Chapter 38
For a moment, his words were exhilarating.
In all of our time together, he had never asked something of me in this way, with such simplicity, its subtle chord of need, and the sound charmed, as if it were a spell of my own making. I could not tear my eyes from his face. Nor could I afford to forget myself.
“And what if I do want to stay,” I said. “Say I heeded you and did not go—what then? Why now, in the depths of your heart, do you ask this of me?”
I was not powerless; I knew that, just as I knew this had to come to an end. Yet if Lancelot moved to draw me back to him, I wasn’t certain I could resist us a second time.
But, in his unpredictable way, he had heard my voice and decided to save us both. He stepped back and held up acquiescent hands.
“Not for that reason, I swear it,” he said. “We have parted and so we will remain. But just…stay until dawn has broken. There is so much more to say.”
The light in his eyes, too, had changed—no longer bright with hunger, but beseeching, needful of a different type of connection.
“How can there be?” I asked, but it was more curiosity than dismissal. “Until dawn, then. Not a moment beyond.”
He sighed in relief. “I will never ask anything more of you. First, let me wash and put on a shirt and clean breeches.”
Mutely, I nodded, and he retreated to the washstand at the back of the room.
I went to the nearest window and sat down inside the embrasure, taking in the deep twilight beyond my reflection.
I listened to the splash of water poured into a bowl in the chamber, the hiss of skin on skin as Lancelot scrubbed his blood away.
Soon came the whisper of cloth as he dressed in the clean shirt and breeches Tressa left for him daily.
I heard the chime of a chain as he hung Guinevere’s emerald back around his neck.
His footsteps padded closer, but he never appeared before me. I reached out with my senses and discerned him through several feet of stone, settling in the window seat just behind, until we were seated back to back.
“May I ask you a question?”
The deep, clear voice prickled at the nape of my neck; now cleansed, he sounded like himself again.
“Of course,” I replied.
“The gold coin you always wear,” he said. “Why?”
“For the same reason you wear that emerald ring. It means a great deal to me.” I drew out the Gaulish coin and clasped it in my palm. “We are all carrying something.”
He sighed, and I felt it as feathers across my skin.
“How long have you known?” he asked. “That I have healing blood.”
“Some time. Since we first met, almost.”
I expected a burst of temper, but there came only more pensive quiet. I resisted the impulse to seek his face and see what was written there.
Eventually, he said. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Would you have wanted to hear it?” I countered. “From me, of all people?”
He considered it awhile. “No, I would not,” he said slowly. “Back then, at least. Now, I am grateful.”
That his unguardedness still had the power to jolt my heart was both a revelation and completely expected. Lancelot’s unpredictability would always carry a thrill.
“Nevertheless, I should have told you earlier,” I said. “It wasn’t my secret to keep.”
I felt his pause, his nod of acceptance. Then, quietly, “You called it a miracle.”
“It is,” I said. “In its potential, at least.”
“Then what does it mean for me?”
“I cannot say, beyond it being the reason you heal quickly from your injuries. I have not much observed you in the outside world.”
“It’s your own skill, is it not?” Lancelot said. “I could tell you how a man might improve his jousting without facing him down myself.”
“But you cannot tell how good a rider he is without seeing him ahorse,” I pointed out. “Without teaching you, I can only advise from a general point of view. Use what I have already shown you, open your mind to your senses and go from there.”
A tremor of impatience reached me; he was so used to being good at everything, he could not imagine needing to learn from a position of absolute deficiency.
“Is that what you wanted—to teach me?” he said, a slight tension in his voice. “To induct me into your ways?”
“I did once, maybe. I wanted to enlighten you, expand your mind, bend you until you viewed the world a different way. Amongst other things.”
“And now?”
“Now, I am done with that.”
I turned my face back to the window. Outside, a sliver of gold had just broached the horizon. Dawn: we were almost concluded. “But know this,” I added. “You are more than Camelot allows you to be.”
The word, the place it conjured, hung between us, invasive but unavoidable.
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter,” Lancelot replied. “I need nothing more—nor should anyone else. King Arthur built Camelot in honour and hope, for the sake of the greater good. A future where anything is possible.”
“I know,” I said. “I was there when it began.”
“Yes, and at one time, it was all you wanted too,” he said. “To stand beside your brother, fighting for his ideals as I do. It is well known.”
“I don’t deny it,” I replied. “Yet unlike for you, it was never so simple as falling in love with Camelot’s promises, or following my own noble purpose.”
It silenced him for a while, so I watched the light creep up the sky and did not try to sense what he was thinking.
Eventually, he asked, “What was it like? In those early days?”
“I believed in it,” I said. “Camelot’s ways weren’t perfect—what means of government is?
But I supported the possibilities because of Arthur.
I thought if he could accept the complications of life beyond the boundaries Merlin had given him, then he could do anything.
I loved him—we loved and trusted one another. ”
“But you left,” Lancelot said. “You walked away from the King, his vision, the privilege you held. All of it. You chose yourself above the greater good.”
It wasn’t quite a condemnation, but the heat of irritation crept under my skin.
“I never said it was easy to leave,” I said tersely.
“The fact that I didn’t return—the reason I couldn’t—is none of your business.
My brother made mistakes, I made them—none of that can be undone.
Perfect, unquestioning loyalty is impossible, but who knows that better than you? ”
I felt him tense beyond the wall; I had dared mention what he had painted so fervently but refused to ever speak aloud.
“I love King Arthur more than any man on God’s earth,” he said.
“Whatever you believe, I will not have my dedication to him questioned. Many things can be true at once, even if they are sometimes opposing.”
There, he had caught me; I could not argue with my own belief in complexity.
“Precisely,” I said. “Hence, I once wanted my life at Arthur’s side, but I was wronged and no one would accept it, so I chose exile. I chose love and freedom, whereas you are too enraptured to break away. The Camelot you can’t escape, I have let go.”
Lancelot gave a grim laugh. “Do not fool yourself. You came here tonight to strike my paintings off the wall because you cannot bear to be reminded. No doubt I was taken captive because King Arthur sent you away for good. You have sought vengeance upon Camelot for years because you cannot abandon the connection with the life you lost.”
It smarted like a whip lash, but I would not yield. “The reason I will keep seeking vengeance upon Camelot is because my brother murdered the man I loved.”
A sudden silence fell between us, heavy and unexpected.
It lasted so long it began to weigh on me like a steel hauberk, as if I were a duelling knight, and du Lac stood opposite with his sword drawn.
For the first time in my life, I was about to get up, leave, abandon this fight, when his voice came, low and serious.
“No, he did not,” Lancelot said. “There was no murder.”
His opening strike took the wind out of me, but I withstood him.
“I’m sure you’d call it ‘God-given justice,’ ” I spat. “It’s all the same lie.”
“Indeed not,” he insisted. “The act you punish him for, King Arthur is not guilty of. I know what plagues him, everything he blames on himself—about you, your breach, your knightly lover. The beliefs that you have built your vengeance upon are not true.”
My fury, already smouldering in my belly, caught alight. “I’ve told you, tread this route with care,” I said dangerously. “You don’t know where this began. You were not a speck of mud on the mantle of Camelot when it did.”
“Yet you believe it,” he said. “I can hear it in your voice. You feel when I am telling you the truth. Because, for our sins, I know you, Morgan le Fay, and you know me.”
Full dawn or not, our game was over. I swept out of the window seat, only to find Lancelot standing in my way, his aspect blazing and extraordinary.
“I don’t have to listen to this,” I said. “This is not confession, and I couldn’t be further from your priest.”
He stood unmoved. “If everyone deserves the truth, then so do you,” he said. “You have never once thought beyond your convictions, or considered that you are not the only one who suffers. That your brother grieves what you grieve, and always has.”
“Where do you get the gall to speak to me about my brother, as if you care for his heart, or are loyal to him?” I snarled. “You are adulterous with his wife, for God’s sake. If he could accept the truth, he would hate you far more than he has ever hated me.”
Lancelot drew up to his tremendous stature, hardening until he looked carved from marble, a towering sculpture of a god on some distant mountain.
“You think you know it all, don’t you?” he said. “About me, about her—about Camelot. About Arthur and how it is between us. Somehow, you are so certain you understand everything, when you do not even know the truth of your own life.”
“Do not concern yourself with my life,” I said. “I know myself, my purpose, and everything that’s been done to me.”
He leaned forwards, his eyes clear as winter stars.
“No, Morgan le Fay, you do not,” he said. “But for the truth you gave me, this I will give you in return. If you really want to know who you are, face your failures, your deepest pain, and seek the whole story.”
I felt it then, as his words struck my body—this was not goading or punishment, or trying to win. Lancelot was being honest. And I was not ready to admit I could hear him.
“Who are you to tell me what I should do?” I snapped. “When you cannot face what your endless cycle of honour and dishonour has made of you. If I have been living a lie, then you are a heathen far worse.”
Lancelot didn’t flinch. “So be it,” he said. “But I stand by my word. Listen to me.”
There was nothing I could say, no magic that could defeat him, no argument that could force him to withdraw the offering he was determined to sling upon my altar. Much as I wanted to deny Lancelot du Lac, he would never yield. Nor was he lying.
I glared at him, the morning light carving his figure into its brooding archangel form. His blood sang out to mine even from within the pulse in his neck, calling me towards temptation and destruction. It took all of my strength not to let us claw at one another until we were both covered in scars.
“You are a ghost,” I said, and walked away.