That summer there was war again, the Northmen raiding the western 1 coasts, and Arthur’s legion rode forth to battle, this time riding at the head of the Saxon kings from the southern country, Ceardig and his men. Queen Morgause remained in Camelot; it was not safe to take the road alone to Lothian, and none could be spared to escort her.
They returned late in the summer. Morgause was in the women’s hall with Gwenhwyfar and her ladies when they heard the trumpets from the heights.
“It is Arthur returning!” Gwenhwyfar rose from her seat. Immediately all of the women dropped their spindles and clustered around her.
“How do you know?”
Gwenhwyfar laughed. “A messenger brought me the news last night,” she said. “Do you think I am dealing in sorcery at my age?” She looked around her at the excited girls—to Morgause it seemed that all of Gwen-hwyfar’s ladies were but little girls, fourteen and fifteen, who made every excuse to leave off spinning; and now the Queen said indulgently, “Shall we go and watch them from the heights?”
Chattering, giggling, gathering in groups of two and three, they ran off, leaving the dropped spindles where they had fallen. Good-naturedly, Gwenhwyfar called one of the serving-women to put the room to rights and, at Morgause’s side, followed at a more dignified pace to the brow of the hill, where they could see the wide road leading up to Camelot.
“Look, there is the King—“
“And sir Mordred, riding at his side—“
“And there is the lord Lancelet—oh, look, he has a bandage round his head, and his arm is in a sling!”
“Let me see,” said Gwenhwyfar and pushed them aside, while the girls stared. Morgause could make out Gwydion, riding at Arthur’s side; he appeared unwounded, and she drew a sigh of relief. She could see Cormac back among the men, too—he had ridden to war with all the men, and he too seemed unhurt. Gareth was easy to find among them—he was the tallest man in Arthur’s whole company, and his fair hair blazed like a halo. Gawaine, too, at Arthur’s back as always, was upright in his saddle, but as they came nearer she could see a great bruise on his face, darkening his eyes, and his mouth swollen as if he had had a tooth or two knocked out.
“Look, sir Mordred is handsome—“ one of the little girls said. “I have heard the Queen say that he looks exactly as Lancelet did when Lancelet was young,” and then she giggled and dug her neighbor in the ribs. They clung together, whispering, and Morgause watched, sighing. They seemed so young, all of them, so pretty with their hair silky-soft and bound in plaits and curls, brown or red or golden, their cheeks soft as petals and smooth as a baby’s, their waists so slim, their hands so smooth and white—she felt, suddenly, wild with jealousy; once she had been more beautiful than any of them. Now they were nudging one another, whispering about this knight and that.
“Look how the Saxon knights are all bearded—why do they want to look shaggy like dogs?”
“My mother says,” one of the maidens said impudently—she was the daughter of one of the Saxon noblemen, her name was something barbarian which Morgause could hardly pronounce, Alfreth or something of that sort —“that to kiss a man without a beard is like kissing another maiden, or your baby brother!”
“Yet sir Mordred shaves his face clean, and there is nothing maidenly about him,” said one of the girls, and turned laughing to Niniane, standing quietly among the women, “is there, lady Niniane?”
Niniane said, with a soft laugh, “All these bearded men seem old to me—when I was a little girl, only my father and the oldest Druids ever went bearded.”
“Even Bishop Patricius now wears his beard,” said one of the girls. “I heard him say that in heathen times men deformed their faces by cutting their beards and men should wear their beards as God made them. Maybe the Saxons think it so.”
“It is but a new fashion,” said Morgause. “They come and they go— when I was young, Christian and pagan alike shaved their faces clean, and now the fashion has changed—I think not it has anything to do with holiness either way. I doubt not, one day Gwydion will wear a beard—will you think less of him, Niniane?”
The younger woman laughed. “No, cousin. He is the same, bearded or shaven. Ah, look, there rides King Ceardig, and others—are they all to be guested here at Camelot? Madam, shall I go and tell the stewards?”
“Please do, my dear,” Gwenhwyfar said, and Niniane moved toward the hall. The girls were shoving one another to get a better view, and Gwenhwyfar said, “Come, come—all of you, back to your spinning. It is unseemly to stare at young men this way. Have none of you anything better to do than talk so immodestly about the men? All of you now, be off with you, you will see them this night in the great hall. There is to be feasting, which means work for all of you.”
They looked sulky, but they went obediently back to the hall, and Gwenhwyfar sighed and shook her head as she walked back at Morgause’s side. “In Heaven’s name, was there ever such a lot of unruly girls? And somehow I must keep them all chaste and under my guidance—it seems they spend all their time gossiping and giggling instead of minding their spinning. I am ashamed that my court should be so filled with empty-headed and immodest little hussies like this!”
“Oh, come, my dear,” said Morgause lazily, “surely you too were fifteen once? Surely you were not such a model maiden as all that—did you never steal a look at a handsome young man and think and gossip about how it would be to kiss him, bearded or shaven?”
“I do not know what you did when you were fifteen,” Gwenhwyfar flared at her, “but I was behind convent walls! It seems to me that would be a good place for these unmannerly maids!”
Morgause laughed. “When I was fourteen, I had an eye for everything that wore breeches. I recall that I used to sit in Gorlois’s lap—he that was married to Igraine before Uther’s eyes fell on her—and Igraine knew it well, for when she married Uther, her first act was to pack me off to be married to Lot, which was about as far from Uther’s court as she could send me without crossing the ocean! Come, Gwenhwyfar, even behind your convent walls can you swear you never peeped out at any handsome young man who came to break your father’s horses, or the crimson cloak of any young knight?”
Gwenhwyfar looked down at her sandals. “It seems so very long ago—“ and then, recollecting herself, spoke briskly. “The hunters brought in a deer last night—I shall give orders that it be cut up and roasted for dinner, and perhaps we should have a pig killed too, if all these Saxons are to be guested here. And fresh straw must be spread in the rooms where they will sleep, there will never be enough beds for all these people!”
“Send the maidens to see to that too,” said Morgause. “They must learn to manage guests in a great hall—for what other reason are they in your care, Gwenhwyfar? And it is the duty of a queen to welcome her lord when he returns from war.”
“You are right.” Gwenhwyfar sent her page to give the orders, and they walked toward the great gates of Camelot together. Morgause thought, Why, it is exactly as if we had been friends all our lives. And she thought, there were so few of them who had been young together.
She had much the same feeling when she sat that night in the great hall that was hung with decorations and brilliant with the fine clothes of the ladies and the knights. Almost it was like the great days of Camelot. Yet so many of the old Companions were gone in war, or on the Grail quest, and would never return. Morgause did not remember often that she was old, and it frightened her. Half the seats of the Round Table, it seemed, were filled now with hairy Saxons with their great beards and their rough cloaks, or with young men who seemed hardly old enough to hold weapons. Even her baby, Gareth, was one of the older knights of the Round Table, and the newer ones deferred to him amazingly, calling him sir, and asking his advice, or hesitating to argue with him if they differed. As for Gwydion —most of them called him sir Mordred—he seemed quite a leader among the younger men, new knights and the Saxons whom Arthur had chosen as his Companions.
Gwenhwyfar’s ladies and stewards had done their task well; there was roast and boiled meat in plenty, and great meat pies with gravy, platters of early apples and grapes, hot bread and lentil porridge. At the high table, when the feasting was done and the Saxons were drinking and at their favorite game of asking riddles, Arthur called Niniane to sing for them. Gwenhwyfar had Lancelet at her side, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling—he had been wounded by a Northman’s battleaxe. He could not use his arm, and Gwenhwyfar was cutting his meat for him. No one, Morgause thought, paid it the slightest attention.
Gareth and Gawaine were seated further down the table, and Gwydion close to them, sharing a dish with Niniane. Morgause went to greet them. Gwydion had bathed and combed his hair into curls, but one of his legs was bandaged, propped on a stool.
“Are you hurt, my son?”
“It does well enough,” he said. “I am too big now, Mother, to run and climb into your lap when I stub my toe!”
“It looks worse than that,” she said, looking at the bandage and the crusted blood at the edges, “but I will leave you alone, if you wish. Is that tunic new?”
It was made in a fashion she had seen many of the Saxons wearing, with sleeves so long that they came down past the wrist and half covered the knuckles of the hand. Gwydion’s was of blue-dyed cloth, embroidered with crimson stitchery.
“It was a gift from Ceardig. He told me it was a good fashion for a Christian court, for it conceals the serpents of Avalon.” His mouth twisted. “Perhaps I should give my lord Arthur such a tunic for a New Year’s gift this winter!”
“I doubt if anyone would know the difference,” said Gawaine. “No one, now, thinks of Avalon, and Arthur’s wrists are so faded no one sees or would criticize if they did.”
Morgause looked at Gawaine’s bruised face and eyes. He had in truth lost more than one tooth, and his hands, too, looked cut and bruised.
“And you too are wounded, my son?”
“Not from the enemy,” Gawaine growled. “This I got from our Saxon friends—one of the men in Ceardig’s army. Damn them all, those unmannerly bastards! I think I liked it better when they were all our foes!”
“You fought him, then?”
“Aye, and will do so again, should he dare to open his clacking jaw about my king,” Gawaine said angrily. “Nor did I need Gareth to come to my rescue, as if I were not big enough to fight my own battles without my little brother coming to my aid—“
“He was twice your size,” said Gareth, putting down his spoon, “and he had you on the ground, and I thought he would break your back or crack your ribs—I am not sure yet that he did not. Was I to sit aside while that foul-tongued fellow beat my brother and slandered my kinsman? He will think twice and then thrice before he opens his evil mouth again with such words.”
“Still,” said Gwydion quietly, “you cannot silence the whole Saxon army, Gareth, especially when what they say is true. There’s a name, and not a pretty one, for a man, even when that man’s a king, who sits back and says nothing while another man does his husband’s duty in his wife’s bed—“
“You dare!” Gareth half rose, turning on Gwydion and gripping the Saxon tunic at the neck. Gwydion put up his hands to loosen Gareth’s hold.
“Easy, foster-brother!” He looked like a child in the giant Gareth’s grip. “Will you treat me as you treated yonder Saxon because here among kinsmen I speak truth, or am I too to keep to the pleasant lie of the court, when all men see the Queen with her paramour and say nothing?”
Gareth slowly relaxed his grip and eased Gwydion back to his seat. “If Arthur has nothing to complain of in the lady’s conduct, who am I to speak?”
Gawaine muttered, “Damn the woman! Damn her anyhow! Would that Arthur had put her away while there was still time! I have no great love for so Christian a court as this has become, and filled with Saxons. When I was first knight at Arthur’s side, there was not a Saxon in all this land with more of religion than a pig in his sty!”
Gwydion made a deprecating sound, and Gawaine turned on him. “I know them better than you. I was fighting Saxons while you were wetting your swaddling bands! Are we now to run Arthur’s court by what these hairy grunters think of us?”
“You do not know the Saxons half so well as I do,” Gwydion said. “You do not get to know a man at the business end of a battleaxe. I have lived in their courts and drunk with them and courted their women, and I venture to say that I know them well, which you do not. And this much is true: they call Arthur and his court corrupt, too pagan.”
“That comes well from them,” Gawaine snorted.
“Still,” said Gwydion, “it is no laughing matter, that these men, unrebuked, can call Arthur corrupt—“
“Unrebuked, say you?” Gareth grumbled. “I think Gawaine and I did some rebuking!”
“Will you fight your way through the Saxon court? Better to amend the cause of slander,” said Gwydion. “Cannot Arthur rule his wife better than this?”
Gawaine said, “It would take a braver man than I to speak ill of Gwenhwyfar to Arthur’s face.”
“Yet it must be done,” said Gwydion. “If Arthur is to be High King over all these men, he cannot be a laughingstock. When they call him cuckold, will they take oath to follow him in peace and in war? Somehow he must heal the corruption in this court—send the woman to a nunnery perhaps, or banish Lancelet—“
Gawaine looked anxiously around. “For God’s sake, lower your voice,” he said. “Such things should not even be whispered in this place!”
“It is better that we should whisper them than that they should be whispered all the length and breadth of the land,” Gwydion said. “In God’s name, there they sit close by him, and he smiles on them both! Is Camelot to become a joke, and the Round Table a bawdy house?”
“Now shut your filthy mouth or I will shut it for you,” Gawaine snarled, gripping Gwydion’s shoulder in his iron fingers.
“If I were speaking lies, Gawaine, you might well try to shut my mouth, but can you stop the truth with your fists? Or do you still maintain that Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet are innocent? You, Gareth, who have all your life been his pet and minion, I might well believe that you will think no evil of your friend—“
Gareth said, gritting his teeth, “It is true I wish the woman at the bottom of the sea, or behind the walls of the safest convent in Cornwall. But while Arthur does not speak, I will hold my tongue. And they are old enough to be discreet. All men have known for years that he has been her champion lifelong—“
“If I only had some proof, Arthur might listen to me,” Gwydion said.
“Damn you, I am certain Arthur knows what there is to know. But it is for him to allow it or to interfere ... and he will hear no word against either of them.” Gawaine swallowed and went on. “Lancelet is my kinsman, and my friend too. But—damn you—do you think I have not tried?”
“And what said Arthur?”
“He said that the Queen was above my criticism, and whatever she chose to do was well done. He was courteous, but I could tell that he knew what I was saying and was warning me not to interfere.”
“But if it were drawn to his attention in a way he could not choose to ignore,” Gwydion said quietly, considering, then raised his hand and beckoned. Niniane, seated at Arthur’s feet, her hands still touching the strings of her harp, softly asked leave of Arthur, then rose and came to him.
“My lady,” Gwydion said, “is it not true that she”— he inclined his head very slightly in Gwenhwyfar’s direction—“often sends her women away for the night?”
Niniane said quietly, “She has not done so while the legion was away from Camelot.”
“So at least we know the lady is loyal,” said Gwydion cynically, “and does not distribute her favors wholesale.”
“No one has ever accused her of common lechery,” said Gareth angrily, “and at their ages—they are both older than you, Gawaine—whatever they are about cannot be much harm to anyone, I should think.”
“No, I am serious,” said Gwydion with equal heat. “If Arthur is to remain High King—“
“Mean you not,” said Gareth angrily, “if you are to be High King after him—“
“What would you, brother? That when Arthur is gone I should turn over all this land to the Saxons?” Their heads were close together, and they were talking in furious whispers. Morgause knew they had forgotten not only her presence but her very existence.
“Why, I thought you loved the Saxons well,” said Gareth, in angry scorn. “Would you not be content to have them rule, then?”
“No, hear me,” said Gwydion in a rage, but Gareth grabbed at him again and said, “The whole of the court will hear you if you do not moderate your voices—look, Arthur is staring at you, he watched when Niniane came over here! Maybe Arthur is not the only one who should look to his lady, or—“
“Be silent!” Gwydion said, wrestling himself free of Gareth’s hands.
Arthur called out to him, “What, do my loyal cousins of Lothian quarrel among themselves? I will have peace in my hall, kinsmen! Come, Gawaine, here’s King Ceardig asking if you will have a game of riddles with him!”
Gawaine rose, but Gwydion said softly, “Here’s a riddle for you— when a man will not mind his property, what’s to be done by those who have an interest in it?”
Gawaine stalked away, pretending he did not hear, and Niniane bent over Gwydion and said, “Leave it for now. There are too many ears and eyes. You have planted the seed. Now speak to some of the other knights. Do you think you are the only one who saw—that?” and she moved her elbow just a little. Morgause, following the slight gesture, saw that Gwen-hwyfar was bending with Lancelet over a game board on their laps; their heads were close together.
“I think there are many who think it touches the honor of Arthur’s Camelot,” Niniane murmured. “You need only find some who are less— biased—than your brothers of Lothian, Gwydion.”
But Gwydion was looking angrily at Gareth. “Lancelet,” he muttered, “always Lancelet!” And Morgause, looking from Gwydion to her youngest son, thought of a small child prattling to a red-and-blue carved knight which he called Lancelet.
Then she thought of a younger Gwydion, following Gareth about like a puppy. Gareth is his Lancelet, she thought. What will come of this? But her disquiet was swallowed up in malice. Surely it is time, she thought, that Lancelet should have to answer for all he has wrought.
NINIANE STOOD at the crest of Camelot, looking down at the mists that surrounded the hill. She heard a step behind her, and said, without turning, “Gwydion?”
“Who else?” His arms came around her and held her tight, and she turned her face to kiss him. He demanded, without letting her go, “Does Arthur kiss you like that?”
She freed herself from his embrace to confront him. “Are you jealous of the King? Was it not you who told me to gain his confidence?”
“Already Arthur has had more than enough of what is mine—“
“Arthur is a Christian man—I will say no more than that,” Niniane said, “and you are my dear love. But I am Niniane of Avalon, and I account to no man on this earth for what I do with what is mine—yes, mine and not yours. I am not Roman, to let some man tell me what I may do with what the Goddess gave me. And if you like that not, Gwydion, then I shall return to Avalon.”
Gwydion smiled, the cynical smile she liked least about him.
“If you could find the way,” he said. “You might find that not so easy any longer.” Then the cynicism slipped from his face and he stood holding Niniane’s hand lightly in his and said, “I care not what Arthur may do in the time remaining to him. Like Galahad, he may have his moments, for he will be a long time without them.” He stared down at what looked like an ocean of mist surrounding Camelot. “When the mist clears we will see Avalon from here, perhaps, and Dragon Island.” He sighed and said, “Did you know—some of the Saxons are moving into that country now, and there has been hunting of the deer on Dragon Island, though Arthur forbade it.”
Niniane’s face hardened in anger. “A stop must be put to that. The place is sacred, and the deer—“
“And the little folk who own the deer. But Aedwin the Saxon slaughtered them,” Gwydion said. “He told Arthur that they shot at his men with poisoned elf-arrows, so he gave his men leave to kill as many of them as he could find. And now they hunt the deer—and Arthur will go to war against Aedwin, if he must. I wish Aedwin had a better cause—in honor I must fight to protect those who look to Avalon.”
“And Arthur goes to war for their sakes?” Niniane was surprised. “I thought he had forsworn Avalon.”
“Avalon, perhaps, but not the harmless folk from the island.” Gwydion was silent, and Niniane knew he was remembering a day on Dragon Island. He slid his fingers along the tattooed serpents on his wrists, then pulled the sleeves of his Saxon tunic down over them. “I wonder, could I still pull down a King Stag with only my hands and a flint knife?”
“I doubt not that you could, if you were challenged,” said Niniane. “The question is, could Arthur? For if he cannot ... ”
She left the question hanging in the air, and he said somberly, watching the enclosing mist, “I do not think it will clear. Mist hangs here always, so thickly now that some of the Saxon kings who send messengers cannot find their way ... . Niniane! Will Camelot too go into the mists?”
She began to fling him back some careless word of jest or reassurance, then stopped and said, “I know not. Dragon Island is defiled, the folk dying or dead, the sacred herd prey to the Saxon hunters. Northmen raid the coast. Will they one day sack Camelot as the Goths overthrew Rome?”
“If I had known in time,” Gwydion said with smothered violence, striking one fist against the other, “if the Saxons had brought word to Arthur, he could have sent me—or some other—to protect that holy ground where he was made King Stag and made the sacred marriage with the land! Now the shrine of the Goddess has been overthrown, since he did not die to protect it, his kingship is forfeit.”
Niniane heard what he did not say: And mine. She said, “You knew not that it was endangered.”
“And for that too I blame Arthur,” Gwydion said. “That the Saxons could think of doing this without consulting him—does it not say to you how little they think now of his High Kingship? And why do they think so little of him? I will tell you, Niniane—they think little of any king who is cuckold, who cannot rule his women—“
“You who were reared in Avalon,” she said angrily, “will you judge Arthur by the Saxon’s standards, which are worse than those of the Romans? Will you let a kingdom rise or fall because of some notion of how a man should keep his women in bonds? You are to be King, Gwydion, because you bear the royal blood of Avalon and because you are the child of the Goddess—“
“Pah!” Gwydion spat and followed it with an obscenity. “Did it never occur to you, Niniane—perhaps Avalon fell as later Rome fell, because there was corruption at the heart of the realm? By Avalon’s laws, Gwenhwyfar has done no more than is right—the lady shall choose who she will for her consort, and Arthur should be overthrown by Lancelet! Why, Lancelet is the son of the High Priestess herself—why not set him to be King in Arthur’s place? But is our king to be chosen because some woman wants him in her bed?” Again he spat. “No, Niniane, that day is done—first the Romans and now the Saxons know how the world’s to be. The world is no longer a great womb bearing men—now the movement of men and armies settles things. What people now would accept my rule because I was the son of this woman or that? Now it is the king’s son who takes the land, and shall we turn away a good thing because the Romans did so first? We have better ships now—we will discover lands beyond the old lands that have sunk in the sea. Will a Goddess who is tied to this one patch of earth and its crops follow us there? Look at the Northmen who are raiding our coasts—will they be stopped with the Mother’s curses? The few priestesses that are left in Avalon—no Saxons or wild Northmen will ever ravish them, because Avalon is no longer a part of the world in which these wild raiders live. Those women who live in the world that is coming will need men to guard them. The world now, Niniane, is not one of Goddesses, but of Gods, perhaps of one God. I need not try to bring Arthur down. Time and change alone will do that.”
Niniane’s back prickled as if with the Sight. “And what of you, King Stag of Avalon? What of the Mother who sent you forth in her name?”
“Do you think I mean to go into the mists with Avalon and Camelot? I mean to be High King after Arthur—and to do that, I must keep the glory of Arthur’s court at full height. So Lancelet must go, which means that Arthur must be forced to banish him, and probably Gwenhwyfar as well. Are you with me, Niniane, or not?”
Her face was deathly white. She clenched her fists at her side, wishing that she had the power of Morgaine, the power of the Goddess, to rise like a bridge from earth to sky and strike him down with the lightning force of the outraged Goddess. The crescent moon on her brow burned with rage.
“Am I to help you by betraying a woman who has taken the right the Goddess has given to all women, to choose what man she will?”
Gwydion laughed mockingly. “Gwenhwyfar gave up that right when first she knelt at the feet of the slave’s God.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll have nothing to do with betraying her.”
“Then you will not send me word when she sends her women away again for the night?”
“No,” said Niniane, “by the Goddess, I will not. And Arthur’s treachery to Avalon is nothing to yours!” She turned her back on him and would have moved away, but he caught and held her there.
“You’ll do what I command you!”
She struggled to free herself, at last wrenching her bruised wrists from him. “Command me? Not in a thousand years!” she said, breathless with fury. “Beware, you who have laid hands on the Lady of Avalon! Arthur shall know now what sort of viper he has taken to his breast!”
In a towering rage, Gwydion grabbed her other wrist and pulled her toward him, then struck her full force across the temple, and she fell to the ground without a cry. He was so full of wrath that he let her fall without a move to catch her.
“Well did the Saxons name you,” said a low, savage voice from the fog. “Evil counsel, Mordred—murderer!”
He turned with a convulsive moment of fear and looked at the crumpled body of Niniane at his feet. “Murderer? No! I was only angry with her—I would not hurt her—“ He stared around him, unable to make out anything in the thickening mist, yet knowing the voice.
“Morgaine! Lady—my mother!”
He knelt, panic clutching at his throat, raising Niniane up, searching for a heartbeat but she lay there without breath, without life.
“Morgaine! Where are you? Where are you? Damn you, show yourself!” But there was only Niniane, lifeless and unmoving at his feet. He clasped her to him, imploring. “Niniane! Niniane, my love—speak to me—“
“She will not speak again,” said the bodiless voice, but as Gwydion turned this way and that in the fog, a woman’s solid figure materialized out of it. “Oh, what have you done, my son?”
“Was it you? Was it you?” Gwydion demanded, his voice cracking in hysteria. “Was it you called me murderer?
Morgause stepped back, half afraid. “No, no, I came but now—what have you done?”
Gwydion flung himself at her, and she held him, stroking him as she had done when he was twelve years old. “Niniane angered me—she threatened me—as the Gods witness it, Mother, I meant her no harm, but she threatened to go to Arthur and tell him I plotted against his precious Lancelet,” Gwydion said, almost babbling. “I struck her, I swear I meant only to frighten her, but she fell—“
Morgause let Gwydion go and knelt beside Niniane. “You struck an unlucky blow, my son—she is dead. There’s nothing you can do now. We must go and tell Arthur’s marshals and stewards.”
His face had gone livid. “Mother! The marshals—what will Arthur say?”
Morgause felt a great melting within her heart. He was in her hands, as when he had been a little helpless child whom Lot would have killed, his life was hers, and he knew it. She folded him to her breast.
“Never mind, my love, you mustn’t suffer for it, any more than for any other you killed in battle,” she said, looking down with triumph at Niniane’s lifeless body. “She could have fallen in the fog—it’s a long way to the bottom of the hill,” she said, looking over the brow of Camelot, where it descended steeply into the mist. “So, catch hold of her feet thus. Done is done, and nothing that happens to her now can make a difference.” Her old hatred of Arthur surged up; Gwydion would bring him down, and he would do it with her help—and when it was done, she would be at his side, the lady who had set him on his throne! Niniane was no longer between them; she herself alone should be his support and his help.
Silently, in the fog, the slight body of the Lady of Avalon disappeared into the mists. Later Arthur would call for her and when she did not appear, send men to search; but Gwydion, staring as if hypnotized into the mists, thought for a moment that he saw the black shadow of the Avalon barge somewhere on the waters between Camelot and Dragon Island. It seemed to him for a moment that Niniane, robed in black as the Death-crone, beckoned to him from the barge ... and then it was gone.
“Come, my son,” said Morgause. “You spent this morning in my rooms and the rest of the day you must spend with Arthur in his hall. Remember, you have not seen Niniane this day—when you come to Arthur, you must ask for her, even seem a little jealous, as if you feared to find her in his bed.”
And it was balm to her heart that he clutched at her and muttered, “I will. I will, my mother. Surely you are the best of all mothers, the best of all women!”
And she held him for a moment and kissed him again, savoring her power, before she let him go.
Gwenhwyfar lay wide-eyed in the darkness, waiting for the step of Lancelet, yet thinking of Morgause, smiling—almost leering —as she murmured, “Ah, I envy you, my dear! Cormac is a fine young man, and hearty enough—but he has none of the grace and beauty of your lover.” Gwenhwyfar had bent her head and said nothing. Who was she to scorn Morgause, when she was doing the same thing? But it was too dangerous. The bishop, on his last Sunday, had preached a sermon on the great commandment against adultery, saying that the chastity of wives lay at the very root of the Christian way of living, since only by married chastity did women redeem the sin of Eve. Gwenhwyfar recalled the tale of that woman taken in adultery, whom they had brought to Christ; he had said, Let that one who has done no sin, cast at her the fast stone. There had been none guiltless to cast it—but here in her court, there were many who were sinless, with Arthur himself to cast that stone. Christ had said to the woman, Go and sin no more. And that was what she must do ... .
It was not his body she desired. Morgause, sniggering over the lusty young man who was her lover, would never have believed how little difference that had made to either of them. Seldom, indeed, had he ever taken her in that way which was sin and dishonor—only in those first years, when they had had Arthur’s acquiescence, to try and see if Gwenhwyfar could bear a son to the kingdom. There had been other ways to find pleasure, which she somehow felt less of a sin, less violation of Arthur’s marriage rights in her body. And even so, it was not that she desired so much, only that she should be with him ... it was a thing, she thought, almost more of the soul than the body. Why should a God of love condemn this? He might condemn the sin they had done, for which she had done penance over and over, but how could he condemn this, which was the truest love of the heart?
I have taken nothing from Arthur which he desired or needed of me. He must have a queen, a lady to keep his castle; for the rest, he wanted nothing of me save a son, and it was not I but God who denied him that.
There was a soft step in the darkness; she whispered, “Lancelet?”
“Not so.” A glimmer of a tiny lamp in the darkness confused her; for a moment she saw what seemed a beloved face, grown young—then knew who it must be.
“How dare you? My women are not so far but that I can scream aloud, and there is none will believe that I summoned you here!”
“Lie still,” he said. “There is a knife at your throat, my lady.” And as she shrank away, clutching the bed clothing, “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, madam, I came not here for rape. Your charms are too stale for me, my lady, and too well tasted.”
“That’s enough,” said a husky voice in the dark behind Gwydion. “Don’t mock her, man! This is a dirty business, snooping at bedchamber doors, and I wish I’d never heard of it! Quiet, all of you, and hide yourselves around the chamber!”
She recognized Gawaine’s face as her eyes adapted to the dim light, and beyond them a familiar form. “Gareth! What do you here?” she asked, sorrowfully. “I thought you Lancelet’s dearest friend.”
“And so I am,” he said grimly. “I came to see no worse done to him than justice. That one”—he flicked a contemptuous gesture at Gwydion— “would cut his throat—and leave you to be accused of murder!”
“Be still,” said Gwydion, and the light went out. Gwenhwyfar felt the pricking of the knife at her throat. “If you speak a syllable to warn him, madam, I will cut your throat and take my chances explaining why to my lord Arthur.” The point dug in till Gwenhwyfar, flinching with pain, wondered if it had actually drawn blood. She could hear small noises—the rustle of garments, the clink of weapons hurriedly muffled; how many men had he brought to this ambush? She lay silent, twisting her hands in despair. If only she could warn Lancelet... but she lay like a small animal in a snare, helpless.
Minutes crawled by for the trapped woman silent between her pillows and the knife. After a long time, she heard a tiny sound, a soft whistle like a bird call. Gwydion felt the tensing of her muscles and asked in a rasping whisper, “Lancelet’s signal?” He dug the knife again into the yielding skin at her throat, and she whispered, sweating in terror, “Yes.”
She felt the straw beneath her rustle as he shifted his weight and moved away. “There are a dozen men in this room. Try to give him warning, and you will not live three seconds.”
She heard sounds in the antechamber; Lancelet’s cloak, his sword—ah, God, would they take him naked and weaponless? She tensed again, feeling in advance the knife driving into her body, but somehow she must warn him, must cry out—she opened her lips, but Gwydion—was it the Sight, how did he know? —thrust his hand cruelly over her face, smothering the cry. She writhed under his suffocating hand, then felt Lancelet’s weight on the bed. “Gwen?” he whispered. “What is the matter? Did I hear you crying, my beloved?”
She managed to writhe away from the concealing hand. “Run!” she screamed. “It’s a trick, a trap—“ “Hell’s doors!” She could feel him, like a cat, springing back. Gwydion’s lamp flared; somehow the light went from hand to hand, until the room was filled with light, and Gawaine, Cai, and Gareth, with a dozen shadowy forms behind them, stepped forward. Gwenhwyfar huddled under the bedcover, and Lancelet stood still, quite naked, weaponless. “Mordred,” he said, in contempt. “Such a trick is worthy of you!” Gawaine said formally, “In the King’s name, Lancelet, I accuse you of high treason. Get me your sword.”
“Never mind that,” said Gwydion, “go and take it.”
“Gareth! In God’s name, why did you lend yourself to this?” Gareth’s eyes were glistening as if with tears in the lamplight. “I never believed it of you, Lancelet. I would to God I had fallen in battle before ever I saw this day.”
Lancelet bent his head and Gwenhwyfar saw his eyes, panicky, move around the room. He muttered, “Oh, God, Pellinore looked at me so when they came with the torches to take me in Elaine’s bed—must I betray everyone, everyone?” She wanted to reach out to him, to cry out with pity and pain, to shelter him in her arms. But he would not look at her.
“Your sword,” said Gawaine quietly. “And dress yourself, Lancelet. I will not take you naked and disgraced into Arthur’s presence. Enough men have witnessed your shame.”
“Don’t let him get at his sword—“ some faceless voice in the darkness protested, but Gawaine gestured the speaker contemptuously into silence. Lancelet turned slowly away from them, into the tiny antechamber where he had left clothing, armor, weapons. She heard him drawing on his garments. Gareth stood, his hand on his sword, as Lancelet came into the room, dressed but weaponless, his hands in full view.
“I am glad for your sake that you will come with us quietly,” said Gwydion. “Mother”—he turned into the shadows, and Gwenhwyfar saw, with consternation, Queen Morgause standing there—“see to the Queen. She shall be in your charge until Arthur may deal with her.”
Morgause advanced on the bedside. Gwenhwyfar had never noticed before how large a woman Morgause was, and how ruthless her jaw line.
“Come along, my lady, get into your gown,” she said. “And I will help you peg your hair—you do not want to go naked and shameless before the King. And be glad there was a woman here. These men—“she looked contemptuously at them—“meant to wait until they could catch him actually inside you.” Gwenhwyfar shrank from the brutality of the words; slowly, with lagging fingers, she began to draw on her gown. “Must I dress before all these men?”
Gwydion did not wait for Morgause to answer. He said, “Don’t try to cozen us, shameless woman! Dare you pretend you have anything left of decency or modesty? Put on that gown, madam, or my mother shall bundle you into it like a sack!”
He calls her mother. No wonder Gwydion is cruel and ruthless, with the Queen of Lothian to foster him! Yet Gwenhwyfar had seen Morgause so often as merely a lazy, jolly, greedy woman—what had brought her to this? She sat still, fastening the laces of her shoes.
Lancelet said quietly, “It is my sword you want, then?”
“You know it,” Gawaine said.
“Why, then”—moving almost more swiftly than the eye could follow, Lancelet leaped for Gawaine, and in another catlike movement, had Gawaine’s own sword in his hand—“come and take it, damn you!” He lunged with Gawaine’s sword at Gwydion, who fell across the bed, howling, bleeding from a great slash in his backside; then, as Cai stepped forward, sword in hand, Lancelet caught up a cushion from the bed and pushed Cai backward with it so that he fell into the advancing men, who tripped over him. He leaped up on the bed and said, low and short to Gwenhwyfar, “Keep perfectly still and be ready!”
She gasped, shrinking back and making herself small in a corner. They were coming at him again; he ran one of them through, briefly engaged another, and over that one’s body, lunged and slashed at a shadowy attacker. The giant form of Gareth crumpled slowly to the floor. Lancelet was already fighting someone else, but Gwydion, bleeding, cried out, “Gareth!” and flung himself across the body of his foster-brother. In that moment of horrified lull, while Gwydion knelt, sobbing, over Gareth’s body, Gwenhwyfar felt Lancelet catch her up on his arm, whirl, kill someone at the door—she never knew who it was—and then she was on her feet in the corridor, and Lancelet was pushing her, with frantic haste, ahead of him. Someone came at him out of the dark and Lancelet killed him, and they ran on.
“Make for the stables,” he gasped. “Horses, and out of here, fast.”
“Wait!” She caught at his arm. “If we throw ourselves on Arthur’s mercy—or you escape and I will stay and face Arthur—“
“Gareth might have seen justice done. But with Gwydion’s hand in it, do you think either of us would ever reach the King alive? I named him well Mordred!” He hurried her into the stables, swiftly flung a saddle on his horse. “No time to find yours. Ride behind me, and hold on well—I’m going to have to ride down the guards at the gate.” And Gwenhwyfar realized she was seeing a new Lancelet—not her lover, but the hardened warrior. How many men had he killed this night? She had no time for fear as he lifted her on his horse and sprang up before her.
“Hang on to me,” he said. “I’ll have no time to look after you.” He turned then, and gave her one hard, long kiss. “This is my fault, I should have known that infernal bastard would be spying—well, whatever happens now, at least it’s over. No more lies and no more hiding. You’re mine forever—“ and he broke off. She could feel him trembling, but he turned savagely to grip the reins. “And now we go!”
MORGAUSE LOOKED ON in horror as Gwydion, weeping, bent over her youngest son.
Words spoken in half earnest, years ago—Gwydion had refused to take the lists on the opposite side from Gareth, even in a mock battle. It seemed to me that you lay dying, he had said ... and I knew it was my doing you lay without the spark of life ... . I will not tempt that fate.
Lancelet had done this, Lancelet whom Gareth had always loved more than any other man.
One of the men in the room stepped forward and said, “They’re getting away—“
“Do you think I care about that?” Gwydion winced, and Morgause realized that he was bleeding, that his blood was flowing and mingling with Gareth’s on the floor of the chamber. She caught up the linen sheet from the bed, tore it, and wadded it against Gwydion’s wound.
Gawaine said somberly, “No man in all of Britain will hide them now. Lancelet is everywhere outcast. He has been taken in treason to his king, and his very life is forfeit. God! How I wish it had not come to this!” He came and looked at Gwydion’s wound, then shrugged. “No more than a flesh cut —see, the bleeding is slowed already, it will heal, but you will not sit in comfort for some days. Gareth—“ His voice broke; the great, rough, greying man began to weep like a child. “Gareth had worse fortune, and I will have Lancelet’s life for it, if I die myself at his hands. Ah God, Gareth, my little one, my little brother—“ and Gawaine bent and cradled the big body against him. He said thickly, through sobs, “Was it worth it, Gwydion, was it worth Gareth’s life?”
“Come away, my boy,” said Morgause, through a tightness in her own throat—Gareth, her baby, her last child; she had lost him long ago to Arthur, but still she remembered a fair-haired little boy, clutching a wooden painted knight in his hand. And one day you and I shall go on quest together, sir Lancelet ... always Lancelet. But now Lancelet had overreached himself, and everywhere in the land every man’s hand would be against him. And still she had Gwydion, her beloved, the one who would one day be King, and she at his side.
“Come, my lad, come away, you can do nothing for Gareth now. Let me bind up your wound, then we shall go to Arthur and tell him what has befallen, so that he may send out his men to seek for the traitors—“
Gwydion shook her grip from his arm. “Get away from me, curse you,” he said in a terrible voice. “Gareth was the best of us, and I would not have sacrificed him for a dozen kings! It was you and your spite against Arthur always urging me on, as if I cared what bed the Queen slept in— as if Gwenhwyfar were any worse than you, when from the time I was ten years old you had this one or that one in your bed—“
“Oh, my son—“ she whispered, aghast. “How can you speak so to me? Gareth was my son too—“
“What did you ever care for Gareth, or for any of us, or for anything but your own pleasure and your own ambition? You would urge me to a throne, not for my sake but for your own power!” He thrust away her clinging hands. “Get you back to Lothian, or to hell if the devil will have you, but if ever I set eyes on you again, I swear I will forget all except that you were the murderer of the one brother I loved, the one kinsman—“and as Gawaine urgently pushed his mother from the chamber, she could hear Gwydion weeping again. “Oh, Gareth, Gareth, I should have died first—“
Gawaine said shortly, “Cormac, take the Queen of Lothian to her chamber.”
His strong arm was holding her upright, and after they had moved down the hall, after that dreadful sobbing had died away behind her, Morgause began to draw breath freely again. How could he turn on her this way? When had she ever done anything except for his sake? She must show decent mourning for Gareth, certainly, but Gareth was Arthur’s man, and surely Gwydion would have realized it, sooner or later. She looked up at Cormac. “I cannot walk so fast—hold back a little.”
“Certainly, my lady.” She was very much aware of his arm enfolding her, holding her. She let herself lean a little on him. She had bragged to Gwenhwyfar of her young lover, but she had never yet actually taken him to her bed—she had kept him delaying, dangling. She turned her head against his shoulder. “You have been faithful to your queen, Cormac.”
“I am loyal to my royal house, as all my people have ever been,” the young man said in their own language, and she smiled.
“Here is my chamber—help me inside, will you? I can scarce walk—“
He supported her, eased her down on her bed. “Is it my lady’s will that I call her women?”
“No,” she whispered, catching at his hands, aware that her tears were seductive. “You have been loyal to me, Cormac, and now is that loyalty to be rewarded—come here—“
She held out her arms, half shutting her eyes, then opened them, in shock, as he pulled awkwardly away.
“I—I think you are distraught, madam,” he stammered. “What do you think I am? What do you take me for? Why, lady, I have as much respect for you as for my own grandmother! Should I take advantge of an old woman like you when you are beside yourself with grief? Let me call your waiting-woman, and she will make you a nice posset and I will forget what you said in the madness of grief, madam.”
Morgause could feel the blow in the very pit of her stomach, repeated blows on her heart—my own grandmother ... old woman ... the madness of grief.... The whole of the world had suddenly gone mad—Gwydion insane with ingratitude, this man who had looked on her so long with desire turning on her ... she wanted to scream, to call for her servants and have him whipped till his back ran crimson with his blood and the walls rang with his shrieking for mercy. But even as she opened her mouth for that, the whole weight of her life seemed to descend on her in deadly weariness.
"Yes," she said dully, "I do not know what I was saying—call my women, Cormac, and tell them to bring me some wine. We will ride at daybreak for Lothian."
And when he had gone, she sat on the bed without the strength to lift her hands.
I am an old woman. And I have lost my son Gareth, and I have lost Gwydion, and I will never now be Queen in Camelot. I have lived too long.
Clinging to Lancelet's back, her gown pulled up above her knees and her bare legs hanging down, Gwenhwyfar closed her eyes as they rode hard through the night. She had no idea where they were going. Lancelet was a stranger, a hard-faced warrior, a man she had never known. There was a time, she thought, when I would have been terrified, out like this under the open sky, at night ... but she felt excited, exhilarated. At the back of her mind was pain too, mourning for the gentle Gareth who had been like a son to Arthur and deserved better of life than to be struck down so — she wondered if Lancelet even knew whom he had killed! And there was grief for the end of her years with Arthur, and all they had shared for so long. But from what had happened this night there could be no going back. She had to lean forward to hear Lancelet over the rushing of wind. "We must stop somewhere soon, the horse must rest — and if we ride in daylight, my face and yours are known all through this countryside."
She nodded; she had not breath enough to speak. After a time they came within a little wood, and there he pulled to a stop and lifted her gently from the horse's back. He led the horse to water, then spread his cloak on the ground for her to sit. He stared at the sword by his side. "I still have Gawaine's sword. When I was a boy — I heard tales of the fighting madness, but I knew not that it was within our blood — " and sighed heavily. "There is blood on the sword. Whom did I kill, Gwen?"
She could not bear to see his sorrow and guilt. "There was more than one — "
"I know I struck Gwydion — Mordred, damn him. I know I wounded him, I could still act with my own will then. I don't suppose" — his voice hardened — "that I had the luck to kill him?"
Silently she shook her head.
"Then who?" She did not speak; he leaned over and took her shoulders so roughly that for a moment she was afraid of the warrior as she had never been of the lover. "Gwen, tell me! In God's name—did I kill my cousin Gawaine?"
This she could answer without hesitation, glad it was Gawaine he had named. "No. I swear it, not Gawaine."
"It could have been anyone," he said, staring at the sword and suddenly shuddering. "I swear it to you, Gwen, I knew not even that I had a sword in my hand. I struck Gwydion as if he had been a dog, and then I remember no more until we were riding—" and he knelt before her, trembling. He whispered, "I am mad again, I think, as once I was mad—"
She reached out, caught him against her in a passion of wild tenderness. "No, no," she whispered, "ah, no, my love—I have brought all this on you, disgrace and exile—"
"You say that," he whispered, "when I have brought them on you, taken you away from everything that meant anything to you—"
Reckless, she pressed herself to him and said, "Would to God that you had done it before!"
"Ah, it is not too late—I am young again, with you beside me, and you—you have never been more beautiful, my own dear love—" He pushed her back on the cloak, suddenly laughing in abandon. "Ah, now there's none to come between us, none to interrupt us, my own—ah, Gwen, Gwen—"
As she came into his arms, she remembered the rising sun and a room in Meleagrant's castle. It was like that now; and she clung to him, as if there were nothing else in the world, nothing more for either of them, not ever.
They slept a little, curled together in the cloak, and wakened still in each other's arms, the sun searching for them through the green branches overhead. He smiled, touching her face.
"Do you know—never before have I wakened in your arms without fear. Yet now I am happy, in spite of all.. ." and he laughed at her, a note of wildness coming into the laughter. There were leaves in his white hair, and leaves caught in his beard, and his tunic was rumpled; she put up her hands and felt grass and leaves in her own hair, which was coming down. She had no way to comb it, but she caught it in handfuls and parted it to braid, then bound the end of the single braid with a scrap ripped from the edge of her torn skirt. She said, her voice catching with laughter, "What a pair of wild ragamuffins we are! Who would know the High Queen and the brave Lancelet?"
"Does it matter to you?"
"No, my love. Not in the least."
He brushed leaves and grass out of his hair and beard. "I must get up and catch the horse," he said, "and perhaps there will be a farm nearby where we can find you some bread or a drink of ale—I have not a single coin with me, nor anything worth money, save my sword, and this—“ He touched a little gold pin on his tunic. “For the moment, at least, we are beggars, though if we could reach Pellinore’s castle, I still have a house there, where I lived with Elaine, and servants—and gold, too, to pay our passage overseas. Will you come with me to Less Britain, Gwenhwyfar?”
“Anywhere,” she whispered, her voice breaking, and at that moment she meant it absolutely—to Less Britain, or to Rome, or to the country beyond the world’s end, only that she might be with him forever. She pulled him down to her again and forgot everything in his arms.
But when, hours later, he lifted her on the horse and they went on at a soberer pace, she fell silent, troubled. Yes, no doubt they could make their way overseas. Yet when this night’s work was talked from one end of the world to the other, shame and scorn would come down on Arthur, so that for his own honor he must seek them out wherever they fled. And soon or late, Lancelet must know that he had slain the friend who was dearest to him in all the world save only Arthur’s self. He had done it in madness, but she knew how grief and guilt would consume him and in time he would remember, when he looked on her, not that she was his love, but that he had killed his friend, unknowing, for her sake; and that he had betrayed Arthur for her sake. If he must make war on Arthur for her sake, he would hate her ... .
No. He would love her still, but he would never forget by whose blood he had come to possess her. Never would one or the other—love or hate—take power over him, but he would live with them both, tearing doubly at his heart, and one day they would tear his mind to bits and he would go mad again. She clung close to the warmth of his body, leaning her head against his back, and wept. She knew, for the first time, that she was stronger than he, and it cut at her heart with a deathly sword.
And so when they paused again, she was dry-eyed, though she knew that the weeping had moved inward to her heart and never would she cease to mourn. “I will not go overseas with you, Lancelet, nor will I bring strife among all the old Companions of the Round Table. When—when Mor-dred has his way, they will all be at odds,” she said, “and a day will come when Arthur will need all his friends. I will not be like that lady of old time—was her name Helen, that fair one in the saga you used to tell to me? — who had all the kings and knights of her day at strife over her in Troy.”
“But what will you do?” She tried not to hear that even through the bewilderment and grief in his voice, there was a thread of relief.
“You will take me to the Isle of Glastonbury,” she said. “There is a nunnery there where I was schooled. There I will go, and I will tell them only that evil tongues made a quarrel between you and Arthur for my sake. When some time has passed, I will send word to Arthur so that he knows where I am, and knows that I am not with you. And then he can with honor make his peace with you.”
He protested, “No! No, I cannot let you go—“ but she knew, with a sinking at her heart, that she would have no difficulty persuading him. Perhaps, against all odds, she had hoped that he would fight for her, that he would carry her off to Less Britain with the sheer force of his will and passion. But that was not Lancelet’s way. He was as he was, and whatever he was, so and no other way he had been when first she loved him, and so he was now, and so she would love him for the rest of her life. And at last he strove no more with her, but set the horse’s head on the road toward Glastonbury.
THE LONG SHADOW of the church lay across the waters when they set foot at last on the boat that would bring them to the island, and the church bells were ringing out the Angelus. Gwenhwyfar bent her head and whispered a word of prayer.
Mary, God’s Holy Mother, have pity on me, a sinful woman ... and then for a moment it seemed to her that she stood beneath a great light, as she had stood on that day when the Grail passed through the hall. Lancelet sat in the prow of the ferry, his head lowered. He had not touched her from the moment she had told him what she had decided, and she was glad; a single touch of his hand would have worn away her resolve. Mist lay on the Lake, and for an instant it seemed to her that she saw a shadow, like the shadow of their own boat, a barge draped in black, with a dark figure at the prow—but no. It was only a shadow, a shadow ... .
The boat scraped on the shore. He helped her from it. “Gwenhwyfar —are you certain?”
“I am certain,” she said, trying to sound surer than she felt.
“Then I will escort you to the doors of the convent,” he said, and it suddenly struck her that this took, for him, more courage than all the killing he had done for her sake.
The old abbess recognized the High Queen, and was awed and amazed that she should return, but Gwenhwyfar told the tale she had decided on —that evil tongues had wrought a quarrel between Arthur and Lancelet for her sake, and she had chosen to take refuge here so they might amend their quarrel.
The old woman patted her cheek as if she were the little Gwenhwyfar who had been lessoned here when she was a child. “You are welcome to stay as long as you wish it, my daughter. Forever, if that is your will. In God’s house we turn no one away. But here you will not be a queen,” she warned, “only one of our sisters.”
Gwenhwyfar sighed with utter relief. She had not known till this moment how heavy it was, the weight of being a queen. “I must say farewell to my knight, and wish him well, and bid him amend the quarrel with my husband.”
The abbess nodded gravely. “In these days, our good King Arthur cannot spare a single one of his knights, and surely not the good sir Lancelet.”
Gwenhwyfar went out into the anteroom of the convent. Lancelet was there, wandering restlessly. He took her hands. “I cannot bear to say farewell to you here, Gwenhwyfar—ah, my lady, my love, must it be this way?”
“It must be so,” she said pitilessly, but knowing that for the first time she acted without thought of herself. “Your heart was always with Arthur, my dearest. I often think the only sin we did was not that we loved, but that I came between the love you had for each other.” If it could always have been among us three as it was on that Beltane night with Morgaine’s love charm, she thought, there would have been less of sin. The sin was not that we lay together, but that there was strife, and less of love therefore. “I send you back to Arthur with all my heart, dearest. Tell him for me that I loved him never the less.”
His face was almost transfigured. “I know that now,” he said. “And I know, too, that I loved him never the less, and I felt always that I wronged you by loving him ... .” He would have kissed her, but it was not suitable here. Instead he bent over her hand. “While you are in God’s house, pray for me, lady.”
My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know. She thought she had never loved him so much as at this moment, when she heard the convent door close, hard and final, and felt the walls shutting her in.
So safe, so protected, those walls had made her feel, in that day long past. Now she knew that she would walk between them all the rest of her life. When I had freedom, she thought, I desired it not, and feared it. And now, when I have learned to love it and long for it, I am renouncing it in the name of my love. Dimly she felt that this was right—the acceptable gift and sacrifice to bring before God. But as she walked through the nuns’ cloister, she looked at the walls closing her in, trapping her.
For my love. And for the love of God, she thought, and felt a small seed of comfort stealing through her. Lancelet would go to the church where Galahad had died, and there he would pray. Perhaps he would remember a day when the mists of Avalon had opened, and she and he and Morgaine had stood together, lost, knee-deep in the waters of the Lake. She thought of Morgaine too, with a sudden passion of love and tenderness. Mary, Holy Mother of God, be with her too, and bring her to you one day ... .
The walls, the walls, they would drive her mad, closing her in, she would never be free again.... No. For her love, and for the love of God, she would even learn to love them again one day. Folding her hands in prayer, Gwenhwyfar walked down the cloister to the sisters’ enclosure, and went inside forever.
MORGAINE SPEAKS ...
I thought I was beyond the Sight; Viviane, still younger than I, had renounced it, chosen another to be Lady in her place. But there was none to sit in the shrine of the Lady after me, and none to approach the Goddess. I saw it, helpless, when Niniane died, and I could not stretch forth my hand.
I had loosed this monster upon the world, and I had acquiesced in that move which should send him to throw down the King Stag. And I saw it from afar when, on Dragon Island, the shrine was thrown down and the deer hunted in the forest, without love, without challenge, without appeal to her who was giver of the deer; only arrows from afar and the edge of the spear, and her people hunted down like her deer. The tides of the world were changing. There were times when I saw Camelot too, drifting in the mist, and the wars raging up and down the land again, the Northmen who were the new foe plundering and burning ... a new world, and new Gods.
Truly the Goddess had departed, even from Avalon, and I, mortal as I was, remained there alone ... .
And yet, one night, some dream, some vision, some fragment of the Sight, drove me, at the hour of the dark moon, to the mirror.
At first I saw only the wars raging up and down the land. I never knew what came between Arthur and Gwydion, although, after Lancelet fled with Gwenhwyfar, there was enmity among the old Companions, blood feud declared between Lancelet and Gawaine. Later, when Gawaine lay dying, that great-hearted man begged Arthur, with his last breath, to make his peace with Lancelet and summon him to Camelot once more. But it was too late; not even Lancelet could rally Arthur’s legion again, not when so many followed Gwydion, who now led half of Arthur’s own men and most of the Saxons and even a few of the renegade Northmen against him. And in that hour before dawn, the mirror cleared, and in the unearthly light I saw the face of my son at last with a sword in his hand, circling slowly, in the darkness, seeking ...
Seeking, as Arthur in his day had sought, to challenge the King Stag. I had forgotten what a small man Gwydion was, like Lancelet. Elf-arrow, the Saxons had called Lancelet; small, dark, and deadly. Arthur would have towered more than a head above him.
Ah, in the days of the Goddess, man went against King Stag to seek his kingship! Arthur had been content to await his father’s death, but now a new thing was coming upon this land—father and son enemies, and sons to challenge fathers for a crown ... it seemed to me that I could see a land that ran red with blood, where sons were not content to await their crowning day. And now, in the circling dark, it seemed that I could see Arthur too, tall and fair and alone, cut off from his men ... and Excalibur naked in his hand.
But through and around the prowling figures I could see Arthur in his tent, restlessly asleep, Lancelet guarding him as he slept; and somewhere, too, I knew Gwydion slept among his own armies. Yet some part of them prowled restless on the shores of the Lake, seeking in the darkness, swords naked, against one another.
“Arthur! Arthur, stand to the challenge, or do you fear me too much?”
“No man can say that I ever ran from a challenge.” Arthur turned as Gwydion came from the wood. “So,” he said, “it is you, Mordred. I never more than half believed that you had turned against me till now when I see it with my own eyes. I thought those who told me so sought to undermine my courage by telling me the worst that could befall. What have I done? Why have you become my enemy? Why, my son?”
“Do you truly believe that I was ever anything else, my father?” He spoke the word with the greatest bitterness. “For what else was I begotten and born, but for this moment when I challenge you for a cause that is no longer within the borders of this world? I no longer even know why I am to challenge you—only that there is nothing else left in my life but for this hatred.”
Arthur said quietly, “I knew Morgaine hated me, but I did not know she hated me as much as this. Must you do her will even in this, Gwydion?”
“Do you think I do her will, you fool?” Gwydion snarled. “If anything could bid me spare you, it is that—that I do Morgaine’s will, that she wishes you overthrown, and I know not whether I hate more her or you ...”
And then, stepping forth into their dream or vision or whatever it might be, I knew that I stood on the shores of the Lake where they challenged each other, stood between them clad in the robes of a priestess.
“Must this be? I call upon you both, in the name of the Goddess, to amend your quarrel. I sinned against you, Arthur, and against you, Gwydion, but your hate is for me, not for each other, and in the name of the Goddess I beg of you—“
“What is the Goddess to me?” Arthur tightened his fist on the hilt of Excalibur. “I saw her always in your face, but you turned away from me, and when the Goddess rejected me, I sought another God. ...”
And Gwydion said, looking on me with contempt, “I needed not the Goddess, but the woman who mothered me, and you put me into the hands of one who had no fear of any Goddess or any God.”
I tried to cry out, “I had no choice! I did not choose—“ but they came at each other with their swords, rushing through me as if I were made of air, and it seemed that their swords met in my body ... and then I was in Avalon again, staring in horror at the mirror where I could see nothing, nothing but the widening stain of blood in the sacred waters of the Well. My mouth was dry and my heart pounding as if it would beat a hole in the walls of my chest, and the taste of ruin and death was bitter on my lips.
I had failed, failed, failed! I was false to the Goddess, if indeed there was any Goddess except for myself; false to Avalon, false to Arthur, false to brother and son and lover ... and all I had sought was in ruin. In the sky was a pale and reddening flush where, sometime soon, the sun would rise; and beyond the mists of Avalon, cold in the sky, I knew that somewhere Arthur and Gwydion would meet, this day, for the last time.
As I went to the shore to summon the barge, it seemed to me that the little dark people were all around me and that I walked among them as the priestess I had been. I stood in the barge alone, and yet I knew there were others standing there with me, robed and crowned, Morgaine the Maiden, who had summoned Arthur to the running of the deer and the challenge of the King Stag, and Morgaine the Mother who had been torn asunder when Gwydion was born, and the Queen of North Wales, summoning the eclipse to send Accolon raging against Arthur, and the Dark Queen of Fairy... or was it the Death-crone who stood at my side? And as the barge neared the shore, I heard the last of his followers cry, “Look—look, there, the barge with the four fair queens in the sunrise, the fairy barge of Avalon....”
He lay there, his hair matted with blood, my Gwydion, my lover, my son ... and at his feet Gwydion lay dead, my son, the child I had never known. I bent and covered his face with my own veil. And I knew that it was the end of an age. In the days past, the young stag had thrown down the King Stag, and become King Stag in his turn; but the deer had been slaughtered, and the King Stag had killed the young stag and there would be none after him ...
And the King Stag must die in his turn.
I knelt at his side. “The sword, Arthur. Excalibur. Take it in your hand. Take it, and fling it from you, into the waters of the Lake.”
The Sacred Regalia were gone out of this world forever, and the last of them, the sword Excalibur, must go with them. But he whispered, protesting, holding it tight, “No—it must be kept for those who come after—to rally their cause, the sword of Arthur—“ and looked up into the eyes of Lancelet. “Take it, Galahad —hear you not the trumpets from Camelot, calling to Arthur’s legion? Take it —-for the Companions—“
“No,” I told him quietly. “That day is past. None after you must pretend or claim to bear the sword of Arthur.” I loosed his fingers gently from the hilt. “Take it, Lancelet,” I said softly, “but fling it from you far into the waters of the Lake. Let the mists of Avalon swallow it forever.”
Lancelet went quietly to do my bidding. I know not if he saw me, or who he thought I was. And I cradled Arthur against my breast. His life was fading fast; I knew it, but I was beyond tears.
“Morgaine,” he whispered. His eyes were bewildered and full of pain. “Morgaine, was it all for nothing then, what we did, and all that we tried to do? Why did we fail?”
It was my own question, and I had no answer; but from somewhere, the answer came. “You did not fail, my brother, my love, my child. You held this land in peace for many years, so that the Saxons did not destroy it. You held back the darkness for a whole generation, until they were civilized men, with learning and music and faith in God, who will fight to save something of the beauty of the times that are past. If this land had fallen to the Saxons when Uther died, then would all that was beautiful or good have perished forever from Britain. And so you did not fail, my love. None of us knows how she will do her will—only that it will be done.”
And I knew not, even then, whether what I spoke was truth, or whether I spoke to comfort him, in love, as with the little child Igraine had put into my arms when I was but a child myself; Morgaine, she had told me, take care of your little brother, and so I had always done, so I would always do, now and beyond life ... or was it the Goddess herself who had put Arthur into my arms?
He pressed his failing fingers over the great cut at his breast. “If I had but —the scabbard you fashioned for me, Morgaine—I should not lie here now with my life slowly bleeding forth from me.... Morgaine, I dreamed—and in my dream I cried out for you, but I could not hold you—“
I held him close. In the first light of the rising sun I saw Lancelet raise Excalibur in his hand, then fling it as hard as he could. It flew through the air end over end, the sun glinting as if on the wing of a white bird; then it fell, twisting, and I saw no more; my eyes were misted with tears and the growing light.
Then I heard Lancelet: “I saw a hand rising from the Lake—a hand that took the sword, and brandished it three times in the air, and then drew it beneath the water ...”
I had seen nothing, only the glimmer of light on a fish that broke the surface of the Lake; but I doubt not that he saw what he said he saw.
“Morgaine,” Arthur whispered, “is it really you? I cannot see you, Morgaine, it is so dark here—is the sun setting? Morgaine, take me to Avalon, where you can heal me of this wound—take me home, Morgaine—“
His head was heavy on my breast, heavy as the child in my own childish arms, heavy as the King Stag who had come to me in triumph. Morgaine, my mother had called impatiently, take care of the baby ... and all my life I had borne him with me. I held him close and wiped away his tears with my veil, and he reached up and caught at my hand with his own.
“But it is really you,” he murmured, “it is you, Morgaine ... you have come back to me ... and you are so young and fair ... I will always see the Goddess with your face ... Morgaine, you will not leave me again, will you?”
“I will never leave you again, my brother, my baby, my love,” I whispered to him, and I kissed his eyes. And he died, just as the mists rose and the sun shone full over the shores of Avalon.
IN THE spring of the year after this, Morgaine had a curious dream.
She dreamed that she was in the ancient Christian chapel upon Avalon, built in the old times by that Joseph of Arimathea who had come here from the Holy Land. And there, before that altar where Galahad had died, Lancelet stood in the robes of a priest, and his face was solemn and shining. In her dream she went, as she had never done in any Christian church, to the altar rail for the sharing of their bread and wine, and Lancelet bent and set the cup to her lips and she drank. And then it seemed to her that he knelt in his turn, and he said to her, “Take this cup, you who have served the Goddess. For all the Gods are one God, and we are all One, who serve the One.” And as she took the cup in her hands to set it to his lips in her turn, priestess to priest, he was young and beautiful as he had been years ago. And she saw that the cup in her hands was the Grail.
And then he cried out, as he had done when Galahad knelt before him, “Ah, the light—the light—“ and fell forward and lay on the stones without moving; and Morgaine woke in her isolated dwelling on Avalon with that cry of rapture still ringing in her ears; and she was alone.
It was very early, and mist lay thick on Avalon. She rose quietly and robed herself in the dark garb of a priestess, but she tied her veil around her head so that the crescent tattoo there was invisible.
She went quietly out into the stillness of the dawn, taking the downward path beside the Sacred Well. Still as it was, she could sense noiseless footsteps, silent as shadows, behind her. She was never alone; the little dark people always attended her, though she seldom actually saw them—she was their mother and their priestess and they would never leave her. But when she came near the shadow of the ancient Christian chapel, the footsteps gradually ceased; they would not follow her on this ground. Morgaine paused at the door.
Inside the chapel there was a glimmer of light, the light they always kept in their sanctuary. For a moment, so real was the memory of her dream, Morgaine was tempted to step inside ... she could hardly believe she would not see Lancelet there, struck down by the magical brilliance of the Grail ... but no. She had no business there, and she would not intrude on their God; and if indeed the Grail was there, it had gone beyond her reach.
Yet the dream remained with her. Had it been sent as a warning? Lancelet was younger than she herself was ... she knew not how time ran in the outer world. Avalon, now, had gone so far into the mists that it might be with Avalon as it had been with the fairy country when she was young —while a single year passed within Avalon, three or five or even seven years might have run by in the outer world. And so what it had come to her to do should be done now, while she could still come and go between the worlds.
She knelt before the Holy Thorn, whispering a soft prayer to the Goddess, and asking leave of the tree; then she cut a slip for planting. It was not the first time: in these last years, whenever one had come to Avalon and returned to the outside world, wandering Druid or pilgrim priest ... for a few of them could still come to the ancient chapel on Avalon ... she had sent with him a slip of the Holy Thorn, so that it might still blossom in the world outside. But this she must do with her own hands.
Never, except at Arthur’s crowning, had she set foot on the other island ... except, perhaps, for that day when the mists had opened, and Gwenhwy-far had somehow fallen or wandered through. But now, deliberately, she called the barge, and when it was out in the Lake, sent it into the mists, so that when it glided forth into the sunlight again, she could see the long shadow of the church lying over the Lake, and hear the soft tolling of a bell. She saw her followers shrink from the sound, and knew that here, too, they would not follow her, nor set foot. So be it, then; the last thing she wished for was to have the priests on that isle staring in fear and dread at the barge from Avalon. Unseen, they glided toward the shore and unseen she stepped onto the land, watching the black-draped barge vanish again into the mists. And then, the basket over her arm—like any old market woman or peddler come here on pilgrimage, she thought—she went silently up the path from the shore.
Only a hundred years or less, certainly less in Avalon, that these worlds have diverged; yet already the world here is different. The trees were different, and the paths, and she stopped, bewildered, at the foot of a little hill—surely there was nothing like this on Avalon? She had somehow thought the land would be the same, only the buildings different, for they were, after all, the same island, separated only by some magical change ... but now she saw that they were very different.
And then she saw, winding down the hill toward the little church, a procession of robed monks, and they bore with them, toward the church, a body on its bier.
So I saw truly, then, even though I thought it a dream. She stopped, and as the monks brought the body to rest before taking it into the church, she went forward and drew back the pall from the dead face.
Lancelet’s face was drawn and lined, far older than when they had parted ... she did not want to think how much older. But she saw that only for a moment; then what she saw on his face was only the sweet and marvelous look of peace. He lay smiling, looking so far beyond her that she knew on what his dying eyes had rested.
She whispered, “So at last you found your Grail.”
One of the monks who carried him said, “Perhaps you knew him in the world, sister?” and she knew that in her dark garb, he thought her one of them.
“He was a—a kinsman of mine.”
Cousin, lover, friend ... but that was long ago. At the end we were priestess and priest.
“I thought as much,” said the monk, “for they called him Lancelet at the court of Arthur, in the old days, but here among us we called him Galahad. He had been with us for many years, and he was made priest but a few days ago.”
So far you came in your search for a God who would not mock you, my cousin!
The monks who carried him raised him again to their shoulders. The one who had spoken with her said, “Pray for his soul, sister,” and she bowed her head. She could not feel grief; not now, when she had seen the reflection of that faraway light on his face.
But she would not follow him into the church. Here the veil is thin. Here Galahad knelt, and saw the light of the Grail in the other chapel, the chapel on Avalon, and reached for it, reached through the worlds, and so died ... .
And here at last Lancelet has come to follow his son.
Morgaine walked slowly along the path, half ready to abandon what she had come to do. What difference did it make now? But as she paused, irresolute, an old gardener, kneeling at one of the beds of flowers behind the path, raised his head and spoke to her. “I know you not, sister, you are not one of those who dwell here,” he said. “Are you a pilgrim?”
Not as the man thought; but so she was, in a way. “I seek the burial place of my kinswoman—she was the Lady of the Lake—“
“Ah yes, that was many, many years ago, in the reign of our good King Arthur,” he said. “It lies yonder, where pilgrims to the island may see it. And from it, the path leads up to the convent of the sisters, and if you are hungry, sister, they will give you something to eat there.”
Has it come to this, that I look like a beggar? But the man had meant no harm, so she thanked him, and walked in the direction he had pointed out.
Arthur had built for Viviane a noble tomb indeed. But what lay there was not Viviane; nothing lay there but bones, slowly returning to the earth from which they had come ... and all things at last give up their body and their spirit into the keeping of the Lady again ... .
Why had it made so much difference to her? Viviane was not there. Yet when she stood with bent head before the cairn, she was weeping.
After a time, a woman in a dark robe not unlike her own, with a white veil over her head, approached her. “Why do you weep, sister? She who lies here is at peace and in God’s hands, she has no need of mourning. But maybe she was one of your kin?”
Morgaine nodded, bending her head against the tears.
“We pray always for her,” said the nun, “for, though I do not know her name, she was said to be the friend and benefactor of our good King Arthur in the days that were gone.” She lowered her head and murmured some prayer or other, and even as she prayed, bells rang out, and Morgaine drew back. So, in place of the harps of Avalon, Viviane had only these clanging bells and doleful psalms?
Never did I think I would stand side by side with one of these Christian nuns, joining with her in prayer. But then she remembered what Lancelet had said in her dream.
Take this cup, you who have served the Goddess. For all the Gods are One ...
“Come up to the cloister with me, sister,” said the nun, smiling and laying a hand on her arm. “You must be hungry and weary.”
Morgaine went with her to the gates of their cloister, but would not go in. “I am not hungry,” she said, “but if I might have a drink of water—“
“Of course.” The woman in black beckoned, and a young girl came and brought a pitcher of water, which she poured into a cup. And she said, as Morgaine lifted it to her lips, “We drink only the water of the chalice well—it is a holy place, you know.”
It was like Viviane’s voice in her ears: The priestesses drink only the water of the Sacred Well.
The nun and the young girl, robed in black, turned and bent their heads before a woman who came from the cloister, and the nun who had guided her said, “This is our abbess.”
Morgaine thought, Somewhere I have seen her. But even as the thought crossed her mind, the woman said, “Morgaine, you do not know me? We thought you long dead ... ”
Morgaine smiled at her, troubled. “I am sorry—I do not—“
“No, you would not remember me,” said the abbess, “though I saw you, now and again, at Camelot; I was so much younger. My name is Lionors. I was married to Gareth, and when all my children were grown, I came here—here to end my days. Did you come to Lancelet’s funeral, then?” She smiled and said, “I should indeed have said Father Galahad, but it is hard to remember, and now he is in Heaven it will not matter.” She smiled again. “I know not now even who is King, or whether Camelot still stands—there is war in the land again, it is not as it was in Arthur’s time. That all seems so very long ago,” she added with detachment.
“I came here to visit Viviane’s grave. She is buried here—do you remember?”
“I have seen the tomb,” said the abbess, “but it was before ever I came to Camelot.”
“I have a favor to beg of you,” Morgaine said, and touched the basket on her arm. “This is the Holy Thorn that grows on the hills of Avalon, where it is said that the foster-father of Christ struck his staff into the ground and it blossomed there. I would plant a cutting of this thorn tree on her grave.”
“Plant it if you will,” said Lionors. “I cannot see how anyone could object to that. It seems right to me that it should be here in the world, and not hidden away in Avalon.”
She looked at Morgaine, dismayed.
“Avalon! Have you come here from that unholy land?”
Morgaine thought, Once I would have been angry with her. “Unholy it is not, whatever the priests say, Lionors,” she said gently. “Think—would the foster-father of Christ have struck his staff there if the land had seemed to him evil? Is not the Holy Spirit everywhere?”
The woman bowed her head. “You are right. I will send novices to help you with the planting.”
Morgaine would sooner have been alone, but she knew it was a kindly thought. The novices seemed no more than children to Morgaine, girls of nineteen or twenty, so young that she wondered—forgetting that she herself had been made priestess when she was eighteen—how they could possibly know enough of spiritual things to choose lives like this. She had thought nuns in Christian convents would be sad and doleful, ever conscious of what the priests said about the sinfulness of being born women, but these were innocent and merry as robins, talking gaily to Morgaine of their new chapel and bidding her rest her knees while they dug the hole for the cutting.
“And it is your kinswoman who is buried here?” asked one of the girls. “Can you read what it says? I never thought I would learn to read, for my mother said it was not suitable, but when I came here, they told me I must be able to read in the mass book, and so now I can read in Latin! Look,” she said proudly, and read: “ ‘King Arthur made this tomb for his kinswoman and benefactress, the Lady of the Lake, slain by treachery at his court in Camelot’—I cannot read the date, but it was a long time ago.”
“She must have been a very holy woman,” said another of the girls, “for Arthur, they say, was the best and the most Christian of all kings. He would never have had any woman buried here unless she was a saint!”
Morgaine smiled; they reminded her of the girls in the House of Maidens. “I would not call her a saint, though I loved her. In her day, there were those who called her a wicked sorceress.”
“King Arthur would never have a wicked sorceress buried here among holy people,” said the girl. “And as for sorcery—well, there are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are! Are you going to stay and take the veil here, Mother?” she asked, and Morgaine, for a moment startled at the word, realized that they were speaking to her with the same deference and respect as any of her own maidens in the House of Maidens, as if she were an elder among them.
“I am vowed elsewhere, my daughter.”
“Is your convent as nice as this one? Mother Lionors is a kind woman,” the girl said, “and we are all very happy here—once we had a woman among our sisters who had been a queen. And I know we will go to Heaven, all of us,” said the girl with a smile, “but if you have taken vows elsewhere, I am sure that is a good place, too. Only I thought you might perhaps want to stay here, so that you could pray for the soul of your kinswoman who lies buried here.” The girl rose and dusted off her dark dress. “Now you may plant your cutting, Mother ... or would you like me to set it in the earth?”
“No, I will do it,” said Morgaine, and knelt to press the soft soil around the roots of the plant. As she rose, the girl said, “If you wish, Mother, I will promise to come here and say a prayer every Sunday for your kinswoman.”
For some absurd reason, Morgaine felt that tears were coming to her eyes. “Prayer is always a good thing. I am grateful to you, daughter.”
“And you, in your convent, wherever it may be, you must pray for us too,” said the girl simply, taking Morgaine’s hand as she rose. “Here, Mother, let me brush the dirt from your gown. Now you must come and see our chapel.”
For a moment Morgaine was inclined to protest. She had sworn when last she left Arthur’s court that she would never again enter any Christian church; but this girl was so much like one of her own young priestesses that she would not profane the name by which the girl knew her God. She let the girl lead her inside the church.
In that other world, she thought, that church where the ancient Christians worship must stand on this very spot; some holiness from Avalon must surely come through the worlds, through the mists ... she did not kneel or cross herself, but she bent her head before the high altar of the church; and then the girl tugged gently at her hand.
“Come,” she said. “The high altar is of God and I am a little afraid here always ... but you have not seen our chapel—the sisters’ chapel ... come, Mother.”
Morgaine followed the young girl into the small side chapel. There were flowers here, armfuls of apple blossom, before a statue of a veiled woman crowned with a halo of light; and in her arms she bore a child. Morgaine drew a shaking breath and bowed her head before the Goddess.
The girl said, “Here we have the Mother of Christ, Mary the Sinless. God is so great and terrible I am always afraid before his altar, but here in the chapel of Mary, we who are her avowed virgins may come to her as our Mother, too. And look, here we have little statues of our saints, Mary who loved Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and Martha who cooked dinner for him and scolded her sister when she would not cook with her —I like to think of Jesus when he was a real man who would do something for his mother, when he changed the water into wine at that wedding, so she wouldn’t be unhappy because there wasn’t enough wine for everyone. And here is a very old statue that our bishop gave us, from his native country ... one of their saints, her name is Brigid ... ”
Morgaine looked on the statue of Brigid, and she could feel the power coming from it in great waves that permeated the chapel. She bowed her head.
But Brigid is not a Christian saint, she thought, even if Patricius thinks so. That is the Goddess as she is worshipped in Ireland. And I know it, and even if they think otherwise, these women know the power of the Immortal. Exile her as they may, she will prevail. The Goddess will never withdraw herself from mankind.
And Morgaine bowed her head and whispered the first sincere prayer she had ever spoken in any Christian church.
“Why, look,” said the novice, as she brought her out of doors into the daylight, “we have one of the Holy Thorn here too, not the one you planted on your kinswoman’s grave.”
And I thought I could meddle in this? Morgaine thought. Surely, the holy thing had brought itself from Avalon, moving, as the hallows were withdrawn from Avalon, into the world of men where it was most needed. It would remain hidden in Avalon, but it would be shown here in the world as well. “Yes, you have the Holy Thorn, and in days to come, as long as this land shall last, every queen shall be given the Holy Thorn at Christmas, in token of her who is queen in Heaven as in Avalon.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Mother, but thank you for your blessing,” said the young novice. “The abbess is awaiting you in the guesthouse—she will take breakfast with you. But would you like, perhaps, to stay in the Lady’s chapel first and pray awhile? Sometimes when you are alone with the Holy Mother, she can make things clear to you.”
Morgaine nodded, unable to speak, and the girl said, “Very well. When you are ready, just come to the guesthouse.” She pointed, and Morgaine went back into the chapel and bowed her head, and giving way at last, sank to her knees.
“Mother,” she whispered, “forgive me. I thought I must do what I now see you can do for yourself. The Goddess is within us, yes, but now I know that you are in the world too, now and always, just as you are in Avalon and in the hearts of all men and women. Be in me too now, and guide me, and tell me when I need only let you do your will ... .”
She was silent, kneeling, for a long time, her head bowed, but then, as if compelled, she looked up, and as she had seen it on the altar of the ancient Christian brotherhood in Avalon, as she had seen it when she bore it in Arthur’s hall, she saw a light on the altar, and in the Lady’s hands— and the shadow, only the shadow, of a chalice ...
It is in Avalon, but it is here. It is everywhere. And those who have need of a sign in this world will see it always.
There was a sweet scent that did not come from the flowers; and for an instant it seemed to Morgaine that it was Igraine’s voice that whispered to her ... but she could not hear the words ... and Igraine’s hands that touched her head. As she rose, blinded by tears, suddenly it rushed over her, like a great light.
No, we did not fail. What I said to comfort Arthur in his dying, it was all true. I did the Mother’s work in Avalon until at last those who came after us might bring her into this world. I did not fail. I did what she had given me to do. It was not she but I in my pride who thought I should have done more.
Outside the chapel, sunlight lay on the land, and there was a fresh scent of spring in the air. Where the apple trees moved in the morning breeze, she could see the blossoms that would bear fruit in their season.
She turned her face toward the guesthouse. Should she go there and breakfast with the nuns, speak perhaps of the old days at Camelot? Morgaine smiled gently. No. She was filled with the same tenderness for them as for the budding apple trees, but that time was past. She turned her back on the convent and walked down to the Lake, along the old path by the shore. Here was a place where the veil lying between the worlds was thin. She needed no longer to summon the barge—she need only step through the mists here, and be in Avalon.
Her work was done.
Marion Zimmer Bradley has been a professional writer for more than twenty-five years. She is bestknown for her novels of exotic fantasy adventure, particularly her best-selling Darkover series. Ms. Bradley lives in Berkeley, California with her two children.