THE CURSE OF EXCALIBUR: a gripping Arthurian fantasy (THE MORGAN TRILOGY Book 2) (6 page)

“I told her the
truth
,”
Morgawse shouted. Mordred woke in her arms, and began to scream.

“Oh!” My mother said, suddenly moving me back from her, holding me by the shoulders. It was as though she thought the matter entirely dealt with. “I forgot – I came to tell you that Arthur and his knights are meeting the new Queen at Dover today, and the wedding will be tomorrow.”

I nodded. I didn’t care.

“At Dover?” Morgawse asked as she shushed Mordred quiet again, seemingly utterly distracted by this news as my mother was. “So it’s a foreign princess. Isolde?”

My mother shook her head.

“He didn’t want Isolde. She seemed like a lovely girl to me, but Arthur didn’t take to her. She was Merlin’s choice.” My mother made a little noise of disapproval in her throat. I was not sure if she disapproved of Merlin, or of Arthur ignoring his advice. “Anyway, we should make ourselves ready to welcome this new Queen. Now,” she turned to me and took my hand, “you had better go back to your own room, Morgan. To your husband.”

I cast a plaintive look at Morgawse, but I went willingly with Mother. When I reached my room, I was relieved to find that Uriens was gone.

Chapter Seven

There were serving women waiting there for me, and though I did not like being fussed by them, I was grateful for the warm bath they brought, and grateful to close my eyes and feel my hair being brushed. I dressed in one of my mother’s old dresses that she had given me at my wedding, a simple grey and silver brocade dress, and pulled my woollen cloak on top.

I found Merlin where I sought him. He had a room in the same tower as Arthur’s bedroom. It was dark and smoky, and I was sure he kept it stuffed with bizarre herbs and animal parts in jars in order to scare people. Nothing he had in that room looked particularly useful or felt particularly powerful to me. On my way up the stairs, when I was sure no one was around, I closed my eyes and imagined myself as Nimue. I had done it once before, so it came easily, and I felt my limbs change, grow smaller and lighter, and my shape become hers. I wondered if Merlin would be fooled.

I pushed the door open, and for a moment he was, but then a smug smile gathered on his face.

“Ah, Morgan. Have you come to reconsider my offer?”

I strode into the room and jumped up to sit on the table, resting my feet on the chair beneath me. I did not bother to allow my shape to change back.

“Why didn’t Arthur marry the woman you suggested?” I asked. My boldness sounded strange in Nimue’s soft voice. I wanted to distract him so that I could look at the spines of his books, see if there was anything I knew I could not get anywhere else.

Merlin scoffed and shook his head. “Your Seneschal lover told him that Isolde is a simpleton. It is the truth, but simpletons make good wives. The woman he has chosen instead is Leodegrance’s daughter. Many of the Bretons are still pagans, and the princess grew up without a mother’s guidance. The girl is half-wild.” He shook his head again. “He has insisted upon her because I told him that she has the blood of the witch-queen Maev of Cruachan in her veins. That was meant to
dissuade
him. Queen Maev cursed two of her husbands with her blood, and with one of them she took as her lover his finest knight. He seemed to think I was
recommending
the girl because of
it. His god has cursed him for that bastard child he got on his sister. I have seen it. I warned him of his bad destiny. I warned him that the child would bring his death, but he has got this idea in his head that this princess of Leodegrance’s will give him an Otherworld child that will protect him from his god. It’s ridiculous. Destiny cannot be escaped. But he has set his heart on her, and where a man sets his heart he will not be dissuaded.” Merlin said this last sentence in a funny little voice, as though he were trying to imitate Arthur.

I saw something on the bookshelf that caught my eye. A thin leather book with
macrobius
printed along the spine. It was too thin to be either of the volumes I knew about. It must be the third volume, where Macrobius described how to change things other than oneself.

I pointed to it.

“Is that the
Theory of Dreams
?” I asked. Merlin gave his skull-like grin.

“I hoped you would notice that. I am open to an offer of a fair exchange, Morgan.”

“I did not think that was the
Theory of Dreams
.” I climbed down from the table, still in Nimue’s shape. I crossed my arms. “You will not have the sword.”

“Ah, Morgan.” He pressed his lips together in disappointment. “Then you shall not have the book.”

I leaned closer to hiss at him, “That is what you said to me last time.”

And then I left. When I was on the empty stairs, I allowed Nimue’s shape to slip from me and became myself again. I had got information from Merlin, and I had seen his books. I knew what he had, and I had nothing with me in Camelot that he could steal in return that was worth anything near as much to me as that book.

I spent the night before Arthur’s wedding in Morgawse’s bedroom again. I did not think our mother would come back. Like Arthur, she spent her time pretending that Mordred did not exist, and so avoided seeing him at all costs. The day of Arthur’s marriage, Morgawse and I got ready together, as though we were girls again. I sent the serving women to get my jewelled dress from my room, and Morgawse plaited my hair. She still wore hers as my mother did, according to the Cornish fashion, drawn back simply at the front, and loose at the back. I would not have been allowed loose hair in the abbey, and I had grown used to the fashions of Logrys now, so much so that I felt naked when my hair was not neatly plaited away.

I made an excuse not to go down to the wedding in the chapel. I wanted a moment on my own, in my own room, without being afraid that Uriens would come in. I had not actually seen him since I had left in the night. I was sure he would be angry. I waited in Morgawse’s room until I heard the noise in the courtyard fall quiet. I wondered what the Breton princess was like. I thought of the Breton queen that I had failed to save at Rheged. She must be this girl’s mother, but she had talked about her like she was a child, and the princess Arthur had chosen was of roughly his own age. Did mothers always see their daughters as little children? I supposed Morgawse still saw her huge sons as children. My mother still called me
little Morgan
. Did this princess even know that Arthur had killed her brothers and had her mother executed? Oh, I doubted that anyone would tell her. I wondered if she was afraid. What if she had come over without a word of English to be given into the hands of the man who had killed almost all of her family? If she was like her mother, she would be proud and defiant. I wondered if it was better to be that way, or to be simple and compliant.
Simpletons make good wives.

When I got down to my room, I at first thought I was alone, and was relieved. I walked in and shut the door, but as I went to sit in the window seat, Uriens stepped out from behind the bed where the bed curtains had hidden him.

“Been hiding from me, Morgan?” he accused, striding over to me. I ran a few steps back from him.

“Don’t touch me,” I half-shouted.

“Morgan,” he sighed, rubbing his face. “I don’t do anything to you that I... shouldn’t. I have been a good husband to you. I do not beat you. I have not told anyone that you were not a virgin when we married, or tried to shame you. I do not keep other women indiscriminately, or take whores. I have let you have your freedom, to write to whom you please, to move about the castle, to control some of the gold at my disposal, to organise your part of household. I have been good to you. You have to
try
. Do you think this is what I want? That I find it easy? I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I don’t like your pagan woad, and we do not have any real affection for one another, but I have made efforts in my duty, and you have made none. We would both be a lot happier if you accepted that this is what marriage
is
. This is what married men and women do.”

I could not even speak. I was too angry. The way he was with me was awful. I could feel his disgust, his stolid duty, and I didn’t want it. I thought we would have both been happier if we agreed instead to live separate lives.

“Uriens, you
force
me. You put your hand over my mouth. That isn’t kind.” I gave one, desperate attempt to explain to him that what he was doing was
not
reasonable for a husband to do. I was as much his property as a dog might be, but people still spoke with disapproval of men who kicked their dogs, or beat them. He should not have been violent with me.

“I have to. Do you think I want other people to hear your screaming? It is not my fault that you do not enjoy it.”

“
Yes it is
,” I shouted.

“All of the other women I have had have enjoyed it,” Uriens said, crossing his arms in front of him.

And all of the other men I have had, I have enjoyed
,
I thought. I did not say it. I did not want him to hit me or call me a whore again. I drew myself back, against the door.

“I hate you,” I said, very softly. Uriens shrugged.

“How you feel is of no importance in the matter,” he answered.

I ran back up to Morgawse’s room and locked the door. I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. The room seemed oddly quiet without the little burbling of the infant Mordred, but I was grateful for the peace. Uriens did not come looking for me, or if he did, he could not find me. No one tried the door until Morgawse came back from the chapel. When she rattled the handle and found it did not move, she knew it was me, and called out for me to let her in. I opened the door to see that she had all her sons with her, and the whole lot of them rushed into the room. They were all dressed alike in Lothian’s dark blue, and on the surcoats of Gawain and Aggravain were sewn Lot’s two-headed gryphon in gold thread. Morgawse herself was gorgeous as usual in a dress of dark orange embroidered in lovely patterns with gold that shone like her red-gold hair, and she had a necklace of amber beads around her neck, resting against her pale breasts where they swelled at the neck of her dress. She put Mordred tenderly in his crib and, placing a kiss on his head, came over to take me by the hand. There was a slightly sad look in her eyes as she squeezed my hand.

“Arthur has a wife now,” she said.

I nodded. I supposed that he was the only man who had treated her kindly, at least for a time.

“Is she beautiful?” I asked, idly.

Morgawse shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. She’s covered in jewels. Mother’s old jewels. He must have sent them to her.”

“I think she is quite beautiful,” Gaheris, who was just coming of an age where he might notice such things, said. “Her hair is very lovely. Red.”

“You didn’t
see
it.” Gawain beside him groaned, clearly overcome at the memory of his sight of the Queen. “When we met her at Dover, she had it loose. She looked like a savage, like a barbarian, but I couldn’t stop staring at that
hair
. There is so much of it. I wanted to just grab a handful and –”

Morgawse gave a little scolding cough, and Gawain gave her a sharp look, but he did change his tack.

“Well, she is a fitting Queen for Arthur, who is the finest King this land will ever know,” Gawain said.

It seemed a strange statement for a seventeen year old boy to make, but no one disagreed with him. I was not sure I agreed, but then I could not think of any kings I knew of who I thought had been particularly fine. From the sound of it, they were all brutes.

Aggravain made a low, derisive noise. “It’s a mistake for a king to have a wife that other men covet. But she is not so beautiful. She looks somewhat ordinary to me.”

“Aggravain, you did not see her
hair
,” Gawain insisted.

It seemed as though no one but Gawain was sure of quite what to make of her.

They milled around me, getting ready for the feast. Morgawse took Gareth and Mordred off to the bedroom that Gareth and Gaheris slept in, and I heard her instructing Gareth to watch his little brother carefully while she and the eldest three were gone. I had heard that Gaheris had just pledged into Arthur’s knights as well. Morgawse was running low on sons to keep her company now that she was a widow in Lothian Castle.

When Morgawse returned, she checked the clothing of her three eldest sons and kissed them all on the cheek. We were ready to go. Even though Gawain and Aggravain towered over her, she still treated them like boys. Morgawse would never tell anyone who was the older of Gawain and Aggravain. She had told me that she feared the younger one would feel cheated of his birthright, and by refusing to tell she had made it so the twins shared Lothian Castle and its armies between them. I followed them out, through the courtyard, and to the great hall, where I could hear that the feast had begun already.

Chapter Eight

When I saw the girl that Arthur had married, I felt a shock go through me. She was the woman in my dream. The same deep red hair and white face; the same small, angry red mouth twisted into a little tense knot that was still, somehow, unbearably beautiful. I did not think she would have looked so beautiful were she not so angry. It gave what might otherwise have been a placid face a kind of power. I could not tear my eyes from her. It seemed, as I had hoped, that she was angry and defiant as her mother had been. It did not, however, bode well for Arthur. I wondered why he had set his heart so firmly on her, until, when I came up to the table after my mother to greet Arthur with a kiss on the cheek, I felt the unmistakable feel of the Otherworld all about her. It was not how I had felt it before, though – not with the ladies of Avalon, or Kay. This was an Otherworld foreign in its quality to me. Something about it felt ancient, and portentous. I remembered, suddenly, what Merlin had said to Arthur about the witch-queen Maev. I didn’t entirely believe it, but there was some powerful destiny hanging about this strange, angry girl. She was in my dream.
I would one day stand with her on the shores of Avalon, with Excalibur between us. We were all tangled together, all of us, around her, around Arthur, around the sword Excalibur. This was the beginning of it all.

Uriens was already sitting in the seat beside the one meant for me, and I ignored him as I sat down. Morgawse was right behind me, and Arthur greeted her awkwardly. He did not want her there. He would not kiss her on the cheek. When she came to sit by my side, she leaned down and hissed in my ear.

“I don’t fancy Arthur’s luck tonight.” Her eyes were on the new Queen. No, I did not either.

I kept my eyes on her, and on Arthur. I could hear her speaking to my mother. She was definitely Breton; I could hear it in the rich tones of her accent when she spoke – thick, though her English was good. So, it was as I had suspected, and this girl, who had been meant for a simple life of happy marriage in her home country, in the wishes of her mother, had been summoned by Arthur across the sea to be his wife and protect him from his bad destiny. I wondered if she even knew how it was Arthur himself who had slain her brothers in battle.

Her Breton accent was pretty enough; the English words sounded richer and crisper on her tongue than they did on native speakers’. Her English was
very
good, and she seemed very comfortable speaking it. I supposed that was a mercy since I knew that Arthur did not speak a word of Breton. She looked uncomfortable, still, though I could see my mother was trying to be kind. I noticed, too, that she drank
a lot
of wine, until a red flush came high on her cheeks. Perhaps Arthur would be luckier than Morgawse thought. As the evening wore on, and she became flushed and bright with anger and wine, she was all the more enrapturing. Half the men’s eyes around the table were on her.

My gaze fell on Arthur. I had seen him look with desire before, as I had seen him look on our own sister, but the look he cast on his new bride was something else entirely. He looked at her as though there were nothing else in the room. Surely a dangerous way for a king to look on any woman, I thought. Especially one who was yet, it seemed to me, to look on him at all.

Arthur left the feast early with his new wife, to the cheering of his men, especially Gawain. Gawain’s eyes followed Arthur and the Queen out of the room. He was the least able of the men around that table to hide the fact that they were all picturing themselves leading the new Queen to their own bedroom. I thought uncomfortably of Gawain’s wish for a fistful of her hair.

“To Arthur the conqueror,” Gawain cheered, raising his cup. The men cheered lewdly and smashed their cups together, except Kay, whose eyes I felt on me. He had not been sat far from her. He must have felt the Otherworld, too. When I caught his eye, he stood from his seat to come and stand behind Morgawse and me. He gave a sly smile.

“What do you think of our new Queen?” he asked, archly. He had obviously drunk enough that he had forgotten to be nervous and awkward around me.

Morgawse, beside me, shrugged, and the wine that filled her cup sloshed out the side a little. With my eyes on the Queen’s cup, I had not noticed that my own sister’s cup had been filled and emptied many times, too. I supposed that this could not have been easy for her.

“She seems angry,” Morgawse said, slurring slightly.

I turned over my shoulder to look up at Kay. He was gazing off where Arthur had gone. I had hoped to find him sharp and alert as always, but either he was drunk or even he as well was picturing himself with his brother’s new wife.

“And well she might be,” Kay answered, thoughtfully. “When we picked her up at Dover yesterday, Arthur was with us, but he didn’t reveal himself to her. He told me it was because he wanted to be sure she had Queen Maev’s Otherworld blood in her. I think he just wanted to check she wasn’t ugly. Well... I think she’s even more lovely than Arthur hoped. Beautiful.” Kay’s tone was odd, worried. Morgawse, beside me, hiccupped. Kay put a gentle hand on the top of her head, a gesture of comfort.

“Poor Gawse,” he said, softly, and she turned to give him a bleary smile.

Uriens beside me, whom I had been doing my best to ignore all evening, leaned over to join the conversation. He stank of ale and I could see from the lack of focus in his ugly, dull old eyes that he was drunk as the rest of them. I hoped he would continue drinking, and be too drunk to stop me slipping away to sleep side by side with Morgawse.

“You know, they say that red-headed women like her,” he jabbed his finger clumsily off after where Arthur had gone, “and your sister Morgawse here…” He jabbed his finger in her direction, narrowly missing catching me in the face. “They say that red-headed women love to be fucked by a man.”

“
Be quiet
, Uriens,” I hissed at him. People were looking already, but he carried on, droning with all the loud, drunk crassness he could muster.

“I bet that Breton girl squirms like an eel when Arthur fucks her tonight. Oh, of course she looks angry, but it’s the angry ones that want it, really. Except Morgan, of course. You’re always angry, aren’t you? And you never want to be fucked. Funny, isn’t it, how the King fucks all the best women, and leaves me with
you
? You’re hard and dry as an old twig, aren’t you Morgan?” I refused to look at him, gazing off across the table at my mother whose face was turned away, and who was making polite conversation with Ector beside her, but who I could tell was listening. She should have come over and silenced Uriens. She was still a queen. Uriens had leaned across me to leer at Morgawse now. “All you red women love the feel of a man, don’t you?”

Beside his mother, Gawain banged his fist on the table and made to stand; the only thing stilling him was his brother Aggravain’s hand on his arm. I was sorry for it. I had hoped that Gawain would strike Uriens. Gawain was strong enough to kill him, I thought, with a well-judged single blow to the head. I would have been grateful for that.

Aggravain spoke, low and threatening, not lifting his hand from his brother’s arm, and the harsh, cold sound of his voice seemed to sober Uriens a little. “Be careful what you say, Uriens. Our mother is your sister by marriage now, so any shame you say to her is shame upon yourself. Besides, do not think because our father is dead that Lothian has lost its strength, and will not crush those who dishonour Lot’s blood. You are drunk, sir, and have been foolish. But remember this: the next time you insult the sons of Lot or our lady mother – who is Queen of a realm ten times the strength of yours in arms – will be the last time.”

Uriens reeled back in his seat, flushed with ale and impotent rage. I supposed that he had barely noticed Aggravain until then. Morgawse, happily, was too drunk to have paid the whole argument any attention, and simply sat leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed and a slack smile on her face as she rested her head against Kay’s hand. He lightly rubbed her hair, as though he were scratching a little cat. She murmured happily against it.

“Still,” Uriens began again, bracing himself against the edge of the table and blinking hard as though trying to steady himself, “I know what women like
her
...” It was unclear which of the several women he had been variously insulting he was talking about. “I know what women like
her
like. What they all want.”

I glanced up at Kay, and saw the annoyance tightening across his face, dragging him away from whatever thoughts had held him distant and staring off after his foster-brother.

“You don’t know what women like as well as you
think
you know, Uriens,” he snapped, and there was a new note of deliberate cruelty in his voice that I had not heard before. “Just go to bed.”

Uriens stood to his feet, pushing his chair back and squaring up to Kay. Neither of them had spoken to each other, or even, it seemed, acknowledged one another before, and Uriens was a little thrown off balance by Kay’s sudden familiarity, and insult. I hoped
someone
was going to hit Uriens tonight. As he stepped forward, Kay lifted up his hands, showing his palms in a gesture of peace-making. “Uriens,
just go to bed
,”
he said.

Uriens grabbed Kay by the front of his surcoat. “What would
you
know about what women like, eh? Don’t pretend you know
anything
about women. I know what people say about you. I’ve heard. So don’t pretend that you know what women like when every man and woman in this room knows that you’re a sodomite.”

Uriens did not see it coming. His eyes were on Kay’s right hand, over his own hand on Kay’s surcoat, prising his fingers away. But Kay was mirror-handed, another gift – he had told me once – from his Otherworld mother. Kay’s fist struck him out of nowhere, hard on the jaw, and he collapsed to the ground. Kay stared down at him, wincing and shaking out his hand.

“I probably should not have done that,” he said.

Aggravain shrugged. “I saw nothing,” he said, drinking from his cup again.

I turned around in my chair to peer down at Uriens, sprawled on the floor behind me.

“Is he dead?” I asked softly.

Kay prodded him with the toe of his boot, and shook his head. “He’s breathing. I didn’t hit him very hard.” Morgawse moaned and rubbed her face beside me. She was beginning to move from the pleasant oblivion of wine to suffering with it. Kay noticed, and sighed. “Can you get someone to take Uriens to his bed? I’ll take Morgawse.”

I nodded. Kay leaned down and wrapped his arm around Morgawse’s waist, pulling her up with him. She slumped against him, but looked happy again. If I could have done, I would have left Uriens lying on the floor. As it was, after he had finished his cup of wine, Aggravain offered to take him, and threw him over his shoulder. I was pleased that he would not be handled gently. He did not deserve it.

I lingered a while, thinking Kay might come back. I had had enough wine to feel daring, and for my anger at Kay to feel fuzzy and distant. I remembered the feel of his hands on my body, of his thick, soft hair between my fingers, and his mouth on mine, and I wanted to feel it again. It would be just a moment’s escape back into our childhood innocence. I supposed it was taking him a long time to drag Morgawse to her bed.

I didn’t want to go back to my room to lie down beside Uriens’ unconscious body. I walked to Morgawse’s room. I hoped that she would not be too sick from the wine for me to sleep beside her. I really,
really
did not want to have to sleep in my own bed with Uriens.

When I reached her room, I hung back, for Kay was still with her. Kay was trying to open the door with one hand while holding her up with the other. He must have been a little drunk, too, because he fumbled against the latch for a long time before the door swung open, and when it did he gave his low, soft laugh.

“Goodnight, Gawse,” he said, kissing her clumsily on the forehead.

“Come in with me,” Morgawse, who seemed a little recovered from the walk to her room, but not greatly, replied in tones of teasing pleading. She took hold of the front of Kay’s surcoat in both hands and pulled him towards her, and the open door.

“Morgawse,” Kay replied gently, trying to release her grip on his surcoat. “I don’t think that’s such a good –”

But Kay did not finish, for Morgawse leaned forward suddenly, and kissed him. I saw him reel back under it for a moment, as though he was going to pull away, but then he seemed to yield beneath it, wrapping his arms tight around her waist, and responding to her kiss. I wanted to shout out to stop them, but it was too late. Morgawse pulled Kay through the open doorway with her, and he reached out a hand behind himself to slam the door as they stumbled through. The sound of it seemed to resonate through me, sending an awful shock through my bones. Though I had a different lover now, it still felt like an awful betrayal. I was not sure which of them I was the more angry with. Kay. It was Kay. Morgawse did not know. But Morgawse knew why I did not want to sleep in my own bedroom. Now she was in there with Kay, I had nowhere to go.

I supposed there was one other woman in the castle who, that night, would have nowhere to hide from her husband. The Breton princess was far from her home, and tonight she would have to go to bed with her conqueror. The thought didn’t comfort me very much.