11

Gwenhwyfar had come to hate the day of Pentecost, when each year Arthur sent out word that all his old Companions should come to Camelot and renew their fellowship. With the growing of peace in the land, and the scattering of the old Companions, every year there were fewer to come, more who had ties to their own homes and families and estates. And Gwenhwyfar was glad, for these Pentecost reunions put her too much in mind of those days when Arthur had not been a Christian king but bore the hated Pendragon banner. At Pentecost court he belonged to his Companions and she had no part at all in his life.

She stood behind him now as he sealed the two dozen copies his scribes had made, for every one of his fellow kings and many of his old Companions. “Why do you send out a special call for them to come this year? Surely all those who have no other business will come without your calling.”

“But that is not enough this year,” said Arthur, turning to smile at her. He was going grey, she realized, though he was so fair-haired that none could see unless they were standing quite close. “I wish to assure them of such games and mock battles as will make all men aware that Arthur’s legion is still well able to fight.”

“Do you think any will doubt this?” Gwenhwyfar asked.

“Perhaps not. But there is this man Lucius in Less Britain—Bors has sent me word, and as all my subject kings came to my aid when the Saxons and Northmen would have overrun this island, so I am pledged to come to theirs. Emperor, he calls himself, of Rome!”

“And has he any right to be emperor?” Gwenhwyfar asked.

“Need you ask? Far less than I, certainly,” Arthur said. “There has been no Emperor of Rome for more than a hundred years, my wife. Constantine was emperor and wore the purple, and after him Magnus Maximus, who went abroad over the channel to try and make himself emperor; but he came never back to Britain, and God alone knows what befell him or where he died. And after him, Ambrosius Aurelianus rallied our people against the Saxons, and after him Uther, and I suppose either of them could have called himself emperor, or I, but I am content to be High King of Britain. When I was a boy I read something of the history of Rome, and it was nothing new that some upstart pretender should somehow get the loyalty of a legion or two, and proclaim himself to the purple. But here in Britain it takes more than an eagle standard to make an Imperator. Else would Uriens be emperor in this land! I have sent for him to come—it seems long since I have seen my sister.”

Gwenhwyfar did not answer that, not directly. She shuddered. “I do not want to see this land touched by war again, and torn apart by slaughter—“

“Nor do I,” said Arthur. “I think every king would rather have peace.”

“I am not so certain. There are some of your men who never cease speaking of the old days when they fought early and late against the Saxons. And now they begrudge Christian fellowship to those same Saxons, no matter what their bishop says—“

“I do not think it is the days of war they regret,” Arthur said, smiling at his queen, “I think it is the days when we were all young, and the closeness that was between us all. Do you never long for those years, my wife?”

Gwenhwyfar felt herself coloring. Indeed, she remembered well  ...  those days when Lancelet had been her champion, and they had loved   ...  this was no way for a Christian queen to think, and yet she could not stop herself. “Indeed I do, my husband. And, as you say, perhaps it is only longing for my own youth ... I am not young,” she said, sighing, and he took her hand and said, “You are as beautiful to me, my dearest, as the day when we were first bedded,” and she knew that it was true.

But she forced herself to be calm, not to blush. I am not young, she thought, it is not seemly that I should think of those days when I was young and regret them, because in those days I was a sinner and an adulteress. Now I have repented and made peace with God, and even Arthur has done penance for his sin with Morgaine. She forced herself to practicality, as befitted the Queen of all Britain. “I suppose we shall have more visitors than ever, then, at Pentecost—I must take counsel with Cai, and sir Lucan, as to where we shall bestow them all, and how we shall feast them. Will Bors come from Less Britain?”

“He will come if he can,” Arthur said, “although Lancelet sent me a message earlier in this week, asking leave to go and aid his brother Bors if he is besieged there. I sent him word to come here, for it might be that we will all go.... Now that Pellinore is gone, Lancelet is king there as Elaine’s husband, while their son is a little child. And Agravaine will come for Morgause of Lothian, and Uriens—or perhaps one of his sons. Uriens is marvelously well preserved for his years, but he is not immortal. His elder son is something of a fool, but Accolon is one of my old Companions, and Uriens has Morgaine to guide and counsel him.”

“That seems not right to me,” Gwenhwyfar said, “for the Holy Apostle said that women should submit themselves to their husbands, yet Morgause rules still in Lothian, and Morgaine would be more than helpmeet to her king in North Wales.”

“You must remember, my lady,” said Arthur, “that I come of the royal line of Avalon. I am king, not only as Uther Pendragon’s son, but because I am son of Igraine, who was daughter to the old Lady of the Lake. Gwenhwyfar, from time out of mind, the Lady ruled the land, and the king was no more than consort in time of war. Even in the days of Rome, the legions dealt with what they came to call client queens, who ruled the Tribes, and some of them were mighty warriors. Have you heard never of the Queen Boadicea?—she who, when her daughters were raped by the men of the legions, and the queen herself flogged as a rebel against Rome, raised an army and nearly drove all the Romans from these shores.”

Gwenhwyfar said bitterly, “I hope they killed her.”

“Oh, they did, and outraged her body  ...  yet it was a sign that the Romans could not hope to conquer without accepting that in this country, the Lady rules ...  . Every ruler of Britain, down to my father, Uther, has borne the title the Romans coined for a war leader under a queen: dux bellorum, duke of war. Uther, and I after him, bear the throne of Britain as dux bellorum to the Lady of Avalon, Gwenhwyfar. Forget not that.”

Gwenhwyfar said impatiently, “I thought you had done with that, that you had professed yourself a Christian king and done penance for your servitude to the fairy folk of that evil island ...  .”

Arthur said, with equal impatience, “My personal life and my religious faith are one thing, Gwenhwyfar, but the Tribes stand by me because I bear this!” His hand struck against Excalibur, belted at his side, inside its crimson scabbard. “I survived in war because of the magic of this blade—“

“You survived in war because God spared you to Christianize this land,” said Gwenhwyfar.

“Some day, perhaps. That time is not yet, lady. In Lothian, men are content to live under the rule of Morgause, and Morgaine is queen in Cornwall and in North Wales. If the time were ripe for all these lands to fall to the rule of Christ, then would they clamor for a king and not for a queen. I rule this land as it is, Gwenhwyfar, not as the bishops would have it to be.”

Gwenhwyfar would have argued further, but she saw the impatience in his eyes and held her peace. “Perhaps in time even the Saxons and the Tribes may come to the foot of the cross. A day will come, so Bishop Patricius has said, when Christ will be the only king among Christian men, and kings and queens his servants. God speed the day,” and she made the sign of the cross. Arthur laughed.

“Servant to Christ will I be willingly,” he said, “but not to his priests. No doubt, though, Bishop Patricius will be among the guests, and you may feast him as fine as you will.”

“And Uriens will come from North Wales,” Gwenhwyfar said, “and Morgaine too, no doubt. And from Pellinore’s land, Lancelet?”

“He will come,” said Arthur, “though I fear, if you wish to see your cousin Elaine again, you must journey thither to make her a visit: Lancelet sent word that she is in childbed again.”

Gwenhwyfar flinched. She knew that Lancelet spent little time at home with his wife, but Elaine had given Lancelet what she could not—sons and daughters.

“How old now is Elaine’s son? He is to be my heir, he should be fostered at this court,” Arthur said, and Gwenhwyfar replied, “I offered as much when he was born, but Elaine said that even if he was to be king one day, he must be brought up to a simple and modest manhood. You too were fostered as a plain man’s son, and it did you no harm.”

“Well, perhaps she is right,” said Arthur. “I would like, once, to see Morgaine’s son. He would be grown to manhood now—it has been seventeen years. I know he cannot succeed me, the priests would not have it, but he is all the son I have ever fathered, and I would like, once, to set eyes on the lad and tell him ... I know not what I would like to tell him. But I would like to see him once.”

Gwenhwyfar struggled against the furious retort that sprang to her lips; nothing could be gained by arguing this again. She said only, “He is well where he is.” She spoke the truth, and after she said it she knew it was the truth; she was glad Morgaine’s son was being reared on that isle of sorceries, where no Christian king could go. Schooled there, it was more certain than ever that no sudden swing of fortune would set him on the throne after Arthur—more and more, the priests and people of this land distrusted the sorcery of Avalon. Reared at court, it might be that some unscrupulous person would begin to think of Morgaine’s son as a successor more legitimate than Lancelet’s.

Arthur sighed. “Yet it is hard for a man to know he has a son and never set eyes on him,” he said. “Perhaps, one day.” But his shoulders went up and then down in resignation. “No doubt you are right, my dear. What of the Pentecost feast? I know you will make it, as always, a memorable day.”

AND SO SHE HAD DONE, Gwenhwyfar thought on that morning, looking out over the expanse of tents and pavilions. The great war-gaming field had been cleared and lined with ropes and banners, and the flags and banners of half a hundred petty kings and more than a hundred knights were moving briskly in the summer wind on the heights. It was like an army encamped here.

She sought out the banner of Pellinore, the white dragon he had adopted after the killing of the dragon in the lake. Lancelet would be there ... it had been more than a year since she had seen him, and then formally before all the court. It had been many years since she had been alone with him even for a moment; the day before he had married Elaine, he had come to seek her out alone and to say farewell.

He had been Morgaine’s victim too; he had not betrayed her, they had both been victim of the cruel trick Morgaine had played on them. When he told her about it, he had wept, and she cherished the memory of his tears as the highest compliment he had ever given her ... who had seen Lancelet weep?

“I swear to you, Gwenhwyfar, she trapped me—Morgaine sent me the false message, and a kerchief with your scent. And I think she drugged me, too, or put some spell upon me.” He had looked into her eyes, weeping, and she had wept too. “And Morgaine told Elaine some lie too, saying I was sick with love of her  ...  and we were there together. I thought it was you at first, it was as if I were under some enchantment. And then when I knew it was Elaine in my arms, still I could not stop myself. And then they were all there with torches  ...  what could I do, Gwen? I had taken the virgin daughter of my host, Pellinore would have been within his rights to kill me then and there in her bed  ... ” Lancelet cried out, and then, his voice breaking, he had ended, “Would to God that I had rushed on his sword instead ...  .”

She had asked him, You do not care at all for Elaine, then? She had known it was an inexcusable thing to say, but she could not live without that reassurance  ...  but while Lancelet might uncover his own misery to her, he would not speak of Elaine; he had only said, stiffly, that none of this was Elaine’s fault, and that he was bound in honor to try to make her as happy as he could.

Well, it was done, Morgaine had had her will. So she would see Lancelet and welcome him as her husband’s kinsman, no more. The other madness was past and gone, but she would see him and that was better than nothing. She tried to banish all this with thoughts of the feast. Two oxen were being roasted, would it be enough? And there was a huge wild boar taken in hunting a few days ago, and two pigs from the farms nearby, being baked in a pit yonder; already it smelled so good that a group of hungry children were hanging around sniffing the good smell. And there were hundreds of loaves of barley bread, many of which would be given away to the countryfolk who came to crowd around the edges of the field and watch the doings of the nobles, the kings and knights and Companions; and there were apples baked in cream, and nuts by the bushel, and confectionery for the ladies, honey cakes, and rabbits and small birds stewed in wine ... if this feast was not a success, certainly it would not be for the want of good and abundant food!

Some time after the noon hour they gathered, a long line of richly dressed nobles and ladies coming into the great hall and being ushered to their proper places. The Companions, as always, were shown to their places at the great round mead-hall table; but huge as it was, it would no longer place all the assembled company.

Gawaine, who was always closest to Arthur, presented his mother, Morgause. She was leaning on the arm of a young man Gwenhwyfar did not for a moment recognize; Morgause was slender as ever, her hair still thick and rich, braided with gems. She sank in a curtsey before Arthur, who motioned her to rise and embraced her.

“Welcome, Aunt, to my court.”

“I have heard that you ride only white horses,” said Morgause, “and so I have brought you one from the Saxon country. I have a fosterling there who sent it as a gift.”

Gwenhwyfar saw Arthur’s jaw tighten, and she too could guess who the fosterling must be. But he only said, “A kingly gift truly, Aunt.”

“I will not have the horse led into the hall, as I am told is the custom in the Saxon countries,” Morgause said gaily. “I do not think the lady of Camelot would like having her high hall, garnished for guests, turned into a byre! And, no doubt, your stewards have enough to do, Gwenhwyfar!” She embraced the Queen; the younger woman was enveloped in a warm wave, and close by she could see that Morgause’s face was painted, her bright eyes lined with kohl; but she was beautiful no less.

Gwenhwyfar said, “I thank you for your forbearance, lady Morgause —it would not be the first time a fine horse or dog had been led before my lord and king here in his hall, and I know ‘tis meant as courtesy, but I have no doubt your horse will be waiting outside quite content—I do not think the hospitality of Camelot means much even to the finest of horses. He would rather dine in his stall! Though Lancelet used to tell us a tale of some Roman who had his horse fed on wine in a golden trough and gave him honors and laurel wreaths—“

The handsome young man at Morgause’s side laughed and said, “I remember, Lancelet told that story at my sister’s wedding. It was the Emperor Gaius the God, who made his favorite horse one of his senators, and when he died, the next emperor said something like, at least the horse had given no evil counsel and done no murder. But do not the same, my lord Arthur—we have no chairs fit to hold such a Companion, should you see fit to name your stallion as one of them!”

Arthur laughed heartily and took the young man by the hand, saying, “I will not, Lamorak,” and with a start, Gwenhwyfar realized who the young man at Morgause’s side must be: he was Pellinore’s son. Yes, she had heard some rumor of this—that Morgause had taken the young man as her favorite, even before her whole court—how could the woman share her bed with a man young enough to be her son? Why, Lamorak was only five-and-twenty, even now! She looked with fascinated horror and secret envy at Morgause. She looks so young, she is still so beautiful despite all her paint, and she does what she will and cares not if all men criticize her! Her voice was chill as she said, “Will you come and sit beside me, kinswoman, and leave the men to their talk?”

Morgause pressed Gwenhwyfar’s hand. “Thank you, cousin. I come so seldom to court, I am happy to sit for once among ladies and gossip about who is married and who has taken a paramour and all the new fashions in gowns and ribbons! I am kept so busy in Lothian with the ruling of the land that I have small time for women’s matters, and it is a luxury and a pleasure for me.” She patted Lamorak’s hand and, when she thought no one noticed, brushed his temple with a surreptitious kiss. “I leave you to the Companions, my dear.”

Her ample fragrance, the warm scent of her ribbons and the folds of her gown, almost dizzied Gwenhwyfar as the Queen of Lothian sat beside her on the bench. Gwenhwyfar said, “If you are kept so busy with affairs of state, cousin, why do you not find a wife for Agravaine, and let him rule in his father’s place, and give over the ruling of Lothian? Surely the folk there cannot be happy without a king—“

Morgause’s laugh was warm and merry. “Why, then I should have to live unwedded, since in that country the queen’s husband is king, and my dear, that would not suit me at all! And Lamorak is overyoung to rule as king, though he has other duties, and I find him most satisfactory—“

Gwenhwyfar listened with fascinated distaste; how could a woman Morgause’s age make a fool of herself with so young a man? Yet his eyes followed Morgause as if she were the most beautiful and fascinating woman in the world. He hardly looked at Isotta of Cornwall, who was bending before the throne now at the side of her elderly husband, Duke Marcus of Cornwall. Isotta was so beautiful that a little murmur went all down the hall; tall and slender, with hair the color of a new-struck copper coin. But no doubt Marcus had thought more of the Irish gold she wore at her throat and at the clasp of her cloak, and the Irish pearls braided into her hair, than the treasure of her beauty. Isotta was, Gwenhwyfar thought, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Next to Isotta Morgause looked raddled and overblown, but still Lamorak’s eyes followed her.

“Aye, Isotta is very beautiful,” Morgause said, “but it is told in the court of Duke Marcus that she has more of an eye for his heir, young Drustan, than for old Marcus himself, and who can blame her? But she is modest and discreet, and if she has sense enough to give the old man a child —though, heaven knows, she might fare better at such craft with the young Drustan, at that.” Morgause chuckled. “She looks not like a woman over-happy in her marriage bed. Still, I do not suppose Marcus wants much more of her than a son for Cornwall. Marcus wants only for that, I think, before he declares that Cornwall belongs to him who keeps it, not to Morgaine, who has it from Gorlois—where is my kinswoman Morgaine? I am eager to embrace her!”

“She is there with Uriens,” said Gwenhwyfar, looking to where the King of North Wales waited to approach the throne.

“Arthur would have done better to marry Morgaine into Cornwall,” Morgause said. “But I think he felt Marcus was too old for her. Though he might well have married her to yonder young Drustan—his mother was kindred to Ban of Less Britain, and he is a distant cousin to Lancelet, and handsome almost as Lancelet himself, is he not, Gwenhwyfar?” She smiled merrily and added, “Ah, but I had forgotten, you are so pious a lady, you look never on the beauty of any man save your own wedded husband. But then, it is easy for you to be virtuous, married to one so young and handsome and gallant as Arthur!”

Gwenhwyfar felt that Morgause’s chatter would drive her mad. Did the woman think of nothing else? Morgause said, “I suppose you must speak a word or two of courtesy to Isotta—she is newcome to Britain. I have heard she speaks little of our tongue, only that of her Irish homeland. But I have heard, too, that in her own country she was a notable mistress of herbs and magic, so that when Drustan fought with the Irish knight the Marhaus, she healed him when none thought he could live, and so he is her faithful knight and champion—or at least he said that was his reason,” Morgause chattered on, “though she is so beautiful, I would not wonder  ...  perhaps I should make her known to Morgaine, she too is a great mistress of herb lore and spells of healing. They would have much to speak of, and I think Morgaine knows a little of the Irish tongue. And Morgaine, too, is married to a man old enough to be her father—I think that was ill done of Arthur!”

Gwenhwyfar said stiffly, “Morgaine married Uriens with her own consent. You do not think Arthur would marry away his dear sister without asking her!”

Morgause almost snorted, “Morgaine is full enough of life that I do not think she would be content in an old man’s bed,” she said, “and if I had a stepson as handsome as yonder Accolon, I know well I would not!”

“Come, ask the lady of Cornwall to sit with us,” Gwenhwyfar said, to put an end to Morgause’s gossip. “And Morgaine, too, if you will.” Morgaine was safely married to Uriens; what was it to Gwenhwyfar if she made a fool of herself or put her immortal soul at hazard by playing the harlot with this man or that?

Uriens, with Morgaine and his two younger sons, had come to greet Arthur, who took the old king by both hands, calling him “Brother-in-law,” and kissed Morgaine on either cheek.

“But you have come to offer me a gift, Uriens? I need no gifts from kinsmen, your affection is enough,” he said.

“Not only to offer you a gift but to ask a boon of you,” said Uriens. “I beg you to make my son Uwaine a knight of your Round Table and receive him as one of your Companions.”

Arthur smiled at the slender, dark young man who knelt before him. “How old are you, young Uwaine?”

“Fifteen, my lord and king.”

“Well, then, rise, sir Uwaine,” said Arthur graciously. “You may watch this night by your arms, and tomorrow one of my Companions shall make you knight.”

“By your leave,” said Gawaine, “may I be the one to confer this honor on my cousin Uwaine, lord Arthur?”

“Who better than you, my cousin and friend?” Arthur said. “If that is agreeable to you, Uwaine, let it be so. I receive you willingly as my Companion for your own sake, and because you are stepson to my dear sister. Make him a place at table there, you men, and you, Uwaine, may fight in my company tomorrow in the mock battles.”

Uwaine stammered, “I thank you, my k-king.”

Arthur smiled at Morgaine. “I thank you for this gift, my sister.”

“It is a gift to me as well, Arthur,” Morgaine said. “Uwaine has been like a true son to me.”

Gwenhwyfar thought, cruelly, that Morgaine looked her age; her face was touched with subtle lines, and there were streaks of white in the raven hair, though her dark eyes were as fine as ever. And she had spoken of Uwaine as her son, and she looked at him with pride and affection. Yet her own son must be older yet ...  .

And so Morgaine, damn her, has two sons, and I not so much as a fosterling!

Morgaine, seated at Uriens’ side down the table, was conscious of Gwenhwyfar’s eyes on her. How she hates me! Even now when I can do her no harm! Yet she did not hate Gwenhwyfar; she had even ceased to resent the marriage to Uriens, knowing that in some obscure way it had brought her back to what she had once been—priestess of Avalon. Still, but for Gwenhwyfar, I would have been married to Accolon at this moment, and as it is, we are at the mercy of some servant who might spy on us, or blab to Uriens for a reward  ...  here in Camelot they must be very discreet. Gwenhwyfar would stop at nothing to make trouble.

She should not have come. Yet Uwaine had wished for her to see him knighted, and she was the only mother Uwaine had ever known.

Uriens could not, after all, live forever—though sometimes, in the dragging years, she felt that he had decided to rival old King Methuselah —and she doubted that even the stupid pig farmers of North Wales would accept Avalloch as king. If she could only bear Accolon a child, then no one would question that Accolon, at her side, would reign rightly.

She would have risked it—Viviane, after all, had been nearly as old as she was now when Lancelet was born, and she had lived to see him grown. But the Goddess had not sent her even the hope of conception, and to be honest, she did not want it. Uwaine was son enough for her, and Accolon had not reproached her for childlessness—no doubt he felt that no one would seriously believe it was Uriens’ son, though Morgaine doubted not she could persuade her old husband to acknowledge the child his own; he doted on her in everything, and she shared his bed often enough—too often, for her taste.

She said to Uriens now, “Let me fill your plate. That roast pig is too rich for you, it will make you ill. Some of those wheaten cakes, perhaps, sopped in the gravy, and here is a fine fat saddle of rabbit.” She beckoned to a serving-man carrying a tray of early fruits and chose some gooseberries and cherries for her husband. “Here, I know you are fond of these.”

“You are good to me, Morgaine,” he said, and she patted his arm. It was worth it—all the time she spent in cosseting him, caring for his health, embroidering him fine cloaks and shirts, and even now and then, discreetly, finding a young woman for his bed and giving him a dose of one of her herb medicines which would allow him something like normal virility; Uriens was convinced that she adored him, and never questioned her devotion or denied her anything she asked.

The feasting was breaking up now—people moving about the hall, nibbling at cakes and sweets, calling for wine and ale, stopping to speak to kinsmen and friends whom they saw only once or twice a year. Uriens was still munching his gooseberries; Morgaine asked leave to go and speak to her kinswomen.

“As you like, my dearest,” he mumbled. “You should have cut my hair, my wife, all the Companions are wearing their hair shorn—“

She patted his scanty locks and said, “Oh, no, my dear, I think it is better suited to your years. You do not want to look like a schoolboy, or a monk.” And, she thought, there is so little of your hair that if you cut it short, your bald spot would shine through like a beacon! “Look, the noble Lancelet still wears his hair long and flowing, and Gawaine, and Gareth— no one could call them old men!”

“You are right, as always,” Uriens said smugly. “I suppose it is fitted to a mature man. It is all very well for a boy like Uwaine to clip his hair short.” And Uwaine, indeed, had shorn his hair close to the nape of his neck in the new fashion. “I mark there is gray in Lancelet’s hair as well—we are none of us young anymore, my dear.”

You were a grandsire when Lancelet was born, Morgaine thought crossly, but she only murmured that none of them was as young as they had been ten years ago—a truth with which no one could possibly argue—and moved away.

Lancelet was still, she thought, the finest-looking man she had ever seen; next to him even Accolon seemed too perfect, his features too precise. There was grey in his hair, yes, and in the smoothly trimmed beard; but his eyes twinkled with the old smile. “Good day to you, cousin.”

She was surprised at his cordial tone. Yet, she thought, it is true what Uriens said, we are none of us so young anymore, and there are not many of us who remember that time when we were all young together. He embraced her, and she felt his curly beard silky against her cheek.

She asked him, “Is Elaine not here?”

“No, she bore me another daughter but three days since. She had hoped the child would be already born, and she well enough to ride to Pentecost, but it was a fine big girl and she took her own time in coming. We had hoped to have her three weeks ago!”

“How many children have you now, Lance?”

“Three. Galahad is a big lad of seven, and Nimue is five years old. I do not see them very often, but their nurses say they are clever and quick for their age, and Elaine would name the new little one Gwenhwyfar, for the Queen.”

“I think I shall ride north and visit her,” Morgaine said.

“She will be glad to see you, I am sure. It is lonely there,” said Lancelet. Morgaine did not think Elaine would be glad to see her at all, but that was between her and Elaine. Lancelet glanced toward the dais where Gwenhwyfar had taken Isotta of Cornwall to sit at her side while Arthur spoke with Duke Marcus and his nephew. “Know you yonder Drustan? He is a fine harper, though not like to Kevin, of course.”

Morgaine shook her head. “Is Kevin to play at this feast?”

“I have not seen him,” Lancelet said. “The Queen likes him not—the court is grown too Christian for that, though Arthur values him as a councillor and for his music as well.”

She asked him bluntly, “Are you grown a Christian too?”

“I could wish I were,” he said, sighing from the bottom of his heart. “That faith seems too simple to me—the idea that we have only to believe that Christ died for our sins once and for all. But I know too much of the truth ... of the way life works, with life after life in which we ourselves, and only we, can work out the causes we have set in motion and make amends for the harm we have done. It stands not in the realm of reason that one man, however holy and blessed, could atone for all the sins of all men, done in all lifetimes. What else could explain why some men have all things, and others so little? No, that is a cruel trick of the priests, I think, to coax men into thinking that they have the ear of God and can forgive sins in his name—ah, I wish it were true indeed. And some of their priests are fine and sincere men.”

“I never met with one who was half so learned or so good as Taliesin,” said Morgaine.

“Taliesin was a great soul,” Lancelet said. “Perhaps one lifetime of service to the Gods cannot create so much wisdom, and he is one of the great ones who has served them for hundreds of years. Next to him, Kevin seems no more fit to be the Lord Merlin than my little son to sit on Arthur’s throne and lead his troops into battle. And Taliesin was big enough to make no quarrel with the priests, knowing they served their God as best they could, and perhaps after many lives they would learn that their God was bigger than they thought him. And I know he respected their strength to live chastely.”

“That seems to me blasphemy and a denial of life,” said Morgaine, “and I know Viviane would have thought it so.” Why, she wondered, do I stand here arguing religion with Lancelet, of all men?

“Viviane, like Taliesin, came from another world and another time,” said Lancelet. “They were giants in those days, and now we must make do with such as we have. You are so like her, Morgaine. He smiled, a rueful half-smile, and it wrenched her heart; she remembered that he had said something like this to her  ...  nay, she had dreamed it too, but she could not remember all ...  but he went on, “I see you here with your husband and your fine stepson—a credit he will be to the Companions. I always wished you happiness, Morgaine, and for so many years you seemed so unhappy, but now you are queen in your own country, and you have a good son…”

Surely, she thought, what more could any woman want  ...  ?

“But now I must go and pay my respects to the Queen—“

“Yes,” she said, and could not keep the bitterness from her voice. “You would be eager to do that.”

“Oh, Morgaine,” he said, dismayed, “we have known each other so long, we are all kin, cannot we let the past die? Do you despise me so much, do you still hate her as much as that?”

Morgaine shook her head. “I don’t hate either of you,” she said. “Why should I? But I thought, now you were wedded—and Gwenhwyfar too deserves to be left in peace.”

“You have never understood her,” said Lancelet hotly. “I well believe you have disliked her since you were both young girls! It is not well done of you, Morgaine! She has repented her sin, and I—well, I am wedded, as you say, to another. But I will not shun her as if she were a leper. If she wants my friendship as her husband’s kinsman, it is hers!”

Morgaine knew he spoke sincerely; well, it was nothing to her. She had now from Accolon what she had so long desired from him  ...  and strangely even that was painful, like the space left by an aching tooth after it was drawn; she had loved him so many years that now when she could look on him without desire, she felt hollow inside. She said softly, “I am sorry, Lance, I had no wish to make you angry. As you say, it is all past.”

I dare say he really believes that he and Gwenhwyfar can be no more than friends  ...  maybe for him it is so, and Gwenhwyfar has grown so pious, I doubt it not at all ...  .

“So there you are, Lancelet, as always, chattering with the court’s most beautiful ladies,” said a merry voice, and Lancelet turned and caught the newcomer in a bear hug.

“Gareth! How goes it with you in the North country? And so you too are a married man and a householder ... is it two children your lady has given you now, or three? Handsome, you are better-looking than ever—even Cai could not mock you now!”

“I would like it well to have him back in my kitchens,” laughed Cai, coming up to clap Gareth on the shoulder. “Four sons, is it not? But the lady Lionors has twins, like one of the wildcats of your country, does she not? Morgaine, I think you grow ever younger with the years,” he added, bending over her hand; he had always liked her.

“But when I see Gareth grown, and such a man, I feel older than the hills themselves.” Morgaine too laughed. “A woman knows she is getting old when she looks at every tall young man and says to herself, I knew him before he was breeched ...  .”

“And, alas, ‘tis true of me, cousin.” Gareth bent to hug Morgaine. “I remember, you used to carve me wooden knights when I was no more than a babe—“

“You remember still those wooden knights?” Morgaine was pleased.

“I do—one of them Lionors keeps with my treasures still,” Gareth said. “It is bravely painted in blue and red, and my oldest son would gladly have it, but I treasure it too greatly. Did you know I called it Lancelet when I was a babe, cousin?”

The older man laughed too, and Morgaine thought she had never seen Lancelet so carefree and merry as he was now among his friends. “Your son —he is almost as old as my Galahad, I think. Galahad is a fine boy, though he looks not much like my side of the family. I saw him but a few days ago, for the first time since he was out of breechclouts. And the girls are pretty, or they seem so to me.”

Gareth turned back to Morgaine and said, “How does my foster-brother Gwydion, lady Morgaine?”

She said shortly, “I have heard he is in Avalon. I have not seen him,” and turned away, leaving Lancelet to his friends. But Gawaine joined them, bending to give Morgaine an almost filial embrace.

Gawaine was a huge man now, monstrously heavy, with shoulders that looked—and probably were—strong enough to throw down a bull; his face was hacked and bitten with many scars. He said, “Your son Uwaine seems a fine lad. I think he will make a good knight, and we may need such— have you seen your brother Lionel, Lance?”

“No—is Lionel here?” asked Lancelet, glancing around, and his eyes fell on a tall, sturdy man, wearing a cloak of a strange fashion. “Lionel! Brother, how goes it with you in your foggy kingdom beyond the seas?”

Lionel came and greeted them, speaking with so thick an accent that Morgaine found it hard to follow his speech. “All the worse for you not being there, Lancelet—we may have some trouble there, you have heard? You have heard Bors’s news?”

Lancelot shook his head. “I heard nothing later than that he was to marry King Hoell’s daughter,” he said, “I forget her name—“

“Isotta—the same name as the Queen of Cornwall,” said Lionel. “But there has been no marriage as yet. Hoell, you must know, is one who can say never yea or nay to anything, but must ponder forever the advantage of alliance with Less Britain or Cornwall—“

“Marcus cannot give Cornwall to any,” said Gawaine dryly. “Cornwall is yours, is it not, lady Morgaine? I seem to remember Uther gave it to the lady Igraine when he came to the throne, so that you have it of both Igraine and Gorlois, though Gorlois’s lands were forfeit to Uther, if I mind the tale aright —it all befell before I was born, though you were a child then.”

“Duke Marcus keeps the land for me,” said Morgaine. “I knew never that he claimed it, though I know once there was talk I should marry Duke Marcus, or Drustan his nephew—“

“It would have been well if you had,” said Lionel, “for Marcus is a greedy man—he got much treasure with his Irish lady, and I doubt it not, he will try to swallow up all of Cornwall and Tintagel too, if he thinks he can get away with it, as a fox gets away with a barnyard fowl.”

Lancelet said, “I liked better the days when we were all but Arthur’s Companions. Now I am reigning in Pellinore’s country, and Morgaine queen in North Wales, and you, Gawaine, should be king in Lothian, if you had your rights—“

Gawaine grinned at him. “I have neither talent nor taste for kingship, cousin, I am a warrior, and to dwell always in one place and live at court would weary me to death! I am happy enough that Agravaine shall rule at my mother’s side. I think the Tribes have the right of it—women to stay home and rule, and men to wander about and make war. I will not be parted from Arthur, but I admit I grow weary of life in court. Still, a mock battle is better than none.”

“I am sure you will win honor and credit,” said Morgaine, smiling at her cousin. “How does your mother, Gawaine? I have not yet spoken with her.” She added, with a touch of malice, “I have heard she has other help than Agravaine in ruling your kingdom.”

Gawaine chuckled broadly. “Aye, ‘tis all the fashion now—it is your doing, Lancelet. After you married Pellinore’s daughter, I suppose Lamorak thought no knight could be great and courtly and win great renown unless he had first been the para—“ He stopped himself at Lancelet’s grim face, and amended hastily, “the chosen champion of a great and beautiful queen. I think it is not just a pose—I think Lamorak truly loves my mother, and I begrudge it not. She was wedded to old King Lot when she was not yet fifteen, and even when I was a little fellow I used to wonder how she could live at peace with him and be always kind and good.”

“Kind and good is Morgause indeed,” said Morgaine, “nor had she any very easy life with Lot. He may have sought her counsel in all things, but the court was so full of his bastards he had no need to hire men-at-arms, and any woman who came into the court was his lawful prey, even I who was his wife’s niece. Such behavior is thought manly in a king, and if any criticize it in Morgause, I will have a word to say to them myself!”

Gawaine said, “I know well you are my mother’s friend, Morgaine. I know too Gwenhwyfar does not like her. Gwenhwyfar—“ He glanced at Lancelet, shrugged, and held his peace. Gareth said, “Gwenhwyfar is so pious, and no woman has ever had anything to complain about at Arthur’s court—perhaps Gwenhwyfar finds it hard to understand that a woman may have cause for wanting more of life than her marriage gives her. As for me, I am fortunate that Lionors chose me of her own free will, and she is always so busy breeding, or lying-in, or suckling our youngest, that she has no leisure to look at any other man even if she would. Which,” he added, smiling, “I hope she has no desire to do, for if she wished for it I think I could deny her nothing.”

Lancelet’s face lost its grimness. He said, “I cannot imagine that a dame married to you, Gareth, would wish to look elsewhere.”

“But you must look elsewhere, cousin,” said Gawaine, “for there is the Queen looking for you, and you should go and pay your respects as her champion.”

And indeed at that moment one of Gwenhwyfar’s little maidens came and said in her childish voice, “You are sir Lancelet, are you not? The Queen has asked that you will come and speak with her,” and Lancelet bowed to Morgaine, said, “We will speak later, Gawaine, Gareth,” and went away. Gareth watched him, frowning, and muttered, “Ever he runs when she stretches out her hand.”

“Did you expect anything else, brother?” Gawaine said in his easygoing way. “He has been her champion since she was wedded to Arthur, and if it were otherwise—well, so Morgaine said: such things are considered manly in a king, why should we criticize them in a queen? Nay, ‘tis all the fashion now—or have you not heard the tales about yonder Irish queen, married to old Duke Marcus, and how Drustan makes songs for her and follows her about ... he is a harper, they say, as fine as Kevin! Have you yet heard him play, Morgaine?”

She shook her head. She said, “You should not call Isotta Queen of Cornwall—there is no queen in Cornwall but I. Marcus reigns there only as my castellan, and if he does not know it, it is time he found it out.”

“I do not think Isotta cares what Marcus may call himself,” said Gawaine, turning to look at the long table where the ladies sat. Morgause had joined Gwenhwyfar and the Irish queen, and Lancelet had come to speak with them; Gwenhwyfar was smiling at Lancelet, and Morgause making some jest which made them laugh, but Isotta of Cornwall was staring at nothing, her exquisite face pale and drawn. “I never saw any lady who looked so unhappy as yonder Irish queen.”

Morgaine said, “If I were married to old Duke Marcus, I doubt I should be happy,” and Gawaine gave her a rough hug.

“Arthur did not well when he married you to that grandsire old Uriens, either, Morgaine—are you unhappy too?”

Morgaine felt her throat tighten, as if Gawaine’s kindness would make her weep. “Perhaps there is not much happiness for women in marriage after all ...  .”

“I would not say that,” Gareth said. “Lionors seems happy enough.”

“Ah, but Lionors is married to you,” Morgaine said, laughing. “And I could not have that good fortune, I am only your old cousin.”

“Still,” said Gawaine, “I criticize not my mother. She was good to Lot all his life long, and while he lived she never flaunted her lovers in his face. I begrudge her nothing, and Lamorak is a good man and a good knight. As for Gwenhwyfar—“ He grimaced. “It’s God’s pity that Lancelet did not take her away from this kingdom while there was still time for Arthur to find him another wife—still, I suppose young Galahad will be a good king in his day. Lancelet is of the old royal line of Avalon, and royal, too, in his blood from Ban of Less Britain.”

“Still,” said Gareth, “I think your son closer to the throne than his, Morgaine,” and she remembered that he had been old enough to remember Gwydion’s birth. “And the Tribes would give allegiance to Arthur’s sister —in the old days, the sister’s son was the natural heir, in the days when rule passed through the blood of the woman.” He frowned and thought for a moment, then asked, “Morgaine, is he Lancelet’s son?”

She supposed the question was natural enough—they had been friends from childhood. But she shook her head, trying to make a jest instead of showing the irritation she felt. “No, Gareth, if it had been so I would have told you. It would have pleased you so, anything to do with Lancelet. Forgive me, cousins, I should go and speak with your mother—she was always good to me.” She turned away, making her way slowly toward the dais where the ladies sat; the room was growing more and more crowded as everyone greeted old friends and little knots of people collected.

She had always disliked crowded places, and she had lately spent so much time on the green Welsh hills that she was no longer used to the smell of bodies crowded together and the smoke from the hearth fire. Moving to one side, she collided with a man who staggered under her light weight and caught at the wall to steady himself, and she found herself face to face with the Merlin.

She had not spoken with Kevin since the day of Viviane’s death. She looked him coldly in the face and turned away.

“Morgaine—“

She ignored him. Kevin said, in a voice as cold as her glance, “Will a daughter of Avalon turn her face away when the Merlin speaks?”

Morgaine drew a long breath and said, “If you bid me hear you in the name of Avalon, I am here to listen. But that suits you not, you who gave Viviane’s body to Christian rule. That I call a traitor’s deed.”

“And who are you to speak of traitor’s deeds, lady, who sits as queen in Wales when Viviane’s high seat is empty in Avalon?”

She flared, “I sought once to speak in Avalon’s name and you bade me hold my peace,” and bowed her head, not waiting for his reply. No, he is right. How dare I speak of treachery when I fled from Avalon, too young and too foolish to know what Viviane planned? Only now do I begin to know that she gave me a hold on the King’s conscience: And I cast it aside unused and let Gwenhwyfar lead him into the hands of the priests. “Speak, Merlin. Avalon’s daughter listens.”

For a moment he said nothing, but only looked at her, and she remembered, sorrowfully, the years when he had been her only friend and ally at this court. At last he said, “Your beauty, like Viviane’s, ripens with the years, Morgaine. Next to you every woman at this court, including that Irishwoman they call so beautiful, is a painted doll.”

She smiled faintly and said, “You did not stop me in my tracks with the thunders of Avalon to make me pretty compliments, Kevin.”

“Did I not? I spoke ill, Morgaine—you are needed in Avalon. She who sits there now is—“ He broke off, troubled. “Are you so much in love with your elderly husband that you cannot tear yourself away?”

“No,” she said, “but I do the work of the Goddess there too.”

“This much I know,” he said, “and so I have told Niniane. And if Accolon can succeed his father, the worship of the Goddess will grow there  ...  but Accolon is not his father’s heir, and the older son is a priest-ridden fool.”

“Accolon is not king, but Druid,” Morgaine said, “and Avalloch’s death would avail nothing—they follow Roman ways in Wales now, and Avalloch has a son.” Conn, she thought, who sat in my lap and called me Granny.

And Kevin said, as if he had heard her unspoken words: “The lives of children are uncertain, Morgaine. Many come not to manhood.”

“I will do no murder,” she said, “even for Avalon, and you may tell them so for me.”

“Tell them yourself,” said Kevin. “Niniane said to me that you would be coming there after Pentecost.” And now Morgaine felt the empty, cold sickness strike at her stomach and was glad she had eaten but little of the rich food of the feast.

Do they know all, then? Do they watch, judging me, as I betray my old and trusting husband with Accolon? She thought of Elaine, trembling and shamed in the light of the torches that had caught her naked in Lancelet’s arms. Do they know even what I plan before I am certain of it myself? But she had done only what the Goddess gave her to do.

“What is it that you came to tell me, Merlin?”

“Only that your place in Avalon is empty still, and Niniane knows it as well as 1.1 love you well, Morgaine, and I am no traitor—it pains me that you think me so, when you have given me so much.” He held out his twisted hands. “Peace, then, Morgaine, between us?”

She said, “In the Lady’s name, peace, then,” and kissed his scarred mouth.

For him too the Goddess wears my face  ...  and pain struck through her. The Goddess is the giver of life and manhood... and of death. As her lips touched his, the Merlin recoiled, and on his face was naked fear.

“Do you recoil from me, Kevin? I swear it on my life, I will do no murder. You have nothing to fear—“ she said, but he put out his twisted fingers to stop the words.

“Make no oath, Morgaine, lest you pay the penalty of the forsworn ... none of us knows what the Goddess may demand of us. I too have made the Great Marriage, and my life was forfeit on that day. I live only at the will of the Goddess, and my life is not so sweet that I would begrudge to lay it down,” he said. Years later Morgaine would remember these words and feel them sweeten the bitterest task of her life. He bent to her, in the salute given only to the Lady of Avalon or to the High Druid, and then, swiftly, turned away. Morgaine stood trembling, watching him go. Why had he done that? And why did he fear her?

She moved on through the crowds; when she reached the dais, Gwenhwyfar gave her a chilly smile, but Morgause rose and took her into an ample, warm embrace.

“Dearest child, you look tired—I know you have little love for crowds!” She held a silver cup to Morgaine’s lips, and Morgaine sipped the wine, then shook her head. She said, “You seem to grow ever younger, Aunt!”

Morgause laughed gaily and said, “Young company does that for me, my dear—saw you Lamorak? While he thinks me beautiful, I think myself so, and so I am ... it is the only sorcery I need!” She traced with her smooth finger a little line beneath Morgaine’s eye, and said, “I recommend it to you, my dear, or you will grow old and cross ... are there no handsome young men at Uriens’ court with an eye for their queen?”

Over her shoulder Morgaine saw Gwenhwyfar’s frown of distaste, even though she certainly believed Morgause was joking. At least the tale of my behavior with Accolon is not common gossip here. Then she thought angrily, In the Lady’s name, I am not ashamed of what I do, I am not Gwenhwyfar!

Lancelet was talking with Isotta of Cornwall. Yes, he would always have an eye for the most beautiful woman in the room, and Morgaine could tell Gwenhwyfar liked it not; Gwenhwyfar said now, with nervous haste, “Lady Isotta, know you my husband’s sister, Morgaine?”

The Irish beauty raised her eyes listlessly to Morgaine, and smiled. She was very pale, her chiselled features white as new cream, her eyes that blue that is almost green. Morgaine saw that although she was tall, her bones were so small that she looked like a child hung with jewels and pearls and golden chains which seemed too heavy for her. Morgaine had sudden pity for the girl and withheld the first words that came into her mind, which were, So they call you queen in Cornwall now? I must have words with Duke Marcus! She said only, “My kinsman told me you are skilled in herbs and medicines, lady. Some day, if we have leisure before I return to Wales, I would like to speak of them with you.”

“It would be a pleasure,” said Isotta courteously. Lancelet looked up and said, “I have told her also that you are a musician, Morgaine. Are we to hear you play this day?”

“With Kevin here? My music is nothing to his,” said Morgaine, but Gwenhwyfar shuddered, and interrupted.

“I wish Arthur would listen to me and send that man from his court. I like it not, to have wizards and sorcerers here, and such an evil face must portend evil within! I know not how you can bear to touch him, Morgaine

—I should think any fastidious woman would be ill if he touched her, yet you embraced and kissed him as if he were a kinsman—“

“Clearly,” said Morgaine, “I am altogether lacking in proper feelings—and I rejoice at it.”

Isotta of Cornwall said in her soft, sweet voice, “If what is without is like to that which is within, then the music Kevin makes must be a sign to us, lady Gwenhwyfar, that the soul within him is indeed that of the highest angels. For no evil man could play as he plays.”

Arthur had come to join them, and had heard the last few words. He said, “Yet I will not affront my queen with the presence of one distasteful to her—nor will I have the insolence to command the music of such an artist as Kevin for one who cannot receive him with grace.” He sounded displeased. “Morgaine, will you play for us, then?”

“My harp is in Wales,” she said. “Perhaps, if someone can lend me a harp, at another time. The hall is so crowded and noisy, the music would be lost ...  . Lancelet is as much a musician as I.”

Lancelot, standing behind him, shook his head. “Oh, no, cousin. I know one string from another, because I was reared in Avalon and my mother set a harp in my hand for a plaything as soon as I could hold one. But I have not the gift of music as Morgaine has, nor the nephew of Marcus—have you heard Drustan play, Morgaine?”

She shook her head, and Isotta said, “I will ask him to come and play for us.”

She sent a page for him, and Drustan came, a slight young man, dark-eyed and dark-haired; he was indeed, Morgaine thought, not unlike Lancelet. Isotta asked him to play, and he called for his harp and sat on the steps of the dais, playing some Breton tunes. They were plaintive and sad, in a very old scale, and they made Morgaine think of the ancient land of Lyonnesse, far away and sunk past the coastline of Tintagel. He had, indeed, a gift beyond Lancelet’s; even, she thought, beyond her own. Though he was not Kevin, nor near to it, he was the finest player, otherwise, that she had heard. His voice, too, was sweet and musical.

Under cover of the music Arthur said softly to Morgaine, “How is it with you, sister? It is long since you came to Camelot—we have missed you.”

“Oh, indeed?” said Morgaine. “I thought that was why you married me away into North Wales—that my lady”—an ironic bow to Gwenhwyfar—“might not be affronted with the sight of anything distasteful to her, neither Kevin nor me.”

“Why, how can you say that?” demanded Arthur. “I love you well, you know that, and Uriens is a good man, and he seems to dote on you —certainly he hangs on your every word! I sought to find you a kind husband, Morgaine, one who had sons and would not reproach you should you not give him children. And it was my pleasure this day to make your fine young stepson one of my Companions. What could you ask more than this, my sister?”

“What, indeed?” said Morgaine. “What more could a woman desire than a good husband old enough to be her grandsire, and a kingdom to rule at the far end of the world—I should bow down and thank you on my knees, my brother!”

Arthur sought to take her hand. “Indeed I did what I thought would please you, sister. Uriens is too old for you, but he will not live forever. Truly, I thought it would make you happy.”

No doubt, thought Morgaine, he was telling the exact truth as he saw it. How could he be so good and wise a king, and have so little imagination? Or was this the secret of his kingship, that he held to simple truths and sought for no more? Was this why the Christian faith had lured him, that it was so simple, with a few simple laws?

“I like that everybody be happy,” Arthur said, and she knew that this was really the key to his nature; he did indeed seek to see everyone happy, down to the least of his subjects. He had allowed what went on between Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet because he knew it would make his queen unhappy if he parted them, nor would he hurt Gwenhwyfar by taking another wife or a mistress to give him the son she could not.

He is not ruthless enough to be High King, she thought, while she tried to listen to Drustan’s sorrowful songs. Ardiur turned to speaking of the lead and tin mines of Cornwall—she should ride to see to them, Duke Marcus should know that he was not ruler over all that country, and, no doubt, she and Isotta would be friends, they both cared for music—see how intently she listened to Drustan.

It is not love of music which makes it impossible to take her eyes from him, Morgaine thought, but she did not say so. She considered the four queens who sat at this table, and sighed; Isotta could not take her eyes from Drustan, and who could blame her? Duke Marcus was old and stern, with quick, darting, ill-natured eyes that reminded her of Lot of Orkney. Morgause had beckoned to her young Lamorak and was whispering to him; well, who could blame her? She had been wedded to Lot—and he was no prize—when she was but fourteen, and all the while Lot lived she had been mindful of his pride and never flaunted her young lovers in his face. And I am no better than any of them, cosseting Uriens with one hand and slipping away to Accolon’s bed with the other, and justifying myself by calling Accolon my priest ...  .

She wondered if any woman ever did otherwise. Gwenhwyfar was High Queen, and she had first taken a lover  ...  and it seemed to Morgaine that her heart hardened like stone. She and Morgause and Isotta were married to old men, and such was their life. But Gwenhwyfar had been married to a man who was handsome, and no more than her own age, and High King as well—what had she to be discontented with?

Drustan put the harp aside, bowing, and took up a horn of wine to cool his throat. “I can sing no more,” he said, “but if the lady Morgaine would like to take my harp, she is welcome. I have heard of the lady’s skill as a musician.”

“Yes, sing for us, child,” said Morgause, and Arthur added his entreaty.

“Yes, it is long since I heard your voice, and it is still the sweetest voice I have ever heard  ...  perhaps because it is the first voice I remember hearing,” Arthur said. “I think you sang me to sleep with lullabies before I could talk plain, and you were no more than a child yourself. Always I remember you best like that, Morgaine,” he added, and before the pain in his eyes, Morgaine bent her head.

Is this what Gwenhwyfar cannot forgive, that I bear for him the face of the Goddess? She took Drustan’s harp and bent her head over the strings, touching them one by one.

“ ‘Tis tuned differently than mine,” she said, trying a few strings, and then looked up as there was a commotion in the lower hall. A trumpet blew, harsh and shrill inside the walls, and there was a tramp of armed feet. Arthur half rose, then sank back into his seat as four armed men, bearing sword and shield, strode into the hall.

Cai came to meet them, protesting—it was not allowed to bear weapons into the King’s hall at Pentecost. They shoved him roughly to one side.

The men wore Roman helmets—Morgaine had seen one or two of those preserved in Avalon—and short military tunics and Roman armor, and thick red military cloaks streamed out behind them. Morgaine blinked —it was as if Roman legionaries had walked out of the past; one man bore, at the end of a pike, the carved and gilded figure of an eagle.

“Arthur, Duke of Britain!” cried out one of the men. “We bear you a message from Lucius, Emperor of Rome!”

Arthur rose from his seat and took a single step toward the men in legionary dress. “I am not Duke of Britain, but High King,” he said mildly, “and I know of no Emperor Lucius. Rome has fallen and is in the hands of barbarians—and, I doubt not, impostors. Still, one does not hang the dog for the impertinence of the master. You may say your message.”

“I am Castor, centurion of the Valeria Victrix legion,” said the man who had spoken before. “In Gaul, the legions have been formed again, behind the banner of Lucius Valerius, Emperor of Rome. The message of Lucius is this—that you, Arthur, Duke of Britain, may continue to rule under that style and designation, provided that you send him, within six weeks, imperial tribute consisting of forty ounces of gold, two dozens of the British pearls, and three wagonloads each of iron, tin, and lead from your country, with a hundred ells of woven British wool and a hundred slaves.”

Lancelet rose from his place, leaped forward into the space before the King.

“My lord Arthur,” he cried, “let me flay these impudent dogs and send them yelping back to their master, and tell this idiot Lucius that if he wants tribute from England he may come and try to take it—“

“Wait, Lancelet,” said Arthur gently, smiling at his friend, “that is not the way.” He surveyed the legionaries for a moment; Castor had half drawn his sword, and Arthur said grimly, “No steel may be drawn on this holy day in my court, soldier. I do not expect a barbarian from Gaul to know the manners of a civilized country, but if you put not your sword back into its sheath, then, I swear, Lancelet may come and take it from you as best he can. And no doubt you have heard of sir Lancelet, even in Gaul. But I want no blood shed at the foot of my throne.”

Castor, baring his teeth with rage, thrust his sword back into his sheath. “I am not afraid of your knight Lancelet,” he said. “His days were long gone in the wars with the Saxons. But I was sent as a messenger with orders to shed no blood. What answer may I take the emperor, Duke Arthur?”

“None—if you refuse me my proper title in my own hall,” said Arthur. “But say this to Lucius: that Uther Pendragon succeeded Ambrosius Aurelianus when there were no Romans to aid us in our death struggle against the Saxons, and I, Arthur, succeeded my father Uther, and my nephew Galahad will succeed me on the throne of Britain. There is none who can lawfully lay claim to the purple of the emperor—the Roman Empire rules no more in Britain. If Lucius wishes to rule in his native Gaul and the people there accept him as king, I will surely not come to contest his claim; but if he lays claim to a single inch of Britain or Less Britain, then he shall have nothing from us but three dozen good British arrowheads where they will do him most good.”

Castor, pale with fury, said, “My emperor foresaw some such impudent answer as this, and this is what he bade me say: that Less Britain is already in his hands, and he has imprisoned King Ban’s son Bors, in his own castle. And when the Emperor Lucius has laid all of Less Britain waste, then he will come to Britain, as did the Emperor Claudius of old, and conquer that country again, in despite of all your painted savage chiefs smeared with woad!”

“Tell your emperor,” said Arthur, “that my offer of three dozen British arrowheads holds good, only now will I raise my offer to three hundred, and he gets no tribute from me but one of them through his heart. Tell him, too, that if he harms a single hair on the head of my Companion sir Bors, I shall give him to Lancelet and Lionel, who are Bors’s brothers, to skin him alive and hang his flayed corpse from the castle walls. Now go back to your emperor and give him that message. No, Cai, don’t let anyone lay a hand on him—a messenger is sacred to his Gods.”

There was an appalled silence as the legionaries strode out of the hall, turning crisply on their heels and letting their mailed boots stamp and ring on the stones. When they had gone a clamor arose, but Arthur raised his hand and quiet fell again.

“There will be no mock battles on the morrow, for we will have real ones soon,” he said, “and for prizes I can offer the plunder of this self-styled emperor. Companions, I would have you ready to ride at daybreak for the coast. Cai, you can handle the provisioning. Lancelet”—a faint smile as he looked at his friend—“I would leave you here to guard the Queen, but since your brother is prisoned, I know you will wish to ride with us. I shall ask the priest to say holy service for those of you who wish to be shriven of any sins before you ride into battle, tomorrow at dawn. Sir Uwaine”—his eyes sought out his newest Companion where he sat among the younger knights—“now I can offer you glory in battle instead of war games. I beg you, as my sister’s son, to ride at my side and cover my back against treachery.”

“I am honored, m-my king,” Uwaine stammered, his face glowing, and in that moment Morgaine saw something of how Arthur had inspired such great devotion.

“Uriens, my good brother-in-law,” said Arthur, “I leave the Queen in your care—remain at Camelot and guard her till I return.” He bent to kiss Gwenhwyfar’s hand. “My lady, I beg you to excuse us from further feasting—there is war upon us again.”

Gwenhwyfar was white as her shift. “And you know it is welcome to you, my lord. God keep you, dear husband.” And she leaned forward to kiss him. He rose and went down from the dais, beckoning.

“Gawaine, Lionel, Gareth—all of you—Companions, attend me!”

Lancelet delayed for a moment before following him. “Bid me also God’s blessing as I ride, my queen.”

“Oh, God—Lancelet—“ Gwenhwyfar said, and, regardless of the eyes on her, she flung herself into his arms. He held her, gently, speaking so softly that Morgaine could not hear, but Morgaine saw that she was weeping. But when she raised her head her face was dry and tearless. “God speed you, my dearest love.”

“And God keep you, love of my heart,” Lancelet said very softly. “Whether I return or no, may he bless you.” He turned to Morgaine. “Now indeed do I rejoice that you are to pay a visit to Elaine. You must bear my greetings to my dear wife, and tell her I have gone with Arthur to the rescue of my kinsman Bors from this knave who calls himself the Emperor Lucius. Tell her I pray God to keep her and care for her, and send my love to our children.”

He stood for a moment silent, and for a moment Morgaine thought he would kiss her too; instead, smiling, he laid his hand against her cheek. “God bless you too, Morgaine—whether or no you want his blessing.” He turned to join Arthur where the Companions were gathering in the lower hall.

Uriens came to the dais and bowed to Gwenhwyfar. “I am at your service, my lady.”

If she laughs at the old man, Morgaine thought with a sudden, fierce protectiveness, I will slap her! Uriens meant well, and the duty was no more than ceremonial, a minor tribute to kinship; Camelot would be very well in the hands of Cai and Lucan, as always. But Gwenhwyfar was accustomed to diplomacy at court. She said gravely, “I thank you, sir Uriens. You are most welcome here. Morgaine is my dear friend and sister, and I will be happy to have her near me at court again.”

Oh, Gwenhwyfar, Gwenhwyfar, what a liar you are! Morgaine said sweetly, “But I must ride forth and visit my kinswoman Elaine. Lancelet charged me to bear his news.”

“You are always kind,” said Uriens, “and since the war is not in our countryside, but across the channel, you shall go when you wish. I would ask Accolon to escort you, but it is likely he must ride with Arthur to the coast.”

He really would leave me in Accolon’s care; he thinks good of everyone, Morgaine thought, and kissed her husband with real warmth. “When I have paid my visit to Elaine, my lord, may I have leave to visit my kinswoman in Avalon?”

“You may do your own will, my lady,” said Uriens, “but before you go, will you unpack my things? My valet can never do it so well as you. And will you leave some of your herbal salves and medicines for me?”

“To be sure,” she said, and as she went to make all ready for her journey, she thought with resignation that no doubt, before they parted, he would want to sleep with her this night. Well, she had endured it before this, she could do so again.

What a whore I have grown!

12

Morgaine knew that she dared make this journey only if she made it one step at a time, one league at a time, one day at a time. Her first step, then, was to Pellinore’s castle; bitter irony, that her first mission was a kindly message to Lancelet’s wife and his children.

All that first day she followed the old Roman road northward through rolling hills. Kevin had offered to escort her, and she had been tempted; the old fear gripped her, that she would not find the way to Avalon this time either, not dare to summon the Avalon barge; that she would wander again into the fairy country and be lost there forever. She had not dared go after Viviane’s death ...  .

But now she must meet this test, as when she had first been made priestess ...  cast out of Avalon alone, with no test save this, that she must be able somehow to return ... by her own strength, not Kevin’s, she must win entry there again.

Still she was frightened; it had been so long.

On the fourth day she came within sight of Pellinore’s castle, and at noon of that day, riding along the marshy shores of the lake which now bore no trace of the dragon which once had lurked there (though her serving-man and woman shivered and clung together and told each other horrible tales of dragons), she caught sight of the somewhat smaller dwelling which Pellinore had given to Elaine and Lancelet when they were wedded.

It was more villa than castle; in these days of peace there were not many fortified places in that countryside. Broad lawns sloped down toward the road, and as Morgaine rode up toward the house, a flock of geese sent up a great squawk.

A well-dressed chamberlain greeted her, asking her name and business.

“I am the lady Morgaine, wife of King Uriens of North Wales. I bear a message from the lord Lancelet.”

She was taken to a room where she could wash and refresh herself, then conducted to the great hall, where a fire burned and wheat cakes were set before her, with honey and a flask of good wine. Morgaine found herself yawning at the ceremoniousness of this—she was, after all, a kinswoman, not a state visitor. After a time, a small boy peered into the room, and when he saw that she was alone, came in. He was fair, with blue eyes and a splashing of golden freckles on his face, and she knew at once whose son he was, though he was nothing like his father.

“Are you the lady Morgaine that they call Morgaine of the Fairies?”

Morgaine said, “I am. And I am your cousin, Galahad.”

“How do you know my name?” he asked suspiciously. “Are you a sorceress? Why do they call you Morgaine of the Fairies?”

She said, “Because I am of the old royal line of Avalon, and fostered there. And I know your name, not from sorcery, but because you look like your mother, who is also my kinswoman.”

“My father’s name is Galahad too,” said the child, “but the Saxons call him Elf-arrow.”

“I came here to bear your father’s greetings to you, and to your mother, and to your sisters too,” Morgaine said.

“Nimue is a silly girl,” said Galahad. “She is a big girl, five years old, but she cried when my father came and would not let him pick her up and kiss her, because she did not recognize him. Do you know my father?”

“Indeed I do,” said Morgaine. “His mother, the Lady of the Lake, was my foster-mother and my aunt.”

He looked skeptical and frowned. “My mother told me that the Lady of the Lake is an evil sorceress.”

“Your mother is—“ Morgaine stopped and softened the words; he was, after all, only a child. “Your mother did not know the Lady as I did. She was a good and wise woman, and a great priestess.”

  “Oh?” She could see Galahad struggling with this concept. “Father Griffin says that only men can be priests, because men are made in God’s image and women are not. Nimue said that she wanted to be a priest when she grew up, and learn to read and write and play upon the harp, and Father Griffin told her that no woman could do all these things, or any of them.”

“Then Father Griffin is mistaken,” said Morgaine, “for I can do them all and more.”

“I don’t believe you,” Galahad said, surveying her with a level stare of hostility. “You think everyone is wrong but you, don’t you? My mother says that little ones should not contradict grown-ups, and you look as if you were not so much older than I. You aren’t much bigger, are you?”

Morgaine laughed at the angry child and said, “But I am older than either your mother or your father, Galahad, even though I am not very big.”

There was a stir at the door and Elaine came in. She had grown softer, her body rounded, her breasts sagging—after all, Morgaine told herself, she had borne three children and one was still at the breast. But she was still lovely, her golden hair shining as bright as ever, and she embraced Morgaine as if they had met but yesterday.

“I see you have met my good son,” she said. “Nimue is in her room being punished—she was impertinent to Father Griffin—and Gwennie, thank Heaven, is asleep—she is a fussy baby and I was awake with her much of the night. Have you come from Camelot? Why did my lord not ride with you, Morgaine?”

“I have come to tell you about that,” Morgaine said. “Lancelet will not ride home for some while. There is war in Less Britain, and his brother Bors is besieged in his castle. All of Arthur’s Companions have gone to rescue him and put down the man who would be emperor.”

Blame’s eyes filled with tears, but young Galahad’s face was eager with excitement. “If I were older,” he said, “I would be one of the Companions and my father would make me a knight and I would ride with them, and I would fight these old Saxons—and any old emperor too!”

Elaine heard the story and said, “This Lucius sounds to me like a madman!”

“Mad or sane, he has an army and claims it in the name of Rome,” Morgaine said. “Lancelet sent me to see you, and bade me kiss his children —though I doubt not this young man is too big to be kissed like a babe,” she said, smiling at Galahad. “My stepson, Uwaine, thought himself too big for that when he was about your size, and a few days ago he was made one of Arthur’s Companions.”

“How old is he?” asked Galahad, and when Morgaine said fifteen, he scowled furiously and began to reckon up on his fingers.

Elaine asked, “How looked my dear lord? Galahad, run away to your tutor, I want to speak with my cousin,” and when the child had gone, she said, “I had more time to speak with Lancelet before Pentecost than in all the years of our marriage. This is the first time in all these years that I have had more than a week of his company!”

“At least he did not leave you with child this time,” said Morgaine.

“No,” said Elaine, “and he was very considerate and did not seek my bed during those last weeks while we waited together for Gwen’s birth— he said that I was so big, it would be no pleasure to me. I would not have refused him, but to tell the truth I think he cared not at all ... and there’s a confession for you, Morgaine.”

“You forget,” said Morgaine with a grim little smile, “I have known Lancelet all my life.”

“Tell me,” Elaine said, “I swore, once, I would never ask you this— was Lancelet your lover, did you ever lie with him?”

Morgaine looked at her drawn face and said gently, “No, Elaine. There was a time when I thought—but it came never to that. I did not love him, nor did he love me.” And to her own surprise, she knew the words were true, though she had never known it before.

Elaine stared at the floor, where a patch of sunlight came in through an old, discolored bit of glass that had been there since Roman days. “Morgaine—while he was at Pentecost, did he see the Queen?”

“Since Lancelet is not blind, and since she sat on the dais beside Arthur, I suppose he did,” Morgaine said dryly.

Elaine made an impatient movement. “You know what I speak of!”

Is she still so jealous? Does she hate Gwenhwyfar so much? She has Lancelet, she has borne his children, she knows he is honorable, what more does she want? But before the younger woman’s nervously twisting hands, the tears which seemed to hang on her eyelashes, Morgaine softened. “Elaine, he spoke with the Queen, and he kissed her in farewell when the call to arms came. But I vow to you, he spoke as courtier to his queen, not as lover to lover. They have known one another since they were young, and if they cannot forget that once they loved in a way that comes not twice to any man or woman, why should you begrudge them that? You are his wife, Elaine, and I could tell when he bade me bear you his message, he loves you well.”

“And I swore to be content with no more, did I not?”

Elaine lowered her head for a long moment, and Morgaine saw her blinking furiously, but she did not cry, and at last she raised her head. “You who have had so many lovers, have you ever known what it is to love?”

For a moment Morgaine felt herself swept by the old tempest, the madness of love which had flung her and Lancelet, on a sun-flooded hill in Avalon, into each other’s arms, which had brought them together again and again, until it all ended in bitterness ... by main will she forced away the memory and filled her mind with the thought of Accolon, who had roused again the sweetness of womanhood in her heart and body when she had felt old, dead, abandoned  ...  who had brought her back to the Goddess, who had made her again into a priestess  ...  she felt bands of crimson rising in quick successive waves over her face. Slowly, she nodded. “Yes, child. I have known—I know what it is to love.”

She could see that Elaine wanted to ask a hundred other questions, and she thought how happy it would be to share all this with the one woman who had been her friend since she left Avalon, whose marriage she had made —but no. Secrecy was a part of the power of a priestess, and to speak of what she and Accolon had known would be to bring it outside of the magical realm, make her no more than a discontented wife sneaking to the bed of her stepson. She said, “But now, Elaine, there is something more to speak of. Remember, you made me a vow once—that if I helped you to win Lancelet, you would give me what I asked of you. Nimue is past five years old, old enough for fostering. I ride tomorrow for Avalon. You must make her ready to accompany me.”

“No!” It was a long cry, almost a shriek. “No, no, Morgaine—you cannot mean it!”

Morgaine had been afraid of this. Now she made her voice distant and hard.

“Elaine. You have sworn it.”

“How could I swear for a child not yet born? I knew not what it meant —oh, no, not my daughter, not my daughter—you cannot take her from me, not so young!”

Again Morgaine said, “You have sworn it.”

“And if I refuse?” Elaine looked like a spitting cat ready to defend her kittens against a large and angry dog.

“If you refuse,” Morgaine’s voice was as quiet as ever, “when Lancelet comes home, he shall hear from me how this marriage was made, how you wept and begged me to put a spell on him so that he would turn from Gwenhwyfar to you. He thinks you the innocent victim of my magic, Elaine, and blames me, not you. Shall he know the truth?”

“You would not!” Elaine was white with horror.

“Try me,” Morgaine said. “I know not how Christians regard an oath, but I assure you, among those who worship the Goddess, it is taken in all seriousness. And so I took yours. I waited till you had another daughter, but Nimue is mine by your pledged word.”

“But—but what of her? She is a Christian child—how can I send her from her mother into—into a world of pagan sorceries  ...  ?”

“I am, after all, her kinswoman,” Morgaine said gently. “How long have you known me, Elaine? Have you ever known me do anything so dishonorable or wicked that you would hesitate to entrust a child to me? I do not, after all, want her for feeding to a dragon, and the days are long, long past when even criminals were burnt on altars of sacrifice.”

“What will befall her, then, in Avalon?” asked Elaine, so fearfully that Morgaine wondered if Elaine, after all, had harbored some such notions.

“She will be a priestess, trained in all the wisdom of Avalon,” said Morgaine. “One day she will read the stars and know all the wisdom of the world and the heavens.” She found herself smiling. “Galahad told me that she wished to learn to read and write and to play the harp—and in Avalon no one will forbid her this. Her life will be less harsh than if you had put her to school in some nunnery. We will surely ask less of her in the way of fasting and penance before she is grown.”

“But—but what shall I say to Lancelet?” wavered Elaine.

“What you will,” said Morgaine. “It would be best to tell him the truth, that you sent her to fosterage in Avalon, that she might fill the place left empty there. But I care not whether you perjure yourself to him—you may tell him that she was drowned in the lake or taken by the ghost of old Pellinore’s dragon, for all care.”

“And what of the priest? When Father Griffin hears that I have sent my daughter to become a sorceress in the heathen lands—“

“I care even less what you tell him,” Morgaine said. “If you choose to tell him that you put your soul in pawn for my sorceries to win yourself a husband, and pledged your first daughter in return—no? I thought not.”

“You are hard, Morgaine,” said Elaine, tears falling from her eyes. “Cannot I have a few days to prepare her to go from me, to pack such things as she will need—“

“She needs not much,” said Morgaine. “A change of shift if you will, and warm things for riding, a thick cloak and stout shoes, no more than that. In Avalon they will give her the dress of a novice priestess. Believe me,” she added kindly, “she will be treated with love and reverence as the granddaughter of the greatest of priestesses. And they will—what is it your priests say—they will temper the wind to the shorn lamb. She will not be forced to austerities until she is of an age to endure them. I think she will be happy there.”

“Happy? In that place of evil sorcery?”

Morgaine said, and the utter conviction of her words struck Elaine’s heart, “I vow to you—I was happy in Avalon, and every day since I left, I have longed, early and late, to return thither. Have you ever heard me lie? Come—let me see the child.”

“I bade her stay in her room and spin in solitude till sunset. She was rude to the priest and is being punished,” said Elaine.

“But I remit the punishment,” said Morgaine. “I am now her guardian and foster-mother, and there is no longer any reason to show courtesy to that priest. Take me to her.”

THEY RODE FORTH the next day at dawn. Nimue had wept at parting with her mother, but even before they were gone an hour, she had begun to peer forth curiously at Morgaine from under the hood of her cloak. She was tall for her age, less like Lancelet’s mother, Viviane, than like Morgause or Igraine; fair-haired, but with enough copper in the golden strands that Morgaine thought her hair would be red when she was older. And her eyes were almost the color of the small wood violets which grew by the brooks.

They had had only a little wine and water before setting out, so Morgaine asked, “Are you hungry, Nimue? We can stop and break our fast as soon as we find a clearing, if you wish.”

“Yes, Aunt.”

“Very well.” And soon she dismounted and lifted the little girl from her pony.

“I have to—“ The child cast down her eyes and squirmed.

“If you have to pass water, go behind that tree with the serving-woman,” said Morgaine, “and never be ashamed again to speak of what God has made.”

“Father Griffin says it is not modest—“

“And never speak to me again of anything Father Griffin said to you,” Morgaine said gently, but with a hint of iron behind the mild words. “That is past, Nimue.”

When the child came back she said, with a wide-eyed look of wonder, “I saw someone very small peering out at me from behind a tree. Galahad said you were called Morgaine of the Fairies—was it a fairy, Aunt?”

Morgaine shook her head and said, “No, it was one of the Old People of the hills—they are as real as you or I. It is better not to speak of them, Nimue, or take any notice. They are very shy, and afraid of men who live in villages and farms.”

“Where do they live, then?”

“In the hills and forests,” Morgaine said. “They cannot bear to see the earth, who is their mother, raped by the plow and forced to bear, and they do not live in villages.”

“If they do not plow and reap, Aunt, what do they eat?”

“Only such things as the earth gives them of her free will,” said Morgaine. “Root, berry and herb, fruit and seeds—meat they taste only at the great festivals. As I told you, it is better not to speak of them, but you may leave them some bread at the edge of the clearing, there is plenty for us all.” She broke off a piece of a loaf and let Nimue take it to the edge of the woods. Elaine had, indeed, given them enough food for ten days’ ride, instead of the brief journey to Avalon.

She ate little herself, but she let the child have all she wanted, and spread honey herself on Nimue’s bread; time enough to train her, and after all, she was still growing very fast.

“You are eating no meat, Aunt,” said Nimue. “Is it a fast day?”

Morgaine suddenly remembered how she had questioned Viviane. “No, I do not often eat it.”

“Don’t you like it? I do.”

“Well, eat it then, if you wish. The priestesses do not have meat very often, but it is not forbidden, certainly not to a child your age.”

“Are they like the nuns? Do they fast all the time? Father Griffin says—“ She stopped, remembering she had been told not to quote what he said, and Morgaine was pleased; the child learned quickly.

She said, “I meant you are not to take what he says as a guide for your own conduct. But you may tell me what he says and one day you will learn to separate for yourself what is right in what he says, and what is folly or worse.”

“He says that men and women must fast for their sins. Is that why?”

Morgaine shook her head. “The people of Avalon fast, sometimes, to teach their bodies to do what they are told without making demands it is inconvenient to satisfy—there are times when one must do without food, or water, or sleep, and the body must be the servant of the mind, not the master. The mind cannot be set on holy things, or wisdom, or stilled for the long meditation which opens the mind to other realms, when the body cries out ‘Feed me!’ or ‘I thirst!’ So we teach ourselves to still its clamoring. Do you understand?”

“N-not really,” said the child doubtfully.

“You will understand when you are older, then. For now, eat your bread, and make ready to ride again.”

Nimue finished her bread and honey and wiped her hands tidily on a clump of grass. “I never understood Father Griffin either, but he was angry when I did not. I was punished when I asked him why we must fast and pray for our sins when Christ had already forgiven them, and he said I had been taught heathendom and made Mother send me to my room. What is heathendom, Aunt?”

“It is anything a priest does not like,” said Morgaine. “Father Griffin is a fool. Even the best of the Christian priests do not trouble little ones like you, who can do no sin, with much talk about it. Time enough to talk about sin, Nimue, when you are capable of doing it, or making choices between good and evil.”

Nimue got on her pony obediently, but after a time she said, “Aunt Morgaine—I am not such a good girl, though. I sin all the time. I am always doing wicked things. I am not at all surprised that Mother wanted to send me away. That is why she is sending me to a wicked place, because I am a wicked girl.”

Morgaine felt her throat close with something like agony. She had been about to mount her own horse, but she hurried to Nimue’s pony and caught the girl in a great hug, holding her tight and kissing her again and again. She said, breathlessly, “Never say that again, Nimue! Never! It is not true, I vow to you it is not! Your mother did not want to send you away at all, and if she had thought Avalon a wicked place she would not have sent you no matter what I threatened!”

Nimue said in a small voice, “Why am I being sent away, then?”

Morgaine still held her tight with all the strength of her arms. “Because you were pledged to Avalon before you were born, my child. Because your grandmother was a priestess, and because I have no daughter for the Goddess, and you are being sent to Avalon that you may learn wisdom and serve the Goddess.” She noted that her tears were falling, unheeded, on Nimue’s fair hair. “Who let you believe it was punishment?”

“One of the women—while she packed my shift—“ Nimue faltered. “I heard her say, Mother should not have sent me to that wicked place— and Father Griffin has told me often I am a wicked girl—“

Morgaine sank to the ground, holding Nimue in her lap, rocking her back and forth. “No, no,” she said gently, “no, darling, no. You are a good girl. If you are naughty or lazy or disobedient, that is not sin, it is only that you are not old enough to know any better, and when you are taught to do what is right, then you will do so.” And then, because she thought this conversation had gone far for a child so young, she said, “Look at that butterfly! I have not seen one that color before! Come, Nimue, let me lift you on your pony now,” she said, and listened attentively as the little girl chattered on about butterflies.

Alone she could have ridden to Avalon in a single day, but the short legs of Nimue’s little pony could not make that distance, so they slept that night in a clearing. Nimue had never slept out of doors before, and the darkness frightened her when they put out the fire, so Morgaine let the child creep into the circle of her arms and lay pointing out one star after another to her.

The little girl was tired with riding and soon slept, but Morgaine lay awake, Nimue’s head heavy on her arm, feeling fear stealing upon her. She had been so long away from Avalon. Step by slow step, she had retraced all her training, or what she could remember; but would she forget some vital thing?

At last she slept, but before morning it seemed that she heard a step in the clearing, and Raven stood before her. She wore her dark gown and spotted deerskin tunic, and she said, “Morgaine! Morgaine, my dearest!” Her voice, the voice Morgaine had heard but once in all her years in Avalon, was so filled with surprise and joy and wonder that Morgaine woke suddenly and stared around the clearing, half expecting to see Raven there in the flesh. But the clearing was empty, except for a trace of mist that blotted out the stars, and Morgaine lay down again, not knowing if she had dreamed, or whether, with the Sight, Raven knew that she was approaching. Her heart was racing; she could feel the beat of it, almost painful inside her chest.

I should never have stayed away so long. I should have tried to return when Viviane died. Even if I died in the attempt, I should have made it ...  . Will they want me now, old, worn, used, the Sight slowly going from me, with nothing to bring them ...  ?

The child at her side made a small sleepy sound and stirred; she shifted her weight slightly and moved closer into Morgaine’s arms. Morgaine put an arm round her, thinking, I bring them Viviane’s granddaughter. But if they let me return only for her sake it will be more bitter than death. Has the Goddess cast me out forever?

At last she slept again, not to waken until it was broad daylight, misty drizzle beginning to fall. With this bad start the day went badly; toward midday Nimue’s pony cast a shoe, and, although Morgaine was impatient and would have taken the child up to ride before her—she herself was the lightest of burdens for a horse, who could have carried two her size without trouble—she did not want to lame the pony, so they must turn aside for a village and a blacksmith. She did not want it known or rumored in the countryside that the King’s sister rode for Avalon, but now there was no help for it. There was so little news in this part of the land that whatever happened here seemed to fly on wings.

Well, it could not helped; the wretched little animal was not to blame. They delayed and found a small village off the main road. All day the rain fell; even though it was high summer, Morgaine was shivering, and the child was damp and fretful. Morgaine paid little attention to her fussing; she was sorry for her, especially when Nimue began to cry softly for her mother, but that could not be helped either, and one of the first lessons of a priestess in the making was to endure loneliness. She would simply have to cry until she found her own comfort or learned to live without it, as all the maidens in the House had had to learn to do.

It was now long past noon, although the overcast was so thick that they could get no hint of the sun. Still, at this time of year, the light lingered late, and Morgaine did not want to spend another night on the road. She resolved to ride as far as they could see their way and was encouraged to see that as soon as they began to ride again, Nimue stopped whimpering and began to take an interest in what they rode past. Now they were very near Avalon. Nimue was so sleepy that she swayed in her saddle and at last Morgaine lifted the little girl from her pony and held her in front of her on the saddle. But the child woke when they came to the shores of the Lake.

“Are we there, Aunt?” she asked, as she was set on her feet.

“No, but it is not far now,” Morgaine said. “Within half an hour, if all goes well, you will be ready for supper and bed.”

And if all does not go well? Morgaine refused to think of that. Doubt was fatal to power, and to the Sight.... Five years she had spent, laboriously retracing her steps from the beginning; now it was as it had been before, cast out of Avalon, with no test save this, Have I the power to return  ...  ?

“I don’t see anything at all,” Nimue said. “Is this the place? But there is nothing here, Aunt.” And she looked fearfully at the dismal dripping shore, the solitary reeds murmuring to the rain.

“They will send us a boat,” said Morgaine.

“But how will they know we are here? How can they see us in this rain?”

“I will call it,” said Morgaine. “Be quiet, Nimue.” Within her echoed the fretful child’s cry, but now, when she stood at last on the shores of home, she felt the old knowledge welling up, filling her like a cup overrunning its brim. She bent her head for an instant in the most fervent prayer of her life, then drew a long breath and raised her arms in invocation’.

For an instant, heartsick with failure, she felt nothing; then, like a slowly descending line of light running down her, it struck through her, and she heard the little girl at her side gasp in sudden wonder; but she had no time for that, she felt her body like a bridge of lightning between Heaven and Earth. She did not consciously speak the word of power, but felt it throbbing like thunder through her whole body ... silence. Silence, Nimue white and dumb at her side. And then in the dim, dull waters of the Lake there was a little stirring, like mist boiling ... and then a shadow, and then, long and dark and shining, the Avalon barge moving slowly out of the patch of mist. Morgaine let her breath go in a long sigh that was half a sob.

It glided noiseless as a shadow to the shore, but the sound of the boat scraping on the land was very real and solid. Several of the little dark men scrambled out and took the horses’ heads, bowing low to Morgaine, saying, “I will lead them by the other path, lady,” and vanishing into the rain. Another drew back so that Morgaine could first step into the boat, lift the staring child in after her, give a hand to the frightened servants. Still in silence, except for the muttered words of the man who had taken the horses, the boat glided out into the Lake.

“What is that shadow, Aunt?” Nimue whispered, as the oars shoved out from shore.

“It is Glastonbury church,” said Morgaine, surprised that her voice was so calm. “It is on the other island, the one we can see from here. Your grandmother, your father’s mother, is buried there. Someday, perhaps, you will see her memorial stone.”

“Are we going there?”

“Not today.”

“But the boat is going straight toward it—I have heard there is a convent on Glastonbury too—“

“No,” said Morgaine, “we are not going there. Wait and see, and be quiet.”

Now would come the true test. They might have seen her from Avalon, with the Sight, and sent the boat, but whether she could open the mists to Avalon ... that would be the test of all she had done in these years. She must not try and fail, she must simply arise and do it, without stopping to think. They were now in the very center of the Lake, where another stroke of the oars would take them into the current which ran toward the Isle of Glastonbury ...  . Morgaine rose swiftly, the flow of her draperies around her, and raised her arms. Again she remembered ... it was like the first time she had done this, with a shock of surprise that the tremendous flow of power was silent, when it should blast the sky with thunders  ...  she dared not open her eyes until she heard Nimue cry aloud in fear and wonder ...  .

The rain was gone, and under the last brilliance of a setting sun, the Isle of Avalon lay green and beautiful before them, sunlight on the Lake, sunlight striking through the ring stones atop the Tor, sunlight on the white walls of the temple. Morgaine saw it through a blur of tears; she swayed in the boat and would have fallen, except for a hand laid on her shoulder.

Home, home, I am here, I am coming home ...  .

She felt the boat scrape on the pebbled shore and composed herself. It seemed not right that she should not be wearing the garb of a priestess, though beneath her gown, as always, Viviane’s little knife was belted close around her waist. It seemed not right ...  her silken veils, the rings on her narrow fingers  ...  Queen Morgaine of North Wales, not Morgaine of Avalon  ...  well, that could be changed. She lifted her head proudly, drawing a long breath, and took the child by the hand. However she had changed, however many the years that lay between, she was Morgaine of Avalon, priestess of the Great Goddess. Beyond that Lake of mists and shadows, she might be queen to an elderly and laughable king, in a country far away  ...  but here she was priestess, and born of the old royal line of Avalon.

She saw without surprise, as she stepped on land, that before her stood a line of bowing servants and behind them, awaiting her, the dark-robed forms of priestesses... they had known and had come to welcome her home. And through the line of priestesses, she saw a face and form she had seen only in a dream, a tall woman, fair-haired and queenly, her golden hair braided low on her forehead. The woman came to Morgaine quickly through the line of the other priestesses, and took her into an embrace.

“Welcome, kinswoman,” she said softly. “Welcome home, Morgaine.”

And Morgaine spoke the name she had heard only in dreams till Kevin spoke it to her, confirming the dream. “I greet you, Niniane, and I bring you Viviane’s granddaughter. She shall be fostered here, and her name is Nimue.”

Niniane was studying her curiously; what had she heard, Morgaine wondered, in all these years? But then she looked away and stooped to look at the little girl.

“And this is Galahad’s daughter?”

“No,” said Nimue, “Galahad is my brother. I am the daughter of the good knight Lancelet.”

Niniane smiled. “I know,” she said, “but here we do not use the name the Saxons gave your father, and he has the same name as your brother, you see. Well, Nimue, have you come to be a priestess here?”

Nimue looked around at the sunset landscape. “That is what my aunt Morgaine told me. I would like to learn to read and write and play the harp, and know about the stars and all kinds of things as she does. Are you really evil sorceresses here? I thought a sorceress would be old and ugly, and you are very pretty.” She bit her lip. “I am being rude again.”

Niniane laughed. “Always speak out the truth, child. Yes, I am a sorceress. I do not think I am ugly, but you must decide for yourself whether I am good or evil. I try to do the will of the Goddess, and that is all anyone can do.”

“I will try to do that, if you will tell me how,” Nimue said.

The sun dropped below the horizon, and suddenly the shore was all grey twilight. Niniane signalled; a servant holding a single torch reached out to another, and the light passed swiftly from hand to hand until the shore was all ablaze with torchlight. Niniane patted the little girl on the cheek. She said, “Until you are old enough to know her will for yourself, will you obey the rules here, and obey the women who have you in charge?”

“I will try,” Nimue said, “but I am always forgetting. And I ask too many questions.”

“You may ask as many questions as you want to, when it is the proper time for such things,” Niniane said, “but you have been riding all day and it is late, so for tonight the first command I give you is to be a good girl, and go and have supper and a bath and go to your bed. Say farewell to your kinswoman, now, and go with Lheanna to the House of Maidens.” She gestured to a sturdy, motherly looking woman in the dress of a priestess.

Nimue sniffled a little and said, “Must I say goodbye now? Won’t you come and tell me goodbye tomorrow, Aunt Morgaine? I thought I would be with you here.”

Morgaine said, very gently, “No, you must go to the House of Maidens, and do what you are told.” She kissed the petal-soft cheek. “The Goddess bless you, darling. We will meet again when she wills it.” And as she spoke she saw this same Nimue grown to tall womanhood, pale and serious with the blue crescent painted between her brows, and the shadow of the Death-crone  ...  she swayed, and Niniane put out a hand to support her.

“You are weary, lady Morgaine. Send the babe to her rest, and come with me. We can talk tomorrow.”

Morgaine printed a final kiss on Nimue’s brow and the little girl trotted away obediently at Lheanna’s side. Morgaine felt a darkening mist before her eyes; Niniane gave her an arm and said, “Lean on me. Come with me to my quarters where you can rest.”

Niniane brought her to the dwelling that had once been Viviane’s, and to the little room where the priestesses in attendance on the Lady of the Lake slept in their turn. Alone, Morgaine managed to collect herself. For a moment she wondered if Niniane had brought her to these quarters to emphasize that she, not Morgaine, was Lady of the Lake  ...  then stopped herself; that kind of intrigue was for the court, not for Avalon. Niniane had simply given her the most convenient and secluded of the rooms available. Once Raven had dwelt here, in her consecrated silence, so that Viviane might teach her ...  .

Morgaine washed the grime of travel from her weary body, wrapped herself in the long robe of undyed wool which she found lying across the bed, and even ate some of the food they brought, but did not touch the warmed and spiced wine. There was a stone water jar at the side of the fireplace, and she dipped out a ladleful, drinking, with tears in her eyes.

The priestesses of Avalon drink only waterfront the Sacred Well.... Again she was the young Morgaine, sleeping within the walls of her own place. She went to bed and slept like a child.

She never knew what woke her. There was a step in the room, and silence. By the last flicker of the dying firelight and the flooding light of the moon through the shutters, she saw a veiled form, and for a moment she thought that Niniane had come to speak with her; but the hair that flowed over the shoulders was long and dark and the dark face beautiful and still. On one hand she could see the darkened, thickened patch of an ancient scar  ...  Raven! She sat up and said, “Raven! Is it you?”

Raven’s fingers covered her lips, in the old gesture of silence; she came to Morgaine’s side, bent over her and kissed her. Without a word, she threw off her long cloak and lay down at Morgaine’s side, taking her in her arms. In the dimness Morgaine could see the rest of the scars running up along the arm and across the pale heavy breast ...  neither of them spoke a word, then, nor in the time that followed. It seemed that the real world and Avalon had both slipped away, and again she was in the shadows of the fairy country, held close in the arms of the lady.... Morgaine heard in her mind the words of the ancient blessing of Avalon, as Raven touched her slowly, with ritual silence and significance, and the sound seemed to shiver around her in the silence. Blessed be the feet that have brought you to this place... blessed the knees that shall bend before her altar  ...  blessed be the gate of Life ...  .

And then the world began to flow and change and move around her, and for a moment it was not Raven in the silence, but a form edged in light, whom she had seen once, years before, at the time when she crossed the great silence  ...  and Morgaine knew that she too was glowing in light  ...   still the deep flowing silence. And then it was only Raven again, lying close to her with her hair perfumed with the herbs they used in the rites, one arm flung over her, her silent lips just touching Morgaine’s cheek. Morgaine could see that there were long pale streaks of white in the dark hair.

Raven stirred and raised herself up. Still she did not speak, but she took from somewhere a silver crescent, the ritual ornament of a priestess. Morgaine knew, with a catch of breath, that it was the one she had left on her bed in the House of Maidens on that day when she had fled forth from Avalon with Arthur’s child in her womb  ...  silent, after a gasp of half-voiced protest, she let Raven bind it about her neck; but Raven showed her briefly, by the last glint of the setting moon, the flash of a knife blade bound about her own waist. Morgaine nodded, knowing that Viviane’s ritual knife would never again while she lived leave her side; she was content that Raven should bear the one she herself had abandoned until one day she saw it bound about Nimue’s waist.

Raven took the little razor-sharp knife, and Morgaine watched, stilled into a dream, as she raised it; so be it, even if she wishes here to shed my blood before the Goddess I tried to flee  ...  but Raven turned the knife toward her own throat; from the breastbone she pricked a single drop of blood, and Morgaine, bowing her head, took the knife and made a slight cut over her heart.

We are old, Raven and I, we shed blood no longer from the womb but from the heart ...  and wondered afterward what she had meant. Raven bent to her and licked the blood away from the small cut; Morgaine bent and touched her lips to the small, welling stain at Raven’s breast, knowing that this was a sealing long past the vows she had taken when she came to womanhood. Then Raven drew her again into her arms.

I gave up my maidenhood to the Horned One. I bore a child to the God. I burned with passion for Lancelet, and Accolon created me priestess anew in the plowed fields which the Spring Maiden had blessed. Yet never have I known what it was to be received simply in love.... It seemed to Morgaine, half in a dream, that she lay in the lap of her mother ... no, not Igraine, but welcomed back into the arms of the Great Mother ...  .

When she woke she was alone. Opening her eyes into the sunlight of Avalon, weeping with joy, she wondered for a moment if she had dreamed. Yet over her heart was a small stain of dried blood; and on the pillow beside her lay the silver crescent, the ritual jewel of a priestess, which she had left when she fled from Avalon. Yet surely Raven had bound it about her throat ...  .

Morgaine tied it around her neck on its slender thong. It would never leave her again; like Viviane, she would be buried with this about her neck. Her fingers shook as she knotted the leather, knowing this was a reconsecration. There was something else on the pillow, and for a moment it shifted and changed, an unopened rosebud, a blown rose, and when Morgaine took it into her hand, it was the rose-hip berry, full and round and crimson, pulsing with the tart life of the rose. As she watched, it shrank, withered, lay dried in her hand; and Morgaine suddenly understood.

Flower and even fruit are only the beginning. In the seed lies the life and the future.

With a long sigh, Morgaine tied the seed into a scrap of silk, knowing that she must go forth again from Avalon. Her work was not completed, and she had chosen the place of her work and her testing when she fled forth from Avalon. One day, perhaps, she might return, but that time had not yet come.

And what I am must be hidden, as the rose lies hidden within the seed. She rose then and put on the garments of the queen. The robe of a priestess should be hers again one day, but she had yet to earn again the right to wear it. Then she sat and waited for Niniane to summon her.

WHEN SHE CAME into the central room where she had faced Viviane so often, time swooped and circled and turned on itself so that for a moment it seemed to Morgaine that she must see Viviane sitting where she had so often sat, dwarfed by the high seat and yet impressive, filling the whole room  ...  then she blinked, and it was Niniane there, tall and slight and fair; it seemed to Morgaine that Niniane was no more than a child, sitting in play in the high seat.

And then what Viviane had said to her when she stood before her, so many years ago, suddenly rushed over her: you have reached a stage where obedience may be tempered with your own judgment ...  and for a moment it seemed to her that her best judgment was to turn aside now, to say to Niniane only such words as might reassure her. And then the surge of resentment came over her at the thought that this child, this foolish and ordinary girl in the dress of a priestess, was presuming to sit where Viviane had sat and to give orders in the name of A valon. She had been chosen only because she was of the blood of Taliesin ...  . How does she dare sit here and presume to give orders to me ...  ?

She looked down at the girl, knowing, without being certain how, that she had taken upon herself the old glamour and majesty, and then, with a sudden surge of the Sight, it seemed to her that she read Niniane’s thoughts.

She should be here in my place, Niniane was thinking, how can I speak with authority to Queen Morgaine of the Fairies  ...  and the thought was blurred, half with awe of the strange and powerful priestess before her, and half with simple resentment, if she had not fled from us and forsworn her duty, I would not now be struggling to fill a place for which we both know I am not fit.

Morgaine came and took her hands, and Niniane was surprised at her gentle voice.

“I am sorry, my poor girl, I would give my very life to return here and take the burden from you. But I cannot, I dare not. I cannot hide here and shirk my given task because I long for my home.” It was no longer arrogance, nor contempt for the girl who had been thrust, unwilling, into the place which should have been hers, but simple pity for her. “I have begun a task in the West country which must be completed—if I leave it half done, it were better it had never been begun. You cannot take my place there, and so, may the Goddess help us both, you must keep my place here.” She bent and embraced the girl, holding her tight. “My poor little cousin, there is a fate on us both, and we cannot escape it ... if I had stayed here, the Goddess would have worked with me one way, but even when I tried to flee my sworn duty, she brought it upon me elsewhere  ...  none of us can escape. We are both in her hands, and it is too late to say it would have been better the other way  ...  she will do with us as she will.”

Niniane held rigidly aloof for a moment, then her resentment melted and she clung to Morgaine, almost as Nimue had done. Blinking back tears, she said, “I wanted to hate you—“

“And I, you, perhaps  ... ” Morgaine said. “But she has willed otherwise, and before her we are sisters....” Hesitantly, her lips reluctant to speakthe words which had been withheld for so long, she added something else, and Niniane bent her head and murmured the proper response. Then she said, “Tell me of your work in the West, Morgaine. No, sit here beside me, there is no rank between us, you know that ...  .”

When Morgaine had told her what she could, Niniane nodded. “Something of this I heard from the Merlin,” she said. “In that country, then, men turn again to the old worship  ...  but Uriens has two sons, and the elder is his father’s heir. Your task then is to make certain that Wales has a king from Avalon—which means that Accolon must succeed his father, Morgaine.”

Morgaine closed her eyes and sat with bent head. At last she said, “I will not kill, Niniane. I have seen too much of war and bloodshed. Avalloch’s death would solve nothing—they follow Roman ways there now, since the priests have come, and Avalloch has a son.”

Niniane dismissed that. “A son who could be reared to the old worship —how old is he, four years old?”

“He was so when I came to Wales,” said Morgaine, thinking of the child who had sat in her lap and clung to her with his sticky fingers and called her Granny. “Enough, Niniane. I have done all else, but even for Avalon, I will not kill.”

Niniane’s eyes flamed blue sparks at her. She raised her head and said, warning, “Never name that well from which you will not drink!”

And suddenly Morgaine realized that the woman before her was priestess, too, not merely the pliant child she had seemed; she could not be where she was, she could never have passed the tests and ordeals which went into the making of a Lady of Avalon, if she had not been acceptable to the Goddess. With unexpected humility, she realized why she had been sent here. Niniane said, almost in warning, “You will do what the Goddess wills when her hand is laid upon you, and that I know by the token you bear  ... ” and her eyes rested upon Morgaine’s bosom as if she could see through the folds of the gown to the seed which lay there, or to the silver crescent on its leather thong. Morgaine bent her head and whispered, “We are all in her hands.”

“Be it so,” said Niniane, and for a moment it was so silent in the room that Morgaine could hear the splash of a fish in the Lake beyond the borders of the little house. Then she said, “What of Arthur, Morgaine? He bears still the sword of the Druid Regalia. Will he honor his oath at last? Can you make him honor it?”

“I do not know Arthur’s heart,” Morgaine said, and it was a bitter confession. I had power over him, and I was too squeamish to use it. I flung it away.

“He must swear again to honor his oath to Avalon, or you must get the sword from him again,” said Niniane, “and you are the only person living to whom this task might be entrusted. Excalibur, the sword of the Holy Regalia, must not remain in the hands of one who follows Christ. You know Arthur has no son by his queen, and he has named the son of Lancelet, Galahad by name, to be his heir, since now the Queen grows old.”

Morgaine thought, Gwenhwyfar is younger than I, and I might still bear a child if I had not been so damaged in Gwydion’s birth. Why are they so certain she will never bear? But before Niniane’s certainty she asked no questions. There was magic enough in Avalon, and no doubt they had hands and eyes at Arthur’s court; and indeed the last thing they would wish would be that the Christian Gwenhwyfar should bear Arthur a son  ...  not now.

“Arthur has a son,” said Niniane, “and while his day is not yet, there is a kingdom he can take—a place to begin the recapture of this land for Avalon. In the ancient ways, the king’s son meant little, the son of the Lady was all, and the king’s sister’s son was his heir  ...  know you what I mean, Morgaine?”

Accolon must succeed to the throne of Wales. Morgaine heard it again, and then what Niniane did not say: And my son .. . is the son of King Arthur. Now it all made sense. Even her own barrenness after Gwydion’s birth. But she asked, “What of Arthur’s heir—Lancelet’s son?”

Niniane shrugged and for a moment Morgaine wondered, horrified, whether it was intended to give Nimue the same hold on Galahad’s conscience that she had been given on Arthur’s.

“I cannot see all things,” said Niniane. “Had you been Lady here— but time has moved on and other plans must be made. Arthur may yet honor his oath to Avalon and keep the sword Excalibur, and then there will be one way to proceed. And he may not, and there will be another way which she will prepare, to which end we each have our tasks. But whether or no, Accolon must come to rule in the West country, and that is your task. And the next king will rule from Avalon. When Arthur falls—though his stars say he will live to be old—then the king of Avalon will rise. Or else, the stars say, such darkness will fall over this land that it will be as if he had never been. And when the next king takes power, then will Avalon return into the mainstream of time and history ... and then there will be a subject king over the western lands, ruling his Tribespeople. Accolon shall rise high as your consort—and it is for you to prepare the land for the great king from Avalon.”

Again Morgaine bowed her head and said, “I am in your hands.”

“You must return now,” said Niniane, “but first there is one you must know. His time is not yet  ...  but there will be one more task for you.” She raised her hand, and as if he had been waiting in an anteroom, a door opened and a tall young man came into the room.

And at the sight Morgaine caught her breath, with a pain so great that it seemed for a moment that she could not breathe. Here was Lancelet reborn —young and slender as a dark flame, his hair curling about his cheeks, his narrow dark face smiling ... Lancelet as he had been on that day when they lay together in the shadow of the ring stones, as if time had slipped and circled back as in the fairy country ...  .

And then she knew who it must be. He came forward and bent to kiss her hand. His walk was Lancelet’s too, the flowing movements that seemed almost a dance. But he wore the robes of a bard, and on his forehead was the small tattoo of an acorn crest, and about his wrists the serpents of Avalon writhed. Time reeled in her mind.

If Galahad is to be king in the land, is my son then the Merlin, tanist and dark twin and sacrifice? For a moment it seemed she moved among shadows, king and Druid, the bright shadow who sat beside Arthur’s throne as queen, and herself who had borne Arthur’s shadow son  ...  Dark Lady of power.

She knew anything she said would be foolish. “Gwydion. You are not like your father.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I bear the blood of Avalon. I looked once on Arthur, when he made a pilgrimage to Glastonbury of the priests —I went there unseen in a priest’s robe. He bows overmuch to the priests, this Arthur our king.” His smile was fleeting, feral.

“You have no reason to love either of your parents, Gwydion,” said Morgaine, and her hand tightened on his, but she surprised a fleeting look in his eyes, icy hatred  ...  then it was gone and he was the smiling young Druid again.

“My parents gave me their best gift,” Gwydion said, “the royal blood of Avalon. And one more thing I ask of you, lady Morgaine.” Irrationally she wished he had called her, just once, by the name of Mother.

“Ask, and if I can give, it is yours.”

Gwydion said, “It is not a great gift. Surely not more than five years hence, Queen Morgaine, you will lead me to look on Arthur and let him know that I am his son. I am aware”—a quick, disturbing smile—“that he cannot acknowledge me as his heir. But I wish him to look on the face of his son. I ask no more than that.”

She bent her head. “Surely I owe you that much, Gwydion.”

Gwenhwyfar might think what she liked—Arthur had already done penance for this. No man could be other than proud of this grave and priestly young Druid. Nor should she  ...  after all these years, she knew it ... feel shame for what had been, as now she knew she had felt it all these years since she fled from Avalon. Now that she saw her son grown, she bowed before the inevitability of Viviane’s Sight.

She said, “I vow to you that day will come, I swear it by the Sacred Well.” Her eyes blurred, and angrily she blinked back the rebellious tears. This was not her son; Uwaine, perhaps, was her son, but not Gwydion. This dark, handsome young man so like the Lancelet she had loved as a girl, he was not her son looking for the first time on the mother who had abandoned him before he was weaned; he was priest and she priestess of the Great Goddess, and if they were no more to each other than that, at least they were no less.

She put her hands to his bent head and said, “Be thou blessed.”

13

Queen Morgause had long ceased to repine that she had not the Sight. Yet twice, in the last days of falling leaves, when the red larch trees stood bare in the icy wind that blew over Lothian, she dreamed of her foster-son Gwydion; and she was not at all surprised when one of her servant folk told her that a rider was on the road.

Gwydion wore a strangely colored cloak, coarse and with a clasp of bone such as she had never seen, and when she would have wrapped him in her arms, he shrank away, wincing.

“No, Mother—“ He put his free arm around her and explained, “I caught a sword cut there in Brittany—no, it is not serious,” he reassured her. “It did not fester and perhaps I shall not even have a scar, but when it is touched it cries out to me!”

“You have been fighting in Brittany, then? I thought you safe in Avalon,” she remonstrated, as she led him within and set him by the fire. “I have no southern wine for you—“

He laughed. “I am weary of it—barley beer is enough for me, or some of the firewater if you have it... with hot water and honey if there is any. I am stiff with riding.” He let one of the women draw off his boots and hang his cloak to dry, leaning back at ease.

“So good it is to be here, Mother—“ He set the steaming cup to his lips and drank with pleasure.

“And you came so far, riding in the cold with a wound? Was there some great tidings that needed to tell?”

He shook his head. “None—I was homesick, no more,” he said. “It’s all so green and lush and damp there, with fog and church bells ... I longed for the clean air of the fells, and the gulls’ cry, and your face, Mother  ... ” He reached out for the cup he had set down, and she saw the serpents about his wrists. She was not greatly versed in the lore of Avalon, but she knew they were the sign of the highest rank of the priesthood. He saw her glance and nodded, but said nothing.

“Was it in Brittany you got you that ugly cloak, so coarse-woven and low, fit only for a serving-man?”

He chuckled. “It kept the rain from me. I took it from a great chief of the foreign lands, who fought under the legions of that man who called himself Emperor Lucius. Arthur’s men made short work of that one, believe me, and there was plunder for all—I have a silver cup and a golden ring in my packs for you, Mother.”

“You fought in the armies of Arthur?” Morgause asked. She had never thought he would do this; he saw the surprise in her face and laughed again.

“Yes, I fought under that great King who fathered me,” he said, with a grin of contempt. “Oh, fear not, I had my orders from Avalon. I took care to fight among the warriors of Ceardig, the Saxon chief of the treaty men who loves me well, and to come not under Arthur’s eyes. Gawaine knew me not, and I was careful not to let Gareth see me except when I was shrouded in a cloak like that—I lost my own cloak in battle, and feared if I was wearing a cloak of Lothian, Gareth would come to look on a wounded countryman, so I got this one ...  .”

“Gareth would have known you anywhere,” said Morgause, “and I hope you do not think your foster-brother would ever betray you.”

Gwydion smiled, and Morgause thought that he looked very like the little boy who had once sat in her lap. He said, “I longed to make myself known to Gareth, and when I lay wounded and weak, I came near to doing so. But Gareth is Arthur’s man, and he loves his king, I could see that, and I would not put that burden on my best of brothers,” he said. “Gareth— Gareth is the only one—“

He did not finish the sentence, but Morgause knew what he would have said; stranger as he was everywhere, Gareth was his brother and his beloved friend. Abruptly he grinned, chasing away the remote smile that made him look so young. “All through the Saxon armies, Mother, I was asked again and again if I was Lancelet’s son! I cannot see the resemblance so much myself, but then I am not really familiar with my own face ... I look into a mirror only when I shave myself!”

“Still,” said Morgause, “anyone who had seen Lancelet, especially anyone who knew him in youth, could not look on you without knowing you his kinsman.”

“Some such thing as that I said—I put on a Breton accent, sometimes, and said I too was kinsman to old King Ban,” Gwydion said. “Yet I would think our Lancelet, with the face which makes him a magnet to all maids, would have fathered enough bastards that it would not be such a marvel to all men that one should go about wearing his face! Not so? I wondered,” he said, “but all I heard of Lancelet was that it might be that he had fathered a son on the Queen and the child was spirited away somewhere to be fostered by that kinswoman of hers whom they married off to Lancelet ...  . Tales of Lancelet and the Queen are many, each wilder than the next, but all agree that for every other woman the Gods made, he has nothing but courtesy and fair words. There were even women who flung themselves at me, saying that if they could not have Lancelet, they would have his son....” He grinned again. “It must have been hard for the gallant Lancelet. I have eye enough for a fair woman, but when they push themselves on me so, well  ... ” He shrugged, comically. Morgause laughed.

“Then the Druids have not robbed you of that, my son?”

“By no means,” he said. “But most women are fools, so that I prefer not to trouble myself making play with those who expect me to treat them as something very special, or to pay heed to what they say. You have spoilt me for foolish women, Mother.”

“Pity the same could not have been said of Lancelet,” said Morgause, “for never did anyone think Gwenhwyfar had more wits than she needed to keep her girdle tied, and where Lancelet was concerned, I doubt she had that much,” and she thought, You have Lancelet’s face, my boy, but you have your mother’s wit!

As if he had heard her thoughts, he set down the empty cup, and waved away a serving-girl who would have scurried to refill it. “No more, I am so weary that I will be drunk at another taste! Supper I would have. I have had enough of hunter’s fortune, I am sick of meat, and long for home food —porridge and bannock ...  . Mother, I looked on the lady Morgaine at Avalon before I left for Brittany.”

Now why, Morgause wondered, does he say this to me? It could not be looked for that he should have much love for his mother, and then she felt sudden guilt. I made sure he should not love any but me. Well, she had done what she must, and she did not regret it.

“How looks my kinswoman?”

“She looks not young,” said Gwydion, “it seemed to me that she was older than you, Mother.”

“No,” Morgause said, “Morgaine is younger than I by ten years.”

“Still, she looks worn and old, and you  ... ” He smiled at her, and Morgause felt the flood of sudden happiness. She thought, None of my own sons have I loved as this one. Morgaine did well to leave him to my care.

“Oh,” she said, “I grow old too, my lad ... I had a grown son when you were born!”

“Then you are twice the sorceress she is,” said Gwydion, “for one could swear you had dwelt long in the fairy country with time never touching you ... you look to me as you did the day I rode away for Avalon, Mother mine.” He reached out his hand to hers and brought it to his lips and kissed it, and she came and put her arm round him, careful to avoid his wound. She stroked the dark hair. “So Morgaine is queen now in Wales.”

“True,” Gwydion said, “and high, I hear, in favor with the King  ...  Arthur has made her stepson Uwaine a member of his own personal bodyguard, next to Gawaine, and he and Gawaine are close friends. Uwaine’s not a bad fellow—not unlike Gawaine, I’d say—tough and staunch, both of them, and devoted to Arthur as if the sun rose and set where he pissed ...” and Morgause noted the wry smile. “But then it’s a fault many men have—and I came here to speak of this to you, Mother,” he said. “Know you anything of Avalon’s plan?”

“I know what Niniane said, and the Merlin, when they came to take you thither,” said Morgause. “I know you are to be Arthur’s heir, even though he believes he will leave the kingdom to that son of Lancelet’s. I know you are the young stag who will bring down the King Stag  ... ” she said in the old language, and Gwydion raised his brow.

“Then you know it all,” he said. “But this, perhaps, you do not know ... it cannot be done now. Since Arthur brought down this Roman who would be emperor, this Lucius, his star has never flamed higher than now. Anyone who raised a hand against Arthur would be torn in pieces by the mob, or by his Companions—never have I seen a man so loved. This, I think, is why I needed to look from afar on his face, to see what is it in a king which makes him so loved ...  .”

His voice fell away into silence and Morgause felt ill at ease. “And did you so?”

Gwydion nodded slowly. “He is a king indeed  ...  even I who have no cause to love him felt that spell he creates around him. You cannot imagine how he is worshipped.”

“Strange,” said Morgause, “I for one never thought him so remarkable.”

“No, be fair,” said Gwydion. “There are not many—perhaps there is no other within this land who could have rallied all factions as he did! Romans, Welsh, Cornish, West-countrymen, East Anglians, men of Brittany, the Old People, the men of Lothian ... all through this kingdom, Mother, all men swear by Arthur’s star. Even those Saxons who once fought Uther to the death, stand and swear that Arthur shall be their king. He is a great warrior  ...  no, not in himself, he fights no better than any other warrior, not half so well as Lancelet or even Gareth, but he is a great general. And it is something  ...  something in himself,” Gwydion said. “It is easy to love him. And while all worship him thus, I have no possible task.”

“Then,” said Morgause, “their love of him must somehow be made less. He must be discredited. He is no better than any other man, the Gods know that. He fathered you on his own sister, and it is well known here and abroad that he plays no very noble part with his queen. There is a name for a man who sits complacent while another man pays court to his queen, and not so pretty a name, after all.”

“Something, I am sure, can be made of that,” said Gwydion. “Though in these late years, it is said, Lancelet has stayed far from court and taken care never to be alone with the Queen, so that no shadow of scandal shall fall on her name. Yet they say she wept like a child, and so did Lancelet, when he took leave of her to go and fight at Arthur’s side against this Lucius, and never did I see man fight as did Lancelet. One would think he longed to fling himself headlong into death. But he took never even a wound, as if his life was charmed. I wonder ... he is the son of a High Priestess of Avalon,” he mused. “It may be he bears supernatural protection of some sort.”

“Morgaine would know that,” said Morgause dryly, “but I would not suggest you ask her.”

“I do know that Arthur’s life is charmed,” said Gwydion, “for he bears the sacred Excalibur, sword of the Druid Regalia, and a magical scabbard which guards him from shedding blood. Without it, so Niniane told me, he would have bled himself to death at Celidon Wood, and after that ...  . Morgaine has been given as her first task to get this sword again from Arthur, unless he will swear anew to be true to Avalon. And I doubt not my mother is wily enough to do so. I doubt she would stop at much, my mother. Of the two, I think I like my father better—he knew not what evil he had wrought when he got me, I think.”

“Morgaine knew not that, either,” said Morgause sharply.

“Oh, I am weary of Morgaine  ...  even Niniane has fallen under her spell,” said Gwydion sharply. “Do not you begin to defend her to me, Mother.”

Morgause thought, Viviane was even so, she could charm any man alive to do her will, and any woman either  ...  Igraine went pliant at her bidding to wed with Gorlois and later to seduce Uther  ...  and I to Lot’s bed  ...  and now Niniane has done what Morgaine wished. And this foster-son of hers had, she suspected, something of that power, too. She recalled, suddenly and with unexpected pain, Morgaine with her head bent, having her hair combed like a child, on the night she bore Gwydion; Morgaine, who had been to her as the daughter she never bore, and now she was torn between Morgaine and Morgaine’s son, who was even dearer to her than her own sons. “Do you hate her so, Gwydion?”

“I know not how I feel,” said Gwydion, looking up at her with Lancelet’s dark mournful eyes. “It seems not to run with the vows of Avalon that I should so hate the mother who bore me and the father who got me. ... I would that I had been reared at court as my father’s son and his sworn follower, not his bitterest enemy ...  .”

He laid his head down on his arms and said through them, “I am weary, Mother. I am weary and sick of fighting, and I know Arthur is so, too ... he has brought peace in these isles—from Cornwall to Lothian. I do not like to think that this great king, this great man, is my enemy and that for the sake of Avalon I must bring him down to nothing, to death or dishonor. I would rather love him, as all men do. I would like to look on my mother—not you, Mother, but lady Morgaine—I would like to look on her who bore me as my mother, not as the great priestess whom I am sworn to obey whatever she bids me. I would that she were my mother, not the Goddess. I wish that when Niniane lay in my arms she were no more than my own dear love, whom I love because she has your sweet face and your lovely voice. ... I am so weary of gods and goddesses ... I would that I had been your son and Lot’s and no more than this, I am so weary of my fate ...  .” And he lay for a long moment quiet, his face hidden, his shoulders shaking. Tentatively, Morgause stroked his hair. At last he raised his head and said, with a bitter grin that defied her to make anything of his moment of weakness, “I will have now another cup of that strong spirit they brew in these hills, without the water and honey this time  ... ” and when it was brought, he drained it, without even looking on the steaming porridge and bannock the girl had brought. “What was it said in those old books of Lot’s, when the house priest beat Gareth and me until our backsides were bloody, trying to teach us the Roman tongue? Who was yonder old Roman who said, ‘Call no man happy until he is dead’? My task, then, is to bring that greatest of all happinesses to my father, and why should I then rebel against that fate?” He signalled for another drink; when Morgause hesitated, he seized the flask and poured the cup full again.

“You will be drunk, my dear son. Eat your supper first, will you not?”

“So I will be drunk,” said Gwydion bitterly. “So let it be. I drink to death and to dishonor... Arthur’s and mine!” Again he drained the drinking horn and flung it into a corner, where it struck with a metallic sound. “So let it be as the fates have ordained—the King Stag shall rule in the forest until the day the Lady has ordained .. .for all the beasts were born and joined with others of their kind and lived and worked the will of the forces of life and at last gave up their spirits into the keeping of the Lady again. ...” He spoke the words with a strange, harsh emphasis, and Morgause, untrained in Druid lore, knew that the words were those of ritual, and shivered as he spoke them.

He drew a deep breath. Then he said, “But for tonight I shall sleep in my mother’s house and forget Avalon, and kings, and stags, and fates. Shall I not? Shall I not?” and, as the strong drink at last overpowered him, he fell forward into her arms. She held him there, stroking his fine dark hair, so much like Morgaine’s own, as he slept with his head on her breast. But even in his dreams he twitched and moaned and muttered as if his dreams were evil, and Morgause knew it was not only the pain of his unhealed wound.