Morgan Le Fay; The True Story

Chapter Six

The first several weeks of my companionship with Leslie were positively drab. While Kellan had always had a taste for adventure and action (which was the reason that she had needed a companion in the first place), Leslie preferred tamer past times.

She couldn’t wait to be married, and every spare moment of the day was spent making things for her dowry. Leslie adored all things that were proper, and she firmly believed that a woman’s role was nothing more than to be a fair flower to the public eye and the one who managed and cared for her husband in private.

I couldn’t understand how she could be satisfied, and she thought the same of my in my unmarried status. We spent hours sitting in silence because of this, her occupied with her needlework and I absorbed in my reading.

“How can you stand to stare at those words for so long?” she asked me once, her needle flashing in and out of the material quickly. “Don’t you know that it will ruin your eyes?”

“No more than staring at those miniscule stitches you’re so keen on making will,” I responded offhandedly. She blushed.

“But I heard that reading fills a woman’s head with dangerous thoughts,” she said her voice dropping down to a whisper. “How will you ever manage to get a husband if you are ruined by your reading?” I closed my book sharply.

“And what if I do not wish to marry?” I asked her. She shot me a startled glance.

“Do not say such things!” she exclaimed. “Of course you wish to marry. All women do.”

“Not necessarily,” I murmured to myself, rising and crossing the room. A maid had just brought in a tea service, imported from Arabia. Uncle had bought it off of a trader from Milan, who had gotten it from someone in Venice, who had connections with the eastern lands. Since it had arrived with the tea leaves, I had become fond of the beverage although it vaguely reminded me of the herbal concoctions the healers would give us when we fell ill. “Tea?”

“Oh, heavens, no,” she said with a delicate shudder. I sighed and poured myself a cup of the hot beverage. As I returned to my seat she studied me in a disappointed manner. “How can you bear to drink that awful stuff? It’s so bitter!”

“Is it, indeed?” I asked serenely opening my book again.” I simply cannot please you today Leslie. From my choice of hobbies to my choice of beverages, you disapprove of them all.”

“Well, it is your fault, really,” she said, sniffing delicately with thinly veiled disgust. “You have such queer tastes, and you don’t behave as a lady ought to at all.”

“Oh?” I asked, looking at her. She stared back at me, the expression on her face one of an upright old woman, despite the fact that she was only nine. “I suppose you are right. The traditions that you so adore have always seemed stifling and unfair to me. After all, a boy becomes a man at a much later age than a girl becomes a woman, so no one expects him to marry while he is still young.” The look on Leslie’s face was the perfect expression of horror. I continued, restraining my desire to laugh at her.

“So girls are married while they are little more than children. They are only there for their husband’s pleasure, and for the continuation of his family line. A woman is disposable if she doesn’t please him. It’s rather unfair isn’t it?”

“Men are supposed to protect their wives,” Leslie blustered, horror and anger mixing nicely on her face. “They are better equipped to deal with the outside world.”

“And why is that?” I mused aloud, my tone slipping into one of sarcasm. “Of course it would have nothing to do with the fact that men are generally better educated than women in this predominately illiterate world? Or that they have opportunities to see the world that women are not granted? Women are not expected to think, so they sink into thoughtlessness. Women are not expected to learn, so they permit themselves to be told what they ought to believe. They are tought to fulfill their duty, to never question the status quo.”