THE WITCHES OF AVALON: a thrilling Arthurian fantasy (THE MORGAN TRILOGY Book 1)

by Lavinia Collins

  As soon as we got back to Camelot, I waved a quick goodbye to Kay and slipped up to my room, bolting the door behind me. Morgawse would not be coming back tonight, I did not think. My stomach was churning and I felt weak and dizzy. I lay down, but I could still feel my empty stomach churning. It had come so suddenly upon me. I realised, too, that I had not eaten anything all day. I ought to have been hungry but I felt so very sick. A horrible thought came to me, all of a sudden. I should have bled a week ago, but in the disturbance of Morgawse’s arrival, I had forgotten. Or rather, I had forgotten to worry about it. I had been glad not to have the inconvenience. How could this be happening now? When I needed my strength to go and tear my sister away from Arthur so her husband would not try to kill them both. It was so stupid. I should have thought of it. I remembered Kay saying I suppose we won’t do any extra harm. How had neither of us thought about this? I supposed that Kay had thought because I was a witch I would have ways of stopping it, but I had not thought of it. I couldn’t have a child. Not if Arthur would not let us marry, and he would not. Especially if there would be war with Lot now. I could not be wasted on an allegiance that was already held. No, the child would be taken from me, and I would be married off as a widow, excuses made for me, and I would not see the child again. Or, worse, I would be allowed to take it with me, to a stepfather that hated it as much as mine had hated us. The anger burned inside me that Arthur could do what he wanted, and we could not. He could start a war to please himself, and the rest of us had to bear the consequences.

  Well, that was the way it was, and I could not have the child. Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself up from the bed, feeling the wave of nausea move through me, and found my book of medicines. The recipe was there, and I had made it before, though not for myself. I wanted it done before Kay came looking for me, which I was sure he would once he knew Arthur was occupied. I did not want him talking me out of it. I also did not want him to feel that he was complicit in the awful thing I was about to do. I did not think it was wrong to be rid of those that were unwanted, the children of rape, or unhappy unions, but something in me was repulsed by the idea that I was about to destroy a child of love.

  I had what I needed in my room, the herbs, and a small jug of wine. The smell of the mixture made me retch, and even at the smell of it I felt a stab of pain at my stomach. It would be easier now, right at the very beginning, than if I waited. I was beginning to feel faint, but I forced myself to stay standing, to follow the instructions. When it was done, I drank the drink down in one long gulp. I didn’t want to turn back.

  The effect it had was sudden, and overwhelming. My head span, and I stumbled back, towards the bed, to lie down before I fell. I retched against the potion, but I held it down as I felt a feeling like the pricking of hundreds of needles deep inside my stomach, and an awful squirming feeling that was tinged with the power of the Otherworld. Oh, of course; this was a child of the Otherworld and it would not go easy. Still, I felt the blood began to trickle, hot and sickly between my legs as my head spun faster, and I swallowed down the awful bile I felt rising in my throat. Dimly, through this, I heard a knocking at my door, but I did not have the strength to stand, or to answer it.

  When I came around, it was to the feel of the cold night air on my face, and a gentle hand at my brow. I forced my heavy eyes open to see that the window was open, and Kay was beside me. He must have climbed in when he felt the door was locked. I tried to look at his face, to see how he was, but my eyes were too heavy, and my head too full of the sickening swirl of the drink, and I drifted away again. Dimly, I thought we should not be here, we should be trying harder to stop Arthur, but the pain in my stomach was blocking everything else out, and the darkness was edging in all around me.

  When I woke again, it was bright daylight, and Kay was still beside me, in the clothes he had been wearing the night before. His eyes bore the weary look of one who has sat up and watched all night, and across his face was a faint shadow of dark stubble. I was in a clean nightdress. Kay must have washed away the blood and made sure that I was well. I felt well, but sore, and hollow with loss.

  Kay didn’t say anything, but he leant down and kissed me on the forehead when he saw that I was awake. He slid down to lie beside me on the bed and gathered me in to his arms. I lay against him, expecting the tears to come then, but they did not. I had done the only thing that I could have done. It was better to have done with it right away.

  We did not talk about it, and Kay left before prime to wash and change. He had duties, still, to do, even if Arthur had forgotten all the duties he had to his friends and people when he had laid eyes on my sister. I regretted not telling Kay first. He might have wanted it, he might have insisted we run away together, like his father had done with his mother, but I had not been sure enough to ask him to. I think he felt a desperate need to be near Arthur, to protect the boy who had been his brother from his new, dangerous role of King. It seemed that Arthur needed it, but it did not leave much room for me, or what I needed. Perhaps Kay’s father’s talk to him on family duty had worked too effectively. I would have preferred it if Kay cared less about that. If he had asked, I would have gone with him. Anywhere.

  I dressed slowly and carefully, still a little sick, still a little sore, in one of my many plain wool dresses. I wished I had something finer like the clothes my sister had. That would have made me feel a little more protected, a little more distant from the world around me. They were another way of hiding, her fine clothes. Still, the black wool dresses were all I had. I plaited my hair up, and washed my face in the basin of cold water, and settled in to the seat at the window, to watch the men in the courtyard below.

  Kay was down there already, checking the equipment of the horses. Today he did it with a kind of intense attention that betrayed that he was trying not to think of anything else at all. Beyond him, in the yard, Lancelot was teaching some squire the basics of swordfighting. I leaned my head back against the alcove of the window, and sighed in the cold new-winter air. I hated, intensely, this life that I had found myself in, where I could not do as I wanted, as was right by my heart, but had to do what was political. I had wasted not only a rare opportunity to be alone with Kay, but a precious Otherworld life that we could have had together. Maybe I would ask him to run somewhere with me. To disappear. I was not sure that he would say no. We were young, and I had not damaged myself with the potion. I could have another child. One day.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Morgawse crashing in to my room. She was flushed and giggling and I knew for sure now that it had happened between them at last. I gave her a narrow look from my seat at the window, but she didn’t notice.

  “I know what you’ve been doing,” I said sharply, “and I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Morgawse laughed softly, her pretty blue eyes flashing with wickedness. She loved to do whatever she shouldn’t, I knew that. Perhaps it had been a mistake to ask her not to tell me. A vain hope that she would ever listen to anything that I said.

  “Oh Morgan, you prude, you’ve been too long around those nuns, you know.” She wanted my attention even more now I had said I didn’t want to know. She moved slowly closer, across the room, teasing. “You might like it, Morgan, if you were less uptight. You know he does this thing –”

  When Morgawse touched the tip of her tongue with the tip of her finger to illustrate her point, I reached out to bat her hand away.

  “That’s a sin you know,” I told her, curtly. I was in no mood to propitiate her.

  “So is adultery,” Morgawse replied with a wicked grin. She was enjoying this even more, I could tell, because I was resistant, and visibly horrified. “And they both feel so good.”

  I shoved her away from me.

  “Besides,” Morgawse continued, as though I had asked for more, “he has a great big cock. Lot only has this little nub; he’s worn it almost away to nothing with his whoring.”

  I shoved her again. “You’re disgusting, Morgawse, you know th
at? The North has made you crude and wicked.”

  Suddenly, Morgawse’s eyes flashed spiteful, and I felt an argument beginning in earnest between us. I tensed for it. Morgawse, when angry, was brutal. I wanted it. I wanted a fight. A little anger was making me feel better. Less sad.

  “You sad little nun. You’re just a miserable little virgin who doesn’t understand the way the world works.”

  “I’m not a virgin,” I said, quiet, defensive and resentful. I wrapped my arms around my knees in the window seat.

  “Yes you are.” I could see Morgawse was angry with me now, but she was the one who was doing wrong. She had a husband, and Arthur was ten years younger than she was. She was being disgusting. Besides, she was selfish and stupid, and she could not even see me before her. She had no idea that I, too, had a lover, and that I suffered because she had one. She could not see the cold lump of anger gathering inside me against her and Arthur, and the whole lot of them at Camelot. Even a little bit at Kay, with his infuriating dutifulness. Why was Kay watching out for Arthur, more than he was watching out for me?

  Morgawse reached out and pinched me hard at the ear. I winced, and I was going to protest, but she spoke again and her words were sharp and angry. “It was all well enough for you, wasn’t it, to go off to the abbey and have a sweet childhood with the nuns. You think you’re so pure don’t you, Morgan? Well, it’s easy to be pure when you weren’t given away to an old, disgusting man at twelve years old. And I had to let him kiss me, and touch me, and get on top of me, and put his cock inside me.” Morgawse leaned close to my ear to say this last part and I squirmed with discomfort to hear her say the words. “And it’s because of women like me who suffer disgusting old kings to get on top of them that women like you are safe to hide in your abbeys reading books and talking on and on about how pure you all are.” Morgawse pushed me away then. I met her harsh look with a defiant stare of my own. “Don’t you dare judge me, Morgan, if I want to enjoy myself a little, now that I am free. There’s no dishonour in it. Arthur is a king, we are his vassal kingdom. That’s how it works, Morgan, and don’t you judge me if I want to just have a little bit of pleasure in my life. My marriage has kept us all safe. When Lot is dead, Arthur will keep us safe, for my sake. There’s not just power in spells and potions, and hidden in the dusty books in the abbey. Just think about that.”

  Coldly, I gathered myself up in my seat. I had given up a child so that Arthur’s kingdom might have peace. I was in love with a man who I knew would never marry me, not because he did not want me, but because he wanted what was best for his brother and king, and she was standing there before me pleased with herself for putting us all in danger. Selfish Morgawse, as she had always been.

  “You’ll bring war on all of us,” I told her, making no effort to keep the icy resentment from my voice.

  Morgawse flicked up her eyebrows in a gesture of chillingly reckless daring, and, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest, replied, “Let it come.”

  Chapter Twelve

  What Morgawse had said to me had dimmed my anger against her a little. She must have suffered in her life. Though I still wished that she could have thought of others, thought of me, just a little more. As time went on her words about her marriage reached me more deeply. I knew she had been lonely, from the times I had seen her, at Christmas, at Easter, and I knew that she missed the home that by now no longer existed. It had stopped existing when Uther had killed our father, whom she had known well, though I did not remember him. By her account, a gentle man with a low, soft voice, who used to sing to her and my mother in the evenings. I was sure that she imagined him more perfect than he was, but he was a different man entirely, certainly, from our stepfather Uther. No, besides, it was not only Morgawse who forgot her duty in this. It was Arthur who had a responsibility to his people and – in a fog of lust – had forgotten it.

  I knew that war was certain when Morgawse came to me at last. As soon as I saw the panic on her face, I forgave her. She was sick and pale, and having felt it so recently myself, I recognised it well. So did she. She had had four children before. I offered her the drink that I had taken, but she shook her head.

  “If there is war, and Lot loses, this child will be my protection against his enemies.”

  Morgawse was not as stupid as she seemed. Still, I felt the little burn of resentment within me. It felt as though she had stolen something from me, though I knew that she had not.

  By the time that Christmas came, Morgawse had told Arthur. He looked sickeningly pleased with himself, as though he did not understand the seriousness of it all. Kay, when I told him, had crinkled up his brow and groaned in despair. I told him I had offered Morgawse the drink I had taken and she had refused, and he had nodded in quiet thoughtfulness, and I wished I had not told him, because it made him sad.

  There was a huge Christmas feast, with all kinds of game birds and huge platters of vegetables, and fruit, and little cakes and many jugs of rich wines. I drank as much as I could. I wanted to have a little fun. I wanted to forget that war would come, and that I might soon be parted forever from Kay. It would happen as soon as Arthur was capable of tearing himself away from my sister for long enough. I hoped it would not be soon, for he seemed more absorbed in her than ever now that she was carrying his child. She even sat beside him at the table every night, as though she were his wife.

  I drank more than I ate, and I was pleased with the effects. I felt less worried, and the thoughts of the child I might have had with Kay sank back in my mind under the heavy fog of alcohol. Kay seemed to be doing the same. He sat beside his father and Lancelot, flushed and laughing, as they told the story again to some other knight beside them of Arthur pulling Uther’s sword out of Merlin’s stone. Merlin was still, ominously, absent. If he had been here, he might have advised Arthur against an affair with my sister, and war might have been averted. But it was Christmas, and I would not think about that.

  By the time the plates were being cleared away, I felt almost cheerful. Kay jumped from his seat to declare it was time for the Christmas games. Kay was a little unsteady on his feet, but on him it came across in little dancing motions, and he carried it well in his impish way. I wished that there might have been dancing instead of games. Kay was a good dancer, and I was very bad at the games.

  This year, the Christmas game mainly, it seemed, consisted of Kay and Arthur throwing an orange stuck with cloves at one another, though I thought that was not meant to be the point of it. More and more of the knights joined in, and it seemed that it was the aim to catch the orange in one’s mouth, but everyone was too drunk to manage it. I noticed that Ector and Lancelot, ever more reserved than most of the other knights, did not join in. Morgawse, too, sat back in her seat, more beautiful than ever, flushed with wine and with a wreath of Christmas ivy in her copper-gold hair, smiling at the games. Had she forgotten what would be waiting for her, now, when she finally went back to Lothian? Did she think she would never have to go back to her old husband? I didn’t know what was going on in her head, what she was thinking. Maybe she didn’t even have a plan. It didn’t seem fair that she seemed to have forgotten about it all and even through the wine I could not quite. I could not quite forget.

  With the thought of war, and Morgawse, I felt my feel for the festivities evaporate around me, and I had no more taste for it. I drained the last of my cup of wine, and left. I hoped that I would fall asleep as soon as I got to my bed, but it didn’t seem likely with all the thoughts whirring around in my mind. When I stepped out in the courtyard, it was icy cold, the floor already slick with frost. It would be snowing up in Lothian, thick and deep, keeping Lot from marching down with his knights to see what was keeping his wife in Camelot. If she did not go back with spring, I felt sure that he would come to fetch her.

  It was bitingly cold, so I hurried across to the tower than held my room. I was too distracted by hurrying from the cold that I did not notice Kay, close behind me, until I got to the door of my room,
and I heard him call my name softly. I turned, and there he was at the foot of the stairs, his colour high from the wine, his black hair ruffled from the games. He was wearing this black and gold brocade surcoat that must have been made new, for I had not seen it before, sewn with twisting patterns like the patterns on his black armour. It must have been a gift for Christmas from Arthur. No one else could have had the money to give Kay anything so fine. Except Lancelot. I pushed the thought away. In the low torchlight of the stairway, the gold threads winked and glinted, and the light caught in his glossy hair, and against the darkness of his sparkling eyes. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt my heart hammer suddenly in my chest.

  Kay was up the stairs in a few short leaps, pulling me into his arms. Our faces were cold from the air outside, our mouths warm as they came together, and I felt the powerful softness, the tenderness of his lips against mine, and I felt myself melt into his arms.

  “We shouldn’t,” he said, but he was already following me as I pulled him into the room with me. I wanted to taste a moment of recklessness; to be like Morgawse, just for a moment. We tumbled in, both drunk, both clumsy, but it didn’t matter. I stumbled, losing my balance in the darkness, and as Kay stepped forward to catch me we both fell, still holding each other tight. I was wild, desperate for the erasure that only passion could bring, and Kay seemed to respond in kind. He was impatient with the wine, though, and couldn’t make his fingers work on the lacing of my underdress. After one particularly violent pull, it tore down to my waist.

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “I don’t care,” I breathed, pulling him back down towards me. And in that moment, I did not.