Margery giggled, as though I were telling her some great, forbidden secret.
Suddenly, Guinevere was standing over us, demanding to know what we were laughing about. She had lost that steely control I knew so well; her anger had overtaken her, and the opaque calm I had seen on her when we had ridden into Camelot had utterly evaporated. She grasped me hard by the arm and pulled me to my feet.
"What amuses you two ladies so?" she demanded, in her anger her Breton accent thick, her English words too formal.
I gathered my best politeness around myself. I only wanted her to appear more wild, more out of control than even she was. The more scandalous it seemed, the more the gossip would eat away at her, and I would have what I had waited for.
"Forgive me," I began, demurely, fixing her with the most innocent look I could muster. It was difficult, for I was enjoying myself. "I was telling Margery of the love of Sir Lancelot. I know I should not speak in public of such things, but he was so tender. So," I drew in an expressive breath, and saw the rage catch deeper in her, "manful, I "
To my absolute pleasure and triumph, she slapped me hard across the face. I barely felt the pain, I had such a rush in my veins. I heard Margery gasp beside me. I had won. Perhaps I would even go to Lancelot, and cry, and say that she had been unkind, and then he would hate her for it.
With a sudden lurch of guilt, I wondered if it might not be about the child as much as it was about Lancelot. The child I had offered up in exchange for Mordred"s life. Once the thought struck me the guilt did not leave easy. I had been happy to enjoy her suffering when I had thought it was a lover"s jealousy, but for a lost child I was not so sure. It had been a year two? since then, and there was no sign that she might have another. It struck me that only a woman who knew she would never bear a child would demand her lover"s compliance as boldly as I had heard Guinevere do. She had nothing to fear. It was too late for hesitancy now, though. Too late for doubt.
As I walked back to the room that had been set aside for me, I overheard two voices I knew almost as well as my own, arguing. It was Kay and Lancelot, and I thought to burst in, and throw out my tears so that they would know what a cruel and jealous woman the Queen was, but when I came closer and pressed my ear to the door, I held back.
"Well, you can"t go," Kay was saying, angrily.
"Kay, I don"t know what to do. If I don"t, she"s lost to me forever. I know, I know I should not, but Kay, I don"t know what else I can do."
There was a short silence, and even through the door it felt tense.
"Why are you telling me this?" Kay snapped. "What do you expect? Is this just so that if Arthur ever finds out you can tell him you had my blessing? Because you don"t, Lancelot. Not at all. Do you truly need me to tell you how foolish this is?"
I heard Lancelot sigh, so deep that the sound came to me through the thick wood of the door.
"I know, Kay. But I cannot stop it. I cannot."
There was a long silence, and I wondered if they were talking too quietly for me to hear. I leaned closer to the door. For a moment, there was more silence, and then I heard Kay speak, soft and low with anger.
"You know, Lancelot, if you were going to go and do something like this anyway, if you truly do not care about what people think is right and wrong, I don"t know why you gave up so easily on me."
"Kay, I did not " Lancelot began, but Kay interrupted him, forcefully.
"No, Lancelot. You ignored my letters, you refused to see me "
"Kay." I had not heard Lancelot shout before, and the sound of it shocked me. "I was sixteen years old. I was afraid. Your father sent me from his house in disgrace. What was I supposed to do? Besides," his voice sank, became the slightly sulky tone I had not heard fully since he was a boy of that age, "it was you first, who... knew another."
I heard Kay give a groan of frustration. "Morgan? Are you still angry about Morgan? You know, she wasn"t anyone else"s wife. She was kind, and she was there. You were gone. What, was I supposed to spend the rest of my life alone because you didn"t want me anymore?"
"Not just Morgan," Lancelot answered, grimly, after a pause.
"No," Kay replied, "not just Morgan."
"Her sister, too."
Kay sighed, this time. "I suppose Morgan told you that."
"Well, is it true?" Lancelot demanded.
"Yes," Kay said, "it"s true. We can"t all live like you, waiting for the great power of true and perfect love before we have anyone. I am a man of flesh and blood, Lancelot. I will not live my life lonely, because I cannot have any of those whom I have loved. And I will not be made to feel ashamed of it by you. You should be ashamed. For G.o.d"s sake, give up your thoughts of Guinevere. Marry this girl who has your child. Live an easy life, a happy life."
"Like you, Kay?"
There was the sound of some kind of scuffle, as though one of them had lunged at the other, and a fight was about to begin, but it stopped as quickly as it had begun.
I heard Kay reply, "Never, Lancelot, never come to me with this again. I do not want to hear it."
I slipped away, my heart cold within me. Lancelot was planning to go to Guinevere again, even though he had me, and I had his child. He was still involved with Kay. They might not share a bed anymore, but I had never known two people to argue like that who had totally forgotten one another. I thought, too, of the last time Kay and I had argued, and the scuffle I had heard. Had it been about to go the same way? Who had grasped hold of whom? It seemed it was over for Lancelot, if all he thought of was the Queen, and yet he was still angry that Kay had loved me, once he was gone. Sixteen years old, Lancelot had said. Had it been so long ago? Seven years? Despite how much had changed, how much I myself had changed, I could hardly believe that so much time had slipped past me. Too late to think back, too late to turn back. I had already become who I was.
Chapter Twenty Four.
There was a feast that night, the food richer and finer than ever before. Arthur was trying to impress Isolde. I ate heartily, made hungry by my victory. I sat beside Lancelot, letting one hand rest on my pregnant belly, watching Guinevere. She barely ate the food before her. Arthur beside her did not seem to notice. He ate and drank freely, laughing and joking with Gawain at his other side, and as much as he could with Lancelot who, beside me, was tense and uncomfortable. I could feel Guinevere glance at me whenever I looked away. I was enjoying my new power, seeing another woman rejected and discomforted. I knew I should not, but I had had so little victory in my life. I wanted this. I deserved it.
I saw Kay drape an arm around the back of Guinevere"s chair from where he sat beside her, and lean down to whisper something in her ear. She turned to him. Their faces were close; the way they spoke, intimate. No one around seemed to see anything unusual in it. I, surely, could have been forgiven for thinking before that it was Kay she wanted as her lover, rather than Lancelot.
Whatever Kay had said to her, Guinevere did not like it. I could imagine, from what he had said to Lancelot, that she would not. She gave him a sharp look, drained her cup of wine and, placing it a little too hard against the table, made her excuses to leave. This time, Arthur did not protest. As she left, she cast a look towards Lancelot that I think only he and I saw.
It would be tonight, then, that he would come to her. It would not happen. He would not so easily slip from me. The knights and Arthur were growing louder, drunker. I supposed Guinevere could be so bold because she knew Arthur well, and that once he had begun drinking with Gawain it would be late before he came to her, if he came at all.
Lancelot made an excuse to leave not long after. I was his excuse. Arthur was very approving when Lancelot said he wanted to escort his pregnant lady to her chamber. I was happy to go along with it. But I was not sure that he intended to go to Guinevere, for when he walked back with me to my room, which was only beside hers I was sure that she had me there to keep watch on me he kissed me goodnight on the cheek, and walked off, down the stairs. When I went into my own chamber, I could hear Guinevere moving around inside hers. He had known she was there, and walked away? Had he truly listened so closely to Kay?
But this ruined my plan. I had wanted him to come to me, thinking I was her, and for her to see, and for it to be over between them for good. Best of all, she might scream all through the castle about it, and then Arthur would know as well.
I dressed in one of my plain wool dresses, and let myself become Margery. When I felt the growing mound of the child disappear under my hand, I panicked a little, but when I slipped back to myself to check, it was still there. My own magic seemed to know what I wanted; for the child to be seen when I was Elaine, and not when I was another. I prepared a cup of wine for Lancelot, the same that I had made before, and bore it with me in my hand.
I slipped down the stairs, through the castle to where Lancelot"s bedroom was, far from the Queen"s chambers, among the rooms for the knights that were simple and plain.
I knocked on the door, and when there was no answer, I pushed it open and walked in.
Lancelot was lying on his bed, still in his shirt and breeches, staring up at the ceiling over him.
"Sir," I said, my tone scolding, and loud enough that he startled. "Surely you are not going to sleep? My Lady waits for you."
Lancelot sat up sharply in the bed, his eyes wild and unfocussed. I held out the cup of wine towards him.
"Do not be nervous, sir," I a.s.sured him. He sat up, took the cup and drained it fast. He was nervous. He thought he had succeeded with Guinevere before, and now he faced the task again. But I knew, as well as Guinevere did, what a difference there was between a man one desired, and one"s husband.
Lancelot groaned and, setting the cup on the floor at his feet, rubbed his face with his hands.
"I should not be doing this," he mumbled, but it was only to himself. He got to his feet and followed me from the room, as obedient as a lamb. I rushed on ahead of him, back to my room, to change into the stolen nightdress, and Guinevere"s shape. When I heard the sound of his boots coming up the stairs, my heart raced in thrilling antic.i.p.ation. After tonight, I hoped two victories would be won; Lancelot would be mine, and Arthur would be destroyed. When I heard him reach the top, I opened the door and stepped out before him.
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 s.n.a.t.c.h it from me on the sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.sing 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 Twenty Five.
Back at Rheged I pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 p.r.i.c.kly, 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 superst.i.tious, 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.