Page 34 of The Faerie Morgana
“I thought it must be. Wounded?”
“Yes. Many.”
“Where’s Morgana?”
“I—” Braithe had to think how to respond, to serve both her loyalties. “I haven’t seen her, my lord. Not since yesterday.” This, at least, was the truth.
“You’ll have to fill in, then, as the representative of the Temple. Fetch her basket, will you?”
“My lord, I—I have no magic. My potions aren’t—”
Arthur put up a hand. “It doesn’t matter. Bandages, salves, whatever you can find. I’ll meet you there.”
With a sinking heart, Braithe went to do as he asked.
Braithe stepped out into the keep with the basket in her hands. It seemed there were bodies everywhere, and many of them no longer moved. The kitchen maids were laying out makeshift pallets, stanching wounds, bringing bowls of water, holding the hands of those for whom they could do no more.
One of the women looked up and caught sight of Braithe. “Oh, praise the Lady! A priestess is here.”
Braithe had given up trying to convince them she was not a Temple priestess. Now the pressure of their expectations made her tremble. She tried to school her features into a calm expression and went to kneel by the nearest wounded man.
She began to lift things from Morgana’s basket, surprised by how many she recognized and how clearly she recalled their uses. There was a clay jar of poppy tincture, already magicked by Morgana, which would help with pain. There was a potion of lavender, which would be both healing and soothing. There were salves to stop bleeding, and pastes to keep wounds clean. Her anxiety eased a bit as she set to work. The kitchen maids ran back and forth to fetch clean bandages, warm water, straps for splints. The injuries were sometimes shallow, but often grievous, with torn flesh and crushed bones. Within moments of beginning the unaccustomed labor, dealing with blood and pain and filth, Braithe found that her revulsion at such things retreated. Her natural urge to help and to comfort conquered her reluctance to look, to touch, to be immersed in so much suffering.
She and the maids labored for hours among the wounded. Arthur was there, too, bending over each of the men, offering a word of encouragement, promises to care for families who would be left behind, gratitude from Camulod itself. Once Braithe paused in her work to stretch her aching back, and she and Arthur looked at each other from across the scattered pallets. The sky blue of his eyes had gone night-dark with sorrow, and she supposed her own face was splotched red with fatigue, but he gave her a small, private smile, and her heart lifted a little. It was a terrible day, but they were working together, and that eased the burden.
One of the maids trotted up to her to ask her to see to someone else, and the dream evaporated like the chimera it was. Nothing had changed, Braithe reminded herself. She was still just Morgana’s handmaid, croft-born, cottar-bred, and Arthur was the prince of Camulod, the future king.
By the time Morgana limped through the main gate of the castle, barefoot and dressed in the Blackbird’s ancient brown robe, the remains of the dead were being collected on a cart to await the funeral pyre outside the walls. The Blackbird, nodding with exhaustion, was helped down from his mud-brown palfrey by the butcher. The little horse stood with her head hanging, her feet splayed with fatigue.
Braithe ran to greet Morgana, to exclaim over her bleeding feet, to tell her she had found her robe and laid it on her bed. “You’ve been shapeshifting,” she whispered. “I know how that tires you.”
She put an arm around the priestess’s lean waist to lead herindoors, but Morgana said, “Wait. The horse is as exhausted as I am. She needs water, hot mash, a rubdown.”
“Priestess?” It was the horsemaster, holding out his weathered hand for the palfrey’s reins. “I got her.”
Morgana handed the reins to him, then leaned into Braithe’s arm as she hobbled toward the tower. Just as they were about to step inside, she glanced back at the keep, at the pallets where the wounded were being tended, and beyond, taking in the cart laden with bodies. “He didn’t care,” she said bitterly. “So many dead, and he didn’t care.”
“Who, Priestess?”
Morgana looked down at her with a bleak expression in her dark eyes. “Uther. My stepfather. The false king.”
“Where is he?” Braithe whispered. “The king?”
Morgana said, “If he is not on that cart, then they left him on the field, like the faithless trash he was.”
Morgana barely made it to her bedchamber before collapsing. Her handmaid washed her wounded feet, peeled back the blankets, and tucked Morgana between the bedsheets as if she were a child. Morgana felt achy and feverish, but Braithe gave her a cup of tea made of some herb she didn’t recognize, and she was asleep before she could ask what was in it.
She woke once, when Braithe came in with a bowl of soup and a chunk of bread to dip in it. Morgana ate everything, though she was so tired it was almost too much effort to lift the spoon. Despite that, when she lay down, she couldn’t go back tosleep. She grew heated and threw off her cover, then was chilled and pulled it back. Her long limbs ached, but Braithe, watching over her, made another cup of the tea, and she finally slept once more. Just before dropping off, Morgana mumbled, “What is that herb? It smells like cherries.”
“I know.” Braithe soothed her hot forehead with her cool little hand. “One of the kitchen maids makes it for her little ones when they can’t rest.”
“Kitchen maid?”
Braithe smoothed her blanket, saying quietly, “The kitchen maids will surprise you with what they can do, Priestess. Now, sleep, and sleep well.”
Morgana did sleep, deeply. Her only dream was of flying with her falcon guide, weightless and agile, swooping above the forest without a care for the woes of the world below.
When Braithe touched her shoulder and she opened her eyes, Morgana found the room drenched in morning light. Beyond the window, the rowan tree’s branches barely stirred, and the keep was unnaturally quiet.
