Chapter 56 #2
“I was battling three knights with lance and sword, and was knocked from my horse,” he continued.
“Yvain must have seen me from across the field, because immediately he came, leaping from his destrier and picking me up off the ground. He was helping me remount when the three knights set upon him, but dealt with them valiantly as I righted myself. We drove them bleeding into the mud, but they had distracted us and… ” He swallowed hard, withstanding another shiver.
“I swung around as fast as I could, but… ”
I couldn’t bear it anymore. “What happened, Arthur? How did my son die?”
He held me tighter. “Mordred rode up with his sword held high. He was heading for me, but your brave, honourable son put his body in the horse’s path to slow him down.
Yvain swerved and parried but could not block the blow in time.
Mordred cleaved him through the skull.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. “He fell at once, like a stone, he… ”
I let myself lean into him, finding the words to comfort us both. “It was instantaneous,” I managed. “He wouldn’t have known, or felt any pain.”
Arthur shook his head, as if the notion was intolerable. “I gave chase, but that godforsaken coward rode off into the trees. My men were crying out for command—I had to let him go. Mordred fleeing meant the battle ended without firm resolution.”
He grabbed my hands and stared directly into my eyes. “That was the moment, Morgan. Death was upon me, and Yvain stood in Fate’s way. I escaped, but I wish it had never happened.”
“Don’t say that,” I said fiercely. “Yvain loved you, Arthur. If you had asked him, he wouldn’t have hesitated to give his life for yours. Let his courage, his sacrifice, mean something.”
He nodded, but released me and put his head in his hands, kinglike calm fracturing.
“What was this all for? Yvain is dead, Gawain already gone. Kay—who I swore to Mother and Father I would always keep safe—was slain in Mordred’s knavish attacks across the Channel, fighting for my sake.
What will I do now, without my brother?”
I thought I had no heart left to shatter until he spoke Kay’s name. I put my arms back around him and Arthur did the same, holding us together.
“Sister,” he said. “How are we supposed to survive all this?”
“I don’t know” was all I could say. “I don’t know.”
We stayed that way for a long time, clouds outside scudding across the light as if days and nights were passing without end. I was lost in a trance of grief when Arthur sat up, his eyes blazing with fury and purpose.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said. “Mordred must die. For Yvain, for Kay and every soul he has slain, and to avenge what he has done to Camelot. I will ride to where he lays his cursed head, wake him from sleep and cut him to pieces. For you and me both.”
The idea ran through my veins like molten steel, searing to hardness as it went. I wanted this—a savage and bloody punishment for the one who had killed my son, denying Yvain and me our hopeful future. I wanted revenge for my first-born child, for Arthur in his grief and most of all for myself.
My brother stood up, pacing before the bonfire with a febrile intensity, as ready to act as I was. “Come, we must go. There is no time to waste.” He held his hand out and I let him pull me to my feet. “You will ride with me, bear witness to the justice I will serve.”
His eyes shone unnaturally bright, our shared rage turning a grief-stricken impulse into real and deadly action. Within a few hours and the ring of blades, this could all be over.
My brother was already striding away, towards his decision. I closed my eyes and released the taut breath in my chest, letting loose the furious need to react, the temptation to choose vengeance over everything, at any cost.
“No, Arthur,” I said. “This is not how your life ends.”
He stopped and looked back at me. “What do you mean?”
“You have transcended your destiny once,” I said. “Right now you are free—a miracle of your will over the chains of Fate. But to keep returning to the moment of your destruction is ensuring the inevitable. The prophecy will come true if you insist that obeying it is the only way your life can be.”
Arthur paused, then shook his head vehemently. “I have to face Mordred—he must die for what he’s done. Prophecy or not, I choose this. I decide when to stare down my fate. There is no other way.”
“Yes, brother, there is,” I said. “Avalon.”
The word arrested him, as if he had heard the summoning toll of a bell.
“Avalon?” he said. “I know the name, though not why. What is it to me?”
“Everything, if you choose your future,” I said.
“Avalon, Ynys Afallach, is an island halfway between this world and the other, made from fairy magic. Ninianne of the Lake and I will go there soon to live and study, gain in wisdom. Because of Merlin’s prophecy, she believed you would die at Salisbury Plain.
She was supposed to tell you of Avalon before the battle and ask if you wished to be conveyed there upon your death, where I would gradually heal you back to life. ”
Arthur stood like a statue, his face wreathed in confusion. “If I had died, I would have gone to this island to be…resurrected?”
I nodded. “It would have been your choice, but yes. Now, you have defied prophecy, but you can still choose eternity. Sail for Avalon, rest awhile, rebuild your body and mind, and consider your future. You are no longer in a duel with death.”
“You mean…walk away? From my kingdom, my Crown?” Arthur stared at me—stubborn, fierce, his doubt and duty galloping at one another in a relentless joust charge. “If I lose this war, accept defeat, then how will that help the realm?”
It raised a bittersweet amusement in me; he had never known how to lose a fight, just as I had never learned to walk away from one. I saw then that he was being truthful when he told me that he never feared death. My formidable brother was only afraid to die in vain.
“I cannot answer that,” I said. “I can only advise what I think is coming. The kingdom you built, and the shining era you created with it, is over. All these years you have been fighting for your ideals, and you did everything you could. Camelot was a beautiful dream, and that perfection was why it could never last. It is already history.”
Arthur cast his gaze over the remnants of the Round Table, then dropped again onto the dais steps, hand to his forehead. I sat beside him, unable to read his mood.
“They say he is my son,” he said unexpectedly. “Mordred.”
I nodded slowly, unsure what was best to impart. “It looks that way.”
Arthur shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, relieving us of the subject. It was too much, in that moment, to contemplate.
“How can this all be happening, Morgan?” He looked up at me with pleading eyes. “Give me your wisdom, sister. What happens to my country if I go to Avalon?”
Over time, my willingness to tell harsh truths had gone in and out like the tides, but we were one mind now. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Nothing,” I said. “The country will survive. Lancelot is on his way. He will lament that he could not come to your aid in time, but will finish what you began, defeat Mordred’s remaining forces and allow the kingdom to start anew.”
In a heartbeat, his face ran through more seasons of emotion than I could count: astonishment, pride, regret, deep affection. “Lancelot is coming? He would do this?”
“Of course,” I said. “His honour and love have always resided with you.”
The thought of Lancelot’s grace left him speechless, but I felt his spirits rise with his best knight’s act of faith. He put his chin in his hand, and for a long time, he sat in contemplative silence, the past and future turning over in his mind like a coin.
Suddenly, Arthur sat upright, decision ringing in the air like a drawn sword.
“Could you still heal me if I died?” he asked. “If I choose to do battle one more time and fall, is there a way back?”
“I cannot resurrect you in the way Merlin promised,” I replied.
“There will be no flash of heavenly light, or appearing on the battlefield, ready to take back your crown. There is no coming back to this day, this time. But I will heal you, Arthur. It will take many days and months and much work, for myself and us together, but at my hands you will live again. You will be ready for any future you choose.”
“What will that mean—the future?”
“To do this is to have a second chance, to learn from our mistakes and succeed anew,” I said.
“You will be stronger, wiser, able to answer any challenge. If you wish, you will see your country again, and have the power to return when Britain needs you most. You and I will have all the hours we need to talk and heal and forgive one another. But for that, you have to make the difficult choice now and bring this time to an end.”
He nodded, though I could feel he was being brave about it. Who would he be in all that time away? What would his name mean to anyone?
“I believe you, sister,” he said. “I want to choose, to live, to seek wisdom and become better. But if I leave this all behind now without conclusion, will I have done the right thing? How will I know if it is an act for the greater good?”
“Because there is a cost to being extraordinary,” I said, “and this is the debt. By choosing Avalon, you will be showing the world how to let go of one era and find its way safely into another. Your legacy will be one of hope.”
“Hope,” he considered. “I would like that.”
I stood up and held out my hands. Rising, he took them, and I drew us together in the manner of taking an oath.
In the quiet of Camelot’s Great Hall, we reached into ourselves for the bond that years and circumstance had not been able to sever: the wild blue sea of Tintagel, and the wind that makes the waves.
“We can do this, Arthur,” I said. “Together, we can be eternal, if you trust me.”
My brother regarded me with new certainty, calm and regal; so like our mother. “I trust you, Morgan. But in turn, you have to trust me.”
Drawing his hands out of mine, he stepped back and reached down into the shadows beside the dais. When he rose again, he was gripping a sleek blade, golden hilt glowing in his hand.
“Hope can flourish only when I have fulfilled my duty to this realm,” he said.
“No one else must die for this cause. If Mordred is my creation, then I will be the one to right this wrong. For the kingdom, those I love and all who gave their lives—this ends at Camlann. Then you and I begin again, in Avalon.”
With a long-held proficiency, my brother swung Excalibur up and held his legendary sword before him, the blade gleaming in his serene grey eyes.
“For All Britain,” he said, “I will finish this.”
And for the first time since the moment of his birth, King Arthur chose his own future.