Chapter XVI:
Morgan le Fay

“IF KNIGHTS ERRANT were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in.”

Well, of course; everyone knew that. The Yankee was not blaring a news flash. For a start, there was the infamous Green Knight, Sir Bertilak, whose grand idea of a party game was to invite his knightly guests to chop off his head in exchange for the privilege of chopping off theirs. Sir Percard, the Black Knight, had invented a similar version of fun, and Sir Ironside, the Red Knight, liked to adorn a massive ancient oak tree near his castle with the bodies of the knights who had lost to him in combat—are we sensing a pattern here? I read silently on, “As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the rest was fact.”

“Hah!”

Sandy looked at me in surprise; I had forgotten the second rule of queenship, the definition of “bodily noises” having been expanded by the Royal Rules Committee in the Year of Our Lord 502 to include exclamations of a non-verbal nature. He said, “I’m sorry, Boss, you found something to be funny?”

“Indeed. Knights errant are not the only people whose statements are over-inflated. Just visit the Outfield Inn after the conclusion of any home game.” As fragile as Sandy was looking at this point, I refrained from jesting about the ballplayers’ statistics, which were his lifeblood. That hit would have come far too easily. Statistics lie, and liars statisticate. Instead I asked, with more than a mote of incredulity, “Was this what you would have me see?”

“Not exactly.” He flipped forward a few pages, past a humorous image of a man trying with his entire body’s weight to pry the pope off the Throne of Peter using a lever named “Persimmons Soap;” a rather unflattering rendition of a mounted Sir Cote Male Taile, his destrier as well as himself also brandishing the soap moniker; and a moody depiction of Sir Boss and the Lady Alisande la Carteloise arriving at the portcullis of my castle.

I followed the course of Sandy’s finger as it traced down the facing page and stopped mid-paragraph. “Please start here,” he said. Curious, I obliged him:

 

…But Morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as another person would have harpooned a rat!

Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the old king was wrung an involuntary “O-h!” of compassion. The look he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk.

[Excerpted from Chapter XVI of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, 1889; public domain.]

 

Sandy whispered in a tone so low I had to magically boost his volume, “Did you really murder an innocent child—just like that—for bumping your knee?”

“Yes.” I elected to relieve him of the horror cascading over his face, ere he suffered a stroke before my very eyes. “But there is of course more to the story than the Yankee knew. That page was not innocent. He was ‘bumping’ my husband King Uriens—”

“That does put a different face on the king’s reaction.”

I chose to ignore the interruption. “—obtaining damaging secrets during these illicit liaisons and selling them to our enemies, most notably, my brother the good King Arthur himself.”

“O-h-h-h-h.” I permitted Sandy to put in as many hyphens as he needed in order to expel his concerns and doubts. “Still—”

“Still, nothing!” I did have a limit to how many dashes—“m” or “n”—that I would tolerate on any given issue. “I was perfectly within my rights and authority as queen to eliminate a catamite, spy, and traitor with one stroke.” The details of the incident flooded to mind; I did not require the Yankee’s reminder. The page’s grandmother had intruded upon the feast later that same evening to lay the curse of God’s wrath upon me for slaying her last remaining kin, and when I would have had the crone burnt at the stake for her treason, The Boss intervened with threats of destroying my castle.

God’s wrath had proven itself in my subsequent banishment to this century. Heat rose, unbidden, to my cheeks. I closed my eyes against the stinging threat of tears, and I pursed my lips to keep them from betraying me as well.

After a time—how long, I know not—I felt Sandy’s arm come gently to rest across my shoulders; I accepted his tacit invitation and pressed my face against his chest. His other arm encircled me, too, a mantle of forgiveness that was long overdue.