When I moved through the castle, wary of running into Arthur every time I turned a corner, or opened a door, I was not bothered by anyone. People simply inclined their heads respectfully as I passed, or smiled affectionately. Much as I hated him, I could not deny that he was liked by the people of Camelot.
I came into Arthur’s bedroom to find, to my surprise, it was not empty. Guinevere was there, standing at the window, dressed as though she had just stepped in from the outside, a light flush from the cold on her cheeks, and a cloak of dark furs around her shoulders. From beneath, a dark green dress sewn in gold peeped, and in her hands she held a large square of parchment which seemed, from across the room, to be a map of Europe. She was looking at it attentively, and with her dark red hair gathered in a thick plaited knot at the nape of her neck, I could see the white skin of her long neck, soft and inviting as fresh snow, beneath. I had forgotten how enchanting she was.
When she heard me, heard Arthur’s heavy footfalls at the door, she looked up, and smiled. I realised I had not seen her smile properly before; it broke across her face like dawn. She loves him, I thought. How could that be? Had everything I had dreamed about her been wrong? It was all so confusing, and all unfair.
“Arthur,” she said. She ran the few steps across the room to meet me as I walked towards her. Her movements were lithe and light; she had the easy strength and grace of a woman who knew her own body well, and still the same impulsiveness with which I had seen her flick water from her bath. She held out the map before me and turned around so I could look over her shoulder as she held it out, pointing with a slender finger. “I've been looking at this map, and Arthur, look – here beside Carhais, it's not marked, there's some thick woodland. From here, if Lucius' forces come north, we would have cover to defend our own lands. We would avoid an open battle, you'd need fewer knights, fewer losses. You should send men to Carhais now, try to prevent open war.”
She was not just beautiful, then; she was also clever. Or at least shrewd and careful in the workings of war. She was talking about the Emperor of Rome. Word had come to us as well that he was not pleased that there was a King of Britain, and that he was planning to invade Arthur’s allies in France. I remembered what Arthur had said, about wanting a wife who will be useful as a queen. He had got everything that he wanted. It was so unfair.
As she spoke, I leaned over her shoulder a little to follow the trace of her finger, and felt her lean back into me just a little. It was a small movement of marital intimacy, of tenderness, but I noticed it. Her hair smelled of roses, and as I leaned nearer I noticed that she had tucked old dry rose petals from her garden into her plaited hair.
I felt her sink further back against me with a little murmur of content, almost too soft to hear. She let the map slip carelessly from her fingers, taking one of my hands and tucking it inside her cloak to rest against her stomach. She had been hiding herself under the layers of winter clothes, afraid of too many people knowing, I supposed, but I felt her secret. Under my hand I felt the small but unmistakable swell of a growing child. Not much, perhaps three months, but there. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I saw before my eyes as clear as the dreams from Avalon, the image of a girl – tall, golden-haired and grey-eyed like Arthur, but with Guinevere’s proud high-cheekbone features, mounted on a horse and clad in armour like I had seen the Breton queen wear. Her hair streamed down around her, shining in the sun, but she was dressed for war, with a sword at her side. I blinked the image away, but it stayed with me. Arthur would have been hoping for a son. That would have made sure his kingdom never went to Morgawse’s child.
Guinevere slipped her hand on top of mine, and leaned back just a little more against me. I felt the body I had borrowed respond, and it shocked me. It was not like my own awakening to desire, and it did not touch me with it, but I felt it go through the body like a flash of lighting. It was not like my own slow heat, it was a flash of sudden fire. Was that what it was like to be a man? It was powerful enough to stun me for a second, but when my mind and the borrowed body did not accord, it passed away as quickly as it had come.
I reached up with my other hand and lightly brushed my fingers against Guinevere’s neck. I could make Arthur suffer now, if I wanted. There was strength enough in his hands that I could have killed her right there. I could feel her pulse against my fingertips. But I could not bring myself to do it. I too had known what it was like to bear a child inside me, and Arthur’s Queen had not harmed me.
She turned around in my arms and laid her hands against Arthur’s chest.
“Did you decide not to go hunting in the end, then?” she asked gently, her brow crinkling slightly in confusion. Good, I thought, Arthur is out hunting.
“No,” I replied, unsure of how he was used to speaking to her when they were alone. I had never really overheard them talk, or even heard them talk at all. I had often seen him touch her. “I had matters to attend to here. Guinevere, where is my sword?”
She gave her low, gentle laugh, moving away from me to beside the bed, the far side from the door. I would not have seen it coming in to the room.
“Arthur, it is right here where you always leave it.”
She leant down to pick it up, one hand resting on her stomach still. She had to move it away to lift the false sword with both hands, and there it was, my lovely jewelled scabbard, just a few steps across the room from me, and coming closer and closer. I expected her to hand it to me, but she came right up close and reached around me to buckle the scabbard on to me. She let our bodies press together. I felt strangely about it, but I knew I could not move away without her suspecting that something was wrong. She turned her face up, her lips met mine in a soft, loving kiss. She moved away swiftly once the kiss was given. It was the casual, soft kiss of a loving wife, of one who was sure of another. How did Arthur have this already? They had not even been married a year. She was supposed to hate him. Everyone else hated their husbands.
She walked back over to the map to pick it up off the floor where she had dropped it. She turned back over her shoulder once she had it in her hand.
“Arthur, I will see you tonight?” she asked.
“Tonight,” I agreed, giving her a nod, and rushing out the door.
As I went down the stairs, flushed with victory just a little, I noticed that the door to Merlin’s room stood slightly ajar. I tentatively pushed the door further open. It seemed to be empty. I didn’t trust Merlin not to be hiding in there, but I thought it would be worth taking the risk. I stepped boldly into the room, and there it was, just on the shelf, Macrobius’ final book. I rushed over and was just reaching for it when I heard the voice I had been afraid I would hear, close behind me.
“I thought I would be seeing you again, Morgan,” Merlin laughed behind me. I turned around and there he was, in the form of the young man. He had pushed the door shut behind him without my hearing it. It looked as though the door was bolted. That didn’t matter now that I knew I could disappear back home in a moment. “So, you’re prepared to renegotiate for Macrobius?”
He stepped forward, putting his hand around the scabbard at my waist. Under his touch I felt the borrowed form slip away from me, and I stood before him in men’s clothes, hanging loose on my slender frame. I pushed his hand from the scabbard, but he did not let go. I drew the sword with both hands and he jumped back, but I did not intend to strike him. I placed the sword on the table beside us.
“Arthur can keep his sword, and he does not care for the scabbard. The scabbard stays with me. I leave Arthur his sword, you give me Macrobius.”
Merlin grinned broader across his face, moving towards me again, backing me into the bookshelf until I felt it bump against the base of my back. I could smell the old leather of the books, and the dust. Merlin reached up over me, leaning closer, so close that I felt a glossy brown curl of his hair brush against my cheek and our noses touched, to pull Macrobius off the shelf. I reached to snatch it off him, but he lifted it up out of my reach. I reached up and wr
apped my hand around his wrist, trying to pull his arm back down, and it was in that touch that I felt with a shock that passed right through my body, the full power of his dark magic strength. I gasped. It was not just the Black Arts, not just dark knowledge, but a natural power beyond that that had been turned to blackness through it. How had I not felt it before? We had been this close. Closer. He had been hiding it before, and now he wanted me to feel its fullness, to know how weak my negotiating position was.
While I was still reeling from it, he pressed his mouth against mine, dropping the book to the floor to grasp me with both wrists and hold my hands over my head against the bookcase, pinning me in his grip. I tried to pull away, but he only kissed me harder.
“What do I care whether Arthur has his sword or not? No, I want the same exchange as before. Excalibur for Macrobius,” he whispered. I shook my head. I kept my face cold and aloof. He would not think he could intimidate me with this. I had killed Uriens. I had destroyed what had made me afraid, and I had the strength in me to do it again.
He did not move back. I felt one of his hands release my wrist and slide down my arm, and over my breast through the thin fabric of the man’s shirt. He was distracted by his lust, I realised. The men’s clothes showed my shape, and through the thin white shirt the patterns of the blue woad beneath. He threw himself at me again, his kisses wild and rough, his hands pushing the shirt up as I tried to push it back down. I felt his hands force themselves inside, and I was disgusted by his touch. I pushed him back hard, and, surprised and distracted, he stumbled back. I seized the moment as it was given to me and snatched up the book from the floor, closing my eyes and holding it tight against my chest, picturing bright and clear as I could in my mind the stables at Rheged, desperate to disappear before he got his hands on me again and I was under his power.
Mercifully, I felt the dizziness rush over me, and when I opened my eyes, I stood there before Accolon, the book clutched to my chest, and my enchanted scabbard at my side. When he saw me, wild-eyed with victory, he threw down the bridle he held in his hands and strode over to take me into his arms.
“Is it time?” he breathed, kissing me once, soft and tender, then suddenly rough with passion. I put a gentle hand on his chest and he stilled. I looked up at him.
“It is time,” I told him.
He threw the book from my hands, and held me tight against him, and we fell into the straw together.
Chapter Thirty Six
I stood in my bedroom, dressed in my black dress of gems, the crown of Gore on my head, buckling Accolon into his armour. It seemed right to prepare for this dressed as the queen I was. I had seen myself like this, with Excalibur in my hands. Now was the fated moment. I had never dreamed of Guinevere with Arthur, when I had dreamed of the future. This would be his end. He would not have to wait for his bad destiny.
Accolon was quiet, focussed. He stared off into the distance, as though he were running through in his head what he would do, what moves he would make. When I had buckled all his armour on to him, I took up the scabbard and buckled it around him. I took Excalibur from its hiding-place and stood before him, holding it pointing straight up before me. I have seen this moment. Accolon wrapped his hands around mine on the hilt of the sword.
“No mercy,” I told him.
“No mercy,” he agreed, with a single nod. I let go of Excalibur, and he slid the sword into its scabbard. He turned back to me and, wrapping an arm around my waist, pulled me against him and into a deep, passionate kiss. I melted against him for a moment, then gently pushed him back, taking his face in my hands and looking him deep in the eyes.
“When you return,” I promised, giving him one last, lingering kiss.
I climbed up to the battlements to watch him ride off into the distance. He would go to Camelot, and bide his time in secret nearby until Arthur rode out on his hunt, and he would kill him.
I was not concerned when a few days passed and the snows began to fall. I expected Accolon to have to wait, to be a little wary, before he struck. Besides, I was occupied with the final book of Macrobius which, as I had hoped, described the changing of other things at the touch, and the changing of the self into other objects. The book was as simple as it was slim. There was no new potion to be made. One simply had to be born with the gifts of the Otherworld and know how.
It was in the very depths of winter, when the Christmas festivities had passed me by unobserved in Rheged, that news came to me. I was sat in my room beside the fire, the book of Black Arts secrets open on my lap, when one of my knights knocked on my door to announce that a lady had arrived at the castle, and a knight had been seen on the horizon who seemed to be riding towards us. What kind of lady preceded her knight?
I should have known. It was Nimue. In the bright, cold winter sun, she had a stunning, brittle beauty about her. She had a cloak of thick pure-white furs thrown over her pale blue dress of gems, and her plaited hair shone almost white against it. She had a cold, tense look on her face. She strode up to me.
“Morgan,” she began, and I could hear the cold fury in her voice, “I must speak with you.”
I gestured her inside with me. I took her up to my bedroom, and slid the bolt on the door behind us.
“A knight from Rheged Castle has tried to murder Arthur,” Nimue began, her voice sharp. “What would you know about that, Morgan?”
Tried, I thought.
I shrugged.
“How do you know it was a knight from Rheged?” I asked.
Nimue took a step closer, and I saw the anger in her eyes, and her voice lowered to a deadly whisper.
“Because, as he died, he was begging for forgiveness, and he told me that he was your lover, and he had done it for you.”
It took a moment for her words to hit me, but when they did, I staggered back under them. I could hear an awful rushing in my ears, and the desperate beating of my own heart. I gasped for my breath. As he died. I had been so sure we would not fail. But he had died, and with his final breath he had betrayed me. Nimue watched me, impassive.
“Arthur killed him?” I choked out through my gasps, in disbelief. He had had Excalibur, and the scabbard. He should not have spilled a drop of blood. Arthur. Arthur again. All of my suffering came from Arthur.
“No, Morgan,” Nimue answered, cold. “You killed him.” Nimue stepped forward to me again, and her voice became low and threatening. “Let this be the last time you try to harm a man under my protection.”
“Under your protection?” I cried out. “What about me? Am I not under your protection?”
“No, Morgan.” Her eyes were fierce. “You are under your own protection.”
And she wheeled around and left.
Accolon was gone. Was I to blame? Had I really killed him with my lust for revenge? I closed my eyes as the memory of him washed through me, of the first night we had been together, his hand tugging rough in my hair, his hunger, his need, his utter devotion to me.
Suddenly the door opened again. I could have screamed. I was desperate to be alone. Kay stepped through the door dressed in his black armour. One of my knights, behind him, stepped apologetically up behind Kay.
“I am sorry, my Lady; we could not stop him.”
I waved an impatient, dismissive hand at my knight, and he scurried away. Kay slammed the door behind him. He rubbed his flushed face with his hands as he stood before me, his eyes wide as they fell on me, but I did not care. Kay had told me he loved me, and then gone to my sister’s bed. Kay had never forgotten Lancelot, but he had swiftly forgotten me. He had been weak. He had given in. He had not been brave enough to love me as he should. He had loved Arthur more.
“Morgan, what happened to you?” He stopped before me. “I don’t even recognise you anymore. I mean – you tried to kill Arthur. Arthur. What is wrong with you?”
I drew myself up to my full height and crossed my arms.
“You abandoned me, Kay,” I said.
“Abandoned you?” he shouted in disbel
ief.
“You let Arthur give me to Uriens and you forgot me.”
“Morgan.” Kay stepped forwards towards me, and I saw the flush of anger against his neck, and I felt the raw power of his rage, and the Otherworld beneath it. “I let you go because I loved you. Morgan, what do you think happened? I begged Arthur not to marry you to that man, but I couldn’t change his mind. When you married him I had to let you go – how do you not see this? Did Uriens seem like a kind man to you? A forgiving one? What, do you think if he had known it was me when he dragged you in front of Arthur after your wedding he would have spared either you or me, or left Logrys without a war? We are not children anymore, Morgan. It is not just you and me. Arthur is the King and you are his sister and many many people’s lives were at stake. I didn’t want to follow you and put you in danger. How do you not understand, Morgan? If I had followed you here and Uriens had caught us together he would have killed you.” The anger washed out of him in a sudden wave. I felt the steel within me weaken, and bend. I was weak with the loss of Accolon, and I had missed Kay. I was angry with him, so angry, but in him was everything sweet and innocent that I had lost. I could not deny that in that moment, I wanted it back, desperately. I wanted to step forward to him, to ask, Can’t we all go back to the beginning? But what he said to me stilled me where I stood. “You thought I had abandoned you? You thought I had forgotten you? What, because I spent one night with another woman? Don’t you know what it’s like to be lonely? To make a mistake? Could you not have imagined what it was like for me, seeing you with him? I never cared for another woman. Do you think I don’t know about everything else that you have done? Your lover you sent to kill Arthur? I knew about him before. And Lancelot. And Merlin.” Kay paused, reeling under his anger. I was too drained to be shocked that Kay knew every little way I had betrayed him. Together we had destroyed the wonderful thing we had had. I did not know how, but it was gone now. “But I didn’t care. I never knew anyone else, I never loved anyone else. I never forgot you. I knew you. Or I thought I did. No, Morgan stop.” I had stepped forward towards him. Turning his face down and away from me, Kay stepped back. “Whatever there was between us, it is over now. Over.” He looked back up and I could see still the tears that were there, shining as he held them back. “You didn’t trust me. You have become a creature without trust, without love, without kindness. I heard what your lover said – oh yes, because though I knew you had a lover, I still did not forget you – when he died.” He paused, and I knew what was coming. He hissed it out, shaking with rage. “As you love me you will show Arthur no mercy. No mercy. Morgan, no mercy? Who are you? The Morgan I loved was a good woman. She loved Arthur as a brother. She loved me, too.”
MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 29
