MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy

by Lavinia Collins

  With the thought of war, and Morgawse, I felt my feel for the festivities evaporate around me, and I had no more taste for it. I drained the last of my cup of wine, and left. I hoped that I would fall asleep as soon as I got to my bed, but it didn’t seem likely with all the thoughts whirring around in my mind. When I stepped out in the courtyard, it was icy cold, the floor already slick with frost. It would be snowing up in Lothian, thick and deep, keeping Lot from marching down with his knights to see what was keeping his wife in Camelot. If she did not go back with spring, I felt sure that he would come to fetch her.

  It was bitingly cold, so I hurried across to the tower than held my room. I was too distracted by hurrying from the cold that I did not notice Kay, close behind me, until I got to the door of my room, and I heard him call my name softly. I turned, and there he was at the foot of the stairs, his colour high from the wine, his black hair ruffled from the games. He was wearing this black and gold brocade surcoat that must have been made new, for I had not seen it before, sewn with twisting patterns like the patterns on his black armour. It must have been a gift for Christmas from Arthur. No one else could have had the money to give Kay anything so fine. Except Lancelot. I pushed the thought away. In the low torchlight of the stairway, the gold threads winked and glinted, and the light caught in his glossy hair, and against the darkness of his sparkling eyes. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt my heart hammer suddenly in my chest.

  Kay was up the stairs in a few short leaps, pulling me into his arms. Our faces were cold from the air outside, our mouths warm as they came together, and I felt the powerful softness, the tenderness of his lips against mine, and I felt myself melt into his arms.

  “We shouldn’t,” he said, but he was already following me as I pulled him into the room with me. I wanted to taste a moment of recklessness; to be like Morgawse, just for a moment. We tumbled in, both drunk, both clumsy, but it didn’t matter. I stumbled, losing my balance in the darkness, and as Kay stepped forward to catch me we both fell, still holding each other tight. I was wild, desperate for the erasure that only passion could bring, and Kay seemed to respond in kind. He was impatient with the wine, though, and couldn’t make his fingers work on the lacing of my underdress. After one particularly violent pull, it tore down to my waist.

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “I don’t care,” I breathed, pulling him back down towards me. And in that moment, I did not.

  Kay was still asleep when I woke, before it was quite light outside, but when I brushed a gentle kiss against his sleeping lips his dark eyes fluttered open and he smiled, drawing me closer towards him. I felt anxious, now. I already regretted my brief attempt at recklessness. I just didn’t seem to be made for it.

  “Mmm,” he mumbled, through his sleep. “I don’t want to go.”

  But he did go. He shouldn’t even have stayed. We had forgotten Morgawse last night, though she had forgotten us. She had forgotten everything apart from Arthur.

  I heard a soft knock at my door, and I thought it would be Kay, but it was Lancelot. I resented being disturbed from my daydream memories by anyone other than Kay, and I stood back in the doorway defensively, not letting go of the open door, but ready to shut it again. Lancelot stood tensely in the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Morgan.” Lancelot shifted awkwardly on his feet, and he did not meet my eye. I suspected already what this was about, and I was unwilling to discuss it at all with him. “Can I come in?”

  I couldn’t think of a good excuse not to let him in, and anyway he was already striding through the open doorway. He ran a hand thoughtfully through his dark, gently curling hair, which was cut to his chin, the way the French men wore it. He had spent his life in Britain, in Avalon, and yet he was still unmistakably French, unmistakably foreign. I supposed as an outsider too, myself, I ought to have felt we were allies, but he was not here now to help me. As he turned back to me I shut the door and turned to him, crossing my arms over my chest defensively.

  “Morgan,” Lancelot sighed, rubbing his brow with his hand as though he was trying to find the right words. I hung back. He had interrupted my little moment of pleasant remembrance and I did not want to listen to him. “This is difficult. Ah…” I was not sure if he was searching for the English word, or if he was trying to formulate his words in the most appropriate manner possible. I thought I had heard the Lady of Avalon was French, originally, and though she was wholly a woman of Avalon now, and I could not hear it in her voice, she must have spent his childhood speaking to him in French. But this time, he had not lost his words. “Morgan, Kay is…” Yes, I knew this would be about Kay. “Kay is kind and gentle, and where Kay puts his heart he does so entirely. This isn’t a game for him, Morgan. I don’t think you should be doing this. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t kind.”

  How dare he come here and say these things to me? He had no idea. What did he think I was doing? What kind of nasty knowingness had he imagined in me, in his madness for Kay? I felt hot with anger, and also something else. A kind of nervous embarrassment, and I couldn’t help thinking of the new, unfamiliar embarrassment I had felt when the Abbess had made me climb from the lake naked before him. That had not been so long ago. And we were alone, and I could not help noticing that he was growing in to his angular, thoughtful looks. I felt, as well as the heat of anger in my stomach, a flutter of nerves I was unwilling to feel, unwilling to acknowledge. Up close, like this, I could see, even through his black shirt, the lightly muscular shape of his body, the easy grace of his movements. I didn’t want to notice. I did not want to be flustered by his closeness, I didn’t want to be feeling any kind of attraction to him when he was only being rude to me, and that made me all the angrier with him.

  “You are just jealous because Kay gave you up, and now he wants me.”

  “He didn’t give me up,” Lancelot scowled. So, I had hit a nerve. Good. That meant that Kay truly had not been with Lancelot since his father had told him it must end. That meant that Kay was all mine.

  “Yes he did. I don’t see how this is any concern of yours, Lancelot,” I told him, haughtily.

  “Because there is no future in it, Morgan. You will be married to some prince somewhere, and Kay will have to give you up as well.” Hah, so he admitted now that he had been given up. “I don’t think you know how much he suffered… before. It’s not right, Morgan. You shouldn’t hold on to him when you know this isn’t going to bring either of you happiness. I know it isn’t really my business, I know that. But I know that Kay would do the same for me, if he thought I was getting myself in danger like this. Isn’t it bad enough what your sister is doing, without all this as well? Let him go. Let him be free to have someone he can have. This isn’t fair.”

  I crossed my arms more tightly around myself. He was a hypocrite, really. He wished that Kay hadn’t given him up for duty’s sake, and yet he was asking me to do the same thing. I wasn’t going to. I wouldn’t be taken away from Kay until I was torn away from him. The new danger, the temptation I felt a spark of alone with Lancelot only made me more resolved that he would not separate me from Kay. I didn’t want his words or his presence to have any control over me. I would not be weak to attraction, petty little thing that it was. I was strong, and clever, and I knew what I was doing. Lancelot would not sway me.

  “You can’t just give up love,” I told him, harshly. “It’s too precious. It’s not my fault if you let it slip away from you before.”

  Lancelot reddened, and I could see the anger flash in his eyes, and the frustration. He knew that I was not going to listen to him. I didn’t have to do anything that he suggested. I had put Kay in far less danger than he had. I did not know how he had known, but then I supposed that he would have been the only person looking out for it. Perhaps he had followed Kay last night. That was an unsettling thought.

  “I have to get back to training,” he said sharply, and before I could stop him he sprang past me, out of the door, and left. It was the sa
me quickness that I had seen in the courtyard as he trained for battle.

  I would wait for the time when Lancelot would regret the things that he had said to me. Kay was not his. Kay was mine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I had not had time to grow calm before I heard the loud horns that heralded the arrival of a king or queen sounding in Camelot’s great courtyard. My heart skittered with panic. Lot. I threw my cloak around myself, and rushed down from my room, running out into the courtyard. But it was not King Lot.

  Riding in through the great gates with just a few knights behind her, a rich cloak of russet furs around her narrow shoulders and the white gold crown of Cornwall on her head, my mother, Queen Igraine. My breath caught in my chest, and a rush of joy and affection went through me. Years had passed, and I could see the threads of grey at my mother’s temples where her hair, soft dark brown like my own, was drawn back into a long plait, and the crinkles in the corner of her eyes where she had often smiled. My mother often smiled. I had seen myself in my middle age, and I had borne no such lines around my eyes. But then, already, I did not often smile. She jumped lightly from her horse. In that she and I were different, too; my sister had inherited her dance-like movements from my mother, and somehow I had never quite grown in to my body, slightly clumsy, slightly too tall and slender to move with the easy grace of my mother and sister. Still, when my mother saw me, she rushed to me, and I let her gather me into her arms like a child, and I rested my head on her chest. I smelled her familiar smell; lavender and the dust of her thick brocade clothes, and the salty smell of Cornwall, and Tintagel where the waves beat hard against the rocks at the foot of our castle.

  “Morgan,” she laughed, her laugh soft and tinkling like Morgawse’s. She gently held me away from her, looking over me with motherly approval. “A proper woman of Avalon now. I am so proud. Your father, too, would have been proud.” She kissed me on the forehead, and suddenly I felt embarrassed, too old for her motherly kindnesses. “I hoped I would reach you before Christmas, but the snows near Wales were bad. Morgan, you are all grown.” Fondly, she tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, but then she sighed, looking sad. I wondered if it were a sigh for the lost past, for with all that had happened in Uther’s last sickness, it had been three years since I had seen my mother. “Your sister is here, too?” I nodded. “I must speak with you both, right away.”

  I nodded. Someone behind us shouted an order to send for Morgawse. My mother turned to the men behind her, her voice changed entirely from motherly affection to the orders of a queen.

  “Take my bags to my room in the east tower. Send word to King Arthur that Igraine of Cornwall is here, and that I request an audience with him this afternoon.”

  I thought it was strange that she did not want to present herself to Arthur first. There must be something very important that she had to speak to me and Morgawse about. Perhaps it was something secret to do with Uther’s death. I would not have been surprised, now, if Merlin had had something to do with it.

  My mother led me up to the rooms that had been hers not so long ago. I suspected that her bedroom was still filled with her dresses and books. She led me into her audience room, a small wood-panelled room with a long, broad table of dark oak and a few heavy chairs. In the middle stood a silver candlestick, a half-burned candle still in it, and the wax left where it had dripped. I wondered if my mother had fled Camelot for Cornwall in a hurry, and why she had refused to come back to Camelot when Arthur was crowned King unless Morgawse was here. She must have thought she was in danger from someone, though clearly she had been hoping that Morgawse would have brought Lot and his knights with her, because that was what she asked me as soon as we were alone. I shook my head. She sighed. She did not know yet quite how ill-advised Lot’s failure to accompany his wife had truly been.

  She shrugged off her cloak of furs to reveal a dress underneath made of lovely pale grey, sewn with silver thread. She was slender, like I was, and delicately boned. She was still a beauty, though she was no longer young, with gentle grey eyes and soft features. It was her gentleness and grace that made her so beautiful, and though I bore the same shape and features, that was what I lacked, and I knew it. Still, this was why I was so pleased with the woad. It gave me something else, an arcane gravitas, I thought. People saw me and saw all the greatness and mystery of Avalon.

  When Morgawse came, she burst through the door with a cry of joy, jumping into my mother’s arms so that she stumbled a step back. My mother smiled indulgently, but wearily, and Morgawse stepped away, pulling off her own cloak of white fur and laying it casually on the table beside our mother’s. Beneath Morgawse was dressed in a stunning dress of green and gold samite, cut low at the neck and tight around the waist, and sewn around the neck with little emeralds. Beside the two of them I felt my shabbiness, and plainness. But then again, they both knew the price of being a queen, and I did not.

  My mother touched Morgawse’s cheek gently, and smiled at her, and turned to look at me with a smile as well. She also, thoughtfully, rested her hand on the already obvious swell of Morgawse’s pregnant stomach, but absently as though it were something so mundane that it required no comment. She must have seen her eldest daughter pregnant many times before, and thought nothing different about this time.

  “You girls might want to sit down,” she told us, her face creasing a little in concern. I felt a flutter of panic within me. Was she ill? Was she dying? Neither of us moved. Morgawse crossed her arms over her swelling belly, and I gripped the back of the chair in front of me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “There is something I have kept from you both. It was partly because of my own shame about the matter, partly because it was a dangerous time, and I wanted to protect you both from the knowledge of it. Just after your father died, a man came to me who I thought was your father. I didn’t know he was dead, and I was sure it was he and, well – there was a child. A boy.” I already felt cold inside, but I could see it had not yet dawned on Morgawse. I heard the voice of the Lady of Avalon ringing in my head; Uther desired a lady who had a husband, and Merlin changed Uther’s shape so that he could lie one night with her disguised as this husband. This boy Merlin intends to put on the throne – now, he doesn’t know it and it’s not his fault – but he is a child of rape. It explained so much. Why Uther had married my mother right away, why she had sent us both so fast away, just months after we came to Camelot. It was not just Uther’s cruelty. She must have been beginning to show. Our mother sighed deeply again, and she seemed to be gathering her strength once more. “The boy was taken from me, as soon as he was born, by the witch Merlin, and send to Avalon to be fostered.” She looked up at me then, and our eyes met, and she knew that I knew, but awfully, awfully, she did not know how bad it truly was. I glanced at Morgawse. She was silent, her face white. She was realising before she knew she was. I could see it. “That boy, that boy was Uther’s son. Uther told me it had been him who had come to me in the shape of my husband. So, it is I. I am Arthur’s mother.”

  Morgawse stumbled back under the blow of the revelation, and held her hand against her brow, her mouth falling open into a desperate ‘O’ of denial that she knew was useless. The blood had drained all out of her face, and she was trembling.

  “No,” she breathed, “no, no, no. Mother, no.”

  Igraine sighed in frustration, a tone of annoyance and scolding creeping in to her voice. “It’s not that bad, Morgawse. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but there’s no need for this display of histrionics.”

  I remembered then, despite myself, why I had such a deep affection for my mother. She was one of the few people that preferred my quiet reservation to Morgawse’s demonstrative ways. But she did not realise how misplaced this scolding was now.

  “Actually, Mother…” I began quietly, but I did not need to finish. Our mother’s eyes had lit again on Morgawse’s stomach. She knew how long her daughter had been in Camelot, after all. We had written to her when
Morgawse arrived. Her eyes grew wide, and her usually gentle eyes flashed with anger.

  “Morgawse,” she shouted. “What have you done? Morgawse.”

  She stepped forward towards her, and my sister jumped away. She was shaking, gasping for her breath, shaking her head and muttering no, no, no over and over to herself under her breath. Suddenly, she rounded back on our mother, shouting.

  “You should have said something before. You should have said.”

  “Morgawse,” the scolding tone had returned to our mother’s voice, “I didn’t raise you to be a harlot, letting any man who asks you nicely into your bed. How was I supposed to expect this would happen? If you had been able to keep your legs together –”

  Morgawse had lost it; she was screaming already, and I could see the tears in her eyes. “You married me to an awful old man, who was cruel to me, and rough with me, and who still forced himself on me when I had only just had his children and I was bleeding and begging him to stop. And you expect me to turn away one chance I get of kindness, of even a little bit of gentleness? Arthur is a king, too, so I did not think there was any dishonour in it. You did not tell me.”