I Am Morgan le Fay (22 page)

“Yes. No.” I sensed in him a memory, quickly suppressed, of his father captured, his own capture when he was but a boy. “I don't know. That power I have known all my life. But this—it's uncanny.”

“It is uncanny that I should wish you by me?”

He caught my teasing tone and smiled anew. “Yes. I cannot encompass it. You did—all this—”

His glance and a movement of his hand took it all in: Caer Morgana. The many candles and pleasant gold-groined chambers drawn from my memories of Avalon, the courtyard where we were enjoying a day of sunshine, the arbors of fruit trees, the white doves nesting in the ivy, the blue roses blooming.

“Do you not like it?” I teased.

“I—it is paradise.” He stirred as if some bad dream troubled him, shifting his head on the pillows. He whispered, “But—such power—”

“Shhhh.” He had seen too many horrors if he saw something fearsome in me, I decided. “Hush, Thomas. Just rest. Or are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Maybe—something to drink—”

I touched my milpreve, sent a thought, and in a moment one of the servants, I think it was Gilly, hurried out with a goblet of pear ambrosia on a tray. I smiled, for goblet and tray were of matching silver beaded with gold. Gilly was learning.

Thomas watched as she placed the tray on a little table at his right side. She should have handed him the goblet also, but she went away without doing so. I would speak to her later.

Thomas turned his blue gaze back to me. Like a puzzled child he said, “I miss the piskies and their mischief.”

“Do you truly?” I did not. I preferred to have my stockings mended and my meals prepared without mischief, thank you; I had never liked hearing the little wretches giggling behind my back in the evenings. I preferred them obedient, as they were now. Still, if Thomas missed them ... “If you want mischief,” I said slowly, “I suppose we could manage some. When you're stronger.”

“My lady ...” Thomas shook his head with a look I could not quite understand, as if he wanted to laugh or cry.

“What, Thomas?”

“Nothing. I was thinking that mischief is not mischief if it is managed, that is all.” He reached for his goblet of pear ambrosia, lifted it toward me and asked, “Would you not like some also, my lady?”

I shook my head with a smile. I smiled often those days; it was heavenly to have him there with me, my faithful knight, my True Thomas.

He drank, set the goblet upon its tray, then asked me, “Do you never thirst, Lady Morgan?”

“Of course I do.” Silly boy. “But I go down to the pool and drink at the spring.”

He gave me an oddly intent gaze. “Still? Like when you were a child here?”

“Yes.”

“But, my lady, why do you not ask a servant to bring you springwater if it is springwater you crave?”

“I ...” But I loved the pool. I always sat for at least a few minutes there, alone with the herons and rushes and the mirroring water. This morning I had watched the dawn brighten that water and turn it blue—rare, such blue water, such a blue-sky day, by this stormy, misty seaside. I had watched the pool shine as blue as Thomas's eyes.

Why not ask a servant to bring me springwater? Something in Thomas's question and his sky blue gaze tested me, and I did not like that. Therefore I did not tell him the truth, or not the whole truth.

“The servants are for you,” I said.

“But if I would rather walk down to the pool and drink at the spring?”

“Then of course you should do so, Thomas,” I said. “When you are well again. Hush, now, and rest.”

“You rest in the grass and violets, do you not, my lady?” Thomas asked softly. “You rest awhile and gaze at the peaceful water?”

“Shhh, Thomas! Save talking for when you are feeling stronger.”

We would have a lifetime for talking.

He smiled at me, obeyed me and closed his blue, blue eyes.

I had not yet given him the ring that I had made for him. My token. A knight must earn the token of his lady, and Thomas had not yet had a chance to do so. But he would; I felt certain he would.

 

 

“I could give you a mare just like Annie,” I told Thomas.

“No, my lady, please.” He rode the tall saddle horse I had magicked for him, shining black to match his hair—it is not hard to make a horse given a stick of blackthorn or two and the right dreams to work with, and Thomas often dreamed of horses, sleek prancing horses, usually black or dapple-gray but once in a while sunny gold. I rode the golden gelding at his side; with the summer wind lifting our hair like wings we rode the crest of the moor, and although Thomas did not know it, the walls of Caer Morgana followed along with us, invisible fortifications encircling us to protect us. Thomas would meet with no knights errant upon this summer day.

My stables were like my battlements, invisible and without set form or size, taking no space at all, yet in them I kept any steed Thomas or I could wish to ride, whether a swan-necked red or silver mare of the hot Araby blood, a black charger, or a gentle white palfrey. And, yes, a dapple-gray mare just like Annie, only larger.

“It would break my heart,” Thomas said.

I nodded. That was why I had not showed her to him.

Something in the face of the moor that day reminded me of Rhiannon, all flowers and flutter, heather as green as her wise merry eyes, white and yellow butterflies flitting to sip at bluestars, buttercups, heartsease, daisies.

“Sir Thomas,” I said, trying hard to be more formal than coy, “I wish you to bring me a bouquet of butterflies.” I could not keep a smile from tugging at the corners of my mouth, confound it.

He looked at me with astonishment quirking his eyebrows, laughter hiding in his blue eyes, a dawning of color in the pearl white skin over his cheekbones, his mouth severely grave. “My lady's wish is my command,” he declared, swinging his leg over his saddle to leap down off his horse. Thanks to my care and his own strength and goodness of heart, he was as well and strong as ever.

“And make sure you don't hurt any of them,” I added.

He gave me a look that made me duck my head to keep from laughing. This solemn silliness, that a knight must perform the tasks his lady commanded of him whether possible or not, earned him her favor and her token. When I looked up, Thomas was darting toward a patch of daisies aflutter with butterflies, his blue velvet cape flying over his linen shirt as if he himself had wings.

I watched, thinking of the more serious quest he had already performed for me: finding my half brother, Arthur. A stripling named Arthur, he had told me, lived with the family of one Sir Ector of the north midlands, nobly reared but of no known parentage. Meanwhile, all the petty kings and pretenders churned the land with their wars, Lothe of Lothian marching on Uryens of Gore, while Gore besieged Caer Argent to take it from Redburke or Carados or whoever occupied it at the time, unless it was Caer Leon they were fighting over today; it went on and on, relentless. Never ending.

Never to take my Thomas away.

Thomas's horse slowly strayed, grazing despite the bit in its mouth and the reins falling around its ears. Soon it would step on the reins and either spook itself or break them or both. As a proper haughty lady, I should have let the horse do what it would and enjoyed watching Thomas deal with the annoyance. But as Morgan, I found that I could torment Thomas only just so much. I rolled my eyes, rode after the straying horse, dismounted and stood in the furze holding both horses by the reins. I was trying to think how to tether them so as not to look like a servant lass when, confound everything, Thomas walked up behind me.

I heard his footsteps and turned. “Lady Morgan,” he said with just a hint, a ripple, of laughter marring the smooth surface of the words. He bowed low, presenting me with an armful of blossoms—daisies, buttercups, bluestars. Beautiful.

“But Sir Thomas, they are not butterflies,” I said, finding it very hard to keep a petulant face and chide.

“The butterflies will follow, my lady,” he said, and even as he spoke, one floated down a shaft of sunshine and lit on the topmost blossom, fanning wings all jewel colors, topaz and ruby and amethyst, more exquisite than my mother's finest jewels.

Mother. Forever crying and scrying for Arthur, Arthur. Now that I knew, or thought I knew, where Arthur was, did I mean to tell her?

No. No, I wanted only to abide at Caer Morgana with Thomas.

“My lady, will you not be seated?” he asked, smiling, taking the reins of the two horses from me. “The turf is as soft as a couch of green velvet. Prithee, sit awhile. May I make for you a crown?”

With a regal nod I deigned to seat myself. The jewel-colored butterfly had flitted away, but sunbeams warmed me like love, and I held my wildflower bouquet like a baby in my arms, thinking, I don't know why, of the blossom girl in the old story Morgause had read to Ongwynn and me one night. I watched Thomas lead the horses to a distance and hobble them, then start plucking daisies and weaving the stems together. I wondered whether he would add other flowers to my crown. I wondered whether he had ever plucked the petals of a daisy, whispering
she loves me, she loves me not,
whether he had been thinking of me. Another butterfly, garnet and lapis this time, floated down to land on one of the starflowers in my arms.

Whispering a small wish, I hugged my flowers and fingered my milpreve. In a moment, butterflies drifted out of the sky like golden and crimson and blue leaves falling, like great bright snowflakes. They alighted by the dozen on the blossoms in my arms, butterflies upon every bloom, every petal, cloud sea mist white amethyst sunshine sapphire porphyry and pearl, butterflies crowding butterflies until they could scarcely fan their heavenly wings.

I cried, “Thomas, look!”

He turned, and his eyes widened, for in my embrace I held a bouquet of butterflies.

T
HAT WAS THE DAY I MOST REMEMBER, NOW THAT I FLY over battlefields and the screams of dying men echo up to me as fate falls like soot from my gray wings. I think back upon many sweet mortal days, but that day of wildflowers and butterflies, that was the sweetest.

There were other such days, heavenly days. Thomas grew strong and well and served my small demands ardently, and I gave my token to him, the ring woven of my hair. By that token my knight, True Thomas, knew that I cherished him. And by his deeds I knew that he adored me. All was as it should be.

Or so I thought.

Fate thought otherwise.

It started small, as such dooms often do. It began because sometimes I needed to be by myself, away from the questions of the servants and, yes, away from Thomas's adoration, away from my own love for him, love so ardent and hungry it frightened me and I never dared to show it to him entirely. Just as I had stolen away sometimes to be alone in my quoit stone when I was a child, sometimes I stole away to be alone by the pool or, this time, by the sea.

The tide ran high, answering the call of the moon at her strongest, and I sat just above the wet grit with my skirts in a muddle like the wrack at the edge of the waves, with my fingers sorting shells and pebbles for no reason, with nothing in my mind but pink cream amber, when footfalls crunched toward me, running. I looked up.

“Thomas?”

“My lady.” He plunged to his knees in the gravel beside me, panting. “My—Morgan, I wanted to walk out on the moor, and something would not let me. It was—it was like a wall of air.”

“Yes,” I said, looking back at him stupidly I suppose, for I did not yet understand why he had become so distraught.

He demanded, “Did you do that?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“I didn't want a visible wall,” I said, lifting my grubby hands full of pebbles and whelks, explaining as best I could. “I wanted to be able to see the sea.” Most castle walls were ugly, cutting off light and air.

Sitting on his heels, Thomas stared at me, his face on a level with mine, his blue eyes clouded with a trouble I did not understand.

Belatedly I realized that Thomas had not realized that there were walls at all. As they had been composed so as to let him in, and as they went along when I rode out with him, how was he to know? I never should have left him to roam Caer Morgana on his own. “This is a castle,” I explained. “The walls are to stop intruders.” Other than him. A few times my sentries had reported riders to me, knights errant, scouts. The walls had stopped them out of sight of my domed dwelling, my courtyard and fruit trees and Ladywater pool, my blue roses.

“But, my lady,” Thomas asked me quietly, “how am I to get out?”

“Just come to me,” I said.