For a while I thought I might die.
When Fair Guard’s hawthorn-lined entryway came into view; when we passed the stables full of Accolon’s beloved horses; when Alys, Tressa, Robin and I walked together along the river towards the house and beheld the turret and the birch tree, all looking the same but irrevocably changed now, every window full of shadow and silence. When I saw the edges of his tiltyard, tinted by the deep-blue dusk, I felt I had reached my end in so many ways.
Without Accolon, I would always be adrift; no matter what I did, the current of my grief would drag my broken, unresisting soul beneath the riptide until I was nothing but a shipwreck, disintegrating in the dark depths.
But as the sun rose and set through the decaying summer, a crisp and painfully beautiful autumn and the wintry death of the year; as the mourning household honoured their champion knight by returning to laughter and music and the day’s familiar rhythms, still I lived. Suffering was not exquisite, my hours spent both tormented and nourished by memories in a dizzying whirl, but my passion and despair were nevertheless a reminder that Accolon would want me to keep on. He had taught me how to swim, how to survive, after all.
His heart I had kept in the blue kerchief, turned back into stone so it would not decay as my heartbreak weathered me. To lay him to rest under our willow tree was his wish, and every day I took the silk bundle from the silver box in my study and imagined making the long walk up to the lake, returning the heart to delicate flesh and committing him to the earth. And every day, I could not bear to let him go.
Then, near the end of March, I awoke to a bright, lively morning that I soon realized was the day of my birth, and the equinox. When I went to the turret and drew out the silver box, I knew, as sure as the darkness could be felt in perfect balance with the light, that the time was right.
I had not been to our lake since my last time with Accolon, in the hazy summer days before he left for Camelot, when we swam and laughed despite ourselves, and loved beneath the willow tree in a desperate defiance of his leaving. In his honour, the lake had remained unchanged in its beauty, morning light dancing off its surface like a shower of stars.
It took no time at all to ask the earth to shift and make a hole at the foot of the willow trunk, large enough for a solitary heart. Once it was done, I knelt and unfolded the Parisian blue silk, taking the solid weight into my hands. My second enchantment had made the stone smooth and pale, lightly streaked with veins, more a marble sculpture than the rough grey rocks I had made of us in the forest.
I held the heart to my chest with a tenderness so deep, my transformation of the stone back into cool, sleek muscle came with a sudden bolt of resistance to what I must do next. Instead of placing it in the ground, I curved my body around the renewed heart, as if hoping it would join with my own and reside there for all eternity.
Then I felt it: a light tingling through the bones of my hands and up through my limbs, manifesting as pinpricks of light inside my mind, like a spray of dew shaken from a leaf. A faint, high sound rang beneath my skin, vague and ethereal, chiming far away.
I had known this feeling before, in the presence of birds hours, days and weeks dead, and in a wild white hart, torn to shreds in violent death, until it lived again. A flutter, a silvery essence, a choral note; a melody darting through Accolon’s heart, singing of a life once lived, and something else: potential.
The impossibility of his heartsong rocked through my being. In Camelot’s cathedral, I had embraced him, laid my head on him, put my hands to his chest to split mail and bone and heard nothing. But it had been years since I had sought the sensation, or remembered such a thing existed. Even if I had, in St. Stephen’s, amidst the stunned, blood-roaring fury of my despair, I could not have heard such a subtle whisper without hours of calm. I could only weep and disbelieve, and take of him what I could before they came to take me.
Now I had peace and time to listen, the defiant stillness of Accolon’s lake a silent sanctuary to hear the truth—the undying traces of his existence, the threads of life running through his heart like a cloud’s silver lining. Accolon was dead, but he was not yet gone, and the thought sparked in my core, fiery with hope.
Mon coeur, Accolon had always called me—my heart, the red-chambered centre of the soul, upon which all life was written. His blood and bones and skin were not what made him, and all could be formed again, if my mind and skills could be pushed beyond miracles.
Everything I needed, I could find, and the rest I held within me, fuelled by the twin powers of rage and love, which would be enough: to save Accolon, save myself, and bring us back to one another.
By noon, the day was a glorious one, the sky a lively blue and scudded with wisps of cloud, a clear, pale sun just warm enough to counter the fresh breeze. The air smelled of water and greenery, of blossom about to bud—of spring, and new life.
I had spent the rest of the morning in my study, rereading my secret notes from Merlin’s and the remembered knowledge I had recorded since: lists of formulae; healing theory and techniques; ancient words on the hidden qualities of the body; forbidden ideas on how to speak the language of death, and in doing so, defy it.
By the time Alys found me, I was out on the balcony, Accolon’s heart in my hands, stone again in its box, observing the view from on high. The home I had chosen stretched out before me, its forests and fields ready to burst into colour once more. Across the fast-running river, the jousting meadow lay lush and overgrown, in need of care but not forgotten.
“I must have the tiltyard cut back,” I said, as she stood beside me. “Restore the boundaries and the quintain, so Robin can train on it again. It should be put to good use.”
“I agree,” she said. “I’ll make arrangements.” She paused for a long moment, then released an audible breath. “I thought you were up at the lake.”
“I was.”
She glanced at the silver box. “Oh, Morgan, it’s all right that you couldn’t bear it. There will be other days.”
I kept my eyes on the tiltyard. “It’s not what you think, this time. The lake gave me what I needed. The water, this day, the harmony between light and dark—my future became clear. I dug the hole, unfroze the heart, was ready to do what is expected, and then I heard it—the truth, the purpose of all of this. Right away, I knew what needed to be done.”
I opened the box and drew the marble heart out of its blue silk, cupped in my two hands. “I’m not meant to let him go, Alys. I have the skills, the power, the ability to learn. I’m going to bring Accolon back.”
Alys stood very still, gazing at me with a serene, half-smiling acceptance that was entirely her, but I had not expected.
“Heart theory and healing,” she said. “Knowledge and magic. It has been within you all along.”
I nodded calmly, though my own heart soared at her instant understanding. “But it will take much more than me to be certain of success. More books, more time, more study. I can hone this power, master it enough to make the whole world tremble, but to recreate a person from just a heart, I need something else, more powerful than anything I could create in a lifetime. An object that makes the healing power of Excalibur’s scabbard look like battlefield stitching. To return Accolon to me whole, I need the Shroud of Tithonus.”
“How will you get it?” Alys asked.
“I don’t know for certain where it is,” I said. “But there is only one place to start looking. I must go to Merlin’s.”
When we returned to the study, Tressa was there, sitting at the scribe’s desk and rifling through a pot of quills. Alys went to her side and kissed her, taking up the chosen ink bottle and pouring it into her inkwell.
Sir Manassen entered, bowing at the knee, providing a vague amusement that I hadn’t felt for a long time. I ushered him up and let him kiss my hand, then moved to the new chair behind my desk, a tall and heavy seat, pale beech wood carved with a hundred different birds. A pair of chiselled peregrines stood sentry on either side of the chair back, and as I sat, two live magpies flew in and alighted between them with casual belonging.
I laughed at Sir Manassen’s look of surprise. “Lady Alys says I shouldn’t encourage them,” I explained.
“But they are far too clever to listen to reason,” Alys said wryly.
Sir Manassen inclined his head, almost smiling. “It seems somewhat apt.”
“How have you been?” I asked him. “Did you recover comfortably from your misadventure by the well?”
“I did, my lady. The salves that Lady Alys sent were very helpful. My now wife is pleased to have me at full strength, and sends her thanks.”
“Are you happy now, the two of you?” I said.
“We are, my lady. Married life suits me very well.”
His face softened in a way I had never seen, and his obvious contentment struck bittersweet in my chest, a chord of joy and grief that I could not afford to feel just then, when there was so much to be done.
“Good,” I said briskly. “I must meet her soon. We will dine.”
“That would please us both,” Sir Manassen said. “But first, I have received official notification of the Royal Court’s return to Camelot for Eastertide, and I am expected to attend. It is time.”
I sighed, resting my palms on the desk in front of me and regarding him directly. “Are you certain you want to do this? You have sworn me no official oath. I can still release you from your promise and restore your fealty to King Arthur. No one will know.”
Sir Manassen’s face returned to its stonelike determination. “Lady Morgan, the oath I took to you was the most serious of my life. The debt of gratitude and honour I owe to you is eternal, and I will spend my remaining years serving its cause. Not only for Accolon, but because when you should have walked away, you saved my life.”
“I am grateful for your faith, Sir Manassen,” I said. “But you are a forthright and honourable man, and what we are about to embark upon pushes many boundaries. There will be subterfuge, spying, pretence. What you bring to me, I will use for ill purpose. I can still accept your loyalty and not ask you to do this.”
“My lady,” he said sternly. “It is a boon no one in Camelot knows I serve you. My loyalty is my own business, as it was King Arthur’s business to kill my honourable cousin for no better reason than to punish his own sister. I cannot keep faith with such a man. I wished to join his court because his way was meant to be better—based on justice and fairness, not vengeance and executive power. Everything Camelot stands for is a lie.”
“The greatest lie,” I said. “A gleaming Crown, a glorious reign, a glittering castle rotten from within. If I can, I intend to expose that lie, and bring Arthur’s great golden edifice crashing down. I am no longer part of their world, and in exile I am set free. I will become exactly what Camelot says I am, and rain chaos upon their heads.”
The knight gave a solemn nod. “Then command me, my lady. What you wish will be done.”
“Very well, Sir Manassen.” I stood up from the chair, magpies ruffling their feathers behind me. “You will carry a message to court, under the auspices of protecting your King, which I will write and sign as proof, and you will speak aloud. I have been too quiet for far too long. Let Arthur and Camelot hear my voice.”
I looked at Tressa, already waiting with parchment before her, quill poised.
“Where I will start is with the truth,” I said, and she began writing. “I am an adulteress, a woman of ambition and cunning, and a sorceress in possession of great knowledge and exceptional powers. I have both given and taken, fixed and broken, wronged and been wronged, and never in my life have I stopped fighting for the freedom that is rightfully mine. For all this, I am not sorry. I have been a despairing girl, a reluctant queen, a firebrand wife, a sister in need, a thwarted mother, an unrepentant lover, and have chosen defiance against this realm and its attempts to cage me. But I am not a traitoress, neither to King Arthur nor the Crown of All Britain.
“I loved a good man, Sir Accolon of Gaul, who was valiant, honourable and true, and did not deserve his death at King Arthur’s hand. Such an act was selfish, cruel and unjust, and a scourge of shame against the High King. I am not guilty of treason, but I will have vengeance upon those who brought about my ruin, and in doing so caused the death of the man I loved better than this entire godforsaken world.
“For all of this, I will work to destroy the castle of lies and artifice that Camelot represents. Every gossiping hypocrisy of the court, I will expose it; every foot Queen Guinevere puts wrong, I will shine upon her an unforgiving light. And for my self-righteous, murderous brother, I will save my closest scrutiny—every ideal, every rule he spouts forth that he secretly ignores when it does not serve his purpose, he will feel my sharp gaze and hear my voice in his inconstant mind, calling him the deceiver he is. The loyal sister who once loved him is now a Fury reborn. King Arthur will feel my wrath and remember me, and know what it is to have Morgan as an enemy.”
I closed my eyes and let out a long breath, and it was as if the whole room, the building, the land beyond within the silver-threaded veil of my protection, exhaled with me.
“Is it finished?” Tressa asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And it has just begun. All I must do is sign it.”
Alys received the paper from Tressa’s desk and brought it to my waiting hand.
I reached across my desk and picked up a shining, blue-black quill, a gift one of the magpies had left me in the final, aching days of last summer, as they shed their feathers and were remade. Steeping the nib in ink, I read the letter, then marked it with three words, encompassing my sense of self, my enduring presence, all that I had become.
I lifted the paper and blew on the ink, taking one last glance at what I had done. It looked and felt entirely right.
Sir Manassen took the parchment from me with an undaunted bow. “Any concluding words, my lady?”
“Yes,” I said. “Tell them, I am, and will remain, Morgan le Fay.”