The sight of me – of her – in her nightclothes, hair loose about her shoulders, stopped him where he stood. If there had been any doubts in him before, they were gone. Once more I tasted my magic drink on his lips. Once more I led him with me to bed. Once more I found myself quickly lost in his sensual intensity. He did not try to speak this time, for he feared being heard. He did not, either, seem to think it strange that he had been lured to this room, and not the one that was her usual chamber. Tangled in the net of longing and disappointment that had ensnared us both, he was as weak for me – for who he thought I was – as I was for him. We wound together in a haze of desire and delight, as great as I had known with him before.
It was only after we had lain side by side in the exhausted silence of satisfaction a long time that Lancelot murmured, “I should go.” But the drink had done its work well, and he fell into a slumber. I closed my eyes, too, but it was not to sleep. It was to feel once more our lips come together, our bodies, the rapture of his love.
I heard sounds coming from the corridor, or the room beside me. I sat up, glancing down at Lancelot. He stirred, but did not wake. Perhaps it is Arthur, I thought. I want him to see this.
I pulled the stolen nightdress over my head and, still in Guinevere’s shape, stepped out into the corridor. It was empty, but I could hear movements. I walked warily towards Guinevere’s bedroom door, only to find it suddenly wrenched open, and in the doorway, Guinevere. She was still fully dressed, and she was white with rage. I stepped back away, but I was not fast enough. She grabbed hold of a handful of my hair – her own thick, red curls – and I could not get away. I let the figure in her hands change back to Elaine. If anyone came, it would be better if there were not two of Guinevere.
She dragged me down the steps, her grip tight in my hair. She dragged me through the castle, and up to the room with her Round Table in it, and slammed the door. I could feel the power from the table, as well as from her, and the two coming together. I should not have been surprised; it was her father’s table, made, perhaps, by those of her blood. Then, as if from nowhere, she drew Excalibur. I had not seen it in so long, and I felt a tug of longing, of belonging at the sight of it. I needed it back. She held it easily in one hand. Of course she did; and one day she would try to snatch it from me on the shores of Avalon. Today it was in her hand, but it would one day be in mine.
I thought, then, that my one last option would be to try to make her believe that, in her jealous rage, she had imagined it. I could see she was still angry, still wild. I let Elaine’s features crinkle into distress.
“Please,” I begged, as pitifully as I could. “Please don’t hurt me. I don’t know what I have done wrong.”
Guinevere stepped closer towards me, lowering the point of the sword towards my swollen belly. I saw she would not be fooled. No, nor would I if I had sensed the Otherworld on another. Then she would know how selfish she was. Could she not leave Lancelot for anyone else? Barren and married, she had nothing real to offer him. I could have given him everything.
“What kind of woman are you, good Queen? You have Arthur. Women all over this realm pray every night for a man such as him, and yet you long for another. But you do not love him enough to let him be happy with some other woman, but you must draw Lancelot ever back to you. You desire only to possess him,” I said.
“Get on the table,” she demanded, taking another step towards me. Excalibur’s power, too, was making it harder and harder for me to hold on to the illusion that I was Elaine. I could feel my head growing dizzy, spinning, could feel myself struggling to keep a hold of it.
The door opened behind her and Lancelot stepped in, his hair tangled still, his clothes thrown roughly on him, and breathing fast as though he had run here. Guinevere did not turn around to see who was behind her. She knew who it was.
He darted forward and tried to take the sword off her, but she stepped aside, still giving me no ground. “Guinevere, what are you doing!?” he cried, “Guinevere, please, let her go – she hasn’t done anything wrong – stop!”
He had not understood as quickly as she had, but then he stopped, confusion passing across his face at the sight of her, fully dressed with her hair still braided neatly away.
“Who was with you, just now?” she asked him.
He shook his head, lost and confused once again. “You,” he answered.
It was making me feel nauseous, gripping on to the shape of Elaine, and I was feeling it slipping away from me.
“Get on the table,” Guinevere demanded again, and as she moved towards me, I stepped away, up on to it. I was not sure that she would not strike me with the sword and try to kill me. I had lost everything else. I would not lose the child.
As I got on the table, I felt the illusion slip fully from my grasp at last, and saw the deep shock on Lancelot’s face. The moment before I closed my eyes to picture myself back in my bedroom at Rheged Castle, I saw them both there, side by side, both shocked, both shaken. I hoped, at least, that I had torn them apart.
Chapter Forty Seven
Back at Rheged I passed my days waiting for the child to come in a haze of bittersweet half-absence from myself. None of the men questioned why the lord of the castle’s widow of two years was growing great with child, not even my own son Ywain, who, when I saw him infrequently, called me mother and kissed me on the cheek, ever quiet and obedient. He asked me once how his father had died, and I told him that the devil came for him. He did not ask again, after that. I had learned well enough from the abbey what words frighten quietness and obedience into little children. To think, I had once, too, been afraid of the devil.
I dreamed strange dreams with the black magic child inside me. I dreamed of Kay, with Guinevere, his hands in her hair, his mouth against hers in a kiss as gentle and powerful as that I had felt myself long ago, when Kay had still loved me. I dreamed of Kay with Lancelot, too, though not as boys. They were grown men, older, far older than now. The three of them, Kay, Lancelot, Guinevere; they were what filled my thoughts, what tangled me in. Arthur, for all the King he was, was strangely on the edge of it all.
It was in the depths of winter, just before Christmas came, that my second son was born. I sent to Avalon for Nimue, because there wasn’t anyone else. I could not have survived it alone. I knew she was angry, I could see it all over her neat little face, but she said nothing. I drank the drink to kill the pain and lay back until it was done.
This time, when I sat up in the bed and reached out my arms for the boy, I felt what I had seen pass across my sister’s face. A rush of joy from the centre of me out, and love. I held him close to my chest, and he opened his eyes, deep, dark blue like the eyes of his father. I could have cried for joy, but I would not with Nimue standing over me, silent and cold. When she was sure I had survived it, she left without a word.
I called the boy Galahad; this had once been Lancelot’s name, long, long ago before he had been taken into the care of the Lady of Avalon as little more than an infant himself. It seemed right, somehow. Galahad was perfect in the way I thought no creature could be, from the slick of dark hair already thick on his head, to the tiny little fingers and toes on his hands and feet. Though he had been conceived in magic and darkness, I felt nothing of that when I held him, only a deep peace that settled through me. For the first time in a long, long time, I forgot my anger.
I was glad, strangely, that his father did not come to look for him. I loved him jealously, as a thing all mine. Ywain wanted to see him, and I let him look from across the room. He wrinkled his nose in displeasure at the sight of another child, a half-brother. He was as much of a coward as his father had been, afraid of what he did not know. Ywain had nothing to fear from Galahad. His father’s castle would be his. I hoped that Galahad might go to Avalon, and school there, and have the woad as Merlin had. It was a rare man that had the gifts of the Otherworld, but I thought a son of mine like Galahad would have those talents in him.
In the joy of having at last a
child that I had wanted, I forgot the world around me. I was lost waiting for his smiles, as they came, and his happy sounds, and cries. The fingers of his little hand grasping around mine. I forgot Arthur, and Lancelot, Guinevere and Kay, far off in Logrys. I did not write to Morgawse. I wanted to, but I was afraid she would be disgusted with me. I still remembered, though I pushed it back into the depths of my mind, the Lady of Avalon’s words about Arthur’s conception: he does not know it, but he is a child of rape. It was not the same. It was not. I had done only what I must, only what I had seen. Besides, Galahad was so perfect, I did not see how he could have come from anything but the greatest goodness.
A year passed, and then another. Galahad could say my name, could ask for me. His world was still complete; he was not yet old enough to ask where his father was. Ywain, too, had no father, and Galahad’s sweet presence had brought Ywain closer to me, too. Once he was used to him, he seemed to like his little brother, and was happy to sit with him, play with him, listen to him try to form his words. Galahad was much brighter than Ywain, I could see that already, and he had a ready laugh that his brother had lacked even as an infant. Ywain was dour and serious, but Galahad was full of an endless joy that spread into me as well, whenever I had him in my arms. I wondered if this was how I would have been, had Uther not married my mother. This, too, I thought, was what Ywain would have been like, if he had been Kay’s. Still, as I saw more of Ywain, I began to see a little of myself, though they were the parts I liked the least. He was shy, too, and reserved. He was prickly, and would not talk in more than two or three words at a time. Still, there was a gentle, happy domesticity in sitting with my sons around me, Galahad taking tottering, unsteady steps across the room while Ywain stood with his arms out to catch him. Galahad was strong already. I could see he would have his father’s strength. Perhaps Ywain would be a great man, too, though he would be stolid like his father. It was in those days that I wished the world would tighten, close in, so that all that was left in it was Rheged Castle and Gore, and no one would come for me, or for my sons, and I could have lived my life in simple happiness. Live an easy life, a happy life. A simple life was where happiness was.
I knew Nimue would come. I knew that she was angry with me, and I knew that she would return, but I had feared it would be as soon as it was. I sat in my room, with Galahad playing on the fur rug beside the fire. Autumn was coming, and the air had turned chill, though the sun was still bright. I had had two and a half years – more – of perfect joy with Galahad, and that day I had felt close about me the threat of its ending, of its drawing to a close with the summer. I had pushed the fears away as silly or superstitious, but I was a witch with witches’ blood in me, and I knew I did not fear for no reason.
Nimue appeared before me, in her dress of pale blue set from the neck to the waist with pale sapphires, her hair long and loose down to her waist, ghost-white against the faint blue-green patterns across her skin. At her side, hand clasped in hand, came the aged Abbess. I felt an old sting of anger, and revulsion, at the sight of the old nun. She had taught me to be afraid, taught me to be ashamed. If there was someone largely to blame for the anger in me, it was she.
“Morgan,” Nimue began gently, and I did not like the tone of her voice. “It is time to give him up.”
I reached out my arms for Galahad before me, and obediently he tottered into them.
“It is not time,” I protested, quietly, smoothing down Galahad’s hair, more to comfort myself than him. I was glad Ywain was not there today. As lacking as my motherly affection for him was, I did not want him to hear me beg to keep his little brother, when I had handed him carelessly to a nurse the moment after his birth. Galahad grasped hold of the plait of my hair, and rested his head against my chest, closing his eyes. He was falling asleep. If he were older, I could have told him to run.
“Morgan, do not make this harder than it has to be. You have a destiny, your son has a destiny. It must be. He does not belong here, he belongs in Amesbury.”
I was not sure I had the strength in me to fight Nimue. I did not want to end like Merlin, shut under a rock, screaming until the end of time.
“He belongs with me,” I resisted, stubbornly.
Nimue shook her head. She looked a little sad, but it did not make me forgive her. This was not hurting her like it was hurting me. If they took Galahad from me, it would take the last of my happiness, and I would be back in the place where I had been; dark, angry and alone.
“He belongs in Amesbury.”
“He is my child,” I protested, and though I struggled to be calm the words came from me like a shout. I wrapped my arms tighter around him. Nimue’s face was set, and pale under her woad, and the Abbess beside her said nothing, but looked on, tight-lipped. Nimue sighed, and shook her head.
“Morgan, this is the way it has to be. Did I not warn you about the dangers of the Black Arts? Besides, Morgan, you already have a child. A natural son. This child, he was made in darkness, and the only good that can come through him is if we give him up to the Abbey, and they raise him for the Grail.”
“We?” I cried, and Galahad woke in my arms, his little face crinkling as though he was about to cry, but I held him closer and he fell quiet. “He is nothing to do with you. Anyway, what about Arthur? He was made the same way, and he lives a natural life.”
Nimue shook her head. “That was different. Merlin was not Arthur’s father. Morgan, you must give him to us.”
“No,” I insisted. Nimue glanced at the Abbess, who was staring at me, narrowly. Of course she was. I was sure she hardly recognised me now, blue with woad, a queen in my castle, but I remembered her. She would not have my child.
Nimue held out her hand towards me, and I felt my arms obey, though I struggled and resisted.
“Nimue, no,” I pleaded, but she did not look at me. I did not have the strength in me to resist her power, and when she stepped towards me for the child, my arms opened and she took him from me. In her arms his dark black hair began to change, and first I thought a light was glowing around him, as at the top it shone white-blonde like Nimue; but then it spread all through it, and my child was changed before my eyes, to look like her, all silver-white.
“I am sorry, truly, Morgan,” she said, but still she took the Abbess’ hand in hers and they, and my child, faded from sight before me.
It was a long time, a long time, before I began to feel alive again. I spent long hours with my books of magic, committing all I could to memory, and then I burned them all. It did not matter how strong I was, if someone else could be stronger. Merlin had hidden his secrets in his mind, and that was how he had been so strong for so long. It was only his weakness for Nimue that had led him to his death. I would not be weak like that again. Now, I would have only myself.
I wrote to Galahad in Amesbury, but I was sure Nimue burned my letters before they reached him. Everyone would say that Elaine was his mother. I would not exist. There was no one I could call on to help me. No one who would understand. Merlin was amoral enough that he might have helped me if I had had anything to offer in exchange, but when I went back to the rock Nimue had shut him beneath and put my ear to it, I could still hear him screaming and screaming and screaming, and though I screamed down to him, he could not hear me. I was glad, then, that I had burned my books. Nimue would not have them. I did not care for her apologies. They were only lies, to me. She had taken my joy from me. I would not forget. I would not forgive.
I longed to know the future, to know my fate. On the shortest night, when dreams were sharpest and clearest, almost two years from when Galahad was stolen from me, I mixed from memory the drink of knowing and seeing from Avalon. I had to know, if Galahad would come back to me.
The first thing I saw as the sudden sleep came over me, I thought at first was Galahad grown, but it was not. It was Lancelot. Dressed in his armour and soaked with rain, stepping into a pavilion where Guinevere, wearing only a thin nightgown, stood to greet him. In the dream, I could
smell the heavy late summer rain. Against the white-blue light of the summer lightening, they rushed together, her jumping up into his arms, wrapping her legs around him, he running his hands through her hair, pulling her mouth against his in a kiss that was unbearably passionate to watch. The way they came together, it was as though they had been waiting all their lives. So, despite what I had done, it would happen after all.
Next, I saw my sister, riding through the gates of Camelot, with a man at her side who I would have thought was Arthur had my sister been twenty years younger. Arthur’s son. She looked proud, and defiant, he dark and serious. Standing to greet them were Arthur, his face clouded with anger, and beside him, Guinevere. So, Mordred would return to his father. In a sudden flash, I saw again the dream I had had, where Arthur had forced Guinevere against the floor, just for a second. I wondered, then, if it were really Arthur I was seeing. But what would Arthur’s son want with his father’s ageing Queen?
As though summoned by my thoughts, I saw Guinevere again, standing before the altar in the chapel. I could not see what she was looking at, but whatever she saw as she gazed towards the chapel door had frozen her to the spot. With resentment, I had to recognise that if anything she had grown more beautiful with age. Gone was the prettiness of a girl, any softness, and with it she had the proud looks of a queen. She looked grand, and powerful, and yet whatever she looked on had robbed the strength from her, I could see that well enough. I wondered if I did not see what it was, because it was I.
The last thing I saw was Kay, standing beside his father, his arms crossed over his chest. There was a strange look in his eye, of resignation, of loss. He looked older, maybe even ten years older than I had last seen him, and tired. Beside him Ector looked grim, as I had never seen him before. I was there, I knew I was there.
MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 38
