9       

I grow too old for these journeys, Viviane thought as she rode through the late-winter rain, head bowed, her cloak wrapped tight around her body. And then resentment surged through her: This should now be Morgaine’s task, it is she who was to be Lady after me in Avalon.

 

Taliesin had told her, four years ago now, that Morgaine had been in Caerleon for Arthur’s wedding, and had been given to Gwenhwyfar for one of her ladies, and had tarried there. The Lady of the Lake, waiting-woman to a queen? How dared Morgaine forsake her true and appointed path in this way? And yet when she had sent a message to Caerleon with word that Morgaine should return to Avalon, the messenger had returned to say that Morgaine had left the court  ...  they thought for Avalon.

 

But she is not in Avalon. Nor is she in Tintagel with Igraine, nor yet at the court of Lot in Orkney. Where then has she gone?

 

Some harm could have come to her on one of her solitary journeys. She might have been captured by one of the marauders or masterless men who throng the country—she might have lost her memory or have been raped, murdered, flung into a ditch somewhere and her bones never been found ...  . Oh no, Viviane thought, if harm had come to her, I would surely have seen it in the mirror ... or with the Sight ...  .

 

Yet she could not be certain. The Sight was erratic in her now, and often when she sought to see beyond, nothing came but a maddening grey fog before her eyes, the veil of the unknown which she dared not try to pierce. And Morgaine’s fate was concealed somewhere within that veil.

 

Goddess, she prayed as she had done so often before, Mother, I have given you my life, bring back my child to me while I yet live ... but even as she spoke, she knew that there would be no answer, only grey rain like the veil of the unknown, the answer of the Goddess hidden in the unyielding sky.

 

Had it wearied her so much as this when last she made this journey, half a year ago? It seemed now to her that she had always ridden, before this, as lightly as a girl, and now the jolting of her donkey seemed to rattle every bone in her thin body, while the cold crept into her and gnawed at her with little icy teeth.

 

One of her escort turned back and said, “Lady, I can see the farmstead below. We will be there before nightfall, it seems.”

 

Viviane thanked the man, trying not to sound as grateful as she felt. She could not betray weakness before her escort.

 

Gawan met her in the narrow barnyard as she was dismounting from her donkey, steadying her so that she did not step into the midden. “Welcome, Lady,” he said, “as always, it is my pleasure to see you. My son Balin and your son will be here with the morrow—I sent to Caerleon that they might be here.”

 

“Is it as grave as that, old friend?” Viviane asked, and Gawan nodded. He said, “You will scarcely know her, Lady. She is fallen away to nothing now, and if she eats or drinks ever so little, she says it is as if a fire were lighted in her vitals. It cannot be much longer now, for all your medicines.”

 

Viviane nodded and sighed. “I feared as much,” she said. “When this illness once has hold on anyone, it never lets loose its claw. Perhaps I can give her some ease.”

 

“God grant it,” said Gawan, “for the medicines you left us when you were last here do little now. She wakes and cries in the night like a little child, when she thinks the serving-women and I do not hear. I have not even the heart to pray that she shall be spared to us for any more suffering, Lady.”

 

Viviane sighed again. When last she had come this way, half a year ago, she had left her strongest drugs and medicines, and she had half wished that Priscilla might take a fever in the autumn and die quickly, before the medicines lost their effect. There was little more that she could do. She let Gawan lead her into the house, seat her before the fire, and the serving-woman dished her up a hot bowl of soup from a kettle near the fire.

 

“You have been riding long in the rain, Lady,” he said. “Sit and rest, and you shall see my wife after the evening meal—sometimes she sleeps a little at this time of day.”

 

“If she can rest even a little, it is blessed, and I shall not disturb her,” Viviane said, folding her chilled hands around the soup bowl, and letting herself slump down on the backless bench. One of the serving-women drew off her boots and cloak, another came with a warmed towel to dry her feet, and Viviane, turning her skirts back so that her bony knees felt the fire, rested for a moment in mindless comfort, forgetting her grim errand. Then a thin wailing cry was heard from an inner room, and the serving-woman started and trembled. She said to Viviane, “It is the mistress, poor thing— she must be awake. I hoped she would sleep till we had set the night meal. I must go to her.”

 

“I will come too,” said Viviane, and followed the woman to the inner chamber. Gawan was seated by the fire, and she saw the look of dread on his face as that thin cry died away.

 

Always before, since Priscilla had fallen ill, Viviane had found some trace in the woman of her old buxom prettiness, some resemblance to the jolly young woman who had fostered her son Balan. Now face and lips and faded hair were all the same yellowed grey, and even the blue eyes seemed faded, as if the sickness had leached all the color from the woman. When last she had come, too, Priscilla had been up and about a part of every day; now she could see that this woman had been bedfast for months  ...  half a year had made this much change. And always before, Viviane’s medicines and herb potions had given ease and comfort and partial recovery. Now, she knew, it was too late for any further help.

 

For a moment the faded eyes drifted unfocused around the room, the lips moving faintly over the fallen-in jaw. Then Priscilla saw Viviane, blinked a little, and said in a whisper, “Is it you, Lady?”

 

Viviane went to her side and carefully took her withered hand. She said, “I am sorry to see you so ill. How is it with you, my dear friend?”

 

The faded, cracked lips drew back in a grimace which Viviane, for a moment, thought to be a movement of pain; then she realized it was meant for a smile. “I hardly know how it could be more ill,” she whispered. “I think God and his Mother have forgotten me. Yet I am glad to see you again, and I hope to live long enough to look again on my dear sons and bless them ...  .” She sighed wearily, trying to shift her body a little. “My back aches so with lying here, and yet whenever I am touched, it is like knives thrusting into me. And I am so thirsty, yet I dare not drink for fear of the pain ...  .”

 

“I will make you as comfortable as I can,” Viviane said, and, telling the servants what she wanted, she dressed the sores that came from lying in the bed and washed out Priscilla’s mouth with a cooling lotion, so that even though she did not drink, her mouth would not torment her so with dryness. Then she sat near her, holding her hand, not troubling the sick woman with words. Some time after dark, there was a sound in the courtyard, and Priscilla, starting up again, her eyes feverish in the lamplight, cried out, “It is my sons!”

 

And indeed, after a little time, Balan and his foster-brother, Balin, Gawan’s son, came into the room, stooping under the low ceiling.

 

“Mother,” Balan said, and stooped to kiss Priscilla’s hand, only then turning to Viviane to bow before her. “My lady.”

 

Viviane reached out and touched her elder son’s cheek. He was not as handsome as Lancelet, this one; he was a huge burly man, but his eyes were dark and fine like her own, or Lancelet’s. Balin was smaller, a sturdy, grey-eyed man. He was, she knew, just ten days older than her own son. He looked as Priscilla had once looked, fair-haired and red-cheeked.

 

“My poor mother,” he murmured, stroking Priscilla’s hand, “but now the Lady Viviane has come to help you, then you will be well again very soon, will you not? But you are so thin, Mother, you must try to eat more and be strong and well again ...  .”

 

“No,” she whispered, “I shall never be strong more until I sup with Jesus in Heaven, dear son.”

 

  “Oh, no, Mother, you must not say so—“ Balin cried, and Balan, meeting Viviane’s eyes, sighed.

 

He said in so low a tone that neither Priscilla nor her son could hear, “He cannot see that she is dying, my lady—my mother. Always he insists that she can recover. I had truly hoped that she would go in the autumn, when we all took the fever, but she has always been so strong—“ Balan shook his head, and his thick neck was flushed. Viviane saw that tears were standing in his eyes; he dashed them quickly away. And after a little, she said that they must all go out and let the sick woman rest again.

 

“Say farewell to your sons, Priscilla, and bless them,” she said, and Priscilla’s eyes brightened a little. “I would it should truly be farewell, before it grows worse—I would not have them see me as I was this morning,” she murmured, and Viviane saw the terror in her eyes. She bent over Priscilla and said gently, “I think I can promise you no more pain, my dear, if that is how you wish it to end.”

 

“Please,” whispered the dying woman, and Viviane felt the clawlike hand tighten on hers in entreaty.

 

“I will leave you here with your sons, then,” Viviane said gently, “for they are both your sons, my dear, even though you bore but one of them.” She went out into the other room and found Gawan there.

 

“Bring me my saddlebags,” she said; and when this had been done, she searched in a pocket for a moment. Then she turned to the man. “She is at ease for a moment now, but I can do little more, save to put an end to her suffering. I think this is what she wishes.”

 

“There is no hope then—none at all?”

 

“No. There is nothing left for her but suffering, and I cannot think that your God wills it that she should suffer more.”

 

Gawan said, shaken, “She has said often—that she wished she had had courage to throw herself into the river while she could still walk thither—“

 

“It is time, then, that she should go in peace,” Viviane said quietly, “but I wanted you to know that whatever I do, it is by her own will—“

 

“Lady,” Gawan replied, “I have trusted you always, and my wife loves you well and trusts you. I ask no more. If her sufferings end here, I know she will bless you.” But his face was drawn with grief. He followed Viviane into the inner room again. Priscilla had been speaking quietly to Balin; now she released his hand, and he went, weeping, to his father. She held out her thin hand to Balan and said in her shaking voice, “You too have been a good son to me, my lad. Always look after your foster-brother, and I beg you to pray for my soul.”

 

“I will, my mother,” said Balan, and bent to embrace her, but she gave a. little trembling cry of pain and fear as he moved toward her, and so he only picked up her withered hand and pressed his fingers to it.

 

“Now I have your medicine for you, Priscilla,” said Viviane. “Say good night, and sleep ...  .”

 

“I am so weary,” the dying woman whispered, “I shall be glad to sleep  ...  bless you, Lady, and your Goddess too ...  .”

 

“In her name, who gives mercy,” Viviane murmured, and held Pris-cilla’s head up so that she could swallow.

 

“I am afraid to drink—it is bitter, and whenever I swallow anything there is pain—“ Priscilla whispered.

 

“I swear to you, my sister, that when you have drunk this, there will be no more pain at all,” Viviane said steadily, and tipped the cup. Priscilla swallowed and raised her weak hand to touch Viviane’s face.

 

“Kiss me in farewell, too, Lady,” she said, with that ghastly smile again, and Viviane pressed her lips to the skull-like brow.

 

I have brought life and now I come as the Death-crone ...  . Mother, I do for her only what I would that one might do for me one day, Viviane thought, and shivered again, raising her eyes to meet Balin’s frowning gaze.

 

“Come,” she said quietly, “let her rest.”

 

They went out into the other room. Gawan remained behind, his hand in his wife’s; it was only fitting, Viviane thought, that he should remain with her.

 

The serving-women had set the evening meal and Viviane went to her place and ate and drank, for she was weary after the long ride.

 

“Have you ridden from Arthur’s court at Caerleon all in this day, my boys?” she asked, then smiled—these “boys” were men!

 

“Aye, from Caerleon—“ Balan said, “and a wretched ride it was, in cold and rain!” He helped himself to salt fish and spread butter on his bread, then handed the wooden dish to Balin. “You are eating nothing, my brother.”

 

Balin shuddered. “I have not the heart to eat when our mother lies like that. But God be thanked now you have come, Lady, she will soon be all well again, will she not? Your medicines did her so much good last time, it was like a miracle, and now again she will be better, will she not?”

 

Viviane stared at him—was it possible that he did not understand? She said quietly, “The best end of all is that she might go to join her God in the hereafter, Balin.”

 

He looked up at her, his ruddy face stricken. “No! She must not die,” he cried. “Lady, tell me that you will help her, that you will not let her die—“

 

Viviane said severely, “I am not your God, and life and death are not in my keeping, Balin. Would you have her linger in such misery for much longer?”

 

“But you are skilled in all manner of magic lore,” Balin protested angrily. “Why came you here, if not to cure her again? I heard you say but now, that you could put an end to her pain—“

 

“There is only one cure for such an illness as has taken your mother,” Viviane said, laying a compassionate hand on Balm’s shoulder, “and that is merciful.”

 

“Balin, have done,” Balan said, going to put his big callused hand on his foster-brother’s. “Would you truly have her suffer more?”

 

But Balin jerked up his head and glared at Viviane. “So you used your sorcery tricks to cure her when it was honor to your evil fiend-Goddess,” he shouted, “and now when you can get no more good of it you will let her die—“

 

“Be still, man,” Balan said, and now his voice was rough and strained. “Marked you not—our mother blessed and kissed her farewell, it was what she wished for—“

 

But Balin was staring at Viviane, and then he raised his hand as if to strike her. “Judas!” he shouted. “You too betrayed with a kiss—“ And he whirled and ran toward the inner room. “What have you done? Murderess! Foul murderess! Father! Father, here’s murder and evil sorcery—!”

 

Gawan, white-faced, appeared in the chamber door, anxiously gesturing for silence, but Balin shoved him aside and burst into the room. Viviane followed, and she saw that Gawan had closed the dead woman’s eyes.

 

Balin saw also, and he turned on her, shouting incoherently, “Murder! Treachery, sorcery—! Foul, murdering witch—!”

 

Gawan wrapped restraining arms around his son. “You will not speak so over your mother’s very body to one she trusted and loved!”

 

But Balin raved and shouted, straining to come at Viviane. She tried to speak, to quiet him, but he would not hear. At last she went out into the kitchen and sat by the fire.

 

Balan came and took her hand and said, “I’m sorry he is receiving it in this way, my lady. He knows better, and when the shock is past he’ll be grateful to you as I am—poor little mother, she suffered so, and now ‘tis ended, and I bless you too.” He lowered his head, trying not to sob aloud. “She was—was like mother to me too—“

 

“I know, my son, I know,” Viviane murmured, patting his head as if he were the clumsy little boy he had been more than twenty years ago. “It’s only right you should weep for your foster-mother, you would be heartless if you did not—“ and he broke down and sobbed, kneeling at her side, his face buried in her lap.

 

Balin came and stood over them, his face drawn with fury. “You know she killed our mother, Balan, and yet you come to her for comfort?”

 

Balan raised his head, snuffling back sobs. “She did our mother’s will. Are you such a fool you could not see—even with God’s help our mother could not have lived another fortnight, do you grudge her that last pain she was spared?”

 

But Balin only cried desolately, “My mother, my mother is dead!”

 

“Be still, she was my foster-mother, my mother too,” said Balan angrily, and then his face softened. “Ah, brother, brother, I grieve too, why should we quarrel? Come now, drink some wine, her suffering is ended and she is with God—better we should pray for her than be all at odds this way. Come, brother, come and eat and rest, you are weary too.”

 

“No,” cried Balin, “I will not rest under the roof that shelters the foul sorceress who slew my mother!”

 

Gawan came, pale and angry, and struck Balin across the mouth. He said, “Peace! The Lady of Avalon is our guest and our friend! You shall not sully the hospitality of this roof with such blasphemous words! Sit down, my son, and eat, or you will speak words we shall all regret!”

 

But Balin stared about him like a wild animal. “I will neither eat nor rest under this roof while it holds that—that woman.”

 

Balan demanded, “Dare you offer insult to my mother?” And Balin cried, “You are all against me, then—I shall go forth from this roof which shelters my mother’s slayer!” He turned his back and ran from the house. Viviane sank down in a chair, and Balan came to offer his arm and Gawan to pour her a cup of wine.

 

“Drink, Lady—and accept my apologies for my son,” he said. “He is beside himself; he will come soon enough to sanity.”

 

“Shall I go after him, Father, for fear he should do himself some hurt?” Balan asked, but Gawan shook his head.

 

“No—no, son, stay here with your mother. Words will do him little good now.”

 

Trembling, Viviane sipped at her wine. She, too, was overcome with sorrow for Priscilla, and for the time when they had been young women together, each with her baby son in her arms.... Priscilla had been so pretty and merry, they had laughed together and played with their babies, and now Priscilla lay dead after a wasting illness, and Viviane’s own hand had held the cup of her death. That she had done Priscilla’s own will only eased her conscience, it did not blunt her sadness.

 

We were young together, and now she lies dead and I am old, old as the Death-crone’s very self; and those pretty babies who played about our feet, one has grey in his own hair, and the other would kill me if he could, as afoul sorceress and murderer. ... It seemed to Viviane that her very bones rattled with an icy grief. She stood near to the fire, but still she shivered and could not get warm. She clutched her shawl about her, and Balan came and led her to the best seat, tucked a cushion behind her back, set a cup of heated wine in her hands.

 

“Ah, you loved her too,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself about Balin, Lady, he will regain his reason in time. When he can think clear again, he’ll know that what you did was great mercy to our mother—“ He broke off, slow red creeping up his heavy jowls. “Are you angry with me, Lady, that still I think of my mother as she who died but now?”

 

“It is no more than reason,” said Viviane, sipping at the hot wine, and caressing her son’s hardened hand. Once, she thought, it had been so little and tender that she could enfold it within her own, like a curled rosebud, and now her own hand was quite lost within his. “The Goddess knows, she was more mother to you than ever I was.”

 

“Aye, I should have known that you would understand that,” said Balan. “Morgaine said as much to me when I saw her last at Arthur’s court.”

 

“Morgaine? Is she at Arthur’s court now, my son? Was she there when you came away?”

 

Balan shook his head regretfully. “No, I saw her last—it was years gone, Lady. She left Arthur’s court, let me think ... it was before Arthur had his great wound  ...  why, ‘tis three years come Midsummer. I thought she was with you in Avalon.”

 

Viviane shook her head and steadied herself against the arm of the high seat. “I have not seen Morgaine since Arthur’s wedding.” And then she thought, perhaps she is gone over the seas. She asked Balan, “What of your brother Lancelet? Is he at court or has he gone back to Less Britain?”

 

“He will not do that, I think, while Arthur lives,” Balan said, “though he is not often at court now ...” and Viviane, with a fragment of the Sight, heard the unspoken words Balan bit back, unwilling to speak gossip or scandal: When Lancelet is at court, men mark how he never takes his eyes from Queen Gwenhwyfar, and twice he has refused Arthur when Arthur would have had him wedded. Balan went on hastily, “Lancelet has said he will set all things in order in Arthur’s kingdom, and so he is always out and about the lands, he has killed more marauding brigands and raiding bands than any other of Arthur’s Companions. They say of him that he is an entire legion in himself, Lady—“ and Balan raised his head and looked ruefully at Viviane. “Your younger son, Mother, is a great knight, such a knight as that old Alexander of the legends. There are those who say, even, that he is a better knight than Arthur’s self. I have brought no such glory on you, my lady.”

 

“We all do such things as the Gods give us to do, my son,” Viviane said gently. “I am only glad to see that you do not bear malice toward your brother for that he is a better knight than you.”

 

Balan shook his head. “Why, that would be like bearing malice toward Arthur that I am not the King, Mother,” he said. “And Lancelet is modest and good to all men, and pious as a maiden too—knew you not that he had become a Christian, Lady?”

 

Viviane shook her head. “It surprises me not,” she said, with a trace of scorn she did not know would be in her voice until she had spoken. “Always your brother fears those things he cannot understand, and the faith of Christ is a fitting faith for slaves who think themselves sinners and humble—“ Then she stopped herself and said, “I am sorry, my son. I meant not to belittle. I know it is your faith too.”

 

Balan blinked and smiled. “Now has a miracle come to pass, madam, that you ask pardon of any for any word you ever spoke!”

 

Viviane bit her lip. “Is that truly how you see me, my son?”

 

He nodded. “Aye, ever you have seemed to me the proudest of women—and it seemed to me right that you should be exactly as you are,” he said. And Viviane mocked herself that she had come to this, seeking a word of approval from her son! She cast about to find something new to speak of.

 

“You told me Lancelet has twice refused to marry? For what, do you think, is he waiting? Does he want more of a dowry than any maiden can bring him?”

 

Again it seemed that she heard Balan’s unspoken thoughts: He cannot have the one he would have, for she is wedded to his king  ...  but her son said only, “He says he has no mind to marry any woman, and jests that he is fonder of his horse than he could be of any woman who could not ride with him into battle—he says in jest that one day he will take one of the Saxon shield maidens to wife. None can match him at arms, either, nor in the games Arthur holds at Caerleon. Sometimes he will take some handicap, ride without a shield, or change horses with another, so he will not have too much of the advantage. Balin challenged him once and won a course against him, but he refused a prize for it, because he found out it was because Lancelet’s saddle girths broke.”

 

“So Balin too is a courteous and good knight?” Viviane said.

 

“Oh, yes, Mother, you must not judge my brother by tonight,” Balan said eagerly. “When he rode against Lancelet, truly I knew not which of them to cheer on. Lancelet offered him the prize, saying he had won it fairly, since he should not have lost control of his horse—so he said! But Balin would not take it, and they stood disputing with one another in courtesy like two heroes from the ancient sagas Taliesin used to tell us when we were lads!”

 

“So you can be proud of both your brothers,” Viviane said, and the talk passed to other things, and after a little time she said she should go and help with the laying-out. But when she went into the chamber, she saw that the women were all in awe of her, and a priest had come, too, from the village. He welcomed her courteously indeed, but Viviane could tell by his words that he thought her one of the sisters from the nunnery nearby— indeed, her dark travel dress made her look so, and she had no wish to confront him this night. So, when they entreated her to go to the best guest bed, she went, and at last she slept. But all that she had spoken of with Balan seemed to come and go in her head, through her dreams, and at one moment it seemed that she saw Morgaine through grey and thinning mists, running away into a wood of strange trees and crowned with flowers such as never grew in Avalon, and she said in her dreams, and again to herself when she woke, I must delay no longer, I must seek for her with the Sight, or what remains to me of the Sight.

 

The next morning she stood by while Priscilla was laid in earth. Balin had returned and stood weeping by the graveside, and after the burial was done and the other folk had gone into the house to drink ale, she approached him and said gently, "Will you not embrace me and exchange forgiveness with me, foster-son? Believe me, I share your grief. We have been friends all our lives, Dame Priscilla and I, or would I have given her my own son to nurse? And I am your foster-brother's mother." She held out her arms, but Balin's face drew hard and cold, and he turned his back on her and walked away.

 

Gawan besought her to stay for a day or two and rest there, but Viviane asked for her donkey to be brought; she must return to Avalon, she said, and she saw that Gawan, though his hospitality had been sincere, was relieved—if someone had told the priest who she was, there might have been awkwardness he had no mind to, during his wife's funeral feast. Balan, too, asked, "Will you have me to ride with you to Avalon, madam? There are sometimes brigands and evil folk on the road."

 

"No," she said, giving him her hand and smiling. "I look not as if I had gold about me, and the men who ride with me are of the Tribesmen —we could hide in the hills, should we be attacked. Nor am I any temptation to any man who might seek to take a woman." She laughed and said, "And with Lancelet questing to kill all the brigands in this country, it will soon be as it was said once it was, that a virgin of fifteen bearing a purse of gold might ride from one end of the land to the other with no man to offer her insult! Stay here, my son, and mourn your mother, and make peace with your foster-brother. You must not quarrel with him for my sake, Balan." And then she shuddered suddenly as if with cold, for a picture had come into her mind, and it seemed to her as if there was the clash of swords and her son bleeding from a great wound ...  .

 

"What is it, Lady?" he asked her softly.

 

"Nothing, my son—only promise to me that you will not break the peace with your brother Balin."

 

He bent his head. "I will not, Mother. And I will tell him that you have said this, so he will not think you bear him any grudge, either."

 

"By the Lady, I do not," said Viviane, but still she felt icy cold, though the winter sun was warm on her back. "May she bless you, my son, and your brother too, though I doubt he wishes for the blessing of any God but his own. Will you take the Lady's blessing, Balan?"

 

"I will," he said, bending to kiss Viviane's hand, and he stood looking after her as she rode away.

 

She told herself, as she rode toward Avalon that surely what she had seen had come of her own weariness and fear; and in any case Balan was one of Arthur's Companions, and it could not be looked for, in this war with the Saxons, that he should escape a wound. But the picture persisted in her mind, that Balan and his foster-brother should somehow quarrel in her name, until at last she made a stern banishing gesture and willed to see her son's face no more in her mind till she should look on it again in the flesh!

 

She was troubled too about Lancelet. He was long past the age when a man should marry. Yet there were men enough who had no mind to women, seeking only for the companionship of their brothers and comrades under arms, and she had wondered often enough if Ban's son were one of them. Well, Lancelet should take his own road; she had consented to that when he left Avalon. If he professed great devotion to the Queen, no doubt, it was only that his comrades should not mock at him as a lover of boys.

 

But she dismissed her sons from her mind. Neither of them was as near to her heart as Morgaine, and Morgaine  ...  where was Morgaine? She had been disquieted before this, but now, hearing Balan's news, she feared for Morgaine's very life. Before this day was ended, she should send out messengers from Avalon to Tintagel, where Igraine dwelt, and northward to Lot's court where Morgaine might have gone to be with her child ...  . She had seen the young Gwydion, once or twice, in her mirror, but had paid him little heed, as long as he grew and thrived. Morgause was kindly to all little children, having a brood of her own, and there would be time enough to look to Gwydion when he came of an age for fostering. Then should he come to Avalon ...  .

 

With the iron discipline of years, she managed to put even Morgaine from her mind and to ride home to Avalon in a mood befitting a priestess who had just taken the part of the Death-crone for her oldest friend— sobered indeed, but without great grief, for death was only the beginning of new life.

 

Priscilla was a Christian. She believed she would now be with her God in Heaven. Yet she too will be born again on this imperfect world, to seek the perfection of the Gods, again and yet again ...  . Balan and I parted as strangers, and so it must be. I am no more the Mother, and I should feel no more grief than when I ceased to be the Maiden for her  ...  yet her heart was filled with rebellion.

 

Truly, the time had come for her to give up her rulership of Avalon, that a younger woman might be Lady of the Lake and she herself no more than one of the wise-women, offering counsel and advice, but carrying no more that fearsome power. She had long known that the Sight was leaving her. Yet she would not lay down her power until she could place it in the hands of that one she had prepared to take it from her. She had felt that she could wait until Morgaine had outgrown her bitterness and returned to Avalon.

 

Yet if anything has befallen Morgaine  ...  and even if it has not, have I the right to continue as Lady when the Sight has left me?

 

For a moment, when she came to the Lake, she was so cold and wet that when the boat’s crew turned to her to call down the mists, she could not force herself to remember the spell. Indeed it is time and more than time that I should lay down my powers ...  . Then the words of power came back into her mind and she spoke them, but much of that night she lay wakeful, in dread.

 

When the morning had come, she studied the sky; the moon was darkening, and it would do no good to consult the mirror at this time. Will it ever profit me anything to look into that mirror again, now the Sight has departed from me? With iron discipline, she forced herself to say nothing of any of this to her attendant priestesses. But later that day she met with the other wise-women and asked them, “Is there anyone in the House of Maidens who is still virgin and has never yet gone to the grove or to the fires?”

 

“There is Taliesin’s little daughter,” said one of the women. For a moment Viviane was confused—surely Igraine was grown and wedded and widowed, mother of the High King in Caerleon, and Morgause too was wedded and the mother of many sons. Then she recalled herself and said, “I knew not that he had a daughter in the House of Maidens.” A time had been, she thought, when no girl had been taken into the Maiden House without her own knowledge, and it had been her hand that had tested each one for the Sight and for her fitness for the Druid lore. But in the last years, she had let this slip from her.

 

“Tell me. How old is she? What is her name? When did she come to us?”

 

“Her name is Niniane,” said the old priestess. “She is the daughter of Branwen—do you remember? Branwen said that Taliesin had fathered this child at Beltane fire. It seems it was only a little while ago, but she must be eleven or twelve, perhaps more. She was fostered away in the North somewhere, but she came to us five or six seasons ago. She is a good child and biddable enough, and there are not now so many maidens who come to us that we can afford to pick and choose among them, Lady! There are none now like Raven or your fosterling Morgaine. And where is Morgaine now, Lady? She should return to us!”

 

Viviane said, “She should return to us indeed,” and felt ashamed to say that she did not even know where Morgaine was, or even whether she was alive or dead. How have I the insolence to be Lady of Avalon when I know not even the name of my successor, nor who dwells in the House of Maidens? But if this Niniane was daughter to Taliesin and to a priestess of Avalon, surely she must have the Sight. And even if she had it not herself, Viviane could compel her to see, if she was a maiden still.

 

She said, “See that Niniane is sent to me before dawn, three days from now,” and, although she saw a dozen questions in the eyes of the old priestess, she marked with a certain satisfaction that she was still unquestioned Lady of Avalon, for the woman asked her nothing.

 

NINIANE CAME TO HER an hour before dawn, at the end of the moon-dark seclusion; Viviane, sleepless, had spent much of the night in restless self-questioning. She knew herself reluctant to set aside her own position of authority, yet if she could lay it into Morgaine’s hands, she would do so without regrets. She turned over in her hand the little sickle knife which Morgaine had abandoned when she fled from Avalon, then put it aside and raised her face to look at Taliesin’s daughter.

 

The old priestess, even as I myself, loses track of time; surely she is more than eleven or twelve. The girl was trembling in awe, and Viviane recalled how Morgaine too had trembled when she first saw her as Lady of Avalon. She said gently, “You are Niniane? Who are your parents?”

 

“I am Branwen’s daughter, Lady, but I do not know my father’s name. She said only that I was Beltane-gotten.” Well, that was reasonable enough.

 

“How old are you, Niniane?”

 

“I shall have finished fourteen winters this year.”

 

“And you, have you been to the fires, child?”

 

The girl shook her head. She said, “I have not been called thither.”

 

“Have you the Sight?”

 

“Only a little, I think, Lady,” she said, and Viviane sighed and said, “Well, we shall see, child; come with me,” and she led the way out of her isolated house, upwards along the hidden path to the Sacred Well. The girl was taller than she herself, slender and fair-haired, with violet eyes—she was not unlike Igraine at that age, Viviane thought, though Igraine’s hair had been nearer red than golden. Suddenly it seemed that she could see this Niniane crowned and robed as the Lady, and she shook her head impatiently, to clear it of unwanted vision. Surely this was only wandering daydream ...  .

 

She brought Niniane to the pool, then stopped for a moment to look at the sky. She handed her the sickle knife which had been given to Morgaine when she had been made priestess, and said to her quietly, “Look into the mirror, my child, and see where she who held this dwells now.”

 

Niniane looked at her hesitantly and said, “Lady, I told you—I have little of the Sight—“

 

Viviane suddenly understood—the girl was frightened of failure. “It does not matter. You will see with the Sight that once was mine. Be not afraid, child, but look for me into the mirror.”

 

Silence, while Viviane watched the girl’s bent head. In the surface of the pool it seemed only that wind came and ruffled the surface, as always. Then Niniane said in a quiet, wandering voice, “Ah, see ... she sleeps in the arms of the grey king  ... ” and was still.

 

What can she mean? Viviane could make nothing of the words. She wanted to cry out to Niniane, to force the Sight upon her undesired, yet she compelled herself, by the greatest effort of her life, to keep still, knowing that even her restless thoughts could blur the Sight for the maiden. She said, hardly above a whisper, “Tell me, Niniane, do you see that day when Morgaine shall return to Avalon?”

 

Again the empty silence. A little breeze—the dawn wind—had sprung up, and again the riffle of wind came and went across the glassy surface of the water. At last Niniane said softly, “She stands in the boat  ...  her hair is all grey now  ... ” and again she was still, sighing as if with pain.

 

“Do you see more, Niniane? Speak, tell me—“

 

Pain and terror crossed the girl’s face and she whispered, “Ah, the cross  ...  the light burns me, the cauldron between her hands—Raven! Raven, will you leave us now?” She gave a sharp indrawn breath of shock and dismay, and crumpled fainting to the ground.

 

Viviane stood motionless, her hands clenched, and then, with a long sigh, she bent to raise the girl. She dipped her hand in the pool, sprinkled water on Niniane’s slack face. After a moment the girl opened her eyes, stared at Viviane in fright, and began to cry.

 

“I am sorry, Lady—I could see nothing,” she whimpered.

 

So. She spoke, but she remembers nothing of what she saw. I might well have spared her this, for all the good it has done. It was pointless to be angry with her—she had done no more than she was commanded. Viviane stroked the fair hair back from Niniane’s forehead and said gently, “Don’t cry; I am not angry with you. Does your head ache? So—go and rest, my child.”

 

The Goddess bestows her gifts as she will. But why, Mother of all, do you send me to do your will with imperfect instruments? You have taken from me the power to do your will; why, then, have you taken from me the one who should serve you when I am no longer here? Niniane, her hands pressed to her forehead, went slowly down the path toward the House of Maidens, and after a time, Viviane followed.

 

Had Niniane’s words been nothing but raving? She did not think so —she was sure the girl had seen something. But Viviane could make nothing of what Niniane had seen, and the girl’s few attempts to put it into words meant nothing to Viviane. And now Niniane had forgotten it all, so that she could not be questioned further.

 

She sleeps in the arms of the grey king. Did that mean Morgaine was lying in the arms of death?

 

Would Morgaine return to them? Niniane had said only, She stands in the boat... so Morgaine would return to Avalon. Her hair is all grey now. So the return would not come soon, if at all. That, at least, was unequivocal.

 

The cross. The light burns me. Raven, Raven, the cauldron between her hands. That was certainly no more than delirium, an attempt to put some tenuous vision into words. Raven would bear the cauldron, the magical weapon of water and of the Goddess  ...  yes, Raven was empowered to handle the Great Regalia. Viviane sat staring at the wall of her chamber, wondering if this meant that now Morgaine was gone from them, Raven should bear the power of the Lady of the Lake. It seemed to her that there was no other way to interpret the girl’s words. And even so, they might mean nothing.

 

Whatever I do now, I am in the dark—I might better have gone to Raven, who would have answered me only with silence!

 

But if Morgaine had indeed gone into the arms of death, or was lost to Avalon forever, there was no other priestess fit to carry the weight. Raven had given her voice to the Goddess in prophecy  ...  was the place of the Goddess to go unserved because Raven had chosen her silent path?

 

Viviane sat alone in her dwelling, staring at the wall, pondering Niniane’s cryptic words again and again in her heart. Once she rose and went alone up the silent path to stare again into the unmoving waters, but they were grey, grey as the unyielding sky. Once indeed it seemed to her that something moved there, and Viviane whispered, “Morgaine?” and looked deep into the silence of the pool.

 

But the face that looked out at her was not Morgaine’s face—it was still, dispassionate as the Goddess herself, crowned with bare wicker-withes ...  .

 

  ...  Is it my own reflection I see, or the Death-crone?  ...

 

At last, weary, she turned away.

 

This I have known since first I trod the path—a time comes when there is only despair, when you seek to tear the veil from the shrine, and you cry out to her and know that she will not answer because she is not there, because she was never there, there is no Goddess but only yourself, and you are alone in the mockery of echoes from an empty shrine ...  .

 

There is no one there, there was never anyone there, and all the Sight is but dreams and delusions ...  .

 

As she trudged wearily down the hill, she saw that the new moon stood in the sky. But now it meant nothing to her save that this ritual silence and seclusion were done for the time.

 

What have I to do with this mockery of a Goddess? The fate of Avalon lies in my hands, and Morgaine is gone, and I am alone with old women and children and half-trained girls . .. alone, all alone! And I am old and weary and my death awaits me ...  .

 

Within her dwelling the women had lighted a fire, and a cup of warmed wine sat steaming beside her usual chair so that she might break the moon-dark fast. She sank down wearily, and one of her attendant priestesses came silently to draw off her shoes and put a warm shawl about her shoulders.

 

There is no one but I. But I have still my daughters, I am not wholly alone. “Thank you, my children,” she said, with unaccustomed warmth, and one of the attendants bowed her head shyly without speaking. Viviane did not know the girl’s name—why am I thus neglectful?—but she thought she must be under a vow of silence for the time. The second said softly, “It is our privilege to serve you, Mother. Will you go to rest?”

 

“Not yet awhile,” Viviane said, and then on an impulse said, “Go and ask the priestess Raven to attend me.”

 

It seemed a long time before, with silent step, Raven came into the room. Viviane greeted her with a bending of the head, and Raven came and bowed, then, following Viviane’s gesture, went to the seat across from Viviane’s own. Viviane handed her the cup, still half filled with the hot wine, and Raven sipped, smiling thanks, and put it from her.

 

At last Viviane said in entreaty, “My daughter, you broke your silence once before Morgaine left us. Now I seek for her and she cannot be found. She is not in Caerleon, nor in Tintagel, nor with Lot and Morgause in Lothian  ...  and I grow old. There is none to serve. ... I ask of you as I would inquire of the oracle of the Goddess: will Morgaine return?”

 

Raven was silent. At last she shook her head and Viviane demanded, “Do you mean that Morgaine will not return? Or do you mean that you do not know?” But the younger priestess made an odd gesture of helplessness and questioning.

 

“Raven,” said Viviane, “you know that I must lay down my place, and there is no other to bear it, none who has the old training of a priestess, none who has gone so far—only you. If Morgaine does not return to us, you must be Lady of the Lake. Your oath was given to silence, and you have borne it faithfully. Now it is time to lay it aside, and take from my hands the guardianship of this place—there is no other way.”

 

Raven shook her head. She was a tall woman, slightly built, and, Viviane thought, no longer young; she was certainly ten years older than Morgaine—she must be nearing her fortieth year. And she came here as a little maiden with her breasts not yet budded. Her hair was long and dark, and her face dark and sallow, her eyes large beneath dark, thick brows. She looked worn and austere.

 

Viviane covered her face with her hands and said in a hoarse voice, through tears she could not shed, “I—cannot, Raven.”

 

After a moment, her face covered, she felt a gentle touch on her cheek. Raven had risen and was bending over her. She did not speak, only took Viviane into a close embrace and held her for a moment, and Viviane, feeling the warmth of the younger woman pressed against her, began to sob, and felt that she would weep and weep with no will ever to cease. And at last, when in sheer exhaustion Viviane was silent, Raven kissed her on the cheek and went silently away.

 

                                  10         

Once Igraine had said to Gwenhwyfar that Cornwall was at the world’s end. So it seemed to Gwenhwyfar—there might never have been such things as marauding Saxons or a High King. Or a High Queen. Here in this distant Cornish convent, even though on a clear day she could look out toward the sea and see the stark line of Tintagel castle, she and Igraine were no more than two Christian ladies. Gwenhwyfar thought, surprising herself, I am glad I came.

 

Yet when Arthur had asked her to go, she had been afraid to leave the enclosing walls of Caerleon. The journey had seemed a long nightmare to her, even the swift and comfortable ride along the Roman road south; when they left the Roman road and began to travel across the high, exposed moors, Gwenhwyfar had huddled in panic within her litter, hardly able to tell which was more of a terror to her, the high open sky or the long, long vistas of grass, treeless, where the rocks thrust up stark and cold like the very bones of the earth. Then for a time no living creature could be seen except the ravens that circled high, waiting for something to die, or, far away, one of the wild moorland ponies, stopping to throw up a shaggy head before bolting away.

 

Yet here in this distant Cornish convent, all was still and peaceful; a soft-toned bell rang the hours, and roses grew in the enclosed cloister garden and twined into crannies of the crumbling brick wall. Once it had been a Roman villa. The sisters had taken up the floor of one big room, they said, because it had portrayed some scandalous pagan scene—Gwenhwyfar was curious as to what it was, but no one told her and she was ashamed to ask. All around the edges of the room were lovely little tiled dolphins and curious fish, and at the center, common bricks had been laid. She sat there with the sisters sometimes in the afternoons and stitched at her sewing, while Igraine was resting.

 

Igraine was dying. Two months since, the message had come to Caerleon. Arthur had had to travel north to Eboracum to see to the fortification of the Roman wall there and could not go, nor was Morgaine there. And since Arthur could not go, and it could not be looked for that Viviane, at her age, could make the long journey, Arthur had begged Gwenhwyfar to go and stay with his mother; and after much persuasion she had agreed.

 

Gwenhwyfar knew little about tending the sick. Whatever illness had seized on Igraine, at least it was painless—but she was short of breath and could not walk far without coughing and gasping. The sister who cared for her said it was congestion in the lungs, yet there was no coughing of blood and she had no fever and flushing. Her lips were pale and her nails blue, and her ankles were swollen to where she could hardly walk on them; she seemed almost too weary to speak and kept her bed most of the time. She seemed not so very ill to Gwenhwyfar, but the sister said she was dying indeed, and now it could not be more than a week at most.

 

It was the fairest part of the summer, and this morning Gwenhwyfar brought a white rose from the convent garden and laid it on Igraine’s pillow. Igraine had struggled to her feet last night to go to evensong, but this morning she had been so weary and without strength she could not rise. Yet she smiled up at Gwenhwyfar and said in her wheezing voice, “Thank you, dear daughter.” She put the flower to her face, sniffing delicately at the petals. “Always I wanted roses at Tintagel, but the soil there was so poor, little would grow. ... I dwelt there five years and never did I cease from trying to make some sort of garden.”

 

“When you came to take me to be wedded, you saw the garden at my home,” Gwenhwyfar said, with a sudden twinge of homesickness for that faraway walled garden.

 

“I remember how beautiful it was—it put me in mind of Avalon. The flowers are so beautiful there, in the courts of the House of Maidens.” She was silent for a moment. “A message was sent to Morgaine at Avalon?”

 

“A message was sent, Mother. But Taliesin told us Morgaine had not been seen in Avalon,” said Gwenhwyfar. “No doubt she is with Queen Morgause in Lothian, and in these times it takes forever for a messenger to come and go.”

 

Igraine drew a heavy sigh and began to struggle with a cough again, and Gwenhwyfar helped her to sit upright. After a time Igraine murmured, “Yet the Sight should have bidden Morgaine to come to me—you would come if you knew your mother was dying, would you not? Yes, for you came, and I am not even your own mother. Why has Morgaine not come?”

 

It is nothing to her that I have come, Gwenhwyfar thought, it is not me she wants here. There is no one who cares whether I am here or elsewhere. And it seemed as if her very heart was bruised. But Igraine was looking at her expectantly, and she said, “Perhaps Morgaine has received no message. Perhaps she has gone into a convent somewhere and become a Christian and renounced the Sight.”

 

“It may be so.... I did so when I married Uther,” Igraine murmured. “Yet now and again it thrust itself on me undesired, and I think if Morgaine was ill or dying I would know it.” Her voice was fretful. “The Sight came upon me before you were married  ...  tell me, Gwenhwyfar, do you love my son?”

 

Gwenhwyfar shrank from the sick woman’s clear grey eyes; could Igraine see into her very soul? “I love him well and I am his faithful queen, lady.”

 

“Aye, I believe you are ... and you are happy together?” Igraine held Gwenhwyfar’s slender hands in her own for a moment and suddenly smiled. “Why, so you must be. And will be happier yet, since you are bearing his son at last.”

 

Gwenhwyfar’s mouth dropped open and she stared at Igraine. “I—I —I did not know.”

 

Igraine smiled again, a tender and radiant smile, so that Gwenhwyfar thought, Yes, I can believe it, that when she was young, she was beautiful enough for Uther to cast aside all caution and seek her with spells and charms.

 

Igraine said, “It is often so, though you are not really so young—I am surprised you have not already had a child.”

 

“It was not for lack of wanting, no, nor praying for it either, lady,” Gwenhwyfar said, so shaken that she hardly knew what she was saying. Was the old Queen falling into delirium? This was too cruel for jesting. “How —what makes you think I am—am with child?”

 

Igraine said, “I forgot, you have not the Sight—it has deserted me for long and long I renounced it, but as I say, it steals upon me unawares, and never has it played me false.” Gwenhwyfar began to weep, and Igraine, troubled, reached out her thin hand and laid it over the younger woman’s.

 

“Why, how is this, that I give you good news and you weep, child?”

 

Now she will think I do not want a child, and I cannot bear to have her think ill of me ...  . Gwenhwyfar said shakily, “Only twice in all the years I have been married have I had any cause to think myself pregnant, and then I carried the child only a month or two. Tell me, lady, do you—“ Her throat closed and she dared not speak the words. Tell me, Igraine, shall I bear this child, have you seen me then with Arthur’s child at my breast? What would her priest think of this compromise with sorcery?

 

Igraine patted her hand. “I wish I might tell you more, but the Sight comes and goes as it will. God grant it come to a good end, my dear; it may be that I can see no more because by the time your child is born, I shall not be here to see—no, no, child, do not weep,” she begged. “I have been ready to leave this life ever since I saw Arthur wedded. I would like to see your son, I would like to hold a child of Morgaine’s in my arms, should that day ever come, but Uther is gone and it is well with my children. It may be that Uther waits for me beyond death, or the other children I lost at birth. And if they do not—“ She shrugged. “I shall never know.”

 

Igraine’s eyes closed, and Gwenhwyfar thought, I have wearied her. She sat silent until the older woman slept, then rose and went quietly into the garden.

 

She felt numbed; it had truly not seemed to her that she might be pregnant. If she had thought anything at all about it, it was that the stress of travel had delayed her courses ... for the first three years of her marriage, every time it had been late, she had thought herself with child. Then, in the year in which Arthur had been, first, away for the battle of Celidon Wood and the long campaign before it, then wounded and too weak to touch her, the same pattern had persisted. And finally she had realized that her monthly rhythms were inconstant—there was no way to keep track of them by the moon, for sometimes two or three months might pass with no sign.

 

But now that Igraine had spoken, she wondered why she had not thought of this before; it never occurred to her to doubt the Queen. Something inside Gwenhwyfar said, Sorcery, and there was a small voice that persisted in reminding her, All these things are of the Devil, and have no place in this house of holy women. But something else said, How could it be wicked to tell me this? It was more, she thought, as when the angel was sent to Mary the Virgin to tell her of the birth of her son  ...  and then for a moment Gwenhwyfar was struck with awe at her own presumption; and then she began softly to giggle, at the incongruity of Igraine, old and dying, as an angel of God.

 

At that moment the bell rang in the cloister for prayers, and Gwenhwyfar, though here as a guest, and without obligation, turned and went into the sisters’ chapel, kneeling in her accustomed place among the visitors. But she heard little of the service, for her whole heart and mind were caught up in the most fervent prayer of her entire life.

 

It has come, the answer to all my prayers. Oh, thank you, God and Christ and our Blessed Lady!

 

Arthur was wrong. It was not he who failed. There was no need  ...  and once again she was filled with the paralyzing shame she had felt when he had said that thing to her, all but giving her leave to betray him  ...  and what a wicked woman I was then, that I could even have considered it ...  . But now in the very midst of her wickedness God had rewarded her when she deserved it now. Gwenhwyfar raised her head and began to sing the Magnificat with the rest, so fervently that the abbess raised her head and looked sharply at her.

 

They do not know why I am thankful ...  they do not know how much I have to be thankful for ...  .

 

But they do not know how wicked I was either, for I was thinking here in this holy place of the one I love ...  .

 

And then, even through her joy, suddenly it was like pain again: Now he will look upon me big with Arthur’s child, and he will think me ugly and gross and never look on me again with love and longing. And even through the joy in her heart, she felt small and cramped and joyless.

 

Arthur gave me leave, and we could have had each other, at least once, and now never  ...  never  ...  never ...  .

 

She put her face into her hands and wept behind them, silently, and no longer cared that the abbess was watching her.

 

THAT NIGHT IGRAINE’S BREATHING was so labored that she could not even lower her head to rest; she had to sit bolt upright, propped up on many cushions, to breathe at all, and she wheezed and coughed without end. The abbess gave her a draught of something which would clear the lungs, but it only made her queasy, she said, and she could take no more of it.

 

Gwenhwyfar sat beside her, drowsing a little now and then, but alert whenever the sick woman stirred, to give her a sip of water, to shift her pillows so that she could find a little ease. There was only a small lamp in the room, but there was brilliant moonlight, and the night was so warm that the door stood open into the garden. And through it all there was the ever-present muffled sound of the sea beyond the garden, beating at the rocks.

 

“Strange,” Igraine murmured at last in a faraway voice, “never would I have thought I would come here to die. ... I remember how dreary I felt, how alone, when first I came to Tintagel, as if I had come to the very end of the world. Avalon was so fair, so beautiful, so filled with flowers  ... ”

 

“There are flowers here,” Gwenhwyfar said.

 

“But not like the flowers of my home. It is so barren here, so rocky,” she said. “Have you been in the Island, child?”

 

“I was schooled in the convent on Ynis Witrin, madam.”

 

“It is beautiful on the Island. And when I travelled here over the moors, it was so high and barren and deserted, I was afraid—“

 

Igraine made a weak movement toward her, and Gwenhwyfar took her hand and was alarmed by its coldness. “You are a good child,” Igraine said, “to come so far, when my own children could not. I remember how you dread travelling—and now to come so far, when you are pregnant.”

 

Gwenhwyfar rubbed the icy hands between her own. “Do not tire yourself with talking, Mother.”

 

Igraine made a little sound like a laugh, but it got lost in a fit of wheezing. “Do you think it makes any difference now, Gwenhwyfar? I wronged you—even on the very day you were wedded, I went to Taliesin and asked him, was there any honorable way for Arthur to get out of this marriage.”

 

“I—did not know. Why?”

 

It seemed to her that Igraine hesitated before answering, but she could not tell, perhaps it was only that the other woman struggled for speech. “I know not  ...  perhaps it was that I thought you would not be happy with my son.” She struggled again with a fit of coughing so heavy that it seemed she would never get her breath.

 

When she had quieted a little, Gwenhwyfar said, “Now you must talk no more, Mother—will you have me bring you a priest?”

 

“Damn all priests,” said Igraine clearly. “I will have none of them about me—oh, look not so shocked, child!” She lay still for a moment. “You thought me so pious, that I retired to a convent in my last years. But where else should I have gone? Viviane would have had me at Avalon, but I could not forget it was she who had married me to Gorlois ...  . Beyond that garden wall lies Tintagel, like a prison ... a prison it was to me, indeed. Yet it was the only place I could call my own. And I felt I had won it by what I endured there ...  .”

 

Another long, silent struggle for breath. At last she said, “I wish Morgaine had come to me  ...  she has the Sight, she should have known I was dying ...  .”

 

Gwenhwyfar saw that there were tears in her eyes. She said gently, rubbing the icy hands which now felt as taut as cold claws, “I am sure she would come if she knew, dear Mother.”

 

“I am not so sure ... I sent her from me into Viviane’s hands. Even though I knew well how ruthless Viviane could be, that she would use Morgaine as ruthlessly as she used me, for the well-being of this land and for her own love of power,” Igraine whispered. “I sent her from me because I felt it better, if it came to be a choice of evils, that she should be in Avalon and in the hands of the Goddess, than in the hands of the black priests who would teach her to think that she was evil because she was a woman.”

 

Gwenhwyfar was deeply dismayed. She chafed the icy hands between her own and renewed the hot bricks at Igraine’s feet; but the feet too were cold as ice, and when she rubbed them Igraine said she could not feel them.

 

She felt she must try again. “Now with your end near, do you not want to speak with one of Christ’s priests, dear Mother?”

 

“I told you, no,” said Igraine, “or after all these years when I kept silent to have peace in my home, I might tell them at last what I truly felt about them.... I loved Morgaine enough to send her to Viviane, that she at least might escape them ...  .” She began wheezing again. “Arthur,” she said at last. “Never was he my son ... he was Uther’s—only a hope of the succession, no more. I loved Uther well and I bore him sons because it meant so much to him that he should have a son to follow him. Our second son —he that died soon after his navel string was cut—him, I think, I might have loved for my own, as I loved Morgaine ...  . Tell me, Gwenhwyfar, has my son reproached you that you have not yet borne him an heir?”

 

Gwenhwyfar bent her head, feeling her eyes stinging with tears. “No, he has been so good ... never once has he reproached me. He told me once that he had never fathered a son by any woman, though he had known many, so that perhaps the fault was not mine.”

 

“If he loves you for yourself, then he is a priceless jewel among men,” said Igraine, “and it is all the better if you can make him happy ...  . Morgaine I loved because she was all I had to love. I was young and wretched; you can never know how unhappy I was that winter when I bore her, alone and far from home and not yet full-grown. I feared she would have become a monster because of all the hate I felt when I was bearing her, but she was the prettiest little thing, solemn, wise, like a fairy child. She and Uther only have I loved  ...  where is she, Gwenhwyfar? Where is she that she would not come to her mother when she is dying?”

 

Gwenhwyfar said compassionately, “No doubt she knows not that you are ill—“

 

“But the Sight!” Igraine cried, moving restlessly on her pillow. “Where can she be, that she does not see that I am dying? Ah, I saw she was in deep trouble, even at Arthur’s crowning, and yet I said nothing, I did not want to know, I felt I had had enough grief and said nothing when she needed me ...  . Gwenhwyfar, tell me the truth! Did Morgaine have a child somewhere, alone and far from anyone who loved her? Has she spoken of this to you? Does she hate me then, that she will not come to me even when I am dying, only because I did not speak out all my fears for her at Arthur’s crowning? Ah, Goddess ... I put aside the Sight to have peace in my home, since Uther was a follower of the Christ ...  . Show me where dwells my child, my daughter ...  .”

 

Gwenhwyfar held her motionless and said, “Now you must be still, Mother ... it must be as God wills. You cannot call upon the Goddess of the fiends here—“

 

Igraine sat bolt upright; despite her sick swollen face, her blue lips, she looked on the younger woman in such a way that Gwenhwyfar suddenly remembered, She too is High Queen of this land.

 

“You know not what you speak,” Igraine said, with pride and pity and contempt. “The Goddess is beyond all your other Gods. Religions may come and go, as the Romans found and no doubt the Christians will find after them, but she is beyond them all.” She let Gwenhwyfar lower her to her pillows and groaned. “I would my feet could be warmed ... yes, I know you have hot bricks there, I cannot feel them. Once I read in an ancient book which Taliesin gave me of some scholar who was forced to drink hemlock. Taliesin says that the people have always killed the wise. Even as the people of the far southlands put Christ to the cross, so this wise and holy man was forced to drink hemlock because the rabble and the kings said he taught false doctrine. And when he was dying, he said that the cold crept upward from his feet, and so he died. ... I have not drunk of hemlock, but it is as if I had  ...  and now the cold is reaching my heart ...  .” She shivered and was still, and for a moment Gwenhwyfar thought she had ceased to breathe. No, the heart was still sluggishly beating. But Igraine did not speak again, lying wheezing on her pillows, and a little before dawn the rasping breaths finally ceased.

 

11

Igraine was buried at midday, after a solemn service of mourning; Gwenhwyfar stood beside the grave, tears sliding down her face as the shrouded body was lowered into the open earth. Yet she could not properly mourn her mother-in-law. Her living here was all a lie, she was no true Christian. If it was true what they believed, then Igraine was even now burning in hell. And she could not bear that, not when she thought of all Igraine’s kindness to her.

 

Her eyes burned with sleeplessness and tears. The lowering sky echoed her vague dread; heavy, as if at any moment rain would fall on them. Here within convent walls she was safe, but soon she must leave the safety of this place and ride for days over the high moors with the brooding menace of that open sky everywhere, hanging over her and over her child ...  . Gwenhwyfar, shivering, clasped her hands across her belly, as if in a futile wish to protect the dweller there from the menace of that sky.

 

Why am I always so frightened? Igraine was a pagan and lost to the tricks of the Devil, but I am safe, I call upon Christ to save me. What is there under God’s Heaven to be afraid of? Yet she was afraid, with the same reasonless fear that seized on her so often. I must not fear. I am High Queen of all Britain; the only other to bear that title sleeps here beneath the earth  ...  High Queen, and bearing the son of Arthur. Why should I be afraid of anything in God’s world?

 

The nuns finished their hymn, turning from the grave. Gwenhwyfar shivered again, clutching her cloak. Now she must take very good care of herself, eat well, rest much, make certain that nothing went amiss as it had done before. Secretly she counted on her fingers. If it had been that last time before she left... but no, her courses had not come upon her for more than ten Sundays, she simply was not certain. Still, it was sure that her son would be born sometime about Eastertide. Yes, that was a good time; she remembered when her lady Meleas had born her son, it had been the darkest of winter, and the wind had howled outside like all the fiends waiting to snatch the soul of the newborn child, so nothing would suit Meleas but that the priest must come down to the women’s hall and baptize her babe almost before it cried. No, Gwenhwyfar was just as well pleased that she would not lie in at the darkest days of winter. Yet to have the longed-for child, she would be content to bear it even at Midwinter-night itself!

 

A bell tolled, and then the abbess came to Gwenhwyfar. She did not bow—temporal power, she had once said, was nothing here—but Gwenhwyfar was, after all, the High Queen, so she inclined her head with great courtesy and said, “Will you be staying on with us here, my lady? We would be deeply honored to keep you as long as you wish.”

 

Oh, if only I could stay! It is so peaceful here.... Gwenhwyfar said, with visible regret, “I cannot. I must return to Caerleon.”

 

She could not delay telling Arthur her good news, the news of his son ...  .

 

“The High King must hear of—of his mother’s death,” she said. Then, knowing what the woman wanted to hear, she added quickly, “Be sure I will tell him how kindly you treated her. She had everything she could wish for in the last days of her life.”

 

“It was our pleasure; we all loved the lady Igraine,” said the old nun. “Your escort shall be told, and be ready to ride with you early in the morning, God willing and send good weather.”

 

“Tomorrow? Why not today?” Gwenhwyfar asked, then stopped— no, that would be insulting haste indeed. She had not realized she was so eager to tell her news to Arthur, to end for all time the silent reproach that she was barren. She laid her hand on the abbess' arm. "You must pray for me much now, and for the safe birth of the High King's son."

 

"Is it so, lady?" The abbess' lined face wrinkled up in pleasure at being the confidante of the Queen. "Indeed we shall pray for you. It will give all the sisters pleasure to think we are the first to say prayers for our new prince."

 

"I shall make gifts to your convent—"

 

"God's gifts and prayers may not be bought for gold," the abbess said primly, but she looked pleased nevertheless.

 

In the room near Igraine's chamber, where she had slept these last nights, her serving-woman was moving about, putting garments and gear into saddlebags. As Gwenhwyfar entered, she looked up and grumbled, "It suits not well with the dignity of the High Queen, madam, to travel with only one servant! Why, any knight's wife would have as much! You should get you another from one of the houses here, and a lady to travel with you as well!"

 

"Get one of the lay sisters to help you, then," said Gwenhwyfar. "But we shall travel all the more quickly if we are but few."

 

"I heard in the courtyard that there were Saxons landing on the Southern Shores," the woman grumbled. "It soon will not be safe to ride anywhere in this country!"

 

"Don't be foolish," Gwenhwyfar said. "The Saxons on the Southern Shores are bound fast by treaty to keep peace with the High King's lands. They know what Arthur's legion can do, they found it out at Celidon Wood. Do you think they want more work for ravens? In any case we will soon be back at Caerleon, and at the end of summer, we shall move the court to Camelot in the Summer Country—the Romans defended that fort against all the barbarians. It has never been taken. Even now Sir Cai is there, building a great hall fit for Arthur's Round Table, so that all the Companions and kings may sit at meat together."

 

As she had hoped, the woman was diverted. "That is near your own old home, is it not, lady?"

 

"Yes. From the heights of Camelot, one may look a bowshot across the water and see my father's island kingdom. Indeed, I went there in childhood once," she said, remembering how, when she was a little girl, even before she went to school with the nuns on Ynis Witrin, she had been taken up to the ruins of the old Roman fort. There had been little there then, except for the old wall, and the priest had not stinted to make this a lesson on how human glories faded away ...  .

 

She dreamed that night that she stood high on Camelot; but the mists drew in around the shore, so that the island seemed to swim in a sea of cloud. Across from them, she could see the high Tor of Ynis Witrin, crowned with ring stones; although she knew well that the ring stones had been thrown down by the priests a hundred years ago. And by some trick of the Sight it seemed that Morgaine stood on the Tor and laughed at her and mocked her, and she was crowned with a wreath of bare wicker-withes. And then Morgaine was standing beside her on Camelot and they looked out over all the Summer Country as far as the Isle of the Priests, looking down over her own old home where her father Leodegranz was king, and over Dragon Island shrouded in mist. But Morgaine was wearing strange robes and a high double crown, and she stood so that Gwenhwyfar could not quite see her, but only knew she was there. She said, I am Morgaine of the Fairies, and all these kingdoms will I give to you as their High Queen if you will fall down and worship me.

 

Gwenhwyfar woke with a start, Morgaine's mocking laughter in her ears. The room was empty and silent except for the heavy snores of her serving-woman in a pallet on the floor. Gwenhwyfar made the sign of the cross and lay down to sleep again. But on the very edge of sleep it seemed to her that she looked into the clear and moonlit waters of a pool, and instead of her own face, Morgaine's pale face was reflected back at her, crowned with wicker-withes like the harvest dolls some of the peasant folk still made, and very far away. And again Gwenhwyfar had to sit up and make the sign of the cross before she could compose herself to sleep.

 

It seemed all too soon that she was wakened, but then she had been so insistent they should set forth at the first light. She could hear the rain pounding on the roof as she put on her gown by lamplight, but if they stayed for rain in this climate they should be here a year. She felt dull and queasy, but now she knew there was a good reason for that, and secretly patted her still-flat stomach as if to reassure herself it was real. She had no desire to eat, but dutifully swallowed some bread and cold meats ...  she had a long ride before her. And if she had no mind to riding in the rain, at least it was likely that any Saxons or marauders would stay within doors as well.

 

She was fastening the hood of her warmest cloak when the abbess entered. After a few formal words of thanks for the rich gifts made by Gwenhwyfar on her own behalf and on Igraine's, the abbess came to the real business of this farewell visit.

 

"Who now reigns in Cornwall, lady?"

 

"Why—I am not sure," said Gwenhwyfar, trying to remember. "I know the High King gave Tintagel to Igraine when he married, so that she might have a place of her own, and I suppose, after her, the lady Morgaine, daughter of Igraine by the old Duke Gorlois. I know not even who is there now as castellan."

 

"Nor I," said the abbess. "Some serving-man or knight of the lady Igraine, I suppose. That is why I came to speak with you, madam ... the castle Tintagel is a prize, and it should be tenanted, or there will be war in this countryside too. If the lady Morgaine is married and comes here to live, all will be well, I suppose—I do not know the lady, but if she is Igraine’s daughter, I suppose she is a good woman and a good Christian.”

 

You suppose wrong, Gwenhwyfar thought, and again it was as if she heard the mocking laughter from her dream. But she would not speak ill of Arthur’s kinswoman to a stranger.

 

The abbess said, “Bear my message to Arthur the King, lady—that someone should come to dwell in Tintagel. I have heard something of a rumor that ran about the countryside when Gorlois died—that he had a bastard son and some other kinfolk, and some of them might strive to conquer this country again. While Igraine dwelt here, all folk knew it was under Arthur’s dominion, but now it would be well if the High King sent one of his best knights hither—perhaps married to the lady Morgaine.”

 

“I will tell Arthur,” Gwenhwyfar said, and as she set out, she pondered this. She knew little of statecraft, but she remembered that there had been chaos before Uther came to the crown and again when he died leaving no heir; she supposed something like that might befall if Cornwall was left with none to rule or keep good laws. Morgaine was Queen of Cornwall and should come hither to reign. And then she remembered what Arthur had once said that his dearest friend should wed with his sister. Since Lancelet was not wealthy and had no lands of his own, it would be the right thing that they should come to reign together in Cornwall.

 

And now I am to bear Arthur’s son, it would be best to send Lancelet far from court, that I might never again look on his face and think of him such thoughts as no wedded woman and no good Christian should think. And yet she could not bear to think of Lancelet wedded to Morgaine. Had there ever been so wicked a woman as she on the face of this wicked world? She rode with her face hidden in her cloak, not listening to the gossip of the knights who were her escort, but after a time she realized that they were passing by a village which had been burned. One of the knights asked her leave to stop a while, and went away to look for survivors; he came back looking grim.

 

“Saxons,” he said to the others, and bit the words off when he saw that the Queen was listening.

 

“Don’t be frightened, madam, they are gone, but we must ride as fast as we may and tell Arthur of this. If we find you a faster horse, can you keep our pace?”

 

Gwenhwyfar felt her breath catch in her throat. They had come up out of one of the deep valleys, and the sky arched high and open over them, filled with menace—she felt as some small thing must feel in the grass when the shadow of a hawk swoops over it. She said, and heard her voice thin and trembling like the voice of a very little girl, “I cannot ride faster now. I bear the child of the High King and I dare not endanger him.”

 

Again it seemed as if the knight—he was Griflet, husband of her own waiting-woman, Meleas—bit off his words, setting his jaw with a snap. He said at last, concealing his impatience, “Then, madam, it were as well we should escort you to Tintagel, or to some other great house in this area, or back again to the convent, so that we may ride at speed and reach Caerleon before the dawn of tomorrow’s day. If you are with child you certainly cannot ride through the night! Will you let one of us escort you and your woman back to Tintagel or to the convent again?”

 

I would like it well to be within walls again, if there are Saxons in this country  ...  but I must not be such a coward. Arthur must have the news of his son. She said stubbornly, “Cannot one of you ride on toward Caerleon, and the rest of you travel at my pace? Or cannot a messenger be hired to bear the word quickly?”

 

Griflet looked as if he wanted to swear. “I could not trust to any hired messenger in this country now, madam, and there are few of us even for a peaceful country, barely enough to protect you. Well, it must be as it will, no doubt Arthur’s men have received the word already.” He turned away, his jaw white and set, and looked so angry that Gwenhwyfar wanted to call him back and agree to all he said; but she told herself firmly not to be so cowardly. Now when she was to bear the royal son, she must behave herself like a queen and ride on with courage.

 

And if I was at Tintagel and the countryside was filled with Saxons, there would I remain until the war had ended and all the country at peace again, and it might be long  ...  and if Arthur did not even know I was with child, he might be content to let me dwell there forevermore. Why should he want to bring back a barren queen to his new palace at Camelot? Like enough he would listen to the counsel of that old Druid who hates me, Taliesin, who is his grandsire, and put me away for some woman who could bear him a bouncing brat every ten moons or so ...

 

But all will be well, once Arthur knows ...  .

 

It seemed as if the icy wind was sweeping across the high moors and into her very bones; after a time she begged them to stop again and get out the litter so that she might ride within it... the horse’s motion jolted her so. Griflet looked angry, and for a moment she thought he would forget his courtesy and swear at her, but he gave the orders, and she huddled gratefully inside the litter, glad of the slow pace and the closed flaps which closed out the frightening sky.

 

Before dusk the rain stopped for a while, and the sun came out, low and slanting over the dismal moor. “We will set up the tents here,” Griflet said. “Here on the moor at least we can see a long way. Tomorrow we should strike the old Roman road, and then we can travel faster—“ and then he dropped his voice and said something to the other knights which Gwenhwyfar could not hear, but she cringed, knowing he was angry at the slow pace at which they must travel. Yet everyone knew a breeding woman was more like to miscarry if she rode a fast horse, and already twice she had miscarried a child—did they want her to lose Arthur’s son this time too? She slept poorly within the tent, the ground hard beneath her thin body, her cloak and blankets all damp, her body aching from the unaccustomed riding.

 

But after a time she slept, despite the pouring rain that leaked through the tent, and was wakened by the sound of riders and a call: Griflet’s voice, harsh and rough.

 

“Who rides there! Stand!”

 

“Is it you, Griflet? I know your voice,” came a cry out of the dark. “It is Gawaine, and I seek for your party—is the Queen with you?”

 

Gwenhwyfar threw her cloak over her nightdress and came out from the tent. “Is it you, cousin? What do you here?”

 

“I hoped to find you still at the convent,” said Gawaine, sliding from his horse. Behind him in the darkness were other forms—four or five of Arthur’s men, though Gwenhwyfar could not distinguish their faces. “Since you are here, madam, I suppose Queen Igraine has departed this life—“ “She died the night before last,” Gwenhwyfar said, and Gawaine sighed.

 

“Well, it is God’s will,” he said. “But the land is under arms, madam —since you are here and so far on your way, I suppose you must continue on to Caerleon. Had you still been at the convent I was under orders to escort you, and such of the sisters as wished to seek protection, to Tintagel castle, and bid you remain there until there was safety in the land.”

 

“And now you may spare the journey,” said Gwenhwyfar irritably, but Gawaine shook his head. He said, “Since my message is useless, and I suppose the sisters will wish to take shelter within their convent walls, I must ride on to Tintagel with news for all men sworn to Arthur to come at once. The Saxons are massing near the coast with more than a hundred ships— beacon signals were sent from the lighthouses. The legion is at Caerleon, and all men are gathering. When the word came to Lothian, I rode at once to join Arthur; and Arthur sent me to Tintagel to bear word thither.” He drew breath. “Not the Merlin’s self is more a messenger than I these ten days.”

 

“And I told the Queen,” said Griflet, “that she should remain at Tintagel, but now it is too late to return there! And with armies gathering on the roads—Gawaine, perhaps you should escort the Queen back to Tintagel.”

 

“No,” said Gwenhwyfar clearly. “I must return now, I am not afraid to travel where I must.” Even more, if he was facing war again, Arthur would wish for the good news she bore. Gawaine had already shaken his head impatiently.

 

“I cannot delay for any woman’s riding, unless it were the Lady of the Lake herself, who can ride a day’s journey with any man a-horse! And you are but a sorry rider, madam—nay, I spoke not to anger you, no one expects that you should ride like a knight, but I cannot delay—“

 

“And the Queen is breeding and must travel at the slowest pace of all,” Griflet told him with equal impatience. “Can some of your slowest riders be told to escort the Queen, Gawaine, and I ride on with you to Tintagel?” Gawaine smiled. “No doubt you wish to be at the heart of things, Griflet, but you have been given this task and no one envies you,” he said. “Can you find me a cup of wine and some bread? I will travel on through the night, to be in Tintagel at sunrise. I have a message for Marcus, who is war duke of Cornwall and is to bring his knights. This may be the great battle Taliesin foretold, where we perish or we drive the Saxons once and for all from this land! But every man must come and fight at Arthur’s side.”

 

“Even some of the treaty troops will stand with Arthur now,” said Griflet. “Ride on if you must, Gawaine, and God ride with you.” The two knights embraced. “We will meet again when God wills, friend.”

 

Gawaine bowed to Gwenhwyfar. She reached out a hand to him and said, “A moment—is my kinswoman Morgause well?”

 

“As ever, madam.”

 

“And my sister-in-law Morgaine—she is safe in Morgause’s court, then?”

 

Gawaine looked startled. “Morgaine? No, madam, I have not seen my kinswoman Morgaine for many years. Certainly she has not visited Lothian, or so my mother said,” he replied, courteous despite his impatience. “Now I must be off.”

 

“God ride with you,” she said, and stood watching as the men’s hoofbeats thundered away in the night.

 

“It is now so near dawn,” she said, “is there any reason to try to sleep more, or should we break camp and ride on for Caerleon?”

 

Griflet looked pleased. “True, there will be little sleep for any, in this rain,” he said, “and if you can travel, lady, it would please me well to be on the road. God knows what we shall have to pass through before we reach Caerleon.”

 

But as the sun rose over the moors it was as if they rode through a land already struck silent by the war. It was the season when the farmers should be out in their fields, but although they passed several isolated hill farms, no sheep grazed, not a dog barked, nor any child came to watch them; and even along the Roman road there was not a single traveller. Gwenhwyfar, shivering, realized that the word had gone out to raise the countryside for war, and such as could do nothing had crept behind closed doors to hide from the armies of either side.

 

Will it endanger my child, to travel at this pace? Yet now it seemed a choice of evils—endanger herself and her child and Arthur’s by this forced travel, or delay on the road and perhaps fall into the hands of the Saxon armies. She resolved that Griflet should have no further cause to complain that she had delayed them. Yet as she rode, unwilling to take refuge within her litter lest he accuse her again of delaying him, it seemed that fear was hovering everywhere around her.

 

IT WAS NEAR TO sunset, and it had been a long day, when they caught sight of the watchtower which Uther had built at Caerleon. The great crimson banner of the Pendragon floated from the heights, and Gwenhwyfar crossed herself as they passed beneath it.

 

Now all Christian men are to make a stand against the barbarians, is it fating that this sign of an ancient Devil-faith should serve to rally the armies of a Christian king? Once indeed she had spoken of it to Arthur and he had answered that he had sworn to his people that he would rule over them as the Great Dragon, Christian and non-Christian alike without favor, and had laughed, stretching out his arms with the barbarian serpents tattooed all along their length. She felt loathing for those serpents, symbols that no Christian man should bear, but he had been stubborn.

 

“I bear them in sign of the kingmaking when I was given Uther’s place in this land. We will speak no more of this, lady.” And nothing she had said could force him to discuss it with her or to listen to what a priest might say on the subject.

 

“Priestcraft is one thing and kingcraft is another, my Gwenhwyfar. I would that you should share all things with me, but you have no wish to share this, and so I may not speak of it to you. And as for the priests, it is none of their affair. Leave it, I say.” His voice had been firm, not angry, but still she had bent her head and said no more. Yet now, as she rode beneath the Pendragon banner, she trembled. If our son is to rule in a Christian land, is it fating that Druid banner should fly above his father’s castle?

 

They rode slowly through the encamped armies in the plain before Caerleon. Some of the knights, who knew her well, came out and set up a cheer for their queen, and she smiled and waved to them. They rode beneath the banner of Lot and through the men of Lothian, Northmen with pikes and long axes, wrapped in the crudely dyed clothes they wore; over their camp flew the banner of the Morrigan, the Great Raven of Gawaine’s brother Gaheris came out from that camp and bowed to her, and walked beside Griflet’s horse as they rode up toward the castle.

 

“Did my brother find you, Griflet? He had a message for the Queen—“

 

“He met us when we were already a day on the road,” Gwenhwyfar said, “and it was easier to continue here.”

 

“I will come with you to the castle—all of Arthur’s chosen Companions are bidden to dine with the King,” said Gaheris. “Gawaine was angry at being sent with messages, yet no one can ride so swiftly as my brother when he must. Your lady is here, Griflet, but she is readying herself and the child to go to the new castle—Arthur says all the women must go, they can be more easily defended there, and he can spare but few to defend them.”

 

To Camelot! Gwenhwyfar’s heart sank—she had ridden all the way from Tintagel to give Arthur news of their child, and now would he pack her up and send her to Camelot?

 

“I do not know that banner,” said Griflet, looking at a golden eagle sculptured lifelike on a pole. It seemed very ancient.

 

“It is the standard of North Wales,” said Gaheris. “Uriens is here, with Avalloch his son. Uriens claims his father took this standard from the Romans, more than a hundred years ago. It may even be the truth! The men from Uriens’ hills are strong fighters, though I’d not say so in their hearing.”

 

“And whose banner is that?” asked Griflet, but this time, though Gaheris turned to speak, it was Gwenhwyfar herself who answered.

 

“That is the banner of my father, Leodegranz, the blue banner with the cross worked in gold.” She herself, as a young maiden in the Summer Country, had helped her mother’s women to embroider it for the king. It was said that her father had chosen this device after hearing a tale that one of the emperors of Rome had seen the sign of the cross in the sky before one of his battles. We should now be fighting beneath that sign, not the serpents of Avalon! She shivered, and Gaheris looked at her sharply.

 

“Are you cold, lady? We must ride on to the castle, Griflet, no doubt Arthur will be awaiting his queen.”

 

“You must be weary of riding, my queen,” said Griflet, looking up kindly at her. “Now will you soon be in the hands of your women.”

 

And as they came closer to the doors of the castle, there were many of Arthur’s Companions whom she knew, who waved to her and called to her in friendly, informal fashion. Next year at this time, she thought, they will come out to cheer their prince.

 

A big, lurching man, huge and clumsy-footed, in leather armor and a steel cap, came into the path of her horse—it was as if he stumbled, though he bowed to Gwenhwyfar and she could see that it was deliberate, that he had put himself in her way like this.

 

“Madam, my sister,” he said, “do you not know me?” Gwenhwyfar frowned and stared at him, then after a moment recognized him. “Is it you—“

 

“Meleagrant,” he said. “I have come here to fight at our father’s side and your husband’s, my sister.”

 

Griflet said, with a friendly smile, “I knew not that your father had a son, my queen. But all are welcome to fight under Arthur’s standard—“

 

“Perhaps you will speak for me to your husband the King, my sister,” said Meleagrant. Gwenhwyfar, looking at him, felt a faint distaste run through her. He was an enormous man, almost a giant, and like so many huge men, he looked misshapen, as if one side of his body were somehow grown larger than the other. One eye was certainly larger than the other, and had a squint; yet, trying to be fair, Gwenhwyfar thought the man’s deformity was no fault of his, and she really knew nothing against him. Yet it was arrogance, that he should call her sister before all these men, and now he had grasped her hand without leave and made as if to kiss it. She clenched it into a fist and pulled it away.

 

Trying to make her voice firm, she said, “No doubt when you merit it, Meleagrant, my father will speak for you to Arthur and he will make you one of his knights. I am only a woman and I have no authority to promise you that. Is my father here?”

 

“He is with Arthur within the castle,” said Meleagrant sullenly, “and I am like a dog out here with the horses!”

 

Gwenhwyfar said firmly, “I cannot see that you have any claim to more than this, Meleagrant. He has given you a post at his side, for your mother was once a favorite of his—“

 

Meleagrant said harshly, “All men in the country know as well as my mother that I am the king’s son, his only living son! Sister, speak to our father for me!”

 

She pulled away her hand from his repeated effort to seize it. “Let me go, Meleagrant! My father claims you are not his son, and how can I say anything else? I never knew your mother—this is between you and my father!”

 

“But you must listen,” said Meleagrant urgently, tugging at her hand, and Griflet thrust himself between them and said, “Here, here, fellow, you can’t talk to the Queen like that, or Arthur will have your head on his platter at dinnertime! I’m sure our lord and king will grant you what’s right, and if you fight well for him at this battle, no doubt he’ll be glad to have you among his Companions. But you mustn’t trouble the Queen this way!” Meleagrant turned to face him, towering over Griflet until the latter, though he was a tall, athletic young man, looked like a child. The giant said, “Are you going to tell me what I can say to my own sister, you little popinjay?”

 

Griflet put his hand on his sword and said, “I was given the task of escorting my queen, fellow, and I’ll do the task Arthur’s given me to do. Get out of my path or I’ll force you to!”

 

“You with who else?” sneered Meleagrant, bracing himself with an ugly sneer.

 

“I, for one,” said Gaheris, standing quickly at Griflet’s side. Like Gawaine, he was a big, sturdy man who would have made two of the slender Griflet.

 

“And I,” said Lancelet from the darkness beyond them, striding quickly toward Gwenhwyfar’s horse, and she could have wept with relief. Never had he looked more handsome to her than now; and though he was slender and slightly built, something in his presence made Meleagrant draw back. “Is this man annoying you, lady Gwenhwyfar?”

 

She swallowed and nodded, and found to her dismay that she had no voice to speak. Meleagrant blustered, “Who may you be, fellow?”

 

“Take care,” said Gaheris, “don’t you know the lord Lancelet?”

 

“I am Arthur’s captain of horse,” said Lancelet, in his lazy amused voice, “and the Queen’s champion. Have you anything to say to me?”

 

“My business is with my sister,” said Meleagrant, but Gwenhwyfar said, high and shrill, “I am no sister of his! This man claims to be my father’s son because his mother was for a time one of the king’s women! He is no son of my father’s, but a baseborn clown who belongs in a farmyard, though my father has been kind enough to give him a place in his household!”

 

“You had best get out of our way,” said Lancelet, surveying Meleagrant with contempt, and it was easy enough to see that Meleagrant knew who Lancelet was and had no desire to try conclusions with him.

 

He edged backward, saying in a surly voice, “You will be sorry for this some day, Gwenhwyfar,” but he gave ground, glowering, and let them pass.

 

Lancelet was dressed with his usual fastidious taste, in crimson tunic and cloak; his hair was carefully trimmed and combed, his face clean-shaven. His hands looked smooth and white as Gwenhwyfar’s own, although she knew that they were hard and steel-strong. He was handsomer than ever. And he had come just in time to save her from an Ugly encounter with Meleagrant. She smiled—she could not help herself; it was as if something turned over, deep inside her.

 

No, I must not look at him this way now, I am to be the mother of Arthur’s son ...  .

 

Lancelet said, “You do not want to pass through the great hall, lady, in your draggled riding clothes ...  . Has it been raining most of your journey? Let me take you and your servant to the side door, and you can go directly to your chamber and refresh yourself, then greet my lord Arthur in the hall when you are freshly dressed and warm and dry—you are shivering! Is the wind cold on you, Gwenhwyfar?”

 

He long had the privilege of calling her by her name, without the formal “my queen” or “lady,” but never had it sounded so sweet on his lips. “You are, as ever, thoughtful of me,” she said, and let him lead her horse.

 

Lancelet said, “Griflet, go now and tell our king that the lady is safe in her chambers. And you too, Gaheris, you are longing to be back among the Companions. I will see my lady safe.”

 

At the door he helped her to dismount, and she was only aware of the touch of his hands. She lowered her eyes and would not look at him.

 

“The great hall is filled with Arthur’s Companions,” he said, “and all is confusion—the Round Table has gone but three days ago, on three carts to Camelot, and Cai with it to set it in its place in the new hall. Now a rider has gone out in haste to summon Cai back, and such men as can ride from the Summer Country—“

 

She looked up at him, frightened. “Gawaine told us of the Saxon landing—is this truly the war Arthur feared?”

 

“It is what we have all known for years must come, Gwen,” he said quietly. “For this Arthur has been training his legions, and I working with his horse troops. When this is over, perhaps, we shall have the peace we have longed for, all my life and all Uther’s.”

 

Suddenly she flung her arms around him. “You could be killed,” she whispered. It was the first time she had had courage to do such a thing. She stood pressed against him, holding her face against his shoulder, and his arms went around her. Even through her fear she felt the sweetness that he would hold her so. He said, and his voice shook, “We all knew that it must come some day soon, my dear. By our good fortune, we have had years to prepare for it, and Arthur to lead us—do even you know what a great leader of men he is, and how dear we all hold him? He is young, but he is the greatest of the High Kings we have had since long before the time of the Romans, and with Arthur to lead us, we will certainly drive the Saxons’ hence—and for the rest, it’s as God wills, Gwenhwyfar.” He patted her shoulder gently, saying, “Poor girl, you are so wearied, let me take you to your women.” But she could feel his hands trembling, and was suddenly shamed that she had thrown herself into his arms as if she were a camp follower!

 

IN HER OWN CHAMBERS all was confusion, Meleas putting garments into boxes, Elaine supervising the serving-women. Elaine came and took Gwenhwyfar in her arms, crying out, “Kinswoman, we have been so worried about you, on the roads—we had hoped that you had the message before leaving the convent, and would stay safe in Tintagel—“

 

“No,” said Gwenhwyfar, “Igraine died. Gawaine met with us when we had already been a whole day on the road, and besides, my place is at my husband’s side.”

 

Meleas asked, “Lady, did Griflet return with you?”

 

Gwenhwyfar nodded. “He escorted me here. You will see him at dinner, I suppose—I heard Gaheris say that all of Arthur’s Companions had been bidden to dine with the King—“

 

Meleas said, “If you can call it dining. It is more like gobbling soldier’s rations—this place is like an armed camp, and it will be worse before it is better. But Elaine and I have done our best to keep all things in order.” She was a usually smiling, plump young woman who now looked worried and tired. “I have put all your gowns and such things as you shall need for this summer into boxes, so that you may be ready to ride for Camelot in the morning. The King said we were all to go at once, and it is all but ready for occupancy, with the work that Cai has done. But we never thought we would go there like this, in haste and almost under siege.”

 

No, thought Gwenhwyfar. I have been riding these days and now I will not ride forth again! My place is here and my son has a right to be born in his father’s own castle. I will not again be sent hither and thither like any bit of luggage or saddlery! She said, “Be at ease, Meleas, perhaps there is no such haste as all this. Send someone for washwater and fetch me some gown which is not soaked and bedraggled by mud and travel. And who are all these women?”

 

These women, it turned out, were wives of some of the Companions and of certain of Arthur’s subject kings, who would be sent with them to Camelot; it was easier if they all travelled in convoy, and there they would be safe from the Saxons. “It is near to your home,” Elaine said, as if that should settle all Gwenhwyfar’s unwillingness. “You can visit your father’s wife, and your little brothers and sisters. Or while Leodegranz is at war, your stepmother will dwell with us at Camelot.”

 

That would be no pleasure to either of us, Gwenhwyfar thought, and then was ashamed of herself. She felt like ending all this with a few words, I am pregnant, I cannot travel, but she shrank from the excited flurry of questions she knew would follow. Arthur should know it first.

 

12

When Gwenhwyfar came into the great hall, which looked barren and empty without the great Round Table and all the splendor of banners and tapestries and hangings gone, Arthur was sitting at a trestle table halfway down the hall near the fires, surrounded by half a dozen of his Companions, others clustered near. She had been so eager to tell her news, but now she could not blurt it out before the whole court! She must wait until tonight when they were alone in bed—that was the only time she ever had him to herself at all. But when he looked up from his Companions and saw her, he rose and came to embrace her.

 

“Gwen, my dearest!” he said. “I had hoped Gawaine’s message would keep you safe in Tintagel—“

 

“Are you angry that I have come back?”

 

He shook his head. “No, of course not. So the roads are still safe, then, and you were lucky,” he said. “But I suppose this must mean that my mother  ... ”

 

“She died two days ago, and was buried within the convent walls,” Gwenhwyfar said, “and I set out at once to bring you the news. And now you have nothing but reproach for me that I did not stay safely at Tintagel because of this war!”

 

“Not reproach, my dear wife,” he said gently, “concern for your safety. But sir Griflet cared well for you, I can see. Come and sit with us here.” He led her to a bench and seated her at his side. The silver and pottery dishes had vanished—she supposed they too had been sent to Camelot, and she wondered what had happened to the fine red dish of Roman make which her stepmother had given her at her wedding. The walls were bare and the place stripped, and they ate their food out of plain wooden bowls, the crude carved stuff of the markets. She said, dipping a piece of bread into the dish, “Already this place looks as if a battle had swept over it!”

 

“It seemed as well to me that everything should be sent ahead to Camelot,” he said, “and then we had the rumors of the Saxon landings and all’s confusion. Your father is here, my love—no doubt you will want to greet him.”

 

Leodegranz was seated near, though not in the inner ring of those around Arthur. She came and kissed him, feeling his bony shoulders under her hands—always her father had been a big man to her, big and imposing, and now suddenly he seemed old and wasted.

 

“I told my lord Arthur he should not have sent you travelling about the countryside at this time,” he said. “Ah, yes, no doubt it was well done of Arthur that he wished to send you to his mother’s deathbed, but he had a duty to his wife too, and Igraine has an unwedded daughter who should have been with her mother—where is the Duchess of Cornwall that she did not go?”

 

“I do not know where Morgaine is,” said Arthur. “My sister is a woman grown, and her own mistress. She need not seek my leave to be here or there.”

 

“Aye, it is ever so with a king,” said Leodegranz querulously, “he is lord of all save his womenfolk. Alienor is the same, and I have three daughters, not even old enough to marry, and they think they rule my household! You will see them at Camelot, Gwenhwyfar. I have sent them there for safekeeping, and the oldest, Isotta, is old enough—you might wish to make her one of your ladies, your own half-sister? And since I have no sons living, I want you to ask Arthur to marry her to one of his best knights when she is old enough.”

 

Gwenhwyfar shook her head in amazement at the thought of Isotta, her half-sister—old enough to come to court? Well, she had been almost seven years old when Gwenhwyfar was married—now she must be a great girl of twelve or thirteen. Elaine had been no older when she was brought to Caerleon. No doubt, if she asked, Arthur would give Isotta to one of his best knights, Gawaine perhaps, or possibly—since Gawaine would be king of Lothian some day—to Gaheris, who was the King’s own cousin. She said, “I am certain that Arthur and I together will find someone for my sister.”

 

“Lancelet is still unwed,” suggested Leodegranz, “and so is Duke Marcus of Cornwall. Though no doubt it would be more suitable if Marcus married the lady Morgaine and they combined their claims, then would the lady have someone to keep her castle and defend her lands. And, though I understand the lady is one of the damsels of the Lady of the Lake, no doubt Duke Marcus could tame her.”

 

Gwenhwyfar smiled at the thought of Morgaine being tamely married to someone they thought suitable. And then she grew angry. Why should Morgaine please herself? No other woman was allowed to do her own will, even Igraine who was mother to the King had been married as her elders thought good. Arthur should exert his authority and get Morgaine properly married before she disgraced them all! Conveniently Gwenhwyfar stifled the memory that when Arthur had spoken of marrying Morgaine to his friend Lancelet, she had objected. Ah, I was selfish ... I cannot have him myself, and I grudge him a wife. No, she told herself, she would be happy to see Lancelet married if the girl was suitable and virtuous!

 

Leodegranz asked, “I thought the Duchess of Cornwall was among your ladies—?”

 

“She was,” Gwenhwyfar said, “but she left us some years ago to dwell with her kinswoman and has not returned.” And it occurred to her once again: where was Morgaine? Not in Avalon, not in Lothian with Morgause, not in Tintagel with Igraine—she might be in Less Britain, or on a pilgrimage to Rome, or in the fairy country, or in Hell itself for all Gwenhwyfar knew to the contrary. This could not go on—Arthur had a right to know where dwelt his nearest kinswoman, now that his mother was dead! But surely Morgaine would have come to her mother’s deathbed if she could?

 

She went back to her place beside Arthur. Lancelet and the King were drawing with the tips of their daggers on the wooden boards before them, while they ate absentmindedly out of the same dish. Biting her lip—indeed she might as well have stayed in Tintagel for all the difference it made to Arthur that she was there or not—she would have withdrawn to a bench with her ladies, but Arthur looked up at her and smiled, holding out his arm to her.

 

“Nay, my dear one, I meant not to drive you away—I must indeed talk with my captain of horse, but there is room for you here, too.” He beckoned to one of the servers. “Bring another plate of meat for my lady. Lancelet and I have made a wreck of this dish—there is fresh-baked bread too, somewhere, if any of it is left, though with Cai not here the kitchens are in chaos.”

 

“I think I have eaten enough,” Gwenhwyfar said, leaning a little against his shoulder, and he patted her absently. She could feel Lancelet, warm and solid, on the other side, and she felt secure and safe between them. Arthur leaned forward, one hand still stroking her hair, the other holding the dagger where he was sketching.

 

“Look, can we bring the horses up this way? We can travel fast, and leave the wagons with provisions and baggage to come around on the flat country, but men with horses can cut across country and march light and fast—Cai has had men baking hard journey-bread for the armies and stockpiling it these three years since Celidon Wood. It is likely they will land here—“ He pointed to a spot on the rough map he had made. “Leodegranz, Uriens, come here and look at this—“

 

Her father came, and with him another man, slight and dark and dapper, though his hair was greying and his face lined.

 

“King Uriens,” Arthur said, “I greet you as my father’s friend and mine. Have you met my lady Gwenhwyfar?”

 

Uriens bowed. His voice was pleasant and melodious. “My pleasure to speak with you, madam. When the country is more settled, I will bring my wife, if I may, to present to you at Camelot.”

 

“I shall be pleased,” Gwenhwyfar said, feeling that her voice was insincere—never had she learned how to speak these polite platitudes so that they carried any conviction.

 

“It will not be this summer, we have other work to do,” said Uriens. He bent over Arthur’s rough map. “In Ambrosius’ time we led an army up country this way—we had not so many horses, save with the baggage wagons, but one could bring them up and cut across ground here. You must keep out of swamps as you go to the south of the Summer Country—“

 

“I had hoped not to climb the fells,” said Lancelet.

 

Uriens shook his head. “With that great body of horse, it is better.”

 

“On those hills, horses slip on stone and break their legs,” Lancelet argued.

 

“Better even that, sir Lancelet, than have men and horses and wagons all bemired—better fells than swamps,” said Uriens. “Look, here lies the old Roman wall  ... ”

 

“I cannot see where so many have scribbled,” said Lancelet impatiently. He went to the fireplace and plucked out a long stick, shook out the fire on the end, and began drawing on the floor with the charcoaled stick. “Look, here lies the Summer Country and here the Lakes and the Roman wall ...  . We have, say, three hundred horse, and here two hundred—“

 

“So many indeed?” Uriens demanded incredulously. “The legions of Caesar had no more!”

 

“Seven years we have been training them, and training mounted soldiers in their use,” said Lancelet.

 

“Thanks to you, dear cousin,” Arthur said.

 

Lancelet turned and smiled. “Thanks to you, my king, who had vision to see what we could do with them.”

 

“Some soldiers still know not how to fight on horseback,” said Uriens. “As for me, I fought well enough leading men on foot—“

 

“And that is as well,” said Arthur good-naturedly, “for we have not horses for every man who wishes to fight mounted, nor saddles and stirrups and harness for all, though I have had every harnessmaker in my kingdom working as fast as he might, and hard enough work I’ve had to levy enough money to pay for all this, and men thinking me a greedy tyrant.” He chuckled, patting Gwenhwyfar on the back and saying, “All this time I have had hardly enough gold of my own to buy my queen silks for her embroidery! It has all gone to horseflesh and smiths and saddlers!” Suddenly the gaiety was gone and he was serious, almost frowning. “And now is the great test of all that we have done and all that we can do—the Saxons this time are a flood, my friends. If we cannot stop them, with less than half their numbers, there will be none fed in this country but ravens and wolves!”

 

“That is the advantage of horse troops,” said Lancelet gravely. “Armed and mounted men can fight five, ten—it may be twenty times their number. We shall see, and if we have guessed right, we shall stop the Saxons once and for all time. If we have not—well, we shall die defending our own homes and the lands we love, and our women and little children.”

 

“Aye,” said Arthur softly, “that we would. For what else have we worked since we were tall enough to hold a sword, Galahad?”

 

He smiled, his rare, sweet smile, and Gwenhwyfar thought, with a stab of pain, Never does he smile at me like that. Yet, when he hears what news I bear him, why then  ...

 

For a moment Lancelet answered the smile, then he sighed. “I had a dispatch from my half-brother Lionel—Ban’s eldest son. He said he would set sail in three days—no”—he stopped, counting on his fingers—“he is already at sea—the messenger was delayed. He has forty ships and he hopes to drive the Saxon ships, or as many as he may, onto the rocks, or south to the Cornish coast, where they cannot land their troops aright. Then when he lands he will march his men to where we are gathering. I should send a messenger with a place for rendezvous.” He pointed to the improvised map on the stones.

 

Then there was a little stirring of voices at the door of the room, and a tall, thin, greying man strode in through the scattered benches and trestle tables. Gwenhwyfar had not seen Lot of Lothian since before the battle of Celidon Wood.

 

“Why, I see Arthur’s hall as I never thought to see it, bare without his Round Table—what, Arthur, cousin, playing at knucklebones on the floor with all your schoolfellows?”

 

“The Round Table is already gone to Camelot, kinsman,” said Arthur, rising, “with all my other furniture and women’s gear—you see here an armed camp, waiting only for daybreak to send the last of the women to Camelot. Most of the women and all of the children are already gone.” Lot bowed to Gwenhwyfar and said, in his smooth voice, “Why, then, Arthur’s hall will be barren indeed. But is it safe for women and children to travel with the land rising for war?”

 

“The Saxons have not yet come so far inland,” said Arthur, “and there is no danger if they go at once. I must tell fifty of my men—and a thankless job it is—to stay out of the field, and guard Camelot. Queen Morgause is well where she is, in Lothian—I am glad my sister is with her!”

 

“Morgaine?” Lot shook his head. “She has not been in Lothian these many years! Well, well, well. I wonder where she may have gone? And with whom? I thought always there was more to that young woman than I ever could see! But why to Camelot, my lord Arthur?”

 

“It is easily defended,” said Arthur. “Fifty men can hold it till Christ should come again. If I left the women at Caerleon here, I would need to hold back two hundred men or more from the battle. I know not why my father made Caerleon his stronghold—I had hoped before the Saxons came again we would be gone with all our court to Camelot, and then they would have to march across Britain’s width to come at us, and we could give them battle on a field of our own choosing. If we led them into the swamps and lakes of the Summer Country, where the land is never the same two years in a row, why then mud and swamps could do some of the work of bow and arrow and axe for us, and the little folk of Avalon finish them off with their elf-arrows.”

 

“They will come to do that anyway,” said Lancelet, rising on his knees from studying the map on the stones. “Avalon has already sent three hundred, and more will come, they say. And the Merlin said when last I spoke with him that they had sent riders into your country too, my lord Uriens, so that all the Old People who dwell in your hills may come to fight at our side. So we have the legion, horse soldiers fighting on the flat ground, every horseman armored and armed with spears, good for a dozen or more Saxons. Then we have multitudes of foot soldiers, bowmen and swordsmen, who can fight in the hills and valleys. And then we have many of the men of the Tribes, with pikes and axes, and the Old People, who can fight from ambush and drop men with their elf-arrows unseen. I think we could thus meet every Saxon from all of Gaul and the shores of the continent!”

 

“And we will have to do just that,” said Lot. “I have fought the Saxons since the days of Ambrosius—so has Uriens here—and never have we had to face anything like the army coming against us now.”

 

“Since I was crowned, I have known this day was coming—the Lady of the Lake told me this when she gave me Excalibur. And now she is sending for all the folk of Avalon to rally beneath the banner of the Pendragon.”

 

“We will all be there,” said Lot, but Gwenhwyfar shuddered, and Arthur said solicitously, “My dear one, you have been riding all the day, and the day before, and you must set forth again at daybreak. May I call your women to take you away to bed?”

 

She shook her head, twisting her hands together in her lap. “No, I am not weary, no—Arthur, it seems no proper thing for the pagans of Avalon, ruled by sorcery, to fight on the side of a Christian king! And when you rally them under that pagan banner—“

 

Lancelet asked gently, “My queen, would you have the folk of Avalon sit and watch their homes fall into the hands of the Saxon? Britain is their land too—they will fight even as we do, to hold our land against the barbarians. And the Pendragon is their sworn king.”

 

“It is that I do not like,” said Gwenhwyfar, trying to make her voice steady so that she did not sound like a little girl raising her voice in the men’s council. After all, she told herself, Morgause is accepted as one of Lot’s councillors, and Viviane never stinted to speak of matters of state! “I like it not that we and the folk of Avalon should fight on the same side. This battle shall be the stand of civilized men, followers of Christ, descendants of Rome, against those who know not our God. The Old People are of the enemy, as much as the Saxons, and this will not be a proper Christian land until all those folk are dead or fled into their hills, and their demon gods with them! And I like it not, Arthur, that you should raise a pagan banner for your standard. You should fight, like Uriens, under the cross of Christ so that we may tell friend from foe!”

 

Lancelet looked shocked. “Am I also your enemy, Gwenhwyfar?” She shook her head. “You are a Christian, Lancelet.”

 

“My mother is that same wicked Lady of the Lake you condemn for her witchcraft,” he said, “and I myself was fostered in Avalon, and the Old People are my own people. My own father, who is a Christian king, made also the Great Marriage with the Goddess for his land!” He looked hard and angry.

 

Arthur laid his hand on the hilt of Excalibur, in its scabbard of crimson velvet and gold. The sight of his hand laid on the magical symbols of that scabbard, and the serpents twined round his wrist, made Gwenhwyfar turn her eyes away. She said, “How will God give us the victory, if we will not put away from us all the symbols of sorcery and fight beneath his cross?”

 

“Why, there’s something to what the Queen says,” Uriens said, conciliating, “but I bear my eagles in the name of my fathers and of Rome.”

 

Leodegranz said, “I offer to you the banner of the cross, my lord Arthur, if you will. You bear it rightly for your queen’s sake.”

 

Arthur shook his head. Only the high flush in his cheekbones told Gwenhwyfar that he was angry. “I swore to fight beneath the royal banner of the Pendragon, and so shall I do or die. I am no tyrant. Whoever wishes to do so may bear the cross of Christ on his shield, but the Pendragon banner stands in token that all the folk of Britain—Christian, Druid, Old People too—shall fight together. Even as the dragon is over all the beasts, so the Pendragon is over all the people! All, I say!”

 

“And the eagles of Uriens and the Great Raven of Lothian shall fight beside the dragon,” said Lot, rising. “Is Gawaine not here, Arthur? I would have a word with my son, and I thought he was ever at your side!”

 

“I miss him as much as you, Uncle,” said Arthur. “I know not where to turn without Gawaine at my back, but I had to send him on a message to Tintagel, for none can ride so swiftly.”

 

“Oh, you have plenty to guard you,” said Lot sourly. “I see Lancelet never more than a step or three from your side, ready to fill the empty place.”

 

Lancelet flushed, but he said smoothly, “It is always so, kinsman, all of Arthur’s Companions strive with one another for the honor of being the closest to the King, and when Gawaine is here, even Cai who is Arthur’s foster-brother and I who am Queen’s champion must take a place further off.”

 

Arthur turned back to Gwenhwyfar and said, “Now indeed, my queen, you must go to rest. This council may go on far into the night, and you must be ready to ride at daybreak.”

 

Gwenhwyfar clenched her hands. This one time, this one. time let me have courage to speak ...  . She said clearly, “No. No, my lord, I do not ride at daybreak, not to Camelot or to anywhere else on the face of this earth.”

 

Arthur’s cheeks flushed again with that high color which told her he was angry. “Why, how’s this, madam? You cannot delay when there is war in the land. I would willingly give you a day or two of rest before you ride, but we must make haste to get you all to safety before the Saxons come. I tell you, Gwenhwyfar, when the morning comes, your horse and gear will be ready. If you cannot ride you may travel in a litter or be carried in a chair, but ride you shall.”

 

“I shall not!” she said fiercely. “And you cannot force me, not unless you set me on my horse and tie me there!”

 

“God forbid I should have to do so,” Arthur said. “But what is this, lady?” He was troubled, yet trying to keep his voice light and humorous. “Why, all those legions of men out there obey my word, am I to have mutiny at my own hearth fire and from my own wife?”

 

“Your men may all obey your word,” she said desperately. “They have not my reason for staying here! I will stay with no more than one waiting-woman and a midwife, my lord, but I will ride nowhere—not so far as to the banks of the river—before our son is born!”

 

There, I have said it  ...  here before all these men ...  .

 

And Arthur, hearing, understood, and instead of looking overjoyed, seemed only dismayed. He shook his head, then said, “Gwenhwyfar—“ and stopped.

 

Lot chuckled and said, “Are you breeding, madam? Why, congratulations! But that need not stop you from travelling. Morgause was every day in the saddle, till she was too big for her horse to carry her, while no one would know as yet that you were with child. Our midwives say that fresh air and exercise are healthy for a breeding woman, and when my own favorite mare is in foal, I ride her till six weeks before she drops the foal!”

 

“I am not a mare,” said Gwenhwyfar coldly, “and twice I have miscarried. Would you expose me again to that, Arthur?”

 

“Yet you cannot stay here. This place cannot be properly defended,” said Arthur distractedly, “and we may march out with the army at any time! Nor is it fair to ask your women to stay with you and risk being caught by the Saxons. I am certain it will not harm you, dear wife, there were pregnant women with those who left for Camelot last week—and you cannot stay here with all your women gone, it will be an armed soldier’s camp, no more, my Gwen!”

 

Gwenhwyfar looked at her ladies. “Will not one of you stay with her queen?”

 

“I will stay with you, cousin, if Arthur permits,” said Elaine. And Meleas said, “I will stay, if my lord does not mind, though our son is already at Camelot—“

 

“No, Meleas, you must go to your child,” Elaine said. “I am her kinswoman and I can endure anything Gwenhwyfar can endure, even to live in an armed camp with the men.” She came and stood beside Gwenhwyfar, holding her hand. “But could you not travel in a litter? Camelot is so much safer.”

 

Lancelet got up and came to Gwenhwyfar. He bent over her hand and said in a low voice, “My lady, I beg you to go with the other women. This countryside may all be in ruin within a matter of days, when the Saxons come. In Camelot you are near to your father’s country. My own mother dwells in Avalon, within a day’s journey—she is a notable healer woman and midwife, and I am sure she would come to you and care for you, or even stay to be with you when the babe is born. If I send to my mother with a message to come to you, will you go?”

 

Gwenhwyfar bent her head, fighting not to cry. Once again I must do as I am bid, like any woman, no matter what I want! Now even Lancelet had joined in to get her to do what she was told. She remembered the journey here from the Summer Country—even with Igraine at hand she had been terrified, and all this day she had ridden across the dreadful moors from Tintagel—now she was safe within walls and it seemed to her that she would never again be willing to leave their shelter.

 

Perhaps, when she was stronger, when her son was safe in her arms  ...  then, perhaps she could dare that journey, but not now  ...  and Lancelet could offer her as a gift the company of that evil sorceress his mother! How could he think she would let such a sorceress near her son? Arthur might contaminate himself with vows and links to Avalon, but her son should never be touched by that pagan evil.

 

“It is kind of you, Lancelet,” she said stubbornly, “but I shall go nowhere until my son is born.”

 

“Even if you were to be taken to Avalon itself?” Arthur asked. “You and our son would be safer there than anywhere in this world.”

 

She shivered and crossed herself. “God and Mary Virgin forbid!” she whispered. “I would as soon go into the fairy country itself!”

 

, “Gwenhwyfar, listen to me—“ he began urgently, then sighed in defeat, and she knew she had won. “Have it as you will. If the danger of travel seems greater to you than the danger of remaining here, then God forbid I should force you to travel ...  .”

 

Gaheris said wrathfully, “Arthur, will you let her do this? I say to you, you should bundle her on to her horse and send her forth whether she will, or not! My king, will you listen like this to a woman’s raving?”

 

Arthur shook his head wearily. “Peace, cousin,” he said, “it is easy to see you are no married man. Gwenhwyfar, do as you will. Elaine may remain with you, and one serving-woman and a midwife and your priest, but no more. Everyone else must ride at daybreak. And now you must go to your chamber, Gwen, I have no more time for this!”

 

And Gwenhwyfar, dutifully raising her cheek for his dutiful kiss, had no sense that she had won a victory.

 

THE OTHER WOMEN set forth at daybreak. Meleas begged to stay with the Queen, but Griflet would not have it. “Elaine has neither husband nor child,” he said. “Let her stay. Yet if I were King Pellinore I would not let my daughter remain, queen or no. You shall go, my lady.” And Gwenhwyfar fancied that the look he gave her was one of scorn.

 

And Arthur made it clear to her that the main part of the castle was now the army camp, and she must keep to her chambers with Elaine and the serving-women. Most of her furniture had been sent to Camelot; a bed was brought up from the guest chamber, and she slept in it with Elaine. Arthur spent his nights in the camp with the men, sending to inquire for her once a day, but she rarely saw him.

 

At first she thought every day that she would see them march out to do battle with the Saxons, or that the battle would sweep over them here, but day followed day and then week came after week and she heard no news. Solitary riders and messengers came and went, and Gwenhwyfar could see more armies gathering, but immured in her chamber and the tiny garden behind it, she heard only such scattered bits of news as her servant and the midwife could bring, much garbled and mostly gossip. The time hung heavy over her; she was queasy in the morning and wished for nothing but to lie in bed, though later she felt well and would pace the garden restlessly, with nothing to do but make pictures in her mind of the marauding Saxons off the coast, and think of her child ...  . She would have liked to sew on baby clothes, but she had no wool to spin and the big loom had gone already.

 

However, she had the small loom, and the silks and spun wool and embroidery gear which had gone with her to Tintagel, and she began to plan the weaving of a banner ...  . Once Arthur had promised her that when she gave him a son she might ask him for whatever gift was in his power to give, and she had it in mind that on that day she would ask him to put aside the pagan banner of the Pendragon and raise Christ’s cross. That would make all this land under the High King a Christian land, and Arthur’s legion a holy army under the protection of Mary the Virgin.

 

It was most beautiful as she planned it—blue, with gold thread, and her priceless crimson-dyed silks for the mantle of the Virgin. She had no other occupation, so she sewed at it from morning to night, and with Elaine to help her, it grew swiftly under her fingers. And into every stitch of this banner shall I weave my prayers that Arthur shall be safe, and this a Christian land from Tintagel to Lothian ...  .

 

One afternoon the Merlin came to visit her, Taliesin the venerable. She hesitated—was it right she should have that old pagan and demon worshipper near to her at such a time as this, when she bore Arthur’s son, who would one day be the king of this Christian land? But looking at the old man’s kindly eyes, she recalled that this was Igraine’s father and would be great-grandfather to her babe.

 

“May the Eternal bless you, Gwenhwyfar,” he said, spreading out his arms in blessing. She made the sign of the cross, then wondered if he would be offended, but he seemed to take it simply as an exchange of blessings.

 

“How do you, lady, in this close confinement?” he said, looking around the room. “Why, you might be dungeoned here! You would be better in Camelot, or in Avalon, or on the isle at Ynis Witrin—you went to school there with the nuns, did you not? And there, at least, you would have had fresh air and exercise! This room is like to a byre!”

 

“I have air enough in the garden,” said Gwenhwyfar, resolving that the bedding should be aired that very day and that the serving-woman should air and sweep the room which was littered with their possessions— it was too small for four women.

 

“Then make certain, my child, that you walk every day in the fresh air, even if it is raining—air is medicine for all ills,” he said. “I can well believe that you are dull here. No, child, I did not come to reproach you,” he added gently. “Arthur told me your happy news, and I rejoice for you, as do we all. And I especially—not many men live so long as to look on the face of their great-grandchildren.” His creased old face seemed to glow with benevolence. “If there is anything I can do for you, you must command me, lady. Are they sending you suitable fresh food, or only soldier’s rations?”

 

Gwenhwyfar assured him that she had everything she could wish for —every day a basket of the finest provisions to be had reached her—though she did not tell him she had little wish for food.

 

She told him of Igraine’s death and that she lay buried in Tintagel, and that Igraine’s last act had been to tell her of her child. Of the Sight she said little, but she did ask, looking at the old man with troubled eyes, “Sir, do you know where dwells Morgaine, that she did not come even to her mother’s deathbed?”

 

He shook his head slowly. “I am sorry, I know not.”

 

“But this is scandalous, that Morgaine should not let her kin know whither she has gone!”

 

“It may be that—as some of the priestesses of Avalon do—she has gone on some magical quest, or secluded herself to seek vision,” Taliesin ventured, and he too looked troubled. “In that case I would not have been told, but I think, if she were in Avalon, where my own daughter dwells with the priestesses, I would have known. I know not.” He sighed. “Morgaine is a woman grown, and she need not seek leave of any man to come and go.”

 

It would serve Morgaine right, thought Gwenhwyfar, if she came to grief for her own stubbornness and the godless way in which she did her own will! She clenched her fists and did not answer the Druid, looking down so that he would not see her anger ... he thought well of her, she would not have him think otherwise of her. Nor did he notice, for Elaine was showing him the banner.

 

“See, this is how we spend our prisoned days, good father.”

 

“It grows swiftly,” said the Merlin, smiling. “I see well that there is no time—what is it your priests say, the Devil finds work for the idle— you have left no place for the Devil to do his work here, you are as busy as a hive of bees, you two. Already I can see the beautiful design.”

 

“And as I wove it, I prayed,” said Gwenhwyfar defiantly. “With every stitch I wove a prayer that Arthur and the cross of Christ may triumph over the Saxons and their pagan Gods! Will you not rebuke me then, Lord Merlin, that I do this when you bid Arthur fight under their pagan banner?”

 

The Merlin said mildly, “Prayer is never wasted, Gwenhwyfar. Do you think we know nothing of prayer? When Arthur was given his great sword Excalibur, it was sheathed in a scabbard into which a priestess worked prayers and spells for safety and protection, and she fasted and prayed for five days all the time she worked upon it. And no doubt you have taken note that even though he is wounded, he sheds but little blood.”

 

“I would have him protected with Christ, not sorcery,” said Gwenhwyfar hotly, and the old man smiled and said, “God is one and there is but one God—all else is but the way the ignorant seek to put Gods into a form they can understand, like the image of your Virgin there, lady. Nothing befalls on this world without the blessing of the One, who will give us victory or defeat as God shall ordain. Dragon and Virgin alike are the signs of man’s appeal to what is higher than we.”

 

“But would you not be angry if the Pendragon banner was torn down and the standard of the Virgin raised over our legion?” asked Gwenhwyfar scornfully.

 

He stood close to her, reaching out a wrinkled hand to caress the brilliant silks. “Such a thing of beauty as this is,” he said gently, “and made with such love, how could I possibly condemn it? But there are those who love their Pendragon standard as you love the cross of Christ—would you deny them their holy things, madam? Those of Avalon—Druid, priest and priestess—would know that the banner is but a symbol, and the symbol is nothing, while the reality is all. But the little folk, no, they would not understand, and they must have their dragon as a symbol of the King’s protection.”

 

Gwenhwyfar thought of the little people of Avalon and the far hills of Wales who had come bearing bronze axes and even little arrows of flint, their bodies smeared crudely with paint. She shuddered in horror that a folk so wild and savage should fight at the side of a Christian king.

 

The Merlin saw her shivering and mistook its cause. “It is dank and chill here,” he said. “You must go out more into the sunlight.” But then understanding touched him and he put his arm around the woman at his side and said gently, “Dear child, you must remember—this country is for all men, whatever their Gods, and we fight against the Saxons not because they will not worship our Gods but because they wish to burn and ravage our lands and take all that we have for themselves. We fight to defend the peace of these lands, lady, Christian and pagan alike, and that is why so many have flocked to Arthur’s side. Would you have him a tyrant who put the souls of men in slavery to his own God, as not even the Caesars dared to do?”

 

But she only shivered, and Taliesin said he must go, but that she should send him word if she had need of anything.

 

Elaine asked, “Is Kevin the Bard in the castle, Lord Merlin?”

 

“Yes, I think so—I should have thought of that. I shall send him to come and play his harp for you ladies while you are cloistered here.”

 

“We would willingly have him,” said Elaine, “but what I was asking is, might we borrow his harp ... or yours, Lord Druid?”

 

He hesitated, and said, “Kevin would not lend his harp—My lady is a jealous mistress.” He smiled. “And as for mine, it is consecrated to the Gods and I may let no other touch it. But the lady Morgaine did not take her harp with her when she went away; it is in her rooms. Shall I have it sent here, lady Elaine? Can you play it?”

 

“Not well,” said Elaine, “but I know enough of harp music to do it no harm, and it would give our hands something to do when we are weary of stitching.”

 

“Yours,” said Gwenhwyfar. “I have always thought it unseemly for a woman to play on the harp.”

 

“So be it, unseemly then,” said Elaine, “but I think I shall go mad shut away here if I have nothing to do, and there is none to see me, even if I dance naked like Salome before Herod!”

 

Gwenhwyfar giggled, then looked scandalized—what would the Merlin think? But the old man laughed heartily. “I will send you Morgaine’s harp, lady, and you may indulge in your unseemly pastime—though indeed I see nothing unseemly in the making of music!”

 

That night Gwenhwyfar dreamed that Arthur stood beside her, but that the serpents on his wrists came alive and crawled to her banner, leaving it all cold with their slime, and fouled. .. . She woke gasping and retching, and that day she had no strength to leave her bed. Arthur came that afternoon to see her, and stood distraught beside her.

 

“I cannot see that this confinement does you any good, lady,” he said. “I wish you were safe in Camelot! I have had word from the kings of Less Britain—they have driven thirty Saxon ships on to the rocks, and we will be marching out in ten days more.” He bit his lip. “I would this were over, and we all safe at Camelot. Pray to God, Gwen, that we come safe there.” He sat on the bed beside her, and she took his hand, but one of her fingers touched the serpents on his wrist and she drew it back with a gasp of dismay.

 

“What is it, Gwen?” he whispered, drawing her into his arms. “My poor girl, being shut up here has made you ill ... I was afraid of this!”

 

She fought to control her tears. “I dreamed—I dreamed—oh, Arthur,” she begged, sitting bolt upright in bed and throwing back the covers, “I cannot bear to think of it, that you would let that foul dragon cover all, as it was in my dream ...  . Look what I have made for you!” Barefoot, she drew him with both hands to the loom. “See, it is near finished, in three days I could have it ready—“

 

He put his arm round her and held her close. “I wish it did not mean so much to you, Gwenhwyfar. I am sorry. I will carry it to battle beside the Pendragon banner, if you will, but I cannot abandon the vow I have sworn.”

 

“God will punish you if you keep a vow you have made to pagan folk and not to him,” she cried. “He will punish us both—“

 

He put away her clinging hands. “My poor girl, you are sick and wretched, and no wonder, in this place. And now, alas, it is too late to send you away even if you would go, there may be Saxon bands between here and Camelot. Try to be calm, my love,” he said, and went toward the door. She ran after him, holding to his arm.

 

“You are not so angry—?”

 

“Angry? When you are ill and overwrought?” He kissed her brow. “But we will not speak of this again, Gwenhwyfar. And now I must go, I am expecting a messenger who may come at any instant. I will send Kevin to play for you. His music will cheer you.” He kissed her again and went away, and Gwenhwyfar went back to the banner and began to work at it in a frenzy.

 

Kevin came late the next day, dragging his misshapen body on a stick; his harp was hitched over one shoulder, giving him more than ever the look of some monstrous hunchback in silhouette against the door. It seemed to Gwenhwyfar that his nose wrinkled in distaste, and suddenly she could see the room through his eyes, cluttered with the daily things of four women, the air not overfresh. He raised his hand in the Druid blessing and Gwenhwyfar flinched—she could accept this from the venerable Taliesin, but from Kevin it filled her with dread, as if he would bewitch her and her babe with pagan sorcery; secretly she signed herself with the cross, and wondered if he saw.

 

Elaine went to him and said courteously, “Let me help you with the harp, Master Harper.”

 

He shrugged as if to ward her away, though his smooth singer’s voice was perfectly civil. “I thank you, but no one may touch My Lady. If I carry her with my own hands when I can hardly drag myself along on a stick, do you not think there is a reason, madam?”

 

Elaine bent her head like a scolded child and said, “I meant no harm, sir.”

 

“Of course not, how could you know?” he said, and twisted painfully, or so it seemed to Gwenhwyfar, to unsling his harp and set it on the floor.

 

“Are you comfortable, Master Harper? Will you have a cup of wine to soothe your throat before you sing?” Gwenhwyfar asked, and he accepted politely enough. Then, noting the banner of the cross on the loom, he said to Elaine, “You are King Pellinore’s daughter, are you not, madam? Are you weaving a banner for your father to carry into battle?”

 

Gwenhwyfar said quickly, “Elaine’s hands worked as skillfully as mine, but the banner is for Arthur.”

 

His rich voice was as detached as if he were admiring a child’s first attempts to spin. “It is beautiful, and will make a fair wall-hanging for Camelot when you go there, madam, but I am sure Arthur will carry the Pendragon banner as did his father before him. But ladies love not to speak of battles. Shall I play for you?” He set his hands to the strings and began to play; Gwenhwyfar listened, spellbound, and her serving-woman crept to the door to listen too, aware of sharing a royal gift. He played for a long time in the gathering dusk, and as she listened, Gwenhwyfar was borne away into a world where pagan or Christian made no difference, war or peace, but only the human spirit, flaming against the great darkness like an everburning torch. When the harp notes finally stilled, Gwenhwyfar could not speak, and she saw that Elaine was weeping softly in the silence.

 

After a time she said, “Words cannot say what you have given us, Master Harper. I can say only that I will remember it always.”

 

Kevin’s crooked smile seemed for a moment to mock her emotion and his own as he said, “Madam, in music he who gives receives as much as he who hears.” He turned to Elaine and added, “I see you have the lady Morgaine’s harp. You, then, know the truth of what I say.”

 

She nodded, but said, “I am only the worst of beginners at music. I love to play, but no one could find pleasure in hearing me—I am grateful to my companions for their forbearance while I struggle with the notes.”

 

“That is not true, you know we enjoy hearing you,” said Gwenhwyfar, and Kevin smiled and said, “Perhaps the harp is the one instrument which cannot sound evil no matter how badly played—I wonder if that is why it is dedicated to the Gods?”

 

Gwenhwyfar’s lips tightened—must he spoil the delight of this hour by speaking of his infernal Gods? The man was, after all, a misshapen toad; without his music he would never be allowed to sit at any respectable board —somewhere she had heard that he was no more than a peasant’s foundling brat. She would not offend him when he had come to give them pleasure, but she looked away; let Elaine chatter with him if she would. She stood up and went to the door. “It is as hot in here as the breath of Hell,” she said irritably and flung it open.

 

Across the sky, darkening now, flamed spears of light, darting out of the north. Her cry brought Elaine and the serving-woman, and even Kevin, folding his harp tenderly into its covering, dragged himself heavily to the door.

 

“Oh, what is it, what does it portend?” she cried.

 

Kevin said quietly, “The Northmen say it is the flashing of spears in the country of the giants; when it is seen on earth, it portends a great battle. And sure enough, that is what we face now—a battle where Arthur’s legion, madam, may determine, with the help of all the Gods, whether we live as civilized men or go into the darkness forever. You should have gone to Camelot, lady Gwenhwyfar. It is not right that the High King should be concerned now with women and babes.”

 

She turned on him and flared, “What would you know of women or babes—or of battles, Druid?”

 

“Why, this would not be my first battle, my queen,” he said equably. “My Lady was from a king who gifted me for playing his war harps to his victory. Would you think I should have gone to safety with the maidens and the skirted eunuchs of the Christian priests? Not I, madam. Not even Taliesin, old as he is, will run from battle.” Silence, and above them the northern lights flamed and flared. “By your leave, my queen, I must go to my lord Arthur and speak with him and the Lord Merlin of what these lights portend for the battle which comes upon us.”

 

Gwenhwyfar felt it like a sharp knife run through her belly. Even this malformed heathen might be with Arthur now, yet she, his wife, must lurk here out of sight, although she bore the hope of his kingdom! She had thought, if ever she bore Arthur’s son, then he must give her place and show her great respect, not treat her still as that useless woman he had been forced to take as part of a dowry of horses! Yet here she was, packed off into a corner again because he could not be rid of her, and even her gallant banner thrust back at her unwanted.

 

Kevin said with swift concern, “Are you ill, my queen? Lady Elaine, assist her!” He held out a hand to Gwenhwyfar, but it was misshapen, a twisted wrist, and she saw the serpent coiling around it, tattooed there in blue  ...  she recoiled sharply and struck out at him, hardly knowing what she did, so that Kevin, who was none too steady on his feet, lost his balance and fell heavily to the stone floor.

 

“Keep away from me,” she cried out, gasping. “Don’t touch me, with your evil serpents—pagan, hell-bound, lay not your foul serpents on my babe—“

 

“Gwenhwyfar!” Elaine hurried to her, but instead of supporting Gwenhwyfar she bent solicitously over Kevin and gave him her hand to rise. “Lord Druid, do not curse her—she is ill and she does not know what she does—“

 

“Oh, do I not?” Gwenhwyfar shrieked. “Do you think I do not know how you all look at me—like a fool, as if I were deaf and dumb and blind? And you would calm me with kind words while you go behind the back of the priests to claim Arthur for pagan wickedness and heathendom, you who would give us over to the hands of the evil sorcerers ...  . Go from here, lest my babe be born deformed because I have looked on your vile face ...  .”

 

Kevin shut his eyes and the twisted hands clamped, but he turned quietly away and began laboriously hoisting his harp over his shoulder. He fumbled for his stick; Elaine handed it to him, and Gwenhwyfar heard her whisper, “Forgive her, Lord Druid, she is ill and knows not—“

 

Kevin’s musical voice was harsh. “I know that well, lady. Think you I have never heard such sweet words from women before this? I am sorry, I wished only to give you pleasure,” he said, and Gwenhwyfar, her head hidden in her hands, heard the dragging hitch of his stick and his stumbling feet as he hauled himself painfully from the room. But even when he had gone she went on huddling with her arms over her head—ah, he had cursed her with those vile serpents, she could feel them stabbing and biting into her body, the spears of the flaring lights overhead were impaling her, the lights flaring in her brain.... She screamed and hid her face with her hands and fell, writhing, as the spears went through her ... she came to herself a little as she heard Elaine cry out.

 

“Gwenhwyfar! Cousin, look at me, speak to me! Ah, may the holy Virgin help us. ... Send for the midwife! Look, the blood—“

 

“Kevin,” Gwenhwyfar screamed, “Kevin has cursed my child—“ and she drew herself up frantically, pain lashing through her, beating with her fists against the stone wall. “Ah, God help me, send for the priest, the priest, perhaps he can take away this curse—“ and, ignoring the gushing of water and blood that now she could feel drenching her thighs, she dragged herself to the banner she had woven, signing herself with the cross again and again in a frenzy, before it all vanished in darkness and nightmare.

 

IT WAS DAYS LATER that she understood she had been dangerously ill, that she had come near to bleeding to death when she miscarried the four-months child which was too small and weak to breathe.

 

Arthur. Now for certain he must hate me, I could not even bring his son to birth ...  . Kevin, it was Kevin who cursed me with his serpents ...  . She wandered in evil dreams of serpents and spears, and once when Arthur came to her side and tried to hold her head, she started away in terror from the serpents which seemed to writhe on his wrists.

 

Even when she was out of danger, she did not recover her strength, but lay in a dreary apathy, unmoving, tears sliding down her face. She had not even the strength to wipe them away. No, it was folly to think Kevin had cursed her, that must have been a madness of her delirium  ...  this was not the first child she had miscarried, and if there was any fault it was her own, for staying here where she could not have fresh air and fresh food and exercise and the company of her ladies.

 

Her house priest came to her, and he too agreed that it was madness to think that Kevin had cursed her ...  . God would not use the hands of a pagan priest to chastise her. “You must not be so quick to assign blame to others,” he said severely. “If there is fault, it must be your own. Is there any unconfessed sin on your conscience, lady Gwenhwyfar?”

 

Unconfessed? No. For long ago she had confessed her love for Lancelet and been absolved, and she had striven to keep her thoughts only on her lawful lord. No, it could not be that  ...  and yet she had failed.

 

“I could not persuade—I was not strong enough to persuade Arthur to lay aside his pagan serpents and the Pendragon banner,” she said weakly. “Would God punish my child for that?”

 

“Only you know what lies on your conscience, lady. And speak not of punishment for the child  ...  he is in the bosom of Christ  ...  but it is you and Arthur being punished, if there is punishment, which,” he added primly, “I must not presume to say.”

 

“What can I do to atone? What can I do that God may send Arthur a son for Britain?”

 

“Have you truly done all you may to assure that Britain shall have a Christian king? Or do you hold back the words you know you must speak, because you wish to please your husband?” the priest asked austerely. And when he had gone away, she lay looking at the banner. Every night now, she knew, the northern lights burned in the sky, in portent of the great battle that was to come; yet once, a Roman emperor had seen the sign of the cross in the sky, and the fate of all Britain had been changed. Could she but bring such a sign to Arthur  ...

 

“Come, help me get up,” she said to her woman. “I must finish the banner for Arthur to carry into battle.”

 

Arthur came that night to her chambers, just as she set the last stitches to it, and the women were lighting the lamps.

 

“How is it with you now, my dear one? I am glad to see you up again, and well enough to work,” he said, and kissed her. “Dearest, you must not grieve so... no woman could bring a healthy child to birth under this strain, with the battle impending at any moment—I should have sent you to Camelot, indeed. We are young still, my Gwenhwyfar, God may yet send us many children.” But she saw the vulnerable look on his face, and knew he shared her sorrow.

 

She clasped his hand and drew him down beside her on the bench where she sat before the banner. “Is it not fair?” she said, and thought she sounded like a child begging for praise.

 

“It is very beautiful. I thought I had never seen so fine work as this” — and he laid his hand on the crimson-worked scabbard of Excalibur that never left his side—“but this is finer still.”

 

“And I have woven prayers for you and your Companions into every stitch,” she said, in entreaty. “Arthur, listen to me—do you think, could it not be, God has punished us because he feels we are not fit to give this kingdom another king, you and I, unless we will vow ourselves to serve him faithfully, not in pagan ways but in the new way under Christ? All the forces of pagan evil are allied against us, and we must fight it with the cross.

 

He laid his hand over hers and said, “Come, dear love, this is folly. You know I serve God as best I may ...  .”

 

“But you still raise that pagan banner of serpents over your men,” she cried, and he shook his head in distress.

 

“Dear love, I cannot break faith with the Lady of Avalon who set me on my throne—“

 

“It was God, and no other, who set you on your throne,” she said earnestly. “Ah, Arthur, if you love me, do this, if you wish for God to send us another child! Do you not see how he has punished us by taking our son to himself?”

 

“You must not speak so,” he said firmly. “To think God would do so is superstitious folly. I came to tell you at last the Saxons are massing, and we shall move to give them battle at Mount Badon! I would now that you were well enough to ride to Camelot, but it cannot be—not yet—“

 

“Ah, I know it well, I am only an encumbrance to you,” she cried out bitterly. “I was never more to you—it is a pity I did not die with my babe.”

 

“No, no, you must not speak so,” he said tenderly. “I have every confidence that with my good sword Excalibur and all my Companions, we shall triumph. And you must pray for us night and day, my Gwenhwyfar.” He rose and added, “We will not march till daybreak. I will try to come and take leave of you this night before we march, and your father too, and Gawaine and perhaps Lancelet—he sent you greetings, Gwenhwyfar, he was very troubled when he heard you were so ill. Can you speak to them if they come?”

 

She bent her head and said bitterly, “I will do my king and my lord’s will. Yes, let them come, though I wonder you trouble to ask my prayers —I cannot even persuade you to put away that pagan banner and raise the cross of Christ ...  . And no doubt God knows your heart, since God will not let you ride forth into battle believing that any son of yours shall rule this land, because you have not yet resolved to make this a Christian land ...  .”

 

He stopped and let her hand go, and she could feel him looking down at her. At last he bent and put his hand under his chin and raised her face to look at his. He said quietly, “My dear lady, my own dear love, in God’s name, believe you that?”

 

She nodded, unable to speak, wiping her nose like a child on the sleeve of her gown.

 

“I tell you, dear lady, before God, I believe it not, that God works in such ways, nor that it matters so much what banner we carry. But if it matters thus to you—“ He paused and swallowed. “Gwenhwyfar, I cannot bear to see you in such distress. If I bear this banner of Christ and the Virgin into battle over my troops, will you cease to mourn, and pray to God for me with your best heart?”

 

She looked up at him, transformed, her heart lifting with a wild joy. Would he indeed do this for her? “Oh, Arthur, I have prayed, I have prayed—“

 

“Then,” said Arthur, with a sigh, “I swear it to you, Gwenhwyfar— I shall carry only your banner of Christ and the Virgin into battle, and no other sign shall be raised above my legion. So be it, amen.” He kissed her, but Gwenhwyfar thought he looked very sad. She clasped his hands and kissed them, and for the first time, it seemed that the serpents on his wrists were nothing, mere faded pictures, and that she had indeed been mad to think they could have power to harm her or her child.

 

He called to his squire, who stood at the door of the room, to come and take the banner carefully and to raise it above their camp. “For we march at dawn tomorrow,” he said, “and all must see my lady’s banner with the Holy Virgin and the cross flying above the legion of Arthur.”

 

The squire looked startled. “Sir—my lord—what of the Pendragon banner?”

 

Arthur said, “Take it to the steward, and bid him lay it somewhere away. We march under the standard of God.”

 

The squire did as Arthur said, and Arthur smiled at Gwenhwyfar, but there was little gladness in the smile. “I will come to see you at sunset, with your father and some of our kin. We will dine here, and I will have my stewards bring food for us all. Elaine shall not be troubled with providing for so many. Until then, my dear wife,” and he went away.

 

In the end the small dinner was held in one of the little halls, for Gwenhwyfar’s chamber would not hold so many in comfort. Gwenhwyfar and Elaine put on the best gowns which had remained here at Caerleon and did their hair with ribbons; it was exciting to have some kind of festival after the grim confinement of the last weeks. The feast—though indeed it was not much better than army rations—was spread on trestle tables. Most of Arthur’s older councillors had been sent to Camelot, including Bishop Patricius, but Taliesin the Merlin had been bidden to dine, and King Lot, and King Uriens of Wales, and Duke Marcus of Cornwall, and Lancelet’s older half-brother, Lionel of Less Britain, Ban’s oldest son and heir. Lancelet was there too, and he found a moment to come to Gwenhwyfar’s side and kiss her hand, looking into her eyes with hopeless tenderness.

 

“Are you recovered, my lady? I was troubled for you.” Under cover of the shadows, he kissed her, only a feather-brushing of soft lips against her temple.

 

King Leodegranz came too, scowling and fussing, to kiss her brow. “I am sorry for your illness, my dear, and sorry you lost your child, but Arthur should have bundled you off to Camelot in a litter—that is how I would have handled Alienor, if she had gainsaid me,” he scolded. “And now, see, you have gained nothing by staying!”

 

“You must not rebuke her,” said Taliesin gently, “she has suffered enough, my lord. If Arthur does not reproach her, it is not for her father to do so.”

 

Elaine tactfully changed the subject. “Who is yonder Duke Marcus?”

 

“He is a cousin of Gorlois of Cornwall, who died before Uther took the throne,” said Lancelet, “and he has asked Arthur that if we win the day at Mount Badon, he shall have Cornwall by marrying our kinswoman Morgaine.”

 

“That old man?” said Gwenhwyfar, shocked.

 

“I think it would be as well to give Morgaine to an older man—she has not the kind of beauty to attract a younger one,” said Lancelet. “But she is clever and learned, and as it happens, Duke Marcus wants her not for himself but for his son Drustan, who is one of Cornwall’s best knights. Arthur has made him one of his Companions now, on the eve of this battle. Though it’s likely, if Morgaine returns not to court, that Drustan will wed with the daughter of the old Breton king Hoell—“ He chuckled. “Court gossip of the making of marriages—is there nothing else to speak of?”

 

“Well,” said Elaine boldly, “when will you tell us of your marriage, sir Lancelet?”

 

He inclined his head gallantly and said, “On the day when your father offers you to me, lady Elaine, I will not refuse him. But it is likely your father will have you wed a wealthier man than I, and since my lady here is already wedded”—he bowed to Gwenhwyfar but she saw the sadness in his eyes—“I am in no haste to marry.”

 

Elaine colored and cast down her eyes. Arthur said, “I bade Pellinore to join us, but he would stay in the field with his men, seeing to the order of march. Some of the wagons are moving out already. Look—“ He pointed to the window. “The northern spears blaze over us again!”

 

Lancelet asked, “Is Kevin the Harper not to be with us?”

 

“I bade him come if he would,” said Taliesin, “but he said he would rather not offend the Queen with his presence. Have you quarrelled, Gwenhwyfar?”

 

She cast down her eyes and said, “I spoke harshly to him while I was ill and in great pain. If you see him, Lord Druid, will you say I would gladly beg his pardon?” With Arthur at her side and her banner flying above Arthur’s camp, she felt love and charity for everyone, even for the bard.

 

“I think he knows you spoke in the bitterness of your own ordeal,” said Taliesin gently, and Gwenhwyfar wondered what the younger Druid had told him.

 

Abruptly the door was thrust open and Lot and Gawaine strode into the room.

 

“Why, what’s this, my lord Arthur?” demanded Lot. “The Pendragon banner we pledged ourselves to follow, it flies no more over the camp, and there is great unrest among the Tribes—tell me, what have you done?”

 

Arthur looked pale in the torchlight. “No more than this, cousin— we are a Christian folk, and we fight under the banner of Christ and the Virgin.”

 

Lot scowled at him. “The archers of Avalon are talking of leaving you, Arthur. Fly your banner of Christ, if your conscience so bids you, but raise the Pendragon banner at its side with the serpents of wisdom, or you will see your men scattered and not all of one heart as they have been through all this dreary waiting! Would you toss all that goodwill away? And the Pict folk with their elf-bolts have killed many a Saxon before this, and will again. I beg you, don’t take away their banner and their allegiance like this!”

 

Arthur smiled uneasily. “Even as that emperor who saw the sign in the sky and said, ‘In this sign shall we conquer,’ so shall we. You, Uriens, who raise the eagles of Rome, you know that tale.”

 

“I do, my king,” said Uriens, “but is it wise to deny the folk of Avalon? Even as I, my lord Arthur, you wear the serpents at your wrists, in token of a land older than the cross.”

 

“But it will be a new land if we win the victory,” said Gwenhwyfar, “and if we do not, it will not matter.”

 

Lot turned as she spoke and looked on her with loathing. “I might have known this was your doing, my queen.”

 

Gawaine strode restlessly to the window and looked down at the camp. “I see them moving about their fires, the little folk—from Avalon, and from your country, King Uriens. Arthur, cousin”—and he went to the King— “I beg of you, as the oldest of your Companions, put the Pendragon banner into the field for those who wish to follow it.”

 

Arthur hesitated, but a glance at Gwenhwyfar’s shining eyes and he smiled at her and said, “I have sworn it. If we survive the battle, our son shall reign over a land united under the cross. I shall compel no man’s conscience, but as it is written in Holy Writ—‘as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ “

 

Lancelet drew a deep breath. He stepped away from Gwenhwyfar. “My lord and king, I remind you, I am Lancelet of the Lake, and I honor the Lady of Avalon. In her name, my king, who was your friend and benefactor, I beg this favor of you—let me carry the Pendragon banner into battle myself. Then your vow will be kept, and yet you will not be forsworn to Avalon.”

 

Arthur hesitated. Gwenhwyfar shook her head imperceptibly, and Lancelet glanced at Taliesin. Taking the silence for consent, Lancelet was about to stride out of the room when Lot said, “Arthur, no! There is enough talk now about Lancelet being your heir and favorite! If he bears the Pendragon into battle, then will they think you have appointed him to bear your banner and there will be division in the kingdom, your party under the cross and Lancelet’s under the Pendragon.”

 

Lancelet turned on Lot violently. “You carry your own banner—so does Leodegranz, so does Uriens, so does Duke Marcus of Cornwall—why should I not bear a banner of Avalon?”

 

“But the Pendragon banner is the banner of all Britain united under one Great Dragon,” said Lot, and Arthur sighed and nodded. “We must fight under one standard, and that standard is the cross. I am sorry to refuse you anything, cousin,” Arthur said, and reached for Lancelet’s hand, “but this I may not allow.”

 

Lancelet stood with his mouth taut, visibly holding in his anger, then went to the window. Lot, behind him, said, “I heard it among my Northmen —they say these are the spears of the Saxons which we will face, and the wild swans are crying, and the ravens await us all ...  .”

 

Gwenhwyfar stood with her hand tightly clasped in Arthur’s. She said quietly, “In this sign you shall conquer ...” and Arthur squeezed her hand.

 

“Though all the forces of Hell, and not the Saxons alone, were ranged against us, lady, with my Companions I cannot fail. And you at my side, Lancelet,” Arthur said, and moved to draw him close to them both. A moment Lancelet stood unmoving, his face still set in angry lines, and then he said, with a deep sigh, “So be it, King Arthur. But—“ He hesitated, and Gwenhwyfar, standing very close to him, could feel the shudder which ran through his limbs. “I know not what they will say when they hear of it in Avalon, my lord and my king.”

 

And for a moment there was total silence in the chamber, while the lights, the spears of the flames from the north, flared over them.

 

And then Elaine jerked the curtains shut, closing out the portents, and cried merrily, “Come and sit to your dinner, my lords! For if you ride forth to battle at daybreak, you shall not set forth unfeasted, and we have done our best for you!”

 

But again and again, as they sat at meat, while Lot and Uriens and Duke Marcus spoke of strategy and troop placement with Arthur, Gwenhwyfar caught Lancelet’s dark eyes, and they were filled with sorrow and dread.

 

13

When Morgaine left Arthur’s court at Caerleon, asking leave only to pay a visit to Avalon and her foster-mother, she kept her thoughts on Viviane—that way she need not think of what had befallen her and Lancelet. Whenever she let her mind wander to it, it was like being burnt with a hot iron of shame; she had offered herself to him in all honesty, in the old way, and he had wanted nothing of her but childish toyings that made a mockery of her womanhood. She did not know whether it was at him or herself that she was angered, that he could have so played with her, or that she could have hungered for him ...  .

 

Now and again she regretted her harsh words to him. Why had she flung insults at him? He was as the Goddess had made him, no worse and no better. But at other times, while she rode eastward, she felt herself to blame; the old taunt of Gwenhwyfar, little and ugly as one of the fairy folk, scalded her mind. Had she had more to give, had she been beautiful as Gwenhwyfar was beautiful  ...  had she been content with what he had to give... and then her mind would swing the other way again, he had insulted her and the Goddess through her. ... So tormented, she rode through the green country of the hills. And after a time her thoughts began to turn to what awaited her at Avalon.

 

She had left the Holy Isle unpermitted. She had renounced her state as priestess, leaving behind her even the little sickle knife of her initiation; and in the years since, always she had dressed her hair low on her brow, so that none might see the blue crescent tattooed there. Now in one of the villages she bartered away a little gilt ring she had for some of the blue paint the Tribeswomen used, and painted the faded mark afresh.

 

All that has befallen me has come because I forswore the vows I had given the Goddess  ...  and then she recalled what Lancelet had said in his despair, that there were neither Gods nor Goddess, but these were the shapes mankind gives, in terror, to what they cannot make into reason.

 

But even if this were true, it would not lessen her guilt. For whether the Goddess took the form they thought, or whether the Goddess was only another name for the great unknowns of nature, still she had deserted the temple and the way of life and thought to which she was pledged, and she had forsaken the great tides and rhythms of the earth. She had eaten foods forbidden to a priestess, had taken the life of animal or bird or plant without giving thanks to that part of the Goddess being sacrificed for her good, she had lived unmindful, had given herself to a man without seeking to know the will of the Goddess in her sun tides, for mere pleasure and lechery— no, it was not to be looked for, that she could return and all should be as before. And as she rode through the hills, through ripening harvest and fertilizing rain, she was aware, with greater and greater pain, of how far she had come from the teachings of Viviane and of Avalon.

 

The difference is deeper than I thought. Even those who till the earth, when they are Christians, come to a way of life which is far from the earth; they say that their God has given them dominion over all growing things and every beast of the field. Whereas we dwellers in hillside and swamp, forest and far field, we know that it is not we who have the dominion over nature, but she who has dominion over us, from the moment lust stirs in the loins of our fathers and desire in the womb of our mothers to bring us forth, under her dominion, to when we quicken in the womb and are brought forth in her time, to the lives of plant and animal which must be sacrificed to feed and swaddle and clothe us and give us strength to live  ...  all, all of these things are under the domain of the Goddess and without her beneficent mercy none of us could draw a living breath, but all things would be barren and die. And even when the time comes for barrenness and death, so that others may come to take our place on this earth, that is her doing too, she who is not only the Green Lady of the fruitful earth, but also the Dark Lady of the seed lying hidden beneath the snows, of the raven and the hawk who bring death to the slow, and of the worms who work in secret to destroy that which has served its time, even Our Lady of rot and destruction and death at the end ...  .

 

In the memory of all these things, Morgaine came at last to see that what had happened with Lancelet, after all, was but a little thing; the greatest sin was not with Lancelet but in her own heart, that she had turned away from the Goddess. What did it matter what the priests thought was good, or virtuous, or sinful, or shameful? The wound to her pride was only a healthful cleansing.

 

The Goddess will deal with Lancelet in her own time and her way. It is not for me to say. At the moment Morgaine thought it the best thing that could happen, should she never set eyes again on her cousin.

 

No; it was not to be looked for that she could return to her place as chosen priestess  ...  but Viviane might have pity on her and let her amend her sins against the Goddess. At the moment she felt she could be content to dwell in Avalon, even as servant or humble worker-woman in the fields. She felt like a sick child, hurrying to lay her head in her mother’s lap and weep there  ...  she would send for her son and have him fostered in Avalon, among the priests, and never depart again from the way she had been taught ...  .

 

And so when first she saw the sight of the Tor, thrusting itself up, green and unmistakable, over the hills lying in between, the tears streamed down her face. She was coming home, home to her own place and to Viviane, she would stand within the ring stones and pray to the Goddess that her faults might be healed, that she might return to that place from which her own pride and self-will had thrust her.

 

It seemed that the Tor was playing hide-and-seek with her, now visible, thrusting itself up between the hills like an erect phallus, now hiding between smaller hills, now disappearing in the damp fogs; but at last she came to the shores of the Lake where she had come with Viviane so many years ago.

 

The greying waters, in late-evening sunlight, lay empty before her. Against the red light in the sky, the reeds were dark and barren, and the shores of the Island of the Priests just visible, rising in the sunset mist. But nothing stirred, nothing moved on the water, even though she thrust forth her whole heart and mind in a passionate effort to reach the Holy Isle, to summon the barge ...  . An hour she stood there unmoving, and then the darkness closed down, and she knew she had failed.

 

No ... the barge would not come for her, this night or ever again. It would come for a priestess, for Viviane’s chosen, cherished fosterling; it would not come for a runaway who had lived in secular courts and done her own will for four years. Once before, at the time of her initiation, she had been cast forth from Avalon, and the test of whether or no she might be called priestess was only this—that she should return without aid.

 

She could not call the barge; she feared within her very soul to cry aloud the word of power that would summon it through the mists. She could not command it, who had forfeited the right to be called a child of Avalon. As the color left the water and the last remnants of the sunlight faded into twilight mist, Morgaine looked mournfully toward the distant shore. No, she dared not call the boat; but there was another way into Avalon, around at the other side of the Lake, where she could cross by the hidden path through the swamp and there find her way into the hidden world. Aching with loneliness, she began to skirt the shore, leading her horse. The looming presence of the big animal in the dusk, his snorting breaths behind her, were a vague comfort. If all failed she could spend the night on the shores of the Lake; it would not be the first night she had spent alone in the open. And in the morning she would find her way. She remembered that solitary journey, disguised, to Lot’s court far in the north, years ago. She had grown soft with the good living and luxury of the court, but she could do it again if she must.

 

But it was so still: no sound of bells from the Isle of the Priests, no chantings from the convent, no bird cries; it was as if she moved through an enchanted country. Morgaine found the place she was looking for. It was growing dark, and each bush and tree seemed to take on a sinister shape, some strange thing, some monster, some dragon. But Morgaine was recovering the habits of mind she had possessed when she dwelt in Avalon; there was nothing here that would harm her, if she meant it no harm.

 

She began to take her way along the hidden path. Halfway she must move through the mists; otherwise the path would but bring her to the monks’ kitchen garden behind their cloister. She admonished herself firmly to stop thinking of the growing darkness and set her mind into meditative silence, fixing it on where she longed to go. Thus, then, with each step as if she wound a spell, treading out the spiral dance as if the way wound up the Tor toward the ring stones .. . she moved silently, her eyes half-closed, placing each foot with care. She could feel the mists cold about her now.

 

Viviane had not thought it any such great ill, that she should lie with her half-brother and bear him a child ... a child born of the old royal line of Avalon, more a king than Arthur’s self. Had she borne such a child to Lancelet, then could that child have been fostered here in Avalon and reared to become one of the greatest of the Druids. Now what would become of her son? Why did she leave Gwydion in the hands of Morgause? Morgaine thought, I am an unnatural mother; I should have sent for my son. But she had not been willing to look Arthur in the face and tell him of his child’s existence. She would not want the priests and ladies at court to look on her and say, This is the woman who bore a child to the Horned One in the old pagan way of the tribes who paint their faces and wear horns and run with the deer like animals ... the boy was well enough where he was, Arthur’s court was no place for him, and what would she do with a little boy of three running at her heels? Arthur’s?

 

But there were times when she thought of him, remembered nights when he had been brought to her full-fed and sweet-smelling, when she had sat holding him and crooning to him, thinking of nothing, her whole body filled with mindless happiness  ...  when else had she been so happy? Only once, she thought, when Lancelet and I lay in the sunshine on the Tor, when we hunted waterfowl by the shores of the Lake  ...  and then, blinking, she realized that by this time she should have come further than this, she should be past the mists and on the solid ground of Avalon.

 

And indeed the boggy places were gone—there were trees around her, and the path was firm underfoot, and she had not come to the priests’ kitchen garden and outbuildings either. She should now be in the field behind the House of Maidens, leading into the orchard; now she must think of what she would say when she was found here, of the words she would speak to prove to the folk of Avalon that she had the right to be here. Or did she? Somehow it seemed that it was a little less dark; perhaps the moon was rising —it was three or four days after the full, soon there would be light enough to find her way. It was not to be looked for that every tree and bush should be the same as when she had dwelt here and known every step of every path. Morgaine clung to her horse’s bridle, suddenly afraid of losing her way on the once-familiar paths.

 

No, it was actually growing brighter, she could see the bushes and trees quite plainly now. If the moon was rising, why could she not see it above the trees? Had she somehow gotten turned round, while she was walking with her eyes half-closed, treading out the path that led through the mists and between the worlds? If only she might see some familiar landmark! There were no clouds now—she could see the sky and even the mists had gone, but she could make out no star.

 

Perhaps she had been away too long from such things? She could see no sign of rising moon, though it should have been long since in the sky ...  .

 

And then it was as if cold water flooded down her back and set her blood to moving like ice inside her. That day when she had gone to seek roots and herbs, when she would have cast forth the child within her  ...  had she wandered again into that enchanted country which was neither the world of Britain nor the secret world where the magic of the Druids had taken Avalon, but that older, darker country where there was neither star nor sun  ...  ?

 

She bade her beating heart to still itself; she gripped the horse’s bridle and leaned against the warm, sweaty flank, feeling the solidity of muscle and bone, hearing the soft snorting breaths real and definite under her cheek. Surely if she stood still for a little and took thought, she would find her way ...  . But fear was rising in her.

 

I cannot go back. I cannot go back to Avalon, I am not worthy, I cannot make my way through the mists ...  . On the day of the ordeal of initiation she had felt this for a moment, but she had firmly put her fear aside.

 

But I was younger then and innocent. Never then had I betrayed the Goddess or the secret teachings, never had I betrayed life ...  .

 

Morgaine fought to control the rising tides of panic. Fear was the worst thing. Fear would put her at the mercy of whatever misfortune came. Even the wild beasts could smell fear on your body and would come and attack, while they would flee from the courageous. This was why the bravest man could run among the deer with safety, so long as fear was not smelled on his skin ... was this, she wondered, why they smeared their bodies with the acrid blue dye of woad, because it covered the smell of fear? Perhaps the truly brave man or woman was the one whose mind made no pictures of what might happen if things went awry.

 

There was nothing here to harm her, even if it might be that she had strayed into the fairy country. Once before she had found herself there, but the woman who had mocked her had offered no harm or threat. They were older even than the Druids, but they too lived by the will and rule of the Goddess in their life and ways, and it might even be that one could guide her to her proper path. So, either way, there was nothing to fear: at worst she would meet no one and spend a lonely night among the trees.

 

Now she saw light—was it one of the lights that burned in the court of the House of Maidens? If it was so, well, then she would soon be home, and if not, then she could ask her way of whatever folk she met. If she had strayed into the Isle of the Priests, then if she met with some strange priest he might fear that she was one of the fairy women. She wondered if, from time to time, these women did come to tempt the priests; it was only reasonable that here, in the very shrine of the Goddess, some priest with more imagination than others might feel the pulse of this place, come to know that his way of life was a denial of the forces of life which ran within the very pulse beat of the world. They denied life rather than affirming it, from the life of the heart and the life of nature to the life that ran at root between man and woman ...  .

 

If I were Lady of Avalon, on the nights when the moon was new and springing, I would send the maidens into the cloister of the priests, to show them that the Goddess cannot be mocked or denied, that they are men and that women are not evil inventions of their pretended Devil, but that the Goddess will have her way with them  ...  aye, at Beltane or Midsummer ...  .

 

Or would these mad priests bid the maidens be gone and think them demons, come to tempt the faithful? And for a moment it seemed she could hear the voice of the Merlin: Let all men be free to serve what God they best like ...  .

 

Even, she wondered, one which denied the very life of the earth? But she knew Taliesin would have said, Even so.

 

Now through the trees she made out clearly the shape of a torch, flaring up yellow and blue from a long pole. The glare of it blinded her eyes for a moment, and then she saw the man who held the torch. He was small and dark, and neither priest nor Druid. He wore a loincloth of spotted deerskin and some sort of dark cloak over his bare shoulders; he was like to one of the little Tribesmen, only taller. His hair was dark and long, and he wore a garland of colored leaves in it; autumn leaves, though the leaves had not yet turned. And somehow that frightened Morgaine. But his voice was mellow and soft, as he spoke in an ancient dialect. “Welcome, sister; are you benighted? Come this way. Let me lead your horse—I know the paths.” It was for all the world, she thought, as if she were expected.

 

As if she had fallen into a dream, Morgaine followed. The path grew harder underfoot and easier to follow, and the light of the torch blurred away the misty dimness. He led the horse, but now and then he turned toward her and smiled. Then he reached out and took her by the hand, as if he were leading a young child. His teeth were very white, and his eyes, dark in the torch glow, were merry.

 

There were more lights now; at some point, she did not know when, he had given over her horse to another, and led her within a ring of lights —she did not remember coming within walls, but she was in a great hall where there were men and women feasting, with garlands on their heads. Some bore garlands of the autumn leaves, but at the same time there were women who bore garlands of early spring flowers, the little pale arbutus that hides under the leaves even before the snow is gone. Somewhere, a harp was playing.

 

Her guide was still at her side. He led her toward the high table and there, somehow without surprise, she recognized the woman she had seen before, wearing in her hair a garland of bare twined wicker-withes. The woman’s grey eyes seemed ageless and knowing, as if she could read and see all things.

 

The man set Morgaine on a bench and put a tankard in her hand. It was of some metal she did not know  ...  the liquor in it was sweet and smooth and tasted of peat and heather. She drank thirstily, and realized she had drunk too quickly after her long fast; she felt dizzied. Then she recalled the old tale—should you blunder into the fairy country, you must never drink nor eat of their food ... but that was only an old tale, no more; they would not harm her.

 

She asked, “What is this place?”

 

The lady said, “This is the Castle Chariot, and you are welcome here, Morgaine, Queen of Britain.”

 

She shook her head. “No, no, I am no queen. My mother was High Queen, and I am Duchess of Cornwall, but no more ...  .”

 

The lady smiled. “It is all one. You are weary and have travelled long. Eat and drink, little sister, and tomorrow one shall guide you wherever you wish to go. Now is the time for feasting.”

 

There were fruits on her plate, and bread, a dark soft bread of some unknown grain, but it seemed she had tasted it somewhere before this ... she saw that the man who had led her hither had bracelets of gold about his wrists, twining like live snakes  ...  she rubbed her eyes, wondering if she had fallen into a dream, and when she looked again it was only a bracelet, or perhaps a tattoo, like the one Arthur bore from his kingmaking. And at times when she looked at him, the torches flared so, it seemed there was the shadow of antlers above his brow; and the lady was crowned and hung about with gold, but now and again it seemed it was only a crown of wicker, and she had a necklace of shells about her throat, the little shells which were halved like a woman’s private parts, and sacred to the Goddess. She sat between them and somewhere a harp was playing, a sweeter music than even the harps of Avalon ...  .

 

She was no longer wearied. The sweet-tasting drink had cleared her mind of fatigue and sorrow. Later someone put a harp in her hand and she too played and sang; never had her voice sounded so soft and clear and sweet. She fell into a dream as she played, where it seemed all the faces around her wore the semblance of someone she had known elsewhere.... It seemed she walked on the shores of a sunny island and played a curious bowed harp; and then there was a time when she sat in a great stone courtyard and a wise Druid in strange long robes taught them with compasses and a star finder, and there were songs and sounds that would open a locked door or raise a circle of ring stones and she learned them all, and was crowned with a golden serpent over her brow ...  .

 

The lady said it was time to go to rest—on the morrow one would guide her and her horse. She slept that night in a cool room hung about with leaves—or were they tapestries that now seemed to twist and change, telling stories of all the things that had been? She saw herself too, woven into the tapestry, with her harp in her hand, with Gwydion on her lap, and she saw herself woven into the tapestry with Lancelet—he played with her hair and held her hand, and she thought there was something she should remember, some reason she should be angry with Lancelet; but she could not remember what it was.

 

When the lady said that this night was festival and she should stay here a day or two more and dance with them, she let it be ... it was so long, it seemed, since she had danced and been merry. But when she took thought to what festival it might be, she could not quite remember  ...  surely the Equinox had not come yet, nor could she see moon or sun to reckon it for herself as she had been taught.

 

They put a garland of flowers in her hair, bright summer flowers, for, said the lady, you are no untried maiden. It was a starless night, and it troubled her that she could not see the moon, as she had not seen the sun by day. Had it been one day, or two or three? Somehow time seemed not to matter; she ate when she was hungry, slept where she was when she felt weary, alone, or lying on a bed, soft as grass, with one of the lady’s maidens. Once, to her surprise, she found the maiden—yes, she looked somewhat like Raven—twining her arms round her neck and kissing her, and she returned the kisses without surprise or shame. It was as it is in a dream, where strange things seem wholly possible, and she was surprised at this, just a little, but somehow it did not seem to matter, she lived in an enchanted dream. Sometimes she wondered what had happened to her horse, but when she thought of riding forth, the lady said she must not think of it yet, they willed that she should stay with them  ...  once years afterward when she was trying to recall all that had befallen her within the Castle Chariot, she remembered that she had lain in the lady’s lap and suckled at her breast, and it did not seem strange to her at all that she, a grown woman, should lie in her mother’s lap, and be kissed and dandled like an infant. But surely that had been no more than a dream, when she was dizzied with the sweet-tasting strong wine ...  .

 

And sometimes it seemed to her that the lady was Viviane, and she wondered: Have I fallen sick, am I lying in a fever and dreaming all these curious things? She went out with the lady’s maidens and searched with them for root and herb, and the season seemed not to matter. And at the festival— was it that same night or another?—she danced to the harps, and again she took a turn at the harps for the dancing, and the music she made sounded both melancholy and merry.

 

Once when she was searching for berries and flowers for garlands, her feet stumbled over something: the white bleached bones of some animal. And round its neck was a fragment of leather, and on that a scrap of red cloth—it was something like to the bag in which she had borne her gear when she rode from Caerleon. What, she wondered, had happened to her own horse, was it safe in the stables here? She had not seen stables at all in the fairy castle, but she supposed they were somewhere. For now it was enough to dance, to sing, to let time pass, enchanted ...  .

 

Once the man who had brought her there led her aside from the dancing ring. She was never to know his name. How, when she could see neither sun nor moon, could the tides of moon and sun beat in her so fiercely?

 

“You have a dagger about you,” he said, “you must put it from you, I cannot bear it near.”

 

She unfastened the leather thongs that bound it to her waist and cast it away, not knowing where it fell. Then he came to her, his dark hair falling about hers; his mouth tasted sweet, of berries and of the strong heather drink. He undid her clothing. She had grown used to the cold—it did not matter to her that it was cold on the grass here, that she was naked under his body. She touched him; he was warm, his body warm, his strong male member hot and strong, his hands opening her thighs were strong and eager. Her whole body welcomed him as hungrily as a virgin; she moved with him and she felt the rhythm of the pulsing tides of the earth around her.

 

Then she was afraid  ...  she did not want him to get her with child, it had gone so ill with her when Gwydion was born, another child would surely kill her. But when she would have spoken, he laid a hand gently over her lips and she knew he could read her thoughts.

 

“No fear of that, sweet lady, the tides are not right for that  ...  this is the time for pleasure and not for ripening,” he said softly, and she gave herself up to it, and yes, there were antlers shadowing his brow, she lay again with the Horned One, and it was as if stars were falling in the wood all round them, or was it but fireflies and glowworms?

 

Once she was wandering in the woods with the maidens and she came to a pool and bent over it, and looking deep there, she saw Viviane’s face looking out at her from the waters. Her hair was greying now, strands of white all through it, and there were lines she had never seen before. Her lips opened; it seemed she was calling, and Morgaine wondered, How long have I been here? Surely, I have been here four or Jive days, maybe even a week. I must surely go. The lady said one would guide me to the shores of Avalon ...  .

 

And she made her way to the lady and told her that she must surely go. But night was falling—surely tomorrow would be time enough ...  .

 

Once again, in the water, it seemed she saw Arthur, his armies massing ...  . Gwenhwyfar looked weary and somehow older; she held Lancelet by the hand as he bade them farewell, and he kissed her lips. Yes, Morgaine thought in bitterness, such games as he likes well to play. Gwenhwyfar would wish it so, to have all his love and devotion and never endanger her honor ...  . But it was easy to put them away from her, too.

 

And then one night she woke with a start, hearing from somewhere a great cry, and for a moment, it seemed to her as if she stood on the Tor at the center of the ring stones, hearing the terrifying cry ringing through the worlds—the voice she had heard but once since she grew to womanhood, that harsh rusty voice, grown dull with unuse, the voice of Raven, who broke her silence only when the Gods had a message they dared not leave to any other ...  .

 

Ah, the Pendragon has betrayed Avalon, the dragon has flown ... the banner of the dragon flies no more against the Saxon warriors ... weep, weep, if the Lady should set foot from Avalon, for surely she will return no more  ...  and a sound of weeping, of sobbing in the sudden darkness  ...

 

And silence. Morgaine sat upright in the greyish light, her mind suddenly clear for the first time since she had come into this country.

 

I have been here all too long, she thought, winter has come. Now I must depart, now, before this day is over ... no, I cannot even say so, the sun does not rise or set here  ...  I must go now, at once. She knew she should call for her horse, and then, remembering, she knew: her horse was long since dead in these woods. In a sudden fright, she thought, How long have I been here?

 

She searched for her dagger, and remembered that she had cast it away. She bound her dress about her—it seemed faded. She could not remember washing it, nor her underlinen, yet they seemed not dirtied much. She wondered suddenly if she were mad.

 

If I speak to the lady, she will beseech me again not to go ...  .

 

Morgaine tied her hair up in plaits  ...  why had she let it hang free, she, a grown woman? And she set off down the path which, she knew, would bring her to Avalon.

 

MORGAINE SPEAKS  ...

 

To this very day I have never known how many nights and days I spent in the fairy country—even now my mind blurs when I try to reckon it up. Try as I may I can make it no fewer than five and no more than thirteen. Nor am I certain how much time passed in the world outside, nor in Avalon, while I was there, but because mankind keeps better records of time than the fairy folk, I know that some five years passed.

 

Perhaps, and I think this more as I grow older, what we speak of as time passing happens only because we have made it a habit, in our very blood and bones, to count things—the fingers of a newborn child, the rising and returning of the sun, we think so often of how many days must pass or how many seasons before our corn will ripen or our child grow in the womb and come to birth or some longed-for meeting take place; and we watch these by the turning of the year and the sun, as the first of the priestly secrets. Within the fairy country I knew nothing of the passing of time, and so for me it did not pass. For when I came out of the country I found that already there were more lines in Gwenhwyfar’s face, and Elaine’s exquisite youthfulness had begun to blur a little; but my own hands were no thinner, my face was untouched by line or wrinkle, and though in our family white comes early to the hair—in his nineteenth year Lancelet had had already a few grey strands—my hair was black and untouched by time as the wing of a crow.

 

I have come to think that once the Druids had taken Avalon away from the world of constant counting and reckoning it began to happen there, too. Time does not flow in Avalon unreckoned like the passing of a dream, as it does in the fairy country. Yet truly time has begun to drift a little. We see the moon and sun of the Goddess there, and reckon the rites within the ring stones, and so time never wholly leaves us. But it runs not even with time elsewhere, though one would think that if the motion of sun and moon were known at all, it would move like to that in the world outside  ...  yet it is not so. Toward these last years I could bide a month in Avalon and discover when I came away that an entire season had sped by outside. And often, toward the end of those years, I did so, for I had no patience to see what happened in the world outside; and when folk marked that I stayed ever young, then more than ever did they call me fairy or witch.

 

But that was long, long afterward.

 

For when I heard Raven in that terrifying cry which moved into the spaces between the worlds, reaching my mind even where I stayed in the timeless dream of the fairy world, I set forth  ...  but not to Avalon.