Mordred, Bastard Son

by Douglas Clegg

  “And you’ll love every minute of it,” she said.

  “And after I come back from my service,” he added. “For all I know, that will be seven years, as well.”

  “Service?” I asked.

  “To our kings,” he said.

  “But you can’t leave the lake.”

  Melisse leaned forward to rest her head upon the horse’s mane. She looked over at me, offering up a wan smile.

  “Our cousins and families are in danger on the coast,” Lukat said. “I won’t leave until next summer.”

  “And the coast may be safe by then,” she added.

  “But…but you belong here. We are not people of those kingdoms.”

  “Mordred? Of course we are. Haven’t you noticed others who have gone? A lot of the boys younger than us have already left.”

  “But the wars are for Christendom. They are for the nobles of Britain. Not for those in service to Our Lady.”

  “Our Lady of the Lake is for all who call themselves Briton and who keep her sanctuary safe. Those Saxons may come and burn these woods some day. Or the Romans may return in another few years, for their new kings to the east grow restless and hungry for power. In Paris, there is a king who seeks favor with Constantinople. You’ve heard the messengers’ reports at each council meeting. I can’t ignore this,” he said, his mood darkening. “I knew I should not have told you yet.”

  “The wars may be over by Beltane,” Melisse said, keeping her gazed fixed upon me. “Do not fear. We will ask the goddess for peace. She will surely bring it.”

  “The source of our strength is our lake,” I said, as I felt my heart beating too fast, thinking of Lukat leaving for war. I had ignored the men who left our forest to go to follow the call of duty, for exiles came and went from the Isle of Glass, off to serve with their fellow-Britons to protect the southern kingdoms. But I had never thought Lukat, whose family had been Eponi, would ever join them.

  “All the lakes of the world, and all its forests, will not stop the attacks on our people,” Lukat said.

  “This is the first I’ve heard such talk from you,” I said, a bitter taste in my throat as the evening grew colder and our horses seemed to stop to graze too much on our lazy way home. “You won’t do it. I know you. By spring, you’ll handfast, and by summer, you’ll have your water garden and be tending the sheep in the summer meadow.”

  Lukat turned away from me, looking up the road ahead. I could tell he was angry. Melisse watched me, sadness on her face. “I tell you,” she said, “the wars will end soon. There is peace in Cornwall and North-Galis, and only in London do the Saxons rob the old Roman towns. Do not fear.”

  “The King of all Britons, the high king who rules the warlords of the lands, Arthur, is the greatest of all emperors, and frees our people as his great knights lead the armies to victory in east, west, north and south. And I intend to serve him,” Lukat said.

  I was dumbstruck. My closest friend in the whole world could not know the evil that the high king had brought to my mother, and to me.

  Could not know how he had torn at my mother’s family, murdering many, and seeking my death as well as my mother’s.

  The man he thought of as the great liberator of the Britons, both in the islands to the west, and the Hebrides, and Orkney and the White Coast of Lyonesse, and the Dragon’s Mount and its coastline, was, to me, the one human being I wished dead in the world.

  And yet, within that hatred, I had a longing to see him. He was my father, despite the monstrous things he’d done to my mother before my birth. He was a man who commanded the armies of other kings, who served him as if they were his vassals. He had been predicted in the ancient scrolls, the high king of the tribes, and his legend, it was said, had spread across the world and even the Romans respected and feared him.

  But I was certain that I would never see my father as long as I lived.

  And I would never leave the Lake of Glass and its secrets until my father had breathed his final breath.

  I rode a little ahead of them, prodding my mount with my heels. I had to resist the urge to argue with my friends, for fear that I might reveal the secret of my birth and thereby risk even Lukat’s life should he ever be called before the king’s guard—known torturers and thieves—to testify to his knowledge of the existence of the king’s bastard son.

  I knew that I would have to let my friend go where he would in life. We had reached that crossroads, and my world might never be his again as he sought his future and his life. He would marry, go to war, and even if he returned in another harvest season, our friendship would change. I did not like the way life went, and I began to wonder if the lake were sanctuary or prison for me.

  They caught up to me, and Melisse challenged us both to race our mares along the twilight path. “We take the longer path home, and race until we reach the shepherd’s stones before the Grove itself. Whomever crosses the last stone first, wins.”

  “And what do we win?” I asked.

  “A kiss. From either of us,” she smiled.

  “If I win?” Lukat asked.

  “Well, I hope you’ll want a kiss from me,” she said.

  “I want more than a kiss.” He grinned wickedly. He glanced over to me. “My horse is called Wind-mare, for she is like the wind in a storm.”

  “I’ve heard her wind,” I said, laughing again, letting the trouble of my mind melt a bit. “And it truly is a mighty wind. Mine is named”—and I had to make up a name quickly, for I didn’t know the true name of the horse I rode—“Boadicea, for she has the spirit of the great Iceni warrior queen who vanquishes all!”

  “But can she run?” he asked, and then he clicked his tongue, pressed his feet against his horse, and took off, Melisse crying out, surprised by the suddenness of it.

  “Cheater!” I cried out, and soon had my mare racing to catch up to his. The path to the shepherd stones took a few turns and twists along the heath before returning to the woods, and then as we raced, I saw ahead of us both—for we were nearly neck and neck along that wide well-trodden path—the opening from the groves onto the meadow where the stones stood. It had grown so cold that I could see the steam coming from my mount’s nostrils, and when I briefly glanced over at the two of them, Lukat had wrapped his arms around Melisse and they bounced together up and down on the poor mare’s back while Melisse giggled and cried out with delight. As we had just cleared the trees and the expanse of meadow lay before us with its dips and rises, I thought I saw movement among the brambles by the wayside. I didn’t imagine it was anything to be concerned about, and it had become a blur to me, as I faced forward again, seeing the stones ahead of us, hoping to outrace Lukat and Melisse so that I might kiss him again, though I knew he would never be mine.

  My mare seemed to gain great energy as we passed the brambles. I felt a surge of movement as she galloped so fast it nearly seemed she had wings.

  And then I heard a terrible noise behind me, and Melisse cried out. I drew back on the reins, and my horse didn’t want to slow down at all, so I kept trying to turn her to stop her galloping. When I finally glanced back, bringing my mare around, I heard a noise as if some growling bear had bounded up behind us.

  When I turned in my mount, I saw Lukat’s horse on the ground, being torn at by a beast the like of which I could not make out. My blood rushed fast within me, and I turned my horse around and went riding back to them.

  Melisse lay beneath the fallen horse, and for the first time in my life I saw one of the boars of Moccus crouching there, tearing at the dying horse.

  Lukat had been thrown clear of it, and lay upon brambles and grass, his eyes closed.

  I had nothing but a dirk in the scabbard at my shoulder, but I drew it from beneath my cloak and ran swiftly to face the beast.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  The great creature was nearly half my height, and I was considered tall for our people, though not as tall as many of the Druids. It was wide and thick and reminded me more of a
bear than of a boar. I held my small blade up, hoping that it would at least be wary of one who was taller than it might be. I tried not to think of Viviane’s encounter with the Moccus, which I had somehow doubted for her tale had seemed too far-fetched. And yet, it was as she had described the animal to me—its spines were thick and like small daggers themselves, and it had two long crescent tusks to the left of its snout, cutting through the skin of its muzzle, and three to the right. Its coloring provided even more wonder and terror, for it was pure white; its eyes were blood-red; its muzzle, spattered with the blood of the now-dead mare.

  Steam came from its mouth and nostrils, and it dug at the turf beneath its feet with its hooves, as if it would charge me.

  I could not take it on, for my small dirk might at best penetrate an eye or, with luck, its tough hide, but I would be dead before I was able to stab it more than once.

  Merlin, help me; I tried vesseling to my master.

  Merlin, come to me now. Bring me magick that I might stop this hell-beast.

  Time itself seemed to freeze as I stood there, hearing Lukat moaning with pain. The boar, also listening for this, twitched his head and looked in the direction of him.

  I took a tentative step forward, holding the dirk before me with a trembling hand.

  Lady of the Lake, be with me now, and at the moment of my passing into the Otherworld, I prayed. You are blessed of all the forest and the waters within it, and you may entreat Arawn of the Otherworld to call back his creatures that we might gain safe passage. But if we cannot, be with me at that passage into darkness, for it is from darkness to darkness we go.

  I heard Merlin in my mind, although it was not his vesseling of me at some great distance. It was my own memory, bringing up his words as one draws water from a deep well. You have the blood of the great kings within you, Mordred, and the queens of power and right. You have learned the Art of the vessel. It is the auras that come together that all living creatures possess. Use the magick that you have, for it is good to do so.

  In less time than it takes for a soul to pass from the body, I spoke to the boar’s mind in a way that I hoped it would understand. Not with words that would be foreign to it, but with visions of its own slaughter at my hands. My anger and fury rose to such a degree that in my vision that I wished to vessel into it, I tore it open and skinned it while alive, drenched in the blood of that beast.

  The boar of Moccus seemed to calm as it looked from me to Lukat, to Melisse who lay silent under the dead horse’s weight.

  The watcher along the trees and hilltops had seen this from a distance, and soon I heard hoofbeats behind me as horsemen and women rode along the path, and it was perhaps their coming that scared off the boar, and not my imagined vesseling of a vision into the beast.

  But as it ran off into the ferny shadows, I thanked the Lady for her blessings and asked her to bring life into my friends.

  Then I ran first to Melisse, and with two other men who had just leapt down from their mounts, drew the horse from her body. One of the men wept as he lifted her. I knew without him saying it that her spirit had passed to Arawn’s arms in Annwn, where the souls went soon after death.

  I glanced over at those men who had gone to Lukat, and was heartened to see him open his eyes and cry out. My joy at the sound of his voice quickly turned to anguish.

  He called Melisse’s name several times into the darkening air and there came no reply.

  2

  I stayed at Lukat’s bedside for three days, barely sleeping and hardly eating. His father remained in chambers, as well, cooking stews and accepting fresh bread and herbal remedies from others who came to offer their blessings and prayers. When alone with Lukat, I wept and crawled beside him that he might feel warmth. He remained unconscious for those days and nights, though his eyes fluttered open during moments and he took water by a damp cool cloth that I pressed to his lips. The back of his scalp had been torn at by the brambles, and their thorns had been driven into his neck and back also by the force of his fall. These wounds needed daily washings, so my mother came with her salves and balms. She was slowly withdrawing from me in many ways, but she had not abandoned her knowledge of the goddess’s healing. She taught me how to rub the salve along his back and shoulders, and how to massage it into his scalp so that he would heal better. His father brought a large round tub into the chamber, and poured heated water from the hearth-fire into it. We undressed my friend and lifted him up, bringing him into the bath to clean him in the health of the Lady of the Lake’s lifeblood, which was that crystal-clear water full of minerals of the earth that brought health and vitality to her people.

  Finally, at the end of the third day, as nightfall blessed us, he stirred in his sleep, and turned, reaching for me. His eyes opened, and he whispered, “Mordred.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I dreamed she had died. Melisse.” His voice was scratchy from the dryness of his throat, and before he spoke again, I had him sit up, his arms ringed around my shoulders. I dipped my hand into the water font by the bed, and he drank from my hand as if he’d never tasted water before.

  “Where is she?”

  “Gone.”

  “To Arawn,” he said. “To Annwn.”

  I could not answer, but began sobbing, clutching him that I might never let him go again.

  “To Arawn,” he repeated as I clung to him.

  3

  Before dawn, my arms wrapped around my friend, I felt his terrible fever that came on, and his back was slick with sweat. “Mordred?”

  “Hmm,” I murmured.

  “When we die, do we go right into a new life?” His voice had a moan within it, as if each breath took some life from him.

  “I don’t know. I suppose. Sometimes.”

  “Could Melisse be born right now?”

  “If Arawn wills it.”

  “Perhaps even here, in the caves?”

  “The sun hasn’t risen yet. Go back to sleep.”

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “Yes. You’re my brother that I never had.”

  “And you’re mine. But you love me like I loved her.”

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “I wish I could love you back. Like that.”

  “I do, too.”

  “I wish I didn’t hurt so much. On the inside. Thinking of her.”

  “If I could, Lukat, I’d change places so I’d feel that pain. You would not suffer so much.”

  “It’s a suffering I want. I see her face the more it hurts. I feel her with me. With us here. Right here.”

  We lay there silently. I began to understand something of love that I had never before known. It was greater than the love I had felt for him when I had felt my heart pound next to him before. I felt the pain of love, which was sacrifice. There was no way around it.

  I acquired a wisdom that no priestess or Merlin had yet taught me. And it was that love is a sacrifice, but not to the gods or goddesses.

  It is a sacrifice to the soul and the chambers within the soul enlarge because of it, and we find within those chambers more doorways into other rooms and corridors. Each love—each genuine love—we carry, expands the vessel of the soul. If the vessel should crack, break, and not be mended, it is none the worse for being broken.

  The vessel of the soul is meant to break, to expand, to be larger and more full at the end of our lives than at their beginnings.

  I kissed the back of his neck with tenderness, without lust, without want, without need. I inhaled the aroma of him—the sweat and the flower of it, and the fresh-grass odor he carried as well as the herbs of the bath that remained on his skin. If I had been able to ravel then, I would have raveled into him and he into me so that neither of us would feel that terrible loneliness that one feels when the ache for love grows too great to bear.

  I felt as if he and I were one, there, in that feather-stuffed woolen mat, covered with the layered blankets of the weavers. I whispered to him
about our games of childhood, and how we were punished many times by our stern elders. I reminded him of the day he had taught me to swim by trying to drown me, and of our races along the desolate lands and of chasing down a stag in the hunt one November day when we had both begun to understand our differences.

  After a while, he turned to me and whispered, “I wish I could love you as you want to be loved, Mordred. For other than Melisse, there is no one in this world I care about as I do you. If I could, I would handfast with you. I would be with you forever.”

  “It wouldn’t be you, Lukat. It’s not your nature, though I wish it.”

  “But I would.” His eyes filled with the gleam of tears as the light came up beyond the chamber, and I embraced him, and he me, as he turned. He pressed his eyelids to my lips, and I tasted the saltiness of his tears.

  He kissed me just below my lips, and drew his head back. “I’m going to leave the lake forever,” he said.

  “I know,” I whispered, afraid of this, and knowing in my heart it was what he must do.

  “One day, I will find Melisse again. The Druids say that the young child will remember, sometimes, the life lived before. I can wait many years. I can wait for her soul to return and to grow up into a great lady again.”

  “They say it is not good to remember the pain of past lives,” I said.

  “Because it brings fear to those who must face this life,” he replied, as we had been taught in our childhood lessons with the wise women.

  “But you will find her,” I said.

  He nodded. “Will you love many men, or one man?”

  “I hope one,” I said.

  “I thought I would have many women when I became a man,” he said. “But Melisse is all I ever wanted. I knew her soul as she looked into mine, too. I knew her in ways that I know no one else but you.” His voice became almost a bleating, as of a lamb. It tore at my heart to hear him. “Mordred. Mordred. I don’t want to ever have to hurt like this again. Please tell me I won’t rip in two. I feel like I may. I feel it.”