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

by Lavinia Collins

  “She’s a witch, Lot.” Morgawse, beside me, tried to push him away from me, and he released one hand from me to strike her across the face, knocking her back. She shouted, desperation in her voice, “She’ll curse you for this.”

  Lot laughed, unafraid. As I felt him release one hand from my arms again and the fear deepened through me, I was struck by a sudden idea, from what Morgawse had said. Lot knew nothing of the magic arts. I began to mutter in a scramble of Latin and ancient words, meaningless, cobbled together from half-remembered poems that I had read in the abbey, books from Avalon, the offices I had learned from the nuns, but it worked. Lot jumped back from me. It is as well to frighten people as to seduce them.

  “Stop!” he shouted. I turned, pushing my dress down again, stepping back to stand beside my sister, still muttering and he shouted again. “Stop. Stop.”

  I stopped, and let a wicked smile form across my face, forcing myself to play the part my sister had suggested for me. I could not appear afraid of him.

  “You will not touch us again,” I told him, mustering all the cold threat I could to my voice. I did not need to have any dangerous powers, as long as Lot thought I did. He turned to Morgawse, his face twisted in anger, his belt still hanging open.

  “And you bring a witch into my house.” He spat at her, and left, slamming the door.

  Morgawse let out a breath that shook right through her. I could see she was trembling. So was I. We had both only just escaped. Morgawse shook her head. She wrapped her arms around me and held me close to her. I hugged her tight against me. Her hair, brushing soft against my cheek, smelled of woodsmoke and spices, familiar and comforting. Up here in Lothian, we only had each other. I wondered what her sons would make of this, if they would stand with their mother, or with their father.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Morgawse, when she had stopped shaking, led us to her room. I was glad that she had assumed that we would sleep side by side. Neither of us wanted to be alone in separate rooms. When we were at last safe and alone, a fire roaring in the room with us, Morgawse turned to me and took me by both hands, her bright eyes fired with something new, a steely desperation.

  “Morgan, now is the time for your book of black magic,” she told me.

  I felt a flash of rage, and of panic.

  “You went through my things!” I cried.

  Morgawse shrugged. “Of course. I wanted to see if you had anything useful.”

  I thought with a jolt of fear of what else she might have found. My letter from Kay. She did not say anything about it, though, and it had seemed to me that she would have been more interested in that than in my book of Macrobius.

  Casting her a look of censure, I nonetheless went over to my bag and got it out, laying it on her table at the window. Morgawse’s rooms were richly furnished, in thick brocade and everything sewn with gold thread. In the glowing firelight, her room was a little haven of cosiness and safety. Still, I was more comforted by the heavy bolt that she had drawn across the door.

  Morgawse came over and eyed it with interest. I was surprised. I had not even been sure that my sister could read in Latin. In fact, I was not sure she had read the title of the book. She had probably just guessed from the fact that I had this book of magic and had kept it secret that it was a dangerous book.

  I had not been sure that I was ready to cross this line, but now I did not think I had any choice. I opened the book carefully. It was old and the vellum smelled pungent. The old inks it was written with had cracked on some of the pages, and the spine creaked a little as it opened. The first step was to make the drink. The list of things I needed was long. Wine, that would be easy enough to find, but there were many herbs, not all of which I was sure could be found in Lothian, and other more occultish things; items acquired at a certain phase of the moon, or time of night. I thought about writing to Merlin to ask him for help, but I knew what the price of that would be, and I was not that desperate yet. I could write to Nimue, but if it reached her on Avalon, the Lady would know that I had begun with the Black Arts despite her words to me.

  I read off the list to Morgawse and she nodded along with it. She seemed to think that she could bring me all of the items. As she nodded, she absent-mindedly held the back of her hand against her bleeding lip, where Lot’s blow had split it, as though it were nothing at all. I supposed that to her it was. I supposed that she had done so many times before. I wished, then, that I could always escape marriage.

  I felt horribly nervous. It had gone wrong before, and I had thought I had everything. I was not sure that Morgawse would know what she was doing, would recognise the right things. Merlin had not taught me as well as he pretended that he had when he had robbed me. The only thing he had taught me properly was not to trust him.

  I sighed. “It says we also need a drop of virgin’s blood. I don’t know where we will get that.”

  Morgawse laughed for a moment, as though she thought I was joking. “Morgan, you’re not going to pretend you’re not to get out of giving a little drop of blood.”

  I turned around to face her, annoyed.

  “Morgawse,” I said, my tone exasperated, “I told you.”

  “Alright then. If you’re not, then who was it?”

  “Merlin,” I told her. It was half a truth, and that was all I was willing to give her.

  Morgawse wrinkled up her face in disgust, and for the first time I noticed her slight family resemblance to Arthur, and it made me feel uneasy.

  “Morgan, why?” she gasped.

  I turned back to the book, angry and embarrassed and defensive.

  “Why do you think, Morgawse? To get this book. Anyway… he didn’t look like that.”

  “Hmm,” Morgawse was incredulous, “really? I suppose your love was so wild that it made all his hair fall out, and aged him thirty years.”

  I wheeled back round to her. I wasn’t going to be made fun of by her, or to be called disgusting. She had had her brother. I didn’t know why, after the first little spasm of distress, she remained so stunningly unbothered by what she had done.

  “Morgawse, do you want my help, or not?”

  “Fine, fine,” Morgawse shrugged, “I’m sorry.” She sighed again, and then, thoughtful, asked, “Does it say it has to be a woman?”

  I looked again at the recipe. It didn’t seem to specify. I hadn’t even thought of that, since it was only women that everyone else seemed to care about.

  “It doesn’t,” I told her.

  “Good. Well, I’ll fetch Gareth. He’s only eight, so I think we’re safe there.” She paused thoughtfully again, wrapping her arms around herself, fixing me with a strange look, her head on one side. “No one ever asks men about these things, do they? No one ever bothers with what they might have been doing. I don’t expect anyone is shouting at Arthur and calling him disgusting, or striking him in the face, or threatening to rape that odd, sodomite foster-brother of his.” Morgawse saw my look of surprise and interpreted it as disbelief. “Oh yes, Arthur’s Seneschal foster-brother, you know, the funny impy man.” I nodded. Morgawse had, then, already forgotten eyeing him up when she had met him. “Well, he, ah, he used to sleep in the same bed as that other strange dark-haired one, the French one who never says anything.”

  I shrugged like I didn’t care, but it made me uneasy for Kay’s sake that everyone seemed to know. I was sure that it did not go well for him that people did. I could not forget what Ector had said about shame, or the way that Lot had shouted about family honour. It was life and death to them, the men.

  “Anyway,” Morgawse sighed more deeply, “I’m sure this is going to go much worse for me than it does for Arthur.” A note of anger and frustration crept in to her voice. “It’s all very well for him deciding he won’t talk about it, or deal with it with me, but I can hardly get away from it, can I?” She pointed to her swelling stomach. I nodded in agreement. It was unfair. Arthur was absolving himself of responsibility for it by sending her away. Maybe he was just too you
ng to deal with something like this, but I was not sure that I forgave him for it on that count. Whatever he had not known, he had begun it all knowing that she had an angry and vengeful army. He hadn’t thought like a king. He had thought like a selfish boy who finds he can suddenly have whatever he wants.

  Morgawse left to fetch the things for the potion. I thought it was brave of her, since Lot was still about, but she did not seem to think that he would be up late at night, nor be where she was going. She seemed to think herself safe enough. I supposed she knew the castle, and its ways.

  While she was gone, I leafed through the rest of the book, to the place where I had stopped reading with Merlin. I skimmed through the section on turning one’s shape back, for it was just a description of the sensation, and realised then why Merlin had stopped before reading the final pages. They were Macrobius’ warning to the witch.

  To whomever practises such arts, the art of the changing of shapes, be warned that after the first act of changement, the body is forever altered to be in a state of flux. From thence a person might become another at will, or change from place to place on a wish. While this is not necessarily a disadvantage, the prudent witch must exercise caution. If one transmutes their body to that of a person who is dead, or who does not truly exist, one acquires also their state. Similarly, if one wishes to travel to somewhere that does not truly exist, the same fate befalls. Similarly, if one wishes for a place that is long-gone, one can achieve it, but then must live one’s life out at that point in time, as well as in that locus. Many have been lost through the art of the changing of shapes, and I, Macrobius, counsel you to exercise them with the extremity of caution. It is easy, in another’s shape, to lose oneself.

  Though I stood before the fire, I felt cold. My hands trembled slightly, and I felt myself to be on the precarious edge of something. Becoming someone else. Losing oneself. But maybe I did want to lose myself a little. As I was, I was powerless. If I could lose shy little Morgan and become something fearsome, I and my sister and those I cared about would be safer.

  Morgawse came back fast, with her smallest son with her, sleepy-eyed and in his bedclothes. I don’t know why she had brought him when she could have just taken a little of the blood. She had everything else with her. I was impressed. I supposed Lothian must have had a witch once, perhaps long before Lot who seemed not to like our kind, and there was somewhere in the castle – somewhere Morgawse knew about – that held the witches’ store.

  Morgawse fussed at the sleepy boy as I poured out a full cup of wine, and reading slowly under my breath the Latin of Macrobius’ instructions, added the ingredients carefully. The smell in the room grew more acrid from the bitter herbs, more foreboding. As I nodded to Morgawse that it was time, she drew out a little knife she must have brought with her for the occasion and lightly pricked her son’s finger. He pouted and screwed up his face in sleepy displeasure, but he said nothing, and I caught the drop of bright red in the cup. Morgawse gathered him up in to her arms, although he was too old for that, and large besides, and she pregnant, and carried him back to his room.

  By the time she returned, I was sure the drink was ready. From Macrobius’ description of the finished potion, this was it. It smelled like the bitter herbs that were in it, but beyond that something heady which was not quite a smell, but a feeling, like the moment before one falls asleep, or the half-sleep of waking in the morning. I wondered how much we would forget when we became someone else.

  “So,” Morgawse said with an eager smile, “what will it do?”

  So, she hadn’t read the Latin. She had just guessed the book was Black Arts from the look of it.

  “Well, we drink the potion and we can change our shape.”

  Morgawse’s face fell.

  “Is that all?”

  I shrugged at her, annoyed. “Morgawse, what did you think it would do?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what it says in that book. Is that the only thing that that book tells you how to do?” She gave a little cry of frustration. “I thought we were going to kill Lot! I thought that was what we were doing. I thought you were going to make a shadow man to go and stab him in his sleep.”

  I shook my head in disbelief and frustration at her. “Morgawse, those aren’t real. Witchcraft is an art, a skill. You don’t just wish for what you want and get it. You have to learn each piece. This piece is the only piece I have. This piece will keep us safe. We drink the potion, then whenever Lot is around we can change our shape so that we look like one of your sons, and he will leave us alone. Besides, if we wanted to kill Lot there are easier, far less risky ways than black magic. This is dangerous stuff, Morgawse. I don’t know what might happen when we drink it.”

  Morgawse’s face darkened from frustration into furious disbelief. “You don’t know – you mean you have never done this before?”

  “Of course I have never done this before!” I shouted back. “Morgawse, this is the Black Arts. I wouldn’t be doing this if we had any other choice. Do you know what this means for me? Do you? Do you have any idea how forbidden this stuff is? This isn’t a love-potion, or a sleep-potion, or a potion for seeing the future, this is dangerous. There is no going back once we take this.” Unspoken behind those words, I thought, I cannot go back to Avalon. I snatched up the cup. Too late to think about that.

  Morgawse stepped back warily, but I was fired with fear and anger, spurred by her disbelief that I could not do it if I had not before, and I drained half the cup. It felt like liquid fire down my throat, and I could not suppress a cry of pain. Had I made it wrong? There was no description of pain in Macrobius’ book. I felt it burn down my throat, through my stomach, and spread, seep out through my body, through my limbs up to my head. My whole body felt like it was burning away, being seared through with the drink. The pain was intense, but it gradually began to pass. I felt a strangeness settle over me, like the shadow of a feeling. It was a feeling of power, of dark, pressing power close to me. It was like the feel of the Otherworld in its feel of ancientness, immediacy, but utterly unlike it in its quality. It was richer, blacker. It felt wonderful. I felt strength coursing through my blood, I felt potentiality run through me as, recovering from the pain, I gasped.

  I glanced up at Morgawse, who stood back against the wall, horrified. I held out the cup to her, and warily, she came forward to take it.

  “It hurts?” she asked.

  I nodded. “It hurts.”

  Morgawse, to her credit, was not afraid. She drained the rest of the cup, but instead of pain across her face, I saw the colour drain out of her. She groaned with nausea, and ran to the window. I heard her retching and retching until all the precious potion was gone. Perhaps it was only made for witches, but King Uther had had not a drop of witches’ blood in him, and Merlin had changed him into my father’s shape. There must be more. More forbidden books, more forbidden spells. A witch must be able to change someone else’s shape for them. It would not work for my sister, Macrobius’ changing of shapes. I was annoyed with Merlin. How little he had given me in return for what I had ceded to him.

  Morgawse turned back to me, her eyes wide with fear, her hands clamped over her stomach.

  “He’s wriggling around like I’ve hurt him, Morgan. Was it the drink? Was it? Have we killed him?”

  I ran over and pressed my hand on her stomach. Beneath the skin, deep in her womb, I felt something writhe and kick. The child wasn’t dead, but it had felt the potion. I did not know what that would mean.

  I shook my head. “I think he will be fine. I… I don’t know. There’s nothing in the book about… children.”

  “What about you?” Morgawse whispered. “Did it work for you?”

  I closed my eyes and pictured myself as Kay. Perhaps I was giving too much of myself away, but I thought it was safest to try first to become one whom I knew so well, whom I could picture so clearly. I felt a tingling through my limbs, as though I were becoming numb, and a rushing in my head as though I were spinning ar
ound, but soon these settled, and when I opened my eyes and looked down, I saw Kay’s hands peeping from the sleeves of my wool dress, felt it stretch taught across the muscular shoulders I had acquired. I could feel strength all through the body whose form I had taken. Morgawse’s mouth fell open when she saw me, and then she laughed until she slid to the ground. I reached up and ran my hand through the short, velvety dark hair that I knew would be there. I had done it. I had become someone else.

  At last, I thought. At last.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I slept that night beside Morgawse, I dreamed strange dreams where I stood at the mirror, and every time I blinked saw someone new before me. Me. Kay. Morgawse. Arthur. Lancelot. Mother. Gawain. Lot. Morgawse. Me. Kay. Ector. It was not a bad dream, but it made me feel uneasy. Lose oneself. But I was resolved. I would not lose control. So, the potion would not protect both me and Morgawse as I had thought, but it had made me feel strong, and though she could not change to keep herself safe, I could do my best to protect her.

  The next day I wrote to Kay, trying as hard as I could to pass the message that we, and Arthur, were in danger from Lot, without saying it in so many words. I wanted it to seem like a mundane note, not worth intercepting. I wrote:

  K – remember that boy that used to squire for you who lost all your equipment? Same silly boy has caused awful trouble with what he has left behind with us. Hope he is prepared to fight with things in this state of disarray. Not sure when we will return to the south, might not be until lost equipment is found. Hope all well. M

  Morgawse did not speak about the potion again, though I was sure she was glad that it had worked for me, for she stuck close to me as we went around the castle together. Her sons were pleased to see her, and spoke kindly to her. For a while they seemed to choose to believe that it was a full brother of theirs inside her belly. Though, as spring came and the snows around Lothian thawed the possibility that it would be her husband’s evaporated, and an atmosphere of anger and resentment returned to Lothian castle. I stayed close by her, and whenever our path crossed with Lot’s, I would meet his look of violent rage to her with a cold stare, and he would edge away. I did not want to change my shape unless I had to, and Lot seemed afraid enough of my woaded face to leave us be, for now.