Gwenhwyfar (43 page)

He laughed, and pulled the coverings over her head again. And mercifully, the roaring, and the blackness came back, and she was carried away by them and hid inside them.

G
wen sat
cross-legged on her pallet on the floor, patiently braided her own hairs into a thread. A few threads and she could make a cord. If she had a cord, she might be able to strangle Medraut with it . . .

There was not much else to do. She lived in a small room with a high window in one wall and a mattress heaped with furs on the floor. The floors were stone, the walls were stone, and the timbers of the ceiling could not be reached by any means from the floor. Without a knife, it was not possible to cut up the furs or the canvas cover of the mattress. She was wearing heavy woolen gowns of material too tough to tear and too closely woven to pick apart, without any fastenings or cords. She was barefoot.

The latrine was a heavy stone basin in the corner with a hole much too small to stick anything down. The huge guard that brought her food sloshed a bucket of water down it when he came in.

Medraut had gone to great lengths to make sure that there was nothing in here she could use as a weapon. Her food was served in a grass basket, and she ate it with her fingers; her drink came in a blunted drinking horn that wouldn’t serve as a weapon itself and wouldn’t smash to give her something with a point or edge. Those were taken away when she was finished, and the guard stayed there until she finished.

This place, whatever it was, must have been built on the Roman style, for the floor was warm, though not nearly as warm as Arthur’s palace.

She was not sure how long she had been here. Weeks, certainly. Months . . . probably. For most of the early part of this ordeal, she had been unconscious for long stretches thanks to Medraut’s potions.

Medraut visited her from time to time; his visits were irregular, and the only way that she knew one was going to occur was when she began to feel dizzy after eating. He made sure that she couldn’t move long before he unlocked her door. She had been completely unsuccessful in detecting whatever he was putting in her food; she’d tried not eating altogether, but eventually hunger drove her to eat. After all it wasn’t as if she wanted to die—that was the last thing she wanted. She wanted to get free.

She was pretty certain that on the last several visits, Medraut hadn’t touched her, although she knew very well he had done whatever he liked early on. Probably he had found that lying with someone as unresponsive as a corpse was rather unsatisfying. Instead, of late, he had a chair brought and sat in it, talking at her until she lost consciousness. That might actually have not been so bad if he had given her any real information. She knew far more than she wanted to know now about how he had gotten rid of Arthur’s sons, how he had hoodwinked Arthur into trusting him, what most of his late childhood had been like—and far, far too much about how he had been certain she was destined for him from the moment he saw her.

But a very, very strange thing also happened when she was drugged—and sometimes, when she was asleep.

Visions—maybe. If visions they were, she could hardly credit them. But if they were not, why on earth would her mind have made such a thing up?

She got glimpses into the life Little Gwen was leading in her place, and at first, everything happened as she would have predicted. Little Gwen absolutely reveled in her place as queen, wallowing in the baths and the preening, gossiping viciously with her ladies and for mischief setting them against each other, ordering gown after sumptuous gown, and entertaining Arthur in her bed with a wanton abandon that made Gwen blush with shame.

But then something happened. A new Arthur began to appear in that bedchamber of nights. An Arthur that
she
had never seen, a man who, despite his years, seemed more vibrant, more alive, than she had ever seen him. And under the charismatic spell of
that
Arthur . . . Little Gwen softened. Gradually, she ceased tormenting her ladies. Gradually, her demeanor took on a cast that Gwen couldn’t really identify at first.

And when she did . . . that was when she simply couldn’t believe the dreams. Because—if she was right—Arthur was taming the untamable Little Gwen, winning her to him the way he won his men’s hearts. And she simply could not believe that anyone as self-centered as Little Gwen could come to care for anyone other than herself.

She’d had another of those dreams last night. It seemed just as impossible as the ones before it. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that Little Gwen was having second thoughts about betraying Arthur.

Impossible.

As she braided, she began to feel the tingling in her lips that signified he had slipped a potion into her again. With a resigned sigh, she thrust the thread she was braiding with the others she had made under the mattress, then stretched out under the furs and waited for the paralysis—and Medraut—to arrive. She stared up at the ceiling and the tiny bit of sky that was all she could see through the window.

She was almost beginning to look forward to this. It made for a change in the endless sameness of her days. She had thought she was bored as Arthur’s queen; here she had nothing whatsoever to do except exercise, comb her fingers through her hair, and braid what came out.

At least she was still fit. She did every exercise she could remember, practiced fighting moves even if she didn’t have a weapon, stretched and flexed until she was more limber than she had ever been in her life except as a small child. She had learned how to run and tumble in these wretched gowns, even if she couldn’t run very far in the tiny cell.

She even practiced that meditation that the Ladies did, though she wasn’t very good at it. She prayed a great deal. She recited what she could remember of bardic ballads and epics.

She did that now, waiting for the potion to take effect, staring upward, because when she couldn’t move, she really didn’t want to be frozen in a position where she had to look at Medraut.

The room began to spin, even though she was lying down. Beneath the furs, she tried, experimentally, to move her arm, and couldn’t. So . . . he should be entering at any moment.

This was when she heard the bar on the outside of the door slide aside, and the door scraped open. Footsteps on the stone followed as Medraut entered the room, followed by a servant with a comfortable chair; who placed the chair and washed out the basin with a bucket of water. She could just see Medraut out of the corner of her eye; he made a face, and waved a hand in front of his nose.

“Time for another bath and a new gown, my love,” he said. “You’ll like that, won’t you?”

She felt a little sick inside. Yes, she liked being clean. No, she did not like the fact that it happened while she was unconscious. Not one bit. She would wake up with her hair washed and braided, completely scrubbed, and in a new clean gown. She had no idea who or what was doing this, nor what, if anything, happened besides the washing. What was the most disturbing, perhaps, was the level of detail; her fingers and toes were neatly manicured, the nails trimmed, and even buffed to a soft polish. There were none of the perfumed oils of Arthur’s baths, but there was a faintly pleasant scent on her skin afterwards. Any tiny abrasions or bruises were anointed with a balm, and calluses were sanded.

“Well, now, where were we?” Medraut asked, rhetorically, since she couldn’t answer. She turned her attention back to the ceiling. In a way, since she was forced to listen to these monologues, she was glad even her expression was frozen. At least he didn’t know how revolted she was most of the time by his confidences. And why did he ever think that this would make her care for him?

“Ah, I don’t believe I ever told you how Lot told me that I wasn’t his.” She heard him move a little as he settled himself in the chair. “It was one of those rare moments when he was sulking about being Mother’s pander, rather than gloating about it. Possibly his temper was because she was lying with someone he hadn’t picked himself, and she wasn’t allowing him to watch. So when I interrupted him to show him the results of the sacrifice and blood spell I had done all by myself, he knocked me into a wall and called me ‘Arthur’s unnatural bastard.’ ”

At this point, likely, Gwenhwyfach had been cooing with sympathy to him. Oh, how she wished she could stop her ears. The images that his narrative called up made her feel even more ill. Her imagination—given what her visions had shown her of Anna Morgause and her past—created scenes of Medraut’s mother disporting herself with a lover all too vividly. And it was hardly that she disapproved of lovemaking—though her own experiences were not inclined to make her crave it herself. It was how Anna Morgause had used it: as a tool, a weapon. Even with Arthur.
Especially
with Arthur.

“I knew better than to move. Lot is entirely unpredictable, and there was no telling how he would react. He glared at me a moment, then stormed off. I went to ask Morgana what he meant.” Gwen couldn’t turn her head to see his expression, but his tone was casual, as if he were telling a tale about someone else. This had probably hurt him—yes, even him—if it was true. If. There was no telling, with Medraut. Perhaps the reason for his casual tone was that it actually had never happened at all.

“She told me that what Lot had said was entirely true. Even the ‘unnatural’ part.” He chuckled. “She explained it all to me, that Mother was Arthur’s half-sister, and that even though the gods themselves often mated with their siblings, or daughter with father and son with mother, small-minded mortals thought this was wrong. A very enlightened woman, is Morgana. None of that really mattered to me, either.” His voice took on a faint tone of gloating. Now
this,
this she could believe. Very little mattered to Medraut, so long as he got what he wanted. “All that did matter was that Lot, whom I hated and despised, even at so young an age, was not my father. My real father was the man who was King over Lot, who had the Folk of Annwn as his allies, and the Merlin as his servant. My real father was Arthur, the High King. What Lot intended to be the moment of my humiliation became the moment of my release and elevation. That was the moment that I knew that I was destined for great things. I would either create something unparalleled, or destroy it. Either way, my name would never be forgotten.”

She would have shivered at his words if she had been able to move. She believed this, too, believed fervently that Medraut hated Lot and Lot hated him—and that Medraut craved fame or infamy and didn’t care which he got, so long as he had it.

“Mother sensed that I had learned the truth and questioned me about it. I told her, but only in Morgana’s presence, because I wanted Morgana to know I had told, and I wanted Mother to know that we were together on this.” He let out his breath in a long sigh of reminiscence. “Mother was always a little afraid of Morgana, and I didn’t know why at the time, but I felt that with Morgana there, she wouldn’t dare punish either of us. I found out later, of course, just why Mother feared her. Morgana had pledged herself to the Morrigan when her woman’s blood first began to flow.”

That meant nothing to her—well, except that if Anna Morgause was wary about this Morrigan, it would be wise to be even more wary. He laughed softly, mockingly. “You’re puzzled, of course. You wouldn’t know of the Morrigan. She is the Dark of the Moon to Cerridwen’s Full Moon. They know her well in Eire, though, and it was a wise woman of Eire that taught our Morgana of her. She is the chooser of the dead, the storm crow, the washer at the ford. She is power and chaos, and she suits our Morgana most perfectly. Even Mother was afraid of the Morrigan’s power.”

Gwen felt a cold that had nothing to do with the potions or her paralysis. It wasn’t wise to mix with the gods, the dark ones in particular. “Lot himself has always left Morgana alone, even though he lusts for her to this day. I often wonder if that wasn’t why Morgana pledged herself in the first place.”

Well, Gwen couldn’t fault Morgana for protecting herself from Lot, whose excesses rivaled those of his wife. But dealing with the dark side of the moon goddess—risky, risky business. Everyone knew there were always two sides to every Power, but dealing even with the bright side of the changeable Goddess of the Moon was a great deal like trying to bargain with the Folk of Annwn. Cerridwen was fickle enough; what was the Morrigan like?

It wasn’t wise to put a name to the dark ones, nor to give your name to them, and it was even more foolish to bargain with them. Not unless you wanted them to come for you one day, asking a payment much too high for what you got.

It did rather sound as if that was exactly what Morgana wanted.

“So, Mother didn’t argue with Morgana, she didn’t even chide her. She just said ‘Since you have told him, you might as well have the teaching of him.’ And that was what she did.” Gwen heard him get up from his chair and walk over to her pallet to peer down at her. The ceiling seemed to move in a slow circle, with his face as the center of it. “Ah, still with me. Good. It is really quite important that you hear this, my love. You need to understand just why it’s futile to resist me and important to love me.”

He sat back down in his chair, satisfied that she was still listening to him. “Naturally, Morgana told me everything then, not the least of which was how the Merlin had tried to have me killed when I was born. Morgana had seen just this thing in her scrying and had told Mother, so Mother had made certain I was safe by giving birth early. By that, Morgana was as much my mother as she was, if not more. Well! When she told me that, I was all for pledging to the Morrigan myself! Unfortunately, the Morrigan does not accept males.” He sighed, theatrically. “Nevertheless, Morgana taught me and kept me safe from my brothers until I could defend myself. Shortly after that, Mother decided that it would be a fine idea to wed Morgana to your father. She had intended him for herself, but her magics were thwarted.”