“Lancelot, then, did not come?” I heard her say. Her voice was still thick with her Breton accent, as though all her years in Logrys had not taken any part of her away. She had not changed. Her face gave nothing away. So strange, even now, to not show how she was feeling.
“He did not come, my Lady,” Ywain answered her softly. Nimue and I came closer, but she did not seem to see us. She did not seem to see anything before her at all. “They say he has gathered his armies to ride to Arthur’s aid, but he has not come. Not in time.”
Her eyes fluttered closed; for a moment it was as though she were blinking, or holding back tears, but then she collapsed and Kay jumped to catch her, scooping her up easily in his arms. It was then that he saw me, and as our eyes met I could see everything that he was feeling. Regret for the choices he had made, going with Lancelot and leaving his brother behind, sorrow for Arthur’s death, fear for Guinevere now that Britain would be thrown into confusion. Truly, Kay did not know how many were dead. I did not know. There was no heir to Lothian anymore, not now that Mordred was dead. Two great kingdoms without a king, and Britain without a single ruler, the single ruler who had given it peace. My son was Arthur’s closest living heir now, and I would not give him up to the throne, not now that it had proved itself to be a seat of death.
Nimue and I rushed after Kay and Ector, following them upstairs to a bedroom where Kay set Guinevere gently on the bed. I sent him for water. I didn’t want him there, raw and open, with his sorrow pouring out of him. I didn’t want to think about it. What I had done to Arthur, how awful it had been to feel relief and then have it snatched from me, as coming death had not abated Mordred’s desire for revenge. Nimue put her hand gently on Ector’s shoulder, and he put his hand on hers in comfort. I realised, suddenly, that she was wearing black. Dressed for mourning. She had known, really, that this would happen. How awful for her, then, that even she who knew could not have prevented it.
When Kay came back with the water, I took it from him and sat beside Guinevere where she lay on the bed. Kay leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest, watching. She had held it all in too much, and at last it had all overwhelmed her. I took the linen cloth Nimue handed me and dipped it in the water, then wrung it out and held it against Guinevere’s brow. There was no magic in it, but Guinevere did not need magic. No magic would help her now. Her chest rose and fell slowly, as though she were deep in sleep, but the shock of the cold seemed to wake her from it. She opened her eyes slowly, and I saw them widen with surprise as they saw me. She still did not trust me.
“Do you want us to take you to him?” I asked her, softly.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Kay step forward as though to protest, but Ector put a fatherly hand against his chest and Kay fell back. Ector understood. He had lost his wife, and he understood the need to say goodbye.
Guinevere nodded, and I took her hand. Nimue reached out and took the other, and I opened my eyes to see us standing on the shores of Avalon. This truly was the end. Arthur dead, Guinevere in her armoured dress. Soon the sword would come, and we would stand side by side and I would know, at last, that it was over. I had lived out the days of my destiny.
Guinevere saw Arthur before I did, slumped against a tree at the shore, the three women we had left him with kneeling before him in mourning. She slipped her hand from mine, and ran bare-footed across the grass. As they saw her coming, the other women stepped back and Guinevere fell to her knees before Arthur, taking his face in her hands. She kissed him. He did not move. I could see her lips moving, and I knew she was calling his name.
“What kind of woman is she,” Nimue asked softly, “that she has it in her to love two men like that?”
I did not answer. I knew, surely enough, that I was the same. I had loved Kay, and Lancelot, and Accolon, at one point all at once, and I was sure that Nimue still loved Arthur, in a way, though she was happily married now with Pelleas. It was easy to see in someone else the tangled knots of love, but not in oneself.
We walked forward slowly. As we approached, Nimue’s women gently lifted her away, and she slumped in their arms. Nimue and I knelt before him and began unbuckling his armour. I placed my hand over the cut in the side of his skull, but under my hand I felt a raw, hostile burning. It was the work of Excalibur, and had its own magic, that wound. It would not be healed by me. Not by any of us.
Excalibur was still at his side. Someone, one of the women, must have recognised it and slipped it back into its scabbard. I paused for a moment, but only a moment. The time had come. In the end, Arthur had not needed it, or even wanted it. I reached down, unbuckled the belt and pulled it away, buckling it around myself. My sword had come home, but it was bittersweet. I leaned down to Arthur.
“My dear brother,” I whispered in his ear, kissing him on the cheek. It was all I had it in me to say. There was too much, and I would not cry. He murmured, as though he heard something, but the end was upon him, and he would never speak to any of us again.
Nimue had somehow got his surcoat of red and gold, and we dressed him in it, and with the women who let go of Guinevere – who seemed to have steadied herself enough to stand – we lifted him into a little barge moored at the end of the lake. When he passed through into the mist, he would go into the between-lands before the Otherworld, and Nimue would ease his passing, and then he would be gone. I hoped he would be remembered as the great king he had once been, and not the broken man he had been at the end.
Nimue stepped into the barge with him, but I did not go. Too many times I had broken the oath I had not really made to the Breton queen, and now I would remain to keep it.
As Nimue pushed the barge away, Guinevere ran forward again, shouting after Arthur one last time, but as she reached the edge of the lake, the barge moved just beyond her reach, and she fell to her knees. I could not hear her, but I could see her shoulders shudder, as though she were crying.
I stood beside her to watch the barge move out of sight, watch Arthur move from life to death through the middle-lands of Avalon. The grief for me, I knew, would be slow, and long. It would come gently, and I would miss Arthur, and then it would wear at me, heavy, for I would know what a wicked part I had had in it all.
Guinevere stood slowly beside me, staring out until Arthur was gone. She turned to me suddenly, and made a grab for the sword. She was angry. I could see that clearly on her face. Though the clean lines of tears were visible through the dirt and the blood caked on her face from the siege, her eyes were dry now, and shining with the anger that – I was sure, for her – was far easier than grief. I stepped back and drew it between us, instinctively. Then I saw it, as I had seen it before. She and I, and the sword between us, and I felt my heart race.
“Do you know for whom Excalibur was forged?” I asked her.
She stepped forward as though she was going to try and take it again, but I moved back, lifting it a little away.
“For Arthur,” she said, stubbornly.
“You know that isn’t true. Arthur can barely lift it without both hands. Excalibur was forged for me, but Merlin tricked me, and took it from me. Said it was Arthur’s destiny. Like you, I suppose.”
Both had brought his death. She and I and the sword, we had tangled together and each played a vital part. Her – what was it about her that he could not have lived without her, and knowing how she had loved another could not have just sent her away? And the sword – he had kept the sword though it meant little to him because Merlin had given it to him. And me? What about me and the sword? I was never going to fight. No. No, it was worse. It was a wicked thing that had put greed and death in my heart. Nimue had made it to keep me safe, and my greed for it had brought me only suffering.
I threw it out, hard, into the centre of the lake. With my Otherworld strength behind it, it went far, so I did not see it fall as it plunged into the mist, but I heard it sink into the water.
Chapter Eighty One
I heard hooves behind me, and turned
around to see Kay and Ector riding up towards us. I felt suddenly resentful, not of them in particular, but of the whole lot of them. Knights. Kings. Men.
“You are too late,” I told them.
Kay strode past me as though he did not see me and pulled Guinevere into his arms. I felt a stab of jealousy that only made my resentment worse. I saw the way she grasped hold of his arms as he held her, how she buried her face against his shoulder, and his hand, on the back of her head, tangled with her loosening hair. I did not think I could have been blamed for thinking that there had been more than friendship between them. Kay had held me tight like that, too, long ago.
“Say your goodbyes. I am taking her to Amesbury,” I said sharply, fixing Kay with a harsh look. I was suddenly unbearably tired of them all, passing her around between them as the sword had been passed between us. To my surprise, she did not protest. Kay did not release his grip on her, but buried his face in her hair. I wondered if he was crying.
“Are you sure, Morgan, that this is best?” Ector said to me, gentle and kind.
I nodded, still watching Kay and Guinevere.
“I am, Ector. Soon enough there will be greedy kings wanting to make her their wife if she doesn’t go to an abbey. She is the Kingdom now. Someone will try. Probably Mark.”
Beside me, Ector nodded. “But what about Lancelot? What happens when he comes?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You’ll take care of her, Morgan?” he asked me, earnestly.
I took his weathered old hand in mine. “I promise, Ector.
“Guinevere,” I called out to her, “it’s time.”
She moved away from Kay, taking his hands in hers. She was saying something quietly to him. I could only see the back of him, but he nodded gently. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.
“I never did know,” Ector said, soft and solemn beside me, “how close they truly were.”
She walked past Kay, who did not turn around to watch her go, and came to take my hands, and I closed my eyes and pictured the Abbey where I had spent my years as a girl, and we were there.
She did not say much, but she seemed to like it there. She walked around the cloister garden slowly, looking everything over with those bright, fierce, unreadable eyes of hers. She said nothing when I led her to the room where she would stay. I did not tell her it had once been my room, as a girl. She sank down to sit on the bed with a sigh that went right through her. She had lost none of her charming abandon, though there was something dark to the recklessness now, as though she somewhat hoped some careless move or other would bring her death. She did not say anything to me as I left her there, but she did give me a strange half-smile, something like gratitude.
It was strange, the way the time went on passing after that, as though the world were the same. But it was not the same. Not once Arthur was dead. We had all forgotten to appreciate the peace that his rule had given Britain, and now the greedy lords, with no one to be afraid of anymore, turned on one another. The Lords of Wales, unhappy with Ywain’s youth and his English mother, the witch, turned their allegiance away from him, eager to grab the land from one another. He stayed in Rheged, and held Gore – no one would take that from him – but could not make the other men leave off their fighting, or swear themselves to him.
I could not bear to go back to Lothian, since I was sure I would feel Morgawse’s ghost beside me. Perhaps she blamed me, wherever she had gone, for not being able to save her. Perhaps she blamed me, too, for Gareth’s and Gaheris’ deaths. Well, now they were all gone. And Nimue and I, and Guinevere, and Kay and Ywain, were the only ones of any of us left. The war with Mordred had seen the end of Dinadan, and not just of everyone else I knew, but anyone else I recognised. Britain was a country of young men, young and angry and ambitious. Mark still ruled in Cornwall, and turned his greedy eye on the rest of Britain. Having put his wife Isolde to death for her adultery, he was looking for a way to marry himself into more power. There was a princess in Carhais again, an infant daughter of the boasting Prince who had not let us inside, but the Breton people were more reluctant now than ever to give their girls away in marriage, and refused to send even a cousin of the Prince to be Mark’s bride. The Lord of Orkney ruled Lothian now, and his own kingdom. He, too, was looking for a wife to secure his lands. They both wanted Gareth’s daughter, Anna, but the girl was lost, disappeared. She had disappeared from Camelot with her mother at the beginning of Mordred’s war, and no one knew where the little Princess of Lothian had gone. I knew that she was with Kay, wherever he was, but I would not say that she was with him, nor would I have told them where Kay was living, even if I knew.
I went to Avalon, to Nimue. I spent a long time with her there. I was pleased to be away from the world outside, past the sickly fragrant mists and close to the Otherworld. I went between there and Rheged, and sometimes back to Amesbury, to Guinevere, who sometimes would even give me her sudden smile when she saw me now, though it was less somehow. More muted. Nimue called me back to Avalon when it was time to set Arthur in his tomb. After she had set him there, I went to the Abbey to take Guinevere to see it. She stood before it as though she could not see it, and reached out her hand to touch it, and ran her fingers over the stone surface of it, the Latin letters Nimue had inscribed on the stone, but she did not seem to take it in. She did not cry as she had when the barge had sailed away from her. She must have been thinking of him, and how he had been when they were alive together.
She looked strange in the nuns’ clothes, the plain black that I had worn when I lived there. She looked like a different woman entirely, until she moved with the same wild briskness. Her bright hair was hidden beneath its black veil, and she looked as though she could have been a nun all her life. She had the same impassive face I had seen on many of the nuns growing up.
So the months passed, and turned into years, and the world around me was grim again with greed and war. War until one of the minor kings of Britain had killed all the others. Avalon was drawing back from the outside world, no longer giving its favour or power to any one king. I did not think Nimue could bear to find another king to favour. Instead, she sat in her great stone hall with Pelleas, and carefully oversaw the training of the women of Avalon. But there were fewer, I thought, than there had been when I was young. The Otherworld blood was dwindling away. I did not know of any marriages of two Otherworld parents, and certainly my Otherworld father had only passed his gifts to me, and I had not managed to give them to my surviving son. Magic was draining out of the world. Merlin’s books were burned – I was not so sorry for that – and there were fewer and fewer of us who had it in our blood.
It was some years – two, perhaps three years after Arthur’s death – that I found Kay again, quite by chance. I had been with Guinevere in the Abbey. She was ever quiet, never as forthcoming with me as she had been with her maids, though I was not sure if that was because of who I was, or because now it must have seemed to her unbearable to joke about such things as she had with them, now Arthur was dead, and Lancelot lost. For Lancelot had not come, or not to any of us. Some said he had never left France, some said he had died on the journey, but others said that he wandered Britain alone searching for his lost love. I could not believe anything but the last of those to be true.
“You know,” I told her gently, one evening as the summer sun was dipping into the horizon, its orange light slanting through the stone window, lighting bright against her pale profile as she stared out, “Lancelot will come for you.”
She nodded, without replying. In the late evening light, her white skin lit with red along its edge, she could have been the girl I had seen scowling at her own wedding, the young, conquered princess brought to Britain as a prize. But she was not. Twenty five years had passed since then, or thereabouts. With the veil over her hair, I could not see how it had faded from deep red to pale gold, and her face, though marked with loss and weariness, was still beautiful. If she had not come to the Abbey, ageing and bar
ren though she was, there would have been kings fighting to marry her, not just for the right to call themselves King of Britain. I was sure that this was a relief for her.
“Will you go with him?” I asked her, softly. There was nothing stopping her. I did not see why they should not be together, why they could not escape into some kind of reckless happiness. It ought to come to someone, I thought.
She turned to me then with a sad smile, and shook her head. “And, what, Morgan?” she sighed. “Go back to France with him and live as his wife? So, we grow old, and talk of Arthur, and how between us we killed him? And at night, when we make love, we both pretend that Arthur is not there beside us, every time? No.” She shook her head, gazing away again, out across the land beyond the window where the dark shadows were growing sharp, and long. “There is not room in this world for our love anymore. And besides,” she sighed again, heavily, “I am old, and will give him no children. He should find a young girl, and marry her, and have children of his own. If he had not loved me, he would have had children. I know –” She paused, glancing down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I know he wanted that.”
I came and sat beside her, but I had no words to say. She had been selfish. We had all been selfish. Still, I was not sure that if the time came and Lancelot found her that she would not go with him.
It was then that one of the novice nuns knocked on the door.
“My Lady,” she peeped her head in, and tried to hide her alarm at the sight of my woaded face, “Sir Kay has come to see you.”
MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 58
