I left the cathedral as if on wings, through courtyards and under archways, blurred instinct leading somewhere. It wasn’t until I reached the lower stables, peaceful and tinged with pale-blue dawn, that I knew where my grief had brought me.
Accolon’s travelling horse whinnied when he saw me from his stall. His two other mounts I assumed lost to the hunting trip, but my Gaul had left his favourite to rest—a fleet, handsome stallion with a flame-bright chestnut coat, who he had let me name Phénix.
I tacked the horse, slid Accolon’s sword into the saddle scabbard and mounted up in the courtyard. The guards at the stable gate were barely alert at that hour, and I trotted past them with my hood up, not so fast as to be noticeable, but before they spotted I was a woman absconding on a horse of knightly quality.
At the city gates, I looked back; no one was in pursuit, nor were any alarum bells ringing for my escape. Camelot stood mute, golden and forbidding in the sharpening light. I wondered if I would ever see it again, and found I felt nothing. Arthur was the reason it was once my sanctuary, not the great stone-and-glass edifice he had built. It was empty now and always would be, both of the High King I believed in, and the brother I had loved.
Accolon’s heavy heart was still cradled in the crook of my arm; I hooked it onto the saddlebow and rode into the forest where I had left the household. We had two hours or so before my escape would be discovered, and we needed to be far away by then.
“Morgan!” Alys exclaimed as I rode through the glade’s protective threads. “Thank God, you’re back.”
She and Tressa sat drinking from steaming cups beside a healthy fire. They jumped up as I dismounted, embracing me in turn.
“I—I thought you’d be asleep,” I said.
“Some are,” Tressa said. “But some of us couldn’t.”
I glanced around the quick camp they had made: sheets stretched between trees where the household slept; a long, low branch as hitching post for the dozing horses; the pot of herb tea brewing over the fire. All, and nothing, was normal.
“We heard a commotion on the road yesterday afternoon,” Alys said. “Ringing bells, slow hoofbeats, chants of lament. What’s happened?”
The enormity of the question made me dizzy. But I had taken my moment’s weakness in St. Stephen’s with Accolon; for him, and the sake of the household, I must hold myself steady.
“We have to leave,” I said. “Now, quickly. I’ll explain on the road, but––”
“That’s Sir Accolon’s horse,” said an uncertain voice, and I turned to see Robin emerging from between the other tethered mounts. “Phénix. He brought him to Camelot.”
His eyes grew wider with every step. By the time he reached me, he looked like a child. “Where’s…Sir Accolon?”
There were a dozen things I could have said, but I was dumbstruck in the face of Robin’s innocence, his growing worry that I could not quell. The moments that followed would change him—as I was when Sir Bretel crashed to his knees and told us my father had been killed—his life forever coloured by what came hereafter. If I could, I would have torn myself apart to prevent him ever knowing, but I could not change what was true. Our life as we knew it was already over.
“Morgan?” Alys’s voice cut into my silence.
I looked back at her and felt the hollowness behind my own eyes. She brought a hand up to her mouth.
“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God, no. It can’t be. He isn’t…”
Tressa’s cup fell from her hands, and I watched it descend in slow motion, its soundless bounce onto the forest floor. She grabbed Alys’s arm and held up a warding hand, as if to stop me uttering the final words.
“He’s dead,” I said. “Accolon is dead.”
The horrifying truth of it cut through the air, vicious and permanent. My women ran to me, but I had already fallen, bracing against the dirt in prostration, my lungs tearing with screams I could not hear above the roar of my blood.
Accolon’s horse reared up in fear, and I willed its hooves to crash down upon my head, but Robin had the reins, drawing the frightened animal aside, and there were arms about me, clutching my body, cradling my head, absorbing my cries. Warm tears seeped into my skin—theirs, ours—bringing me back to myself, a reminder that this grief would not be mine alone.
Eventually, I looked up and saw the rest of the household gathering, solemn and unsure, waiting to hear what came next. They needed me now, as much I needed them.
Gripping Alys’s and Tressa’s hands, I stood up, breathing deep of the forest air. “It’s true. Sir Accolon is dead and lies in the cathedral of St. Stephen’s. Slain in a duel by King Arthur himself.”
It wounded even more deeply when spoken aloud. A collective gasp rippled around the glade.
“My own brother killed Sir Accolon,” I continued. “Not for any wrong he did, but as punishment to me, for a treason the King believes I have committed. He isn’t at Camelot, but we must leave here immediately, before he returns. I swear I can keep you safe in Fair Guard, but trouble may yet come. Speak now, and I will free you of your association with me, and any danger therein.”
I looked around the crescent of melancholy faces. A few tears ran down cheeks, some heads in hands. They had loved Accolon more than they did me, not because I did not have their loyalty, but because he made himself so easy to love. Perhaps it was for him, their good-humoured, honourable champion, they had stayed all along.
“It is no small thing to be at odds with the High King,” I said. “I swear on Sir Accolon’s immortal soul I will understand.”
Robin, still holding the becalmed horse, stepped forwards. “I’m for Lady le Fay and I’m staying,” he said. “Whatever comes.”
To my astonishment, every head in the household began to nod. “For Lady le Fay,” they said in succession, until the wind lifted the chorus into the treetops and the horses began to stir. I couldn’t have spoken even if I had the words.
“Then we ride for Fair Guard,” Robin declared, and the crowd hurried off, gathering belongings, packing saddlebags. He turned to me, suddenly more man than boy, and held out Phénix’s reins. “He’s a good horse, my lady. You should ride him home.”
A rush of gratitude and loss crashed over me as he turned away. I put my hands on the saddle and leaned against it, trying not to look at the ominous silk bundle. My eyes landed on Accolon’s sword.
“Robin, wait.” Gently, I drew out the blade, offering it up to him across my palms. “Accolon would have wanted you to have this. He loved you, and you made him proud.”
Robin took the sword into his hands as if it were glass, gazing at the silver horse hilt. “I loved him,” he said. “He was like a––”
A sob cut him short, and I couldn’t bear to supply the words, or watch the tears streaming silently down his haunted young face.
“I know,” was all I could say. “He knew.”
We were several hours beyond Camelot, riding mainly in a shocked, devastated silence, when a crossroads came into view. So far, we had thankfully not encountered another soul, but ahead of us a pale horse cantered out of a small, tree-enclosed track, its rider wearing a cloak of bright violet. The sight struck me with instant recognition.
I gasped. “It’s her.”
“Who?” Alys said, but I was already gone, pushing my horse in pursuit.
“Ninianne!” I called, and she halted, hooded head swinging around. “I need to speak with you.”
I had not seen her for half a decade, and as ever, she looked no older. Her emerald eyes glittered with hardness, but her expression was hunted, a look of shock I had little seen. I had caught her unawares and she did not like it.
Ninianne glanced briefly behind her, whence she had come. “This doesn’t concern you, Morgan,” she said in her deep, resonant voice. “You must accept what has happened and move beyond.”
Anger flared in my bones. “My brother killed the man I loved as punishment for my so-called treason and it doesn’t concern me? You were there—I deserve to know what happened.”
She pushed her hood down, copper hair blinding in the sun. “You know what you did. Everything else is far beyond your understanding.”
My gathering wrath ignited into a wildfire. It was as if we had never been at Merlin’s together at all, had never spent those hours in study, or sharing our lives as women surviving the world of men. She had delivered my lost son and taught me the charms to protect my existence, yet that meant nothing to her fairy heart?
“After all we’ve been through,” I said, “you accuse me of treason and insult my intelligence?”
With a wordless look of scorn, she dug her heels into her horse and galloped off the road, veering into the trees. Accolon’s horse quivered in anticipation, eager for the chase, but for the sake of the stunned household, I curbed my impulses and trotted back to Alys.
“It’s Ninianne,” I explained. “I must follow her, find out what she knows.”
“What was she doing at a nunnery?” Alys asked. I frowned and she pointed towards the neat, tree-lined track. “There’s an abbey down that road, with a good infirmary. I considered going there before I chose St. Brigid’s.”
I stared at her, then off into the forest where Ninianne had vanished. I could still hear the faint thud of hoofbeats on the breeze.
“It’s a trick,” I said. “Her insults, her evasion. She wants me to follow her.”
“Why?” Alys said.
“To direct me away from where she’s been.” My heart took up a stuttering rhythm, like the beating of a broken wing. “Arthur’s there. His message said he was healing at an abbey. Ninianne must have stayed until his guards arrived from Camelot.”
“Then you should away from here and quickly,” Alys said. I gave her a significant look and she paled. “Oh no, Morgan. You can’t be thinking of confronting him, not now.”
“The worst has already happened, Alys. There’s nothing else they can do to me. Take the household home, dear heart. I’ll catch up with you.”
“Cariad, no,” she protested. “He has armed men now. You’d be mad to attempt going anywhere near him.”
I smiled, for the first time in what felt like an age. “I am destined to be the madwoman for eternity, but I will fear no man on this earth. I deserve satisfaction—we all do. Accolon does. And I will have it. This isn’t over by a very long way.”