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

by Lavinia Collins

  The knights pulled up the barrels of food and of wine from the cellars of the Emperor’s palace, and pulled down the benches of the senate-house into its central floor for makeshift trestle tables. When Arthur saw me, he called me to his side at the high table he had set up, with Lancelot and Gawain at his side, and Ector and Gawain’s brothers further from his special favour, and I sat with them and watched as Arthur’s knights drank Rome’s wine and shouted and cheered and sang. Over and over again they told and re-told the stories of the final conquest, the work of that day, and I looked out over the shouting, swearing, drinking men who had torn down the benches of the senate house to make themselves a mead hall, all dirty and sweaty and bloody from battle still, and I thought what savages we are.

  I had read some histories of Rome in the abbey – Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, the great epics of Virgil and Statius – and I had read the work of Roman poets and philosophers – the wry humour of Catullus and Horace, and the harsh philosophies of Seneca and the Stoics. I knew what they would make of Arthur and his rabble, who shook the heads of their enemies in front of their baying army, who tore down the ancient civilisation around them for the sake of a night of drinking and feasting. The men were wild with victory, and drunkenly grabbed at the women among them. I was glad to be far from it, to be on the high table – if it could be called such a thing. Still, the talk here was hardly less crude. Gawain was laughing with his brothers about the Emperor’s daughter. I had missed the beginning of his story, and I was glad of it. I did not want to listen to my nephews talk about such things. Arthur was drunk, flushed and grinning, talking to Lancelot, who was quiet and sober at his side. He should have been drinking like the rest of them.

  “I will ride back to Britain,” Arthur was saying, slightly too loud, slightly too slow, “and I will tell my wife that she is an Empress now, and then I will...” Arthur made an expressive gesture, and Lancelot blushed, “love her like an Emperor should.”

  “If she is not still angry with you,” I said, before I realised I had spoken. Perhaps I had drunk more of the Roman wine than I thought I had.

  Arthur turned to me. “What are you talking about, Morgan?” he demanded.

  “It did not sound to me like she wanted to be sent back to Britain,” I pointed out, haughtily. I did not like the way he talked about her. It made me think of the Breton queen, to whom I felt a strange sense of duty still, long after her death.

  “You don’t know what you are talking about, Morgan,” he replied, with a shrug. He did not seem bothered. He did not seem worried. But Lancelot caught my eye, and I knew that he understood. I stayed quiet for the rest of the feast, and when the men began to disperse, I hung back, hoping that Lancelot might want to speak with me, but he left with Arthur once Gawain had dragged one of the women out with him, and I was left to walk back to the camp on my own. In the cold autumn night the stars seemed sharp and hostile.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The journey back to Britain was slow. The army was tired and winter was setting in, and got colder and colder as we moved north. But, we returned with victory.

  When we came in the great gates of Camelot, I heard the shout go up and the horns sound. There was crying and shouting with joy; it was a city welcoming back its conquering King. The boy Kay had teased as a child was now truly a great man. He had defeated an Emperor, he had made Britain safe. A small party had ridden ahead to warn of Arthur’s coming, Lancelot among them, and when I rode into the courtyard beside Arthur, I saw the Queen waiting there. She had a cloak of thick grey furs around her, but beneath, a dress of plain, rough wool. She was not wearing a crown, or any jewels, and she looked thin. Was this how things had been in Camelot? I glanced through the crowd for Kay. News had not come to us of his death, so I hoped that he had survived, but it felt ill not to see him.

  Arthur did not seem to notice how thin his Queen looked, how hungry his people, after his long war, but he jumped from his horse to lift her into his arms, and pull her against him in a passionate kiss before she could even speak. I saw Lancelot walk out from the stables where he must have been setting his horse to feed, and his eyes followed Arthur as he took his wife by the hand and rushed her up the stairs of his tower with him.

  I was not sure that Kay would want to see me, so I waited until I was alone in my room, and I took Lancelot’s shape to go looking for him. The last book I had learned from allowed me to change the shape of my clothes, too, and it was easy for me to become the man I saw almost every time my eyes closed. He was easy, so easy for me to become. Too easy.

  I knew where Kay’s bedroom was, and I found him there. When I pushed the door open, Kay sat up on his bed, where he had been lying, and his familiar smile spread across his face.

  “Lancelot, you look well. War suits you. It did not suit me so well, as I suppose you heard.”

  He pulled up his shirt, and at the side of his stomach, I could see the pale knot of a scar. It should not have looked so healed already. Someone with strength in healing as great as mine – or more – had done that. It made me feel wary, uneasy. Who could it have been? Not Nimue. Nimue was many things, but she was no healer.

  “You are well healed,” I said, hearing Lancelot’s soft French tones come from my mouth.

  To my surprise, Kay gestured him – me – further into the room. I stepped in and shut the door behind me. I was not sure that I was prepared enough for what was expected of me if Kay wanted to take Lancelot to bed, but he did not seem to want to. He stood up and rubbed his face, pacing before me.

  “Lancelot, I am going to tell you something I should not,” he said thickly.

  “What is it, Kay?” I asked.

  Kay ran his hands through his hair before turning to look at me. I could see that he was trying to work out what he wanted to say.

  “So, you know that I was injured and I was brought back here? Well, when I was brought here, well, I don’t remember the journey. I was feverish, had strange dreams, but through those dreams – awful dreams – I began hearing this voice. It was speaking to me... in Breton. I did not even know that I had arrived in Camelot, or that Guinevere was here, but it was her voice I heard over and over again, in Breton and in English, saying wish for life, wish for life. And I remember lying side by side with her on the Round Table. I was dying Lancelot, dying. I had disease in my wound, and she wished it away. I felt it. It was all her. Oh, I don’t know – how can it have been? But there was only darkness, and her voice. Then, when the fever passed away, and I woke, I was in Arthur’s bed and she was there, sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, asleep against her hand as though she had sat up with me all night, and it was like I was seeing her for the first time. I have heard the others talking about her – Gawain, his brothers, you know, the men, the others – but it was as though I had never truly seen her before that moment. She saved my life.” Kay shook his head and ran his hands through his hair again. “You were gone a year. A year. It was a different world here – I – it is not as if anything was said, it is not as if anything was done – I do not even know if she –” Kay shook his head, as though he was trying to shake his troubled thoughts into order. “It was easy to forget the way things truly were. You were all long gone, we were here alone, struggling to feed everyone, to keep the castle in order – but I should not have – I have thought things – ah, I know that sounds like nothing – but I cannot pretend that I have not imagined what it would be like – and then you all returned, and I stood at the window, and I watched Arthur jump from his horse and pick her up in his arms, and I… The world as it was here while you were all gone was an illusion. It was easy to forget, but I should not have done. He is my brother, whatever anyone says about blood. Arthur is my brother and I… But things will go back to the way they were. Yes. I am sure. I do not suppose you like to hear this, though we ought to be long past jealousy now,” Kay added wryly. Then he sighed, “I wish I could undo this.”

  I did not know what to say. I had no comfort to offer Kay,
and I was angry and disgusted that now even he was besotted with the Queen. Why would he tell Lancelot? Why would he tell Lancelot about this, and not about Morgawse, who I was sure had been meaningless to him?

  “Perhaps you will forget,” I offered, knowing it was a useless suggestion.

  Kay reached out, and laid a hand against my arm – Lancelot’s arm – and fixed me with a look that he had never given me as myself before.

  “I did not forget you,” he said. I opened my mouth to speak, but I had nothing to say.

  I felt oddly embarrassed by Kay, embarrassed on his behalf, by how weak he was. Unable to let go of Lancelot, but teetering on the brink of something worse. A new obsession. I was angry with him, too, for forgetting me entirely. But, it did give me an idea. An idea of how I might begin to punish Arthur for the suffering he had caused me. He had made me a miserable marriage, and I could take his happy marriage from him. There was clearly no child involved, and so I did not see how I would be harming innocents. The only problem was, how would I convince the Queen that she should take a lover? I hoped that she was still angry with Arthur for sending her back to Britain. I hoped that would be enough.

  There was a great feast held, and I did not go. I did not want to hear more men’s talk of women and fighting and glory. I lay alone in my bedroom and tried to sleep, but more and more and more I thought of Lancelot, and the dream I had dreamed of him long ago. It had to come true. It had to.

  The next day, I thought I would go disguised as the English maid to see the Queen. I wanted to see how easy it would be to push her from Arthur. I caught the girl, as I had before, on the way down the stairs, and sent her off on some fool’s task. She went willingly. She was afraid of my woad as anyone else, and obeyed without question.

  I found the other maids waiting outside, and when I approached, the older woman, whom I remembered my dislike of, but who seemed kind enough when she was among her own, put her finger to her lips. It was the middle of the morning, past prime already, so the only reason I could imagine for Guinevere’s women waiting outside her door was that Arthur was in there. Supporting my assumption was the fact that the little maid, Marie, looked as though she was holding back giggles. I was glad that I did not stand so close to the door as her.

  After a while, the door opened and Arthur stepped through in his shirt and breeches, with a friendly nod to the women, and disappeared down the stairs.

  The older woman, whose name I had learned only after she had left the camp as Christine, led the way into the room. Guinevere was sat in the bed, which was spread with a rich fur over the covers for the winter, with her knees drawn up and her chin resting on them, and her arms around her legs. Her hair spread loose all around her, and she pushed out her bottom lip to blow it off her face, as I had seen her do before.

  Marie was chattering to her in Breton and she was replying, shrugging her shoulders. She looked a little angry, a little petulant still.

  Christine clicked her tongue. “English, Marie.”

  I noticed that she only scolded the maid, never Guinevere, though it was the pair of them talking in Breton.

  “There will be a tournament tomorrow,” Marie said, brightly. “A great great tournament, and all the brave knights from King Arthur’s war will show their strength. I am very excited.” She chirruped as she pulled out an undershift from the bundle of clothes in her arms and handed it to Guinevere.

  “I am not,” Guinevere replied, slipping it over her head from under the warmth of the covers.

  Christine clicked her tongue again. Guinevere slipped from the bed in her underdress. I saw her shiver against the cold as she stretched up, wriggling her wakefulness into her fingers.

  “Men need their games,” Christine said, authoritatively. “We may not like it, but they need it.”

  The Bretons did not joust like the French. The whole tedious pageantry of it must have seemed very strange to Guinevere.

  “Arthur has been away for almost a year fighting his war, and now he wants to come back and see more fighting?” Guinevere shook her head and made a little noise of frustration as Marie pulled a dress of thick plum-coloured wool over her head. It was simple and plain. I had seen her with fine dresses before. Alone here, she must have sold them to keep Camelot in meat and grain. Guinevere held her hair up and away so that Marie could lace her into the dress, and continued, her voice sharper than I had heard it before. “He has been away at war, and I have been here on my own, not knowing if he is dead or alive, when he was coming home.” Then, after a pause, and a short sigh of annoyance that seemed to pass through her whole body, she muttered, “I am sure Arthur was not alone all year long.”

  I felt the spark of victory light within me. So, she was a jealous woman, and a jealous woman that was right to know her husband well. I, too, knew Arthur as a man with a lust for women, and I had heard his own men say the same.

  Christine sighed, and clicked her tongue once more. “The wise woman does not ask her husband what he has done while at war. On the battlefield or otherwise.”

  Guinevere did not reply. She was proud, as she had a right to be. But her pride would be an easy weapon for me to use against Arthur. Would it be so easy? And were Breton customs so different? I had heard Morgawse joke about the other women Lot had had, but then she had not loved him. Why was Guinevere even surprised enough to be angry? But I was glad of it. If she was angry with Arthur, and Kay was besotted with her, my revenge on Arthur was ready-made.

  On my way down from Guinevere’s bedroom, intending to go back to my own room and slip back into my own form, a familiar voice caught my attention – Lancelot’s voice – and another I was sure I recognised. When I stepped out of the door of the tower, there Lancelot was, standing at the edge of the courtyard leaning against the wall, and Gareth beside him. He looked much, much older than when I had seen him last. On the cusp of manhood. But he still had the open, trusting face of a child. He had not known war.

  I crept closer to try to overhear what they were saying. I was sure that they would not notice one lowly, plain maid.

  “Do you have a lady?” Gareth was asking Lancelot, his voice bright with innocence, with simplicity. How little he knew, I thought. To my surprise, Lancelot gave a soft laugh in response.

  “Every knight needs a lady,” he told him. I saw a knowing smile play about his lips, just a little. I had never seen him like that before.

  Gareth nodded. He paused a moment, cast a shy look at Lancelot, and asked again, “Is she your paramour – I mean, your lady, do you... sleep in her bedroom?”

  Lancelot looked a little shocked. “Gareth, who taught you to ask that kind of question?”

  Gareth blushed, deep red. But Lancelot had a lady. I felt my heart quickening within me, but I pushed down the hope. It was silly. He had not wanted me. Besides, he had not said anything definite. It would be in his interest to pretend he had a lady. It would stop people gossiping about him and Kay.

  Gareth shuffled his feet on the spot, and a little sulkily tried once again to find out what a knight ought to do with his lady.

  “Does she let you kiss her?”

  Lancelot gave Gareth a gentle, forgiving smile. “I have kissed her.”

  It’s me, I thought, and I pushed the thought away as soon as it came. It could not be true. It could not be me. Surely, not.

  Gareth made a thoughtful noise of approval. “She must be a very beautiful lady, for a knight like you to love her.”

  “I think she is beautiful, but every knight thinks his own lady the most beautiful,” Lancelot replied. Gareth nodded, studiously, as though he was trying to remember everything Lancelot said.

  “Does she love you?” Gareth asked.

  Lancelot gave a strange sigh. “I am sure she does. I can feel it, when I am near her, like the heat coming off a fire.” He sounded sad, and Gareth was as confused as I was. I, also, was embarrassed. Was it so obvious? I was not sure I knew it myself. I knew I wanted Lancelot, but he felt love coming from me, wh
enever we were close?

  “Is that bad?” Gareth asked, confused. “Do you not love her the same?”

  Lancelot turned to Gareth, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I love her the same. I never stop thinking about her, and when I feel her eyes on me, it feels like the touch of the sunshine. But there are some things that cannot be. That should not be. When a boy becomes a man, he has to learn the difference between what he wants to do and what he should do. There are others who would suffer if my lady and I were to give in to the fullness of our love, and it is a man’s duty to do what is right.”

  I saw Gareth’s face fall under such seriousness, and felt my own heart sink in my chest. It was me, and Lancelot was keeping himself away for – for what? For Kay’s sake? For Arthur’s? Why were these brave men always so wary of offending one another? What about me? He ought to have cared what I wanted.

  One kiss, and a love that we both felt, that loyalty to others held us back from. It was both joy and pain to hear him say it. But I had suffered waiting before; I had suffered holding back with Kay, because Kay was wary of Arthur. I would not again. I would be brave.

  “Oh,” Gareth said, and he sounded a little disappointed. “Well, I have a lady, too. But she will not kiss me, and I do not think she loves me. Not like a lady loves a knight, anyway.”

  “Who is she?” Lancelot asked.

  “The Queen,” Gareth said proudly, and he flushed deeply again when Lancelot laughed. “Everyone laughs at me. I’m serious. I told Kay the Seneschal and now all he does is make fun of me. But I think she is the most beautiful lady in all of Britain.”

  Lancelot’s smile became softer, more thoughtful, but he turned to Gareth in comfort. “Don’t worry about Kay the Seneschal. If he makes fun of you, that means he is fond of you.”