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

by Lavinia Collins

  I knew Nimue would come. I knew that she was angry with me, and I knew that she would return, but I had feared it would be as soon as it was. I sat in my room, with Galahad playing on the fur rug beside the fire. Autumn was coming, and the air had turned chill, though the sun was still bright. I had had two and a half years – more – of perfect joy with Galahad, and that day I had felt close about me the threat of its ending, of its drawing to a close with the summer. I had pushed the fears away as silly or superstitious, but I was a witch with witches’ blood in me, and I knew I did not fear for no reason.

  Nimue appeared before me, in her dress of pale blue set from the neck to the waist with pale sapphires, her hair long and loose down to her waist, ghost-white against the faint blue-green patterns across her skin. At her side, hand clasped in hand, came the aged Abbess. I felt an old sting of anger, and revulsion, at the sight of the old nun. She had taught me to be afraid, taught me to be ashamed. If there was someone largely to blame for the anger in me, it was she.

  “Morgan,” Nimue began gently, and I did not like the tone of her voice. “It is time to give him up.”

  I reached out my arms for Galahad before me, and obediently he tottered into them.

  “It is not time,” I protested, quietly, smoothing down Galahad’s hair, more to comfort myself than him. I was glad Ywain was not there today. As lacking as my motherly affection for him was, I did not want him to hear me beg to keep his little brother, when I had handed him carelessly to a nurse the moment after his birth. Galahad grasped hold of the plait of my hair, and rested his head against my chest, closing his eyes. He was falling asleep. If he were older, I could have told him to run.

  “Morgan, do not make this harder than it has to be. You have a destiny, your son has a destiny. It must be. He does not belong here, he belongs in Amesbury.”

  I was not sure I had the strength in me to fight Nimue. I did not want to end like Merlin, shut under a rock, screaming until the end of time.

  “He belongs with me,” I resisted, stubbornly.

  Nimue shook her head. She looked a little sad, but it did not make me forgive her. This was not hurting her like it was hurting me. If they took Galahad from me, it would take the last of my happiness, and I would be back in the place where I had been; dark, angry and alone.

  “He belongs in Amesbury.”

  “He is my child,” I protested, and though I struggled to be calm the words came from me like a shout. I wrapped my arms tighter around him. Nimue’s face was set, and pale under her woad, and the Abbess beside her said nothing, but looked on, tight-lipped. Nimue sighed, and shook her head.

  “Morgan, this is the way it has to be. Did I not warn you about the dangers of the Black Arts? Besides, Morgan, you already have a child. A natural son. This child, he was made in darkness, and the only good that can come through him is if we give him up to the Abbey, and they raise him for the Grail.”

  “We?” I cried, and Galahad woke in my arms, his little face crinkling as though he was about to cry, but I held him closer and he fell quiet. “He is nothing to do with you. Anyway, what about Arthur? He was made the same way, and he lives a natural life.”

  Nimue shook her head. “That was different. Merlin was not Arthur’s father. Morgan, you must give him to us.”

  “No,” I insisted. Nimue glanced at the Abbess, who was staring at me, narrowly. Of course she was. I was sure she hardly recognised me now, blue with woad, a queen in my castle, but I remembered her. She would not have my child.

  Nimue held out her hand towards me, and I felt my arms obey, though I struggled and resisted.

  “Nimue, no,” I pleaded, but she did not look at me. I did not have the strength in me to resist her power, and when she stepped towards me for the child, my arms opened and she took him from me. In her arms his dark black hair began to change, and first I thought a light was glowing around him, as at the top it shone white-blonde like Nimue; but then it spread all through it, and my child was changed before my eyes, to look like her, all silver-white.

  “I am sorry, truly, Morgan,” she said, but still she took the Abbess’ hand in hers and they, and my child, faded from sight before me.

  It was a long time, a long time, before I began to feel alive again. I spent long hours with my books of magic, committing all I could to memory, and then I burned them all. It did not matter how strong I was, if someone else could be stronger. Merlin had hidden his secrets in his mind, and that was how he had been so strong for so long. It was only his weakness for Nimue that had led him to his death. I would not be weak like that again. Now, I would have only myself.

  I wrote to Galahad in Amesbury, but I was sure Nimue burned my letters before they reached him. Everyone would say that Elaine was his mother. I would not exist. There was no one I could call on to help me. No one who would understand. Merlin was amoral enough that he might have helped me if I had had anything to offer in exchange, but when I went back to the rock Nimue had shut him beneath and put my ear to it, I could still hear him screaming and screaming and screaming, and though I screamed down to him, he could not hear me. I was glad, then, that I had burned my books. Nimue would not have them. I did not care for her apologies. They were only lies, to me. She had taken my joy from me. I would not forget. I would not forgive.

  I longed to know the future, to know my fate. On the shortest night, when dreams were sharpest and clearest, almost two years from when Galahad was stolen from me, I mixed from memory the drink of knowing and seeing from Avalon. I had to know, if Galahad would come back to me.

  The first thing I saw as the sudden sleep came over me, I thought at first was Galahad grown, but it was not. It was Lancelot. Dressed in his armour and soaked with rain, stepping into a pavilion where Guinevere, wearing only a thin nightgown, stood to greet him. In the dream, I could smell the heavy late summer rain. Against the white-blue light of the summer lightening, they rushed together, her jumping up into his arms, wrapping her legs around him, he running his hands through her hair, pulling her mouth against his in a kiss that was unbearably passionate to watch. The way they came together, it was as though they had been waiting all their lives. So, despite what I had done, it would happen after all.

  Next, I saw my sister, riding through the gates of Camelot, with a man at her side who I would have thought was Arthur had my sister been twenty years younger. Arthur’s son. She looked proud, and defiant, he dark and serious. Standing to greet them were Arthur, his face clouded with anger, and beside him, Guinevere. So, Mordred would return to his father. In a sudden flash, I saw again the dream I had had, where Arthur had forced Guinevere against the floor, just for a second. I wondered, then, if it were really Arthur I was seeing. But what would Arthur’s son want with his father’s ageing Queen?

  As though summoned by my thoughts, I saw Guinevere again, standing before the altar in the chapel. I could not see what she was looking at, but whatever she saw as she gazed towards the chapel door had frozen her to the spot. With resentment, I had to recognise that if anything she had grown more beautiful with age. Gone was the prettiness of a girl, any softness, and with it she had the proud looks of a queen. She looked grand, and powerful, and yet whatever she looked on had robbed the strength from her, I could see that well enough. I wondered if I did not see what it was, because it was I.

  The last thing I saw was Kay, standing beside his father, his arms crossed over his chest. There was a strange look in his eye, of resignation, of loss. He looked older, maybe even ten years older than I had last seen him, and tired. Beside him Ector looked grim, as I had never seen him before. I was there, I knew I was there.

  So, this was what was to come. Mordred. That seemed the answer to everything. If I wanted to destroy Arthur, I only needed to bring his son to Camelot. I did not know how I would get Morgawse to part with him, but I knew that it had to be done, and I knew – because I had seen it – that it could be done. For the first time in a long long time, in too long, I wrote to Morgawse.


  It was only after, when I lay awake in my bed, that I realised that I had not dreamed at all of Galahad.

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