A Royal duty

chapter 3

"You must prepare yourself for quite a shock Merlin."

Arthur  spoke seriously as he lay his golden head upon his lover`s chest. Merlin ran his long fingers through the soft, sweet smelling, fair  hair and kissed his head. The gentle light from the candle flickered illuminating the golden hair even more, almost a like a halo around a saint in church window.

"Tell me my love."

"Well the lady Morganna, my father`s ward, whom I have grown up with since early childhood thinking she was just a cousin, the girl I assumed my father would have me betrothed to, well, I just found out she is my sister. Morganna is actually my sister."

Merlin lifted Arthur`s face towards him and stared at him with his wide, shining blue eyes. Then he smirked.

"Oh come on Arthur, you`re jesting. You know that I am gullible so you jest with me. I mean I know you told me a few times that you feel for Morganna as if she is a sister but, come one, not really."

Arthur sat upright, looking most idignantly at Merlin.

" I jest not, why  would I make humour out of such a  thing? come on you are supposed to be the wizard and I just the mere mortal, you must know this."

Merlin also sat up in the bed.

"Arthur I would have told you had I had an insight into this, really my divination abilities are not good, I need to work on them a little, but then nothing can be quite so bad as my potion making skills. Remember that potion I made for that little boy we were all trying to hide from your father?"

"Hmm yes Merlin, " said Arthur with a small, wiry smile, the first smile Merlin had seen all night. "your potion making skills would most likely have killed that Druid child before my father`s axe, had Gaius not saved the day."

"Oh Arthur come on, I have learned some wonderful potions from Gaius that I use on your tired and aching limbs or to cure those head aches after a night of indulging."

Both boys were sitting up in the large, dark oak framed four poster bed, it was cold as the fire was dying in the grate, Merlin pulled a warm fleece around their naked shoulders and they huddled together like two small boys telling ghost stories by candle light.

"Anyway Arthur my divination skills sometimes work, did I never tell you the story of how I saved myself from ending up as a sacrifice when the village Druids were building an important building and each night it collapsed?..."

"Yes, yes Merlin, many times now, the Druids wanted to sacrifice the blood of a fatherless child to stop the building from collapsing and they were going to spill your blood on the foundations and then you predicted the red and white dragon fighting below the foundations which caused the building to fall, and low and behold there were two dragons fighting."

Merlin nodded, quite proud of this incident in his young life.

"I was only 7 years old then. and after that they really did revere me as a chosen child, like a saint."

Arthur drew his lover into his arms, the young wizard was delicate and slender in build, pale and almost etherial in the moonlight, his face was child like but angular, the eyes really did look magical, they were blue but Arthur had seen them turn a pale amber when he was working a spell.

" I am glad you did predict about those dragons Merlin or you would not be here in my bed now. But hush now I was trying to tell you about my sister. The Lady Morganna."

Merlin nodded and rested his head on Arthur`s broad, muscular shoulder.

"Well,you know how my mother, Igraine, was barren and she  and my father longed so much to have a child, for her just a child but for my father it had to be a son, an heir to the throne of Camelot. Father says that she prayed and fasted, she went on pilgrimages to the Holy Wells, she almost pined away for want of a child, just for one child, her heart must have been breaking, I cannot imagine the sorrow a barren lady must feel and she must have felt that she had failed in her duty as a Queen and a wife."

Arthur spoke so gently of his mother, his eyes filled with tears that glistened in the light of the candle, brave, courageous strong Arthur, with the heart of a fierce dragon was also compassionate and as gentle as a lamb when he wanted to be.

"Month after month passed by and my poor mother had no child, she was  as fruitless and as barren as a crone or a virgin girl and finally in her despair she begged my father to do something that she had learned of in a bible tale told to her by the priest. How Abraham the patriarch of the Hebrews begat a child by his wife`s handmaiden because, like my mother, she could not conceive or bear a child. So she gave my father her maid servant, a girl just like Guinevere who serves Lady Morganna, who would do anything for her mistress. So my father lay with this damsel and she became pregnant. The girl was kept hidden and my father proclaimed that his wife, the Queen, Igraine was at last with child.

The servant girl was magical and some say she was from the fairies, her beauty was unlike that of any mortal girl, she was like Morganna, and Lord God knows how beautiful she is. She patiently carried the longed for son in her belly whilst my parents prayed for the child to be an heir, a prince for Camelot. My mother, who always held onto the old religion, as well as embracing the new one from Rome, still went to the Druids groves and prayed to the old gods and Goddesses as well as the Christian saints and to Our Lady the blessed Virgin,I think it worried her that the new God might not hear her prayers.

My mother`s handmaid gave birth to a little girl, a beautiful little girl, a little girl who looked as  though she was from the fairies too, but my father was devastated, utterly devastated. Camelot must have a prince. He sent the little baby, girl to live with one of his brothers in another kingdom across the sea, the Maid servant  was given money and clothing and sent away, back to her mysterious people , just as Abraham of the bible turned his wife`s hand maiden away. He told the people that the Queen had been brought to bed at last, but that the child was still born. Yes so ashamed was he that he lied to the people and denied even his own child.

However, as you know, the tale does not end there, for there was war in that land and much unrest so the little girl, named Morganna, was given back to my father but this time as his ward, he promised the man that Morganna knew only as her father that he would take care of her and protect her, of course, he felt guilty for his rejection of her at her birth. By the time she was my father`s ward, I was a precocious little brat of a toddler, I had never known my mother. She died giving me life."

Merlin was mesmerised by the sad tale, he kissed Arthur`s sharp, chiseled cheek where a tear had escaped from under his eye lid.

"That is my father for you, a man full of secrets, he had held onto this one as long as he could but of course one day I would have to know, as the dreadful occasion of my betrothal draws nigh. Now I have a year in which to find a  suitable princess or noble woman that my father approves of and make her my wife. Now you see why I wept tonight because it is you that I love Merlin, you whom I desire with all my heart, my soul and flesh and you who I am destined to be with. Yet  I have this damned royal duty to marry and produce an heir."