King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court Page 3
I did not miss the pigeons cavorting overhead or their annoying capacity to foul the food, although under the full leafy tree branches of this feasting area, their absence was a wonder; few birds of any ilk graced the skies of Revel Grove, though several tiny winged creatures pleased themselves to hop about our feet after the occasional dropped crumb and took wing when startled by some reveler’s abrupt movement.
What revealed itself as “entertainment” by King Henry’s command proved not unlike the doings customary during the feasts hosted by myself and other queens and kings of my era: a parade of knights leading their noble prisoners, those other knights having been vanquished in battle. Each victorious knight regaled us with the story of his conquest, each battle sounding more fantastical than the last as the knights competed for royal favor.
Did I not already state that all men are the same? Strip them of their gleaming armor and adornments and eclipse the unique devices on their shields, and they descend into a tribe of club-wagging, chest-thumping monkeys indistinguishable and uncouth and good for naught save the pleasures they can deliver a woman in the bedchamber,—and many not even that much.
Believe me, gentle reader; I possess prodigious experience in such matters. Sir Accolon was simply the best. And, whether inside his armor or out, in the spirit of fairness and with great fondness, I must state that he is—was—no monkey.
Pray, forgive me; I digress.
All of the aforementioned parading and posturing and boasting, I expected. What I did not expect was for each knight’s name—as well as his shield’s device and the tale of his battle—to be familiar to me even though the men’s countenances bore no resemblance to any knight of my personal acquaintance.
Should you require more proof of this claim, I shall state for this chronicle that I heard, verbatim and in verifiable detail, the tale of how Sir Gareth Beaumains toughened his pretty hands against Sir Kay, Sir Launcelot, and six other knights, besting all save Sir Launcelot for the rescue and love of the Lady Lyonors; next, “Sir Launcelot” told us his tale of how he dressed as Sir Kay after delivering him from several attacking knights and journeyed on to defeat yet other knights while wearing Sir Kay’s armor, wielding his sword, riding his horse, and bearing his shield. Had I commanded these players to write the accounts of their tales herein, the details would not have varied one jot from the accounts scribed for preservation in Camelot’s Hall of Records.
Said hall and the precious parchments it housed doubtless did not in total survive the destruction of Camelot following the end of Arthur’s reign, owing to the observable fact that later chroniclers have confused the more intricate and obscure details of our lives, our exploits, our realms, yea, even unto the spelling of our very names. Arthur, they mostly got right, of course; but I have been variously named Morganna, Morgaine, Morriga, Morgu, and even Morghe.
“Morgaine” calls to mind a potion I later discovered in this era for the restoration of hair, and so I deem it an acceptable association with my healing arts. “Le Fay” wields insult enough, but “Morghe,” the sound of which is not unlike what they of this century call a repository for corpses…what could that author possibly have been thinking?
And yet it is not my intent herein to correct these conflicting records, else I would require at least a dozen volumes and an array of attendant scribes working for as many years to complete the nigh-impossible task.
Enough digression! Necessity demands that I forge onward with my account.
Lady Jane must have sensed my mounting confusion, for she begged leave of King Henry to remove herself from his side unto mine. The king was reluctant to grant her request, and yet, to his credit, he did so.
“Of a certitude, your Majesty,” said Lady Jane after she seated herself beside me, “these proceedings, with knights pretending to be King Arthur’s own, are not customary for King Henry’s court.” With one eyebrow arched, I bade her continue. “It was foretold that upon this auspicious day of the Autumnal Equinox, Crownsville would receive a certain visitor from King Arthur’s realm. And so these especial arrangements have been made for his”—she blushed again; this time not so prettily in my estimation—“that is to say, for your benefit, Queen Morgan, as our realm’s most honored guest.”
I had no time to respond to her statement, for at that moment, in strutted a man portraying Sir Kay the Seneschal, leading a bound, bedraggled, and oddly dressed—even for this era—stranger who could be none other than the sorcerous adversary I despised second only in magnitude to my brother: The Boss himself.
I felt the familiar, welcome tingle of my awakening power.
Chapter IV:
Sir Kay and the Man Who Would Be Boss
I FORCED MYSELF to recall that here before me stood two pretenders, a thousand years removed from the original men, and I damped my magical impulse.
The man portraying Sir Kay was far too handsome: broad of shoulders, tall of stance, slim of hips, thick of limbs, with a magnificent, free-flowing golden mane, and arresting blue eyes. The Sir Kay of old was brawny, of course. Any man who lumbers through life bearing armor whose helmet alone weighs twenty-two pounds, to say nothing of the rest of it, must be well muscled to move even a single step.
In defense of women I feel compelled to assert that my royal crown of state weighed a full eight pounds, and on average my many layers of undergarments, overdress, cloak, boots, and sundry adornments weighed in total close to ninety. And men persist in calling us “the weaker sex.” Hah.
The Sir Kay of my acquaintance suffered squinty eyes and a twisted lip that molded his expression into a perpetual sneer made all the more grotesque whenever he heaped insults upon his chosen victim, which happened frequently. I could understand why Arthur chose to appoint Sir Kay as the kingdom’s seneschal, the discharge of which office necessitated his staying in and nigh Camelot when not riding off to war. Sir Kay’s was not the face or demeanor of an ambassador or even a collector of tax levies, as other, lesser-ranked knights were so appointed, nor did Sir Kay often partake in quests of knight-errantry as did his more well-favored comrades-at-arms. In jousting and swordsmanship he stood in rank far lower than the best and not far higher than the worst.
’Twas no small wonder, then, that Sir Kay had suffered as the butt of many jests.
Why Arthur had befriended the odious knight, I shall never fathom, even when considering the years Arthur had been fostered in the household of Sir Kay’s father. There is no accounting for taste.
This faux Sir Kay possessed swagger and insults aplenty in spite of his comeliness, which crafted a real enough illusion for the purpose.
The Hank Morgan pretender standing before me, however, could have been the original Boss’s twin: short, slight of build, stooped of posture, with unkempt hair, scuffed boots, stubbly whiskers, musty scent, dusty clothing, and a languid look in his eyes that tried to veil, with the illusion of boredom, that he was in fact evaluating his captor and the court amongst which he stood.
The Original Boss’s Twin
I remember the long-ago day quite clearly. It chanced that I had been visiting Camelot to learn what had become of my enchanted Horn of Adultery (Sir Lamorak, in his anger at Sir Tristram for besting him in a tournament, had diverted it to King Mark, where it proved almost as entertaining in the hands of Queen Isoud, though I would have paid my weight,—crown, clothing, and all—in solid gold to watch Guenever attempt to drink from it) when Sir Kay brought in the captive stranger. Most vividly of that day I remember the stranger’s shrewd gaze. I had realized that gaze signaled trouble, although had I foreseen the sheer magnitude into which the trouble would evolve, I would have insisted upon his immediate execution.
In those days, Arthur would have acceded to my request in spite of the politely disguised friction ever present betwixt him and me.
The comely Sir Kay of this era rambled on in appropriate length and breadth of detail regarding how he had captured the stranger: besting the stranger’s thirteen knightly companions in
a three-hour-long battle—three hours being a quite impossible length of time to be hacking at each other with twenty-pound broadswords while clad in full armor, of course, but ’tis the standard length to inspire awe and respect in the listeners—and being forced to capture the stranger alive on account of the stranger’s enchanted garments protecting him from all hurt and harm.
When I refer to “the stranger,” the wisdom of centuries permits me to omit Sir Kay’s more colorful descriptive phrases such as “horrible sky-towering monster” and (my personal favorite) “tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre.” On the day I first heard Sir Kay’s tale, I had been too far occupied in privily plotting Sir Lamorak’s punishment for having intercepted my enchanted adulteress-revealing drinking horn to pay much heed to Sir Kay’s words.
On this day, upon hearing the tale told for a second time and with Sir Lamorak having long since been dealt with by my nephew Sir Gawaine and his brothers at my behest, it occurred to me how ridiculous it was of Sir Kay to have called the stranger tusked, taloned, and sky-towering. Clearly, the stranger was none of those things; and the man portraying him also possessed neither tusk nor talon, nor even a snaggled tooth or grubby torn fingernail.
In retrospect, I marvel that none of the other knights or ladies or Arthur or Guenever or even Merlin had questioned Sir Kay’s fantastical account. As I gazed at King Henry and Queen Anne and their court, they were responding in much the same fashion. I reckoned it to the natural stupor induced by the over-imbibing of ale, a tradition that never changes from age to age.
I also marvel that my brother had decided to elevate this untusked, untaloned, and otherwise unremarkable stranger to the status of second in the kingdom. On the other hand, whatever should I have expected from a man possessing so little discernment as to have married the unfaithful Guenever and befriended the fractious Sir Kay?
A man’s blindness leads him to his doom, and in that respect King Arthur stood no differently than any other man—or woman, alas.
Chapter V:
An Inspiration
AS ON THAT first day more than a millennium ago, a clamor arose among King Henry’s court for the stranger’s execution. True to my original part in the proceedings, I remained silent,—not plotting anyone’s demise this time, but curious as to how the event would unfold. The expected debate ensued regarding the enchanted nature of the stranger’s clothing as to whether the garments would deliver him from execution.
I paid close heed to this discussion, given my knowledge in all matters magical. I did not doubt that such a powerful and useful enchantment could be wrought, provided the one performing the incantation possessed skill enough and will enough to bring it to pass. Excalibur’s scabbard was imbued by such an enchantment by the Lady of the Lake, which is why I had removed it from Arthur’s possession; he never could have been killed otherwise, and his chroniclers would have had to dub him “The Once and Forever King.”
What I did begin to doubt on this day, watching these players in general and the stranger in particular, was whether the stranger himself believed in the power—or even the very existence—of an enchantment upon his clothing. While knights and ladies argued this way and that, with King Henry and Queen Anne and the faux sirs Kay and Launcelot interjecting their opinions from time to time, the stranger first stared at the monarchs and the court in surprise and confusion, reached his own conclusion regarding the debate, and then proceeded to adopt an attitude of casual indifference.
A gray-bearded old man, dressed in elaborate midnight robes embroidered with innumerable stars and other symbols and wearing a similarly caparisoned pointed hat surmounted by a gray feather—clearly the “Merlin” player of this drama, though the real Merlin never would have worn such fanciful garments—rose to speak. Everyone else fell silent.
His sage gaze traversed the assembly, his visage bearing amusement and disdain in equal measures. “Are you so dull?” he asked the court in a tone and pitch surely everyone could hear. Beside me, Queen Anne shifted in her seat. “Strip off the ogre’s enchanted raiment and be done with him!”
The stranger’s indifference evaporated as knights seized his arms and tore off his clothing. Most of his clothing, I should amend for the record, unlike on the original day, when the man fated to become The Boss stood as naked before King Arthur’s court as in the hour of his birth, though far cleaner.
That deviation from the proceedings was a tremendous disappointment to me. Ever I welcome the opportunity to admire the male form in its full splendor, whether said male be prince, knight, ogre, or otherwise. Still, my recollection of the true event served me well. If this player had been chosen for his likeness to the stranger of my era, then it stood to reason that the similarities extended to the rest of him.
Queen Anne remarked, with admiration and none too discreetly, that she had never seen anyone with legs like the stranger’s. Queen Guenever had said something similar to me, which at the time I dismissed as sheer foolishness coming from someone who was interested in only one pair of legs in the whole of England, and those not belonging to her husband.
This time I gave the stranger’s legs a second look.
In truth they appeared comely enough, tanned and hard-muscled, protruding at a goodly length below the knee cuffs of tight-fitting trousers that enhanced the rest of his glory. It occurred to me, then, that perhaps Queen Anne—as with Queen Guenever before her—had not in fact been referring to the appendages upon which the stranger walked.
Languidly I licked my lips. The fabric comprising the trousers did not look sturdy enough to last long when subjected to the rigors of dungeon interment.
However, in yet another departure from the proceedings, when Sir Kay’s prisoner was led, bound and fully naked, to the dungeon, thence to languish for two days while the stake and viewing area were prepared, the stranger began at once to shout his threat to visit a terrible calamity upon the entire kingdom on account of his being the “Supreme Grand High-yu Muckamuck” of all magicians.
King Henry, visibly shaken, stood ready to release the prisoner with all haste; but the faux Merlin made a few dramatic passes through the air with his hands, mumbled a few garbled yet dramatic-sounding syllables, and addressed the stranger.
“I have wrought a spell about you of the most potent kind, binding your magic for to protect the king and queen and all the court. Spout what words you may; you can wreak no harm upon us.”
The nearly naked stranger grinned. “Merlin, you cheap old humbug! You maundering old ass! You claim to have protected your king and court? Bosh is what it is, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world!”
The faux Merlin appeared unfazed. To King Henry, he said, “This is simply the bravado of the condemned. Do with him what you will, Sire. My enchantment shall stand proof against any test of his devising.”
Whereupon King Henry ordered the immediate commencement of the stranger’s execution.
“No! You cannot!” cried the stranger as minions carried in an already assembled platform and stake, along with bundles of faggots, which they began piling onto the platform’s planks. “Continue no further, or I will rain down upon you the most severe calamity imaginable!”
All activity stopped. Merlin crossed his arms and gave the stranger a severe look. “Very well, ogre. Name the calamity.”
The stranger, with a stupefied look not unlike the deer that sees the arrow winging to kill it, remained silent.
“You see, Sire?” Merlin said to the king. “The ogre does not name this calamity because he cannot. He is no magician, supreme, grand, mucky, or otherwise.”
King Henry ordered the work to recommence.
A slow, hopeful glint lit the stranger’s eyes. “Wait! If you do not desist at once and spare my life, I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die to the last man!”
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sp; Queen Anne heaved a gasping sigh and swooned in her throne. The other ladies did likewise; lacking thrones, they left it for their noble menfolk to catch them lest they topple backward off their benches and injure themselves. It had transpired thus during my era, although the reactions had been prompted by a page’s announcement of the prisoner’s dire message rather than being pronounced by the prisoner himself. Said thrice-cursed page, Amyas le Poulet, was later fated to become The Boss Hank Morgan’s closest confidant and deputy, whom it pleased The Boss to call Clarence; had I known it then, I would have dispatched that little chicken, too, and no one of consequence would have dared say nay.
I did not swoon, either then or now, being both times more interested in seeing whether this self-proclaimed mucky-muck magician could bring such a calamity to pass.
Understand, fair reader, that I write this account armed with the accumulated wisdom of the ages, having since learned that the event to which the stranger referred is a natural phenomenon called an eclipse, when the moon—not any magician, of any rank or strength of powers or degree of muckyness—casts its mantle of shadow in the semblance of having obliterated the sun. I know now what I did not know then: that the real Hank Morgan could no more have caused the earth to fall under a doom of darkness than this man pretending to be him could on this day.
I held no sway over the shining of the sun itself, either; but I did note well that there existed in the sky not even the remotest hint of the birth of a single cloud, and so I conceived a plan to show these pretenders that there indeed stood among them someone who wielded genuine power.
Long have I practiced the art of weather magic, it being useful to influence the outcome of battles with the presence or absence of fog, glare, torrential rains, ice storms, and the like. Bending the weather to my will also proves useful if I wish to speed or hinder a courier, increase the yield of my lands, or engender a certain ambience when entertaining guests.