Free Alicia Roque Ruggieri by The House of Mercy

him!  Fire had burned all
around him.  Fire was a friend, wasn’t it?  To keep him warm and safe from wild
beasts?
    Where was he?  Who
were these frightful Big People, wearing strange clothing and speaking stranger
words?  At least, Papa’s warrior stayed with him, gripping him in his mighty
arms.  With all the strength in his chubby fingers, the child clung to the
man’s forearms.
    But wait.  The
warrior carried him forward toward a great chair, carved with the heads of
animals and covered with furs.  A man sat in the chair.  He was a young Big
Person, not as old as Papa, with a beard that matched his yellow hair.  The man
wore gold things on his head and fingers and around his neck.
    “Come here, little
one,” he spoke and smiled.  When the toddler saw the smile, he didn’t feel as
afraid; the man seemed so kind and gentle.  Like Papa.
     
    Deoradhan shook his head
defiantly.  He would allow no tender thoughts to cloud his attitude toward
Arthur.  Purposely, he turned to another, more painful memory.
     
    He had always
disliked the boy.  Now he had a reason and a good one at that.  In disbelief,
Deoradhan stared at his wrestling partner Modred and wondered if the lad had
made his comment only to distract him from glorying in his victory minutes
earlier.
    “What did you say?”
Deoradhan barely forced the question out of his eleven-year-old lips.
    His swarthy
countenance patient, Modred repeated his remark.  “I said that you inherited
our father’s brute strength.  I fear I rather take after my mother in that
respect.”  With a graceful shrug, the slim youth, older than Deoradhan by three
or four years, turned and began the stroll from the training grounds back to
the fortress walls.
    In two bounds,
Deoradhan sprang in front of his companion.  “Stay,” he commanded, grasping
Modred’s slender shoulders.  “What do you mean by ‘our father’?  Of whom do you
speak?”  His heart pounded in his chest as with vigorous exercise.  “Your
father is unknown.  You grew up with your half-brothers in Orkney; you came
here to train under your uncle, the high king.”
    Modred shook his
shoulders free.  “Others may be ignorant of who fathered me, but I am not.  And
he is your father as well.”
    At Deoradhan’s look
of complete confusion, Modred smiled, showing beautiful white teeth.  “Arthur,
you fool.  I thought you knew.”
    Deoradhan could
barely breathe.  “Arthur?  Are you sure?” he finally choked out.
    Modred sneered.  “Am
I sure?  Is the sky blue?”  He resumed walking, and Deoradhan woodenly matched
Modred’s elegant prowl.  “My mother, Lady Morgana, told me this.  She is a
druidess and is never wrong.”
    “She knows about me,
too?” Deoradhan could barely believe it.  He had never known who he was or
whither he had come, except for a few shadowy memories that elusively haunted
him.  Infrequently, the lad had dreamed of finding his parents to be high-born
British Romans or even Irish royalty, who had perhaps set him afloat across the
Irish sea to save him from some horrible doom.  Like Moses, of whom the
Christian priests spoke.  Never had he really believed ‘twas the high king who
had sired him, albeit illegitimately.  Pride and shame coursed through every
fiber of his lanky body.
    “No, my mother only
told me about myself.  I assumed that of you.  Think about it, though: your
story fits the mold.”  Modred directed his serene blue eyes to Deoradhan’s
troubled ones and waited for a response.
    An unknown birth.  An
upbringing at court fit for a prince’s son.  The tutoring, the training, the
numerous gifts from Arthur.  So much that had gone unexplained now made sense.
    Deoradhan nodded.  “I
believe you,” he said to the young man whom he knew to be his half-brother.  “I
must go speak with the king.”
     
    And he had spoken with
Pendragon.  Deoradhan gritted his teeth, remembering.  Arthur had denied the
charge, gently, as a man