[Moruadh]

Continuazione dell'estratto (disponibile online sul sito dell'autore-www.douglasclegg.com)

7

The stranger did not resist the monks as they took him at the elbows and prodded him along, for the stranger, despite his youthful appearance, no more it seemed than a man in his late twenties, yet showed infirmity of limb and fell once or twice before reaching the monastery gate. The little boy trotted after the monks alongside the dirt road, and now and then reminded the elder monk that his father would want the gold “if the good Sir Bedevere keeps his promises.”
Watching the monks from a distance, some of the villagers came to the edge of the winter fields to ask after this prisoner. The boy’s father came, too, and drew his son back “for the plague may be with him, and demons upon his robe.” And then, his father shouted after the monks, “I will not forget what is owed me from this! What my son is owed!”
The elder monk glanced back at the shouting man, and shook his head when he saw the folk who had gathered to watch them. He said to the young monk who shouldered the burden of their captive, “They will want blood. It is all anyone wants, these days. More so than gold.”
The other monk remained silent, while the strange man leaned against him for support as they walked.
At the north gate into the monastery, which led first to the gardens, the elder monk said to the younger, “Bedevere will come soon enough for this man. We must keep him here overnight before the soldiers force their way to him. I do not want an innocent man murdered in a time like this. Too much murder has gone on. Too much greed. You will find what he seeks. Why he is here. If he is the traitor, we shall pass him to the knight’s men. But if he is not, we shall give him sanctuary.”

8

Inside, they took the stranger to a room of straw and dirt, and after awhile, in the dark, he slept again. The heavy-gated door, closed and locked. Though it was a prison cell, the place held a bit of warmth in the earth and when he awoke briefly, before falling back to the deepest sleep of his life, he found a bowl of fresh water near him, as well as a trencher of bread soaked with milk.
Sometime in the night, the young monk entered his cell, a slow-burning lamp in his hand.

9

The stranger sat up in the straw, stretching his arms over his head as he woke. “Thank you for the water,” he said, sleepily. “It revived me much.”
“You have great need of sleep.”
“I have need of that sleep from which one does not wake,” the man said. Then, when he tried to move again, he groaned slightly, reaching down to touch his side. When he noticed the monk’s eyes upon his hand, he said, “Do not trouble yourself with my pain.”
“You are wounded?”
“I am healed,” the man said.
“I want to see your wounds,” the monk insisted. “They may need tending.”
The captive lay back on clumps of straw and drew back the fabric of his cloak, but slightly. Then, he smiled, but did not say a word. He reached to the stays along his cloak and undid them, up to his throat, and drew out the curved silver pin that held it in place.
When it opened, the monk noticed the torque that encircled his neck. He had seen torques in his childhood, but they had been outlawed by the church and the king as symbols of the heathens. It was a twist of beautiful gold, a collar band that did not seem too tight against the muscled cords of the man’s throat.
“It was given me by one whom I loved much,” the captive said, fingering the torque, like a slave collar. “It cannot be removed, though I have tried. But you are after wounds, my friend. I offer them to you.”
Drawing back his cloak completely, the man reached up with his hands and tore the thin fabric of his shirt open to his waist. Between the jagged tears of the cloth, the curves of a lean physique, well-defined muscles, with a chest that was thick and broad despite his body’s over-all slender build. Upon his smooth flesh, small tattoos of the type that adorned the pagan priests – markings in the ancient tongue that could not be deciphered without risk of heresy. The small image of the sun itself lay just above the curve of his left nipple, and of the crescent moon at his right. Three small markings had been etched just below his navel, with what looked like the welt of a healing wound that rose from the thin strip of leather at his thigh. He had no tufts of hair there, as was the old ritual of the forest priests to remove the body hair of initiates into certain forbidden mysteries and damnations.
“Yes,” the man said, watching the young monk. “Are they not beautiful? It is hard to take your eyes from this art, for it is said that it holds a glamour for men to look upon it.”
The monk, transfixed by the body art, his fingers gliding lightly along the captive’s ridged and taut stomach to his navel, and felt the slight welt of scar where the tattoos had been made just above his loins. The man shivered slightly at his touch.
“You are a most unusual monk,” the captive said, softly, his eyes warming to the monk’s face. “Would you like to inspect the rest of me before I am throttled by soldiers? I could step from these trousers that you might see more of this magickal art.”
His skin shone with oil and sweat, and when the man drew open the strip of leather binding at his trousers, and parted the opening, he grinned. “I have lain with monks before, so if that allows me escape from this place, then we may know each other freely.” He brought his hand to the monk’s sleeve and tugged it. “Is this what you wish?”
The monk drew his arm back, and returned his gaze to the captive’s face.
His eyes seemed like shiny black stones now where they had seemed warm and bright beneath the sun, and although the man remained smiling, his lips thick and curved, he radiated fury.
“I do not wish to…” the young monk said, his throat dry. “I want only to know.”
“To know? Is that why do you keep me here? Or is it to sell my head to the highest bidder?”
“No. But you are hunted like the forest stag. You are safer here than out in the cold fields where Bedevere’s men might find you. You are the one who betrayed the king. And the knight Lancelot. And the Queen of the Britons, Guinevere.”
“All those?” the man said. “You know this?”
“I have heard. And worst of all, to the people of these lands, from here to the islands, you murdered King Arthur, the greatest leader of the Britons.”
“My father.”
“You are truly Mordred, son of Morgan le Fay?”
“Yes. I am Mordred. I could lay claim to the family pen-Dragon, but I do not wish to do so. I am a prince of the Wastelands and of the isles of Glass and of Avalon and a priest of the sacred Grove. And only son of the king.”
“Why do you return here? We had heard you would escape to the Saxon lands, if alive. But…”
“You heard I had died, on the field. So here I am, a ghost.”
“Some reports were of your death, some not. I never believed you were dead.”
“Who are you not to believe in my death? You seem young to doubt me. How old can you be?”
“I am old enough,” the monk said. “I am nearly into my nineteenth year.”
“A dangerous age to bury yourself in a monastery, little brother monk,” Mordred said. “Your beauty is like a young stag in springtime. You should be out in the field dances, or riding a wild horse along the banks of a river. Chasing nymphs. Or men. The monastery is meant for old men, but the wilderness is meant for you. Your life has been shackled.”
“My life has been pure,” the monk said. “For I was born of sin and must atone.”
“All the world, according to monks, born from sin,” Mordred laughed. “Tell me, pure one, why have you come to me so late? To see my wounds? To cut off my head as I lay sleeping?”
“No.” The monk’s face reddened. “I would tend to your wounds, yes. But they seem healed. I would ask of you that you tell me of your life.”
“Why?”
Then, the monk said in a voice that was both nervous and hopeful, “That I might understand all of this.” In his eyes, a glistening of tears, yet he did not wipe them. “I cannot tell you more, for if I did, I would have to leave you to your fate. I have been raised among the gardens and cells of this abbey. My mother died before I reached a full year, and I have not experienced the world at all. The monastery have been my lot this whole life.”
“So tales of my crimes will please you?” Mordred asked.
The monk nodded.
“So that when you are on that hard wood bed, in your itchy shirt, after your evening prayers, you may lie there and think of the great and evil Mordred to whom you are superior?”
“No, my lord. Not in any way. But they say the world has unraveled, and the great knights and the King have passed. And you are the only witness who has come here who has known these noble knights and ladies of whom…of whom I speak. I wish for truth, good sir. I wish…” But the monk’s voice faded, and a troubling look came into his eyes. “I wish to know.”
“I will tell you what truth I know,” Mordred said. “If, with each tale, you allow me one freedom.”
“I cannot promise freedom.”
“I do not mean the freedom from this cell. I mean, the freedom with you that I desire.”
“I have heard of your desires,” the monk said.
“And I know the desires of one kept among monks his whole life, one of such beauty and longing and purity,” Mordred said. “But I need one freedom to begin, and another when I have finished.”
“Tell me,” the young monk said.
“For a kiss,” Mordred smiled, his gaze steady upon the youth who leaned forward while Mordred rose to meet it, and press his lips against the monk’s. The young monk withdrew after too long a moment, his face flush-red in the lamplight.
“Thank you,” Mordred sighed. “I have not felt so refreshed in days. And now, where shall I begin? Shall it be when I brought the Queen into the light of day? Or when, as a boy, I learned of the secrets of the earth and the lakes. Or of my training with the Merlin, in the eastern arts of necromancy and of war? I owe you my life tonight, my friend. I will tell you what you wish to know.”
“All of it,” the monk said, a slight rise in tone to his voice as if he were angry now for having given the kiss. “I want to know of Arthur and his knights. I want to know of meek and beautiful Guinevere, and that shining knight Lancelot, and the Lady of Astolat. I want to know of that terrible witch, Morgan le Fay and of her ogre-sister, Morgause, and of…”
“The lies that you’ve heard, second-hand, in your monk’s cage,” Mordred said, his eyes seeming to sadden a bit. “They are not true. Morgan and Morgause were not ogresses, neither were they terrible. In fact, many men believed them to be the most beautiful and powerful women of their time. If I tell you the truth, the truth as I know it from my own memory, tonight, will you help me escape this place?”
Without hesitation, the monk nodded his head, keeping his eyes on Mordred’s. “I will. Tell me of your mother. I have heard she was a great sorceress and spoke with the spirits of the dead.”
Mordred began his tale. “The king would one day call my mother the Witch-Queen, and she bore that title as if it were the greatest in all the world. And that is how I think of her, as the Queen of Witches, of the Faerie, of Broceliande and of Tintagel and of the Wastelands. But mostly, I think of her as Queen of the Britons. She was heavy with me in her belly when first she learned that Arthur, the King, but seventeen years of age, meant to murder her.”