The Idylls of the Queen

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  We proceeded at a walk beneath the fir trees. Sometimes they grew so close that the men—afoot now—who bore the torches had to be careful not to set the branches afire. If there was a path, I could not see it; but Dame Nimue kept us going in the direction of her dart, and the thing hummed more and more loudly. Now and then, when we had to turn aside for a detour around some thorn thicket or patch of mire, it quieted down. But as soon as we were back in the way it pointed us, it spoke up again louder than ever. By the time we reached our destination, it was humming raucously enough to have frightened every night creature in the woods far away from us, if the torches had not already done that.

  We emerged from the trees into a cleared area and saw the castle looming up across the park. It seemed a small fortress, but in the hands of a mere mortal castellan I doubted it would stand a siege, or even a good, enthusiastic attack. But Le Fay, of course, would have her own defenses. Years ago, she had withstood all her brother’s men, archers, and siege weapons when he tried to take back Ringwood, the little castle he had given her near the south coast; and none of us had ever seen more than three knights at a time issue out of Ringwood, and maybe six or seven archers on the walls, rarely bothering to shoot.

  Besides, this castle seemed pretty well isolated in the woods, far from any strategic importance, probably invisible unless you stumbled across it by accident while out hunting. Maybe Morgan would have kept it hidden from our sight now if Dame Nimue had not been with us to counteract her spells. Or maybe Morgan herself chose for some quirk of mood to welcome us. Lights burned along the battlements and on each of the three towers, and the drawbridge was already down, with torchbearers waiting in two rows on either side.

  As we crossed the drawbridge between the double line of torchbearers, half of whom were smiling damsels, I tried to look beyond them into the moat. Something was splashing in the dark water, but I could not see what it was. Only once, when I glanced back, I saw a scaly head resting on the planks between two torchbearers. It was about as big as a cow, resembled a giant snake with ears, and seemed to be attached to a long, gleaming neck. It also seemed to be watching us with friendly curiosity, like a dog. One of the torchbearing damsels noticed it and gave it a nudge with her foot to send it sliding back into the water.

  Whatever else the creatures were, they must have been excellent scavengers. The moat smelled fresh and slightly perfumed. As we passed beneath the portcullis, I noticed that it seemed to be made of silver worked into fancy shapes, like an ornamental garden lattice. The courtyard was illuminated with maybe a hundred wax candles and hung around with better tapestries than those they weave in Toulouse. To my surprise, one of the tapestries showed Joseph of Arimathea bringing his followers to Christianize Britain.

  “Welcome,” said Le Fay. She had appeared at the top of a flight of stone steps. The doorway was dark behind her, and she was dressed in black, so she would not have needed any magical invisibility to slip out and watch us for a few moments unobserved before speaking.

  “You see, sister,” said Nimue, “I have answered your invitation at last.”

  Nimue dismounted and started up the steps while Dame Morgan started down. They met halfway and exchanged a sisterly embrace and kiss.

  “And this will be my youngest nephew, Mordred, will it not?” Morgan went on, gazing down at him. “How like your mother you look, boy!”

  He bowed. “Thank you for likening me to her, Aunt, instead of to my father or brothers.”

  “May I take it, madame,” I said, “that we’re here under a sign of truce?”

  “Ah, my good Sir Kay of the caustic tongue.” Still half-embracing Nimue, Queen Morgan waved one hand and signaled her servants to start seeing to our needs. “If you look for treachery and insist on having it, my dear Seneschal, then I will oblige you. But if you give me your trust, you may sleep here more safely than in Caerleon. Nor will you wake on a barren hillside. My house and food are substantial, and most of my people are human.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The Queen of All Dark Magic

  “And King Lot of Lothian and of Orkney then wedded Margawse that was Gawaine’s mother, and King Nentres of the land of Garlot wedded Elaine. All this was done at the request of King Uther. And the third sister Morgan le Fay was put to school in a nunnery, and there she learned so much that she was a great clerk of necromancy. And after she was wedded to King Uriens of the land of Gore…”

  —Malory I, 3

  The supper Dame Morgan spread for us seemed substantial enough, her plate was better than any we had for the service of the King himself, and her harper had one of the best voices I have ever heard. I was not sure whether her camaraderie with the Dame of the Lake meant that we were safe, or that Dame Nimue herself was still quite so friendly to Arthur as she had always seemed to be. But since our best hope of learning what we could and coming away again safely lay in Nimue’s good faith with us and Morgan’s willing compliance, I decided to accept her hospitality as cheerfully as I could, not drink too much, and hope the Sign of the Cross would be enough to protect us from being spirited away like old Merlin.

  Mordred seemed to be enjoying himself. Lovel remained nervous, despite the efforts of a pretty serving-damsel to flirt with him over the gold platters and flagons they were carrying; Gillimer, on the other hand, relaxed to the point of carelessness. As at the nunnery and in Rowse Castle, we left the important talk for after meat.

  Supper over, Morgan rose and said, “Of course you will want to hear Compline, my lords.”

  “There are other things besides Compline we want to hear, Dame,” I said.

  “You will want to hear Compline first. Pray that you will know what questions to ask afterwards, and how to accept the answers. Besides, it is Sunday.”

  We heard Compline. Morgan trooped along to chapel with us, dipped her hand into the font and signed herself with holy water like any good Christian. She had begun her education in a convent, of course; but I had never known her to keep any custom, conventual, Christian, or courtly, which she did not freely choose to keep.

  Her black garments were cut very simply. She would even have looked like a nun if she had worn wimple and veil instead of a small gold coronet and thin black silk veil that let her hair show plainly. Her hair was black, too, and she wore it braided and coiled up; but she had permitted it to begin silvering rather heavily, though she had not permitted more than a few wrinkles in her handsome face. (I preferred Dame Guenevere’s honest ripening, however.) Aside from the coronet, the keys of the castle at her waist, and a few rings on her long fingers, Le Fay wore only one decoration: some kind of silver pendant that hung by a thin chain around her neck. I never could make out the exact shape of that pendant, but while we were in chapel it looked like a cross.

  After Compline she dismissed the others, including Pelleas, and led Nimue, Mordred, and me alone up into a small round solar with a half-open roof and central hearth instead of fireplace and chimney. Motioning us to sit, she poked up the banked fire and added more wood herself, then sat on a chest and started stroking a dark cat that sprang into her lap. The pendant around her neck looked like a circle now.

  “Have you arranged your questions?” she said.

  “I had somehow fancied, Aunt,” said Mordred, “that you would have abandoned Ihesu for older gods.”

  “There is no older and no other god, Nephew. Nor is there any goddess but one, though your churchmen would diminish Her state. You worship God under one name and call everyone Pagan who uses another name for the Divine, who builds a theology around other aspects, reads other sacred writings, or finds other symbols than those which your churchmen approve. I join myself to God under all His names, explore all Her aspects, study all scriptures, choose myself symbols wherever I find them.”

  “And also choose for yourself which of God’s commandments to keep and which to break,” I said.

  “I thought we would come to the accusations. How shall I reply, Seneschal? That every woman and every man ch
oose which commandments must be kept and which ones, in her or his own mind, may with righteousness be set aside? Or that appearances lie, and I have kept all of God’s commandments more truly than have most men and women?”

  “You’d better stick to the first answer,” I said. “You’d have a hard time proving the second. Adultery, attempted murder, treason against the King’s person—”

  “Adultery? Oh, aye. When my sister Morgawse was wed to Lot, King of Orkney, and my sister Elaine to the King of Garloth, they put me into a convent. I did not wish marriage. I wished to be Ihesu’s bride. My sisters were golden-haired and lovely, like our mother, the Duchess Ygraine; I was dark and blunt-featured, like our father Gorlois, and also very young, and so Ygraine was able to honor my wish. But as I grew older and happier and more learned in my chosen place, I grew too handsome in the sight of the world to be wasted as a bride of Christ, so Uther Pendragon took me from my convent, despite my mother’s protests and my own, and wed me to the young king of Gorre, who wished to be the lustiest of the lusty but had not quite enough honest power for it, so that he must stir himself up with various strange and sometimes barely natural couplings.

  “There are two ways of joining oneself with the immortal Power: the path of virginity and that of fertility. I would have chosen the first. In order to consolidate a mortal alliance for a few years’ time, my mother’s ravisher and new lord destroyed my own decision. I lost the path of virginity, and that not even in the arms of a man I loved, or could have loved, but in the arms of one I disliked at first meeting and soon came to hate. One who could not even be true to me, but, in his search for new ways of arousing his lust, pretended that the same meat every night was tedious and that by indulging in a variety of women he could bring himself back to his wife’s bed with a fresh appetite and therefore make himself more pleasing to me. The Devils know how he had seed for more than one woman; but, having sown successfully in two beds, he must further advertise his prowess by giving the bastard son the same name as the trueborn. He could not even allow me joy in my child Ywain without setting before me a constant reminder that that other poor Ywain was also the fruit of my husband’s loins, though not of mine.

  “Whose was the adultery, my lords? Uther’s, in selling me against my will to such a mate, or mine in leaving Uriens and seeking, now that the way of virginity was closed to me, some gentler paramour for my companion in the way of fertility? Yes, I have had paramours, in the days of my fertility when I needed them—noble and gentle paramours, each one, even the unfaithful one, worth ten such beasts as Uriens. But never more than one at a time, Sir Kay, and I was true to each of them until his death or disloyalty to me.”

  She looked as if she should still be fertile. But Le Fay could wear the appearance of whatever age she wished. She had still been a young woman in reality when Gawain saw her disguised as an aged crone in Hautdesert Castle. “All right,” I said, “you didn’t need such an elaborate defense for the charge of adultery. All you had to tell us was, ‘Cast the first stone.’”

  Morgan smiled. “Nimue could have cast it. So could you yourself, Sir Kay, as I suppose, if actions only are taken into account, and not desires.”

  “Maybe Dame Nimue knows everything in my past,” I said, “but you don’t, Dame Morgan. And not every unfaithful wife tries to cut off her husband’s head in his sleep.”

  Dame Morgan never blushed. The cat purred, turned around in her lap, and settled down again. “Who was it told that tale?” asked Le Fay. “Not my son Ywain, surely. The damsel who brought me my husband’s sword? Yes, in a moment of hate and rage I would have yielded to the mortal temptation and cut off his despicable head with his own sword as he slept. If my son had not stopped me, I would have avenged myself like any wronged woman having sufficient resolution—I may even say, like Judith striking off the head of Holofernes. But I acted in that moment as a mere mortal creature in the grip of simple human emotion, not as a sorceress in search of union with the Divine Power. I called for Uriens’ sword. I did not attempt to use any sorcery.”

  “It was the damsel who spread that particular story,” I said. “I suppose you were acting as a sorceress in search of union with the Divine when you made the counterfeit Excalibur, stole Excalibur’s scabbard, sent Artus the poisoned cloak, sent us that lying goblet that supposedly showed which ladies were true to their lords and which were cheating, sent your Green Man with his beheading game, and tried all your other tricks to destroy your brother and the Queen?”

  “To destroy my brother?” She shook her head. “My poor little half-brother who made his decisions according to Merlin’s prophecies and leaned on other men’s magic when he should have been searching for the power within himself. Even Merlin told Artus to call on the magical power of the Sword from the Stone only in the moment of his most crucial need—yet later Artus wielded Excalibur as if he believed that always and everywhere it would lend him its own power. And it was Merlin, was it not, who told the King to prize the scabbard of Excalibur above the blade, since the scabbard would keep whoever wore it from losing his blood. So Artus fought recklessly, relying on the magic of the scabbard rather than on his own battle defenses. A limb or a head may be lopped off, my lords, or a stomach cut open and the bowels spilled out upon the ground though never a drop of blood be lost. At least my charade with the false Excalibur did some good, though it cost me my Accolon—my true paramour who was as good a knight as any of you.” She paused for a moment as if her throat had swollen, but the cat in her lap went on purring in sheer contentment. Morgan’s hand never faltered nor gave a rough stroke. “After his lesson at that battle,” she went on, “did not Artus give Excalibur to Gawain, who knows how to wield it as a simple, noble blade and an extension of his own arm, without depending on it as a magical wand?”

  “And you forcibly weaned Artus away from dependence on the scabbard by stealing it,” I pointed out.

  “And by throwing it into a deep water.” She glanced at the Lady of the Lake and they seemed to exchange smiles. “My sister Nimue could, perhaps, recover it, if she deemed it worth the effort.”

  “Brother Gawain, of course,” said Mordred, “has his own inbred magic in his strength redoubling from dawn to noon.”

  “Aye. The mystical gift of his foolish godfather,” Morgan replied. “And the result of it is that, as other folk notice it through the years, half his victories are credited to his marvelous, mysterious hours of increased strength from morning until midday, and other men refuse to fight him until after noon, while he, in his chivalry, agrees to fight them at the hour of their choosing. You and the rest of your brothers, Mordred, may thank God you were not given such a christening-gift as Gawain’s.”

  “For a dame who despises the magical arts as much as you claim to,” I said, “you use them often enough yourself.”

  “Less often now than in my youth. I slowly wean myself away to the better part.”

  “And your poisoned cloak was an attempt to wean Artus away from magic by easing him away from life, I suppose?” I persisted.

  She shrugged. “I was still young, I was very much grieved and angry for the death of my beloved Accolon, the life of my hated Uriens, and my son Ywain taking the part of his father and turning from me. I believe I spread a stronger venom on that cloak than I had at first intended.” She glanced sharply at Nimue. “Nevertheless, you should have counseled Arthur to throw my gift at once on the fire, not to force it upon the shoulders of my poor, innocent damsel.”

  “You were my superior in magic,” Dame Nimue said mildly. “How could I guess the cloak might be quicker and more powerful than you had meant, sister?” She sighed. “I paid for it soon thereafter when I misjudged the strength of one of my own enchantments.”

  “Aye, and other women, not ourselves, bore the mortal brunt of our misjudgings,” said Morgan. “That is perhaps our heaviest punishment. As for my goblet from which no faithless wife, as the world understands faithlessness, could drink without spilling her wine, did you n
ot consider, Seneschal, that I could not have drunk from it myself? The world had thrown the stone at me, and I threw it back at the world.”

  I said, “Your lying goblet could have got the Queen burned for adultery if Artus hadn’t learned by then what weight to put on your accusations.”

  “’Lying’? Well, Dame Guenevere had been the first woman of all to accuse me. As for my dear Green Knight, he was a pretty Yuletide mummery, a toy to help satisfy my little brother’s thirst for holiday marvels… though it was a pity we could not have sent Artus home again chastened instead of Gawain.”

  “Didn’t your Green Man himself say you’d hoped to frighten Dame Guenevere to her grave?” I asked.

  Morgan leaned her head back and laughed. “Did he use some such phrase, my dear Bertilak? And did you all take it for literal truth? Of course it was also devised to give Guenevere a start—but to think I was not aware it would take more than my jovial Green Man to frighten that woman to death or madness!”

  I stood up. “You’ve hated the Queen for years. You’ve tried to destroy her time after time. Don’t try to pass it all off now as mere light-hearted sports and jesting. Let me tell you, Dame Morgan, you may think of your brother as Merlin’s spineless puppet, but he stood on his own two feet and defied Merlin’s bloody prophecies when he married Her Grace. If you really did want to make him his own man, you ought to be grateful to Dame Guenevere for helping.”

  “Unfortunate that he did not ignore Merlin’s prophecies more often.”

  “Why do you hate the Queen?” I insisted.

  “I do not hate Guenevere. I no longer hate even Uriens. Does the Earth hate the plowshare that cuts it? How have I tried to destroy your Queen?”

  “Dame Guenevere’s destruction,” said Mordred, “as the world understands destruction, of course, would probably ensue were the King finally persuaded of her unfaithfulness. And you must admit you’ve done your part to try persuading him, Aunt, with your goblet, and that shield showing a knight trampling a king and queen that you tricked Tristram to carry in tournament beneath their noses, and so on.”