He seemed proud, rather than ashamed, of his incestuous heritage. He was sure of himself because he had never been tested. Morgawse looked weary, as though they had had this same argument before, as though Mordred in his “high spirits” had been charging around Lothian, declaring himself Arthur’s heir.
“Mordred, my love,” she said, gently, “go and wash, then you can dine with me and Morgan.”
To my surprise, he nodded obediently. He went back to Morgawse and pressed a kiss against her lips. It was brief, a kiss of filial affection, but it made me uneasy. It was, I thought, a moment too long, a little too close. I supposed Galahad, the son whom I had loved, had not grown to adolescence with me, so I did not know what was proper, or natural. When the door shut behind him, I was left with an uncomfortable mix of unease and victory; he unsettled me, but he was an ambitious man, and fixated on his goal. He would be easy to control.
Chapter Forty Nine
News came from Camelot as soon as the snows began to thaw around Lothian Castle. I sat in Morgawse’s bedroom with her and Mordred while she read the letters. It was cold still, though the snows were thinner, and the rivers beginning to move again, and I sat cross-legged on a fur rug beside the fire, feeling its lovely warmth through me, while Morgawse reclined close by on a pile of velvet and brocade cushions. Mordred lay beside her, his head on her shoulder, one arm draped lazily across her waist. I found it strange, their constant closeness, but no one else seemed to. Not even the knight Morgawse had taken as her lover. I saw him sometimes cast wary looks at Mordred across the courtyard, but these were clearly wary of his knowledge.
Morgawse sighed with annoyance, reading the letter in her hands.
“Aggravain only sends me more gossip. Who is fucking whom. I don’t care.”
She went to crumple it and throw it in the fire but, with a sulky murmur of protest, Mordred took it from her hand and read it, with avid interest. There was nothing of interest to me in it. I already knew that Lancelot and Guinevere were lovers.
Morgawse picked up the next one, and sighed again. “Gaheris writes again, wanting to be married.”
She seemed unduly irritated by this, and it piqued my curiosity.
“Why shouldn’t he?”
Morgawse shook her head, her manner suddenly scolding, as though she were talking to Gaheris before her. “Oh, he can marry if he wishes, but not to this girl he writes about here. She’s a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, Breton, a half-peasant no doubt, for those Bretons have funny ways. Oh, he thinks he can do as he pleases since he has two older brothers, but no, no. He is still a prince of Lothian, and he shall not marry beneath himself. If he wants to get married, he can marry the sister of Gareth’s wife. She has a rich kingdom, and the match is suitable. She is supposed to be beautiful enough. Certainly, she’ll have finer clothes than this servant girl he has set his heart on.”
Morgawse crumpled the letter in her hand and threw it into the fire, where it turned black, and dissolved into ash before my eyes. I had not known Gareth was married. When I had seen him last, he had been a child. How my life had slipped past me.
“Gawain writes of a quest for the Holy Grail,” Morgawse commented, raising an eyebrow at the letter in her hand. “The next letter I receive from Gawain will be about a hunt for unicorns, or the cyclops, I am sure.”
She threw that letter into the fire, too, but I felt that one strike me at my core. Nimue had taken Galahad for the Grail quest, but he was just a child. It could not be time yet, surely.
“I want to go,” Mordred declared, half sitting up beside his mother.
“No, love,” she said. “You’re too young, yet.”
I was surprised how easily this angry, powerful young man was placated by his mother. In her arms, he was like a child, but I was sure he was not so in front of his men. At fourteen years old Mordred was too young to be made a knight, but it would not be long. When the end of spring came, and Mayday, he would turn fifteen, and Morgawse could not expect him to stay with her in Lothian, if he did not wish to.
Morgawse read through the rest of the letters, but I was no longer listening. I was thinking about Galahad, anxious to get back to my room and the letter I expected – and dreaded – to find there for me.
I made some excuse to leave after a while. Mordred stayed, unwilling to part, it seemed, from his mother’s embrace.
When I came back to my room, the letter from Nimue was waiting for me. I knew it would be there. I had been away, and no one had come to check the fire, so it had died, and the room was half-dark and cold. I suspected that many of the servants in Lothian Castle were afraid of me, and my blue woad. This was not Rheged, or Camelot, where men were accustomed to seeing the woaded women of Avalon, and in Lothian the superstitious terror of the witch remained strong.
I did not send for the fire to be lit. I could not wait to open the letter, to see what Nimue had written, and if it was as bad as I had feared.
“My dear Morgan, I am sure you are still angry, but I assure you again that I did only what I must. One day you will understand. But I am not writing to you now to ask for your forgiveness. I am writing to tell you that we have sent Galahad to Camelot. The time of the Grail came faster than we expected, and I had to have him grow to meet it. Your son is a man grown, now. But, Morgan, you must not go to Camelot to see him. Do not try. Do not write to him, do not send a message to him, and most of all do not try to see him. He belongs to his destiny, and he will not know you. Save yourself the sorrow. I will explain in full when I see you, but Morgan – you must not try to see him. Nimue.”
I wished, then, that I had a fire to cast her letter into.
Well, I would go. I would go and see my son. See what she had done to him. He was too young. He was still a child. I had wanted a childhood for him of innocence and peace, and Nimue had turned him into her thing, for the sake of this quest for the Grail. Her letter only made me more determined to see him, and to get in the way of whatever she was trying to do with him. And Arthur; it only made me more determined that it was he who should be punished, too. This was, after all, so much his fault. He had laughed at me, laughed, when I had gone to him asking to be married to Lancelot. As though I were such a plain and ugly thing that no man would want me. He had taken my sword. He had married me to Uriens. He lived his happy life of peace and ignorance, and all the while Lancelot – who had refused me – was making love to his Queen. And none of them suffered. Not Lancelot, not Arthur, not Guinevere. Not Kay. But I did, and my sister did, and her son. Far from Arthur’s love, and his grace; and those who were truly betraying him he kept close, in his foolishness. I wanted Arthur to see his charmed life disintegrate in his hands. I would do it. I would, and Mordred would help me. Mordred, Prince of Britain. A greedy man was easy to control. I would offer him what he desired, and he would be mine to command.
The next day, I went to see Mordred. I had to keep reminding myself that he was a teenage boy, despite his size. I had to be sure that Mordred would go through with it. I had to be sure that he wanted it more than I did.
When I knocked on his door, he called me in, but I opened it to see that he was in the bath. He grinned when he saw me, pleased to have embarrassed me, leaning back lazily in the tub, letting his arms rest down its side. He looked far beyond his years; his chest and shoulders already heavily muscled, and dark gold hair, light but discernible, already growing across his chest.
“It is not urgent, Mordred,” I said, irritably. His casualness about it made me wonder if he was naked, still, in front of his mother, even though he was grown. Was this normal? I had never known what a grown boy was like with his mother.
Mordred laughed, low and soft, standing in the bath, the water sluicing off his body. I looked away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him wrap a sheet around his waist, but he did not move to get dressed.
“Mother told me that you were raised by nuns,” he laughed. So, the pair of them laughed at me. Of course they did.
I turned back t
o him, and met his look of amusement with an even stare, ready to scold him for being rude to me, but he was talking again already.
“I’ve heard it said,” he began, grinning, “that the wise women of Avalon are tattooed in woad all over their bodies.”
His words hit me harder than I had expected. He was just teasing me, but they reminded me, unbearably, of the first time I had spoken to Accolon. He had said the same thing to me. My anger, my resentment at Arthur for his murder, had eclipsed my grief, but now the sight of my sister’s son – young, muscular and darkly golden – and Mordred’s words brought my memories of him, and the pain of his loss, to the surface of my mind. Unconsciously, I put a hand to my brow, stepping back. I wished I had not already shown Mordred a sign of weakness, but I hoped that in his youth he would think it was only my nunnish modesty that he and his mother had laughed so heartily together about.
“Morgan,” he said, quietly, and I looked up at him. “I did not mean to upset you.”
He was a strange boy. The way he spoke was strange, too. Always direct, never respectful. He never called me Lady Morgan, nor Aunt. I wondered if that was a sign of his respect, or his disdain. I did not think he was particularly clever, but he was certainly shrewd, watchful. I suspected him of knowing enough about Avalon not to have disdain for me, or my skills.
“I am not upset,” I told him. He crossed his arms over his bare chest, looking at me with his curious stare.
“They say that Merlin gave you his secrets before he died.”
“Some of them,” I answered, warily. “And there was a price.”
“What?”
“He took a precious magic object from me.” I forced myself to try to be calm, I forced myself to remember what I had come for. “What is your interest in the magic arts, Mordred?”
He shrugged. “Mother tends to exaggerate. I just wanted to know if you really were a powerful witch or not.”
I could not help but smile then. Mordred knew his mother well. So, now I knew what would win him around to an alliance with me. A display of power. I closed my eyes and pictured myself as Guinevere, dressed in one of her fine dresses of green silk, her wild hair plaited into a bun, the picture of reserved, demure, queenly power. When I opened my eyes, Mordred’s face wore an expression that betrayed both how impressed he was, and how useful he thought this would be to his own ambitions. I closed my eyes and let my shape shift through others; Kay, Lancelot, Arthur, Gawain, his mother, back to myself. When I opened my eyes, he was grinning.
“Very impressive, Morgan.” His smile changed. “Morgan... who was that woman?”
Of course. Of course Mordred, like every other foolish man who had ever laid eyes on her, had conceived a desire for Guinevere. But this would not necessarily go ill for my designs.
“That,” I told him, with a smile of my own, “was your father’s wife.
Chapter Fifty
My victory with Mordred was enough to put my thoughts of Accolon from my mind for the rest of the day, but it was not enough once I was asleep. In my dreams, I woke to the sound of the bed curtains being pulled back, and I opened my eyes to find myself back in my bed in Rheged, and him there, standing at the foot of the bed, his hand still on the bed-curtain, and in the other hand, the sword forged as Excalibur’s double. He threw it down, and I leapt into his arms as he came towards me. Our mouths met in a desperate passion, and I felt it as though he was really there in my arms, the roughness of his stubble against my face, the hunger of his kiss, my own body’s passionate response to it, the hot longing rising up in a wave of heat from the core of me. The dream was a haze of remembered sensations, and it only left me hot and frustrated. I woke with Morgawse’s words, You want a young man, Morgan, echoing in my ears. But I didn’t need a young man. I needed revenge. I needed payment for Accolon’s death, and my betrayal. That was the only thing that would give me satisfaction.
Before I began in earnest, though, I had to know if Galahad was safe, and I had to see him if I could. Nimue had given her orders, but I was resolved to go to Camelot. I dressed in my fine dress of black with the black gems sewn into it from neck to waist, and I closed my eyes, and pictured myself back in my room at Camelot. I saw the wood of my table, the empty fireplace, the plain bed, but as the room appeared before me, so did Nimue, standing small and stern, her arms crossed in front of her chest, her childlike, pretty face, swirled through with blue, turned up in anger towards me as I appeared standing over her.
“I knew you would come anyway,” she said, sharply.
So, she had learned great secrets from Merlin. I did not know how she had sensed my coming, and come to meet me. But she would not stop me. I went to step past her, and she held out a hand, and I felt my legs freeze still. I could feel the strength of her. She was stronger now than Merlin had ever been. The only difference between them was that Nimue considered herself noble, and Merlin had acknowledged his own selfishness. She was just as selfish as I was, or he had been. She only wanted to protect Arthur because he was the man she favoured – I wondered idly if she still desired him – and she only hoped to secure her own power as the Lady of Avalon. She never had shared Merlin’s secrets with me, as she had promised that she would.
“Morgan, please, go back to Lothian.”
“Why him? Why did you have to take my son? Was it just to punish me? Do you hate me so much that you would hurt me so deeply as to take my son and forbid me from seeing him?” I cried.
“No, Morgan,” Nimue said, gently, and I saw the regret in her eyes, but I was not moved by it. “Morgan... it had to be him. I saw it, long ago. I am sorry that Lancelot did not... wish to stay with you. But, Galahad, he was conceived in magic, he has magic in his blood from you, and from his father, he has all the greatness of a perfect knight. It is only he who can find the Grail.”
“What is the Grail to you?” I snapped. I knew that Nimue was no Christian. “What do you want with the blood of Christ?”
Nimue shook her head. “The Grail is not the cup of Christ. It is the blood of the world, the blood of the Mother. Galahad will bring it to us, if anyone can. It was the last of Merlin’s secrets, the blood of the world. With the blood of the world, anything can be done. Anything can be changed. Even a man’s destiny.”
Arthur’s destiny.
“This is all for Arthur, then,” I said.
“For him,” Nimue admitted, with a small nod, “for Britain. For your sister’s son. Maybe for you as well.”
“What have you seen about me?” I demanded, suddenly alarmed. I had never thought of my own destiny. Destiny was something the men had, and I was on the edge, free to do as I pleased, now that I was free of men. I did not want some great hand of destiny hanging over me, deciding my fate. But Nimue did not answer, she reached out and took my hand in hers, and I saw my room in Lothian appear before me, and her dissolve away.
She had taken my son, she had kept me from him, and she was trying to use him to protect Arthur, because she loved him. Well, it would not be. I did not even believe the Grail – either Nimue’s Grail, or the Cup of Christ – existed, and I would take destiny into my hands without the help of Merlin’s secrets. I had the instrument of destiny within my grasp, and I would use Mordred as ruthlessly as Nimue had used my own son.
The end of April came, and with it, Mordred’s entry to adulthood. It was time that he should become a knight. The question remained unanswered whether that would be in Lothian with his mother, or in Camelot with his father. Morgawse arranged a great feast for the day, and a tournament. The men of Lothian did not joust, considering it a game for French dandies, but instead fought all their tournaments on foot, with blunted but real swords, and dressed in full armour. Mordred was easily the victor of the day. I wondered, to watch him fight, how he would have fared against his brothers, or Lancelot. Or Arthur. He had all of Arthur’s powerful strength and muscular bulk. I had seen Arthur on the battlefield, and he was graceful for his size, every move powerful and smooth. Mordred had all the sa
me power, but behind it a kind of reckless wildness, a savagery almost. He never seemed to feel his own wounds, or the blows other men struck at him, though when he took off his helm at the end to be named the winner of the day, he had a line of dried blood thick against his scalp. As it was, no man in Lothian could stand long against him, but soon he would no longer be in Lothian, and the men of Camelot trained hard and grew huge from the fighting. It was easy to see him as a giant among men here, but I wondered how large and strong he would look at his father’s court.
Morgawse was already drunk when the feast began, but pleasantly so. She was upset, I could tell, that her last son had become a man, but she wore it well. I had been half afraid that she would get drunk and cry, but the wine seemed to have put her in good spirits, and her love for her son to have won out over her desire to keep him to herself. Her lover, Sir Lamerocke, sat down among the other knights on the trestle tables, and she barely seemed to notice him there, though I often saw him glance towards her with an ill-disguised longing. I noticed Mordred see it, too.
I sat at Morgawse’s left side, and Mordred sat at her right, in the place he always held. He ought to have, now he was a man and the last prince of Lothian left in the castle, have taken her seat, but it was clear he did not want to take that from her. Morgawse had ruled like a man in Lothian with the threat of her grown sons not far away, and it was clear to me that every single one would have given anything to protect their mother.
Mordred did not drink much, and neither did I. I had no taste for drunkenness, and nothing to erase like my sister had. Morgawse, a light flush on her cheeks, and against her neck, was laughing beside me, her blue eyes sparkling, her easy grace flowing out of her. She looked beautiful, as though the years had not touched her, her long, copper-gold hair flowing in waves over her shoulders, pulled back at the front and clasped with an ornament of gold and amber. Around her neck she had a string of amber beads, the colour rich and gorgeous against her pale skin and the pale gold freckles that covered it. She still had the full figure of her youth, and she wore a dress of dark orange and gold cut low and square at the neck that showed it well, and around her shoulders, rich red furs. She did not wear her crown, but it was clear to everyone what a queen she was. I wondered how thin, and hard, and dark I must have looked beside her in my dress of black gems, my woad, my long, dark brown plait of hair. Morgawse and I must have looked like creatures from different worlds. I always felt my plainness most acutely beside her, but she never seemed to notice either my plainness or her own beauty at all.
MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 40
