Read Online I Am Morgan le Fay by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online

scanned the domed and groined hall of stone. I looked to see what he was looking for and saw nothing but rock, dust, cobwebs and shadows. Yet Thomas spoke. “Thank you, dwellers in Caer Ongwynn,” he said softly to the shadows.
    Caer Ongwynn? This was no castle.
    Yet no one laughed.
    Except, perhaps, the denizens. From somewhere there sounded a kind of squeak or chuckle—it might have been a hedgehog or some sort of bird. I wanted to think it was just a bird or a mouse that had come in from outside.
    Morgause and I looked at each other. Neither of us spoke. She turned back to slicing parsnips.
    On her makeshift bed Ongwynn stirred and murmured.
    â€œHas she come to herself at all?” Thomas asked.
    I nodded. “Just for a moment. She said something I couldn’t quite catch.”
    â€œSomething about bread,” Morgause said.
    â€œScone,” I corrected, for a scone was not quite the same thing as bread.
    â€œBread would be better for her,” Morgause said.
    â€œWhat does it matter? Scone or bread, we do not have it to give to her.”
    The water in the kettle had finally started to steam, although it was not yet boiling. Morgause scooped up handfuls of chopped dried meat and plunked them in, then the vegetables. Wobbling with weariness, Thomas nudged peat into the fire.
    â€œThomas,” I told him, “go sleep.”
    â€œI’m not tired,” he said, and he sat down on the stone floor near Ongwynn. Glancing at him a moment later, I saw that his head drooped, eyes closed.
    â€œYou’re going to fall over and conk yourself,” I told him.
    He did not answer, but began to sag to one side. I could have bowled him over with a touch. The thought tempted me and made me smile, but I took him by the shoulders and eased him to the stone, where he sprawled and slumbered. I stood gazing at him. Many folk look more beautiful, more innocent, more holy when they are sleeping, but Thomas did not. It was not possible. He had about him the innocent courage of a holy hero always.
    â€œMorgan,” Morgause said to me.
    I turned to her. She had left the soup to tend itself and knelt dabbing Ongwynn’s forehead with the wet corner of her shawl.
    I knelt beside her. “Is she any better?”
    â€œNo.”
    She sat on the floor by Nurse—Ongwynn—and I sat beside her, staring at the sick woman as she did.
    Just a common, blocky, sandy-haired Cornishwoman.
    â€œThere is so much I do not understand,” Morgause murmured. “This is her home? A hollow hill, a spirit grange? How did such a one come to us?”
    I said nothing, but I shared her wondering. Why had Ongwynn, pedlar to whom all commoners prayed, become our nurse?
    Wondering was no use. I stood up. “Come on,” I told Morgause.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œJust—looking.”
    I hauled her to her feet. Hand in hand we tiptoed through Ongwynn’s home, peering into the shadows of the half-moon arches, the vines, the groins, the niches in the stone walls. Our wanderings took us to our bedchamber, where we let go of each other long enough to grab our mantles and trot back to Thomas and bundle them around him as he slept. We checked on Ongwynn, then set off snooping again. We found a chamber stacked with heavy wooden chests, and we tried to look into one, leaving our finger marks in its dust; although we saw no padlock, we could not pry open the lid. In another chamber we saw, standing all alone in the middle of the stone floor, a golden goblet fit for a king, so glowing even through its dust that we did not dare to go near it. Other than those things, we found nothing out of the way—a root cellar, empty; the hollow of a baking oven behind the fireplace; a few rotting wooden water buckets. A pink-footed mouse or two scampered away from us. A dove cooed then flew over our heads. We saw no signs of any other life but these and ourselves.
    Yet when we reached the pantry—a cubbyhole