I Am Morgan le Fay Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sometimes servants brought things to eat, and some of them were good and some of them were awful but I had to eat some anyway to be polite. I liked the candied quail and the sweetbreads and the apple tarts and the marzipan. I did not like the spiced roast pork. In between things to eat there were tumblers, and I wanted to get up and try to do somersaults too, but I had to sit still. Sometimes the baby cried and Mother drew him up to her bosom and nursed him and I felt the fire dragon hissing in my chest. Sometimes I watched a nurse carry the baby away to diaper him and then bring him back. Sometimes I stared at Uther Pendragon, who never looked at me at all. Mostly I squirmed in my hard chair.
    â€œShh,” Nurse hushed me. “Only a little longer now.”
    A minstrel in a ragtag tunic stood near the king. From his harp he strummed out a chord that rang like a hundred bells, singing a ballad about True Thomas, who saw a bright lady come riding:
    Her skirt was of the grass green silk,
Her mantle of the velvet fine,
From every braid of her horse’s mane
Hung fifty silver bells and nine.
    She was the queen of Faerie, the otherworld, and she dared him to kiss her, and he did. In my childish mind I never thought otherwise than that the minstrel sang of Thomas the messenger boy I had met. I felt sure that he was true and handsome enough to kiss the queen of Faerie.
    And then she told him that he must go with her.
    She mounted on her milk white steed,
She took True Thomas up behind,
And when she made the bridle ring,
The steed flew swifter than the wind.
    They rode up the ferny hillside, the winding road to Faerie.
    â€œThomas, you must hold your tongue,
Whatever you may hear or see,
For if you speak a word in my land,
You’ll never go back to your own country. ”
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    On they rode and farther on
And waded through rivers above the knee
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.
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    It was dark, dark night with no starlight
And they waded through red blood to the knee,
For all the blood that’s shed on earth
Runs through the springs of that country.
    My breath caught, and I did not listen to the rest of the song, for I knew now that my father’s blood ran through Faerie. And I knew that it had to be somewhere near where I lived, for they heard the roaring of the sea.
    As the last chords rang away, there came shafts of silvergold light from somewhere, from everywhere, and a stir as all those jeweled courtiers turned to look, and—
    â€œThe fays!” the herald cried. “Welcome, people of peace!” And he blew a great blast on his golden horn.
    They entered through no doorway, from nowhere and everywhere, as if they had been there all along, as if they were made out of foreverness and sun and moon and the light coming out of nowhere, no, coming out of the carved eyes of the golden winged women under the arches, and perhaps I was dreaming.
    Uther Pendragon stood up to greet the fays the way we had all stood up before him. Everyone stood. I jumped on top of my chair to try to see.
    â€œMorgan!” Nurse tugged at me.
    â€œBe seated,” commanded a sweet young voice. Folk sat, but the king remained standing and I knelt on my chair, gawking. She who had spoken was a barefoot slip of a big-eyed girl, no more than sixteen, with primroses twined in her masses of chestnut hair even though it was long past primrose season. Her shining filmy frock did not cover either her arms or her legs, but she danced up to the high table just so, not caring who saw her. Behind her hobbled a bent, ancient crone supported by a matronly woman not unlike my nurse—but both had the same unearthly sheen as the girl’s frock. Her skin and hair, I saw now, glimmered with the same fey light. Her lovely face shone with a subtle glow like starlight. In the middle-aged woman and the ancient one I saw remnants of her eerie beauty.
    The three of them progressed