I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to walk naked out of the lake with the three of them standing there staring and watching me. The Lady of Avalon’s eyes fell on me, soft light green against the blue-green woad that tattooed her face in swirls and whorls like the patterns of the movements of the stars, but she did not speak to spare me the Abbess’ scolding.
“Come along Morgan. If you weren’t embarrassed to get in like that, you shouldn’t be embarrassed to get out.”
I squinted up at her with what I hoped was an air of innocent supplication. Surely she was not going to make me walk naked from the lake when there was a boy my own age beside her.
“Please, Abbess,” I pleaded.
Lancelot, beside his lady guardian, shifted on his feet and looked down at the ground before him, avoiding looking at me, although the water covered me almost to my neck. It wasn’t just me the Abbess was upsetting, then. I felt my chest tighten with frustrated tears. It didn’t seem fair. No one was here to punish Arthur, or Kay. They were still swimming far out on the lake behind me. The Abbess, however, did not relent, only held out my underdress in her fist towards me. Slowly, I moved from the water, my arms still crossed over my chest, until I was out, and dripping and shivering as the cold water evaporated from my skin in the fading sun. I snatched the underdress from her hand and pulled it over me fast, but the water on my skin made the white cotton go see-through and if anything I felt worse. My plaited hair, too, still soaking wet, left a trail of water down the back of my underdress, and as I pulled the black wool dress over the top, I felt it cold and clammy against my back as I felt my cheeks burn.
“Now Morgan,” the Abbess said firmly, pointing her finger at me. I was taller than her already. She was a withered little woman, and I was tall and thin as a sapling, but I still felt tiny before her. “Remember how ashamed you feel now, and that will stop you behaving in such a disgraceful manner again.”
I felt sick with shame and injustice as they led me back to the abbey, and worst of all behind me I could still hear Kay and Arthur splashing in the lake, and laughing. They were boys, and this was not their concern.
Chapter Two
Back at the abbey, I rushed to my room, wrapped myself in a rough wool blanket, sat on my bed and pulled one of the old books onto my lap. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not the Abbess, not the other nuns, and especially not Arthur and Kay. I just wanted to be left alone, to feel the angry burn of unfairness, and nurse it inside me. But it was not long enough I was alone with the book, not long enough that I had to close my eyes and imagine myself as a dark-haired boy, that the bell sounded for the evening meal and I had to leave again. It had gone less well this time, too, for when I had tried to picture myself becoming Kay, I had instead been unable to shift from my mind the image of Kay waist-deep in the water, his bare chest, the shape of the muscles forming beneath, his hair damp against his brow from the water.
I wondered if I was still in trouble, but the Abbess seemed to have forgotten. She was displeased, I could see, by the presence of the Lady of Avalon. The Lady of Avalon did not bend her head to pray, though I noticed that Lancelot, the boy from Avalon, bent his head most dutifully and seemed to know all the words of the prayers better than I did. Across the table from me, I caught Kay’s eye and he gave me a sympathetic shrug and a semi-apologetic look. I thought he was going to say something, but then Arthur elbowed him under the table and they began whispering to one another about something else, it seemed, because they were both laughing silently. Arthur hid it better than Kay, so it was Kay who earned the tut from the Abbess that stilled them both. I was aware, suddenly, that though Kay was as old as I was, they were still children. The world was not yet dangerous for them as it was for me. Nothing was at stake. Perhaps Ector would scold them, or the Abbess, or someone, but I was a woman, and old enough now that my body was dangerous, and my place as the stepdaughter of a dying king only made it more so. I was having to become, all of a sudden, some kind of lady, some kind of princess, and it burned all the more with unfairness that they did not have to do the same.
When the food was finally brought, the Lady of Avalon cleared her throat and turned to me, as I was raising a spoon of the vegetable stew to my lips.
“Morgan, have you bled yet?” she asked, loudly. Blushing hard, I dropped the spoon, and hot stew splattered back up across my face and the front of my dress. I heard the nuns around us gasp and tut with disapproval.
“I have, my Lady,” I mumbled, looking down at my stew.
“That is well, Morgan. Then I shall take you to Avalon when the summer is out.”
I felt too hot and sick with embarrassment to feel hungry for the stew any more, but I forced myself to eat it, not wanting to attract more attention from anyone as the talk continued quietly around me. I did not look up at Kay and Arthur. That would have been unbearable. I was not sure, now that the moment was upon me, how I felt about going to Avalon. I knew it was where I was meant to be, where I belonged, but my life with the nuns was all I knew, almost all that I could remember.
When the meal was finished and I slipped away quickly to my bedroom, as I passed the cloister I overheard Sir Ector talking to the Lady of Avalon in its little garden.
“I thought I would ask Morgan if she would like to spend the summer with us. This is the last summer of her childhood. Is that well with you?” he asked.
“That seems well to me, Ector,” she replied gently. “It might be for the best that Morgan is not at the abbey, where there may be this king or that coming to look for her when her stepfather dies. That seems a wise course to me, until the time comes for me to take her to Avalon.” My heart jumped within me. I hoped that I could take my books with me.
The next day, I packed up the few things I possessed – I was not a princess of jewels and silk dresses – and ran out early and eager. Ector and his sons were there already, and Lancelot with them. I supposed he must be staying with us, too. He often used to when we were all much younger. He had not got less shy, I noticed, and did not greet me as I came, though Kay and Arthur shouted greetings with joy. Kay bounded a step forward, but then seemed to remember his father’s admonition that I was a princess and held back.
There were only three horses, and Kay leapt up behind Lancelot on his, wrapping his arms around Lancelot’s chest to hold on, and I had to jump up behind Arthur with my bag of things. Arthur was less fun on a horse than Kay. Something about Kay put the horses at ease, and Kay and Lancelot’s horse pranced ahead of the rest of us, while I plodded on behind Arthur, who was chattering away about becoming Kay’s squire, and all the jousting and fighting they would do together, as though he had not been paying attention when Ector had said that King Uther was ill and dying. That meant real war and real fighting, not jousting and games.
The sun was dipping and the shadows becoming long when we arrived at Ector’s house, a humble stone building unlike the castles of other knights, set in lovely lush farmland. I never saw that house without feeling a rush of affection, or gladness. But, also, sorrow, for I knew that Ector’s wife would not be stepping from the door to greet us, wafting out with her the smell of fresh bread. Ector’s heart had gone to the grave with his wife, and though he was not yet old we all knew that he would never take another.
When we stopped the horses outside the house, to my surprise Arthur leapt down from behind me to wait until Lancelot had slipped from Kay’s horse, to grab Kay by the ankle and yank him from the saddle. Kay crashed into Arthur and they fell in a heap on the ground, laughing and shoving at each other. They were laughing hard, and it was just a game, but I saw the concern cross Ector’s face, not that they would be hurt, for they were not, but that real war was coming, pale and deadly across the horizon, and Kay and Arthur still played at hurting one another like boys. Lancelot, too, stood back from it, regarding the brothers with a sort of melancholy that I could not place. Perhaps Lancelot wished that he had a brother to play rough with. He must have missed the company of other boys growing
up in Avalon, with the druid women.
Inside the long narrow house there were plenty of clean, cosy rooms and it was busy with servants, and Ector’s wife’s sister, who was a strange wet-eyed women who jabbered to herself and whom the kind Ector had taken care of as long as we could remember. I felt much more at home in Ector’s house than I had ever done with the nuns. I wondered if Avalon would feel like home. Kay had told me that everything in Avalon felt like the Otherworld, though I was half-sure he was making it up, and he had never really been.
We ate a meal of beef and vegetables that I knew was simple but was still finer than anything I would have had with the nuns. It was the lovely juiciness of meat that I longed for at the abbey, although because the nuns did not have it I had been unable to stop myself from equating the deliciousness of meat with sin, and I could not eat it without a heavy feeling settling around my stomach. It felt like greed to enjoy what was forbidden by the nuns, but somehow it also made it taste all the more delicious.
I slept fast in the bed that was half-familiar to me from previous summers with Ector, but I woke in the night thirsty from the meat. When I left my room, silent as I could to avoid waking Ector’s wife’s mad sister – for I was sure she was mad although that was the word that none dared say – to tiptoe to the kitchen to get some water, I heard low voices coming from Kay’s room, a few doors down the corridor. The door was just ajar, as though someone had slipped inside, although it was dark. I thought it was strange that Kay was still awake without lighting a candle, and although I knew it was wrong to spy, my curiosity got the better of me and I crept to the door and peered in the crack.
Outlined in the faint, pale moonlight that filtered through Kay’s window, I could make out two figures on Kay’s bed, one on top of the other. The one on top seemed to be Kay, and the two of them seemed to be playfighting, as I had seen Kay and Arthur do many times before, but strangely slow and quiet. I could hear their ragged breathing, but something about it seemed very, very strange. I saw Kay sit up, as though he had been pushed back and away, his profile lighting white against the moonlight, and his glossy black hair shining.
“Kay, stop.” I had expected it to be Arthur, but from the rich, low French tones of the voice I realised that it was Lancelot. I was surprised that Lancelot was yielding the fight so soon, especially since it did not seem to be that rough. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Why not?” Kay whispered back, his voice daring.
“If your father catches us again he will be angry. He will send me away for good. And not just to Avalon; back to France.”
I did not see why Ector would be angry, though I remembered his look at Kay and Arthur fighting when we arrived. I supposed that was why Kay and Lancelot were doing it in the dark, because they did not want Ector to see. Still, I thought it seemed a little unfair to send Lancelot away for it. I did not think that Ector would really do such a thing.
Kay didn’t reply, but fell down on top of Lancelot again, and I could see the vague shapes of bodies squirming together on the bed, and a flash of pale skin as Kay’s shirt rode up at the back. Low, and wicked I heard Kay say,
“Tell me to stop again, now.”
And I heard Lancelot groan low in defeat and whisper in reply, “Shut up, Kay.”
Behind me, I heard a noise and spun around, blushing in the dark, suddenly guilty for being caught spying. It was Arthur, standing opposite me in the hall, in just his nightshirt with his legs bare and his arms crossed over his chest. In the dark, he looked older, and I realised it was his boy’s face that betrayed his age, for he was as big, as broad at least, as Kay and Lancelot, and his body as grown and strong.
“Kay’s with Lancelot again isn’t he?” Arthur hissed, low and annoyed. When I nodded he sighed in frustration. “I wish they wouldn’t do that.” He thought for a second, and then took a step towards me, “And you shouldn’t be watching.”
I drew myself up to my full height and crossed my arms over my chest. I wasn’t going to be scolded by a boy three years younger than me.
“I’ve seen it before, a hundred times,” I told him, imperiously. I had seen him fight with Kay, and hundreds of boys fighting. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t look.
Arthur wrinkled up his face in disgust, shook his head at me, and turned back into his own room, shutting the door with a deliberately loud bang. I heard scuffling and low, panicked voices in the room behind me. I didn’t know why Arthur and Ector didn’t want Kay and Lancelot to playfight like Kay did with Arthur. Perhaps it was something you were only supposed to do with a brother, or with your squire if you were becoming a knight. It didn’t make any sense to me.
The next day, the atmosphere at breakfast was tense. Kay slept until past prime, or was hiding in his bedroom, and only came out when Ector sent Arthur in to shake him from his bed. I sat at the rough wooden table, staring down at the grain of it, past the quickly cooling porridge before me, aware that something was about to break around me, like a thunderstorm. Lancelot, beside me, was quiet, too. Kay came to his seat beside me and sat down hard, grabbing his spoon in his fist, his face dark and unreadable. Ector, opposite me, cleared his throat nervously, rubbing his brow. When he spoke his voice was weary.
“I heard some… moving about last night,” he said, slowly. Kay, beside me, looked up to meet his father’s eye, fierce and defiant, the spoon clutched in his hand like a weapon.
“It was me. I got up to get a drink of water,” I said, softly. It was the truth, and besides I felt an instinct in me to defend Kay. Arthur, beside Ector, was looking down at his knees under the table. He looked sick with the awkwardness of it. Ector did not seem to hear me.
“Kay… we have spoken about this before. If there are any more… disturbances… I will be forced to send all of our guests home.”
Kay, his eyes blazing, slammed his spoon down onto the table with a bang, standing so forcefully his chair behind him fell back with a clatter against the stone floor of the kitchen, and stormed out of the door. As he left, his father shouted after him, “Kay. Kay! You’ll understand when you’re older that this is for your own good.” Ector sighed back against his seat, and rubbed his face in his hands. Then, awfully soft, and as though to himself he said, “I should have married again. God knows that boy needs a mother.”
Ector groaned and leaned his elbows on the table, not lifting his head from his hands. I peeped beside me at Lancelot, who looked pale and distant, staring into his porridge, but clearly seeing nothing. I did not understand why Kay was so angry, or Ector so upset, or the fighting so forbidden. Arthur was the only one eating. He was always, always hungry.
I felt sick and tense, confused. I wanted to run out after Kay and ask him what was so wrong. There had been nothing like this all the summers past I had spent days with Ector and his sons, but it seemed as though we were all on the edge of something, on the edge of our adulthood, and that made everything we did loaded and dangerous. I could not swim with the boys any more, and they could not play with one another as they had done before.
After a long, long pause, Ector took his face from his hands and turned to Lancelot.
“I think it’s best, Lancelot, if you go back to Avalon.”
Lancelot, beside me, nodded mutely.
The Lady of Avalon came to take Lancelot back with her in the afternoon, before Kay had returned from wherever he had stormed off to. Arthur and I lingered around the house, nervous and watchful, but neither speaking of what we had seen, or heard. To distract us from the tension of waiting, I tried to show Arthur one of my books, but he didn’t know how to read properly, nor recognise any of the Latin words, so I quickly gave up. Instead, we lay side by side on his bed staring up at the ceiling, watching the little spiders make their webs. We left the door wide open, and when Ector walked past he said nothing, so I was sure, at least, that this, too, was not another newly forbidden pastime.
It was almost dusk by the time Kay came back, demanding to see Lancelot, and Arthur and I hid
behind the door to the kitchen to listen to what Ector would say. Arthur was stocky and pushy, and stood closer to the door than I did. I had to lean around him to press my ear to the door and only managed it because I was so much taller. I could see the flush of danger about his cheeks; he knew we were doing something forbidden now, too. I was afraid, as well as eager, to listen. I wanted to know what was so awful about what Kay and Lancelot had done, but it seemed like it might be dark and dangerous even to know about it.
“You sent him away, didn’t you?” Kay was shouting.
I heard Ector pace in the kitchen, his boots tapping against the stone floor.
“Kay.” His voice was tired, full of the forbearance and the suffering of a parent. “You have to try to understand. I tolerated this when you were younger, but you’re a man now and it has to stop.”
“Why?” Kay’s voice was thick with frustration and, to my surprise, upset. I did not think I had heard Kay distressed before. “We weren’t hurting anyone. I don’t see why it’s wrong.”
I heard Ector sigh.
“It is wrong because people think it is wrong, Kay. Perhaps it doesn’t seem fair to you now – but think of our family. Please, Kay, try to understand. If people hear of this, it will ruin this family. You will understand when you’re older. Kay,” Ector sighed again, and I heard slow steps, as though he was walking over to his son, and his voice dropped softer, more gentle, “we can’t change other people’s ideas of right and wrong. We can’t change the world around us.” Ector paused again, and I leaned closer to the door, trying to catch every word. “We can’t always have the life we want, Kay. We have to learn to be happy with the life we have.”
“You married my mother. She wasn’t meant for you,” Kay replied, still stubborn, still petulant, but sad now instead of angry, and growing resigned.
THE WITCHES OF AVALON: a thrilling Arthurian fantasy (THE MORGAN TRILOGY Book 1) Page 2