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alixtiiTitle: As It Ever Shall Be (3/8)
Fandom: Arthurian Legend
Characters: Ensemble
In this Chapter: Mordred, Agravaine, Morgan, Arthur, Nimue, original characters
Summary: A tale of a young girl who lusts after power, and a kingdom torn apart by desire.
Chapter One is here.
Chapter Two is here.
Chapter Three
Four figures, set upon two horses, rode up to and into the gates of the castle Tintagel. Jenifer rushed out into the courtyard to greet the master of the castle—Mordred, Lord of Cornwall. She looked at the two women—young, dark-haired, dressed in the loose gowns of peasants, and clearly sisters—who sat in front of him upon his horse. “Should I find rooms for the ladies, my lord?” she asked.
She could see the thoughtful expression of Lord Mordred’s face. Jenifer had watched the Lord grew up, and she knew very well what he was thinking—why give the girls their own rooms? His lordship would no doubt prefer having them chained to his bed. But Sir Agravaine, Mordred’s companion—and the son of the Lord of Lothian—chimed in first. “I think that would be a very good idea, Jenifer.”
Jenifer nodded, and helped the poor lasses—frightened and uncertain, it was plain to see—down from the horses. “As you wish, sir.”
Mordred scowled, but didn’t contradict his friend. “Is my mother home?”
Jenifer shook her head. “No, my lord. She traveled to Caerleon to see the king.”
“To see my father,” Mordred corrected, although they were the one and the same, Jenifer knew. “She spends more time in Caerleon than she does in Cornwall," he added to Agravaine with a scowl. "It’s not good: the people need someone to rule them, and she’s not there.”
We certainly don’t need you to rule us, thought Jenifer. God help us when the Lady Morgan dies, and Mordred would run unchecked. If it weren’t for her good sense keeping him checked and reigned in, he’d have destroyed Cornwall years ago.
Still, Mordred was Lord of Cornwall, and Jenifer was the head housekeeper of Tintagel. It never would have occurred to her, except perhaps as fantasy, to speak her thoughts aloud. She was Lord Mordred’s servant (the Lady Morgan’s as well, thank God, but his nonetheless) and to speak such disrespect would be to abandon everything that she was.
Jenifer led the girl away from the two men, shaking her head as she did. The quicker the Lady Morgan returned home, the better.
* * *
“How is Caerleon, my lady?” Jenifer asked.
The housekeeper did not really care about the state of affairs in Caerleon, Morgan knew. Tintagel was a world to itself, and more than enough for Jenifer to worry about. Instead, the question was a formal one; wrapped up in it were questions about Morgan’s health and her return and a hundred other topics. Morgan answered it just as formally: “The same, Jenifer. The same machinations, the same intrigues, again and again, year after year.”
“You must be exhausted, my lady,” Jenifer observed with a nod. “Your rooms are ready and waiting for you. Should I instruct the servants to draw a bath?”
At the moment, there was nothing Morgan wanted more. “Thank you, Jenifer, that would be wonderful. Tintagel seems to be remaining standing. I trust that all was well in my absence?” She flashed a smile at Jenifer; the housekeeper was capable and Morgan had no doubt that everything was as it should be
Jenifer smiled back, knowing that Morgan was playing. “Tintagel is the same as ever, my lady. You won’t find any machinations or intrigues here.” And yet there was a subtle exasperation in Jenifer’s voice, and Morgan could hear the part of the sentence that went unspoken: unless they are his lordship’s. Jenifer was too good a servant to ever speak against Mordred, but Morgan knew her son was not easy to handle. After all, she was his mother.
But Tintagel was Mordred’s home, and Morgan was his mother. What could she do but make sure that here he had a place he knew he could always return to, where he would find unconditional love no matter what? And try to make life at least a little easier for the servants, especially Jenifer.
Jenifer had been but three years old when Morgan returned to Tintagel after the death of Uther Penndragon. The daughter of the one of the under-housekeepers, she was one of the few inhabitants of Tintagel younger than the mistress of the castle. Even as Morgan matured and blossomed from a young girl into a woman, she saw Jenifer going through younger maturations, learning how to read and write and the duties of a servant. When Mordred had been born, Jenifer had been fourteen, just learning how to be a woman, but she took an interest in the baby which was half childish, half maternal. She also learned the task of managing a household, and grew into a strong and competent administrator. When the Morgan’s old housekeeper grew too feeble to continue work, it was Jenifer that was put in her place, and Morgan never came to regret that decision.
With the exception of Morgan herself, Jenifer knew Mordred better than anyone—his many foibles, and—on the rare occasion he chose to manifest it—his better nature as well. Mordred had a quick mind, and both Morgan and Jenifer knew he could go far when he chose to put it to good use.
Yet Jenifer never interfered, content to let things happen around her, and simply pick up the pieces as they needed. Morgan envied her her perspective, able to observe human nature at work without the obligation to step in and constantly make things right. After all, for all the Queens of Faerie’s campaign against Merlin had done, they might as well had stayed home and mopped the floors. Jenifer could just watch from her position of servility the ebb and flow of human activity, gaining an ever present sense of human nature.
Even Jenifer, standing across from her, so young—although her hair, unlike Morgan’s, had already begun to be streaked by gray, her body not kept young by Faerie itself—had incredible wisdom from having seen many things, and noticed that which everyone else—even Morgan—overlooked. Unbidden, Morgan’s thoughts went back two decades to that month in Sir Ector’s castle. What had that housekeeper—Susanna her name was, and Morgan could picture the older woman in her mind. No doubt the late housekeeper was dead by then—she must have been in her forties at the time.
Morgan laughed at that thought, for she herself was almost in her forties! But housekeepers, unlike sorceresses, lacked the advantage of having Faerie itself sustain them, except in the abstract way it sustained all living creatures.
Jenifer turned to Morgan’s apprentice, Kapalu, sitting on the horse behind Morgan’s. “And how was your trip, Kapalu?” she asked.
Kapalu shrugged. “It’s decadent, that’s what it is," he said, as he jumped down from his horse. "What can one expect? Could a king’s castle be any less?”
Jenifer eyed him skeptically. “Are you trying to tell me you did not enjoy yourself?”
Kapalu shrugged. “One takes things as they come, even decadence.”
“You’re a scoundrel, and you know it.” But Jenifer’s voice was playful. “Welcome back, to both of you.”
“It’s good to be back,” said Morgan. “It’s good to be home.”
* * *
“Jenifer tells me we have some guests,” Morgan said as she entered the hall. Mordred and Agravaine sat on opposite sides of a table, arm-wrestling. (Mordred was winning, she noted with approval.)
“If ‘guest,’ is the word you choose to use.” Mordred spoke with a cultivated nonchalance, deliberately intended to infuriate his mother.
Morgan chose to ignore it. “Jenifer could not, however, tell me who she was.”
“What does it matter?" Agravaine's wrist hit the table and Mordred gave a quick shout of triumph. "What difference does a name make?”
“A name gives substance, forms reality," she reminded him, sitting down beside him. "Denying someone a name is denying her her humanity. Even the gods have names.”
“Gods?” Mordred harrumphed. “Such nonsense you spout. The girls are nobodies, worthless; certainly not gods—more like dogs, bitches the both of them. Who cares who she is or what her name is? We all know what she is good for.”
“And we all know the hospitality of my house will not be violated, Mordred,” she said, firmly, and Mordred flinched. She turned to her son’s companion. “Agravaine?”
The boy shrugged, an embarrassed look on his face. “We never found out, my lady. We found them in the midst of a mob of men.”
“All of whom are now at the bottom of the river," Mordred interjected, picking up his dagger and making a stabbing motion with it.
“That’s quite enough, Mordred.” Morgan turned to Agravaine. “And it never occurred to you to ask their names?” Under her gaze, the lad dropped his eyes.
Morgan had to refrain to from shaking her head. What was she to do with the boys? She couldn’t chastise them for preventing a pair of girls from being gang-raped, but she wished she could believe that they had been motivated by an actual concern for the two girls and not simply by the chance to kill. And two vulnerable girls and her son were not a combination she cared to think about.
As if anticipating her thoughts, Agravaine spoke up. “I swear to you, Lady Morgan, neither Mordred nor I did anything dishonorable.”
Morgan felt this to be small comfort, indeed. Agravaine’s word was good as far as it went; it was his sense of what was and wasn’t honorable that she didn’t trust. She permitted herself a small sigh. Would she have been giving this much grief to her parents if they had lived so long? She certaintly was killing anyone at the age of seventeen (even as a sorceress her death count was quite low, and she had no doubt Mordred had already beaten it), but then, society had expected different things from her than they did from Mordred and Agravaine.
Morgan was trying to think of what to say to the two, when Jenifer burst into the room. At first, Morgan was shocked at her sudden entrance, without warning or announcement, but then she saw the red flush over the servant’s face and her hasty breathing. “Jenifer! What is it?”
“The king, my lady! He’s here!”
* * *
As Arthur waited in the courtyard of Tintagel for Morgan to be fetched by her housekeeper, he could feel his legs shaking beneath him. Why did Morgan do this to him?
He tried to pull himself together as she saw her walk through the door into the courtyard. She was followed by her son—their son—Mordred, along with the Lord of Lothian’s son Agravaine and Morgan’s apprentice—what was his name again? Kaplooey? No matter. “Good day, Morgan,” he said.
“Good day, Arthur.” Her voice did not hold the love it once had, or even the anger. Instead, she just sounded tired. “You must have set out for Tintagel within hours of my leaving Caerleon.”
Arthur raised his arms in a meaningless gesture. “Something . . . came up.” How was he to tell her? What could he possibly say?
“It must have been something of quite large import for Merlin to let you out of his sight,” Morgan remarked wryly. Inextricably, both the gazes of Mordred and Kapa—Kapalu, that was it—turned and rested, for some reason, on the tree beside him, in which a blackbird was perched upon a branch. The gaze of Morgan, however, stayed fixed upon him—a gaze he felt the urge to squirm under, despite being the gaze of his sister and former lover. Why did she always have to reopen old wounds?
“You’ve grown tall, Mordred,” Arthur said. His son said nothing, and Morgan did not remove her gaze. The awkward silence continued, and Arthur could hear their thought: No thanks to you.
Get on with it. “Merlin had an idea,” he said, then quickly realized any way would have been a better way to open than that one.
“Twenty-to-one it’s a bad idea, then.”
Arthur cursed himself as he tried to save the conversation. “I know you don’t like him, Morgan, but—”
“Don’t like? That’s a bit of an understatement, don’t you think? I detest and loathe the man, because he is wicked and evil and insidious and nefarious and—and do I really need to go on?”
“I would rather you didn’t,” Arthur admitted, wishing desperately to be anywhere else at the moment. Why did this have to be so difficult? He hadn’t even told her yet, and already—
Morgan’s features softened. “He uses you, Arthur. And I care too much to let that happen.”
“But you’re wrong about him,” Arthur argued, knowing that if there was anything he could say to persuade her, he would have convinced years ago. “You always have been wrong about him. He’s a kind old man who has guided me all these years and I owe him so much and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Perhaps we should go live with the flies, then,” pointed out Mordred. Agravaine snickered.
“Quiet, Mordred,” his mother hushed him. “And you, too, Agravaine. Mind your manners in front of the king.”
The boy bowed, stricken. “My apologies, my lady, your majesty.”
Arthur looked back at Morgan. “Morgan, you haven’t even heard this idea.”
Morgan nodded, a pensive look on her face. “I fear that I don’t have to, not if Merlin is behind it, but I guess I should if it was important enough for you to ride out to Tintagel in order to tell me about it. I owe you that much. Speak, then, Arthur.”
Where should he begin? Should he begin with Guinevere, and get it over with? No, leave that for the end—start at the beginning, with the table. That was safe. “You know how it is, Morgan. My knights quarrel amongst themselves, always wanting greater glory than everyone else. They ask me to decide who is worthy to sit at the head of their table, and those I do not choose grow resentful.”
“Only one can be the best. How else could it be?” asked Mordred.
“I would rather they work together, in peace, and care less which is the greater," Arthur answered. "My vision for Caerleon has always been everyone working together for the benefit of the whole.”
Mordred just harrumphed. “A fool’s vision. What is the point of giving privilege to those not worthy of it? It weakens Caerleon, if anything.”
Morgan shook her head. “It’s a noble vision, Arthur, but if it is really what you want, you know what the best way to do it.”
There was no reasoning with her. “That being as it may, Morgan, Merlin drew to my attention that this problem does in fact have a solution, one used by my father, in fact.”
Morgan titled her head, as if trying to remember the banquet hall at Caerleon years ago when Uther reigned. “A round table,” she said at last. “I remember it, vaguely. Oak?”
“So Merlin says. According to him, it now belongs to Lord Leodegrance, and is part of his daughter’s dowry.”
“And Merlin is saying you should—” Realization suddenly seemed to dawn on Morgan’s face, and she was quiet for sudden moments. Arthur’s heart began to beat so fast he was afraid he would collapse. “He’s saying you should marry Leodegrance’s daughter?” she asked slowly, almost emotionlessly.
Arthur nodded. “Merlin proposed the match, and when she arrived the other day—”
Morgan cut him off. “Wait. We’re not talking about that girl who arrived the night before I left? Fair hair, blue eyes, slender, this tall?” Morgan held her hand short of five feet off the ground. Arthur nodded eagerly. “Things are beginning to fall into place.”
It was Kapalu who spoke up. “My lady?”
Morgan sighed. “Perhaps I am overquick to judge the lady—I have seen her but one night since she was nine years old. Yet if I were Merlin, I would fancy such a girl as that to be the king's bride.”
“You don’t like her?" Arthur asked, suprised. He had expected resistance from Morgan, but who could object to Guinevere? "I would have thought that impossible—I found her to be quite charming.”
“I would reckon that perhaps it is impossible, Arthur, for a man, or at least a lover of women. If I had to say one thing for her, she is attractive—no, Kapalu?”
Kapalu blushed. “If you are speaking of the lady I think you are, then she was indeed quite—” Kapalu shrugged. “She was quite.”
“Well-said,” Morgan said with a mirthless laugh. Then, she turned back to Arthur. “In all of these years, I never thought of you wedded.”
“Have you never thought of taking a husband?” Arthur asked.
“Never,” answered Morgan. "It is difficult enough raising a son without having to worry about taking care of a husband as well.”
Never? wondered Arthur. He was afraid to ask even himself why that should be. “Well, I have,” said Arthur. “I see young, attractive women, and I wonder what it would be like to have and to hold, to cherish and to protect—”
“—to take to bed each night,” Morgan interjected.
“Well, yes,” Arthur admitted, somewhat flustered. “There is that.” But what was wrong with that? After all, wasn’t that why God created men and women, so that they could come together in love and—
“Of course,” Morgan said.
“There are other reasons,” Arthur insisted, thinking for the hundredth time that he would have been making more progress if he were having the conversation with a brick wall. “We’re getting old, Morgan.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m not yet forty and you’re younger than I am.” It was true--even at her age she retained the beauty of her youth. He could still see the young girl he had fallen in love with in her face.
“You age slower than I do," he complained. "What I’m trying to say is, there is no knowing when my death might come. I should insure that there is an heir to my kingdom.”
Morgan's eyes narrowed. “Mordred, Agravaine, why don’t you see how our visitors are doing? Perhaps you could learn their names while you are at it,” she said pointedly to the two boys. When they had left, she turned back to Arthur.
“You know I can’t possibly recognize Mordred,” he told her, trying to cut her off before she made things any more difficulty than they were already. He knew she knew it—why did she have to bring it up now? She was being even more difficult than she usually was. Why? “Besides, Morgan, we both know Mordred would make a terrible king.”
“A terrible king?” asked Morgan. “Perhaps. But he would make an excellent tyrant, which, between you and Merlin, is about what we have already.”
“We’ve had these arguments, before, Morgan.”
But she was relentless. “And I have no doubt that we will have them again.”
Would they ever be free, then, from this shadow which hung over them? “That’s how it is, then.” He turned away.
“Arthur, wait.” Morgan’s voice was calm. He turned back. “You came all the way to Tintagel—racing after me just as I leave Caerleon—just to tell me you were going to get married, and to get into an argument? What do you want from me, Arthur? Did you want me to tell you, yes, of course you should marry Leodegrance’s daughter, and Merlin is a wonderful person, and not to worry about Mordred, I’ll—”
“You’re invited to the ceremony at Caerleon, of course," he said, as quickly as possible. "And I didn’t want you to find out from some impersonal parchment. And—” He hung his head, knowing he was asking for that which he would never have. “I was hoping to get your blessing.”
“You don’t need my blessing, you know that.” Didn’t he? Arthur really didn’t know. He just knew it was important to him, that somehow it would be a mistake to get married without going to Morgan first.
Morgan walked up to him, put her hand on his shoulder. “I only want you to be happy; you know that. Leodegrance’s daughter, Merlin—I fear for you because of them. But in the end, you need to do what is right for you. May you find happiness, Arthur, regardless of it all. That's my blessing.”
* * *
“Another wrinkle, in a cloth which is far from flat already,” said Morgan to herself as she stirred to small cauldron.
“My lady?” Kapalu looked to her, not understanding.
“No matter, Kapalu. My thoughts were elsewhere. Hmm, yes, your lessons.” Kapalu was, like Morgan’s own mother, half-elvish, but for him, unlike Igerna le Fay, the elvish traits dominated. He had inherited the elvish gift of glamour, of being able to hide oneself from human eyes. In full elves it usually took the form of simple invisibility, but in half-breeds especially it sometimes took more exotic forms. Kapalu, for example, had the innate power to, without spell, charm, or potion, transform himself into whichever animal he desired. Yet his elvish blood provided him with remarkable potential in other areas of the Art of Sorcery, where he could use his close connection to Faerie to cast spells and manipulate the world. Morgan was trying to help him achieve his potential, to learn to use his sorcerous abilities in ways which might one day help others and improve the world.
“Faerie,” began Morgan, “includes all things. It is the pulse of life, and nothing could exist without it. It is far vaster than any human mind could comprehend; even your mother's people the elves can claim only a limited knowledge of its immensity. Perhaps a god could hold it complete within his or her thoughts; I don’t—I haven’t met one. But we can take it only as it is presented to us, searching for meaning in the small portion our minds can grasp. You must be attuned to it, able to sense its flows. Everything living is part of it, and everything is love, sharing one heartbeat, the pulse of Faerie.”
She paused. “Do you sense what I sense?”
He looked at her, suddenly realizing what she meant. “The rodents in the walls. One of them—”
“Nimueia,” Morgan said, pronouncing the name with the inflections of the ancient tongue. She sent her mind into the walls, finding the rat who, beneath the physical geas, answered to that name. She guided the simple mind of the rat, leading it out of the walls, into the hall and then into the chamber where they sat.
Morgan could sense a mind, deeper and more complex than that of the rat, wrestle for control of the rat’s body. Shields sprung up, trying to deflect Morgan’s manipulations. “Nimueia,” Morgan said again, calmly and softly, as the rat entered the room.
“Y’ral sa kin tral Nimueia,” Morgan incanted, as the form of the rat grew and took on the expected form of the young girl, cloaked in her black robe. “Did your mother never tell you not to spy?” Morgan asked the girl. “No, I suspect she never did.”
“She taught me to do what was necessary,” the girl said simply. There was a chair to her left; she sat in it. “Whatever was necessary.”
“As I imagined. And so your master felt it necessary to send you as Arthur’s watchdog?” asked Morgan. Or watchbird, or watchrat. . . .
“My master must see all.”
“So that he can use his knowledge as a weapon?”
The little girl shrugged. “Anything is a weapon. He taught you that, years ago. You chose to ignore the teaching.”
Ignore it? No. She took it to heart, in her own way—just not the way that Merlin had wanted. “What does he plan to accomplish with this marriage?”
Finally, a flicker of emotion passed Nimue’s face. “I am just an apprentice, my lady. He tells me only what he deems I need to know.”
She was telling the truth, Morgan realized. Interesting. “You don’t approve?”
“Does it master what I think? My master has made his decision.” Now the spite was undeniable, a rare moment of honesty.
Morgan's voice when she responded was calm, and she hoped soothing. “It may not matter to Merlin what you think. Perhaps it might matter to me.”
But Nimue would have nothing of it. “So you can use what I tell you against him?”
“You do not like Guinevere.” It was not a question.
“She is a charming woman,” said Nimue. “It is difficult not to like her.”
“Yet you manage. Why?”
The girl was silent.
“I would ask myself that if I were you,” said Morgan. “What does she have that you do not? In the meantime, however, Arthur will do not break Merlin’s leash in Tintagel. I would recommend you leave the castle.”
Nimue nodded, a small half-bow, then turned towards the wind and, as a blackbird, flew away. “Nimue is like you, Kapalu,” Morgan mused. “Fond of the animal’s form.”
Kapalu harrumphed. “Rats and blackbirds and serpents,” he said. “I prefer animals of strength, lions and bears and creatures need to be reckoned with. Creatures with power.”
“Subtlety is often a prerequisite for power,” Morgan pointed out. “Merlin and Nimue are the ones who realize that, and they are in power. It is not always the one with the sharpest sword or the most powerfull spells who wins.” Morgan paused, then said, “Perhaps it would be best if you summoned the Queens of Faerie, Kapalu. Something is in the air.”
Fandom: Arthurian Legend
Characters: Ensemble
In this Chapter: Mordred, Agravaine, Morgan, Arthur, Nimue, original characters
Summary: A tale of a young girl who lusts after power, and a kingdom torn apart by desire.
Chapter One is here.
Chapter Two is here.
Chapter Three
Four figures, set upon two horses, rode up to and into the gates of the castle Tintagel. Jenifer rushed out into the courtyard to greet the master of the castle—Mordred, Lord of Cornwall. She looked at the two women—young, dark-haired, dressed in the loose gowns of peasants, and clearly sisters—who sat in front of him upon his horse. “Should I find rooms for the ladies, my lord?” she asked.
She could see the thoughtful expression of Lord Mordred’s face. Jenifer had watched the Lord grew up, and she knew very well what he was thinking—why give the girls their own rooms? His lordship would no doubt prefer having them chained to his bed. But Sir Agravaine, Mordred’s companion—and the son of the Lord of Lothian—chimed in first. “I think that would be a very good idea, Jenifer.”
Jenifer nodded, and helped the poor lasses—frightened and uncertain, it was plain to see—down from the horses. “As you wish, sir.”
Mordred scowled, but didn’t contradict his friend. “Is my mother home?”
Jenifer shook her head. “No, my lord. She traveled to Caerleon to see the king.”
“To see my father,” Mordred corrected, although they were the one and the same, Jenifer knew. “She spends more time in Caerleon than she does in Cornwall," he added to Agravaine with a scowl. "It’s not good: the people need someone to rule them, and she’s not there.”
We certainly don’t need you to rule us, thought Jenifer. God help us when the Lady Morgan dies, and Mordred would run unchecked. If it weren’t for her good sense keeping him checked and reigned in, he’d have destroyed Cornwall years ago.
Still, Mordred was Lord of Cornwall, and Jenifer was the head housekeeper of Tintagel. It never would have occurred to her, except perhaps as fantasy, to speak her thoughts aloud. She was Lord Mordred’s servant (the Lady Morgan’s as well, thank God, but his nonetheless) and to speak such disrespect would be to abandon everything that she was.
Jenifer led the girl away from the two men, shaking her head as she did. The quicker the Lady Morgan returned home, the better.
* * *
“How is Caerleon, my lady?” Jenifer asked.
The housekeeper did not really care about the state of affairs in Caerleon, Morgan knew. Tintagel was a world to itself, and more than enough for Jenifer to worry about. Instead, the question was a formal one; wrapped up in it were questions about Morgan’s health and her return and a hundred other topics. Morgan answered it just as formally: “The same, Jenifer. The same machinations, the same intrigues, again and again, year after year.”
“You must be exhausted, my lady,” Jenifer observed with a nod. “Your rooms are ready and waiting for you. Should I instruct the servants to draw a bath?”
At the moment, there was nothing Morgan wanted more. “Thank you, Jenifer, that would be wonderful. Tintagel seems to be remaining standing. I trust that all was well in my absence?” She flashed a smile at Jenifer; the housekeeper was capable and Morgan had no doubt that everything was as it should be
Jenifer smiled back, knowing that Morgan was playing. “Tintagel is the same as ever, my lady. You won’t find any machinations or intrigues here.” And yet there was a subtle exasperation in Jenifer’s voice, and Morgan could hear the part of the sentence that went unspoken: unless they are his lordship’s. Jenifer was too good a servant to ever speak against Mordred, but Morgan knew her son was not easy to handle. After all, she was his mother.
But Tintagel was Mordred’s home, and Morgan was his mother. What could she do but make sure that here he had a place he knew he could always return to, where he would find unconditional love no matter what? And try to make life at least a little easier for the servants, especially Jenifer.
Jenifer had been but three years old when Morgan returned to Tintagel after the death of Uther Penndragon. The daughter of the one of the under-housekeepers, she was one of the few inhabitants of Tintagel younger than the mistress of the castle. Even as Morgan matured and blossomed from a young girl into a woman, she saw Jenifer going through younger maturations, learning how to read and write and the duties of a servant. When Mordred had been born, Jenifer had been fourteen, just learning how to be a woman, but she took an interest in the baby which was half childish, half maternal. She also learned the task of managing a household, and grew into a strong and competent administrator. When the Morgan’s old housekeeper grew too feeble to continue work, it was Jenifer that was put in her place, and Morgan never came to regret that decision.
With the exception of Morgan herself, Jenifer knew Mordred better than anyone—his many foibles, and—on the rare occasion he chose to manifest it—his better nature as well. Mordred had a quick mind, and both Morgan and Jenifer knew he could go far when he chose to put it to good use.
Yet Jenifer never interfered, content to let things happen around her, and simply pick up the pieces as they needed. Morgan envied her her perspective, able to observe human nature at work without the obligation to step in and constantly make things right. After all, for all the Queens of Faerie’s campaign against Merlin had done, they might as well had stayed home and mopped the floors. Jenifer could just watch from her position of servility the ebb and flow of human activity, gaining an ever present sense of human nature.
Even Jenifer, standing across from her, so young—although her hair, unlike Morgan’s, had already begun to be streaked by gray, her body not kept young by Faerie itself—had incredible wisdom from having seen many things, and noticed that which everyone else—even Morgan—overlooked. Unbidden, Morgan’s thoughts went back two decades to that month in Sir Ector’s castle. What had that housekeeper—Susanna her name was, and Morgan could picture the older woman in her mind. No doubt the late housekeeper was dead by then—she must have been in her forties at the time.
Morgan laughed at that thought, for she herself was almost in her forties! But housekeepers, unlike sorceresses, lacked the advantage of having Faerie itself sustain them, except in the abstract way it sustained all living creatures.
Jenifer turned to Morgan’s apprentice, Kapalu, sitting on the horse behind Morgan’s. “And how was your trip, Kapalu?” she asked.
Kapalu shrugged. “It’s decadent, that’s what it is," he said, as he jumped down from his horse. "What can one expect? Could a king’s castle be any less?”
Jenifer eyed him skeptically. “Are you trying to tell me you did not enjoy yourself?”
Kapalu shrugged. “One takes things as they come, even decadence.”
“You’re a scoundrel, and you know it.” But Jenifer’s voice was playful. “Welcome back, to both of you.”
“It’s good to be back,” said Morgan. “It’s good to be home.”
* * *
“Jenifer tells me we have some guests,” Morgan said as she entered the hall. Mordred and Agravaine sat on opposite sides of a table, arm-wrestling. (Mordred was winning, she noted with approval.)
“If ‘guest,’ is the word you choose to use.” Mordred spoke with a cultivated nonchalance, deliberately intended to infuriate his mother.
Morgan chose to ignore it. “Jenifer could not, however, tell me who she was.”
“What does it matter?" Agravaine's wrist hit the table and Mordred gave a quick shout of triumph. "What difference does a name make?”
“A name gives substance, forms reality," she reminded him, sitting down beside him. "Denying someone a name is denying her her humanity. Even the gods have names.”
“Gods?” Mordred harrumphed. “Such nonsense you spout. The girls are nobodies, worthless; certainly not gods—more like dogs, bitches the both of them. Who cares who she is or what her name is? We all know what she is good for.”
“And we all know the hospitality of my house will not be violated, Mordred,” she said, firmly, and Mordred flinched. She turned to her son’s companion. “Agravaine?”
The boy shrugged, an embarrassed look on his face. “We never found out, my lady. We found them in the midst of a mob of men.”
“All of whom are now at the bottom of the river," Mordred interjected, picking up his dagger and making a stabbing motion with it.
“That’s quite enough, Mordred.” Morgan turned to Agravaine. “And it never occurred to you to ask their names?” Under her gaze, the lad dropped his eyes.
Morgan had to refrain to from shaking her head. What was she to do with the boys? She couldn’t chastise them for preventing a pair of girls from being gang-raped, but she wished she could believe that they had been motivated by an actual concern for the two girls and not simply by the chance to kill. And two vulnerable girls and her son were not a combination she cared to think about.
As if anticipating her thoughts, Agravaine spoke up. “I swear to you, Lady Morgan, neither Mordred nor I did anything dishonorable.”
Morgan felt this to be small comfort, indeed. Agravaine’s word was good as far as it went; it was his sense of what was and wasn’t honorable that she didn’t trust. She permitted herself a small sigh. Would she have been giving this much grief to her parents if they had lived so long? She certaintly was killing anyone at the age of seventeen (even as a sorceress her death count was quite low, and she had no doubt Mordred had already beaten it), but then, society had expected different things from her than they did from Mordred and Agravaine.
Morgan was trying to think of what to say to the two, when Jenifer burst into the room. At first, Morgan was shocked at her sudden entrance, without warning or announcement, but then she saw the red flush over the servant’s face and her hasty breathing. “Jenifer! What is it?”
“The king, my lady! He’s here!”
* * *
As Arthur waited in the courtyard of Tintagel for Morgan to be fetched by her housekeeper, he could feel his legs shaking beneath him. Why did Morgan do this to him?
He tried to pull himself together as she saw her walk through the door into the courtyard. She was followed by her son—their son—Mordred, along with the Lord of Lothian’s son Agravaine and Morgan’s apprentice—what was his name again? Kaplooey? No matter. “Good day, Morgan,” he said.
“Good day, Arthur.” Her voice did not hold the love it once had, or even the anger. Instead, she just sounded tired. “You must have set out for Tintagel within hours of my leaving Caerleon.”
Arthur raised his arms in a meaningless gesture. “Something . . . came up.” How was he to tell her? What could he possibly say?
“It must have been something of quite large import for Merlin to let you out of his sight,” Morgan remarked wryly. Inextricably, both the gazes of Mordred and Kapa—Kapalu, that was it—turned and rested, for some reason, on the tree beside him, in which a blackbird was perched upon a branch. The gaze of Morgan, however, stayed fixed upon him—a gaze he felt the urge to squirm under, despite being the gaze of his sister and former lover. Why did she always have to reopen old wounds?
“You’ve grown tall, Mordred,” Arthur said. His son said nothing, and Morgan did not remove her gaze. The awkward silence continued, and Arthur could hear their thought: No thanks to you.
Get on with it. “Merlin had an idea,” he said, then quickly realized any way would have been a better way to open than that one.
“Twenty-to-one it’s a bad idea, then.”
Arthur cursed himself as he tried to save the conversation. “I know you don’t like him, Morgan, but—”
“Don’t like? That’s a bit of an understatement, don’t you think? I detest and loathe the man, because he is wicked and evil and insidious and nefarious and—and do I really need to go on?”
“I would rather you didn’t,” Arthur admitted, wishing desperately to be anywhere else at the moment. Why did this have to be so difficult? He hadn’t even told her yet, and already—
Morgan’s features softened. “He uses you, Arthur. And I care too much to let that happen.”
“But you’re wrong about him,” Arthur argued, knowing that if there was anything he could say to persuade her, he would have convinced years ago. “You always have been wrong about him. He’s a kind old man who has guided me all these years and I owe him so much and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Perhaps we should go live with the flies, then,” pointed out Mordred. Agravaine snickered.
“Quiet, Mordred,” his mother hushed him. “And you, too, Agravaine. Mind your manners in front of the king.”
The boy bowed, stricken. “My apologies, my lady, your majesty.”
Arthur looked back at Morgan. “Morgan, you haven’t even heard this idea.”
Morgan nodded, a pensive look on her face. “I fear that I don’t have to, not if Merlin is behind it, but I guess I should if it was important enough for you to ride out to Tintagel in order to tell me about it. I owe you that much. Speak, then, Arthur.”
Where should he begin? Should he begin with Guinevere, and get it over with? No, leave that for the end—start at the beginning, with the table. That was safe. “You know how it is, Morgan. My knights quarrel amongst themselves, always wanting greater glory than everyone else. They ask me to decide who is worthy to sit at the head of their table, and those I do not choose grow resentful.”
“Only one can be the best. How else could it be?” asked Mordred.
“I would rather they work together, in peace, and care less which is the greater," Arthur answered. "My vision for Caerleon has always been everyone working together for the benefit of the whole.”
Mordred just harrumphed. “A fool’s vision. What is the point of giving privilege to those not worthy of it? It weakens Caerleon, if anything.”
Morgan shook her head. “It’s a noble vision, Arthur, but if it is really what you want, you know what the best way to do it.”
There was no reasoning with her. “That being as it may, Morgan, Merlin drew to my attention that this problem does in fact have a solution, one used by my father, in fact.”
Morgan titled her head, as if trying to remember the banquet hall at Caerleon years ago when Uther reigned. “A round table,” she said at last. “I remember it, vaguely. Oak?”
“So Merlin says. According to him, it now belongs to Lord Leodegrance, and is part of his daughter’s dowry.”
“And Merlin is saying you should—” Realization suddenly seemed to dawn on Morgan’s face, and she was quiet for sudden moments. Arthur’s heart began to beat so fast he was afraid he would collapse. “He’s saying you should marry Leodegrance’s daughter?” she asked slowly, almost emotionlessly.
Arthur nodded. “Merlin proposed the match, and when she arrived the other day—”
Morgan cut him off. “Wait. We’re not talking about that girl who arrived the night before I left? Fair hair, blue eyes, slender, this tall?” Morgan held her hand short of five feet off the ground. Arthur nodded eagerly. “Things are beginning to fall into place.”
It was Kapalu who spoke up. “My lady?”
Morgan sighed. “Perhaps I am overquick to judge the lady—I have seen her but one night since she was nine years old. Yet if I were Merlin, I would fancy such a girl as that to be the king's bride.”
“You don’t like her?" Arthur asked, suprised. He had expected resistance from Morgan, but who could object to Guinevere? "I would have thought that impossible—I found her to be quite charming.”
“I would reckon that perhaps it is impossible, Arthur, for a man, or at least a lover of women. If I had to say one thing for her, she is attractive—no, Kapalu?”
Kapalu blushed. “If you are speaking of the lady I think you are, then she was indeed quite—” Kapalu shrugged. “She was quite.”
“Well-said,” Morgan said with a mirthless laugh. Then, she turned back to Arthur. “In all of these years, I never thought of you wedded.”
“Have you never thought of taking a husband?” Arthur asked.
“Never,” answered Morgan. "It is difficult enough raising a son without having to worry about taking care of a husband as well.”
Never? wondered Arthur. He was afraid to ask even himself why that should be. “Well, I have,” said Arthur. “I see young, attractive women, and I wonder what it would be like to have and to hold, to cherish and to protect—”
“—to take to bed each night,” Morgan interjected.
“Well, yes,” Arthur admitted, somewhat flustered. “There is that.” But what was wrong with that? After all, wasn’t that why God created men and women, so that they could come together in love and—
“Of course,” Morgan said.
“There are other reasons,” Arthur insisted, thinking for the hundredth time that he would have been making more progress if he were having the conversation with a brick wall. “We’re getting old, Morgan.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m not yet forty and you’re younger than I am.” It was true--even at her age she retained the beauty of her youth. He could still see the young girl he had fallen in love with in her face.
“You age slower than I do," he complained. "What I’m trying to say is, there is no knowing when my death might come. I should insure that there is an heir to my kingdom.”
Morgan's eyes narrowed. “Mordred, Agravaine, why don’t you see how our visitors are doing? Perhaps you could learn their names while you are at it,” she said pointedly to the two boys. When they had left, she turned back to Arthur.
“You know I can’t possibly recognize Mordred,” he told her, trying to cut her off before she made things any more difficulty than they were already. He knew she knew it—why did she have to bring it up now? She was being even more difficult than she usually was. Why? “Besides, Morgan, we both know Mordred would make a terrible king.”
“A terrible king?” asked Morgan. “Perhaps. But he would make an excellent tyrant, which, between you and Merlin, is about what we have already.”
“We’ve had these arguments, before, Morgan.”
But she was relentless. “And I have no doubt that we will have them again.”
Would they ever be free, then, from this shadow which hung over them? “That’s how it is, then.” He turned away.
“Arthur, wait.” Morgan’s voice was calm. He turned back. “You came all the way to Tintagel—racing after me just as I leave Caerleon—just to tell me you were going to get married, and to get into an argument? What do you want from me, Arthur? Did you want me to tell you, yes, of course you should marry Leodegrance’s daughter, and Merlin is a wonderful person, and not to worry about Mordred, I’ll—”
“You’re invited to the ceremony at Caerleon, of course," he said, as quickly as possible. "And I didn’t want you to find out from some impersonal parchment. And—” He hung his head, knowing he was asking for that which he would never have. “I was hoping to get your blessing.”
“You don’t need my blessing, you know that.” Didn’t he? Arthur really didn’t know. He just knew it was important to him, that somehow it would be a mistake to get married without going to Morgan first.
Morgan walked up to him, put her hand on his shoulder. “I only want you to be happy; you know that. Leodegrance’s daughter, Merlin—I fear for you because of them. But in the end, you need to do what is right for you. May you find happiness, Arthur, regardless of it all. That's my blessing.”
* * *
“Another wrinkle, in a cloth which is far from flat already,” said Morgan to herself as she stirred to small cauldron.
“My lady?” Kapalu looked to her, not understanding.
“No matter, Kapalu. My thoughts were elsewhere. Hmm, yes, your lessons.” Kapalu was, like Morgan’s own mother, half-elvish, but for him, unlike Igerna le Fay, the elvish traits dominated. He had inherited the elvish gift of glamour, of being able to hide oneself from human eyes. In full elves it usually took the form of simple invisibility, but in half-breeds especially it sometimes took more exotic forms. Kapalu, for example, had the innate power to, without spell, charm, or potion, transform himself into whichever animal he desired. Yet his elvish blood provided him with remarkable potential in other areas of the Art of Sorcery, where he could use his close connection to Faerie to cast spells and manipulate the world. Morgan was trying to help him achieve his potential, to learn to use his sorcerous abilities in ways which might one day help others and improve the world.
“Faerie,” began Morgan, “includes all things. It is the pulse of life, and nothing could exist without it. It is far vaster than any human mind could comprehend; even your mother's people the elves can claim only a limited knowledge of its immensity. Perhaps a god could hold it complete within his or her thoughts; I don’t—I haven’t met one. But we can take it only as it is presented to us, searching for meaning in the small portion our minds can grasp. You must be attuned to it, able to sense its flows. Everything living is part of it, and everything is love, sharing one heartbeat, the pulse of Faerie.”
She paused. “Do you sense what I sense?”
He looked at her, suddenly realizing what she meant. “The rodents in the walls. One of them—”
“Nimueia,” Morgan said, pronouncing the name with the inflections of the ancient tongue. She sent her mind into the walls, finding the rat who, beneath the physical geas, answered to that name. She guided the simple mind of the rat, leading it out of the walls, into the hall and then into the chamber where they sat.
Morgan could sense a mind, deeper and more complex than that of the rat, wrestle for control of the rat’s body. Shields sprung up, trying to deflect Morgan’s manipulations. “Nimueia,” Morgan said again, calmly and softly, as the rat entered the room.
“Y’ral sa kin tral Nimueia,” Morgan incanted, as the form of the rat grew and took on the expected form of the young girl, cloaked in her black robe. “Did your mother never tell you not to spy?” Morgan asked the girl. “No, I suspect she never did.”
“She taught me to do what was necessary,” the girl said simply. There was a chair to her left; she sat in it. “Whatever was necessary.”
“As I imagined. And so your master felt it necessary to send you as Arthur’s watchdog?” asked Morgan. Or watchbird, or watchrat. . . .
“My master must see all.”
“So that he can use his knowledge as a weapon?”
The little girl shrugged. “Anything is a weapon. He taught you that, years ago. You chose to ignore the teaching.”
Ignore it? No. She took it to heart, in her own way—just not the way that Merlin had wanted. “What does he plan to accomplish with this marriage?”
Finally, a flicker of emotion passed Nimue’s face. “I am just an apprentice, my lady. He tells me only what he deems I need to know.”
She was telling the truth, Morgan realized. Interesting. “You don’t approve?”
“Does it master what I think? My master has made his decision.” Now the spite was undeniable, a rare moment of honesty.
Morgan's voice when she responded was calm, and she hoped soothing. “It may not matter to Merlin what you think. Perhaps it might matter to me.”
But Nimue would have nothing of it. “So you can use what I tell you against him?”
“You do not like Guinevere.” It was not a question.
“She is a charming woman,” said Nimue. “It is difficult not to like her.”
“Yet you manage. Why?”
The girl was silent.
“I would ask myself that if I were you,” said Morgan. “What does she have that you do not? In the meantime, however, Arthur will do not break Merlin’s leash in Tintagel. I would recommend you leave the castle.”
Nimue nodded, a small half-bow, then turned towards the wind and, as a blackbird, flew away. “Nimue is like you, Kapalu,” Morgan mused. “Fond of the animal’s form.”
Kapalu harrumphed. “Rats and blackbirds and serpents,” he said. “I prefer animals of strength, lions and bears and creatures need to be reckoned with. Creatures with power.”
“Subtlety is often a prerequisite for power,” Morgan pointed out. “Merlin and Nimue are the ones who realize that, and they are in power. It is not always the one with the sharpest sword or the most powerfull spells who wins.” Morgan paused, then said, “Perhaps it would be best if you summoned the Queens of Faerie, Kapalu. Something is in the air.”