Chapter 30 #2
I lowered my voice. “I did nothing wrong, Yvain. And I care about how you feel. You must believe me.”
My son sighed, his gaze drawn to the lioness, poised to defend him, kill for him if necessary. I envied her that presumption.
“Peace, cub,” he said to her, and she stopped, threats in her gullet receding into silence. She studied me for a few more panting breaths, then looped back to her patch of sun.
To me, he said, “How can I believe what I’ve never been shown?”
It was a fair question, but my desperation still held sway.
“I have tried to show you I care,” I insisted.
“I have been in your life even if you did not realize it. A few years ago, when you were struggling with your reputation at court, you found Sir Lancelot and brought him back from the wilderness, did you not? It restored you in the eyes of King Arthur.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I found him, and my uncle was pleased. What of it?”
“Did you never wonder why you came across him so easily? Why, of all possible routes, you met on the same one?”
His brow creased in the way that was just like my own late father. “You made me find him…or Lancelot find me? How? Were we…spellbound into meeting?”
“No! I would never do that. I just…helped you. I heard of your troubles at court and wanted to make things better.”
Yvain ignored my denial and paced away, every limp on his injured leg a dart of distress to my senses. “It was all a lie,” he said, half to himself. “I thought my good deeds were my own, and it was lies.”
“No—you don’t understand,” I insisted, but he was too distracted by the revelation. I wanted to take his hand, or turn his face to mine, but didn’t dare touch him. In the end, as Alys often did to me, I put myself in the way of his pacing and made him stop.
“Nothing was a lie,” I said firmly. “No one was charmed or bewitched. You still found Sir Lancelot—that was all your own free will. I swear upon… ”
He glared at me, waiting for the end of my sentence, and his fierce expectation struck the words from my lips. What could I possibly swear upon that could convince him? My own life, his eyes—god forbid, my honour?
“I swear it,” I concluded quietly. “All I did was ease your way to being in the same part of the country. The rest was your doing.”
“I don’t see how that’s any better,” he said. “Not to mention you kidnapped Sir Lancelot in the first place.”
“That was nothing to do with you,” I replied. “What matters is Sir Lancelot went free and unharmed, and you brought him home.”
Yvain recoiled. “Is that what you truly believe? You imprisoned my friend, which can never be justified, then used it to meddle in my life. How is that good for anyone?”
“I was doing the best I could for you,” I replied. “I was trying to—”
“You don’t understand,” he interrupted. “If you knew me, you’d know that all I have ever wanted, from those professing to care for me, is honesty. What you have done—it isn’t honesty in any way. Can you not see that?”
I began to protest, but he held up his hands. “This was my mistake. I shouldn’t have come here.”
His declaration was calm, containing a resignation that hurt me far worse than his anger could.
My son turned away and limped to his horse, mounting off his uninjured leg, his pain still crying out to me through the air.
He beckoned to his lioness, who rose and padded dutifully to his side, her yellow-green eyes fixed on me.
“Don’t go,” I said to him. “Tell me what I can do.”
“What you can do is leave me alone,” he said. “As you have always done.”
“Yvain, no. I am your—” I began, but he looked at me with such savage hurt that it silenced me at once.
“Do not say it,” he said. “It only feels like another lie.”
Touching his gold spurs to his horse’s side, Yvain cantered off, with his lioness loping gracefully in his wake, until the treeline swallowed him and he disappeared. I sat on the low wall and waited until the sun set and night engulfed me, but he never came back.
*
When I finally returned to the house, I climbed to my empty study and sat at my desk.
The Shroud of Tithonus still lay where I had left it, potent and useless, a symbol of my inaction, my wrongness, my inability to become the woman I had once been.
Morgan le Fay, whoever she was—everything her name had meant—felt so far away now.
My son had come to me, had ridden up to my valley and this time had not turned away, until I had played all the wrong notes to a tune I should have known by heart. Yvain had sought me, and found me wanting; he was part of me, yet I couldn’t make him stay.
It only feels like another lie, he had said, when I almost called myself his mother.
Worse still, he was right. Everything, each moment, misjudgment and error, lay at my feet.
The lies, the scheming and disguises, every selfishness I had invoked had made me become what I never wished to be.
Over and again, I had resorted to Merlin’s deceptive magic as I swore I never would, allowing the sorcerer’s voice back in my head, too obsessed with achieving my vengeance to care what it might cost.
Nor was I the only victim of my choices.
Yvain had stood up to his beloved father and powerful uncle for the right to believe there was more beyond his mother’s dark facade, and what had I done?
I had donned the poisoned reputation the Royal Court had given me and paraded it through the realm as if every word were true.
Yet again, I had taken my son’s faith and burned it into ashes. Of all of my sins, failing him was the greatest.
Now, I had lost him forever, but I must still seek to fix it, even if we would always be broken.
Yvain must know that he was not wrong to believe in his mother; that it was honourable and good to have hope, and to question the world’s accepted truths.
He deserved to know he could trust his own judgment, and move on with his life.
The only salve to our wound was to seek my exoneration. And that singular power lay with my brother.
For my son, I would sacrifice my pride, my grief and rage, and ask Camelot for the acquittal I had never cared to receive.
For Yvain, my one faultless creation, I would speak to King Arthur, my brother, my enemy, tell my secrets and admit my own wrongs.
Whatever it took to free Yvain of his mother’s curse.
No more games, no more concealment, no more lies. I would never be worthy of any miracle, until I had told every last truth.