Mordred, Bastard Son

by Douglas Clegg

  From these dreams, I often awoke feeling as if I were on fire and needed to bathe so that I could cool myself from that burning sensation.

  I had begun to feel that I wanted to sleep with a man, nearly any man, and hated that feeling because it plagued my mind, for I could not break my word to Merlin, nor pay that debt to the Anthea that they required.

  And so I burned from these dreams and became obsessed with thoughts of the sparkling eyes of men and the want of their touch.

  5

  Merlin had not returned this year, and the news from the watchers and messengers was that the war along the battles along the coast had been severe. I worried about Merlin, and Lukat, and my cousins, though Morgause thought poorly of them. I went to Viviane to ask her to scry the fates of those I cared for, but she told me that the scrying bowl was not a game. We shared a pipe together, and she said, “Your soul is darkening, Mordred. Will you bring light into it that I might see your troubles?”

  “I cannot,” I said. “But it is my mother and her health that concern me.”

  “As I am concerned for her, too,” she said, and then, as was her way, she diverted my mind with a tale of old. She recited the tale of the legends of the ravens of Brana and how they had come to lose their beautiful shiny black feathers when they flew too close to the sun on Midsummer’s Night. “They became the sacred white ravens of the goddess, and were thrice blessed for disobeying their mistress and flying into the heavens.” When I asked her why she told me this tale now, she smiled. “Sometimes these legends of our woods mean more today than they meant in the long ago.”

  “I am tired of stories,” I said. “I want to do things. I want to…I want to leave, sometimes. Go out where other men go.”

  “How old are you now?” she asked.

  It was a strange question, for I had stopped counting the years of my life. The Isle of Glass had taken time away, and I measured life by its seasons and harvests, not by my age.

  When I told her my age, I realized I had reached that age of being a man. Youths my age had already begun their lives with their mates, had already apprenticed to the field or the hunt or the herding or the farming and gathering or the priesthood or gone off to the border wars. She sensed this, as well. “We have kept you a boy too long, Mordred. Out of protection for you. Out of love,” she said. “We did this—all of us here—because of what came before your life—the suffering of your mother and those exiled. Sometimes, it is worse to protect the nest than to set the birds free. Sometimes we think the birds will die if they fly to the sun, but we may be wrong. Sometimes, the gods bless them for their freedom and bravery.”

  “As the ravens were blessed when burned by the sun,” I said. “As they became sacred by it.”

  I realized that I could not wait for Merlin to bring me into the rites of manhood through his Art. I had become a man, and I had to find what manhood was before all of life passed. I felt that urgency of youth that may be looked back upon with gentle humor in later years—that sense that everything was now, and nothing could wait.

  I needed to forge my destiny as all men and women must, and leave behind the childhood that had held me in its thrall for too long. But I was also determined to retain my chastity, now at any cost, though male chastity was not prized, and certainly not at my age where many of the youths had already handfasted and had their first children.

  But if I could avoid the lures of the pleasures of mating and the erotic joy of flesh, I might never have to rob the Lady of the Lake of her Cauldron and pass it to those sisters at the Well and grotto.

  My mother would remain alive, and perhaps find the happiness that had eluded her for many years.

  6

  But the bargain struck with those Roman sisters was not meant to be delayed. I should have understood this, for Merlin had taught me the ways of the trickster-gods who brought men to debts that could not be paid without great tragedy.

  But I was not yet a man, though I was by age and development. In many respects I was still too much a youth, and underestimated the powers of those three women. I had not understood the true price that would be paid to the daughters of Namtareth.

  And yet, my Midsummer Rites were approaching, as all the youths of the Lake would pass the guardian Maponus and venture into the deep labyrinth where the Druid priests would bring us forth as men at the very doorway to the Otherworld.

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  The Anthea, whose goddess Namtareth granted me vision that I might see where my mother had fallen, had tricked me well with the notion that the debt would be forgiven if I did not lie with man or woman.

  For just having planted that seed in my mind, they had ensured that I should think of nothing else but of rutting and flesh and of the overpowering urges of the loins. I tried to stop up the dreams they had sent me by what my friends called “skinning the adder,” which involved a warming salve applied with the palm beneath the tunic, and a stroking motion outward. I became obsessed with this activity for a while, and even bored with it. No matter how it seemed to satisfy my midnight lusts, I wanted someone with me, not simply my hand. I did not seek release of pleasure, but of a physical man to be with me, to wrap myself around, to awaken the energies of the body with the ride that only two people could take together.

  In these dreams that haunted me, I saw that dark-haired stranger, that hermit whose body had brought turned my thoughts toward rutting and pleasure. I began to wander toward that turf house of his, though I never went beyond watching it from a distance—and dreaming. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of him at a distance having just caught two rabbits for his supper, walking back to his home, alone. I tried to throw myself into swimming, and into shepherding and horse herding and my studies, but my mind wandered to these daydreams, and I began to think I would go mad if this quickening of the flesh weren’t satisfied.

  I may look back on these events now and wish I could force that youth that I was to not allow the dreams sent to him take him over in such a way. Those demon sisters had surely brought me this craving that had only been a mild one previous, and I went to the Lady for her blessing of chastity, but even while I did, I thought of that image of Cernunnos, of his great antlers and large ball-sack with its extended prick, and I felt as if I had turned into some kind of soldier’s whore, in heat like a wolf-bitch. At the bridge into manhood, I had begun drinking mead and honey-ale with the other young men my age after a day of work. They would talk of the maidens they’d coupled with, and how it felt to be inside them. The whole time they spoke, I wanted to tear at their shirts and trousers and show them other feelings they hadn’t yet had with the maidens. I was disturbed, and the mead never helped this, for it disordered my senses and sometimes I would stay late with the other men, hoping one would take me by the hand and lead me into some fern-bed. Sometimes, I feel asleep out in the meadow, having drunk too much and dreamed that I had been taken by two of the more muscular horse-herds, and laid across a wolf-fur rug while I glanced over and saw the horrible sisters of Namtareth laughing as my men’s mouths covered mine, one after another. Waking up, the hammering headache of drink, the dryness in my mouth that made me run to the stream and dunk my head under the surface just to feel alive.

  I may have reached manhood by my age, but I had certainly not yet made it there through balls or bravery.

  But Midsummer’s Night would change all that.

  2

  To try and take my mind of my urges, I spent more time with my mother, who still lay recovering from her fall. She had not been able to speak, and so I tried vesseling into her. Though I told her much in this fashion, I did not hear anything in reply from her. She would look at me, now and then, as if she barely recognized me. All around her, garlands had been laid, and small carved statues of the goddess. I sat there with her, holding her hand, and trying to speak into her mind, but it was as if I pressed against a wall of darkness.

  3

  Before the first light of day on Midsummer’s Eve, the D
ruids gathered upon the site of the seven stones that surrounded the gaping mouth of the cavern. There, a sacred thanks to the sun and to the coming of the harvest in the months ahead, and such rituals as Druids keep to their orders.

  A Druid priest in a dark-blue robe awoke me.

  He pressed his hand to my mouth to keep me silent, and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

  “I have come to take you to the edge of Annwn so that you will become a man today.”

  4

  I went beneath his robe to leave my home, as did other boys of my age, some slightly younger, some older, for the blue robes the Druids wore were large, and meant to hide us like a great tent that we might not yet be seen by the rising sun. On flat boats, perhaps a dozen of us, along with six Druids, went out across the lake to the ledge where Maponus stood, blade in hand.

  When I stepped off the boat, the blind old man held his blade to my throat and muttered, “As you pass here, you shall die to the old ways. All that you see below must remain secret even until you pass into the arms of Arawn.”

  We were each blindfolded at that place, and as I walked further along, my head was held down to avoid bumping the low cavern ceiling. Then I felt steps beneath my feet, and I took these rough-hewn stairs slowly. I felt as if we walked for hours, although I had lost track of time in that darkness of the mind. But my bones ached and I had grown thirsty.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I was led to a place, with my back nearly touching the rock wall behind me. Heat rose from this place, a dry but not uncomfortable heat, and I smelled the herbs and incense of Druid ceremony as the sweat began to pour from my skin. It felt like a cleansing, and we were instructed to remove what clothes we wore. After I did so, I felt the sharp sting of small whips along my back and shoulders, but realized soon enough that these were the thorny branches of the stag-thistle, a poisonous plant if eaten, but if pressed against the skin, it would draw blood to the surface.

  Then someone came up and slipped a cloak of some kind over my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “You are the son of Arawn, the light of Cernunnos, consort of the great Lady.” I heard many whispers of this, so I imagined the other youths each heard this from various priests that had brought us. Then we were told that we each would be taken into individual chambers of the labyrinth that we might experience the great god Arawn for ourselves.

  Fingers pried my lips open, and that sacred stag-thistle berry was squeezed upon my tongue. It tasted bitter but also carried with it a sweet tartness of the wild strawberries often found in the meadow in early spring.

  “The stag-thistle was brought from Annwn in the paws of the hounds, and its seed fell in our grove where they chased the stag of life. It may kill a man if too much is given,” a Druid told us. “But in these sacred rites, it will bring your spirit forth from your body that you may be instructed in the ways of Midsummer, of the men of the tribes, of the old ways of our people. We perform this in secret now, by the sacred doorway, because we are hunted by Romans and Saxons and even Britons who have abandoned the Sacred Groves. But in our past lives, we performed this ritual in the full light of day, by the sunlit waters of the goddess. You may never speak of what you do here, for to speak of it will press a thorn deep into your heart and kill you instantly.”

  As he spoke, the stag-thistle had its effect upon me, and judging from the moans I heard from those around me, I knew I was not alone. My body became soaked in sweat, my lungs filled with that rich perfumed air, and a smoke as of something sweet also rose up, which made me cough. I felt light-headed, and it reminded me too much of the salve that Merlin had once rubbed upon me. I seemed to be floating beyond my body, and yet, blindfolded even so, saw nothing.

  “You will see visions here,” the Druid said. His voice echoed in this chamber, and the drug that I’d taken had stretched the echo out in such a way that his words seemed to change into other words, and their meanings evaded me. “You will know who you will become by these sights. Fear what you see, embrace what you find, but all is at your peril. Remove the coverings from your eyes.”

  This last part I understood, and after what seemed a long silence, someone removed my blindfold.

  I had been brought down into a deep circular pit. There were many carved arched doorways leading out of this chamber. The cavern ceiling above seemed many leagues upward, and there was a round hole at its very top, barely more than a pinprick at this distance, as if it were the top of a well far above us. From this hole, the light of the sun brought a thin spear of white to the center of the stone chamber.

  Only four other youths stood with me, and a Druid whose face was covered with a silver mask conducted us in the first rite of the day.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw faint light down the other arched doorways, and from the murmuring sounds and the mist of incense that came up, I gathered that the other youths were in their own rooms with a mentor or Druid who would guide them through this sacred rite.

  For some reason, I stood watching one particular young man, who looked as if he were too drugged to see me; his staring eyes seemed to look right through me. He resembled someone I knew—a friend, perhaps—though I could not recall his name. Now I knew! As I looked at him, he looked like my cousin Gawain, though, no, his face was less canine in some way, and in some respects I felt as if I looked at some lost brother of mine, for in feature he resembled me. His hair, though tamped down by sweat, was much like mine, and his nose and lips seemed borrowed from my mother… I felt a terrible chill, the kind that when experienced in intense heat brings with it greater shivers than if surrounded by ice.

  I looked at myself, standing there.

  I had left my body completely. The stag-thistle and its incense and the beating of my shoulders with its stinging nettles had disordered my senses more so than even the raveling might have.

  I had stepped outside my body and could watch myself, as if asleep yet wide-eyed, with this Druid speaking to that body while I wandered. I glanced at the others—all the youths in the room were similarly glazed in eye and manner. This self-consciousness began to annoy me, for I could not look too much beyond myself, though I could catch glimpses about my body. It was as if my consciousness were locked upon my own figure.

  And then, giving me a feeling of absolute terror, I felt something brush against the back of my neck, yet I could not turn around to see who—or what—this might be.

  But it gave me the dreadful feeling: I am not alone. The others here, they too must have felt that thing brush past them.

  We were near the doorway into the Otherworld.

  It was the feeling of the spirits of the dead moving past us.

  That is what I had felt.

  I too was spirit as I watched myself.

  And then, the Druid stepped through me and went to my body. He drew my cloak apart and, with a small blade, began carving symbols into my skin. First along my chest, and then downward. As he did, he drew the cloak back over the skin. I did not feel the pain of any of this, and watched with a detached interest, as if I did not care what happened to my body but was fascinated by the art of the sun and moon and of the stag, drawn with a small sharp blade.

  When this was done, two of the elders who I had not seen on the flatboats coming here, brought a headdress of a young stag and placed it upon my head. They drew my cloak back and dressed me in a leather tunic as our ancestors might have worn. They brought my hands in front of me, and with a thin leather strip, tied them together.

  Then they led me off, through one of the doorways. My spirit followed, and we went deeper and lower. At one point, we crossed what seemed a stone bridge, and beneath was not water at all, but what seemed like burning rock that flowed like a slow-moving stream. Yet I did not feel the heat, though I watched the elders and my body, whose skin seemed reddened from fire.

  At last we came to another room with great white walls. It did not need torches to light it, for at its center was a pool of water almost like a grotto within the rock. The water bubbled and chu
rned and steamed from the heat of that place. On the other side of the pool, a low doorway with many carvings in the Druid tongue at its entrance.

  This, then, was the door into the Otherworld.

  As I stood watching my body before me, with the antlers of the stag upon my head, with the still-healing art of the Druids upon my skin, the room around me began to fade, just as the chanting began, just as a Druid came up to my body and whispered to me, “You will not die to this world to which you were born, and when you return, you will return a man.”

  As I stood there, my mind and spirit separate from my body, I began to see other spirits—other souls—like the impression in the steamy mist and smoke of the room, move around my body. This was truly the gateway, and Midsummer’s Day, with its long hours of sunlight in the world above, was one of the four days when the veil between worlds was thinnest.

  I understood the meaning of the ritual, even as it had not completely begun.

  To become men, we had to mingle with the spirits of the dead. We had to understand life through knowledge of death.

  And so, the Mysteries of this great Midsummer rite began, though I may not tell of it here, in this life or the next.

  5

  When we emerged it was nearly dawn of the following day—Midsummer’s Day itself.

  I slept on the shores of the cave with the other young men, exhausted from a night that had left us with body aches and headaches, and secrets of which we could never speak.

  When we returned to the Isle of Glass, the other youths and maidens had already begun making the summer cakes of grain milled from the first sprouts of the field, and upon these cakes, scored marks upon them of their wishes for love. Then, when someone at the festivities took a cake, he or she had to find the maker of it for a dance, be that person youth or maiden, it did not matter. Within two cakes, a small ring had been placed. The couple who chose those cakes would become the Lord and Lady of the Sun. They'd be treated as embodiments of the god and goddess during the dancing and revelry. The lord wore an antler headdress and a snow-white cloak, and the lady wore a diadem upon her head that was the crescent moon carved from a boar’s tusk, and her cloak was a light blue, like a bird’s egg. A tree would be cut down earlier in the day—new growth from the forest, and rich dark earth dug from the muddy banks for the lake itself. These two would be brought to the lord and lady, and all would bring offerings to plant in that mud or hang from the tree. It was a beautiful ritual to begin the great festival of the night of the sun.