THE THREE QUEENS

Esther M. Friesner

“The Three Queens” was purchased by Gardner Dozois, and appeared in the January 1993 issue of Asimov’s, with an illustration by Carol Heyer. Friesner’s first sale was to Asimov’s, under George Scithers in 1982, and she’s made several sales here subsequently under Gardner Dozois. In the years since 1982, she’s become one of the most prolific of modern fantasists, with more than twenty novels in print, and has established herself as one of the funniest writers to enter the field in some while. Her many novels include Mustapha and His Wise Dog, Elf Defense, Druid’s Blood, Sphinxes Wild, Here Be Demons, Demon Blues, Hooray For Hellywood, Broadway Banshee, Ragnarok and Roll, Majyk By Accident, Majyk By Hook or Crook, Majyk By Design, Wishing Season, and The Water King’s Daughter. Her most recent books include The Sherwood Game, Child of the Eagle, and The Psalms of Herod. Her Asimov’s story “Death and the Librarian” won a Nebula Award in 1996. She lives with her family in Madison, Connecticut. In the moving story that follows, a distinct change of pace from her usual Funny Stuff, she treats us to a haunting and powerful look at the reality behind the mask of Legend…

Long after Guinhwyfar has gone, I gaze at the old man in the chair. The damp wind off the marshes blows in through the unglazed windows, lifting his elflocked white hair until some strand or other is whipped across dripping nose or rheum-encrusted eyes, and there it sticks. It always happens so. He never even tries to brush the pale, limp threads away. I do not move. To move would be to break the slender spell that is all that keeps me from lurching to my feet, grabbing him by the scrawny, wattled neck, shaking him until his toothless gums clapper together and demanding, “What have you done with my father?”

So slim a spell, at once impossibly strong and frail as adamantine spiderweb. Yet for all that, I know its power would be useless, kept or broken. No cave so deep nor elfland so faraway could hold the man this excuse for breath has stolen from me. From us all.

My father was a hero. Many times in my travels I saw how the mere mention of his name would cleave the chatter from a gathering of common men. The sound of it alone would fall upon them like Rome’s old might, Byzantium’s awesome splendor. I saw how it filled their meager souls with fire, made their heavy lips twist into smiles that lingered over wondrous dreams.

His name, and for a time they shook the dung from their cracked leather shoes, put aside the wooden plow, and rode with him in search of holy glory. I saw raw hands that had never so much as touched a dagger curl themselves around the gemmed hilts of invisible swords while the phantom bodies of the proud black knights their fancies slew stacked themselves three deep around the smoky daub walls of the drinking house. My father’s name hung in the air, a glamour more golden than any homely casting of my dam’s, and lent these earthworms wings. Had Guinhwyfar been there as witness, she’d cross herself and move bloodless lips around her tame catchword: miracle.

Yes, hero and miracle both, my father and his name. But now…

I pace the small, cheerless chamber. It lies in the southernmost quarter of my keep, far from the prying eyes of those servingfolk I may not entirely trust. The slaves I permit to come and go at their pleasure. They know, by the warning bite of their iron collars, that a word spoken incautiously will buy them a fiercer bite of iron at the neck. I do not like to play the cruel man’s part, but he has given me no choice. I glower at my captive, my captor, and demand, “What have you done with him?” awaiting some reply.

There is none. There can be none. And who am I to expect a miracle? No, I set my sights lower. I would be satisfied to have some contrary spark of hellfire itself light those empty eyes with their old, keen flame. I would dice with the Christians’ own devil for the hope of having this clatter of old bones rise once more and say to me, “Still the fool, boy? What an hour I wasted in your begetting! Not even the memory of pleasure can make up for having fathered a weak-spined thing like you, Modred.”

Why do I continue to shelter him from the world, and the world from what he has become? Surely not for love. I wonder if perhaps I ought to summon my men to me, to escort me from this place. The cold marsh wind is not good for my aching bones. He bears it well, of course. Cold is nothing to him, who rode so late, so long, over so many lives to hammer out a realm. And now the owlish, elfin voice behind my ear creeps in like the soft soughing of the wind to ask, And for what?

That is not for me to say.

I will not summon my men just yet. Instead I will drink a leisurely memory of my—of our—late visitor.

Guinhwyfar was charming, of course. To that sole end these petty kings breed their daughters, to win in bed what they may not in battle. She came for Christian charity, she said, and stayed long enough to spoon a pan of gruel into the gaping red hole of his mouth. More than the half of it dribbled down into his lap where she left it for lesser souls to wipe away.

She said, “His lips look a little blue, Modred. Is that all right?” and hurried back to the warmth and serenity of her convent walls without listening to my reply.

She will not much like what I plan to do this day, I think, but what in her god’s name will the white woman ever be able to do about it? Milk-skinned, milk-souled, she is too sickly-sweet to raise any quarrel she cannot win by pouting or wheedling or running off to hide. Yet she shall play her part.

One comes. “My lord?” My men-at-arms flank him with cold steel against the unlikely event of his attempted departure without leave. I weigh him by eye: Not much meat, birdie bones, dirt, the smell of stale beer. So this is a poet.

“Leave him,” I command. “Let the slaves bring us food and wine. The Falernian.” My men have heard me—their eyes, at least, still kindle when another human being speaks to them. But I am more and less than human, if what the poets sing of my dark mother can ring true. Black Morgan’s get from her own brother’s loins, I must have stolen some of that cunningwoman’s skill for sifting souls. How else explain that even now my men-at-arms carry a Modred-imp inside their skulls? And the imp scampers among their thoughts to spy the fear each feels whenever he looks upon my father’s face. The fear clothes itself in words that shiver like beggars in the rain: And in this, too, the end that waits for me?

I think these men-at-arms who aid me now, in this hidden chamber, in this desolate place, will become my boldest steel. This instant I could command them to go forth and conquer me the world, and they would do it. One last look on my father’s face and they would gallop to their deaths without demur. So Arthur still retains a scrap of power to work miracles even now. He casts a new spell that, singing, weaves its strength around strong men: Better to throw your life against the lances of your enemy than purchase safety, cradle your bones, go home to dandle babes that grow and fly away to leave you lone, awaiting the erosions of time and the death that cruelly will not come.

Only I am immune to his witcheries. Keen death, quick death, death with a whetted edge—such won’t be mine. My father said it best himself, long since: “Can such a coward be my son?”

But I am brave. Just coming here each day takes bravery. Where is Lancelot, who once was held up before my eyes as goading whip and bright exemplum every chance my father got? Lancelot, the grail of gallantry! He too has fled. He huddles among monks and whimpers psalms piteously at the gates of heaven like a starving dog scratching for admittance at a kitchen door. Against the iron face of age, Lancelot is the coward, not I.

“My—my lord?” It is the poet, piping like a cricket from his perch on that blackwood stool beneath the window. My men-at-arms have left us two alone, as ordered.

I am being a sorry host. My guest has taken the only other seat in this room, apart from the siege where my father sits. I lean upon my staff and turn to him. “What is your name?”

His mouth opens and closes many times. My imp leaps in at his ear and reads that he is balancing the wisdom of truth against several clever lies. Whichever choice will lengthen his days, allow him to escape my keep alive, that will be the one he’ll make. Not what is right, but what will serve him best to save his skin. Oh, good. I like this man better by the moment.

“Never mind,” I say. “I need a man who can keep a secret.”

The poet shifts uneasily in his place. My father’s head nods, slumps down. Long gurgling snores fill the stone chamber. The poet’s eyes shift left and right. To gaze upon my father’s face once filled men with dread, yet lifted up their hearts. Now there is only the dread, and that is chiller than the marsh winds. Monks claim they love to meditate upon the body’s frailty, the better to adore the imperishable soul, yet I have yet to hear of one monastery where they take special pains to gather in and contemplate the old.

A slave comes with food and wine. I serve my guest myself, although my ache-gnarled legs make such service difficult. When I look at him, will his eyes presume to hold a measure of pity? They had better not. Not for me.

There are three slabs of bread to hold our cold meat and cheese, three cups also. Some fool kitchen knave will need a talking-to, I see. It’s not as if we are three full men here. My father has lacked the means—teeth and inclination both—to deal with food like this since Mother’s elfin henchmen brought him to my keep all those months past. Still, for old times’ sake, when he stirs I kneel beside him and tilt his cup against his lips. I smile to see the silver-stubbled cords of his neck move greedily as he gulps the wine.

“Falernian,” I tell the poet. “Imported from the southron lands, when the sea-wolves permit the ships to cross unhindered. It was his favorite—is. There are times I find it hard not to speak of him as dead. A shame there is not more of this fine vintage in store—I was lucky to get this much. Sometimes I like to think it only wants enough of a draught of the wine he loved—loves—to bring him back to the land of the living.”

The poet sips his own wine charily. To his eyes, I babble, and so am an even greater danger than rumor tints me. What have I in store for him? No one of my people has let slip a word, for I have given them no words to let slip. Being who I am, I must be up to no good. He is a poet: He believes the tales, even to those he weaves on his own account. He should know better, but logic sleeps apart from poetry. His imagination flutters wildly from one baseless surmise to another. Now I see it fold its wings and drop to roost upon the matter of this wine.

How prudently he savors every mouthful of the liquid silk! Perhaps he dreams my black sorcery knows limits, that my poisons are trifles that a man’s tongue can detect, so long as he tastes each mouthful cautiously enough. Foolish notion: My venoms surpass even my mother’s finest brews, and are tasteless, odorless, cureless every one.

Yet even in my most desperate need to do a man to death, I would not stoop to taint the Falernian. I am still civilized. I feed my father the rest of the good wine. My poor bones creak and pop when I may finally stand.

The poet sees me in a new light, now, and he is curious. Dark Modred, black Morgan’s son, little twisty toad-back who crept from the blazing sun of his father’s splendid court to follow after mysteries, that is the mask he holds up to cover my face. (Merlin, my master, also delighted in books, but apart from the slander of his begetting—nun’s child, devil’s seed—he is reputed wise, kind, a maker of marvels. The old pimp.) Why should a creature like me take such pains over this dribble-and-dirt befouled shell of an old man? Let him wonder.

“What—what happened to him, my lord?” the poet asks. It is as direct as he dares come at the matter.

This is all to the good, his asking. If he had not, I would have had to twitch the conversation this way and that until I brought him ‘round to pose that very question. I dislike such games; I relish being spared them. I must ask Mother whether my stars are especially fortunate today.

But Mother will keep. I have a poet with whom to deal. “Do you not know who this man is?” I counter-ask. He shakes his head, a fearful emptiness in his eyes. He cannot tell whether he will be punished for not knowing. I have a certain reputation in these lands—no worse than most, but considering whose womb bore me, certain small demerits of morality tend to become exaggerated as my doings pass from lip to lip.

I tell him the true name of who it is sits with clouded eye between us. The marsh wind whirls the too-sweet reek of old man’s urine through the room beneath the breath of my terse, plain revelation. The poet’s fear blossoms as I speak, a rose of ice. He shakes his head like a hoof-stunned hound. Oh, poet! Poor heart-struck poet, do you dream that if you shake the words away into the night, the fact will follow? No, I speak the truth. Modred is a weak-boned imp, half fey in the blood, called coward because I did not cherish steel over study, but I am no liar. Not yet.

I reach into the soft blue lambskin pouch at my belt and let my dark fingers unwrap from around the mystery I now would show him. An arrowhead so small, so black, so primitively shaped you could not imagine it being able to serve a weapon’s purpose unless the full force of otherworldly magic lash it to the fletched shaft and guide it to the mark. I have found many of these toys in my rambles. So have other men. We differ only in what we make of such finds. I am wise enough to know that I cannot guess to what end this tiny chip of flint was made.

But “Elfshot!” gasps the poet. He is of the other sort of man, I see. He looks from the flint to my father, then to me. As I said, he knows the tales. The hidden folk whose land we stole, the malice that is as vital to elfin hearts as blood to human, the wicked weaponry with which they stalk us on the sly, all this is as familiar ground to him as his mother’s hearthside.

The healthy ploughman whose arm suddenly falls useless has been stricken by the villainous archery of the Fey. The deep-chested warrior who wakes one morn to find his legs won’t bear him is their victim too. The tender lady whose laughter once made all men glad, yet who now lies abed, a muttering crone before her time, has likewise been elfshot to the heart. There is no other explanation. The truth is, no explanation at all exists, but we flee the ignorant dark more eagerly than we flee the foolish lie.

Elfshot. I nod and sigh, giving my consent to the first falsehood. “He has been so since his vanishment. We found him wandering near the Saxon lands. It was fortunate that they did not find him first.”

The poet’s grief destroys his face. “Mount Badon,” he says, “now this.” My father’s most famous victory over the barbarous tribes has become a staple of every poet’s offerings. The best changes rung upon that theme are those which seduce the listeners into believing that they themselves stood shield-by-shield with Arthur at Badon and slew their boar-helmed hundreds.

“I can’t believe it.” The poet is cast adrift on hostile waters. I have done worse than cheat him of a hero; I have cut down a dream. “I thought our king was loved by the folk of Faerie.” He might say more—might casually mention the tales they tell of my mother’s fey blood, now mine—but he would not be so discourteous. All things of Faerie by custom shun the touch of iron, and within these walls all the iron blades answer to me.

“Well, they are the Seeliefolk who love him,” I explain. “But, then, the Unseelie are another elfin nation altogether, capricious, malign, and not to be trusted.”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” he says, as if he’d suckled nonsense of that stripe from his mother’s breast.

“You can see why I keep him here,” I say. “If his old foes discovered this—”

“But the realm is secure.” The poet looks uncertain. “Isn’t it? Lord Bedwyr reigns—”

“Bless his reign with many days,” I say, and no man who knows me can doubt my sincerity. I never craved kingship. This, too, my father held to my account of failings. “But our lord holds only the borderlands. The rest of the realm is broken up under the care of many of Arthur’s best knights. Good men, all, but in your wanderings have you ever heard it said that they would rally without question to Bedwyr’s aid, if the Saxons pressed?”

The poet makes many annoying small disclaimers as to the reliability of his sources, coupled with the modest assertion that he is too lowly placed a person to learn much of how the great conduct their affairs—the better to escape any blame should the information he gives me prove false. In the end he confirms what my spies have already told me: Each lordling for himself; Bedwyr stands alone.

“My father gave his life to the making of the realm,” I say. His life and others, I think. With their consent or without it. My life, too, if I had let him, or been worth the trouble to bully into his dream. But done is done. Any man who asks the dead if they were content to perish as they did gets no answer to his folly. “If we do not now find a way to destroy all chance of this—” I wave at the figure in the chair “— becoming known, a day will come when the tribes learn the truth.”

The poet still shakes his head and puts the knuckles of one finger to his mouth, like a little boy. “What difference will it make, my lord? He does the land no good the way he is, but still he does it no harm either.”

I whirl to lash the thickwit savagely across his wagging jaws. The effort winds me and brands pain along the back of my hand. I doubt the poet will feel the throb of my blow for long, but that means nothing. Our finest acts lie in the ghosts of power they summon up, not in themselves. My father would understand.

“Silence!” I bark. “Prove your ignorance to me again and I’ll have my men deal with you. I don’t need the services of a fool.”

The poet cringes and swears that it shall be as my lordship wishes.

Now I might explain my purpose to him, but to what good? He fears me too much for me to gauge whether he truly comprehends what I need to do or if he is only saying so to shield himself from a black wizard gone mad. That is too bad. I had wished for someone to share more of this with me than merely the execution.

“Come,” I command. I hobble from the chamber. The poet follows, no fine-bred questing-hound but a tame hedgehog chumbling in my wake. My men-at-arms stand just outside the door. I signal that they are to escort us. This means the brawnier one is to carry me. I am scooped up in his arms as if I were a babe. His grip on my shoulder is strong, and I see the glimmer of the old, gold ring with which I bought this man’s devotion.

We pass through the keep and out into the open air. The second man-at-arms has run ahead. I gave the orders for this day weeks ago. All should have come to pass by now, save for the fact that my men could not find me the proper poet. The dying of the year reaps the roads of gay summer folk— the singers, the tumblers, the pipers and the rest. I think they go to ground with the bear-keeper and his beast, drowsing through the winter on the memory of music.

I glance over my man’s shoulder at the poet we have found at last. He is very wan and the fear of death still shimmers in the whites of his eyes like the reflection of a scythe-blade on water.

The horses are waiting. Once mounted, I am as good as any man. My most trusted people gather to my stirrup. They are only nine—I could risk no more—and they must suffice. Guinhwyfar prattled how her white god reached the ears of a world with just twelve men to bear his tidings. My nine will do: I have only a realm to reach.

The poet mounts his steed with difficulty. He is unused to it and will be sore before this task is done. But after, when his true labor begins, I think he will spend time enough in the saddle to grow accustomed to the pain.

I tell my people, “You know your purposes. Be blessed in their accomplishment.” The saddle beneath me creaks as I turn and show them the poet. “Remember him,” I say. “You will hear more of him in time.” They nod. They know that if they do not hear what I have promised, or hear it all recounted hobblewise and clumsy, their duty is to hunt him down or face the wrath of my avenging spirit.

They believe in ghosts! Silly folk, but mine, and useful. And who am I to laugh at those who fear what cannot be seen or touched? I am worse than they. They stand in terror of the unseen; I have come to worship it.

The poet and I ride from the keep. One of my men rides with us the three-days’ journey to my mother’s house. I need him to guard the poet and to attend my wants on the road.

When the poet learns where we are going, there is no holding him from his verses: Black Morgan has left the halls of stone where once she ruled the mountains! Black Morgan has stepped down from her aerie with silver wings sweeping back the midnight of her hair! Here is a man bound for disappointment.

Mother’s house takes up the least ruinous wing of an old Roman villa. She dwells there happily, rooting in the tousled garden like a mole, speaking to the dozen cats who prowl her beds of herbs and wail like strayed changelings at the moon. Mother is fond of cats and herbs and seeing things through to a proper ending. When she was tired of queenship, she left it with a calm, sensible grace, and told her successor that if any were sent to follow after her and bother her with trifling ravel-end matters of government, she would loose the full power of the Fey upon them. She has been undisturbed in the old villa ever since.

It is her love for ending things with grace that bought me her cooperation in this. My messenger raced ahead of our small party to bring her the good news about the poet. She is mounted and waiting for us at the place where the lichened corpse of a toppled garden god marks the western edge of her demesne. Deeply hooded, her face is invisible, but I can see jewels brightening the brown hands she extends for the poet’s homage. A basket rides pillion behind her. Does it mew? Oh, Mother!

Two more days’ ride and we will be there. I feel the shell around my shoulders start to crack. Mother keeps her counsel and her place by the nightly fire my man builds up for her use alone. To his credit, the poet does not seek to intrude upon black Morgan’s midnight privacies. He eats his food and drinks his wine and does his business against the trees in peace, under the vigilant eyes of my human falcon.

And now we lie down for our rest this last night of all. So near the lake, I marvel that I cannot hear the water lapping against the shore. I lie on two thicknesses of sheepskin, but still the cold seeps through the fleeces, knotting my limbs. The stars scrape silver scars across the sky. I watch them wheel their way to dawn and pity myself a little that I shall see them no more.

Modred? I wake to cat’s eyes burning green. My mother’s voice comes from the brown striped puss that sits so primly near my head. The cat does not speak—it is simply her vessel—and no one can hear its words but the one of her choosing. Son, are you sure?

I close my eyes and fill Mother’s cat with all the thought I have given to tomorrow. If I could spare her the pain, I would, but the pain is a part of what I have decided, what I have become. There have been days when I imagined I was gone and all that was left was a Modred-shape molded of pain. Not all my art will let me figure myself as a being apart from the fire eating me by inches, alive. Let her know—not because I want to burden her with my agony, but so that she will understand why it was easy for me to choose the path of sacrifice.

Yes, she will understand, my mother. She must, already understanding so much. I have gazed into her eyes and seen the secrets of the dreaming seed, the mysteries of the dying and undying year. Her pastes and potions are only the simplest trappings of the true powers she draws out of the earth. The peasants can never grasp her as what she is, but they nod, very sage and knowing, when we name her sorceress and fey. Before we part, I pray she will find the means and time to reassure me that my pain, too, has its place in the cycle.

The cat goes to carry my message back to Mother. I suppose she had to ask if I were sure. This is no common way I’ve chosen to make my offering. Least of all she understands why I’ve chosen to involve my father in this manner. For her to fathom that, she must be reborn someone’s son.

Soon I hear her rise from her separate fire and come to ours. My good guard feigns sleep prettily. I soon have cause to be grateful for his skill. When Mother rouses the poet and he cries out loudly enough to shake ripe chestnuts from the trees, the guard just grumbles and rolls over, much to the poet’s amazement. Mother has the wit to spin him a story of spells that hold men senseless at her pleasure and all is well.

Her cape rustles over the dead leaves as she draws the poet away. She is telling him of how lonely she has been, cut off from human society by a cruel son’s mandate, little better than a thrall within the boundaries I have set for her. The cold air gusts from the folds of her cloak as she settles down beside her fire. I hear the poet crunching leaves under his skinny rump as he joins her.

There will be wine. This time it will not be the Falernian. In moments, his head will grow heavy but he will not sleep. That would not suit our purpose at all. He will blink his eyes and swear he is alert, merely bedazzled by black Morgan’s legendary beauty. She is all charm, my royal dam—not false appeal like Guinhwyfar’s superficial wiles, but the true art which envious minds call witchery. By the time she asks him to sing her the song of Camlann, the potion has him fast.

“Lady, what song is this?” he whispers. Does he wonder why his lips are half-numb?

“The song of my greatest sorrow,” Mother says. “The song of the last great battle.” I do not dare to turn my body enough so that I can see them where they sit by her fire. Still, my mind paints her mimicking the pose of that nameless Roman matron whose features grace her sleeping-chamber wall: neck bent, but never to a yoke, head bowed to Fate, but never in surrender.

And then the words, the story that has been my secret portion in all this, the tale I’ve spun from strands of heart’s blood ever since the day they brought that husk, my father, home. I feel a flutter in my chest, a startlement to know that the story over which I lavished so many hours of care could be told in so little time.

I expect by now the poet’s brow is furrowed deeper than a mountain gorge. “Lord Modred… dead?” He bats at clouds that storm his brain. “But isn’t he—?” He must be pointing at this fire now.

“How can that be when you yourself sang of the grim battle where he fell?” Regal indignation often cows more peaceable souls away from the truth they know. The poet stammers out apologies. Mother softens and warms, rewarding him with gentler words for his compliance.

The poet walks through mists that snare his mind as Mother pours more words into his ears, words she claims were always his. Even I, with a mind unfettered by drugged wine—I, who know first to last that the verses are mine—I find myself near to believing them as they fall from her mouth.

Against my eyelids I can see a strong-limbed Modred lusting for his father’s queen. I plot, I pace, I bring false accusation against sweet Guinhwyfar’s innocence. My treachery’s unmasked, I rally my men to me and challenge my lord and sire on the battlefield of Camlann. Many good men fall to serve my wickedness. When truce is called, unhappy chance sends a serpent from the grass to sting a worthy fighter’s heel—the poet cannot help but compare the subtle worm to me—the man draws steel, the peace is breached, battle rejoins. This time there can be no truce until my father and I stand face to face and Arthur—sun-king, bear-king, righteous champion—takes back the life he gave in an ill hour with a spear-thrust through my heart.

I do not die without some last harm done. Arthur is wounded by my sword, the great king lies near death. I hear the poet sobbing as Mother recounts the final verses of the song. I fancy that he never knew he had such talent in him! He is still sobbing as the wine’s last effect takes hold and shifts him subtly into a shallow slumber. I crawl away from the fire so as not to wake him from this fragile doze.

I have to leave my staff behind. My knees shriek as I drag them over stones and roots, deeper into the lakeside wood. The smell of freezing earth is enough to make me drunk with a last cowardly desire to live until the spring’s first greening. I will not tarry too long in worship over the perfection of each blade of grass, the pattern of loveliness written in each fallen leaf, the web my breath casts over the frosty air, for fear that these small, precious beauties make me a traitor to myself. Somewhere birds are singing dawnlight carols to a dying autumn sun whose rebirth I won’t see.

For once I understand the strange Gethsemane tale Guinhwyfar used to tell at court. Before this, it always struck me odd that Jesus, being a god, didn’t just rise up from among the Roman soldiers come to take him to his death and roar, “Enough! I will not submit to this!” I even asked her why he didn’t burst into flame and devour them all with his divine splendor, the way Jupiter did to poor stupid Semele in the old story. Her answer was that thin-lipped, condescending smirk and the assurance that I could never hope to understand these Christian mysteries.

Well, if this hard road I follow ever ends, she’ll learn how wrong she was. Her Jesus god has come to make me his brother. I understand him now. Will she ever?

They are waiting for me not too far off. It’s a relief to see them. For awhile it seemed to me that I would never find them, yet here they are! Four of my trusted servants bide to meet me, to lift me from the dirt and bear me into the rough tent they have pitched in sight of the water. One lifts the leather flap and as I enter hands me the golden staff which is to be part of my regalia today. I’m just glad to have something strong to lean on again.

Guinhwyfar rises from her stool in a white rage when she sees me. For an instant I fear she may fly at me to scratch out my eyes. Then she recalls the drab nun’s garb she wears, and realizes she does not dress for passion these days. A rage would ruin the waxen image she has made of herself, and so she folds her ivory hands into an attitude of prayer and lifts her lilting voice, politely requesting that her god smite me down into Hell.

I leave her to her devotions. There is too much to see to and too little time.

He is ready. He sits in the very siege that was his place while he dwelled under my roof. They have dressed him in an assortment of silks and armor such as no practical fighting man would wear. The gold crown is on his head and the gilded sword at his belt. They have even loaned him a captured Saxon long-ax for the occasion. (Father always decried the long-ax as better suited for chopping wood than flesh, but I must admit he does look superb.) His hair has been washed and combed, his beard trimmed, the stubble scraped from his neck and the tufts of wiry gray plucked from his ears and nostrils. They really shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. No one who matters will come close enough to see that Arthur’s ears are clean.

“Welcome back, Father,” I murmur, and lift the sword-worn right hand from his knee. Yes, the ring is there, just as I commanded. I turn the hand palm upmost and breathe a kiss against the calloused flesh.

Guinhwyfar is shocked when I summon a man to assist me to disrobe in her presence. There’s no help for it: This tent is the only place I’ve got. She flings herself to her knees, amber beads clicking furiously between her fingers, and keeps her eyes on the ground. Is it for modesty’s sake, or simply because she finds it makes her ill to gaze on anything untoward, misshapen, less than beautiful?

I regret the inconvenience I have put her to, this cold perfection of a queen—everything I have done to her and with her has left its mark like dog piss on snow: The false message that her lost lord was found and called for her by name, which was the ruse to bring her to my keep; the offer of my own men to escort her safely back to her convent, which was the means by which we kidnapped her and brought her here out of all hope of rescue; the enforced captivity in this rude tent, shared with the man whose bed she used to share, which was—

Well, which was some pure, true cruelty on my part, I confess. But she deserved it.

She deserted him! When the first tremors came, the hairline cracks flawing the golden mirror of a king’s majesty, the first hints that slivers of the Arthur-oak were being nibbled away from the heartwood out, she burst into religion and fled. Who was there for him then as he slipped by inches deeper into the dark? Was her name on his lips when dusk charmed dire ghosts from his wandering mind? Her name … or Lancelot’s perhaps; not mine. Yet both of them abandoned him to meet his wraiths alone. Where could I better study cruelty?

I think the truth is that I’ve done Guinhwyfar a favor, closeting her here with Father these few days. The Christians teach that it is good for the soul to confront the face of its sins. Or perhaps they don’t. If I’ve been mistaken, it’s too late now to do anything other for Guinhwyfar than say I’m sorry.

If she needs more than that, too bad.

All is ready now, except Guinhwyfar. I explain what’s wanted of her and she balks. I expected this. I’ve had horses like her, the kind that roll their eyes until the white shows every time you urge them to do something to which they’re not inclined. A little windfall apple by way of persuasion works wonders.

The windfall I show Guinhwyfar lies inside a gorgeous casket, set with gems, a treasure of itself. The quantity of gold it contains will buy her the establishment of her own abbey, herself the comfortably invisible crown of abbess. The warrior who carries it in keeping is my man, but he is also a Christian. She knows him, and trusts the holy oath he takes to deliver the treasure to her as soon as she has done my bidding.

She crosses her hands over her bosom and lets her head droop as she tells us, quite solemnly, that she will do whatever I say. Not because she covets that gold—oh, never!— but again, for Christian charity.

And so, with Christian charity paid, we may begin. Two of my men come to escort our lord from the tent. A tiring-woman arrives to give Guinhwyfar the silver-shot royal robes she must wear, and the diamond-kissed crown. I am depraved enough to steal a backward glance at Father’s queen as she picks up each piece of her ordained dress. I gloat as yearning vanity strives against compulsive holiness in that birchtwig face.

The sun is a pale blotch of watered gold on the horizon. The mists are rising gray and white from the lake waters. The heavy barge is moored securely to the near shore, linked by other, more slender lines to the island. When they hear me give the signal, those who wait invisible among the dry brown reeds of Ynys-witrin, they will draw the vessel home.

Mother is already seated in the prow, her cloak cast aside, herself a blazon of jewels over black silk. When Guinhwyfar joins us, I don’t think she’ll like seeing a woman twice her age outshine her so extravagantly.

“Don’t you think you’re wearing a few too many necklaces for a woman in mourning?” I tease her.

“A queen in mourning, puppy,” she corrects me. Her eyes sparkle with laughter. “Our rules are different. I thought you knew how much I hate black.” Then without warning she rises from her place and crushes me to her bosom. “My babe.” The words are husky and torn. “Oh, my beloved son.”

She lets me go the moment she sees Guinhwyfar approach. We shall have no other parting. The white queen asks a few last frightened questions about the isle to which she is bound. She has heard stories, it seems, stories that have nothing to do with the adventures of her god and his followers. Can the Fey be trusted to keep faith? Don’t they often steal fair mortal women? What guarantee does she have that the tall elfin knights of Ynys-witrin won’t ravish her away?

I suppose it would be rude to offer her a mirror for an answer. Besides, she wouldn’t know at all what I mean.

There is a bier amidships on the barge, a luxurious contrivance draped in sable damask bought for a fortune at the Londinium market. Pillars of gold hold up an embroidered canopy of black Gaza-cloth, diaphanous as smoke. While Guinhwyfar fusses with her skirt, complains that there is water oozing up through the carpets on the bottom of the barge, shows a soaked slipper to anyone who cares, I go to help my father.

He steps into the barge with a strength I hardly recognize after such a lengthy absence. Impatiently he shakes off the hands of my men as they try to lift him aboard. But when I extend my own hand, he stares at it awhile, then brushes it with his own in a purely ceremonial gesture of homage given and received.

“What now, my son?” he asks, and there are phantoms of the hero and the man asleep beneath those words. I show him the bier and the gilded steps by which he must mount to the top. “For me?” A corner of his mouth twitches. Is it laughter? “I thought I was well,” he says.

Then the glimmer vanishes. He stands like deadwood beside the steps until my men carry him up and help him to lie down with his head on the cushions and his crown on his breast. He lies peacefully, a king-doll. When they come down again, I pull myself up the stairs to have a last look at his face.

“Where is he?” I whisper to wrinkles and emptiness and dust. And again, until tears threaten to choke off all breath, “Where is he? What have you done with my father?”

Under the bier there is plenty of room for someone of my size to sit. With such a spectacle as this funerary barge to fill the eye, who will notice if the damask draperies are drawn aside on this side or that? In the shadows, I feel around until I find the hunting horn I’ll need to get us started.

Before I take breath for the blast, I pause to think if I have forgotten anything. My lands and my possessions are all distributed and disposed among my loyal people. I am dressed with suitable pomp for what awaits me. Mother has made a place of refuge within her villa walls for the nameless, witless old man who will come to live with her, and pet the cats, and tend the herb beds on his better days. She has few visitors, but if anyone asks they will hear of how this good man stood with Arthur at Mount Badon.

I guess that’s everything.

The echoing call of the hunting horn of Faerie must wake a lonesome poet where he sleeps beside a fire gone cold. (All signs of other fires, other folk have been swept away by Mother’s art.) He will hark to the sound and stumble from his campsite through the bracken to where a lake gleams green as glass. His head still rings with the grand verses he made the other night about the fall of Arthur, Britain’s king, at Camlann. How wonderful to know that he could compose a tale so grand, so tragic! How strange that he has no other memory of Camlann than his own verses. Modred dead, Arthur sorely wounded, a battle at which so many knights perished—and no idea at all from whom he heard the news. But—but it must have happened, or why would he make a song about it?

It happened. Oh yes, it happened as his song assures him it did, for as he stands trembling among the lakeside reeds, he sees a sight that strikes his small heart mute.

The water laps the shore, the birds of morning sing. There is no other sound to mark the passing of the king. White queen, black queen attend him as he sails across the holy lake to Ynys-witrin‘s halls. In majesty he departs, yet not to death but sleep he goes. The hands of Faerie heal his hurts; he shall return to conquer Britain’s foes.

The words resound inside my head. Poet, if you are there, I wish I had the power to free them from my mind, to pour them into your hands like water. Let them spill away or hold them to your heart, but make the words you choose to take their place worthy of the man whose passing you witness here.

Arthur goes to his rest, but does not die. Do you see? Will your words make the others see it too—the people of the land, the little lordlings, the barbarous tribes? Arthur waits dreaming like the grain in the winter furrow, but he will come again, the green king, the sun-king, the bear-king rising from a sleep like death, renewed. He does not, will not, can not die!

My father cannot die.

I lift the curtain and see a solitary figure standing in the mists along the lakeside. The wind blows from that quarter and I imagine I can still detect my poet’s perfume of stale beer. One hand goes up to touch brow, belly, breast and breast in the Christians’ sign. He kneels where the reeds lisp secrets. Then the isle’s curve hides us from his sight, and he from mine.

He will stay where he is, as he is, only for as long as the marvel has power to keep him from feeling the cold. Then he will stand, go to his horse and ride away. (A horse? Where did he get—? But here it is, and with his meager gear lashed behind the saddle. He will ride first and question Fortune after.)

Wherever he stops for the night, he will sing the tale of Camlann and Arthur’s passing, because it is a very fine tale and he remembers that it is his to sing. In the drinking houses they will look at him as if he is mad—What battle? We heard of no battle!—but only for a time.

Because there will come sturdy men, fighting men, nine armed men out of the marshlands. Singly they will seek out every drinking house and market, every lord’s keep and manor in the realm. They will share the tale of their greatest battle as payment for a night’s shelter and a mug of ale. Oh, but I was at Camlann, where Arthur fell! Surely you remember Camlann of blood, dark Camlann, Camlann of Modred’s death, of Arthur’s doom?

The peasants will not dare to contradict men like these— Arthur’s fall! Well, so that’s what became of him. We heard nothing for so long that I wondered. Of course I remember!— and the lords will half recall a poet who passed through their lands not so long ago and sang of just that battle. Before long, other poets will take up the tale, and the lords will be remembering how they were at glorious Camlann, at their true king’s side. Maybe one of them will even be bold enough to claim that he stood with his lord in the lakeside dawn and saw the last of Arthur as the queens bore him away.

The barge bumps against the island’s bank. I emerge from under the bier to greet my small, dark kindred. Mother has anticipated me ashore. The Fey cluster at her skirts, snap-eyed and merry as a revel of fieldmice. Still aboard, Guinhwyfar scans the isle in vain for any hope of the tall, elegant knights of Elfland. Poor cheated queen! I’m afraid all your ravishments must remain the stuff of romance.

They swarm up the steps to Arthur’s bier and bring my father down. Guinhwyfar draws her gown aside from the taint of his touch as they pass her by. I lean over her shoulder to murmur, “It’s not leprosy; it’s worse. And if it’s meant to find you, lady, the sorrow of it is you’ll never know it has until too late.” She stares at me with huge, shallow eyes, lips wobbling from the insult I’ve done to her pride. I know she slips my face over the image of the serpent in the garden tale when I add, “Even through convent walls, king’s daughter; even though you’ve been a queen.”

She folds her long white hands over her lily face and her shoulders shake. I have seen her strike this pose too many times at court to give it more than a passing bow, as to an old friend recognized. Let her tears be genuine, for once, even if they’re only shed for herself.

There is a clamor on shore. The people of the isle fall back, drop to their knees. Only Mother has the right to stand, to greet the one who comes as an equal. As she moves forward, away from Father’s side, I must scurry to take her place and let him lean on me.

Father’s head moves slowly from side to side, mouth agape. Does he know where he is? Does he recall this place, these people? Does he wonder why we’ve brought him here? There is a winey smell of apples in the air, and the sweet bite of smoke from the burning wood of orchard trees past their bearing years. The earth has taught the Fey to waste nothing.

“Ynys-witrin.” I send the whisper up to reach his ear. “The Lady’s isle.” I see his nostrils flare to catch the scent, but the memory flits through his mind and darts off into the rising sun.

And now she comes, the Lady. Pale Guinhwyfar melts like curd in a furnace before her majesty, black Morgan my mother cannot aspire to equal her sister queen for beauty.

Small and dark like the folk she rules, her darkness glows more brave, more brilliant than any daystar queen or sovereign moon-mistress. Guinhwyfar once dazzled, Morgan smolders, but Vivian the Lady of this isle burns with flame that is all light, immortal.

The formalities are all family matters. It does not take long for Guinhwyfar to be sent back to the shore where my men await her. A few minutes more and Mother and Father too are taken from my sight. His hand clung to mine an instant when they came to lead him away to the boat on the far side of the island, but I don’t think it was because he knew who I am or what awaits me. Mother went without a word—we have already said all that needs saying—and if I can bear to add the pain of truth to the burden I already carry, then I admit I said goodbye to my father years ago.

It is just Modred and the Fey.

“You’ve chosen this?” Queen Vivian eyes my princely robes, weighing their expense as if that were a gauge of my sincerity. “It’s no good to either of us if you’ve been forced. The offering won’t count, but you’ll be just as dead.”

“I’ve come of my own will,” I say, “in return for favors given. Is that free enough? Will it do?”

An ember of the poet’s earlier confusion glints in her eyes. “What we did for you, you could have done yourself on the shores of some other lake. The barge and its trappings are not beyond your means. You command men and slaves enough to bring this off without a bit of our aid.”

Lady, there is no need for your puzzlement. I haven’t asked you to understand me, just to kill me. I will tell you nothing that you do not need to know.

She sighs, and apple blossoms drop from her lips. Where they star the grass between us, hyacinth bells spring up in flourishes of unseasonable fragrance. “He never loved you. You were a disappointment to him.”

“That’s old news.”

“Then why all this? Why purchase him so majestic a leave-taking? He could have remained what he was—an old man stricken weak-minded—and you could have remained—”

Alive? I will not say it, for I might laugh in her face.

“Have you a use for me or not, Lady?” I put the question softly, knowing her reply.

There is a last shadow of regret that flashes in her ancient eyes before she makes the sign her people await. I hear the rumbling roar of the great oak they have felled and hollowed and fitted back together again. They trundle the mighty trunk down to the waterside and stand around it, staring at me. That unpolished hull is to be my passage to eternity.

The rites which my old master Merlin told me they practice on this isle are true, it appears. That wild winter when he disappeared—I wonder if it was to journey here and give himself up as the year’s-wane offering? I suppose he might’ve simply frozen to death in a ditch somewhere, but I’d rather not know that. I glance out over the lake, as if I could hope to see Merlin’s oak still drifting beneath the calm water.

“Thank you for your courtesy,” I say to the crowd as I lean my hands on the open trunk. “For bringing this to me instead of the other way around. It’s been a tiring day, I couldn’t walk another step, and I don’t think any of you could carry me.” I am all smiles.

I climb into the tree unaided, only my golden staff to help me lever uncooperative limbs over the barky lip. The interior is smooth as riverstones, the bottom made soft by a mattress filled with sweet-scented herbs and blossoms. Every move I make as I settle onto my back presses more fragrance from it.

The Lady bends over me. In all my life I never could have hoped to have one so beautiful bring her lips so near to mine. If I steal a kiss, will it harm the sacrifice? Then she says, “To do so much for him when he never did the half for you … to let him drift into their legends even at the cost of your life here, and your fame in the times to come … they will remember you as a villain, Modred.”

Her mouth is unresisting as I take my first and only kiss from a lovely woman. My lips curve up. “But they will remember me.”

She imagines I have given her the answer to the riddle. She’s wrong. The Modred they’ll remember in the tales is good at duping queens. It’s only fair I get in a little practice.

She gestures, and her servants serve me a wine that smells of summer mornings. There may be a potion concealed by the taste, a brew to make the sacrifice remain tractable or else a kinder draught to hurry me on my way. In either case, I’m grateful, and the wine itself is almost as fine as the Falernian.

She lifts her hands, and the cutaway slab of the oak rises with no hands laid on it. It lowers itself to a perfect landing, groove fitting snugly into groove, slicing away my last glimpse of the light. The whole tree rocks itself free of the earth and floats, it seems, by the power of the Lady’s word. I sense too much air beneath me and not enough in here to keep me company for long. Then the sound of water caresses the walls of my coffin and the first cold trickles send spidery fingers in through cracks I cannot see.

However long I’ve left of life and breath, I feel neither sorrow, self-pity, nor longing for a chance to backtrack the hasty road that’s brought me here. I took it willingly for his sake, for the realm’s and—let me be honest, dying—most of all, for mine.

No glamour of Fey, no book of wizardry, no skill with the sword or power of cloistered prayer can hope to equal what I have done this day. With words alone I’ve made my hero-father into the undying heart of this land, made him its ever-living guardian soul. With words alone I’ve given him a son he might be proud to love. The poets who come after my tame bard will all sing of how dearly Arthur loved his traitor-son, and so it will be. So it must: Without great love there can be no great treachery.

As long as men sing Arthur, they must sing Modred too. Behind me I leave pain and loneliness, but with me I bring to birth a dream as grand as any of my father’s. I perish to lie down with princes. I rise to live forever among kings.

*

Table of Contents

Start