Page 42 of The Faerie Morgana

The day of King Arthur’s wedding to the Lady Gwenvere dawned clear and blue, a sparkling spring day that seemed charged with magic.

Skylarks rose from their woodland nests to sing above the castle.

Flowers bloomed before their time. Even Ilyn lay silver-smooth in the light of the rising sun. It was a day gilded with promise.

Arthur had ordered that the common folk who came to see him wed received a royal breakfast, served to them at long wooden tables in the center of the keep.

The kitchen had been busy for days preparing.

The visitors ate roasted pig and boiled eggs, loaves of fresh bread and cheese from the castle’s buttery, honeyed nuts and preserved figs, all with casks of cider and barrels of ale.

The riches spilled over so that those beyond the gates, who had been too late to fit inside the walls, were delighted to see platters of the same riches carried out to them.

Every subject called out praises for the king, and every heart lifted with pride in what their kingdom had become with their good King Arthur at its head.

In the absence of Braithe, who was assisting Gwenvere in her preparations, Morgana had prevailed upon one of the kitchen maids to bring her the simple breakfast of fruit, bread, and fresh goat’s milk she preferred.

She ate, then stood with the cup of milk in her hand, watching the happy throng beneath her window.

Several times one of the revelers glanced up and caught sight of her in her window.

She supposed she was hard to miss, in her black robe, with her long silver hair flowing over her shoulders.

Often people glanced away, made uneasy by the sight of her, but sometimes, a woman would bow her head in respect.

They knew, Morgana thought. Women knew who she was and what she did, and although some were afraid of her, others were aware of the service she provided to women and girls.

Some, perhaps, had even been her petitioners in the Temple.

When they bowed to her, she raised her long-fingered hand in blessing, and they touched their hearts in gratitude.

It was to be, for her, the best part of the day.

She was startled when Braithe, out of breath and her curly hair unbound, burst into her chamber. “Priestess!” Braithe said. “I came to help you dress. I only have a few moments, because she wants me back to dress her hair.”

Morgana smiled at her handmaid. “Thank you, Braithe, but I can manage.”

“No,” Braithe said firmly. “I’m going to plait your hair first, and then I will do Lady Gwenvere’s.”

“Very well.” Morgana drained her cup and set it on the table, then seated herself on one of the chairs while Braithe gathered the pins for her hair. “Tell me how it’s going. Is she courteous?”

Braithe took up the brush and began to smooth Morgana’s hair with it. “I would say that the Lady Gwenvere has smooth manners,” she said. “Half the castle seems to have fallen in love with her already.”

“Not you, I gather.”

“Me? No.” Braithe divided the heavy tresses of Morgana’s hair with her small, deft fingers and began the first plait. “She is like a glassy pond. Everyone who looks into the pond sees something different, something they would like to see.”

“What do you see, brat?”

Braithe made a small, unhappy noise in her throat. “For me, the pond is windblown. Muddy. That’s what I see.”

Morgana was on the point of asking if this reaction might be due to envy, but Braithe’s thoughts ran ahead of hers. “I am not jealous,” she said in a calm tone. “I thought I would be. I was prepared to suppress that in myself, but that is not what I feel.”

She paused as she twisted several braids into a glistening circlet around Morgana’s head and secured the creation with silver pins. Morgana prompted, “What do you feel, then?”

Braithe let her hands drop for a moment. “I don’t want you to laugh at me.”

“I will not.”

“I feel… fear. I’m afraid.”

Morgana twisted her head to look back at her. “Afraid of the Lady Gwenvere?”

Braithe shook her head. “Not of the lady herself, exactly… Of what she might do.”

Morgana looked away again, and Braithe pinned the last plaits into place. She said, as she smoothed the last strand, “There is something dark about her. Something deceitful.”

“Is there?”

“I suspect you know there is, Priestess.”

Morgana lifted one forefinger. “And you always claim you have no magic.”

The tables had been removed from the keep, and the ground swept clean.

Garlands of greenery swung from every wall and window, and a dozen brightly dressed little girls ran here and there, sprinkling the ground with flower petals.

A dais had been erected in the center, also hung with garlands, placed so that the people could stand below and watch the ceremony.

The Blackbird watched all of this from the window of his cramped room at the very top of the western tower.

He hadn’t needed to take this room, which he had to climb the whole staircase to reach, but hardly anyone else cared to climb that far, and it was perfect for him.

He could close his door and work without prying eyes or other interruptions. There had been things he needed to do.

Those were done now, however. He had cast the stones. He had scried in a flat dish of water, but he was no Priestess Morgana. He supposed his scrying had weakened over the length of his long life. His efforts had been frustrating, yielding nothing new.

He leaned his shoulder against the window casement, standing in a shaft of merry sunlight that was at odds with his dark mood.

When he learned that the king had asked his half sister to preside over his wedding, the Blackbird retreated to his aerie and huddled there for hours, trying to sort through how he should feel and what he should do.

He had not seen his protégée since their clash nearly four years before.

He had spent many sleepless nights worrying that he had been wrong and had foolishly alienated the single living person who meant the most to him.

He agonized over whether it was, after all, he himself who had done the damage to Lloegyr, threatened the reign of the true king, all by holding his secrets close to his breast and trusting no one—not even Morgana.

He had seen her arrive at Camulod, tall and lean and graceful, with her plump little handmaid at her side.

The sight of her abundant hair gone silver as moonlight made his heart cramp in his chest. He suspected he had actually groaned.

And today, he would have to stand behind Arthur as he married his lady, and face Morgana once again.

Thinking of it, he tugged anxiously at his beard.

What could he say to her? Or should he keep his own counsel, as he had for so long?

The Blackbird had grown more and more isolated since Arthur’s coronation, all by his own devices.

The king sought his advice, and of course he gave it freely, if he had it, but he had no other social contacts.

He had chafed at the wrangling of the Nine in the Temple, but now he remembered their drawn-out discussions with nostalgia.

He had been furious with Morgana, so furious he had broken their connection, but now…

He missed her. He heard rumors of her achievements, stories of her popularity, accounts of her wielding prodigious power in her tinctures and charms and scrying and deep sight, and he wished he could speak of them with her.

Tell her how proud he was. He wished he could, at last, tell her everything, but the vow he had sworn held him back.

Perhaps swearing vows was the first great mistake.

Arthur’s wedding day was a blessed blur to Braithe.

After arranging Morgana’s hair in the most regal manner she knew how, she spent an hour braiding and rebraiding Gwenvere’s until the lady was content.

It finally hung in a dozen plaits over Gwenvere’s shoulders, each threaded with gold and sparkling with semiprecious stones.

Even from beneath the gauzy veil she wore, Gwenvere’s hair glistened and shimmered whenever she moved.

Her gown had required another hour of adjusting and stitching and pinning.

It was, as all her dresses seemed to be, in the Roman style, artfully draped and tied, and it took all of Braithe’s already tested patience to deal with the lady’s demands about this fold and that, this crease and that one, the position of the jewel that clasped it at her shoulder, the arrangement of the sash that secured it beneath her small breasts.

By the end of all of this, Braithe was sick of the smell of Gwenvere’s overly sweet floral perfume.

She was repulsed by the odd, persistent heat of Gwenvere’s body, as if she always had a fever.

She was weary of the little-girl voice that turned shrill when she was unhappy. Gwenvere was often unhappy.

The maids who had come with Lady Gwenvere from her father’s demesne showed no reaction to any of it, although Braithe glanced their way more than once, expecting some display of feeling.

Whatever emotions they might have had in their lady’s presence were schooled into dumbness.

They never betrayed, even by a glance just between the three of them, how they felt about their mistress’s demands and complaints and exasperating orders.

Braithe had known difficult girls on the Isle. She knew women could be cruel to one another. This woman, however, privileged and spoiled and arrogant, made Braithe’s past conflicts with her own sex fade to nothing.

When the bridal party moved into the public eye, everything changed. Gwenvere deftly assumed the role of the shy maiden, charming the throng in the keep with her tilted green gaze, her childish voice, her graceful movements. It was like watching a dragon become a kitten.