Chapter 9
A fortnight later, my brother began his war against me.
The first band of knights he sent were spotted on the main road outside Belle Garde as All Hallows’ came and went.
Camelot’s finest approached the valley daily, unable to do anything other than be sent in circles by the protective charms. Their efforts did not perturb the household or limit their movement—there was a secret pass through the southern forest which Sir Manassen always used—but in any case, my virtuous brother did not stoop to order their suppression.
This wasn’t a siege of anything but his own sister.
What Arthur hadn’t accounted for was that I could besiege him equally well without leaving my turret.
The storms I created grew stronger: thunderous galleons containing enough rain to flood a fortress; narrow tempests full of pelting ice; black clouds twitching with lightning like whipcracks of fire.
I perfected my form, training in the same relentless way great knights ran drills: practising for hours until my bones ached and muscles screamed, but mastery had become second nature.
I harnessed wind and water like chariot horses, until I could drive my savage clouds a hundred miles across the country, and call down havoc with a flick of my hands.
If the weather was my armoured warrior, then the magpies were my spymaster, my winged connection to the places I could not go.
Through the matriarch, I could see whoever Arthur put on the road towards me, then fly across rivers and forests and over great golden walls, until I had infiltrated my brother’s greatest loves: Camelot and his wife.
Both felt the full force of my prowess. With storms, I shattered windows, rained on every hunt; my lightning set fire to wooden stockades the nights before tournaments were due to begin.
Every time Guinevere showed her pretty fair head under the open sky, my magpies were there, swooping for her emerald diadem.
By the following spring, Sir Manassen brought news that she had cancelled her traditional plans to go a-Maying, and no longer made the public courtyard procession to St. Stephen’s for High Mass, instead taking the warrenlike passageways with the monks and floor sweepers.
Guinevere could walk on no terrace, nor ride any road without a falconer at each corner.
Arthur’s fury at my infiltration was clear.
Manassen reported the King’s abrupt and distracted manner at court, and the knights he sent to bounce off my defences doubled.
As expected, he was outraged that I could rattle Camelot’s gilded cage, that I knew his heart so well and exactly where to strike him.
Meanwhile, I relished news of the court’s fractious and malcontent mood.
Many gossiped that the High King looked sleepless; no doubt Tintagel’s seas churned as hard in my brother’s nightly thoughts as they did in mine.
When eventually forced to address his unsettled courtiers, Arthur claimed God was testing their resolve.
But my cause was not divine, and as a year and more passed, the skies absorbed all I had: my endless fury, the black despair for my brutal losses—Accolon’s death, my snatched children, the tarnish thrown upon my name—every ounce of my futility and spite.
I was beyond strategy, wedded to chaos, more than the power of creation. I had become the storm.
*
At least, that was how it felt in the daytime.
In the depths of the night, when I lay sleepless amidst the otherworldly roar of Tintagel’s violent tides, there was only me and my solitude, the failures that resided within.
So much I could do, so much noise and fear I could invoke, but I could not hold a dead sparrow in my hands and give it new life. I could not take Accolon’s singing stone heart and recreate the man I loved.
Face the truth, my dearest Morgan, Merlin’s voice mocked me in the dark. You are so far from what you could have been.
Indeed, sometimes it seemed I had overplayed my moves.
Reports came that Ninianne had occasionally been seen at court, tales of the strange and beautiful maiden who arrived unexpectedly to cause a stir in the Great Hall and advise the King on some matter, or set in motion a mysterious quest for Camelot’s knights to chase.
Perhaps Arthur had forgiven her for Merlin, or else had allowed her back into his graces because he was desperate for a more powerful magic to protect his precious city from my disruption.
Either way, the Book of Prophecies sat worthless on its shelf, the Shroud of Tithonus never coming.
“When did you last get a decent night’s rest?” Alys said, not long after the second anniversary of my battling Arthur. “Let me make you a tincture to help you sleep.”
She had offered me such a remedy several times since Accolon’s death, but I always refused; even if painful, my body’s instincts were all I had keeping me from becoming numb.
“I get enough rest for my needs,” I lied.
“It’s just…I can see this is taking a toll upon you in a way it hasn’t before,” she said. “You’ve…changed.”
It was a strange comment to hear. Due to my protective charms made from fairy magic, all of us who were full-grown and lived in Belle Garde looked only slightly older than when I had arrived seven years ago—myself most of all—in a lesser but similar way to Ninianne’s slowness of ageing.
“I’m fine, dear heart,” I replied. “Sleep will come if I need it.”
I smiled reassuringly until she looked convinced, but later, bored in my bedchamber, I rose from my sleepless bed and uncovered the long mirror I never used in my dressing room.
What I saw there was a shock—not out of vanity, but because Alys was right.
Looking back at me was drawn, greyish skin, a gaunt and hollow aspect, darkened eyes that were the same deep blue but lifeless and flat.
I did not just look older but afflicted, death-shadowed, completely unlike myself.
Frequent use of fairy magic may have affected my ability to age, but it was not enough to keep the past three years from my face.
It was not what I intended, and a defeat I would not accept.
Despite Ninianne’s apparent favour with Arthur, his fraught patience would soon wear out when he realized she could not save him from me.
To stay by his side, she would still need the prophecies, her only choice to bring me the Shroud.
And when I raised Accolon, I did not want him to find me in any way changed from the day he left Belle Garde.
This, at least, I could fix. Closing my eyes, I let healing gather within me, until my body felt full of light.
I drew my hands over my face, across my cheeks and brow and back through my hair, focusing on the golden force until I was a column of restoration.
Temples to toes, I shed the weeks and months from my body, undoing the ravages of grief: the missed meals, lack of sleep and frayed nerves that had exhausted all signs of vitality.
When I felt it done, I opened my eyes and in the looking glass saw myself again—or an accurate depiction of the Morgan le Fay I had been, on that last Midsummer’s Eve years ago.
None of this would cure my despair, my secret-keeping and other destructive habits, but I could at least control how my troubles wrote themselves upon the face I showed the world.
Until Accolon and I were together again, I would erase every moment we had been forced to be apart.
*
Nevertheless, life went on, and sometimes there was good, pinpricks of starlight in the never-ending dark.
A year after he had left with Robin, Sir Manassen came to me and said that his wife was with child, then expecting a second within eighteen months.
He named his first son after Accolon and spent most of his time in Gaul, where his growing family were now settled, but still attended every court held at Camelot.
While there, he brought me news, gossip, any rumours he thought would be of interest, but I didn’t ask for more than that.
Manassen was healing, breaking free of his need for vengeance, and I would not have him take risks for my sake.
I was more than capable of bringing chaos to Arthur’s door in my own name.
Meanwhile, Belle Garde carried on, unheeding of my conflicts, and saw its share of change. Sir Ceredig the chamberlain retired and bid us farewell to live out his latter years with his daughters, leaving Alys and Tressa with complete mastery of the household.
In turn, the huntsman took full charge of the land and stables, as Accolon had always intended.
Born and raised in the valley, he was decades younger than Sir Ceredig, proficient with bow, spear and sword, and as fiercely protective of Belle Garde as I was.
His true name was Rhisiart, his new title Steward of the Estate, but he called himself neither, refused an offer of knighthood, and was still known to everyone as the huntsman.
To any who enquired who was his lord, he would answer without fail, “I have none. I serve only a mistress.” I could rely upon every word he brought me, and though it would never be necessary, trusted him with my life.
Elsewhere, the derelict structures throughout the valley had mostly been rebuilt, enlarged and restored where needed, including a marvel that Alys led me to one day, in a clearing just beyond the rising spring.
There, a once-ruined rectangular stone barn had transformed into a whitewashed, high-raftered longhouse, neatly laid with flagstones and furnished with two rows of beds, woven reed screens and washbowls on stands.
“We did it, cariad, at long last,” she said, beaming. “Our own infirmary.”