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kashilascorner · 9 hours

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May Day Parade: May 1-5: Morbid Month of May {May King Mordred}

My contribution this time is a short story. You can read it under the cut or here. Happy birthday Mordred!

The night Mordred was born it was very cold. Colder than Mays should be, I was told. My mother's labor was harder than ever before, harder than it should have been. I was old enough to remember the baby girl, and later the baby boy she had had a few years ago: they were so small and so soft, and mother looked very happy. I remember my father, so proud of his children, of his healthy seed and his strong wife. But this time it was different. Mother labored for more than a day and I could hear her struggling from the corridors. The castle was so quiet, and it was raining outside, so there was nothing for us to do but to wait, and wait. My father, in his throne room, waited, at first calmly and later pacing frantically. He had dismissed all of his barons and gathered all of us, his children, with him. Gawain busied himself with painting a wooden horse for Gareth (he has always been the type of person who cannot keep his hands idle), and Gaheris clung to me, begging me to play with him. Back then I thought I was too old to be playing games, so I just stared at the rain falling outside and patiently waited for Gaheris to tire himself down. The little ones were also strangely quiet, as if they knew better than to be noisy, with Clarissant was dressing up little Gareth as if he was a doll, combing his hair, and only an occasional faint laughter from her and a low protest from him when she pulled his hair too hard.

Night fell and still no midwife had come out of mother's chambers. Men and children were not allowed in the room, but my father was desperate so he sent Gawain to get news, to no avail. The nurses came to take Gareth and Clarissant, though Gaheris insisted on staying a little longer. Father seemed deep in thoughts. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he seemed much older than ever before. Years had instilled into him after his war with uncle Arthur. During that year I had not seen him, and when he was finally back home, he seemed different: thinner, greyer, a slowness in his steps, and a new scar under his eyebrow. He was still a handsome looking man but this type of suffering, of lingering melancholy, did not suit him. He seemed to me a different person from the father I had known before. Knowing he would have a new baby had taken color back to his cheeks and yet, now he was becoming a shadow of himself again: only the silhouette of his tall figure seemed to remain and the rest was impenetrable in a somewhat pitiful way.

“Take Gaheris to bed, Ailie.” He told the nurse. She obeyed quickly, though the child did not. He was already so sleepy, but fought like all children do when they are commanded to do something they should be doing. Father stared at us with a very serious face, Gawain and I stood very straight. We had not talked too much since he came back from his honorable defeat and his glorious capitulation. When he saw us for the first time after his war, he had hugged us very tightly, said my fine, fine boys, and with a kiss, he sealed any attempt at explanations and never mentioned anything of what had happened again: nothing about how he left for fighting, how we fled and begged uncle Arthur's mercy, how the little ones had stayed behind while Gawain and I swore allegiance to Arthur on a bended knee. But this time father was not looking at us with unshed tears in his eyes and an untold story in his throat. Rather, his eyes were hollow and his voice cracked like a crow's.

“Gawain,” he said carefully, then his gaze came to me “Agravain, come here.” We approached the throne slowly, and stood side by side like little soldiers. Father was about to take our hands in his, but hesitated. Instead, he put one of his palms against the other, rubbing them with a nervousness that was completely unlike him. These were not the imperturbable yet somewhat sardonic mannerisms of the father I knew, and I could not help but think with contempt of how much he had changed. “My boys... You are old enough to understand this: your mother might not make it through the night, neither your new sibling, so pray if you find it in your heart. God always listens to innocents the most.” He smiled a little at that, then he could not resist resting his right hand on Gawain's shoulder. “Go to bed now. It's been a long day, yes?” Gawain nodded, reluctantly. Father pressed my hand lightly against his, feeling the ring he had given me the year prior as a birthday present, right before we left Lothian's court. I had been told I was the one who resembled him the most, and I thought it must be true because it seemed to me he was looking for something in my eyes that, in the past, he must have found within himself.

Gawain said some prayers and fell asleep murmuring barely audible words, snoring a little, maybe crying a little too. He always slept soundly; I suspected it was a way that his body compensated for the extra strength he had during the sun hours. Soon he would have his own room, and Clarissant would also move out of the children’s room very soon because she was the only girl. But I would still be sharing a room for some more time. I envied them, able to be alone with their thoughts and their secrets, no snoring brother beside them. No need to hold back any tears or any other ugliness. Would I miss Gawain? We were so close in age that we had always been together. I could not wait to sever myself from him, maybe prove something myself.

I didn't sleep that night. I thought of mother, and what father had said. What if I went to sleep and when I woke up, mother was gone? The mere thought made my heart beat faster and my stomach ache. When I had been away from her, the first few nights, I had to force myself not to cry. It felt so unfair how we had to leave mother and father. I could not even think of what it would be like not to ever see her again. And what of our new brother (for I was sure it would be a baby boy), what it I never got to meet him? I would have prayed, but I was never good at it. Father said innocent prayers are better, but none of mine ever were. Was I innocent just because I had done as I had been told? Had I not betrayed my father with my actions, fulfilling mother's orders? But my mother had done what was reasonable: she protected us because she loved us. And my father loved us too. Now I wish I had rejected my mother's ideas and went to war with father regardless of the consequences, but the night Mordred was born, I did not yet know that I would never in my life get the chance to fight alongside our father so the though barely crossed my mind. I did not know how little time we had left, and I was still too young to fight a real war. I refused to think of my dying mother and instead thought of my bay brother: what would he look like? Tall and blond like the rest of us, for sure. Would he be shy or outgoing? Clever or strong? I certainly hoped he could beat Gawain in a fight... Suddenly, I heard noises, and stood right up.

“Is it a girl?” Father asked, in a loud voice, as he rushed to mother's chambers. He really wanted more daughters. He had been delighted when Clarissant was born. I knew why: they said too many boys in a house was guaranteed trouble, and we were already a boy too many. I woke Gawain.

When we arrived, father was just entering mother’s room. The baby was a boy, I heard the midwife said. Father smiled and approached mother, closing the door behind him despite seeing us, so we were forced to wait outside as the last few busy maids left with their dirty clothes. A lot of dirty clothes. Gawain and I exchanged a look. I leaned into the wooden door.

“Don't eavesdrop!” Gawain scolded me, hitting my arm with his flat hand.

“Shut up, I'm trying to hear. Don't you want to know why father closed the door?” I whispered.

“Of course I do. But this way you'll only get us caught, idiot. Mother speaks too low to hear anyways.” The door was thick, so I admitted defeat with some reluctance. Perhaps I could sneak into mother's room and read the letters father had sent her, and the midwife's daughter liked me. Midwives always hear this type of stuff. Clarissant walked towards us, with Gaheris following behind, holding Gareth. He struggled. Although Gaheris was tall for his age, Gareth was now beyond the age of being carried in arms. He was rubbing his sleepy eyes and seemed to have cried, probably upset with being woken up. Finally, father opened the door. Outside it was breaking dawn and light was filtering through mother’s window.

“Say hello,” he said in a soft voice “and then let your mother rest.”

The room smelled like blood and filth –sweat, excrement, a lot of things I did not identify—with a vague hint of milk. It was obvious that the maids had done everything possible to clean up mother and make her presentable, but her hair was wet and the stench was difficult to bear. She was very, very pale, and obviously at the limit of her strength. Father took the baby from her trembling arms while she gave us an apologetic look, shy, and she would have blushed if she could. She was always very careful of her image and in any other circumstances, she would have never let us in the room. But this time she had to see us, had to hold our hands, feel us, like a matter of life and death. The maids had badly tried to cover bloody sheet after bloody sheet, and Gawain and father aptly maneuvered the youngest to spare them the worse views. And then there was the baby: he was very small, but according to my mother, he had roared and suckled like a lion. He was a wrinkled little thing with reddish skin and still some white sticky substance clinging to his hair and between his wrinkles. Until then I did not know what newborns looked like (both Clarissant and Gareth had been pristine clean by the time I first met them), but Mordred was there, right in front of me, freshly out of my mother’s flesh, not beautiful at all, but raw and ugly. It was fascinating. And for all of us, reunited after so long, it felt like a triumph.

It was late September when they took him. An unusually hot September, it seems to have been. Gawain joked that Mordred had dragged the summer along with him. Uncle Arthur then sent a message: every noble-born woman was to send their children born in late April to mid-May to Camelot for a massive blessing. My parents could have done what other families did, what I would have done if I were them, and send any other child instead. Mordred alone had two milk mothers that could have swapped their sons for our brother. But my parents had no reason to mistrust uncle Arthur, mother’s brother, father’s new ally. He was High King and it was not strange for noble born children to be raised in other courts –especially the children of defeated kings. So they trusted, and gave away Mordred. Little Mordred who was an absolute delight, who was fat and cute, and always smiled at strangers like life was a delightful discovery.

We lost him just two days later. The ship sunk, they said, no survivors, they said, a terrible loss and an even more terrible miscalculation, there was no one to blame but the bad weather. I did not believe a word (where were the adults? Why sail in such bad weather when all other days had been so sunny?), and I told Gawain, but he did not seem to hear me. He stared through the window, into the sea, very quiet, like in a trance.

Only the roaring waves and my mother's wailing could be heard, and they were everywhere. She wailed, wailed, wailed. She called on every god, pleading, just to curse them later. Where is my baby, she said, where is my baby? She was completely out of her mind. Her pain was unbearable, maddening, the kind of grief that births demons. All good manners were gone, and only the desperation remained. Father tried to hold mother, to contain her, but she refused to be contained. And my father... my father had been taken by a freezing, calculating rage that cut like a knife, a grief thick with blood, an anger that would burn nations to the ground.

When Mordred was born, I learned that it is always love that gives way to the greatest nightmares.

“we begin in the dark and birth is the death of us” ---Anne Carson / Sophokles, Antogonick

#this is not proofread so apologies in advance for any typos/mistakes!#may day parade #this is like the third story i write about Mordred's birth yes you could say i'm obsessed #my writing #death mention //#arthuriana

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