Page 44 of The Faerie Morgana

Gwenvere, as if she knew instinctively what would rankle the most, summoned Braithe to prepare her for her wedding night. The banquet had lasted long into the evening, and a full moon hung high in the sky above the keep when one of the new queen’s maids came in search of Braithe.

Braithe had gone to bed, but she rose without demur, drew on her customary brown robe, and tied on her sandals.

Around her fair curls she wrapped a scarf, and she pulled a shawl over her shoulders against the night chill.

She had to go down two flights of stairs to the queen’s apartment, where she found two slightly tipsy guards outside and a dozen candles burning within.

Gwenvere’s three maids hovered uncertainly in the outer room, and Arthur stood beside the window, his hands linked behind his back, his face lifted up into the white moonlight. When Braithe came in, he didn’t move.

She gave a single firm knock on the inner door of the bedchamber and went in without waiting for a response.

“Braithe!” Gwenvere exclaimed. “I thought you were never coming.”

“I am here, my lady.”

“Good.” Gwenvere was still in her wedding gown, her plaits dangling over her shoulders. “The maids brought up the bathwater, but I need help taking down my hair and getting out of this dress. Then washing.”

Washing? Braithe had no idea what that meant, but she soon learned, to her horror.

When her gown had been unwound and untied and laid aside, and her hair tied up out of the way, Gwenvere intended that Braithe should wash her body in readiness for her marriage bed.

Soap was laid ready, and towels. Gwenvere stripped off her shift and her woven stockings, and stood expectantly before Braithe.

Her body was as beautiful naked as it had been surrounded by floating draperies.

Her skin was flawless, and her arms and legs slender and well-formed, her breasts high and firm.

The rest of her, Braithe could only assume, was also perfect, but she would never know.

When she washed those parts, she closed her eyes, and pictured herself back on her mother’s farm, washing the parts of a newly lambed ewe.

Soon enough, it was done. The queen was dried and dressed in a heavily embroidered nightdress of a fabric so thin it was virtually transparent.

Braithe pulled back the coverlet on the bed and smoothed the sheets.

Gwenvere arranged herself artfully, two pillows behind her head, her hair let down once again to shine in the candlelight.

Her smile to Braithe was slyly direct, not the slanted, coquettish expression she used elsewhere. “Wish me luck,” she said.

Braithe responded, with a blunt sincerity born of her own experience, “You will not need it, my lady,” and made her escape.

The moonlit keep was deserted when Braithe climbed the stairs to the narrow door that opened to the top of the courtine.

She walked along the wall, away from the tower, not looking back to where she knew the queen’s windows opened above the keep.

She did not allow herself to think of Gwenvere at this moment, or of Arthur, or even of herself in her loneliness.

She paced slowly along the top of the wall, letting her fingers trail along the thigh-high parapet.

She tipped her face up to the moon as it traced its arc against the black sky, drowning the stars with its brilliance.

She breathed in the fragrance of tree and shrub and flower from the woods surrounding the castle, and a stanza rose in her mind:

What blooms will die.

What dies is born again.

What comes between matters not.

Why write such a stanza? Was it meant to comfort, or to condemn?

She decided it was neither. It was simply a statement, devoid of emotion, neither a benediction nor a curse. She put it, and everything else, out of her mind. Throughout the waning night, until the moon set and dawn silvered the sky, Braithe paced, and breathed, and thought of nothing.

Arthur sent for Morgana first thing the next morning. She found him in a large, airy room on the level of the tower just above the great hall. She had been in that room before, but something about it had changed since her stepfather’s day. She paused in the doorway to discern what it was.

“The table,” she said.

Her half brother was seated at one side of the room beside a wide desk laden with scrolls and inkwells and pots of blotting sand.

He was poring over a set of messages, but he laid them aside, smiling.

He came to embrace her, and she felt his pride and happiness resonating through the touch of his cheek.

“Good morning, sister,” he said. He gestured to the furnishing that had attracted her attention. “Do you like it?”

She gave him an oblique glance as she strolled toward the object in question. It was an unostentatious thing, lacking embellishment or decoration, but elegant in the simple pure circle of its form. Arthur walked beside her, watching for her reaction.

She stood for a moment, her hands on her hips, regarding it. Finally she said, “Yes, my lord. I like it very much. It’s a brilliant idea.”

“I have always disliked sitting at the head of a table, with all those around it being judged by their relative position. Competing to be above the salt or below.”

“And now, when your knights sit down to confer with you, all the seats at the table are the same. That will be coveted in itself.” She reached the big table and traced the edge of it with her fingers as he stood back, beaming. “You are a wise ruler, brother,” Morgana said. “I am proud of you.”

“Thank you.”

“You wanted to see me?”

“I did.” He gestured back toward his desk, where another chair waited across from his own. “Come, sit. Breakfast will be brought here.” He sat down and leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the desk, nearly upsetting an inkwell.

Morgana moved the inkwell out of the way and took her seat more sedately, both her sandaled feet firmly on the floor.

A servingwoman came in with a tray laden with a basket of bread, a dish of fresh butter and one of honey, and a pitcher of cider.

Arthur waved the maid off and served Morgana himself, sliding the tray toward her, pouring cider into a cup.

She watched him with a wary eye. He wanted something, of course, and was making himself as charming as he could. He could be very charming indeed, but it made her suspicious. “Tell me. I performed your marriage ritual, as you requested. What else are you going to ask of me?”

He grinned, and she saw the sweet boy’s face behind that of the handsome king. It made her want to sigh, to wave away the trappings of royalty, the implications of the perfectly round table he had ordered, and simply have time with her brother.

He said with a twinkle, “Can I not just break my fast with my sister?”

She spoke in a tart manner. “Can you just eat, brother, and not speak?”

He laughed, and reached across the desk to take her hand. “I am so glad you’re here. I like having you by my side.”

Before she could respond, the door to the room opened, and the new queen, Arthur’s bride, stood in the doorway.

“There you are!” she exclaimed in her little-girl voice.

Arthur released Morgana’s hand as Gwenvere picked up the skirts of yet another diaphanous Roman-style gown and tripped lightly across the room to Arthur.

She inclined her head to him, then kissed his cheek.

“I thought we would breakfast together!” It seemed all other thoughts fled from Arthur’s mind as he bestowed a delighted smile on his bride.

Gwenvere turned her head to send a blazing green gaze at Morgana, a look utterly at odds with her girlish demeanor.

Morgana allowed her lips to curl in something that was not a smile, and she let her voice drop to its lowest register. “Good morning, my lady. As it is so late, I surmise you slept well.”

Gwenvere said only, “Do you know where my companion is? Braithe? I had to dress without her!”

Arthur said, “Surely, my love, you have a lady’s maid to assist you in dressing. Three of them, I believe.”

Morgana caught the sudden narrowing of Gwenvere’s eyes, and she felt an odd wave of heat from her, as if a fire had suddenly blazed.

Arthur, she could see, did not feel it. The queen placed one slender, possessive hand on her new husband’s shoulder.

“But it is Braithe, is it not, my lord, who is to teach me the ways of your castle? I want to do everything in the proper manner!”

Arthur picked up a bell from his desk and rang it. “I will have Bran send for her.”

“And is this breakfast?” Gwenvere exclaimed. She reached for a slice of the bread that had been set before Morgana and took a nibble. “I’m so hungry! What a good idea, husband.” Arthur gave her an indulgent look.

Morgana said, “I believe I will breakfast in my room. We can speak later.”

Arthur glanced up at her, briefly recalled to their conversation, but Gwenvere distracted him. “Oh, what a magnificent table that is, my lord! A perfect circle, and so big! What is it for?”

Morgana rose, ceding her seat to Arthur’s bride, and strode from the room. She didn’t want to hear her half brother’s explanation of the obvious to Gwenvere. Indeed, she didn’t want to hear Gwenvere’s voice again any sooner than she must.

Morgana had no chance to speak to Arthur again that day. She saw him several times, but never without Gwenvere clinging to his arm. Braithe came to her chamber in the evening, after a lengthy dinner Morgana had avoided, to see if she needed anything and to know of her plans.

“I had hoped to be on my way back to the Isle,” Morgana told her. “But it seems the king wants something more from me. I don’t yet know how long he means to keep me.”

“It seems he means to keep us both, Priestess.” Braithe had cast a critical eye around Morgana’s bedchamber. Then, apparently approving of its lack of disorder, she wandered to the window and stood looking down.