Twilight of Avalon Read online

  Touchstone

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Anna Grube

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Elliott, Anna.

  Twilight of Avalon / by Anna Elliott.

  p. cm.

  1. Iseult (Legendary character)—Fiction. 2. Tristan (Legendary character)—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3605.L443T85 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2008021830

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-6455-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4391-6455-X

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

  To my Dad, who taught me to write

  Contents

  Dramatis Personae

  Isolde’s Britain

  Prologue

  Book I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Book II

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Book III

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  Touchstone Reading Group Guide

  Dramatis Personae

  Dead Before the Story Begins

  Arthur, High King of Britain, father of Modred, brother of Morgan; killed in the battle of Camlann

  Constantine, Arthur’s heir as Britain’s High King; husband to Isolde

  Gwynefar, Arthur’s wife; betrayed Arthur to become Modred’s queen; mother to Isolde

  Modred, Arthur’s traitor son and Isolde’s father; killed in fighting Arthur at Camlann

  Morgan, mother to Modred; believed by many to be a sorceress

  Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur

  Rulers of Britain

  Coel, King of Rhegged

  Huel, eldest son of King Coel of Rhegged

  Isolde, daughter of Modred and Gwynefar; Lady of Camelerd; Constantine’s High Queen

  Madoc, King of Gwynedd

  Marche, King of Cornwall

  Owain, King of Powys

  Outside Tintagel’s Walls

  Bran, a young escaped slave

  Brother Columba, a Christian hermit

  Hereric, a Saxon and friend to Trystan

  Kian, a former British soldier, now outlaw

  Trystan, a Saxon mercenary and outlaw

  Others

  Cerdic, King of Wessex, a Saxon

  Octa, King of Kent; a Saxon

  Brychan, captain of Constantine’s guard

  Cyn, Saxon prisoner at Tintagel; comrade of Trystan

  Dera, camp follower and prostitute

  Ector, Constantine’s armorer

  Erbin, soldier of King Marche’s guard

  Hedda, Saxon slave and serving woman to Isolde

  Hunno, soldier of King Marche’s guard

  Myrddin, a druid and Arthur’s chief bard

  Nest, cousin and chatelaine to King Marche

  Marcia, Nest’s serving maid

  Prologue

  I am a singer, I am steel.

  I am a druid, I am a serpent.

  I am love.

  SO I SAY TO CALL the visions into the scrying bowl.

  Three drops of oil to sweeten the waters. Three drops of blood as payment to lift the veil.

  In the name of earth and fire, water and air. By the silver Lady and the golden Lord. Make this space a place of joining, a world between the worlds. Let the nine silver apples chime.

  Let Avalon be reborn here.

  The bowl’s pattern is as old as the words. Though the tracings are worn smooth, I can follow them yet with the fingers of one hand, for they are familiar as the lines on my palm. Serpents of eternity, forever swallowing their tails.

  And I wonder if it be true what they say, that time is an endless curve. And in what form I’ll be reborn when the wheel makes another round. What body Arthur will fill.

  And whether that turning will, at last, be a time for love.

  My name is Morgan. “Sea-begotten,” it means, in the old tongue. Morgan of Avalon. Water faerie of the sacred glass isle.

  An exalted name indeed for the unwanted girl-child of Uther the Pendragon’s murdered bride. But then, even in this world, we all rise and fall on the turnings of the serpent’s wheel.

  “Are you ready?” I say, and the girl at my side nods.

  Isolde, her mother called her. Beautiful one.

  “Then close your eyes.”

  I give her two twigs, one in each outstretched hand. “Now tell me which is the alder and which the beech.”

  She starts to rub the bark with her thumb, but I make her stop, twitching another twig hard against the back of her hand.

  “Not with your fingers. With your mind. There is a voice to all living things. A thread that ties us to Dana, the Great Mother Earth. That echoes like the strings of an unseen harper’s lyre, if only we can teach ourselves to hear. Reach into yourself for the space where the harp strings are tied, and you will hear the voice of the twigs. Or of the trees. Or of women and men and the threads that weave the pattern of our lives, joining future and past as one.

  “And that is the Sight. A gift of the Old Ones, yours by birth and by blood.”

  WHEN AT LAST I ALLOW HER to look in the scrying bowl, the water shows only swirling oil and dispersing blood. Then, slowly, slowly, a newborn babe’s face takes shape. Reddened with crying, the small mouth puckered in a silent O. And an old, grizzle-haired man in a tattered robe of the druid-born stoops over the child’s cradle and lifts one hand.

  Is this, I wonder, where the story begins? When the High King Uther, Pendragon of Britain—my father—made war on Gorlois of Cornwall? When he swore his lies of adultery and witchcraft as excuse to see my mother burn? When he took Gorlois’s lady Ygraine as his queen and got on her a son. And bribed his druids with gold to call it the gods’ will and prophesy that only the child of Uther and Ygraine would save Britain from the invading Saxon hordes.

  There was a king, once, King Arthur, son of the Pendragon and his queen Ygraine. Destined from birth to battle back the Saxon tide.

  So run the harpers’ songs.

  Or does the tale begin earlier still? With the first Saxon who set foot on Britain’s shore, the first drop of blood spilled when he seized land not his own? Or earlier yet, when the Romans sacked the
holy places and groves of the Old Ones.

  When Avalon, once the druids’ holy isle, became in this world only a name in a tale.

  The babe and the old man shimmer and dissolve. The water is clouded for an instant, then shapes begin to form once more.

  A boy’s face, now. He is almost a man. Flushed with drink, eyes both clouded and bright, face still smeared with a rusty streak of dried blood. He raises a drinking horn and throws the draft back, laughs and waves the cup, shouting for more.

  So all men look, after a battle won.

  His head weaves as he scans the room. Then his eyes fix on a girl. A year or two older than the girl at my side, but with the same black hair and milk-pale skin.

  Isolde is very like me indeed. Or like what I was at fifteen.

  The boy-man smiles. And I have to fight to keep from plunging my hands into the scrying bowl, from tipping it out onto the floor. But the waters are kind after all. The picture breaks and dissolves, and my granddaughter will not see how Modred, her father, was made.

  All these years gone by, and the hurt is still there, an ember ready to blaze into flame, a taste in my mouth as bitter as bile.

  Though, in fairness, Arthur was young as well. I suppose I may grant him that now. And far gone in drink, as the water showed. Too far gone to hear a girl crying “no” or recognize her for his own half sister? Or to care whether she was branded whore?

  That I cannot say.

  When the image in the water forms again, a woman wearing the habit of a Christian holy woman sits on the wooden pallet in a narrow cell. The cell is empty, save for a tallow candle and a jar of water on the floor. She stares at the wall, her eyes unseeing and blank and the same clear gray in color as those of the girl at my side.

  And then she seizes the water jar and hurls it as hard as she can against the floor.

  I suppose I should be sorry for Gwynefar, Arthur’s bride. I, who knew best all what Arthur was. Knew that to expect her to grow a spine and fight would have been like asking a rabbit to stand against a pack of wolves.

  A wonder, really, that she ever had the nerve to betray Arthur with my son. Though she fled to a convent rather than chance facing her husband’s wrath.

  At least she died soon after, and the child was left to my care. And she’s nothing like her mother, praise be. For all she has Gwynefar’s gray eyes.

  With the breaking jar, the image in the scrying bowl breaks as well, then forms again. One last time.

  Two men. Almost they might be brothers. Black hair and broad shoulders and deep-set dark eyes.

  Modred pulls the tunic over his head and starts to bathe, splashing water over his chest. His skin is golden-tan.

  The second man watches, and his face looks…hungry. He licks dry lips.

  A warrior, this man, with the scars of battle on his face and the backs of his arms. And yet, in his eyes, I at least can See the shadow of a boy, one who aches all over with his father’s blows and tries his hardest not to cry. Because you’re only punished if you’re weak. And maybe tomorrow his father will love him if only he can learn to be brave.

  Maybe we all have a child like that buried deep inside. And it’s only that Marche of Cornwall’s buried child has never stopped crying in all these long years.

  Sometimes I would give much to relinquish the gift of Sight. To look at Arthur and see only the king, not the boy who was given the throne and a sword too heavy for him to wield when Uther our father fell. Who walked the practice yard at night in fear that he’d fail to live up to the prophecies and fire-tales and tickled the stable cats for the warmth of their fur.

  The Modred in the scrying bowl looks up. Catches Marche watching. Sees the look on the other man’s face. Hunger—no, more than that. Desire. And for a moment my son is stunned. Then disgust blooms, naked and involuntary and unguarded, in his eyes.

  And without a word, Marche turns and strides from the room, and the image is gone. The bowl holds nothing but water and blood and oil.

  I look down at the child at my side. I suppose it is some compensation for being captured in a tale. If a soul lives with each mention of its name, I will be forever young and beautiful as the Morgan in the tales.

  As this child is now.

  She has the healer’s hands, as well as the Sight. A wicked temper, too. That’s also mine.

  And she has now a glimpse, at least, of the blood and flesh and bone beneath the songs the bards sing.

  There was a king, once, King Arthur, son of the Pendragon and his queen Ygraine. Destined from birth to battle back the Saxon tide. Arthur’s queen was Gwynefar, of the white hands and golden hair. And under Arthur the Brave there was peace in Britain, and the land without pillage and fear.

  But Gwynefar the queen bore King Arthur no heir.

  And so Arthur named Modred his heir. Modred, son of his sister Morgan, whom some say was a wisewoman, some say a witch. But of all the men who fought at Arthur’s side, none was braver, or more loved by the king, than Modred his heir.

  But Modred it was who betrayed his king. Who seized the throne. Coerced Gwynefar to betray Arthur, her lord. Who begot on Gwynefar a daughter, child of treason and sin.

  So run the harpers’ songs. Bright threads in the tapestry of the land.

  I wonder if the tales, as much as anything I or Modred or Arthur has done, have led to this moment, this meeting at Camlann. And all at once I am cold, with a crawling feeling I am deadly afraid is fear. And there is no place for fear now.

  Marche, strongest of my son’s allies, is gone. And tomorrow two kings will meet in battle. Arthur and Modred. My brother and his—my—son.

  Stories I’ve told, countless numbers of them, of a time before Britain, of worlds beyond our own. When I stitched a soldier’s wound or helped a mother bring her child into the world. But this story—my own—could I have made it a tale of forgiveness instead of vengeance? Blessing instead of bane?

  Or were the threads of this story woven long ago, by a hand other than mine, the ending fixed, unchangeable as one of the old druid tales?

  In an instant, I have caught up the knife, drawn it hard across the palm of my hand, then across the girl’s. My son’s daughter. And Arthur’s grandchild, as well as the child his wife bore another man. That thought seems very strange.

  She gasps, but does not cry.

  The priests of the Christians preach fire and hell-fury against the old ways. But their God once demanded his blood sacrifice as well, in payment for men’s souls.

  I let the blood drip into the clouded waters of the bowl. If I have trapped the child beside me in the net of a tale, let this blood offering join us somewhere, beyond the veil. Let her be protected. Let me see her safe from harm.

  Book I

  Chapter One

  THE DEAD MAN’S EYES WERE weighted with gold. From the chapel doorway, Isolde saw the coins wink and gleam in the light of the candles that burned on the altar above. Payment for the holy women who would ferry him across the waters to the Isle of Glass. Or perhaps only a means to keep the sightless eyes closed; this was a church, consecrated to the Christ-God, after all. The old ways would have no place here.

  Isolde stood still, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of the place. Even the chapel at Tintagel smelled of the sea; the stones even here thrummed like a bard’s harp with the echo of all the fortress’s walls had seen. Of Uther the Pendragon defeating Duke Gorlois and winning the duke’s wife Ygraine for his queen. Of the birth of Arthur, Lord of Battles. Arthur, who had ridden out from these walls to drive the Saxons back with blow after crushing blow, and so won peace in Britain, for a time.

  And all of that, Isolde thought, ended here, now, with the death of this king. Constantine, Arthur’s heir.

  She had seen fighting men with spear or sword wounds turned putrid, so far gone that the arm or leg had to be taken off if the soldier’s life was to be saved. She’d made the cuts herself, had held the hot knives to cauterize the severed limbs and stop the bleeding. And seen how, for a bri
ef, blessed moment after the glowing metal touched their skin, the men were numb, immune from pain, before they fainted or started to scream.

  It was the same with her now.

  The autumn dusk was drawing in, carrying with it the salt-laden mist that drifted up jagged cliffs from the ocean below, and the chapel felt dank and chill. And maybe, Isolde thought, the peace was ended long ago, when Arthur himself fell. And all these last seven years have only been part of that same long, crumbling fall.

  A shield, likewise bearing the bloodred badge of the Pendragon, rested on the dead man’s chest, and on the floor all about the coffin lay the great battle-axes, the knives, the helmet with its royal circlet of gold, and the jeweled and gilded sword that he had once carried into battle. Isolde drew her cloak more closely about her. Then she stepped out of the shadow of the arched lintel above.

  Instantly, the armed and helmeted guard to the left of the altar stiffened to attention, his hand moving reflexively to the hilt of his sword. His fellow, the broader, taller man of the two, had been standing at the side of the coffin, his back to Isolde, but at the sound of Isolde’s footsteps he whirled to face her, as well. Isolde looked from one man to the other. Neither guard was known to her, but she recognized the emblem of the wild boar blazoned on their shields.

  Marche’s men.

  She let the hood of her cloak slip to her shoulders, and saw them relax slightly, as they caught sight of her face. She could remember one of the older serving women telling her, with venomous sweetness, that she was the very image of what her grandmother had been when young.