Page 26 of The Road to Avalon
Difficult to undress a man you’re kissing, but I managed. As soon as he was naked, I pulled my shirt off and we fell back onto the bed together, my hair tumbling about us. It was going to need combing again. He rolled me onto my back and leaned over, eyes burning with the same desire rising in me. I reached up and buried my fingers in his hair, pulling him closer still. “I want you, Arthur Pendragon,” I growled. “Now.”
He grinned. “Your wish is my desire.”
*
Our pink facesand slightly disheveled hair might well have given us away when we arrived in the great hall for the evening meal. Cei gave Arthur an elaborate wink and a thumbs up, which I could have done without, and Merlin raised his eyebrows, but neither passed comment.
Eigr came in after us, taking small, stiff steps and leaning on her staff with one hand, and on a solemn-faced Archfedd with the other. Her servants had prepared three tables, one down each side, and the top table across the head of the hall, and banked up the fire, taking the heat to furnace level. “I’ll have my granddaughter beside me,” Eigr said, hobbling to her seat, which was really Cei’s throne. “And my boys.”
Her boys. I didn’t like the way she’d said that. Arthur wasn’t hers, and, as far as I was concerned, Cei wasn’t either. Despite the truce she and I had come to nineteen years ago, an uneasy feeling persisted in my heart, of not entirely trusting this woman. I caught her sharp gaze on me. In all probability she felt the same way toward me, the woman she claimed to have seen in a vision, drenched in blood. After nineteen years in the Dark Ages, I was a bit more inclined to believe in visions than I used to be.
Arthur pulled some more seats out of the shadowy corners of the hall. The fact that the only seat behind the table was the throne Eigr had lowered herself into implied she usually must sit there alone, presiding over her son’s hall. We took our places, with our men and Merlin at the other two tables, and servants brought the food.
The meal was strained, to say the least. Cei, ever good natured, did his best to jolly proceedings along, but his mother was never going to be the warmest of hosts. Archfedd sat stiffly at her grandmother’s left side, picking at her food and clearly not at ease. She answered the few questions that came her way with polite economy and kept her head down. As Cei had taken the place on his mother’s right, and I was on the end next to Arthur, no opportunity arose for me to speak to Archfedd and reassure her.
I was very glad when the time to rise arrived.
Archfedd shot me a beseeching look, but all I could do was widen my eyes and shrug. She’d have to go with the old lady and humor her. If I had my way, we wouldn’t be here for long.
Once Eigr and Archfedd had departed, the atmosphere relaxed.
“Some flagons of that good cider my mother has in her storehouse,” Cei called to the servants hovering in the shadows. “And quick about it.”
They hurried to do his bidding.
Arthur strode down the hall and threw open the double doors. “And let’s get some fresh air in our lungs.” The night rushed in on a salty sea wind, the torches guttered, and the flames on the hearth fire leapt in the draught, but the searing temperature dropped by several degrees in an instant.
The scurrying servants returned with the cider, and everyone left the hot, smoky fug of the hall to sit outside in the cool twilight. Perched on the platform by the hall doors, or on rocks like the gulls roosting on the cliffs below, we gazed out across the pale expanse of the endless ocean. In the velvet darkness of the sky, a billion pinpricks of light shone, and the sea shimmered with their reflected light as though sprinkled with stardust.
Horn cups filled with cider like magic, men emptied them and came back for more, and Gwalchmei fetched his lyre and strummed a plaintive melody. The sweet notes rose through the night air, and my heart soared with them. I pushed away the memories of Drustans and Essylt, those tragic lovers, and the fears I had for Archfedd with her grandmother.
Men laughed and joked, or joined in with songs, with everything about the evening much more convivial than the meal had been. It felt as though our men had let out a collective sigh of relief once Eigr had retired, as though they thought her as much a witch as her daughter, Morgana.
I sat on the edge of the raised platform with Arthur’s arm draped around my shoulders. The ever-present sea wind, redolent of salt and seaweed, cooled the sweat on my hot body. If it weren’t for Eigr’s disturbing presence, I could have sat there forever.
*
Cei had workto do while we were at Din Tagel. Normally, Arthur would have accompanied him, but, wary of Eigr, on that first day I asked him to stay with me. His indulgent smile, that I could have smacked off his face but didn’t, told me he knew exactly why I’d suddenly become so clingy. Instead of him riding out to visit the local farms and tin mines, the latter a staple part of Din Tagel’s economy, Arthur and I took the opportunity to act like tourists. Not that he’d have been familiar with the concept.
Hand-in-hand, we walked up over the windy headland and, at its furthest point, stopped to stare out across a changeable sea that could one moment be gray and white topped, and another the blue of aquamarine. A stiff westerly snatched at our cloaks and hair as we gazed into the distance– a distance only I knew ended in the Americas, an idea too foreign to share. Something Arthur didn’t need to know.
We settled on the tufty grass between high banks of purple heather that sheltered us from the warm wind, and lay in each other’s arms, squinting up at the white clouds racing across the powder-blue sky overhead. A chough landed on a rock near us and sat preening himself in the sun, and the never-ending raucous cries of gulls filled the air.
“I love it here,” Arthur said, his voice dreamy. “Cei’s lucky to have it. There’s something about the sea. It’s at times like this I understand why Theodoric loves it so much. More than his own wife, perhaps.” He turned his head and smiled at me. “I sometimes wish I had another life. A life without constant fighting. A life just with you.”
Oh, if only that could come true.
I shuffled closer and touched my lips to his in a feather-light kiss. “I quite often wish the same.” I sighed. “To be without all the worries and responsibilities for other people. For you never to be in danger again, and me never to have to worry about you being killed in battle.” I couldn’t say this without the fear, never far away, returning to remind me of what lay ahead of us.
He rolled onto his side, eyes fixed on mine. “Make love to me.” His hand ran down my body and hitched at the hem of the gown I was wearing, his fingers on my bare leg. “Here, under the endless sky, on the edge of the world.”
I cupped his cheek. “I love you so much.”
We made love in that grassy nook, our bodies entangled in passion, with the sun warming our skin. Afterwards, we lay naked together in the quiet hollow, as though nothing else mattered in the world. If only we could have stayed there.
Chapter Thirteen
On our secondday in Din Tagel, I was sitting above the cliffs, perched on a slab of stone someone had set up as a low bench and staring out to sea, when Merlin came upon me. I’d been throwing crusts of stale bread scrounged from the kitchen up into the air for the gulls to swoop and catch, delighting in their skill.
