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| Ten Minute Tales |
For your entertainment
As a little self-indulgence - and because I've been promoting other authors more than myself...
I'm going to post some (chosen at random) excerpts from my own books
I'm going to post some (chosen at random) excerpts from my own books
today an excerpt from
The Kingmaking
part one of the Pendragon's Banner Trilogy
by Helen Hollick
May 455 AD
Yns Witrin (Glastobury Tor)
The Kingmaking
part one of the Pendragon's Banner Trilogy
by Helen Hollick
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| ©Cathy Helms |
Yns Witrin (Glastobury Tor)
Gwenhwyfar knew something was to happen. Not precisely when, but soon, very soon. It was an odd feeling this, something inside niggling like an image vaguely remembered after a waking dream. For the past week she had climbed the Tor each morning, settled herself close by the largest standing stone on the summit and watched. For what, she did not know, just watched.
It was not a Christian place, this Tor, the Holy Sisters did not like her walking here. Yns Witrin it was called, the Glass Isle. Even in the driest of summers there was always water spread around the foot of this conical hill - sodden places, marsh oozing underfoot, pitted with deeper bog that could trap and drown the unwary. Come winter, or after weeks of rain such as this year had brought, the low flat levels became a plain of dotted lakes and running channels. The brooding height of the Tor reflected in those vast, mirroring waters. An imaged island as delicately translucent and brittle as glass.
Shrouded in morning mist and with its ancient miz-maze path winding back and forth in ritual pattern up the steep slopes, the Tor squatted over a cluster of little hills, like a matriarch presiding over her mixed brood sheltering within the fall of her shadow.
It might not be Christian, but it was a revered and mystical place. A sanctum of the Old Ways, of the Mother Goddess and Avallach, God of the Underworld. She danced on the buttercup-spotted or frost-rimed grass. He slept beneath, in his domain of Avalon within the darkness of the hollow hill, waiting for the souls of the dead to find their way by night down the passages into the Other World.
Once, there had been many who served the Goddess; now the young women went to the Christian Mother. Daughters learnt the litany of the Holy Church, not the ancient learning of a Goddess who was sliding into obscurity. Only three priestesses were left down there at the base of the Tor, their poor dwelling houses built along the shore of the water. Theirs was an ancient, once elite, clan. ‘The Ladies’, they were called: women of the Goddess. With the passing of the three, the Goddess would be gone from the Tor. Forgotten.
Drawn to this richly spiritual place, Christian people had settled their community among the cluster of hills set on the flat of the Summer Land. They had built their little chapel and crude dwellings; set up their market place and expanded as each year more people joined them. The chapel became a church, the dwelling houses merging together into cloistered orders where men and women could live and work alongside God and Christ. Traders arrived. Farmers brought their produce and cattle to the market and prospered; a tavern flourished to provide bed and food for weary travellers who came to worship at the wondrous-built church, or seek healing or learning from the holy men and woman. Under the Christ God the Glass Isle thrived.
It may have been very pagan, this Tor that hovered above the mist of a damp spring or autumn morning, or floated on a flood plain of glistening, sky-bright water, but Yns Witrin possessed a pull of awe and inspiration. A place where it was easy to listen to the voice of your God. Within the spirit of the Tor, you could see through the shaded windows of your own soul. And the Tor was a place of the Mother. Whether she were the old Goddess or the Virgin Mother of Christ, she was still the Mother. Gwenhwyfar had been safe here under her protective wing, was calmed and becoming healed of fear and the disgrace of an unwanted and uninvited invasion of her body. Rape carried a powerful backlash of wretchedness.
To her, this quiet hill was a patient, contented place away from the dark, crowding shadows of horror. A place for the female. A sanctuary where time drifted with the moon cycle and where the earth beneath your feet understood the pain of labour and the joy of birth.
‘Have other women stood here, where I stand on this wind-teased summit,’ she wondered. ‘Watching as I watch, waiting as I wait, for a child to be born or the menfolk to come back from war?’
Probably. The Tor was a guardian shield for women. It was said children were conceived or borne with ease and safety up here. Women’s natural troubles were healed. The Tor, a buffer against the harsh reality of life out there in the bad lands. It seemed so long ago, so far away, that rain-drenched night in Londinium. Yet it haunted her, clinging like stale perfume. Sickly and repulsive.
She had a vague recollection of how she came to be here. She remembered the shouting and a clash of weapons; fearful desperate faces. Pounding hooves, sobbing breath - her own? Frightened horses bolting. Her arms clinging exhausted to a bay horse, muscles locked, unable to let go until he shuddered, eventually, to a halt. Gwenhwyfar had no idea how far that wild flight had taken her or to where she was taken. Knew only that her body ached and head throbbed. She was unaware of the jagged slash across her forehead, barely recalled the swinging hilt of a sword on a rocking boat that had caused it. The scab had long since peeled itching away, the scar beneath fading white against darker skin.
The Holy Sisters said she had ranted delirious in fever for several days.
Had an inner sense guided her to them? Or had it been the wandering bay horse with a rider slumped across his withers who had trotted to other horses, eager for company? Whatever, the six women making their way to join the Sisters of Yns Witrin had taken her into their wagon, tended and cared for her. Unsure who she was or where she had come from, and unwilling to delay their journey, they had decided to carry her with them.
In her dazed state, Gwenhwyfar had raised no objection.
The gentle Sisters fluttered round her, enfolding her in the safe seclusion of their nest, clucking and cooing, thanking the wisdom of the Virgin for guiding a daughter to safety. Gwenhwyfar let their attentions wash like healing balm over her muddled mind, having no energy or inclination to contradict them, relieved and thankful that the Goddess - under whatever guise - had brought her here, once strength and sense began to return, to idle among these gentle women of peace.
Once, she had visited the Ladies, going across the spread of the lake to their huddle of meagre dwellings at the base of the Tor. The two she had met had welcomed her, were as kind as the Sisters, but - and this surprised Gwenhwyfar - could offer her no more comfort than the Christian community. Strange, it was the quiet, simple lives of the Holy Sisters that provided the inner peace she craved. The Ladies were brash and gaudy - their bangles jangling at their wrists, the vivid-bright tunics, the startling blue tattooed in writhing swirls on face and arms. Inside the squat building they took her to, a heavy, mind-numbing aroma muddled her mind even more and left her disorientated and distant. They were kind, concerned and eager to help, but Gwenhwyfar sat with them tense and stiff, like a doll carved of wood.
And something else she realised, as she had punted the little boat back across the lake: they seemed to be living a pretence. A theatre play. Women dressed up as the Goddess’s Ladies, raising their hands to the sky and calling with shrieks and cries for the Mother to hear and help. Not that it had been like that; there had been no wailing or moaning, but the intoned prayer had jarred with a stilted rhythm, which had grated and pierced the ears instead of relaxing and pacifying the spirit as did the chanting of the Sisters.
Gwenhwyfar would walk on the Tor, but she never went back to the Ladies at the Lake.
The Sisters led a life of rigid routine revolving around daily chores and prayer. Their speech was quiet but not without laughter; indeed, they laughed often, sharing the many pleasures of their God’s created world of happiness and beauty. In the Sisters’ chapel or about their duties, they would often sing, chanting their praising rhythms to the glory of God. A comforting sound.
One other reason kept Gwenhwyfar away from the Ladies: Morgause was one of them. She was the third Lady.
After leaving the Ladies on that one visit, Gwenhwyfar had walked down the sloping path, through the clusters of alder and willow and had met with her, coming up from the lakeside. They had not exchanged words, merely stood, the one eyeing the other, stone-faced, critical. Morgause was dressed as a Lady of the Goddess, her golden hair loose with the blue-painted patterns tattooed on her cheeks, forehead and bare arms. In comparison, Gwenhwyfar, with cloak clutched tight to her breast, was pale, frightened and tired.
This was the Lady they talked of then, down in the market place and in the tavern; the women with clacking disapproval, the men with shared winks and nudging elbows. She had wondered, Gwenhwyfar, meeting with the two Ladies, what there was in them for the men to be so excited over. They were old, shrivel-skinned, claw-fingered women with creased, toothless smiles. Her Holy Sisters were virtuous, pledged to serve God, not a man’s lusting. The Ladies welcomed the pleasure a man could give. Though what pleasures could be shared with those two crones Gwenhwyfar could not imagine. Not until she stood before Morgause. As young and perfectly beautiful as ever. She had dipped her head and stood aside to allow Gwenhwyfar to pass, honour-bound to a guest of the Goddess. Gwenhwyfar had murmured her thanks and hurried by, barely noticing the child, darker-skinned but with the same golden hair, tucked behind Morgause’s flame-coloured skirts.
The wind lifted Gwenhwyfar’s loose hair; she liked letting it flow unbound up here on the Tor, it added a sense of abandoned freedom. She would have liked to cast aside her clothing too, run naked over the short, springy turf. But that would shock the dear Sisters too much, and besides she did not have the courage to prance about in the open birthclad. Overhead, a screech of swifts darted, swooping and diving, their calls shrill but wildly exciting. She watched them pass, clapped her hands at their breathtaking aerobatics. As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, skimming down the side of the Tor and away.
Gwenhwyfar closed her eyes and breathed in deep, holding the heady scent of morning-damp air, releasing it slowly. Thank God today the rain had ceased. Gwenhwyfar smiled, felt the babe within her kick at her belly.
That was one thing she was grateful for. One solid thing that had given her strength to defeat the evil sense of dirt that Melwas’s stench had left on her. Even had she not known otherwise, the child she carried was too large, too well formed, to have been put there by him. She placed her hand on the bulge, felt another hefty kick. “Ah, babe, you are anxious to see Arthur, your Da? Soon will I send for him and he will come for us; soon.”
“Talking to yourself? They oft-times say it is a madness sign.”
Gwenhwyfar swivelled, startled. Morgause leant against another of the standing stones, her arms folded, expression mocking. The child was with her again, a pretty girl for all the grubbiness of skin, hair and dress - and the startling sign of fear that surged, naked, in her wide, dark eyes.
“Happen it is best to talk with yourself if you know the answers make sense.” Gwenhwyfar spoke to the woman pleasantly; the Tor did not lend itself to bad moods and sour answers. “Aside,” she said with a smile, “I talk to my child.”
“Ah, your child.” Morgause seated herself on the grass a few feet from Gwenhwyfar, querying with her hand and a raised eyebrow whether Gwenhwyfar minded, although it was not for Gwenhwyfar to say - the Tor belonged to all. Morgause leant her head back, letting the warmth of a sudden burst of sunshine on her face. To the grey-blue sky she said, “Why are you here, Gwenhwyfar of Gwynedd?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
Smiling at the neat answer, Morgause indicated Gwenhwyfar’s swollen belly and said, “Except I can guess your reason. Now the great Cunedda has gone you fear Gwynedd might throw you out for breeding a fatherless bastard?”
She liked hurting, Morgause, enjoyed the pleasure of another’s pain, would poke and stab at vulnerable places and watch her victim squirm under her torture. Animals, children, unprotected adults - few were safe from torment at Morgause’s hand. If she had intended to hurt Gwenhwyfar with this one, though, she failed. Gwenhwyfar had long accepted her father’s death - liked it not, but accepted it. And her brothers would not reject her when she became ready to contact them.
Morgause sat forward, hugging her knees. “As I recall, Cunedda had a fondness for fatherless bastards.”
Gwenhwyfar did not miss the inference, said with a lifted eyebrow, “He had a father, though, didn’t he - Arthur?”
Several thoughts wandered through Morgause’s mind: Uthr, and his son; the love she held for the one, the hatred for the other. The son should have been hers. If she had borne Uthr a son, then... then what? Would Uthr still be alive, would she now be Queen? The thread of Fate would never weave so smooth a pattern. Even had she borne a son, Uthr would still be dead, she would still have come here to seek shelter with the Ladies, become one of them. It suited her to be here. For now, until the time came to move on.
“So,” she said to Gwenhwyfar, pleasantly, “you come to the kingdom of Avallach and the garden of the Goddess to bide your time before dropping your child.”
“I come to share the peace of the Holy Sisters.”
“Hah!” Morgause snorted with amusement. “That pathetic bunch of nanny-goats! What would they know of bastard brats? It is in my mind you hide away here lest your brothers discover your condition. You ought to have had it aborted.” Morgause ran her hands across her own flat belly. “We of the Goddess know how to keep a womb empty.” She giggled, a crude sound full of suggestive pleasure. “Though men try hard to fill it.” Scornfully she added, “I doubt your Sisters know anything of such matters. Would scream ‘rape’ should a man dare catch a glimpse of an ankle beneath that drab garb they encase themselves in.”
“The nuns are good, kind women - do not mock them.”
“What, all of them?” Morgause was massaging her toes, wriggling each one between her fingers. The little girl had wandered some way off, was absorbed in picking daisies and threading them into a joined chain.
Watching her, Gwenhwyfar said, “She is a pretty child, your daughter.”
“What makes you assume she is my daughter?” Morgause laughed.
Cocking her head to one side, Gwenhwyfar studied the little girl. She was dressed in a rough-spun tunic, sleeveless, reaching a little below her knees. A shabby bandage was bound about her right hand. There were bruises, Gwenhwyfar noticed, on her arms and legs. A lot of angry bruises, but then children were always falling and hurting themselves. “I say it because twice now I have seen her trotting at your heels and because, although she has not your delicate skin, she is very like you.” And someone else?
Lifting her shoulders Morgause made light of it. “So she is mine. The Goddess smiles that she has another to follow her path.” She gathered up her skirt, folding the cloth back to her thighs, and stretched her bare legs to the sun. She threw Gwenhwyfar a sly sidelong look; eyeing her bulge, assessing how far the babe had grown. “Who is the father? Or can you not name him for fear of decrying his wife?”
Gwenhwyfar replied, indifferent to the taunting, “I have no intention of fighting with you, Morgause. It is no business of yours to know. I could as well ask who fathered your girl.” She added with a twist of returned spite, “Or do you not know?”
Morgause watched the child a moment through slit eyes. A stupid girl who answered questions in a mumble and had downcast eyes, a runny nose, a bottom lip that trembled most of the time and clumsy hands that dropped everything. She still wetted the bedding. Punishment seemed to have no effect, even though it was becoming more severe. Take this morning. The idiot child had spilt scalding porridge all over Morgause’s gown. She had immediately plunged the girl’s hand into water boiling in the cooking pot; doubted whether even that punishment would have any effect. The child would be as clumsy some other time, some other way. A tiresome, disappointing weed of a brat.
With a sigh, “She is nothing like her father.” Morgause scratched at an itch along her inner thigh and lay back, her hands tucked behind her head. “It is as well he does not know of her. He would be disappointed.”
“I think my man will be pleased with mine.”
Morgause learnt much from that. The father, whoever he was, knew nothing of the coming child. Also, Gwenhwyfar was not certain of him. She took that to mean there had been some passing affair, torrid meetings of a night, a sharing of lust, and now the man had gone. Back to his wife? Probably. It usually went that way.
“That is just as well,” Morgause said, climbing to her feet and straightening her skirt. The sun was becoming blanketed by a thick bank of cloud. It was darkening in the west, more rain coming. It was time she went. She looked north across the flood plain, north to where, somewhere, the Goddess was still held in awe, where this Christian God had trod no lasting footprint. The Ladies were revered in the far north, were welcomed. A gifted Lady could soar high among the Picti people. Could, if canny, fly as high as a queen. Aye, it was time she went from Yns Witrin.
In passing she said with unexpected good intention, “The Goddess has a place for girl-children should yours be born female. She does not need to know a father’s name, would welcome yours to her bosom.”
“As would the Christian Virgin.”
The kindness disappeared. “Hah! That is not how I heard it.” Brushing at a grass stain, Morgause came to stand before Gwenhwyfar. “You would fare better under the Goddess, she is in need of new servants.”
So that was why Morgause was being so friendly this day. Gwenhwyfar had wondered. She held her tongue, for Morgause spoke the truth of it. The nuns were kind-hearted, well-meaning and loving, but a few had tutted and mumbled over her condition. When Gwenhwyfar first came there had been guarded questions, met with a polite silence. They knew her name, that was all, but of her parentage, her home, and the father of the child Gwenhwyfar had said nothing.
Was that something moving out there on the plain?
She had deliberately not informed anyone of her whereabouts. That they would be suffering pain she realised, but it would be a short, soon mended hurt. Her own hurt, for the time being, came more important. She was not ready for the harassment of the outside world, was not ready for the sympathy and swamping affection that, however well intentioned, would drown her severely cracked spirit. The Sisters gave her those things, but in a distant, impersonal way. “Soon,” she had promised herself, “I will send a messenger soon. When I am ready to take up my cloak and go out into the world again; but for now I need time for my wounds to heal, here within the peace and privacy of Yns Witrin.” And suddenly she received the welcome knowing that ‘soon’ had come. She was ready to turn aside from tranquillity and face reality.
“I must be getting back,” Gwenhwyfar said, rising to her feet. She took a few paces down the slope, stopped to say, “I shall tell Arthur, the Pendragon when I see him that you are here, Morgause.”
Morgause laughed, hands on hips, head tossed back. “So he may avoid the place? Do not bother yourself, I am leaving. I need somewhere more...” She paused, smiled - wicked, Morgause’s smile could be - “Beneficial,” she finished.
She watched Gwenhwyfar go; watched, too, the horsemen, for that knot of clouded shapes was definitely horsemen. The girl had come up, was standing a few inches from her mother.
“I met with Gwenhwyfar when I had the Pendragon,” Morgause said to the wind. “Not this Pendragon, I speak of the father.” She clasped her arms about herself. The wind was growing chill. “He was a man worth the having.” She looked down at the child who stood wide-eyed with fear, thumb stuck in her mouth. A patch had spread on her skirt where she had wet herself.
“Love of the Mother!” Morgause snarled. “Uthr Pendragon was worth the having, but by the pleasure he gave, were you?”
© Helen Hollick
It was not a Christian place, this Tor, the Holy Sisters did not like her walking here. Yns Witrin it was called, the Glass Isle. Even in the driest of summers there was always water spread around the foot of this conical hill - sodden places, marsh oozing underfoot, pitted with deeper bog that could trap and drown the unwary. Come winter, or after weeks of rain such as this year had brought, the low flat levels became a plain of dotted lakes and running channels. The brooding height of the Tor reflected in those vast, mirroring waters. An imaged island as delicately translucent and brittle as glass.
Shrouded in morning mist and with its ancient miz-maze path winding back and forth in ritual pattern up the steep slopes, the Tor squatted over a cluster of little hills, like a matriarch presiding over her mixed brood sheltering within the fall of her shadow.
It might not be Christian, but it was a revered and mystical place. A sanctum of the Old Ways, of the Mother Goddess and Avallach, God of the Underworld. She danced on the buttercup-spotted or frost-rimed grass. He slept beneath, in his domain of Avalon within the darkness of the hollow hill, waiting for the souls of the dead to find their way by night down the passages into the Other World.
Once, there had been many who served the Goddess; now the young women went to the Christian Mother. Daughters learnt the litany of the Holy Church, not the ancient learning of a Goddess who was sliding into obscurity. Only three priestesses were left down there at the base of the Tor, their poor dwelling houses built along the shore of the water. Theirs was an ancient, once elite, clan. ‘The Ladies’, they were called: women of the Goddess. With the passing of the three, the Goddess would be gone from the Tor. Forgotten.
Drawn to this richly spiritual place, Christian people had settled their community among the cluster of hills set on the flat of the Summer Land. They had built their little chapel and crude dwellings; set up their market place and expanded as each year more people joined them. The chapel became a church, the dwelling houses merging together into cloistered orders where men and women could live and work alongside God and Christ. Traders arrived. Farmers brought their produce and cattle to the market and prospered; a tavern flourished to provide bed and food for weary travellers who came to worship at the wondrous-built church, or seek healing or learning from the holy men and woman. Under the Christ God the Glass Isle thrived.
It may have been very pagan, this Tor that hovered above the mist of a damp spring or autumn morning, or floated on a flood plain of glistening, sky-bright water, but Yns Witrin possessed a pull of awe and inspiration. A place where it was easy to listen to the voice of your God. Within the spirit of the Tor, you could see through the shaded windows of your own soul. And the Tor was a place of the Mother. Whether she were the old Goddess or the Virgin Mother of Christ, she was still the Mother. Gwenhwyfar had been safe here under her protective wing, was calmed and becoming healed of fear and the disgrace of an unwanted and uninvited invasion of her body. Rape carried a powerful backlash of wretchedness.
To her, this quiet hill was a patient, contented place away from the dark, crowding shadows of horror. A place for the female. A sanctuary where time drifted with the moon cycle and where the earth beneath your feet understood the pain of labour and the joy of birth.
‘Have other women stood here, where I stand on this wind-teased summit,’ she wondered. ‘Watching as I watch, waiting as I wait, for a child to be born or the menfolk to come back from war?’
Probably. The Tor was a guardian shield for women. It was said children were conceived or borne with ease and safety up here. Women’s natural troubles were healed. The Tor, a buffer against the harsh reality of life out there in the bad lands. It seemed so long ago, so far away, that rain-drenched night in Londinium. Yet it haunted her, clinging like stale perfume. Sickly and repulsive.
She had a vague recollection of how she came to be here. She remembered the shouting and a clash of weapons; fearful desperate faces. Pounding hooves, sobbing breath - her own? Frightened horses bolting. Her arms clinging exhausted to a bay horse, muscles locked, unable to let go until he shuddered, eventually, to a halt. Gwenhwyfar had no idea how far that wild flight had taken her or to where she was taken. Knew only that her body ached and head throbbed. She was unaware of the jagged slash across her forehead, barely recalled the swinging hilt of a sword on a rocking boat that had caused it. The scab had long since peeled itching away, the scar beneath fading white against darker skin.
The Holy Sisters said she had ranted delirious in fever for several days.
Had an inner sense guided her to them? Or had it been the wandering bay horse with a rider slumped across his withers who had trotted to other horses, eager for company? Whatever, the six women making their way to join the Sisters of Yns Witrin had taken her into their wagon, tended and cared for her. Unsure who she was or where she had come from, and unwilling to delay their journey, they had decided to carry her with them.
In her dazed state, Gwenhwyfar had raised no objection.
The gentle Sisters fluttered round her, enfolding her in the safe seclusion of their nest, clucking and cooing, thanking the wisdom of the Virgin for guiding a daughter to safety. Gwenhwyfar let their attentions wash like healing balm over her muddled mind, having no energy or inclination to contradict them, relieved and thankful that the Goddess - under whatever guise - had brought her here, once strength and sense began to return, to idle among these gentle women of peace.
Once, she had visited the Ladies, going across the spread of the lake to their huddle of meagre dwellings at the base of the Tor. The two she had met had welcomed her, were as kind as the Sisters, but - and this surprised Gwenhwyfar - could offer her no more comfort than the Christian community. Strange, it was the quiet, simple lives of the Holy Sisters that provided the inner peace she craved. The Ladies were brash and gaudy - their bangles jangling at their wrists, the vivid-bright tunics, the startling blue tattooed in writhing swirls on face and arms. Inside the squat building they took her to, a heavy, mind-numbing aroma muddled her mind even more and left her disorientated and distant. They were kind, concerned and eager to help, but Gwenhwyfar sat with them tense and stiff, like a doll carved of wood.
And something else she realised, as she had punted the little boat back across the lake: they seemed to be living a pretence. A theatre play. Women dressed up as the Goddess’s Ladies, raising their hands to the sky and calling with shrieks and cries for the Mother to hear and help. Not that it had been like that; there had been no wailing or moaning, but the intoned prayer had jarred with a stilted rhythm, which had grated and pierced the ears instead of relaxing and pacifying the spirit as did the chanting of the Sisters.
Gwenhwyfar would walk on the Tor, but she never went back to the Ladies at the Lake.
The Sisters led a life of rigid routine revolving around daily chores and prayer. Their speech was quiet but not without laughter; indeed, they laughed often, sharing the many pleasures of their God’s created world of happiness and beauty. In the Sisters’ chapel or about their duties, they would often sing, chanting their praising rhythms to the glory of God. A comforting sound.
One other reason kept Gwenhwyfar away from the Ladies: Morgause was one of them. She was the third Lady.
After leaving the Ladies on that one visit, Gwenhwyfar had walked down the sloping path, through the clusters of alder and willow and had met with her, coming up from the lakeside. They had not exchanged words, merely stood, the one eyeing the other, stone-faced, critical. Morgause was dressed as a Lady of the Goddess, her golden hair loose with the blue-painted patterns tattooed on her cheeks, forehead and bare arms. In comparison, Gwenhwyfar, with cloak clutched tight to her breast, was pale, frightened and tired.
This was the Lady they talked of then, down in the market place and in the tavern; the women with clacking disapproval, the men with shared winks and nudging elbows. She had wondered, Gwenhwyfar, meeting with the two Ladies, what there was in them for the men to be so excited over. They were old, shrivel-skinned, claw-fingered women with creased, toothless smiles. Her Holy Sisters were virtuous, pledged to serve God, not a man’s lusting. The Ladies welcomed the pleasure a man could give. Though what pleasures could be shared with those two crones Gwenhwyfar could not imagine. Not until she stood before Morgause. As young and perfectly beautiful as ever. She had dipped her head and stood aside to allow Gwenhwyfar to pass, honour-bound to a guest of the Goddess. Gwenhwyfar had murmured her thanks and hurried by, barely noticing the child, darker-skinned but with the same golden hair, tucked behind Morgause’s flame-coloured skirts.
The wind lifted Gwenhwyfar’s loose hair; she liked letting it flow unbound up here on the Tor, it added a sense of abandoned freedom. She would have liked to cast aside her clothing too, run naked over the short, springy turf. But that would shock the dear Sisters too much, and besides she did not have the courage to prance about in the open birthclad. Overhead, a screech of swifts darted, swooping and diving, their calls shrill but wildly exciting. She watched them pass, clapped her hands at their breathtaking aerobatics. As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, skimming down the side of the Tor and away.
Gwenhwyfar closed her eyes and breathed in deep, holding the heady scent of morning-damp air, releasing it slowly. Thank God today the rain had ceased. Gwenhwyfar smiled, felt the babe within her kick at her belly.
That was one thing she was grateful for. One solid thing that had given her strength to defeat the evil sense of dirt that Melwas’s stench had left on her. Even had she not known otherwise, the child she carried was too large, too well formed, to have been put there by him. She placed her hand on the bulge, felt another hefty kick. “Ah, babe, you are anxious to see Arthur, your Da? Soon will I send for him and he will come for us; soon.”
“Talking to yourself? They oft-times say it is a madness sign.”
Gwenhwyfar swivelled, startled. Morgause leant against another of the standing stones, her arms folded, expression mocking. The child was with her again, a pretty girl for all the grubbiness of skin, hair and dress - and the startling sign of fear that surged, naked, in her wide, dark eyes.
“Happen it is best to talk with yourself if you know the answers make sense.” Gwenhwyfar spoke to the woman pleasantly; the Tor did not lend itself to bad moods and sour answers. “Aside,” she said with a smile, “I talk to my child.”
“Ah, your child.” Morgause seated herself on the grass a few feet from Gwenhwyfar, querying with her hand and a raised eyebrow whether Gwenhwyfar minded, although it was not for Gwenhwyfar to say - the Tor belonged to all. Morgause leant her head back, letting the warmth of a sudden burst of sunshine on her face. To the grey-blue sky she said, “Why are you here, Gwenhwyfar of Gwynedd?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
Smiling at the neat answer, Morgause indicated Gwenhwyfar’s swollen belly and said, “Except I can guess your reason. Now the great Cunedda has gone you fear Gwynedd might throw you out for breeding a fatherless bastard?”
She liked hurting, Morgause, enjoyed the pleasure of another’s pain, would poke and stab at vulnerable places and watch her victim squirm under her torture. Animals, children, unprotected adults - few were safe from torment at Morgause’s hand. If she had intended to hurt Gwenhwyfar with this one, though, she failed. Gwenhwyfar had long accepted her father’s death - liked it not, but accepted it. And her brothers would not reject her when she became ready to contact them.
Morgause sat forward, hugging her knees. “As I recall, Cunedda had a fondness for fatherless bastards.”
Gwenhwyfar did not miss the inference, said with a lifted eyebrow, “He had a father, though, didn’t he - Arthur?”
Several thoughts wandered through Morgause’s mind: Uthr, and his son; the love she held for the one, the hatred for the other. The son should have been hers. If she had borne Uthr a son, then... then what? Would Uthr still be alive, would she now be Queen? The thread of Fate would never weave so smooth a pattern. Even had she borne a son, Uthr would still be dead, she would still have come here to seek shelter with the Ladies, become one of them. It suited her to be here. For now, until the time came to move on.
“So,” she said to Gwenhwyfar, pleasantly, “you come to the kingdom of Avallach and the garden of the Goddess to bide your time before dropping your child.”
“I come to share the peace of the Holy Sisters.”
“Hah!” Morgause snorted with amusement. “That pathetic bunch of nanny-goats! What would they know of bastard brats? It is in my mind you hide away here lest your brothers discover your condition. You ought to have had it aborted.” Morgause ran her hands across her own flat belly. “We of the Goddess know how to keep a womb empty.” She giggled, a crude sound full of suggestive pleasure. “Though men try hard to fill it.” Scornfully she added, “I doubt your Sisters know anything of such matters. Would scream ‘rape’ should a man dare catch a glimpse of an ankle beneath that drab garb they encase themselves in.”
“The nuns are good, kind women - do not mock them.”
“What, all of them?” Morgause was massaging her toes, wriggling each one between her fingers. The little girl had wandered some way off, was absorbed in picking daisies and threading them into a joined chain.
Watching her, Gwenhwyfar said, “She is a pretty child, your daughter.”
“What makes you assume she is my daughter?” Morgause laughed.
Cocking her head to one side, Gwenhwyfar studied the little girl. She was dressed in a rough-spun tunic, sleeveless, reaching a little below her knees. A shabby bandage was bound about her right hand. There were bruises, Gwenhwyfar noticed, on her arms and legs. A lot of angry bruises, but then children were always falling and hurting themselves. “I say it because twice now I have seen her trotting at your heels and because, although she has not your delicate skin, she is very like you.” And someone else?
Lifting her shoulders Morgause made light of it. “So she is mine. The Goddess smiles that she has another to follow her path.” She gathered up her skirt, folding the cloth back to her thighs, and stretched her bare legs to the sun. She threw Gwenhwyfar a sly sidelong look; eyeing her bulge, assessing how far the babe had grown. “Who is the father? Or can you not name him for fear of decrying his wife?”
Gwenhwyfar replied, indifferent to the taunting, “I have no intention of fighting with you, Morgause. It is no business of yours to know. I could as well ask who fathered your girl.” She added with a twist of returned spite, “Or do you not know?”
Morgause watched the child a moment through slit eyes. A stupid girl who answered questions in a mumble and had downcast eyes, a runny nose, a bottom lip that trembled most of the time and clumsy hands that dropped everything. She still wetted the bedding. Punishment seemed to have no effect, even though it was becoming more severe. Take this morning. The idiot child had spilt scalding porridge all over Morgause’s gown. She had immediately plunged the girl’s hand into water boiling in the cooking pot; doubted whether even that punishment would have any effect. The child would be as clumsy some other time, some other way. A tiresome, disappointing weed of a brat.
With a sigh, “She is nothing like her father.” Morgause scratched at an itch along her inner thigh and lay back, her hands tucked behind her head. “It is as well he does not know of her. He would be disappointed.”
“I think my man will be pleased with mine.”
Morgause learnt much from that. The father, whoever he was, knew nothing of the coming child. Also, Gwenhwyfar was not certain of him. She took that to mean there had been some passing affair, torrid meetings of a night, a sharing of lust, and now the man had gone. Back to his wife? Probably. It usually went that way.
“That is just as well,” Morgause said, climbing to her feet and straightening her skirt. The sun was becoming blanketed by a thick bank of cloud. It was darkening in the west, more rain coming. It was time she went. She looked north across the flood plain, north to where, somewhere, the Goddess was still held in awe, where this Christian God had trod no lasting footprint. The Ladies were revered in the far north, were welcomed. A gifted Lady could soar high among the Picti people. Could, if canny, fly as high as a queen. Aye, it was time she went from Yns Witrin.
In passing she said with unexpected good intention, “The Goddess has a place for girl-children should yours be born female. She does not need to know a father’s name, would welcome yours to her bosom.”
“As would the Christian Virgin.”
The kindness disappeared. “Hah! That is not how I heard it.” Brushing at a grass stain, Morgause came to stand before Gwenhwyfar. “You would fare better under the Goddess, she is in need of new servants.”
So that was why Morgause was being so friendly this day. Gwenhwyfar had wondered. She held her tongue, for Morgause spoke the truth of it. The nuns were kind-hearted, well-meaning and loving, but a few had tutted and mumbled over her condition. When Gwenhwyfar first came there had been guarded questions, met with a polite silence. They knew her name, that was all, but of her parentage, her home, and the father of the child Gwenhwyfar had said nothing.
Was that something moving out there on the plain?
She had deliberately not informed anyone of her whereabouts. That they would be suffering pain she realised, but it would be a short, soon mended hurt. Her own hurt, for the time being, came more important. She was not ready for the harassment of the outside world, was not ready for the sympathy and swamping affection that, however well intentioned, would drown her severely cracked spirit. The Sisters gave her those things, but in a distant, impersonal way. “Soon,” she had promised herself, “I will send a messenger soon. When I am ready to take up my cloak and go out into the world again; but for now I need time for my wounds to heal, here within the peace and privacy of Yns Witrin.” And suddenly she received the welcome knowing that ‘soon’ had come. She was ready to turn aside from tranquillity and face reality.
“I must be getting back,” Gwenhwyfar said, rising to her feet. She took a few paces down the slope, stopped to say, “I shall tell Arthur, the Pendragon when I see him that you are here, Morgause.”
Morgause laughed, hands on hips, head tossed back. “So he may avoid the place? Do not bother yourself, I am leaving. I need somewhere more...” She paused, smiled - wicked, Morgause’s smile could be - “Beneficial,” she finished.
She watched Gwenhwyfar go; watched, too, the horsemen, for that knot of clouded shapes was definitely horsemen. The girl had come up, was standing a few inches from her mother.
“I met with Gwenhwyfar when I had the Pendragon,” Morgause said to the wind. “Not this Pendragon, I speak of the father.” She clasped her arms about herself. The wind was growing chill. “He was a man worth the having.” She looked down at the child who stood wide-eyed with fear, thumb stuck in her mouth. A patch had spread on her skirt where she had wet herself.
“Love of the Mother!” Morgause snarled. “Uthr Pendragon was worth the having, but by the pleasure he gave, were you?”
© Helen Hollick
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I love this passage. Glastonbury, even today, is a magical place and I have been fortunate to have climbed the Tor twice. You have cleverly combined fact and myth into the history of the place
ReplyDeleteDeliberately done of course. Yes I've been up the Tor several times - and I see it quite often when out and about competing in that area with daughter Kathy's showjumping.
DeleteOh I think I might just have to set current reading pile to one side and revisit this wonderful book. I still have my first edition copy!
ReplyDeleteOne of these days I'll pluck up courage to re-read it myself ... trouble is I'm bound to want to re-edit it. I did write it well over 26 years ago after all!
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