At the Crossing Places Read Free Page B

the color of her eyes, violet as the first wood-violets in March. It is Ygerna, my own mother.
    Now Sir Ulfius stands up and rudely steps right in front of the queen.
    â€œHere she is,” he shouts. “The rotten root! The black flower!”
    Ygerna doesn’t flinch. Like a woman who has learned to expect pain, she looks sadly at Sir Ulfius, then lowers her eyes and quietly listens to him.
    â€œIf this woman had told the world about her son,” Sir Ulfius growls, “her son by King Uther, we would never have been leaderless for so long. The Saxons harassed us, we fought one another, and all the while this woman, this queen, remained silent.”
    Ygerna gently shakes her head.
    â€œIsn’t it true?” Sir Ulfius bawls. Then he rips off his right glove and throws it at the queen’s feet. “If any man here thinks otherwise, let him say so, and I’ll cross swords with him.”
    â€œSir Ulfius,” Queen Ygerna replies, “how could I tell you what I did not know myself? I have not seen my son since the day he was born. King Uther gave my baby to the hooded man, and he carried him away to foster parents.”
    â€œIf that is true,” says Sir Ulfius, loud and accusing, “the hooded man is even more to blame than you.”
    â€œI gave birth to my first son,” Ygerna says in a low, steady voice, “but I do not even know his name. I do not know where he is or what has become of him.”
    Now I see the hooded man, and yes, he is Merlin, as he always has been. He walks down the hall and he and the queen stand face to face. “Ygerna,” he says in his dark voice, “I told you once that everything has its own time.”
    Merlin takes the queen by the right hand, and leads her up the hall until she’s standing right in front of me.
    My own mother! I could reach out. I could touch her…
    Now Merlin takes my right hand. Gently he lays Ygerna’s hand over it.
    â€œYgerna,” he says, “this is your son, Arthur. Your son.” Merlin’s eyes shine silver as sunlight on slate. “Arthur,” he says. “This is your mother.”
    Merlin takes a step backwards. Everyone in the great hall falls back into shadow and silence.
    For one moment, for thirteen years, for time beyond time’shurt, Ygerna and I gaze at each other. My own blood-mother. Her own son. We are feasters, we are tremblers, inside-out somersaulters, we are dreamers waking, strangers, red-eyed and dissolving.
    Needles of silver rain, fat drops of golden rain, pricked and burst inside my seeing stone. They began to rinse and blur everything.
    Then my stone went blind. I crouched over my story. My eyes stung with tears.

4 KNIGHT AND SQUIRE
    I DREW IN MY BREATH.
    â€œYes,” said Lord Stephen. “The hanging.”
    We stood side by side, and gazed at the enormous wall hanging. It must be fifteen feet long and ten feet high. The top half is divided into small squares, each of them beautifully embroidered with scenes of brightly colored people, animals, birds, buildings, flowers, trees. In the square in the uppermost left corner, a small boy is walking through a dark wood, hand in hand with his mother and his father.
    â€œAnd this,” said Lord Stephen, waving at the bottom half of the hanging, which was just plain linen, “is the part of the story still untold.”
    â€œWhich story, sir?”
    â€œThe part still unlived,” said Lord Stephen. “You must ask Lady Judith to tell you all about it. It’s her work.”
    â€œShe sewed all this?” I exclaimed.
    â€œRowena helps her, of course,” Lord Stephen said. “Now! This is our solar, and it serves the same function as your chamber at Caldicot. Here, I can talk to people in private, and Lady Judith and I sleep in the inner room. And then the third room’s up those steps.”
    â€œThe third room?” I asked.
    â€œYou haven’t heard of the third