Lady of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Lina eyed her dubiously. “But some of the priestesses have babies. Dierna herself has had three. They are so sweet. I dream of having a child in my arms.”

  “I do not,” answered Teleri. “That is the only thing the women I grew up with could do. Perhaps it is natural to dream of what you do not have.”

  “At least the choice is ours,” said one of the other girls. “When our priestesses dwelt in the Forest House long ago, they were forbidden to lie with men. I am glad that custom was changed!” she added fervently, and everyone laughed. “The priestesses of Avalon may bear children, but they do not have to. Our babies come by the will of the Goddess and at our own, not to please any man!”

  Then I will not bear any, thought Teleri, plucking another handful of wool.

  Through the grace of the Goddess and Dierna’s magic, she was still a virgin, and content to remain so. In any case, she was vowed to chastity until she had completed her training and taken her final vows. From being the youngest in her father’s household she had become the oldest in the House of Maidens on Avalon. Even the royal daughters who were sent here for a little extra polish before marriage usually came at an earlier age. She had wondered if the other maidens would laugh at her ignorance—she had wasted so much time, and there was so much to learn! But after her journey with Dierna, some of the charisma of the High Priestess seemed to have rubbed off on her, and they treated her as an elder sister. In any case, she would not remain with the maidens for long. She had been here now for almost two years. In another year, perhaps she would take her vows and become the youngest of the priestesses.

  Her only regret was that she saw so little of Dierna herself. As soon as they returned, the majesty, and the responsibilities, of the High Priestess of Avalon had enfolded her. Teleri told herself that she should be grateful to have had even so much of the Lady’s company. The other girls envied her for having shared that journey; they did not know that even now, when so many moons had passed, she still woke whimpering from dreams in which the Saxon chieftain was attacking her.

  The spindle was growing heavy with its weight of spun wool. Teleri let it down until the point was supported by a flat stone against which it could twirl, and lengthened the yarn between her fingers and the shaft. She would have to wind off the yarn into a skein as soon as she had spun out the last of this wool.

  Old Cigfolla, who despite stiff joints could outspin any of them, drew out a fine thread of flax. The wool they spun came from their own sheep, but the flax was given in trade or tribute to Avalon. Some of it, thought Teleri, might have come from her own father’s storerooms as part of the gifts he had sent after she came.

  “We spin wool for warmth, and heavy linen for wear,” said Cigfolla. “But what shall we do with such a thread as this?” The spindle twirled and the thread, so fine it was almost invisible, lengthened again.

  “Weave it into veils for the priestesses to wear, because it is the most perfect?” asked Lina.

  “Indeed, but not because it is better—only because the cloth it makes is so thin. That does not mean your own work should be less smooth or even,” said the old woman sharply. “The apple tree is not more holy than the oak, nor wheat than barley. Each has its own purpose. Some of you will become priestesses, and some of you will return home to marry. In the eyes of the Goddess, all ways are equal in honor. You must strive to do whatever work She gives you as well as you can. Even if you are only spinning hemp for sacking, it should still be done as well as you know how. Do you understand?”

  A dozen pairs of eyes met her rheumy gaze and flinched away. “You think that you are set to spinning here because we wish to keep you busy?” Cigfolla shook her head. “We could trade for cloth, as we do for other things. But there is a virtue in the cloth that is made on Avalon. Spinning is a mighty magic, did you not know? When we speak of holy things as we work, more than wool or flax goes into the thread. Look at your own work—see how the fibers twine. Singly they are no more than wisps on the wind, but together they grow strong. They are stronger still if you sing as you spin, if you whisper a spell into each strand.”

  “What spell, Wise One, do you sing into the linen that will veil the Lady of Avalon?” Teleri asked.

  “Into this thread is bound all that we have spoken of,” Cigfolla answered her. “Cycles and seasons, turning and returning as the spindle spirals round. Other things will be added in the weaving—the past and the present, the world beyond the mists and this sacred soil, warp and woof interweaving a new destiny.”

  “And the dyeing?” asked Lina.

  Cigfolla smiled. “That is the love of the Goddess, which permeates and colors all we do….”

  “May She keep us safe here,” whispered Lina.

  “Indeed She has,” said the old woman. “For most of my lifetime Britannia has been at peace within a united Empire. And we have prospered.”

  “The markets are full, but people do not have enough money to buy,” objected Teleri. “Perhaps you do not see it, living here, but I spent too many years listening to those who came to plead in my father’s hall not to see what is happening. The things we import from elsewhere in the Empire grow steadily more expensive, and our people demand higher wages so that they can buy them, and then our own people have to raise their prices as well.”

  “My father says it is all the fault of Postumus, who tried to split off the western half of the Empire,” said Adwen, who would take her vows along with Teleri.

  “But Postumus was defeated,” objected Lina.

  “Maybe so, but reuniting the Empire does not seem to have helped much. Prices are still going up, and our young men are taken away to fight at the other end of the world, but no one is sent to defend our own shores!” Teleri said hotly.

  “That’s true,” chorused the others. “The pirates grow ever bolder.”

  Cigfolla added another handful of flax and set her spindle spinning once more. “The world turns like this spindle…. That good and ill shall follow one another is our only certainty. Without change, nothing new could grow. When the old patterns are repeated, it is in a new way—the face of the Lady changes, but Her power endures; the King who gives his life to the land is reborn to make the sacrifice anew. Sometimes I too grow fearful, but I have seen too many winters pass not to believe that spring will always come….” She lifted her face to the sun, and Teleri saw it filled with light.

  To sit spinning with the other women was not the life of freedom she had imagined when she begged her father to let her come to Avalon. Will I yearn always for a happiness that is beyond my grasp? she wondered then. Or will I learn in time to live contentedly within the mists that wall us round?

  As the season advanced, the weather became warmer. Grass grew thick and green in the water meadows as the marshes dried. In the world beyond Avalon the roads were drying as well, and merchants and travelers began to move across the land, laden with goods and news. At times this spring, it seemed there was more of the latter, for the improving weather had signaled the start of the shipping season as well, and with the merchant ships, the pirates who preyed upon them also went to sea.

  Though Dierna did not leave Avalon, news came to her. Messages came from women who had been trained on the holy isle or those who had at some point been helped by them, from wandering Druids, from a network of informants all over Britannia. Her communications were not so swift as those of the Roman Governor, but far more varied, and the conclusions to which she came were rather different.

  As the moon moved toward the full just before Midsummer, the High Priestess withdrew to the enclosure on the Isle of Briga to meditate. For three days she stayed there, eating nothing, drinking only water brought from the sacred well. All the information she had gathered must be understood and analyzed and then, perhaps, the Lady would teach her what must be done.

  The first day was always the hardest. She would find herself wondering about all the tasks, and the people, she had left behind her. Old Cigfolla knew more about running the affa
irs of Avalon than she did, and Ildeg, who was only a little older than herself, could be depended on to keep the young women in the House of Maidens in line. Dierna had left them both in charge many times when she traveled away from Avalon.

  The priestesses understood what she was doing, but what about her children? How could she explain why they must not try to see her even when they knew she was not far away? Their faces filled her vision: her first daughter, who was slim and dark, what they called a fairy child, and the red-haired, lively twins. She ached for the weight of them in her arms. She told herself that her daughters were born, like herself, to the service of Avalon, and this was not too early for them to learn its price. That first child, fathered by a Druid priest in the rites, was gone from her already, being fostered by a family of the blood of Avalon who had built their home from the scattered stones of the old Druid sanctuary of Mona. The twins, her children by a chieftain who had called on her to help him restore his blighted fields, must soon follow. Her heart hurt most for them, but at least they had each other for company.

  Dierna shook her head, recognizing these thoughts for the pointless distractions with which the mind always tried to avoid its task. It did no good to deny them—each thought must be allowed to surface, and then eased on its way. She fixed her gaze on the flicker of the oil lamp once more.

  When she awakened the next morning, the little marsh woman who served her had left a basket with a few of the powerful mushrooms her people found in the fens. Dierna smiled and, after cleaning them thoroughly, chopped them fine and cast them into her small cauldron with the other herbs she had brought along. Leaning over the cauldron, she began to chant and stir.

  The act of preparation was itself a spell, and even before she drank any of the liquid, the acrid steam that swirled from its dark surface had begun to alter her perceptions. She strained the contents of the cauldron into a silver cup and carried it outside.

  The hut in which she had kept vigil was surrounded by a thorn hedge. The moon was already a quarter of the way above the eastern horizon, her oval shape shining pale as shell, and homing birds soared and swooped in the golden sky. Dierna lifted the cup in salutation.

  “To Thee, Lady of Life and Death, I offer this cup, but it is I myself who am the offering. If my death is required, I am in Thy hand, but if Thou wilt, grant me instead a blessing—a vision of what is and what must be, and the wisdom to understand it….”

  There was always that uncertainty, for the difference between a dose of the potion that was effective and one that was fatal was small, affected by the state of the mushrooms, by the health of the one who drank, and, as she had been taught, by the will of the gods. With only a little hesitation she set the cup to her lips and drained it, grimacing at the taste, and set the empty vessel on the ground. Then she wrapped her mantle of pale, undyed wool around her and lay down on the long, grey altar stone.

  Dierna took a deep breath and let it out slowly, counting, and relaxed each limb in turn until she felt herself melting into the cold stone. Above her, the circle of sky was dimming from the luminous violet of sunset to grey. She gazed upward, and saw, between one blink of the eye and the next, the twinkle of the first star.

  In the next moment a ripple of light seemed to pass across the sky. Her breath caught; then she forced her breathing to steady, responses trained by years of practice suppressing the instinct to fight or flee. She had seen one young priestess driven to madness because she had not the strength of will to give herself to the tumult of the senses that racked the body as the spirit of the mushroom took hold and yet retain control of the soul.

  Now the starlight was pulsing in rainbows. She felt a moment of vertigo as the heavens seemed to turn themselves inside out, took another breath, and directed her awareness inward to the point of light in the center of her skull. The universe spiraled around her in swirls of multicolored light, but the observing “self” continued to throb steadily within. Monstrous shapes loomed from the shadows, but she banished them as she had banished the intruding thoughts before.

  And presently the tumult began to lessen, her vision to focus until she was once more aware of herself lying upon the stone, gazing up at the night sky. She watched the heavens with a sustained attention that no one in a normal state of consciousness could have endured.

  Moonlight brightened the eastern sky, but Dierna gazed straight up into a starry vastness into which one could fall upward forever. She was not here for her own pleasure, however. With an inner sigh she began to trace out the great constellations that rule the skies. Mortal sight could distinguish only the stars themselves, scattered in apparent confusion across the sky. But Dierna’s tranced spirit saw also the spectral shapes that gave the constellations their names.

  High above, the Great Bear lumbered around the pole. As the night progressed, she would circle around to the west and drop toward the horizon again. The Bear was the heavenly analogue of the isles in the Vale of Avalon—observation of the other stars with which she shared the sky would tell Dierna what powers ruled the future that was coming into being now.

  Her gaze moved southward to the constellation called the Eagle—was that, perhaps, the Eagle of Rome? It was bright, but not so radiant as the Dragon that coiled across the center of the sky. Nearby, the Virgin sat in untouched majesty. Dierna turned her head, searching for the steadier blaze of the wandering stars, and saw toward the northern edge of the western horizon the liquid shimmer of the Lady of Love, with the ruddy gleam of the war god’s planet close beside her.

  Another ripple of color glimmered across the heavens; Dierna’s breath caught and she made herself breathe out again, knowing the herbs were taking her to a level where image and meaning were the same. Radiance flared from those two lights until she saw the god pursuing, the goddess radiant with surrender that was also a victory.

  The key is love, she thought; love will be the magic that binds the warrior to our cause…. Her gaze, moving southward along the horizon, found the planet of the heavenly king. But sovereignty sits in the south…. She blinked, her vision filled suddenly with images of marble columns, gilded porticoes, processions, and people—more people than she had ever seen gathered together at one time. Was this Rome? Her gaze swung wider; she saw the golden Eagles leading the Legions toward a white temple where a small figure draped in purple waited to welcome them.

  It was magnificent, but alien. How should such folk as these care for the concerns of Britannia, away off at the end of the Empire?

  Let the Eagle take care of his own! It is the Dragon we must summon to ward his people, as he has done before…. And even as she thought it, the starry Dragon became a rainbow serpent that uncoiled northward across the sky.

  That opalescent splendor was overwhelming, and Dierna was swept, despite her discipline, into a maelstrom of visions that she could neither halt nor control. Colors became clouds, driving across a storm-scoured sea. Wind howled, so that hearing was as taxed as vision. The currents of force that guided her spirit when she journeyed over land were lost in this confusion of energies; it took all her strength to master the terror of the deeps, to force herself to stop fighting the storm and seek the rhythms underlying its dissonant harmonies.

  Upon the surface of the sea ships tossed, even more vulnerable to the fury of the elements than she, for they were made of wooden planks and hempen ropes and crewed by creatures of flesh and bone. Her spirit sped on a gust of wind toward the largest, where she saw men heaving at oars. Tossed and turned as they were, they knew not where to seek a sheltering shore. Among that crew one man only stood unflinching, legs braced, swaying as the deck lurched and rolled. He was of middle height, round-headed and barrel-chested with fair hair plastered now to his skull by the rain. But, like the others, he peered anxiously across the waves.

  Dierna willed her spirit upward, extending spirit-senses into the storm. She saw jutting sea cliffs at whose feet waves frothed among toothed stones. But beyond them was slack water. Through veils of rain she gli
mpsed the pale curve of a beach and the glimmer of lights on the shore.

  Moved at first only by compassion, she sought the commander. But as she drew closer, she sensed the strength in him, and a spirit that would never be daunted. Was he the leader she was looking for?

  She began to draw on the raw energy of the storm, building up a spirit-shape that even mortal eyes could see. Swathed in white, it walked upon the sea. One of the sailors shouted; in a moment they were all looking that way. Dierna willed a ghostly arm to move, pointing toward the land….

  “There—can’t you see? There it goes—” The lookout shouted from his place at the prow. “A white lady, walking on the waves!”

  Wind struck the water with a mighty hand, sweeping the waves and the fragile ships that rode them before it. The Dubris squadron had scattered. Marcus Aurelius Musaeus Carausius, their Admiral, braced himself against the sternpost of the Hercules and dashed spray from his eyes, trying to see.

  “Hold fast,” came the voice of Aelius, who captained her. “Watch out for rocks, not froth on the sea!”

  A swell as high as a house rose to starboard, smooth slope gleaming as the moon broke for a moment through the clouds. The deck of the liburnian tilted sharply, oars waving like the legs of an overturned beetle, but from the port side came the ominous crack of overstressed wood as oars, driven deeply into the water, caught and broke beneath the strain.

  “Neptunus!” exclaimed the captain as the ship, shuddering, began to right herself once more. “Another gust like that and we’ll be under.”

  Carausius nodded. They had not expected such a storm at this season. They had put out from Gesoriacum at dawn, expecting to cross the Channel at its narrowest point and make Dubris by nightfall. But they had not reckoned with this Hades-born gale. They were far to the west of where they should be, and only the gods could bring them safe to harbor now. The gods, or the spirit the steersman had seen. He peered at the sea. Was that a figure in white or a gleam of moonlight on the wave?