Romanzo Mordred, Bastard Son (Douglas Clegg)

[llamrei]

1) Suppongo sia vietato ai minori....almeno per quel paio di capitoli che ho letto
2) E' in lingua - non credo sia stato ancora tradotto

Anche questo non sapevo se postarlo o meno.
E' una visione "particolare" di Mordred in questo caso, comunque la storia (ovviamente) è concatenata ad Artù.
Ho letto solo un paio di capitoli o poco più...il mio inglese è al momento parcheggiato... comunque sia prima o poi leggerò questo libro: credo che, nonostante le preferenze dei protagonisti...il libro meriti di essere letto in quanto è un'esplosione di sentimenti.

[Morris]

Attenderò ...prima di giudicarlo!

[Moruadh]

Fa parte di una trilogia.

Vi metto la copertina.




Come comprarlo?- Amazon (internaziole,lo trovate anche usato) o LibreriaUniversitaria (http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/.../9781555839871)

[Moruadh]

Estratto dal libro presente nel sito dell'autore (per farsi un'idea):

www.douglasclegg.com/

MORDRED, BASTARD SON

Chapter One

1

The long wooden boat, its sails lowered, glided along the marshy shoals at the inlet from the mist-shrouded sea.
Standing at the boat’s prow, a cloaked figure guided the boatman between the rocks, toward the strand, as if knowing the place by heart.

2

These were the days after the fall of the kingdoms of Arthur, King of the Britons, whose sovereignty had run from Cornwall to Wales to the west of Gaul called by some Armorica, by others, Britannia. The Romans threatened battle to the east; the Saxons and the men of the North had launched boats upon the southern kingdoms, and it was rumored that an attack on the coast was imminent. The omens of the last days emerged through the mist of smoke and ash that touched the stone-grey sea. Great dark fish of the deep flung themselves onto the sand, as if the water itself had been poisoned. In the air, flocks of ravens flew swift along the twisting roads at the edge of the marshy strand that led to the great rock island, the Dragon’s Mount, which jutted out from a strand of the southern Armorica coast called Cornouaille by the Celtic tribes. The priests and bishops called out for the heathens to be hunted down, for they had brought ruin to the crops and kept the land unholy and allowed the Saxons and the men of the North to destroy the holy sites. But those who had known the Days of the Kings and of the Druid Priests, had remembered the Roman captivity, called out for the Merlin in the old tongue, hoping that the ancient mage might save them from the devastation.
Atop the peak of the Dragon’s Mount, where the rocks flattened like great altars, soldiers stood vigil lest those who had lost faith during the fortnight might risk the quicksand marshes and ascend the rocky stair to the ancient place of pagan worship.
The year of war and fire lay dying, and the Cauldron of Rebirth, called by some the Grail, had been lost. The isles of Avalon in the brackish summer sea turned to haze and even the finest boatmen could not find them. Those who worshipped the heathen gods went underground, those of Christendom sought sanctuary in the ruins of abbeys and monasteries and nunneries and the Roman villas, which had become property of either church or warlord; the wars continued, even after the great castles of Arthur, pen-Dragon had fallen and lay in ruin.
All of it, so it was said, could be laid at the feet of one man, whose infamy had spread throughout the kingdoms and whose name had quickly come to mean, simply, “traitor.”
That name was Mordred.
“Mordred,” curved upon the lips of those men who sought the source for the unraveling of the world – as if the word “Mordred” were an eel that wriggled and slithered along the tongue, many grimaced as the name was spoken. He was known to be unnatural; a demon; a spirit of malevolence rising from the miasma; some believed him to be a creature of the night, drinking the blood of youths; still, others remembered his mother, and how she had turned to darkness and raised her son in shadow. A great price of gold and silver had been set upon the head of this bastard heathen, as well as for the sword he had stolen from the greatest of Kings of the Britons.
And yet, few could recognize the face of this man. By legend, he was a hideous, deformed creature, with the horns of the Bull-god upon his forehead, and the stench of the grave about him.
The villagers expected a phantom in the form of a man.
It was to this craggy shore that a stranger arrived, cloaked and masked.

3

He paid his fee to the boatman with a sack of gold – and none questioned him, though rumors spread as fast as fire across a field of drying hay.
A soldier under Bedevere’s command, standing with his comrades along the Roman wall, found the boatman soon after his landing. Threatening him and his crew with death, the boatman confessed that the masked stranger had first come to him with blood on his hands, blood on his gold, and had only washed in the sea when the stranger had noticed the boatman’s glare. “He wears a mask of gold and silver, as I have seen the heathens wear for their infernal celebrations,” the boatman said.
The soldier struck the old man hard, and the boatman fell to the earth. “You are heathen yourself. I see the markings upon your wrist old man. You brought this murderer to our land to escape his fate among Arthur’s knights.”
Then, he took the gold from the boatman. Passing it to his companions, the soldier told them to arrest the boatman until a confession was had as to the whereabouts of “that bastard Mordred who shall not live to see another dawn.”

4

And yet, for one long day and night, the stranger traveled inland, finding the narrow byways off the main coastal roads, avoiding the trade routes and the endless run of horsemen and soldiers.
The nameless days of December passed, the days without sun following the solstice; the hours since the song of swords had last been sung; many nights since the last cry had been heard on the battlefields, beyond the gentle slope of land. The fires had come, and then the silence. The dead remained unburied where they had fallen; the living had retreated from the sea to the forest and the inland villages. Smoke plumed at a great distance, from the still-burning towers along the sea wall. The sky above, at twilight, ran crimson through thatched gray clouds, and the local folk who lived along the marshlands and the fields beyond the ruined castle of the dead warlord, Hoel, felt this was a sign that Arthur had begun his journey to the Otherworld, through the isles of Avalon.
The forest by the roadside grew dark too fast; and omens and auguries were read by the priests of old, in secret places, and predictions of the coming year mingled with prophecies of the immortal king. Whispers rode the wind across the wolf-scavenged battlefield at the plain beyond the woods. At the far end of the torn castle wall, near the abbey and the old Roman road, it was whispered that all that had been found was lost, and all that had been dreamed, disturbed.
Into this approaching dusk, came that dark-hued stranger, a man of shadows, like the spirit of one long dead now raised to complete a task. That phantom, masked and shrouded, carrying a staff that looked as if it had once been a spear of war.

5

He wore a heavy, ragged cloak, as a beggar might, and some folk grew afraid that he brought a plague with him as he skulked beneath the fallen towers, still blackened and smoldering. His face, covered by that jeweled mask placed as if hiding a war-scar.
He grasped his staff, trudging up the dirt road with its markers of pikes with the heads of traitors upon them. In a time of plenty, he might be judged a wanderer, but in these dangerous times after the wars, fear had spread across the land. Strangers brought with them dread. The kindest among the folk in the village whispered in doorways that this might be a hermit come to the forests, having retreated from the world of men in order to fight the demons of temptation. Those of the old beliefs, those who still kept the antler headdress hidden beneath their straw mats, or went to beg the Lady of the Wood for herbs and salves, felt that he might be one of their Druids, perhaps even the sacred Merlin, disguised as a wanderer.
Those who held to fearful beliefs thought it might be one of the undead of the battlegrounds, called the Wandering Ones. These spirits had not been invited into the Otherworld for crimes they had committed and debts they owed.
This cloaked man went along, unmolested, unharmed, and as twilight grew near, he stopped along the rotting wood and crumbling stone of an old Roman villa that had but one standing wall left to it.
Here, he slept, curled nearly into a ball, against the cold stone.

6

He awoke shivering. Above him, a boy of no more than nine or ten, standing in a peasant shift, pointing down at him. Beyond the boy, two monks watched his slow movements as he sat up.
“The soldiers came. Three nights past,” the little boy said. “Sir Bedevere’s, they told me. Looking for a stranger, they told me. They promised my father and brothers gold should any of us find him.”
“That warlord’s army might have more pressing things to do than raid these villages and search for one man,” the elder monk said, resting his hand upon the boy’s shoulder briefly as if for comfort. “Do not be afraid of these things, child. And if gold is to be had, you shall have it, I’m certain.” His voice carried with it a wheeze and a cough, and the young monk with him touched the edge of his hand as if to steady him.
The young monk moved closer to the stranger, raising his russet robe slightly as he got down on one knee beside him.
“Is it the devil?” the boy asked. “They say he has the jaws of a wolf.”
The monk lifted the stranger’s hood so that he could better see his face. The monk reached up to the mask that covered the stranger’s eyes, and drew it from him. He recognized the mask as one used many years before in the heathen ceremonies, and it was the face of Cernunnos, the Lord of the Forest. A pagan god’s face, etched into the gold and silver mask. Around the eyes, amber and garnet stone.
The hunter and the hunted one.
Beneath the mask, a face sharply handsome, yet worn as if all his energies had been spent.
The stranger’s eyes opened and closed as if he believed himself dreaming rather than waking.
When the stranger opened them again, the elder monk said, “He has been hurt much. I dread what will become of him. Yet, we must take him. If not us, the soldiers. Or the wolves.”
The stranger’s eyes were warm and a brown-green shade.
Then, the young monk turned back to the boy and his companion, “This may be the one who has been sought these many days.”

[Moruadh]

Continuazione dell'estratto (disponibile online sul sito dell'autore-www.douglasclegg.com)

7

The stranger did not resist the monks as they took him at the elbows and prodded him along, for the stranger, despite his youthful appearance, no more it seemed than a man in his late twenties, yet showed infirmity of limb and fell once or twice before reaching the monastery gate. The little boy trotted after the monks alongside the dirt road, and now and then reminded the elder monk that his father would want the gold “if the good Sir Bedevere keeps his promises.”
Watching the monks from a distance, some of the villagers came to the edge of the winter fields to ask after this prisoner. The boy’s father came, too, and drew his son back “for the plague may be with him, and demons upon his robe.” And then, his father shouted after the monks, “I will not forget what is owed me from this! What my son is owed!”
The elder monk glanced back at the shouting man, and shook his head when he saw the folk who had gathered to watch them. He said to the young monk who shouldered the burden of their captive, “They will want blood. It is all anyone wants, these days. More so than gold.”
The other monk remained silent, while the strange man leaned against him for support as they walked.
At the north gate into the monastery, which led first to the gardens, the elder monk said to the younger, “Bedevere will come soon enough for this man. We must keep him here overnight before the soldiers force their way to him. I do not want an innocent man murdered in a time like this. Too much murder has gone on. Too much greed. You will find what he seeks. Why he is here. If he is the traitor, we shall pass him to the knight’s men. But if he is not, we shall give him sanctuary.”

8

Inside, they took the stranger to a room of straw and dirt, and after awhile, in the dark, he slept again. The heavy-gated door, closed and locked. Though it was a prison cell, the place held a bit of warmth in the earth and when he awoke briefly, before falling back to the deepest sleep of his life, he found a bowl of fresh water near him, as well as a trencher of bread soaked with milk.
Sometime in the night, the young monk entered his cell, a slow-burning lamp in his hand.

9

The stranger sat up in the straw, stretching his arms over his head as he woke. “Thank you for the water,” he said, sleepily. “It revived me much.”
“You have great need of sleep.”
“I have need of that sleep from which one does not wake,” the man said. Then, when he tried to move again, he groaned slightly, reaching down to touch his side. When he noticed the monk’s eyes upon his hand, he said, “Do not trouble yourself with my pain.”
“You are wounded?”
“I am healed,” the man said.
“I want to see your wounds,” the monk insisted. “They may need tending.”
The captive lay back on clumps of straw and drew back the fabric of his cloak, but slightly. Then, he smiled, but did not say a word. He reached to the stays along his cloak and undid them, up to his throat, and drew out the curved silver pin that held it in place.
When it opened, the monk noticed the torque that encircled his neck. He had seen torques in his childhood, but they had been outlawed by the church and the king as symbols of the heathens. It was a twist of beautiful gold, a collar band that did not seem too tight against the muscled cords of the man’s throat.
“It was given me by one whom I loved much,” the captive said, fingering the torque, like a slave collar. “It cannot be removed, though I have tried. But you are after wounds, my friend. I offer them to you.”
Drawing back his cloak completely, the man reached up with his hands and tore the thin fabric of his shirt open to his waist. Between the jagged tears of the cloth, the curves of a lean physique, well-defined muscles, with a chest that was thick and broad despite his body’s over-all slender build. Upon his smooth flesh, small tattoos of the type that adorned the pagan priests – markings in the ancient tongue that could not be deciphered without risk of heresy. The small image of the sun itself lay just above the curve of his left nipple, and of the crescent moon at his right. Three small markings had been etched just below his navel, with what looked like the welt of a healing wound that rose from the thin strip of leather at his thigh. He had no tufts of hair there, as was the old ritual of the forest priests to remove the body hair of initiates into certain forbidden mysteries and damnations.
“Yes,” the man said, watching the young monk. “Are they not beautiful? It is hard to take your eyes from this art, for it is said that it holds a glamour for men to look upon it.”
The monk, transfixed by the body art, his fingers gliding lightly along the captive’s ridged and taut stomach to his navel, and felt the slight welt of scar where the tattoos had been made just above his loins. The man shivered slightly at his touch.
“You are a most unusual monk,” the captive said, softly, his eyes warming to the monk’s face. “Would you like to inspect the rest of me before I am throttled by soldiers? I could step from these trousers that you might see more of this magickal art.”
His skin shone with oil and sweat, and when the man drew open the strip of leather binding at his trousers, and parted the opening, he grinned. “I have lain with monks before, so if that allows me escape from this place, then we may know each other freely.” He brought his hand to the monk’s sleeve and tugged it. “Is this what you wish?”
The monk drew his arm back, and returned his gaze to the captive’s face.
His eyes seemed like shiny black stones now where they had seemed warm and bright beneath the sun, and although the man remained smiling, his lips thick and curved, he radiated fury.
“I do not wish to…” the young monk said, his throat dry. “I want only to know.”
“To know? Is that why do you keep me here? Or is it to sell my head to the highest bidder?”
“No. But you are hunted like the forest stag. You are safer here than out in the cold fields where Bedevere’s men might find you. You are the one who betrayed the king. And the knight Lancelot. And the Queen of the Britons, Guinevere.”
“All those?” the man said. “You know this?”
“I have heard. And worst of all, to the people of these lands, from here to the islands, you murdered King Arthur, the greatest leader of the Britons.”
“My father.”
“You are truly Mordred, son of Morgan le Fay?”
“Yes. I am Mordred. I could lay claim to the family pen-Dragon, but I do not wish to do so. I am a prince of the Wastelands and of the isles of Glass and of Avalon and a priest of the sacred Grove. And only son of the king.”
“Why do you return here? We had heard you would escape to the Saxon lands, if alive. But…”
“You heard I had died, on the field. So here I am, a ghost.”
“Some reports were of your death, some not. I never believed you were dead.”
“Who are you not to believe in my death? You seem young to doubt me. How old can you be?”
“I am old enough,” the monk said. “I am nearly into my nineteenth year.”
“A dangerous age to bury yourself in a monastery, little brother monk,” Mordred said. “Your beauty is like a young stag in springtime. You should be out in the field dances, or riding a wild horse along the banks of a river. Chasing nymphs. Or men. The monastery is meant for old men, but the wilderness is meant for you. Your life has been shackled.”
“My life has been pure,” the monk said. “For I was born of sin and must atone.”
“All the world, according to monks, born from sin,” Mordred laughed. “Tell me, pure one, why have you come to me so late? To see my wounds? To cut off my head as I lay sleeping?”
“No.” The monk’s face reddened. “I would tend to your wounds, yes. But they seem healed. I would ask of you that you tell me of your life.”
“Why?”
Then, the monk said in a voice that was both nervous and hopeful, “That I might understand all of this.” In his eyes, a glistening of tears, yet he did not wipe them. “I cannot tell you more, for if I did, I would have to leave you to your fate. I have been raised among the gardens and cells of this abbey. My mother died before I reached a full year, and I have not experienced the world at all. The monastery have been my lot this whole life.”
“So tales of my crimes will please you?” Mordred asked.
The monk nodded.
“So that when you are on that hard wood bed, in your itchy shirt, after your evening prayers, you may lie there and think of the great and evil Mordred to whom you are superior?”
“No, my lord. Not in any way. But they say the world has unraveled, and the great knights and the King have passed. And you are the only witness who has come here who has known these noble knights and ladies of whom…of whom I speak. I wish for truth, good sir. I wish…” But the monk’s voice faded, and a troubling look came into his eyes. “I wish to know.”
“I will tell you what truth I know,” Mordred said. “If, with each tale, you allow me one freedom.”
“I cannot promise freedom.”
“I do not mean the freedom from this cell. I mean, the freedom with you that I desire.”
“I have heard of your desires,” the monk said.
“And I know the desires of one kept among monks his whole life, one of such beauty and longing and purity,” Mordred said. “But I need one freedom to begin, and another when I have finished.”
“Tell me,” the young monk said.
“For a kiss,” Mordred smiled, his gaze steady upon the youth who leaned forward while Mordred rose to meet it, and press his lips against the monk’s. The young monk withdrew after too long a moment, his face flush-red in the lamplight.
“Thank you,” Mordred sighed. “I have not felt so refreshed in days. And now, where shall I begin? Shall it be when I brought the Queen into the light of day? Or when, as a boy, I learned of the secrets of the earth and the lakes. Or of my training with the Merlin, in the eastern arts of necromancy and of war? I owe you my life tonight, my friend. I will tell you what you wish to know.”
“All of it,” the monk said, a slight rise in tone to his voice as if he were angry now for having given the kiss. “I want to know of Arthur and his knights. I want to know of meek and beautiful Guinevere, and that shining knight Lancelot, and the Lady of Astolat. I want to know of that terrible witch, Morgan le Fay and of her ogre-sister, Morgause, and of…”
“The lies that you’ve heard, second-hand, in your monk’s cage,” Mordred said, his eyes seeming to sadden a bit. “They are not true. Morgan and Morgause were not ogresses, neither were they terrible. In fact, many men believed them to be the most beautiful and powerful women of their time. If I tell you the truth, the truth as I know it from my own memory, tonight, will you help me escape this place?”
Without hesitation, the monk nodded his head, keeping his eyes on Mordred’s. “I will. Tell me of your mother. I have heard she was a great sorceress and spoke with the spirits of the dead.”
Mordred began his tale. “The king would one day call my mother the Witch-Queen, and she bore that title as if it were the greatest in all the world. And that is how I think of her, as the Queen of Witches, of the Faerie, of Broceliande and of Tintagel and of the Wastelands. But mostly, I think of her as Queen of the Britons. She was heavy with me in her belly when first she learned that Arthur, the King, but seventeen years of age, meant to murder her.”

[llamrei]

Morouadh: gentilmente: leggete il regolamento prima di postare e soprattutto citate le fonti da dove attingete le informazioni

[Moruadh]

La fonte è appunto il sito dell'autore, come scritto, Milady.

[llamrei]

Originalmente inviato da Moruadh

La fonte è appunto il sito dell'autore, come scritto, Milady.

Io lo benissimo, infatti da li ho letto i primi episodi. I link devono essere sempre citati milady, è una norma nel rispetto di chi ci fornisce le informazioni e onde evitare problemi nel caso il possessore si accorga da quanto attinto e postato sul forum.
Grazie per averlo inserito a seguito della mia segnalazione. Buona permanenza Moruadh

[llamrei]

Vi volevo informare che ho ricevuto comunicazione da parte di Douglas Clegg in merito al libro in questione.
Avevo rivolto all'autore del libro, tra le altre cose, domanda in merito alla possibilità di trovare questo titolo in italiano. Purtroppo, dice, il libro non è ancora stato preso in mano per la traduzione nella nostra lingua ma è comunque fiducioso che ciò avverrà presto.
Intanto godiamocelo in inglese

[Hastatus77]

Complimenti ... sei una lady piena di risorse.