I Am Morgan le Fay

by Nancy Springer

  “Morgan,” Morgause said to me.

  I turned to her. She had left the soup to tend itself and knelt dabbing Ongwynn’s forehead with the wet corner of her shawl.

  I knelt beside her. “Is she any better?”

  “No.”

  She sat on the floor by Nurse—Ongwynn—and I sat beside her, staring at the sick woman as she did.

  Just a common, blocky, sandy-haired Cornishwoman.

  “There is so much I do not understand,” Morgause murmured. “This is her home? A hollow hill, a spirit grange? How did such a one come to us?”

  I said nothing, but I shared her wondering. Why had Ongwynn, pedlar to whom all commoners prayed, become our nurse?

  Wondering was no use. I stood up. “Come on,” I told Morgause.

  “Where?”

  “Just—looking.”

  I hauled her to her feet. Hand in hand we tiptoed through Ongwynn’s home, peering into the shadows of the half-moon arches, the vines, the groins, the niches in the stone walls. Our wanderings took us to our bedchamber, where we let go of each other long enough to grab our mantles and trot back to Thomas and bundle them around him as he slept. We checked on Ongwynn, then set off snooping again. We found a chamber stacked with heavy wooden chests, and we tried to look into one, leaving our finger marks in its dust; although we saw no padlock, we could not pry open the lid. In another chamber we saw, standing all alone in the middle of the stone floor, a golden goblet fit for a king, so glowing even through its dust that we did not dare to go near it. Other than those things, we found nothing out of the way—a root cellar, empty; the hollow of a baking oven behind the fireplace; a few rotting wooden water buckets. A pink-footed mouse or two scampered away from us. A dove cooed then flew over our heads. We saw no signs of any other life but these and ourselves.

  Yet when we reached the pantry—a cubbyhole carved into the stone—there laid out on dock leaves sat bread, a dozen little loaves the size of our fists, freshly baked.

  Morgause took the first watch over Ongwynn that night, and I the second. We had lifted Ongwynn and tried to feed her soup and bread, but we had not succeeded in getting much of it into her. Sometimes she shook with cold even by the hearth fire, and other times she sweated and burned with fever, and she had not come to herself all day.

  My belly was full of good food, the best I had tasted in weeks, yet I felt empty. Alone in the mid of night, I sat by Ongwynn, kept the hearth fire going, and tried not to think or feel much.

  Father, gone. Then, Mother. Now—Nurse?

  And here I sat in a benighted cave instead of Tintagel. I began to understand that I could depend on nothing in my life. Nothing.

  Except myself.

  I had loved my father, and he was dead.

  Mother... where was Mother now?

  Nurse ...

  Soft footsteps, and here came Thomas to join me—early, it seemed to me. He sat beside me at the hearth, but I did not move from my place.

  “I’ll watch,” he told me. “Go sleep.”

  I shook my head. I could not possibly have slept. A voice, my own, said like a ghost in the night, “She’s going to die.”

  Thomas did not dispute it. He sat silent.

  From around the corner of the fireplace, where we had left a food offering upon a dock leaf as Thomas had advised, there came small sounds such as squirrels might have made: rustle, squeak, chuckle. I startled, and would have jumped up to look, but Thomas put his hand on my shoulder to restrain me.

  “Blessed earth folk,” he said softly to the night, “can you help Ongwynn?”

  The sounds ceased. Only silence answered him.

  He let go of my shoulder. “I should not have asked,” he murmured. “Now I’ve distressed them.”

  I whispered, “How do you know?”

  “They have only small powers. Make a flower bloom, mend a shoe, cozen a butterfly. And you should not overtax them, or they can be mischievous.”

  “No, I mean—how do you know such things?”

  “It makes sense that Ongwynn would have such folk about her.”

  What he took for sense I saw as far more. “No! I mean ...” I shook my head like Annie shaking off flies and asked of him the question he had once asked Ongwynn. “Who are you?”

  Silence.

  “Thomas?”

  He said gently—almost always he spoke gently—“You’ll be safer if I do not tell you.”

  “But—”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched, looking at the floor. “Uther Pendragon killed my father,” he said, “and my mother and my two little sisters, much as he would have killed you if it had suited him.”

  His voice was so quiet and calm that it harrowed me more than tears would have. I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded but did not look at me. “It was all a muddle of darkness and blood and fire and—and screams,” he said. “Men-at-arms took hold of me and hit me until it was nothing but black. When I awoke I was in a dungeon.” He shuddered and stopped speaking.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered again.

  “Death is kinder than prison,” Thomas said, low. “I watched my father die in his shackles before they killed him.”

  “I—” I did not understand. “Did they starve him?”

  “Of course.” He gave me a glance that almost pitied me, then looked to the stone floor again. “His manhood died, I mean. Prison slew his soul. When they took him out to kill him, he had no heart left, no good-bye for me.”

  I thought I understood. “I miss my father too.”

  He said nothing.

  I asked, “Why did they let you go?”

  “They didn’t. They dragged me to the block in my turn, but I was little and skinny as an eel, they had no chains that would not fall off me, and somehow I wiggled out of their grasp. I ran into the forest.”

  I had been thinking of him as always and forever a handsome youth. “You were just a little boy?”

  He nodded. “In my seventh summer. Not quite old enough to make a proper outlaw.” He lifted his head with a wry smile, trying to joke, but neither of us laughed. “I wandered and wept and tried to find something to eat, but I was already so starved I had no strength to fend for myself. I lay down to die. When I awoke, Gypsies were feeding me.”

  “Gypsies!”

  He nodded. “Annie is a Gypsy pony.”

  “They—they raised you?”

  “Yes. They took me in and cherished me and beat me when I needed it and told me their stories and taught me to be a horseman.”

  “Nobody should beat you! Not ever!”

  He looked at me, smiling; he could smile now, being past the sorrowful part. “A beating is nothing compared to... He let the thought go.

  Compared to being slaughtered by a conquering king? Compared to dying in battle? Compared to his fate?

  “But I could not stay a Gypsy,” he said. “They steal. I can’t steal. Something in me won’t let me.”

  True Thomas.

  “When I was old enough I thanked them and left them and journeyed to Caer Argent to serve Uther Pendragon.”

  The king who had killed his family? “Why?”

  Thomas said just as gently as ever, “I meant to learn all I could of him. I meant to be trusted by him. And then, when I was a man and strong enough, I meant to take my revenge.”

  At our feet, Ongwynn stirred and groaned. I knelt by her side, dipped the kerchief in the pan of cool water we had placed nearby and bathed her face. Her breathing panted, shallow, and she did not open her eyes to look at me.

  “Fate has seen fit to save me from being a murderer,” Thomas murmured.

  I did not like what Thomas was saying. I did not like to think that he could kill. And he spoke of fate, and I did not understand or like the ways of fate. Blast fate, if it wanted to take Uther Pendragon, why couldn’t it have done so before he had killed my father? And what did fate want Nurse for, when I needed her? That laughing fay had said I was fated
to be fate? Nonsense. Idiocy. If fate wanted Nurse to die, I had to fight it any way I could.

  I cupped Ongwynn’s head in my hands, lifted it and demanded, “Nurse, tell me what will make you well.”

  She did not answer. She did not see me. Her eyes opened but they were only shadows in her face, as blind as if they had been picked out by crows. I meant nothing to her anymore.

  I shook her. “Answer me!”

  I felt Thomas take hold of my shoulders, tugging me away from her. “Morgan, she can’t.”

  I twisted loose of his hold, staying where I was, kneeling beside Ongwynn. All fate be damned, what was it that she had said? I was not at all convinced that stupid Morgause had heard her correctly. Rude scone?

  “Scone,” I whispered, puzzling aloud, “spoon, stone, crude stone, good stone, trued stone—”

  “Morgan,” breathed Thomas, his voice taut. I looked up at him, and he stood like a deer about to leap, his eyes wide, gazing at me.

  Druid stone.

  Even before I thought it, my hand, which often seemed to have more sense than my head, pressed to my chest. Against my skin I could feel the stone burning like my own fury against fate.

  Despite that fire I froze, icy with fear. Terror. Magic? Something magical about me? But I knew nothing of magic, and I remembered the black pits that were Merlin’s eyes. What might happen to me if I attempted this fearsome thing?

  Yet I had to try.

  My hand found the red silk cord knotted around my neck. I drew the druid stone out of my frock and let it swing free and naked in the firelight. In that flickering tawny glow, the milpreve shone with its own fey sky blue-gold light, pulsing like an azure star, a cold spark so bright it made me blink. I heard Thomas gasp, but I did not speak to him; I sensed that I had better waste neither time nor strength talking. I took the fey stone in the palm of my left hand, where it burned blue, blue. With my right hand I pulled the covers back from Nurse. Then my hand hovered over her until, with its own good sense, it came to rest on her chest just where her old brown dress opened into collar, where her breastbone widened at the base of her neck, close to her heart. I pressed my hand into the warmth that had cared for me from birth and whispered, “Please.”

  I could feel the life fluttering too weak in her humble neck. Other than that, nothing happened.

  “Please,” I said to the night, the stone shining true blue and relentless in the darkness. “I need her.”

  Nothing. Not even a chuckle in the shadows.

  Then, like the brat I was, like the mule-headed child she had raised me to be, I flared into rage because I was not getting my own way. “A pox on you!” I shouted at the night, at the distant, darkened moon, sending echoes and doves flying; I could hear beating wings and frightened whistlings overhead. “Damn everything!” And in that tantrum moment I somehow knew what I had to say, what I had to surrender. I yelled, “All right, I am Morgan and I am fey, damn it, and I will be—I will be whatever I have to be to save her! Blast it, now make her well!”

  Even after all these many years, I do not understand much better than I did then whence the power comes or where it goes. All I know is that it knocks me about as badly as any beating I care to imagine. It walloped me like a blow from Uther Pendragon’s mailed fist, like a quoit stone thrown at my head, like a whack from a not-so-playful giant, like being hurled off a cliff into the sea, thrown into a dungeon by huge enemies. All in an instant, not enough time to flee or even to move—but in that instant I felt Nurse move under my hand. I felt the great veins of her neck pulse strongly. I felt her start to sit up, and I heard her blessed voice exclaim my name—and then darkness. I knew nothing more.

  6

  THOMAS WENT AWAY ONLY A FEW DAYS LATER.

  I had lain a day abed, weak and dazed, and then I was all right, although bruised. I hobbled when I walked, and Ongwynn said my face looked tragic, all great black eyes. She made much of me, everyone made much of me, and I gladly let them; it felt wonderful to be cosseted and praised. And it was all because I had dared to attempt magic. That power had made me a heroine. Ongwynn felt as well and strong as when she was twenty, she said. Better than before we left Tintagel.

  That day, the day Thomas left, started like a song for me. Ongwynn had Morgause help her carry in extra water, and she heated the largest kettle over the fire, then called me to come bathe. She and Morgause had bathed in the cold spring pool, but there was warm water for me, to comfort every part of me including my soul, and Ongwynn washed my hair for me, and Morgause stood by and wrapped me in shawls when I was finished and made me sit by the hearth to stay warm. Nurse, Ongwynn I mean, started gently combing the tangles out of my wet hair.

  I felt blessed and grateful, and such warmth of heart is rare in me. I blurted, “Nurse, how did you come to us?”

  She gave me her slow smile but said nothing.

  “Because you are Ongwynn, I mean.” Now I wanted my way, I wanted to know. “You are a wise woman, a white witch—”

  She said, “You have more of the old, uncanny power than I ever will.”

  The memory of that power made me shiver. Still, I had saved Ongwynn.... I asked humbly, “It’s not just the milpreve, then?”

  “No! The milpreve came to you as a ...” Ongwynn paused at length, listening within herself for the right word. “A sign,” she said finally, “and a blessing, like the crown on a king.”

  “It knew me?” I had always felt this to be true.

  “It knew you and chose you.”

  “Yet ...” This was confusing. “Yet I needed it....” The power had come to me through the milpreve. I sensed this surely.

  Ongwynn said to me in her quiet way, “Yes, you must wear it. Without it you are still Morgan, but... is an uncrowned king still a king?”

  I sat wondering yet delighted, for a king held his throne merely by birth and force, whereas I ... I was chosen.

  I had forgotten my question to Ongwynn, but Morgause had not. “Ongwynn, Morgan’s right. If this is your home, what were you doing in Tintagel, being a servant?”

  Ongwynn sighed in a way that meant she would answer when she had formed the words; we knew this from long acquaintance with her silences. Morgause sat beside me on the hearthstone. We waited.

  When she had combed every inch of my hair, Ongwynn said, “A sending told me to go.”

  “Sending?” I did not know what she meant.

  “A dream. Strong. A vision in the night.”

  “Sent from whom?”

  “Maybe the goddess mother of us all. Maybe fate. Maybe—I don’t know. I am just a pedlar. I obey.”

  Morgause and I sat looking at each other, trying to puzzle this out.

  Kneeling in front of me and to one side, Ongwynn started braiding my hair into many long plaits to make it ripple as it dried. “So I walked into Tintagel on the day of your birth, Morgan,” she said.

  As a child—that is to say, up until a few weeks before that day—I had assumed that Nurse had been there for me forever, like Tintagel, like the stones on which the castle stood. Morgause must have thought much the same, for she exclaimed, “I was a year old already?”

  “Yes.” This time Ongwynn’s slow smile spread wide, almost mischievous. I had never seen such a smirk on her or such a glint in her pebble brown eyes. “You had another nurse taking care of you.”

  But then—but then why had they needed Ongwynn? I sat gawking.

  She almost grinned. “I looked your mother and father in the eye,” she said, “and told them I had come to nurse both of you girls, and that took care of it.”

  Green power.

  The uncanny power of her gaze. The power she had used against armed guards to protect our escape from Tintagel. The power that had cost her so dearly that she had sickened and nearly died. I hesitated to speak of it, but I asked anyway, “It didn’t tax you to do that?”

  She knew exactly what I meant. Slowly she shook her head. “I was younger and stronger then.”

  I wondered whet
her there was not more to the matter than that, and I might have asked, but at that moment Thomas called from outside the portal, “May I come in yet?”

  “Just a minute!” Morgause and I both shouted at once, and I bolted into my bedchamber, where a clean frock was laid out for me. It seemed that there had been a mighty washing of clothing during the day I lay abed, whether by my human companions or my small unseen ones I was not sure, but my sense was that the denizens helped those who were trying to do for themselves, and that Ongwynn and Morgause and Thomas had done much. The stone walls and ledges shone now from scrubbing. Sweet rushes lined the floors. Fat perch that Thomas had fished out of the spring pool lay cleaned and scaled and ready to poach for supper.

  Dressed, I trotted back to the warmth of the hearth, where Ongwynn knelt at my other side and set to braiding my hair again. “Come in,” she called to Thomas.

  He did so, lugging a bundle of sticks and a sack of peat, which he unloaded, stacking the squares to dry near the fireplace. At first I listened only to the good feeling of Nurse’s fingers tidying my head, but then the silence of Thomas’s back began to work upon me, and I turned to look at him. He felt my look and gave me a half smile over his shoulder, but still he did not speak.

  “What is wrong?” I asked him.

  “Nothing.”

  Ongwynn let off plaiting my hair and turned to peer at him. He set the last square of peat in place, stood, straightened his shoulders and spoke to her.

  “If all is well here,” he said quietly, as if speaking of a bucket to be mended or a hare to be skinned, “I’ll be leaving.”

  The words went through me like a spear. I leapt to my feet. “Thomas, no!” I cried before I realized it was not my place to speak.

  Morgause spoke out of turn also. “Leaving? But Thomas, what for?”

  He kept his eyes on Ongwynn’s face, and to this day I am not sure whether he was speaking to her or to us. “It is not fitting that I should remain here.”