The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Marion Bradley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Gwenhwyfar's mouth dropped open and she stared at Igraine. "I-I -I did not know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "There are flowers here," Gwenhwyfar said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "I-did not know. Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Gwenhwyfar said compassionately, "No doubt she knows not that you are ill-"

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

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

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

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

  11

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