The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology
Page 27
And if in after years there was no love lost between Cai and Gwenhwyfar, nor between the queen and Morrigan, there is, perhaps, little wonder. For Cai had marked well the queen’s face when he came to fetch her from Gwythyr’s hall, and it was not the same woman whom he bore triumphantly back on May Day. Nor, very many years later, when he came upon the fearless son of Gwenhwyfar, Llacheu, asleep in the wood, did he fail to avenge the deception by thrusting the sleeping youth through with his sword, to the eternal sorrow of Gwenhwyfar.
They said that Gwenhwyfar’s name signified ‘White Phantom’ but they never knew the half of it, those poets who had never known what it was to stare into an otherworldly mirror and see there reflected the ghosts of one’s mother and one’s serving maid.
They said that Arthur was never quite satisfied with his wife from then onwards. They said that he had three wives, all called by the same name. Well, that was true, though he was never wholly aware of the fact. The Gwenhwyfar who was Enid, the Gwenhwyfar who was herself, and the Gwenhwyfar who was really Gwenhwyfach and occasionally filled in for the queen when her friend went weekending in the underworld with Edern.
They said that the Battle of Camlan – that byword in futility – was caused by the blow that one woman – Gwenhwyfach – struck upon another: Gwenhwyfar. And that is partly true, for Gwenhwyfach never really learnt the subtleties of mortality. She was bad when little and worse when big, for that is the nature of giants: to meddle in the affairs of humans and cause them hurt. She had no means of knowing that, by inviting Medrawt to court, it would be the undoing of Arthur. For Medrawt was half mortal, half faery and he had his mother’s true sight. When he saw Gwenhwyfach sitting in the queen’s chair, the great lolloping giantess that she was, he knew her to be false; he spilled wine in her lap, pulled her from the royal throne and cast her to the ground in full view of all. He spared none at court the true nature of Gwenhwyfar’s relationship with other knights, both mortal and immortal, and so threw the kingdom into tumult and eventually war. For only when Arthur awoke to the traitorous relationships of his queen, did he attempt to punish her.
And if, in after years, the monk, Gildas, had little to write of the High King Arthur, in his chronicles, it is little wonder. His few months in the dark forests of faery-land had addled his wits, causing him to take a vow of silence, and to have a very low opinion of the marital affairs of kings and rulers in general.
As for Enid, she faced and overcame the fierce seas. Aboard the curragh bound for Armorica, she felt still the healing hands of Morrigan upon her. Her blessing sustained Enid even when Gereint rejected her, making her pursue him through the trackless forest until at last he relented and married her. When her son was grown, she sent him to his father, but Amr was never destined to be king. He died at his father’s hands: victim of mistaken identity in a passage of arms.
And at the last, when the final blow had been struck at Camlan, it was in Enid’s lap that they lay Arthur’s head. While, at his feet, it was Gwenhwyfar who wept and Gwenhwyfach who mourned. But when Enid raised her eyes to the woman in the stern who steered the crystal curragh to the blessed isle of Avalon, she met the eyes of the White Hart and knew Morrigan for what she was: the greatest of the Four Queens who bore Arthur to his final home and eternal healing.
Caitlín Matthews is the author of 70 books including Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, a study of Divine Feminine in Gnostic, Jewish and Christian thought and King Arthur’s Raid on the Underworld, a new translation and study of the Welsh poet Taliesin’s extraordinary poem. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-one languages. She found, completed and edited The Fourth Gwenevere for Jo Fletcher Books, along with her husband John Matthews. She lives in Oxford. www.hallowquest.org.uk