gnimaerd | Fic: Beltane (Pt 1 of 9)

Title: Beltane
Pairing: Arthur/Morgana; background Gwen/Merlin; hints of Morgana/Gwen and Merlin/Arthur
Rating: NC-17 (in later chapters)
Summary: Set at some point during season 1, before 1x12; Taking part in the celebration of Beltane has unforseen consequences for the crown prince and the king's ward.

Notes: this fic has been a LONG time in the making. I started writing it whilst the first series was still airing and have been squirrelling away at it on and off for the better part of nine months. It is now finished and I will be posting one part a day for the next nine days. It's inspired by what happens in the Mists of Avalon, when Morgaine and Arthur unwittingly sleep together - essentially what would happen if that scenario were played out in Merlin's version of the Arthurian universe. With thanks to the ever-patient

clanne for beta services.

Chapter One:

“You’re going then?” Morgana had draped herself around his doorway, grinning roguishly.

Arthur rolled his eyes, tossing his knife from hand to hand, “don’t worry – I promise I won’t deflower any virgins.”

Morgana snorted, “it’s not the virgins I worry for. Who’s going to take the throne after Uther if his only son has been gored to death by a stag?”

“I’ll be fine, Morgana,” Arthur spun the knife with expert fingers, and then tucked it into its sheath on his belt. “It’s not that dangerous, really…”

“Tearing through a forest on foot in the dark in a mask with hundreds of other men after a dangerous and desperate animal you intend to kill with only the aid of a knife and your bare hands… is not dangerous,” Morgana deadpanned, “I’m sure it isn’t, Arthur.”

“Oh, hush,” Arthur waved a hand. “If it were that dangerous it would have died out as a tradition years ago.”

Morgana folded her arms, “I think you are underestimating the potential for male stupidity here, Arthur.”

“I’ve done it before,” Arthur shook his head.

“You mean the time you broke your collar bone?”

“…that was different.”

Morgana shook her head and sighed. “Just don’t kill yourself, Arthur.”

“I’m touched by your concern, Morgana.” Arthur grinned at her, “not joining the ladies for the festival, then?”

“Uther forbids it,” Morgana pointed out, “he’d forbid you to go too, if he thought he could stop you.”

“Since when did you let my father stop you doing what you want to do?” Arthur enquired.

Morgana shrugged, “I don’t want to. All night in a field, in the dark and cold, getting extremely drunk with a group of equally drunk strangers and no doubt at some point getting groped by a man who could be anyone behind that mask? Only a lunatic would willingly sign up for such treatment.”

“I heard Gwen was going,” Arthur pointed out.

“Gwen’s going to walk the streets for a bit – she’s not going onto the moors,” Morgana waved a hand, dismissively, “she knows what it’s like out there as well as I do.”

“You women,” Arthur informed her, “have no sense of fun.”

“You men have no sense of propriety,” Morgana retorted, “anyway – mind what I said. Don’t get yourself killed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She turned on her heal and disappeared out of the doorway again. Arthur shook his head.

She didn’t get it, of course. She had, at one point. Years ago, when she had been too young to know how to defy him, she had begged Uther to let her go out to the Beltane festival. But Uther did not approve of this particular celebration, because of its routes in the occult. He allowed it to continue only because there was no direct magical involvement anymore, and because he knew that calling it off would likely raise more civil discontent than he could afford to. It was a massively popular event with Camelot’s youth.

There were other Beltane celebrations during the day – feasts and parades and the choosing of the May queen – which were all well and good. But it was the night festival that was really what the celebration was all about.

All the unmarried men took part in the hunt through the forest, after a specially raised stag. The hunters had to be masked and wore only breeches, their knives the only permitted weapons. All the unmarried women, equally masked, starting on the streets of Camelot, with torches and music and plenty of alcohol, marched out of the city and onto the moors beyond, lighting great bonfires. When the hunters finally returned out of the forests and onto the moors with the stag, whichever of them had killed the beast was taken to a pavilion always set up in the centre of the festivities, where awaited him a virgin picked out from the crowd by an old crone who was supposedly a Seer. (Of course, she wasn’t anymore – not with Uther’s rule to abide by – but traditionally she was supposed to be).

Then the hunter and the virgin were joined in a union which was meant to bring fertility to the earth for another year, promise a good summer and bountiful harvest, whilst the body of the stag was roasted and fed to the revellers.

The promise of a waiting virgin at the end of it all was more than enough sentiment to get most of Camelot’s young men to take part. Even if you didn’t manage to kill the dear, you were still likely to find solace in the arms of one of the many other unattached young women who would be on the moors that night.

Arthur had attended a few times, much to Uther’s chagrin. His son sometimes suspected that the king was secretly proud of him for going – for it was truly a test of masculinity that he came out with so few injuries to begin with – which was why he didn’t simply lock his son in the dungeons to stop him. But Uther would not abide by Morgana attending at all. The risks to a woman at such a celebration were obvious – the possibility of her ending up as the virgin in the union with the hunter, though minuet, was too much to risk.

The masking involved was largely to protect the virgin in these circumstances, so that no one could ever have proof that any particular girl had been deflowered. But, as a noble, Morgana would be subject to more rigorous checking by her future husband that she had stayed chaste than any common girl would be. And even if she wasn’t selected, she could still easily be assaulted.

The dark, the anonymity, the crowd and the noise made the place an easy hunting ground for those men with dishonourable intentions. Added to that, the dark possibility of an illegitimate pregnancy, which would absolutely decimate Morgana’s honour and any possibility of a good marriage, and Uther had taken great pains to insure that she could not attend. For several years running, in fact, he had sent her out of Camelot entirely to stay with some allies in a neighbouring kingdom, rather than risk her slipping out to join the festivities.

For her part, once the initial romance of the idea of the festival had worn off while she was still a teenager, Morgana had seemed largely uninterested in attending anyway. And as she had ascended out of her adolescence, Uther had stopped sending her away, trusting her good judgment on the matter.

Arthur, however, had attended twice before and enjoyed each occasion greatly (aside from the incident where he had broken his collar bone). He made a point of skipping one year and attending the next, which was a rough enough compromise to keep his father from becoming too wrathful about it.

Wearing only a plain shirt, leather breaches and boots, he checked his knife was still attached to his belt, picked up his mask, and made his way out of the castle.

***

“Are you sure you won’t get into trouble?” Gwen was asking, as she hurriedly pinned up Morgana’s hair, threading in a spray of ferns, ribbons and feathers.

“Of course I’ll get into trouble,” Morgana retorted, “but only if Uther finds out, which he won’t. It’ll only be for an hour so – we do this every year, Gwen, we’ll be fine.”

Gwen bit her lip, nervously, but nodded, and went to blow out the one remaining candle on her mistress’s table, leaving the room in darkness.

They were each dressed plainly and wrapped in heavy cloaks – as was the custom. They had tied up their hair with ribbons, flowers, weathers and leaves, which was also the custom – all a part of the general practice of masking.

Every year since Uther had stopped sending Morgana away for Beltane, she had taken quiet joy in defying him by slipping out with her maidservant to join the revelry for a little while. Never for very long – there was no point risking it – and never out onto the moors. They just stayed on the streets, where it was safest, dancing with the other crowds of unmarried women, drinking and carrying torches. It was fun.

This year was no exception, and the two women joined hands as they scurried through the castle corridors, through the courtyard and out onto the road beyond, pausing for only a second to regain their breath and don their masks before plunging on down into the town.

The celebrations were already in full swing, a sea of young bodies moving through the streets to the beating of distant drums and somebody with a set of pipes much closer. Most of them were women, with large numbers of children also in attendance at this early stage of the proceedings, and men, too – married ones with their partners or just ones who hadn’t had any wish to take part in the hunt.

Gwen held tight to Morgana’s hand as they entered the crowd. It would be too easy to get separated, and, while they were fairly safe in the town, it was always best to stay with someone you knew.

Morgana was laughing, grinning fiercely through her mask (it only covered the top half of her face anyway). She loved the boiling freedom that the anonymity afforded her at Beltane. It made her want to do something ridiculous like throw off all her clothes and run down the main street, or climb up onto the roofs and start leaping from house to house.

They moved with the crowds for a while – dance, Gwen! Dance! – and the sky was beginning to swirl in an interesting sort of way by the time Morgana had downed her third cup of sweet mulberry wine. It was a clear night, the stars glittering, the moon swollen to its fullest point.

“I think that’s Merlin!” Gwen had grabbed her mistress’s arm and pointed to a vaguely familiar body standing against a wall, keeping out of the main flow of the people.

Morgana squinted – but the boy was masked and the light too dim to make much out by.

“How can you tell?” She asked, over the noise.

“I can see his neckerchief!” Gwen giggled, “oh, I feel funny, mistress!”

“That’ll be the wine,” Morgana told her, “don’t drink any more of it, Guinevere – I don’t want you getting taken advantage of!”

Gwen giggled and shook her head again, “I wouldn’t mind being take advantage of, my lady!”

“That really is the wine,” Morgana gave her a gentle push, “go, see if that’s Merlin – you take advantage of him!”

Gwen glanced back, “are you sure…?”

“I’ll wait here!” Morgana waved a hand, “it’s fine, Gwen, honestly.”

Gwen glanced back one more time, then darted off through the crowd to tug at the sleeve and the man who might have been Merlin.

Morgana waited long enough for him to lift his mask to reveal that he was, indeed, Arthur’s trouble-prone manservant, and for Gwen to take his hand and bounce about him gleefully, before waving them both away.

Gwen cast her a questioning look through the crowd but Morgana shook her head, mouthing go! at her. She didn’t particularly want anyone other than Gwen to know of her presence here tonight (not that she did not trust Merlin; more that she suspected he’d likely let slip to Arthur without realising, and she didn’t want Arthur ribbing her about it when she’d made such a to-do over her scorn for the event to him). And Gwen liked Merlin, quite a lot, and if she was going to have the courage to drag him off somewhere and impress herself upon him, tonight would be the night.

It was time she headed back to the castle anyway.

Gwen gave her another uncertain look, before reluctantly allowing herself to be towed away by Merlin.

Satisfied, Morgana turned back and began to make her way through the long, winding streets towards the castle once more. The crowd was just starting to thin out when she felt a hand grab her wrist, and yelped, her own hand going to the knife she had stowed in her belt for an emergency.

But the moonlight illuminated only the face of a woman in the extremes of old age, looking up at her with eyes frosted by cataracts.

“Where do you hurry to, on Beltane night?” Her voice was thin and cracked but curiously clear over the noise of the festivities.

Morgana frowned, bemused. “Home. I promised my father I would return before midnight.”

“You are lying,” the old woman remarked, mildly. “You should go to the moors.”

“It’s dangerous out there,” Morgana shook her head, “I’d really rather go home.”

The old crone gazed at her with those unseeing eyes for a moment longer, “I think you should go to the moors. I think there is something you must do, this night.”

“What?” Morgana gazed back at her, warily.

The old woman licked her lips, and then edged forward, beckoning Morgana to lean down that she might hear her better. “The great stag is dead. The hunter is returning. He needs a bride.”

Morgana raised her eyebrows, “there must be hundreds of women on the moors already. I’m sure he’ll have no trouble finding one.”

“No,” the old crone shook her head, tightening her grip on Morgana’s wrist, “it must be you.”

Morgana’s eyes widened. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I am far from ridiculous,” the crone replied, keeping her perfectly mild, clear tone. “You have been destined for this.”

“Says who?” Morgana raised her eyebrows.

“Say the old gods,” the crone told her, “they live still, and this night more than others they are powerful, potent. The Goddess wishes to take her God to bed – and she will do it through you if you are willing.”

“Well I am not willing!” Morgana snapped, “I can’t go to bed with anyone before I am married!”

The crone laughed, softly. “Oh, Morgan Le Fay… you will never be married, my dear.”

Morgana felt her breath freeze in her chest. The crone’s touch was suddenly cold. “That’s not my name.”

“It is one of your names,” the crone told her, “and one day, it will be the truest of them.”

“How can you know I am destined for this?” Morgana asked, softly, biting her lip. Something in her had begun to hum – that deeper part of her that opened up in her dreams and drank in death and destiny. The part of her that was reading the truth in this woman’s blind eyes.

“The same way that you know what is to become of Camelot, eventually,” the crone replied, “the same way you know how Arthur is to die… or what the weather will be like in a month’s time. We have something in common, Morgan Le Fay.”

“Don’t call me that,” Morgana shook her head.

The crone gazed up at her, still perfectly blind (although Morgana fancied that she saw her quite plainly, somehow), before inclining her head. “Will you come?”

Morgana looked past her, out to the lights she could already see blazing on the moors – the jumble of shadowed bodies moving out there.

“I suppose I don’t have much choice.”

____________________________________________
Part two here.