I slept little, disturbed by visions of Yvain and restless for news of Arthur, so I rose early and crossed the quiet Entrance Hall to the only place where I might not be unwelcome: the Seneschal’s Great Chamber.
Sir Kay glanced up from behind his desk and gestured to a chair. I declined and he nodded, letting me pace around the room. Eventually, his quill ceased scratching and he cleared his throat.
“About last night,” he said. “I’m sorry I was not able to warn you. I knew King Urien and your son were due. Your former rooms were being retained for them, which is why I didn’t lodge you there, but they were unexpectedly early. Apparently, the Queen knew they had arrived and no one saw fit to inform me.”
“I didn’t think you’d kept it from me,” I replied. “Guinevere obviously wanted my surprise to be pure.”
Kay rubbed his chin, as he always did when reaching for diplomacy. “I assume King Urien went directly to the Queen because he had news of Arthur, and in the shortness of time before dinner she forgot to mention it.”
“Safest to explain it thus,” I said grimly. “How did Urien have news of Arthur?”
“He was on the hunting trip,” Kay replied.
My entire body hollowed. “What?”
“He heard of the excursion on his way to court, sent Yvain to a liegeman’s manor nearby, and joined them.” Kay paused, looking thoughtful. “The news he brought was rather strange—he said their party got separated, so he collected Yvain and rode back to Camelot. Don’t worry, Lady Morgan. I’m sure Arthur’s return is––”
It was the last I heard; I was already charging out of the Seneschal’s chamber and up a side stair. When I reached the familiar door, I burst in with the wrath of the Furies running through my blood.
“Where is he?” I screamed.
“Sweet Christ!” Urien reared up in shock. “What in all Hell are you doing here?”
I could not recall the answer, too consumed with white-hot fury, until I realized he was shielding something. A small, dark-gold head peered out from behind my husband’s towering frame, his deep-blue eyes a mirror image.
Yvain.
He was even more beautiful close up, staring at me from under a creased brow that sang so much of my father it hit me in the chest. I moved towards him, arms outstretched, and my son shrank back, cowering once more behind his huge guardian.
Urien held out a warning hand. “Don’t speak to him. Not a single word.”
I couldn’t if I tried, my entire purpose forgotten at the sight of my child. I stood mute as Urien knelt to his level, speaking with a gentleness I had never heard.
“Yvain, go and tell the nurse to arrange your riding habit,” he said calmly. “It’s a fine day—we will ride out and I’ll show you the tilt field. Stay in your bedchamber until I come for you, yes?”
Yvain nodded, wary eyes flicking to me. Urien squeezed his shoulder. “Good boy,” he said, planting a kiss on the top of his head. “I won’t be long.”
He ushered our son to the interior door and pulled it firmly shut, waiting several beats before rounding on me.
“God’s blood, woman,” he growled. “You have no right to come barrelling in here like a damned banshee. I ought to call for the guards.”
The spell of my peace broke immediately. I charged towards him, spitting rage. “You won’t get past me to summon anyone. Not until you answer my questions.”
Urien’s tremendous frame stopped me halfway. He gave me a long, seething look, which I met with equal intensity, and he spun away in exasperation. When he turned back, he had smoothed over his demeanour, and my battle-hungry body felt it as disappointment.
“You shouldn’t alarm the child,” he said sanctimoniously. “It’s not a favourable impression for a mother to make. Not that he will ever know you as such, so far.”
He took a turn about the room, and I tracked his movements carefully. The chamber had little changed: walls still sky blue and much the same furniture, including the rug where Yvain had taken his first steps, though Alys’s loom was gone, along with Tressa’s writing desk. The terrace door stood open, the scent of honeysuckle drifting in, sweet and evocative.
Urien noted my observation. “I hear these were once your chambers, yet Yvain had no familiarity with them. He doesn’t remember his time with you at all.”
He was keeping his distance, but had no real concept of how much danger he was in. My limbs itched to spring at him and scratch his tanned flesh to shreds, but to have me escorted away flailing and spitting was his aim, and I would not indulge him.
“You were on the hunting trip with Arthur,” I said evenly. “My anger was because you didn’t see fit to mention it last evening. I’m worried for him.”
Urien gave me a probing look. “Your brother. I see. He is your concern. Why? I’d warrant he won’t be happy to see you.”
“You know nothing of our circumstances.”
“I know more than you think, dear wife. In courtly terms, only your status as my Queen is currently preventing you from being locked in a dungeon.”
“Lies, same as always,” I said. “Even so, I’d rather be locked up in a dungeon than have my name uttered in the same breath as yours.”
Urien’s blue-green eyes flashed; I had gored him. “Locked up with your Gaul, no doubt,” he snapped. “To await the adultery stake.”
I tried not to stiffen. “What can you mean?”
“You know full well,” he replied. “Your illicit Frenchman, so charming and adept. The ‘he’ you are truly looking for.”
It had to be a trick. True, they had been in company, but Accolon was clever, careful. He would never expose us. “I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, spare me, woman,” Urien said. “Your estranged brother isn’t why you stormed in here spitting feathers like a harpy. Can you be sure your gallant knight never spoke a word to prove you were his conquest? Do you know nothing of men?”
I was sure Accolon had nothing whatsoever to prove, but to engage with Urien now was a dangerous game, the veil between anger and violence thinning by the moment.
“I’ve had enough of this.” With the greatest restraint I had ever shown in my life, I put my back to him and headed for the door.
“A free lance, my Queen—really?” he called after me. “How quaint—like a washerwoman’s favourite ballad. You know, I feel rather sorry for him. Your pauper paramour is so protective of you, and you immediately deny his existence. Brushed off like the streak of dirt he is—Sir Accolon of Gaul, your lover, your fool.”
His laugh grated across my nerves. I charged back and thrust a finger in his face.
“You strike his name from your tongue and keep it that way. Sir Accolon of Gaul is a better knight, a better lover and a better man than you can contemplate being. You are not fit to breathe the same air as he. There—is that confession enough for you?”
Urien’s face darkened with blood. His hand rose, straining to grab my neck and shake me into submission. And the blackest, bitterest parts of me wanted him to, so I could steeple my fingers against his chest and pull the breath out of his lungs until they collapsed.
Instead, he stepped back, rubbing a hand over his jaw.
“Don’t bother confessing to what I already know,” he sneered. “He is not so subtle, your arrogant bedfellow. Any word I tried to speak of you, he was there with some clever observation or argument to weaken my point. He almost had your credulous brother reconsidering his view on you, but it soon dawned on me where his eagerness was coming from. I can spot a man bewitched by bodily pleasure from a mile away.”
“I swear to God, if you’ve brought your spurious accusations to Arthur—”
“I would never demean myself to speak of it,” Urien interrupted. “Besides, the High King has been unsettled since his sorcerer’s death. Suspicion dogs him, and he fears treachery at every turn. A private reminder in King Arthur’s ear of your self-exile, and an explanation of the violence you perpetrated upon my face, and your lover leaping to your defence took on the cast of conspiracy. It was unfortunate our party got separated, or I would have offered to deal with the Frenchman myself.”
“God’s teeth, now I know you’re lying!” I said. “On your very best day, you could not defeat Accolon in a battle of swords or bare hands. He would beat you bloody.”
Urien’s lip curled with disdain; I had speared him again, his endless vanities. “That’s not what I meant. I am a King. I hardly need to condescend to a swordfight with an expensively dressed stablehand.”
“Enough talk,” I snapped. “Tell me where they are before I truly lose my temper. You remember how that can feel.”
He covered a shudder with a look of contempt. “Despite your unnatural threats, I cannot. It’s true that I lost them. A few nights ago, we were invited onto a luxurious boat, where there were women, drugged wine. All I remember is waking alone in the forest. I heard on my ride back that a duel would take place between two fine knights, so perhaps there’s something in that.”
“Drugged wine? Strange women on boats? Mysterious duels? A wild and unlikely tale. Tell the truth.”
“Believe what you wish,” Urien said. “What occurred in the forest is the least of your problems. When King Arthur finds you here, you will either have to account for what he may consider as traitorous, or burn at the adultery stake for the marital treason you have admitted to me. Unless…”
I regarded my husband closely, his hands loose at his sides, face calm now, unflustered. He did not believe he was lying, and my knowledge of Arthur’s fraught mistrust, combined with our last confrontation and his formidable fury, made Urien’s claim ring terribly true. Scabbard or not, Accolon and I would never gain our freedom if my brother believed I was acting against him.
“Unless what?” I said.
Urien smiled, a slow, fox-like expression of old. “I can prevent all of this, my lady Queen. Save your life.”
“What the Devil do you mean?”
“Don’t toy with me,” he said. “You know what I mean. Return to Gore, our marriage, my bed. I will make no adultery complaint, and will smooth your way with the High King.”
Of all the possibilities on God’s earth, Urien’s reply wasn’t one I would have predicted in a thousand years. Shocked, I began to laugh, high-pitched and uncontrollable.
“Have you abandoned your senses?” I exclaimed. “We have no marriage, aside from in law. The last time we saw one another in Gore, you threatened to kill me and I swore I would kill you first.”
Urien chuckled along with me, as if it were an amusing part of our familial history, rather than a set of violent, intrusive memories. It was the most we had ever laughed together in our entire union.
“This makes no sense,” I said. “Why would you even suggest such a thing?”
His face fell abruptly to seriousness. “Because somehow, dear wife, I am still compelled by you. Never have I desired a woman as much as you, and God forgive me, that has not changed.”
“No,” I replied. “You just want to win. To retake possession of me and regain mastery over the woman who dared leave you.”
“That’s not what drives me,” he said, but I had watched his demeanour change as I spoke, his shifting shoulders and heightened colour, eyes glazing as he imagined my words played out and wanting it all the more.
“I’ve confessed to loving another man,” I said. “That I’ve been an adulteress for him constantly and you fail to compare in every way, yet you still want me as your wife?”
“You are my wife,” Urien said. “Nothing but death can change that. All I want is for you to act as such. Is it so wrong?”
I suppressed the urge to start laughing again. “It isn’t just wrong; it’s twisted. Do those scars on your face mean nothing to you?”
Perhaps they didn’t, I thought; my burning his face had done little to mar his good looks. His peers would have lauded his bravery and I doubted women had ceased to fall into his bed as a result. Why then did he want this?
As if hearing my thoughts, Urien said, “Do you really want to know what convinced me?”
“I’d be fascinated,” I said drily.
“The night on the boat, in my sleep,” he murmured, “I had a dream that I awoke in your bed, with you beside me. We were warm, unclothed, entwined, the crown of Gore around your head. I had never felt more satisfied. And when I returned to Camelot, you were here, as alluring as I had ever seen you. I thought surely it must be Fate.”
In one lunge, he had hold of my waist and pulled me against him, one hand caressing my cheek. I froze, paralyzed by the sudden, rough intimacy of it.
“See,” he said. “Even now you hesitate to resist.”
His presumption melted my inaction. I shoved him hard and tore my body away.
“Dear God,” I said. “You call a lascivious dream you had in a drugged haze Fate? You despise me, Urien. Not as much as I despise you, but still it is true. The only fate awaiting me in Gore is death at your hands.”
“Kill King Arthur’s sister? That would be foolhardy by anyone’s standards. I’m sure you do not fear harm from me, given what you…can do.” He gestured at my hands, the cords of his neck tensing. “In practical terms, you know I’ve always wanted you back, to restore Gore’s image of unity, have more children. Returning to a godly path would certainly reinstate you in your brother’s good graces. What’s more, there’s the true reward—you will regain a son.”
Images of Yvain flew into my head: at the previous night’s banquet, playful and confident; his stricken face when I had first charged in; the deep blue eyes that were mine but did not know me. His trusting nod to his father, which I felt within like a great empty craving.
“Yvain will have his mother back,” Urien said. “You’ll watch him grow into the great knight he will become.”
I turned away so he would not see the pain the thought had conjured. “This is nothing but a devil’s trick.”
“I agree it’s a generous offer,” he said. “But it’s a true one, with little reason to refuse. Going to bed with me never taxed you in the past. Obedience might take a little practice, but I am willing to be somewhat patient.”
I said nothing, which he took as the advent of victory.
“Well, what say you?” he pressed.
Slowly, I rounded on my once husband, relishing the shadow of fear that passed over his face. “Do you honestly think that after everything you’ve done, I would ever lower myself to be near you, sit next to your vainglorious throne, or God forbid let you crawl into my bed? I would rather die.”
Urien hardened, jaw muscle twitching beneath his beard. “Don’t be hasty, my lady, given death is genuinely on the table. When King Arthur returns and I add adultery to your list of betrayals, my offer may not sound so unsavoury.”
Before I could respond, a cacophony of bells began to ring, a discordant set of notes clanging persistently, meaning one thing: the High King was back. I spun on my heel and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded. “We aren’t finished.”
“We are, Urien,” I said. “In every way. I learned long ago that you cannot bestow or take away my future. That power lies with me.”