Guinevere nodded and, giving me an unsteady smile, stood to leave.
It surprised me that I had not known before. Kay was nearby, and he still came to see her.
She told me later that he lived now in his father’s house, and he had married. I had not expected that, but I was pleased. I told myself that I would not go to him, not back to the house where we had loved in innocence as children, but somehow I found myself there, and when he saw me from where he stood in the doorway of his father’s house, he ran out as he had run across the cloister garden all those years ago. Only this time he did not throw his arms around me in an embrace. He stopped short, wary, but his smile was there, still warm.
“Morgan...” he greeted me. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then gestured with his head for me to follow him. “Come. You should meet my wife. And my daughter. I have a daughter now.” He paused, looking at me. “It’s been too long, Morgan.”
I followed him round the back of the house, where I used to watch him fighting Arthur with sticks. There was a woman there, golden-haired and slender, and a little girl. A little way away, half-hidden in the shade of the house, I thought for a moment I saw Morgawse’s ghost in the shape of a pretty girl with coppery hair disappearing into the kitchen with a pail of milk, but it was only Gareth’s daughter, Anna, who now – somehow – was almost grown.
Kay leaned back against the wall of the house, gazing out at his wife and little girl playing in the long grass. She was young, perhaps twenty years old, and pretty. She had a sweet face, and an easy smile. The easy smile of innocence, of youth. The little girl had the same fair hair as the mother, shining golden in the midsummer sun, but Kay’s bright, mischievous brown eyes. She was perhaps a couple of years old, and had a loud, infectious laugh like her father’s already. I wondered why, after the great and complex loves he had had in his life, Kay had chosen the sweet, simple girl before us, full of rural innocence, as his wife. She must, too, have been more than twenty years younger than him. But Kay was a man; he could have another chance at life, at simple happiness. For Guinevere, and for me, that chance was past.
“Why her, Kay?” I asked softly, gently.
Kay shrugged, still watching his wife as she lifted the little girl in her arms, and the girl kicked her little feet in the air with delight.
“She doesn’t know any of it, I suppose. She doesn’t know who I am. I mean, she knows that this is my father’s land, she knows who Anna is – well, sort of. She knows why we have to hide her here. She knows that I fought in two wars with Arthur, but she doesn’t know that we grew up as brothers. She knows that he was the King for a long time, but she doesn’t really know what happened, or how he was killed. She doesn’t know that I fought beside the great hero Sir Lancelot, or lay beside him. She doesn’t know that I have loved queens, and witches, and men. None of it really touched her. Life in the little villages here stays the same. Everyone has heard of King Arthur, and Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. They have all heard of Morgan le Fay. They have even heard of Sir Gawain, but no one has heard of Kay the Seneschal. Well, that’s a mercy. When I go to visit Guinevere at Amesbury, I tell my wife I am going to pray for my mother. It’s half true. When I talk about her, I call her Queen Guinevere, as though I never knew her. She wants to see the child. Guinevere, I mean. She wants to see her, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I think it would break her heart.” Kay’s voice was low and soft, wistful. He was the only one of us who had escaped, but he had only seemed to escape. He still thought of it, I could see that. I wondered what he dreamed about at night, with his innocent young wife at his side. He turned to me, a look on his face of sadness that was only half-wry. “I was... with her. Once.”
I was not quite sure what he meant.
“What... Guinevere?” I asked in disbelief.
He nodded, looking back away, back towards his wife, but this time his eyes were fixed into the distance.
“At Joyous Guard. Just once.”
“With Lancelot there?” I had meant in the castle, but evidently Kay understood something different.
“Oh yes. He was there. The way I remember it, it was somewhat his idea.” Kay sighed deeply once more, as though the memory of it all weighed him down, and he could not shake it off. “But neither of them saw anything apart from one another, did they? I’m not sure they really saw each other, either. Not really. Maybe people like you and me can’t understand that kind of love; I don’t know, but it seemed a lot like madness to me. But I loved her. As much as either of them did. As much as I loved Lancelot when I was a boy. And you.”
He turned to me with a tight, sad smile. I had to tell him, and I felt the tightness grow within my throat, the tears that I would not cry, I could not. We had lost so much, Kay and I. And we had even lost each other. Ector’s voice came to me, across the huge chasm of the years: You can’t always have the life you want. You have to learn to be happy with the life you have. None of us had been happy. We had all wanted more, and now here we were, all broken and alone. I sighed, tensing myself for the blow that I knew I had to deliver before I left Kay.
“Kay, she is dying,” I told him, as gently as I could. I had felt it, sitting beside her. I thought it must have been what Merlin had done to her all those years ago. I could feel the dark, heavy lump of it when I came too close. It would not be long. I had not said so to her. I had not said so to anyone but Kay before, and now I had said it, it seemed unbearably real. I felt as though I had missed something with her, and that we could have been close, if things had been different.
Kay nodded.
“Does she know?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think she senses it. I will take her to Avalon soon, when the time is right.” When Lancelot has come, I thought, but I did not say it.
Kay nodded again. “To be with Arthur?” he asked.
“Kay,” I said, gentle but firm, “Arthur is dead. Nimue has set him in his tomb. Being in Avalon eased his passing, and it will hers, but death is death. Arthur is not coming back.”
I could not believe that Kay of all people had trusted in the peasant rumours that Arthur would return. Kay knew the Otherworld better than that. Perhaps it was easier for him to think that the brother he had not seen since he left him in the middle of the night to join Lancelot might come back, and they might be reconciled.
“I know,” Kay said, quietly, gazing down at the ground before him.
Kay’s wife and little girl were walking back towards us, and Kay crouched to the ground and held out his arms for his little daughter to run into. He scooped her up, laughing with her, his smile breaking bright across his face. It was as though he had not been sad moments before, had not been wistful, and regretful. Perhaps he could forget, when he was with them. Kay kissed his daughter on the cheek, and she giggled, grabbing on to his shirt with her little fists and Kay wrapped his arms around her. His wife came up beside him and kissed him on the cheek, and he turned his bright smile to her.
“My love, this is –” He hesitated for a moment. “This is Morgan. She grew up in the Abbey. We were childhood friends.”
His wife smiled and stepped forward to kiss me on the cheek. She had not connected me, despite my woaded face, with Morgan le Fay. Of course not; she thought Kay far from any of that, and besides, Morgan le Fay was to her not a real woman, but a creature of myth.
“It is lovely to meet you,” she said. Her voice was sweet and low, and light with youth. There was no suspicion in her. I felt suddenly warm with gladness that Kay, at least, had this second chance at happiness with a sweet girl who would ask nothing of him that it would hurt him to give. We had all asked too much of Kay, Lancelot, Guinevere and I. Even Arthur. Too much of one another.
“Where did you two meet?” I asked.
That was when Kay grinned, at her, and then at me, and I saw he had his spark of wicked brightness still strong within him. Kay had survived.
“Actually, we met on the shores of Avalon,” he said, a
nd I felt the smile creep onto my face as well.
More great fiction available in paperback by Lavinia Collins:
Gripping fantasy romance fiction based on real legend
Torn from her homeland to marry the young King Arthur, Guinevere tries to get used to her new life in Camelot. Despite Arthur’s somewhat gruff persona she develops feelings for him, but not ones as strong as those for the dashing knight Lancelot who becomes her champion. Torn between two loves, torn between duty and desire, Guinevere must overcome jealousy and suspicion at court, although staying true to her heart will threaten the whole realm.
If you like historical romance you will love this epic take on one of the world’s most famous legends.
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MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 59
