Mordred, Bastard Son

by Douglas Clegg

  4

  The Merlin knew the stars well, and was the first to see the fires lit along the eastern Dragon’s Mount to help guide the slender, long boat into the harbor by the strand.

  “Do you see?” Merlin said to her as he drew the hood down from his shaved head and pointed to the west, back toward the water.

  When my mother looked back, she saw distant green lights on the horizon, as of the eyes of wolves in a dark wood.

  “Boats.”

  “Following us?”

  “At least ten of them.”

  “I did not think he would launch so many.”

  “I am surprised it is not a thousand ships,” Merlin said, and my mother, finally, had to smile at this. “He is afraid of his own future, Morgan. That is why you must not fear that which is to come. You have seen your death, have you not?”

  “From scrying, yes,” she said.

  “I have shown him his, and he knows. He knows that if this child grows to manhood, his dreams will become nightmares.” Merlin nodded. “He is afraid of you. He was taken with madness in that night that he possessed you. This is the evil of the sword. There is good to that precious blade, but it has its price for the one who bears it. It does not belong to any man. It is cursed, and I should have understood what it would bring. When he came to me, to gaze into the Well of Sulis, I saw the future he feared. And he wishes to avert it.”

  “There is no future that cannot be altered,” she replied, and whispered, “Forgive me for cursing our patron goddess and our Lords of the Earth.”

  “Forgiven,” he said. “And forgive me for the slap upon your face. It was the fury in me.”

  “As it was within me,” she said, nodding. “If anything should befall me, Merlin, I wish for you to raise this child. Do you understand? As you did Arthur, I wish for you to teach him the languages and the knowledge. He must know of the Otherworld and of the scrying. I want him initiated into the groves, as well, though you no longer dwell within them. Because he will have many trials and torments from those who serve his father, he must have the darkest knowledge as well as the shining wisdom. He must be greater than other men that he may live long enough to see our kingdom restored.”

  “As I can, so I shall,” he promised her. Then, he kissed her fondly upon her forehead. They had a bond both miserable and grand. They fought like badgers at times, but did not stay angry long.

  But this sweet moment would not last long, for my mother kept watch at the helm, back to the west. The boats that pursued them were fast, with many oarsmen working at them and full sails to the winds. The small crew that piloted the craft in which my mother sat could not possibly outrace them, nor did they have the weapons to overpower the boats that swiftly approached across the midnight sea.

  My mother’s heart began beating too rapidly in her chest. Again, her head pounded as if stones smashed down upon her, and she could not control her anger and fear. She clutched that boy close to her as if she could bring him beneath her skin for protection, and she watched the wavering lights of the boats pursuing them. “I have seen the High-Priestess of Epona call the brothers of the sea for aid. Might you not now do this?”

  He nodded, but a grave expression had come upon him in the moonlit dark. “I might once call up that which sleeps in the water, but if I did, my lady, it might harm us as much as those who follow us.”

  “Please,” she begged. “For these children that we bring with us. Is there not something?”

  “I trust we will make the shore,” he said.

  “And will they then not find us? Will the earth itself hide us? Will we sleep beneath the marsh waters?”

  “You must believe that you are meant to live, Morgan. You must believe that I would not have even had the vision if your child were meant to die. Visions are not to bring action, but acceptance.”

  “I trust in the goddess, and in the sisters of the wind and the brothers of the sea,” she whispered. “But even so, I was not protected from a drunken boy who had become king, son of my mother as I was, but of a brutal father, possessed by some hatred of himself, coming to me with cruel swiftness at the moment when I could fight him least…where was the Lady then? I was at my bath, and she did not protect me. And now, for this act forced upon me, the innocent child within me must die? And my sister’s child, as well? Where is that goddess? Where is she who protects and rewards?”

  “If you could but remember your lives before this one, you might understand all. But know this, you are blessed, whether in this life or the next.”

  “You speak as my mother did,” she said, her fury returning. “Queen Ygrain who lay with Uther, all the while knowing that he had engineered the murder of my father and my brothers just so he might part her thighs and take her lands. And still she spoke of blessing and acceptance. I might allow Arthur to push his hand between my legs when I could not slice his throat, but I will never let him touch a hair on my child’s head. And if the Lady of the Sea and Sky and the Lord of the Deep will not hear your prayer, perhaps they will answer mine.” She began to shout into the night a terrible chant for the death of those who followed. Finally she exhausted herself, and seemed on the verge of sobbing, but did not.

  “You are strong, as the white raven who is your guide in this lifetime also is strong and free, and must fly when the storm comes, but only for a little while,” he whispered into her ear once she had calmed. “You may not entreat those aspects of shadow that bring pain into the world, Morgan. For every pain you inflict, you bring three upon your own head, and for every sorrow caused, ninefold shall be yours. Should you be reborn, this debt will follow you. Do not trade on your soul for this. Do not wish for others to die that you might live. Wish instead for the life of your child within you and for Gawain beside you and that your child’s father will love him one day, as well. Wish for your crown to be returned to you, and for justice to be done. Wish goodness upon our boatmen and servants, that they might have long life. And allow the sea and the sky and the wind to bless you. It is all that can be done. It is all that will be done. For what is cursed here may be commanded in that Otherworld, but not as we would want it to be. Do you understand?”

  “Do not blame me for desiring the death of him who seeks to murder me and my unborn child. You brought him to the sword within the sacred caverns of the womb of the Lady. You inflicted this upon him when both the sword and Cauldron were meant to be mine.”

  “Aye,” he said. “And I pay in torment for this. But this is not the moment to take this risk. Even death is not worth that price. There is a game that will not end this night.”

  “We are not chess pieces for you to move about as you wish. I do not think you care if we live or die.”

  “Though I have loved you and your sister and mother all these years, you believe that?” he asked. Merlin’s dark eyes flashed with anger, and he muttered, “You cannot tamper with what must come to pass, Morgan. You swore an oath to the Grove. I saw you take the blade upon your shoulder and drink from the golden chalice of Avalon when you were but fifteen years and you swore on your life and upon your soul’s journey. You understood the hardships that were required of you. You even then understood that you would bear a child of a terrible union. You saw this in the cup that was offered to you, and you did not then refuse that bitter draught. Are you now a rebel to your own kind? Do you believe the Lady of the Lake has forsaken you, even while she sends her winds to bring you into her embrace? Do not forget who protected you in your time of peril. Do not forget who stood before Uther pen-Dragon and stayed his hand from murdering the daughters of Gorlois.”

  My mother went silent, and watched the lights in the dark behind us.

  Merlin pointed up to the sky and said to my little cousin Gawain, “Do you see it? How the clouds gather? This is the blessing of rain, and it comes to us so that the Sacred Grove might flourish and the rivers fill.”

  I looked, too, for I could see within this memory. I can only say what I saw in the raveling, when my mother brou
ght these visions into my mind, but soon the moon became shadowed with clouds, and then a light rain began to fall upon the sea, and the wind grew until the rain became a storm and lightning crackled along the sky and at the edge of the horizon, lighting up the sea and the pursuing boats’ sails, with the cross and dragon upon a field of white.

  The torches that had been lit along the king’s boats died out in the torrent, and the oarsmen seemed to have lost their senses of direction and floundered as they sought the coastline through a heavy fog that descended as the storm passed.

  5

  My mother carried little Gawain across the plank onto the shore. She uttered words of prayer to the daughters of the marshes who lived among the shifting sands at the edge of the strand to grant them safe passage.

  And she prayed for the deaths of those who wished to kill her unborn child.

  6

  By the time they reached the inner marshland beyond the sea, others from Broceliande had come to meet my mother and her companions, for the raven messengers had flown the previous nightfall with the news of Merlin’s impending arrival. Three men and six women of the Lake rode up on horseback, those tall and slender horse masters called Eponi, the old servants of the goddess Epona, as well as two white-garbed Druids—one male and one female—and upon their shoulders, goshawks who then flew up into the sky to watch for the approaching enemy. Behind them, charioteers, half naked and muscular, their loins wrapped in wolf fur, with the iron torques upon their necks that could not be broken after they had escaped their slavery, and the thick bracelets upon their forearms—these were Roman slaves of the provinces who had come willingly to the Lake of Glass and who knew the ways of their former masters too well. They guided their chariots over to the path, to carry my mother and cousin and servants from the shifting sands down the hundred-league road. The storm had run its course in the sky, the fog along the water had begun fading, and a distant purple light of dawn played above the topmost branches of the trees, the rose-yellow halo of the sun barely visible.

  “We must reach our lake before the sun rises, or they will find us!” Merlin said, and called out to the Druidess, “We are followed by cutthroats!”

  The Druidess nodded, glancing toward her male companion. The Druid, whose beard was long and dark, lifted up his staff and called out in the old tongue of Nimue to the taranis crows, which bring the omens of storms upon their wings, to fly from the tallest branches that we might be hidden on our journey.

  My mother drew Gawain up with her into a chariot and crouched down, holding the boy tightly to her. She glanced up at the charioteer whose long yellow hair seemed as if it were spun from gold. He turned to look at her as well, as if he had heard her thoughts. “Do not worry, my Queen. My horses have outraced the chariot of Apollo himself and have not been singed by his fire. We will be home before the king’s men reach the marshes.”

  On horseback and chariot they went down the labyrinthine path of Broceliande, that ancient highway that was like a spider web between the trees and moss-covered stones. My mother glanced back again as the chariot she rode raced through the great hall of oaks. The trees themselves seemed to bend and bow so that the assassins would find no good entrance into the Broceliande wood. Their branches reached across the road to those of another tree, and soon all she saw behind her was the forest itself and the highway was hidden.

  She hadn’t seen the Lake of Glass or its isle since she had been a little girl, and although she had not loved its rough ways and its isolation from the world beyond Broceliande, she now prayed that it was as she remembered.

  And so they went, my mother, my young cousin, with Merlin and the two Druids guiding them, the horsemen and the charioteers, under cover of the forest, into the kingdom of the Lady of the Lake which lay beneath the ground.

  A few months later, I came into this life during the Beltane Fires.

  Chapter Four

  1

  Fair monk, you were born, no doubt, after the celebrations of the spring were outlawed or were married to the Easter Mass by law. But in those days, the music of pipe and drum barely drowned the sounds of laughter and the clapping of hands and stomping of feet upon the earth. The fires and the dancing went on through the May nights with the sweet scent of wildflowers in the air, and the arbors of the groves full of leaf and fruit, and the calls and cries of animal lust among the rising meadows.

  I saw her sister, my aunt Morgause, and my great-aunt Viviane, gathered around me soon after my birth, casting their prayers to the will of life. Morgause looked nearly like the mirror image of my mother, though she was years older. She had the long red-black hair, and when she grew it long, one would often mistake them at least for twins. Viviane was called Crone by one and all, for she had outlived nearly all the men of her time and many of the women. She was pale as a dove, and her hair, which she kept long and unbraided, seemed like the mane of a snow-white horse. Her skin was not so wrinkled, despite her advanced age, and it was only in her withered legs that she seemed to have lost vitality, for these had been broken long ago by a Roman commander who had decided to make a lesson of her to the others in the days before she retreated to the caverns to be the tunnel of the Lady Herself.

  Through Viviane, the Great Lady of the Lake offered a blessing of her own to my newborn incarnation, and as my great-aunt parted her lips, the ancient language spilled forth from her tongue, a confusion of voices, yet the blessings of that nameless goddess were unmistakable. The Lady showed herself as a tower of yellow and orange butterflies swirling in beauty before us. She was like the wisp of light that carried the morning’s dew, and she tickled my small ear with her blessing and her gifts that she gave to all the newborn children of her followers. Other elemental spirits came, too, although most were not seen by eyes, but felt with their presence. This was what others called the Fay, for these elementals were spirits of the wood and of the rock unseen by many but for those who felt their vibrations. They touched my skin and whispered to me, and through my mother’s eyes I sensed their benevolent prayers for me.

  When the Beltane fires had died, my aunts washed me and returned with my mother and me to the stone chambers that were both palace and self-imposed prison of exile.

  2

  There are seven doors upon the lands of the Britons that lead to Annwn, the Otherworld. The greatest of these doors, and the last to remain open, is on the isle of Avalon, though this isle is not often found but by ritual and sacrifice and the blessing of the mother goddess and the father god of the tribes. There is a door in Glastonbury; another lies in Iona; along the ashen cliffs of the Wastelands, still another doorway exists, though it smolders; still another in the caves at Lyonesse; but the doorway into the Otherworld that I knew then was near the caverns of the Lady of the Lake.

  Though there was an entrance through burning water at the lower point of the lake itself, there was a door, though few could ever find it—a cave within the caverns, they said, that did not reveal itself to the living but the dead, where the black swans of Annwn hid during the long winters and from which the Annwn hounds escaped to quarry the dead. This doorway was unknown to me as I grew up, but the caverns themselves would be the home of my childhood and it was this connection to the Otherworld that brought us the blessings of the Lady, and even of the Lord of Death, King Arawn, who hunted the world each night for souls of the dead to bring into his kingdom.

  I once found the beginnings of the entryway that might lead to that door to the land of the dead. Along a rock-encrusted ledge, an hour’s boat travel from the isle, there was a low opening between rocks. A guard lived there, though few of the Lake would ever chance going through the opening except at the designated night of the year. The guard was called Maponus, and he lived along those rocks, never leaving them. He was a criminal, though his crime was unknown to me. His atonement for it, however, was that he would guard the ledge and this opening so that none should pass until the Midsummer Rites. These were rites of manhood, and were forbidden to all but the
priests and the youths who would become men through ritual at the year chosen for them. No one was to ever talk about going into that place, though by the time I was a boy, I had heard that it led into a deep labyrinth of cavernous pathways, and that the ancient rites of the Bull and the Stag took place there.

  There were other doorways into caves, some explored, some that had once been settlements, and others that led to deep pits where one might fall to his death and never be found.

  It was the sacred—and secret—place of our people, and the kings of the many lands knew to never search for any who had found sanctuary within it, for the curses of the gods would be upon them.

  The caverns of Glass had been an ancestral home to the Iceni, from whom our tribe descended. This network of caves and passageways was hidden at a break in the forest, with bramble thickets rising up and a slender waterfall that dropped across them like long, wild hair. The entry was narrow, almost like an eyelid in the rock, opening up into a crevice. Another entrance to the caverns was further into the forest, but nearly a day’s ride on horseback. But at the cliffside caverns, a child of ten or so could easily enter standing up, but most had to crawl in through the rock edge, just behind the waterfall and among brambles and damp moss. Inside, the crevice widened almost immediately, and within twenty feet even the tallest of men could stand and not touch the ceiling of the cave. With a torch in the hand, one could see the drawings that our ancestors had made here. It had always been a sacred place, a source of life for our tribes. The paintings using the charred ends of burnt wood and a red dye from the earth to depict the great hunters and heroes as they chased down the wild bulls and boars that had once dominated Broceliande’s woods. In another section of the caverns were the chambers of the dead—they were like catacombs, filled with skulls and bones of those priests and priestesses who had hidden here during the first Roman occupation centuries before. The Druids of my childhood had nearly been hunted into extinction for many hundreds of years, but those who sought refuge in the Glass caverns had remained there, and the chambers had been maintained for the Druid dead as a reminder to us all of those terrible persecutions of our leaders and chieftains.