Arthur watched Mordred pace back and forth and back and forth until he finished reading the terms. At last, Mordred sighed and set the paper down on the table, regarding Arthur lazily across it, an unpleasant smile flickering across his lips.
“These terms seem... reasonable,” he admitted, with a shrug.
Arthur stepped forward, and I saw one of the knights behind Mordred put his hand to the hilt of his own sword.
“There is one more thing, Mordred,” Arthur said. “I left Guinevere in your keeping.”
“Ah, yes.” Mordred leaned forward over the table, grinning at his father. I closed my eyes for a second and prayed that Arthur would keep his temper. We only had to appease Mordred until Lancelot came. “I have had her, in Camelot, in your very own chamber.”
“Keeping her as your prisoner is not part of the agreement,” Arthur insisted, oblivious as always to what was really being said to him. “You will return her to me.”
Mordred gave a cruel laugh, looking down and shaking his head for a moment.
“Father, you misunderstand me,” he said, looking back up at Arthur with his cold black eyes. “I mean to say that I have enjoyed her.”
Arthur lunged forward towards him, and I heard Ywain shout “Arthur!” as I did, and we both jumped forward to catch him and hold him back. I could not have held him on my own, and I was glad Ywain was there.
“Arthur,” Ywain said, quietly, “he is lying. He is only trying to make you angry.”
Mordred was laughing, and I could hear some of the knights behind him laughing along with him.
Arthur relaxed back just a little, though he did not look convinced by Ywain’s words. Mordred shrugged at them both, still grinning.
“You can wait at your leisure to see whether or not I am lying. She rides to meet me, and she has consented to be my wife. Once you are dead. She will be glad to be free of you. She longs for me, Father. I have heard it from her own lips, how she wants me. How the love she had from you – even the love she had from that French idiot Lancelot – was nothing to what she had from me.”
Arthur lunged forward once more, though this time Ywain was ready for it, and held him back fast. It only made Mordred laugh harder to see his father struggle against his anger. I felt an unbearable stab of pity for Arthur, then. He had not seen any of this coming. Any of it. I had wanted to make him see how fragile his perfect world was, and now I had done it, I wished deeply, painfully that I had not. The truth was ugly, and hostile, and the world had been a better place when lovers had met in secret, and Arthur had lived in his blissful ignorance.
Mordred suddenly slammed both of his palms down flat on the table top, leaning forward and staring hard at Arthur, who stared hard back, past Ywain, who was warily moving back from him.
When Mordred spoke it was soft, and low, and as though he and Arthur were the only two in the room. “Father, we would not have come to this if you had acknowledged me as your heir. But now I possess everything that was once yours – everything except the kingdoms of Britain, and the sword. I have your castle, your home, I wear your crown, I have Uther’s coat, I have the loyalty of the men who were once yours. I have known the secrets of your marriage bed.” Arthur did not move, but I saw Ywain close his gloved hand around the greave on Arthur’s arm, just in case. Mordred leaned forward, his grin leering now. I myself longed to strike him across the face. “And what secrets they are, Father.”
He was daring Arthur to strike him. To break the truce. He was hungry for war. He wanted the truce because it was so well in his favour to have Cornwall and North Wales – for we had promised him almost everything we had to give – but he would rather have come to blows with Arthur then and there.
“But,” Mordred continued, suddenly casual, striding around the table, towards Arthur, until he stood face to face with him, “can something truly be called a secret if it is something that many men have known?”
Arthur stared back at him.
Mordred gave a sigh of false defeat, as though Arthur’s angry stare had convinced him of something. “Very well, Father. Give me the sword, and I will return her to you, if she is willing. Though, be prepared that she might not wish to return to you, now she has felt what it is like to be loved by a man who is neither a coward who cannot kill his enemies in battle like Lancelot, nor a fool, like you.”
He must have known by now that Guinevere had no intention of joining him, or marrying him, and yet he bore the illusion well. His natural arrogance helped him.
Arthur grasped hold of Excalibur by the hilt, and I put my hand over his, desperate that he should neither give the sword away, nor strike Mordred with it, as satisfying as that would have been. We had to wait for Lancelot to come.
“Do not,” I hissed, “give him the sword.”
In Mordred’s hands, I had no idea what Excalibur would do. Mordred took a threatening step towards me, but I did not take my hand from over Arthur’s, over Excalibur’s hilt.
“And you, my dear Aunt Morgan.” He leaned down towards me. “What treachery are you plotting now? To wait until my father and I have killed each other, and take the sword for yourself? How easy it is for a woman like you to change her sides. There was a time not so long ago when I thought I could have been sure of your allegiance to me, but no. A creature like you has no allegiance. Only to herself.” He turned back to Arthur, holding out his hand for the sword. “This is the last time I will make the offer. The sword, and I will tell Guinevere when she comes to me – which she will – that she is free to go to you. If she wishes.”
Arthur’s hand moved on the hilt of the sword, and I put my other hand over his as well.
“Arthur, no,” I insisted.
Without waiting for Arthur’s response, Mordred gave a curt nod, walking back around to the other side of the table.
“Nonetheless, the truce stands,” Mordred said, his tone business-like. He began flicking through the sheets of terms again, as though giving it final consideration. A movement in the grass caught my eye, and I watched as an adder slithered across the grass at our feet. I saw Ywain notice it, too, and watch it come towards him. Mordred, on the other side of the tent, was giving quiet orders to his men. I was not sure if it was time for us to leave.
Suddenly, the adder rose from the grass as though it were about to strike Ywain, and carried through by instinct, he drew his sword and struck down at it, slicing through it. I shouted out No, but it was too late. Mordred’s men had already seen the flash of naked steel, and heard the threatening hiss of a sword draw from its sheath and suddenly all around us was shouting and men drawing their swords. I reached out and grasped Ywain by the hand, and closed my eyes. He, Arthur and I swam in the in-between for a moment, caught by surprise, but the memory of Arthur’s pavilion came back to me, sharp with panic, and we were there. I hoped that the others who had come with us would make it out alive. We could not afford to lose more men.
The truce was over.
Chapter Eighty
Arthur strode away from us into the tent, unbuckling his breastplate and throwing it off. I glanced at Ywain and motioned for him to leave. He went, silently. It would be he that gathered Arthur’s troops for the battle that was about to begin.
I stepped into the tent.
“Morgan, leave,” he growled.
I stepped forward again and took hold of him by the shoulders, hard. He needed to calm down if any of us were going to survive this, to survive Mordred.
“Arthur, he is lying.” Arthur stilled a little under my grip, but I could feel his muscles tensed under my hands still. “He does not have Guinevere. I have her.”
“You have her?” Arthur cried. “Where?”
“She is safe. She has gone to the Tower. Kay and Ector are with her, and some of the knights from Camelot. But she will only remain safe if you can kill Mordred. She pretended that she was willing to be his wife, and escaped to the Tower and barricaded herself in. He is furious that she deceived him. She cannot last in there foreve
r, and if Mordred gets inside, there will be no mercy for her, or those who hid her there. So, you have to pull yourself together.” I shook him hard, but it seemed to be working. I could see a steely determination settle over him. We only had to survive and keep Mordred and his army engaged until Lancelot arrived. It would be soon. It had to be soon. “And, Arthur.” I felt the breath rush out of me, and the strength, and all of the anger I had held tight to for so many years, and instead I felt nothing but hollowness and regret. “Arthur, I am sorry.”
Arthur took my face in his hands and hushed me gently. How had I forgotten for so many years that he was gentle, and kind? That he was naïve and forgiving? Oh, those fine qualities of his had made him weak, weak to me, to his wife’s deception, to Mordred’s. Truly, we did not live in a world where it was safe for a man to be gentle or trusting.
“Morgan, you did not do any of this. You tried to tell me the truth, and I wouldn’t listen. You didn’t make my wife fall in love with another man. You didn’t make Mordred hate me. I did those things. I never noticed her. I was happy, so I just thought she must have been happy as well. I never asked her. I just thought that she loved me as I loved her. I suppose I was arrogant enough to believe that no one could want anyone else when they had me. Mordred – well, if I could have been a father to him, all might have been well. The rest –” Arthur shook his head. “It’s destiny, it’s chance, it’s whatever you call it. Either way, I know my death is coming. It’s alright, Morgan,” he reassured me, when I opened my mouth to speak. “I’m ready for it. There’s nothing left for me now. Besides, I saw it, long ago, in Nimue’s enchanted woods. I saw the moment. If it will not be now, it will be soon.”
“What about Guinevere?” I asked him, softly.
He sighed then, and nodded, sadly. “I am sorry that I will never say goodbye to her.” Arthur gave a weary smile. “Though, if I saw her now, she would only be angry with me, wouldn’t she? For leaving her alone with Mordred. For not writing to her when I was in France. Still, I would have liked to, one last time, have held her in my arms.” Arthur shrugged again. “We can’t un-love those who hurt us, I suppose. It will be her I’m thinking of, when the time comes.”
I nodded. I did not know what to say. I put my head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around me. Why did you have to give me away to Uriens? I thought. Why? But he had been so young when he had done that, and desperate. He had felt his enemies closing in around him, and panicked. He had not had the years to understand me, nor I him.
Ywain returned, and Arthur buckled his armour back on, and they both kissed me on the cheek, and put on their helms and rode out to war.
Each day they came back alive, I was relieved, but I also knew, and Arthur knew, each day he returned alive was only prolonging the coming of what must. One day, deep into summer when it was uncomfortably hot and dry, Arthur stepped from his tent to go to battle in the morning and gazed up at the sky, thoughtfully.
Just quiet enough that only I beside him would hear, he said, “It will be today.”
Too soon, too soon. I had had letters from Nimue saying that Lancelot’s armies had reached Carhais. They were just a few days’ journey from here. No, Arthur, I thought. But it would not be changed. Perhaps Arthur was wrong, but I understood fate, and I did not think he was. I wanted to tell Ywain not to ride out today, for he was always at Arthur’s side, but the hope that Ywain might protect him outweighed my anxiety for his safety. He was a grown man. I could not hold him back. He would want to go.
So I mounted my horse and rode to battle with them, in my dress of black gems and with the crown of Gore on my head. Men stayed away from me, from my glinting dress of black, my woaded face, from the name Morgan le Fay that hung around me now like a mantle, protecting me.
I watched as at last, after so many weeks of waiting and trying, Mordred finally found his way to Arthur on the battlefield. Ywain moved between them, his sword drawn. I wanted to cry out, to step forward, but I held back. Mordred lunged forward with his spear, which pierced the chest of Ywain’s horse. Ywain climbed clumsily from the screaming beast as it fell, dragging his foot out from beneath it just before it would have fallen hard enough there to break his leg.
“Get out of the way,” Mordred growled at him. Weighing his sword in his hand, my son stepped forward, even as Mordred’s horse reared over him. He struck up, fast, sinking his sword into the horse’s chest as Mordred’s sword swung down at him. I saw it catch, hard, against his shoulder, and Ywain stumbled back as Mordred’s horse crashed down underneath him. Ywain was scrambling back as Mordred, seemingly unharmed, stepped from the body of his horse, swinging his sword. Run, Ywain, I thought. I almost shouted it, but I did not need to.
“Mordred,” Arthur called out, jumping from his own horse, his spear in his hand. Mordred froze where he stood at the sound of his father’s voice. I could not see his face through his helm, but I was sure he wore his cruel grin.
Mordred turned back to Ywain.
“Step aside, boy.” Ywain stood his ground.
“Ywain,” I shouted. He half-turned over his shoulder to me, but did not move.
“Run back to your mother, Ywain,” Mordred sneered, stepping towards him.
Ywain shouted something back at him that I did not hear, for he was turned away from me, and his helm swallowed the noise. Mordred lunged at him again, and Ywain met his blow with his sword. I saw Ywain crumple under Mordred’s force. He was already hurt in the shoulder from where Mordred had struck him before, but still he did not move out of the way. Not until Arthur lowered his spear and called out to Mordred again, and Mordred, having struck Ywain again, knocking him to his knees, turned aside from him and stepped towards his father.
“It’s time, Mordred,” I heard Arthur say.
Mordred did not say anything, but stepped forward, and as he did, Arthur stepped forward as well, thrusting hard with his spear. The strength of the blow knocked Mordred back, and the helm fell from his head, rolling away on the grass. I rode softly to Ywain’s side and offered my hand. Silently, he took it and climbed heavily onto the horse behind me. He leaned against me, and I could hear him breathing ragged with his wounds.
Arthur struck again, fast, and Mordred, still unbalanced, reeling back, having foolishly miscalculated his father’s strength – or perhaps the strength of his father’s anger – exposed the small gap in his armour beneath his breastplate. Arthur struck fast once more, and I heard Mordred choke with pain as the spear went through him. I felt the relief wash over me. I couldn’t quite believe it. Arthur wasn’t going to die. Mordred was. It was over.
I was just about to turn my horse around and leave, when I saw Mordred grasp hold of the shaft of Arthur’s spear, and begin to drag himself up, pushing himself further on to it. His teeth, already dark with the blood that was seeping up into his lungs from the wound, were set together in an awful grimace against the pain, and behind him on the wooden shaft he left a trail of his blood. He had dropped his sword to drag himself up it with both hands. Arthur stared, frozen, at Mordred pulling the fatal spear deeper onto himself. When he was right up by his father, whose hands, too, were both still around the shaft of the spear, he snatched Excalibur from the scabbard Arthur wore it in at his side, and in a swift, ringing blow, holding it in a single hand, he brought it crashing against Arthur’s head. I saw the sword slice easily through the metal of the helm, and grow dark with blood. With that, Mordred let Excalibur fall from his hands and collapsed as Arthur’s hands slackened on the spear and Mordred fell with it. Arthur fell heavily to his knees.
I wanted to cry out, wanted to jump down, to put my healing hands around Arthur’s wound, but I was with my son. It was Arthur or Ywain. I was frozen, could not move. But then around Arthur appeared Nimue, and three more women whom I knew from their woad to be women of Avalon. They would heal him. All would be well. But then I thought, with awful dread, if Excalibur struck the blow, how could it ever be healed?
I called out to Nimue, and s
he turned to me. I could see the open distress on her face.
She left the other women with Arthur, trying to lift him to his feet, and walked over to me.
“I saw it, Morgan,” she said, absent with grief. “And still I came too late. I must have seen it... only as it happened.”
“Can he be saved?”
Nimue shook her head. “We must take him to Avalon.”
I nodded, though I was not sure what good Avalon would do him.
I turned to Ywain over my shoulder. He had pulled off his helm. His face was pale, greyish, covered in a light film of clammy sweat.
“Can you ride?” I asked him.
He nodded. Nimue handed up a skin of something. I supposed it was the potion for healing the blood. If she was handing it to Ywain that meant that it would be no good to Arthur now.
“Ywain, ride to London, to the Tower. The Queen is there. Tell her that Mordred is defeated. That,” I glanced at Nimue, “... Arthur is wounded, and it is the end of him, and we are taking him to Avalon. I will follow.”
Ywain nodded, and drinking deep from what Nimue had given him, he turned on his horse as he did and rode away.
Beside me, quietly, Nimue said, “We should bring her to him.” I nodded, and she took my hand.
Either Ywain had ridden fast, or we had come slow through the middle-lands of magical travel, because we arrived to see him, his back to us, framed in the great doorway of the Tower, its doors thrown back and open. Beyond him, I could see Guinevere, dressed in her armoured dress, the crown of the Queen of Logrys on her head, and Kay beside her, his arm around her as though he were prepared to catch her for a fall. Her eyes were wide, and glassy, her look distant. Kay was saying something to her. I could see his lips moving, but she did not seem to hear him.
MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 57
