Mordred, Bastard Son

by Douglas Clegg

  “She won’t talk with me about this, either. Not anymore. When I was younger, she sometimes let me know that…”

  “It was your nature?”

  “Yes.”

  Morgause took a deep breath and then exhaled. “You understand about your mother.” Her eyes shone with tears that remained there like drops of dew upon clover. “She has had the worst of the burdens of this world.”

  “I know what my father did to her.”

  She turned away briefly, and then said, “I have learned, my dear, not to dwell in the places from which I’ve come.” She set her cup down and brought her knees up under her chin, her arms wrapped around them, her long garments spilling onto the floor, hiding her bare feet. Morgause reminded me, at times, of a cat with her crouching and her stretching-—there was something very free about her in those days. “But your mother lives in the past, still. I do not think she left Tintagel, in her mind, though her body has been here so many years. Your entire life, and yet she does not seem to be here at the Lake at all.”

  We were quiet for a bit, and I finally said what I had wished to say earlier. “She has turned away from the Lady, away even from Cernunnos and Sulis.”

  “Ah,” Morgause said. “Do not worry about the goddess to whom she seeks blessings, Mordred. All are the masks of the one goddess, though some of the masks are more fearsome than others.”

  “And this Greek goddess of darkness, called Hecate? Worshipped here only by those Roman poisoners at the ancient well?”

  “You say it like a challenge,” she said. “These are masks, and beneath them, the true goddess. She wears the masks for us, so that we might understand her better. So that we might go to her with everything we feel and know, for the mask reflects our desires and not her true face.”

  “The Lady of the Lake wears no mask.”

  “Even that is its own mask,” my aunt said.

  4

  While the dances and the bonfires went on in the world above, and the season of lambing had begun, and while the Druids began their sacred duties of augury and of tending the Grove and its oaks and birch, I remained in the cavernous chambers I shared with my mother and aunt. Morgause, never one to miss the dancing and all-night festival of Beltane, slept for days once the fires were out. I found her a-bed with a young man of twenty, and when she saw me staring at the two of them—sleeping, for it was nearly noon and she rarely rose before the midday meal—she stuck out her tongue at me. Later, she told me not to be jealous because she found lovers among the horse herds and the young priests. “I am a foolish woman to sleep with men young enough to be my children,” she said.

  “He wasn’t that young. I know him. He reached his midsummer rites two years ago.”

  “I might’ve given birth to him when I was fifteen,” she said, laughing. “Some maidens marry at that age.”

  “But not a daughter of Ygrain,” I said.

  “True. I waited until I was eighteen, and even that was far too young,” she laughed. “But I am foolish, Mordred. I married out of fear, and now simply am married to fear. Morgan has always been the wiser or the two of us.” As she said this, her still-half-asleep eyes lit up wide as she glanced around. “Where is your mother?”

  “She has taken to sleeping above. Once I found her near the bogs, curled up in ferns.”

  “Ah. The bogs hold the spirits of past sacrifice. The call of shadows,” she said. “It is the way of that dark moon tribe. Or whatever they call themselves.”

  “Witches,” I said.

  “Do not say it like a fearful cleric from Ravenna,” she said, laughing. “They say it with a bit of spite and bile for good measure. But the art itself is called witchcraft by those folk of the church and the villas. Your father thought she was a witch. He calls her the Witch-Queen whenever her name is brought up.” As soon as she said it, she clapped her hand over her mouth. “By the gods, the white ravens should swoop down and tear out my tongue by its roots lest I tell all the secrets of the Grove.”

  “No, my mother told me. He called her a Witch-Queen once, when he caught her at her scrying bowl. She told me it was an honor to be called it.”

  “Your father mistook wit—and witch—for wisdom. Arthur could steal Excalibur from Our Lady, and learn the sacred arts that the goddess allows boys to learn. And then he turns on all his teachings and is suddenly wearing a cross and claiming that Excalibur is not the sword of pagan conquerors, but blessed by the Nazarene, who, as I recall, was not one to suggest taking up swords in the first place.”

  “He was a good man,” I said. “The Nazarene. Merlin has taught me much of his life.”

  “Yes,” she said, “he believed many of the things which our path teaches, as well, though those bishops don’t seem to want to acknowledge the Old Ways. We are witches, after all.”

  “But there is that dark side of witchcraft and the Art itself,” I said. “They say that even the Lord of the Dead shuns it.”

  “Sometimes, Mordred, you sound like your father,” she said, rather sharply. She pointed her finger at me. “You need to understand your mother. Always seek to understand before passing judgment. She loves you very much, and has given you this world that, I will tell you, is better than the court at Camelot.”

  I loved when she talked of court. “Is it full of handsome knights and beautiful ladies who wear jewels stolen from the Saxon treasuries?”

  She gave me a look as if I were the most naïve dolt in the world. “Every castle looks the same after a few visits. And Arthur does not welcome me much.”

  “Does he…does he ask about my mother?”

  She bit her lower lip and nodded. “He believes her dead. We have allowed that belief to be known.”

  “But someone will tell him. Someday,” I said.

  “No. Who? Who besides me? Will Merlin?”

  “My cousins. Gawain hates me. He will tell.”

  “They are too frightened for their own skins,” she said, fanning the air as if to dismiss her sons. “They are greedy little knights, Mordred. If it were known that they had come here, that they knew of this place, and how to call to the ravens that the horsemen might come…well, they are afraid they will lose their lives in the bargain. They speak of nothing of their summers here, and Arthur will never ask them of it.”

  “So we are dead to him. To my father.”

  “That makes you sad?” She put her finger to my chin and lifted my face up toward hers. “I do not care for your father, Mordred. I have lived to regret—in too many ways to count—the mistakes I made in my young years. I married not for love, but for escape and to ensure the position of our bloodline within the kingdoms. I brought children into the world because it was my duty as a wife to a king. I have watched your father create a wonderful court, and bring much peace to the southern kingdoms, though wars continue in the farthest reaches of the lands. But I would rather be dead to him. To that world. And live here until my bones are dust in the crevice of rock, than have to return to that life, that bargain I made, in order to survive. You have so much here. And your mother, for all her moods and disturbances, is ten times the person that your father could ever hope to be. She is a Witch-Queen, and I say that as the Iceni once said it of their greatest warriors. She is gifted of the goddess, and whether she brings thunder or gentle showers upon this land, she is one of the finest women I have ever been fortunate enough to know.”

  5

  Morgause had been right—my mother was gifted of the goddess, and it was said by the wise women that the one who is most gifted by the goddess is also thrice cursed by the gods.

  So when an entire day and night passed, and my mother had not come back to our home, I went to the paddocks for a horse and told Morgause to send out the message among the people that Morgan le Fay was missing.

  6

  I rode for one full night, until I had exhausted myself and had to find a warm, soft place for sleeping. I slept but a few hours, and ate only the sweet bread I’d packed into my cloak.

&nbs
p; I raced my horse to the point of his exhaustion as well, traveling along the desolate lands and the heath, hunting the very edges of the forest, and out along the cliffs, through the Grove itself, among the old stone temples and the earth-hovels and deep into the fern-spattered woods. I called out to my mother, and to the goddess for guidance. Nearing twilight, I brought the horse to water not far from that well of poisoners, and, with a dollop of fear and a bit of false courage, went to find those three Roman sisters who might have kidnapped my mother into their service.

  The well itself was older than even our tribes, and had been there since the early times of the land, when the gods walked the groves and the mistletoe grew as tall trees. The elders said that children had been cast into that well by the Romans, and that to drink of it was to become invaded by their spirits. But these Roman sisters had poisoned it so that none would drink without the taste of death upon their lips.

  Behind the well, one of the old Roman grottos could barely be seen through a heavy overgrowth of twisting vine, rimmed by stone blocks carved up with various symbols of the Romans. The vines here had once been a grape arbor that had gone wild, and the grapes were milky white and as poisonous as anything that grew in this cursed place. The stories of the elders were that the Romans of centuries previous had made blood sacrifices of the Celtic youth and maidens, spilling their blood into the grotto that they might divine future events. Debaucheries and lascivious orgies had taken place here, usually with the slaves of our tribe being badly abused. They said that for each stone at the edge of the mossy grotto, there had been a child buried beneath it, some of them still breathing when they were placed in the large urns that were sealed as their tombs.

  The Druids shunned the place, and I had been told my whole life not to go near it, but I feared for my mother’s safety, and I also feared for her mind, that it had taken her to this place of nightmares.

  As I stood at the edge of the grotto, I glanced through those snaky vines and branches that overhung the rounded cave entrance where the shiny black water flowed.

  There, in the water, was a statue to that goddess of the howling night, Hecate. Her three faces were of the bird of prey, and the feral cat, and the jackal.

  Both female and male was she in this statue, though I had never heard before that this Greek goddess was hermaphrodite, which was a blessing and a sign of wholeness-of-self. Her breasts were large and the chest beneath them was muscular as a warrior.

  In her left hand, she carried a dagger, which was the poisoned blade. In her right hand she carried a rounded globe, which may have been meant to symbolize the moon itself.

  Through the doorway, lights flickered.

  I heard the muffled sound of women’s voices.

  No man was meant to ever cross this sanctuary, so I waited at the edge of the water and knelt there.

  My gaze settled briefly upon the statue.

  I closed my eyes and prayed to the goddess who watched over all of creation and wore the masks of eternity that she might help me with the Strega.

  Opening my eyes again, I called out, “Strega! I have come for Morgan le Fay! Strega! Witches! Poisoners! I call to you! Come out of your pit!”

  7

  After several minutes of such calls and shouts, I heard a strange howling from within the grotto’s mouth.

  The flickering of lights grew in intensity from that watery doorway.

  A woman, naked as the goddess herself and covered in mud, slender vines wrapped into her long hair, came out. She was older than my mother, perhaps as old as Viviane, but her face had been painted with blues and greens such that it gave her a vital appearance, though I suspected she had not slept in days.

  “Do you bring an offering?” she asked, still crawling toward the water, her breasts hanging down, her thickly painted lips drawn back over gleaming white teeth, sharpened into points. As she got to the very edge of the water across from me, she slipped into it, just as a lizard might, and continued to crawl in it toward me.

  Behind her, there was a noise like a scuttling crab along rock, and the first I saw of her were fingers extending at the roof-edge of the doorway into the grotto cave. Then, a face appeared, upside down, with long, oiled black hair shining. This Strega clung to the ceiling of her lair, and crawled out from it onto the ledge that was just above the entryway. She righted herself and crouched there on her haunches, looking down at me. “Do you bring us pain or pleasure?” this one asked.

  In the water, the one that now slithered toward me drew herself up to the statue of the goddess, and clung to the stone, watching me with eyes that seemed like the dead eyes of the adder that caused one to freeze upon seeing the creature. “You are a pretty youth to come to us,” both sisters said in unison, and to their two voices, I heard a third. The Strega upon the ledge sniffed at the air. “You have not yet used the power between your legs,” she said, and grinned a terrible crescent-moon smile. “Hecate blesses you for this.”

  “She drinks the blood of youths who have not yet unsheathed their blades,” the Strega at the statue said.

  Then an inky shadow moved out from the doorway as the flickering lights brightened, and, following this shadow, the third of the Roman sisters carrying a torch that seemed to burn along its entire length though it did not burn her hand. This woman was of a less horrifying aspect as her sisters, for she was a Crone of some beauty, with her hair golden and plaited, though she too was naked and covered in mud. “We have been sleeping,” she said, but as she said it, the other three also repeated her words, like an echo. “You have come from the Lady’s island.” Again, as she spoke, her sisters repeated, watching me with their snake-like eyes.

  I was about to say something, but this third Strega smiled and stepped into the water, setting her torch down upon the surface. The fire from her torch burned upon the water and a ring of flame raced to encircle the grotto.

  “No man may enter our sanctuary,” the beautiful Crone said. “But you may ask of us what you wish. If you bring us meat, we will give you roots and berries which may heal or kill.”

  “Heal or kill,” her sisters echoed.

  “Do not be afraid, virgin youth,” the Crone said. “My sisters’ aspect frightens some, but they are blessed with our mother goddess. But you, yourself, have an understanding nature.”

  Watching her through the fire, I nodded.

  “You search for your mother,” she said, and the others echoed her. “We know that fair lady, Morgan of the Faerie, who is Queen of Three Realms that have been stolen from her by men. You are the one who was brought into her by the goddess, to bless her when men had taken too much to bear.”

  “Too much to bear,” the sisters repeated.

  “I am Anthea, and my sisters are also myself.”

  “I hear you share one soul,” I said.

  “One soul,” they said. “Three bodies. We cannot share more with you.”

  “You are Strega, and of the Roman mysteries.”

  “Older than Rome are our mysteries. We are Anthea,” the three said in a mumbling unison. “We are not Strega, as your tribe has called us who are of the ancient Etruscan dynasty. Our goddess is not that Greek, Hecate, but her mother, who was blessed among the Canaanites, called Namtareth, who brings light into the deepest well and darkest night.”

  The one who had curled around the statue pointed to the blade in the statue’s hand. “She is a surgeon for those who are sick.”

  Over the ledge, the sister said, “She brings death when misery is too great to bear.”

  At the statue, the sister reached up to the goddess’s right hand and the globe within it. “This is the soul, which she carries over black waters of night to him whom you call Arawn but we know as Plutonis and Hades, in his Otherworld kingdom. For the soul is like a ball of light and it seeks light, which Namtareth brings with her presence.”

  “Her holy presence,” said the Anthea who stood in the water, clutching the torch.

  “Many die,” they said in unison. “And m
any come to know the light of Namtareth who lifts them up from the deep and returns them to the clay of the flesh.”

  “Your mother is not yet dead,” they said. “But only sleeping. She lies among the brambles and the sedge.”

  “Her soul has not yet traveled,” said the ledge Anthea.

  “Her blood has spoken to the earth, and we hear its call,” said the Anthea upon the statue.

  “Do not fear us, gentle Mordred, son of Morgan,” said the torchbearing Anthea, “for though men fear the Crone and the women who live in the wilderness and the dark, it is these women who bring peace and safe passage into those other realms. There will come a day, Mordred…”

  “I can see it,” said the statue-clinging Anthea.

  “In the chambers of my soul, I see that day,” said the sister who crouched upon the ledge above the entrance.

  And then, all three said, “A day when souls shall twin within one body, and you shall grow dark with the maddening fury.”

  “If your mother should die,” said one.

  “If she should breathe her last,” said another.

  And then, a confusion of tongues began, and in many languages, though I could only understand the Roman and my own language. It was as if many small birds flew through the air around me, or a plague of bees, buzzing at my ears with their words that crisscrossed and came at me too quickly, from all three of them.

  “Then it shall come to pass, and the world will be unmade.”

  “Unmade, until that sword.”

  “That evil sword.”

  “The sword of tyrants.”

  “Tyrants who once were great kings.”