Queen of the Summer Stars Read Free Page A

quiet girl, quite unaware of her own startling beauty, who preferred to spend her time with the wild creatures of field and air rather than in the Hall. She soon developed great skill with wild things—rescuing fledglings that fell from nests, and once even healing a fox kit with a badly gashed paw.
    “But best of all,” she’d confided, “I liked standing beneath the Sacred Oak, safe and secure while the wild wind whipped around me. There was an excitement in it that made my blood sing…”
    Gorlois was as magnificently rough-hewn as his fortress, and when she was fifteen, his beautiful young charge agreed to marry the widowed Duke. So they made their vows under the branches of the Sacred Oak, and when their daughters Morgause and Morgan were born, they too were brought there, barely dry from birthing, to be offered to the Old Gods.
    And it was at the Oak that Igraine left votive gifts of flowers and bright ribbon when Gorlois went off to join Uther and Ambrosius in their battle to depose Vortigern. By then Igraine had become a young matron, bringing the same care and devotion to the raising of her lively children that she used to lavish on the small wild animals she’d nurtured as a girl.
    “I had no interest in going beyond the narrow path that connected Tintagel with the rest of the world,” she’d said with a twinkle of wry amusement. “I clung to the safety Gorlois provided, content with the moira the fates had given me—and would have run in terror if anyone had told me someday I would become a queen.”
    Even after Ambrosius overcame Vortigern and Gorlois returned to Tintagel with wonderful tales of the new High King, Igraine listened with little curiosity. And when her husband tried to get her to go to the High Court with him, she begged to stay in Cornwall, for the idea of leaving Tintagel filled her with dread.
    But what was put off that summer became a necessity several winters later when Ambrosius died and his brother Uther Pendragon became High King. There was no escaping the summons to Winchester to swear fealty to the new overlord, and though Igraine tried to persuade her husband to go without her, it was to no avail.
    “I served under Uther in battle,” Gorlois announced, “and know how volatile his moods can be. I’ll not risk calling down the Pendragon’s wrath on this house, so we’ll go to the King Making despite weather and calendar and the fact that you’ve no desire to travel.”
    And that was that. When they departed for the High Court Igraine rode beside her husband, as calm and valiant a partner as anyone could wish, with no outward sign of her inner turmoil.
    “It comes,” she’d noted, “of being born to a long line of Celtic queens.”
    ***
     
    I smiled at the memory of her words, for I too had been raised in the tradition of brave and competent women, and knew the litany by heart; it was one of the things that the Queen Mother and I used to joke about.
    But I was not sure I could have coped with a man like Uther, and sometimes wondered how much like his father Arthur might turn out to be.
    Ulfin was leading us across the broad sweep of the Berkshire downs by now, and the morning showers had turned into real rain as Uther’s Chamberlain dropped back to ride next to me.
    “There’s an inn by the ford, not far ahead. I know the man who runs it, and it’s a good place to spend the night,” he announced, and I nodded my agreement.
    “Tell me, Sir Ulfin—were you with Uther in Brittany, before the invasion?”
    “Aye, M’lady. I was raised in their military camp on the Breton shore. My father was a Master Armorer, helping to outfit both warriors and nobles for the invasion to come…it took years to ready the army, and by that time I was grown myself. As was Merlin, the young druid who came to join our cause. So I guess you could say I’ve known them all, from early days on.”
    “What were they like?” I asked.
    Ulfin considered the matter. “Well, it was clear