Bigger and much fleshier than Morgan, she must once have borne the mark of Igraine’s beauty. Now she was overblown and voluptuous, and both her lips and eyes were painted. She made no effort to hide the strawberry mark on her cheek, but it didn’t detract from her looks. Certainly Lamorak found her attractive.
Watching their flirtation, I began to wonder if this proud, passionate woman who ruled alone in the cold northern islands was starved for male attention. Or perhaps, like her sister, she simply had a taste for younger men.
Mordred was a quiet, shy boy and looked, as Igraine had once told me, far more like Morgan than Morgause. Like his aunt, he was slight of build and his eyes moved quickly and restlessly everywhere. But at least they were brown in color and not the eerie green of the Lady’s.
“He’s such a good lad,” Morgause said fondly as we went into the Hall. “Learned everything I ever tried to teach him. Children are such a treasure in one’s older years, don’t you think?”
When I nodded silently she gave me a puzzled look and putting her hand on my arm, stared into my face.
“Oh, my dear, is it possible you don’t have any?” Pity and compassion flooded her voice, and I looked away hastily. I would have thought everyone in Britain knew I was barren, but perhaps the Orkney Isles were so remote, not even Court gossip reached them. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I had no idea…Well, there’s bound to be other pleasures in your life, if not offspring.” Her gaze slid over to Lamorak.
***
Seated next to me at the table, Morgause and her son ate as eagerly as young foxes.
“Did Gareth decide to stay home with you?” I asked, for he had never come to Court to be a page.
“Gareth?” The Orkney Queen’s voice quavered slightly. “Gareth was lost to me two years ago…drowned in the killing sea near the Old Man of Hoy. I thought Gawain would have told you. You know Gawain came to visit for the first time in more than a decade,” she confided, pushing away her empty bowl and brushing the crumbs from her lap. “Such a flamboyant fellow; like his father, one never knows what he’ll be up to next.”
I laughed, beginning to enjoy our visit. She had none of her sister’s tautness of spirit but exuded the comfort and blowsy good nature of a tavern-maid. One would never guess her husband had been a powerful king who had opposed mine, or that her bitterness had been so strong, she had disowned her firstborn because he espoused Arthur’s cause.
So far I had found nothing to account for Arthur’s hatred of the woman and wondered how to make amends for his rudeness.
But there was no time for conciliatory gestures. Just as she was finishing the third course of the meal the High King burst into the Hall and we all froze on the spot.
Lucan must have warned him of Morgause’s presence, for Arthur strode immediately to the center of the Hall, glowering like the Master of the Wild Hunt. Stopping to gather himself to his full height, he extended one arm and pointed directly at his sister’s forehead.
“Were you not told to stay away from my Court, on pain of banishment?”
The Queen of Orkney stared at her brother without blinking, then slowly reached over and ruffled Mordred’s hair.
“I have brought you a gift, M’lord,” she said, her voice going every bit as silky as Morgan’s did when she was pleased. “I shall leave by tomorrow’s first light, as long as I know he has been delivered safely into your hands.”
Arthur let out a string of profanity that was shocking in its virulence, then clamped his mouth shut as he wrestled with his anger.
“You will leave now, this very moment, and take your child with you,” he ordered finally, his voice shaking.
“Oh, Arthur, it’s so wretched out there,” I burst out, only to have my husband turn on me with equal wrath.
“Stay out of this, Gwen. You know nothing of what has happened here.” Turning back to Morgause, he clenched his fists until his knuckles went white. “You will leave now, I say!”
The rejected Queen gathered her skirts together and rose with as much dignity as possible, but it was the boy who caught my attention. He stared at Arthur with a combination of wistfulness and fear, and I wondered what was going on behind those large, liquid eyes. Only when Morgause tugged on his sleeve did the child leave off watching the High King and follow his mother toward the kitchen.
“Out,” Arthur bellowed. “Out of this Hall, out of Camelot—out of my life, forever!”
“At least let me give her something for shelter,” I pleaded, scrambling to my feet.
My husband turned and glared at me but didn’t forbid it, so I ran after them, calling for Lamorak to fetch one of the leather tents from the soldiers’ supplies.
“Find a sheltered meadow on the other side of the hills,” I ordered, wanting to get her out of Arthur’s sight. “Make sure she’s safe, and as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.”
“That’s very dear of you.” Morgause gave me a look of bemused resignation, as though we were fellow conspirators against the unreasonableness of men. “I understand Uther was hotheaded as well. But it is a pity we had no chance to get better acquainted. Perhaps you can join me at the tent tomorrow? I’ll give you back these clothes, and we can have a talk…there’s so much I would like to catch up on. They say you were with my mother at the end?”
I nodded and against my better judgment, agreed to visit her the next afternoon, provided that the rain had stopped.
“If not, then the next nice day,” she suggested with a touch of gaiety as she and the boy followed Lamorak out the door.
Sighing deeply, I turned back to the Hall, suddenly very tired of the strange conflicts and convoluted hatreds within Igraine’s family.
By tacit agreement Arthur and I stayed in different rooms that night; he was enraged at my going against his dictum, and I was chagrined that we, the most civilized Court in the West, should refuse shelter to a woman and child during a torrential storm.
It was the first time we had gone to bed with ill will between us since we’d married, and I lay awake a long while, listening to the blustering wind pound against the shutters.
***
The dawn was gray and soggy, but no actual rain fell, and by midday I was trying to convince Bedivere to escort me out to the place where Morgause’s tent had been raised.
“Lamorak came back this morning with the directions,” I noted. He’d spent the night with the Queen of Orkney, who was, he said, a lady of many talents, but I didn’t think the lieutenant needed to know that. Lamorak was Pellinore’s son, after all, so no one was surprised that he found his way into so many warm beds.
“Just because you know where she is doesn’t mean you should be going out to meet her,” Bedivere responded gruffly.
“What’s this?” I fumed. “Does Arthur now forbid anyone to have contact with her, even outside of Camelot’s walls?”
My longtime friend was looking at me gravely. When he finally spoke, his voice was firm and his words emphatic. “Guinevere, I have never told you what I thought you should do, but if I were to do so, I would say stay away from Morgause.”
“Well,” I temporized, ashamed at having snapped at him, “I realize your loyalty lies with Arthur. But the woman was treated very rudely last night, and I promised I’d visit today. It doesn’t have to be you who comes with me—I can get someone else.”
The lieutenant sighed heavily and rose to his feet.
“No…if you’re intent on doing this, I’ll escort you.” He reached for the rain cape that hung on the peg by the door. “I’ll get the horses ready.”
***
Even though she hosted me in a military tent, Lot’s widow had dressed in her finest clothes and was made up as though for a grand occasion. She gave me an extravagant welcome, elaborately shooing her servant out of the tent, and asking that Bedivere look after Mordred while we visited. The boy declined the lieutenant’s company, however, preferring instead to explore a nearby creek.
“I am so glad y
ou came,” Morgause assured me, her tone just on the edge of gushing. “I haven’t had a good chat over tea for simply ages. You do take tea in the afternoon, don’t you?”
I grinned and told her that Igraine had introduced me to the custom when I first came to Court.
“Ah, yes.” My hostess nodded, carefully pouring out two cups of blackberry tea. Her hand shook slightly, and she added a dollop of brown liquor to her own from a flask like the one that Bedivere keeps handy for when the stump of his arm hurts. “Mother used to say there’s nothing that couldn’t be settled over a nice cup of tea,” the Queen of Orkney commented. “You know, I lost contact with her after Uther’s death. I’d like you to tell me what happened to her.”
So we sat together quietly at the folding table while I recounted the convent years of the great Queen’s life. Morgause drained and refilled her cup several times.
“And Morgan?” I asked. “Have you been out of touch with her also?”
“Oh, no, Morgan and I have always been close,” she said quickly. “She’s my little sister…the one I looked after until the Pendragon came. It was the two of us who were banished, once Uther entered Mother’s bed.”
Her voice had turned nasty, with a cruel, cutting edge, and she leered at me knowingly before taking a swig directly from her flask.
“You know, it’s a wonder I speak to Arthur at all,” she went on, her manner shifting abruptly to a half-jocular vein. “His father killed mine, and then he killed my husband…” Her voice deepened, and she studied the flask, whisky and self-pity thickening her words. “Lot was a good husband, and now that he is dead, I am widowed and bereft…and the youngest of the boys soon to be gone. Arthur is going to accept his son at Court, isn’t he?”
Like a drunken warrior who has reached the maudlin stage, Morgause was unable to focus clearly but was very intent on trying. She peered at me closely, obviously expecting some sort of answer.
“Arthur has never held the fact that they were Lot’s children against your other sons,” I pointed out. “There’s no reason to think he’ll treat Mordred any differently.”
Morgause’s face went blank, and she let out a short bark of laughter.
“You think Mordred is Lot’s son?”
“But of course,” I responded, remembering Igraine’s comment that the boy had a difficult moira, having been conceived so close to his father’s death. “Who else’s would he be?”
Slack-jawed, the woman across the table stared at me in astonishment. It was becoming clear that this whole visit had been a mistake, and I was sorry I had come.
“So Arthur never told you?”
Having no idea what she was referring to, I shook my head.
The painted mouth snapped shut as a spasm of giggles overtook her. They started from her toes and rippled upward in riotous bursts of glee so strong that her whole body shook. But she kept her jaws firmly locked, as if guarding a delicious secret. Her eyes were scrunched shut with the effort.
I drew back in alarm, thinking she was going into a fit. I glanced at the tent flap, wondering if I should call for help, but a strangled sound brought my gaze back to my hostess.
She was slumped in her chair, tears of laughter streaming down her face. Squeals of delight squirted out from between her clenched teeth like piglets escaping a sty. At last she opened her mouth and spewed out a raucous, tent-filling bellow.
“What a sly one he is, not to tell his own wife,” she guffawed, fighting to catch her breath.
I was beginning to think she was deranged as well as drunk. Gathering my skirts, I prepared to rise.
Guessing my intent, my sister-in-law drew herself together. Hastily composing her features, she looked me full in the face.
“There’s never been a question of Lot being Mordred’s father. That boy is Arthur’s son.”
The words registered slowly, and I shook my head in disbelief. Obviously the woman was mad.
But Morgause narrowed her eyes and leaning across the table, thrust her face into mine.
“So you never guessed? And he never mentioned it! But then, why should he…few people brag about incest.”
Drops of spittle stung my skin as she flung the word at me. She was cold sober now, her faculties drawn into focus by the power of contempt and scorn. There was no question of insanity in the cold, hard eyes that stared at me in triumph. Her voice went very soft, and I began to tremble.
“Oh, yes, my dear…incest. Carnal knowledge of his sister. I’ll wager you never thought of that, much less pictured it; the boy-King begging, groveling, slobbering at my feet…the whelp of Uther rolling on the floor, panting with the heat of his bursting cock, moaning to lick my breasts, my fingers, any part of me he could touch…while I prodded him with my toe.”
Her face loomed before me, leering and twisted into a lewd grimace. I clapped my hands to my ears and, leaping to my feet, fled from the tent.
Bedivere was waiting just outside. I crumpled against him, fighting down nausea and disgust.
“She claims…that Mordred…”
My voice deserted me, and Bedivere supplied the words I could not say.
“Is Arthur’s son?”
Nodding mutely, I pulled away from him in order to see his face. But instead of outrage at such a lie, I found resignation, and my stomach twisted into a knot. Turning from the lieutenant’s arms, I bolted for the horses and sent Shadow galloping back down the trail before Bedivere had finished untying his own.
I raced into the hard gray wind, wishing it could scour the very flesh from my bones, cleanse my world of the slime that crawled over everything—Arthur, our marriage, the fact that I had loved him so long and patiently with so little response…no wonder, if his heart had been given over to Morgause all those years ago. Even her name brought bile to my lips, and when the nausea grew too strong I slowed Shadow to a walk and turned off the Road beside the ruins of an old temple. Slipping from the saddle, I fell to my knees, vomiting until I had no more strength to rise and simply crawled away into the grass.
It was there Bedivere found me, racked by dry heaves and too miserable to care about anything but death. He hauled me to my feet and, wrapping me in the warmth of his leather cape, sat beside me on the cracked steps of the temple.
“Why, Bedivere? Why did he bother with this marriage if he already had a family in the north?”
“Family?” The lieutenant grabbed my chin and lifted my face to look into his own. “Ye Gods, the presence of a child doesn’t by itself make a family, Gwen…particularly when it came into being through the hatred of a mother who saw it only as a chance for revenge. Surely after all these years you know Arthur holds no love for Morgause, so don’t go tormenting yourself with such ideas. That Mordred is his son is unfortunately too true—it is the great heartbreak of Arthur’s life. But he has never thought of them as family…and heaven knows he had no notion of fatherhood at the time. I was with him that night, I know what happened.”
I stared up at Bedivere, seeing compassion and sorrow in his craggy features, and thought of all the years we’d shared together since he’d come to Rheged to take me south for the wedding. Loyal, honest, and steady as he was, I was desperately glad he was here with me now.
“Tell me about it,” I whispered.
“Are you sure you want to hear? Wouldn’t it be better just to accept the boy’s presence and not…go into details?”
I shook my head violently. “I must know. I can face anything as long as I understand what it is…you know that.”
There was a long silence while he searched my face, and finally with a sigh, he looked off into the trees and began.
“Well, you’ve got to remember the situation. The whole of Britain was racked by civil war and many sided with the northern kings who didn’t want to accept Uther’s son. It took all of Merlin’s skill and the help of Brittany’s King Ban to turn the tide. And in the end, King Lot was dead and Urien conquered.
“Once the Great Battle had been won, Arthur had
to be accepted as High King. A boy…ah, Gwen, we were all boys back then. Barely old enough to be blooded, much less leaders of the country…”
***
Numb from the gore-spattered sight of carnage, with echoes of death screams twanging their nerves, the sobbing aftermath of war poured from victor and vanquished alike. In the midst of the tumult Uther’s son stands silently on the field, accepting Urien’s surrender in the blood-soaked mud, afterward helping the older man rise from his knees. Slinging an arm around him, in the exhaustion of victory the boy calls him “Uncle.”
Some say it is a shrewd political move by Merlin’s puppet—others see it as the human gesture of a great leader yet to come. The term would never be used again, but voiced this once it binds up many wounds.
In York the nobles paused in their preparations for flight, gaping at the news their King is forgiven. Panic in the face of ravagement revolves slowly on its axis—turns, spins, wheels into joyful welcome. Hoards of silver treasure are hastily recovered from their hiding places, the dust of packing straw barely wiped off before food for the feast is piled within. Tables groan with the weight of repast, courtiers swing between fear of a trick and the wild giddiness of reprieve.
In her chambers Lot’s widow narrows her eyes at the news that her half-brother is now High King. Raised separate and apart from his Orcadian relatives, there is no familial tie, no blood loyalty to assure the future for her and her sons…at least, not yet.
The mingled armies marched across the bridge at York into the waiting arms of revelry. The youngsters from Sir Ector’s Court whirl from bathhouse to banquet—toasted, feted, petted, sated. Young Cei cannot resist sampling every delicacy; stationing himself at the most sumptuous table, he makes his first discovery of gastronomic delights.
Merlin hurries from conversation to conversation, mending fences, playing diplomat; had he but played chaperon to his fledgling King, the history of Britain might well have been different.
Morgause is indisposed and stays sequestered in her rooms, unwilling to meet the new High King except on her own terms.
Queen of the Summer Stars: Book Two of the Guinevere Trilogy Page 41
