And by my birthright, I am the heir to the thrones that were stolen from my mother.
The first was of the Castle Tintagel itself.
4
It was not the greatest of castles, nor did it hold the finest palace on the islands, and yet it was, to my mother, the most wonderful and magical place she knew of in all of the isles. It had been the seat of the pagan queens of the Wastelands, with my grandmother Ygrain, who was both high priestess and queen of the three lands surrounding it. She said that the stones had come from the isles of Avalon, and had once been a great invading army, turned to rock when their leader had stolen apples from the garden of the Lord of the Sun.
These stones, quarried from that rock, were brought over on great barges along the sea coast during a time of impending war, and that though the stones were heavy, still they did not sink into the deep, for they had the blessings of the isles within them. After it was built, Tintagel had many attackers, though few got beyond the cliffs themselves. The sea itself had tried to bring down the lower balconies more than once, but the stones had held. My mother told me that the doorways were tall and arched and looked out over the turquoise sea and the islands, and that, in summer, the seabirds would cry like children along its cliffside.
She pined for Tintagel most of her life, but would never again return to it after that night she dreamed my name, her belly full with child, and awoke to news that put dread in her heart.
5
The name she dreamed was not meant for a son.
I was named for the goddess of motherhood. My own mother, feeling the goddess so much within her, in her dreams, wished to bless me with the name, Modron. My mother had a dream that I would not be a boy at all, and she wished to honor the patroness of her own birthplace with a daughter of that name. She masculinized the name after my birth to Mordred.
She had seen Modron in dreams many nights—the goddess with three faces, of the moon, of the sun, and of the sea itself. The Eternal Mother who sought out her lost children now that the Christian kings had taken hold of the Britons.
“My dreams,” she told me, “when I was heavy with you, were of cavernous palaces and groves of oaks so thick and tall that to climb them would be to reach the stars. I knew this place well, for it was Broceliande, and I had spent much of my childhood there with my sister, for your grandmother feared that Uther, while alive, would not ensure our protection.”
She told me, “I returned to Cornwall, after Uther’s passing, and tended my sick mother knowing full well that she would not live to see another Midsummer’s Night. This was not a year before Arthur claimed the sword and the allegiance of all Britons. But how I loved my home and harbor, the roughhewn stairs that led down to the boats, and the May Days upon the sea-cracked stones. The winter solstice upon the sea, among the many coves and islands—the smells of brine and salt air, and the scent of the wildflowers among the meadows above the cliffs come spring. You were meant to be born within this castle. I could dream of the mother goddess as I thought of my unborn child and of my sweet mother who had been so wronged in her lifetime.”
“Why?” I would ask her when I was older, but still too young to understand the world and its politics. “Why did she send you away at all?”
“A queen of great lands must think first of the people of those lands. The crown of government is heavy for the one who must wear it. Upon it rests the fate of many. Had she refused Uther and the pen-Dragon claim upon Cornwall, her people would have suffered further war and pestilence. These warlords had pillaged and burned much after the Romans began abandoning those shores. Her husband—my father—was dead by then, and so were my brothers. What more sorrow could that lovely woman face and still call herself queen of her people? She had to do what she did. And for some years it brought about a peace of sorts. But those are old times, long gone. In her last year, I kept her mind off her treacherous son, that new-crowned king who, a mere boy of fifteen, had grown drunk with power…”
My mother, in those days of my childhood, would tell me no more of this sorrow. She spared me for many years the shame of my birth, and so, as a boy, I did not learn of the crime that my father committed upon her.
But I knew that it had changed her. Fundamentally it had turned her toward the dark edge of the goddess.
Caring for her sick mother, she—a young maiden of twenty who had determined for herself that she would never hand-fast with a man, nor offer herself to the pleasures of the body after what had been done to her—had begun speaking to the dead and fallen among the burial mounds of heroes, that she might learn the secrets of the Otherworld from them.
6
With me not six months in her womb, my mother became overshadowed by fear as she thought of all that had been taken from her.
And then her sister, Morgause, brought the news she never wished to hear.
“The rumors are spreading, and you must heed them. Already blood has been shed in Wales, and the boatmen of Mor, our retainers, have been slaughtered in the harbors to the south.” Morgause had overheard, through use of magick, a conversation that her husband had when she had visited him with their son, Gawain, in the summer months in Orkney.
“He spoke in whispers,” Morgause said, “but I have spies within my own house, those of the Grove who pretend to this foreign religion in order to survive. Our brother is scared of that prophecy of the Merlin’s, now that he knows you carry a child within you. Would that a raven might fly down and bite off his tongue that he would prophesy no more.”
“The Merlin is wiser than any,” my mother told her. “If he offered his visions to Arthur, he cannot be blamed if the king brings dishonor and the murder of children upon his own head.”
Because my cousin Gawain had been born just a few weeks earlier, Morgause feared for her child’s life as well. She believed that the king’s influence would spread to Orkney, and if that happened, he might see her as an enemy, as well. “For we know full well that brothers and sisters are threats to kings who claim what is not theirs by right. Take my son for a season, although I will long for the touch of his small hands and the smell of his scalp in the morning when he nurses,” Morgause said. “This madness may pass when the boy-king and that traitor-knight of his have seen many battles. In the summer, I will come to you at the lake, and see him again, and my nephew. But I will not let our children suffer under these men and their ambitions. They turn to bishops and abbots for their counsel, and Christendom does not look kindly on our wisdom.”
“Surely I do not need to leave my dying mother. This must be a momentary madness of Arthur’s.”
“You know what these pen-Dragons are capable of,” she told my mother. “He knows you carry the child whom he fears most. He knows that you are the rightful heir to the throne. Our grandmother was a warrior queen, and fought the Romans to a man, keeping them from our lands, and our great-grandmother led ten thousand soldiers to the Irish coast to fight the Norsemen—and when she lay wounded, defeated, she called to the goddess, and a great dragon came in great burning ashes from the sky, on a clear day, and so terrified the invaders that they surrendered and were slaughtered rather than fight the fire from the heavens. No dragon has come to defend us. No army can we raise. But the fears of our blood still remain with him whose fear of us, his sisters, will never die. He could not press you into a marriage with one of his warlord-kings, as he did me. I was never meant to wear the crown of the kingdoms—as you were meant, and as was prophesied. You are dangerous to him. So is what grows inside you. Already, foreign princes and kings entreat him with their young daughters that he should marry one day. When he takes a bride, prophecy or no, he will not want your child to live who has our blood in his veins and a greater claim on the Britons of these lands than even he can claim. He has stolen the ancient sword. Would you have him also steal the Cauldron?”
My mother’s heart grew heavy, as she had to leave her dear mother, who had but months to live. Nuns had gathered around my grandmother Ygrain as my mother and
her sister left their childhood home. The road along the sea was not safe, but the Merlin knew how to navigate the caves until they could leave by the bay of the White Raven’s Mount, a rock outcropping much like the Dragon’s Mount here.
My mother, with me inside her, and with my cousin Gawain, in her arms, bid farewell to her beloved sister at that sacred island. Morgause wept bitter tears as they parted, and kissed her boy several times over before she could let him from her grasp.
“Take care of our mother,” Morgan said.
“As I can, I shall,” Morgause promised. “But too soon shall I have to return to Orkney and to that life, and if she will not go with me, or is too frail, I will ensure that she has care. In the summer, I will return for you, and for our children. Both of our children, Morgan—and I will see my beloved sister again and our aunt, who is our protector in all things.”
They pressed against each other, and whispered the blessings of the wind before a boat laden with provisions came to take my mother, and my cousin Gawain, across the water to Armorica.
Less than an hour after they’d departed, an army of soldiers, led by a knight much-beloved of the king, arrived at Tintagel to arrest my mother for treason, though some had orders to kill her on sight.
Chapter Three
1
In the boat with Morgan le Fay, besides six servants of the Sacred Grove, and eight loyal and strong oarsmen who were Iceni descendants, was that prophet-wanderer, Merlin, who had guided my father in his own youth, and had despaired of the pain he had wrought in bringing the boy-king to his birthright and the beginning of the shining kingdom.
He told me, once, when I was past the age of nine, “Your father has a good heart, my boy, but the sword holds as slave him who bears it. This was true when Excalibur was raised over the battlements of Troy and when a great Macedonian prince stole it briefly that he might conquer the world, and when those Caesars and tyrants have held it, they, too, knew of power and glory, but also of its terror. It is a sword of power, but also of destruction, and I warned him against its use. Bury it again, I told him. Make it safe, but within your reach. But the sword calls to its handler, and if it is not well sheathed, it will sing too much in the mind of slaughter and possession. All the gold in the tombs of the east will not satisfy the one who wields the sword. I held it but once, and even I felt its promise of glory and dominion. It took me two lifetimes to shake off its vibrating hum. But he carries it always, and it speaks within his mind. He has the sacred tools of the greatest of kings, but even for a great man, these tools will become chains.”
“But,” I asked him, “is he a bad man?”
“How to answer that, I wonder,” the Merlin said. “He’s both bad and good, as are all great men, my little fern-mouse. Bad, good, and some worse, I tell you, worse like you’ve never known in your life. Your father wants his people to have their freedom and their justice. He brought peace in uniting the Briton warlord-kings and raising the greatest of them to his circle of counselors. But even great men make bad decisions. The sword, well, that sword is meant to keep peace but at the same time the blasted thing’s supposed to stay buried in rock. That’s how you keep peace. You put the instruments of war in rock and you look at them and you think, ‘Well, good thing no one’s using that thing.’ But Excalibur’s not any ordinary sword. It’s imbued with an ancient sorcery that few can resist. It attracts those who seek power. It brings war into the midst of men. The sword itself has a spirit dwelling in its hilt and blade, and this daemon delights in slaughter.”
“And yet, we have peace.”
“Wood sparrow, there’s no peace among men for long without threat of war, and much of peace is at the cost of those in chains. Even the gods war with each other, and even the forest hides wickedness in poisoned berries and its spiders devour the beautiful moths that gather at twilight. We live in a time where war is all that men live for, even when they thrust their swords into rock. Soon,” he said. “Soon those knights will want to expand their lands, and increase their stores of gold and grain and cattle. And Excalibur will sing to Arthur as he grasps it, and its song will be one of heroes and attack. But…” As he paused it was as if a cloud had come from behind the sun, for his mood seemed to lift—“…but I’m sure your father will continue to keep the peace as long as he resists these things. He loves his people.”
“Would he love me?” I asked.
“Love a pet magpie like you?” Merlin smiled. He had a large jovial smile that showed magnificently yellowed teeth. “Of course he would. How could he not? You, with your bright feathers and sharp little beak. If he knew you, yes, yes he would. But I tell you, for now, my cave-bat, you must not seek him out the time is right.”
“When will that be?”
“Whenever it is, you won’t need to ask ‘when?’ You’ll ask ‘why now?’ ”
I loved Merlin as if he were my own father, though he had furies and tantrums as any who walked the Earth. I suppose having knowledge of all his past lives must have made him impatient with the rest of us, who only could recall the experience of the present life. He had been born Myrddin, but was “the Merlin,” which meant for our people of the Grove that he was of higher rank than even the high priest, and even the kings. And when he accompanied my mother on her escape from my father’s assassins, his anger and his protection both kept her safe.
2
Beneath the outcroppings of rock islands and cliffs, they moved slowly, staying as close to the cliff-face as possible and among the arched coves of the coastline so as to avoid detection should the high-cliff-dwelling watchers of the king see them and report back of their escape. It took them until nightfall to reach the promontory of rock and sand that extended out from Lyonesse, undetected by those who held that castle built upon the low water flatlands. But they saw the torches lit upon the bay within the finger islands of Lyonesse, and Merlin warned my mother that if she should be caught, she should not resist. “We must trust that no matter what happens, the goddess who protects you would not allow the death of your child in this manner.”
“No goddess protects me,” my mother said bitterly. “Too much has been taken from me.” She had drunk much of that noxious seaweed called cow-root, blended in a milk tea that morning, which was meant to be good for sea voyages as well as those with-child, but it had the curious side effect of short-temperedness. “Why should I leave my home? He has torn too much from me, and now he wishes to kill me? Let him have at me then, but should I see him, I will scrape the flesh from his damn face before I die. Let the gods curse me—let them. I will take from him all that he has taken from me, and may all my lifetimes be ransomed for this one.”
At this, Merlin slapped her face, and she cried out with its sting. His sudden rages, like the storms of the coast, were legendary, and he never hesitated in slapping and hitting someone if he felt it was the only way to get their attention. My mother hated him for it. “Your lot is not to despair or whine, nor were you meant to rule at Tintagel, as you knew from your own visions, stolen from me along with the raveling and other such arts.”
My mother held back her fury and pressed her hands against her belly, thinking only of me. Though neither king nor Druid, Merlin was of higher rank than both to our people, for he knew of the Days Before, and had kept our histories within his soul and brought them into each incarnation, fresh and remembered.
She muttered, “I stole nothing from you but what you were meant to pass to me. You aided that robber-king Uther, you persuaded my poor mother of this Fate you speak of as if it is written in stone when it is merely written in your blood.” She spat the words as if they were poison drawn out from a snake's bite. “This is my child within me. His child. His bastard. My shame. And you would have us flee into the woods rather than turn and fight.”
“A woman of six months may fight an army,” he said. “But not fight well enough to win. If it is winning that you seek, and not annihilation.”
“I seek retribution. I seek justice,” she said
from between nearly clenched teeth. “You men who run this new world do not care for justice. And if the goddess has abandoned her country and her people, then I will go to that darkest part of the Otherworld to find my new goddess. To find the power to unravel this king and his false kingdom. And the gods be damned.”
“Your anger will be your undoing, Morgan,” he said. “What you send, you bring forth. Have you learned nothing from the sacred rites? We will do—all of us—what can be done to keep you safe on this journey. You must think of the child within you. Do not blaspheme those you profess to worship and adore. Do not forget to whom you speak.”
“You may be wise and you may be strong. You have the memories of all your pasts wound into your skull, Merlin,” she said. “But you are nearly as guilty as he for what has come to pass. You are the one who showed him the Lake and that sword. If you were not the instrument of this tragic tune, then you surely plucked its harp-strings that it might play. And if you ever so much as touch me like that again, I will tear you limb from limb like those ancient Furies who did not allow men to cross their paths. And I will fervently pray that you never return to this life again and would sacrifice the life of this child growing within me to ensure that some unknown god of darkness hears my prayer.”
Merlin said nothing in reply to this, but moved to the helmsman’s seat to watch the movement of the torches along the cliffs until the boat was well beyond the Lyonesse harbor.
3
By then my mother could only look back and imagine that she saw the towers of Tintagel far behind them, for the mists had come in and covered much of the coastline and all was a haze. She had great fear and anger within her, and she had begun to despise Merlin for his cruelty and superior air. She told me years later that she thought of nothing but my welfare as she dreamed in that boat of vengeance against the ones who had put them there. She fought within her own nature, for she had not grown up an angry child or an unhappy one, despite the sorrows of her life. But being hunted like a dog by her half-brother who had stolen the sword and the thrones of the kingdoms from her—it had pushed her over the edge until she could no longer sleep nights thinking of all that had been torn from her. She wept into the little cap that Gawain wore upon his head, and dried her tears against her sleeve.
Mordred, Bastard Son Page 3