Chapter 36
The next day, I sought Alys and Tressa in their chambers overlooking the physic garden.
“Come with me,” I said. “There’s something I need to show you.”
We walked the lake path in a mix of quiet talk and companionable silence, a balm to the nervous tension that came with change. All I wanted was for them to have the truth about everything I had done, even though I should have told them months before.
They gasped in unison as we emerged, the lake calm and shining in greeting, showing off its richest dark-blue hue.
“Look at this place.” Tressa pointed excitedly at the pair of apple trees. “No wonder their fruit makes my very best cyser.”
Alys took in her surroundings with a quiet awe. “I can see why you come here all the time, cariad.”
“You will understand even more in a moment,” I said. “What you will see may come as a shock, but it’s long past time you should know.”
They regarded me in confusion, so I hurried beneath the willow before I could change my mind.
“Accolon,” I called out. “I’m here.”
I saw Alys grip Tressa’s arm, but they stayed silent, anticipation vibrating between us. Under the willow, nothing happened.
Impatient, I walked around the tree, finding only the weeping leaves and the swaying shadows they cast. The wind caught in the hollow of the valley, rattling through the woodland with a low howl.
Frustrated, I raised my hands and pulled the gust to a halt, blanketing the lake with a profound silence.
“Accolon, are you there?” I called again.
I listened intently, my heightened senses alert to the soft lap of the water against the lakeshore, the skitter of leaves as an alarmed wood pigeon broke free of its roosting place, the faint rasp of a grasshopper in a sun spot.
“If you are in jest, this isn’t funny,” I said. “Come now—it’s important.”
Still nothing. The wind tugged away from my grip and I let it go, feeling it careen out of the valley.
“Morgan?” Alys’s voice startled me. “What’s happening?”
I sighed and faced them. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” I said. “Accolon is here.”
“Here, as in alive?” Tressa enquired.
“Yes. No. It’s hard to explain,” I said. “Last autumn, with his heart and the Shroud of Tithonus—I raised him. As I always swore I would.”
“How long ago?” Alys exclaimed. “Are you saying he’s been living up here?”
“That’s where it becomes tricky,” I said. “He’s not whole. We cannot touch in any usual way. He has no physical needs. I’ve yearned to tell you both, but he didn’t want to upset anyone in the household, and I haven’t yet found a way of fixing what I’ve done.”
Neither of them said a word. I swung around and called him twice more, my voice a little wilder each time, walking back and forth in rising frustration.
“Why doesn’t he come?” I hissed.
Eventually, Alys came and halted me. “It’s all right,” she said. “If you say he’s here, then he’s here.”
Tressa nodded. “It doesn’t matter if we can see him or not.”
I recoiled at their platitudes. “He’s here, I swear,” I insisted. “He looks perfectly formed aside from being intangible. We talk for hours, and he remembers everything. He feels and thinks how he always has. It’s him.”
“We believe you, Morgan,” Alys said gently. “Of course we do. Let’s go back to the house and discuss it there.”
In their alarmed faces I saw the situation clearly: they loved me and wanted it to be true but were concerned. Never before had I made such a pronouncement of my skills and failed to display proof.
“No,” I said, drawing away from Alys’s touch. “You should go back to the house. Don’t wait for me.”
She began to protest, but I shook my head, trying not to sound how I felt.
“I’m fine, dear heart,” I said. “I just need to understand what’s happened. I’ll be along in a little while.”
They hesitated, then Tressa took Alys’s hand and led her away into the trees. I listened to their footsteps fading, gazing at the sky-tinged lake, the sunlight thick as honey across the water.
“Morgan?”
The voice made me jump, and I spun around to see Accolon emerging from the weeping willow leaves, glowing with love as he always did. When he saw my expression, his smile dropped. “Is something wrong?”
“Where have you been?” I said. “I’ve been calling endlessly for you.”
“I was here,” he replied. “I heard you and tried to come forth, but for some reason I couldn’t. It was strange.”
“I brought Alys and Tressa to see you,” I said. “I couldn’t lie to them any longer. You didn’t come, and now they think I’ve invented the whole thing.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he replied. “They trust you and know what you’re capable of. Bring them again in a few days—I will try harder.”
“So you don’t mind that I brought them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Of course not. It’s been long enough.”
His willingness bolstered my spirit, but it was no good. Twice more, Alys and Tressa returned to the lake with me and I called for Accolon to no avail. Twice more they walked away, trailing worry for me in their wake, only for him to appear again, bringing both relief and a growing sense of doubt.
Are you real? I wanted to ask him. All this time, have you been my madness?
*
Soon enough, winter loomed again, with its short grey days and long darknesses, spindly trees scratching at the skies as if they would never again bear leaf or fruit.
When it became so cold the lake froze over, Accolon urged me to keep indoors once more, but in the wake of Alys and Tressa’s abortive visits and the reawakening of my failures, the thought of leaving him was harder than it had ever been. Dramatic action seemed my only refuge.
“I think it’s time for you to come down to the house,” I told him. “I don’t want to endure another winter without you, and if you are there, it will be easier for me to seek answers to making you whole.”
I had expected some doubt, but instead he bit his lip and let out a long, guilty sigh.
“I’m sorry, Morgan,” he said. “I can’t.”
“You need not see anyone for now,” I replied. “But the household will not fear this. They love you, they honour your memory—they will accept you.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that. I would love to come home. In truth, I have always been ready. I can’t come with you because I am trapped here.”
“Trapped?” I repeated. “As in, at the lake?”
“Not even that far,” he said. “I cannot move much beyond this tree.”
I opened my mouth to argue: surely, in the many months I had been visiting him, we had walked the curve of the lakeshore, at least stood before our apple trees.
But hard as I tried, I could not recall one instance.
We had only ever stayed near the willow, mostly between the trunk and the water’s edge.
All our time had been spent in fascinated talk, or with our essences entwined, travelling only through our memories.
I put a hand to my forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” he said hopelessly. “Part of me thought you knew. And another part…thought it might change. If I moved around, practised, became stronger.”
His expression was wretched, but I wasn’t ready to let hope slip away.
“I’m here now. Perhaps it will work if you try again.” I hurried off, pausing half a bowshot away, near the path to the house. “Come here.”
Reluctantly, Accolon ducked his head and walked towards me. A few yards outside the weeping branches, his form faded, edges dissipating into starry dust.
“No, stop,” I said. “Don’t vanish.”
I felt my blood grow cold as he retreated, his image strengthening until he looked himself again: almost whole, but glittering faintly. His face was riven with sorrow.
“I’m sorry, mon coeur,” he said. “I’ve tried everything since the beginning, and there is no change. When I stray too far, I begin to fade. It feels as though I am losing hold of myself, that I will cease to be. Until I go back to the willow.”
“The magic,” I murmured. “The burial site at the roots. The resurrection must have bound you to the tree.”
I went and put my hand on the bark, partly to see if any feeling came from it. None reached me, but my mind was jangling like chains.
“I thought you not being corporeal was terrible enough,” I said. “But to be trapped here…Dear God, what have I wrought?”
Panic hit me like a charging horse, kicking the breath from my body. In my desperation to resurrect him, I had gone beyond failure and turned it into an act of cruelty. I leaned heavily against the willow trunk, heart racing and my vision narrowing to darkness.
A sound broke into my racing thoughts: Morgan, Morgan, Morgan.
Accolon’s voice, repeating my name. The calming rhythm of it soaked into me, and when I opened my eyes, he was there, face concerned but his presence reassuring.
I let him wrap his warmth around my cold bones, absorbing his love, his assurance, until I felt like myself again—Morgan le Fay, the name I bore because his faith had bestowed it.
We gazed at one another, enraptured, melancholy. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”
“How can it be?” I replied. “No matter what I try, I keep finding ways to ruin you.”
“Morgan, no—” he began, but I could not bear his understanding, his adoring, beautiful face. He had always, always, deserved so much better.
I pulled myself away from his presence, the comfort I had no right to claim. “I’m sorry,” I said, and left him beneath the willow tree, unable to follow.
*
Hindered by winter and awash with new grief, I returned to the worktable with Alys and Tressa. We had existed within a kind but tentative mood, able to speak on everything but the lake, the question of my sanity hanging over us like a great spectre.
Eventually, as dreary February finally gave way to mercurial March, the news came that my prisoner had relinquished his paints and brushes.
In the months since I had been in Lancelot’s chamber, he had continued to paint, working all the hours that daylight and additional candles would allow, though I never asked Tressa what she saw on the walls.