Chapter 41
A few days later, I returned to the lake.
In between, I sat down with Alys and Tressa and told them everything: the full story of Arthur and Accolon’s duel; what occurred between me and Lancelot, and how my discovery came from his urging; my conversation with Ninianne that proved what I had seen.
After our previous difficulties, it was hard to explain the vision and memory-walking, even as they listened without judgment or qualm, but my fear of misunderstanding was unfounded.
“When we said we believed you the first time, we did,” Alys said, alongside Tressa’s vigorous agreement. “It was your own stubbornness that convinced you otherwise, never anything we felt.”
They were right, of course. My withdrawal from them was by my own design, caused by unspoken sadness and the secrecy I built around it. Those days, I hoped, were over.
However, if any doubts of my reality did remain, they left me when I reached Llyn Glas and saw Accolon.
He stood at the willow’s farthest edge, watching the path with a rare impatience, as if he had been waiting since I left.
Upon seeing me, he adjusted his concerned demeanour to a gentle smile, and his consideration was so natural, so like him, that my heart was struck by a sudden, expansive joy. He had never been more real.
“Well,” I said as I reached him, “at least I am no longer insane. You truly are here.”
He did not share my lightness. “Morgan, sacredieu,” he said dramatically. “My death—I thought you knew. All this time, you believed King Arthur killed me on purpose? I would never have let you think such a thing.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I was the one who decided we should not speak of Arthur, Camelot. In my desperation to preserve our happiness, I wanted us to remember only the good.”
The worry lines between his brows faded slightly, but not altogether. “Yet what you must have endured, believing such a thing of your brother…You always said that every cure can also be poison if left unobserved.”
I smiled at his artfulness, knowing I could hardly argue with myself. “I thought it was all for the best, though I see how it was a mistake,” I admitted. “If you are willing, we should speak on it all now, until everything is in the open.”
At last, he reached for me with his warmth and I accepted it gratefully, the intangible comfort of his embrace.
“I would like that very much,” he said.
So that is what we did; Accolon and I sat beneath the willow and talked as the sun made its arc across the clear spring sky.
First, I told him about my following him to Camelot and everything that happened there: of Guinevere, Urien and Yvain; the fateful bier and Arthur’s harsh, lying message; of my arrest, escape and visit to his body in St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
I explained my subsequent confrontation with Arthur in the abbey, before I took Excalibur’s scabbard and threw it into a lake.
In turn, Accolon recounted his days after leaving Belle Garde, the overjoyed reception Arthur gave him when he returned to Camelot and the time they spent together in friendship; their long talks during the hunting trip, before and after my arrogant former husband arrived, of whom Accolon had deservedly little to say.
“Away from the court, the King and I spoke freely, candidly,” he said. “Of course, I did not tell him of us, but the conversation came around to you several times. Your brother missed you, Morgan. That is the first thing I was going to tell you when I came home.”
“But you never came home,” I said quietly. “To me, it doesn’t matter what Arthur felt, in the wake of what he did.”
He did not dispute it, so I continued my story in the aftermath of his death: Sir Manassen’s oath of loyalty, our plans to disrupt Camelot, every act of chaos and destruction I had committed in the name of vengeance.
I had long ago told him of the magpies and storms, and been honest about my searing despair and dark, sleepless moods; the inconsequential knights I had gone to bed with, and how I had held myself remote from those I loved.
He had taken it all with his usual understanding, but I had not told him where my actions had originated, the reasons for the war of rage and grief that burned around everything I did.
“I wanted Arthur to suffer,” I admitted. “True, I wanted Camelot, Guinevere and the entire court to feel my wrath, but most of all I wanted my brother punished. I wanted him to hurt, to regret and never know peace, because of what he had done to you.”
Accolon listened with patient consideration.
“But King Arthur did not do what you thought he did,” he said.
“If we had known we were fighting one another, it would never have happened. Yes, you and he had other troubles, but if your revenge was based on his killing me with a cold heart, then it was never true.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not sure it makes a difference,” I said. “I still lost you. I bore your death as a punishment because Arthur lied about his actions. He still went to war with me when he knew full well what he had done.”
“Bien s?r, so he did, and you have every right to be angry with him,” Accolon said. “Yet for some reason, you came and asked about my death, wanting to solve something. If it makes no difference, I cannot help but wonder why.”
His logic struck me with a discomfort I did not expect. Needing to move, I stood up and he followed, watching me rove within the willow leaves.
“Lancelot,” I muttered. “He was the one who began all of this.”
“Ah yes,” Accolon said archly. “Sir Lancelot du Lac, Camelot’s complicated champion. He looms large in your telling of the past few years.”
“He tends to have that effect” was my careless reply, but I felt an errant flutter beneath my rib cage.
Though I had been honest about my dealings with Lancelot—the kidnappings, the sparring and charged encounters, our almost-consummation—there remained a whisper of a story left incomplete. He was more than just someone to blame.
“In our last argument, Lancelot told me there was something I did not know,” I continued.
“He told me I wasn’t being true to myself, and to seek out what happened.
Without his interference in my life, I may never have known about your battle with Arthur.
Still, I do not know why he gave me the key to the truth, or wanted me to have it.
More than that, I don’t understand why I listened to him.
Why I wanted to believe, and do what he said. ”
Accolon shrugged. “It seems simple to me. You felt something for him.”
“Not in that way,” I said quickly, but it was unnecessary; he had never needed my reassurance.
“I mean, yes, I felt something—many things—for Lancelot, all of it real, but the way we behaved felt like madness. Compelling, but exhausting. We barely gave one another a moment’s peace.
Even in the midst of it, I never quite understood our fascination. ”
He took a few thoughtful steps towards me, bottom lip caught between his teeth. “Have you ever considered,” he said eventually, “that your fascination was not as much for Sir Lancelot as for his connection to King Arthur?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Perhaps his closeness to your brother reminds you of what you lost,” Accolon replied.
“You said yourself King Arthur loves this knight despite being wronged by him, yet he could not give you the same grace. In challenging Sir Lancelot, perhaps you were battling your love for your brother, and the pain that came with it.”
The notion gave me pause, a strange and labyrinthine idea, but with the weight of epiphany. Nothing could quite encapsulate what Lancelot and I had been, but I believed we had been searching for something in one another. The answer being Arthur seemed oddly fitting.
I gazed at Accolon in wonder, and his storm-blue eyes captured me back, decades of intimacy contained in this moment of love and enlightenment.
“Once, long ago,” I said softly, “Manassen said that you would want me to find love, another person to pass my life with.” I lifted a hand and traced his silver-gold edges. “But nothing, no one, has ever come close.”
His top lip curled into the smile I first saw on him all those years ago, charming, only half modest. “Oui, but of course,” he replied. “It is my curse to be irreplaceable.”
It made me laugh, and our eyes held for so long we almost slipped into memory. There was so much more for us to explore now, and I wanted nothing more than to drift away with him. But Accolon would not let me answer my impulse for distraction.
“Alors, what of you, Morgan?” he asked. “Beyond all of the complexities, there is only one question—where do you stand now, in your heart, with King Arthur?”
To this, I did not have a clear answer. “In what way?” I asked. “Why would anything have changed?”
“Why should it not?” he countered. “What you learned has changed you, cast your life in a different light. In your studies, when you discover something you did not know before, do you simply ignore it, or look at your viewpoint anew?”
“It’s hardly the same thing,” I said. “The result of what happened doesn’t change, no matter what I’ve learned.”
“Maybe,” Accolon said. “But when you flew up to this lake and asked if I would show you my death, you were not seeking the riddle of Sir Lancelot, or even my own story. You were seeking your brother.”
I fell silent, wondering if it was true. If I had indeed gone there and insisted we speak of it all because Accolon was the only one who could make me listen to my own heart when all else was noise. Perhaps that did mean something.
“You always said the bond you and he shared went beyond conflict,” he continued. “Don’t you think King Arthur at least deserves to know that you now have the whole truth?”
For the first time, his languid, fair-minded logic struck me with irritation.
“This is too much,” I said. “Am I simply supposed to reverse how I feel about my brother? Arthur killed you, Accolon. How can you not hate him?”
To my surprise, he laughed, as if I had just told him a good joke.
“Mon coeur,” he said. “You don’t hate him either.”
I stared at him, aghast. “Have you not listened to a word I’ve said?”
His voice and face dropped to seriousness.
“Every word, Morgan, do not mistake me. There is nothing I wish more than that I had been here, that none of it happened at all. Just because I have no reason to hate King Arthur does not mean he hasn’t hurt you deeply.
Nevertheless, you do not hate him. You never have, in your heart. ”
I wanted to dispute it, but my feelings towards Arthur had become a blurred, uncertain thing, a sand dune shifting beneath my feet. There was so much he had done to me, damage that a hundred lifetimes might not heal, but the strike that had finally torn us asunder, my brother was not guilty of.
There was always a way back for us, I had told him, until you killed Accolon.
What did that mean, now that the foundation I had based my vengeance on had been shaken into ruins? Did I even want to think of my brother in a different way?
I sighed; it was all too much to contemplate. Possibly, it always would be.
“It’s too late,” I said. “Even if either of us were inclined, there’s not enough time in this world for Arthur and me to repair our bond, or rebuild the trust that has been lost. What’s more—I swore vengeance on Camelot.
For your sake, and my own. The oath I made to avenge you has been my survival, my whole life for years. It cannot be undone.”
I walked to the water’s edge and gazed at the lake, now touched with the first gold of sunset. Hours had gone by, and I was no closer to understanding than when we began.
Accolon joined me before the gleaming blue, saying nothing, but I felt his presence deep in my body, his love and loyalty no matter what I chose.
“What are you thinking?” I asked him.
He let out a long breath. “About us, when we saw one another again in Camelot, after nine years of separation. And my heart, which you kept safe and returned to life after sixteen years of waiting. I am on your side, always, but some things are only too late if you want them to be.”
The truth of it played an aching note in my chest. I turned to Accolon and we faced one another, his calm a cool breeze across my confusion.
“I made a vow,” I said. “How can I go back on everything I swore to you, to myself? Where—and who—would I be?”
“You will be Morgan le Fay,” he replied.
“Nothing you do can change that. But do not forget everything you are. True, you have done remarkable things with your defiance, but what you do not remember are the wonders that have happened when you have let yourself reconsider your own view. A stubborn heart is brave, but change is just as courageous. You and I would not be here now, in this moment, amidst our life together, if you had looked at me in Camelot and not changed your mind.”
He lifted one of his fine, clever hands and I met his fingers with my own, warmth without touch, but real now, certain and true. All along, I had known it was him.
“Sometimes,” Accolon said, “love is greater than the oaths we have sworn.”