A Word of Explanation

IT IS WITH heaviest of hearts and gravest of purposes that I discharge the duty of writing this account of the fate of my sovereign mistress, Queen Morgan. May she find solace and blessed peace, wherever she has gone.

The queen received a vision of what was to befall her brother King Arthur in his final battle with Sir Mordred. Her Majesty deigned not to reveal to me the details of this vision, only that she must hasten to the Salisbury Plain.

Such was her seeming alarm at these as yet untranspired events that she eschewed the customary proprieties and mustered some guards, what small few of her maidservants could sit a palfrey, and me, her humble scribe, to accompany her on this journey. The queen looked beautiful yet grim, bedecked in a gown of deepest midnight black, cloaked and hooded, a very Angel of Death.

Death, indeed, we saw in terrible abundance when, breathless from the pell-mell ride, at last we reached the battlefield. In the pallor of advancing dusk, our eyes surveyed carnage from horizon to horizon, the bodies of men and horses rising like myriad islands in a sea of blood; what survivors there might have been had already escaped, the scavenger birds had flown to roost, and doubtless the corpse-robbers were yet awaiting full dark to begin their godless task. What greeted the queen upon her arrival was the acrid stench of smoke and death, and a great, grave silence.

Queen Morgan gazed about, her head moving slowly this way and that, until of a sudden she must have espied that which she sought, whipped her mount into a gallop, and careened into the valley, leaving her escort to follow as best we might.

The queen halted at a sharp bend of the River Cam, where grew a lone oak whose branches overspread a pair of armored men, one kneeling beside the other, who lay propped against the oak’s trunk. The kneeling knight I recognized by his shield’s device as Sir Bedivere. Upon the ground beside the other knight lay a helmet from whose crest glinted in the torchlight a golden circlet; or rather, the circlet’s remains. Closer inspection revealed the circlet hewn in twain. A mortal blow, thought I, and yet the wounded knight, my lady queen’s sovereign brother, was still on life, though only just; he moaned and swooned, while Sir Bedivere swabbed and bound the royal brow with linen torn asunder from his surcoat’s hem.

Into this piteous scene stepped Queen Morgan, calling for her herbs and simples to be brought forth. Of her purpose I knew not, though as her scribe I am passing fair acquainted with the ponderous and bitter history ’twixt herself and the man in whose veins coursed the blood of Queen Morgan’s mother but not her father. ’Tis neither my intent nor duty to judge; howbeit, if one might suspect the queen had bethought herself to redress certain wrongs committed upon her person, one might not stand far from the truth.

Be it as it may, the queen’s command must be obeyed, for disobedience earns death, as I have observed and heretofore recorded on many a grim occasion, and so her ladies procured the needful potions and bore them to our royal mistress with all haste. Other of her servants she set to the task of gathering peat and wood with which to build a fire nigh the wounded man.

Of the mighty Sir Bedivere, he left his liege’s side but once, upon some errand of unknown shape and import, bearing the king’s own magnificent Excalibur. I like to have fallen down in sheer amazement at that, all the more so when Sir Bedivere returned, some while later, with Excalibur nowhere to be seen, and the king becalmed by his knight’s report.

Forgive me, I beseech of thee; my thoughts outfly my pen, which must chronicle these events in their rightful and proper progression.

All the while Sir Bedivere tarried upon his errand, the fire blazed higher and hotter, coaxed thus by machinations of my lady queen’s doing. She incanted over the blaze in a tongue I know not, and triumph gleamed from her countenance. At the flames’ highest pinnacle, there came a mighty crash like unto thunder, and a flash so bright it rendered me senseless.

I recovered my wits to the feel of someone jostling my shoulder. Fearful for my queen’s safety, I arose and gazed about, and lo! There stood her Majesty as before, yet not as before.

She appeared as comely and regal as ever, with nary a blemish to mar the flawless perfection of her beauty, and yet her countenance seemed reserved, concerned, mayhap—dare I say?—worried. As she turned toward her brother, the hand she laid upon his bandaged brow seemed tender, yea, even loving. What manner of miracle had wrought such a change over a lifetime of rankle, who could say? With her other hand she grasped a tome that I recognized not, bound not in leather and boards but between thin-hammered sheets of a fey, dark metal whose like I had never seen upon this earth. It shaded from blue to purple to black to blue, over and over again, the bands of color writhing serpentine and uncanny across its surface in succession as the tome reflected the fire’s light.

’Twas then Queen Morgan espied me and beckoned me closer. The tome, she insisted, contained the chronicle, written in her own hand, of all the events that had transpired while she was absent from our company. Still befuddled of thought, I began to protest that her absence had been but a few moments; but of a sudden, remembering me to whom I spoke, I desisted at once, lest I regret my outburst.

Rather than waxing wroth, as I had feared, the queen laughed, as if I had regaled her with the most sublime of jests. She placed the tome into my trembling hands and bade me swear that I would render all these events, paying most especial attention to those written within the tome, even should I not comprehend all. She said—

“For ’tis a caution of great import for all time to come.”

What scribe worth his salt could refuse such a task?

Thus, with my oath to her duly sworn, she turned to her men-at-arms and ordered them to strip the ruined battle-wagons of timbers and rope, and build a raft. Its purpose I knew not, nor cared I not, for at that moment I opened the tome.

If its pages were fashioned of parchment, ’twas the most wondrously smooth, thin, supple, and blindingly white parchment that ever had been wrought. Black, flowing script of the most handsome quality greeted my eyes and ensnared my thoughts from the very first word, and I became engrossed in:

 

 

QUEEN MORGAN’S HISTORY

 

ALL CALL ME Queen. For my unparalleled skills in leechcraft, most call me “The Wise.” No man dares call me “le Fay,” lest he die.

I hight Morgan.

That is to say, my name is Morgan, so chosen by my mother, Duchess Igraine, to honor the Great Queen of the Old Religion, Mór Rigan, goddess of war. My mother never knew how prophetic her choice would prove to be.

I am the daughter of Duke Gorlois, the sister of Queen Margawse and Queen Elaine, the wife of King Uriens of Gore, and the mother of Sir Uwaine of the Table Round. Blessed good fortune made me all of these things.

By the capricious hand of ill fortune, King Arthur became my younger half brother, spawned upon my most virtuous and blameless mother by that demon in man’s raiment, Uther Pendragon.

I despised Arthur from the very hour of his birth.

Our history, Arthur’s and mine, is recorded in copious detail elsewhere: his command to Merlin to inflict an enchanted brand upon my person as eternal punishment for my role in assisting Uriens and the other eleven kings in battle against him at the commencement of his reign; his gifting to me of a castle near Camelot and his subsequent—and failed, every one—attempts to win it back through force of arms; his murdering of my beloved Sir Accolon; my acquisition of Excalibur’s scabbard; and my sundry—and failed, all save the last—attempts to open his eyes to the treason of Launcelot and Guenever. I had no reason to love Arthur, nor he me, and every person of every caste living on the isle of Britain knew it.

Thus it should come as no surprise to any reader of these words that I arrived after the battle on the Salisbury Plain intending to assist my half brother from this life with all haste, thereby to aid my nephew Sir Mordred in claiming the throne.

Imagine my utter shock and despair at finding my dearest sister’s son already slain and my wretched brother so far gone of his mortal wound that nothing of my devising could have hurried his demise; ’twas nigh unbearable.

Being deprived of the long-cherished target for my rage, I cast about in my mind for another target and soon had the right of it: the uncouth and irksome stranger Hank Morgan, called by many “Boss.” The fact that he and I share a name remains a source of shame for me.

In quick succession, The Boss—a title he won in his future era, so my court spies informed me—had insinuated himself into my brother’s trust, became the second-most powerful man in the land, and then tried with his sorcerous meddling to effect so-called improvements in our daily lives. The Boss had encouraged slaves to revolt and peasants to view themselves far more highly than they ought, mocked and derided goodly servants of the Church, set free dangerous criminals, and fashioned weapons of the most deadly and unnatural sort. For these crimes, and more besides, The Boss deserved death.