THE CURSE OF EXCALIBUR: a gripping Arthurian fantasy (THE MORGAN TRILOGY Book 2)

by Lavinia Collins

  I opened my eyes to find that Lancelot had stepped towards me again, and he reached out to brush his fingertips against my cheek. I felt the blood in me grow hotter. It’s Merlin, I told myself, but I was frozen to the spot. I knew I should push him back and run, but the shock of it held me still. Slowly, gently, he took my face in his hands and, as my breath fluttered fast from me, he leaned down and our lips brushed. I sighed with longing, and in response, I felt his lips open on mine, his kiss become deep and passionate, and the wave of sweet excitement run through my body. I could feel my heart racing, and my spine weaken as I felt his tongue against mine, and his kiss grow more powerful and hungry with my need for it.

  But when I felt the forceful grip of his hands on the skirts of my dress, pushing it up, I thought again this is Merlin, and this time the feeling that flooded through me was raw disgust. I pushed him back and slapped him hard across the face. Grinning, he changed back into himself. I would have killed him if I had had Excalibur in my hands.

  “Well, it is well enough that Arthur does not have Excalibur. He can pose no mortal danger to me without it. Still, I shall have the sword for myself, Morgan.”

  “It’s a pity that you cannot get a woman to touch you in your real form, isn’t it, Merlin?”

  I felt that I had some ground to win back from him. He had surprised me, and found me vulnerable. I wanted him to feel weak as well. “You think you are the only one who knows other people’s secret desires?”

  I closed my eyes and pictured Nimue; the small-boned frame, the white-blonde hair, the pretty, attentive face. When I opened my eyes, it was the first time I had seen Merlin in his real form with anything other than a grin on his face. His ugly face had fallen, drooping low around the mouth, his eyes wide and staring.

  “But, Merlin, I am not here to give you what you want,” I said, and the voice that came from me was Nimue’s whispery soprano, not the voice I knew as my own. “Why so surprised, Merlin? Did you think I would not study the book that I exchanged for my sword? Or did you think I did not know that you desire Nimue, and she has denied you?”

  Merlin was struggling to regain his control again, and I was beginning to feel stronger and bolder. He tried to gather his expression into one of superiority, and he gave a cruel laugh.

  “You have so much to learn, Morgan.” He leaned closer, to whisper it at me one more time in his rasping voice, “You have so much to learn.”

  As I reached out to slap him again, he disintegrated into mist under my hand, and he was gone. Gone without my ever knowing his news.

  Chapter Six

  The news came nonetheless. Arthur was getting married. Uriens and I would have to ride to Camelot. I told him I did not want to take Elaine. She avoided me now that she knew she irritated me. I wished I could have liked her. It would have been nice to have some female company in Rheged Castle. I missed the communities of women that I had known at the abbey and in Avalon. I missed the conversation of women. I missed Morgawse. I was sorry, too, that now I was married we would not sleep side by side as sisters. I knew I would worry for her, afraid and alone, and unable to sleep in Camelot.

  It was decided that Uriens and I would travel with only two of his knights, leaving the household and our son behind in the cares of Accolon and Elaine. I was sorry to leave Accolon behind, but I thought it would be hard to be secretive with Camelot full of people. We did not talk about parting, the night before I left for Camelot. I would be back soon, and when I was back the mixture I had made for Uriens would be ready. I had not told Accolon yet, but when I returned from Camelot I would.

  We left before light was fully up, to reach Camelot before it was too dark to ride anymore. Uriens did not like the thought of spending a night on the road with me any more than I did with him. It was cold, still. The air was fresh with the coming spring, but it was not yet warm, and I wore my light furs, thin and glossy-black over the gleaming black dress Nimue had made me. I was pleased with how I looked. A little fearsome, I thought, and that was how I wanted it. Uriens wore his crown. I had seen myself wearing it in my dreams of the future, and the sight of it heartened me. He would soon be gone, and his lands would be mine.

  When Camelot came in sight, a huge black silhouette against the fading sunset, Uriens drew his horse up to mine and leaned close to me.

  “You will not embarrass me when we are in Camelot. You will be a proper wife to me. Do you understand, Morgan?”

  I said nothing.

  I heard the horn sound for our arrival, and the gates opened wide. Camelot’s great courtyard was filled with people holding torches. At the head of the group Arthur stood, dressed in his crown and his red and gold surcoat. Merlin stood beside him, his nasty black eyes shining from within his hood, his face a mass of bluish darkness in the shadow the torches threw. Just behind them stood Ector. My mother – our mother – stood at Arthur’s side. It was what was proper, but I thought Arthur would probably have preferred to have Ector beside him. Beside his father, in his black and gold surcoat, stood Kay. He was even more handsome than I had remembered, his dark eyes intense and thoughtful where they were usually bright with laughter. He did not look at me, but I knew he was thinking about me. In the light of the torches, the soft thickness of his black hair shone. I looked for Morgawse in the crowd, but I did not see her.

  I jumped from my horse before Arthur and accepted his kisses on my cheeks, then kissed my mother.

  “You did not bring your son,” she said softly, with disappointment.

  “He is still very young,” I protested gently. She nodded indulgently, thinking me the doting mother. Whenever I thought about the child, it made me feel hollow and sick.

  As I made my excuses that I was tired, Kay slipped through the crowd to meet me on my way to my bedchamber.

  “Morgan, you,” he gave a weak smile, “you look well.” I returned his smile. “Arthur tells me you have a son. Ah…” Kay shifted a little on his feet. “How is he? Is he...?”

  I sighed with annoyance, both at how the boy had turned out, and with Kay’s inability to ask the brave question. “He is the image of his father, which pleases the old man tremendously.”

  Kay nodded thoughtfully. He looked a little disappointed, and I was sorry for my sharpness. I wished that we were in a place where I could touch him, could kiss him, could talk honestly with him.

  “Well, I am so happy to see that you are well. Goodnight, my Lady Queen Morgan.” He took my hand and kissed it softly. I knew how those lips felt all over my body, and I felt their impression on the back of my hand after he had slipped back away into the crowd.

  I undressed and climbed right into bed when I got to my chamber. It was dark and no one had prepared a fire, but I didn’t care. I was exhausted from the ride, and I wanted to be asleep before Uriens came. I hoped that he would leave me alone if I were asleep.

  I fell asleep fast, and I dreamed a sweet dream. The dream began with me and Kay lying side by side in the woodland clearing by Ector’s house. It happened as it had before, and Kay turned to me and kissed me, and we melted together with it, with all the exploratory delight of young love. I felt the sensations again as I had felt them before, the quiver of excitement when Kay found the secret place within me I did not know I had, and the heat of his breath against my neck, and most of all, the gentle power of the first kiss which was full of the smell of the lilacs and the lazy feeling of the end of summer. Then, in the dream, before it was over, Kay turned me over again beneath him, and I was lying on my back in the grass looking up at not Kay, but Lancelot, and the kiss I felt against me was the intense sensual kiss I had felt in the forest, only this time I was not denied, for he was there, at the centre of me, and all around me, our lips and bodies pressed tight together in the ecstasy of passion. In the lovely haze of the dream I felt myself growing hot and eager with it, I felt it gather tight in the low centre of me, deep in my stomach.

  But I was forced from my dream by the feel of Uriens’ rough hands on me. Still slow with
sleep, with the dream, still hot and full of longing, I tried to push him off me, but my mind was hazy still, and my limbs heavy. He did not move. I felt him force his hand up between my legs. He felt my desire there and could not believe that it was not for him. I kicked at him, and I opened my mouth to shout, but he clamped his hand over it before I could get the noise out, covering my nose as well so that the strength left me with my breath. He rolled on to me and, pushing up my nightdress, went hard inside me. I screamed against his hand, but it ate up the sound, and I had already lost the fight. It did not hurt the same as it had before, but I hated the feeling of his heavy body squashing down on top of me, his unkind grip over my mouth, and the other hand wrapped around my wrist. I would see the marks of his fingers against the white and blue of my skin tomorrow. The woad would hide them, but I doubted I would get any sympathy from anyone anyway. A wife’s duty. I felt sick. Thankfully, it was over fast, and he rolled away into the darkness. I felt the hot tears of my powerlessness prick at the back of my eyes, and I held them back.

  When I was sure that Uriens was asleep, I slipped from the bed, smoothing my nightdress down and wrapping a cloak around my shoulders. I had not been wrong to hope that Morgawse would be in her old room. I could see a light from under the door, and I opened the door without knocking. Morgawse was sat, fully dressed still, even wearing her crown, cross-legged on her bed. She had the little boy Mordred on her knee and was fussing his fine strands of golden hair while he giggled and kicked his feet in delight, but when she saw me come through the door in my nightdress she slipped from the bed and set him in a wooden crib. She walked over to me, took my hand, led me into the room just enough to shut the door and bolt it behind us. She gently pushed the loose hair back from around my face and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Marriage as you described,” I whispered, and as I said the word, and acknowledged the depths of my unhappiness to my sister, it broke in me, and I could not hold the tears back. Morgawse held me against her, and hushed me gently. I wrapped my arms around her neck and buried my face in her hair, which smelled of wood-smoke and spices as somehow it always had. When I felt calmer, I pushed gently back up off her shoulder. “I thought he would not try to… hurt me in Camelot. I thought he would be ashamed to in a castle full of people.” I shook my head, fighting back the tears again. Morgawse took off her crown, shushed me again and, taking both of my hands, led me towards the bed where we lay down together side by side. I closed my eyes. We could have been girls again.

  Morgawse did not put out the candles, but they guttered out as we fell asleep. When I woke in the morning I did not remember where I was for a moment, but I did know that I had slept beside Morgawse, and I woke feeling safe. It was only when I was fully awake that my mind flashed back to Uriens with his hand over my mouth.

  I did not have to wonder long why Morgawse had not come out to greet me the night before. She woke before me, when she heard the first little murmurings of wakefulness from Mordred. She was already dressed in a different dress, as rich as the one she had worn before, a deep plum purple and edged with fine white fur around the neck and sleeves. She looked beautiful, still, after everything; far more beautiful than I would ever be, despite the fact that she was seven years older than I.

  She smiled when she saw me awake.

  “Morgan, you’re awake. When I woke up this morning and saw you there, it made me think of when we were girls.” She shook her head with a gentle smile of disbelief, shifting the weight of the little child in her arms. “So much has changed, eh?”

  I climbed out of the bed and wrapped my cloak around myself. I would have to go back downstairs, to Uriens, to get my dress. Morgawse set the child down on the bed when I got out, and turned to me, crossing her arms in a gesture of anger and frustration.

  “Do you know Arthur is refusing to see me?” she said. I shook my head.

  “I don’t know why he is angry with me,” Morgawse raged. “I ought to be angry. My sons were born princes, and now they’re just his knights; he won’t acknowledge his son, and he refuses to talk about it, like he thinks I did it to him!”

  She seemed to have, strangely, forgotten the worst; that Arthur had tried to have their son killed. The little boy sat on the bed staring at his mother, quiet and still, but his eyes following her attentively. Under the bright lick of fine gold hair on his head, he had a curiously serious face for a child that did not seem to come from either of his parents. Absently, Morgawse walked over to the bed and picked him up in her arms again. He grabbed hold of her long, thick hair and rested his head against her breast, closing his eyes. She stroked his head gently. I saw the look of love she gave him, and the deep happiness she got from even this cursed, ill-fated child, and I felt the raw stab of jealousy.

  “He is a strong boy. Any other father would have been proud.”

  “Do you tell him,” I asked warily, “who his father is?”

  Morgawse looked up at me, in disbelief. “Of course! Well, it hardly did his father any good not knowing who his parents were, did it?” I supposed that she was right.

  “Should you have him here? Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked.

  Morgawse spoke gently, still gazing down at her child, but her words were harsh. “It is safe enough. I wrote to Arthur before we came saying that I was bringing him. I told him, if he ever tried to harm any of my sons again, I would let it be known throughout the whole land that it was he, not Merlin the witch, who played Herod to all the little boys in Lothian, and then he would have war on his hands again.”

  I was glad that she had found a way to be safe.

  There was a knock at the door. I gathered the cloak more tightly around myself as Morgawse walked over and opened it with one hand. But I didn’t need to; it was our mother. She kissed Morgawse on the cheek brusquely, casting her a look of disapproval as she came into the room and Morgawse closed the door behind her.

  “You brought the child with you, I see,” she said, her tone thick with distaste.

  “Yes, mother, I brought my child with me. I had to, because I was afraid that his father would try to have him killed again.”

  Mother ignored her, and came over to kiss me on both cheeks and take my face in her hands.

  “Little Morgan.” Her kind eyes crinkled into a smile. “Not little Morgan any more, but a wife and a mother.” She kissed me on the forehead. “It suits you well.”

  I did not think it suited me at all. Then my mother’s face turned to confusion as she looked at me properly.

  “Morgan, why are you here so early? Why are you in your bedclothes?” She asked, her tone halfway between concern and reprimand.

  I opened my mouth, unsure of whether to tell her the truth or not. Morgawse stepped in for me.

  “She slept here last night,” Morgawse told her, firmly, striding over to stand beside us, Mordred still in her arms. He seemed to be sleeping.

  “Why?” Mother asked softly. I glanced at Morgawse. She was as unsure as I was. I did not think I could bear a speech about duty.

  “Uriens has been hurting her. Look.” Morgawse grabbed my wrist with her free hand, holding it up in front of our mother’s face. I had not thought she had noticed the blue-black marks of his fingers through the woad, but she had, and I was grateful. I did not know why I was surprised; she had felt them herself.

  My mother sighed heavily and gently took my wrist from Morgawse. She laid her fingertips against the marks lightly, as though trying to soothe it better.

  “Men can be rough. Perhaps I was wrong to send you to the abbey. Marriage must have been a shock for you. Just,” she sighed again and drew me into an embrace, pressing a kiss to the top of my head as though I were a child, “Try to do what he wants. Marriage does take some getting used to. And don’t listen to your sister too much. She frightened you about it, didn’t she?”

  “I told her the truth,” Morgawse shouted. Mordred woke in her arms, and began to scream.

  “Oh!” My mother said, suddenly moving me back f
rom her, holding me by the shoulders. It was as though she thought the matter entirely dealt with. “I forgot – I came to tell you that Arthur and his knights are meeting the new Queen at Dover today, and the wedding will be tomorrow.”

  I nodded. I didn’t care.

  “At Dover?” Morgawse asked as she shushed Mordred quiet again, seemingly utterly distracted by this news as my mother was. “So it’s a foreign princess. Isolde?”

  My mother shook her head.

  “He didn’t want Isolde. She seemed like a lovely girl to me, but Arthur didn’t take to her. She was Merlin’s choice.” My mother made a little noise of disapproval in her throat. I was not sure if she disapproved of Merlin, or of Arthur ignoring his advice. “Anyway, we should make ourselves ready to welcome this new Queen. Now,” she turned to me and took my hand, “you had better go back to your own room, Morgan. To your husband.”

  I cast a plaintive look at Morgawse, but I went willingly with Mother. When I reached my room, I was relieved to find that Uriens was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  There were serving women waiting there for me, and though I did not like being fussed by them, I was grateful for the warm bath they brought, and grateful to close my eyes and feel my hair being brushed. I dressed in one of my mother’s old dresses that she had given me at my wedding, a simple grey and silver brocade dress, and pulled my woollen cloak on top.

  I found Merlin where I sought him. He had a room in the same tower as Arthur’s bedroom. It was dark and smoky, and I was sure he kept it stuffed with bizarre herbs and animal parts in jars in order to scare people. Nothing he had in that room looked particularly useful or felt particularly powerful to me. On my way up the stairs, when I was sure no one was around, I closed my eyes and imagined myself as Nimue. I had done it once before, so it came easily, and I felt my limbs change, grow smaller and lighter, and my shape become hers. I wondered if Merlin would be fooled.