10

Gwenhwyfar watching the preparations in the hall, hearing Bishop Patricius’ soft voice saying, No man may come to the Father Except he call upon my name, looked on the cup with mixed emotions. Half of her said, This beautiful thing should be dedicated, as Patricius wishes, to the service of Christ; even the Merlin has come at last to the cross.

But the other half of her insisted, quite against her will, No. It would have been better to destroy it, to melt down the gold if need be, and fashion from it another chalice dedicated, from its first making, to the true service of the true God. For this one is of the Goddess, as they call her, and that same Goddess is that great harlot who has from the beginning of time been the enemy of God ...   . Truly the priests say, with woman came evil into this world, and then she was confused, for surely not all that is woman can be evil—even God chose a woman to bear his son, and Christ himself spoke of Heaven to his chosen disciples and their sisters and wives ...   .

One, at least, had forsaken that Goddess. She felt her face soften as she looked on Nimue—Elaine’s daughter, and very like Elaine as a child, but even more beautiful, with something of the smiling gaiety and dancing grace of the younger Lancelet. So fair and sweet was Nimue, she could not believe anything of her was evil, yet this woman had served since childhood in the very house of the Goddess. And now she had repented of that evil service and come to Camelot, begging that no one should know that she had served in Avalon, not even Bishop Patricius. Not even Arthur. It would be hard, Gwenhwyfar thought, to refuse Nimue anything at all; she had willingly pledged herself to keep the young maiden’s secret.

She looked past Nimue to where Patricius was standing, ready to take the cup with his hands. And then   ...

... and then it seemed to Gwenhwyfar that a great angel, wings falling away in shadow behind the shining form, raised between its hands a cup that glowed like a great shining star. It was crimson like a beating heart, a glowing ruby   ...   no, but it was the very blue of the deepest heaven, and there was a scent like all the roses of every garden she had ever entered in all her life. And a great clean-scented wind seemed suddenly to blow through the hall, and though they were at holy service, Gwenhwyfar suddenly felt that she could rise from her seat and run out of doors on the hills, into the great spaces which belonged to God, under his great wide healing sky. She knew, knew deep within her heart, that she would never again be afraid to leave the prison of chamber and hall; she could walk under the open sky and on the hills without fear, because wherever she might go, God would be with her. She smiled; disbelieving, she heard herself laugh aloud, and the small, once-prisoned thing within her asked angrily, At holy service? but the real Gwenhwyfar said, still laughing, though no one heard, If I may not take delight in God, then what is God to me?

And then, through the sweet scents and joy, the angel was before her and the cup at her lips. Shaking, she drank, lowering her eyes, but then she felt a touch on her head and looked up, and she saw that it was not an angel but a woman veiled in blue, with great sad eyes. There was no sound, but the woman said to her, Before Christ ever was, I am, and it was I who made you as you are. Therefore, my beloved daughter, forget all shame and be joyful because you, too, are of the same nature as myself.

Gwenhwyfar felt that her whole body and heart were made of pure joy. She had not been as happy as this since she was a little child. Even in Lancelet’s arms she had never known this absolute bliss. Ah, could I only have brought this to my lover! She knew that the angel, or whatever Presence had touched her, had moved on, and she was saddened that it had withdrawn, but the joy was still pulsing inside her, and she looked up, with love, as the angel held the burning cup to Lancelet’s lips. Ah, if only she can give you some of this joy, my sorrowing lover!

The fiery flames and the rushing wind filled the hall and were silenced. Gwenhwyfar ate and drank, although she never knew what it was, only that it was sweet and savorous; and she gave herself up to the delight of it. Surely whatever has come among us today, it is holy ...   .

Silence fell on the hall; it seemed bare and empty in the pale noonday, and Gawaine had risen, crying out. And after him Galahad.

“I swear that I shall spend all my life, if need be, till I see the Grail clear before me ...   .”

Bishop Patricius looked faint, and she remembered that he was old; and the altar where the cup had lain was empty. She rose swiftly from her place and went to him.

“Father—“ she said, and held a cup of wine to his lips. He sipped, and as the color began to come back into his lined face, he whispered, “Surely something holy has come among us. ... I was fed truly at the Lord’s Table by the very cup from which he drank on that last holy night before he went to his Passion ...   .”

Gwenhwyfar was beginning to know what had happened—whatever had come to them that day by God’s will was a vision. The bishop whispered, “Did you see, my queen, the very cup of Christ   ... ”

She said gently, “Alas no, dear Father, perhaps I was not worthy for that, but I saw an angel, I think, and I thought for a moment it was God’s Holy Mother who stood before me ...   .”

“God has given us each a vision,” said Patricius. “How I have prayed that something might come among us, to inspire all these men with the love of the true vision of Christ ...   .”

Gwenhwyfar thought of the ancient proverb, Have a care what you pray for, it might be given you. Surely something had inspired these men. One after another they were rising, pledging to spend a year and a day searching, and she thought, All of the Round Table now is scattering to the four winds.

She looked at the altar where the chalice had lain. No, she thought, Bishop Patricius and Kevin the Merlin, you were wrong as Arthur was wrong. You cannot call down God to serve your own purposes this way. God blows through human purposes like a mighty wind, like the rush of angel’s wings which I heard in this hall this day, and tears them asunder ...   .

And then she wondered, What is wrong with me, that I am thinking to criticize Arthur or even the bishop for what they did? Yet then, with new strength, she thought, By God, yes! They are not God, they are only men, and their purposes are not sacred! She looked at Arthur, walking now among the peasants and subjects at the far end of the hall   ...   down there something had happened, some peasant had fallen down dead, perhaps overfilled with the joy of the Holy Presence. He came walking back, looking sorrowful.

“Gawaine, must you go—Galahad—? Not you too, my son? Bors, Lionel—what, all of you?”

“My lord Arthur,” called out Mordred. He wore, as always, the crimson which suited him so well and which exaggerated, almost to the point of caricature, his likeness to the young Lancelet.

Arthur’s voice was gentle, “What is it, my dear boy?”

“My king, I ask your permission not to go on this quest,” he said. “Though it may be laid on all your knights, someone must remain at your side.”

Gwenhwyfar felt an overflowing tenderness for the young man. Ah, this is Arthur’s true son, not Galahad, all dreams and visions! Had there ever been a time when she had disliked and distrusted Mordred? She said, heartfelt, “May God bless you, Mordred,” and the young man smiled at her. Arthur bowed his head and said, “Be it so, my son.”

It was the first time Arthur had called him so before other men; Gwenhwyfar gauged his disturbance by that. “God help us both, Gwydion —Mordred, I should say—with so many of my Companions scattered to the four corners of the world, and God alone can say whether or no they will ever return ...   .” He reached out and clasped Mordred’s hands, and for a moment it seemed to Gwenhwyfar that he leaned on his son’s strong arm.

Lancelet came to her side and bowed. “Lady, may I take my leave of you?”

It seemed to Gwenhwyfar that tears were as near the surface as joy. “Ah, love, must you go on this quest?” and cared not who heard her speak the words. Arthur too looked troubled, holding out his hand to his cousin and friend. “Will you leave us, Lancelet?”

He nodded; there was something rapt, otherworldly, shining in his face. So it had come to him, too, that great joy? But why, then, did he need to go forth to seek it? Surely it was within him as well?

“All these years, my love,” she said, “have you told me that you are none so good a Christian as all that. Why then must you run away from me on this quest?”

She saw him struggling for words, and at last he said, “All those years, I knew not whether God was nothing but an old tale told by the priests to frighten us. Now I have seen—“ He wet his lips again with his tongue, trying to find words for something beyond them. “I have seen   ...   something. If a vision such as this can be shown, whether of Christ or of the Devil—“

“Surely,” interrupted Gwenhwyfar, “surely it came of God, Lancelet—“

“So you say, for you have seen, you know,” he said, holding her hand against his heart. “I am not sure—methinks my mother mocked at me, or all Gods are one as Taliesin used to say—I am torn now between the darkness of never knowing, and the light beyond despair, which tells me – “ And again he fumbled for words. “It was as if a great bell called to me, far away, a light like to the faraway lights in the marsh, saying, Follow   ...   and I know that the truth, the real truth, is there, there, just beyond my grasp, if I can only follow it and find it there and tear away that veil which shrouds it ... it is there if only I can reach it, my Gwenhwyfar. Would you deny me the search, now that I know there is truly something worth the finding?”

It seemed as if they were alone in a room, not in the court before all men. She knew she could prevail on him in all else, but who can come between a man and his soul? God had not seen fit to give him this sureness and joy, and she did not wonder that he must now go seeking for it, for if she had sensed it was there, yet without the surety, she too would have spent the rest of her life in that seeking. She reached both hands to him, and said, feeling as though she embraced him before all men in the clear light of day, “Go then, my beloved, and God reward your search with the truth you seek.”

And he said, “God remain with you always, my queen, and may he grant that someday I return to you.”

Then he turned to Arthur, but Gwenhwyfar did not hear what they said, only that he embraced Arthur as he had done when they were all young and innocent.

Arthur stood, his hand on Gwenhwyfar’s shoulder, watching him go. “I think sometimes,” he said softly, “that Lance is the best of us,” and she turned to him, her heart overflowing with love for this good man who was her husband, and said, “I think so too, my dearest love.”

He said, surprising her, “I love you both, Gwen. Never think, never, that you are less to me than anything on earth. I am almost glad you have never borne me a son,” he added, almost in a whisper, “for then you might think I loved you only for that, and now I can say to you, I love you beyond all else save only my duty to this land whereof God has given me the stewardship, and you cannot be jealous of that. ...”

“No,” she said softly. And then, for once meaning it absolutely, without reservation, she said, “And I love you too, Arthur, never doubt that.”

“I have never for a moment doubted that, my own dear love.” And he raised both her hands to his lips and kissed them, and Gwenhwyfar was filled again with that great and overflowing joy. What woman alive has had so much of life, that the two greatest men within the borders of this world have loved me?

All around them, the noises of the court were rising again, demanding notice for the things of everyday life. Everyone, it seemed, had seen something different—an angel; a maiden bearing the Grail; some, like herself, had seemed to see the Holy Mother; and many, many others had seen nothing, nothing but a light too bright to bear, and had been filled with peace and joy, and been fed with such meats and drinks as they liked best.

Now a rumor was going about that, by the favor of Christ, what they had seen was the very Grail from which Christ had drunk at the Last Supper among his disciples, where he broke the bread and shared the wine as if it were body and blood of the ancient sacrifice. Had Bishop Patricius chosen his moment to spread that tale, while they were all confused and no man knew precisely what he had actually seen?

There was a tale Morgaine had told her, Gwenhwyfar remembered, crossing herself: Jesus of Nazareth, they said in Avalon, had come here in youth to be educated among the wise Druids in Glastonbury, and after his death, his foster-father, Joseph of Arimathea, had come here and struck his staff into the ground where it had blossomed into the Holy Thorn. Did it not then seem reasonable that this same Joseph had brought hither the cup of the sacrifice? Surely, whatever passed, it was holy   ...   surely this was a holy thing, since, if it had not come of God, it could not be anything but a most evil enchantment, and how could such beauty, such joy, be evil?

Yet whatever the bishop said, it had been an evil gift, Gwenhwyfar thought, shaking. One by one, the Companions had arisen and ridden forth on their quest, and now she looked on a hall which was all but empty. They were gone, all the Companions save for Mordred, who had vowed to remain, and Cai, who was too old and lame to ride forth. Arthur turned away from Cai—she knew he must be comforting Cai for not riding on this quest with the others—and he said, “Ah, I too should have ridden forth with them, but I could not. I would not shatter their dream.”

She came and herself poured him some wine, and she wished suddenly that they were within their own rooms, not here where they were left alone in the hall of the Round Table. “Arthur, you planned what happened—you told me that something amazing was being planned for Easter—“

“Yes,” he said, leaning back wearily in his chair, “but I swear to you that I knew not what was planned by Bishop Patricius or by the Merlin. I knew that Kevin had brought here the Holy Regalia from Avalon.” He laid a hand on his sword. “I was given the sword at my crowning, and now it has been given to the service of this kingdom and of Christ. It seemed to me, as the Merlin said, that the holiest of Mysteries of the ancient world should be put to the service of God, since all the Gods are one, as Taliesin always told us. In the old days the Druids called their God by other names, but these things belonged to God and should be given to him. Yet I know not what happened in the hall this day.”

“You know not? You? Does it not seem to you that we beheld a true miracle, that God himself came before us to show that the Holy Grail should be reclaimed for his service?”

“At times, I think so,” said Arthur, slowly, “and then I wonder ... was it not the magic of the Merlin which enchanted us, so that we should see a vision and think thus? For now are my Companions gone forth from me, and who knows whether they shall ever return?” He raised his face to her; she noticed, as from very far away, that his eyebrows were all white now, and that his fair hair was liberally silvered.

He said, “Knew you not that Morgaine was here?”

“Morgaine?” Gwenhwyfar shook her head. “No, I knew it not   ...   why came she not to greet us?”

He smiled, “You ask that? She left our court under my great displeasure.” His lips tightened and again his hand sought the hilt of Excalibur, as if to reassure himself that still it lay at his side. It hung now in a leather scabbard, a coarse and ugly thing; she had never dared to ask him what had become of the one Morgaine had made for him so many years ago, but now she guessed that was behind their quarrel.

“You knew it not—that she had rebelled against me. She would have put her paramour Accolon on the throne in my place   ... ”

Gwenhwyfar had thought she would never again feel wrath at any living creature after the day’s joyous vision; even now, what she mostly felt was pity for Morgaine, and pity too for Arthur, knowing how he had loved and trusted the sister who had betrayed him. “Why did you not tell me that? I never trusted her.”

“That is why,” said Arthur, pressing her hand. “I thought I could not bear it, to hear you say how you trusted her never, and how you had often warned me against her. But Morgaine was here this day, in the guise of an old peasant woman. She looked old, Gwenhwyfar, old and harmless and sick. I think that she had come in disguise for another look, perhaps, at that place where once she had held high state, and perhaps for another glimpse of her son ...   . She looked older than our mother looked when she died   ... ” and he was silent, reckoning for a moment on his fingers, and saying at last, “Why, and so she is, as I am older than my father ever was, my Gwenhwyfar. ... I think not that Morgaine came to do mischief, and if she did, why, for sure it was prevented by the holy vision .. .” and he was silent. Gwenhwyfar knew, with her sure instinct, that he did not want to say aloud that he loved Morgaine still and that he missed her.

As the years pass there are so many things I cannot say to Arthur, or he to me   ...   but at least we both spoke today of Lancelet and of the love that was among us all. And it seemed to her for the moment that this love was the greatest truth in her life, and that love could never be weighed out or measured, so much for this one and so much for that, but was an endless and eternal flow, that the more she loved, the more love she had to give, as she gave it now to everyone, as it had been given her by her vision.

Even toward the Merlin, today, she felt that flow of warmth and tenderness. “Look how Kevin struggles with his harp. Shall I send someone to help him, Arthur?”

Arthur smiled and said, “He needs it not, for Nimue is ministering to him, see?”

And again she felt the flood of love, this time for Lancelet’s daughter and Elaine’s—child to two of those she had loved best. Nimue’s hand under the Merlin’s arm   ...   like the old tale of the maiden who fell in love with a wild beast from the depths of the forest! Ah, but today she even felt love for the Merlin too, and was glad that he had Nimue’s strong young hands to help him.

AND AS THE DAYS passed in the near-empty court at Camelot, Nimue came to seem more and more like the daughter she had never had. The girl listened with attentive courtesy when she spoke, flattered her subtly, was ever quick to wait upon her hand and foot. Only in one thing did Nimue displease Gwenhwyfar—she spent far too much time listening to the Merlin.

“He may now call himself Christian, child,” the Queen warned, “but at heart he is an old pagan, sworn by the barbaric rites of the Druids, which you have renounced   ...   you can see still the serpents he wears on his wrists!”

Nimue stroked her own satiny wrists. “Why, so does Arthur,” she said gently, “and I too might have worn them, cousin, had I not seen the great light. He is a wise man, and there is no man in all Britain who can play more sweetly upon the harp.”

“And there is the bond of Avalon to bind you,” said Gwenhwyfar, a little more sharply than she intended.

“No, no,” said Nimue, “I beg of you, cousin, say this never to him. He did not see my face at Avalon, he knows me not, and I do not wish him to think me an apostate from that faith to this ...   .”

She looked so troubled that Gwenhwyfar said lovingly, “Why, if you wish, I will not tell him. I have not told even Arthur that you came to us from Avalon.”

“And I am so fond of music, and of the harp,” Nimue pleaded. “May I not speak with him?”

Gwenhwyfar smiled indulgently. “Your father, too, was a fine musician—once he said that his mother had set a harp in his hand for a plaything before he was old enough even to hold a toy sword, and taught him to touch the strings. I would like Merlin the better if he stayed with his harp and sought not to be one of Arthur’s councillors.” Then she shuddered and said, “To me the man is a monster!”

Nimue said patiently, “I am sorry to see you so against him, cousin. It is not his doing—I am sure he would rather be as handsome as my father and as strong as Gareth!”

Gwenhwyfar bent her head. “I know it is not charitable of me   ...   but from childhood I have had a revulsion for those who are so misshapen. I am not sure it was not the sight of Kevin which caused me to miscarry when last I had a chance to bear a son. And if God is good, does it not follow that what comes from God must be beautiful and perfect, and what is ugly and misshapen must be the work of the foul fiend?”

“No,” said Nimue, “it seems not at all likely to me. God himself sent trials to the folk in Holy Writ, for he afflicted Job with leprosy and boils, and he caused Jonah to be swallowed up by a great fish. And again and again we are told he made his chosen people to suffer, and even Christ himself suffered. One might say that these people suffer because it is the will of God that they shall suffer more than others. It may be that Kevin suffers this affliction for some great sin he did in some life before this one.”

“Bishop Patricius tells us that is a heathen notion and no Christian should believe that abominable lie—that we are born and reborn again. Or how should we ever go to Heaven?”

Nimue smiled, remembering Morgaine saying to her, Never speak to me again of anything Father Griffin said to you. She thought she would like to say it now to Gwenhwyfar, but she kept her voice gentle.

“Oh no, cousin, for even in Holy Scripture, it is told how men asked of John the Baptizer who he was. Some men said that Jesus Christ was Elijah come again, and he said instead, I tell you that Elijah has come among you already and ye knew him not. And men knew—so it says in Holy Writ— that he spoke of John. And so, if Christ himself believed that men were reborn, how can it be wrong for mankind so to believe?”

Gwenhwyfar wondered how so much knowledge of Scripture had come to Nimue, living upon Avalon. And she remembered that Morgaine, too, had known more, she sometimes thought, of the holy writings than she herself did.

Nimue said, “I think perhaps the priests do not want us to think of other lives because they wish us to be very good in this one. Many priests think there is not much time remaining before the world will end and Christ come again, and so they are afraid that men will wait for another life to be good, and will not have time to attain perfection before Christ comes. If men knew they would be reborn, would they work so hard to be perfect in this life?”

“That seems to me dangerous doctrine,” Gwenhwyfar said, “for if people believed that all men must at last be saved in some life or other, what would keep them from committing sins in this one, in the hope that at last God’s mercy would prevail?”

“I do not think that fear of the priests, or of God’s wrath, or anything else, will ever keep mankind from committing sins,” said Nimue, “but only when they have gained enough wisdom in all their lives that they know that error is useless and evil must be paid for, sooner or later.”

“Oh! Hush, child,” Gwenhwyfar said. “Suppose someone should hear you speaking such heresies! Although it is true,” she said after a moment, “that since that day of Easter, it seems to me that there is infinite mercy in God’s love, and perhaps God does not care so much about sin as some of the priests would have us believe   ...   and now I am talking heresy too, perhaps!”

Nimue only smiled again, thinking to herself, I did not come to court to bring enlightenment to Gwenhwyfar. I have a more perilous mission, and it is not for me to preach to her the truth, that all men, and all women too, must one day come to enlightenment.

“Do you not believe Christ will come again, Nimue?”

No, thought Nimue, I do not, I believe that the great enlightened ones, like Christ, come but once, after many lives spent in attaining wisdom, and then they go forth forever into eternity; but I believe the divine ones will send other great masters to preach the truth to mankind, and that mankind will always receive them with the cross and the fire and the stones.

“What I believe does not matter, cousin, what matters is the truth. Some priests preach that their God is a God of love, and others that he is evil and vengeful. Sometimes I feel that the priests were sent to punish people; since they would not hear Christ’s words of Love, God sent them the priests with their message of hatred and bigotry.” And then she stopped short, for she did not want to anger Gwenhwyfar. But the Queen only said, “Well, Nimue, I have known priests like that.”

“And if some priests are bad men,” said Nimue, “I find it not wholly beyond reason that some Druids might be good ones.”

There must, thought Gwenhwyfar, be some error in that reasoning, but she could not make it out. “Well, my dear, you may be right. But it makes me queasy to see you with the Merlin. Although I know Morgaine thought well of him ... it was rumored here at court, even, that they were lovers. I wondered often how a woman so fastidious as Morgaine could have let him touch her.”

Nimue had not known that and she thrust it away in her mind for reference. Was that how Morgaine had known of his undefended fortresses? She said only, “Of all I learned in Avalon, what most I loved was music, and what I have heard in Holy Writ that pleases me most was the psalmist who told us to praise God with the lute and the harp. And Kevin has promised me that he will help me to find a harp, for I came away without my own. May I send for him here, cousin?”

Gwenhwyfar hesitated, but she could not resist the sweet entreaty in the young girl’s smile and said, “To be sure you may, my dearest child.”

11

After a time, the Merlin came—no, thought Nimue, I must remember; he is no more now than Kevin the Harper, traitor to Avalon—and behind him a servant carrying My Lady. Nimue thought, Now he is a Christian, there is no law that no other may touch his harp; it is simpler than keeping an initiated man about him to bear My Lady when his strength fails.

He walked with two sticks, dragging his tortured body after them. But he smiled at the ladies and said, “You must consider, my queen and my lady Nimue, that somehow my spirit has made to you the courtly bow that my unruly body is no longer able to make.”

Nimue whispered, “I beg you, cousin, ask him to sit—he cannot stand for long.”

Gwenhwyfar waved permission, glad for once of her near sight that meant she need not clearly see the misshapen body. For a moment, Nimue was afraid that Kevin’s man was from Avalon and would recognize and perhaps greet her, but he was only a servant in the dress of the court. How had Morgaine, or old Raven, been able to see so far ahead, to order her as a child into seclusion, so that when she came to womanhood, there would be one fully trained priestess in Avalon whom the Merlin would not know by sight? She understood that she was merely a pawn in the great work of the world, sent forth with no weapons but her beauty and her guarded virginity to work the vengeance of the Goddess on this man who had betrayed them all.

Nimue placed another cushion from her own chair under the Merlin’s arm. His bones seemed to protrude through the skin, and when she barely touched his elbow, it seemed that there was so much heat in the swollen joints that it burned her. And she felt a moment’s pity and rebellion.

Surely the Goddess already works her own vengeance! This man has surely suffered enough! Their Christ suffered a day on the cross; this man has been crucified in his broken body for a lifetime!

Yet others had been burned for their faith and had not broken, nor betrayed the Mysteries. She hardened her heart and said sweetly, “Lord Merlin, will you play your harp for me?”

“For you, my lady,” Kevin said in his rich voice, “I will play what you will, and I could wish I were that ancient bard who could play till the trees danced!”

“Oh no,” said Nimue with mocking laughter. “What would we do if they came dancing in here! Why, we would have earth all over the hall, and all our maids with mops and brooms would not be able to clean it! Leave the trees where they are, I beg you, and sing!”

The Merlin put his hands to the harp and began to play. Nimue sat beside him on the floor, her great eyes looking up, intent, into his face. The Merlin looked down on the maiden just as a great dog might watch its master—with humble devotion and utter preoccupation. Gwenhwyfar took such emotion almost for granted. She herself had been the object of intense devotion so often that she never thought twice about it—it was simply the homage that men paid to beauty. Perhaps, though, she should warn Nimue, lest her head be turned by it. Yet she could not imagine how Nimue could sit so close to his ugliness or look at him so attentively.

There was something about Nimue that puzzled Gwenhwyfar. Somehow, the girl’s concentration was not quite what it seemed. It was not the delight taken by one musician in another’s work, nor was it the artless admiration of a naive maiden for a well-travelled and mature man. No, thought Gwenhwyfar, and it was not a sudden passion, either; that she could have understood and, in a sense, sympathized with—she herself had known that sudden overpowering love which sweeps away all obstacles. It had struck her like lightning and had ruined all her hopes that her marriage with Arthur could be a good and proper one. It had been a curse, yet she had known it was something that came of itself, over which neither she nor Lancelet had any power. She had come to terms with it, and she could have accepted that it had happened to Nimue—even though Kevin the Merlin seemed the most unlikely object for such a passion. But it was not that   ...   she did not know how she knew, but she knew.

Simple lust? It might have been that on Kevin’s part—Nimue was beautiful, and even though the Merlin had been most circumspect, she might have kindled any man; but Gwenhwyfar could not believe that Nimue had been likewise roused by such a one when she had remained courteous but cool and unattainable to all of Gwenhwyfar’s handsomest young knights.

From where she sat at the Merlin’s feet, Nimue sensed that Gwenhwyfar was watching her. But she did not turn her eyes away from Kevin. In a way, she thought, I am enchanting him. Her purpose demanded that she have him completely at her mercy—her slave and her victim. And again she stifled the flash of pity that she felt. This man had done worse than simply revealing the Mysteries or the secret teaching; he had given the holy things themselves into the hands of the Christians, to be profaned. Ruthlessly, Nimue refused to consider her next thought, that the Christians had not intended profanation but hallowing. The Christians knew nothing of the inner truths of the Mysteries. And in any case the Merlin had betrayed a sworn oath.

And the Goddess appeared to prevent that profanation ...   . Nimue had had enough training in the Mysteries to know what she had witnessed; even now a shiver went over her at the thought of what had passed among the Companions on that festival day. She had not wholly understood, but she knew that she had touched the greatest holiness.

And the Merlin would have profaned this. No, he must die like the dog he was.

The harp was silent. Kevin said, “I have a harp for you, lady, if you will accept it. It is one which I fashioned with my own hands when I was a lad on Avalon, and first come there. I have made others, and they are better, but this is a good one and I have carried it long. If you will accept it, it is yours.” Nimue protested that such a gift was all too valuable, but inwardly she was overjoyed. If she should possess something so valuable to him personally, something he had fashioned with his own hands and labor, then would it bind him to her, just as if it were a lock of his own hair or a drop of his blood. There were not many, even in Avalon, who knew that the law of magic went so far, that something which had been so intimately intertwined with the mind and the heart and the passions—and Nimue grasped that music was his deepest passion—retained even more of the soul than hair clipped from the body retained the essence of the body.

She thought with satisfaction, He himself, of his own free will, has put his soul into my hands. When he sent for the harp, she caressed it; small and crudely made as it was, the post had been worn smooth with resting against his body, and his hands had touched the strings with love   ...   even now they lingered on it tenderly.

She touched the strings, testing their music. In truth, the tone of the harp was good; he had somehow managed that perfect curve and structure that made the soundingboard echo the strings with the sweetest tone. And if he had done this as a boy, with those mutilated hands   ...   again Nimue felt the surge of pity and pain, Why did he not keep to his music and meddle not in the high affairs of state?

“You are too kind to me.” She let her voice tremble, hoping he would think it was passion instead of triumph   ...   with this, soon he will be mine, possessed body and soul.

But it was too soon. The great tides of Avalon running in her blood told her that the moon was waxing; such great magic as this could be worked only in moon-dark, the slack time when the Lady sheds none of her light on the world, and her hidden purposes are made known.

She must not let his passion grow beyond bounds, nor her own sympathy with him.

He will desire me at full moon; this bond I am forging is a double-edged sword, a rope with two ends   ...   I will desire him as well, I cannot prevent that. For an enchantment to be total, it must involve both enchanter and enchanted, and she knew, with a spasm of terror, that this spell she was weaving would work on her too, and rebound on her. She could not pretend passion and desire; she must feel them as well. She knew, with a fear that wrung her heart, that even as the Merlin would be helpless in her hands, so it might well be that she would come to be helpless in his. And what of me, O Goddess, Mother   ...   that is all too great a price to pay   ...   let it not come on me, no, no, I am afraid ...   .

“Well, Nimue, my dear,” Gwenhwyfar said, “now that you have the harp in your hands, will you play and sing for me?”

She let her hair curtain her face as she looked timidly at the Merlin and murmured, “Shall I, then?”

“I beg you to play,” he said. “Your voice is sweet and I can hear that your hands will bring enchantment from the strings ...   .”

They will indeed if I am favored of the Goddess. Nimue set her hands to the strings, remembering that she must not play any song of Avalon that he would remember and recognize. She began to play a drinking song she had heard at the court, with words none too proper for a maiden; she saw Gwenhwyfar looking scandalized, and thought, Good, if she is shocked by my unmaidenly behavior, she will not inquire too deeply into my motives. Then she played and sang a lament she had heard from a northern harper, the mournful song of a fisherman out on the sea, looking for the lights of his home on the shore.

At the end of the song she rose, looking shyly at him. “I thank you for the use of your harp—may I borrow it again, that my hands may keep their skill?”

“It is my gift to you,” said Kevin. “Now that I have heard what music your hands can bring from it, it could belong to no other. Keep it, I beg you—I have many harps.”

“You are too kind to me,” she murmured, “but, I beg you, now that I can make music for myself, do not abandon me or deprive me of the pleasure of listening to yours.”

“I will play for you whenever you ask me,” Kevin said, and she knew that his heart was in the words. She contrived to brush against him as she leaned forward to take the harp.

She murmured, softly so Gwenhwyfar would not hear, “Words alone cannot express my gratitude to you. Perhaps a time will come when I can express it more fittingly.”

He looked at her, dazed, and she discovered that she was returning his gaze with the same intensity.

A double-edged spell indeed. I am victim too ...

He went away, and she sat obediently by Gwenhwyfar and tried to turn her attention to her spinning.

“How beautifully you play, Nimue,” said Gwenhwyfar. “I need not ask where you learned ... I heard Morgaine sing that lament once.”

Nimue said, averting her eyes, “Tell me something of Morgaine. She had departed from Avalon before I came there. She was married to a king in—Lothian, was it?”

“In the north of Wales,” Gwenhwyfar began.

Nimue, who knew all this perfectly well, was still not completely false. Morgaine remained a puzzle to her, and she was eager to know how the lady Morgaine had appeared to those who knew her in the world.

“Morgaine was one of my ladies-in-waiting,” Gwenhwyfar was saying. “Arthur gave her to me as such on our wedding day. Of course he had been fostered apart from her and hardly knew her, either ...   .”

As she listened attentively, Nimue, who had been trained to read emotions, realized that beneath Gwenhwyfar’s dislike for Morgaine, there was something else: respect, awe, even a kind of tenderness. If Gwenhwyfar were not so fanatically, mindlessly Christian, she would have loved Morgaine well.

At least while Gwenhwyfar was talking of Morgaine, even though she condemned her as an evil sorceress, she was not mouthing the pious nonsense that bored Nimue almost to weeping. But she could not give Gwenhwyfar’s tales her full attention. She sat in an attitude of passionate interest, she made the proper sounds of attention or astonishment, but within, her mind was in turmoil:

I am afraid; I can come to be the Merlin’s slave and victim as I would have him mine ...   .

Goddess! Great Mother! It is not I who must face him, but you ...   . The moon was waxing; four nights until full, and she could already feel the stirring of that tide of life. She thought of the Merlin’s intent gaze, his magical eyes, the beauty of his voice, and knew that already she was deeply entangled in her own spell weaving. Already she had ceased to feel the slightest revulsion against his twisted body, feeling only the strength and life force flowing within it.

If I give myself to him at full moon, she thought, then will the tides of life within us both be taken at the flood, then will my purposes become his own, then will we blend together as one flesh   ...   she felt an ache and agony of desire, longing to be caressed by those sensitive hands, feel his warm breath against her mouth. Everything in her ached together in hunger which, she knew, was at least partly an echo of his own desire and frustration; the magical link she had created between them meant that she too must be tormented with his torment.

When life runs full at the rounding of the moon, then shall the Goddess receive the body of her lover ...   .

It was not altogether beyond belief. She was the daughter of the Queen’s champion and the King’s closest friend. Kevin, the Merlin, unlike a Christian priest, was not forbidden to marry. The court would be pleased at a marriage so high-placed, even though some of the ladies would be shocked that she could yield up her delicate body to a man they considered a monster. Arthur surely knew that Kevin could not, after what he had done, return to Avalon, but he had a place at court as the King’s councillor. Also, he was a musician of surpassing skill. There would be a place for us, and happiness   ...   when the moon is full, brimming with life, he will plant a child in my womb ... and I will bear it joyfully ... he is not monster born, his deformity is from childhood injuries   ...   his sons would be handsome   ...   and then she stopped herself, disturbed by the power of her own fantasies. No, she must not become so deeply entangled in this spell. She must deny herself, even though the waxing moon made the surging blood in her veins a very agony of frustration. She must wait, wait   ...

As she had waited all those years.... There is a magic that comes with yielding to life. The priestesses of Avalon knew it when they lay in the fields at Beltane, invoking the life of the Goddess in their own bodies and hearts   ...   but there is a deeper magic which comes from guarding the power, damming up the stream. The Christians knew something of this, when they insisted that their holy virgins live in chastity and seclusion, that they might burn with the darker flame of that harnessed force; that their chaste priests might pour all their contained power into their Mysteries, such as they were. Nimue had felt that power in the lightest word or gesture from Raven, who had never wasted words on anything trivial, so that her force, when she spent it, was tremendous. She had wondered often, alone in the temple at Avalon, when she was forbidden to mingle with the other maidens or to go to the rites, when she felt that life force in her veins with such power that she sometimes burst into hysterical crying or tore at her hair and her face ... why had they set her aside for this, why must she bear the terrible weight of all this without relief? But she had trusted the Goddess and obeyed her mentors, and now they had entrusted this great work to her, and she must not fail them through her own weakness.

She was a charged vessel of power, like the Holy Regalia which it was death to touch unprepared, and all this power of her long preparation would be hers to bind the Merlin to her ... but she must wait for the tide to slacken and fill again; at the dark moon she must take the other tide which came of the other side of the moon   ...   not fertile but barren, not of life at all but of dark magic older than human life ...   .

And the Merlin knew these things; he knew of the old curse of the dark moon and the barren womb ... he must be so wholly enspelled by her that he would not even wonder why she had refused him at the spring tide and sought him out at the slack. She had one advantage: he did not know that she knew these things, he had never seen her in Avalon. Yet the bond went between them both ways, and if she could read his thoughts, he might read hers; she must guard herself every moment lest he see within and guess her purposes.

I must so wholly blind him with desire that he will forget ...   forget all he has been taught in Avalon. And at the same time, she must not be overcome by his desire, she must contain her own. It would not be easy.

She began to frame in her mind the next wile she would use on him. Tell me of your childhood, she would say, tell me how you were so hurt. Sympathy would be a powerful bond; she knew just how she would touch him with the very tips of her fingers   ...   and she knew, in despair, that she was seeking out ways to be near him and touch him, not for her work but for her own hunger.

Can I make this spell without bringing myself, too, to ruin?

“YOU WERE not at the Queen’s feast,” murmured the Merlin, looking into Nimue’s eyes, “and I had made a new song for you. ... It was the fulling of the moon, and there is great power in the moon, lady ...   .”

She looked at him, all intent. “Truly? I know so little of these things ... are you a magician, my lord Merlin? I sometimes feel helpless, that you are working your magic on me ...   .”

She had hidden herself at the full moon, sure that if he looked into her eyes at that time he would be able to read her thoughts and perhaps divine her purposes. Now that the strength of that magical tide was past, she could, perhaps, guard herself from him.

“You must sing me your song now.” She sat listening, feeling her whole body quiver as the harp strings quivered under his touch.

I cannot bear it, I cannot ... I must act this time as soon as the moon is dark. Another of these tides, she knew, and she would succumb to the flood tide of hunger and desire she was building between them   ...   and I would never be able to betray him   ...   I would be his forever, for this life and beyond ...   .

She reached out and touched the twisted lumps that were his wrist bones, and the touch thrilled her with longing. She could only imagine from the sudden dilation of his pupils, the swift intake of his breath, what it had done to him.

Betrayal, she thought, under the inexorable laws of fate, betrayal would be punished a thousandfold by the Goddess, in life after life; betrayed and betrayer would be punished and bound together for love and hate for thousands of years. But she did this at the command of the Goddess, she had been sent to punish a traitor for betrayal   ...   would she then be punished in turn? If it were so, then there was no justice even in the realms of the Gods ...   .

Christ said true repentance wipes out all sin ...   .

But fate and the laws of the universe cannot be so easily set aside. The stars in their courses do not stop because someone cries out to them, Stop!

Well, be it so; perhaps she betrayed the Merlin as part of a deed done by one of them before the ancient land beneath the waves had sunk into the sea. It was her fate, and she dared not question. He had stopped playing and closed his hand softly over hers; as if in a daze, she laid her lips to his. Now, now it is too late to turn back.

No. It had been too late to turn back when she had bowed her head and accepted the work Morgaine laid on her. It had been too late to turn back when she swore the oath to Avalon ...   .

“Tell me more of yourself,” she whispered, “I want to know everything about you, my lord ...   .”

“Call me not so. My name is Kevin.”

“Kevin,” she said, and made her voice soft and tender, just brushing her fingers again over his arm.

Day by day she wove her spell, with touches and glances and whispered words, as the moon waned away toward darkness. After that first, swift kiss, she withdrew again, as if he had frightened her. It is true. But it is more that I frightened myself ...   never, never in all the years of seclusion had she suspected herself of being capable of such passion, such hunger; and she knew that her spells were enhancing it in herself as in him. At one point, teased beyond endurance by her whispered touches, the soft brushing of her hair against his face when she bent over him where he sat at his harp, he turned and seized her and crushed her to him, and she struggled in real, not pretended, fright this time.

“No—no, I cannot—you forget yourself—I beg you, let me go—“ she cried out, and when he only clasped her closer, burying his face in her bosom and covering her breasts with kisses, she began to cry softly. “No, no, I am afraid, I am afraid—“

He let her go then and drew away, almost in a daze. His breath was hoarse and hard. He sat with his eyes closed, his twisted hands hanging limp. After a moment he murmured, “My beloved, my precious white bird, my own sweetheart—forgive me—forgive me—“

Nimue realized that now she could use even her own very real fear for her own ends. She said, whimpering, “I trusted you. I trusted you—“

“You should not,” he said hoarsely. “I am no more than a man, and certainly not less than one ...” and she cringed at the bitterness as he added, “I am a man of flesh and blood, and I love you, Nimue, and you play with me as if I were a lapdog and expect me to be tame as a gelded pony ... do you think because I am a cripple I am less than a man?”

In his mind Nimue could see, clear and mirrored, memory of a time when he had said this to the first woman who had ever come to him, and saw Morgaine reflected in his eyes and his mind, not the Morgaine she knew but a dark, bewitching woman, soft of voice, yet somehow terrible too, worshipped and also feared because through the daze of passion he could remember that suddenly the lightning would strike ...   .

Nimue reached her hands to him and knew they were trembling and that he would never know why. She guarded her thoughts carefully and said, “I never thought that. Forgive me, Kevin. I—I could not help myself—“

And it is all true. Goddess, it is all true. But not as he believes. What I say is not what he hears.

And yet for all her pity and desire there was a thread of contempt too. Otherwise I could not bear it, to do what I do ... but a man so nakedly at the mercy of desire is contemptible ...   . I too tremble, I am torn   ...   but I will not be at the mercy of my body’s hunger ...   .

And that was why Morgaine had given her the key to this man, put him wholly into her hands. Now was the time to speak the words that would consolidate the spell, make him hers, body and soul, so that she might bring him to Avalon and the appointed doom.

Pretend! Pretend to be one of those feckless virgins Gwenhwyfar has about her, with their minds between their legs!

She said, faltering, “I am sorry—I know you are indeed a man—I am sorry I was afraid—“ and she raised her eyes to his, a gaze aslant through her long hair, afraid that if he could look deep into her eyes she would blurt out all her duplicity. “I ... I—yes, I wanted you to kiss me, but then you were so fierce, and I was frightened. This is neither the time nor the place, someone might come suddenly upon us, and then the Queen would be angry, and I am one of her maidens, and she has warned us that we must not run about with men   ... ”

Is he fool enough to believe me when I speak such simpering nonsense?

“My poor darling!” Kevin covered her hands with contrite kisses. “Ah, I am a beast to frighten you, I love you so ... I love you so much that I cannot bear it! Nimue, Nimue, are you so afraid of the Queen’s anger? I cannot—“ He stopped and breathed again, hard. “I cannot live like this—would you have it that I should be gone from this court? Never, never have I—“ he stopped again and then, holding her hands between his, he said, “I cannot live without you. I must have you or die. Will you not have some pity on me, beloved?”

She lowered her eyes, with a long sigh, watching his contorted face, his dazed breathing. At last she whispered, “What can I say to you?”

“Say that you love me!”

“I love you.” She knew that she sounded like a woman under a spell. “You know that I do.”

“Say that you will give me all your love, say that—ah, Nimue, Nimue, you are so young and beautiful, and I am so twisted and ugly, I cannot believe you care for me, even now I think I am dreaming, that you have for some reason roused me like this that you might make fun of the beast grovelling at your feet like a dog ...   .”

“No,” she said, and swiftly, as if she were afraid of her own daring, bent quickly down and laid the lightest of kisses against his eyes, two darting swallows that came and went.

“Nimue, will you come to my bed?”

She whispered, “I am frightened .. . we might be seen, and I dare not be so wanton—we might be discovered.” She arranged her lips into a childish pout. “If we were caught, then the men would think you only all the more manly for it, and none would chide or shame you, but I, I am a maiden and they would point to me as a harlot or worse   ... ” and she let tears slide down her cheek, but inward she was all triumph. I have him now safe within my net ...   .

“I would do anything, anything to protect you, to reassure you   ... ” Kevin said, his voice trembling with sincerity.

“I know men like to boast of their conquest of maidens,” she said. “How do I know you will not brag of it throughout Camelot, that you have the favor of the Queen’s kinswoman and have taken her maidenhood?”

“Trust me, I beg you, trust me—what can I do? What proof can I give you of my sincerity? You know that I am yours, body and heart and soul—“

And for a moment she was angry, I do not want your damned soul, she thought, close to weeping with tension and fear. He held her between his hands and whispered, “How? When will you be mine? What can I do to prove that I love you beyond all things?”

She said, hesitating, “I cannot take you to my bed. I sleep in a room with four of the Queen’s ladies, and any man who came there would be seized by the guards—“

He said, bending again to cover her hands with kisses, “My poor little love, I would never bring shame on you. I have a place of my own—a little chamber fit for a dog, mostly because none other of the King’s men wishes to share quarters with me. I do not know if you would dare to come there.”

“Surely there must be some better way   ... ” she whispered, keeping her voice soft and tender. Damn you, how can I suggest it without dropping this pretense of maidenly innocence and stupidity   ...   ? “I cannot think of anywhere within the castle where we could be truly safe, and yet—“ She stood and pressed herself against him, where he sat, her breasts just nudging his brow.

He flung his arms around her and buried his face in her body, his shoulders shaking. Then he said, “At this season—it is warm and fair and there is little rain. Would you dare to come out of doors with me, Nimue?”

She murmured as artlessly as she could, “I would dare anything to be with you, my love.”

“Then—tonight   ...   ?”

“Oh,” she whispered, shrinking, “the moonlight is so bright, we should be seen   ...   wait a few days, then there will be no moon ...   .”

“When the moon is dark—“ Kevin flinched, and she knew that here was the moment of danger, the moment when the carefully played fish might slip off the hook and out of the net and be free. In Avalon the priestesses secluded themselves at moon-dark, and all magic was suspended   ...   but he knew not that she was of Avalon.

Would his fear or his desire win out? She was motionless, just fluttering her fingers within his. He said, “That is an uncanny time—“

“But I am afraid to be seen ...   . You do not know how angry the Queen would be with me, if she knew I was such a wanton as to desire you   ... ” she said, holding herself a little closer to him. “Surely you and I do not need a moon to see one another ...   .”

He held her tight, his face buried in her breasts, covering them with hungry kisses. And then he whispered, “My little love, let it be as you will, be the moon light or dark   ... ”

“And you will take me away from Camelot afterward? I do not want to be shamed   ... ”

“Anywhere,” he said, “I swear it ... I will swear it by your God, if you will.”

She murmured, bending her head close to him, her hands moving through the sweet clean curliness of his hair, “The Christian God does not like lovers, and hates it when women lie with men   ...   swear it by your God, Kevin, swear it by the serpents around your wrists ...   .”

He whispered, “I swear,” and the meaning of the oath seemed to ripple the air around them both.

Oh, fool, you have sworn to your death ...   . Nimue shivered, but Kevin, his face still hidden against her breasts, his hot breath damping her gown, was oblivious to anything except her breasts under his lips. As a promised lover he took the privilege of touching, kissing, drawing her gown aside a little to cup them in his hands. “I do not know how I can bear to wait.” And she murmured, “No, nor I,” and meant it with all her heart, I would that this was done ...   .

The moon would not be visible, but the moon tide would turn exactly two hours after sunset, three days from now; she could feel its ebbing like a great sickness in her blood, withdrawing life from her veins. Most of those three days she spent in her chambers, telling the Queen that she was ill, and it was not far from the truth. Much of her time alone she spent with her hands on Kevin’s harp, meditating, filling the ether around her with the magical bond between them.

An ill-omened time, and Kevin knew it, as she did; but he was too blinded by the promise of her love to care.

The day dawned when the moon would darken; Nimue felt it through her body. She had made herself an herbal brew which would keep the moon-dark bleeding from coming on—she did not want to disgust him with the sight of her blood, nor frighten him to recalling the taboos of Avalon. She had to turn her mind away from the physical realities of the act; for all her training, she knew that in truth she was the nervous virgin she pretended to be. Well, so much the better, she need not try to pretend. She could simply be what she was—a girl giving herself for the first time to a man she loved and desired. And what would come after that, well, it was as the Goddess had bidden her.

She hardly knew how to make the day pass. Never had the chatter of Gwenhwyfar’s ladies seemed so meaningless, so vapid. In the afternoon she could not turn her mind to spinning, so she brought the harp Kevin had given her and played and sang for them; but it was not easy, she must avoid all the songs of Avalon, and they were the ones which she found floating in her mind. But even the longest day wears to sunset. She washed herself and scented her body, and sat near Gwenhwyfar in the hall, merely picking at her food, sick and faint, disgusted by the grossness of the table manners, the dogs under the table. She could see Kevin seated among the King’s councillors, near the house priest who confessed some of the ladies. He had been bothering her, asking why she did not seek spiritual advice, and when she said she was in no need of it, frowning as if she were the worst of sinners. Kevin. She could almost feel his hungry hands on her breast, and it seemed as if the look he sent toward her must be audible. Tonight. Tonight, my beloved. Tonight. Ah, Goddess, how can I do this to this man who loves me, who has put his whole soul into my hands. ... 7 have sworn. I must keep my oath or be as much a traitor as he.

They met for a moment in the lower hall as the Queen’s ladies went away to their chambers. He said, swiftly and very low, “I have concealed your horse and mine in the woods beyond the gate. Afterward”—and his voice shook—“afterward I will take you away wherever you will, lady.”

You do not know whither I shall lead you. But it was too late to turn back. She said, through tears she could not control, “Ah, Kevin, I—I love you—“ and knew it was true. She had wound herself so deep in his heart that she did not know, she could not even imagine, how she could bear to be apart from him. It seemed to her that the whole air of the night was alive with magic, that somehow others must see this great trembling in the air and the darkness hovering over her.

She must let them think she had gone abroad on some likely errand. She told the ladies who shared her chamber that she had promised one of the chamberlain’s wives to try a remedy for the toothache, and that she would not be back for many hours. Then, taking her darkest, heavy cloak and tying the small sickle of her initiation about her waist beneath her gown, she slipped out. After a moment she turned into a dark corner and removed the little sickle, slipping it into a tied pocket at her waist—whatever befell, Kevin must not see it.

His heart would break if I failed to keep this tryst, she thought; he did not know how fortunate he would be. ...

Darkness. Not even shadows in the moonless courtyard. She found herself trembling, picking her steps carefully by the dimmest of starlight. After a little there was a deeper darkness and she heard his voice, a muted hoarse mutter: “Nimue?”

“It is I, my beloved.”

Which is the greater falsity, to break my oath to Avalon, or to lie to Kevin thus? Both are false   ...   is a lie ever right?

He took her arm and the touch of his hot hand made her own blood heat. They were both deeply entangled now in the magic of the hour. He led her outside the gate, down the steep slope that raised the ancient fort of Camelot above the surrounding hills. In winter this ran a river and swampy; now it was dry, thick with the rank growth of the damp lands. He led her into a grove of trees.

Ah Goddess, I always knew that on this day when I laid down my virginity, that it would be within a grove   ...   but I did not know it would be with all the sorcery of the dark moon ...   .

He took her close and kissed her. His whole body seemed to be burning. He spread their cloaks together on the grass, and drew her down, his twisted hands shaking so hard on the fastenings of her dress that she had to take and loosen them herself. He said with a shred of his natural voice, “I am glad it is dark   ...   that my misshapen body will not terrify you ...   .”

“Nothing about you could frighten me, my love,” she whispered and reached out her hands for him. At the moment she meant it utterly, rapt in her own spell which had caught her too, knowing that this man, body and heart and soul, was in her hands. Yet, for all her magic, she was inexperienced, and she shrank away with real fear from the touch of his hardening manhood. He kissed and soothed and caressed her, and she felt the burning of the slack tide, the thick darkening of the hour of sorcery. At the very moment when it peaked she pulled him down to her, knowing that if she delayed until the new moon showed in the sky, she would lose much of her power.

He murmured, feeling her trembling, “Nimue, Nimue—my little love —you are a maiden—if you will, we can—pleasure one another and I need not take your virginity ...   .”

Something in that made her want to weep—that he, maddened by his desire, this heavy thing that twisted between them, could still so consider her   ...   but she cried out, “No! No! I want you,” and pulled him down fiercely to her, taking her hands and guiding him into her, almost welcoming the sudden pain; the pain, the sudden blood, the peaking of his frenzied desire, woke a like frenzy in her, and she clung to him, gasping, encouraging him with her fierce cries. And then at the very last moment she held him away, while he gasped and pleaded, and she whispered—“On your oath! You are mine?”

“I swear it! Ah, I cannot bear—I cannot—let me—“ “Wait! You swear it! You are mine! Say it!”

“I swear, I swear by my soul—“

“Yet a third time—you are mine—“

“I am yours! I swear!” And she felt his sudden spasm of fear, knowing what had happened, but now he was in the grip of his own frenzy, moving on her as if despairing, heaving and gasping, crying out as if in unendurable agony, and she felt the magical spell descending on her at the very moment of slack tide, as he cried out and fell heavily on her unresisting body, and she felt the spurting of his seed within her. He was still as death, and she trembled, feeling her breath charged as if with exhaustion. There was none of the pleasure she had heard spoken of, but there was something greater than pleasure—a vast triumph. For the spell was heavy around them both, and she had his spirit and soul and essence. She felt with her hands his sperm that had mingled with the blood of her virginity at the very moment of the moon’s turning. She took it on her fingers and marked his brow, and at the touch the spell came on him and he sat up, slack and lifeless.

“Kevin,” she said. “Get to your horse and ride.”

He rose, his movements leaden. He turned toward the horse and she knew that with this spell she must be precise.

“Garb yourself first,” she said, and mechanically he drew on his robe, tying it about his waist. He moved stiffly, and by starlight she saw the gleam of his eyes; he knew, now, behind the domination of the spell, that she had betrayed him. Her throat tightened with agony and a wild tenderness, she wanted to pull him down again and take away the spell and cover his broken face with kisses, and weep and weep for the betrayal of their love.

But I too am sworn and it is fate.

She covered herself with her robe and took her horse and they rode silently away, taking the road to Avalon. At dawn Morgaine would have the boat waiting for them on the shore.

SOME HOURS BEFORE DAWN, Morgaine waked from restless sleep, sensing that Nimue’s work was done. Silently she robed herself, wakening Niniane and the attendant priestesses, who came slowly in her train down to the shore, wrapped in their dark robes and spotted deerskin tunics, hair braided in the single braid down their backs, and the black-handled sickle knives tied at their waists. They waited, silent, Niniane and Morgaine at their head, and as the sky began to flush pale pink with the first light, she motioned to the barge to cast off and watched it disappear in the mists.

They waited. The light strengthened, and just as the sun was rising, the boat appeared out of the mists again. Morgaine could see Nimue standing in the prow of the boat, her cloak pulled over her head, tall and straight; but her face was hidden in the darkness of the cloak. There was a slumped heap in the bottom of the boat.

What has she done to him? Is he dead or enspelled? Morgaine found herself wishing that indeed he was dead, that he had taken his life in despair or terror. Twice she had raged at this man and called him traitor to Avalon, and the third time he had truly been traitor beyond question, taking the Holy Regalia forth from their hiding place. Oh, yes, he deserved death, even such a death as he should this morning die. She had spoken with the Druids, and they had agreed, one and all, that he should die in the oak grove, and that he should not die the swift death of mercy. Treachery of this sort had not been known in all of Britain since the days of Eilan, who had secretly married a son of the Roman proconsul and put forth pretended oracles to keep the Tribes from rising against the Romans. Eilan had died in the fire, and three of her priestesses with her and Kevin’s deed was not treachery alone, but blasphemy, as when Eilan had meddled with the voice of the Goddess. And it must be punished.

Two of the barge crew helped the Merlin to his feet. He was half-clad, his robe loosely tied around him, barely concealing his nakedness. His hair was disheveled, his face blank   ...   drugged or enchanted? He tried to walk, but without his sticks he reeled and caught for balance at the nearest support. Nimue stood frozen, not looking at him, her face still hidden in her cloak; but as the first rays of the sun arose, she put back the hood, and at that moment, touched by the first sunlight, the enchantment slid off Kevin’s face, and Morgaine saw startled comprehension come into his eyes; he knew where he was and what had happened.

Morgaine saw him look at Nimue, blinking at the sight of the Avalon barge. And then all at once the whole knowledge of his betrayal came over his face, and he lowered his head in shock and shame.

So now he knows not only what it is to betray but to be betrayed.

But then she looked at Nimue. The girl was pale, her face bloodless, her long hair in disarray, though she had hastily tried to braid it. Nimue was looking at Kevin, and her lips trembled as she hastily turned her eyes away again.

She loved him, too; the spell rebounded on her. I should have known, Morgaine thought, that so powerful a spell would have rebounded on its maker.

But Nimue bowed low as Avalon custom demanded.

“Lady and Mother,” she said, her voice toneless, “I have brought you the traitor who betrayed the Holy Regalia.”

Morgaine stepped forward and embraced the girl, who shrank from the embrace. She said, “Welcome back to us, Nimue, priestess, sister,” and kissed the girl on her wet cheek. She could feel Nimue’s misery through her whole body. Ah, Goddess, has this destroyed her too? If so, we have bought Kevin’s life at too dear a price.

“Go now, Nimue,” she added in compassion. “Let them take you back to the House of Maidens—your work is done. You need not witness what must come after this, you have done your part and you have suffered enough.”

Nimue whispered, “What will become of—of him?”

Morgaine held her tight. “Child, child, that need concern you not. You have done your part with strength and courage, it is enough.”

Nimue caught her breath as if she would weep, but she did not. She looked at Kevin, but he did not meet her eyes, and at last, shivering so hard she could hardly walk, she let two of the priestesses lead her away. Morgaine said in a low voice to them, “Don’t torment her with questions. Done is done. Let her be.”

When Nimue was gone, Morgaine turned back to Kevin. She met his eyes, and pain struck at her. This man had been her lover, but he had been more; he had been the only man who had never sought to entangle her in any political maneuvers, never sought to use her birth or high position, never asked anything of her save love. He had called her alive out of hell in Tintagel, he had come to her as the God, he had been perhaps her only friend, man or woman, in her entire life.

She forced her words through the tremendous pain in her throat. “Well, Kevin Harper, false Merlin, forsworn Messenger, have you anything to say to her before you meet her judgment?”

Kevin shook his head. “Nothing that you would consider important, Lady of the Lake.” She remembered, through a haze of pain, that he had been the first to yield to her this title.

“Be it so,” she said, and felt her face like stone. “Take him forth to judgment.”

He took a single faltering step between his captors, then turned back and faced her, his head thrown back in defiance. “No, wait,” he said. “I find I have a thing to say to you after all, Morgaine of Avalon. I told you once that my life was a small thing to forfeit for the Goddess, and I want you to know it is for her that I have done this.”

“Are you saying it is for the sake of the Goddess that you betrayed the Holy Regalia into the hands of the priests?” Niniane demanded, and her voice cut with scorn. “Why then, you are mad as well as forsworn! Takethe traitor away!” she commanded, but Morgaine signalled to them to wait.

“Let him be heard.”

“It is even so,” said Kevin. “Lady, I said it once to you before this— the day of Avalon is ended. The Nazarene has conquered, and we must go into the mists further and further until we are no more than a legend and a dream. Would you then take the Holy Regalia with you into that darkness, preserving it carefully against the dawning of a new day that now shall never be? Even if Avalon must perish, I felt it right that the holy things should be sent forth into the world in the service of the Divine, by whatever name God or the Gods may be called. And because of what I have done, the Goddess has manifested herself at least once in the world yonder, in a way that shall never be forgotten. The passing of the Grail shall be remembered, my Morgaine, when you and I are only legends for the fireside and tales for children. I do not think that wasted, nor should you, who bore that chalice as her priestess. Now do with me what you will.”

Morgaine bent her head. The memory of that moment of ecstasy and revelation, when she had borne the Grail in the form of the Goddess, would remain with her until her death; and of those who had experienced the vision, whatever they might have seen, none of their lives would ever be the same. But now she must face Kevin in the person of the avenging Goddess, the Death-crone, the ravening sow who will devour her own young, the Great Raven, the Destroyer ...   .

Yet he had given the Goddess this much. She reached out her hand to him   ...   and stopped, for under her hand again she saw what once before she had seen, a skull beneath her fingers ...   .

  ...   now he is fey, he sees his own death, and I see it too ...   . Yet he shall not suffer nor be tortured. He spoke truth; he has done what the Goddess has given him to do, and now must I do the same ...   . She waited until her voice was steady before she spoke. In the distance she heard a soft thundering.

At last she said, “The Goddess is merciful. Take him to the oak grove, as is ordained, but there slay him swiftly with a single stroke. Bury him beneath the great oak, and let it henceforth be shunned now and forever by all men. Kevin, last of the Messengers of the Goddess, I curse you to forget all, to be reborn without priesthood and without enlightenment, that all you have done in your former lives be wiped away and your soul returned to the once-born. A hundred lifetimes shall you return, Kevin Harper, always seeking the Goddess and never finding her. Yet in the end, Kevin, once Merlin, I say to you—if she wants you, be very sure she will find you again.”

Kevin looked straight at her. He smiled, that curious, sweet smile, and said, almost in a whisper, “Farewell, then, Lady of the Lake. Tell Nimue I loved her ... or it may be that I will tell her myself. For I think it will be a long, long time before you and I shall meet again, Morgaine.” And again soft thunder punctuated his words.

Morgaine shivered as he limped away without looking back, supported on the arms of his captors.

Why do I feel so shamed? I showed mercy; I could have had him tortured. They will call me, too, traitor and weakling, that he was not taken to the oak grove and there made to scream and pray for death till the very trees shrank from the sound ...   . Am I only a weakling, that I would not torture a man I once loved? Is his death to be so easy that the Goddess will then seek vengeance on me? So be it, even if I must meet the death I could not give him.

She flinched, looking into the grey storm clouds in the sky. Kevin has suffered all his life long. I will add nothing more than death to his fate. Lightning flared in the sky, and she thought, with a shiver—or was it only the cold wind that came with the sudden rush of the storm outside?—So passes the last of the great Merlins, into the storm that breaks now over Avalon.

She gestured to Niniane. “Go. See my sentence done to the letter, that they slay him with a single stroke, and leave not his body above ground for a single hour.” She saw the younger woman’s gaze rest on her face; was it known, then, to everyone, that once they had been lovers? But Niniane only asked, “And you?”

“I go now to Nimue. She will need me.”

But Nimue was not in her room in the House of Maidens, nor anywhere in the house, nor, when Morgaine hurried across the rain-swept courts, was she in the secluded house where she had dwelt with Raven. She was not anywhere in the temple, and one of the attendant priestesses told Morgaine that Nimue had refused food or wine or even a bath. Morgaine, terrible apprehension growing in her with every flash of lightning as the storm grew and raged, called for all the servants of the temple to search for her; but before they could Niniane came, her face white, attended by the men she had sent to see Kevin’s death done as Morgaine had decreed.

“What is it?” Morgaine demanded, her voice cold. “Why was my sentence not done?”

“He was slain with a single stroke, Lady of the Lake,” Niniane whispered, “but with the very stroke came lightning from the sky and struck the great oak—cleft it in twain. There is a great rift in the sacred oak, from the sky to the ground ...   .”

Morgaine felt steel clamp around her throat. Nothing so strange, that with the storm should come the lightning flash, and ever the lightning strikes at the highest point. But that it should come in the same hour wherein Kevin prophesied the end of Avalon   ...

She shivered again, wrapping her arms about herself under her cloak so that those who looked on her should not see her trembling. How could she turn this omen, for omen it surely was, aside from the impending destruction of Avalon?

“The God has prepared a place for the traitor. Bury him, then, within the cleft in the oak ...   .”

They bowed acquiescence and went away, through thunder and the sudden rattle of rain, and Morgaine, distraught, realized that she had forgotten Nimue. But a voice within her said, Now it is too late.

They found her at high noon, just as the sun came out after the storm, floating among the reeds of the Lake. Her long hair was spread out on the surface like water weeds, and Morgaine, stunned with grief, could not find it in her heart to regret that Kevin had not gone alone into the shadowed land beyond death.

12

Morgaine thought often, in the bleak days which followed upon Kevin’s death, now indeed the Goddess had taken it upon herself to destroy the Companions of the Round Table. But why had it been her will to destroy Avalon too?

I am growing old. Raven is dead and Nimue is dead, who should have been Lady after me. And the Goddess has laid her hand upon no other to be her prophetess. Kevin lies entombed within the oak. What of Avalon now?

It seemed that the world was shifting, that beyond the mists the world moved at an ever-accelerating pace. No one save herself and one or two of the oldest priestesses could open the gateway through the mists, and there was now little reason to try. And there were times when she walked abroad and could see neither sun nor moon, and she knew that she had strayed over the borders of the fairy country; but she saw only the rarest glimpses of the fairy folk among the trees, nor did she ever again have sight of the queen.

She wondered if indeed the Goddess had deserted them, for some of the maidens from the House of Maidens had gone again into the world, and others strayed into the fairy country and did not return again.

The Goddess came forth for the last time into the world when she bore the Grail through Arthur’s hall at Camelot, Morgaine thought, and then, confused, she asked herself whether the Goddess had truly borne the Grail, or had it only been herself and Raven working illusion?

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself.

And Morgaine knew that never again would she have the ability to seek beyond herself for comfort or counsel; she could look only within. No priestess, no prophetess, no Druid or councillor, no Goddess now to turn to; none but her unguided self. Now and again, when, as the habit of a lifetime bade her, she sought to call up the image of the Goddess to guide her, she saw nothing, or sometimes the face of Igraine—not the elderly, priest-ridden wife and widow of Uther, but the young and beautiful mother who had first laid these burdens on her, who had bidden her care for Arthur and given her into the hands of Viviane. And now and again she would see the face of Viviane, who had sent her to the bed of the Horned One, or Raven, who had stood at her side during that great moment of invocation.

They are the Goddess. And I am the Goddess. And there is no other.

She cared little to look into her magical mirror, but now and again when the moon was dark she went to drink of the spring and to look into the waters. But she saw only tantalizing glimpses: the Companions of the Round Table rode this way and that, following dreams and glimmers of vision and the Sight, but none found the true Grail. Some forgot the quest and rode openly in search of adventure; some met with more of adventure than they could manage, and so died; some did good deeds, and some evil. One or two, in piercing visions of faith, dreamed their own Grail and so died. Others, following the message of their own visions, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Lands; and others still, following a wind that was blowing all through the world in these days, withdrew into solitude and the hermit life, seeking, in crude caves and shelters, the life of silence and penitence— but what visions came to them, whether of the Grail or of some other thing, Morgaine never knew nor cared.

Once or twice she had glimpses of a face she knew. She saw Mordred at Camelot, at Arthur’s side. Galahad, too, she saw as he sought the Grail; but then she saw him no more, and wondered if the quest had claimed him to death.

And once she saw Lancelet, half naked, clad in animal skins, his hair long and ragged, without armor or sword, running in the forest, and the gleam of madness was in his eyes; well, she had guessed that this quest might lead him only to madness and despair. Still she sought him again in the mirror, from moon to moon, but for a long time she had no success. Then she saw him sleeping, ragged and naked, on straw somewhere, and the walls of a prison or dungeon rose about him   ...   and then she saw him no more. Ah, Gods, has he gone too   ...   with so many of Arthur’s men ...   . Truly the Grail was no blessing to Arthur’s court, but a curse ...   . And rightly so, a curse to the traitor who would have profaned it   ...   And now is it gone forever from Avalon.

For a long time Morgaine believed that the Grail had been taken away by the Goddess into the realms of the Gods, so that mankind might never again profane it, and she was content that it should be so; for it had been defiled with the wine of the Christians, which somehow was blood as well as wine, and she had no notion of how to cleanse it.

Whispers came from the outside world to Morgaine through some of the old brotherhood of priests who came in these days to Avalon; Christians, some of them, of the old ones who had once worshipped beside the Druids, in their firm belief that their Christ had once lived here on Avalon and been taught wisdom. Now, fleeing from the enforced conformity of that new breed of Christians who would wipe out all other worship but their own, they came to Avalon, and from them Morgaine heard something of the Grail.

The priests were now saying that it was indeed the true cup from which Christ had drunk at his Last Supper, and that it had been taken away into Heaven whence it would never again be seen in the world. Yet also there were rumors that it had been seen on that other isle, Ynis Witrin, sparkling in the depths of their well, that well which on Avalon was the holy mirror of the Goddess; and therefore the priests on Ynis Witrin had begun to call it the Well of the Chalice.

And when the old priests had dwelt for a time upon Avalon, Morgaine began to hear rumors that now and again the Grail had been seen, for a moment, upon their altar. That must be as the Goddess wills. They will not profane it. But she knew not whether it was truly there in the ancient church of the Christian brotherhood   ...   which was built on the very spot of the church on the other island, so that they said that, when the mists thinned, the ancient brotherhood on Avalon could hear the monks chanting in their church on Ynis Witrin. Morgaine remembered the day when the mists had thinned to let Gwenhwyfar through to Avalon.

Time ran strangely now upon Avalon. Morgaine did not know whether that twelvemonth and a day to which the knights were vowed had passed or not, and sometimes she thought that indeed years must have passed in the outside world ...   .

She thought long on the words Kevin had spoken:   ...   the mists are closing on Avalon.

And then, one day, she was summoned to the shores of the Lake, but she needed no Sight to tell her who stood in the barge. Avalon had once been his home too. Lancelet’s hair was all grey now and his face thin and haggard, but as he stepped from the boat, with only the shadow of his old light-footed grace, she stepped forward and took his hands, and she could see in his face no trace of madness.

He looked into her eyes, and suddenly it seemed that she was the Morgaine of the old days, when Avalon was a temple alive with priestesses and Druids and not a solitary land adrift in the mists with a bare handful of aging priestesses, a few elderly Druids, a handful of half-forgotten ancient Christians.

“How is it that you are so untouched by time, Morgaine?” he asked her. “All seems changed, even here in Avalon—look, even the ring stones are hidden in the mists!”

“Oh, they are still there,” Morgaine said, “though some of us would lose our way if we sought them now.” And like a pain in her heart she remembered a day—ah, it was a lifetime ago!—when she and Lancelet had lain together in the shadow of the stones. “I think perhaps they will one day go altogether into the mists, and thus never be torn down by human hands or the winds of time. There are none to worship at them now   ...   even the Beltane fires are no longer lighted on Avalon, though I have heard that they keep the old rites still in the wildnesses of North Wales and in Cornwall. The little people will never let them die while any of them survive. I am surprised that you were able to come here, kinsman.”

He smiled, and now she could see the traces of pain and grief—yes, even of madness—around his eyes. “Why, I hardly knew it was hither I came, cousin. My memory plays tricks on me, now. I was mad, Morgaine. I cast away my sword and lived like an animal in the forests, and then there was a time, I know not how long, that I was confined in a strange dungeon.”

“I saw it,” she whispered. “I knew not what it meant.”

“Nor did I, nor do I yet,” Lancelet said. “I remember very little of that time—it is God’s blessing, I think, that I cannot remember what I might have done. I think it was not the first time—there were times, during those years with Elaine, that I hardly knew what I did ...   .”

“But you are well now,” she said quickly. “Come and breakfast with me, cousin—it is too early for anything else, for whatever reason you came here.”

He followed her, and Morgaine took him into her dwelling; except for her attendant priestesses, he was the first person who had entered it in years. There was fish from the Lake, this morning, and she served him with her own hands.

“Ah, this is good,” he said, and ate hungrily—she wondered how long it had been since he had last remembered to eat. His hair was as fastidiously combed as ever, his curly hair—all grey now, and patches of white in his beard—neatly trimmed, and his cloak, though shabby and travel-worn, was neatly brushed and clean. He saw her glance at the cloak and laughed a little.

“In the old days I would not have used this cloak for a saddle blanket,” he said. “I lost cloak and sword and armor, I know not where—it may be that I was robbed of them in some evil adventure, or cast them away in madness. I know only that one day I heard someone speak my name, and it was one of the Companions—Lamorak, perhaps, though it is still very hazy in my mind. I was too weak to travel, but though he rode on the next day, I began slowly to remember who I was, and they gave me a gown and let me sit to table to eat with my knife instead of throwing me scraps in a wooden piggin—“ His laugh was shaky, nervous. “Even when I knew not that I was Lancelet, I had still my accursed strength, and I think I had done some of them harm. I think I lost the best part of a year out of my life. ... I remember only little things, and the main thought in my mind was never to let them know I was Lancelet, lest I bring shame on the Companions or Arthur   ... ” He fell silent, and Morgaine guessed at his torment by what he did not say. “Well, slowly I grew strong enough to travel, and Lamorak had left money for a horse and goods for me. But most of that year is darkness—“

He picked up the remaining bread on his plate and resolutely mopped up the scraps of fish. Morgaine asked him, “What of the quest?”

“What indeed? I have heard a little,” he said, “here and there, here and there, as I rode in the land. Gawaine was the first to return to Camelot.”

Morgaine smiled, almost against her will. “He was always fickle—to everything and everyone.”

“Except to Arthur,” Lancelet said. “He is more loyal to Arthur than any of his dogs! And I met with Gareth as I rode hither.”

Morgaine said, “Dear Gareth, he is the best of Morgause’s sons! What said he to you?”

“He said he had had a vision,” Lancelet said slowly, “which bade him return to court and do his duty by his king and his lands, and not to delay, loitering about and seeking visions of holy things. And he talked a long time with me, begging me to lay aside the quest of the Grail and return to Camelot with him.”

“I am surprised you did not,” Morgaine said.

He smiled. “I am surprised too, kinswoman. And I have promised to return as soon as I can.” Suddenly, his face grew grave. “Gareth told me,” he said, “that Mordred is always about Arthur now. And when I would not return to court with him, he told me this—that what I could best do for Arthur was to find Galahad and bid him return at once to Avalon, for he mistrusted Mordred and his influence upon Arthur. ... I am sorry to speak ill of your son, Morgaine.”

Morgaine said, “He told me once that Galahad would not live to rule   ...   yet he swore to me, by an oath I do not think he would dare break, that he would have no hand in his death.”

Lancelet looked troubled. “I have seen many evil adventures that may befall on this accursed quest. God grant that I can find Galahad before he falls prey to one of them!” A silence fell between them, while Morgaine thought, I knew it in my heart—this was why Mordred refused the quest. She realized, quite suddenly, that she had ceased to believe that her son Gwydion —Mordred—would ever now be King from Avalon. She wondered when she had begun to accept that in her heart. Perhaps it had been when Accolon died and the Goddess did not stretch forth her hand to protect her chosen.

Galahad will be King, and he will be a Christian king.

And that may well mean that he will kill Gwydion. What of the King Stag, when the young stag is grown? But if the day of Avalon had ended, perhaps Galahad would take his throne in peace, without the need to kill his rival.

Lancelet laid down the remnant of a piece of bread and honey and looked past her at the corner of the room. “Is that Viviane’s harp?”

“Yes,” she said. “I left mine at Tintagel. But I suppose it is yours by right of inheritance if you want it.”

“I play no longer, nor do I have any will to make music, Morgaine. By right it is yours, as are all other things which belonged to my mother.”

Morgaine recalled words which had cut her to the heart—again, a lifetime ago!—7 would that you were not so much like my mother, Morgaine! Now the memory held no pain, but warmth; Viviane was not gone entirely from the world if something survived in her. He said, stumbling, “There are now so few of us—so few who recall the old days at Caerleon—even at Camelot—“

“Arthur is there,” she said, “and Gawaine, and Gareth, and Cai, and many more, my dear. And no doubt they ask one another with every day, Where is Lancelet? Why are you here, and not there?”

“I said, my mind plays me tricks—I hardly knew I came hither,” Lancelet said. “Yet now I am here, I should ask—I heard Nimue was here,” and she remembered: she had told him this, once, when he had thought his daughter at the convent where once Gwenhwyfar had been. “I should ask, what has become of her—is she well, does she thrive among the priestesses?”

“I am sorry,” Morgaine said. “It seems I have nothing but ill news for you—Nimue died, a year ago.”

More than this she would not say. Lancelet knew nothing of the Merlin’s betrayal, or of Nimue’s last visit to the court. It could only grieve him to know the rest. He asked no questions, only sighed heavily, and cast his eyes on the floor. At last he said without looking up, “And the baby —little Gwenhwyfar—she is married, and in Less Britain, and this quest has swallowed Galahad. I never knew any of my children. I never tried to know them—it seemed to me they were all I could give Elaine, and so I left them to her almost entirely, even the boy. I rode for a time with Galahad when first we departed from Camelot, and I knew more of him in the ten days and nights we rode together than in all the sixteen years he had lived. I think perhaps he would make a good king, if he lives ...   .”

He looked at Morgaine, almost pleading, and she knew he was longing for reassurance, but she had no comfort for him. At last she said, “If he lives, he will be a good king, but I think he will be a Christian king.” It seemed that for a moment all the sounds of Avalon were hushed around her, as if the very waves of the Lake and the whispering sound of the reeds on the border were silent to hear her say it. “If lie survives the quest of the Grail —or if he should abandon it—still his rule will be circled about by the priests, and through all the land there will be only one God and only one religion.”

“Would that be such a tragedy, Morgaine?” Lancelet asked quietly. “All through this land, the Christian God is bringing a spiritual rebirth here —is that an evil thing, when mankind has forgotten the Mysteries?”

“They have not forgotten the Mysteries,” she said, “they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.”

Lancelet smiled bitterly. “Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work through lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God’s justice, but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.”

Morgaine knew that he spoke truth, and bowed her head in anguish. “And since their view of a God is what shapes their reality, so it shall be —the Goddess was real while mankind still paid homage to her, and created her form for themselves. Now they will make for themselves the kind of God they think they want—the kind of God they deserve, perhaps.”

Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became. While the ancient Gods, the Goddess, were seen as benevolent or life-giving, so indeed had nature been to them; and when the priests had taught men to think of all nature as evil, alien, hostile, and the old Gods as demons, even so they would become, surging up from within that part of man which he now wished to sacrifice or control, instead of letting it lead him.

She said, remembering at random something she had read when she had looked into the books of Uriens’ house priest in Wales, “And so all men will become even as that apostle who wrote that they should become as eunuchs for the Kingdom of God ... I think I care not to live within that world, Lancelet.”

The weary knight sighed and shook his head. “I think I care not for it either, Morgaine. Yet perhaps it will be a simpler world than ours, and it will be easier to know what is right to do. So I came to seek Galahad, for though he will be a Christian king, I think he would be a better king than Mordred ...   .”

Morgaine clenched her hands under the edge of her sleeves. I am not the Goddess! It is—it is not mine to choose! “You came—here to seek him, Lancelet? He was never one of us. My son Gwydion—Mordred—he was reared at Avalon. If he left Arthur’s court he might come here. But Galahad? He was as pious as Elaine—he would scorn to set foot in this world of witchcraft and fairy!”

“But as I told you, I knew not that I came here,” said Lancelet. “I sought to reach Ynis Witrin and the Isle of the Priests, for I heard a rumor of a magical brightness which comes and goes in the church there, and they have renamed their Well, I have heard, the Well of the Chalice—I thought perhaps Galahad rode this way. Another old habit brought me here.”

She asked him seriously then, face to face, “What do you think of this quest, Lancelet?”

“I know not, truly, cousin,” said Lancelet. “When I took this quest on me, I went as once I went to kill old Pellinore’s dragon—do you remember that, Morgaine? None of us believed in it then, and yet I did in the end find that dragon and slay it. Yet I know that something, something of great holiness, came into Camelot that day we saw the Grail.” And when she would have spoken, he said vehemently, “No, tell me not that I imagined it, Morgaine—you were not there, you do not know what it was like! For the first time, I felt that there was a Mystery somewhere which was beyond this life. And so I went on this quest, though half of me felt it was mad —and I rode awhile with Galahad, and it seemed that his faith mocked mine, because he was so pure and his faith so simple and good, and I was old and stained—“ Lancelet stared down at the floor, and she saw him swallow hard. “That is why, in the end, I parted from him, lest I damage that shining faith   ...   and then I know not where I went, for the fog came down over my mind, and the darkness, and it seemed that Galahad must—must know all the sins of my life and he must despise me for them.”

His voice had risen in excitement, and for a moment Morgaine saw the unhealthy brightness returning to his eyes, as she had seen it in the naked man running in the forest. She said quickly, “Don’t think of that time, my dear. It is over.”

He drew a long, shuddering breath and she saw his eyes fade. “My quest now is to seek Galahad. I know not what he saw—an angel maybe —or why the call of the Grail came so strongly to some and so little to others. Of all the knights, I think only Mordred saw nothing, or if he did he kept it to himself.”

My son was reared at Avalon; he would not have been deceived by the magic of the Goddess, Morgaine thought, and was about to speak and tell Lancelet what he had seen—he had been, in youth, an initiate of Avalon and he should not be allowed to think of it as some mystery of the Christians. But, hearing again that strange note in Lancelet’s voice, she bent her head and said nothing. The Goddess had given him a vision of comfort; it was not for her to destroy it with a word.

She had sought this, she had worked for it. Arthur had forsaken the Goddess, and the Goddess had scattered his fellowship with a wind blowing from her holy place. And the final irony was this: that her holiest of visions should inspire the most passionate legend of Christian worship. Morgaine said at last, reaching out her hand to him, “Sometimes I believe, Lancelet, that it does not matter what we do. The Gods move us as they will, whatever it is that we think that we are doing. We are no more than their pawns.”

“If I believed that,” said Lancelet, “I should go mad once and for all.”

Morgaine smiled sadly and said, “And if I did not believe it, I should perhaps go mad. I must believe that I had no power to do other than I have done.”

  ...   must believe that I never had a choice   ...   a choice to refuse the king-making, a choice to destroy Mordred unborn, a choice to refuse when Arthur gave me to Uriens, a choice to hold back my hand from the death of Avalloch, a choice to keep Accolon at my side   ...   a choice to spare Kevin Harper a traitor’s death, and Nimue   ...

Lancelet said, “And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference   ... ”

“Oh, aye,” Morgaine said, “if he knows what good is. But does it not seem to you, cousin, that ever, in this world, evil wears the face of good? Sometimes I feel it is the Goddess who makes the wrong appear the right, and the only thing we can do—“

“Why then, the Goddess would be just such a fiend as the priests say she is,” said Lancelet.

“Lancelet,” she said, leaning forward to plead with him, “never blame yourself. You did what you must! Believe only that it was your fate and ordained—“

“No, or I should slay myself at once, so that the Goddess could not make use of me to bring about more evil,” said Lancelet vehemently. “Morgaine, you have the Sight, and I cannot—I cannot believe it is God’s will that Arthur and his court shall fall into Mordred’s hands! I told you I came hither because my mind played tricks on me. Without thinking, I called the Avalon barge to me and came here, but now, I think, perhaps I wrought better than I knew. You, who have the Sight, can look within the mirror and see for me where Galahad has gone! I will even brave his anger and demand that he leave this quest and return to Camelot—“

The ground seemed to quiver beneath Morgaine’s feet. Once she had stepped unwary into a patch of quicksand and had felt the mud shiver and slip sidewise; it was like that, as if she must throw herself at once to safe ground... she heard herself say, as if very far away, “You will indeed return to Camelot with your son, Lancelet—“ and wondered why the cold seemed to suck at her very vitals. “I will look into the mirror for you, kinsman. But I know Galahad not, I may not see anything which is of use to you.”

“Yet tell me you will do what you can,” Lancelet pleaded, and she said, “I have told you I will look into the mirror. But it will be with us as the Goddess wills. Come.”

The sun was high now, and as they walked down the hill toward the Sacred Well, a raven croaked once overhead. Lancelet crossed himself against the evil omen, but Morgaine looked up and said, “What did you say, sister?”

Raven’s voice said in her mind, Be not afraid. Mordred will not kill Galahad. And Arthur will kill Mordred.

She said aloud, “Arthur will be King Stag still ...   .”

Lancelet turned and stared at her. “What did you say, Morgaine?”

Raven said in her mind, Not to the Holy Well, but to the chapel, and now. It is the time ordained.

Lancelet asked, “Where are we going? Have I forgotten the way to the Holy Well?” and Morgaine, raising her head, realized that her steps had brought them, not to the Well, but to the little chapel where the ancient Christian brotherhood held their services. They said it had been built by the brotherhood when the ancient Joseph had thrust his staff into the ground on the hill called Wearyall. She put out her hand and took a sprig of the Holy Thorn; it pricked her finger to the bone, and hardly knowing what she did, she put out her hand and marked Lancelet’s forehead with the streak of blood.

He looked at her, startled. She could hear the priests singing softly, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison. She went in quietly and knelt down to her own surprise. The chapel was filled with mist, and it seemed to Morgaine that through the mist she could see that other chapel, the one on Ynis Witrin, and hear both sets of voices singing   ...   Kyrie eleison   ...   and there were women’s voices too; yes, this must be on Ynis Witrin, for in the chapel on Avalon there were no women, these must be the nuns in the convent there. It seemed for a moment that Igraine knelt beside her and she heard her voice, clear and soft, singing Christe eleison. The priest was at the altar, and then it seemed to her as if Nimue was there, her golden hair hanging down her back, fair and lovely as Gwenhywfar had been when she was a young maiden in the convent. But instead of the old jealous fury, Morgaine looked on her with the purest love for her beauty   ...   the mists thickened; she could hardly see Lancelet kneeling at her side, but before her, kneeling at the altar in the other chapel, she could see Galahad with his face raised, shining, and on it was the reflected brightness   ...   and she knew that he, too, saw through the mists, into the chapel here on Avalon, where the Grail stood ...   .

She heard from the other chapel a ring of tiny bells, and heard   ...   she never knew which of the priests, the one here in Avalon, or the one on Ynis Witrin   ...   but in her mind it was the gentle voice of Taliesin   ...   murmuring, “For in that night in which the Christ was betrayed, our Master took the cup and blessed it, and said, All of you drink of this, for this is my blood which will be shed for you. So often as ye drink of this cup, do it ever in remembrance of me.”

She could see the shadow of the priest who lifted the cup of communion, yet it was the damsel of the Grail, Nimue ... or was it she herself who set the cup to his lips? Lancelet rushed forward, crying out, “Ah—the light, the light—!” and dropped to his knees, his hands shielding his eyes, then slipped further forward and lay prone on the ground.

Under the touch of the Grail, the shadowed face of the young man became clear, solid, real, and the mists were gone; Galahad knelt and drank of the cup.

“For as the wine of many grapes was crushed to make a single wine, so as we unite in this bloodless and perfect sacrifice, then shall we all become One in the Great Light which is Infinite ...   .”

And even as the rapture glowed through his face, the light shining there, he drew a great breath of absolute joy, and looked full into the light. He reached out to grasp the cup in his hands. .. and fell forward, slithered to the floor of the chapel, and he too lay there without moving.

It is death to touch the holy things unprepared ...   .

Morgaine saw Nimue—or was it she herself?—cover Galahad’s face with a white veil. And then Nimue was gone, and the cup was standing on the altar, only the gold cup of the Mysteries, without any trace of the unearthly light ...   she was not sure it was there ... it was surrounded by mist. And Galahad lay dead on the floor of the chapel in Avalon, cold and still beside Lancelet.

IT WAS a long time before Lancelet stirred, and as he raised his head, Morgaine saw that his face was shadowed with tragedy. He whispered, “And I was not worthy to follow him.”

“You must take him back to Camelot,” Morgaine said gently. “He has won the quest of the Grail—but it was his final quest. He could not bear that light.”

“Nor could I,” Lancelet whispered. “Look, the light is still on his face. What did he see?”

Slowly, she shook her head, feeling the cold rise up her arms. “Neither you nor I will ever know that, Lancelet. I know only this—that he died with the Grail at his lips.”

Lancelet looked up at the altar. The priests had gone quietly away, leaving Morgaine alone with the dead and the living; and the cup, surrounded in mist, still gleamed there, softly glowing.

Lancelet rose. He said, “Yes. And this shall come back with me to Camelot, that all men may know the quest is ended ... and no more knights seeking the unknown to die or go mad   ... ”

He took one step toward the altar where the Grail gleamed, but Morgaine flung her arms around him and held him back.

“No! No! It is not for you! The very sight of it struck you down! It is death to touch the holy things unprepared—“

“Then I shall die for it,” he said, but she held him hard, and soon she felt him give way. He said, “Why, Morgaine? Why must this suicidal folly go on?”

“No,” she said, “the quest of the Grail is ended. You were spared to return to Camelot and tell them that. But you cannot take it back to Camelot. No man can hold and confine it. Those who seek it in faith”— she heard her own voice, though she did not know what she was going to say until she said it—“will always find it—here, beyond the mortal lands. But if it should go back with you to Camelot, it would fall into the hands of the narrowest of the priests, and become a pawn for them....” She could feel the tears thickening her voice. “I beg of you, Lancelet. Leave it here in Avalon. Let there be, in this new world without magic, one Mystery the priests cannot describe and define once and for all, cannot put within their narrow dogma of what is and what is not   ... ” Her voice broke. “In the day which is coming, the priests will tell mankind what is good and what is evil, what to think, what to pray, what to believe. I cannot see to the end—perhaps mankind must have a time of darkness so that we will one day again know what a blessing is the light. But in that darkness, Lancelet, let there be one glimmer of hope. The Grail came once to Camelot. Let the memory of that passing never be sullied by seeing it captive on some worldly altar. Leave one Mystery and one source of vision for man to follow   ... ” She heard her voice go dry until it seemed like the croaking of the last of ravens.

Lancelet bowed down before her. “Morgaine, or are you truly Morgaine? I think I do not know who or what you are. But what you say is true. Let the Grail remain forever in Avalon.”

Morgaine raised her hand, and the little folk of Avalon came and lifted up Galahad’s body, bearing it silently to the Avalon barge. Lancelet’s hand still in her own, Morgaine walked down to the shore, where she looked at the body lying in the boat. For a moment it seemed that Arthur lay there, then the vision wavered and vanished, and it was only Galahad, with that uncanny peace and light on his face.

“Now you ride to Camelot with your son,” said Morgaine quietly, “but not as I foresaw. I think the Sight is given to mock us—we see what the Gods give us to see, but we know never what it means. I think I will never use the Sight more, kinsman.”

“God grant it.” Lancelet took her hands in his own for a moment; then he bent and kissed them.

“And so at last we part,” he said softly. And then, for all she had said of refusing the Sight, she saw in his eyes what he saw when he looked at her—the maiden with whom he had lain in the ring stones and from whom he had turned away from fear of the Goddess; the woman he had gone to in a frenzy of desire, trying to blot out the guilt of his love for Gwenhwyfar and Arthur; the woman he had seen pale and terrible, holding aloft the torch when they had taken him in Elaine’s bed; and now the dark, quiet Lady, shadowed in lights, who had lifted his son from the Grail and pleaded with him to leave it forever outside the world.

She leaned forward and kissed him on the brow. There was no need for words; they both knew it was farewell and benediction. As slowly he turned from her and stepped into the magical barge, Morgaine watched the droop of his shoulders and saw the glint of the setting sun on his hair. It was all white now; and Morgaine, seeing herself again in his eyes, thought, I too am old ...   .

And now she knew why she had never again caught sight of the queen within the land of Fairy.

I am the queen now.

There is no Goddess but this, and I am she   ...

And yet beyond this, she is, as she is in Igraine and Viviane and Morgause and Nimue and the queen. And they live in me too, and she   ...

And within Avalon they live forever.

13

Far to the north, in the country of Lothian, word came seldom and unreliably of the quest for the Grail. Morgause waited for the return of her young lover, Lamorak. And then, half a year later, word came to her that he had died on the quest. He was not the first, she thought, and he will not be the last to die of this monstrous madness, leading men to seek for the unknown! Always I have thought that religions and Gods were a form of madness. Look what they have brought on Arthur! And now they have taken my Lamorak, still so young!

Well, he was gone, and though she missed him and would always miss him in her own way — he had been at her side longer than any other, save only Lot — she need not resign herself to old age and a solitary bed. She scanned herself in her old bronze mirror, sponged away the marks of her tears, then surveyed herself again. If she no longer had quite the full-blown beauty that had brought Lamorak, dazzled, to her feet, she was still a good-looking woman; there were still enough men in the land, and not all of them could have been caught by this questing madness. She was rich, she was Queen of Lothian, and she had her woman’s weapons — she was still handsome, with all her own teeth, though now she must blacken her fading eyebrows and eyelashes   ...   they were such a pale-gingery color now. Well, there would always be men; they were all fools, and a clever woman could do with them what she liked. She was no fool like Morgaine, to fret over devotion or virtue, nor a whining idiot like Gwenhwyfar, to think always about her soul.

From time to time some tale of the quest, each one more fabulous than the last, would reach her. Lamorak, she heard, had come back at last to Pellinore’s castle, drawn by an old rumor of a magical dish that was kept there in a crypt beneath the castle, and there he had died, crying out that the Grail floated before him in the hands of a maiden, in the hands of his sister, Elaine, as she had been in childhood   ...   she wondered what he had really seen. Word came, too, from the country near the Roman wall that Lancelet was dungeoned somewhere in sir Ectorius’ old country as a madman, and that no one dared send word to King Arthur; then she heard that his brother Bors had come and recognized him, and he had come to his wits and ridden away, whether to follow the quest further or to ride back to Camelot she neither knew nor cared. Perhaps, she thought, with luck he too would die on this quest; otherwise the lure of Gwenhwyfar would draw him back yet again to Arthur and his court.

Only her sensible Gwydion had not gone on the quest, but had remained at Camelot, close to Arthur’s side. Would that Gawaine and Gareth had had the wit to do the same! Now at last her sons had come into the place that should always have been theirs with Arthur.

Yet she had another way to know what was happening. Viviane had told her, in her youth at Avalon, that she had not the patience nor the hardihood for initiation into the Mysteries, and Viviane—she knew it now —had been right; who would wish to forsake life for so long as that? For many years she had believed that the doors of magic and of the Sight were closed to her, save for such little tricks as she had mastered on her own. And then she had begun to understand, when first she had used her sorcery to discover Gwydion’s parentage, that the magical art was there, awaiting her, needing nothing but her will; having nothing to do with the complex Druidical rules and limitations about its use, or lies about the Gods. It was simply a part of life, there and accessible, nothing to do with good or evil, but available to anyone who had the will and the ruthlessness to use it.

All those who pretend to religions, Morgause thought, wish only to keep the sources of power in their own hands. But now I have them freely and of my own making, without binding myself by oaths about their use or direction.

So now, on this night, shut away from her servants, she made her preparations. She felt a dispassionate sympathy for the white dog she had brought in, and a moment of genuine revulsion as she cut its throat and set forth the dish of hot blood she had caught; but, after all, it was her own dog, as much hers as a pig she might have slaughtered for the table, and the power of spilled blood was stronger and more direct than the power built up by the long prayers and disciplines of the Avalon priesthood. Before the fireplace, one of her servant-women was lying, drugged and ready, before the fireplace; not one, this time, for whom she had any affection or any real need. She had learned that lesson when last she had attempted this. She spared a regretful thought for the waste of a good spinning woman that time; at least this one would be no loss to anyone, not even the cook who had half a dozen more helpers than she needed.

She still felt a certain squeamishness at the preliminaries. The blood marking her hands and forehead was unpleasantly sticky, but it seemed to her that she could almost see, billowing forth from the blood like smoke, the thin streams of magical power. The moon had shrunk to the thinnest of glimmers in the sky, and she knew the one who awaited her call in Camelot would be ready. At the precise moment the moon moved into the proper quarter of the sky, she poured the rest of the blood into the fire and called three times aloud.

“Morag! Morag! Morag!”

The drugged woman by the fireside—Morgause vaguely recalled that her name was Becca, or something like that—stirred, her vague eyes taking on depth and purpose, and for a moment, as she arose, it seemed that she was wearing the elegant garb of one of Gwenhwyfar’s waiting-women. Her voice, too, was not the rough dialect of the dim-witted country girl, but the careful speech of a southern court lady.

“I am here at your call. What would you have of me, Queen of the Darkness?”

“Tell me of the court. What of the Queen?”

“She is much alone since Lancelet has gone, but often calls young Gwydion to her. She has been heard to say that he is like the son she never had. I think she has forgotten that he is the son of Queen Morgaine,” said the girl, the careful speech so incongruous from the empty-eyed, rough-handed kitchen girl in her shapeless smock of sacking.

“Do you still put the medicine in her wine at bedtime?”

“There is no need, my queen,” said the alien voice which came through and behind the kitchen girl. “The Queen’s courses have not come upon her now for more than a year, and so I have ceased to give her the drug. But in any case the King comes very seldom to her bed.”

So Morgause’s last fear could now be quieted—that somehow, against all odds, Gwenhwyfar would bear a belated child to endanger Gwydion’s position at court. Besides, the King’s subjects would never accept a child for king, after the long peaceful years of Arthur’s reign. Nor, she supposed, would Gwydion have any scruples about making an end to a small, unwanted rival. But it was better not to chance it; Arthur himself, after all, had escaped all Lot’s plotting and her own, and had lived to be crowned.

I have waited too long. Lot should have been King of these lands many years ago, and I Queen. Now there is none to stop me. Viviane is gone; Morgaine is old; Gwydion will make me Queen. I am the only woman living to whose word he will listen.

“What of sir Mordred, Morag? Is he trusted by the Queen, by the King?”

But the voice grew thick and heavy. “I cannot stay—Mordred is often with the King—once I heard the King say to him—eh, my head aches, what am I doing here by the fire? Cook will skin me alive ...” It was the idiot voice of Becca, thick and sullen, and Morgause knew that far away in Camelot, Morag had sunk back into her bizarre dream in which she faced the faraway Queen of Lothian or the Queen of Fairy ...   .

Morgause seized the pan of blood, shaking the last remaining drops into the fire. “Morag, Morag! Hear me, stay, I command!”

“My queen,” came the faraway ladylike voice, “sir Mordred has always at his side one of the damsels of the Lady of the Lake, they say that she is somehow kin to Arthur—“

Niniane, daughter of Taliesin. Morgause thought, I did not know she had left Avalon. But why now should she stay?

“Sir Mordred has been named captain of horse while Lancelet is gone from court. There are rumors   ...   Eh, the fire, my lady, will you set the whole of the castle afire?” Becca was rubbing her eyes and whimpering on the hearth. Infuriated, Morgause gave her a savage push, and the girl fell screaming into the fire; but she was still bound and could not pull herself away from the flames.

“Damn her, she will wake the whole household!” Morgause reached out to pull the girl from the flames, but her dress had caught fire, and her shrieks were dreadful, striking Morgause’s ears like red-hot needles. She thought, with a trace of pity, Poor girl, there is nothing to be done for her now —she would be so burnt, we could not help her even if she should live! She pulled the screaming, struggling girl out of the fire, not regarding the burns on her own hands, and leaned close for a moment, laying her head on the girl’s brow as if to soothe her; then, with a single stroke, she cut her throat from ear to ear. Blood poured into the fire, and the smoke rushed high up into the chimney.

Morgause felt herself shaking with the unexpected power, as if she were spreading out through the whole of the room, through the -whole of Lothian, through the whole of the world   ...   she had never dared so much before, but now it had come to her, unsought. It seemed that she hovered bodiless over all the land. Again after years of peace there were armies on the road, and on the west coast hairy men in high-beaked dragon ships landed, plundering and burning cities, laying monasteries waste, carrying away women from the walled convents where they lived . .. like a crimson wind, sweeping down even to the borders of Camelot   ...   she was not sure whether what she saw now was even at this moment moving in the land or was yet to come.

She cried out through the growing darkness, “Let me see my sons on the quest of the Grail!”

Darkness filled the room, sudden, black and thick, with a curious smell of burning, while Morgause crouched, beaten to her knees by the rush of power. The smoke cleared a little, with a small stirring and coiling in the darkness, like the boiling of a pot. Then Morgause saw, in the widening light, the face of her youngest son, Gareth. He was dirty and travel-worn, his clothing ragged, but he was smiling with the old gaiety, and as the light grew, Morgause could see what he was looking at—the face of Lancelet.

Ah, Gwenhwyfar would not fawn on him now, not this sickly and wasted man with grey in his hair and the traces of madness and suffering in the lines round his eyes ... he looks indeed like something hung up in the field to scare birds from the grain! The old hatred surged through her: it was intolerable, that her youngest and best son should think kindly of this man, should love him and follow him as he had when he was a little child prattling to carved wooden knights ...   .

“No, Gareth”—she heard the voice of Lancelet, soft in the curdled silence in the room—“you know why it is that I will not return to court. I will not speak of my own peace of soul—nor yet of the Queen’s—but I am vowed to follow the Grail for a year and a day.”

“But this is madness! What the devil is the Grail, against the needs of our king? I was sworn to him, and so were you, years before any of us heard of the Grail! When I think of our King Arthur at court with none of his faithful men save such as are lame or infirm or cowardly ... times, I wonder if perhaps it was the work of the fiend, masquerading as a work of God and come to scatter Arthur’s Companions out of his hands!”

Lancelet said quietly, “I know that it came from God, Gareth. Do not try to deprive me of that.” And for a moment it seemed that again the light of madness flickered in his eyes.

Gareth said, and his voice was oddly subdued when he spoke, “But when God does the same work as the Devil? I cannot think it is God’s will that all Arthur has wrought in more than a quarter of a century should thus be cast aside! Do you know there are wild Northmen landing on the shores, and when the men of those lands cry out for Arthur’s legions to come and help them, there are none to send to their aid? And so the Saxon armies are gathering again, while Arthur sits idle in Camelot and you seek for your soul—Lancelet, I beg you, if you will not return to court, at least seek for Galahad and make him return to Arthur’s side! If the King is old and his will grows weak—and God forbid I should ever have to say so much— then perhaps your son may stand in his place, for all men know he is the King’s adopted son and heir!”

“Galahad?” Lancelet’s voice was somber. “Think you I have much influence with my son? You and the others swore to follow the Grail for a year and a day, yet I rode for a time with Galahad, and I know it is with him even as he said on that day, that if need be he would follow it lifelong.”

“No!” Gareth leaned from his horse and gripped Lancelet by the shoulders. “That is what you must make him see, Lancelet, that at all costs he must return to Camelot! Ah, God, Gwydion would call me traitor to my own blood, and I love Gwydion well, but—how can I say this even to you, my cousin and my heart’s brother? I trust not that man’s power over our king! The Saxons who send to Arthur find themselves always speaking with him, they think of him as the sister’s son of Arthur, and among them, know you not, the sister’s son is heir—“

Lancelet said, with a gentle smile, “Recall then, Gareth, that it was even so with the Tribes before the Romans came—we are not Roman, you and I.”

“But will you not fight for the rights of your own son?” demanded Gareth.

“It is for Arthur to say who shall follow him on his throne,” said Lancelet, “if indeed there shall be any king after him at all. Sometimes, it seemed to me when I wandered among the visions of my madness—nay, I mean not to speak of that, but I think perhaps it was a little akin to the Sight—that a darkness would fall over this land when Arthur had gone.”

“And then it should be as if Arthur had never been? What of your vow to Arthur?” Gareth demanded, and Lancelet sighed.

“If it is your will, Gareth, I will seek out Galahad.”

“As quickly as you can,” Gareth urged, “and you must persuade him that his loyalty to the King is beyond all quests and Grails and Gods—“

Lancelet said sadly, “And if he will not come?”

“If he does not,” Gareth said slowly, “then perhaps he is not the King we will need after Arthur. In that case, we are in God’s hands, and may he help us all!”

“Cousin, and more than brother,” said Lancelet, embracing him again, “we are all in God’s hands whatever comes. But I vow to you, I will seek for Galahad and bring him with me to Camelot, I swear it ...   .”

And then the stirring and the brightness were gone, Gareth’s face faded and went into the dark, and for a moment it was only Lancelet’s eyes, lustrous and so like Viviane’s that for a moment Morgause felt that her sister and priestess was looking on her with frowning disapproval, as if to say, Morgause, what have you done now? Then that too was gone, and Morgause was alone with her fire, still belching smoke from which all the clouds of magical power had faded, and the limp, bloodless body of the dead woman lying on the hearth.

Lancelet! Lancelet, damn him, he could still play havoc with her plans! Morgause felt her hate like a pain that struck through, a tightness in her throat that travelled down her body to her very womb. Her head was aching, and she felt deathly sick with the aftermath of magic. She wanted nothing more than to sink down on the hearth and sleep for hours, but she must be strong, strong with the powers of sorcery she had called to herself; she was Queen of Lothian, Queen of Darkness! She opened the door and flung the body of the dog onto the midden heap there, disregarding the sickening stench.

She could not handle the body of the kitchen girl alone. She was about to call out for help, when she stopped, her hands to her face, still marked and sticky with blood; they must not see her like this. She went to the basin and ewer of water, poured it out and washed her face and hands and braided her hair afresh. There was nothing she could do about the bloodstains on her dress, but now that the fire was out, there was little light in the room. At last she called out for her chamberlain, and he came to the door, avid curiosity in his face.

“What is it, my queen? I heard shouts and screams—is anything amiss here?” He held up the light, and Morgause knew very well how she looked to him—beautiful, dishevelled—as if she could see herself through his eyes in the aftermath of the Sight. I could stretch forth my hand now and have him over the girl’s body, she thought, feeling the strange cramping pain and pleasure of desire, and inwardly she laughed, but she put it willfully aside; there would be time enough for that.

“Yes, there is grave trouble. Poor Becca—“ She indicated the limp corpse. “She fell into the fire, and when I would have helped her burns, she grabbed the knife from my hand to cut her throat—she must have been maddened with the agony, poor thing. See, her blood is all over me.”

The man cried out in consternation and went to examine the lifeless form of the girl. “Well, well, the poor lass had not all her wits. You should not have let her in here, madam.”

Morgause was disturbed at the hint of reproach she heard in the man’s voice; had she actually thought of taking this one to her bed? “I did not call you hither to question my deeds. Take her out of here and have her decently buried, and send my women to me. I ride at dawn for Camelot.”

NIGHT WAS falling, and a thick drizzling rain was blurring the road. Morgause was cold and wet, and it only annoyed her when her captain of horse came up and asked, “Are you sure, madam, that we are on the right road?”

She had had her eye on this one for months; his name was Cormac, and he was tall and young, with a hawklike face and strong shoulders and thighs. But it seemed to Morgause now that all men were stupid, she would have done better to leave Cormac at home and lead this party herself. But there were things even the Queen of Lothian could not do.

“I do not recognize any of these roads. Yet I know from the distance we have ridden this day that we must be near to Camelot—unless you have somehow lost your way in the fog and we are riding northward again, Cormac?”

Under ordinary conditions she would have welcomed another night on the road, in her comfortable pavilion, with all the comforts she could provide, and perhaps, when all her women slept, this Cormac to warm her bed.

Since I found the way to sorcery, all men are at my feet. Yet now, it seems, I care for none   ...   strange, I have sought out no man since word came to me of Lamorak’s death. Am I growing old? She recoiled from the thought, and resolved she would have Cormac with her tonight   ...   but first they must reach Camelot; she must act there to protect Gwydion’s interest and to advise him. She said impatiently, “The road must be here, dolt. I have made this journey more times than I have fingers on my two hands! Do you think me a fool?”

“God forbid, madam. And I too have ridden this road often, yet somehow, it seems, we are lost,” Cormac said, and Morgause felt she would choke with her exasperation. Mentally she retraced the road she had travelled so often from Lothian, leaving the Roman road and taking the well-travelled way along the edge of the marshes to Dragon Island, then along the ridge till they should strike the road to Camelot, which Arthur had had broadened and resurfaced until it was almost as good as the old Roman road.

“Yet somehow you have missed the Camelot road, dolt, for there is that old fragment of Roman wall   ...   somehow or other we are half an hour’s ride past the turn to Camelot,” Morgause scolded. There was no help for it now but to turn the whole caravan about, and already darkness was closing down. Morgause drew up her hood over her head and urged her plodding horse through the grey lowering twilight. At this time of year there should have been another hour of sunlight, but there was only the faintest glimmer of light in the west.

“Here it lies,” said one of her women. “See, that clump of four apple trees—I came here one summer to take a graft of apples for the Queen’s garden.”

But there was no road, only a little track winding upward on a barren hill, where there should be a broad road, and above it, even through mist, there should have been the lights of Camelot.

“Nonsense,” she said brusquely, “we have lost the way, somehow— are you trying to tell me that there is no more than one clump of four apple trees in Arthur’s kingdom?”

“Yet that is where the road ought to be, I swear it,” grumbled Cormac, but he got the whole line of riders, horses, and pack animals into motion again and they plodded on, rain coming down and down as if it had been coming down since the beginning of time and had forgotten how to stop. Morgause was cold and weary, longing for hot supper at Gwenhwyfar’s table and hot mulled wine and a soft bed, and when Cormac rode up to her again she demanded crossly, “What now, dolt? Have you managed to lose us again, and miss a wide wagon road once more?”

“My queen, I am sorry, but somehow—look, we are back again where we paused to rest the horses after we turned off the Roman road—that bit of rag I dropped, I’d been using it to clean the muck off one of the packs.”

Her wrath exploded. “Was ever a queen plagued with so many damnable fools about her?” she shouted. “Must we look for the biggest city north of Londinium all over the Summer Country? Or must we ride back and forth on this road all night? If we cannot see Camelot’s lights in the dark, we could at least hear it, a castle with more than a hundred knights and serving-men, horses and cattle, Arthur’s men patrolling all the roads about —everything that moves on this road is clearly in sight of his watchtowers!”

Yet in the end there was nothing to do but to have lanterns lighted and turn southward again; Morgause herself rode at the head of the line, next to Cormac. The fog and rain seemed to damp out all sound, even echoes, until, through the foggy rain, they found themselves again at the ruined patch of Roman wall where they had turned about before. Cormac swore, but he sounded frightened too.

“Lady, I am sorry, I cannot understand it—“

“Damnation seize you all!” Morgause shrieked at him. “Will you have us riding hither and thither on this road all night?” Yet she too recognized the ruined wall. She drew a long breath, exasperation and resignation in one. “Perhaps by morning the rain will have ended, and if we must we can retrace our steps to the Roman wall. At least we will know where we have come!”

“If indeed we have come anywhere and have not wandered somehow into the fairy country,” murmured one of the women, surreptitiously crossing herself. Morgause saw the gesture, but she only said, “No more of that! It’s bad enough to be lost in the rain and fog without such idiot nonsense! Well, why are you all standing about? We can ride no more tonight, make haste to camp here, and in the morning we will know what to do.”

She had intended to call Cormac to her, if only that she might have no leisure for the fear that had begun to steal through her... had they indeed come out of the real world into the unknown? Yet she did not, lying alone and wakeful among her women, restless, mentally retracing all the steps of their journey. There was no sound in the night, not even the calling of frogs from the marshes. It was not possible to lose the whole city of Camelot; yet it had vanished into nowhere. Or was it she herself, with all her men and ladies and horses, who had vanished into the world of sorcery? And every time she came to that point in her thoughts she would wish that she had not allowed her anger with Cormac to set him to watching over the camp; if he were lying here beside her, she would not have that terrifying sense of the world somehow insanely out of joint   ...   again and again she tried to sleep and found herself restlessly staring, wide awake, into the dark.

Sometime in the night, the rain stopped; when day broke, although damp mist was rising everywhere, the sky was free of cloud. Morgause woke from a fitful doze, a dream of Morgaine, greying and old, looking into a mirror like her own, and went out of her pavilion, hoping that she would look up the hill and find that Camelot was, indeed, where it should have been, the broad road leading up to the towers of Arthur’s castle, or else that they were on some unknown road clearly miles and miles from where they should have been. But they were camped by the ruined Roman wall, which she knew to be about a mile south from Camelot, and as horses and men prepared to ride, she looked up at the hill which should have been Camelot; but the hill was green and grass-grown and featureless.

They rode slowly along the road, muddy with the many tracks where they had ridden back and forth half the night. A flock of sheep grazed in a field, but when Morgause’s man went to speak with the shepherd, the man hid behind a rock wall and would not be coaxed out.

“And this is Arthur’s peace?” Morgause wondered aloud. “I think, my lady,” said Cormac with deference, “there must be some enchantment here—whatever it is, this is not Camelot.”

“Then in God’s name, what is it?” asked Morgause, but he only muttered, “In God’s name, what indeed?” and had no further answer for her. She looked upward again, listening to the frightened whimpering of one of her women. For a moment it was as if Viviane spoke again in her mind, saying what Morgause had never more than half believed, that Avalon had gone into the mists, and that if one set out there, either Druid or priestess, and not knowing the way, one would come only to the priests’ Isle of Glastonbury ...   .

They could retrace their steps to the Roman road   ...   but Morgause felt a curious growing fear: would they find that the Roman road too was gone, was Lothian gone, was she alone on the face of the earth with these few men and women? Shivering, she recalled a few words of Scripture she had heard preached by Gwenhwyfar’s house priest, about the end of the world   ...   I say to you, two women will be grinding grain side by side, and one will be taken, and the other one will be left ...   . Had Camelot and all those within it been taken up into the Christian Heaven, had the world ended, with a few stragglers like herself left to wander on the face of the stricken world?

But they could not stand staring at the empty track. She said, “We will retrace our steps toward the Roman road.” If, she thought, it is still there, if there is anything there at all. It seemed, as she looked on the mists rising like magical smoke from the marshes, that the world had vanished and even the rising sun was unfamiliar. Morgause was not a fanciful woman; she told herself, it was better to move and try to make their way back, than to stand in that otherworldly silence. Camelot was real, a place in the real world, it could not vanish entirely away.

Yet if I had had my way, if Lot and I had been successful in our plotting against Arthur, perhaps the whole land would be like this, silent and desolate and full of fears ...   .

Why was it so quiet? It seemed in all the world there was no sound but their horses’ hooves, and even these seemed to fall like stones dropped into water, muffled and dying away in ripples. They had nearly reached the Roman road—or where the Roman road should have been—when they heard hoofbeats on a hard road; a rider was coming, slow and deliberate, from Glastonbury. They could make out a dark figure through the fog, some kind of heavy-laden pack animal behind him. After a moment one of her men cried out, “Why, look there, it is sir Lancelet of the Lake—God give you good morning, sir!”

“Hallo! Who rides there?” It was indeed Lancelet’s well-known voice, and as he came closer, the homely sound of the hooves of horse and pack mule seemed to release something in the world around them. Sounds carried a long way in the fog, and this was a simple sound, dogs barking somewhere, a whole pack of dogs, perhaps quarrelling over their food after a hungry night, but it broke the unworldly stillness with its simple, normal noise.

“It is the Queen of Lothian,” called Cormac, and Lancelet rode toward them, halting his horse before her.

“Well, Aunt, I had not hoped to meet with you here—are my cousins with you, perhaps, Gawaine or Gareth?”

“No,” she said, “I ride alone for Camelot.” If, she thought irritably, such a place still exists upon the face of this earth! Her eyes rested intently on Lancelet’s face as he said some polite words of greeting. He looked weary and travel-worn, his clothing ragged and not overly clean, a cloak of fustian worse than he would have given his groom. Ah, the beautiful Lancelet, Gwenhwyfar will not find you so handsome now, even I would not stretch out my hand to invite him into my bed.

And then he smiled, and she realized, In spite of all, he is beautiful.

“Shall we ride together then, Aunt? For indeed I come on the most sorrowful of missions.”

“I had heard that you were on the quest of the Grail. Have you found it, then, or failed to find it that you are so long-faced?”

“It is not for such a man as I to find that greatest of Mysteries. Yet I bring with me one who did indeed hold the Grail in his hands. And so I have come to say that the quest is ended, and the Grail gone forever out of this world.”

And then Morgause saw that on the pack mule, covered and shrouded, was the body of a man, She whispered, “Who—?”

“Galahad,” said Lancelet quietly. “It was my son who found the Grail, and now we know that no man may look on it and live. Would that it had been I—if only because I bear such bitter news to my king, that the one who should be King after him has gone before us into the world where he may forever follow his quest unspoilt—“

Morgause shuddered. Now indeed will it be as if Arthur had never been, the land will have no king save for the king in Heaven, ruled over by those priests who have Arthur in their hands   ...   but angrily she dismissed those fancies. Galahad is gone. Arthur must choose Gwydion to rule after him.

Lancelet looked sorrowfully at the pack mule with Galahad’s body, but he said only, “Shall we ride on? I had not intended to rest a night by the road, but the mists were thick, and I feared to lose my way. I would have thought it Avalon itself!”

“We could not find Camelot in the mists, no more than Avalon—“ Cormac began, but Morgause interrupted him fretfully.

“Have done with that foolishness,” she said. “We mistook the road in the darkness, and rode back and forth half the night! We too are in haste to come to Camelot, nephew.”

One or two of her men present knew Lancelet and had known Galahad, and now they crowded close to the body, with soft expressions of sympathy and kindly words. Lancelet listened to all they had to say, his face sorrowful, then, with a few soft words, brought it to an end.

“Later, my lads, later, there will be time enough to mourn. I am in no haste, God knows, to bear such news to Arthur, but delaying will make it no kinder. Let us ride on.”

The mist was thinning and burning away fast as the sun gained height. They set off down the road where Morgause and her men had ridden back and forth for hours in search of Camelot, but before they had gone very far there was another sound that broke the strange silence of the haunted morning. It was a trumpet call, clear and silver in the still air, from the heights of Camelot. And before her at the clump of four trees, broad and unmistakable in the growing sunlight, lay the wagon road built by Arthur’s men for his legions to ride.

IT SEEMED appropriate that the first man Morgause should see on the heights of Camelot was her son Gareth. He strode forth to challenge them at the great gates of Camelot; then, recognizing Lancelet, hurried to him. Lancelet flung himself headlong from his horse and took Gareth into a strong embrace.

“So, cousin, it is you—“

“Aye, it is that—Cai is too old and lame to be patrolling the walls of Camelot in these days. Ah, it is a good day in which you return to Camelot, my cousin. But I see that you found not Galahad, Lance?”

“Aye, but I did,” said Lancelet sorrowfully, and Gareth’s open face, still boyish despite his full beard, was struck with dismay as he looked at the outlines of the dead man under the pall.

“I must bear this news to Arthur at once. Take me to him, Gareth.”

Gareth bowed his head, his hand resting on Lancelet’s shoulder. “Ah, this is an evil day for Camelot. I said once before, it seemed to me that yonder Grail was the work of some devil, not of God at all!”

Lancelet shook his head, and it seemed to Morgause that something bright shone through him, as if his body were transparent; and through his sad smile there was hidden joy. “No, my dear cousin,” he said, “you must put that from your mind forever. Galahad has had what God gave to him, and, God help us, so have we all. But his day is finished, and he is free of all human fate. Ours is still to come, dear Gareth—God grant us that we meet it with as much courage as he.”

“Amen to that,” said Gareth, and to Morgause’s horrified surprise he crossed himself. Then, with a start, he looked up at her.

“Mother, is it you? Forgive me—yours is the last company in which I would expect to find Lancelet.” He bent over her hand with a dutiful kiss. “Come, madam, let me summon a chamberlain and take you to the Queen. She will make you welcome among her ladies while Lancelet is with the King.”

Morgause let herself be led away, wondering now why she had come. In Lothian she ruled as queen in her own right, but here in Camelot she could only sit among Gwenhwyfar’s ladies, and know no more of what was going on than what one of her sons might see fit to tell her.

She said to the chamberlain, “Say to my son Gwydion—sir Mordred —that his mother has come, and bid him to wait upon me as soon as he can.” But she wondered, sunk in despondency, if in this strange court he would even be troubled to pay her such respects as Gareth had done. And once again, she felt she had done wrong to come to Camelot.

14

For many years, Gwenhwyfar had felt that when the Companions of the Round Table were present, Arthur belonged not to her but to them. She had resented their intrusion into her life, their presence at Camelot; often she had felt that if Arthur were not surrounded by the court, perhaps they might have had a life happier than the one they led as King and Queen of Camelot.

And yet in this year of the Grail quest, she began to realize that she had been fortunate after all, for Camelot was like a village of ghosts with all the Companions departed, and Arthur the ghost who haunted Camelot, moving silently through the deserted castle.

It was not that she took no pleasure in Arthur’s company when at last it was entirely hers. It was only that now she came to understand how much of his very being he had poured into his legions and the building of Camelot. He showed her ungrudging courtesy and kindness, and she had more of his company than ever she had had in all the long years of war or the years of peace that followed them. But it was as if some part of him was absent with his Companions, wherever they might be, and only a small fraction of the man himself was here with her. She loved Arthur the man no less than Arthur the King, but she realized now how much less was the man without the business of kingship into which he had put so much of his life. And she was ashamed that she could notice it.

They never spoke of those who were absent. In that year of the Grail quest, they lived quietly and in peace from day to day, speaking only of everyday things, of bread and meat, of fruits from the orchard or wine from the cellars, of a new cloak or the clasp of a shoe. And once, looking around the empty chamber of the Round Table, he said, “Should we have it put away until they return, my love? Even in this great chamber, there is small room to move, and now when it is all empty—“

“No,” she said quickly, “no, my dear, leave it. This great room was built for the Round Table, and without it, it would be like an empty barn. Leave it. You and I and the household folk can dine in the smaller chamber.” He smiled at her, and she knew he was glad she had said that.

“And when the knights return from the quest, we can once again make a great feast there,” he said, but then fell silent, and she knew he was wondering how many would ever return.

Cai was with them, and old Lucan, and two or three of the Companions who were old or infirm or nursing old wounds. And Gwydion— Mordred as he was now called—was always with them, like a grown son; often Gwenhwyfar looked on him and thought, This is the son I might have borne to Lancelet, and heat went scalding and flooding through her whole body, leaving her broken into a hot sweat as she thought of that night when Arthur himself had thrust her into Lancelet’s arms. And indeed this heat came often now and went, so that she never knew whether a room was hot or cold, or whether it was this strange sudden heat from within. Gwydion was gentle and deferential to her, calling her always lady or, sometimes, shyly, Aunt; the very shyness with which he used this term of family closeness warmed her and made him dear to her. He was like to Lancelet, too, but more silent and less light of heart; where Lancelet had ever been ready with a jest or play on words, Gwydion smiled and was always ready with some wit like a blow or the thrust of a needle. His wit was wicked, but she could not but laugh when he made some cruel jest.

One night when their shrunken company was at dinner, Arthur said, “Until Lancelet comes back to us, nephew, I would have you take his post and be my captain of horse.”

Gwydion chuckled. “Light enough will that duty be, my uncle and my lord—there are few horses in that stable now. The finest horses in your stables went with your knights and Companions, and who knows, indeed, whether or no some horse will be the one to find that Grail they seek!”

“Oh, hush,” Gwenhwyfar said. “You must not make fun of their quest.”

“Why not, Aunt? Again and again the priests tell us that we are the sheep of our Lord’s pasture, and if a sheep may seek a spiritual presence, why, I have always thought a horse a nobler beast than any sheep. So who’s to say whether or no the nobler beast may achieve the quest? Even some scarred old war horse may come at last to seek spiritual repose, as they say the lion shall one day lie down beside the lamb and never think it dinner-time.”

Arthur laughed uneasily. “Will we need our horses again for war? Since Mount Badon, God be praised, we have had peace in the land—“

“Save for Lucius,” Gwydion said, “and if I have learned one thing in my life, it is that peace is something which cannot last. Wild Northmen in dragon ships are landing on the coast, and when men cry out for Arthur’s legions to defend them, the answer comes only that Arthur’s Companions have ridden away to seek their souls’ peace. And so they seek for help from the Saxon kings in the South. But no doubt when this quest is done, they will look once more to Arthur and to Camelot—and it seems to me that war horses might be in short supply when that day comes. Lancelet is so busy with the Grail and his other deeds that he has had little time to see to the King’s stables.”

“Well, I have told you I wished you to fill that place,” said Arthur, and it struck Gwenhwyfar that his tone sounded peevish, and old, without the strength it once held. “As captain of horse you have authority to send for horses in my name. Lancelet used to deal with traders from somewhere to the south, beyond Brittany—“

“As I shall do also, then,” said Gwydion. “There were no horses like the horses from Spain, but now, my uncle and my lord, the best horses come from further still. The Spaniards themselves buy horses from Africa, from a desert country there. Now these Saracens are beginning to overrun Spain itself—this I heard from yonder Saracen knight Palomides, who journeyed here and was guested for a time, then rode away to see what adventure there might be among the Saxons. He is not a Christian, and it seemed strange to him that all these knights should ride away after the Grail when there was war in the land.”

“I spoke to Palomides,” said Arthur. “He had a sword from that southern country of Spanish steel—I would gladly have had one like to it, though I think it is no finer than Excahbur. No sword in our country will hold such an edge, like a razor. I am glad I never had to face such a sword in the lists. The Northmen have great axes and clubs, but their weapons are not so good even as the Saxon weapons.”

“They are fiercer fighters, though,” said Gwydion. “They go into a madness of fighting, as sometimes the Tribesmen of Lothian used to do, casting away their shields in battle.... No, my king, we may have had peace for a goodly time, but even as the Saracens are beginning to overrun Spain, so the wild Northmen are on our coasts, and the wild Irishmen. In the end, no doubt, the Saracens will be good for Spain even as the Saxons have been good for this land—“

“Good for this land?” Arthur looked at the younger man in astonishment. “What do I hear you say, nephew?”

“When the Romans left us, my lord Arthur, we were isolated at the end of the world, alone with the half-savage Tribes. The war with the Saxons forced us to reach beyond ourselves,” he said. “We had trade with Less Britain and with Spain and the countries to the south, we had to barter for weapons and horses, we built new cities—why, here’s your own Camelot, sir, to show that. I do not even speak of the movement of the priests, who now have come among the Saxons and made them no longer wild Tribesmen with hair on their faces, worshipping their own barbarian Gods, but civilized men with cities and trade of their own, and their own civilized kings who are subject to you. For what else has this whole land been waiting? Now, even, they have monasteries and learned men writing books, and much more   ...   without the wars against the Saxons, my lord Arthur, Uther’s old kingdom would have been forgotten like that of Maximus.”

Arthur said with a glimmer of amusement, “Then, no doubt, you think these twenty years and more of peace have endangered Camelot, and we need more wars and fighting to bring us into the world again? It is easy to see you are not a warrior, young man. I have no such romantic view of war as that!”

Gwydion smiled back. “What makes you think I am not a warrior, my lord? I fought among your men against Lucius who would have been emperor, and I had ample time to make up my own mind about wars and their worth. Without wars, you would be more forgotten than the least of those kings in Wales and in Eire—who now can call the roll of the kings of Tara?”

“And you think one day it may be so with Camelot, my boy?”

“Ah, my uncle and my king, would you have the wisdom of a Druid or the flattery of a courtier?”

Arthur said, laughing, “Let us have the crafty counsel of a Mordred.”

“The courtier would say, my lord, that the reign of Arthur will live forever and his memory be forever green in the world. And the Druid would say that all men perish, and one day they will be, with all of their wisdom and their glories, like unto Atlantis, sunken beneath the waves. The Gods alone endure.”

“And what would my nephew and my friend say, then?”

“Your nephew”—he put just enough emphasis on the word that Gwenhwyfar could hear that it should have been your son—“would say, my uncle and my lord, that we are living for this day, and not for what history may say of us a thousand years hence. And so your nephew would advise that your stables should once again reflect the noble days when Arthur’s horses and his fighting men were known and fearful to all. No man should be able to say, the King grows old and with all his knights on quest, cares nothing to keep his men and horses in fighting trim.”

Arthur gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. “So let it be, dear boy. I trust your judgment. Send to Spain, or to Africa if you will, for horses such as best suit the reputation of Arthur’s legion, and see to their training.”

“I shall have to find Saxons for that,” said Gwydion, “and the Saxons know little of our secrets of fighting a-horse—you have always said they should not. Is it your will that since the Saxons are our allies now, they should be trained in our fighting skills?”

Arthur looked troubled. “I fear I must leave that, too, in your hands.”

“I shall try to do my best for you,” Gwydion said, “and now, my lord, we have sat overlong in this talk, and wearied the ladies—forgive me, madam,” he added, inclining his head to Gwenhwyfar with that winning smile. “Shall we have music? The lady Niniane, I am certain, would be happy to bring her harp and sing to you, my lord and my king.”

"I am always happy to hear my kinswoman's music," said Arthur gravely, "if it is pleasing to my lady."

Gwenhwyfar nodded to Niniane, who fetched her harp and sat before them, singing, and Gwenhwyfar listened with pleasure to the music— Niniane played beautifully, and her voice was sweet, though not so pure or strong as Morgaine's. But as she watched Gwydion, his eyes on Taliesin's daughter, she thought, Why is it that we, a Christian court, must always have here one of those damsels of the Lady of the Lake? It worried her, although Gwydion seemed as good a Christian as anyone else at court, coming always to mass on Sunday, as did Niniane herself. For that matter she could not remember how Niniane had come to be one of her ladies, save that Gwydion had brought her to court and asked the Queen to extend her hospitality as a kinswoman of Arthur and as Taliesin's daughter. Gwenhwyfar had only the kindest memories of Taliesin, and had been pleased to welcome his daughter, but somehow it seemed now that, without ever putting herself forward, Niniane had assumed the place of the first among her ladies. Arthur always treated her with favor and often called to her to sing, and there were times when Gwenhwyfar, watching them, wondered if he looked on her as more than kinswoman.

But no, surely not. If Niniane had a paramour here at court it was more than likely to be Gwydion himself. She had seen him look at her   ...   and yet her heart grew sore within her; this woman was fair, fair as she herself had been, and she was but an aging woman with her hair fading, the color gone from her cheeks, her body sagging ... . And so when Niniane had put up her harp and withdrawn, she frowned as Arthur came to escort her from the hall.

"You look weary, my wife, what ails you?"

"Gwydion said you were old—"

"My own dear wife, I have sat on that throne of Britain for one-and-thirty years, with you at my side. Do you think there is anyone in this kingdom who can still call us young? Most of our subjects were not yet born when we came to the throne. Though indeed, my dear, I know not how it is that you look ever so young."

"Oh, my husband, I was not seeking to be praised," she said impatiently.

"You should be flattered, my Gwen, that Gwydion does not deal in empty flattery to an aging king, cozening me with lying words. He speaks honestly and I value him for it. I wish—"

"I know what you wish," she interrupted him, her voice angry. "You wish you could acknowledge him your son, so that he and not Galahad might have your throne after you—"

He colored. "Gwenhwyfar, must we always be so sharp with each other on this subject? The priests would not have him for King, and there's an end of it."

"I cannot but remember whose son he is—"

"I cannot but remember that he is my son," said Arthur gently.

"I trust not Morgaine, and you yourself have found that she—"

His face grew hard and she knew that he would not hear her on this one subject. "Gwenhwyfar, my son was fostered by the Queen of Lothian, and her sons have been the support and stay of my kingdom. What would I have done without Gareth and Gawaine? And now Gwydion stands fair to be like them, kindest and best of friends and Companions. It will not make me think the less of Gwydion that he stood beside me when all my other Companions forsook me for this quest."

Gwenhwyfar did not want to quarrel with him. She said now, sliding her hand into his, "Believe me, my lord, I love you beyond all else on this earth."

"Why, I believe you, my love," he said. "The Saxons have a saying —that man is blessed who has a good friend, a good wife, and a good sword. And all those have I had, my Gwenhwyfar."

"Oh, the Saxons," she said, laughing. "All those years you fought against them, and now you quote their sayings of wisdom—"

"Well, what is the good of war—as Gwydion says—if we cannot learn wisdom from our enemies? Long ago, someone—Gawaine, perhaps—said something about the Saxons and the learned men in their monasteries. He said it is like to a woman who is raped, and yet, after the invaders have left our coasts, bears a good son—is it better to have had only the evil, or, when the evil is done and there's no mending it, to take what good may come from that evil?"

Gwenhwyfar frowned and said, "Only a man, I think, could make such a jest as that!"

"No, I meant not to bring up old sorrows, dear heart," he protested, "but the harm was done for me and Morgaine years ago." She realized that for once he spoke his sister's name without that cold tightening in his face. "Would it be better that no good of any kind should come from the sin I did with Morgaine—for you will have it that it was sin—or should I be grateful that, since the sin was done and there's no going back to innocence, God has given me a good son in return for that evil? Morgaine and I parted not as friends, and I know not where she is or what has befallen her, nor do I suppose I will ever again look upon her face this side of the day of judgment. But her son is now the very stay of my throne. Should I mistrust him because of the mother who gave him birth?"

Gwenhwyfar would have said, I do not trust him because he was reared in Avalon, but she had no wish to, so she held her peace. But when, at her door, Arthur held her hand and asked softly, “Is it your will that I join you this night, lady?” she avoided his eyes and said, “No—no, I am tired.” She tried not to see the look of relief in his eyes. She wondered if it were Niniane or some other who shared his bed these days; she would not stoop to question his chamberlain. If it is not I, why should I care who it might be?

The year moved on into the darkness of winter, and on toward spring. One day Gwenhwyfar said fiercely, “I wish this quest were done and the knights returned, Grail or no Grail!”

“Hush, my dear, they are sworn,” said Arthur, but later that day, indeed, a knight rode up the track to Camelot, and they saw that it was Gawaine.

“Is it you, cousin?” Arthur embraced him and kissed him on either cheek. “I had no hope of seeing you till a year was done—did you not swear to follow the Grail for a year and a day?”

“I did so,” said Gawaine, “but I am not false to my oath, Lord, and yonder priest need not look at me as if I were forsworn. For I last saw the Grail here in this very castle, Arthur, and I am just as like to see it here again as in this corner or that of the world. I rode up and down, hither and thither, and never did I hear word of it more, and one day it came to me that I might as well seek it where I had seen it already, at Camelot and in the presence of my king, even if I must look for it every Sunday on the altar at mass, and nowhere else.”

Arthur smiled and embraced him, and Gwenhwyfar saw that his eyes were wet. “Come in, cousin,” he said simply. “Welcome home.”

And some days later, Gareth too came home. “I had a vision indeed, and I think it may have come from God,” he said as they sat at supper in the hall. “I dreamed I saw the Grail uncovered and fair before me, and then a voice spoke to me from the light around the Grail and said, ‘Gareth, Companion of Arthur, this is all you will ever see of that Grail in this life. Why seek further for visions and glories, when your king has need of you in Camelot? You may serve God when you reach Heaven, but while you live here on earth, return to Camelot and serve your king.’ And when I woke, I remembered that even Christ had said that they should render unto Caesar those things which belonged to Caesar, and so I came home this way, and I met with Lancelet as I rode, and I bade him do the same.”

“Do you think, then, that you truly found the Grail?” Gwydion asked.

Gareth laughed. “Perhaps the Grail itself is only a dream. And when I dreamed of the Grail, it bade me do my duty to my lord and king.”

“I suppose we shall look to see Lancelet here among us soon, then?”

“I hope he can find it in his heart to come,” said Gawaine, “for indeed we need him here. But Easter will be upon us soon, and then we can look to have them all come home.”

Later Gareth asked that Gwydion would bring his harp and sing for them. “For,” he said, “I have not heard even such rough music as I would hear at the court of the Saxons, and you who sit here at home have surely had time to perfect your songs, Gwydion.”

Gwenhwyfar would not have been surprised had he stood aside for Niniane, but instead he brought out a harp Gwenhwyfar recognized.

“Is that not Morgaine’s harp?”

“It is so. She left it at Camelot when she went from here, and if she wants it she can send for it, or come and take it from me. And until that day, well, it is surely mine, and I doubt she would begrudge me this when she has given me nothing else.”

“Save only your life,” said Arthur in a tone of mild reproof, and Gwydion turned on him a look of such bitterness that Gwenhwyfar was sorely distressed. His savage tone could not be heard four feet away. “Should I then be grateful for that, my lord and my king?” Before Arthur could speak, he set his fingers to the strings and began to play. But the song he sang shocked Gwenhwyfar.

He sang the ballad of the Fisher King, who dwelt in a castle at the middle of a great wasteland; and as the king grew ancient and his powers waned, so did the land fade and put forth no crops, till some younger man should come and strike the stroke of mercy which would pour out the blood of the ancient king upon the land. Then the land would grow young again with the new king, and bloom with his youth.

“Say you so?” demanded Arthur uneasily. “That the land where an old king rules can only be a land which fades?”

“Not so, my lord. What would we do without the wisdom of your many years? Yet in the ancient days of the Tribes it was even so, where the Goddess of the Land alone endures, and the king rules while he shall please her. And when the King Stag grew old, another would come from the herd and throw him down   ...   but this is a Christian court, and you have no such heathen ways as that, my king. I think perhaps that ballad of the Fisher King is but a symbol of the grass which, even as it says in your Scriptures, is like to man’s flesh, enduring but a season, and the king of the wasteland but a symbol of the world which yearly dies with the grass and is renewed with spring, as all religions tell... even Christ withered like the Fisher King when he died the death of the cross and returns again with Easter, ever new   ... ” and he touched the strings and sang softly:

“For lo, all the days of man are as a leaf that is fallen and as the grass that withereth.

Thou too shalt be forgotten, like the flower that falleth on the grass, like the wine that is poured out and soaks into the earth.

And yet even as the spring returns, so blooms the land and so blooms life which will come again   ... ”

Gwenhwyfar asked, “Is that Scripture, Gwydion? A verse perhaps of a psalm?”

Gwydion shook his head. “It is an ancient hymn of the Druids, and there are those who say it is older than that, brought perhaps from those lands which now lie beneath the sea. But each religion has some such hymn as that. Perhaps indeed all religion is One   ... ”

Arthur asked him quietly, “Are you a Christian, my lad?”

Gwydion did not answer for a moment. At last he said, “I was reared a Druid and I do not break the oaths I have sworn. My name is not Kevin, my king. But you do not know all the vows I have made.” Quietly he rose from his place and went forth from the hall. Arthur, staring after him, did not speak even to reprove his lack of courtesy, but Gawaine was scowling.

“Will you let him take leave with so little of ceremony, lord?”

“Oh, leave it, leave it,” Arthur said. “We are all kinsmen here, I ask not that he should treat me always as if I were on the throne! He knows well that he is my son, and so does every man in this room! Would you have him always the courtier?”

But Gareth was frowning after him. He said softly, “I wish with all my heart that Galahad would return to court. God grant him some such vision as mine, for you need him more here than you need me, Arthur, and if he comes not soon, I shall go forth myself to seek him.”

IT WAS only a few days before Pentecost when Lancelet finally came home.

They had seen the approaching procession—men, ladies, horses and pack animals—and Gareth, at the gates, had summoned all men to welcome them, but Gwenhwyfar, standing at Arthur’s side, paid little heed to Queen Morgause, except to wonder why the Queen of Lothian had come. Lancelet knelt before Arthur with his sorrowful news, and Gwenhwyfar too felt the pain in his eyes   ...   always, always it had been like this, that what smote his heart was like a lash laid to her own. Arthur bent and raised Lancelet to his feet and embraced him, and his own eyes were wet.

“I have lost a son, no less than you, dear friend. He will be sorely missed.” And Gwenhwyfar could bear it no more, and stepped forward to give Lancelet her hand before them all and say, her voice trembling, “I had longed for you to return to us, Lancelet, but I am sorry that you must come with such sad news.”

Arthur said quietly to his men, “Let him be taken to the chapel where he was made knight. There let him lie, and tomorrow he shall be buried as befits my son and heir.” As he turned away, he staggered a little, and Gwydion was quick to put his hand beneath his arm and support him.

Gwenhwyfar did not often weep now, but she felt she must weep at Lancelet’s face, so marred and stricken. What had befallen him in this year when he followed the Grail? Long sickness, long fasting, weariness, wounds? Never had she seen him so sorrowful, even when he came to speak with her of his marriage to Elaine. Watching Arthur leaning heavily on Gwydion’s arm, she sighed, and Lancelet pressed her hand and said softly, “I can even be glad now that Arthur came to know his own son and to value him. It will soften his grief.”

Gwenhwyfar shook her head, not wanting to think of what this would mean for Gwydion and for Arthur. Morgaine’s son! Morgaine’s son, to follow after Arthur—no, there was no help for it now!

Gareth came and bowed before her and said, “Madam, my mother is here—“ and Gwenhwyfar recalled that she was not free to stay among the men, that her place was with the ladies, that she could not speak a word of comfort to Arthur or even to Lancelet. She said coldly, “I am happy to welcome you, Queen Morgause,” and it came to her mind, Must I confess this then as a sin, that I lie to the queen? Would it somehow be more virtuous if I said to her, I welcome you as duty demands, Queen Morgause, but I am not glad to see you and I wish you had stayed in Lothian, or in hell for all I care! She saw that Niniane was at Arthur’s side, that Arthur was between her and Gwydion, and she frowned.

“Lady Niniane,” she said coolly, “I think that the women will withdraw now. Find a guest room for the Queen of Lothian, and see that everything is made ready for her.”

Gwydion looked angry, but there was nothing to be said, and Gwenhwyfar reflected, as she and her ladies left the courtyard, that there were advantages to being a queen.

ALL THAT DAY, the Companions and knights of the Round Table were riding back toward Arthur’s court, and Gwenhwyfar was busy with the preparations for the feast on the morrow, which would be the funeral. On the day of Pentecost, such of Arthur’s men as had returned from this quest would be reunited. She recognized many faces, but some, she knew, would never return: Perceval, and Bors, and Lamorak—she turned a gentler face on Morgause, who, she knew, sincerely mourned for Lamorak. She had felt that the older woman had made a fool of herself with her young lover, but grief was grief, and when at the funeral mass for Galahad the priest spoke of all those others who had fallen on this quest, she saw Morgause hiding tears behind her veil, and her face was red and blotched after the mass.

The night before, Lancelet had watched by his son’s body in the chapel, and she had had no chance for private words with him. Now, after the funeral mass, she bade him sit beside her and Arthur at dinner, and when she filled his cup, she hoped that he would drink himself drunk and be past mourning. She grieved over his lined face, so drawn with pain and privation, and over the curls around his face, so white now. And she who loved him best, she could not even embrace him and weep with him in public. For many years she had felt it like a deep pain that she would never have any right to turn to him before other men, but must sit at his side and be only a kinswoman and his queen. And now it seemed to her more dreadful than ever, but he did not turn to her, he did not even meet her eyes.

Standing, Arthur drank to the knights who would never return from the quest. “Here before you all, I swear that none of their wives or children shall ever know want while I live and Camelot stands with one stone upon another,” he said. “I share your sorrow. The heir to my throne died in the quest of the Grail.” He turned, and held out his hand to Gwydion, who came slowly to his side. He looked younger than he was, in a plain white tunic, his dark hair caught in a golden band.

Arthur said, “A king cannot, like other men, indulge in long mourning, my Companions. Here I ask you to mourn with me for my lost nephew and adopted son, who now will never reign at my side. But even though our mourning is still green, I ask you to accept Gwydion—sir Mordred— the son of my only sister, Morgaine of Avalon, as my heir. Gwydion is young, but he has become one of my wise councillors.” He raised his cup and drank. “I drink to you, my son, and to your reign when mine is done.”

Gwydion came and knelt before Arthur. “May your reign be long, my father.” It seemed to Gwenhwyfar that he was blinking back tears, and she liked him better for it. The Companions drank, and then, led by Gareth, broke out in cheering.

But Gwenhwyfar sat silent. She had known this must come, but she had not expected it to happen at Galahad’s very funeral feast! Now she turned to Lancelet and whispered, “I wish he had waited! I wish he had consulted with his councillors!”

“Knew you not he intended this?” Lancelet asked. He reached out and took her hand, pressing it softly and holding on to it, stroking her fingers beneath the rings she wore. Her fingers seemed now so thin and bony, not young and soft as they had been; she felt abashed and would have drawn her hand away, but he would not let her. He said, still stroking her hand, “Arthur should not have done that to you without warning—“

“God knows, I have no right to complain, who could not give him a son, so he must make do with Morgaine’s—“

“Still, he should have warned you,” Lancelet said. It was the first time, Gwenhwyfar thought distantly, that he had ever, even for a moment, seemed to criticize Arthur. He raised her hand gently to his lips, then let it go as Arthur approached them with Gwydion. Stewards were bringing smoking platters of meat, trays of fresh fruits and hot breads, setting sweetmeats every few places along the table. Gwenhwyfar let her steward help her to some meat and fruits, but she barely touched her plate. She saw, with a smile, that it had been arranged that she shared her plate with Lancelet, as so often she had done at other Pentecost feasts; and that Niniane, on Arthur’s other side, was eating from his dish. Once he called her daughter, which relieved Gwenhwyfar’s mind somewhat—perhaps he accepted her already as his son’s potential wife. To her surprise Lancelet seemed to follow her thought.

“Will the next festival at court be a wedding? I would have thought the kinship too close—“

“Would that matter in Avalon?” Gwenhwyfar asked, her voice harsher than she intended; the old pain was still there.

Lancelet shrugged. “I know not—in Avalon as a boy I heard of a country far to the south of here, where the royal house married always their own sister and brother that the royal blood might not be diluted by that of the common people, and that dynasty lasted for a thousand years.”

“Heathen men,” said Gwenhwyfar. “They knew nothing of God, and knew not that they sinned ...   .”

Yet Gwydion seemed not to have suffered from the sin of his mother and his father; why should he, Taliesin’s grandson—no, his great-grandson —hesitate to wed with Taliesin’s daughter?

God will punish Camelot for that sin, she thought suddenly. For Arthur’s sin and for mine   ...   and Lancelet’s   ...

Beyond her she heard Arthur say to Gwydion, “You said once in my hearing that Galahad looked not like one who would live to his crowning.”

“And you remember too, my father and my lord,” said Gwydion quietly, “that I swore to you I would have no part in his death, but that he would die honorably for the cross he worshipped, and it was so.”

“What more do you foresee, my son?”

“Ask me not, lord Arthur. The Gods are kind when they say that no man may know his own end. Even if I knew—and I say not that I know —I would tell you nothing.”

Perhaps, thought Gwenhwyfar, with a sudden shiver, God has punished us enough for our sin when he sent us this Mordred   ...   and then, looking at the young man, she was dismayed. How can I think so of the one who has been to Arthur as a son indeed? He is not to blame for his fathering!

She said to Lancelet, “Arthur should not have done this before Galahad was cold in his grave!”

“Not so, my lady. Arthur knows well the duties of a king. Do you think it would matter to Galahad, where he has gone, who sits on the throne he never wished for? I would have done better to make my son a priest, Gwenhwyfar.”

She looked at Lancelet, brooding, a thousand leagues away from her, gone into himself where she could never follow, and she said, awkwardly, reaching for him in the best way she could, “And did you, then, fail to find the Grail?”

She saw him come slowly back through the long distance. “I came— nearer than any sinful man can come and live. But I was spared, to tell the men at Arthur’s court that the Grail has gone forever beyond this world.” Again he fell silent, then said across that vast distance, “I would have followed it beyond the world, but I was given no choice.”

She wondered, Did you not, then, wish to return to court for my sake? And it seemed clear to her that Lancelet was more like Arthur than she had ever known, and that she had never been anything more, to either of them, than a diversion between war and quest; that the real life of a man was lived in a world where love meant nothing. All his life he had devoted to wars at Arthur’s side, and now when there was no war he had given himself over to a great Mystery. The Grail had come between them, as Arthur had come between them, and Lancelet’s own honor.

Now even Lancelet had turned to God, and thought, no doubt, only that she had led him into grave sin. The pain was unendurable. In all of life, she had had nothing more than this, and she could not keep herself from reaching out to him, clasping his hand. “I have longed for you,” she whispered, and was shocked at the longing in her voice; he will think me no better than Morgause, flinging myself at his head ...   . He held her hand and said softly, “And I have missed you, Gwen.” And then, as if he could read her whole hungry heart, he said in a low voice, “Grail or no Grail, beloved, nothing could have brought me back to this court but the thought of you. I would have remained there, spending the rest of my life in prayers that I might see again that Mystery that was hidden from my eyes. But I am no more than a man, my beloved ...   .”

And she knew what it was that he was saying, and pressed his hand. “Shall I send away my women, then?”

He hesitated a moment, and Gwenhwyfar felt the old dread   ...   how dared she be so forward, so lacking in a woman’s modesty? ... Always, this moment was like death. Then he tightened his grip on her fingers and said, “Yes, my love.”

BUT AS SHE awaited him, alone in the darkness, she wondered in bitterness if his “Yes” had been like Arthur’s, an offer made from time to time out of pity, or a wish to save her pride. Now that there was no longer the slightest hope that she would bear to Arthur a belated child, he could have stopped coming to her, but he was too kind to give her women cause to smile behind her back. Still, it was like a knife in her heart that Arthur always seemed relieved when she sent him away; there were even times when she invited him in and they talked together or she lay for a time in his arms, content to be held and comforted, but demanding no more of him. Now she wondered if Arthur felt that his embraces would be unwelcome to her, so that he seldom offered them, or whether he truly did not desire her. She wondered if he ever had desired her, or had always come to her because she was the wife he had taken and it was his duty to give her children.

All men praised my beauty and desired me, save for the husband I was given. And now, she thought, perhaps even Lancelet comes to me because he is too kind to abandon me or turn me away. She grew feverish, and it seemed that even in her light bed gown she was overheated, her whole body breaking out in drops of sweat. She rose and sponged herself with the cold water in a jar on her dressing table, touching her sagging breasts with distaste. Ah, I am old, surely it will disgust him, that this ugly old flesh is still as eager for him as if I were young and beautiful ...   .

And then she heard his step behind her; and he caught her into his arms, and she forgot her fears. But after he had gone she lay wakeful.

I should not risk this. It was different, in the old days; now we are a Christian court and the eyes of the bishop are always on me.

But I have nothing else   ...   and it occurred to her suddenly, nor has Lancelet ...   . His son was dead, and his wife, and the old closeness with Arthur was gone beyond recall.

Would that I were like Morgaine, who does not need a man’s love to feel herself alive and real ...   . And yet Gwenhwyfar knew that even if she did not need this from Lancelet, it was he who needed her; and without her, he would be utterly alone. He had come to court because he needed her no less than she needed him.

And so, even if it was sin, it seemed the greater sin to leave Lancelet comfortless.

Even if we are both damned for it, she thought, never shall I turn aside from him. God is a God of love, she thought; how then could he condemnthe one thing in her life that was born of love? And if he did, she thought, terrified at her blasphemy, he was not the God she had always worshipped, and she did not care what he thought!