Chapter 36 #2
“He’s finished?” I said, when Tressa told us. “For good?”
“So it seems,” she replied. “Though there is still space on the walls. He simply left his supplies in a pile and declared he was no longer in need of them.”
It intrigued me less than I thought it would.
As spring blew in, I was once again frequenting the lake, steeping myself in memory with Accolon, but my escape from the world did little to assuage my hopelessness and growing despair.
It was as though I had returned to the ways of before, the pain of my long-ago losses renewed and searing, like a dragon rising from slumber.
Of course, I told no one, but it was the worst I had felt in a very long time.
However, I had forgotten how things can continue to get worse, until one day near the equinox, when Alys and Tressa came to the turret and stood before my desk.
At their concerned looks, I assumed they were finally bringing me their doubts on my soundness of mind, and felt immediately weary. I had no recourse, after all.
Instead, Alys stepped forwards and handed me a letter. “From Queen Elaine,” she said solemnly. Their seriousness and ceremony confused me, but upon taking the missive, I saw the reason. Elaine had used her official Royal Seal, and the wax was black.
Pulse quickening, I tore the letter open.
Dearest Morgan, she wrote. I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this. Our sister, Morgause, is dead. Taken before her time, in terrible, unexpected circumstances.
I read it, then read it several more times. Morgause was gone, any chance we would someday meet again snatched away forever. How many of those I loved would be out of my reach before I could no longer stand it?
From my grieving heart to yours, these are the worst words I have ever had to write, but you deserve the bald and awful truth, the letter went on. She was beheaded. Killed by one of her own sons.
A cry of horror escaped me. Abruptly, I pushed up from my chair and walked away from the desk, clutching the letter to my hollowed heart.
“Cariad, what is it?” Alys asked.
“My sister Morgause… ” I managed. “She’s dead.”
They rushed over at once, but I waved them away. “It’s all right—do not fuss. I just…need to lie down, be alone.”
Half in a trance, I went to my bedchamber and changed into a long blue robe.
I made myself lie on the bed, letter grasped in my hand, but could not keep still, or bear to read the rest of what Elaine had written.
Instead, I found myself back on the stairs, wandering various hallways until cool air touched my skin and I saw I had come to the secluded courtyard outside mine and Accolon’s former bedchamber.
It was early evening, and still light enough to show the murals painted a year ago, a vibrant depiction of Aeneas’s triumphs and trials.
Shuddering, I sank down upon the stone bench where we often used to sit to watch the sunset or stars.
Sometimes, Accolon would pour us wine and bring blankets, and we would cocoon ourselves there, talking and laughing, savouring our time alone together as true lovers do. Another time, another life long gone.
I looked at the letter in my hand and made myself read.
From what I can gather, Elaine wrote, Morgause had a lover, and her son Sir Gaheris took exception. He came upon them together, and in anger or jealousy, he killed her. The lover escaped and ran directly to Camelot with the news. One would hope the outcome would be a just punishment.
I did not share Elaine’s assumption. Arthur and Morgause had been at odds for decades due to King Lot’s rebellion, but her children were sworn to Camelot’s cause. The knightly son would not be sacrificed for the sake of the estranged mother, already dead.
A yellow rose vine had blossomed early along the wall, giving off a sweet, evocative scent: of my own mother and the rose oil she used in her bath; the feeling of being wrapped in her embrace and the sound of my father’s laugh; of Elaine and Morgause and our childhood, when the Cornish sun shone upon us and happiness was all we knew.
Killed by her own son. How could we, as women, exist in a world where such things were possible without losing every semblance of hope? No matter what we did—whether a shrewd, dutiful queen or a rebel witch in exile, however much rank, knowledge or power we held—always our survival was in question.
All my life, I had fought against the world’s hostilities.
I had tried chaos, strategy, and held the forces of destruction in my hands, but it had never been enough to cause the slightest tremor in the status quo.
I had trapped the world’s greatest knight in the room behind me to make Camelot suffer, and all he had done was paint its golden image all over my walls.
When the game was already decided, there was no victory, or true vengeance, to be had.
But there could be punishment. I looked to the window at my shoulder, its candles already snuffed out, its resident sleeping in undeserving peace.
Lancelot had dared sully my domain, but it was my Vale of No Return, its fate mine to decide.
Here, I did not have to bow to Camelot’s curse.
What was done could, and must, be destroyed.
When I rose again, the sky was coal black, the air woven with textures of night. Flint on steel, I told myself, and lit fire in the palm of my hand.