TM Challenge 212

[littlebetter]

I never knew why my mother took Sir Lamorak for her lover. I knew his father had killed mine, and that our families were kept in feud by it; I knew that we never spoke to each other when we met, and though I'd never spoken to him I bore him ill-will. I don't even know how she met him, except that it must have been some time when she came to Britain to get out of Orkney, because she hated it.

I don't know whether she loved him, or whether she just wanted someone to laugh at, or share her bed, or make her feel beautiful. I don't know why out of every other damned man in the world she chose him.

I don't know why she told him her name, when I'd managed to make myself believe that no on else knew it but me, and it was the one secret I had of hers that let me believe she loved me--told myself, if she had given me that, she might, some day, give me something more. I don't know why I even believed that.

I don't know whether she would have mourned if I had killed him, or whether she was angry at him when she died, for causing it somehow.

I tell myself I don't want to know.

(sometimes I think, if I did, if I knew any of it, I might have seen some goodness in her, or some humanity--if I knew how she met Sir Lamorak, and knew why she chose him, God, maybe I--but thinking back's no good: I never knew anything.)

I don't want to know.

Words: 278