Something About a Sword and a Stone?, Page 2

for some reason, and was hanging around right by Uther's camp. Merlin stopped Ulfius. "Whoa, where are you off to in such a hurry? Are you looking for someone? Hmm? Someone who's name starts with an M?"

  "Beat it," said Ulfius, "I'm on official Patriarchy business."

  Merlin was thus robbed of his dramatic reveal but ploughed on regardless: he outed himself as Merlin, said that he knew Ulfius was looking for him. "I'll be happy to give Uther what he wants, provided Uther gives me what I want, which will be good for Uther too, because then Uther will get what Uther wants and what I want is also good for Uther."

  "Yeah, okay," said Ulfius. "I didn't completely follow that, but I'm sure Uther will give you whatever, assuming it's not something crazy."

  "Good enough!" And off they went to find Uther.

  (This bit where Ulfius searched for Merlin, Merlin-as-beggar strode up, Merlin tried to do a cool thing where he'd be like "but I'M Merlin!" completely misfires in a way that, since there's so little detail, I'm free to imagine as adorable. Poor Merlin! Will nothing go right for him?)

  Ulfius ran back to Uther in his camp outside the besieged Castle Terrabil. "Merlin's here!"

  "What? You liar, I don't see Merlin. Liar."

  In fact Merlin was waiting outside; apparently he was like a vampire in that he couldn't come in unless invited. Uther sent Ulfius out; Ulfius escorted Merlin in; Uther greeted Merlin; Merlin cut him off.

  "I know what you want," said Merlin, "and I can make it happen. I just have one thing I need in return."

  "Name it."

  Merlin made Uther swear on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John before he continued (this is the first mention of Christianity so far). Once Uther committed himself, Merlin explained that he wanted the child that Uther would father upon Igraine, to raise as Merlin saw fit. Merlin was completely confident that after one night with Uther, Igraine would be pregnant. Merlin also claimed that this course of action would be best for everyone. Perhaps he didn't think much of Uther's child-raising abilities.

  After Uther agreed, Merlin said to stand back because he was going to do some magic.

  Merlin disguised himself and Ulfius as a couple of the Duke's men, Sir Jordanus and Sir Brastias, and disguised Uther as the Duke himself. Then they made for Castle Tintagil, where they were admitted despite the siege.

  When Duke Gorlas's men asked why he'd suddenly appeared, Uther-as-Gorlas claimed he was very sick. He was also very tired. In the morning, he would explain what he was doing at Castle Tintagil instead of Castle Terrabil where he was supposed to be repelling Uther's siege. Right then, though, he just wanted to go to bed with his wife. And by "go to bed," Igraine learned, Uther-as-Gorlas meant sex. Despite claiming to be very sick and very tired.

  Meanwhile, the actual Duke cottoned to Uther leaving the siege, somehow. He decided that while the king was away was a great time to sally forth and break the siege. Which he tried to do, and failed at miserably, and got himself killed before Uther, Ulfius, and Merlin had even arrived at Tintagil.

  Which I suppose technically clears Uther of the sleeping-with-another-man's-wife charge, since the Duke was dead when he slept with Igraine. Nevertheless her lack of informed consent pushes the interaction pretty far into rape. Whether Ulfius and Merlin spent the night with Jordanus's and Brastias's wives isn't addressed, but in the morning Merlin woke Uther up early. Uther-as-Gorlas kissed Igraine goodbye, and he and Merlin and Ulfius rode off.

  They had only been gone a few minutes before word came that the Duke had died the night before, in a midnight raid trying to lift the siege on Terrabil. This really confused the hell out of Igraine, but she kept her mouth shut about it.

  Anyway, with the Duke dead, all of Uther's barons pointed out that there wasn't a reason to keep on fighting. Uther agreed, so he got Ulfius to pull some shuttle diplomacy, Henry Kissinger style, going back and forth between his camp and Igraine in Castle Tintagil. Ulfius eventually arranged for Igraine and Uther to meet, which is something of a feat given how as far as Igraine knew the last time they met for peace talks it had been just a ruse for Uther to try to seduce her.

  But that was then, this was now. Igraine was a widow and Uther was a) unwed and b) hot for her, so Igraine and Uther agreed to marry! That sealed the deal, boom, peace between England and Cornwall.

  Meanwhile, Uther arranged for three sisters to marry three other kings: Margawse married King Lot of Orkney, Elaine (ELAINE 1!) married Nentres of Garlot, and Morgan, the youngest sister, went to necromancy school and upon graduation married Uriens of Gore. A little googling tells me that Margawse, Elaine, and Morgan were Igraine's three daughters with the late Duke, but Malory forgets to mention this. He does explain that Margawse was the mother of Sir Gawaine, and that Morgan (who graduated summa cum laude from necromancy school by the way) was the mother of Sir Uwaine, but the relationship between Uther marrying off these sisters and everything else that happened in this chapter is wholly unclear.

  The whole incident served to establish Merlin as Uther's bag man. It featured magic as a plot point (though Malory's vague enough that I could believe Merlin just wrapped Uther in bandages and put fake mustaches on himself and Ulfius), which is fun. Unfortunately it also featured Uther sleeping with Igraine under a ruse, which is to say Igraine did not exactly give informed and enthusiastic consent; this more off-putting than I was expecting to find.

  Now, I'm no starry-eyed schoolboy. I knew going in that medieval texts weren't going to be feminist, but there's something creepy in the bit where Malory goes out of his way to excoriate Uther from adultery (since Gorlas was dead before he slept with Igraine) while just ignoring the rape aspect. We can take comfort in the knowledge that 'Uther getting Merlin to disguise him as some dude so that Uther can sleep with that dude's wife' will not be a repeating motif. Book I, chapter 4, is subtitled "Of the death of King Uther Pendragon," so it's immediately obvious that the total amount of Uther being a jackass is likely to be a small percentage of the book. On the other hand, he only has a handful of chapters in which to become less unlikeable.

  (Vocabulary word: mickle, meaning a large amount or greatly. "As mickle as the child is worth" means "as the child is worth a great deal.")

  In which Arthur is born and his father dies

  A few months passed. Just as Merlin predicted, Igraine -- now Uther's wife and the queen of England -- was pregnant. By the time she entered her third trimester, her new husband started to suspect something.

  "So, I can't help but notice you're pregnant," he said one morning, apropos of nothing. "Tell me, whose child is it?"

  This was a question that Igraine really wasn't eager to answer.

  "C'mon," said Uther. "I promise I won't be mad."

  "Well, okay." Igraine explained that the night her previous husband died, he had visited her with two of his men and spent the night. It was a bizarre supernatural occurrence, what with him being dead at the time. Jordanus and Brastias didn't sleep with her; they just came in with Gorlas and left when he did. Igraine had given it a lot of thought and she was pretty sure the father of her most recent child was one of the following: time traveling Gorlas from the recent past, Gorlas's ghost, a demon who assumed Gorlas's form, or Gorlas's evil twin, biological-type or parallel-earth-type.

  "Not at all," laughed Uther. "It was me all along! I was Gorlas the whole time! Merlin did it with magic."

  "Oh, great," said Igraine. I know that sounded like sarcasm, but Malory assures us she was completely thrilled by the knowledge that her new husband used magic to disguise himself as her late husband and sleep with her. This is way better, she thought, than any of the alternatives. So, that's nice.

  Conveniently, Merlin showed up at this point. He reminded the king about how Merlin knew Igraine would be pregnant and how Uther promised Merlin the child.

  "Oh, right," said Uther. "Well, she's not due for another few months, do you want it immediately or should we wait until it's born? And do you want to eat it raw or should we cook it first?"

 
"No, no, no." Merlin had zero intention of eating this particular baby. "There's this guy -- Sir Ector -- who you should invite to visit. Have a sit-down chat with him, you'll see he's a reasonable guy, and get him to promise to raise your son as if it were his own. He'll do a great job, I promise. Solid Merlin guarantee."

  Uther wasn't about to start disagreeing with Merlin at this point. He met with Ector as requested and extracted the aforementioned promise. When the infant boy was born, boom, Uther sent two knights and two ladies to carry him off.

  Uther had no idea how to keep a secret; this was Castle Tintagil all over again. At Tintagil, Uther couldn't just have Merlin disguise him. No, Merlin had to also disguise himself and Sir Ulfius, which meant that those two had to hang out and make small talk with the folks at Tintagil all night, dodging questions like "why aren't you at Terrabil?" and "hey, remember that conversation we were having last time we met, Jordanus? We were discussing the personal details of mutual friends. Let's pick it up right where we left off."

  Anyway, Uther sent this detachment of lords, plural, and ladies, also plural, to the rear gate of the castle, where Merlin stood tapping his foot (further evidence that Merlin was a some kind of vampire and could not enter homes uninvited). Merlin had made a big deal about how he wanted the baby unbaptized, but first thing he