She gaped at him, stunned.  “O-Of course,” she stuttered then, as she turned away from him, as she had learned to do her whole life, forcing herself to move on down the line to where Mithian stood…and Arthur. 

 

Morgana swallowed the lump already growing in her throat, focusing her attention only on Mithian, who seemed herself fit to weep. 

 

“Here,” Morgana made out, handing her Gaius’s handkerchief.  “There’s no need to cry, my friend, for the likes of me.  And besides,” Morgana added, swallowing, “I’ll be back.  This isn’t forever,” she said, thinking those words so familiar to her, wondering where it could have been that she had heard them before—

 

“I know,” Mithian said, wiping her eyes.  “But I will miss you dearly.”

 

Morgana laid two comforting hands on her friend’s shoulders.  “I want you to do something for me, Mithian,” she said then.  “All that love you feel for me, I want you to pour that into bearing your child because he will need it.  That love, us Pendragons rarely receive.  And he is a Pendragon with a great future ahead of him.  He will need that love.  So do not mourn my going.  Instead enjoy your time with him.  Because I will be back come the next spring to see him born.”

 

Morgana heard her choke back a sob. 

 

“You’re strong, Mithian.  Will you do this for me?”

 

“Yes,” she said, drying her eyes.  Then a second time, stronger: “Yes.”

 

“Good,” Morgana said with a sigh.  “You’ll do well.”  She gave her friend one last reassuring squeeze, pressing the weight of her hand against the tear-stained kerchief between them, as if imparting a part of her own soul to her in leaving.  And then with that, she turned down the line to where it dead ended, with the man to whom she wished not to speak a word and the man with whom she wished to say everything. 

 

Thankfully, he possessed the mercy within him to speak first, setting the tone by which she would inevitably follow, as she always had throughout her childhood, oddly enough, she thought then, looking up to him though he was her junior.  So many years had transpired in such a fashion; how could she expect to go on without him?  She supposed it was only necessity that dictated she must, and therefore foretold that she would.   

 

“So, this is goodbye,” he said flatly, careful not to betray emotion, and yet in that, betrayed even more of his heart and the wounds lashed upon it that would not, she supposed, easily heal with time, as hers had not.   

 

She looked down at the ground for a second, recollecting herself.  Then she gathered the courage to look up at him.  He was wearing a blue tunic, she noted, one that brought out the color of his eyes in a way that she used to think charming.  Now though he seemed hollowed out, his composure not royal, but rather sad in stature, as if he were weakened by grief and sickness both. 

 

“I suppose it is,” she said stiffly, allowing her words to carry the weight of the wasteland that now lied between them. 

 

“And I hear you are taking my manservant,” he said, forcing a laugh, that seemed just as hollow, empty.  “Couldn’t leave could you before taking something that was mine?”

 

She laughed despite herself.  In a way, yes, that was the reason why she was leaving, because she had stolen a part of him and now it was growing inside of her.  Not that he could know that, not now, not ever.  She had made a vow, a promise to take the secret, first to Essetir, and then to her grave.  What a lonely grave, she thought.  There would never come a day when she could even tell their child.    

 

“You’ll manage,” she said. 

 

“Yes,” he said, teasing her like in the old way when they were young.  It should have comforted her, a semblance of home and familiarity to take with her on her journey, but instead she was left impatient, almost irritated in truth, and all the more desperately wishing to be off, to not have to suffer him again, when all she wanted deep, deep down was to be with him.   “I hear I am to have a new servant by the name of George.”

 

“I’m sure this George will do just fine,” Morgana quipped back, a latent temper in her voice.  

 

“Yeah, probably better than Merlin here,” Arthur said giving the poor boy a shove, whom Morgana nearly felt sorry for, until she noticed that the boy was grinning ear to ear himself.  She never did understand Arthur’s way with his servants, the way he taunted and teased them like pets.  Most of the past boys feared him, but this boy, this Merlin, seemed different, as if he was completely at ease with her brother, despite his roughhousing, and that intrigued her greatly. 

 

“You will keep good care of my sister, won’t you, Merlin?” Arthur said, yanking on the boy’s ear, as he whispered to him. 

 

“Arthur, leave him alone,” Morgana snapped, and with that her brother released the poor boy, who one minute before had been laughing, but the moment she spoke, clamped up as if she were some witch incanting spells or, perhaps, the specter of a ghost, instead of his intended savior. 

 

How marvelously odd, Morgana thought to herself, as she gave this Merlin, as her brother had addressed him, whom Gaius had named a moment before a prodigy, a once over, quickly scrutinizing him from head to foot as if that one sharp look could possibly convey to her the contents of his mind.  She was greatly disappointed when it did not yield any further insights. 

 

“You’re no fun, Morgana,” Arthur said, shoving Merlin to the side, as he urged him to go on and check on her things.  At the command, Merlin seemed to revert back to his old jovial self from whatever trance had overcome him when she had spoken up on his behalf, and went on to do just as the Prince bid him, grinning back at him as he left. 

 

“No, I guess not,” Morgana said with a sigh to mask what she feared was her old, twisted bitterness rising up once more within her, as she watched Merlin trot off.  It had not gone when she had forgiven Mithian her ignorant crime, but had rather shifted right where it belonged, had belonged this whole time, with Arthur, and although she had done her best to put it aside the night prior when he had come before her asking why she was to go and in that same breath begging her not to, now faced with her inevitable leaving, she felt its darkness swallowing her once more.  “But that is why I carry the responsibility of this family,” she said before she could rethink her words, and her eyes widened momentarily, as she realized their literality.  And in that moment, she prayed her brother too daft, too dumb to question what she had in frustration mistakenly revealed aloud, all the while censuring herself for having hoped him such. 

 

“Morgana, I didn’t mean—” he began, only to stop himself sudden.  “Let’s not part like this.  I couldn’t bear it if we did.”

 

She looked at him then, really looked at him, feeling the familiar love and fondness for which she regarded him, for which she had always regarded him, return in an instant.  She could not hate him, not truly; every time she tried, it was only the backdoor to love.  And now she was going, and in order for herself to go, she was going to have to leave that misplaced affection she held for him her lifelong behind in the dust rising off the tracks of the carriage wheels taking her through the city gates to some unknown place, some unforeseeable future, while he remained safe at home in Camelot, oblivious to the truth, that it was out of love for him that she was leaving at all—

 

There were a million things she wanted to say to him then, but none appropriate to speak that morning in the courtyard with witnesses all around.  So, she gathered her courage about her with her mantle, and spoke only what she could.  “Let there be peace between us, brother,” she said at last, with a tired smile though the day was yet young.  “So, I may go on this long journey without regret.  Come now, bid me adieu.”   

 

A flicker of a smile flashed in his eyes, and he went unto her then, like a good brother, and he kissed her cheek. 

 

The touch of his lips against her skin, however chaste, caused her to blink back her eyes in joint elation and pain.  She wanted to be gone then, more than ever, before the flush rose on her cheek and gave her away, her sentiments, those guarded, wayward feelings she had harbored in secret half her lifetime, and yet, inexplicably, she wanted the moment to last forever.  Either way, withstand the moment and him, she did with a sinner’s discipline.

 

She did not know whether it was she or he who broke away first, but part they did.  In the distance, as if in a dream, she could hear Lot calling her to board the carriage so they could be off, his voice booming over the sounds of the townspeople bidding her goodbye.  And yet amongst the commotion, despite feeling in her bones the need to be off, she felt rooted in place, as she glanced upward and looked at him who was her brother, a brief moment with a tender look in her eyes. 

 

“Go,” he whispered, “while I can bear it.”

 

She nodded, staring at him still.  She tried to will herself to speak the words, to wish him well and that she loved him—with all her heart—to say ‘goodbye, God be with you,’ but she felt tongue-tied, and the words died in her throat unsaid. 

 

The next thing she knew she was darting for the carriage, her raven locks stirring in the breeze behind her, as she threw wide the door and stepped within to take her seat across from Gwen, who smiled at her bravely, she alone comprehending the bewildered look on her face. 

 

Outside the carriage, she heard Lot give a shout and then the whip sounded driving the carriage wheels with a jerk into motion.  Morgana jumped in her seat at the movement, and Gwen instantly laid a reassuring hand on top of hers. 

 

“It’s okay, Morgana,” Gwen said softly.  “I’m here; it’s okay.”

 

Morgana nodded, willing herself to believe that what Gwen spoke was true.  She would be okay; all of this was nothing but an intermission in her life, a short, brief interlude and then the main story would take up again—all in all, nothing but a dream within a dream.  She would be back, she told herself, willing herself not to cry.  She would be back, for better or worse, and when she returned Camelot would be the same as it had always been, and Arthur, he would be waiting for her; she felt that knowledge deep within her bones.

 

Either to prove it to her heart or to test her faith, she looked out then from the small window to her left, to the castle steps dwindling in the distance where they were all standing, watching her go, where she knew he was standing watching her leave, but when she looked she did a doubletake because in the place where he had been there was no one, just a gaping hole.  He was gone.  And she, going.

 

***END OF PART TWO***

Notes:

So here ends the second part. Thank you all for reading this far. Updates from this point on will be more infrequent as I rework a large portion of the third part. Thanks for bearing with me.

Edit 04/16/23: I just realized when I updated this chapter yesterday afternoon that I ended up posting this 7 years to the day I originally uploaded the initial prologue to the story (which has since been rewritten). I only ended up posting the first chapter in May of 2020, but I still think it's neat that I ended up finishing the second part on the anniversary of me originally sharing the ideas for this story.

Chapter 36

Notes:

At long last the first chapter to part 3. I've spent the last few months on and off reworking this chapter (which is a long one and the reason it's taken me so long) and finally I think it's ready. I hope you enjoy.

Thanks as always for continuing on this journey with me.

Jo ❤

P.S. Do not jump to the ending notes because there is a major major spoiler.

PART THREE

—THE GATHERING DARK—

 

CHAPTER ONE: The Seaside Keep

Whatever could be said for Morgana’s mind in those fractured moments of leave-taking, as the carriage she occupied skittered down the dusty road out of Camelot and into the wilds beyond, whatever remained of her qualms for the journey ahead, or perhaps her steadfast expectations—those she kept wrapped close about her not all that unlike the unborn babe nestled in her womb—she did possess the wherewithal to comprehend that the not-so-grand trajectory of her life had ended—perhaps, so a new chapter could begin.

 

Or rather, it was the other way around.

 

In the weeks she sat across from Gwen conversing only when necessary in hushed murmurs so as not to catch the ears of their Essetir escorts as they delivered them along the rudimentary remains of the old Roman roads that only grew more precarious the further north they rode, Morgana had latched onto with a conviction that brief exchange written in a cramped hand, wondering at the implications, as she now had time aplenty to drift and dream as the horses carried them along the road northward bound.  For all Morgause knew the reason for her ever-approaching arrival was the strange, illusory nature of her night terrors which had plagued her for years—ever since the terrible night of her mother’s death to be exact—and not the true circumstances of her own making which had brought her upon this very road through rainstorm and clear skies and many an overcast morn up to the northern lands far from home. 

 

Her mind should have been preoccupied with the lie her father had told unwittingly on her behalf to grant her this remission from life in Camelot, not that it did not give her some fright to think how Morgause would react once she learned that she had been deceived—after all, she hardly remembered her aunt from the brief time she came to Camelot for her mother’s funeral and could not be certain what sort of woman was she, only that she figured based on that short note she to be of a discerning character—but instead as the days passed one to the next, the scenery out the quaint carriage window changing from rolling hills through dense forest where the road narrowed to just two men apace to high moorland to fields of heather and down into the woods again, she found herself quite transfixed on the imparted words that had said to the effect that these nightmares, however terrible, were not so much as a curse, but a gift, one her mother too had shared.

 

Or so Morgana had interpreted the missive.

 

Which brings us to how perhaps, her whole lifelong, she had gotten it wrong.  Perhaps, rather, the days she had wasted pining for her brother cooped up in her bedchamber as she fingered the beads of her rosary like petals of a flower—do I love him? does he love me not?—praying to the blessed virgin for her mercy, to God to strip her of the disease—'lead us not into temptation!’—hearing nothing in reply but her own rapid heartbeat, perhaps, that had been nothing but a detour, and now, now that she had time to think, perhaps, the real story had begun.  The story of Morgana Pendragon, the woman with a child in her womb who supposedly had a gift; something at last to remember her name by, or so she hoped to be so remembered, praying then, to God she supposed, that the remembering did not connote an untimely end (for that would quite ruin the fun of it all.)

 

But either way, it is here that we find our heroine, riding amidst the pines in the depths of Essetir, supposedly mere hours away, according to Lot’s calculations from last they had stopped to rest the horses, from coming up at last to the keep where her aunt abided, the most remote outpost of the five kingdoms. 

 

To say she was excited was an understatement.  Her body was a mess of jitters and nerves, her mind wondering at what awaited her around the bend, where the road dead-ended at this seaside keep, or so it had come to her in her visions and dreams on those cool August nights when she laid down her bedroll, snuggling close to Gwen, to sleep.  During those dreams, caught in glimpses, after she had downed the tonics Merlin had prepared for her based on Gaius’s instructions with the herbs he had packed for the journey for that very purpose, she would feel her child stir from where he lied reposed in her womb, likewise, she thought, dreaming of what fate awaited them in this foreign land.  She sensed that he too was eager to be already at their destination, where at last they could rest from prying eyes and curious ears, or so she prayed each night before sleep finally greeted her spent body. 

 

Sometimes though, it was not flickers of what awaited them that she saw pressed between her eyelids like the words of a book, but rather vignettes of home, of Camelot, of the family she had left there behind, fading in the dust tracks rising off the carriage wheels.  Sometimes she beheld her father, as always, the stoic ruling from his high seat, and at others, dear Mithian, humming to her own child old tunes from her homeland as she readied for the day.  But mostly, she saw Arthur, the way he had tossed and turned in his canopy bed the nights following her departure, so that when the sun rose once more, his eyes upon finally waking appeared hollowed and misty, circles beneath them, as if he too troubled from the night terrors that often visited her.  Was this compensation? she had wondered.  If so, she did not want it.  She realized then she was not as cruel to wish her misery upon anyone, even he who had caused her flight from home, if ever Camelot had been a home to her.  Still, the sight of him still treading was a comfort.  To witness how he missed her most devoutly a balm for the wound upon her soul.  And she wondered whether, if ever she did return to Camelot, whether this time apart would cause him to finally see what he had so foolishly lost, make true the old adage that absence makes the heart only grow fonder so that he, upon her arrival home, would welcome her back into his arms, muttering how sorry he was for what he had done to wound her as he breathed once more the scent of her hair, smelling this time of salt and highland heather. 

 

“Fat chance,” she mumbled, unsurprised by the afterthought that she no longer cared.  There were better things in store for her up ahead than him, she knew, beginning with that keep in Essetir and whatever secrets Morgause had to tell her, whispered confidingly into her ear.  That promise alone kept her going undaunted, moving ever forward.    

 

---

 

As for Gwen, the journey north was not one promising redemption, and neither was it so much a recall to life, but rather a matter of necessity given her duty to her lady and one that no matter how hard, she endured with grace.  If the parting had been hard for Morgana that fair summer morn, then it had been equally taxing for she who had only a brief, fleeting moment to hug both her father and brother farewell when they came along with so many others of the townspeople to see the party off before that bear of a man Lot, interrupting their embrace, had urged her into the carriage so that they could be away while Morgana too had said her goodbyes.  There had been tears in her father’s eyes, he who had lost so much throughout his life, first a wife and then a son when Elyan had run away from home and now his daughter who was the dearest to him of them all.  Elyan had conveyed to her that he loved her and had gifted her a small dagger for her person, one he had forged some time ago to keep her safe, which she accepted gratefully.  Likewise, there were tears in her own eyes at the sight of them but determined to remain resolute in her decision to accompany Morgana along the way, she did not shed them there, promising instead that she would come back to them once the princess’s health had improved, the words sounding from her lips with a determination most kin to devotion. 

 

Once the horses started though their slow, plodding gait, Morgana safely seated across from her in the carriage, Gwen too had looked out the window to her right catching sight of her family dwindling in the distance, the lump risen in her throat—oh, how she would miss them!—only to catch sight of a man with a head of dark curls and a red cloak about his neck, the gold insignia of the Pendragon crest upon the mantle, shimmering in the sunlight from where he stood apart from his fellows upon the castle steps.  She knew him at once to be Lancelot, that most esteemed knight of the High King’s command, and her heart panged that she by going would also leave him behind, not thinking why she cared so much about this moot fact, only that seeing him, his eyes watching the party through the gate with marked discontent filled her heart with such sorrow at the nature of their last parting the night before which in itself seemed more a lifetime ago, left her wondering if it had been something she had said that had prevented him from wishing her well this morning before they were to go. 

 

Perhaps, he is not as noble as all that, she thought then with a dejected sigh, which Morgana failed to hear pass her lips, thinking that perhaps, he had been too ashamed in front of all those people to speak with the likes of her, the blacksmith’s daughter without so much as a noble name.  The thought deflated her anticipation for the journey all at once so that she had ridden in silence along with Morgana most of that first day, until she woke to a soft drizzle the next morn, leaving the small encampment where they had hunkered down for the night many miles away from Camelot and home scenting of fresh grass, the most renewing of scents, as if the rain could cleanse away her sadness, resolved this time to put the past behind her for the journey ahead.  She touched the dagger she had tucked within her skirts then for luck, itself a talisman in a small way, and with that rose to attend her lady. 

 

But as for Lancelot, that fair day as he looked out from his perch upon the castle steps, a tear slipped unnoticed down his cheek as he watched them leave, thinking to himself that he must heed his lady’s words, though she was not his (not truly), and let her go, praying that she would be well along the way and back again. 

 

“God be with you, fair Gwen,” he had murmured when the guardsman had pulled shut the gates, unable to move from his place, himself rigid upon the step, until Gwaine found him moments later and with a clap on his back that broke even he into the shadow of a smile, urged him to join their fellows for a skirmish upon the training field to clear his muddied head, which he accepted with equal parts grace and sorrow. 

 

---

 

The last of the disparate trio, Merlin also remained rather mute throughout the journey, this his first time away from the safeguarding walls of Camelot and the familiarity he had come to know within them since he first arrived at Gaius’s doorstep all those years ago.  Unlike the women, whom he left to the comforts of the carriage, Merlin rode a mare alongside the rest of the Essetir men who more or less did not converse with him, which he thought to be all to the better so he could be alone at last with his thoughts through the duration of the excursion. 

 

Regarding those thoughts, he spared none for sentimentality’s sake on the mourning of leaving home, for in a way he, unlike the Princess or her maid, was returning to his homeland, the place of his birth, for Ealdor was located in Essetir near to where the country bordered that of Camelot.  He thought of his mother and their small cottage along with his childhood friend Will, wondering how they had fared in the time since he had been away.  He had written his mother letters now and again telling her details of his adventures about the castle, how he was quickly picking up Gaius’s skills as a physician of merit himself along with his complaints about working for Prince Arthur, though of course, secretly he enjoyed the tasks he set upon him as well, those jovial sentiments, however, he kept to himself for good reason.  Sometimes, he would receive a letter back from Hunith detailing the small village gossip as the seasons passed, but mostly they contained talk of the tilling of the crops and how much she missed him still.  These letters Merlin cherished and kept in a secret place, in a book of magic Gaius had gifted him, which he kept securely beneath his bed where he could easily pick them up to revisit whenever the urge came upon him in the flits of homesickness that sometimes overwhelmed him every now and again. 

 

But they were not to pass through Ealdor; that much he had picked up from the conversations of the men.  Instead, they were to follow the Roman road north straight to Cenred’s keep, no diversions, and soon Merlin found his thoughts drifting elsewhere than his mother, but rather toward the very nature of their journey, the reason for their ascent into the wilds toward their destination soon approaching with each day that passed at hand.

 

He kept reviewing in his mind again and again the stroke of misfortune which had brought him upon this very road back towards the remote region of his birth, and the knowledge he alone was privy to.  Gaius, through only the fault of his own, he supposed, had persuaded him despite his initial refusal to attend the Princess in his stead in her hour of need, Merlin only acceding to his wish that he aid her, out of the helpless understanding that Gaius could not so easily leave Camelot like he. 

 

Perhaps, it was for the best though, Merlin thought as he rode his mare up the highland stretch with the keen awareness that he, unlike his mentor, was already soiled with the darker knowledge that Gaius could not have possibly suspected, that the child Morgana bore was not just any lover’s but the descendant of the Prince he so vehemently served.  There lied the ache in his bones at the mere thought, the cause for him at times throughout that long winter to bend over sick, dry heaving at his own hypocrisy for there were many who would likewise frown upon his own adoration for Arthur as Morgana had allowed herself to be so adored by him, or so he had discovered one enraptured night as he stood outside his door, ears pressed to the wood wishing that it was he not Morgana that had occupied his bed.  In the days that followed that awful night, he had come to understand that the two of them were one and the same, sinners entranced with their sin, unable to give it up, that holy load as much as they sought to shed their burdens for the sake of survival or even for the mere hope of pitiful redemption. 

 

Perhaps, Morgana wanted to be saved; perhaps, that was what had brought her to Essetir, the privacy with which to bear her child, the proof of her shame, to deliver him, abandon him in that godless country only to return home with her reputation intact once more.  Good for her, Merlin thought as he rode his mare down the dirt path, brambles and thickets at his side, for he was not one to judge her mired character.  He on the other hand desired no such salvation for himself, craving only to be back in Camelot at her brother’s side where he rightfully belonged.  Since he was heading in the opposite direction from that home he had found with him, why, it was nothing to him but an irksome punishment for the waywardness of his nature, for the taboo of his coming to love another man. 

 

He had been a good servant and would continue to do so out of sight of his Prince’s eyes and ears, for as they had parted he asked him a favor, in jest perhaps, but a favor nonetheless, that he watch out for his sister as he himself could not, unable as he was to follow where she was to go, and Merlin, unable to deny Arthur anything, though he had not answered him then, had promised himself he would do just that no matter where the road took them.  

 

---

 

Sometime after their last stop, the carriage jilted down that very road, picking up here and there stones and pebbles in its wake, as it led them through an expanse of trees, both beech and alder.  It seemed they had come through the last of the forest, for Morgana spied with a gasp, raising a hand to her lips in awe as she pushed aside the curtain of the carriage window with the other all the better to see by, a flat sheath, as the trees grew sparser, leading them through patches of heather down to the blue breadth of sea and there on an outcrop before the craggy cliffs stood amongst a scatter of outlying huts the brimstone walls of what she supposed could only be her aunt’s dwelling. 

 

They were here, at last, at their journey’s end, and Morgana’s breath caught with excitement, her heart quickening with equal measures anticipation and dread at what awaited her on the other side of the immense gate ahead of them, the sole barrier to all that remained between her and the fate that awaited her almost placidly like the becalmed sea this day.  In the distance, she could hear them, the cries of gulls circling overhead, sounding just as she had imagined in her reveries of the place, though of course, she had not yet stepped foot upon this northern shore until now.

 

The carriage had come to a stop before the gate, at which point Morgana let go the curtain, deciding to wait out the interim in the muted darkness of the coach, a muted light flickering through the sheers.  Without, the sky had been overcast, heavy clouds threatening rain, and Morgana yearned at once to be within the secure walls of the keep, not fancying to be drenched another night.  She hoped they could pass through quickly.

 

She turned then to Gwen seated opposite herself, laying a trembling hand upon her knee in comfort as much as to steady herself. 

 

“Did you see, Gwen?  The carriage stopped!  And outside the keep!  It appears we are here at last!”

 

Gwen smiled.  “So, it would seem, Mi’lady,” she answered mildly.  In the weeks of their journeying, she had fallen back into the old habit of addressing her as such what with her unease about the Essetir men about whom she knew so little, but also in preparation for her stay in this foreign land.  She knew not the customs here and, thinking it better to be safe than sorry, thought it best that she be on professional terms with her lady during her stay, unless they could be certain of their privacy.  While she understood from Morgana that she was here as a friend as much as a maidservant, the locals did not and perhaps, would or could not understand such a bond as theirs.  Likewise, Morgana did not check her for using the old formality, grateful as she was for Gwen’s precaution and wit as always.

 

“Here, wait, a moment,” Morgana said then, stilling herself to listen to the shouts without.  She believed she heard Lot’s voice urging the guardsman to bid them entrance. 

 

She was right for a moment later she heard the creaking of the gate as it was raised, and then with a start, the carriage set into motion again.  Unable to resist the temptation, she pushed aside the curtain and peered out at the courtyard she found herself now within.  The state of it was not particularly impressive to the young woman who had spent her whole life within the sheltered walls of Camelot.  The whole of it appeared rather lackluster, dingy and unkempt with supply barrels stacked against the far wall and men and livestock rushing about.  The walls, though sturdy, appeared ashen and worn, and moss grew in cracks between the stones.  Whatever Morgana had imagined of Essetir in her dreams, it was not this forgotten, miserly crag of a place betwixt the sea and outer woods beyond.  She had a moment’s doubt how she would fare here.

 

But there was not time for such pitiful thoughts then, for without came another shout and the carriage door was unceremoniously thrust open on its hinges, revealing the stern face of Lot. 

 

He did not offer her his hand, but rather impatiently said, “Come, Princess.  The Queen requires your presence.” 

 

Morgana turned toward Gwen then nodded toward her escort, careful to wrap her cloak about her body, as she exited the safe confines of the carriage, stepping off its step onto the muddied ground below.  She sensed more than saw Gwen follow suit behind her. 

 

“Are you ready for this, Morgana?” Gwen whispered from behind, as they each hastened through the muck to catch up with Lot where he was marching off several feet ahead through a side entry, raindrops still dripping off its eaves though it had rained last a day past, toward an unremarkable door off the main entrance that was flanked by two soldiers adorned in mail and ebony tunics boasting the crest of a crimson tree, the same insignia the men of her escort had imprinted upon their mantles, Morgana remarked with a curious note, recalling then from her youth and the lazy afternoons she had spent peering over her brother’s books as he committed to memory the flags of the noble houses and their families’ lineages, that the crest of her uncle’s house should have been, if she recalled correctly, an ebony snake studded with gold, not this stately tree splattered in scarlet as if etched in blood.  She had thought little of this inconsistency on their journey, so apprehensive in their going was she, but now, at last in this strange land, she wondered the reason for the change in arms, missing at once the gold dragon of her father’s country, thinking to herself now, that she was a long, long way from home and comfort indeed.

 

“Of course, I am,” she announced hastily under her breath, despite her quickening heart.  This, she rationalized as a result of her hastened gait.

 

“You aren’t nervous in the slightest?” Gwen confided softly, catching up with her.  “I am.  And if I am, I can’t imagine—”

 

In her eagerness, Morgana wanted to snap that she never felt more perfectly content, anxious as she was becoming at Gwen’s nervous chittering, though that would make her a liar and she had had time and again throughout her childhood from her brother that she was never much good at lying, but doubt clouded her resolve and she muttered confessionally, “Well, maybe a little.  But I’m determined, Gwen,” she added, her voice rising at the mere thought, “to see this through.  I got myself into this mess, and so to hell I say with any misgivings I may have.  Still,” she said, musing more to herself than to Gwen just then, “I wish there was some way Arthur could be here.  That he could know.  That,” this said as she looked up at the immense keep before them, “I wouldn’t have to do this all alone.”

 

“But you’re not alone, Mi’lady,” Gwen said.  “I am with you, and at your side I will remain until we are able to take you the way back home again.”

 

Morgana stopped to look at her maid beside her, a lit fondness in her eyes at her steadfast loyalty as she did so.  “I—Gwen, I thank you.  Truly.”  She paused, listening to the gale of the wind whooshing through the alley, its strength stirring the curls of her hair, lifting them to her face even beneath the confines of her hood, as if waiting for them to answer some unspoken question of her own.  She looked up ahead at the solitary door, the guardsmen posed to either side.  “Do you think it time, Gwen?”  She shivered, the wind rushing past her, as she thought.  “That I go through that door and meet whatever awaits on the other side of it?  So that I am the maker of my fate?” 

 

The question lingered in the air between them unanswered.   

 

“I’ll follow you wherever you go,” Gwen answered with a promise.

 

Before Morgana could reply, the voice of Lot boomed from the stairway beckoning for them to hurry up and follow if they so much wanted to be out of the wind and cold and before a warm fire to dry themselves out from the chill that seemed to have creeped into their very bones.

 

Morgana gave Gwen a stiff nod and then the two raced the rest of the way down the muddied path, kicking up puddles here and there with their steps, as they scampered down the way and up the stairs through the shadow of the door to what awaited them on the other side down the torchlit hall.

 

Her heart hammering with anticipation, and a spike of dread, as she stepped down the dimly lit hall, Morgana found resolve in Gwen’s assurances.  She would not have to meet her aunt and face her judgement alone.  Gwen would be with her.  In this, she would have a friend.

 

---

 

Whatever Lot had promised to usher them within the dark shelter of the keep, Morgana noted with a grimace that the narrow hall in which she found herself was just as damp and dreary despite the warmth of her cloak and the torchlights beckoning her forward with their soft amber glow at either side.  It seemed rather that the stone of the walls insulated the cold without rather than offering any warmth of their own, even though to all extensive purposes it was summer still and to Morgana’s mind the weather had no right to be this damn penetrating.

 

For this reason, thoughts of a warm fire to rest by, or so Lot had promised—if his word could be trusted—out of the cold damp that seemed to permeate through her layers of clothing down to her flesh and bones, set Morgana’s feet into motion, all doubts for the moment flung from her mind, so that she followed Lot, with Gwen following directly behind her, down the rest of the hall to another door at its end where another guard was stiffly posted.

 

Lot was speaking to the man, Morgana assumed, about their business there within the corridor, and then when she approached him, she caught the trail end of his account, “—the Queen would wish to see her now.  She is her niece, here for a stay at her request.  Now go and send word to her of her arrival—”

 

Before the guard could answer Lot his demand, however, the door creaked open from behind revealing a blonde-haired woman in a dress of scarlet, its bodice and sleeves laced in glittering silver and red silk in view of the torchlight.  She wore an amused look at her brow.  

 

“That will not be necessary, Lot,” she spoke, an air of mystery about her.  “Kanen,” she said, addressing the grizzled guard at her side, and then with a look of intrigue, the thoughts behind her poised face neatly masked, she spoke out towards Morgana where she stood alongside Gwen in Lot’s shadow.  “And to whom do I owe this pleasure?” she asked, though Morgana had the sense she knew perfectly well just who she was, just as she had the tingling sense, she knew her.

 

Morgana lowered her hood at once, uncovering her raven hair, dark as the shadows dancing upon the walls’ stone.  “I am the Lady Morgana,” she attested, “and this,” she added, gesturing to the figure at her side, “is my maidservant, Gwen.”

 

The woman smiled at sight of them.  “Indeed,” she said, then beckoning them forth with her hand, said, “Come.  I’ve been expecting you.  As for you, Lot,” she said turning towards her first in command without so much as a welcome after such a time apart, “see to it that my niece’s things have been brought up to the guest chamber where she will be residing.”  

 

Lot grumbled his agreement and headed off, Morgana pausing to watch him go, wondering how a man such as he could take orders from a woman without so much as a grimace.  Morgause had already been gliding down the hall when she stopped and said without looking behind her, “Come along dear,” and as if this were the sole reason for her hesitance, “You may bring your maid with you.”  

 

Morgana stared at her aunt, mouth agape, now that she had the sense to take her in.  Here, was the woman she remembered seeing as a child, albeit briefly, at the time of her mother’s death, and she was struck dumb at the fact that, if her memory served her well, and usually it did, not a thing seemed different about her in the fifteen years that had transpired since she saw her last; her aunt did not appear a day older in the slightest since the funeral, her skin still smooth as ivory, her face bereft of crease or crinkle with sharp eyes the amber of the alder in autumn and her hair as golden as she remembered her mother’s to be, and, she thought—with a twinge of home-longing—as Arthur’s—and somehow, she had known her niece to have stopped in her tracks, confounded at this mystery, though she had not looked back over her shoulder to gaze her way just as she had known she had arrived without word of her arrival having yet been sent.

 

“My dear,” Morgause spoke now, herself, too now, having stopped.  “Have you no voice?  Or has the chill without stolen your breath?  This is something you will get used to.  Do come in and bring your maid with you.  We’ll get you warmed up in no time.  Come, follow me.”  And with that she kept on down the dimly lit hall.

 

Though she knew not how to answer her aunt just then, who seemed more like an apparition to Morgana from her past, conjured from the mists of this seaside scape, than a full-blooded, living person, she had heard her invitation clearly, and her aunt appearing to be a woman who gave out commands expecting them to be obeyed, or so Morgana had gleaned from Lot’s dutiful response, she heeded her request at once, sliding past Kanen who watched her with a scurrilous look as Morgana followed Morgause further into the castle, with only one uncertain look back at Gwen, who trailed after her, carrying her small sack of things in tow.

 

Sparking torches in sconces mounted on the walls lit the windowless passageway Morgana and Gwen found themselves in, just bright enough for them to make out the shifting form of Morgause as she led them through the keep, around corners and bends and past a dozen or so locked doors.  Gwen hurried closer to Morgana’s side, finding some comfort in the presence of her lady, where otherwise there was none to be found, as they were on their own in a strange land, completely dependent on a woman they barely knew for guidance.  The hall was narrow, just wide enough for the two women to walk abreast one another.  Morgana caught Gwen looking towards her for reassurance, finding herself unsure whether she could give any at this moment.  Still, she smiled at her, and hoped that proved enough, and by the look on Gwen’s face, it had seemed to ease her maid’s worry. 

 

They followed Morgana’s aunt around a bend and then another before finding themselves entering an open space, one far more well-lit than the hall, and what appeared to Morgana to be a receiving room of sorts by the looks of it.  To the far wall a fire blazed in its hearth—this the source of brighter light Morgana had glimpsed from still within the hall—circled by two ornate chairs drawn near it.  To the opposite wall stood a single table of the same oak wood, a lit candelabrum resting atop its center.  Besides this, extra stools and benches were stored in the event, there was more company than what the chairs could provide.  Alongside the left wall hung several tapestries displaying the coat of arms of Essetir, as she thought it to be, the black serpent cast against an ivory field, alongside that of the Gold Dragon upon the red of the High Kingship, and there to the right of these both, once more, the black banner stitched with the crimson tree; for the life of her, she could not place that banner, wondering why it unnerved her so that she could not.  Still, she let the thought pass her by unchecked, as she turned toward her right where there lined three tapered slits for windows, whose purpose Morgana was not under the illusion was for allowing light in, but rather as a defense by which archers could fire their arrows without the keep with little harm coming their way if ever the walls were under siege; the Essetir castle was an outpost built for war not opulence, she was learning.  Before the hearth on the floor there laid a braided rug gleaming crimson with light from the fire. 

 

“Please warm yourself by the hearth, child,” Morgause spoke to her niece, proffering her with a hand to take a seat in one of the chairs.  Morgana obeyed, feeling at once grateful for the fire’s heat and giddy for the feeling of cozy comfort falling over her that one feels after spending a time out in the harsher weather.  “I thank you—Aunt,” she spoke, finding her voice, though unsteadily.  

 

Morgause perceived the pause, the uncertainty in her voice, and so said in an effort to ease her niece’s worries, which were only natural, she decided, not only for the nature of her stay, which she would get to in a moment once the girl had a chance to catch her breath, but for the glaring years in which they had been apart—she was no more than a stranger to Morgana, something Morgause understood quite well, despite their kinship, and something she would not easily forget—“You’re most welcome.  Stay here now,” she added placatingly.  “Rest; catch your breath.  It has been a long journey.  I will send word for refreshments.  How does spiced wine and honey cakes sound?”

 

Morgana eyed her aunt fondly.  “That sounds marvelous.  Thank you.”

 

Morgause smiled thinly.  “Yes.  They were a favorite of your mother’s.  Honey cakes.  Do you remember?”

 

Morgana frowned, thinking.  “Yes…She always made sure the kitchen women would bake them for Arthur and me.  I…I don’t think I’ve had them since before she got sick.  Father never liked us having them.  He was never one to spoil us, especially so after she died.  It—It will be nice to have them again.  Thank you.”

 

Her aunt nodded, then turned to Gwen.  “What is your name, dear?”

 

Gwen took a step back in surprise.  “M-Me?  I am called Guinevere, Mi’lady.”

 

“Why don’t you pull up a seat and sit down, Guinevere,” Morgause replied.

 

“Truly?  You won’t need my help carrying the food or setting up Mi’lady’s chambers?”

 

“All has been taken care of, Guinevere.  You have had just as long a journey as my niece.  Rest.”

 

“Thank you,” Gwen said and curtsied, “Mi’lady.”

 

“I shall return soon,” Morgause spoke to them both and then stepped back into the darkness of the hall.

 

After a moment’s hesitation from Gwen, Morgana said, “Well, you heard my aunt, Gwen.  Grab a seat.”

 

Gwen nodded, strode to the back of the room, chose a stool and brought it over beside the chair Morgana was seated in near the fire and the windows.  She sat down, a smile on her face.  “No one has ever permitted me to rest a moment,” she said, marveling at the notion.

 

“What was that, Gwen?” Morgana asked, her thoughts elsewhere.

 

Gwen smiled at her lady.  “Nothing, Mi’lady,” she answered, pausing a moment.  “Only that your aunt is very kind.”

 

“She is…” Morgana mused, not looking at her maid, but her own hands as she anxiously wrangled them. 

 

“You seem unconvinced?” Gwen prompted. 

 

Morgana, startled out of the reverie she had slipped back into, turned to her maid.  “No,” she said, shrugging uncomfortably, “not that.  It’s just…”  Intuitively, she laid a hand over her stomach.  “I have reason to worry.  We’re in a strange land.  You saw the forests and mists around us when we traveled up the road toward the keep just as I did.  They are not the like that which surrounds Camelot, denser, darker.  And I have reason to think from the stories I’ve heard as a girl that there might be traces of magic here,” she swallowed, “that linger despite Father’s law, perhaps in spite of it.”

“But surely you have nothing to fear from your aunt,” Gwen suggested, though she too had mused over the same concerns during their journey.  

 

“No, she and her husband, my uncle, are loyal to my father.  It’s not that.  From her, I worry, well, I worry once she learns the truth, for I have to tell her, shan’t I?  I can hardly keep it secret, not for long.  The reason why I’m here, she’ll send me back to Camelot, to Father to bear my shame in front of the Court, once she knows.”  She looked up at Gwen, and there was fear in her eyes as she looked at the serving girl, an uncommon sight on the face of a Pendragon, and yet there it was all the same, the eerie thought gracing her conscience that perhaps her aunt already did know the truth of her circumstances, what had brought her here, as certainly as she had known of her arrival without being so told by the men under her command.  She shivered to herself just then as if to displace the thought from her mind, all the while continuing, “I’m afraid she’ll put me out and I’ll have nowhere else to go.”

 

“Try not to think of it now,” Gwen said gently.  “You still have time before you must tell her yet, and even in the case she no longer wishes to permit your stay, we’ll think of something else,” she added, reassuringly.  “There’s always a way out, Morgana.”

 

“Even for someone as depraved as me?” Morgana said dejectedly.

 

“Would you be surprised to learn that I see only goodness in you?”

 

“Yes, actually.  But even then, you don’t understand what drove me to it,” Morgana countered, the firelight from the hearth mirrored in her eyes, she appeared an archangel avenged.  “The choices I made; why I ended up here, despite all my long years spent fighting it.  You don’t understand.”  The look that flashed a moment therein was accusatory.

 

“But I’m here, Morgana, with you,” Gwen pled.  “Doesn’t that count for something?”

 

“Yes, here as my servant.  You must go wherever I bid you follow.  Nothing more.”  She twisted a lock of her hair angrily, thinking a moment, before exhaling her pent-up breath.  She dropped the lock with a sigh.  “I’m sorry, Gwen.  I didn’t mean that.  I know that you are my friend.  That you came with me out of duty, yes, but out of something more as well.  Can you forgive me?”

 

I have forgiven you many times over, Mi’lady, Gwen thought, but before she could tell Morgana ‘Yes’ that she already had, she glanced up and saw Queen Morgause standing in the doorway.  How long had she been standing there? she wondered.  How much and just what had she overheard?  It was a nagging, troubling thought and Gwen did her best to ignore it, even as it persisted, boring at the back of her mind, hungry and insistent.

 

“Have I interrupted something?” Morgause asked, looking from Morgana to Gwen back to Morgana, finding neither woman’s face revealing, before turning back to the servant who entered the sitting room at her side.  In her hands, Morgause carried a plate of honey cakes.  The maid beside her held a decanter of wine and two goblets on a platter.  “Olwen,” Morgause spoke, addressing the maid, “set the wine on the far table, and bring that stool before the fire for the cakes.  Yes, there, thank you.  Now leave us.”  With a nod, Olwen curtsied before turning to go, vanishing in the dark expanse of the hall beyond the firelit room.

 

“There,” Morgause said with a sigh, having taken a seat in the chair beside her niece after pouring her and herself a glass of wine.  “Here, help yourself to a cake, Morgana,” she said, fixating her with her amber eyes, so bright in light of the fire to shine like that of a cat’s, glowing in the night.

 

Morgana hesitated, saw her aunt’s intent look, then reached her hand out for a cake, grasping it and bringing it to her mouth in a sumptuous bite.  As she chewed, she reveled in the flavor, the taste of memory rekindled in her mind, like a match struck a flare.  As her tongue tasted honey and sweetness, her eyes saw reborn before her her mother just as she had appeared in life—here cradling her after she had taken a fall and scraped her knee, the blemish an angry red welt tender to the touch against the worn cloth she had held to hand in careful administration, here retelling her favorite bedtime story as she sat nestled beside her and Arthur beneath the bedcovers, safe and sound within their children’s nursery, and here calling for her to come home for supper, smiling, waving, and Morgana could almost feel her legs stirring, recalling what it had been like to run back to her from where she had been playing with her brother in the courtyard to the sound of her laughing on the castle step and then the reassuring embrace of her arms all about her as she secured her in a hug amongst other such comforting images drifting across her mind’s eye which she had thought herself to have forgotten these long years past, yet nonetheless were with her still. 

 

Morgana swallowed the last bite, the images one by one fading from her mind, as she saw once more the fire before her crackling in its hearth for what it was and nothing more.  She turned swiftly to her aunt, whatever reverie she had been previously reliving whisked away, leaving her abject in the shadow of its memory.  “What was that?,” she said, her eyes emboldened as she glanced away from the fire which was only a fire once more toward her aunt where she sat seated in her chair, “That tasted just like Mother’s.  And as I ate, it—it was like she was here with me, like she never died.” 

 

“How you ask?” Morgause mused with a slight smile, correctly interpreting the question in her niece’s eyes.  “It’s the same recipe, the same one Igraine and I enjoyed as girls.  The one our mother made for us, and hers made for her, and so on.  But come now, child,” she said, taking a meager sip of wine, “let us reacquaint ourselves.  It’s been such a dreadful long time.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana agreed, her eyes misting from the heat of the fire and an emotion rising within her that she could not name.  It had been ages since she found she could share her mother with someone aside from Arthur, and what with recent events being what they were, with this distance come between them no less, she thought, she could hardly speak to him.  Of her father, he had closed that door years ago, the day she died, the day he severed his ties with both his son and daughter in all the ways that mattered, excepting where issues of state were concerned, but, perhaps, affecting his daughter the more than his son.  She, he had stopped knowing, simply as if she never existed, as if she were no more than the living shadow of her mother’s ghost.

 

Now, however, Morgana had a relative who had known her mother in ways Morgana had not.  What secrets were on her aunt’s tongue just waiting to be confided?  What stories from years long past were just waiting to be given voice for a second chance to live again?

 

“Do you, Aunt Morgause,” Morgana put forth, stumbling over the endearment as if tasting the name on her tongue like she had the cake, all honey and sweetness, before knowing whether she may be permitted to use it, “have any stories of my mother from when she was young?”  For a moment, she could have censured herself for her eagerness, and yet here she was at last seated aside her relative, the sole living woman who had known her mother as no other had done, with the intimacy of a sisterly companionship—for that reason alone, how could she not ask? even if it may have been more courteous on her part to have explained herself first?  Surely her aunt would understand that primal need, perhaps in a way having possessed it herself?   

 

“Your mother,” Morgause repeated then, and Morgana’s heart thrummed as she made mention of her, a smile that failed to reach her cat eyes paving its way over her face, her words spoken not as a question, but with a curious musing quality, which led Morgana to infer that there was a story there after all.  “You wish to know more of her, I take?  Very well.  Have you ever heard her speak of how she met your father, Uther, High King of the Britons?”

 

“No, never,” Morgana answered.  “I’m afraid we, Arthur and I, were far too young.  Mother never told us, and there was no broaching the subject to Father after she passed…though I was always curious, how it was for them in the beginning.”

 

Morgause smiled.  “Yes, well, your mother and I hail from Cornwall, the country on Britain’s western shore, surely you must have heard tell of that?  That we were reared there by our mother in a castle by the sea called Tintagel.”  She paused then, as if deciding where to take up the story, tossing over in her mind which parts to reveal and which to keep hidden like incandescent treasures buried beneath the sea.  Moments passed and all was silent in the room except for the sound of the fire spitting in the hearth.  At last, she spoke, carefully, Morgana inching forward expectantly in her seat, “Tintagel was a magical place then, when we were only girls learning our letters and how to weave, for it was the time before the Great War, when Ambrosius was still High King with no heir of his own, but a promising military commander he favored.”

 

“My father?” Morgana asked.  The fire crackled.

 

“The very same,” Morgause answered.  “It was on a military expedition for the High King that brought your father to Cornwall, where he passed by that castle by the sea and met your mother for the first time while she was out riding; their encounter was by mere chance—she had gone out foraging and he on a ride to escape the duties of his camp—but it happened all the same, as if it had been written in the stars, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.  First, you must know how the Great War came to be and how Uther rose to power.”

 

“The Saxons—” Morgana interjected.

 

Morgause continued as if she had not heard her.  “The High King before Ambrosius, Vortigern sought the aid of the invading Saxons, yes, thinking to kill two birds with one stone, allowing them to settle here in the east in return for their lent strength in battle, do you know why?  The Saxons were not the enemy of the High King in those days, as they are now in Uther’s time, now that Vortigern and Hengist are both long dead, the compromise they struck long ago nullified by the times.  In the days of Vortigern and Ambrosius and still, to an extent, your father, there was a different enemy, one more rampant than the Saxons and greater feared: the British citizen, or more specifically those denizens who adhered to the Old Ways and practiced the now all but lost art of magic.”

 

Morgana felt her spine tingle with a sudden, creeping chill, and beside her Gwen shifted in her seat, though the cold was kept back by the stone interior of the room and the roaring warmth of the fire, yet still she had a moment’s thought towards her aunts missive, the one though she had consigned it to the fire, its contents had remained ever fixed in her brain, the words as the flames greedily ate the paper—‘you share her gift.’ 

 

“All my life, magic has been forbidden in Camelot,” she said, “and I always knew my father despised all who practiced it, naming them evil.”

 

“It’s against the Law,” Morgause amended, choosing her words with care.  “And it has been for longer than your father has been High King.”  She chuckled to herself.  “I see this surprises you.  It was your father, yes, who revised the law to state ‘hereby anyone who practices the banned art of magic shall be put to death,’ but magic had been outlawed in Britain for centuries prior that decree, by the Romans, the moment they stepped on British soil, in an attempt to annex the land to their Empire and convert those who followed the Old Religion, those practitioners of magic, to adhere to the Roman way of things and their militant order.  It was a bloody business, the conquering of the isle, and in the end the Romans held dominion and it was men of the Emperor’s choosing who ruled the land and its British subjects.  And so it was for centuries, and magic, now prohibited, was practiced in secret, until Rome fell and those Britons who had kept passing down the art despite the dangers to their children and their children’s children saw their chance to bring magic back to the land in full. 

 

“This was in the Dark Times when Rome was gone and Vortigern was High King.  He thought to combat the druids, the priestesses, the witches and sorcerers by enlisting the help of the Saxons and died amidst the fighting, leaving Ambrosius to succeed him.  If Vortigern had sought to quell the practitioners, then Ambrosius, with your father’s military prowess showed them no leniency.  Your father, under the banner of the Gold Dragon, led many missions to hunt down the renegades and bring them to the High King’s justice.  It was such a mission, to confront such a group of druids, that brought he and his men to Cornwall, where, by accident or by fate, he met your mother.”

 

Morgana’s eyes were wide, attentive to her aunt’s every word; so much she had not known of her people’s history, and yet, perhaps with a child’s curiosity, her thoughts lingered with where this placed her parents amidst the strife, the ruthless turmoil, and so a bit simply, forgetting the greater arc, she asked, “And then what?  Was it love at first sight?”

 

Morgause’s lips curved upwards.  “Some would say so.  Uther was very taken with my sister the moment he laid eyes upon her, and he lingered longer than Ambrosius order he do in Cornwall, staying at Tintagel, inviting his men to camp within and outside our home for a few days after the druids had been promptly dealt with, and in that time that we tended to him and his men, he never took his eyes off your mother.  Watching him as I did, I thought he would never be wont to leave our unsuspecting home by the sea, but then duty dictated he must and return to Camelot he did when a few days later word came to him of the High King’s death, rumored to have been by poison by a member of the Court who had been sympathetic to the magic cause, or so it was believed, though no one ever found the assassin.  Since Ambrosius left behind no sons nor daughters to succeed him, the High Kingship fell to your father as with his dying breath Ambrosius, having always favored Uther, named him his chosen heir.  I was hidden amongst the blackthorn thickets that grew near our home when the messenger accosted Uther with the tidings and seeing his face from my hiding place, never did I see a man look so glad and determined to meet his fate, and then I thought that my poor sister, your mother, had been forgotten in his mind.  But Uther surprised me, and before he left Tintagel that same day for the route back to Camelot, he spoke with Igraine alone, and she told no one this but me, that he promised to come back for her and take her to Camelot to be his bride as the next High Queen, though my sister was engaged to marry a man who had recently been recruited into the High King’s army at the time.  I suppose you know the rest.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, but she was frowning.  “Whatever happened to the man my mother was to marry?  I never heard of him.”

 

“And nor would you.  He was the son of a petty lord with meager lands to his name, a nobody compared to the newly coronated High King.  Igraine’s decision was an easy one.  She broke off the marriage at once and rode for Camelot with Uther.  It was only after she married your father, that she learned of his death fighting in the final battles of the Great War, the war that cemented your father’s rule in the early, tumultuous days of his reign.  The war that brought him much acclaim by his supporters, those still rooted in the Roman way, and much derision by those who heeded the ways of the lost art.”

 

Morgana was silent for a time, pondering all that she had just heard tell of from her aunt, everything that she had just learned of her mother and father, and Morgause likewise fell quiet to provide her dear niece the space to ruminate upon what truths she had spoken over drink and by hearth flame.  One question remained.  “And what do you think of my father, Aunt?” Morgana asked.  “Is he a good man?  Was he right to banish magic like the Romans did?”

 

Morgause took a sip of her wine.  “He followed Ambrosius, your father, and served him well.  I think he only meant to continue serving him pass the grave by finishing his war for him.  As for his continuation of the ban against magic, he did what he only saw needed to be done, as perhaps he was influenced by those to come before him.  My husband, your uncle, lent him his strength in men towards the end of the war, and we both swore him fealty the moment he was crowned High King at the coronation in Camelot, if you are asking where we align regarding the matter.”

 

Morgana’s brows furrowed with thought; in her mind she could not unsee the clump of ashes in the hearth of her own chamber back in Camelot, the remains of her aunt’s sparse note, the conveyed message written diligently on the frayed parchment.

 

“Something troubles you,” Morgause spoke, fingering her cup.

 

“Y-Yes,” Morgana answered, looking up from her own cup to gaze into the amber eyes of her aunt; she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, before, drawing courage, deciding she must either speak aloud her thought to her aunt, trusting her though they only strangers be, or else submerse it within her mind like the abyss of the sea.

 

Viewing plain her niece’s reticence, Morgause shifted her astute gaze from Morgana to her maid, who had remained still and quiet as a hare caught in a raptor’s gaze while she had told her story, but now shifted nervously herself in her seat, caught now as she was in the fixed stare of the Essetir Queen.

 

“Gwen, wasn’t?”

 

“Y-Yes,” Gwen squeaked, adding a hasty “Mi’lady” a moment later.

 

Morgause smiled.  “Very well.  Gwen, why don’t you go find Olwen who is standing without in case we are in need of further refreshments.  She may show you to the servants’ quarters where you will be residing during Morgana’s stay.  That way you can settle in.  Although I must inform you that they are much to be desired compared with what you are used to back in Camelot, I’m afraid.  I will show Morgana to her own room, no need to worry yourself.”

 

Gwen rose from her seat, thinking better than to protest, dipped her head, then curtsied, her eyes straying towards Morgana to check that she would be fine with her leaving so abruptly.

 

“I’ll be alright, Gwen.  All is well,” Morgana answered succinctly.

 

Slightly relieved by her lady’s response, Gwen acknowledged them both with another curtsy, a soft “Mi’lady,” and then taking that she was now excused, gradually, taking up her small bag of things, strolled out of the chamber into the hall beyond where sure enough Olwen was waiting. 

 

Morgana waited a moment, or perhaps two to make sure that Gwen was truly gone—a fact that caused her both relief and grief, and yet it could not be helped, not with what she had on her mind—before then turning to her aunt once more.  “How—?” she asked.  It was all she could manage in that moment and yet Morgause understood her clear.

 

“You had the look of someone wishing to speak in confidence,” Morgause said easily.  “Not that you don’t trust your maid.  I can tell you do, that there is quite a bond between you two, but no, you have something weighing your mind which you cannot relate to her, not to anyone, I can see it in your eyes.”

 

Morgana shivered to be seen through so plain and herself only a stranger to her aunt (wondering of course, what else of her could she so easily glean), yet swallowing her trepidation, she confessed that her aunt was spot on, and then taking a breath to instill once more her courage, she went a step further, relaying the question, the circumstance and perceived situation that had been weighing upon her ever since she read her aunt’s missive back in Camelot, that last afternoon she was to spend within its walls, and then each day and night of her journey to Essetir; now that she was here with the means to answer sitting before her, she felt she must ask or die by the curiosity.

 

“There’s one thing weighing upon me, yes,” she began, trembling slightly, though she continued undeterred, nonetheless.  “When you sent your escort of men to Camelot to retrieve me the long distance to your home, you had imparted to me a message…and in the message you had spoken of a gift, one that my mother possessed, which you believe I may as well, something related to the nightmares…” her voice trailed off, before at last she said, “as I listened to your story, all the while it has been in my mind, the contents of that note, and I could not help but wonder if they are tied…in some way.  A gift…the lost art…is it…?”   After stumbling for a way in which to express her inquiry, she exclaimed at last, “Was my mother a witch?”

 

Morgause sipped her wine, her face impassive.  “Now you are asking the right questions, dear.”

 

Morgana gaped at her, her mouth open stupidly in a delicate ‘o.’  “T-Then—” she stuttered openly, no longer concerned with propriety.  “I—but no, how could she be?  When Father—he always said sorcery was evil.  Magic is evil.”

 

Morgause studied her niece carefully and chose her next words with even greater care.  “So, how could he come to wed your mother?  How was she not executed and burned at the stake like so many others to die before and after her time?”

 

Morgana’s widened eyes answered her, the look speaking a feeble ‘yes.’

 

To Morgana’s surprise, her aunt smiled then.  “Because your mother was no witch, dear.  What she did possess was a gift of the sight, are you familiar with the old stories?  Or did Uther shelter you too from such tales?  Let me put it to you plain, your mother had no desire to practice the craft, the old art, but what she did do was not controlled by her, but rather overcame her, overwhelming her as she slept.  I see you understand now.  When you sleep, you see things don’t you?  Strange visions of times yet to come or perhaps the present moment in another space altogether, that you think nothing of, that it’s just a dream, only to find that what you witness behind your sleeping eyes comes true eventually.  Your mother had the ability as well.  So no, not a witch per se, but a seer she was, and a seer you are too.  When your father wrote to me of your nightmares, I knew then that you had inherited Igraine’s gift.” 

 

“I’m a seer?” Morgana asked, the certainty with which some part of her sensed it was true not fully sinking in beneath the flesh into the marrow of her bones, even as her mind whirred with the thoughts and the memories of things she could not quite recall whether she had witnessed them first behind her closed eyes or in living reality—there was the instance of Arthur’s sprained ankle as a boy when he had fallen from the oak tree—how could she forget?  For days she had been worried, fretting to Father, though he would not listen, and then to Gaius, who likewise hushed her concerns, that Arthur would get hurt that day he and Lance hiked to Avalon to play in the grove aside the waters.  It had been one of Arthur’s cocksure moments, his desire to prove a man to his friend, and so “no girls were allowed” to accompany them though of course she had always been invited to play with him in the past.  But she had not listened and rode all the way to the shoreline where the waters lapped the beach, but not in time, no, she had been too late, and Arthur had fallen from one of the lone oak’s immense branches which could not withhold his weight and down he plummeted to the ground, injuring his ankle with a cry.  She had been there then, to console him through the tears slipping down his face, the ones he had tried so hard not to shed in front of Lance who had a moment earlier gone for help, but before his sister he came undone, as he would later come undone again and again when in his maturity, he spilled his seed inside the temple of her flesh. 

 

But not that, not only that, there was the other darker matter imprinted upon her mind, that night she had dreamt of him and Mithian, and later Mithian had confirmed what the dream had foretold, the conception of the child now growing in her womb—Arthur’s son and heir, while in her own body dwelt his bastard, as much as she feared and hated to admit it, it was true.  She had a thought to screen her thoughts then, shielding them, worrying of course that her aunt would know what lied upon her mind since she could so easily glimpse into her eyes and snatch the essence of her soul—but no matter that, once again to the point at hand, this revelation of a gift that her mother too had possessed, the sight, Morgause had called it, what terror this was and had been throughout her life, but now at last she had a name for it, and nothing named could be as frightening as the unnamed, could it?  She knew it at last, though indeed she was tremulous to know this truth for what it was, and with a thousand creeping questions besides.

 

“My first nightmare…” she said then, “it came the night Mother died.  Then—”

 

“Yes, that would be how it happened then,” Morgause replied.  “Upon her death you inherited her sight.  For some it happens that way, latent until the mother passes, while others it is apparent since the moment of birth, at the infant’s first cry, or even while the child remains in the womb—but always it is passed mother to daughter in such fashion.” 

 

Morgana nodded, taking this new information in.  “And Father?  He never knew about her, about m-me?”

 

“He did not even guess,” her aunt answered.  “Your mother kept many secrets from him, as you do, dear niece.”

 

Morgana started at that lone remark, her eyes widening to fix on her aunt’s smooth gaze.

 

“There is another reason you came seeking shelter at my door, that is not the nightmares, terrible and frightening as they must be for you, causing many a sleepless night, but something else, something you are likewise sheltering.  You may hide it from Uther well, since what would he know of womanly things, but to me it is as if the truth is written upon your body, even under that mantle you wear so cleverly.  Come, you may tell me, you are with child, are you not?”

 

The cup in Morgana’s hand shook and she nearly spilled the warm drink down the front of her cloak and gown in her effort to set it down upon the stool with the cakes, which she did, to regain a moment to think when her mind for the second time that day was shocked to disbelief.  She knew her aunt to be canny, but never would she have guessed that her secret would be out so soon after arriving.  So, what now? her heart hammered. 

 

She laid her free hand over her stomach, looked down at where her son rested, sleeping, a stranger in a strange land that would be his birthplace and perhaps, though she did not wish to think upon it, his place of rearing.  Then she looked back up at her aunt, her expression calm despite the way her heart skipped in her chest.  “You have caught me in my lie, Aunt Morgause,” she said.  “I apologize, but the note Father wrote about the nightmares—it was the only way I could convince him to write to you to permit my stay.  I was so desperate for fear of the shame come upon me had I lingered a day longer in Camelot.  I—”

 

“Say no more, child,” Morgause placated, leaning to rest her hand on her niece’s shoulder.  “I understand.  Such things are not easy for us women, and I am glad you came to me, so please do not think as I know you must be fretting that I will throw you out to the cold now that the truth is out.  Far different from that, I will shelter you here so you may bear your child in secret.  You chose well in coming to me.  Essetir is a remote place and word does not travel so far from our home.  That said, your secret is safe with me.  We will make certain that all your needs are met for both you and your child, and I will teach you what I know about the sight.”

 

Morgana breathed a sigh of relief.  “I…thank you.”

 

“Come now, you must be tired and in need of some respite after harboring that secret for so many days and nights.  Allow me to show you to your chamber where you will be staying while here.  It is not much, but it will do.  Here let me help you up.”

 

Relief coursing through her, Morgana accepted her aunt’s hand and rose from her seat before the fire to step out once more into the dark hall.  While she was glad of her aunt’s hospitality and forgiveness, there was one worry upon her mind.  She noticed that she had not asked about the father of her child, how she had come to be pregnant in the first place, which rang some warning bell in her mind, that perhaps, but no that was absurd, still it could be possible that somehow she already knew that her child-to-be had been sired by none other than her own brother. 

 

It was a chilling thought, and so she shivered as much from it as the returned dampness of the hall away from the hearth’s glow, praying that her aunt did not notice, even when she knew already that she had. 

 

---

 

Later that evening, after showing sweet Morgana to her room, a humble chamber in the north tower with a bed and wash basin and not much else, then taking leave of her so she may rest until she was later called to dinner whereby she would meet her uncle and herself in a small dining room, and then after said dinner—which went remarkably well she surmised as she had vouched not to utter a word about Morgana’s condition to her husband, not yet anyhow, and Cenred had been left none the wiser to the true reason for his niece’s stay—Morgause retreated to her own set of rooms in the east tower, the rooms which she did not permit even her husband to enter unless she permitted it so, which on that account she never did, though she had received her niece and her maid within them earlier that mist-shrouded afternoon. 

 

When she entered them now, first the receiving room, she was greeted with light, as Olwen had kept the hearth tended, adding logs now and then throughout the evening and into the night now that it was past dark, the amber glow from the fire causing her to sight the hung banners in their pristine glory.  She had noticed her niece staring at them earlier when she had shown her the room, the last in particular she had frowned at, the black banner with the rowan tree.  She had not spoken then but it was the emblem of her mother’s people and her mother before her.  So, it seemed Igraine had not brandished it when she left for Camelot joining its crimson totem with that of the gold dragon of Uther’s ilk.  That was cautious of her, Morgause thought.  Well, it would be another day when she told sweet Morgana of her family line, the legacy of the le Fay’s, both her and Igraine’s bloodline, which she supposed her wary sister had not told Uther of for good reason.  Uther, that old fool, had thought Igraine no more than a commoner’s daughter with no father to boast of and therefore no surname just as he thought their meeting in the wood to be no more than chance, the stuff of fate as Morgause had told Morgana, sweet, gullible Morgana.  She could see the wheels turning in her niece’s mind, but could she grasp between the lines that her dear mother had gone out that day to meet High King Ambrosius’s first in command because she had dreamt it first and knew exactly where to meet him that summer morn?  That her dear mother, raised by their mother to hone the sight, knew her gift and how to use it, that natural she, and glimpsing greater prospects on the horizon had gone under the guise of gathering herbs to meet the man she knew would crown her High Queen? 

 

It had been the first time she had not spoken of a vision she had had to Morgause, her little sister, who was not so gifted, and who had to struggle to master the now all but lost art, though with time, master it she did—more so than Igraine ever did in life she would argue—though she herself was no seer, did not possess the gift to her confounded dismay.  But no matter how her girlhood self had lamented and grieved that she had not been chosen like her elder sister, envying her abilities.  She now had other methods and tricks up her sleeve. 

 

She lifted the rowan tree banner whereby was etched into the stone a wooden door; she turned the handle leaving the receiving room behind for her inner chamber, the place where she worked well into the night hours, and sometimes the dawn.

 

This room bore no windows, and so entering it she had picked up the candelabrum off the table in the antechamber to light the way. 

 

The room within was cramped—no more than a storage closet—despite being bare except for a table that stood in its center for its small size, upon it, as she drew near, the candles flickering light, a ceramic dish, a small knife, a worn book resting atop its wooden surface, the wood rowan of course, from the very same tree as that depicted on the banner.  Beneath the table laid a set of drawers containing all sorts of herbs—mugwort, wormwood, yarrow, and deadlier ones besides, the fearsome mandrake root, henbane, belladonna, such poisons that could stop the heart with so much as a pinch laced in a cup of wine. 

 

This was the place where the old art lived again, and this night, Morgause, having with diligence and practice and hours toiled with the old family grimoire her sister with her gift had no use for, no desire to learn and master, had questions she wished to ask the answer, if she would be seemingly blessed with a contrived sight, a way of tricking the natural order of things in granting her prevision. 

 

She set the candelabrum down about the table, watched the wax pool about the wicks, then turning toward the bowl, gazed down into its dark waters and the reflected light to dance ambiently upon its surface.  Next, she picked up the knife, a small blade of silver, its handle a deer’s antler that felt smooth in her hand.  Steady, with years of such practice and patience, she sliced its sharp edge upon her left palm, allowing the blood droplets, glinting black in the near-darkness, to drip into the water of the bowl, dispersing in murky wisps and tendrils beneath the still surface of the water and the dancing candlelight.  There, she relaxed her eyes, watching the blood interweave with the light, allowing her sight to cloud over, and waited.

 

She had told Morgana that she and Cenred had sworn fealty to Uther the High King and in his crusade against magic, all but assuring her niece that she had no history with the lost art, implying that seership and witchcraft were two different matters altogether, and perhaps they were, just as perhaps, her husband had meant his oath, while she herself had other intentions altogether.  Fortunately for her, Cenred did not ask many questions and seeing no need to rein in his wife granted her the freedom to do what she will, and that will was the resolve of the witch.

 

Morgause frowned staring into the murk of the blood-stained bowl.  Perhaps, she should have stolen a drop or two of her niece’s blood for the question she wished to ask, but the retrieval of it would have been much too difficult for her to gather, her niece being only recently under her care and skeptical, if she was intelligent, of her intentions.  So, for that matter, her own blood would have to do, and what she saw within the water was not the matter of who had fathered Morgana’s child (that was the thing with magic, sometimes it surprised even a seasoned practitioner as herself), a matter upon which she was immensely curious, and knew, being no fool, an issue upon which her dear niece would not so easily confide; instead, the blood took on the shape of a boy, a grown boy about to be a man, and in her mind’s eye she saw him take form—his dark hair and fragile build, the shifty look about his eyes that made him appear as if he had a secret or two to hide.  She knew him at once as her son.

 

But neither Gwaine, the brawny and hellraising son of hers that took almost completely after Cenred and bore none of her own traits, and for that reason she had given him not so much as an ounce of her love, no matter how cruel that may be, so be it, nor Agravaine, the child that took not after Cenred but herself completely and for whom she adored most fondly, keeping him close during his rearing, but another boy of hers, her first child which she had spilled such drops of her blood before into the waters of her scrying dish to glean how he had fared growing up out from the reach of her care.

 

So envious she had been of Igraine and hurt besides that she had not confided in her about the matter of Uther, that she had witnessed in her dreams that they together would rule jointly at Camelot’s High Seat, and she being the ambitious and spiteful sort had thought to take matters into her own hands.  So, she had devised a charm, a glamour of sorts, some dark magic indeed, which when she snuck into their mother’s room had read within the grimoire, and taking a lock of her sister’s golden hair and a few drops of her moonblood squeezed from a rag her sister had so carelessly discarded into a vial with cornflower and witch-hazel, concocted a tea which she drank in the dark of the moon to appear not as herself in the shadowed night, but as her elder sister and had gone that last night of the war lord’s stay in Tintagel to Uther’s bed and allowed herself to be loved by him, while Igraine lied sleeping unaware in her own room, a charmed bracelet left beneath her bed that would keep her from dreaming. 

 

Being young, only a maid of fourteen, she had done it only to injure her sister and out of her own jealousy at being so spurned by her, without so much as a thought to the consequences, and so as the moon waxed and waned, and the seasons came and went, from summer to fall, it became apparent that she had conceived that ill-fated night a son of her own, the realization come upon her while Igraine slept in silk and satin in the newly coronated High King’s bed in Camelot.

 

She had had to do something about the pregnancy, and hide it she did for months, for Uther had promised to find a husband for her when she visited the court for his crowning and come the following spring she would be wed to one of most faithful soldiers, who he had gifted the northern lands of the Hebrides in response to his unabashed loyalty, along with his wife’s sister’s hand in marriage. 

 

At once she regretted her actions, but soon being crafty, realized the good fortune of them—as far as she was aware she would bear Uther’s first son—for she knew it was a boy she was carrying low within her womb—and therefore could pose a claim to the throne, knowing what she knew about her sister—and so, telling no one but her family’s maidservant, devised a plan to bear her child in secret and send him away but not too far from where she would come to dwell in her soon-to-be husband’s lands, in case she would be in need of him someday, for fostering.

 

So after a hard labor the night before she was to leave Cornwall to be wed to a man she did not know, in which she had held her boy for but a moment, memorizing his delicate features and gifting him nothing but a name, she placed him in her maid’s arms, a young woman by the name of Hunith, tasking her to claim him as her own, as her own poor child she had birthed had recently died and hence she would be able to feed and shelter him as if her own, and instructed her to follow her carriage the road to Camelot and farther north, settling somewhere remote and unremarkable, where no one would ever come to know, not even Uther, of the son she had borne for him and the hatred for her sister. 

 

It was that boy she saw, as she had come to know him, now grown within the waters of the bowl, his feminine face and wiry features, and she was struck to know that he was here in Essetir after all this time, at last within the reach of her callous grasp. 

 

She had named him Merlin after the bird she had sighted through the eaves chattering into the dawn from where she had lied soaked and bloody upon the birthing bed waiting to be dressed in her finest to meet the man she was to wed. 

 

---

 

After dinner, Olwen had guided Morgana the twisting way through the corridors back up the stairs to the north tower where the chamber which was to be hers during her stay resided.  Though the young woman, a pale girl like herself but with auburn hair, had treated her with kindness, asking her if she was in need of anything, to which Morgana had declined the offer, she found herself missing Gwen, wondering how she fared in this unfamiliar castle on Britain’s farthest shore. 

 

The dinner had gone well, she supposed.  Her aunt had introduced, or perhaps more properly reintroduced her, to her uncle, Cenred, a man who, though tall, appeared to her rather smaller in stature than she remembered vaguely from her youth—as he had seemed so domineering to her child’s eyes—during the times when he would journey to Camelot for treaty talks and of course that terrible instance of her mother’s funeral.  Of him, she could think nothing of note, only that he greeted her well enough, despite not seeming to care much at all about her and her person, the reason for her stay within his walls; it seemed if Morgause had sanctioned her visit then that was well enough for him, which was all to the good, Morgana thought.  They had feasted on goose and elderberries, and herring, a fish caught and drawn up from the sea beside which the keep stood, which while simpler fair than what she was used to back home, still pleased her palate with its saltiness. 

 

Having excused Olwen, who gracefully closed the door behind her, Morgana was at last alone in her room, which if she thought her chamber back in Camelot confining, this small space and its walls that circled about her, boasting only one small window, was nothing to speak of, resembling more so a forgotten attic than a room fitting of a princess, but no matter, if this was the only space her aunt had to spare for her, then she accepted it with good cheer.

 

The room consisted of not much, a small bed beneath the window, which without was growing on to twilight, the sky a hue of lavender now that the clouds had passed against the gray of the sea, and then to the left, a wash basin beside which rested a single candle, which Olwen had lit.  The flame flickered here and again, bathing the dark stone with its amber light and interplay of shadow.  Beside these few things sat her two trunks which she had brought with her along the journey and Lot had ordered her aunt’s men to take up for her to this room, which though small, felt cozier than cramped to Morgana.  Still, she wished the room possessed a hearth of its own, like Morgause’s receiving room, if only for the chill without still clinging to the walls.

 

For this reason, she opened one of the trunks and pulled out a quilt, one her dear mother had sewn for her as a girl to keep her warm during the winter months, and wrapped it about herself as she seated herself upon the bed, gazing out onto the whiplashed waves of the sea and small, rudimentary forms of birds flying out overhead to their nests inland now that it was growing on to night.  A beautiful night, Morgana thought.

 

It was not the only thing she had taken up from the trunk; in her right hand, she grasped her rosary with its worn wooden beads and iron crucifix.  She did not quite know why she had done so, but something that last night spent in Camelot had convinced her that she would need it for her stay in this land she hardly knew.  Her bible she had left behind, herself on adverse terms with God as of late, but Mary, through her pregnancy, she had felt drawn to, having grown a closer bond with and some sense of affiliation, resemblance and comfort too. 

 

Now she ran the beads over in her hand, touching each one as she muttered the accompanying prayer, hailing her in hopes she could provide some guidance, for herself and child, yes, but also for this newfound knowledge she had learned.  A seer, she thought, herself still plagued by her aunt’s confirmation, which had not left her during dinner but had occupied her thoughts and made her not much for conversation, distracted as she was, just as she found herself preoccupied with it and her aunt’s story just now about her mother.  She had always thought Arthur had taken more after their mother, what with his blue eyes and golden hair that seemed a replica of hers, while she herself appeared rather dark in comparison, unlike either of her parents if she were honest, but now she had proof from Morgause that she did take after her mother after all, perhaps, more so than Arthur did.  She did not know what to make of this information but thought she would have time to get used to it, her gift.  For so long she had thought it a curse, those awful dreams, but based on what her aunt had said, could there be a way she could master them?  Learn from them as opposed to living in fear of them?  She could not say, but perhaps Morgause would tell, if not show, her the way.

 

Morgause.  She would have to tread carefully with her aunt, with the way she had known the truth of her condition without her so much as suggesting it.  Though she had been nothing but kind to her, welcoming her at once within her home as kin, Morgana found the trust they shared to be uneasy, and she had no doubts that her aunt was already speculating about the nature of her dreams, if not how she had come to be with child. 

 

Laying a hand over her womb, her son stirring at the touch, as she fumbled the rosary with her other, Morgana spared one last thought toward her brother.  The window without which she looked faced north toward the open water and not south where she knew her brother lied, pondering how he was back home, what he was doing at that given moment, and whether he spared a thought for her.   

 

Sitting like that upon the bedspread, gazing wistfully out the window at the sea, but imagining in her mind another place and time, she wondered if he had found in his heart to forgive her for leaving him behind, in Camelot bound by the love of another woman.

Notes:

Okay, the plot twist. To be honest I did not go into this story planning Merlin to be the illegitimate son of Uther and Morgause, but one day this past year I was struck by the idea that randomly popped into my head (I really don't know where from) and so interwove it into this story (and I've been dying to share this chapter with you since I thought of it). Benefits of taking years to write a fic. The story unravels as I go and even I learn things about it and its characters that I never would have dreamed of at the beginning. 😅

I am indebted to Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga for lending me some basis and foundation for the history of the Great War Morgause related to Morgana in this chapter for my own spin on the BBC Merlin canon. The descriptions of Essetir and the sea are also inspired from the last book in the series, The Wicked Day, since it's a similar locale where Mordred is raised.

Chapter 37

Notes:

I've been in the mood to write lately and so here's another chapter, the brief follow-up to the last one. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER TWO: To everything, there is a season—

It was a muggy August night, and Arthur could not sleep, but not due to the stickiness of the sheets clinging to his body, though perhaps that played a part as well—no, he found himself wide awake and restless, as he had many a night these past few weeks, due to his concern for his sister Morgana, as he wondered how she fared so far from home, his thoughts mulling over where she now was—still upon the road north or was she at last at her journey’s end in Essetir?  He hated that he could not know for certain, not until a letter was dispatched south to Camelot written in either his sister’s or his aunt’s hand relaying that she had arrived safely at that northernmost outpost of the five kingdoms.  Still, he had it in faith that if something had happened, gone wrong along the road though he was wrought to consider it, he would know it in the marrow of his bones, for he and Morgana were inextricably tied no matter what he had done (wrongly he now saw) to sever that tie by placing aside his own love for her in taking her childhood friend to wed.

 

Speaking of his wife, Mithian slumbered in his bed beside him clad in nothing but a thin shift due to the humid weather.  Glancing down at her now, he saw she was posed curled up to nestle alongside where he lay, her knees angled towards her chest in a posture he found almost endearing, especially as he watched her face, her smooth brow at ease and a few stray locks of her chestnut hair resting ever so lightly over her cheek; he had the thought that if things had been different, perhaps he could have loved her. 

 

But as it was his heart belonged to another, and thinking only to regard his wife with some courtesy, not wishing to disturb her sleep, he rose from the bed just then, carefully untangling himself from the sheets to step out upon the cool stone of the floor to walk towards the window as he had done many a night these past few weeks when the restlessness was so fraught upon him, and sleep eluded him.

 

As was now his habit, he drew aside the curtain to look out at the blackened night and the bright pinpricks of stars lighting its darkness alongside the glowing crescent of a new moon.  The great window in his bedchamber faced east, not north, and so he thought as much as felt regrettably that he could not gaze off in the direction towards where his sister now resided, wherever that was, but that did not keep him from conjuring up an image of her, raven hair and ghostly skin with a pair of emerald eyes so vibrant they brought to mind the very woods they had played in as children, behind his own clouded eyes; he missed her greatly—

 

—and so thinking of her, unfurled his fist, whereby from the pale light of the moonlit sky he gazed down at the worn square of cloth that had been his bedfellow as much as his wife these past few weeks—always he slept with it like some talisman secure in his hand, and in the moments when he could not sleep, he then took it with him before the window to think with it for company, his lone memento, that embroidered handkerchief he had found forgotten alongside the waters of Avalon that late midsummer eve he had gone down to think upon what he had done, the grief he had caused them both with his cowardice and foolishness in equal measures.

 

Perhaps, he was a fool now for having kept it, and a coward besides for failing to return it to her, but something in him compelled him to treasure this little piece of his sister, the only part that remained close to him and so he kept it close to him, breathing in its scent which still smelled faintly of her lavender and thyme when he missed her most.  He had not even thought to wash it since last he found it forgotten upon the sand, coming to find a comfort in its stains and blemishes since last he imagined she used it to wipe her triste mouth alongside the embroidered birds and flowers she had stitched as a child.  To him it was just perfect as is, and it was his.

 

“Oh, Morgana,” he sighed then staring down at its white surface that appeared ashen in the feeble moonlight, as his fingers and thumb rolled over its raised stitches in his hand.  “What have I done to us both?” 

 

Of course she could not answer him where he stood alone, adrift in the humid night, wishing he could ride himself the long journey north to where she was going, away from him and what he had done, though she had conveyed to him that last night they had spoken that she was going not because of him but because of the nightmares that tormented her in her sleep, which now, ever since he married, he finally understood what suffering it was for her to find sleep, that lovely respite from mental rumination, impossible, far out of reach.  What he would give to find such forgetfulness in slumber, though he feared if he had it but once, he would wish never to wake again.

 

But he was awake now, tormented by no more he understood than the consequences of his own doing and the haunts of past mistakes he could not now undo, and the illusive memory of his sister whom he craved now more than ever before now that she was gone from his side, and only the shadow of her person remained fixed, unchanging in his disordered mind.

 

It was this thinking of her that caused him to almost sense as much as hear her tiptoeing close to his side then in the ghostly night, as he sometimes would dream when sleep evaded him and he stood solitary at his post, and so he startled to find it was not she who spoke then breaking his mental reverie—

 

“Arthur, what is it?” Mithian asked, reaching him at last with the surety of her presence; no ghost was she, no illusive memory.  She knew better than to lay a reassuring hand upon his shoulder, so stood back apace from where he stood still looking out the window into the night.  “It’s the middle of the night.”

 

Ashamed to be so found out during this vigil of his that had been something of a guilty secret, a habitual pastime, Arthur turned slowly round to face her, his duty, and his burden.  “I know,” he said, bereft.  “Forgive me for waking you, Mithian.  But please just go back to bed.”

 

His wife crossed her arms, thinking.  He could tell she meant to have something out with him, but what he could not say; there were so many ways he had failed her as a husband, and so he was a fool again to think the way he had tried to invite her back into his life these last few weeks after she told him she was with child (though of course Morgana had confessed that secret to him first) by welcoming her once more to his bed as some conciliatory gesture sufficient; he had thought his pretense at domesticity convincing but now seeing her hard look was not so certain, thinking now if she were to berate him that he deserved it, and so prepared himself for what was to him only an inevitability and the acting on a promise.

 

“No,” his wife protested, looking him square in the eyes, arms still crossed, defiant.  He should not have been so taken aback by her boldness just then, but he was, perhaps because he was always so used to her compliance, except in such matters as pertained to Morgana, as this circumstance was—and he wondered then, for the first time, afeared, that perhaps Mithian suspected something more had gone on between he and his sister than he let on, something akin to the ugly truth. 

 

“Arthur,” she said, this time her voice softening, and from where she stood he could tell that she yearned to bridge the distance between them, yet hold herself back she did, knowing he would only rebuke her if she drew nearer his side, he who could not love her as she wished, no matter that she was innocent, a victim of his own self-flagellation; he sensed then that she knew it too. 

 

“Don’t think I don’t know this restlessness that overcomes you ever since you invited me back to your bed, since the child—” and here she laid a tender hand upon her womb, an act that he found meant to reprove him for his insincerity; he had been found out, and to him just then it was sweet, overwhelming relief to be so known as opposed to noxious dread.

 

“Mithian,” he began, helpless, abject, desiring all at once to shed his burden, to lay it at her bare feet in supplication and make her understand.  “It’s not the child,” he said.  “I am happy about that, I—”

 

“You are happy,” she repeated, her voice flat, unemotive, and seemingly void.  She dropped her hands to her sides, met his eyes.  “A happy man does not idle in his bed, tossing and turning as if overcome by some devil, and then rise, abandoning his wife, to stand for hours silent in the moonlight.  What is it, Arthur?  Tell me true.  Don’t I deserve the truth?”

 

His fist tightened upon the cloth in his hand, relenting, the age-old question probing his mind—to tell or not to tell?  What would she make of him if she knew what he held secret in these shaded nights, the one he communed with at the altar of his own religion?  Would she loathe him?  Or worse, absolve him of the sin?

 

He sighed.  “If you must know, I am worried about Morgana.” 

 

That stopped her; he could watch the comprehension dawning over her face, like a small, incandescent sun, though it be night, the obscurity of the night, lit by a sliver of a moon; anything here could be truth, or falsehood cloaked in verity. 

 

Her brow furrowed in a sympathy that disgusted him.  “I, too, worry about Morgana,” she confessed.  “She has been on my mind often these last weeks.”  She moved to cradle her hands, playing with them unconsciously, and he saw the ring, his ring, upon her left, a glint of silver in the feeble light.  “Quite a lot, actually,” she admitted, looking up at him sheepishly, dropping her hands, the glint of silver upon her ring finger falling back into darkness, and granting him the slightest ease. 

 

He swallowed.  “So, you understand that it is only a brother’s concern for his sister that keeps me awake, standing restless, thinking only of her safety?”

 

“Yes, Arthur,” she replied, “I understand it is that in part.  But it is not only that, and don’t pretend that you don’t know what it is that I refer.”

 

He nodded.  “I have failed you, Mithian.”  It felt good to admit it, his insurmountable loss in the name of being a good son.  “In more ways than one.  But I try,” he said then, not knowing why he felt the need to defend himself, knowing himself quite unworthy, though perhaps it was because he could not take her righteous fury any longer, as much as she tried to contain it, still he saw that spark in her eye—something he was learning was found in the innately good versus those who strived errantly for its glory.  “I try.”

 

“Not enough,” she answered him.  “But it is no matter now.  If you cannot love me as you promised, then I will love our child.  I won’t be alone anymore.  Only several more months and he will be born, come spring.  And then, Morgana will have returned, and all will be as it should be once again.”

 

“Yes, Morgana,” he said wistfully, crumpling up the handkerchief in his hand; if she saw him do it, she did not acknowledge the gesture.  He wondered then if she had caught him as she alluded to, standing bereft before the window, breathing in its herbaceous scent—what had she thought of him in such moments?—but he was tired, so very tired just then, and could care no longer.  Let her think what she would of him. 

 

“Let us to bed,” he said then, himself having enough of midnight conversation and ghosts. 

 

His wife nodded, seeming on this to agree, creeping the distance back to the great canopy bed, sliding herself beneath the dusky sheets. 

 

He followed suit, not speaking, laid his head upon the pillow.  In his hand still, the small handkerchief with its array of birds and flowers, telling of springtime and sprightly summer, the most sorrowful season, he thought, of them all. 

 

Behind his open eyes staring upward at the dark expanse above, he thought of his sister, wondering, wherever she may be, whether she spared a thought for him in return amongst her own sleepless dreaming.

Chapter 38

Notes:

Hello, hello; it's been a couple months, but I've been working ever so slowly on writing and revising this third part to the fic, as I go about being busy with mundane life things that unfortunately need attending. It's why if you follow me on tumblr I haven't been posting as much original work (vids, gifsets, etc.) as I usually do, and why as a little treat to myself I pushed myself to have at least this chapter done in time to celebrate Mabon, my favorite sabbat in the Wheel of the Year. And so if you celebrate, or acknowledge the shift of the seasons and welcome Autumn in any way, I hope today treats you well. 🍁

I hope you enjoy this chapter. In it, we leave Arthur to once more return to Morgana's travails in Essetir. Thanks as always for reading.

With love,
Jo ❤

CHAPTER THREE: And woeful, I watched the doe tremble aside the bank of my dreams.

Beneath the bedcovers, Morgana woke the next morning to a crisp drift of air as it stirred the tendrils of her hair upon the down pillow on which she had rested her head the nightlong, not once stirring herself, for Olwen had come in late the night last to deliver her the remedy Merlin had concocted for her, the same prescription as always, and downing it, Morgana, though still she dreamt of many a wild thing, slept like the dead. 

 

Blinking open her eyes to the near-light, it was the dawn she greeted, one cloaked in yet another overcast morn, and rising up into a sitting position, stretching out her arms with a yawn, she brushed aside the curtain to discover with a note of unabashed joy once again the overcast skies without, darkened here and there with the silhouettes of some shorebird taking flight, crying out as if to say, “Hurry up now, it’s time to awake!  Arise!  Arise!”  And so, the sun would rise but behind a screen of cloud and Morgana found the knowledge welcome; here she would earn a respite from the trials of the day.  All in all, the whole matter felt to her rather private, she thought giddily to herself as she twitched her bare toes beneath the covers, her elation perhaps a result of the night she had spent sleeping in cozy slumber, huddled beneath her mother’s quilt, as the cool draft drew within the room, and in the distance the gentle roar of waves cresting and breaking against the craggy shore below. 

 

But it was time to be afoot, and so, wrapping now her mother’s quilt about her, Morgana stepped out of bed, landing two soft feet upon the uneven stone of the tower room.  Back home in Camelot, she would have waited for Gwen to wake her, bringing in the breakfast, herself feeling quite sluggish despite the bright light of day peeking through her window, and yet here, with no such sun glaring down upon her, Morgana felt herself revitalized and so prepped to make the most of the gloomy day. 

 

She stole towards the wash basin, struck a match to relight the same candle that Olwen had blown out during the night, and laved her hands and face with the cool water in the bowl, which was itself a dark ceramic.  After this feat was done, she walked toward her trunks, and selecting one, she opened the latch to find a garment with which to dress herself.  Not feeling particularly picky, she chose a dark plum gown along with her wolf fur, an item she typically would wear only in the winter months back home in Camelot, but the day being galling as it was, she found it suitable.  As her hand passed over the white fur, she stopped a moment, recalling that this too had been her mother’s and wondered then whether it had been an item she had brought with her to Camelot to marry her father, a keepsake of her own from her youth spent in the Tintagel keep Morgause had spoken of.  Dressing, she thought she might ask her, among the myriad other questions circling like crows about her head.  

 

All the night last, she had thought about the truth of her seership, and upon waking wished to recall her dreams to see if, perhaps, they might foretell something small about her day, but with the tonic’s sedative pulsing through her veins, she had slept more deeply so that upon waking she only recalled fragments of the dreams to visit her during the night.  They came to her now in scattered images—here her fingers bloodied though she did not bleed, and there a deer leaping over a hedgerow and into the thickets as if startled by some human presence—and she spent the early hour thinking on what they could mean, only to come up emptyhanded in her answers.  Not one to be dismayed at her own incompetence, she chalked up the dreams as meaningless filler and left it at that—that was except for the last image, that of her brother standing sentry in his own bedchamber for some unknown purpose to the ghostly specters of the night. 

 

It was on him she thought now, calling up her memory of him, his golden hair and blue eyes and the white tunic he wore to bed that revealed the strong heft of his chest, which just as soon dispersed from her mind when then came a soft knock at the door. 

 

“Come in,” she answered, a bit apprehensive to be so caught in her ruminations, and the door opened revealing Gwen—Oh, dearest Gwen!—what a sight she was in her yellow homespun, in her hands a cup of tea and a plate of honey cakes.

 

“Oh, Gwen,” Morgana said, “do come in.  I missed you last night.”

 

“I as well, Mi’lady,” Gwen said, having shut the door, and looking for a place to set the cakes and finding none, placed them upon the bed; the tea she handed directly to Morgana.

 

Morgana breathed in the scent with relish—chamomile with a touch of lavender, how sweet and perfect for the cool, late August morn. 

 

“Thank you, Gwen,” she said.  “Oh, do sit down beside me here.  That’s it.  Now tell me what you have been up to since I saw you last!”

 

Gwen smiled.  “I was about to ask you the same,” she said.  “How was your evening?”

 

This question caused Morgana to pause a moment, as she recalled the conversation she had shared with her aunt after which Morgause had excused Gwen the afternoon before, in which Morgause had confided in her about the matter of her seership, a subject upon which she felt still quite possessive and desiring to keep the matter to herself, and fearing what Gwen would think, at least for the time being, at least until she learned more about the nature of her gift, Morgana decided it best that she not share this private knowledge with her maid, though trustworthy she was on all accounts, and her friend besides.  There was the other matter though, the reason for her stay within these moldering walls, the secret Morgause had suspected as if it had been written plain on her face—the child she carried low in the water of her womb, and here Morgana felt him quiver, as if he too was only waking up to the newborn day.  It was a matter on which, though she would come to share with Gwen what her aunt had guessed, if not the how of it, herself still mesmerized exactly how she had precisely known, she had no desire to voice aloud just then to her in the lightening chamber, herself unready though she could not be certain precisely why to tell the tale.  So, she said simply, “Well enough.  I dined with my aunt and uncle last night in their small hall, and then Olwen led me back to this room to retire for the night.  I spent the evening watching the sea and listening to the gulls.”  Making certain Gwen would not pry further, she asked then, “What of you?  How did you fare this first night here?”

 

Gwen looked as if her thoughts warred with what she wished to say, her mouth held agape a moment before she replied stiffly, “Well.  Olwen likewise showed me where I will be staying, a small room that I am to share with her, and a girl called Freya.  Both were pleasant and welcomed me, but still, we are so far away from home, Morgana—I miss home.”

 

Morgana nodded; while the quiet respite she had last night had been a balm, in many ways, for her soul, as she had sat enraptured at the twilit night with its lavender gleam against dusky pitch, safe and warm beneath her mother’s quilt, she too had thought of home, of namely her brother, and, as much as she wished she could say she was done with those days, it would be a lie and remiss of her both to say she had not missed him, if not for he himself, but the old familiarity, the comfort that comes with knowing someone so long you can enjoy the presence of their person without words, without touch, only the confidence that they too know you inside and out, and would stand by you through thick and thin.  It had been ages since she felt such with Arthur, and yet her mind could so easily kid her into thinking it was just so between them, as if their falling out had never been. 

 

She laid a hand over Gwen’s own.  “I understand, Gwen.  Believe me.”  Then after a moment, “I’m sorry for having taken you away.  But I need you, Gwen.”  It was the first she realized just how much she had asked this year past of Gwen, not thinking of the matter from her perspective, unable to deny her anything, and she wondered whether that too was love in its most terrible form.  Still, she was a selfish person, and her needs came first.  Perhaps, that was what had caused her rift with Arthur.  She had never thought of it before from his side, marrying Mithian as he had done to please their father.  She had only thought of her own wants, her own needs, and how abject she had felt in the absence of his presence!  What lonely misery it was!  Had that been why she latched on to Gwen now, unable to let her go?

 

Gwen smiled wanly.  “Yes,” was all she said, before turning to her and insisting that she eat.

 

She did eat.  A cake and then another for she realized with a pang that she was hungry, but not ravenous enough to consume them all, and so offered the last to Gwen, perhaps in meek apology for having taken her so far from home, which with some persuasion she soon accepted, her mouth dimpling around the sweetness with a picturesque gleam, and finishing her own cake, wiping the trace of crumbs from her mouth, Morgana washed the rest down with her tea. 

 

Afterward, Morgana asked, “What next?”

 

That was when the door opened once again, this time without preamble, and in stepped the shadowy figure of her aunt, wrapped in a heather gray shawl.  Gwen rose from the bed at once, smoothing down her skirt.  

 

“Ah, so you are up,” Morgause mused aloud, though Morgana had the sense that she already knew this before arriving at her door.  “Did you rest comfortably, niece?”

 

Morgana smiled uncertainly.  “Quite well,” she said.  “I never expected it, but the sea, its sounds, make the perfect backdrop for sleep.  And,” she added, “Gwen was kind to bring up more of the cakes with tea for breakfast.  We just finished.”

 

“Good,” Morgause smiled, and there was a brief flicker of pleasure in her eyes.  “You must be wondering why I came to see you.  It was not only out of hospitality, that I did so.”

 

Morgana eyed her aunt curiously.

 

“I wished to give you this,” her aunt said cryptically, reaching in her pocket for an item, which flashed brilliantly as she retrieved it.  Morgana caught at once that it was piece of jewelry, a cuff to be more precise, one engraved with intricate patterns, which Morgana wondered if they held any particular meaning, or were simply a beautiful design. 

 

“For me?” Morgana asked unnecessarily.  “But why-for?  I am your guest.  It should be me offering you a gift for allowing me to stay here,” Morgana said, realizing at once her mistake.  She had brought nothing for her aunt, so eager was she to be on her way, and, with the unexpected arrival of the Essetir guard, there had not been the time besides.

 

“It is only a small thing,” Morgause said, handing the cuff to her niece, who accepted it with a note of hesitance.  “In fact, I’m only returning it now to its proper owner.  You see, this bracelet belonged to your mother.”

 

Morgana looked up at that, from where she had been running her fingers along the engravings, tracing its patterns delicately.  “My mother?” 

 

“Yes,” Morgause said.  “I can’t recall how I ended up with it, but anyhow it is yours.  While the sea eased your sleep last night, I imagine you may find rest easier wearing this.  Igraine always said it was her lucky charm.”

 

Morgana frowned, then slipped the bracelet upon her left arm, where it fit her perfectly.  She noticed it was made of silver, so smooth it was to the touch. 

 

“Thank you,” she said evenly. 

 

Morgause smiled.  “You are most welcome, dear.  But now, what are your plans for the day?” she asked, changing the subject perhaps purposefully.

 

“That was what I was about to ask Gwen,” Morgana said, laughing.  She turned towards her maid, who stood quietly beside the room’s wash basin, looking at her for reassurance, but Gwen averted her eyes, and Morgana turned helplessly back to her aunt.

 

Morgause nodded.  “Well, I thought you may be interested in exploring the keep and outlying village.  Perhaps, a walk along the shore?  Or a venture into the woods?  I thought of sending Freya with you.  She may show you about while setting about her daily chores.  How does that sound?”

 

Morgana glanced again towards Gwen, but unable to read her face, turned back toward Morgause and said, “That sounds lovely.  With all the riding in the carriage the last few weeks, it would be great to stretch my legs.” 

 

---

 

It was decided—snuffing out the lone candle in her room, Morgana, with Gwen to accompany her, soon departed from her tower chamber shortly after her aunt’s visit now joined by the company of a small girl in a cloak of burgundy whom Gwen had correctly identified as Freya, Morgause’s other maidservant, on what was to be a gentle walk through the village and out across the fields of heather into the expanse of woodland Morgana and Gwen had traveled through along with the Essetir guard on their journey to the keep.  

 

Freya, though softspoken, proved a most useful guide, sharing with both Morgana and Gwen various points of interest regarding the village they trudged through on their way out to the forest, namely the location of the markets where fresh caught herring and salmon were packed and sold along with the weathered frame of the sole tavern among these parts, The White Hare, where the local fisherfolk gathered for a cup of spiced mead and shared daring tales of their various exploits at sea, some of which, such as the sightings of kelpies and sirens, may or may not be exaggeration. 

 

They did not spend long in the town, for which Morgana was gently reassured, for the people to walk its muddied streets in their frayed and muted garb stared at her as she walked, she who appeared rather trim and spotless in her royal plum gown with the pristine white fur about her shoulders; it was obvious she did not belong here, in this remote and forgotten place, and she could feel the way in which the villagers made that impression known to her not with words but by the way in which their eyes bore into the back of her skull as she passed, sending shivers down her spine.  Once again, she was met with the fright of what she had done by coming here to this far corner of the known world.  Gwen likewise kept close to her side throughout their trek, and smartly kept her eyes downcast as they walked.

 

Freya, a keen observer of her companions, noticing at once their nervous looks, cut the excursion through the village short, only stopping once before an elderly woman’s hut on the outskirts of town, exchanging with her a loaf of rye bread for a small sack of items which she noted as needed for “the Queen.”  She never revealed what the items in question were, and Morgana was left greatly intrigued, though she did not pry further into the matter, understanding that her aunt must have her secrets as she herself had her own.

 

With that done, Freya turned past the woman’s home, and led them down a deer trail through the fields of purple heather that shifted beautifully with the breeze, smelling a mix of musk and florals with a note of salt from the sea.  Above them the sun shone muted behind a veil of cloud, breaking out in slender rays here and there in the breaks between, and Morgana was struck once again with both the beauty and ferocity of this wild scape, so different and unlike the woods she was used to near home. 

 

The reason of their trip soon became apparent, as Freya stopped here and there besides small outcrops of wild flora to grow amidst the fields, snipping with a small set of shears a stem or two and thus satisfied, placed them within a small cloth bag she carried alongside the one the woman had gifted her in exchange for the bread. 

 

Beside one small tree with indigo berries and what appeared to be sharp thorns, before which Freya had paused to harvest a few of its branches, Morgana, reaching out a hand to touch its dark verdant leaves, careful to avoid the jutting spikes, suddenly asked, “What is this tree?  I don’t recall it from home back in Camelot.”

 

Freya smiled.  “That is the blackthorn,” she said, placing the twigs, leaves and berries and all into her bag.  “The berries called sloes make a tart gin, but I am harvesting the branches for the bark is known to aid against rheumatism.”

 

Morgana nodded, dropping her hand from the leaves.  “Back home, our physician Gaius knew about such cures and remedies.”  She paused, thinking on Gaius, wondering how the elderly man was spending his time back in his quarters without her to dote on and without the aid of his apprentice to share the work of mixing up medicines and cures.  Probably quite busy, she thought then, without the time to think on her.  This led her to another question.

 

“How did you learn the art of wildcrafting?” she asked Freya then, suddenly curious. 

 

Freya paused, as if thinking on what to confide and what to keep secret to herself.  “My grandmother,” she said at last.  “She was a cunningwoman, a healer.  Through accompanying her through her days from when I was young, following her like her shadow, I learned and now I carry on her practices.  The rest I learned from the land itself.”

 

“Have you lived your whole life here?”

 

Freya nodded.  “I’ve never been anywhere else, and nor do I have the desire to go.  This land can be harsh, especially in the dark half of the year, but it is home.”

 

They fell silent for a time, walking on, Morgana musing about her own home faraway back in Camelot; though full of every luxury, it too had been harsh to her, she thought, remembering the days of her girlhood spent in solitude contemplating the ramifications of her sin and the wayward yearnings of her heart.  She was left with the thought that if she and Arthur had grown up in this place amongst the wilds, perhaps here there would be no one to censure them for their tryst.  She had the sense that these people though not without their own knowledge, gathered from years of survival, she supposed, were not as educated as she, and thus not as versed in the teachings of the Lord, but perhaps that was poor judgement of her to make, assuming based on their apparent poverty that they could commit what was to be a crime in the eyes of King and God without conscience and regret.  Freya, however, appeared quite intelligent and she trusted her easily for that reason.

 

The deer trail turned then, and the foliage grew thicker, more blackthorn and rowan, as Freya identified this tree by its crimson berries and gray wood, as she snipped a branch here and there before moving on.  Morgana followed suit, turning to Gwen beside her, who appeared more at ease in the field than she had in the town, though still diffident.  Overhead a blackbird flew, cawing as if in warning.

 

It was then that Freya stopped, motioning for the both of them to draw closer beside a patch of what appeared upon closer inspection to be wild blackberries, ripe and full, with their blue-black sheen in the late August month.  “Come,” Freya said.  “With all our walking, you must be hungry, and we can rest a moment to treat ourselves to the blackberries here.”

 

It was true, Morgana felt, her stomach rumbling at the thought.  It had been hours since she broke her evening fast with the honey cakes, and with their journeying through the foliage she realized she was hungry indeed, and so sat beside Freya before the outcrop and received the bounty of the earth the maidservant poured into her open, supple hands.  Beside her, Gwen waited, and seeing Freya’s approving look, bent to pick some berries for herself, plopping their juicy fruit into her mouth.

 

Morgana ate the sweetness of the fruit, relishing the way the berries burst in her mouth with a tang of tartness, but not too bitter, the berries staining her fingers as she consumed them a bright and bloody red.  The sight struck her a moment—here were her hands coated as she recalled seeing them in her dream—Was this the Sight at work? she wondered, gaping at her open palms, as the juice ran through them, dripping to the dank earth below.  But what purpose would knowing this moment before it happened serve her?  Was there a rhyme or reason to this gift?  And why did it so easily deceive in the ways it so succinctly foretold the truth? 

 

Gwen broke her reverie.  “Morgana,” she said then, her voice strained with warning.  “Are you alright?  You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

 

But it was Freya whom Morgana saw first, watching her, her brown eyes full of knowing.  “Perhaps, this is enough for today,” she said.  “I’ve kept you long and you must be tired.  We can head back.  Here, there is a stream nearby,” she said to Morgana.  “You can wash your hands there.” 

 

Morgana nodded, though still she felt shaken to the core.  And then again when Gwen shouted, “Look!”—her finger pointing to where a doe—seeming to Morgana’s eyes an apparition, herself unable to discern from whence it came—leapt across the bushes, its cloven hoofs landing with a splash into the gentle stream farther afield and then vanishing altogether through the heather as if she had never been. 

 

---

 

When they returned to the keep, it looked like rain; the clouds were so dark and dense, billowing like wildfire smoke.  Freya guided Morgana and Gwen through the twists and turns about the fort back to the north tower and up the stairs to where Morgana’s room waited in case she had yet to commit to memory the secrets of their passages, leaving her at the door.  When Gwen asked her lady whether she would be alright—perhaps sensing along their journey ‘home’ that she, troubled, was occupied with something within the corridors of her mind—and Morgana answered despite this creeping sense that she would, she followed Freya back down the spiral staircase, presumably back towards the servants’ quarters until the event arrived that she was needed again.

 

It was then that Morgana—sighing, spent—opened the door to find her aunt awaiting her within the humble room to her gentle surprise, her golden hair glowing in light of the solitary candle’s flame that either she or Olwen presumably had relit.  Otherwise, the room appeared rather dim, almost desolate against the black sky without, the bed appearing cold instead of the warm haven it had been the night last.

 

Morgana opened her mouth to speak but Morgause beat her to it.

 

“Niece,” she said.  “How was your venture?  Did you learn?”

 

Morgana’s lips trembled, her step wavering.  “I dreamt,” she blurted out, “Last night, and it came true this afternoon.”

 

Morgause nodded as if this was to be expected.  “Tell me what you saw.”

 

Morgana’s stomach lurched and, deep within herself, she felt her babe stir.  “A deer leaping, and my hands bloodied by the blackberries we ate aside a flowing stream, and—” but here she stopped herself, thinking it best not to speak of her brother, wherever he now was—had he really stood beside his window the night last at that midnight hour?—she supposed if she were to trust the other images then this too must be true, but why?; afraid of the answer and what Morgause would say, she finished quietly, “What does it mean?”

 

“Nothing,” her aunt answered.  “You saw a glimpse of the day to come, and hardly anything of note.  Yet I see this still troubles you, perhaps because you have had such foreknowledge in the past, though you were convinced not to trust what the Sight gave you.”  She paused, turned about the room, before continuing, “I heard from Uther in the letter he wrote that you take a tonic each night, one that Gaius prescribed for you, and I had from the boy,” here her lips upturning as if at some inward joke, “Merlin, that he prepared it for you last night.  Tell me.  Do the dreams come in pieces when you take this draft?”

 

Morgana watched her aunt, astonished.  “Yes,” she marveled, “that’s exactly it.”  They had always seemed fractured when she would drink from the potions Gaius crafted just for her, neither here nor there, seeming more fantasy than anything real, and so different from that terrible night she slept without its recourse pulsing through her veins, the night she lied awake in sleepless slumber transposed above her brother’s bed as Mithian had conceived the son she was to bear for him come the spring—

 

She shivered, partly from the cold, despite the thick wolf fur she wore draped about her shoulders.

 

Morgause smiled.  “I thought so.”  And here she stepped towards her niece, brushed a lock of her dark hair away from her face, touched her cheek.  “The dreams frighten you.”  It was a statement rather than a question.

 

Morgana nodded, daring not to look up at her aunt, her eyes transfixed upon the stone floor.

 

“Then I say tonight,” Morgause spoke, laying a hand upon her wrist where the bracelet glinted in the dim, “do well to wear this, and tell me tomorrow what you see.”

 

Morgana glanced upwards then to meet her aunt’s amber eyes, wondering what truth lied behind them.  Could she trust her aunt?  It was not the first she had been left with the doubt, and nor would it be the last time in her brief stay amongst that bitter shore.  Still, Morgause knew things she did not, and she felt more than understood it was best to heed her cryptic warnings.

 

“Is there anything else you need, dear, during your stay in my home?” she asked then, always one to surprise her niece with the twists and turns of her routed words so snakelike just like the passages of the keep they resided in, and Morgana was not lost upon the fact that this unfamiliar place belonged to her; she was in her keeping for better or worse.  “Perhaps, upon the other matter?  Your child?”

 

Instinctively, Morgana brought up a hand to rest over her womb, as if to shelter her would-be son from her aunt’s gaze.  She was six months along now in her pregnancy, and so during these last weeks of travel, had to hide the growing swell of her belly beneath her cloak as well as the dresses she had commissioned for that sake; soon it would be obvious to those not privy to the secret she wished to shield the nature of her delicate condition. 

 

She swallowed, before testing her voice to speak.  “If you have guessed, Aunt, the truth of my condition, then soon so shall others for I can hardly hide the fact any longer.  What shall I do to prevent the gossip?  Yes, Essetir is remote, and word rarely travels from its walls back to Camelot, but still I worry.  How shall I be safe here?”  Then, because she had no other choice, “Can you help me?”

 

Morgause nodded.  “Yes, I have thought of that.  Already whispers of your stay here have gone round the village and people are curious; it is in their nature.  And for that I have thought of an answer, and why I bid you walk with Freya this morning, thinking you would prefer the exercise.  Once you come to show in your last month we will keep you within this room, day and night, and only Olwen, Freya, and your maid will be your visitors aside from myself until it comes time for you to give birth.  Your secret will stay within the walls; I am sure of it.”

 

Morgana blinked back her shock, surveyed once more the small, circular room with its lone window above the bed and the washbasin seated upon the stand where the candle flickered incessantly like an angered ghost—it was far smaller than her room back home and boasting of no such luxury, and she was met with the dismay that in her adolescence there she had imposed upon herself within that chamber a self-confinement that bordered on imprisonment for a crime she had yet in effect to commit, and now it seemed with those somber years for practice, she now carrying the fruit of that sin, would suffer the punishment here in this tight space or else risk the ruin of her good and noble name.  She thought it a most ironic twist of fate, perhaps written in the stars or a sleight of hand played by God in His most mysterious ways, but either way the reason did not matter so much as the lived reality that she would remain sequestered here, to this room, as her belly swelled and her back came to ache—as it was starting to do—left with nothing to do to pass the time but sit upon the bedspread and wait for her deliverance—she could see it now, herself in the weeks to come, pacing back and forth in the cramped space around the bed so as not to lose the tone in her taut legs and waste away from idleness, and it was not a pretty picture, but little in this world was if she were honest, nothing except the lakeshore of Avalon in summer and even then that happy place of her childhood had been marked with the stain of her tears as well as the merry sound of her laughter.  Would she give anything to go back?  To know that temporal innocence again?  Fragrant as the apple blossoms and sweet as the juice of the ripened fruit hanging in the boughs of the trees?

 

But even if she wished it so, it was impossible and done besides, and Morgana closing then her eyes, opening them again, relenting with a sigh, nodded, met her aunt’s fixed gaze—

 

“It’s not what I would have wished for myself in my time here,” she said in her honesty, “but I see it is the only thing to be done.  Thank you for allowing me this discretion.”

 

Morgause nodded somberly.  “Yes,” she said.  “I do not envy your position, but it is the only thing to be done, and so I ask you, is there anything I can bring you to ease your time spent here in this room?”

 

Morgana fingered the bracelet at her wrist.  Her aunt had given her so much, and she nothing for her in return; it grieved her but only a little, she who was accustomed to having her most basic needs met, and now for the first time she thought on what she wanted more than anything and that thought brought her back home to Camelot where her brother had waited throughout the long night most likely keeping time for her, and she unable to reach him from where she now resided, also thinking of the matter of appearances, thought of the next best thing.

 

“If it’s not too much to ask, could I have some parchment and a quill and ink to write by?” she broached, uncertain now if these rudimentary things were scarce so far north and away from civilization.  “My sister-in-law, I wish to write her.”

 

Morgause nodded.  “We can manage that, but keep it brief.”

 

Morgana smiled.  Of course, she would only give up a little of her stay, intending to paint a seemly picture for Mithian’s sake to comfort her friend in her time away.  “Thank you.”

 

“If there is anything else,” her aunt said, “do well to ask Olwen and she will come find me and we will see what we can do.”

 

“I will remember that, thank you,” Morgana replied.

 

Hearing her answer, and with nothing more to say, Morgause exited the tower room, shutting the wooden door behind her with a whimpered pang, leaving Morgana to do what she did best and that was to wait, and wait, as the ages passed with she none the wiser to the measurement of time and the way by which in moving forward, it circled back on itself indefinitely.

 

All that was left to do was to pick up the beads, and finger them, hoping if not for absolution, then for some semblance of comfort and an answer to the age-old question: Have I lived my life well, and right?

 

---

 

For the duration of the afternoon that passed by quietly, Morgana prayed the rosary, thinking not on its mysteries, as her fingers worried each decade, in relation to Christ and his Holy Mother, but on the ambiguities of her own life, she who was both mother and maid, sinner and penitent, and who had suffered immensely for the passion of loving the one she ought not, at least in the bodily way she came to as opposed to the innately spiritual, and so it was that these thoughts consumed her until it came time to lay down the beads and go to dinner, after which she retired to her chamber, exchanging her gown for her nightdress, to pick them up again.

 

It was as she began once more the third decade, that there came a knock which she in her meditation, failed to answer, after which the door opened revealing the bright-haired Olwen and in her hands a gull’s quill along with a bottle of gall ink and a single sheet of parchment.

 

These she handed to Morgana silently before retreating once more into darkened stairwell beyond, and Morgana receiving them, set down the beads to pick up the quill to begin the most gratifying task of writing.

 

My Dearest Sister, she began with no hard surface to write upon but the sill, she pausing here a moment to look out at the darkening sky with its calamitous clouds and the spray of sea below, to gather her thoughts before she continued, knowing that this single sheet precious and could not be wasted.

 

Taking care she wrote, It is with love that I fulfill my promise to you, and so I shall begin to tell an unfortunately brief (for resources are limited) recounting of my time so far away from Camelot and you, hoping that you are as well as I am so far faring now that I have arrived safely and securely in the keeping of my aunt’s dwelling…

 

She relayed to Mithian what she could of the journey north, speaking mostly of the beauty of the highlands, their fields of violet heather, and the forests of scotch pine and alder, as well of course of the remarkable proximity of the great, wide sea—this the first time she had ever come so close to the open water which she now looked out upon from her room as she wrote, marveling of its vastness and ferocity. 

 

She told her friend of her aunt’s hospitality, the way she welcomed her as kin and of how she became reacquainted with her uncle over the dinners they shared these last couple nights in the small hall that was somewhat like the one she and her family resided in back home, as well as the kindness of her aunt’s maidservants who aided her whenever she was in need just like Gwen did, and Sefa did her.

 

But in writing, as she filled the first side of the paper and flipped it over to begin coating the backside with her words, she knew of course the matter upon which Mithian truly wished to know the truth of, that matter of her weakening health and the reason for her stay in Essetir to begin with, and about which she said very little, though enough to reassure her that all would be well with her with time, she thinking forlornly of her aunt’s measures to keep her safe, knowing well that she would have time aplenty to spend in this tower room, whether she liked it no, until the time came for her to depart and head homeward bound once more.

 

The salt air is a balm for my soul, and already I rest more easily to the sounds of waves breaking against the shore, she scrawled, dipping the quill tip once more into the ink.  It was not the whole truth, but a piece of it, and nor was it falsehood or exaggeration, for she had slumbered well beneath the sea breeze, enjoying the respite and sounds of quiet, but a lie of omission, as she spoke not of the leaping deer, her stained fingers, and Arthur, the ghost of her brother to visit her during the night—how was he? she wished to ask, but stopped herself, her fingers tightening about the quill with intention.

 

Please do not worry after me, she wrote instead, though of course, I know you will; I am certain that I will be back home in Camelot before you know it, merry with stories of my exploits here to share with you over a cup of tea.  But enough of me—if you can write back, tell me how fares you and my one-day nephew or niece?  I hope you both are well and happy, and that the pregnancy troubles you not.  Again the will to convey what she could not came upon her, so fierce and powerful, she lifted the quill from the paper, its inky tip dripping droplets upon the page like a dark-soaked blood, to prevent her committing in words the truth of her situation—yes, the sleepless nights which proved more harrowing than she had ever possibly realized, but also the awful fact of her own son by Arthur nestled in her womb, and growing stronger by the day.  In that moment, she would have given it all to confess, if not the father, then that she too was soon to be a mother, to her dear sister who likewise labored throughout her days so far from where she now resided, if only to share with her the comfort of mutual understanding—something she could not share with Gwen for all her devoted loyalty, she as far as she knew having never touched a man, and surely not a man as arresting as Arthur, and therefore could not relate, not truly to her qualm—as if she were a priest listening intently through the screen of the confessional back home, something that had always frightened her as a girl.

 

But no matter how strong the need was then, Morgana mastered her emotions, and ruled by a coarse logic, nearing the end of the parchment, decided to close the letter, I wish you well, my dearest friend.  Please give my love to Father, and because no matter how she had restrained herself thus far, she could not help herself—and to Arthur.  It came only naturally to end the letter thus, and she did not think it odd at all, though perhaps she should have, that her missive to her friend had finished finally, at the last, with the one it had in her heart been addressed to all along. 

 

Thus, she completed the page, marking her signature with a flourish—

 

All my love,

            Morgana

 

Finished, it was now dark outside, the stars blotted out by clouds and endless night, now giving on to rain, and, waiting only a moment for the ink to dry, Morgana thought it best to retire for the day.  She got up only to snuff out the candle, pinching it with her fingers, and now in the dark, walked back towards the bed, laying the finished letter at its side, as she slipped beneath the covers.  Outside the sea moaned like a wolf at the full curve of moon, and Morgana shivered though not from any chill.

 

As she drifted off to sleep, she had the cool sensation of the bracelet, her aunt’s gift, about her wrist, praying this time not to God, but to her mother—wherever she now resided, in Heaven or some other fearsome place—to guide her sleeping spirit to the dawn.

 

---

 

The morning broke the next day in shades of a burnished, rubicund hue, the fisherfolk in the village agreed at the sight that it be best to leave their boats resting in the harbor than take them out upon the open water no matter how eerily still the sea appeared to be—like a fickle woman scorned, it possessed many moods that could turn on a man in an instant, when he least expected it, and so it was always deemed prudent to heed the longstanding omens when they came.

 

But Morgana, her body wrapped like a cocoon in quilt and sheets, missed the warning, waking sluggishly midday to the rough tug and pull on her arm, that compelled her from the deep sleeping place she had been that it was time now to step into the light and arise; and so she blinked open her eyes, their focus steadying upon the frightened look of Gwen peering down upon her.

 

“Oh, thank heavens, you’re awake!” Gwen exclaimed, dropping her grip on her lady’s arm as if she had been scorched by the touch, realizing it inappropriate, though perhaps necessary.

 

Morgana rubbed at her eyes, smearing away the sleep that gathered in their corners, then with a steady hand, pushed herself up into a sitting position.  She noticed the light in the room was bright this day, but her mind, grappling for a reason, could not fathom how this was so. 

 

“Gwen, what time is it?”

 

“Noon, Mi’lady,” Gwen answered.  “When you didn’t wake when I came in this morning with the breakfast, I thought it best to let you rest some more, thinking you needed it.  But then when I came back just now to see you still, I feared something was not right, and so thought to wake you myself.  Thank God you woke just now.”

 

Morgana frowned, listening.  That was rather unlike her.  Normally, when she took her medication, as she had last night, finding the small vial left out for her beside the wash basin, she slept rather fitfully, her sleep interrupted with what she now knew to be snippets of visions, not dreams, and now that she was able to think once more, the wheels in her brain turning, speculating, she was left with but one means to answer for the night she had spent in such deep slumber. 

 

Touching the cuff upon her wrist there was the one thought upon her mind. 

 

“Gwen, send for my aunt.”

 

Her maid frowned but hearing the resolve in her lady’s voice stepped back a foot.

 

“Now, please,” Morgana said.

 

Gwen nodded, and without so much as a word made herself scarce, set upon the task commanded of her.

 

---

 

When Morgause arrived a few moments later, Morgana was still seated upon the bed dressed in nothing but her shift and fingering the engravings of the bracelet upon her wrist.  The bedcovers pushed aside, Morgause could see the swell of her niece’s stomach beneath her shift, and once more she was struck with curiosity regarding the circumstances of Morgana’s condition and how exactly it had been that she came to be with child, she, in coming to observe her niece the last few days, did not think her the adventurous and disobedient sort to get herself with child on purpose, either as an act of revenge upon a lover who had spurned her or a last desperate attempt to lure the capricious man to go on his knee and take her hand.  But no matter, Morgause thought, for that was the subject for another day, one she intended to get to the bottom of.  Now, however, her niece was concerned upon another matter, one she, perhaps, possessed the answers to.

 

Viewing her niece in her delicate condition, and frame of mind besides, Morgause thought she did not hear her come in, and so spoke gently from where she stood at the foot of the bed to make her presence known.

 

“You sent for me?” 

 

Morgana startled, looking up suddenly to find the figure of her aunt standing in a patch of rare sunlight that poured over her where she rested upon the bed into the room.  Despite the rainstorm to fall during the night, the skies had strangely cleared, something she thought in her short time here thus far, unusual for this somber place.  Then, she relaxed a moment, though not unabashedly at her aunt’s words, the note of irony at what she had done not gone unnoticed, that glaring fact that she had indeed summoned Morgause to her room when she was the ruler of this house and a queen besides.  Understanding this, Morgana blushed.

 

“Yes, Aunt,” she said simply. 

 

Morgause nodded, as if she already knew why that was so.  “I see you are still abed,” she prompted.

 

“Yes,” Morgana said again.  Then not knowing how else to begin but to be crudely out with it—“I slept.  Until noon.”

 

Morgause nodded again.  “And you wish to ask me why that was so?”

 

Morgana shook her head nervously.  “Y-Yes.  Nothing was different last night.  I took my prescription as always.  Nothing except this,” she added touching once more the bracelet. 

 

“You told me I would sleep well with it upon my arm, and I did, better than I can recall ever doing before.”

 

There was an uneasy pause, until Morgause spoke again.  “Tell me,” she said simply, “what you dreamt last night.”

 

Morgana frowned, thinking back on the night.  She remembered touching the cuff, the last, delirious thought of her mother—for the bracelet, Morgause had said, belonged to her—and then there was nothing, a gaping hole in her memory, as if she had been swallowed up and whole in the depths of the dark sea, or perhaps in the mouth of some creature that dwelt deep in its depths like the Whale had swallowed up Jonah, alive and whole and Godfearing; Morgana had come to fear her dreams, the knowledge the Sight imparted unto them and her, but now, she was beginning to think their absence the more worrying and deeply unsettling.

 

“Nothing,” she said, awestruck.  “Nothing I can recall that is.”  She stopped herself as a thought dawned upon her.  “Is that—?”

 

“The nature of the bracelet?” Morgause finished for her.  “Yes.  It is charmed to block the Sight.” 

 

Morgana allowed this knowledge to sink in, her mind too frazzled to think just then, as she would come to later, upon the implications of her aunt’s statement.  

 

“Do you feel more at ease?” Morgause asked. 

 

“I—” Morgana began.  “I don’t know.”

 

“From what I gathered from what you’ve confided in me thus far, the Sight troubles you—greatly,” Morgause said.  “Now, you see, you have a choice.  You may choose the gift of foreknowledge or the comfort of ignorance.”

 

Morgana shook her head.  “But it’s not that simple—”  She was beginning to understand that as frightening as it had been to glimpse the future in pieces, wondering at the outcome, whether she could in effect either stop or cause its happening, and what the various parts meant, it was likewise terrifying to be blind to what the morrow would bring, to have no such forewarning spelled out for her as if it were written in blood upon the skies. 

 

“Of course not,” her aunt said. 

 

“What—What did my mother choose?” Morgana asked then, fretful and grappling for some guidance.

 

“When she could bear it, to see,” Morgause said. 

 

Morgana looked from her aunt down once more at the silver cuff upon her arm, undecided, and still thinking.

 

“I see this gives you much to think upon, as, rightly, it should,” Morgause said. 

 

Morgana nodded.  “Yes,” she said sadly, unconsciously moving her hand lower, toward her womb. 

Chapter 39

CHAPTER FOUR: The Missive

While Morgana had much to ponder regarding the choice laid out for her by her aunt—either to retire for the night unshielded so that the Sight could move within her as its vessel—an analogy that, as of yet, disturbed her most profusely—and, in effect, have its way with her, or wear the cuff upon her arm, itself—somehow, inexplicably—a barrier to those darting, vicious visions that teased and toyed with her mind, leaving her breathless and, always, in awe of their terror upon waking with the morn—a matter upon which she still remained, noticeably undecided—there was one subject upon which she had irrefutably set her mind to, and that was to press Morgause the means by which to send her confidential letter to her sister-in-law down the quickest and surest route along the meandering distance back to Camelot and into Mithian’s eager hands as—Morgana imagined idly from within her room in the north tower—she broke the wax seal to read its contents (an image that gave her much comfort, nevertheless).

 

As with everything, Morgause had an answer for her and relayed to her that while her husband tended to send an envoy on foot regarding most political matters, if only for the ostensible matter of displaying before the monarch in question the crafty Essetir colors, and thus, by extension the bearing of his own presence, she had her own subtler methods of correspondence, and that was to tie the curled parchment, cinched tight with string, upon the claw of one her messenger ravens and speaking into the bird’s ear send it off with a flourish into the direction she intended it to fly, in this case south to the “Citadel of Camelot.” 

 

When Morgana asked, quirking her left brow in disbelief, how possibly the bird, no matter how intelligent the species, could possibly fly such a distance and land, she thought ridiculously, upon her sister’s window with the letter whole and intact, Morgause only assured her that this bird, whom she called Badb, was much astute and had journeyed the way often in the past, never once losing a note.  Though still unconvinced, but not one to question her aunt further, thinking it best to trust her for thus far when had she led her astray?—Morgana, handing her letter to Morgause, let the matter drop, albeit not without a brief invocative prayer to Saint Expeditus that the missive arrive safe and unblemished in the keeping of her sister’s slender, graceful hands.  Unaware of her niece’s entreaty, for she could not read minds though troubled herself greatly in mastering the art to no avail, Morgause could not tell her that this was unnecessary, for the bird was bewitched by the guiles of her own doing, to fly straight and true to the destination she whispered gently like a lover within its ear, tirelessly and without rest, until the message was delivered successfully to its recipient.

 

And so it was that, after Morgana had gone to bed for the night, Morgause took the letter up to the rookery whereby, after breaking the seal with her boline, a short knife with a hilt of bone, which she always kept hidden upon her person, and reading its contents by the light of the tallow taper she carried with her to light the way, unimpressed with the words scribed thereupon, for what they failed to confide regarding her niece’s condition, thinking, most petulantly, the matter a waste of paper, fastened the note upon Badb’s talon and bid her fly south to the chestnut-haired princess with the doe eyes, not to return until the message reached her. 

 

She had thought to pen another letter to her brother-in-law, the impudent and now stern man, as she had come to view him over the years in her scrying bowl when the fancy took her, she had once as a young girl taken to her bed in her envy of her sister, poor, sleeping Igraine, nearly two decades gone to wherever the dead go—Heaven, or Hell, as the Godfearing say, or, as their mother had always told them as children in that longstanding tradition of their ilk, to that far shore where no matter the season, it was always Summer, and upon the isle the bountiful grove of apple, the crimson fruit heavy and laden with the most luscious yield—but stopped herself, thinking in her age she was growing unfocused upon the point, and terribly sentimental, which was that understanding what she now knew of the girl Mithian from Morgana’s script, that if the girl who now was with child of her own, and not only that, the future heir—a matter upon which she must cast the bones to see what they told her about this possible difficulty to her plans—then surely she would tell all the rest that Morgana, dear, sweet Morgana had made it safe at last into her hands for keeping—and Morgause, being frugal and a pragmatist, thought if one missive should suffice, then what was the point in sending two?

 

Thus, she retreated down the steps, passed the rooks in their nests, taking her candle with her and out into the sacred scape of the night, the hour upon which she felt most significantly herself and free.  In the distance as she walked back the ways to her quarters, she listened to the waves breaking against the shore, always a comfort, their steadying presence, as she thought out the exact wording of her question; divination was a most exacting profession—ask and you shall receive, but twist up the phrase or otherwise be remiss in the wording, and the answers provided too will fail to amount to much use.  Still, she had the cloying sense, as when she read the contents of the letter, however strangely, that there was little point to enquiry, for she had the understanding, however inexplicably, that Arthur’s heir would never come to draw his first breath let alone his last.

 

---

 

Whatever Morgause had deduced from laying out the bones upon her altar-top that night, whatever secrets she discerned from their sporadic pattern—or lack thereof, a possible non-answer—she had been exact in her foresight regarding the letter; it reached its addressee in a matter of days and moonless nights upon the sill of the quaint guest chamber she occupied during her days spent without her husband at her side—which perhaps was to the better—and taking fright at first at the immense black bird, which had been always a frightful omen to the Nemeth princess in her home country, foretelling death of a kind, relaxed when she spied the note upon its talon, and untying it, curious, to read its contents, her eyes scanning the page with the exact eagerness Morgana had imagined, and then coming to its end, allowing the letter to fall at once to the floor as she scampered on her way out the door to deliver the glad tidings, it was sufficient to say that there had never been a need to send another to the High King.

 

---

 

The Court was abuzz with the news of the Princess’s safe arrival within the country of her aunt’s people, so much so that if Morgana had been back in Camelot, wandering its gallant corridors with an expectant ear, she would have been surprised at the talk and dare it be said relief rushing off the tongues of the nobles and townsfolk alike to know that she had reached at long last her journey’s destination safe and sound.  

 

As for her father, he took the tidings well enough from where he sat seated within the throne room, having been interrupted in his dealings with his people who had come to voice their ills and complaints as they always did on the first Thursday of the month, this being now the golden, late summer days of September, from which he spoke his judgement in their meager disputes—something he in all honesty enjoyed profusely if only for the respect and esteem he was indubitably granted by the commoners—by his lovely daughter-in-law who navigated her way through the gathering throng to convey to him the matter of which she had read just moments ago in her chamber.

 

Once she finished, smiling up at him beatifically, Uther grunted his assent, then announced to the people that the Princess Morgana had reached Essetir, and then without so much as a word to the other Princess, his son’s wife, waved her off with a hand, and turned back to his proceedings with two merchants squabbling over a bolt of cloth.

 

---

 

And so it was that word spread from there, that Thursday the Third of September, a day of resplendent sun and fair wind, from the castle proper down to the lower town and into the outlying villages beyond of Morgana and her journey’s end, more or less to good cheer around, the High King’s quick dismissal of the matter notwithstanding.

 

When word reached Arthur, he had been coming back from a ride he had taken with Lance—something he found himself doing as of late, whether with his friend or alone, to avoid the blossoming figure of his wife, something that despite her lovely physique—or perhaps because of it—filled him with a quiet loathing, as he wished, against his better judgement, that it was Morgana, belly swollen with his first child, and not her friend in her stead, no matter the blasphemy of it all—and the glad tidings shook him to his core.  To put it plain, he trembled there in the outer yard aside the stables, as George, in a succinct and perfunctory matter delivered unto him the news.

 

“Morgana?” he said incredulously, standing there in full armor, which gleamed in the sun, Lance watching him curiously at his side.  It was as if he had not heard the manservant properly. 

 

“She is well then?  Truly?”

 

When George began to tell him of the letter Mithian had received, Arthur brushed past him without so much as a parting to Lance, and, as if in a trance, rushed up the castle steps to find, if not his wife, then this missive that had been penned in his sister’s hand, eager just as Mithian had been—perhaps, more so—to read these words of Morgana’s, telling of her stay in Essetir thus far.

 

---

 

When Mithian arrived back in her chamber, she stopped herself a moment from gasping aloud at the sight of her husband, in his mail, the sweat from his afternoon ride still glistening in his golden hair, to find his eyes scouring the parchment in his hands, as if searching the words imparted upon them for another meaning not so outright conveyed.

 

When he finished, she made her presence known, smiling now to him outright, unable to contain her joy at the sight of him learning of Morgana’s safekeeping as she had mere moments ago before the same open window, standing in that warm patch of sun as she had done.

 

“She made it,” she said then, when he looked up from the letter to find her, now himself surprised to see her there, standing at the other end of the room.

 

“Yes,” he said, the relief coursing through him.  Then again, “Yes.”  He moved across the room then to join her at the other side and taking her, quite unlike himself, into his arms, kissed her profusely on the mouth, caring not that she was not his sister, and only that Morgana was safe at last in Essetir—that was, at least for the time being.

 

When he broke away from her soft lips, tender like the petals of a rose, he held her there close to him a moment, leaned his forehead against hers—Mithian savoring this unusual, intimate touch—and he, not forgetting with whom he spent this regal moment, but rather grateful that it was with her friend that he shared these glad tidings, for he knew she loved her just as he.

 

In his head though, Morgana’s closing words reverberated like Father Layamon holding mass on Sunday morning, first the silence in which the voice rose and boomed throughout the high church walls and vaulted ceiling, reaching each layman with its judgement, its mercy, and Arthur, reading that fine script he recognized as if it had been in his own hand, knew he had been acquitted of a most terrible crime, if not the sin itself—Please give my love…to Arthur, she had written, and he knew all at once that all was not lost, after all, and that there was a likelihood he could make amends for his choice made in cowardice, which he saw now as the wrong one, however late that understanding, in which he could prove to Morgana that though his body had strayed from her flesh, his heart, since birth rather, he reflected, still and always had belonged to her.

 

When the day was done, he decided he would go unto his father in private and humbly ask his permission to take a troop of his finest men and ride north upon the Roman road to pay her a much needed visit in which to go down on his knee and confess in humble apology for the way he had had harmed her in body and soul, and there, head bowed, await her absolution, if, that was, she, his own bright, dark Madonna, would be willing to touch him, open palm to tender cheek, and wash away the sin of his forgetfulness, his lethargy, his blatant hypocrisy of committing himself to her while wed to another in her place.

 

He did not know if she would receive him then, but thought it was worth the journey anyhow.

 

---

 

But that afternoon, late unto evening, just as the sun was making its descent into darkness once more, and Uther was finishing up his business for the day, he noticed as the commoners dispersed from the throne room, one lone man stride forth and make his presence known, by going down on one knee, and taking his hand, kissing the signet of his ring, begged him to stay a moment longer to listen to his entreaty.

 

The man was Sir Agravaine, adorned in his mail and crimson mantle, the attire he had day by day took up in place of the darker colors of his father’s people since coming along with his brother to be fostered by his uncle, the great High King Uther.  It was a decision Cenred had made, goaded by his mother to allow him to come along with Gwaine, who was the true soldier between the two of them, unlike he, who ever since a boy failed to disarm his brother’s friends with their wooden swords, despite his father’s sound judgement that he would only grow more stunted down south, left on his own to defend himself, without his mother’s watchful eye to look out after him.  It had been a rare moment of compassion, Agravaine felt on his father’s behalf, one that surprised him greatly, and to which, even more so, his mother had stunned him by urging him to leave.  All his life, he thought she had loved him, how even into his adolescence, she would gather him up and cradle him in her arms, whispering sweet nothings into his ear, naming him her “favored son,” and then for her to go and dispatch him upon this ill-faired mission like one of her men, unsure whether he would see her again, it had been the greatest betrayal of his life, and yet he loved her, still, he loved her, though he had not since the day of their last parting been back to the land of his birth to visit her, although he had written on many an occasion, penned letters that were never answered, if they had ever been delivered in the first place. 

 

It was not out of his, perhaps misplaced, love of her, that he knelt before his sovereign to ask now permission for an extended leave to travel with a small escort of men—those who had come round to respecting him that was after he had at long last sparred with them and won their bouts during those warm dog days of summer—back home at last, to Essetir, with its brutish weather before the snows came once again, as soon they would arrive, and make once more the roads impassable, but nevertheless it was she he spoke of to the High King, thinking, no, knowing rather, if he spoke the true reason for his sojourn, he would not bid him leave.

 

The High King was tired from his day of dealings, of making snap judgements upon petty matters, most of which he truly found beneath the mind of a king, no matter how necessary the overseeing and how much he treasured the deference made unto him, and so when it came time for Agravaine to voice his entreaty, Uther stopped a moment in disbelief.

 

“You mean to say that you too received a missive not from Morgana, but from Morgause, asking that you return to your home country?”

 

Agravaine shifted uncomfortably on his knee.  Lying did not come easily to him, and yet he presumed that his uncle, who, perhaps in his own perception of self-importance would think rather little of his query, deeming him and the small party of men to travel at his side expendable, unremarkable enough, and replaceable besides, to be granted permission to leave Camelot and ride north to the country of his parents with few questions asked about the reason for their going.

 

“Y-Yes, Sire, precisely that,” he answered.  “I merely ask your permission to take a small band of men to accompany me in the event we meet trouble along the road.  You see, Sire, it’s been many years since I have seen my mother, not since, as you would recall my father brought my brother and me to the citadel to be fostered under your care—”

 

“Yes, yes,” Uther said with a wave of his hand.  “I quite remember.  Well, in any case, if she sent for you then so be it.  I suppose I have no choice, knowing Morgause, then to bid you leave.”

 

Sweet waves of relief poured through the knight, and the tension in his body relaxed substantially.  

 

“When will you leave?”

 

Agravaine paused, glanced up at his uncle, a man who could be as capricious in his judgement as the wind, and upon whom he thought too small a man to wear the crown which always rested atop his head, as it did now in luster of a gold that no matter how genuine, could not, in Agravaine’s estimation, make of him a king worthy of the histories.  There was no telling in his heart how much he loathed this man, and his son—though that was another matter—for the way he looked down upon him despite or perhaps because of their kinship, always belittling him at every turn, and yet in this moment he depended upon his approval and so saw no issue in playing the part of the dutiful knight, the reverent nephew, if that meant bringing him one more step closer to his ardent love, Morgana.

 

“Tomorrow, if it be your will,” he said.

 

“Then let it be done,” Uther answered, “but only if you report back to me news of how my daughter fairs.  The letter she sent Mithian was…vague to say the least.  I had my doubts about sending her so far away, but Gaius had convinced me of the urgency, insisting the need be medical…” here he trailed off in thought, then said, “If you do this, there will be a reward for your person, a place, why not, in the tournament I am preparing for Morgana’s return.”

 

This took the would-be knight by surprise.  “A tournament?”

 

“Yes,” his uncle answered.  “I have decided to wed Morgana to the winner.  It’s high time that she has a husband after all, just like it was for Arthur to have a wife in the spring.”

 

Agravaine recoiled as if he had been slapped.  Nearly a year had gone by since his uncle had promised him the opportunity of courting his daughter at the feast held in her brother’s name.  In that time, he had been much affright to approach her, and in an effort to become a man worthy of her favor, had spent the summer months training and mastering the art of swordsmanship.  But now it seemed that he had squandered his chance, for his uncle, in typical fashion, had reneged the promise he had made unto him, just as he, inspired from the news of her wellbeing, was about to ride the distance home and make his true feelings for the Princess known where he safely could do so to her in private, without that was, the overhanging shadow of her brother following him like a scourge about every bend and turn throughout the bleak castle walls.  Still, he recalled that day in the hall, when Arthur had discovered him taking note of Morgana dressed from head to foot in crimson, and the way in which he had threatened him for merely glancing her way.  That moment had stayed with him, troubling him during his days and the nights he spent idle and awake, tormented with dreams in which, well, it was too terrible to think, let alone name, but in them he saw himself standing before a gallows and his cousin on the balcony where his father would stand when he executed those who committed treason wearing his very same crown, clashing horribly with his gilded locks and austere stare. 

 

He would wake panting and drenched from such dreams, but told himself they were only dreams, just dreams and with himself, having nothing to worry about.  After all Uther was High King, not his son, and Uther, though a fool at times he may be, would never risk angering his father in such an act of parricide, not to mention dissolving the treaty that held the five kingdoms together.

 

It was a dream, he tried to shake off, as best he could, and the reason he almost gave up his pursuit of the Princess, especially with her, ironically, in the place of his rearing while he remained in the city of her own, that was until her missive came and he thought of this plan, to go to her where he could meet her own his terms and finally, at the last, confess the matter of his heart.

 

Now though it seemed like he was too late, if he had heard his uncle correctly, unless he did as he asked, reported back to this man he loathed with news of his daughter, and then only then would be allowed a chance to enter the tournament in which at last he could win her hand once and for all. 

 

He paused a moment before responding, his thoughts at once starting to clear.  If he did as his uncle asked, then maybe, just maybe, he could wed Morgana with Uther’s blessing.  He did stand a chance now, he reasoned, after all his early risings training with the dawn, able now to disarm many a man and perhaps could hold his own in such a tournament.  Perhaps, there was a chance now that he could at last come to have Morgana to hold, and Arthur, if he won fairly by the knight’s code that was, would not be able to move against him.

 

Thus, Agravaine did not question his sovereign further, but bowed his head, and nodded his agreement.

 

“I will do ask you ask,” he answered, then rose to his feet.

 

---

 

That evening Uther took his supper alone in his private chamber, and so that was where Arthur was permitted entrance as the High King’s son, the guards posted at the doors presuming the determined look upon his face to denote a matter of grave importance of which he must immediately be seen by the king.  

 

His father had finished his meal and was tiredly looking over some papers from the day, when hearing in an abstract manner, the double doors creak open and the muted shuffle of booted feet, he glanced upwards with a startle to find his son opposite him with that same determined look upon his brow.

 

“You must permit me to ride north to visit her,” he said without preamble, and Uther looked askance at his son, at first uncertain to which the her in question referred, when then it dawned upon him like the first rays of a new day sun hueing the skies and earth with a white lightning pale-fire that yes it was indeed Morgana, of whom he spoke—of course, as it always had been with him since his youth.  Morgana—he, too, remembered in the days following his wife’s death how he had cried out for her, a puerile replacement for the mother he had lost.

 

“Arthur,” he said, laying down the parchment, the sheet rustling against its fellows.  “It is late.  Talk sense.  Can’t we discuss this in the morning?”

 

Arthur faltered, as if he had not expected this turn of conversation, a halt on his grand plan, which well, if he were honest, he had not thought his objective through; it was only so that the desire swelled within him to be with her again, to know for certain that she was at ease and—at last—happy, as he knew she had not been after the blow he had dealt her by rejecting her in his cowardice, and after all he had promised her that first night they had spent together.  And of course, he was a fool for it, to not think that his father would deny him, or perhaps postpone, this request after his head was already heavy from a day of hearings and wranglings, and exhausted besides.  Deterring the conversation, he meant to have was his way of saying that no, I cannot permit this.  A softer blow, perhaps, gentler than in the way he ever handled Morgana, and yet, still the wound was there, blemishing him as if a cuff against his cheek.

 

“And besides,” his father added, unimpeded by his son’s silence, “I cannot afford to let you go.  You are my son.  My cherished heir.  I need you here and cannot waste you on some senseless mission to visit your sister.”

 

“There is trouble in Mercia,” he said, coming out with it at last.  “You will remember that we have convened on the matter of the Saxons in the east.  Well, what Bayard has done to quell their rebellion has failed.  They have started up again, pillaging the outlying villages, and we are in wait to hear whether they will need our aid.  I may have yet to send a legion of which you will be the head to quash them once and for all.”

 

Arthur stood there, still in the wavering candlelight, his face half aglow, half masked in shadow, his futile hope, what little there had been of it, a concord with his sister, if she would have him once more and take to heart his somber words of apology, engulfed as if in flame, burning him to the bone. 

 

What irony it was, the moment he thought to put aside his notion of duty, and ride out to meet her on her own terms, to where he knew, though she had not spoken to him thus that last night before her leavetaking, she was attempting to build a life without him, to heal from the wound of his broken promises, and allow the tender flesh to scab over, leaving no trace but an ugly scar, that the loyalty he felt for his king and country would come rushing back in an instant, and all would be once again as it always had been, as if he had never read her letter and the imparted forgiveness therein, the missive nothing but mottled ink upon an arbitrary page fallen in a careless heap upon the floor.

 

“Are you hearing me?  Arthur?”

 

Arthur shook his head.  “Yes, Sire,” he said.  “Clearly.”

 

“Good,” Uther replied, studying his son.  “It is settled then.  Granted, all of this could not have come at a worst time, what with how I intended upon holding a tournament come Morgana’s return to wed her to the declared winner.”

 

Arthur faltered. 

 

“A tournament?”  It was the second time that evening Uther had heard that question posed, but this time the words fell from his son’s mouth delicately, like petals from a wilted rose. 

 

“Yes.” 

 

The subsequent, obvious question was on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be spoken, but Arthur stopped himself, not wishing to query his father upon this point, finding it now, like his dream of journeying to Essetir, futile and rather hopeless.  But of course, it was there in his mind, himself wondering at the purpose of it all, even if he could already see the outcome—Morgana wed in a gown as white as winter snow.  It seemed the cruelty he had dispensed in taking Mithian’s hand would come back to bite him, and now he would be in his sister’s position as it was in the spring come to pass. 

 

Will it be spring again when this time I see her walked down the aisle? he thought despondently to himself, a part of him satisfied at least with the symmetry of it all.  The time of year used to be a balm to him in his youth, what with the apple blossoms blooming along the lakeshore come the month of May, reminding him of the days he and his sister would play there, aside the gleaming waters.  Now, he only saw it as drudgery, the pale pink petals cast in mourning, the brighter skies illusive, austere in their cold expanse above.

 

Like he knew she would be, when she would inevitably be walked down the aisle to meet for the first the strange man to lift the veil from her pale face and kiss her chaste mouth, while he watched powerless from his place of honor in the frontmost pew. 

 

To everything there was a season, and spring—what gossamer beauty!—would forever be marked in his heart with sorrow, as it had been for her, that fair day in April, when he, willingly—he must remember he had acted upon his own free will—took to hand, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death parted them, her most cherished friend.  Of course, it had been a most dreary day for him as well, despite the fair skies and the earth peeking once more with all the growing greenery that had gone dormant in those days of winter, but alas, it seemed it would come again, twofold this sorrow, just as there was two of them, he and Morgana, forever twined to mirror and oppose one another until one of them—or both, he hoped—met their cheerless ends.

 

So be it. 

 

“Arthur?” Uther spoke again, recalling his son to the nighttime present, and Arthur, though he could not sight the yellowing leaves turning from green to gold for the darkness without, remembered it was only the beginnings of autumn yet, that happy time a year past when he and Morgana had at last confessed their noble feelings for one another after another tournament—and Arthur wondered, if Morgana returned early from Essetir before summer’s end, would it make all the difference for the both of them? 

 

He felt, foolishly perhaps, the hope rekindled in his chest, that unmistakable flutter of a heartbeat, and who could blame him for being only human as he was, as we all are, dear reader, for that is what we humans do, yearn for the future, romanticize the past, and most of all, dream of the life we wish to have, if only, in a desperate act to save ourselves from going mad from the stark senselessness of it all, these rather ordinary happenings that cause us immense pain—

 

It is why we look to the stars for answer, and blame them when all else fails, and why, too, mankind dreamt up God, an all-knowing Father to glance towards in times of trouble.

 

Arthur might not be a believer, but still, he could, as he did now, recognize the pattern of things and turn them into a reason to keep going despite his meager chances.

 

If there was one chance, one in a fathomless million, he would bet on them.

 

“Is there anything else you would have of me?” his father asked then, breaking the uncanny quiet.  “Anything at all?”

 

The Crowned Prince opened his mouth to speak but knowing his wish most insane to his liege’s ears fell silent. 

 

“No,” he said softly.  “Goodnight, Father.”  He turned to go.

 

“Goodnight, Arthur,” Uther replied, his voice oddly gentle, his internal thoughts inquisitive.  He remembered a similar night nearly a year gone when Morgana had come to him begging him not to go through with Rodor’s proposition; she had been most vociferous and beseeching, Arthur, on the other hand, mute and compliant, or at least that was his interpretation of things.  They truly were alike, but as night and day, two halves of a whole, each dependent upon the other, needing in each other what he or she lacked in himself.  

 

If he were honest, it worried him at times, the lengths they would go for one another, but now he passed that thought by, unchecked.  His impression of the matter was that Arthur had conceded to his wishes, or perhaps, thought them no longer paramount given the situation in Mercia, and he knew his son would never risk the lives of civilians for the sake of his own personal wants, or at least, that was how he had raised him.

 

And so, he assumed, that was what had quieted his initial boldness.

 

He did not think then, or even come close to realizing, that when the double doors shut upon his son once more, that he was still brimming with a fire all his own, that even if the hope that he might ride north to at last be with his sister had died within him, still he held on to the belief that she would not be wed come the time when she at last came back home to Camelot, when he promised he would go onto her in secret and make amends for the error of his ways, if she would have him, as he sensed she would.

 

Such a thought never occurred to Uther, just as it never struck him to admit to his heir that what he had denied him he had permitted in his cousin, that ingratiating Agravaine.

 

If he had admitted it to him aloud in the stillness of his chamber, perhaps he would have witnessed that same fury that burned within Morgana, and being on the receiving end of its ire, come to guess the truth about them.

 

Fortunately, whether fluke or godsend, he did not.

Notes:

Finally, six months later, a new chapter. I hope you're all doing well. Wishing you a happier spring than what may be in store for Arthur and Morgana.

Jo ❤

Chapter 40

CHAPTER FIVE: And the sky gave way to black—

In the end, curiosity got the better of Morgana, and when she laid her head down to sleep that night following her conversation with Morgause, she decided, after a moment’s deliberation, to forgo wearing the bracelet she had so kindly gifted her, thinking that, perhaps, without it, she could glimpse a piece of the future with regards to the birth of her child, and thus glean what to do thereafter.  Still, though she had made it thus far, her secret intact, she could not fathom how she could possibly return to Camelot with her child swaddled in her arms, and without the whole account of her misdeeds come to fruition in the heads of her kin and people, of them, most importantly, Arthur, and then, only secondly, her father.  Her time now in Essetir, though rife with its own dangers, was but a reprieve in which she could find for herself the time to think through her dilemma, and time she would have aplenty to think, bound as she was to the north tower, now that she was—she believed—coming to the end of her term, her belly heavy so that she had to don her cloak to mask the child she carried from the inquisitive eyes of her aunt’s kith.  Not that she minded very much, for the early autumn days were chilly, the heather fields come morning laced with frost, and the cold without was damp, causing that chill to permeate her flesh and set deep into her bones. 

 

That night, after Gwen had gone, leaving with her the tonic Merlin had prepared for her in the same manner Gaius had done since her childhood, Morgana, taking hold the bottle a moment, fingering the amber vial and giving it a shake, set it back down upon the washstand along with the bracelet, her mind at last made up, but no less worried, to try and decipher what she could for her poor babe’s sake.  And so, snuffing out the candle, she came to bed, drew down the covers, and laid her head down upon the feathered pillow, awaiting, anxiously, for the moment sleep would take her.

 

When she woke in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat and shaking, she was not surprised that what she dreamt had frightened her, but only that the dream did not take hold in her mind as she intended.  She had thought, erroneously so, it now seemed, that if she thought of her child nestled in her womb, before closing her eyes, she would logically dream of him during the night. 

 

What came to pass instead was a reprise of another dream, or rather, nightmare, the one that had transpired behind her closed eyes the night before Mithian had come to her telling her that Arthur intended to take her hand in marriage. 

 

Outside, it was raining, sheets upon sheets of rain, and she was in the thick of it, clad in nothing but her shift that was itself soaked through and clinging to her skin, just as the last time, but unlike that time she had stopped running before the inevitable cliffside that looked out upon the sea. 

 

She stopped before it, coming to a rushed halt, as if she could thwart the outcome, and then turning around as if in slow motion, met the entity stalking her, there clad in the rain. 

 

She could not see his face.

 

“Who are you?” she asked, frightened.

 

He opened his palms to sign he possessed no weapon nor means of harming her. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “It’s my fault you’re dead.”

 

Dead?  The word fractured in her mind—splintered, all sharp jagged pieces—as if she could not discern its meaning.  No, that’s impossible…  She was only dreaming, just dreaming.  As if to prove it, she laid her hand upon her arm which was slick with rain, clammy and cold to the touch. 

 

Then it dawned on her.  …my child.  She recalled another dream, the blood between her legs. 

 

“…Are you, my brother?” she asked, looking back up at the man in the rain, but her vision clouded over, overcome by fog and mist.  There was a searing pain in her throat, her trachea burning as if she could not grasp enough air, followed by a hollowed clangor that trembled and reverberated as if deep within her bones.  

 

---

 

Morgana scrambled out of bed, tripping over the entwinned sheets that lay in a heap at its foot.  She fell to the floor, cursing herself and the dark, for it was too dim to see, the moon without obscured by a veil of cloud. 

 

Fumbling for the washstand, she threw her hand upon it, nearly knocking the bowl of water over, as she reached for the cuff, slipping it at once upon her arm.  Only then did she realize she was breathing—in and out, and in again.

 

There was a muffled noise, followed by the door creaking open to reveal Olwen, her face lit by the taper in her hand.

 

“Are you alright?  I heard a shout—”

 

Morgana sighed, herself relaxing in the presence of her aunt’s maid.  “…Yes,” she answered, then pausing a moment, “I think so.”

 

Olwen nodded.  “Should I wake the Queen?”

 

Morgana frowned, herself in her fright not yet able to make sense of the maid’s question, her mind still fraught with the nature of the dream, its uncanny implications.  For a moment she doubted the scene before her was living reality, and then when she laid a hand upon her arm to test the theory, she discovered it trembled, and taking that as her proof enough, understood as of yet, she was alive and well, though no less distraught by that realization.

 

“…No,” she said at last, realizing Olwen had spoken, thinking this an appropriate response.

 

Olwen’s eyes darted towards the bracelet upon her wrist, then up at Morgana again.  Her eyes softened with knowing.  “The Sight came upon you, did it not?”

 

Morgana paused, then nodded.

 

“It—It was a dream I had before, only that before I thought it was a dream, but now—”

“You’re not certain.”

 

Again, Morgana nodded, then held the cuff close to hand, grasping it tightly.

 

“I—” she began but stopped herself.  At first, she thought to explain her intentions, that she had willingly gone to bed without imbibing the sedative—and without wearing Morgause’s gift upon her arm—with the plan, as if these things could be controlled and shifted by her will, of glimpsing in the vision to come before her some clue in which to solve her predicament, to come away from the birth of her child safe and unharmed, yes, but, more importantly she was realizing, to not leave him behind in this desolate place that was a far cry from the luxury she had known back in Camelot.  She could not bear it, the mere thought of him being raised without she as his mother, as she had spent the vast duration of her youth and adolescence bereft of her own, and yet, she had not received an answer to her quandary in her dreamscape, but rather another deleterious outcome—or so she thought—if she continued down this path as she had done without thinking of the consequences of her actions, or rather, turning a blind eye towards them along the way. 

 

Now though she trembled to meet them; and yet what else could possibly be done but accost them on her own terms? 

 

Still, she had a question for Olwen, although she did not necessarily trust her aunt’s maidservant nor her aunt for that matter, but as she understood her predicament she had little choice in the matter than to safeguard a little of her troubles to the each of them.  

 

“Does…the Sight,” she began, trying out the word on her tongue.  Morgause had ensured her that her gifts were not wicked, and yet, the child in her, the one who was reared in Uther’s Court, could not help but wonder if this had ever been considered synonymous with witchcraft in the days leading up to the Purge, and that mere thought alone, however unsubstantiated, left her skin as clammy to the touch and herself rather chilled to the bone as she had been in her dream. 

 

Again, another such vision with its fractures of images surfaced in her mind, bubbling hot with ire—a burning pyre, and above the cries of the crows, the hallowing sound of bells clamoring the new dawn.

 

She recalled it as the start to everything, and now with what she knew, she wondered if this would be how it ended.

 

And so, swallowing her trepidation, she amassed the courage to continue with her query. 

 

“Does the Sight,” she began again, finding her voice now, “always show what is destined to come to past unhindered?”

 

Olwen watched her cautiously above the darting flame. 

 

“Sometimes,” she said at last, and Morgana knew she was offering her solace.  “But I wouldn’t know of such matters personally, as I’ve never been gifted with the ability.  Yet, from what I’ve heard spoken in whispers from the village folk and in snippets from the Queen, these matters are not always set in stone.  At least it was her belief that they could be thwarted, changed if one understood what she was seeing behind her eyes.”

 

Morgana nodded.  So, as certain as the sun would always follow the night, there was hope, even for one as wrought and wretched as she, and her eyes flickering shut a moment, behind them witnessing in a blur the dancing flame in Olwen’s hand, she heard the bells again, saw the dappled light streaking through the mass of clouds, and comprehended that this balance of justice and mercy must be what it felt like to be cradled in the open palm of God.  The urge was in her then to take up her rosary, and recite the prayers along with the mysteries, “Our Father Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name…”

 

Morgana’s eyes flicked open, her mind resolute.  “…Thank you,” she breathed.

 

“Will you be alright?” Olwen asked, uncertain, yet not compassionate.  Morgana had the sense that her question was one of a servant’s formality, expected and uttered as if by rote routine, or perhaps, a morbid curiosity.  Once again, she missed Gwen, her dear friend sleeping somewhere amongst the corridors of this strange keep, yearning for her genuine companionship as opposed to this inscrutable woman’s austere front, and counted herself blessed to have in her what many could not hope to have in a lover, a husband, then she thought morosely, a brother. 

 

“Yes,” Morgana said, strangely becalmed and at ease.  “I believe so.”

 

“Alright, then,” Olwen answered, her face impassive.  She turned to go, and in her hand the light left with her, leaving Morgana once more cloaked in the darkness of the night and its impassible shadows.

 

“Olwen,” Morgana said as the maidservant stepped through the door’s threshold.  “Please don’t speak a word of this to my aunt, if you can.”

 

Olwen nodded, “Yes, Mi’lady.  You will find that I can keep a secret.”

 

With that she was gone, the wooden door shut behind her like a mouth.  Morgana could hear the patter of her footsteps down the stairs, and the squall of some nightbird out the window.

 

Once more, she laid a hand over her womb, this time tentative, but no less heartfelt. 

 

She wondered if it was truly so that she must die to give birth to her child, that like her father had spoken, echoing the words of the clergymen in the small, yet no less opulent church near the citadel, that in magic, something had to be given, sacrificed, if you will, in exchange for what was coveted. 

 

She had coveted her brother, and then, though she had not the words for it, yet alone the understanding, her brother’s wife. 

 

And now her child, was that simply punishment for the sin?  Her belly was swollen, yes, but not nearly as obtrusive as a healthy woman’s would be by her seven-month—that she had observed anyhow most obsessively amongst the women of the Court in the doldrums of the summer to pass, even as she had panicked internally to be amongst them, wondering, always wondering, and fearing, if they could guess the secret of her plight—or perhaps a healthy child, and that, now that she was safe within the tower walls of her aunt’s keep, that thing that she had considered most fortunate, that her belly had been hidden well beneath her dresses to safeguard her vain reputation, was a sign that something was not quite right with her unborn child, perhaps, due to the nature of his begetting, and for this she felt a qualm of unease for her own selfishness, for not thinking something was amiss, wrong even, despite in the earlier months her having had Gaius’s assurance that all was fine and well, her circumstances notwithstanding.

 

But Gaius was no longer here, nor her father, or the priests she could almost foresee herself going to in a time of need to ask their blessing of her child through the screen of the confessional in the church back home in Camelot, no matter the risk, if, she was coming to realize, they could be trusted.  Here there was only her uncle who presided over this outpost, more like a jester than a king, and in this desolate scape she thought this land Godless, the only means to salvation harbored in the smooth wooden beads of her rosary.  It was as if God had left these poor people, and her, to fair on their own against the harsh realities of the locale they lived in.

 

But, it dawned on her, as she made her way to the bed, to seat herself upon its covers once more, thumbing aside the curtains to look at the window at the lightening skies beyond, this land for whatever it seemed to lack in a fatherly, stern presence, seemed full and lively and nearly magical, though a part of her feared to use the term, with a feminine power all its own, and that excited her to the core, and allowed her to ponder there within the circular room whether this was the secret of her mother’s lineage that she was a direct recipient of, that her dreams, whether premonitions of their own accord or the stuff of prophecies—although she deemed herself no prophet; how could she be for being a woman?—were some kind of magic all their own, and this thought, the thought that was more difficult for her to comprehend than the love she had harbored for her dear brother throughout her life, left her exhilarated and exhausted, afeared and delighted that she had been chosen for something just as he had been, that she had been borne for something more than what she once thought in the spring to be her sole purpose, and that to be the vessel through which his child would inevitably come to life and draw his first breath—quite simply, to live.

 

But that was the thing with the visions, they always shifted and changed; she could never be certain of their outcome, although what a fool she was for not understanding until this moment, that that conclusion was always death—whether that be the death of her child, whom she loved in spite of the reckoning God raged upon him, or herself, or dared she think it, Arthur.

 

Her fingers touched the cuff upon her arm, tracing the swirls of its patterns, another question upon her mind. 

 

She had always been taught to put her faith in God, to trust in His master plan and its every turn and unfolding, and yet, with all that faith, she, it would seem, had been borne wrong, just as she suspected her child would be so borne if he survived the birth, at least in her own childlike understanding of His teachings that had been passed down throughout the centuries; that with faith there was no need to utter a word of witchcraft or magic, her father forgive her for even possessing the thought within the well-wrought passages of her mind.

 

Yet, on the other hand, those who walked the left-hand path, desiring to bewitch and charm, those devilish arts that she had been reared to fear and hate, she could not fathom the point of it all, if in the end, the witch could not circumvent her own demise, for surely that was the end, at least on this earth for the lot of them, for all of them, whether borne peasant or king. 

 

She supposed that had been why all those years ago those followers of Christ had adhered to his teachings, the miracle of his resurrection, eager for any hope that they too could follow him into a life beyond this earthly toil and live again.

 

She could understand the appeal, had been raised to believe it, and yet had she not forsaken that truth for having loved as she had only too well her very own brother?  Certainly, if she were to die in the childbed as she had only inferred from her past dream, and now having witnessed the ghost of herself walking the space between the worlds, if it was in such absolutes the outcome of her uninspired life, then certainly, she was barred from it, that everlasting goodness, that other kingdom, the land of milk and honey—

 

Simply put, her body would rot in the ground, in an unmarked tomb, and no one would come to roll the stone away, nor would she possess the power to do so herself.  She was no prophet, and God had damned her—from the beginning, it was clear now—and so when her time came, it would be hellfire, or a waking purgatory, she was sure of it, and so—and here the very thought crept like a chill down her spine, so what if her visions bordered on the diabolic?  If once damned, why not be damned twice?

 

But she still believed in that omnipotent Father, like her own father with his laws and decrees, and in praying, prayed to Him most vehemently to save her anyway, despite the answer written in the skies, and the dripping pools of wax from the tapers, as a child would do.  She was a petulant child, a wayward girl, who could not resist the temptation splayed before her, thinking she could simply ask forgiveness for the way she erred, and then do it again, the cycle unbroken. 

 

She would not accept the judgement to fall upon her, and certainly would not stand for her own sins to mark the tender flesh of her son. 

 

And so, she decided, as she ensnared herself within the sheets of the small bed of the north tower, she would see what promises she could make to safeguard her future, and then once she did return home to Camelot, determined she would pay a fine price for the salvation of her soul.

 

The very thought eased her slumber, and soon she fell asleep, unaware of her aunt’s gift still wrapped around her wrist.

 

---

 

Elsewhere, that night, Merlin woke from a dream of his own.  It was strange, unlike any he had witnessed before, and yet, at the same time, oddly familiar.  Its fragmentary nature made it appear like any other to transpire behind his open eyes, but the scenery, so crisp and clear he had never beheld in his waking memory, and yet, still, it had felt like home, like the coming home this journey back to Essetir had been for him these past few weeks he spent, though within a band of men, mostly with himself for company.

 

He recalled a quaint room in a castle not unlike the one he, most unfortunately, found himself now residing in, and outside the bird of which his mother, Hunith, told him often as a child in Ealdor, as mothers do, she had named him after—why, precisely, she never said, although he did try his best to coax the answer out of her, only to be met with a obscured look before she returned once more to the housekeeping at hand.  He had assumed the reason he was so named had to do as well with the mystery of his father, another matter of which Hunith never spoke despite her son’s eager questions once he grew old enough to know that every boy and girl in Ealdor had a mother and a father, and yet each time he begged her for the truth, she became more or more dismissive, always finding a way in which to change the subject or send him upon some household chore or errand, until one day a few years back, she had sent him to Camelot, where once he was ready, she pledged, the truth would be revealed to him.

 

He had thought of course, again another boyish assumption, that Gaius had possessed the knowledge that his mother had refused to acquaint him with, and so once he grew comfortable with the physician, he had begun asking him the same questions he had asked her, only to be met with the same noncommittal replies, just as cryptic, if not more so than his mother’s, except for the matter of his magic.  That had always been a subject of much discussion between the two of them, though still guarded, taking place only in thoughtful whispers in the late hours of the night, when all, or nearly all, the denizens of the castle were tucked away in their beds and fast asleep, and that, for good reason.

 

Now once more in his home country, though farther north than he had ever travelled before, he sensed a strangeness to that magic as if it were more alive through his veins, or perhaps, as he, ever in tune with himself and his body, noticed that once they were on the path out of Camelot, traversing the road out of the larger city, and he found himself once more, awed and amazed by the forests, the glens, the rivers and lakes the party passed by unremarked upon, that he found himself remembering of how the uncivilized land in all its sublime beauty was brimming, buzzing, stirring and rousing with the scent and the power of magic, the same magic that lived and breathed in him.  A magic that had dimmed and diminished within him within the stone walls of the citadel back in Camelot, always with the overhanging threat of Uther’s ire, if ever he learned the truth about him and his gift; simply, now once more kin with the nature around him, he felt that gift renewed within him once more, and so he drew in that petrichor scent of earth and rain with relish and delight and most of all, the breathtaking sense of freedom. 

 

It was the only balm to distract him from the true purpose of his leaving his friends and Arthur, always Arthur, behind, so that he could now serve fully his most spoilt and unhinged sister, whom he alone, aside from Gwen, poor Gwen, he thought, understood the length of her transgressions and the depths of her sins.

 

It was enough to twist and turn his stomach, the ungodly nature of the child in her womb, and yet he had vowed as Gaius’s apprentice to serve those in need, to never use his knowledge for ill or to harm a life, as he well knew the herbalism he employed could kill as easily as save a life from death, and as much as he had prayed that Morgana would have simply took the rational way out and imbibed the emmenagogue that ill-begotten day he found himself poised to knock upon her door and be invited in, and spared them both the grief to come of it all in the end, he in the days leading up to their journey could not find it within him to slip it into the tonic Gaius and he prepared for her for that would be to go against everything he had pledged and break a promise to Gaius, to himself, that he could not permit himself to do, as much as that one act would have spared so many lives and himself the recollection of how that one deleterious response would change the future indefinitely.

 

But when he woke that night, unbeknownst to him, later than Morgana, in the near morning light to imbue the skies with a rosy hue more breathtaking to him than the stained glass of the small chapel within the citadel of Camelot, himself rubbing at his eyes, as if to wash the sleep away, it was not within a quarter of the keep, but rather in a small bed he had made for himself within King Cenred’s stables—for he after befriending the stableboy, Tyr, that took care of the horses to reside there, decided to encamp himself there on a simple loft of hay rather than slumber within the still air of the castle, where he felt he would inevitably be watched by the prying eyes of the servants under Queen Morgause’s watch, a woman, whose eyes had met him with a rather queer stare despite their amber color, an infinitesimal parting of lips until her mouth closed again, that day they had disembarked, now at their journey’s end, and he had aided her men in the retrieval of the Princess’s things, to bring them back up to her new chamber, that was even smaller than the one back home, from where he had the most misfortune to look up and spy her watching him from one of the keep’s oblique windows.

 

Since that moment, he had taken to avoiding her, choosing to forgo her hospitality for the hayloft, what with the eerie feeling to come over him each time he spied her in the corner of his eyes, watching him.  He knew nothing of this woman, could hardly recall if Arthur even knew much about her, except for the fact that he had from Morgana that she had attended their mother’s funeral, one of the rare occurrences when she had visited Camelot; for the most part it was said, and this he gathered from the villagers he eavesdropped upon, that she rarely left this bleak outpost as if she preferred the galling winds and gray sea over any semblance of the luxury to be found elsewhere for a woman of her standing.  In this, Merlin could hardly blame her, although still he favored the summer fields of Ealdor to this harsh coast, what with its honest people and the everyday pleasures of ensured work.

 

Over the days he lent a hand to Tyr with the horses, and the few moments when he worked to prepare the tonics for Morgana just as Gaius had taught him, he wondered whether Morgana had done well by trusting her aunt with the birth of her child, for that was the true reason for her stay here, despite the false truth she had told of the plaguing nightmares to visit her in her sleep, which he knew all too well was true in its own accord.  Certainly, he found this woman could not be trusted, what with her shifty nature, her watching eyes, traits that if he were not blinded by his own sense of earnest good will, and the memories of his mother, he would have had the sense to recognize in himself.

 

That morning though, near dawn, he roused himself from sleep, eager to put his hands to work to still the onslaught of worries to occupy his mind, the fading memory of the dream to visit him in the night causing him to smile as he planned his day ahead. 

 

He missed his mother, more so than he ever did in Camelot, perhaps for being so close to her, and so decided as to distract himself from the toying grief, to visit the Princess in her tower.

 

---

 

The sky lightened, and with it, the gulls began to cry, waking Morgana to the day.  As she rubbed what was only the residue of the dreamless sleep she had thereafter from her eyes, she gave a short gasp of surprise to see of all people neither Gwen nor Olwen, but Merlin, in his hands a thick heel of bread dipped into an earthenware bowl of soup.

 

“Good morning, Mi’lady,” he said softly, then in his awkward manner which Morgana had witnessed time and again with how he behaved with her brother, he lifted the bowl he held secure in his hands, gave a nod towards her, adding sheepishly, “I thought to bring up your breakfast this morning.”  He shifted uncomfortably.  “It’s a bit of bone broth and some rye bread.  I know you’re used to more sumptuous fare, but—”

 

“Where’s Gwen?” Morgana asked defensively.  Though she had nothing personal against her brother’s manservant, still she deemed it unsuitable that he visit her at this early hour, perhaps for propriety’s sake—though there was little propriety to be had given her predicament—perhaps for her being a woman far from the comforts of home, clad in this morning hour in nothing but her shift, her belly heavy with child besides, and so it was for that reason, upon this realization that as far as she knew Merlin had yet to discern the full extent of her situation, she piled her mother’s quilt and the bedsheets higher about herself, as she peered down at him in a suspicious manner when he gave no quick reply to her inquiry.

 

As she did so, Merlin looked away, above her to the window and the gray light penetrating the sheers. 

 

“I intercepted her in the kitchen, saying I wished to speak with you.  She didn’t like the idea at first, but soon relented when I convinced her that I needed to as, as…” here he faltered a moment, the sweat, despite the coolness of the room, dappling at his brow.  “Well…as a replacement for Gaius,” he finished softly.

 

Morgana’s eyes went wide with recognition, as she recalled the moment of her leavetaking a month or so back now, specifically Gaius’s words to her in their parting that Merlin knew only what he needed to regarding her circumstances.  Then in the hustle bustle of embarking, and what with her clouded emotions regarding Arthur, she had not given much thought to his words, had not the time to, and due to that, they had slipped by her unremarked upon, but now that Merlin faced her head on in his feeble way, a heady wave of understanding reverberated through her head and flickered bright in her eyes—

 

He knew about the child, but how much?  She had no means by which to predict what he knew unless she pressed the question to him, demanding an answer, but that in turn led her to the next inevitable thought about the father of her babe, which such an interrogation on her part could easily cause her to let slip the truth thereof.  Still, the thought hung about her like a darkened horizon, portending storm, and rain.  Could he possibly know that it had been Arthur to sire him?  But no, she felt her body briefly ease for even Gaius had not known that.  If he had, he would not have tended to her, would not have safeguarded her secret as if it were his own, or if he had known, he would have insisted she aborted it immediately, as opposed to permitting her the choice to do with this new life what she would as she willed it—like God.  Morgana’s hands trembled as she clasped them together in an effort to steady them.  What a fool she had been to think that Merlin had accompanied her all this way as a front by which to deliver her needed tonics for her nightmares, which if last night was any indication, she still suffered from, but still she had not surmised that Gaius had confided in him the truth, or at least his fractal version of it—by the grace of God with its most damning element removed—so that he could pick up where he had left off, which would be she supposed to aid her in the birth of her child, now only a month or so away…

 

She shivered, then dropped her hands upon her knees, looked up at the manservant wide-eyed.

 

“You knew, all this time.  Gaius—he told you—”

 

Merlin took a step back, his hands now trembling of their own accord, the broth threatening to spill over the sides of the clay wrought pot.

 

But fortuitously for Merlin, Morgana went on with her accusation turned to hushed relief, as she gave a weary sigh, the wave of fear passing over her as if, miraculously, all at once.  “…He told you what he needed to so that you would be prepared…Merlin, I—I’m so sorry.”

 

Merlin swallowed his own relief, then, in a moment’s intuition that he had mastered like any magical art, he moved to seat himself upon the bed next to Arthur’s sister and handed her the bowl of broth and bread.  “Here,” he said, giving it to her.  “This will help.”

 

Morgana gave him a wry smile in return, then fumbling with the spoon, dipped it into the bowl and brought it, shakily, to her lips for a taste, and, mastering that simple act, returned it to the bowl, hungrily, for another, and another after that.  The bread she chewed thoughtfully, thankful for the strange kindness of this moment, only now considering just how famished and hazy she became when confronted with the very worst of her fears.    

 

When she finished, having sopped up every last drop of the broth with the bread heel, Merlin took the bowl back from her and set it absently upon the floor.

 

Morgana’s eyes glistened as she watched him.  “I’m sorry you had to come all this way on account of me, that you, like Gwen, had to leave your home.”

 

He watched her cautiously, then said, “I don’t mind a little adventure now and then.”  He paused, and a silence fell between them, before he added, “Actually, you may not know this, but I come from Essetir, not here where your aunt lives, but in a small village farther south called Ealdor.  We passed the road it turned down on our way here, so in a way with this journey, you’ve given me a homecoming.”

 

Morgana knew not what to say to this, just watched him, poised for the truth just waiting to be spoken plain before them, hanging thick in the air like heady smoke from an untended fire causing the surrounding fields and foliage to burn in a blaze.  Still, she felt a strange easiness with him, as if now hearing him speak, she had discovered a kinship, and she could see why her brother adored him so.  She had never thought to behold such gentleness in a man, and she felt the difference, as opposed to the men she knew in her short life—Arthur, her father—most welcome.  On that account, she thought then, that she knew not many men, or women for that matter, outside her immediate family, not intimately anyhow, something that most people she supposed would consider rather strange, although not in the slightest, she conceived, the most peculiar thing about her.  The thought passed her by, overtaken by the susurrus of the wind without and the storm deep in the recesses of her mind.  She looked up at Merlin and without preamble, her hands moving of their own accord, without thought, dropped the sheets about her waist, revealing the curve of her stomach, the presence of the child nestled deep within.

 

She watched him watching her, observed the small intake of breath, his lips parting until his mouth closed thereafter, and then the look in his eyes, so blue as to be a twin of her brother’s—was it awe? astonishment?—so bright therein with disbelief at her action—though of course, she reasoned, this must be the only sensible approach—until they deadened to that stormy gray of impassiveness by which she understood was the means by which he controlled his response to those matters outside his domain.  If only she had been ruled by such an exacting mind!  Perhaps, it would have spared her the anguish that was only caused by her and due, in time, by her when the dreadful tale must come to an end, as it would for each and every one of them—

 

Outside, she heard the spray of sea against the black cliffside, the roar, the crash, the inevitable sinking back, the waves dissipating into stillness as if the havoc had never been.

 

She spoke, her voice self-assured in the deadened calm of the room.  “Merlin, I know not what Gaius told you, but you must swear to me that you will never tell a soul that this,” she said, her hands tightening over the swell of her belly, “is the truth of my coming here.  I can’t hold you to it.  I have neither the power nor authority, but I ask if you are any friend to my brother, you will take this secret to your grave, as I intend to.  Do you swear it?”

 

Merlin opened his mouth to speak, pausing pensively, then nodded.  “I swear it, Mi’lady.”

 

Morgana nodded, dropping her hands from her stomach so that they fell comfortably atop the quilt and sheets.  “Good.” 

 

“Mi’lady,” Merlin said a moment later after that uneasy silence that fell between them had long passed its due, “I am loyal to your family, of that I give you my word.  I came here only to help you, just as Gwen has.  She is like a friend to you, and…so am I.  That I promise.”

 

Again, Morgana nodded.  “I hear what you say, and I thank you.  But forgive me for saying that you’ll have to prove it to me.”

 

Merlin glanced downwards.  He gathered up the forgotten bowl and spoon, then, sensing that their exchange was done for the time being, moved to stand and excuse himself from the confining tower room. 

 

He swallowed thickly.  “Then, Mi’lady, I will demonstrate for you just how much.”

Chapter 41

CHAPTER SIX: In which, a visitor approaches the keep

The late summer days of September came to pass in a blur of ordinary monotony as each day for Morgana could be summed up in a matter of a few commonplace tasks that followed the same mundane routine: she woke late with the sun, went to bed early in the evening, and in the moments that formed her day, those ever diminishing hours of daylight—and even rarer, sunshine—kept herself confined as her aunt suggested to the tower room that was to be her home for the interim until it came time for her to give birth to her child in the autumn.  There was little for her to do to occupy her mind in those last days of her pregnancy, except to fret over the future, which since the night of her dream? vision? whatever it had been, she decided from then on to sleep only with her aunt’s bracelet wrapped securely about her arm (in fact she never took it off, not even to bathe in the days she requested a basin in which to wash away the grime of idleness from her flesh) so that her nights were full of restful, rejuvenating sleep, something she suspected both she and her child would need aplenty in the coming months ahead. 

 

But as for her days, they grew to become a bore even for her, she who was quite used to spending her days shut up in her chamber back in Camelot, whiling away the hours as her fancies and apprehensions worked their way within the dark passages of her mind.  She daydreamed, that could be said, often, thinking of home, her past with Arthur, the way they had left things; she still felt the ghost of his farewell kiss upon her cheek; and when it was quiet in the afternoon, when she thought not a soul could hear her say the words aloud, she whispered sweet nothings to her unborn child, telling him—or her, she would remind herself—of their adventures as children growing up in Camelot where the land was bountiful and temperate, so unlike this northern outpost against the tumult of the sea.

 

She was not always alone.  There were the moments when Gwen, ever so steadfast Gwen, came in to visit her, whether to bring by her meals or simply because Morgana craved the companionship that could not be found in any other, not her aunt nor her maidservants nor Merlin, though, she did find herself confiding in Gaius’s apprentice more and more as he came prepared when she needed him most with a good ear and the right medicine to alleviate any of her discomforts, though of course, not once did she confess to him the truth of her predicament, even as the question hung about them like a noose, dangling in the air, as if pleading with each or the both of them to hang themselves with it. 

 

Still, Morgana never let slip that Arthur, her most beloved brother, would be her father’s child, just as Merlin never confessed that he knew him to be so, allowing for many an uncanny quiet to fall between them when they were alone together in which each seethed with his or her private thoughts that could not be so spoken; it was a strange wonder that in spite of this, the both of them, somehow, became almost, in a nonromantic way, enamored with the other—not friends, and certainly not lovers, but companions of a most distraught sort; theirs was the kind of bond that only the lengths of great, tremendous peril could possibly cause two so outwardly different persons to unite under a common cause, which was the child in Morgana’s womb.

 

As for Gwen in all this, she too sensed the discomfort when she intruded upon their encounters in the tower room that Morgana inhabited day after day after day and into the night.  Although she did not know nor could alone surmise that Merlin knew the truth about Arthur and his sister, for not even Morgana fathomed that that truth had been revealed to him that very night he stood listening outside her brother’s room as they had so shamelessly consummated their love for one another in the darkness therein—once she quietly thought to ask if Morgana had spoken to Merlin about the circumstances in which she had come to be with child, to which Morgana replied in a sharp undertone, “Of course not!” which caused Gwen to drop the matter altogether, especially when a knock came a moment later in which Olwen had relayed a message from Morgause, shutting them both up at once.

 

It remained then that Gwen when sighting Merlin with Morgana would excuse herself to set upon some chore such as the washing so as to avoid them together for the uneasiness it caused, which deeply injured her as she used to feel such simplicity in her acquaintanceship with Arthur’s manservant, the both of them sharing a sort of understanding for being the closest confidants to both the Prince and Princess of Camelot, in their early years working in the castle side by side.  She wondered if Merlin missed those easy days, those days when they would casually greet one another with a wave and smile in the halls as they hurried through the corridors tasked with many an important errand for the High King’s children, like she did, most deeply.  But those memories of her own innocence, or rather ignorance, of the siblings’ dark secret, when the work of serving the Princess Morgana had been taxing physically but not emotionally wrought, she never knew if Merlin too ached for that time, for if he did, he never spoke of it aloud; in fact, the two of them rarely spoke to each other at all during their time in Essetir.  When they did it was only a matter of necessity relating to Morgana’s needs.  Because of this, Gwen missed her previous friendship with Merlin most grievously, the distance between them only causing her to long for her family and home even more.

 

---

 

As summer’s end approached, the days were shriller in Essetir than they had ever been back in Camelot in Morgana’s memory; if they were chill in late August, then they were downright dreary, dismal and grim by October, especially cooped up as she was in the north tower without a fireplace by which to keep warm, and so Morgana found herself donning her cloak, even indoors, and piling up the blankets about herself as she lied in bed, waiting, just waiting for all of this waiting to be over with.

 

She did not suspect the visitor to approach the gated keep come as the last leaves were falling from the trees, deadened, blackened things that molded in the damp.  All that she knew was the morn she took her soup with Gwen in her chamber, as they chatted in soft whispers, that outside there was an unaccustomed holler and shout of someone’s arrival.  She thought it only some messenger, perhaps with news from Camelot, unfortunately tasked with riding to this desolate place in a less than fortuitous clime, but as she looked towards Gwen and asked her to find out the source of the commotion, her brows furrowed with worry, and then a dreadful hope lit in her chest amidst a sharp pain in her abdomen at the thought—could it be? Arthur?

 

---

 

The misfortune was that it was not him, but Sir Agravaine dressed in Camelot’s colors to be permitted at once through the fortress’s gate, along with the small troop of knights to accompany him under the banner of the gold dragon.

 

When he arrived before the black iron gate alongside Sir Pellinore, Sir Caridoc, and Sir Bertrand, the guard posted there recognized the knights of the High King first, and Agravaine, King Cenred’s younger son, and a prince in his own right, secondly. 

 

But it was no matter to Agravaine.  What would have only been a bruise to his ego years ago held no virtue by which to wound his pride.  It had been many years since he or Gwaine had returned home to Essetir, and he internally was so infectious with anticipation for seeing his mother, yes, his father, he supposed, but mostly to share a peaceful stay with Uther’s daughter in the country of his own people that he was practically afire with desire, burning inside with that internal flame like the solitary flicker of a candle in the window at night by which a knight followed his way home to his lady, which the poets name love of the highest accord.  

 

He would be alone with Morgana at last without the prying eyes of his companions to disparage his reputation nor Arthur with the strange malice with which he regarded him nor with the austere gaze of the High King, his uncle, overseeing them all in this dance of courtly romance, and at last in his own homeland he could slowly, softly, delicately coax his most noble lady into falling for him in return; he was certain of it.

 

The rumors went that she had journeyed here not for love, like he now had come all this way—for her, his inner voice thrummed in the back in his mind—but on account of her health and mental wellbeing, and so before embarking, he thought to pick a red carnation from the Court Physician’s garden and pin it to his breast, to serve as a totem of his feelings, by which he prayed, that if the petals lasted along the journey, without drooping, without wilting, then once he presented it to her, it would be as sure a sign as any that the love between them was pure and true and just. 

 

All throughout the journey the carnation had remained so attached to him, staining his white tunic when they camped beneath the trees in a deluge underneath his armor a bloody red about his heart; some of the petals fell, but most of them had remained, and this he took as an indication of their eventual courtship to come; they would have their trials, yes, but the love would be there, as it had always been there for him.

 

He could remember it as if it were yesterday, the moment he had arrived in Camelot alongside his elder brother Gwaine and father, sighting there in the courtyard the High King, his stern presence, and then to either side of him, his children, the young Prince to his right on account of whom Gwaine had straightened his shoulders aside Agravaine so as to leave a good impression, and to his left the Princess Morgana in a gown as white as the hawthorn blossoms in May. 

 

She had appeared to his young eyes then such a delicate creature, her skin so pale as to be sickly, and yet when she had stood there next to her father, it was with the strength of fine sinew and bones and an angular grace that marked her jaw, nose, and cheek, again so fair and such the contrast, he had immediately observed, with the dark sable of her hair and those eyes! so verdant as to be the highland glens in summer; to him, she had seemed ever since that first meeting to belong to the wild, more so than this civilized place, but he could never figure if she were the huntress or the prey, wolf or doe, or of a different ilk altogether, like a crow of carrion, if only because of her coloring.  

 

It had haunted him since that day, this inexplicable need to classify her as if she were an unknown fauna, or something akin to the sprites his mother had spoken of in the tales she had whispered in his ear before bed as a child, warning him not to go out into the night or else be devoured by them, and certainly it disarmed him that day, as he, no longer listening to his father and uncle as they went about their introductions, focusing mainly on their heirs, that in that moment, he felt forgotten, he saw her shift her eyes curiously over towards him with a tender look, and he felt in his breast that he was not alone, that she too, hungered, as he did for some sort of acknowledgement from her father, as he did his own; that in another way aside from blood, they shared a kinship of anonymity.

 

Except the moment passed, and he was too much of a fool, or at least full of naivety, overwhelmed by the Court of Camelot and all its impressive goings-on, to notice that her interest had slipped in that moment, over in the blink of an eye.  She had greeted him just as Arthur had done with a curtsy and a nod, but only when prompted by her father, and with that act of decorum out of the way, excused herself to retreat oddly enough to her own chamber, making some remark about the strength of the sun being too overbearing causing her need to lie down, though it was hardly blistering without, and certainly would not be so for a young woman such as she dressed in her fine linens, compared with the rest of them men standing in their armor.

 

Truth be told, he had been much relieved in that moment for her going, if only because he himself could not contain the swell in his heart at the sight of her, hoping that she had retired on account of the synergy of their one moment together—echoed years later in the dance they had shared the night Arthur had been crowned the tourney’s champion—praying that it too had been too much for her, in itself a response most narcissistic, but only of the sort of a boy such as he had been, and still very much was, who lacked any sense of confidence or pride.

 

His mother had always said he was a deeply sentimental child, more privy to reading romances of knights and their ladies than actually training to becoming such a knight of the realm and certainly, his father spoke disparagingly of his book learning, saying it was nothing like “the real thing”—by that, he had meant killing a man as much as wooing a woman—and he said he better wise up and take his training seriously or else he would end up with a dagger in the back, he was sure of it, and so they had bickered, his father and mother, each preferring him to be a different sort of man, and perhaps, he had wizened because of this, but most importantly, dear reader, when it comes time for the end for Agravaine as he stood silent in that darkened cell awaiting judgement in the light of a waning moon, it was on account of this splitting within him that brought about his fate, as much as that rapture within him the day he first beheld his cousin on the castle stair. 

 

Now though he was a far cry from that man, though no less pitiful or to be pitied, as he strode through the muddy yard in his fine clothes, eager to be welcomed home by the women he loved, and though he had hardly been respected in his youth in his family’s home, it had not been any worse than his time in Camelot had been, and perhaps for the familiar territory, and with the support of his fellows, he strutted past the main entrance toward the side quarters belonging to his mother with nearly an arrogance similar to that of his elder brother, or even, though he would hate to admit, that obnoxious cousin of his.

 

---

 

His mother, who always had her way of knowing things—what was to happen and when it was to occur—seemed not at all surprised by his sudden presence within her sitting room that gray morning, the fire roaring in the hearth the only light by which they could greet one another.  

 

Nor did she appear overly sentimental in her addressing him, this the first time since he was a young boy afraid to accompany his brother to Camelot to be fostered alongside him there, though indeed this was the son she strangely preferred to Gwaine, who was boorish and all too reminiscent of Cenred, the man she had wed not out of any sense of love or devotion, but out of her own thirst for political gain and power.  It had suited her well, she supposed, and certainly, the sheer distance from Camelot enabled her to practice her craft in relative secrecy and remarkable peace, so there was that, despite the morose conditions.  Certainly, it had given her Agravaine, her son, in every sense of the word, her youngest and most shrewd even with all his cowardice—perhaps, because of it—which caused her endearment towards him, where all else, including Agravaine himself, saw only faults to be corrected.

 

Still, beholding him in the antechamber, dressed not in the colors of his father’s people—nor hers for that matter—but in the High King’s garb, her eyes glazed over with an aloof sense of coolness, though not without an intermingling of pride.  Her thoughts these past weeks had been most circuitous, spiraling in and out and in again, mesmerizing like a triskele, as she consulted the bones and scried in her pool of water, searching for the answer that evaded her as if obscured by mist, and then even taking up the more ordinary measures of observation, attempted to glean from her niece the nature of her predicament.  Who had fathered her child?  It was certainly a dangerous question to pose, one Morgana would lie if she had to in order to protect the man’s identity, and more importantly, her own reputation.  Morgause knew; she had been there herself, and so was perplexed why the girl had not prompted Uther to wed her off when she had the chance, when all of this could have been sorted and arranged in a snap of the High King’s fingers and be done with. 

 

It was the first in a long time that she had been jealous of Igraine’s abilities; what she would give in these bleak autumn nights for the Sight to greet her in dreams, inspiring her decisions with visions of present, past, and future; instead, she had turned to the craft she had nurtured but the flame reflected in the bowl of water was merely fire and the bones only gave nonanswers, frustrating to be sure, and that perhaps, because her mind was murky with another question, and that being what to do with regards to her illegitimate son, unbeknownst to the High King, his eldest.  Now that he was here in Essetir, she had knelt within her private chamber and prayed to the dark mother, the Great Goddess, who had given birth to them all and to which they would all return, to display her son within the waters so that she could surmise what to do next, but the Goddess had been playful with her inquiry and displayed her youngest instead, dear Agravaine on route to visit his cousin, her niece, who now resided within her keeping.

 

She alone knew how he felt about the girl from the years she had scried upon the water, the dancing flame in its reflective surface, burning brighter in his adoration of her, and now that he was riding with an urgency homeward bound not to herself, but to this child of a woman, it infuriated her maddeningly to be so replaced in her son’s heart—but then again, there was the question of all these different factors and factions—and all on account of her inane rivalry with her sister in her youth—that Morgana, Merlin, and Agravaine would all come to meet under the same roof and all because of her own meddling in matters the Goddess, the great weaver, seemed to say that she should not have toyed with.  Still, Morgause would not be thwarted, and certainly, she would not bow down to Her Will.

 

Instead, she would continue to play with her and her sister’s children like the marionettes they were, and in time, with patience, the way forward would be revealed to her.

 

So, no, she was not surprised to see Agravaine standing before her that gray October morn with that boyish look in his eyes and nor was she particularly overjoyed nor displeased to see him.  Simply, she offered him a goblet of the spiced mead she had been up to then enjoying on her own and insisted he sit, after his weeks of riding, and let the mead work its way into his body, relaxing him enough to speak of what she already knew, the reason for his visit—Morgana.

 

---

 

“Mother—” he had begun, the pain in him welling up in his throat.  For all the years to have gone by, Morgause appeared the same, as if she had not aged in the time since last they spoke, when he nearly hated her for sending him away to become the man, he now realized, he was grateful he now was, if only because it had readied him for this moment by which to at last admit his feelings to the woman he loved.  And yet, the ache was rife in his chest for in all that time, despite all the letters he had penned, Morgause had never written him, and yet now, now that they finally stood opposite one another, still, after all that silence, she remained unmoved. 

 

“Sit, Agravaine,” she said only, and only then comprehending his own weariness, he sat, obediently, as always in the chair she proffered for him.  After he had downed his cup of mead and she had filled it again, then she too sat next to him across from the hearth.  She watched him lose himself in the flames. 

 

“Look at you in the High King’s colors,” she said passingly, as if the picture of him sitting before her, alive and in the manner of her own choosing, were an affront to her personally.  Then, before he could open his mouth to reply, she said, silencing him at once, “I know what brings you here,” she said after a time, and he glanced at her startled, though he knew he should not be so, not when it came to her.  He had and would never know how she accomplished it, but there was a way by which she knew every thought in his head as if it were written on his face in ink—perhaps, it was magic of a sort, like the vile rumors of her he sometimes heard whispered about the halls of the keep as a child—all lies surely—and even rarer spoken in the citadel of Camelot, or perhaps, it was only with the cunning a mother has when it comes to her child; he preferred the latter explanation.

 

“And I will promise you that your heart will only break if I tell you the truth.  I will not permit you to visit her.”

 

Agravaine lurched to his feet.  “Where is she, Mother?  If you sensed the reason for my coming before I arrived, then you must know I will not leave without speaking to her!”

 

Morgause clicked her tongue.  “Don’t cause such a ruckus.  It’s beneath you.  Oh, my dear son, I say this to only spare you the grief, but it seems you will give me no choice.  Morgana is with child.”

 

The color drained away from Agravaine’s face despite the rosy sheen both the drink and fire had lent its pallor, and he staggered backward on his feet. 

 

“No…” he began, then shook his head disbelieving his mother.  “No…that can’t be—”

 

Morgause’s look was triumphant, and Agravaine beheld her for the first time for who she truly was, a fox-faced Queen of wiles, not the loving mother he grew up fancying her to be. 

 

“Would I lie to you, my son?  What good would that cause?”

 

“B-But—” he stammered, protesting, but seeing the look in his mother’s eye, he knew she had spoken the truth.  It was so unfair! he wanted to lay his head upon her breast and cry; after all he had been through, the insults and defamation, and then the trials he took upon himself all to win back his reputation and prepare himself for this moment to at the last admit his feelings to the one he loved above all others, it was too much for him to bear, and he crumpled on the floor before his mother, the tears unbidden streaming down his cheek.

 

“There, there,” she said, ruffling her hand through his hair, eager to have herself foremost back in his heart.  “Don’t waste your tears, Agravaine.  Instead, listen to what I have to say.  I’m sure Uther wants to know.”

 

That caused him to stop his sobbing, and stare at her perplexedly.  “You knew he would only permit me leave if I took news of-f her back to him?  That it was my only chance to take a place in the tournament by which I could win her hand?  You knew, and still, you did not write to impede my coming here?  All this time you never wrote back?”

 

“No, of course not,” Morgause lied.  He was not speaking sense.  Though her study and practice of the craft were great, she could not have foreseen all of this, but it was well she supposed to learn the truth of the matter from him in his aggrieved state; it would suit her purposes perfectly.  “But Agravaine, you must listen to me.  You cannot be spouting your cousin’s circumstances to Uther.  You hear me?  No matter what you feel inside in this moment.  I ask you to think first and recollect your thoughts.  To feel the power I have now gifted you.  That knowledge, far be it from me to tell you how to use it, to either inspire her ruin or thereby ensure yours.  All I ask is that you take the route of caution.”

 

Her words fell upon him with such an urgency that they throttled him out of his stupor, and so he gazed up at his dear mother with a newfound comprehension in his eyes.  This was larger than he and Morgana, and always would be given their positions as the lesser of their fathers’ children.  But still, he could not help but gawk at the mere thought of his beloved impregnated by another man; simply, it did not add up with her virtues, and so, since she had not sought to marry the man in question, he came to the erroneous conclusion that she had been taken by force—it was the only explanation that made sense to him, that this had not been a matter of love—and that mere thought alone boiled his blood on her behalf, that there had been such a man to do this to her and leave her with no choice but to flee to his mother’s country in order to safeguard her good name; he himself knew enough of that to sympathize with her, and so the anger in him moved away from her—where it should never have landed—and towards the man to have fathered her child in such an ungodly manner; Who could it have been?

 

Before he could think upon the matter further, as images of the High King’s knight and guard conjured up in his mind like ghosts, his mother laid a soothing hand upon his temple, causing him to meet her eyes.

 

“I see this news doesn’t change anything for you, my son.”

 

He pushed her away, and her hand fell with an air of despondency, of rejection, back to her side. 

 

“No, it does not,” he made out stiffy.  Then, in a more assured manner: “Perhaps, quite the opposite.”  He swallowed.  “Tell me for I must know so I can challenge the man to have done this to her, who was it?”

 

“That I can’t seem to figure out,” Morgause admitted, and Agravaine frowned; usually, he could count on his mother to provide him with the answers to what he inquired, but this, he supposed, was a different matter altogether.  Certainly, if Morgause had put the question to Morgana bluntly, the poor girl would have kept quiet in fear rather than name her rapist aloud.  “I have lent Morgana the use of my maidservants, Olwen and Freya, hoping that with time she would relax enough around them, and the secret would eventually come tumbling out of her mouth, but the girl is smarter than that.  She knows they are an extension of me.” 

 

Agravaine nodded.  “So, she protects the man to have put her in this situation,” he said dejectedly.

 

“It would seem so,” his mother replied.  “I’m sorry I don’t have an answer for you, Agravaine, not yet anyhow.  What will you report back to Uther?”

 

The knight looked up at his mother, the Queen; he had forgotten that his uncle had asked for news of his daughter what with his thoughts being preoccupied with her tragic deflowering.  He could not get the images out of his mind—first he saw Maleagant, that brusque vagabond of a man who had no place serving as a knight of Camelot, throwing himself down upon the Princess as he ravished her, and the thought caused him to nearly double over sick—certainly, he was a dreadful brute, and he personally despised him given the way he treated him, but still would he stoop so low to harm the High King’s daughter?  It was absurd, but all of this was absurd, to think Morgana was here in his home somewhere, heavy with a vagrant’s child, instead of back where she belonged in her chamber.  He remembered then the days he had spent watching her at the window of her room as she leaned upon the sill daydreaming, her dark locks falling to one side of her head, and the urge he had felt to call out to her that he had suppressed out of his own shame he felt for being who he was, Gwaine’s craven younger brother who could not hope to one day earn glory in battle.  It had all been so emasculating, causing him to look at her from afar, praying for the day he could one day make his feelings known to her.

 

But no one seemed to notice his pining for Morgana, not even Gwaine, who, too, had been noted to comment upon her beauty from time to time—it seemed all the knights seemed to adore her from a distance for being the Prince’s pious sister, taken up with her bible as she had been in her adolescence as she spent her days tucked away in her chamber reading, and perhaps, he would have noticed that he had not been alone in the awkward adoration of her as this saintly figure, for surely there were other knights such as he, both young and besotted, to long for her, though they knew she was verboten for being the High King’s daughter, knights like Lamorak and Owain, now that he thought of it, and so perhaps, he should never have felt so ashamed in his yearning for her—no one who noticed, except for the Prince that was, and just like that the moment he spotted him watching her in the hall came back to him with all the disquieting unease it had caused him.

 

But that was impossible; he was Morgana’s younger brother, happily married they said, with a child on the way, and heir to the throne.

 

Certainly, no matter his personal grudge against the man, he would not jeopardize his future nor his sister’s in such a twisted, downright evil act of adulteration.  It could not be, so he pushed the vile thought from his mind. 

 

After all, his mother was waiting for him to speak.

 

Agravaine sighed, resigned.  “May I stay here awhile, Mother, to have the time to think in peace?  I feel I am at my wit’s end, and after all this riding, it would be nice for the men to have time to rest here before we return to Camelot.  A week is all I ask.  After that I will entrust to you what I will tell my uncle; I promise you that.”

 

His mother’s brow furrowed.  He could tell that she would much prefer it for him and Uther’s knights to be gone, and yet, he knew there was a part of her, that was pleased by his presence there.  He was betting on that part, however, infinitesimal it seemed to him ordinarily, to outbattle the other.

 

“Very well,” she said at last, considering him sincere in his request.  “Although I remind you that you must resist the temptation to see her.  Think of what it would do to her to have you see her in such a state?  If you love her, you will do good for all of us by staying away.”

 

The knight gave a solemn nod.  That he did understand quite well.  Morgana came here as a last resort, because she, in effect, possessed no other choice, and so the least he could do, if he was to be a man of the Knights’ Code, was to allow her this privacy. 

 

“I know, Mother,” was all he said.

 

---

 

When Gwen returned to the turret chamber Morgana occupied, her face bore the look of someone who had seen against her better judgement either a specter or a ghost.

 

“Oh, Gwen, what is it?” Morgana asked, her heart leaping in her chest at the sight of her maid standing in the doorway.  “Do come in and say, who gave that shout?”  Internally, she squirmed to think of her brother here in the place of her refuge, so close to the truth of her predicament and learning of the child she carried for him, followed by a second pain searing in her womb.  As much as she feared his knowing, a part of her, however miniscule, yearned for that very outcome. 

 

“Is it…is it Arthur?”

 

Gwen closed the door, and rushed to Morgana’s side, grabbing her hand to stop her lady’s frantic pacing.

 

“Worse, I’m afraid,” she answered.  “I spied them from the kitchens.  A contingent of the High King’s guard.”

 

“What?  Here?” Morgana announced fretfully.  “Whatever for?”  She laid a hand then over her stomach to soothe both she and her unborn child.  “They don’t mean to take me back, do they?  Don’t tell me that my father sent them here for that very purpose?”  Her hands reached for Gwen and pulled her close to her side.  “As much as I long to be home, I’d die if they forced me back now.”

 

“I-I don’t know,” Gwen said, “At least I don’t think so.  From what I overheard it seems that the visitors come independent of you.  It’s Sir Agravaine, you see; he’s come home.”

 

Morgana pulled back dumbfounded.  “Agravaine?”

 

So, it was not Arthur to come riding through the gate, desperate to be with her once more as she ached to at once be reunited with him, no matter how her secret, the one she had kept so devoutly for his sake, would be laid bare and exposed for him to see—the truth of her child, their child in her womb—and here, a dreadful pang burned through her and she doubled over, seeing visions, not of Arthur, but of a different man to have arrived within the gate at this untimely hour, Agravaine—and she recalled then, with a sense of dread, how her brother once said the man desired her, and the revelation lit in her mind like bursts of pale fire that he had arrived for the sake of her and would then be the one to witness the ungodly truth she had strived and traveled so far to safeguard, unless, of course, her aunt were to prevent his coming here to the tower room she had occupied in that daze of days blending into days on end.

 

“Morgana are you alright?” she heard Gwen cry out, her hands reaching out for her, and she herself not understanding her alarm let alone the reason for it.

 

Agravaine, Morgana lamented again, this time internally, viewing once more in a flush of embarrassment, then panic, the dance they had shared the night Arthur had been crowned champion of the tournament.  Oh, what a fool she had been to lead him on that one, singular night, burning as she was with envy and zeal for her brother who had taken as a dance partner that Sophia in shared spite, leaving him to believe what she had let slip from her mind and that being that she cared for him as a lady would her chosen knight so that now he had ridden this way through wood and gorge to reach her side, at this most inopportune time, now that—

 

She gasped, then gazed down in shock at her soaked nightgown and then at the water upon the floor, followed by another acute pain in her abdomen.  It was then that she knew that her efforts had been futile, the baby was coming now.

 

Morgana looked up to meet Gwen’s eyes and witnessed the same understanding mirrored on her face.

 

“Send for my aunt,” she said.

Notes:

Thank you all who have read this far and continue to be interested in the story. I know it's taken me probably too long to write but I've had my own health issues during this time and so coming back to write and revise the third part has been its own bear for me to work through. I hope you liked this latest installment. And yes, finally, Morgana will have her child, for good or for ill.

Chapter 42

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Birthing

In the bedchamber of the girl who would not be High Queen, her things still packed and sorted in the trunks they arrived in, as if she knew this place would never be her home, slept the Nemeth princess alone, her husband resting in the room next door, and though she rarely dreamed, this night her brow furrowed with deep thought at the images to flicker behind her closed eyes; in her hand, curled up as if a protective amulet, was the single sheet of parchment that contained her dear friend, now sister’s written hand, the spilled ink that she found her fingers tracing with longing in her absence, their motion a single prayer that she prosper wherever she now may be and come back home by the spring.

 

If Arthur clutched at the handkerchief during that midnight hour, the loneliest for a solitary soul, then Mithian, devout, had picked up her letter where he had dropped it in that maddening moment that he, in his shared eagerness to at last have a word from his sister, rushed to her side and uncharacteristically snatched her up and kissed her full and precise on the mouth, and kept it at her bedside ever since. 

 

And on those most loneliest of nights, when Arthur could hardly spare a look at her, let alone share a word, she would retreat to this small chamber and reread its contents, as she waited eagerly for her friend’s return reply to the letter she had written to her that day hers arrived.  So much had happened and yet not at the same time since then.  The days were growing cooler, the nights longer; a full season had passed, and now summer was nearing its end, the russet leaves falling, leaving their branches bare, and down by Avalon, where sometimes the Nemeth princess rode alone to find for herself some peace of mind, the apples hung bountiful in the trees and the lake shimmered, sharp and still like the glint of a blade, and sometimes she would spy herons flying overhead.

 

It was there on the sandy shore, as a wave kissed her knees, that she would recall the story Morgana had given her for her safekeeping, of the wishes that would one day come true if spoken aloud here, and there she would kneel, praying that the cruel world be kind to her husband’s sister, knowing in her heart that her wish would be answered, if not by God, then by the spirit of this place that had no name.  It was enough to simply speak the words, and then retreat out of the misty grove, silent as a shadow.

 

---

 

But the way the divine plays with mortal lives can be an underhanded thing, and Mithian, who up to this point, had hardly acted with spite, would soon find herself punished—or so how she would come to see it, going down to the small chapel on her scuffed knees before the altar of God demanding Why? Why me of all things?—for no reason, and it began that day and into the night Morgana labored and labored in the tower in Essetir, amidst the commotion of the maidservants to rush to her side, whereby the quaint silver bracelet somehow found itself removed from her wrist, granting her sight in the bedlam to the life of her friend back home whose soul it would seem, as much as Arthur’s, had twinned with her own.

 

---

 

Morgana was incoherent, her long locks sticking to her face soaked through with sweat and moisture from the day, her body arched at a terrible angle, her skirts drawn up, her legs splayed, as Olwen and Freya attempted to restrain her upon the bed in the dank tower room, the both of them hustling about, fetching water and damp cloths to assist her in the birthing; Gwen stood at Morgana’s side, holding her hand, gently coaxing her on through the dreadful pangs of labor, all the while frightened, that something was far from alright. 

 

She gave Morgana’s hand a tremendous squeeze and begged her to hold on, reassuring her that the child would be born soon.

 

---

 

But it was not the pain in her womb, as each contraction seared through her body as if ripping it in two, that left Morgana in that thick, disjointed daze, but rather the images to flash behind her lidded eyes as the dusky twilight fell into night. 

 

Something was not right with her child.  She remembered this was so as if in a dream, or between the two states of dreaming and waking, her soul hovering out of body, out of form, someplace else and that place was the small quaint guest chamber back in Camelot, where another princess lay collapsed in agony upon the cold, stone floor bathed in blood.

 

---

 

“Get her to the bed,” the physician said, and then she felt Sefa’s arms wrap around her, gently guiding her to the bed that had been turned down, and for a moment she spared a thought toward the sheets, not wanting to ruin their ghostly sheen with the red that soaked her nightgown. 

 

“Where’s Morgana?”  Somehow, she felt she must know—how she failed, how her last hope had crumpled in a heap, the remnants staining the floor.  It was like a girl’s secret she must confide to a childhood friend, real or imaginary, she could not tell but speak it she must into the deadened night silence or else remain trapped in this room, this moment, with all that she had lost echoing hollowly through the walls and deep into the crevices of her mind.

 

“Mi’lady,” Sefa said softly, “Morgana is not here.”  Then she looked towards the physician for guidance.

 

“Go wake Arthur,” he said, and promptly her maidservant left to do so without another word.

 

---

 

Arthur? Morgana thought between breaths.  He’s coming; he will be here soon.  But what dismay she felt knowing the disapproving look she would spy written across his face at what she had done, at how she had lost their child.  Once more, she feared he would turn away from her and she would be lost, back in that chamber of her own in Camelot with nothing but the sounding shut of the door locking her in, as her mind caved in upon her.  What had she done?

 

But in the darkened quiet, it was Gwen’s voice to answer her.  “Morgana, you’re not speaking sense.  Arthur is back in Camelot.  You need to push now.  Here.  Take my hand.  And push.”

 

---

 

Arthur came at once to his wife’s room dressed in his sleepwear.  His face was still as he gazed upon Mithian who likewise gazed vacantly back at him. 

 

Sefa had told him what had happened, but still, by some morbid curiosity, he lowered his eyes to the floor where the bloody, half-formed remains of his child lay.  It was a grisly business, and yet he felt not sorrow but sweet, guilt-fraught relief.

 

---

 

A great bellow slipped between Morgana’s parted lips as she pushed and pushed as Gwen instructed her, her teeth clenched in a grimace.  As she did so, she felt herself returning to the pain of her body, the agony grounding her once more in the present.  Her child was fighting for his life within her, traveling through her carnal flesh, determined to come out the other side and be born this October night. 

 

“I see the baby’s head,” Freya said, her voice elated, unconcerned.  That was a promising sign that the baby had not turned in her womb; if that had been so, the complications would have been disastrous.  Despite her delirium, she was certain that thus far the birth was as orderly as a woman could hope for in such a fraught time when many, both woman and child, died in the pangs of labor, upon the birthing bed.

 

Morgana could not believe it.  In the last months of her pregnancy, she had dreamt of losing her child, of his delicate, desiccated body slipped between her legs before his time, and the nightmare had haunted her, plagued her with dread that this one piece of Arthur that she would be able to keep for herself would be gone to her too, and then what would she have?  

 

Still, the child was not born yet, and so she did the only thing she could do, and that was to push and keep pushing until the pain began to lessen, to ease, and Freya was there to catch the child as he came tumbling out of her with a cry at the sudden gasp of air to meet his lungs. 

 

“You have a son, Morgana,” Olwen crooned, and just then, in the near dawn light, a raven cawed, once, twice, thrice, startling them all.

 

But Morgana was too weary to pay much mind to what was then an omen.  Euphoric with relief that the pain was over, that her child was safe, she fell against the bed pillows, thanking the Blessed Virgin that she had done it.

 

Gwen gave a cry for the other women to come close, for just as they were snipping the cord that attached babe and mother and awaiting the afterbirth, she pointed towards Morgana’s face where a trickle of bright red blood drained from her nose down her pale cheek.

 

---

 

Throughout the long night that was to be the night that Morgana delivered her child, Morgause did not once visit her poor niece, but rather purposefully stayed away, having sent her closest servants and informants in her place.  If truth be told, she did so, only out of a petty, self-serving need to be away from the bloody business, to find respite from memories of the three times she had labored likewise that threatened to close and cage her in with their unpleasantness, but more importantly, to mull over what to do next about Agravaine.  

 

Having placated her youngest son, she knew he would retreat, weary from the long journey home, to his childhood chamber this night, and there sleep till the morning while the women of the household worked late into the night to best aid Morgana in what was no simple feat, but one of primal necessity that no matter how much women feared it, could not be escaped.

 

Morgause only donned the veneer of a Christian woman for sake of propriety; her prayers were only offered up in pretense, a façade of meekness and modesty she never once possessed before the God of not her own choosing—yet, this night, it could be said that, for lack of better framing to describe the concept, she prayed that the birth would kill her dear, foolish niece, so that she could keep the child and raise him or her in a manner of her own design.

 

But of course, it was possible, if the girl were to live, that she would entrust her child to her, unable to return to Camelot and feign innocence of her role as progenitor otherwise.  Uther, the Court, everyone of import, would know her for the unseemly woman she truly was if she carried her newborn home with her, and a liar besides.  For all Uther’s own rashness, perhaps because of his egoism, he was not a man to be made a fool of; neither, as a woman, was Morgause, she remembered, chiding herself for her own poor decisions in her girlhood, as jealousy of Igraine had warred inside her against her better reason.  Perhaps, that was what lent her harsh judgement upon Morgana; they were, in truth, the same.

 

But Agravaine—it was one thing to have told him the truth about Morgana’s condition, another to confide in him come the morning about the birth of said child (assuming he or she lived, another possibility, that if the child were not to survive longer than those first few breaths would rather tie up this strange chapter in all their lives most neatly).  Frankly, she feared his reaction.  Though he was not Gwaine, prone to his drunken brawls when cast in a sour mood, so alike his brute of a father, she thought derisively, she still sensed that the gentler of her sons by Cenred shared somewhat in that darkness, perhaps not outwardly, in a man’s way, but with the internal discord she understood well within herself, which meant he was all the more unpredictable and, therefore, dangerous.

 

And so, as was her habit in such moments of profound significance, she retreated in the midnight darkness to her inner chamber whereby she consulted her scrying bowl for guidance.  As the candle flame danced and darted upon the water’s cool surface, she spied within her mind’s eye none of her children, but the true object of her mutual vexation and desire—Morgana, her body arched in orgasmic ardor, her lithe fingers gripping at the bedsheets, and her mouth gaping open in a silent, sultry ‘o,’ and in the flickering candlelight to illume the darken space, a man clearly pleasuring her, and of him she could spy within her mind’s third eye a head as gold as the crown that sat upon High King Uther’s brow—and then, stunned to silence, as the vision just as quickly dissipated upon the water, she understood neither much nor little, but just enough to at last piece together the mystery before her. 

 

The last image to press into her mind was of that lone candle in the window aside them, flickering, hedonistically bright, and, outside the night, a wintry gale blowing snow upon snow and snow. 

 

---

 

In the dark of the hayloft, Merlin woke not to Tyr’s snoring as he was acquainted with from time to time and growing more accustomed to, but the silhouette of a young girl, one of the Queen’s maidservants, the smaller one, Freya, a lit taper in her hand, as she rustled him awake with the other, pressing a finger to her lips.

 

She had urged him to come at once for Morgana had begun her contractions hours ago, but she and Olwen had decided it best to wait till dark to come fetch him so as not to alert folk to the situation, especially with the commotion of Agravaine’s unexpected arrival earlier that morning; Merlin was surprised that she knew where to find him, but then as the eyes and ears of the Queen, he assumed she and Olwen knew more about the denizens of the northern outpost than they let on.  Accustomed to being awakened in the dead of night to aid Gaius with some medical emergency or another, he rose at once to follow her up the darkened stairwell to Morgana’s chamber.

 

It was there that in the dark of the room he had prepared raspberry leaf tea to aid Morgana in her contractions and waited nervously as Gwen brought it to her lips to drink, and then when that was drunk, he helped the women to wet linens for the birthing, always making sure to keep a steady eye on Morgana.

 

Though the hours seemed to pass by in slow motion, the birth went rather smoothly, at least from the viewpoint of a physician in the making, such as he, despite his reservations about guiding a birth without Gaius’s expertise, and in no time, Morgana had given birth to what appeared to be a healthy son; Merlin could have been proud, almost, if the circumstances were different.

 

But that was far from the whole of it.  Merlin could see the looks the women exchanged as Morgana twisted and turned upon the bedspread muttering to herself about the child she was near certain she was about to lose, or else be born dead, perhaps herself passing with it, that something else was at play this night, something dark and nefarious and far from natural; only they and he knew what it was, though no one spoke it so, breathed it life into that still, darkened room aloud.

 

Magic.  It was magic.  He was certain of it, and not of a kindly sort.

 

---

 

Aroused by the images to flash before her eyes upon the water, Morgause acted at once and hastened to craft a poppet out of beeswax in the likeness of her niece.  It was rather rudimentary and simple; she had not the time to snatch a hair from her pretty little head, and so, without the necessary taglock, breathed into it, christening it the Princess, and thus linked it with Morgana.  All this she did out of frustration and spite, and more than anything else to safeguard the feelings of her dear and hurt Agravaine. 

 

The ceremony done, she found a rusty nail among her jars of oddities and, by the light of the candle, drew it in and out again of the wax womb, uttering under her breath to curse her child so that he be killed in the uterus and come out of her body in parts, a bloody, grotesque malformation of the wickedest evil.

 

---

 

As Morgana thrashed and screamed in the tower room and Merlin and the women tried to hold her down, something snapped within his mind that this was dark magic at play, the sort of sorcery he had only heard Gaius mention with a shiver and made him think in a odd sense that maybe the High King had been right to ban the craft, and so in the scuffle, he threw off the cuff about the poor girl’s arm which she had told him days before when she caught him studying it had been a gift from her aunt.  In place of this he slipped between the mattress a small keepsake, a rabbit’s foot, which Gaius had given to him long ago for luck, and thinking of his kind, elderly mentor, he passed on its prowess to the poor Camelot Princess and without the need to utter the words, enchanted it to protect her this night, only because it was the right thing to do.

 

---

 

They had urged Mithian to rest, both Gaius and Sefa, and seeing how wan and waxen Mithian appeared in that loathsome chamber, Arthur felt the relief drain from his body, replaced with true horror and he crossed himself.  He knew women could lose children, but the look that crossed the physician’s face told him that this—this miscarriage—was something downright foul and sinister, if only for the quiet, sudden way it had come on, as Mithian had readied for bed, after rereading the letter from Morgana, or so she said, no overt signs, no warning. 

 

Gaius assured him he could return to bed, that both he and Sefa would wait with Mithian and inform him if the already disconsolate circumstances turned for worser still, and Arthur, though he knew the husbandly thing, no, the humane thing, would be to sit through this calamitous night alongside his aching wife, but the air in the room felt too still then, thick and cloying with a dreadful, clammy chill, and so, having this out, he stepped out of the room, and returned not to his own chambers, but stole down the stairs to Morgana’s room, where stepping through the door, he remembered wistfully having cried with her as a child as if upon their mother’s lap.

 

He had brought a candle into the dark of her room, and setting it down upon her vanity, watched as the simple light illuminated the space and all within was just as he remembered, just as she had left it the months before her journey north, and for the first time in a long while, he felt the tears well in his eyes at her absence, and he was a boy again.  What he would have given then just to speak with her once more, to have her hold and shelter him now, she his sole safe haven, as always, against this shroud of darkness gathering and brewing about them as if a ferocious, violent storm though the night without was still, uncannily still as death itself.  

 

A wry curiosity stirred within him then and passing his hands over the table, the mahogany sheen, he drew his hand down to the drawer where he knew she kept her private things and pulling open then the first drawer to the right, he spied a simple book within.  He picked it up at once, recognizing it even in the intrepid dark as her own bible, one that matched his own. 

 

Laying a hand upon its leather cover, he let out a deep sigh—

 

“God, bring her home,” he said, but there was no answer.

 

---

 

Now, sore and aching, Morgana woke as if from a dream that had not been a dream.

 

It had happened again, just as the night she dreamt while sleeping, her dear, beloved brother copulating with her, just as dear to her, bosom friend, and while that night had proven to her just as ugly and verified by Mithian’s telling, so, she suspected, this night must be in a sense true as well, as horrific and glorious a thing that was to be, and to understand. 

 

The seer’s gift had come upon her once again as the contractions began and her memory of the labor fractured with that of another aching woman’s.

 

“Mithian,” she whispered then, bringing her hand toward her face to touch the dripping blood she knew would be there, and brushing her hand against the crimson, felt some solace that she was right.

 

“Shh…” Gwen hushed her, moved to keep her from scrambling out of the bed.  “You need rest, Morgana.”  She looked toward Merlin for confirmation, but Merlin’s eyes darkened as he gazed at the Princess, assessing her.

 

“No, we should leave,” he said, “and quickly, before they come back.”

 

By ‘they’ Morgana assumed Olwen and Freya, the women whom, in her moments of coherence, she recalled having aided her in birthing her son—her son!—Where was he?  And why was Merlin suddenly beside her, stoic in his admittance that they should leave, as if they could suddenly pack up and head for the forest in the dark on their lonesome.  Where would they go?  Back to Camelot?  She with a newborn? 

 

In the empty spanse it took Morgana to piece those thoughts together, Gwen had gone and returned carrying a small, swaddled bundle in her hands, which she brought before Morgana.

 

Morgana gasped, then brought a hand to her mouth as if presented with a gift, and unable to contain the mirth on her face, she took what only was to be her little child into her arms to hold, peeking down at his little face who stole his first look upon his mother.

 

She laughed, then touching his nose, said, “Hello little guy.”

 

Then she studied him, taking him in, his delicate features.  Olwen or Freya, or perhaps, the both of them had washed him and swaddled him up in a patchwork cloth of mismatched linens, and as she brushed aside the cloth, she gasped again in surprise at just how much he resembled herself, what with his fuzz of dark hair atop his head and fair skin, pale as bone, everything was herself mirrored in him, except for the eyes which were as striking a blue as the Lake of Avalon in summer, and which were—entirely—Arthur’s.

 

The similarity caused her to weep.

 

Over her shoulder, Merlin kept his eyes locked on the door that led down the turret stairs. 

 

“Merlin, what is it?” she heard Gwen ask.

 

Without turning back, he shook his head.  “Nothing…just a feeling.  Something’s not right.  The birth—”

 

Morgana looked up at him then; his body was tense and rigid, set on edge.  She held her son closer to her. 

 

“Merlin?” she braved.  It could be many a thing that worried him, which in turn worried her.  Her bloody nose for one, the way she had cried out for Arthur, for Mithian—Mithian, did that mean, her child was…gone, and with it her deepest, most profound wish—and then as low as she felt for her friend then, the guilt now rippling within her as if a stone pitched into troubled water, as she held her own son close and dear, and looking at him held secure in her arms again, watching those bright blue eyes watching her with immaculate curiosity, she feared the worst of everything, that somehow, Merlin had seen it too, that trifling familiarity that all but shouted he belonged not just to her, but to Arthur.

 

Merlin opened his mouth to speak, but it was too late.  They heard the thundering of footsteps upon the stairs and then the door swiveled open revealing neither Freya nor Olwen, as Morgana hoped, but her aunt, Queen Morgause in a scarlet gown, the color of flesh and gore.

 

For a split moment, but a fracture in time, they were all silent, unmoving, each with his or her own private revelation.

 

“Forgive me for not coming sooner, niece,” Morgause said simply.  “My maidservants entrusted to me that all is well and good and that you have now a son to call your own.  My blessing upon you, dear, the both of you.”

 

If she were home back in Camelot, Morgana would have smiled, but here far from what was familiar, and never the more vulnerable, Morgana only bowed her head in gratitude.  Something within her, some woman’s intuition, or that of a witch’s, prompted her to shield her son from this relative of hers, whom now, despite the months she had spent as her guest, was still but a stranger to her.

 

“Leave us,” Morgause said then, and Morgana watched helplessly as Gwen withdrew from the room and down into the dark stairwell; Merlin left as well, but his gaze never left her aunt’s as he did so, and, Morgana thought, in an instant that caused her blood to run momentarily cold, she spied in the corner of her eye her aunt scrutinizing him in return.

 

When they were at last alone, Morgause drew closer to the bedside, and Morgana, trembling now from what she only told herself was exhaustion from the labor, gazed up at the Queen in a wolflike fashion, just as a wolf mother would to shelter her newborn pup against a spectral danger.

 

Morgause made no inclination to sit upon the bedspread which was stained with blood and sweat and excrement.

 

“You did it,” she said with a wicked grin, that changed the features of her rather stoic face most obscenely.  “You survived the worst, the trial of traversing from maid to mother.  Now we must plan what to do next.”

 

“Yes,” Morgana acknowledged; the dreaded conversation here to come at the last.

 

“While you are welcome to winter the darker months here—both I and my husband extend our hospitality towards you until you can make the journey back to Camelot in the spring—you know as well as I that you cannot possibly hope to go home with your babe.  There is no excuse you can possibly make, no reason you can dream up to explain his existence if the two of you were to arrive bumbling in that carriage at Uther’s door.  And so, I say, let me help you, once again.”

 

Morgana nodded, steadying her gaze.  “I’m listening.”

 

“Good.  You see a rather unfortunate, fortunate thing has just occurred.  One of the kitchen girls, gave birth last night, just like you did, except, luckless as it was for her, but lucky for you, the poor child, a girl, was born dead—it happens—and so I offer you a way out.  Let her assume mothership over your babe, let her nurse him and console him, and in all ways call him her own, and I promise that all the while I will watch over him, shelter him, ensure no harm comes to him; I give you, my word.

 

“All the while I will write to you how he fairs, and give you little apprises of his growing up, making sure that he learns his letters and knows his way with a sword—I will take a special interest in him—until the day comes as it did for my sons to ride south to join the High King’s guard, at which point, he will finally be yours and then it is up to you to reveal to him or no, the truth.”

 

Morgana was struck silent by this, as she listened quietly, even as her son began to squirm in her arms, demanding what she thought to be his mother’s milk, and then, her face caved in to howling grief, and she cried, and cried, that, while she always knew deep down that she could not possibly have her child to keep, some part of her had hoped against reason, against fate that this would not be so, that this delicate, fragile, innocent part of her, of Arthur, the proof of their love would be hers to cherish and to hold as he grew into someone brave and honest and wholly good—which they were not—and it was as if that spark within her, that incandescent flare that had burned so brightly during her pregnancy had gone out and died, and with it the hope of a better future for them all—

 

But Morgause was only speaking what was true and reasonable, and here a way out, not just for herself, but for Arthur too, so the secret would remain just that—a secret between them, and, though a dozen or so years could prove a lifetime, it was not forever, and with it, came the promise that she could see her dear beloved boy again and then perhaps, finally, share that secret with him when he, too, was old enough to understand. 

 

“What say you?” she heard Morgause ask outside of herself.

 

“Y-Yes…Yes,” Morgana said, then wiping the tears that streamed from her eyes, she glanced down at her son, Arthur’s son, his one, his only, and kissing his brow the once, the last, she cast her eyes up and away, and closing them tightly, said, “Here, take him to his mother.”

 

She felt more than saw Morgause scoop the newborn up in her arms, startled by the sudden emptiness, the nothingness she now held, and heard him start to wail, and his wail echoed in her own heart, thrummed in her own blood, and the tears came again fresh and painful, more painful than any anguish she had ever known, and weary, she laid her head upon the pillow not to rest nor to dream but to wait out this aching interim of her life as it passed her by, and by, like the veil of clouds drifting past the gilded sun in all its new day glory.

 

***END OF PART THREE***

Notes:

And so the third act comes to an end. While I originally intended to write this story in 4 parts, I've decided to shorten the third part and thereby create a fourth part to follow the characters as they age, after which there will be the fifth and final part.

Thanks for following me through this journey.

Chapter 43

Notes:

And so, at long last, the first chapter to part four is here. I have essentially rewritten the entirety of it from my initial first draft. Hope you enjoy.

Jo ❤

—PART FOUR—

The Blue Hour

 

CHAPTER ONE: Spring Again

It was March, the dreary, murky month of March when, at the last, Morgana bid her dear aunt farewell in the dingy courtyard, patches of gray snow melting here and there, and without so much as a backward glance toward the keep that had provided shelter to her in her time of need, stepped into the same rickety carriage, alongside Gwen and Merlin, more than ready to depart and place behind her this rather desperate, disconsolate chapter of her life.

 

Whatever hope she had felt rise in her chest, burning like an incandescent flame, bright with heat and potency, when she had first stepped within those dark wooden doors of the carriage as it stood waiting for her in her father’s courtyard back in Camelot, or perhaps, better yet, expectancy, had gone out and died during the winter over in Essetir, leaving her just as deadened inside, just as numb to the harshness of life in what should have been a joyous time what with the Christmas season, as it had been for both she and Arthur the year prior—perhaps then, the happiest of their lives—as she huddled about the halls occupying her time with nothing and more nothing, always watching out of the corner of her eye for a sight of the envied kitchen girl, Rose, with her cherished boy, her breasts still heavy with the need to nurse him, though he was gone to her now.

 

It was of him that Morgana thought when Morgause kissed her cheek in parting, though they did not embrace, and of him again, when in a daze, moments later she watched from within the carriage hollowly, as Lot gave the orders to lift the gate, and on and outward the small party clopped on by upon their steeds, the carriage rolling down the path between the heather, and in the distance the sea-spray crash of waves breaking against the cliffside, a dragon’s roar which Morgana thought dispassionately—she one of the Pendragons—would be left imprinted upon her mind forevermore.

 

And on it went like that, in the weeks it took them to journey home—Morgana tucked as if within herself, her spirit slumbering deep within as if preparing for hibernation, when all the while the farther south they rode the greener the woods about them, the sharper the fragrance of the trees, all birch, beech, and alder, bright with life and in the fields the flowers blooming, gentle bluebells and snowdrops all celebrating the end of winter, the end of death, the joy of life reborn, but for Morgana, the crispness of the air, and the heavenly breeze were nothing to be remarked upon, for winter was with her still, deep in the ache of her hollow bones, nestled within her womb where her son ought to be but was not, and his absence despite the early spring warmth, left her penetratingly, devastatingly cold, like a house that could not be warmed.

 

At the least, she thought she would be able to see her brother again, and Mithian.  Poor Mithian, she thought to herself, to have likewise lost her child, or so, Morgana knew now to be the case from the missive that had arrived in the weeks following what she erringly thought to be the last letter from her to arrive sealed with red wax, telling her of her friend’s misfortune.  

 

In truth, her feelings were mixed regarding the loss of Arthur’s other child—boy or girl, they would never know.  While if someone had put the question to her a year ago, she would have been wickedly glad to learn of her sister-in-law’s miscarriage, but now she felt not self-assurance nor peace, but an odd sense of comfort to know that she too would not be alone in her grief, though grieving alone the loss of her own poor boy to a different fate, until time would allow for him to be returned to her, she must, and along with that ease, to know she would not be going back to Camelot to witness her friend’s happy motherhood, she tried to convince herself that her choice to give up her son, Arthur’s son, unto Rose’s keeping and thereby Morgause’s, could not be a worse fate than that of what had happened to Mithian’s own child; at least Morgana’s son was alive and well, as far as she knew, anyhow, as far as she felt was so when she woke from her dreams.

 

Dreams, which as some sense of solace, were kinder to her as of late.  As a parting gift, Morgause had insisted she keep the strange silver bracelet that prevented the more sinister visions from troubling her during the night—her seer’s gift or curse, she could never be certain which it was in truth—and while Morgana felt hesitant to accept it, to take it home with her back to Camelot, she did not have the strength to argue, and so she wrapped it about her wrist where she now thought it rightfully belonged, making certain to wear it both day and night.

 

She noticed that the longer she wore the cuff, while it suppressed the visions, it did not—and she supposed this was only the figments of an ordinary person’s internal nightscape—prevent her from dreaming altogether. 

 

Instead, her dreams—her dreams, as she thought of them internally, telling no one, not even Merlin when he asked after them so as to try a new tonic or potion to assist her sleep, what they consisted of, only that she slept fine now, thank you—were soft and whimsical and ephemeral, passing from one perplexity to the next, all formless and out of form, consisting of nothing dark or of import, only memories—from childhood especially—and they were happy, such happy memories, that she eagerly during that long, arduous carriage ride home, found herself slipping in and out of again and again because she found it lessened the pain in her heart to dream of Arthur and her when they were young.

 

In such a daze, she headed home, and with a strange satisfying note, it appeared both the outward and inward reason for her going had been in a sense resolved—she slept better now, and so, she could tell her father when she greeted him in that long, oppressive hall where he would rightfully sit upon the high seat at its end, that the trip had been a success, the salt air and seascape all the good for her health, if not her heart, and so the lie would be in part truth, and all to the better, for no one but she and Morgause would know what happened to her dear boy, Arthur’s heir, she had given away in order to protect and safeguard them all.

 

---

 

Now it was April, green and tender, and Morgana was being fitted into a gown uncharacteristically white as snow on the fair spring day of her wedding. 

 

At the age of three and twenty, she thought herself rather old to be a bride, yet too young to be a wife, and to a man she could hardly discern from in a crowd, for the leaden armor he had worn from head to foot in that manner in which he had won her, and yet she knew, he must have watched her as she sat eyes vacant amongst her royal family before the proceedings in her name, studying her closely as she sat passive in her silks hardly able to comprehend that her father had assembled such flamboyant pageantry and all for her—it was too much, and inside herself she had gone, her deadened spirit fleeing to that winter abode where she had lingered since Candlemas and the first signs of spring silently opened like a budding flower before the world.

 

Gazing at herself in the mirror atop her bedchamber vanity, she wondered who it was who decided white should be the color for brides to marry in spring, and for that matter, how possibly the tailor deemed her with her paler coloring to be a match for such an impersonal hue, the color not of young love and nuptials, but of death and raw bone once the meaty flesh had gone and rotted away; certainly, it made her seem more ghost than girl this April day, as she thought, morosely, she remembered appearing the April before this as well, though in a different gown, one of her own choosing that suited her better.  Still, this was what her father had arranged for her, and being unaccustomed to his consideration, she decided not to argue but to cordially agree to it, not that she cared much in the first place, all things considered—she had lost too much for that.

 

Upon the surface of the looking glass, Morgana watched Gwen’s steady gaze studying, cautiously, her own, as she did up the knots tying together the back of the gown; Morgana noted that she looked as if she wanted to say something whether to provide comfort or condolence, she could not be sure, but either way, the moment passed them by and Gwen looked down at her own nimble fingers tying the lace at the nape of her neck in a delicate bow.

 

It had been like that—in the days since their arrival back in Camelot, and far before in that dreary winter over in Essetir—between them, they, since the birth of Morgana’s son, uncharacteristically uncertain how to speak with one another, let alone interact; on Gwen’s part, Morgana sensed a hesitancy to flit about the subject when it inevitably drew near, assuming she only wished not to upset her regarding the child she had left behind, but also her forthcoming nuptial as well, as if she were like that porcelain vase, so long ago shattered upon the floor of her chamber, delicate, yet upon breaking, sharp and pointed—and as for Morgana, Gwen supposed that the Camelot Princess, who would never be Queen in her own right, suspected her disquiet around these subjects, her inability to broach them to the lady she served if only because she wished not to cause her any more pain in this harsh life that was to be her own.

 

The other part, which Gwen prayed most fervently that Morgana did not suspect, was that a part of her, no, a rather large part of her, was quietly and most secretively relieved that the child, whom Morgana had not even the moment to name, had been left behind, if only because it meant that Gwen could put that most horrific chapter of her life spent in that foreign land behind her, and more precisely, it signified the end to Morgana’s brief, yet nevertheless vile, affair with her dear younger brother, the man who would be acclaimed High King in the days inevitably following their father’s passing.

 

And if the moment the horse-drawn carriage had rolled to a stop within the courtyard beneath the Citadel steps—Gwen sighing a breath of relief as it did so—signified the culmination of that abhorrent act, then the wedding today, following the days of the tournament, marked its end for good—or so Gwen thought, considering that if Arthur had chosen Mithian over his sister the spring prior, then perhaps, Morgana, could come to find happiness with the man to win her as his bride, and perhaps, have a family with him; at least it was what Gwen hoped for the both of them, although, as she readied Morgana in the early morning light, her face seemed ashen, her eyes deadened, and so she knew better than to speak even so much as a word of consolation, not that she thought Morgana would snap at her in this state.

 

As for Morgana, she did not hear the knock come once, twice, a third—after which another maidservant poked her head in to say that it was time for her to don her veil and come down to the throne room whereby, she would walk down the center aisle to meet her husband at its end.

 

---

 

Perhaps, something should be said of the tournament itself to follow the days of Morgana’s return, as well as the welcome she received there, as she exited the carriage alongside Gwen in her green riding cloak, Merlin aiding the Camelot knights with her trunks of precious keepsakes all the while.

 

Unlike the sendoff she received the summer prior, her arrival spelled a much quieter affair, as although Morgause had sent word of her travel home to Uther, he possessed no means by which to know precisely when she would arrive at his gated court, and that, by Morgana’s account, was perfectly fine by her, she herself not having the mind nor mood for any extensive display of attention or fanfare.  Simply, the noted carriage was permitted through the gate by the guards stationed at the watchtower and when it came to a stop, Gwen had turned toward Morgana with a terrific smile that lit up her whole face, said plainly, though no less exuberantly, “We’re home.”

 

Home again, Morgana had thought silently in answer, absently pushing aside the curtain to gaze wistfully out the window, to notice the changes in the place she knew so well, only to find except for the early spring season, none to be remarked upon let alone considered; she, on the other hand, had changed drastically amidst her own drama of which both Gwen and Merlin partook in the knowledge of that secret act, the one she had so desperately attempted to keep hidden over the course of years to her deathbed intact, and had come to her aid at its climax. 

 

Morgana spied her father’s guards stationed at the citadel steps coming down toward the carriage to speak, most likely with Lot, and along with them she saw the bright fiery head of Sir Leon, the head of the High King’s guard, as he came down to meet them.

 

At once, she let the curtain fall back, obscuring both she and Gwen once more in semi-darkness, all the while thinking how she had no wish to be here in this place that caused her much heartbreak and sorrow; her heart and head yearned instead for Essetir, for the place where she had given up her dear boy to a woman who could mother him better than she.

 

Not that her aunt’s country had proved the happier place—far from it.

 

No, she wished for neither place if truth be told, but a fiction of her own making, one in which she, not Mithian, reigned as Arthur’s wife, and could look upon him with pride as he held their son whose eyes matched his in heaviness and soul; the one part that marked him as his.

 

It was the figure of herself wedded as his wife that caused her then in her dreamscape to recall with a jolt their father’s promise, upon her return, now that the nightmares and her ailing sleep were more or less resolved by her escape to the sea, that now a new trial would begin, a most deleterious chapter in which she would find herself wedded to and bedded by another man.

 

When one of the High King’s guards threw open the carriage door by which she could then disembark, she sat stiff as a cadaver, and Sir Leon, reaching for and grasping her chilled hand, had to lurch her to her feet so that she came tumbling out alongside Gwen into the daylight that had ruined her.

 

---

 

Her father did not come to see her, not on the day of her wedding nor the day of her homecoming, as she dispiritedly trod the stairwell up to her chamber, whereby, the guardsmen having carried up already her trunks of dresses and keepsakes, she rotely set to putting them away, each in their proper place, either within her wardrobe or in one of her vanity’s drawers.

 

It was then that she heard the knock, expecting—well, she supposed she had not really expected anyone in that moment, her mind too fuddled and dazed to form thought—Gwen, having come from having reacquainted herself with her own quarters within the castle, or perhaps, another maidservant, or even Mithian, assuming the news of her arrival had already spread like wildfire throughout the halls—but none of them appeared within her doorway a moment later, the individual in question too impatient and pressed to wait for her hoarse response to the entreaty, and the door, being ajar as it was, herself having forgotten to shut and lock it, baring no hindrance to his entry.

 

She looked up from her things, well, from her bible which sat peculiarly open atop her vanity unlike where she normally kept it; this she was leafing through, remarking a passage here or there, when she heard the knock and then the shuffling of feet, and then, for she was only human and could not help herself, she glanced upwards to find herself suddenly within and outside of time all at once, for there facing her was her brother, whom she had not forgotten in all of this—how could she possibly?—but simply whom her mind had kept from her, but now faced with the present situation, which she had considered at length throughout the winter months in Essetir and upon the ride home, she could hardly speak at all, and so it was he who made himself known to her first.

 

“Morgana…I…you’ve come back to us.  It had been months and months, and yet when Father informed me of our aunt’s note that you would be back by the spring, I feared something would go awry and detain you, or you would prefer her company to ours, and yet, you are here in the flesh, my dear sister…”

 

It was as if he had forgotten the rift between them, or perhaps, remembering it, decided then to close that distance physically by striding without forethought toward her side, whereby Morgana raised a hand to stop him in his tracks, coming into contact with his chest and the somber tunic he wore that matched the color of his eyes—It is too much, she thought, too much—and yet she relished the heat from his body, she who had for months on end felt as chilled as a hearth without a fire to call it home.

 

Her words felt thick on her tongue then, no longer sweet as honey, but stinging with bitterness and regret.

 

“Have I really changed so much?” 

 

He studied her with a frown, and for a moment she was glad for her green riding cloak covering her body, this time not for shielding the swell of her belly, but for the way it hid her now waiflike frame, though it did nothing for the sallowness of her cheeks and the ashen color of her face, stunning as a living corpse, though when she looked up at him, now studying his face in return, he saw mirrored there the months of aching grief, and then remembered that he too had lost, not just the child he was to have with Mithian, but herself as well.  It seemed the winter had made them adults at last and the worst for it, for how could she live alongside him with all that she had suffered and endured, and likewise, how could he?  And yet, in that moment, there was nothing she wished for more, nothing she prayed for less.

 

He cradled her hand in his, their fingers interlocking.  “If you have changed, so have I.”

 

“Yes,” she answered him, and supposed it was the only honest answer the both of them could give. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she added a moment later, not wishing to bring up the past, but finding it the only proper thing not just out of politeness—was that how they must be to each other now?—but to distance herself from becoming all the more vulnerable by laying her heart bare to him now and asking him, just this once, to take her up in his arms as it had been the year before when she had slept easy in his bed and traced patterns into the gooseflesh on his skin and he had buried himself inside her, fervent with the want she saw now was still alight within him, and then to be done with it, them, altogether.

 

It took him a moment to comprehend her meaning, and then, he dropped his gaze from her, as if ashamed, remembering the other figure in the room with them, that belonged to neither one, Mithian, and shaking his head, he murmured, “It was for the best, Morgana.”

 

Her gaze hardened.  “She would not think so.”

 

“No, she did not.  I fear the whole ordeal has made a nun of her.  She wants nothing to do with me now, spending her time going down to the small parish church in the lower town.  Which, again, is for the best.  We are not fit for one another.”

 

“No,” she agreed, and yet her heart panged for Mithian; she could not help but feel sympathy for her and an unequal commiseration.  “What if it were me?” she asked then, leaning against him for support, and burying her head in his shoulder, surprised, to find he accepted the embrace, after everything she had done to hurt him, wrapping his arms about her.  “What would you have done?”

 

“Raged and grieved throughout the night,” he said, “but none of it would matter as long as you were alright.”

 

It was a comforting thought, she reflected, to have him still, vocally at least, if not in deed, siding with her, yet nevertheless the thought numbed her to the bone, despite the sparks that crackled in her fingertips from touching them towards his own.

 

“Tell me,” he said then, a strange calm falling over him, as his hand fell out of her own to grasp her shoulders, push her back to look her straight and true in the eye, as if to study her for any misstep, and she captured there, not knowing what the remainder of his statement—it was no question, for the fervor in his voice—would be, stared up into his own eyes, unprepared as he said, “whether that was the reason you went.”

 

Her mind was a blank page, then one soiled with ink, her thoughts incomprehensible and yet as she fathomed his meaning, it took every figment of her strength to steady her hands to keep them from shaking as he had guessed her long, savored secret, her private affair, the reason for her going and the gift he had given her whom she had no choice but to leave behind—

 

“Arthur,” she said, looking away.  “If that were true…wouldn’t I have told you?  Or better yet, begged you to run away with me?  From this unbearably lonely place of our childhood?”

 

He shrugged, then pushed her away. 

 

“It was just a thought, nothing more; perhaps a fanciful wish given the…circumstances here,” he said despondently.

 

That caused the past rage to reignite inside her, a burning flame, strong and steady to keep her warm. 

 

“Circumstances you chose, may I remind you,” she stated simply.  After her conversation with Mithian the summer before and the months she had spent in Essetir she had thought, erroneously so it now seemed, that she had made her peace with his decision last spring, but now she felt the wound still ripe within her.  There is no going back, is there?  So, what was I thinking just now?

 

He sighed.  “And for which, I will pay dearly again.  Did Father mention what he has planned now that you’ve returned?”

 

Her answer was as suddenly timid as if she were a child.  And distant.

 

“…Yes.”

 

She watched her brother’s face intently for the grief there and found it with neither mirth nor sorrow.  The unspoken truth was plain before them; as she had ached to see him wed to Mithian the spring prior, now this spring, a year later, he would suffer to see her betrothed to another man, and, most likely, to a stranger at that.

 

He hung his head. 

 

“And so, I will pay for my own selfishness…Oh, Morgana, if we could only go back, I would in a heartbeat…now I understand.”

 

She nodded, trapped in the impasse between wanting to watch him suffer, to savor this moment, her strange revenge, and to shield him from it, him her baby brother, from this and all future pain. 

 

But she was a step beyond him in that for having given up their only son without even the chance to give him a name; the onus would fall to another.

 

“But we can’t go back,” she said softly.  She meant her voice to be gentle but in a way the ultimatum was worse spoken so.  “You made your choice, Arthur, and I made mine.”

 

He nodded.  “That’s why I came.  I had to see you first…before it happened.  Because I knew you first no matter the man who will take you to his bed, the man who in his ignorance will steal you away from me…It’s our worst fear realized, Morgana.”

 

The breath caught in her throat, and she swallowed the long overdue lump at its back.  She had not thought of that, but of course, if she were to marry, she would go to live with the man whomsoever he may be, the lucky bastard, and immediately she regretted her long-last admittance of the brokenness of their home.  She would give anything to be imprisoned in these four walls of her bedchamber than go to another kingdom and be a lady there, let alone a queen.  This space was her birthright, her grave, and live in it until she died, she would, rather than be separated from the one dearest to her than any other, except her brief moment with her son.

 

“I had not thought of that,” she admitted quietly.

 

“Believe me,” he answered her.  “I’ve had many moons to think just on it.”

 

“So, that’s why you came.  To say goodbye.”

 

He clenched his trembling fist, then stole a look up at her.

 

“And for this,” he mumbled beneath his breath, lifting her chin up with his hand and then laying the most mournful of kisses upon her mouth.

 

For some reason unbeknownst to her in all her life, Morgana did not know why she did not simply refuse him, the kiss no more hungry than to be savored, and yet, of any kiss they shared throughout their lives now and hereafter, it was this one to haunt her come the time for her to make peace with her God as it she would by the end, as if it were a ghost of what was, what could be, and what could have been.

 

It was not she to break away first; Arthur did, and he looked away, ashamed as he did so. 

 

“One, just this one,” he promised, “moment of infidelity so I can remember all my life the taste of those lips, that mouth, the essence of you.”

 

She gazed at him, her eyes half-lidded, saying nothing.

 

There was nothing more to be said.

 

And so, with that, he walked out of her chamber into the darkness of the hall, as it was growing into twilight, that decadent blue hour of transience when everything is all shadowed and hardly lit at all, making it nearly impossible to see matters for what they were instead of the shifting phantoms they appeared to be.

 

Welcome home, Morgana thought then, as she brought a tremulous hand to her mouth.

 

Just as you’ve come home, now you are to leave it.

 

---

 

Down the central carpeted aisle, she walked between the pews, feeling the eyes of the people, the people who would no longer be her people, she reminded herself most rawly then, head bent as if in prayer, but in truth, she merely glanced downwards to avoid tripping over her feet for the veil she wore obscuring her vision in such a haphazard manner, as well as to avoid the look of her brother seated next to Mithian in the front row, as she expected him to be, picturing the raw agony etched there as if by a sculptor’s hand upon his face.

 

But no, her brother would guard his emotions this day, she, knowing him well, thought, just as she had done the April prior. 

 

Feeling her foot land on the first step up to the landing where her betrothed stood, a man, she could not be sure if she had ever spoken to in her life, and yet would soon become her closest confidant in this mortal realm, in sickness and in health, till death parted them.  Call her sinful, she prayed that their union on this sickly earth be brief.

 

It would be cause for objection had she raised it, but what right to turn back had she, to drop the bouquet of snowdrops in her hands and flee, tearing the gossamer veil from her head, and throw herself through the great oak doors at the hall’s end?  Simply, she had no choice in the matter, as Arthur had no choice, or if he did, she knew he would not disgrace himself so by publicly shaming a peer of his, let alone their father, by making his feelings known.  And if he had?  What then?  What cause would a brother have for not wanting to see his dear beloved sister happy and wed?

 

She gazed upward then to find across from her Father Layamon speaking, though she did not hear the familiar words of the marriage ceremony, instead recalling how in the days following the tournament, once the winner had been proclaimed and the afterparty held, how she, as promised, had found him out, on the pretense of making a confessional to purify herself before becoming a wife, and sat in the darkened room, admitting to sin after sin after sin.

 

She had grappled the beads of her rosary in her hands for support, fingering them over and over again in her cradled hands.

 

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned,” she began, her voice burning not with shame, but pride.

 

And the father had asked her behind the screen to name her sin, and she did without cause for pause.

 

“I have loved another who is not the man I shall wed come the week’s end.”

 

The priest had not pried further, simply waited for her to say more, and when she did not, he, a foolish man, thinking, That’s all? falling into that same trap as most men did, for her fair face and the nature of her noble standing, presuming that she was most virtuous, and so, perhaps, the love that she had felt for this other, was of the innocent sort, the stuff of songs that the troubadours performed in the Great Hall each midwinter, a courtly romance and nothing more, and for it, he gave her the penance of saying the All-Father and Hail-Mary and Glory-Be, and then, to be done with it, with the full intention to do good unto her husband hereafter and evermore.

 

She stood at the altar now and was prompted to take her betrothed’s hand as he slid a gold ring upon the ring finger of her left hand, a finger that she noted had been ostentatiously bare for so long, that the touch of the metal felt heavy and wrong, binding and conflicting like a shackle, or worse yet, a noose.  She wanted to throw it off, and run down the hall, but remained she did, and without looking back to where her brother sat, she wanting to safeguard and protect his privacy in this, his own moldering grief, or perhaps her own, unable to look back to the where the spring prior she had sat her face deadly still and the same ashen gray as she knew in her soul her brother’s now to be. 

 

Instead, she took his hand in return and picking up a matching gold band slid it upon his left hand in the same spot as he had done hers, overwhelmed by the act that was all too intimate to be between strangers, and yet here they were, strangers, tied to that of another, her brother, or so she heard it told, as the man standing before her had been a friend of his in his youth, how ironic, how cruel, how damning.

 

Here came the part she was dreading, every fiber of herself screaming at her to run.

 

He lifted the veil from her face, beheld the pale snow skin and eyes as green as the summer month that she had been born in, and tilting her chin upward just a moment in time, yet oddly akin to what her brother had done just days before in her chamber, a secret privy to no one but them, and the manner in which he had done it, gazed into her eyes and she knew that now would come the act to seal the deal—

 

One moment to behold him standing there before her before her mind blanked and blacked out the rest—

 

Looking back on that day as she did from time to time, it must be confessed, she recalled he had had a kind face.

 

---

 

The day of the tournament had dawned an overcast day of rain and storm, the assembled guests, the courageous, honorable men donning their fine-pressed tunics and mantles and mail, arranging themselves in the arena in such a stately fashion only to be drenched in a cold, unfeeling rain, that Morgana had prayed upon waking to no avail, as she pushed aside the curtains from her window to look out upon the wet ground, would dissuade them in participating for such a foolish cause as the winning of hers truly, but come they had, and being of a staunch fortitude, each and every one, they walked out into the arena with pride in their steps despite the downpour, determined by the day’s end to be betrothed to “the fairest lady in the land.”

 

Sir Agravaine had been one such participant, as was awarded to him when he, too, returned to Camelot, albeit several months before the lady in question had so done, presenting to the High King the very news he desired regarding his daughter.

 

In the week he had stayed in Essetir just as autumn was giving way to winter’s icy breath, Agravaine kept his promise to his mother, and did not visit Morgana once during her stay in what he came to learn from whisperings about the keep was the turret chamber above his mother’s own rooms, to which, even as boy, he had been forbidden from trespassing. 

 

It was no matter to him now, as the news of his love’s pregnancy, its late stage, the baby expected in a mere smattering of days, caused him much disquiet and ultimately, persuaded him more so than his mother, that now was not the time to make his feelings known to Morgana, for her sake, as much as his own.  Simply, he had no desire to embarrass the both of them, or worse yet cause undue shame towards his lady love for a consequence not of her own doing, and so for that wish to safeguard both her heart and his own, he had stayed away from her room in the turret, along with his mother’s quarters, choosing instead to rest up for the journey home, though desolate as the land in early winter he felt with not a mind to much else but going on walks through the nearby woods to steady his head, as he gave thought to what precisely he would tell his uncle come his return to Camelot.

 

It came to him on that final day as he sojourned into the woods of his homeland one final time, that he would say hardly a thing at all, confirming only what the High King knew of his daughter when he had agreed to send her to his home aside the sea; though he shook at the mere thought of lying to such a man, he realized that love Morgana as he did, he could not bring himself to expose her secret and cast her into a position of dependency, her reputation ruined for the good, destined to live out her life as a spinster; no, he would not have that for her, for he knew, she being wholly good, deserved much better than that, no matter the vagabond to place both she and him in this difficult place.

 

And so when he set foot in Camelot again with his small band of men, the last leaves fallen from the trees, and a faint, innocent snow gently falling from a strange sunlit sky, the first he did was walk to the Council Chamber where he knew Uther would reside at such a time discussing matters of import for the kingdom amongst the nobles, and waiting his turn to speak, once he called him up asked what news he had, Agravaine, took in a steadying breath, and told the truth as he saw it, that Morgana was on the mend and would return to Camelot come the spring.

 

It was not a lie, as much as an daring omission of truth, and yet, Agravaine was most stunned when the High King accepted it without pressing him to reveal more, as if he hardly cared or cared to remember for that matter about his daughter and her doings, which he found, profoundly strange, himself, though perhaps, no less able to commiserate with upon second thought, recalling how even in his adulthood his own father had cared not an inkling for him so that he did not even welcome him home after the years they had been apart.

 

This furthered Agravaine’s vision that he and Morgana were simply meant to be, just like that day he recognized her for being as different as he was that day he had arrived in Camelot with his father and brother to be fostered there for a time and be made into knights of the High King’s guard.  He had seen this delicate slip of a girl, shadowed by the presence of her brother, just as he had followed in Gwaine’s never quite living up to him in his father’s eyes—even if in his mother’s the situation was quite reversed—and the rest had been history; he had desired her, yearned for her to complete him ever since that fateful moment.

 

And so, having told his half-truth, and earning his spot within the tournament for her hand come the snow thaw, which no matter how far away it seemed then, would come with time, Agravaine determined to train even harder with his fellows to win her hand in marriage.  He supposed the fates were on his side in this, for having done the remarkable thing in choosing kindness, and if the songs the troubadours sang were of any truth, it was the underdog such as he with a good heart who would come through in the end.

 

This he was almost certain of, and so, he made one last silent promise to God, himself, and Morgana, that upon defeating the last man to stand in his way of her, he would lay that brilliant red carnation he had saved from the autumn and lay it nobly at her feet.

 

---

 

This was the first since he was a boy and too young to participate that Arthur had not taken up the challenge of a tournament or tourney win held within his father’s arena, and the thought galled him for of all the ostentatious games he had performed in previously, winning fame and fortune, this one was the most dear to him, the one that would cost him the most, surely, and yet it was the one he, for sound reason, was barred from competing in.

 

Instead, that wet and dreary morn, so akin to the thundering feelings burdening his chest, he, upon rising, permitted Merlin to dress him in his family colors, the armor he helped him don, merely symbolic for the day’s events, for battle he would not do today, though stepping out of his chambers was to him like rising to meet the enemy on a blood-soaked field, only to know that no matter his prowess, he would lose the war.

 

The tournament for his sister’s hand in marriage.  The mere thought had made him sick all throughout the night prior, though the wine had not helped his head either, and he had woken often during the night to retch up the drink in his chamber pot until he was dry heaving over it and nearly passed out from exhaustion, one thought still on his mind, How had it come to this?

 

And then he did pass out for good, his body limp and crumpled upon the floor—if his father had seen him like this on such a magnanimous day, he would certainly have had a thing or two to say about his wretched state, but fortunately, it was only his manservant to find him so when out of the darkness the dawn came as it always did, though not with the rapture of light, but the storm clouds threatening justice upon the citadel and all its citizens of little consequence.  The rain echoed the pounding in his head.

 

Merlin, unbeknownst to Arthur, had no reason to ask after the prince’s incapacitated state; he merely helped the man up on his feet, and said in the gentlest voice he could muster that he must ready him for the tournament, and that was all to be said between them, Arthur acquiescing to his fate, his mind hazy and dazed, but with enough wherewithal to wonder that if he suffered this day how his beloved sister was faring now that come the end of this awful day she would no longer belong to his father and him, to Camelot, but to another man altogether, perhaps another kingdom at that.

 

It was a sobering thought, as much as a somber one, and enough to bring him back out of his hedonism and into the stark cold reality of the day.

 

---

 

Now, the matches had begun, though the rain had not let up, muddying the field the men sweated upon throwing themselves into every thrust and parry as they each made their claim for the Camelot Princess seated at the far end aside her father the High King, dressed in a gown the color of violets.

 

She sat in the royal booth to the left of the High King, but on his right, sat his son, the Crown Prince Arthur and to his side, his wife, who appeared of them all the most out of place, the most still, her hands crumpled in her lap as if voicing a silent prayer for penance for them all.

 

This infuriated Arthur, who was cast in a black mood all throughout the proceedings, as he knew Mithian was not thinking of Morgana’s suffering this day, but still on her own misfortune which captivated her day in and out and throughout the nights.  It made him sick how much she ached for that lost child, perhaps because in a sense it seemed to him that she blamed him for it, though that was hardly the case at all, and he would have known it so if only he had possessed the genuineness to ask her. 

 

Still, Arthur did not remark upon it with his father so near and watching each bout enraptured.  At least he is enjoying himself, he bemoaned to himself silently.  He knew he could not sneak a look at his sister, dressed as she was in one of his favorite gowns of hers, the violet one—he knew this only for spying her out of the corner of his eye when she stepped up into the booth, face impassive and unemotional, though he knew a turbulence of emotions most likely raged deep within her as the they had burst and festered within him—which now reminded him oddly of violence, the words with their similar root, and then he thought of something he once read amongst his studies as a boy, that the flower the color was named after had been used in classical antiquity in scenes of mourning; he did not believe Morgana knew this, and yet somehow she had intuited accurately the proper language in which to display herself before the men dueling it out on the swamped field.  Never in his life could he recall rain as relentless as this.

 

What pained him the most as he watched passively the matches, himself powerless to put an end to this farce, was the stark, wry irony in which now he witnessed himself helpless as many knights and noblemen from across the country, some of which, like Sir Kay and Sir Oswald, he had once considered, and still did in a sense, dear friends of his.  He could almost understand how his sister must have felt seeing him engaged against his will to her own childhood friend, whom of course in the end he did marry. 

 

It caused him to seethe at his father for arranging this affair, at the ignorance of his once trusted companions that he recalled with pride having bested time and again in the melees, the jousts, the tourneys, all of it, he had been the best of them all, and now it was as if he were crippled, unable to make a stand for the one he loved, and that caused him to seethe the most at himself, hating himself for allowing it all to happen, as he had let his father decide for him that he should wed Mithian, and look at what had come of that.  She could hardly look at him.

 

It seemed he ruined everything he touched.

 

Such were the thoughts on Arthur’s mind when he heard announced that Sir Agravaine, the second son of King Cenred of Essetir, would do battle against Sir Ethan in the next round.

 

---

 

Gazing at her seated in the royal booth, in a gown of the heaviest violet, Agravaine donned his visor and did battle against Sir Ethan upon the rain-soaked field, as the heavens opened up above them, releasing their torrents of rain. 

 

It was the first sign, he determined, of some divine intervention on his behalf, or, perhaps, as he so figured, as a result of the countless mornings of rising throughout that heady summer just as the dawn was rising to train and spar with his fellow brethren, as defeat in his first round Sir Ethan he did and move on to the second round in which he faced Sir Darien, whom he also, to his surprise, defeated. 

 

At this second win, he had thrown off his helmet, delighted by the crowd’s cheers, a first, as ever he recalled on his behalf, and with a tremendous grin he waved at them all, soaking in their pleasure at his feats, but not forgetting to bow in turn to his chosen lady, of whom he was smitten before any of these so called men in their gilded armor attempting to win her as a bride as he did. 

 

Though Morgana had remained rather posed and still as if cast in marble or turned to stone by the Medusa’s fearsome look, and had not acknowledged him, nor any of the noblemen participating for that matter, this did not dissuade him from believing that she was on his side, or that the divine sought to aid him in his footwork, causing him to pivot and dodge blows that surely would have knocked him flat on his feet in the past, and parry offending strokes with the competency of a seasoned knight, which he hardly considered himself to be.  The whole affair was rather swelling of his pride in himself and his cause here, and, so it was that he was not dismayed in the slightest that Morgana appeared distant seated next to her father the High King; he had chalked the matter up to her babe, which after hearing from his mother in her uncommon script, had been born dead in the womb, a matter, which, for her being a woman, would most certainly occupy her thoughts, the poor innocent babe gone and dead before even drawing its first breath, though one in which Agravaine secretly rejoiced, proclaiming the calamity only for the good of them both, so that he could wed Morgana with ease come his victory today, her reputation thus intact, and moreover, so neither of them would have to watch a child grow into the likeness of his reprobate father, a thought that unnerved him most greatly.

 

But then in the third round came his match against Sir Oswald, another crowd favorite, who had deftly dealt with his own opponents with ease and grace, and though Agravaine felt the trepidation seep into his flesh, down deep into the marrow of his bones, in facing such a skilled man as the rain thundered down upon them, this was not the sole source of his anxiety, an apprehension that seemed to dance beneath his skin, causing him to overcalculate his maneuvers, and slip here and there in the muck he did to gasps and sighs from the crowd.

 

What did it in for him in the third round could have been the cockiness growing within him that caused him to envision his victory as predestined, and in the aftermath of the fight, the tears framing his flushed face in shame as he hung his head and strode off the field in defeat, he rather wished it were so, but knowing himself well and the seat of his unease, he could pinpoint it in truth to the source of the Crown Prince’s withered, angry stare, the true opposite of his lovely sister’s, as he watched him with that same strange malice aside his father and wife.

 

It could not be said how Agravaine had known the look was there, poisoning his body with fright as if by some sinister magic, though impossible that was, but as if for a heightened, preternatural sense had lighted in the back of his mind, he had felt the eyes boring into him, as if prompting and jeering at him to miss his mark with his blows and when a blow landed against him in return to trip over his own feet and land on his back in the soiled muck, laughter booming from those same eyes, though he had heard no such outburst, only the cheers on behalf of the man Oswald.

 

No matter how he had felt the cold, hardened stare, it had prompted him in that last definitive moment to look up not at Morgana, his lady love, but to the prince, her brother, who detested him most brazenly and for a cause he could not himself name; that one look, as their eyes locked, the Crown Prince’s with a sardonic malice, and Agravaine’s own with the look of unrestrained fright, it was as if he were doing battle against his liege once again on the training field to the laughter all around as Arthur had mimicked and mocked his rather pathetic thrusts, causing him to flee the training field in shame to the bellowing guffaws of his fellows.

 

Their eyes locked in one singular moment of time, a fraction of a second, and yet enough to cause his downfall, for miss Oswald’s incoming attack he did, and the rest was now history. 

 

Stunned by his loss, he rose from the field not hearing as his opponent, a rather gracious man, he had heard said, offered him some words of solace, saying it had been a good match and himself a staunch challenger; in short, he had thanked him, but Agravaine, unable to fathom this man’s honesty saw his words poisoned as if coming from the Prince Arthur and his ilk, and without so much as a parting word, marched off the field in his self-imposed disgrace, his face angry and belligerent to have come so far only to lose it all, and in that instant, a new enmity was born deep in the rift of his broken heart. 

 

It was not against Arthur who had, he had been certain moments ago, destroyed his winning streak with his evil thoughts against him as if some sort of witch’s craft, but towards Oswald, for reasons that would become even more apparent later that day, as he sat numbly in his chamber, painstakingly going over where he had gone wrong in his match against the man, and then falling into a heap upon the floor of his room, sobbed himself senseless, knowing that, after everything he had done, the many months and hours spent bettering himself in her name, it had all been for naught, and the divine inspiration he had thought resided within him that morn, went and died a most aggrieved death.

 

The fates were cruel; that he saw now.

 

---

 

And on the field where he had fallen remained the wilted carnation, red as a pool of blood upon the soil, where it had slipped from his armor, and upon which the winners of the third round had fought in the fourth, the fifth and final, ignominiously and ignorantly scuffing up and tearing apart its few remaining petals, so that they bled, pummeled into the ground, forgotten.

 

---

 

The announcer had proclaimed the name and rank of each noble knight to take part in the event that day, and though many would know defeat as the day waned on, the rain beating down on them as if to pound them, those fallen, into the dirt and muck, one man, one most fortunate man would reign supreme in this challenge, and this had near everyone from the High King to the lowest of peasants sitting in the stands on the edge of his seat with anticipation for whom the crowned winner would be, the one to finally take the Princess Morgana’s hand in marriage and save her from spinsterhood.

 

Everyone except Morgana that was. 

 

She had heard the names spoken, not in the bitter hungover state of her brother, his ears keen as he recognized many such persons whom he had once had the pleasure sparring with in similar tournaments, and for that matter, disarming—for him, he had wanted to plug his ears, throw a hand over his eyes or gouge them out to blind himself as he witnessed many so called friends of his advance unto higher rounds, and then of course, there was the dolt Agravaine, whom, by the grace of God, had fallen to Oswald, a man, he could not help but like since they had met many years ago, and all it caused him was much weary anguish, so much so he could not help but watch the proceedings with an affixed attention, a morbid, self-injurious curiosity for which he hated himself most vehemently, and yet he could not pry his eyes away from the field, a deeper desire to witness which man would come to wed his sister—and bed her, he lamented—occupying him in the fullest.

 

Simply, it was not so for Morgana, for the spirit residing in her soul was not there seated in the royal booth, but had flown away elsewhere, leaving her body vacant in the stands.

 

She dreamt in her blissed out state, reviewing memories of times gone by, in particular, the last tournament a year or so past which their father had held before the winter snows came at summer’s end at which she had at last made up her mind to tell Arthur the truth her feelings for him, feeling high on the rush of his victory against Sir Valiant that infamous day (still the people talked of it with ardor in their voices and the story told no matter the number of times still caused her much pride on behalf of her brother, and for herself, being his sister, among his closest kin)—how they had both changed in that time!—it was as if many lifetimes had occurred in the near year and a half to transpire since, seasons that saw them come so close to each other, so intimate in the ways they had moved inside each other, panting breathlessly throughout those cold winter nights, skin flushed, hearts burning with their lovemaking…to stark strangers, the sort that used to know each other well, and for such reason were the most unfortunate sort, and who would now both be wed to others more unfamiliar to them still.

 

And like that day, Morgana found herself unable to watch the proceedings, her mind dissociating out of the form of her body, going back to when it all started for them, and before, to those days she had spent curled up in self-reproach upon her bed, unwilling to go down to witness her brother’s performance in the field, unable for the cry in her heart which told her she could not or else the people, their father, would know just how much she cared for him and the innate wrongness of that care. 

 

All those years wasted… she thought, morosely then, just as the years ahead of me will be.

 

It was a somber thought, to think as much as Camelot since their mother’s passing when she was but a girl of seven, and when the nightmares had begun, had not been a home to her, that now that she was most certainly to leave it, to live in another lord’s home within the city, or worse yet, in another of the Five Kingdom’s altogether, it was too much for her to bear, and all she wanted was to curl up under the quilts in her bed and go to sleep and never, ever wake up again.

 

Like that dark winter to pass them ever so painfully by in Essetir.  She had remained in the turret chamber in the North Tower after the birth, after giving her son away to a woman she did not know, hardly able to eat, without even the energy to rise and draw back the curtains before the single window that looked out toward where the craggy cliffside met the harsh crash of the sea, and while she wished to get better, she felt she might as well die in that chamber for the awful memories to plague her in that time, reminding her most viscerally of the early months of her pregnancy, when she, back in Camelot, had refused both food and drink, forgoing Gwen’s offer to push back the curtains and let in the light of day, and all on account of her grief at having lost Arthur to her dear and only nonfamilial friend.

 

Not that, this far north, there was much light to let in throughout the days anyway—the skies were painted a weathered gray from dawn to dusk, or bathed in a midnight black so blue it panged her heart for homesickness, to be where, even in winter, the sun still shone.

 

That winter she could have pummeled that girl she had been until she was black and blue and covered with welts, so angry was she with her, and withered with self-admonishment and self-sacrifice, to think if that had been bad, then this was a thousand times the worser fare to have lost now their only son who was so perfect and crying to be held and loved by his birthmother. 

 

It was enough for her to wish to die.

 

But by some force of will stronger than her desire to end it all, she had survived, survived to come back home only to this tourney of fools in which she would be won, bought and tamed, made a wife out of her, she who had never considered herself one for the domestic realm of such monotonous, supercilious duties, and then, the worst yet, would be forced come each night to lie with another man, something she never once fancied throughout her entire life—never would she dishonor herself or her brother with such a perverse thought—and make babies for him.  What horror, she had thought outside herself as she dressed herself quietly for the tournament this day.  She could not think of a fate worse than that.  Even death would be preferrable, and yet, she had not the courage that morning to throw herself out her window in one desperate final act of love, though a bemused mirth it gave her to picture her body lying in the courtyard split and twisted at all the wrong angles, blood oozing from her shattered skull.

 

And so, with such thoughts on her mind, Morgana watched the proceedings on the field as it rained and rained, the forms and names of the participating men shadowed and muddled so that she saw and heard not a one, though had she been listening, the names and forms would have resembled those from her memories of past courtroom feasts in the Great Hall, memories in which she had huddled in the corner, doing her utmost to remain invisible from the men’s prying eyes as they gathered around her brother, he their ringleader after the days of sport and into the nights of shared revelry, all the while wishing that she could be as adored as he, all the while none the wiser to the fact that Arthur adored her so.

 

So, it was then that she did not hear the name of the victor late that afternoon just as the clouds were parting and the sun opened up its brilliance down upon the providential man and nor did she make out his features as he at the last lifted his helmet from his head to the seemingly unanimous roar of cheers all around. 

 

---

 

Seated in the front pew next to Mithian, Arthur watched acutely as Sir Oswald lifted the veil from his sister’s head, and tipping her chin, in that manner that he had done mere days before, watched as he bent to kiss her tender mouth, thus sealing, in the formal sense, if not the vulgar, their union. 

Chapter 44

CHAPTER TWO: What Arthur Did Next

There was a brief waiting period between that black day of the tournament and the wedding ceremony to take place by the following week’s end in which the High King tasked his officials with overseeing that the throne room and main halls about the castle were properly decorated and fitted for the occasion with spring blooms and garlands hanging above each entrance or displayed in the corners of the rooms to bring attention to the happy season; likewise the tapestries came down from the walls and were beaten of dust, same with the rugs, and the candle stubs replaced with newly poured beeswax pillars. 

 

All this Uther commanded be done not out of any semblance of love for his only daughter, who, thanks to him and his doing, would finally be a bride at the age of three and twenty summers, but for the sole, ostentatious purpose of commanding the respect of all the guests to witness the ceremony on this Friday, the twelfth of April, a day the astrologers of antiquity named most fortuitous in the realm of love and romance, the day being under the rule of Venus as it were.  Simply, Uther desired the arrangement to be as much as possible a feast for the senses, so that it could be said that Camelot knew how to throw a party, and so it was that the servants worked day and night to ready the halls for the event, just as they had done for the High King’s son in the weeks leading up to his own marriage to the Nemeth Princess, and it was well known if not to the people, then to Arthur and Morgana personally that the grand display on both dates was not for any sentimental sake their father might have felt on their behalf, but only for the sake of his egoic pride, and that, they both accepted without much cause for resentment, knowing him as well as they did.

 

That in-between week served a different purpose for his offspring, who, though they did not speak with each other during that time, and certainly, not upon the matter of their mutual feelings come the unfortunate date, nor their shared regrets, found themselves lost in a state of limbo, or an elongated liminality in which the days transpired at a snail’s pace and an instant all at once, they each frankly not knowing what to do with themselves in the time between, and unable to sit with themselves for a long period of time for fear of rumination, turned to less than desirable methods of spending that time, more or less in solitude, when it was available to them; Arthur turned to his drink, a deleterious habit that he had started up in full force since Mithian’s miscarriage the fall previous, which though he did his best to hide his addiction from the Court, his father and sister, most especially, some lesser folk were still on the receiving end of his drunken tempers at times, these being for the most part Merlin, who as his manservant, now that he had returned to Camelot (for which the poor, unequipped George was most grateful to be spared future misadventures in the role) spent the most time with Arthur through the day and day (as Gwen did Morgana) and was most undeserving to be on the receiving end of these tantrums.

 

On the other hand, Morgana, in a similar fashion to the prior spring, found herself hardly eating, although this time she did not have the excuse of—at the time unbeknownst to her—morning sickness to cause this plight.  Gwen was worried of course, though perhaps, less alarmed than she had been the first time for having witnessed Morgana having survived the bleak interim before.  She was certain that while her lady might have cold feet regarding this marriage—which to her was understandable given how she hardly knew the man she was to wed—with time she would come round to the idea of it and even be able to find some sense of happiness in the arrangement.  After all, she reminded her often, Sir Oswald was known to be a kind and generous man, and fortunately, for both their sakes, originating from a noble house not more than a day or so’s ride from Camelot.  She sensed that Morgana had gone silent for fear of leaving her family, something she was not accustomed to, the many months they spent in Essetir being the sole exception to the rule, and having just newly come home again, would be wont to leave it, even for the possibility of a happier future, which Gwen saw for the both of them, as she too, acknowledged that most likely she would be asked to attend the betrothed princess to her new home as her maidservant, and happily, she would take up the job duties there, though miss her brother and father she would; still, she knew for certain that if she had survived the miserable months in Essetir, the journey and stay in Oswald’s family home would be a picnic by comparison; nothing could persuade her otherwise.

 

It was rather obvious despite Gwen’s assurances that Morgana felt differently upon the matter, but even if she did not feel particularly thrilled about the match, she did, having come to her senses after hearing Oswald named the victor, feel some rudimentary relief, for at least having a name to place to the man who would serve to take the place of her brother in their marriage bed, if not her heart, and if only because of the good reputation this man had earned and lived up to throughout his life; he was a fair bit older than both she and Arthur, and though, while she could not say if ever she had spoken with him before, she did recall that the man had been like the elder brother Arthur never had, having looked after and guided him in those early days of his first trainings and tourneys, providing sound advice and support.

 

This caused her to simply wonder what her brother thought of the news of his victory, though of course, he had been present there in the booth alongside she and their father, and Mithian, for that matter, and would have seen it all with his own two eyes; still, she hoped that he was in a sense relieved as she was that it turned out to be Oswald and not some other man, if only for the high esteem in which her brother regarded him, but then again, she knew this was no simple matter, recalling what it had been like for her to hear of Arthur’s engagement to her own friend, an arrangement that had caused her to act in a most ungracious manner, and for which she was now duly sorry for her meanspirited behavior. 

 

Still, she found herself thinking, on the days she left her room for some needed air, and finding her old mare in the stable, saddled her to ride out to Avalon whereby to lose herself amongst the heady scent of the apple blossoms in the orchards near the shore, that no matter Oswald’s apparent goodness, what sort of man participated in a challenge to win a woman against her will?  Certainly, there was a story there, and she feared she would find out what precisely that was when they would inevitably find themselves alone together on the night of their wedding.

 

It haunted her—the idea of such intimacy with this man, and the close proximity for which she would find herself, wrapped, if not trapped, in his arms, the force of his body moving within her—it was enough for her to almost double over sick as if she were with child again like the spring before—for all her life, she had only thought of and dreamt of one man in such a manner, and that was Arthur, only Arthur, and no matter how he had forsaken her to lie unhappily—she now knew—with Mithian, still, she wished to remain loyal not to him, but to the desire that flared in her heart for he who was her brother.

 

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It was a question on Arthur’s mind as well, though despite his tutelage, he had not the words in which to describe the sentiment eating him to his core.

 

It began as the knights began to arrive in Camelot in the days following Morgana’s return, each dressed in his house’s colors, with their squires brandishing the house banners with pride.  It had been many months, a long, yet not so bleak winter to have passed, and normally, Arthur would look upon such an occasion as one of his father’s tournaments with pride, himself a man’s man, eager to meet the men he, over the years, long considered to be his friends, on both the field as well as in the after celebration in the halls; it helped that he being the Crown Prince was for the most part favored by all the knights participating, and he seemed to have formed a good rapport with the majority of the men, some of which were of the Camelot guard, and others knights of the realm, and so, if this occasion had been like any other in the past, instead of determining both his and his sister’s fate, then he would have looked forward to it and seeing his old friends again most sincerely.

 

But as it were, that was not the case, and as the men began to arrive, he found himself cast in a foul mood, one not helped by the drink he was indulging in most nights, dreading as opposed to anticipating those to arrive in time for the tournament, perhaps, in a way, more so than he imagined his sister was.

 

The problem was more than the selfish need to keep Morgana all to himself—no matter, that he had foresworn the promise he had made to her those many months ago when they first spent the night wrapped in each other’s arms—in truth, it was a matter of dignity for the sake of his sister, for whom he felt most sorely, but also himself.

 

Simply, Arthur could not wrap his mind around what sort of “honorable” man, especially one to follow the Knights’ Code as his father had implemented many years ago now, could possibly have received word of this farce of a tournament and thought to himself he was doing the magnanimous thing by participating in it, although understand it in a sense he did in that all-or-nothing mode of thinking by which he deemed those entering the event of “a less than honorable” sort.

 

It angered him so much that one morning that April, he, attempting to master his emotions even as they strained to give way unto the expression of his face, strode into the library to ask Geoffrey if he had a list available of the men attending the tournament for his sister’s hand, as chronicle the matches as they inevitably would play out come the day of the tournament he knew he would do as was his duties to note anything of import that occurred within the kingdom pertaining to the royal family.

 

Geoffrey had been surprised of course by his request, but nevertheless found him the particular parchment, which Arthur, near tearing from his hand, took and read there, his eyes scanning the page in newfound horror, as he read silently the names, which were not only the low-lying brutes of men he expected to be found there such as Maleagant and the ironically named Valiant, whom he had bested in the final match of the tournament nearly two years gone now, but some of his dearest and closest friends, whom he respected, and experiencing there in the dimly lit room a crisis of faith in those men, or perhaps more so his own judgement of their character, he numbly returned the parchment to Geoffrey, mumbling his thanks and left the room altogether to clear his head.

 

Stunned senseless he had been to read the names throughout that day, and the ultimatum in Geoffrey’s fine script served him to question for the first time the motives of those who swore allegiance to both his father and himself, and perhaps, only because it was his sister who would be most sorely affected by the outcome of the matches to take place in a mere few days, he found himself torn between his fond memories of these men, some of whom had been with him since he was a boy first learning swordplay, such as Kay, and others who had been in a sense a mentor to him in his youth, like Oswald. 

 

That one, perhaps, hurt the most, and he had done a doubletake in the library reading over the name in fine black ink.  He had loved Oswald, a near ten years his senior, like a boy would an elder brother, and he himself, never knowing what it was like to have such a sibling, had looked up to him and admired him, not only as a great swordsman, but as a good Christian man, and so he wondered to himself, how could it be that he would throw down his name like a cast of lots into such a game of chance and skill for the sake of winning his sister! 

 

These other men, he had figured, were after the glory of the fight, and he remarked to himself derisively, the other, higher glory of being the one to finally bed the Princess and through that act be inducted into the royal family, with a claim to the throne, assuming after his father died, he himself died with no heirs.  In that case, the throne would go to Morgana’s husband, the throne unable to be passed to, only through a woman.  And that was precisely what angered him so much, to the point of physical hurt even, that these so called good men would do that not only to Morgana, but to him; the fact that they would use this opportunity just to advance themselves with little thought for him in all of this, of how he felt; it made him sick, plain sick, and so coming out of the library, he went straight to Gaius’s to ask the physician for a remedy to alleviate what he could only name as the prickly sensation in his gut, and he was most grateful when he came through with such a tonic without so much as an eyebrow raised or a question asked.

 

Back in his chambers, Merlin was there tidying up his things, which always had a way of falling into disarray as if of their own accord, and seeing the look on his face as he unbuckled his sword belt and threw it unceremoniously unto the bed, knew best to keep scarce and finish up the tidying another time, which was all to the good, Arthur thought, At least my servant has my best interests at heart.

 

Merlin having made his exit, Arthur took the tonic as Gaius had prescribed for him and laid himself back on the bed, rumpling the pillows that Merlin had just puffed and set, covering his face with his hand.

 

In his mind, he kept replaying the scenes from his adolescence over and over in his head, regarding his so called “friends” from his youth who never would have dared to mark so much as a bruise upon his golden head in their sparring matches, who now in their shameful ignorance had marred his heart, as if impaling upon him their blades—one cut, two, forty in all, enough to kill a man, and he was left saying, “Et tu?  Et tu?”

 

But as he thought of each name with growing agitation, it was to Oswald he returned, his handsome face conjured against his will in his mind, simply because of all the men who had entered, his entry had taken him the most off guard, set his mind and body all out of sorts, so that he had done a double-take reading the script in the library, his knees near buckling beneath him, because of all the men to have entered, he knew Oswald to be the best, and being the best, he knew he would by the tournament’s end be the one to wed his beloved sister and call her wife.

 

He did not know his friend’s reasonings for participating and perhaps that made it all the worse for him, that stunted ignorance on his own part, in which he wanted to believe so badly that perhaps, his friend had done this out of the goodness of his heart, knowing in a benign sense the way in which he loved his sister and wishing to give her the best life offered to her—perhaps, in this way, it was a mercy—but Arthur still could not deem it such.

 

“Even you,” he whispered beneath his breath, and he lay there the rest of the afternoon, and into the blackened night, too blue to go down unto dinner and pretend all was well with his father and wife, until eventually sleep took him in its fold, shepherding him into the pasture of dreams where all is imaginary and where the imaginary could not cause him harm.

 

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Now, the moment he had most dreaded all throughout the week leading up to the tournament and the one thereafter, had come to pass, and though he had steeled himself for this moment, telling himself over and over again that whoever it was to win his sister’s hand, he would sit by like a good brother and watch the ceremony which would bind this man and her forevermore as husband and wife until the each of them—God forbid it (in the case of his sister)—passed from this earthly realm—the moment, the very instant in which Oswald had lifted the veil from Morgana’s chastened face and bent to kiss her rosy lips, it was too much for him to bear, and he, whatever control he had possessed and mustered for this untimely present—imagining it again and again in his mind as if in rehearsal for the main event—had faltered, and he had looked askance, towards what he could no longer remember, for memory, however primal, was now conjoined with pain, making it susceptible to blurring and fraying at the edges.

 

It was likened unto the hollow manner unto which he haplessly beheld the spectacle of the last match that dour day in the rain and muck in which, by no means an upset, Oswald had defeated his opponent to cheers all around, which to him he had already witnessed again and again in his mind, as if the imagining it had manifested it into being, which was surely an unchristen thought, one entirely primitive, and yet, that was what had occurred: Oswald, throwing off his helmet to raucous cheers all around, soaking in the glory that he duly earned, and it filled Arthur not with pride for his friend, but revulsion, to think, that he, if in his situation, and able to compete, would have done the same, as if his sister were a prize to be won; there was the revelation that he, too, thought of Morgana in such a manner, especially that fair autumn day in which he had knocked Valiant out cold to the crowd going wild; it had furthered the desire in his flesh into fervor, a fervor that caused him against sense to admit his feelings for Morgana, after years of admonishing himself in secret for those very sentiments of his heart, when she, upon nervous accident, had confessed them aloud to him in the privacy of his chambers that same day.

 

Oh, to go back to that day when it was as if the entire world sat posed within his fingertips, alight and alive for the grabbing, the taking, the consuming whole.

 

That thought, that wayward notion was enough to recall for him, how in the early days of their seeing one another, how both he and Morgana had circled one another, daring the other to back down and turn away before it was too late, as if they both knew internally how this would end for them if they went further, all the while pleading that they would, that the other would stay, how they had fumbled at the start of their relationship, each unsure, wondering if this was the right thing, to go forward or turn back before they each did something they would only learn with time and remorse to regret most profoundly.

 

And perhaps, now, upon hindsight, he did regret it—for knowing Morgana, and now knowing the solitude and loneliness within the fractious union with his wife—which was still, all too new, and raw, and undermining—which was entirely his fault—made it all the harder to watch her now given up to another, and a man, he loved at that, and in that moment, as the world fell away and he honed in on Morgana’s face, still as fallen winter snow, he wished it all back, thinking how much easier to withstand this it would be if he had never welcomed Morgana to his bed, if he had never just days ago, kissed her rosy lips, making his promise to Mithian void.

 

Perhaps, he thought then, it was not better to have loved, if one must watch that love pass away.  Just as perhaps, it was better to not have been born at all—then to come to that stark, bitter realization, that all who are born must one day die, in that, of all diversified life, the one common semblance was that the last moment would be pure agony.

 

That day in the throne room, he wished, the irrational, affecting side of him, the side of him that came undone with Morgana and had desired to lie with her, that Oswald would step down from the dais where he stood holding his sister’s hand and like a brawl between stags, unsheathe his sword and impale it upon his heart, putting him forevermore out of his misery.

 

He has earned it after all, Arthur thought.  Let me be dispatched like the loser I am and be done with it; I care not if my mortal life shall end.

 

But then the blissed out rapture passed, and he noticed Morgana’s forest eyes finding their way to meet him, and in that instant, the feeling left him, as if expired, and he wished more than ever to be alive, grateful in that moment to the God he had eschewed near all his life that he was, still as he knew it, for that matter, alive, his soul still intact within his corporeal flesh, blood, and bone, heart beating, lungs breathing, mind spinning with the gift of asking, how had it come to this?

 

It did not matter that he knew the answer.

 

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Unlike Morgana the spring prior, Arthur attended the afterparty to the wedding, which, to his surprise, having thought their father strangely dismissive of Morgana for reasons unbeknownst to him (but which he supposed were only natural for a father to have, to prefer his son to his daughter, if only because a son could inherit and carry on his legacy in practical, yet nevertheless symbolic ways a daughter simply could not), turned out just as ostentatious an affair as the night of revelry he had arranged for him the fair April day he had wedded Mithian.

 

There was music, dancing, revelry, a great feast to be shared and had with the nobles of the Court, all in all a stately affair, brimming and nauseating with its decadence, or so it was to Arthur, who found himself, avoiding talk where he could, choosing instead to drift off and away to the small alcove at the Great Hall’s side and lose himself in his cups, as was becoming a terrible habit for him, and yet, the warm spiced wine provided him with a means by which to numb the thoughts in his head, while filling with a burnished warmth the coldness in his chest.

 

It was not lost upon him that a year prior he had spent his own engagement party, at least for a brief moment in time, standing in this same spot, fretting after his sister who had not come down to pay her respects to himself and his bride-to-be, and in the whirring of the drink’s intoxicating lure, raced past through flickering images in his mind, the dreaded thoughts and abhorrent recognition that perhaps, his sister, in her grief, had done away with her life: had she drawn up a bath to casually slit her wrists within, watching coolly as the blood pooled about her in carmine rivulets? Or perhaps, stuffed herself inside a pillowcase, calmly waiting for the moment, the last breath would escape her lungs soft as a lullaby?

 

Now, though, that thought was just as near as far from his mind, for in the alcove, he watched his sister with Oswald together, she in a resplendent gown near white as her flesh, and he just as strapping in his house’s colors, of inky blue paired with sunburst red, a bright daze of complimentary hues that brought a flush to his flesh amongst the merriment in such an equal manner as to that which Morgana’s gown washed her out as if the color of a tombstone; this, Arthur, found, did naught to halt his attraction towards her this night, and to him she appeared, perhaps for her days of absence from his side making as the old adage goes the heart all the fonder, or perhaps because she now belonged to another man than himself, all the more beautiful and desirable for that glaring reason, and this he found caused him to ask that his cup be refilled so he could down it while staring at the happy couple, thinking on what their first pillow talk would be once it came time for the consummation later that night, wishing himself to be a fly on a wall so he could watch them together, himself, inanely curious whether Oswald would be as good to his sister as he had been (or so he assumed he had been) in bed.

 

Instead, as he lowered his gaze, now dulled by the wine, to take another gulp from his cup, he thought he must content himself to watch them from the confines of the alcove, now that as the night wore on, less attention would be paid to himself (or so he comprehended, rather obtusely, in his drunken state, for as the High King’s son and heir, would not those about him with whom he normally jested and appeared to be in good humor at such festivities of the past, notice his standoffishness and aloofness this night?).  

 

He had started out the night in a low mood, but with a sound mind, and even had made a speech by which to congratulate his dear friend on his union with his sister, speaking of his merits and good virtues, and stating that he would rather not see his sister with any other man, which, he admitted, was true, if excepting himself, if he had been taken out of the picture, which in way, by wedding Morgana’s singular friend the spring prior, he had, not counting of course, the unacceptable truth of their relation, and Oswald, in response, had clapped him on the back, and toasted to their new stance as brothers, as kin, all the while, Arthur caught Morgana watching on, with a painted smile on her lips, that appeared compliant to those who would not know her, but to him, seemed tired, so very tired, as he too felt.

 

Now, he watched Morgana break away from her husband for a moment, as he kissed her cheek after the dance they had just shared, to speak with Mithian, and he felt the yearning grow within him, his own face flushing with shame, as he watched the two young women he knew carnally converse in low whispers.  He had no way of knowing if they spoke so for the noise of the hall, but imagined they were sharing secrets, Mithian imparting onto her how to survive the wedding night thanks to her hapless experience with him—it was all so humiliating—and Morgana pretending she knew nothing of such matters.  Still, he noticed a small, though no less genuine smile, pave its way on her lips, as she bent her head to listen to Mithian, and it was then he remembered that this was all that he had ever wished for a year ago to his now folly, that the two women would come to be friends again, and Morgana put down her enmity, though now, low as he was in his spirits, he reckoned he was the one cast out, just as he had forcibly done so to Morgana last spring; on the receiving end of that blow, now he understood, and wanted to wrangle himself for being so harsh, so noncommittal, so selfish.

 

It was then though, that a hand fell to his shoulder, startling him into spilling a splash of the dark wine onto his tunic (which thankfully was as bright a red as the wine), and he turned around in his daze to find not Oswald as he suspected, but a better friend, his oldest and truest throughout his life, the most steadfast and willing to fight at his side come hell or highwater—Lance. 

 

Lance, who was a true knight, and had not cast his name into the tournament because, as he once admitted to him upon the shores of Avalon in summer, the heady fragrance of the apple boughs overhead, he neither loved nor coveted Morgana, but her maid, the sweet Gwen, Gwen, whom a year prior, Arthur had begged to go to Morgana’s chamber, to make haste, for he feared that in his selfishness, in his compliance with their father’s wishes, he had, in effect, been wholly responsible for her premature death.

 

“I suspect while it is customary to pay one’s respects to the happy couple, a word must be said to the bride’s brother,” he said as Arthur turned to face him, and then, Lance, frowned a moment, as if in deep thought, a solemness coming over him, though Arthur, perhaps because of the fogginess of his own wits, could not say why so.

 

“Perhaps, I’ve misspoken,” he said then softly.

 

Arthur simply stared at his friend, though he had heard him plain as the tolling of the bells come vespers, and strangely—perhaps, it truly was the wine making him melancholy and sensitive to feelings he otherwise would never have been in tune with—felt a queer urge come over him to embrace his friend, or perhaps, allow himself to be embraced by him, to be held—that was all he wanted—and to know genuine connection, the most primal human need of all, of which he had absconded for the sake of his father’s brutal, bruising love which, if truth be told, never like a winter’s sunlight could be had, grasped, contained, simply, it lay over him with its illusionary warmth, and like an moth out of season, he fled to that beckoning sun, wishing for the light, the heat, the fire—the warmth he found in his cups, but that passed from him just as quickly—that all-consuming and unconditional desire to be known and loved in the presence of the beloved, and to die righteously in that inferno, in the echoing, reflective flames burnished in the beloved’s eyes—

 

But Arthur remained unmoved, too hurt to be touched, his ego compromised in light of Oswald having kissed and danced with his sister more eloquently and kindly than ever he himself could have done, and stepped back from Lance then, giving a swirl of his drink with his hand as he numbly held it in the alcove, looking downwards at the shifting candlelight reflected therein.

 

“I hate to see you like this, Arthur,” Lance spoke again, his voice still with that musical gentle tone.

 

“Like what?” he spoke up at last, truly bemused at what his friend saw, despite his own inner contemplation that should have provided him with some inkling of how he appeared amongst the merrymaking, himself half-cast in shadow of the alcove like a vexed suitor, or worse yet, that lowly Agravaine, who thankfully, Arthur did not see make an appearance this night; it was so obvious how spurned he felt, and yet, it was not, if only because Morgana was his sister, and who could possibly—even one as astute as Lance—come to suspect the torch he carried all for and account for her?

 

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Lance began, his temper flaring just a moment before falling into the quiet rhythm of one equally hurt to see his own closest companion changed in such a manner in which he could not so easily change him back, “the way you are amongst the men, around your wife, at these feasts days since you wedded her, worse yet, since Morgana’s return…While you’ve always been one to enjoy a good party, to galivant with the knights and flirt with the ladies, I’ve never seen you before cast off in such a dour manner, drinking alone?  With the whole Court watching?  I don’t know why the High King hasn’t had a word with you, or perhaps, Mithian?  It’s hardly a secret that the two of you are not happily wed.”

 

Perhaps, the spirits he had imbibed should have caused him to bristle at his friend’s astute accusation and undermining of his character, which once he thought Lance had always admired—but perhaps, that had been foolish thinking on his part—but Arthur continued to watch his favorite of his father’s knights passively, as if he had not heard him, though he had, and the ugly truth delivered from the kindest soul caused his ego to crumble more than it already had so done, as if it were Lance to have found him in his sister’s bed, enjoying himself—that darkest secret of his for which he had always privately loathed himself for harboring even as his greater conscience had permitted him to enjoy it—and not Gwen, the small, cherished vase slipping from her fingers…

 

But that was a time ago, and no matter now, though the thought did occur to him then with sharp acuity—if Lance frequented with Gwen, though he imagined he would never admit it if so, like he himself had with Morgana, perhaps, Gwen had let slip the truth about the two of them? and the thought stopped him dead cold.

 

“Come,” he said then, regathering his wits, no longer so dampened and dulled by drink, “if what you say of me is true, then this is no conversation for a room full to the brim with guests.  Let us go out to speak privately of this matter.”

 

From what he could tell, Lance sighed a breath of relief, then did as he suggested, always the compliant one, and for this, Arthur realized he was most grateful.

 

Taking his cup with him, and steeling himself not to look back at his sister, whom he supposed was still with Mithian, though in truth she too had left the party’s scene, but carried off dramatically in the arms of her proper husband, and perhaps, this glaring omission of his—how he had not looked back—was an omen of the disaster to follow—but enough of that now; for our purposes here, it is enough to note that Lance followed Arthur into the cool spring night, a gentle drizzle glancing down from the heavens above them, and feeling the soft rain on his skin, it was then that Arthur felt not admonishment for his dalliance, but selected as if by a higher power, one he could not understand, to endure this pain, which was his pain, and being his, was enough to sober him in that cool night, so fair and green and earthly.

 

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They roamed the courtyard in silence for a time, overhearing the music and genial conversation lilt from outside the castle walls, until they came to a place to rest—Arthur needing at this point a place to sit down, to still his thundering head—upon a bench near the Court Physician’s gardens, which carried more potently with the rain, the sweetened air of new growing herbs and budding flowers, as well as those like the rosemary that had wintered over in Camelot; it was here that Arthur poured, rather symbolically, the remainder of his wine unto the ground.

 

Lance looked at him as if he prized his actions, and that lifted Arthur’s spirits ever so slightly; all he needed then was to be held in the same good regard he always presumed his friend, as well as the rest of his father’s men, held for him; as in truth, he did them—or used to.

 

“I am ashamed of my actions,” Arthur said quietly at last, not looking at the shadowed light that paved over Lance’s face from the overarching windows of the citadel spilling their candlelight down upon them; if he had, perhaps, he would have thought himself in the confessional with Father Layamon, as he had gone there time and again, for the first in years, while Morgana spent the winter over in their uncle’s kingdom, although the night air outside and the faint, glancing drizzle was a cry for relief for him there, so unlike the cooped up and confined stagnancy of the chapel confessional, although the matters related, the battle that raged within and for soul remained the same.

 

To Father Layamon, he had confessed the relief he had felt at the death of his first child, the one that had slipped from Mithian’s womb in such grotesque lumps and pieces, so as to appear rather unhuman, altogether alien, and of which, he could not stop seeing the blood and flesh in his mind, as if this were his punishment for having gone to Mithian in a bad temper, himself dead drunk and violent—all too like his father, which gave him wary pause—the night she had conceived.  He did not tell the father about the bruises he had left on Mithian’s skin that night, the purplish welts that she did well to cover and not speak of, but they haunted him too, to think he could hurt someone for only doing what they were told, perhaps, because he wished he could hurt himself for doing what his father told him to do, by wedding this woman, by giving up Morgana, because he told himself that was what he was supposed to do. 

 

It pained his conscience, but then the welts faded, turned spring green, then a yellowish gold, and the matter left him, himself feeling absolved if not forgiven, until the matter of the miscarriage that was, when he felt the unchristen gladness of his child’s demise—the son or daughter that could have been his to hold, perhaps, his heir—and here he was happy for its death, thinking it only that, an it, whereas Mithian had loved this little human, that was clear, from the way she had turned away from him and cried and cried onto Sefa’s lap, and then in just as fine a voice, begged him to leave her at once, and he, the coward, left, glad to be gone from a grief that was not his, all the while, his thoughts on Morgana, wondering, could it be? in truth that she had slipped into that carriage that balmy summer day, careful to hide herself beneath her favorite cloak, so as to shield a similar secret, and the hope grew so profound in his chest, he could not stand it and by and by, there came the guilt again, that this was his doing, that he had sent his sister away and perhaps, caused her a similar harm, and from there, there was the drinking and the nights of solitude, and the growing need to confess his sins, though of course he could not do so much as name them, and to Father Layamon he had spoken in a deadened tone, his voice flat, speaking of only how to do right by Mithian, the wife who now abandoned him when he needed her most—for normalcy—for the small parish church in the lower town, whereby she gave alms to the poor and aided the nunnery in offering shelter and a home to the little orphaned boys and girls, those lucky enough to live without, he thought, the burden of parents looming over their little, impoverished heads.

 

None of this he confessed aloud to Lance, who proved a better listener, and who offered kinder guidance, aside the gardens, as he listened to the tap-tapping of rain upon the eaves overhead; Layamon had merely urged him to do his princely and husbandly duties for the sake of the kingdom and his father’s will as if what his father wanted was akin to the Will of God.

 

Lance remained silent, merely listening, a trait Arthur had always adored him for, and perhaps, because of this quiet wisdom he possessed, waiting for the time when the prince would reach deep within himself and tell all that he would, as he would only do with time, that was what had drawn Arthur even as a peer to this gentle spirit of a boy now full grown into a benevolent man; in such ways, Arthur pondered, the two of them were stark opposites, yet, at the same time, there was rarely discord between them, as if they complimented each other despite their differences.  It soothed Arthur now to think so, there as they sat together in silence, to the simple music of the raindrops thudding the eaves, the grassy grounds, their foreheads—all as if in supplication.

 

“Do you remember that day we sparred on the training field?  And then when you found me aside Avalon?  Even then you knew something was on my mind, Lance, and you were right…. I chose…wrong.”

 

Arthur did not turn to view his friend’s response, but could sense him nodding as if in agreement, knowing his habits as well as he did, and in truth, Lance did just that, his own mind remembering, perhaps, in more vivid detail, the scene at Avalon, the two of them in one of their rare disagreements and all on account of their private secrets…Arthur, with his unnamed love, and he, himself, now with the hesitation regarding Gwen, whom, he determined, Arthur must adore just as he, though less so, perhaps, only for the sake of her outer beauty, instead of the inner radiance of her good heart.  Sensing Arthur’s possessiveness that summer afternoon when they chance found each other aside the shore had been enough for Lance to avoid Gwen the rest of that summer until it came time for her to leave Camelot in traveling with the princess northward bound, that last night in which he could not help but worry for her sake and make his feelings indirectly known to her, that he cared, though he could not bring himself that next morning to whisper such sweetness in her ear before the entire crowd of onlookers, Arthur included, that he loved her and wished her well on her journey, to plead as if made then a beggar, that she come back home to him safe and sound.  

 

“I thought you had forgotten, my friend,” Lance said softly.

 

Arthur turned to him then.  “How could I?”

 

The knight swallowed his remorse.  Since Gwen’s return, he, of course, noticed her about the halls, back to her old habits of taking after the princess’s needs, now that she was to be, as of this night, married and come the end of the celebrations on her way as one of Morgana’s women to her new home in Sir Oswald’s house a day or so’s ride from the citadel.  It was not the distance of Essetir—thank God for that, he thought—but enough, that it pained him he would not see her about the castle on the daily as he used to, as in those early easy days before he came to know her, witnessing her from afar, finding himself in love with her, without knowing her intimately; it grieved him, this second, lesser, though no less permanent loss, and for it, he turned ever more so inward, keeping his friends in the dark about how he felt; none of them had ever come to guess the truth, that he loved a maid without so much a fluster of embarrassment nor desire to turn that love into a mere fleeting dalliance, not even Arthur, who knew him well; even he had laughed and balked at the notion, finding it incredulous when first he heard it, and for that, Lance had presumed it reflected upon the prince’s character, a notion of Arthur’s own dark envy and desire to possess Gwen for himself, if only because Lance had named his love for her aloud first.

 

And perhaps, it was for that mistake, that miscalculation on his part, that incomprehensibility that Arthur could shelter within his soul a love more erring still, until it consumed him from the inside out that caused Lance, in his goodness to leave well enough alone regarding Arthur and Gwen, so that Gwen, not knowing this presumption of his, and not understanding Lance’s sudden distance the summer past and worse yet, upon her return, so that she came to slowly back off from him as well, instead of smiling at him as she passed him by, or stopping, when they were alone, for a word or two, ducking her head and hurrying off down the hall with her lady’s washing, as if the two of them had never met, they each consigned and resigned to their separate worlds, nothing more than strangers.

 

Still, it never occurred to Lance that he could have been wrong about Arthur, his strange reaction to his own confessed feelings for Morgana’s maid, as it was only just occurring to Arthur after the event of his father’s tournament that Lance never did fancy Morgana, or else he would have cast his name in the lots and bested even Oswald in the final match. 

 

They sat there together, two men with their hands, desperate to love, and incapable of doing so for their own misconceptions regarding what love looked like and what it should be based on their differing experiences—Lance, with his high ideals based on his parents’ tender accord, and Arthur, with the damning, fractious edge of his father’s widowhood. 

 

It pained him to do so, but Lance spoke then, breaking the wary silence, interrupting himself, as well as Arthur, he assumed, from his thoughts.

 

“Will you ever tell me as I did you the name of the woman who made duty a misery for you?”

Arthur could hardly breathe, though the air was sweet and fresh and fragrant with the tidings of spring—perhaps, on second thought, because of that. 

 

He wanted to get down on his knees then before Lance, take his hand and kiss it in reverence, like he could not do with his father’s priests, and admit at long last, to someone, the truth, someone he loved, someone he thought then, perhaps, could have accepted the ugly truth of his soul. 

 

But if he was wrong?  What then?  Tell, and he could not un-tell; speak, and he could not un-speak the words that would damn him to a cold hell, the loss of a true friend, as none of the others had been for him, as Oswald had turned out not to be.

 

“I wish I could,” Arthur said sadly. 

 

“That makes two of us,” Lance said with a wry laugh.

 

Arthur smiled in the dim light at his friend.  “What a pair we make.  Sitting out here in this spring drizzle, while the party goes on inside…”  He paused, shook his head at his private thought, then added solemnly, “Thank you for holding this space for me.  I think it may have been enough to change my mind about a few things, the drinking for one…”

 

“I’m glad,” Lance said, and meant it.

 

---

 

The cool drizzle and the night air, but more importantly his conversation with his cherished friend, caused Arthur to start sobering up by the time he arrived to his chambers that night, to find his sleepwear all laid out for him by his servant, who had gone to bed in the Court Physician’s quarters without waiting up for him, which would have irked him on a different day as this with less to trouble him, but as it was then he had plenty on his mind to not pass the glaring omission of Merlin’s presence much thought.

 

Instead, he undressed himself, and then dressed himself in his nightclothes, turning down the sheets for bed, a bed in which he would sleep, graciously, penitently, alone, and for which he was most thankful then, trying not to think on how this night would be the first in a year since his sister did not sleep so.

 

Of course, it was futile, if only by his own doing, because as he felt for his buckle, unfastening it, reached by mistake into his pocket, whereby he pulled out the small, stained handkerchief of Morgana’s that he, as a reminder of his folly, kept with him at all times, since finding it by happenstance on Avalon’s sandy shore that day he met Lance there, likewise, by chance, if not predestined in the stars.

 

He had carried it in his pocket, like a talisman, the reminder of his broken oath, throughout the wedding ceremony, thinking when he found his sister at last alone, to return it to her, but the opportunity never came; she was…distant, cool as the spring evening rain, unwilling to so much as look him in the eye, merely bobbing her head when he congratulated her aside Oswald, as the man wrapped him in a great bear hug, welcoming their new stance as brothers-in-law if not by blood.

 

Now, looking at the handkerchief, he was glad he did not return it, if only because this was a small part of Morgana he could oddly keep for himself, and so, perhaps, for his drunkenness, his wit’s end after the calamitous day, not wishing to sleep alone, he tucked the small cloth onto the pillow aside his, and rolling towards it, fell asleep, as if cradling the memory of his sister’s lithe form.

 

There was little he could do now, after all, aside this.

Chapter 45

Notes:

Finally a new chapter. I'm so sorry it's been months and months since I've updated this story. Hopefully, I'll be able to work on this fic more regularly from here on out and updates will be more frequent. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy.

Jo ❤

CHAPTER THREE: Testimonies (reprise)

The way Oswald had snatched her up with a quick peck to her forehead, carrying her in his arms so secure and safe against his body as they raced out of the Great Hall and up through the stairwell beyond—it reminded her—strangely—of how two autumns past she had snatched up her slippers in her hands, tearing out of the same overbearing space to prance up to her bedchamber, thinking on how this night she would be made a woman in her brother’s arms; now, it was spring, a cool April night, and she was to be made renewed in the arms of this other man, Oswald, whom she hardly knew, and yet knew enough to ascertain that he was—or had been—a close confidant—once—of her brother’s.

 

She could not say she anticipated it—the consummation of their marriage vows—in the same way that left her manic and frantic upon her bed a year and half ago, undoing her done up hair, tying it in knots at the thought of going unto he who was her brother and lying with him, but still there was an anxious expectation—a pregnant pause—to the affair, in which she wondered what it would be like to feel herself penetrated by this strong man who held her so—oddly—tenderly in his arms, as they weaved about the halls as if in a dance of their own accord and up the stairs to her bedroom where she, closing her eyes as they passed through the door, drew a deep, exultant sigh that at least they would have privacy here and that—for once—she would not have to fear the trespass of discovery that would damn both she and her lover both; they were wed, their union lawful and honest both.

 

It was with a delicate ease and hardly a word spoken that Oswald dropped her to the bed, content to set her there, and simply gaze upon her, the prize he had so duly won—and Morgana sat there, poised, expectant, as she watched this man who was now her husband rise to light the tapers upon her vanity and nightstand, bathing the familiar bedchamber with light, and then go to the lone window at the far end to draw the curtains, shielding them from the drizzling night without, not that the rain could find them here in this inner room, this place where she spent many a bored afternoon in the summers of her adolescence discovering herself alongside the mental ruminations of Arthur; that in itself made it feel more sin than virtue to be with this man now, this man she did not know, and had hardly shared a word with aside her vows, besides the soft pleasantries spoken during the feast and dancing afterwards.

 

It was this slow way in which she watched her husband prepare the room that set her mind to thinking, or rather, gave her pause to continue upon this course, to conceive of a means by which to forgo this other, less pleasant part of the ceremony, despite the chills crawling up her flesh and spine with thrill; perhaps, her lonely body wanted this, but her spirit did not; her soul wished to remain loyal to Arthur no matter what he had done, no matter that he had lied with women before her, and Mithian—as far as she knew there were no others—after; in a childlike sense, she felt she owed it to him to keep her body pure, her heart untainted with the affections of another man, and so in the stillness of her own bedchamber—it was hers, she would have precedence here, she thought—she schemed silently and devoutly how to sway the mind of this gentle giant in not lying with her this night. 

 

Perhaps, she thought, Oswald felt his own trepidation, hence his few words spoken towards her since entering her private room, and the methodical way he lit the beeswax tapers himself instead of having her do it or calling for a servant to do so in her stead; or perhaps, he simply feared the dark, and wanted to see this night creature who was his bride with his own eyes as he undressed her, as if to make certain that she was the unadulterated young woman she, for all extensive purposes, seemed to be, and that tickled her most absurdly.  Either way, it seemed that time stopped, only to fall open again when he at last returned to her and eased himself down beside her on the bedspread, his hands reaching to clasp her own.

 

Looking at his hands, she felt herself transported back to another time, another place, and a great, warm flush burned through her that hopefully the dim light kept dark and secret, of how Arthur had held her gingerly against him, as he permitted his fingers to encroach within the sweet spot of her sex, and for a moment, she felt herself moved back to that time, that was until she, taking and touching his hands in her own, felt they were wrong, dissimilar, so that with a jolt she looked up at the man-beside-her’s face to find not Arthur, but Oswald—

 

“Don’t—” the single worded plea was out of her mouth before she had time to think through her protest and it died therein, as if mangled in her throat, and she looked up at her husband suddenly afeared, curious in a macabre sense, as to how he would react, if he, too, would shapeshift, in the dimly lit chamber, as she had done, and throttle her for her deliberation, or worse, yet, force himself upon her, for a disobedience he knew not she had already committed.

 

But he did neither thing, and to her dark-accustomed eyes, he appeared the same man as ever aside her as he had before the altar, taking her hand in his as he had slid the golden ring upon her finger, and while this surprised her, nothing could possibly prepare her for the way he drew his hand away from hers, allowing it to rest once more alone in her lap, and looking up at him and into his eyes, she spied not the hunger therein that had burned vehemently within her brother on a similar night such as this, though upon that opposite, darker half of the year.

 

Instead, there was merely a quiet compassion, a snuffed sorrow, as if the fire and yearning within him—that she assumed must have been present within him as a young man—had long ago gone out, and starkly she was met with the realization, that perhaps, he did not desire her as she had come to expect most men to have done throughout her life, and so was left with the inscrutable, probing question, there in the dark, why then had he cast his lot in the tournament in order to wed her? 

 

This question, whose varying answers left her cheeks burning there in the semi-darkness, also sat poised on her tongue, waiting to be spoken, and yet she could not bring herself to utter it aloud in full, if not for a sense of long-forgotten propriety on her behalf that the ceremony this day required of her that she remember and recollect about herself in a demure demeanor, in the inoffensiveness of a tight-lipped smile, then because the darkened quiet seemed all-encompassing and somehow more exposing of the truth of her sentiments, of the gloomy thoughts pressed upon her mind than if she had sat, occupying this same space of her girlhood, alongside her now husband by day with the dappled sunlight spilling through the sheers, brightening all her things and keepsakes, which expressed better than she possibly ever could the loneliness and wretchedness of her most unfortunate youth.

 

And then, it was good that she did not, for suddenly, he interrupted the darkness of the room with speech.

 

“I will not have you frightened of me,” he said softly, and at his voice, so incongruous with all things to do with the night, she inched backwards upon the bedspread, as if to prove his presumption; she was, if not afraid, then nervous, expectant with a fraught anticipation.

 

“I’m sorry—”  Again, the words flew out of her mouth, only for her to stop, stilted, as if the breath in which to give them life suddenly extinguished from her lungs.

 

“Please, don’t be,” he said then.  “It is I who must apologize, for the abrupt manner in which we were introduced…  I can hardly expect you to bare yourself to me now while we sit as strangers.”

 

Her brow furrowed, and then she sighed, the tension in her body dissipating, and she now only sensing it was there now that it was going…

 

“Then why—?”  Once more, the half-spoken question.

 

“Why partake in the tournament for your hand you mean?” he asked, gazing right through her to the heart of what perplexed her so, even if she left the maddening question unspoken, and here he chuckled slightly, in a way she supposed could be endearing with time as she learned to live with him, perhaps, even, with time, learn to love him, even as the bile rose in her throat at the thought.

 

“You should ask the young prince that,” he said, and smiled again in that easy way as she gaped at him even more baffled than before.

 

“Although, on second thought, perhaps, don’t.  I’m not sure if he would remember, or perhaps, would be affronted to have the memory returned to him.”

 

“And why is that?”  Finally, a full sentence, an inquisitive question, clear and out of her mouth, though he seemed perfectly capable of understanding her either way—yet her pulse still quickened at her throat with what he was revealing to her; she could hardly imagine Arthur condoning that this man, though a dear friend of his he was, to enter the tournament where alas he could not so much as hope to do so for her sake.

 

“It was a time ago...” he said softly.  “Arthur had just come of age, and the High King had held a weeklong celebration with jousting and feasting in his name.  Knights and noblemen from across the Five Kingdoms had come for the occasion, myself one of them.  Such a time it was, do you remember it, Princess?”

 

Of course she did.  Such splendor she had never before witnessed in all her life, and perhaps never since—such was the extent to which their father had showered Arthur in glory for his coronation as Prince of Camelot and his chosen heir.  There were games, feasting, merriment all around, following the grand ceremony in which father crowned son with a circlet of pure gold, and while, she, being yet a young woman herself, had been used to stealing away to her chamber in such occasions for the fault of the sin nestled deep within her heart, which she could not risk any such onlooker—whether they be noble or common born—glimpsing within her emerald eyes, as if the ardor for which she coveted her brother for all her own spilled out from therein, still, it could not be helped that she, as part of the royal family, be there that day to witness her brother’s crowning and in the days of revelry thereafter.

 

“Yes, go on,” she said, even as her mind drifted to the scenes rooted deep in her memory, and perhaps, like barbs, better to be kept out of reach or else risk the wounding.

 

“Well,” he continued, in a tone that suggested that for him the memory was something oddly to be cherished, “after the coronation, the High King held a tournament in Arthur’s honor, the first in which he was ever to participate, and so, I would imagine, he must have felt considerable pressure to succeed and prove himself to the High King over the days following his crowning as his heir.”

 

Morgana swallowed, shifted uncomfortably upon the bedspread.  The tale of which Oswald was relating to her now was one she had deeply repressed, for the shame it had caused her, when her strange, beguiling affections for Arthur were yet new, and discomforting to her person. 

 

She had sat at the high table upon the dais in the Great Hall alongside at the left side of her father whereas Arthur sat proudly toward his right, and all the while through the feasting, though she had congratulated Arthur and had been filled with rapture—as if the Holy Spirit itself had come down unto her body and occupied her mortal vessel with exultation, and in the process, filling her hollow bones with a heady lightness and a desire to be good (which she hardly was)—at the moment of his crowning within the throne room, and later at the table, witnessing the result on his young face, the beaming pride in which he carried himself—no longer a boy, but a man—and towards which she had felt a fervent pull towards this “new” Arthur, who was good and beautiful and just in a way she was not, for the creeping, deviant desires worming their way in her heart, and for which that night, that dinner celebration had driven her to a state of tremulous ecstasy and refined sorrow—both—and between them, a formidable fright at the notion lighting in her mind that everyone chattering at the table and beyond the outer room knew the ugly truth in her soul that she loved him with such impunity that right then and there she might as well have acted on those illicit feelings, and so, as the night had drawn on to total darkness, she had wiped her mouth (having hardly touched the food on her plate), set her napkin shakingly down upon the table, and, excusing herself, withdrew to the upper room of her bedchamber to do penance (and this the reciting of the Hail Mary as she fumbled at the beads), all with hardly a look, let alone a word spoken, towards he whom she loved, he who was her brother.

 

But Oswald, no matter as perceptive as he may be, knew none of this, knew none of the aching in her heart and the foulness of her soul, and the eternal damnation that surely awaited her now that she had acted on those wants, that sybaritic ardor which had consumed her—mind, body, and soul—and still, still, affected her, after all this time, unto this that was her wedding night over a decade later; and then in the quiet before he spoke again, she wanted to cry, Will I ever be free of him?

 

She knew what he was to say next, not so much his interpretation of the events to follow that splendid, awful night she stayed up in agony, but the objective manner in which they had occurred; day had followed night, and with the dawn, the knights and noblemen to participate in the morning’s tournament had risen—Arthur among them—with the gilded sun to go out onto the field and spar for their yearning for a higher glory that would surely be theirs upon winning; it had been Arthur’s first tournament as Uther’s named heir—and all knew that he should have won that day, earned his place as Crown Prince in skill and combat—but she had not gone down to watch him in the booth aside their father; she had not gone down, and so possessed no memory of that momentous day, its lackluster finale, except for which she had conjured up in her mind hours later upon hearing word of the ugly truth—Arthur disarmed on the muddy field in astonied surprise—and all because she had not gone down to cheer him on as once as a young girl she had promised she would do.

 

While the loss had been humiliating enough for Arthur, or so Oswald was relaying to her now, it was what had happened afterward that would wound him for years to come, the way, and here Morgana shuddered as he spoke, remembering, experiencing viscerally her brother’s shame as if it had been her own, and in a way, it was, how Uther had called his son, whom just the night before he had praised and lauded before his people, and made a fool out of him before those whom one day he would rule as High King himself, and then, as the story goes—and here, Morgana never truly had word of it from Arthur, but knew the rumors must in a sense be true—that night Uther, perhaps shamed himself at his son’s inane loss which was so uncharacteristic of him, threw him in one of his cells without so much as food or a semblance of comfort to think over what he had done.

 

“And there, Arthur waited through the long night,” Oswald spoke, still with that soft tone as if he himself might be moved to tears on her brother’s behalf, no matter how many years had passed since that wicked day—for them all, she herself, too, anguishing in her upper room, having drawn the curtains to shut out the noise of the outer world and retreat beneath the covers of her bed and beg God for escape in sleep, to flee from the thoughts troubling her mind, feelings she knew not how to contain and master, and still did not, even though, she knew, that therein awaited her dreams, which pursued her with a dread not known to the waking world, and which, perhaps, were worser fare than the circuitous thoughts in her head by day—“Arthur waited, too angry and bitter for the sleep that escaped him that night, and when the first crack of dawn lit from above down unto the cell in which he had languished, and the guards had come to lead him back to his rooms, he came to me later with this extraordinary tale of his experience there in the moonless darkened cell, and burning with a fury towards the High King, he vowed to me that he would never, not once in his life, forfeit a fight again.”

 

Morgana shook, cradling her hands to try to thwart the tremors cascading through her body at his recollection of the story, from an outsider’s point of view, as the candles flickered in the dim, casting shadows along the walls, and outside, she could hear the rain falling, and in that instant, wished she could flee this room, which always, as if it were her punishment and penance in her life, she had been called back to, and gallivant down the stairs and out into the spring night air, the scent of petrichor filling her senses with earthly calm, and the rain cleansing her of and releasing her from her part and guilt in all of this, and the ungodly repercussions echoing out into these later years of their lives.

 

Still, she did not understand how Arthur in his youth confiding in Oswald, who must have appeared much older and wiser to him that day, with years of experience of his own private losses, to have seemed the perfect friend in which to offer up this excruciating tale of his own humiliation at their father’s hands no less, had led to this seemingly kind man to enter a different tournament all these years later for the promise of her hand in marriage; it seemed to her cruel in a most poetic sense that her inability to sit through her brother’s very first tournament and applaud him on, to bear witness to his skill and be with him through it all as a good sister would have done, for her own incapability to understand and master her own fears, for the very love she felt for him and for which she vowed to do good by him by not going, by not surrendering herself to the primal passions hungering in her mind, which, she now realized, had nothing to do with him at all—but herself—would one day lead to her being torn away from him for good, by this other man taking her to wed after a different tournament in which Arthur could not enter, let alone, contend.

 

“I know,” she whispered then, and wondered if Oswald had heard her breathless utterance.  Then again, even softer, “I know.”

 

Of course, the tale also brought back with a desperate urgence for Morgana the memory of that clear autumn day—so uncharacteristically warm, the air crisp, the sunlight brightening the leaves on the trees to burgundy, to gold—when she awoke at last from her years of melancholic, self-incriminating stupor, firm in mind regarding her decision to go down—at last, all these years later—to bear witness to her brother in his realm of mastery and skill, that was, the tournament in which he was named Champion, and in which she had felt such immense pride for his person, so much so that she had begged him to allow her the honor of stripping him of his armor late that afternoon in his private bedchamber, where they would not be spotted together, no less—a tender moment that led to pieces of this tale, of these old hurts to come tumbling out of his mouth, and she, distraught at her past cruelty, had shushed him with putting her lips to his—the rest, being, of course, history—though a history that would never be inscribed within the tomes that lined the shelves of the citadel’s library, not if she could help it.

 

Oswald was speaking, and she had to catch herself, hearing but not understanding the next part of his story.

 

“What did you say?” she asked then, her clasped hands shaking.  She prayed he did not see them shake.

 

“Arthur—he said the strangest thing to me, a second vow, if you will, and for a moment, I thought him delirious from his unfortunate night in that lowly cell…”

 

“Yes, but what did he say?” she pressed him, interjecting.

 

Oswald turned to her in the dim, and feeling his eyes trace over her and down, she glanced down at her tightly clasped hands, urging herself—like some prey animal—not to move, not to so much as blink, or else fear being caught for what she was, an adulteress of the wickedest sort.

 

But Oswald seemed not to notice her strange posture, and continued onward, uninhibited.

 

“That he would do right by the High King, his father, in every match and quest set before him starting that day, so as not to shame him, which I understood rightfully, thinking on my own memories of wanting to do my own father proud, and knowing that Arthur had just been named heir with a heavy destiny ahead of him that this would be magnified tenfold…”

 

He paused a moment, and Morgana could hear the shallowness of her breathing in the all too quiet room.

 

“…but then he mentioned you, my wife, and this took me askance, I must admit, and, not comprehending his meaning, I begged him to repeat himself.  And that is when he asked me, that if ever there was a moment he could not defend you or your honor—as he explained to me, he had felt in the aftermath of his defeat—that I would step in his place… And so, you see, after all these years, I’ve kept to my promise, and have duly entered the tournament the High King arranged for your hand in marriage, all because of that oath he hounded me to swear, not relenting, not allowing me an escape—as much as I thought to give him a moment to recover from his insomnia first before acquiescing to his request.”

 

It was too much.  Too much for her to bear in the confines of that oppressive gown she had no choice but to wear this awful day, to inevitably be stripped of this dreadful night in the likewise confining space of her bedchamber—no matter the tranquil pattering of rain without the room, the candlelight flickering with a bespoke calm within.

 

Everything in her body was screaming at her to run, to devise a means of escape, as fate, this lesser destiny of her own, had thwarted her once again, and all because of her own selfish doing.

 

If only I had mastered then my feelings, she thought to herself, however helpless, no matter that thinking the moment through over and over and over again, round about and round again—as she would come to do in the days following—in endless circles, would not rewrite the past, nor would it change the hapless future she envisioned for Arthur and herself.  If I had been there, would he have won that match all those years ago? If I had been there, would I be matchless now?

 

As she turned inward, her thoughts spiraling in a disastrous descent, her husband—no, she would not think of him as that—Oswald appeared to have talked his full (or if he had said more, she had not heard him) and leaned a hand close to cup her chin, and she herself felt her heartbeat splutter, as she understood that the time at last had come for what she could not then bear for herself to endure—the consummation of their shared vows, which, she realized then, were not so much vows she had made earlier this day, but those that had been uttered by two young men a decade and more before, ones that kept her prized and secure—no longer human, no longer prepossessing of that innate selfhood permitted to all beings—like a rare jewel in a locked vault or chamber, to be lusted after without so much as a say of her own.

 

“Stop—” she said with more force than intended.  Somehow, she had fallen against the bed pillows with himself hanging over her about to unfasten her wedding gown, his hands caught in the lace and strings.

 

“What is it?” he asked.

 

Her mind searched for something, anything resembling sense she could utter to this man before her to make him promise her something instead of Arthur, her brother, and in the dissident silence to follow, a stretching, looming expanse—the rain had stopped outside, and one of the candles had burned itself out—she grasped on to the little she could—the truth, or at least a distorted aspect of it—and stilling her nerves, voiced her sole wish.

 

“I can’t,” she said, softly, but uncharacteristically firm in her mien.  When he simply watched her, perhaps, as confused as when he had heard a young, adolescent Arthur going on about her honor and pleading with him to swear his beguiling oath, she went on, saying, “I…I only mean is that, if you love my brother as much as you appear to do, then you will, as an extension of him, honor these two requests of my own: first, that throughout our marriage we will reside here in the citadel for this has been the only home I’ve ever known throughout my life, and I cannot bear to leave it, even if only for a destination a day or so’s ride away.”

 

She watched him watching her, and saw on his face the moment he surrendered and nodding, asked, “And second?”

 

Her heart was thumping in her chest, and she feared he could hear it, could fathom her fear, even as she understood that was nonsense; the first request, she had an inkling he would respect, but this second one would be a blow to his pride as a man, or at least what she presumed would matter to him as a man—yet she knew in her heart she could not bear it if, even though Arthur had betrayed the promise he had made her that quiet autumn night they spent together for the first time as if a marriage vow of its own accord, and had hurt her time and again afterward, that she would not betray him no matter the cost, no matter if this seemingly gentle giant of a man suddenly shapeshifted his demeanor and, transfiguring into a monster, strangled her against the bedspread for what she was about to ask—because such demands were out of reach for a woman, no matter one with a such a standing as she.

 

“And second,” she said then, her voice reserved, but fierce, “that for as long as we are wed, you will not lie with me unless it is my wish to do so.”

 

There was another pregnant pause as again she watched for the comprehension dawning on his face, though if he gave an outward sign, or underwent some inner private wounding at the notion, she could not spy it therein for the shadows of the room were great and absolute, until he said, at last, “I accede to your wishes, Princess.”