Page 35 of The Faerie Morgana

Braithe did not return to Morgana’s room after dinner. Morgana could have called Dafne if she wanted something, but she had no need. She felt much stronger, a surge of refreshed health imparted by Arthur’s visit. His presence had renewed her compulsion to protect him.

The sensation was something like love, but not the kind of love that would break her vow to the Temple.

It resided in her spirit, not her body. It was a love mixed with respect and hope, and the abiding desire to guard the future of Lloegyr, a desire she knew Arthur shared.

She hoped her failure to disclose her secret did not dishonor the regard she held for him.

She was out of bed and on her feet before he and his men started back across Ilyn the next morning.

Still in her shift, she stood by the window to watch their boat slip silently into the mist. The two guards were at the oars.

Arthur stood in the bow with one foot braced against the hull, his arms crossed over his breast.

Morgana raised her hand, palm outward in his direction, and murmured:

In every darkness there is a light, a beacon to draw the wanderer.

Beneath the lamp is rest and warmth, but beware. The shadows beyond are full of peril.

She didn’t know why that stanza had come to her. She dropped her hand and went to her table to cast the stones, but they told her nothing new.

Instead they showed her an image of her handmaid standing on the shore, watching the king’s boat pierce the circling mist. Morgana pressed her hand to her breast in concern for her little brat.

It was hardly unusual for a young girl to yearn for a man, but Arthur was no usual man.

He was a king, with a king’s responsibilities.

She hoped Braithe would not break her heart over him.

She considered warning her, but would she hurt Braithe’s feelings by doubting her commitment to her vow?

It was not a situation within Morgana’s experience, and she hesitated to offend one who had been so fiercely loyal.

When her handmaid appeared, carrying a tray of broth and bread, Morgana was already washed and dressed in her black robe.

“You’re feeling better!” Braithe exclaimed. Her cheeks were rosy, and her eyes shone as bright as a spring sky.

Morgana said, “I feel quite well, and you certainly look in the peak of health. Let us return to work.”

Braithe set the tray on the table and flashed her dimples. “Eat first,” she said. “Unless you want to breakfast with your sister priestesses.”

“I think not,” Morgana said. “I prefer this.” She picked up a piece of bread and dipped it into the broth. “I see the king has left the Isle.”

Braithe’s freckles drowned in a sudden flush of red. “Yes, I believe he and his knights left this morning.” And she added, “Early.”

“No doubt my half brother has pressing duties.”

“I suppose he must.” Braithe busied herself smoothing Morgana’s bed and tidying the few things she kept beside it. “Shall I braid your hair for you, Priestess?”

“Thank you, yes.”

As Braithe’s small, deft hands brushed Morgana’s long hair and began to plait it, Morgana did her best not to notice that her handmaid smelled differently from her usual scent of soap and candlewax and lavender.

It was a subtle but distinctive perfume, the fragrance of tilled earth and dark woods, of the lake in summer, the bed of thyme in the fall.

It made Morgana’s stomach contract, a response she found strange.

She needed to distract herself. “Braithe,” she began.

“Yes, Priestess.”

“Thank you for keeping my secret.”

“You mean about—about the cat? The owl? Those things?”

“Yes.”

“I did wonder that you didn’t want to tell your half brother.”

“When I understand why I have that particular gift, I may tell him. In the meantime, I like having an ability no one knows about. It was useful in dealing with the assassin, and I may need to use it again.”

Braithe tied off a thick silver plait of Morgana’s hair and laid it neatly over her shoulder. “I wish you would not,” she said, her voice vibrating with sincerity. “I truly feared this time you might die.”

“I know.” Morgana stood and shook out the folds of her black robe. “But in my place, with Arthur’s life at risk, would you have had me do nothing?”

“No!”

The denial was so sharp, so heartfelt, that Morgana startled. “Braithe,” she began, but her handmaid had turned away.

“No.” Braithe spoke in a more disciplined voice. “No, of course not, Priestess. You had to intervene, by whatever means you could. I understand that you’ve devoted yourself to protecting the true king.”

“It is my purpose in life,” Morgana said. She took up the thong that held her sigil and slipped it over her head. “In truth, it is a purpose greater than my life.”

Braithe had stood at her own window to watch Arthur and his guards float away into the mist. Her body felt both tender and painful, tremulous from the shock and the ecstasy of giving in to her desire.

She relived every whispered endearment in her fevered memory of the night just past. She recalled the sensation of Arthur’s smooth skin against her own, at the satisfying hardness of his muscles and the gratifying force of his desiring her.

She marveled at the startling intimacy of opening herself to him.

The sense of abandoning all precautions, all promises, in favor of that experience was a heady one. She would never be the same again.

When the ring of mist had swallowed the king’s boat, she turned away from the window and went to gaze into the mirror that hung above her washstand.

She was startled to see that she looked no different than she had the day before, except that her eyes were brightened by an unnatural shine.

She pulled off her nightdress and stood on tiptoe to see her naked body in the glass, but it looked no different, either.

She put one hand on a breast, remembering Arthur’s hand there.

She traced her belly with her palm, where his palm had been just hours before.

She hugged herself, wishing she could distill the sensations of their time together, bottle them as if they were a potion or a tincture, something to be uncorked and poured out when you wanted to taste them again.

She would ache with longing for him. She knew that.

Her longing would be in vain, and she knew that, too.

Braithe had a firm grasp on her station in life.

She was a country girl. She would not tell herself that Arthur loved her or allow herself to daydream that a king would choose someone like her as his queen.

It would have to be enough that he had wanted her, that he had shared something intense and personal with her, that he had made her feel like a queen, though she could never be one.

As she pulled on her shift and tied her robe around her waist, she told herself these things as firmly as she could.

She said aloud, as she braided her hair, “You are no one, Braithe of the Temple. He is King Arthur of Lloegyr, the true king of Camulod. You are no lord’s daughter, no princess.

You are a handmaid, and a lucky one at that. You must remember.”

But she couldn’t quench the spark of hope that flickered in her heart.

Morgana’s relief at being able to return to her Temple duties, to hear supplicants, to provide what aid she could to them, was tainted by her grief over the rift with the Blackbird.

He had sent her no message, either to repeat his accusation, to apologize, or even to ask after her health.

He must know she had been ill, even if he didn’t know why.

Her sister priestesses asked her about him, because they were known to be close. Everyone understood that the Blackbird favored her. Some resented it. Others envied it. No one questioned it.

She tried to put him out of her mind, but his words haunted her. She kept hearing them, especially in the small hours of the night. You have no idea what you’ve done.

But I do! she wanted to scream. I saved the king from his father’s poison, and I saved him again from Morgause’s assassin!

She imagined an argument in which she spoke all the right words, forced the Blackbird to listen to her, to understand what had happened and why she had done what she did, even to apologize to her for the things he had said, but it was only that—imagination.

He would not listen to her then, would not give her a chance to explain now.

He was set on some plan he had never described to her.

He was laying the fault for its failure at her feet.

It was egregiously unfair. He had shamed her, wounded her, and he continued to let his silence hurt her. It was maddening, and it was painful, and she suffered more because there was nothing she could do about it.

She thought of sending him a message, pouring her heart out in a letter.

She thought of magicking the letter to be certain he read it, forcing him to open his stubborn mind to her.

She could do it, could create a tincture of calamus root for persuasion, with a touch of betony to break through his resistance.

She would mix the tincture at the full of the moon to intensify its power, while a new beeswax candle burned on her altar.

She could sprinkle it over her missive, seal it with the sigil of the Lady pressed into wax, then send it with one of the boatmen to Camulod.

She would not do it. She would never do such a thing.

She had never magicked anyone just to please herself, and she would not stoop to such an action now, no matter how unhappy she was.

She felt a great reluctance to manipulate the Blackbird in any way, despite everything.

She had always been honest with him, and she had taken honest actions, with only the weal of the kingdom in her heart.

If being cut off from the Blackbird’s regard was the price she paid, she would have to pay it without demur.

There was nothing for her to do but to bury herself in her work, and that she did.

As the chill of winter wrapped the Isle and the Temple in its damp folds, and the priestesses and acolytes changed their summer robes for heavy woolen ones, Priestess Morgana worked harder than anyone.

The tribute from her sessions in the anteroom grew so swiftly that even Iffa refrained from making sour remarks.

As Morgana’s fame spread, more and more supplicants came requesting her by name.

The Temple coffers filled with coins, enough to ensure a comfortable winter for everyone on the Isle.

It was the life Morgana had planned. She did her best to take satisfaction from it, to be proud of her work, to think of nothing else.

As time went on, she grew skilled at shutting out thoughts of the Blackbird.

At times, she even managed to convince herself she had forgotten all about him, that she had no need of him anymore.

But the chasm of misunderstanding that had opened between them remained a flaw that marred the smooth surface of her Temple life.

In moments of weakness, when she did not expect it, she sometimes felt a sudden spasm of loneliness for which she had no defense.

She could only put a hand to her breast and bow her head as she waited for it to pass.

Braithe said nothing, but when Morgana was in the midst of such a moment of grief, the touch of Braithe’s small hand gave her comfort.

Braithe, too, was nursing an aching heart. Morgana sensed it, and she worried. Perhaps she should have warned Arthur off, made him take responsibility for allowing a young girl to nurture feelings for him. He might not have listened in any case.

Her half brother was, in the end, a man, and a king besides. Men and kings did as they pleased, no matter how fine their characters. She told herself if Braithe wanted to speak of it, she would listen. Otherwise, there was nothing she could do.

And so the two of them carried on, united in their silence. If once in a while their eyes met in mutual understanding, neither gave voice to their private thoughts. There was no point.