I left the mist at the cathedral door. I didn’t care if I was seen anymore, whether by a sleepless deacon or patrolling guards. The entire knightly presence of the court could charge into St. Stephen’s with their blades drawn sharp and it would not have mattered. It was finished, over; let them come.
But first, I had to see him.
The nave was lined with candles, densely lit rows of iron stands giving way to small tapers at my ankles, glittering along the elaborate tiles. All else was dark, every high window struck blind, the intricate arches, narrow-carved like rib cages, vanishing into shadow as if reaching directly into the night sky. There would be no more dawns, or so it felt.
At the transept crossing, the lights curved into a supernova up the steps of a central platform where the priest usually stood at Mass. There, a thick slab of white marble lay atop a heavy stand, stark and unadorned, the flickering firelight bright enough that my eyes resisted its glare. The image was so dazzling that I didn’t see the figure lying motionless until I was halfway up the altar steps.
I stopped and recoiled, as if not expecting what I was there to see. A long body lay across the marble, shining like winter dawn, clad neck to foot in polished silver mail, a tunic of white silk overlaying the steel. I moved closer and a slash of red appeared—a pointed crimson tail, curling beneath rampant claws and snarling teeth: Arthur’s roaring dragon, like Uther’s before him, but rendered in the colour of blood.
A wave of anguish rocked me sideways. This was not a dream, or a game, or a mistake; they had dressed the one slain in the livery of the man who had murdered him.
I rested my palms on the cold marble and made myself look.
They say the fallen at peace seem to be sleeping, waiting for God in serene repose. That it is a comfort in grief to look upon one who has transcended life to be reborn in Heaven. But all I could see, as I cast my eyes upon the man I loved, was death.
Accolon’s beauty was unexpected, glorious and terrible as an angel’s, and equally impossible. I knew every part of the face before me, every angle, every sculptural plane and curve, yet what made him was gone, extinguished; alien without the spirit that conjured joy and laughter and love every time I had looked at him. His closed, dark-lashed eyes spoke not of sleep but of absence, his top lip counterfeit in its upturned curl.
Below, his hands were pale, elegant fingers threaded across the rearing horse grip of his sword, staid and motionless as they had never been. Grasping the sword hilt, I pulled the blade free, throwing it to the floor with an echoing crash, and raised a trembling hand to his face. His ash-dark hair was cool as I pushed it off his brow, the skin I brushed sheer cold.
On the surface, it was him—Accolon, my Gaul—tranquil and at rest, but beneath, only emptiness, an abyss into which his essence had fallen, leaving him profoundly and violently gone.
An incense-scented draft gusted over the candles, dancing light across his skin, and for a moment my mind brought him to life: Accolon smiling at me from across a room; holding my eyes in the midst of talk; his youthful face long ago, deep in thought, hands fluttering beneath his golden coin, drawing me deeper into my fascination. But the flames settled and the image receded, and we were no longer there—young and hopeful in Tintagel, just beginning, or together at the lakeside in Fair Guard, older and scarcely wiser in the intensity of our love—but here, on different sides of the earthly veil, at the end.
Accolon was dead; it hung in the air like the stars themselves spoke of it.
“No,” I whispered, my fingers still entwined in his silky hair. “This cannot be, it can’t, it can’t.”
Urgent now, I ran my hand down his cold face, across the sleek bones, willing him to shift or smile or lean towards my touch as he had done so many times. Nothing happened, and it pierced me despite knowing it could not, every small realization a sliver of glass in my heart, until it was made entirely of shards.
But I could not stop. I leaned over him, running my healing hands along his neck, his shoulders, the top of his arms, desperately seeking a twitch of muscle, a shiver of breath underneath the cold steel holding him to the marble slab. My fingers searched his chest, gripping the silk, trying to sense a fault, a rupture, anything I could heal. I wanted to reach into his stillness and fill it with my skill’s golden warmth, repair what had been broken, undo what they had done.
“Please,” I heard myself say. “There must be something. I can fix this, I can.”
There was nothing, not a trace of him that would yield to me.
After all we had been through, this couldn’t be the end, a senseless death based on punishment and distrust and a series of terrible untruths. For all I had tried to keep us safe, I had still been the ruin of Accolon, had let the world bring about his destruction when I should have made him go, far away from me—or if not, kept him close and never let him leave at all.
“No, Accolon,” I said, trying to hold on to myself as my body, my mind, my entire being began to shatter. “You can’t leave me. Not…like…this.”
My words turned to weeping—brutal, wracking sobs that sucked the air from my body. I sank down onto Accolon’s chest, pressing my face so hard against his sternum that I could feel the steel rings of the mail hauberk against my cheek through the tunic’s thick silk.
“Stay with me,” I cried, and it was all I could say. Stay with me, over and over.
My noisy flood of grief rang through the cathedral, echoing up into the bonelike arches, a chorus distorted with rage and devastation. Eventually, I forced myself to stand up, staring down at his lifeless form, blood roaring with hurt, seeing stars.
What would I do now? I couldn’t leave him here, among his murderers; those who claimed our love was treasonous, fraudulent, a convenient tryst between a manipulative, vengeful harlot and a bewitched but honourable knight. No one who wished to bury Accolon in Camelot was fit to stand beside his tomb.
Suddenly, his voice was in my head, deep and contented: an idle conversation amidst dusty sunlight and the scent of books, as our love unfolded anew.
When knights die in faraway lands, it is always the heart they ask to be sent home. They say the soul is contained within.
And up at our lake, enrobed in our happiness:
When I die, bury me here, under this weeping willow tree.
I could not have Accolon whole, but I could do as he wished and take what mattered: his knighthood and his heart. I would lay him to rest beside our lake, under the willow tree’s swaying leaves, and curl up with him there, until we were both stardust.
Outside in the distance, a cockerel crowed, and I looked up at the east transept’s towering window to see the first hint of rising dawn etched across multicoloured glass. Soon the castle would awaken, and someone would send for me and find my chamber empty. It had to be now.
First, I took his golden spurs, worn at his heels since Tintagel. Aside from me, knighthood was all Accolon had ever wanted; this part of him, they did not get to keep. When the spurs were unfixed and safe at my belt, I contemplated the rest.
Silk, steel mail, a cage of ribs; it would take more than a knife. My affinity was found within the noble art of healing, but all light had its darkness. All restoration must first begin with destruction. With concentration, and the dread knowledge I had consumed over hours in Merlin’s study, I could rend and carve and lay waste as well as any knight or king. My hands were my longsword, my mind the heavy armoured shoulders necessary to force and break.
For Accolon, I would tear asunder the body I had gazed upon and lain with and loved, and not flinch from my purpose. For Accolon, I would walk out of Camelot’s cathedral changed, with blood on my skin and his soul in my hands. One way or another, I would bring him home.
I steepled my fingertips against his chest. Fabric parted, mail parted, and I saw what had been done: the marks of Arthur’s violence across Accolon’s torso—bruises, deep slashes, a thousand killing blows that had poured forth his blood. There had been no mercy in the battle, no singular lethal strike, and for this I acknowledged a terrible gratitude, for the heart had been spared, his alabaster chest unmarked where it resided, yet stark as an X on a treasure map.
Skin and bone split under my severing thumb. I reached inside, gently, firmly, seeking the anatomy I knew, the careful cuts I still had to make. A body many days past death will not bleed in any usual way, but the heart was slick and solid in my hands, surprising in its heaviness.
It came forth sudden and whole, like a babe from the womb, and I beheld it for a moment, still and glistening like a garnet in the blaze of candles, its shining surface strangely blank, as if I had expected to see my name carved in the curving muscle. I took my kerchief—the square of Parisian blue silk he had once given me wrapped around the chess set—and laid his heart upon it, tying the ends in a careful knot.
Once done, I put my hands on either side of the cavity in his chest and eased it shut, feeling bones and flesh knit back together with my steady breaths. On his skin, I left a neat red line—a final mark upon his body, a signature for all to see—then gathered up my lover’s gentle heart in one hand and his silver longsword in the other, and placed a farewell kiss on Sir Accolon of Gaul’s curved-bow lip.
The laceration in the mail and silk remained open, framing my careful work. The eyes and minds who looked upon this aftermath wouldn’t know for certain what I had done or why, but they would wonder, and speculate, and fear what was possible at my hands.
And they should fear me, the power I possessed, and the bright, ravenous rage that now fuelled my every breath. From that moment onwards, even I did not know what I was capable of.