Spoiler! :
A few weeks after I asked Morgan about King Lot, I was having a nightmare. A gigantic bear chased me though the woods, scratching at my back and legs but never quite catching me before I woke up.
I used to have this dream often. I would sit, shivering in the darkness until the beast seemed less real. I tried to be as silent as possible so I wouldn’t disturb my brothers. We shared a room, and I didn’t want even Agravaine to see me so terrified.
But that night, something about the icy air and the moonlight pouring into the room forced the thoughts I had been repressing to the surface of my mind. The room started to spin as it suddenly became obvious why Morgan hadn’t told me my father’s name. Why she was always talking about Arthur, while my mother couldn't bear even a mention of the king.
I had to go speak with her. I padded down the hall, pausing only when I reached the door of the chamber she shared with Lot. I was almost too scared of waking my stepfather to go in, but part of me still hoped that she could tell me it wasn’t true. Fortunately, she was already awake, standing at the window. She looked so much like a fallen angel staring out at the sky.
I must have made a sound. She turned, and ushered us both into the hall when she realized it was me.
“What do you want Mordred?”
“Is Arthur my father?” My throat felt so tight I could hardly breath.
It took her a moment to reply. She searched my face as if looking for some other answer to give me. Finally she just gave me the truth.
“Yes.”
I started to cry. I should have been too young to understand what this meant. But I had sweated through too many sermons about the wickedness of incest and adultery. Now I was sure they had all been addressed to me.
I got the whole story from Morgan the next time she came to visit. She must have realized that if she ever hid anything from me again she would lose me forever. But that night I first realized, all I could do was cling to my mother and cry.
Mother didn’t push me away, like she usually would have, but she had no words to comfort me. How could she? This was her fault.
I like to think it was an accident, at least on my father’s part. Morgan says she introduced them, but I’ve said before that she likes to hoard valuable information, just to see what will happen. I can easily see her gleefully presenting "a visitor” to the high king. Morgause had my grandfather's looks. You would never be able to guess the two women were related without looking for it.
Arthur had already met two of his half-sisters. In those days Morgan was actually living in Camelot, and Elaine was always bringing another child to be given his blessing. He might never have been told he had another half-sibling. Maybe he mistook a mall spark of recognition for attraction. I don’t excuse him though. He was knowingly betraying his new bride.
I can imagine what was going through his mind. He had just been forced to take a bride, to conform an alliance with the lord of a powerful territory. He couldn’t turn down the offer, even though Merlin had warned him that she would be nothing but trouble. Guinevere herself was probably indifferent to him.
Yet here was this mysterious older woman, who wanted to celebrate Beltane with him in the traditional fashion. He’d been married on the first of May because of the ritual significance, but he had until recently been allowed to celebrate with the common folk, where the custom was for couples to culminate the fertility festival in private. The temptation to trade his responsibilities for one last evening of freedom might have been enough to make him willing to spend his wedding night in the arms of another woman.
Mother knew what she was doing, though. She was a married woman with four children. Her oldest was only a year younger than Arthur. Yet she was willing to seduce her own brother.
I’ve never asked her why she did it. Perhaps she was more like Morgan than anyone realized, and saw Arthur’s attraction to her as an opportunity to take her revenge on the husband she hated and the man who had arranged the match.
I know my mother loved me. For a short time, she cherished me. I was the only thing in her life that was completely hers. Her loathed husband had no part in my birth, and my true father shouldn’t have known I even existed.
Merlin’s prophecy ruined everything. Apparently Arthur was destined to conceive a son on the first of May. That was why Merlin didn’t do more to stop the wedding, even though all the signs were against it. When he learned that Guinevere was not the one destined to bear Arthur’s child, he did something unprecedented. He actually told people exactly what it was he had seen.
Since Merlin had claimed him, Arthur had only gone against the old man's wishes once. The news of my impending arrival right on the heels of his rebellion seemed like conformation that he had been wrong. When the wizard said that they needed to make sure I didn’t reach adulthood, he didn’t question it.
The problem was, he still didn’t know who my mother was. She had fled back to lot early the next morning, without ever telling him her name. Arthur searched all of Britain trying to find her, but Morgan was in Lothian making sure Arthur could neither recognize Morgause, or locate Morgan herself to ask where the strange damsel had come from. Merlin declared that they shoul destroy every male child conceived on the same day I was. Better to do that than to risk letting me live.
This is the truly horrific part of my history. I was a Beltane baby. Just one of the many born nine months after the holiday celebrating conception. Everything else I could excuse, but I will never forgive them for the number of boys they took from their parents trying to find me.
Maybe if they knew for sure which one was cursed they could have found someone willing to take an infant’s life. But even Arthur couldn’t kill us with his own hands. He had the soldiers go to every household, including Lothian.
They brought us all down to the beach. I’m told Arthur actually put us in the boat and pushed it out to sea all by himself. I’m surprised he had the courage, but perhaps he was the only one willing to take part in such a thing.
It was January.
It broke my mother, when the soldiers took me from her. I think she had suddenly realized the implications
of what she had done. She wouldn’t let her sister try and save me. Even when Morgan brought me back, she could never allow herself to treat me the same way.
It wasn’t long before Gawain defied his father, and went to offer his services as a knight in Camelot. It wasn’t long before Arthur learned enough to put the pieces together himself. He also learned about me.
His reputation was already tarnished. If he confirmed the rumours that his sister was also the mother of his child, he would lose the rest of his followers. Without him, Camelot would fall, instantly verifying Merlin’s prediction that my birth would end this era of unstable peace.
Arthur knew that I was still destined to destroy him, and I was completely untouchable.
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