I, Morgana (21 page)

More to the point, how am I meant to use these tablets? If it’s to tell the future, then I need to understand more of their meaning. I stare at them fanned out in front of me, and hammer my fists against the table top in frustration.

Grasping for enlightenment, I think back to what Merlin said.
I doubt she has the wisdom to see what should be plain in front of her. If she can but find the key she could read the future and, perhaps, even change it—if it’s not too late
.

What should be plain in front of me? I study them again. What do the symbols represent? The sword? Excalibur, of course! I feel a frisson of excitement. The wand? I have three of them! The pentacle? Surely it represents the crystal I stole from Merlin. And the cup, what is that? I cast about for inspiration but cannot think of any cup of note, unless it’s as a receptacle for the water that is so necessary to sustain life.

I group the tablets according to their symbols. I try to empty my mind of everything as I contemplate them. I notice that there are similarities between them. Each group has a hand holding one of the symbols; the other tablets show two, three and upward to ten of each symbol. There are also four figures, rising in status from a serving page on bended knee to a mounted knight, a crowned queen and a king. I wonder if these tablets are meant to symbolize a progression of sorts, a journey through life, and through fortune. Of course! That is what Merlin meant when suggesting that by finding the key I would be able to read the future!

I stare at the tablets in triumph, which is quickly trimmed as I realize I still do not understand the meaning behind each tablet.

I study the second set of tablets more carefully. If I’m right, I’ve already sensed what and who some of them represent. There are two more crowned figures, both seated on elaborate thrones. They bear some resemblance to Guenevere and Arthur, but are far older in years. Lines of experience—and regret, perhaps—crease their faces. What of the lovers? And death? That comes to us all—or does it signify the death of ambition? The devil? And judgment? Cold shivers crawl like spiders across my spine as I contemplate the possibilities. Quickly, I push those thoughts away, focusing instead on a child with an innocent expression about to step out into the void. There is something about the figure that reminds me of myself, when I thought that I would inherit the world—and instead fell into the abyss. There is also a star with its promise for the future—and a woman holding a crystal pentacle.

I sort through the tablets and let my mind wander, hoping for illumination. I sense glimmers of ideas that seem to make sense, but I cannot catch hold of them to make them whole enough to weave into a pattern.

Exasperated, I seize up the tablets and mix them all around. I lay them all out again, but they still leave me with only a jumble of impressions. I remove a few, and then whole handfuls, but no clear message comes to me. I sweep them up once more. After a moment’s thought I give them a thorough mix and lay them out, this time with their designs hidden so that I am choosing at random. I pick up seven and turn them over. They make no sense, and so I add another seven. This time, no matter what, I am determined to read and understand their message.

The same tablets that have previously caught my eye are now revealed: the innocent child stepping into the abyss, the magician with his wand and other implements, and the sly man creeping about with his sword. The lovers, cup raised and drinking a toast to each other. My heart aches with loss. The crowned figures, looking as if they bear the cares of the world upon their shoulders, along with a knight, the queen, the pierced heart—all are there as well as the devil, death, judgment and several others. I arrange them in the order in which I have chosen them; they have fallen into the pattern I was looking at before.

I shiver with a dreadful premonition, but try as I might, I am still unable to say for certain what each tablet signifies, either on its own or when looked at as a whole.

While the secrets of the tablets remain tantalizingly out of my reach, I prepare for the birth of my babe. My feelings toward the child are ambivalent. I mourn the absence of Launcelot; shame runs hot through my body as I recall his distaste, the cruelty of his last words to me. And yet it is true that I loved him, and that I love him still. This child is the embodiment of that love, but it serves as a bitter reminder of all that I have lost. Perhaps the baby senses this for it seems to take a malicious pleasure in disturbing my rest, being peaceful while I wake but squirming about and kicking endlessly as soon as I lie down.

To refresh my spirits, I spend long hours walking in my garden, both in the open where all may see me, but also in the secret places where only I can go. I try again to see the future in my scrying pool, for I feel ever anxious, afraid of the consequences of all that I have set in place. Mostly I see only my reflection, but occasionally I catch a glimpse of another face, the girl who looks like me but who is not. My daughter grown? Is this a girl child I am carrying?

Whispers come to me, questions from this young woman whose name so closely resembles mine. “Where are you?” she asks, but does not answer when I ask her the same question. It is my impression that she comes from a time in the future, a boundary I have tried to cross although I have never succeeded. I send her my strongest thoughts; I beg her to talk to me, but the vision always fades before she can tell me what she knows.

On one glorious occasion I feel the presence of Launcelot, and I am suffused with warmth and joy. Is this a message from the future—that he thinks of me and that in time he will return to be a father to his daughter and a husband to me?

This thought sustains me through a long and agonizing labor. I suspect that the child is not positioned as it should be because it seems to be taking its time to move down through the birth canal. The young midwife, summoned for the occasion, gives me a drink containing mugwort and mint, and perhaps some other herbs, which she says will help with the birth. She also gives me pepper to inhale and bids me “sneeze the child out.” If only it could be that easy!

“Do you have a saint’s relic to help you, madame?”

I shake my head.

“A piece of coral or a precious stone to hold?” She looks about the room with a hopeful expression.

I know from my own experience that these things do not help in cases such as mine. “No,” I say shortly. “You are better off to massage my belly and see if you can persuade this baby to come.” I gesture toward a vial containing oil of roses, which I’ve made up in preparation for the birth.

She tips some drops into her hand, and sets to work. Her touch is light as a butterfly’s kiss and I cannot think it will achieve anything. But I assume she knows what she is doing, and so I keep quiet.

Still the baby won’t shift, and finally she wrings her hands and says she knows not what to do other than cut my belly open once I am dead in order to save the child. “And you’ll have to ask someone else to do that,” she adds, “because I cannot.”

 This I will not tolerate, at least not without a fight. This baby has caused me more than enough grief already. Besides, I know something of childbirth, having borne one of my own and helped with other births at Joyous Garde and elsewhere. “You must try harder,” I tell her. “Try massaging my belly in this way.” I move my hands across my bloated stomach in opposite directions, to show her what I mean. “See if you can turn the baby around and position it so that it can come down head first through the birth canal. You should already know how to do this!”

“Forgive me, madame.” The young woman looks fearful as she explains. “It is my mother who is the midwife, but she is away yonder delivering a baby elsewhere. Being unsure of when she would return, I came in her place to do what I may and in the hope and expectation of an easy birth.” She tips more oil into her hand, and begins to pat and rub once more.

“Not like that!” Now I am thoroughly irritated. I seize her arm in a hard grasp. “Like this.” I massage my hands around her arm, and she squawks with the pain of it. But when I release her and she tries again, the pressure is firm and I begin to hope that it is not too late for the baby to be turned.

 “If this fails, then you must grease your hands and see if you can pull the baby out.”

The young woman looks so horrified at the notion that she sets to work with a will. Sweat stands out on her brow; she grunts with the effort. I lie beneath her hands, and know despair. Only now, when it is too late, do I realize how very badly I want this child to be born, and for me to live long enough to be its mother, guardian and protector.

The child has squirmed in my belly, keeping me sleepless night after night. Now, when I most want it to shift, it stays stubbornly still. I have the sudden horrible notion that it might have strangled on the cord that binds a child to its mother, and that it might already be dead. I have seen such things before, and witnessed the grief of the mother when she holds the dead baby in her arms. Tears spring into my eyes, and course down my cheeks.

Turn, you little bastard, I think.
Turn!

As if in response, I feel the baby stir into life and begin its familiar squirming. I draw in a sobbing breath of relief and smile through my tears at the midwife’s daughter.

“It’s beginning to move. Please, please keep on doing what you’re doing.” And the young girl responds with doubled effort, and the baby starts to squirm in earnest.

I feel a sudden shift, and know that the head has locked into the birth canal. Without waiting for instruction, I bat the young woman’s hands away and begin to push. The pain is agonizing. I feel as if I’m giving birth to a horse. I pant, I take deep breaths, I push again. And pant. And push. And push. And all of a rush, my daughter is born.

She is an ugly baby, my daughter. In this she resembles me rather than her father, for I recall overhearing a slighting comment from my mother regarding my appearance when I was born. She was comparing me unfavorably with the newborn Arthur: a beautiful baby who subsequently grew into an appealing toddler and finally a handsome man.

“Morgana looked just like a little frog when she was a baby,” my mother said. Uther had laughed, and so did my mother. It only served to make me hate them more, although I couldn’t hate Arthur, not then while he was still so small. Now I understand my mother’s words, for so does my daughter look like a little frog with her wide apart eyes and wider mouth. It only serves to make me feel more tender toward her. I can’t resist rubbing my cheek against the fuzz of soft brown down that covers her head, and inhaling her sweet baby smell. I have called her Marie, and I love her with a passion equal to the love I felt for Mordred after he was born.

She was fussy in my womb, and she is fussy now, quick to cry and always eager to suckle. I walk her endlessly around my small room at the priory, trying to quieten her so that she will not disturb the other guests or the nuns, for the guest house is in close proximity to the priory itself. She closes my fingers in her tiny hands in a grasp so strong that it is difficult to persuade her to let go. She is a fighter, this one, and greedy for life—and in this she is most definitely my child.

I gaze and gaze at her, seeking signs of her father, but can see none. I don’t know whether to be glad or sorry for it, but in the end I give up worrying for she becomes who she is: Marie, a child in her own right. I make a solemn vow to myself that this child will be different from Mordred. I shall be with her always; I shall educate her in the ways of our world and in the magical ways of the Otherworld. I acknowledge, but only in my most private thoughts, that I believe she’ll need all the powers at her disposal to counteract the damage that her half-brother may inflict on us all, and on the kingdom. I am determined to keep Marie’s birth a secret from Mordred for as long as I am able, for I have seen his ambition and his cruelty, and I fear for her safety. Marie is no threat to him, but I suspect he may not see it that way.

I am determined also to keep her birth a secret from Launcelot, for I am afraid he will come for her if he learns that we have made a child together. My resolution does not stop me thinking about him, longing for him, wishing he was by my side. My longing grows deeper when I learn that he and Guenevere have had a falling out and that he has left the court. In spite of his harsh words, I cannot help hoping that he will come to me. Instead I hear a most worrying tale: his arm was wounded in a skirmish and he fled into the forest where he was taken in by the family of Bernard of Astolat.

I have heard of the beauty of Elaine the Fair, Bernard’s daughter, and I am gripped by jealousy. Unbidden come intimations of her ministrations to Launcelot while she nurses him back to health: her intimacy with his body as she bathes him and tends his wounds; her soft voice; her healing touch. None of this I know for certain, but my imaginings are so vivid and so painful that I determine to find him and see the situation for myself.

I have not attempted any transmutation since my return to the priory, and I wonder if my ability to shape-shift has left me along with my skill at scrying. Marie is asleep. I call for a lay sister to keep watch over her, and then go out into the garden. I look up into the sky where ravens wheel around a field of ripening wheat. Their hoarse caws shatter the air, calling me upward into freedom. I gaze at them and, as I did so many years ago under Merlin’s watchful eye, I focus on thinking like a raven,
being
a raven. And within a heartbeat I am flying up there with them and looking down as they do for signs of field mice or other tasty things to eat.

I shudder, and veer away, making for the forest of Astolat where I hope—or dread—to find Launcelot. I fly for some distance, until movement in a forest glade below draws my attention. I come closer in order to inspect the scene, and I see Launcelot. He is mounted, but not on his usual steed. Apparently he is healed and ready to depart. I am about to rejoice when I see who is with him—Elaine the Fair has lingered to bid him farewell. She tries to steal a kiss, and he turns his cheek to her. I smile to myself, but not for long. She has unpinned one of her sleeves and now she hands it to him.

It is the fashion at Camelot for knights to wear the favors of their ladies when going into battle, or when taking parts in jousts or melees. Launcelot, to my certain knowledge, has never worn a lady’s favor: in the first instance because our relationship was a secret, and in the second because his love for Guenevere is also supposed to be a secret. And yet he takes the sleeve from Elaine and fastens it to his helm where it unfurls in a bright red ribbon.

I notice that he is armed, and frown, for he appears to be wearing someone else’s armor. It would appear that he is going into battle in disguise.

Elaine lifts her hand to her mouth and blows him a fluttering kiss. “God’s speed, my lord, and good luck in the tournament.”

“If I should win the prize, it shall be yours.”

Elaine gives a girlish giggle; a blush colors her pale skin. She is truly beautiful—and I hate her.

I am also confused. How has the spell binding him to Guenevere come so undone that he makes promises to this girl and even wears her favor? I wish I could look into his heart for the truth of the affair, for their leave-taking is anything but a loving farewell. My body stirs as I recall how ardent Launcelot was when he was with me. But not with Elaine. Perhaps I should be glad of it; perhaps, I think, I should also follow him to Camelot to see for myself what this is all about.

I become aware that Elaine is staring up at me. I’ve been so caught up in watching them that I have flown close to hover over their heads when I should rather have settled on a branch some distance away.

“Get you gone, you black devil!” she cries, and I hear the fear and loathing in her voice. She bends, picks up a stone and, before I can put a safe distance between us, she throws it at me with all her might. The stone slams against my body, a stinging blow that weakens me so that I lose height and the power to fly. I struggle to keep myself aloft, for I know that she will show no mercy if I fall at her feet. She shouts after me, and beats the air with her fist. Fortunately, she does not throw another stone. Nevertheless I am hurt and, once I have flown out of her sight, I alight in a tree to groom my feathers and inspect my wound.

There is no blood, nor do my wings appear to be damaged in any way; for this I am deeply thankful. I can keep going if I am only bruised. And so I fly on, this time following the path that Launcelot took. He is attending the joust for the ninth crystal, I understand that much, for there have been similar jousts before, each time with a beautiful crystal as a reward. The prizes are offered by the king, but they are always won by Launcelot who, ever the queen’s champion, presents them to Guenevere.

I remind myself that he and the queen have fallen out; he is at liberty now to give the crystal to whomsoever he chooses. And I smile to myself as I picture the queen’s fury when it is not given to her. At odds with Launcelot or not, she will not forgive such a slight in a hurry.

I fly on and, as I suspected, the tournament is taking place in the field near Camelot where it is always held. The day is fine, the meadow is a rainbow of wildflowers: pink ragged robin and purple selfheal, scarlet poppies and blue forget-me-nots, yellow buttercups and starry white daisies, their colors matched by the gaiety of the pavilions that have been set around the tourney field.

The competitors come out in order, one pair after the other, all going through the same motions. I find it a tedious business, watching knights ride hard at their opponents, slamming into each other with lances at the ready in the hope of unhorsing each other, and fighting in close combat if they do not manage to stay mounted. Some are wounded quite grievously, while others cry mercy as soon as they hit the ground. Launcelot fights like a lion, as always, and I am proud of him although ever fearful when he takes a blow, for I see how he favors his left arm and I fear the old wound will open if he does not protect it sufficiently.

I perch on the rigging of the queen’s pavilion to watch her. She appears agitated, jumping up to pace about and scan the crowd before sitting down to fiddle with her tasseled sash, or her hair. I know she is looking for Launcelot but does not recognize him with his helm in place, although the scarlet sleeve is like a beacon. I notice that the queen’s eyes are drawn more than once to the mysterious knight; each time she blinks and looks away, and I know she is telling herself that it cannot be Launcelot for he would not wear anyone’s favors but her own—and that, of course, he is unable to do. I smile to myself with malicious satisfaction.

Launcelot wins, and keeps on winning. The queen continues to watch him; I read the confusion on her face, and see in the way she shakes her head that she is still not willing to accept him for who he really is. But I see also her desolation as she seeks him among the crowd.

Arthur meanwhile stands with his knights, laughing and joking with them, and urging them on to victory. Launcelot, I notice, keeps his distance when he is not on the tourney field, and does not remove his visor.

Recognizing his duty as a husband at last, Arthur comes to sit beside Guenevere for a short time. “Where is your champion today, my lady?”

“I know not. I cannot see him anywhere,” Guenevere replies in a low voice.

“He must surely come to claim the ninth crystal for you, wife! I know you will not be satisfied unless you have it.”

Guenevere gives a small moan. Arthur smiles at her, apparently indifferent to her distress. “Well, it’s time someone else has the chance of winning!” he says cheerfully. “That knight with the red favor stands out among all the others who have fought so far. I wonder where he hails from?” He jumps up. “I’ll see if I can find out.”

Guenevere stares after Arthur as he hastens away, her expression unreadable. I suspect that if things were bad between them before, they have now become worse. I wonder if she recalls my advice about the need for a passionate relationship in order to have a child. And I wonder when she gave up trying.

As expected, the ninth crystal is awarded to Launcelot at the ceremony following the day’s activities. By then, I’ve transformed myself into a fieldmouse in order to enter the pavilion and run up one of the supporting wooden poles to observe Guenevere’s reaction when it becomes clear that the coveted crystal will not fall into her hands.

I wonder if I have mistaken the situation for, to my surprise, Launcelot removes his helm as Arthur calls out for the knight with the red favor to claim his reward. A gasp ricochets around the room. Guenevere puts her hand to her mouth; she is so pale I wonder if she is going to collapse.

Launcelot comes forward, bows to the king and then to the queen. He takes the crystal from Arthur, and the queen smiles at him. He seems ready to break his promise to Elaine of Astolat and hand his prize to Guenevere after all—but he does not. He thanks them both courteously, and takes his leave. There is complete silence as he walks out of the pavilion and whistles for his mount. The silence isn’t broken until the sound of galloping hooves retreats into the distance.

By then I have scurried down the pole and out of the tent. In the concealing darkness I transform myself into a raven once more. I think to follow Launcelot, but my heart fails me. He will give the crystal to Elaine, I know that now. And then he will probably speak to her father, for having worn her favor he is nigh betrothed to her already. He may even bed her—and that I cannot bear to witness. So I fly back to the priory, and to my Marie who, I am told, has been fretful without me even though the lay sister had the good sense to send for a wet nurse when I did not return in time to feed her.

As I tend the bruises inflicted on my body by Elaine’s stone, I listen for news of Launcelot’s nuptials to the fair maid of Astolat. I hear instead of her death. Sir Ector has called in to the priory seeking shelter for the night. I cannot show myself to him but, when I hear him talking to the guest mistress at the gate, I creep closer to listen. It is a sad tale and I cannot help feeling sorry for the young woman whom I
’d 
envied so fiercely.

“Elaine was in love with Launcelot and he played her false,” Sir Ector says sternly. “His heart was ever unto the queen, but we all hoped that he had seen his error and was preparing to make a new life with a beautiful young woman who loved him. It is said that she told him she would die if she could not have him as a husband.”

“And he refused her?” Sister Ursula’s tone is incredulous.

“Indeed he did. And she fell into such sadness that she called for a boat and asked her brother Lavaine to sail downriver with her to Camelot. I don’t know if she hoped to see Launcelot and change his mind, but she died of grief along the journey. The boat floated beneath the castle walls and Lavaine brought it in to the jetty, where they were greeted with lamentations and prayers for her soul. The queen was furious with Launcelot over the affair of the ninth crystal and other things besides, but there seemed to be some reconciliation between them until this happened. Now she reproaches Launcelot for being an unfeeling cur, although we do wonder if he only took up with Elaine because he was banished from the court by Guenevere.”

“The poor lady. She shall have our prayers here, at the priory.”

Elaine has my prayers too—I know exactly how she felt. The wound of losing Launcelot sliced so deep that even now it has not healed; I think it never will. I did not die for love, at least not openly. But inside, my heart has shriveled into something hard and small. I am riven with despair and longing, with love and with hate. At least I have Marie; without her I think I would have lost the will to live. I leave my hiding place and hurry to find her, to hold her in my arms and kiss her; to promise her that I shall never leave her and that we shall be together always.