Of all his castles and meeting rooms, Arthur’s Great Chamber at Camelot was my favourite, both grand and comfortable, with blue-and-gold-painted rafters, an enormous hearth flanked by stone lions and an array of chairs suited to every type of meeting. A series of tapestries adorned the walls, depicting Jason’s pursuit of the Golden Fleece.
I entered without knocking, and found my brother before a long window, hands clasped behind him. He wore a blood-red tunic and the same understated coronet, his only movement the grinding swing of his jaw.
“Morgan,” he said without stirring. “Come in.”
I joined him in the embrasure, sharing the view of Camelot’s vast and busy entrance courtyard. A red steel dragon the size of a warhorse reared over the enormous main doorway, drawing stares from arriving guests. In the sky, a rare cloud drifted across the sun, darkening then re-illuminating Arthur’s modest crown. He raised a hand and rubbed his thumb against its golden edge.
“Brother,” I said, “what’s wrong?”
He gestured to the window seat. “Let’s sit.”
I perched on the cushioned sill and he sat opposite. Seriousness lay across him like a mantle of steel, and I wanted to chase it away, return us to the cheer of the night before. At length, he cleared his throat and regarded me with the direct grey gaze that was entirely our mother’s.
“This morning,” he began, “I was catching up on my private correspondence when I opened a letter from your husband. It seems King Urien wants to see his son.”
My stomach turned over. “He will attend the tournament after all?”
It was possible, I supposed; if Urien had taken to the road not long after his original refusal, Gore’s retinue could arrive within––
“No.” Arthur’s solemn voice cut through my racing thoughts. “He’s not coming to Camelot.”
“Then how does he expect to see Yvain?”
My brother said nothing. A cold creeping dread began to rise up my body. “Arthur?” I urged.
He sighed. “A royal escort is on its way to accompany Yvain to Gore. King Urien has called him home.”
A flash of fire fought with the chill. “This is Yvain’s home,” I said forcefully. “He’s not going.”
“You cannot refuse,” he replied. “And by law I cannot prevent it. The rights of the father are inviolable and absolute.”
Air caught in my lungs, eyes swimming in the unrelenting sunlight. I pushed myself out of the window seat, visions of my son rising in the shade: as I had seen him that morning, clambering across my bed to touch my nose with his and laughing as if there was no greater joy.
“He’ll be afraid,” I said. “Without me, my women. He doesn’t know anyone in Gore.”
“He won’t be afraid, I promise you. Yvain is confident, cheerful—I’ve never seen a more sociable child. You raised him that way.”
Arthur stood, a wavering tension in his stance, torn between loving brother and righteous, law-abiding king.
“He has two nurses, yes?” he continued. “They will go with him, of course, for familiarity and comfort, and report back. One word that he’s being cared for beneath the standard you set, and his father will have me to answer to.”
“His father didn’t even come to retrieve him in person,” I protested. “Yvain is my son and your nephew, not a cart of wine barrels. I don’t know Urien’s escort from the Devil.”
“You won’t have to,” Arthur said. “However many come, I will send double my own men to match them—the best in the land, loyal to me, to us. Yvain will be safe anywhere under my banner.”
“God’s wounds! Are you saying that I should accept this?”
“I’m saying your husband could have called for Yvain at any time.” He spread his hands in a calming gesture. “You knew this moment had to come, but it’s not forever. I am dedicated to my nephew’s knightly education at Camelot, and the importance of time spent with his mother. When we ride north for Michaelmas, I will call Gore to court and we will negotiate an arrangement fair to all. King Urien will be convinced.”
“Convinced!” I exclaimed. “He should have to beg me for clemency, and still it wouldn’t be enough.”
“You are distraught and rightfully so, but would you not want fairness if the situation was reversed? Despite your differences, your son is also his. Surely you cannot deny Yvain and his father deserve to know one another?”
I stared at him, wordless, defiant—maybe because I did not know the answer, or because I knew that he would not like it.
Arthur sighed. “Do not think this pleases me. It’s abrupt and uncivil, and I will tell King Urien in no uncertain terms. What we have gained in bargaining power due to his behaviour is immeasurable. But for now, you must be calm and rational—it is not as hopeless as you think.”
“I see. You think because this was bound to happen, I should not react so strongly.” My voice was sharp, turning bitter. “Perhaps if you had your own son, you would not believe it so simple.”
His eyes flashed like a drawn blade. “I know you do not mean that, sister. Indeed, I hope you do not.”
His entire being had hardened, while my form felt hot and liquid. I knew Arthur’s anger well: occasionally the same wildfire as mine; at other times, an instant, impenetrable coldness, deepening into ice. But we had never flung our fury at one another, and I felt a swift resentfulness that it was Urien who had broken our peace.
“No,” I conceded. “I don’t know what I mean.”
I sank back onto the window seat, letting my head loll against the sun-warmed wall. Arthur remained where I left him, his gaze fixed beyond me, the room, beyond us all.
Suddenly, his shoulders loosened, like snow falling from a thawing branch. With startling speed he came to me, dropping to his haunches and clasping my hands as if kneeling at prayer.
“Do you want me to go to war for this, Morgan?” he said. “Because if this is the difference between keeping our bond or losing it, then know that I will. It’s against my principles, almost certainly illegal, but if it’s the only way to retain your love and the trust we share, I will gather an army and march tomorrow.”
An image arose: Arthur’s men at Urien’s door, delivering a stark, severe message instead of my son. Gore didn’t have the men, nor its King the stomach for such a confrontation—Urien would quail and concede without opening Castle Chariot’s gates. It was the most satisfying thought I had encountered in a long time.
I looked down at my brother’s beseeching face. He would do such a thing, I believed it, but then what would he be? Just like his father, Uther Pendragon, the man I had hated more than anyone; a High King violent and unreasonable, destroying everything in his path. I had suffered it, seen first-hand what such tyrannical power could do. It was not a world I cared to live in again.
“No, brother,” I said. “Your vision for the realm is one we share, your ideals what set you apart. I would never ask you to compromise yourself for the sake of lesser men. I just wish there was a better way.”
“I know.” Arthur squeezed my hands tighter, a slight tension creasing his brow. “It’s little consolation, but…you must want things from this—from life—and…I swear if I can give them to you, then it will…be done.”
He grimaced again, the cords of his neck flexing.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Does your head trouble you?”
“No,” he said. “I just…need to know that you trust me.”
“I do.”
“I mean it, Morgan. We are bound by blood, regard…mutual affinity. Sometimes it feels like we share one mind.” He sucked in another sharp breath. “There’s…nothing more important to me than keeping us that way. But you…have to…trust me.”
A sudden guttural cry cut him off. He tore away, cradling his face in his hands.
“It is your head.” I leapt from my seat, prising the crown from around his temples. “Damn it all, Arthur. I’ve told you not to pretend with me.”
His savage headaches, which I had often healed when I arrived at Camelot, had become a rarity in the past year or so, but I knew what to do. I knelt beside him on the floor, steepling my fingers along the top of his skull, feeling for the wall of pain that I had dismantled over and again. Unusually, the source was obscured, lost within a thick, ashen fog. How he had managed to form coherent thought was a mystery, but Arthur was young and stubborn, and stronger than anyone ought to be. Still, he needed me now.
Drawing him closer, my hands held firm, pushing light through the billowing dark until I found the headache’s rocky surface, hard as a sandstone barbican. I braced the golden force against it, pulling heavy breaths and chipping at the damage until the pain gave way, stones splitting to shards, shards into dust.
Arthur’s eyes snapped open and he released a transcendent sigh. “Thank you,” he said.
I let my hands fall from his head and studied him. “This bout is extremely developed. It must have made you sick.”
“The night of my return,” he confessed. “Then again, the following morning.”
“You should have called for me,” I said.
“I know.”
He smiled wearily and I sat back, enjoying the healing’s golden warmth through my body. However, the greater my rush of success, the worse the affliction had been, and it had been so long since he’d suffered an attack. Why this; why now?
“What happened, Arthur?” I asked. “I trust you, but you have to trust me. Why did you leave?”
Arthur eased upright, rotating his neck. “Merlin,” he said. “He summoned me.”
I knew it, I thought. Who else but Merlin would Arthur run to, alone and at the slightest demand? Who else would absorb him for days, then send my brother back fogged and exhausted, with vicious headaches scraping around his skull?
I swallowed my unease. “To what end?”
He looked up, eyes sudden and silver, regarding me with the same searching scrutiny as in the Great Hall.
“Yes,” he murmured. “You are the right one…the only one.”
Before I could question him, he helped me to my feet and guided us across the room to a shadowy side table, upon which was a long rectangular object in red-and-white cloth folded thick as a tomb lid. With great care, Arthur picked it up and turned to face me.
“Please, remove the casings,” he said, and I obeyed, unwinding the layered fabric. My fingers brushed the edge of something both hard and soft, and a rush of pleasure surged up my arms, glittering into my head like a shooting star.
I gasped, but Arthur didn’t notice, his attention fixed upon the uncovered object. Across his palms lay a sleek longsword, sheathed in a jewelled scabbard. The hilt was pure gold and so bright it illuminated our darkened corner, as if sunlight had been forged into the metal. The pommel bore an inlaid image of a crown, the arcing golden crossguard carved with bold lettering that looked ancient as the land itself, but no language I had ever learned.
In one flashing movement, Arthur wrapped his hand around the grip and unsheathed the sword, revealing a shining silver blade, double edges singing of their fineness. It too seemed to contain its own light, only cooler, sharper, like the moon cutting across a lake. He tilted the weapon back and forth, its chill radiance shimmering across his face. It could not have been a new sight to him, yet he seemed transfixed by the starry steel’s sheer presence.
“Last week,” he said, “I met Merlin beyond the city gate. We travelled far and long, until he brought me to a lake crowded by trees and engulfed in mist, so large I could not see beyond it. So deep, he said, that no man could enter it without meeting certain death. We waited awhile, then the most remarkable thing happened. A woman’s arm rose from the water, brandishing a sword—this sword.”
He sighed and lowered the blade. “It sounds too fantastical, I know.”
“Not to me,” I assured him. “Go on.”
“The mist obscured the sight, but when it cleared again, a young woman stood in the middle of the lake, bearing the sword and scabbard in her hands. She was exceedingly beautiful, her hair alive like the sunset. Everything about her seemed to shine.”
Ninianne, of course; Merlin’s unfathomable fairy companion. I had not seen her for almost a decade, but our last encounter on Tintagel’s headland lived on in my mind. In one conversation she had told me the truth about Accolon’s abandonment and lied through her teeth about Arthur’s existence. She vehemently rejected the idea of being Merlin’s tool, yet did all his bidding. To know of her was to understand nothing.
“She walked towards me, atop the water,” Arthur continued. “Like a holy miracle, a myth of old, like…”
“Magic,” I murmured.
My brother smiled. “I knew you would understand.”
Only too well, I thought. I could see it: this endless lake; the billowing mist; Ninianne’s slow, captivating movements; the otherworldly glow from her skin.
“When she reached us,” Arthur continued, “she handed me the sword and spoke as if we were long acquaintances. I felt we had met somehow, but it cannot be—I would remember such a face. Then she vanished back into the mist. When I asked Merlin, he told me only that she is known as the Lady of the Lake.”
Typical of the sorcerer, to withhold for the illusion of mystery, but I would not keep his secrets.
“You have met her, in a way,” I said. “Her name is Ninianne. She delivered our mother of you, and helped Merlin carry you off.”
It struck Arthur less than I thought it would. “Merlin said she was important to my past and future. Thereafter, he would speak of nothing but the sword.”
He lifted the weapon again, turning his wrist; it glowed cold between us, lustrous and deadly. Arthur gazed at the blade as Narcissus beheld his reflection.
“What about the sword?” I asked.
“Its name is Excalibur. Merlin says it is the finest sword in existence, and I am destined to wield it. It cuts through iron as if it were flesh, never loses its edge, and holds untold power. Is it not beautiful?”
There was certainly something about this Excalibur that held Arthur rapt, but the radiating pull I felt came from the jewelled scabbard in his left hand, a siren song I could not ignore. I reached out, wanting badly to touch it again.
Arthur smiled. “Of course, my clever sister. You would succeed where I failed.”
He placed the scabbard in my hands. In contrast to the sword’s relative simplicity, it dazzled with luxury: thick, pale leather ridged with emeralds and rubies between starbursts of sapphire and diamond. I was ready for it this time, so the cascade of light did not stun, but bathed me in its lucent goodness, sending waves of tranquil power through my body. It was as if I were being remade anew: stronger, confident, vital. Invincible.
“At the lake,” he said, “Merlin asked me which of the two I deemed more important. Naturally, I said the sword—it is the symbol of a knight’s life, a king’s, how we protect what we love and shape the world to our will. Nevertheless, I was wrong. The scabbard is by far the most important of the two, and you knew it at once.”
“It’s a marvel, singing with life and power. The jewels must be enchanted.” I ran my fingertips between the gemstones. “No—the leather. Anyone who wears this would be protected better than any armour.”
Arthur beamed with brotherly pride. “Your wisdom is endless. The hide is suffused with old magic, more ancient and complex than even Merlin can explain. He who wears it cannot bleed from wounds, and is healed as he stands. In plain terms, this scabbard is worth ten Excaliburs.”
“An object that prevents death itself,” I said in wonder. “I can feel it.”
“I confess, I do not,” Arthur said. “Your learnedness, the astonishing skills you possess, allow you to sense what I cannot. Sometimes I think that if you could sit down with Merlin and entwine your intelligence with his…”
The notion cut a discordant note through the scabbard’s joyous symphony. “No,” I said. “My mind is for no one’s use but yours.”
He had suggested it before and my answer had not changed, though for the sake of our bond, I rarely spoke of how I felt about the sorcerer. But what Merlin did for Uther Pendragon led to my father’s murder and my mother’s violation and entrapment. I would never forgive him, nor spend a moment in his presence that I could avoid.
Arthur gave a bare nod and held his hand out for the scabbard. I prised the precious object away from my body and watched as he slid the sword home.
“According to Merlin,” he said, “Excalibur is essential to my strength, my reign. He said I should gird myself with it and be worthy of its great power.”
“Yet you have not worn it, nor shown it to the court. Why?”
“I—I don’t know.”
He glanced down at the fantastical object, his reluctance strangely moving. The grandeur and visibility that came with his status had long been second nature, his command of his kingdom masterful; he understood the responsibilities of power better than most. The sword he currently carried in public was the one he drew from the stone, used to win the battles that secured his crown—hardly inauspicious. What was another impressive talisman to Arthur’s godlike reputation?
But he was a man, not a god, and perhaps there, in the space where I knew him deeply, lay the answer.
“Arthur,” I said. “You are worthy of this, but it is no sin to take caution. Your reluctance to gird yourself with the sword isn’t because you fear it—it’s because you want it to mean something.” I put my hand on his arm. “Excalibur is yours. You can use it however and whenever you wish. The only authority you answer to is God Himself.”
The weight on his brow lifted. “My dear sister. Your loyalty, your belief in me, it strengthens my soul, it…”
He stopped, looking down at the sheathed sword, then back at me.
“Take it,” he said.
His steel-grey gaze was so serious it made me step back. “What?”
“Take Excalibur, and more importantly, the scabbard. Conceal it, guard it, keep it safe—with all the wisdom that you have.”
My mouth dropped open. “Why?”
“I want you to,” he said. “I will not even ask where you keep it. When the time feels right to display Excalibur to the kingdom, I will come for it, and you will know if I am ready because you know me better than anyone.”
The idea of having the scabbard in my hands again was thrilling, but the sword was Arthur’s legacy, the kingdom’s future, and I was one woman, not a vault.
“Truly I am honoured,” I said. “But are you sure I should be the one to bear such a responsibility?”
He smiled, both brother and King. “Morgan, there is no one in this world I trust more than you.”
It caught me unawares with a bolt of joy, a sentiment that I had often hoped for, but he had never declared with such conviction.
“In fact,” my brother continued, “your place should not only be in my heart and high regard—it should be at my right hand. Once all is formalized with King Urien, there will be no need to make excuses for your presence here. Things being well, you must leave the Queen’s service and have a place on my official council. What do you say?”
And there it was—a true act of faith, one I deserved, and a pathway to the future I had long envisioned. All I had to do was accept.
Arthur bore up Excalibur, presenting the sword as if on completion of my knighthood. “Please, sister. I cannot do this without you.”
I bowed my head and offered up my open hands.
It took me the entire journey back to my rooms with the silk-wrapped sword beneath my mantle, and the sight of Yvain’s tiny leather slippers by my bed, for reality to pierce my heart. I shut all the doors between me and the outside world, tossed Excalibur and its miraculous scabbard under my mattress, and went to seek my son.