The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Marion Bradley

  Kevin's voice was soft and husky in the half-light.

  "Do you weep for your mother, Morgaine?"

  "For my mother-and for Viviane-and perhaps most of all for myself." Morgaine was never certain whether she had spoken the words aloud. Kevin's arm circled her, and she let her head fall against his chest and wept and wept until she could weep no more.

  He said, after a long time, still stroking her hair, "You spoke truth, Morgaine-you do not shrink from me."

  "How could I," she said, nestling closer, "when you have been so kind?"

  "All women think not so," he said. "Even when I came to the Beltane fires, I heard-for some folk think that because my legs and hands are lame, I am also deaf and dumb-I heard more than one, even of the maidens of the Goddess, whisper to their priestess that she should place them afar from me, so that there would be no chance I would look upon them when the time came to go apart from the fires ... ."

  Morgaine sat straight up in dismay. "Were I that priestess, I would drive such a woman forth from the fires, because she dared to question the form in which the God might come to her ... what did you do, Kevin?"

  He shrugged. "Rather than interrupt the ritual or put any woman to such a choice, I went away so quietly that none knew. Even the God could never change what they see or think of me. Even before I was forbidden by the Druid vows to couple with women who barter their bodies for gold, I could pay no woman to accept me. Perhaps I should seek to be a priest among the Christians, who, I have heard, teach their priests the secret of living without women. Or perhaps I should wish that when the raiders broke my hands and body they had gelded me too, so that I should not care one way or the other. I am sorry-I should not speak of it. But I wonder if you consented to lie at my side because you thought this crooked body of mine was not a man's, and did not think of me so ... "

  Morgaine listened to him, appalled at the agony of bitterness in his words, the wounds dealt to his manhood. She knew the awareness that lived in his hands, the quick emotion of the musician. Even before the Goddess, could women look only at a broken body? She remembered how she had flung herself into Lancelet's arms, and the wound to her pride which, she knew, would never cease to bleed.

  Quite deliberately she bent down and kissed him on the lips, pulled his hand to her and kissed the scars there. "Never doubt it, to me you are a man, and the Goddess has prompted me to do this." She lay down again, turning toward him.

  He looked sharply at her in the growing light. For a moment she flinched at what she saw in his face-did he think she pitied him? No: she shared the awareness of his suffering, which was another thing. She looked him directly in the eyes ... yes, if his face had not been so drawn with bitterness, so twisted with suffering, he might have been handsome; his features were good, his eyes very dark and gentle. Fate had broken his body, but not his spirit-no coward could have endured the ordeals of the Druids.

  Under the mantle of the Goddess, as every woman is my sister and my daughter and my mother, so must every man be to me as father and lover and son ... . My father was dead before I could remember him, and I have not seen my son since he was weaned ... but to this man I will give what the Goddess prompts me ... . Morgaine kissed one of the scarred hands again and laid it inside her gown, against her breast.

  He was inexperienced-which seemed to her strange for a man of his age. But how, Morgaine wondered, could he possibly have been anything else? And then she thought, This is the first time, really, that I have done this of my free will, and had the gift taken simply, as it was offered. It healed something in her. Strange, that it could have been so with a man she scarcely knew, and for whom she felt only kindness. Even in his inexperience he was generous and gentle with her, and she felt, welling up within her, a great and unspeakable tenderness.

  "It is strange," he said at last, in a quiet, musing voice. "I had known you were wise and a priestess, but somehow I had never thought you were beautiful."

  She laughed harshly. "Beautiful? Me?" But she was grateful that, to him, at that moment, she seemed so.

  "Morgaine, tell me-where have you been? I would not ask, but that whatever it is, it lies heavy on your heart."

  "I do not know," she blurted out. She had never thought she would tell him. "Out of the world, perhaps-I was trying to reach Avalon-and I could not come there, the way is barred to me, I think. Twice now, I have been-elsewhere. Another country, a country of dreams and enchantments-a country where time stands still and is not, and there is nothing but music-" And she fell silent; would the harper think her a madwoman?

  He traced a finger along the corner of her eye. It was cold, and they had thrown the covers off them; he tucked the cloaks gently round her again. "Once I too was there, and heard their music ... " he said, in a distant brooding voice, "and in that place I was not near so crippled, and their women did not mock me ... . Some day, perhaps, when I have lost my fear of madness, I shall go to them once again ... they showed me the hidden ways and said I might come because of my music ... " and again, his soft voice dropped into a long silence.

  She shivered and looked away from him. "We had better get up. If our poor horse has not quite frozen in the night, we will arrive at Camelot this day."

  "And if we arrive together," Kevin said quietly, "they may believe that you have come with me from Avalon. It is none of their affair where you have dwelt-you are a priestess, and your conscience is not in the keeping of any man alive, not even of their bishops, or of Taliesin himself."

  Morgaine wished she had a decent dress to put on; she would arrive at Arthur's court in the garb of a beggar woman. Well, it could not be helped. Kevin watched as she arranged her hair, then held out his hand, and she helped him to his feet, matter-of-factly; but she saw that the bitter look was in his eyes again. He was guarded behind a hundred fences of reserve and anger. Yet just as they were crawling out the door he touched her hand. "I have not thanked you, Morgaine-"

  She smiled. "Oh-if there are thanks, they are to be spoken both ways, my friend-or could you not tell that?"

  For a moment the scarred fingers tightened on hers... and then it was like a blaze of fire, she saw his ravaged face circled with a ring of fire, contorted with shrieking, and all about and all around him fire ... fire ... she stiffened and snatched her hand away, staring at him in horror.

  "Morgaine!" he cried. "What is it?"

  "Nothing, nothing-a cramp in my foot-" she lied, and avoided his hand when he would have put it out to steady her. Death! Death by burning! What did it mean? Not even the worst of traitors died that death ... or had she seen only what had befallen him when he was lamed as a boy? Brief as the moment of Sight had been, it left her shaken, as if she herself had spoken the word that would deliver him to his death.

  "Come," she said, almost brusquely. "Let us ride."

  15

  Gwenhwyfar had never wished to meddle with the Sight; did it not say in Holy Writ that no man knew what a day might bring forth? Yet she had hardly thought of Morgaine in the last year, not since they had moved the court to Camelot, but this very morning she had wakened remembering a dream she had had of Morgaine-a dream in which Morgaine had taken her hand, leading her to the Beltane fires and bidding her lie with Lancelet there. When she was well awake she could laugh at the madness of that dream. Surely dreams were sent from the Devil, for in all of hers that gave her such evil counsel that no Christian wife could heed, oftenest it was Morgaine who spoke it.

  Well, she is gone from this court, I need never think of her again ... no, I do not wish her ill, I wish she might repent of her sins, and find peace in a nunnery ... but one very far from here. Now that Arthur had given over his pagan ways, Gwenhwyfar felt that she would even be happy if it were not for these dreams in which Morgaine led her into shameful things. And now the dream haunted her while she sat working at the altar cloth she was making for the church, haunted her so deeply that it seemed wicked to sit working a cross in gold thread while she thought of Lancelet. She put down her th
read and whispered a prayer, but her thoughts went on, relentless. Arthur, when she begged him at Christmas, had promised her that he would put down the Beltane fires in the countryside; she thought he would have done it before this, except that the Merlin had forbidden him. It would be hard for any, Gwenhwyfar thought, not to love the old man-he was so gentle and good; if only he were Christian, he would be better than any priest. But Taliesin had said it was not fair to the countryfolk, either, to take from them a simple awareness of a Goddess who cared for their fields and their crops and the fertility of their beasts and their own wombs. Surely there was little that such folk could do in the way of sin, they had all they could do to toil in the fields and till their crops for enough bread to keep them out of death's reach; it was not to be looked for that the Devil should trouble himself with such people, if there was a Devil at all. But Gwenhwyfar said, "I suppose you think they do no sin, when they go to the Beltane fires and there do lewd and heathen rites and lie with other than their husbands-"

  "God knows they have little enough joy in their lives," Taliesin responded tranquilly. "I cannot think it very wrong that four times in a whole year, when the seasons turn, they should make merry and do what pleasures them. I could not find much reason to love a God who took thought about such things and would call them wicked. Do you call them wicked, my queen?"

  And she did; any Christian woman must think so, to go into the fields and dance naked and lie there with the first man sent to her ... immodest and shameful and wicked. Taliesin shook his head, sighing.

  "Still, my queen, none can be the master of another's conscience. Even if you think it wicked and shameful, would you pretend to know what is right for another? Even the wise cannot know everything, and perhaps the Gods have more purposes than we, in our little knowledge, can see."

  "If I knew right from wrong-as I do and as the priests have taught us, and as God has taught us in Holy Writ-then should I fear God's punishment if I did not make such laws as would keep my people from sin?" Gwenhwyfar demanded. "God would require it at my hands, I think, if I allowed evil to take place in my realm, and if I were king I should already have put it down."

  "Then, lady, I can say only that it is the good fortune of this land that you are not king. A king must protect his people from outsiders, from invaders, and lead his people to defend themselves-a king must be the first to thrust himself between the land and all danger, just as a farmer stands to defend his fields from any robber. But it is not his duty to dictate to them what their innermost hearts may do."

  But she had debated with him hotly. "A king is the protector of his people, and what good is it to protect their bodies if he lets their souls fall into evil ways? Look you, Lord Merlin, I am a queen, and mothers in this land send their daughters to wait upon me and be schooled in courtly ways -understand you? Well, what manner of queen should I be, if I let another woman's daughter behave immodestly and get herself with child, or-as did Queen Morgause, I have heard-let her maidens go to the king's bed, if he wished to have his way with them? Mothers entrust me with their daughters because they know I will protect them-"

  "It is different, that you should be entrusted with maidens too young to know their own will, and be even as a mother to bring them up rightly," Taliesin said. "But a king rules over grown men."

  "God has not said there is one law for the court and one other for the country folk! He wishes all men to keep his commandments-and suppose the laws were not there? What do you think would happen to this land if I and my ladies went out into the fields and behaved so immodestly? How can such things be allowed to go on within the very sound of the church bells?"

  Taliesin smiled. He said, "I do not think, even if there was no law against it, that you would be very likely to go into the fields at Beltane, my lady. I have marked it-that you like not to go out of doors much at all."

  "I have had the good of Christian teaching and priestly counsel and I choose not to go," she said sharply.

  "But Gwenhwyfar," he said very gently, his faded blue eyes looking at her out of the network of lines and patches on his face, "think of this. Suppose a law was made against it, and your conscience told you that it was the right thing to do, to give yourself to the Goddess, in acknowledgment that she is over us all, body and soul? If your Goddess wished for you to do so-then, dear lady, would you let the passing of a law forbidding the Beltane fires stop you from it? Think, dear lady: not more than two hundred years ago-has Bishop Patricius not told you of this?-it was strictly against the laws here in the Summer Country that any should worship the Christ, for so they should defraud the Gods of Rome of their just and righteous due. And there were Christians who died rather than do such a little thing, cast a pinch of incense before one of their idols-aye, I see you have heard the story. Would you have your God be as great a tyrant as any Roman emperor?"

  "But God is real, and they are but idols fashioned by men," Gwenhwyfar said.

  "Not so, no more than the picture of Mary Virgin which Arthur bore into battle ... " said Taliesin, "a picture to give comfort to the minds of the faithful. It is strictly forbidden to me, a Druid, that I may have any representation of any God, for I have been so taught, in many lives, that I need none-I can think upon my God and he is with me. But the once-born cannot do that, and so they need their Goddess in round stones and pools, as your simple people need the picture of Mary Virgin and the cross which some of your knights bear on their shields, so that men may know they are Christian knights."

  Gwenhwyfar knew there was a flaw in this argument, but she could not debate with the Merlin; and in any case, he was only an old man, and a heathen.

  When I have borne Arthur a son-once he said to me that then I might ask of him anything he could give, and at that time I will ask him to forbid the Beltane fires and the harvest fires.

  Gwenhwyfar remembered this conversation, months after, on the morning of her dream. No doubt Morgaine would have counselled her so, that she should go with Lancelet to the fires ... Arthur had said he would ask her no question if she should bear a child, he had all but given her leave to have Lancelet as a lover ... she felt her face flaming as she bent over the cross; she was not fit to touch such stuff. She put the altar cloth from her and wrapped it in a piece of coarser cloth. She would work on it when she was more tranquil.

  Cai's uneven step sounded at the door of the room. "My lady," he said, "the King has sent to ask if you would come down to the arms field to watch. There is something he would show you."

  Gwenhwyfar nodded to her ladies. "Elaine, Meleas, come with me," she said. "You others, you may come or stay here and work, as you like."

  One of the women, who was elderly and somewhat shortsighted, chose to stay and go on with her spinning; the others, eager for a chance to get out into the sunlight, flocked after Gwenhwyfar.

  In the night there had been snow, but the strength of the winter was past, and now the snow lay melting quickly in the sun. Little bulbs were poking leaves through the grass; in another month, this would be a wilderness of flowers. When she had come here to Camelot, her father Leodegranz had sent her his favorite gardener, so that he could decide what vegetables and pot herbs would grow best in this site. But this hilltop had been fortified long before Roman times and there were some herbs growing; Gwenhwyfar had had him transplant them all into her kitchen garden, and when they found a patch where flowers were growing wild, Gwenhwyfar begged Arthur that she should be left it for her own lawns, and he had built the arms field further along the hilltop.

  She looked up timidly, as they moved across the lawns. It was so open here, so near to the sky; Caerleon had nestled close to the earth. Here at Camelot, on rainy days, it was like being on an island of fog and mist- like Avalon-but on clear days of sunlight, such as this one, it lay high and exposed, so that it could command all the country round, and standing at the edge of the hilltop she could see miles and miles of hill and forest ... .

  It was like being too near to Heaven; surely it was not right
that human beings, mere mortals, should see so far-but Arthur said, even though there was peace in the land, the King's castle should be difficult to come at.

  It was not Arthur who came to meet her, but Lancelet. He had grown even handsomer, she thought. Now that he need not keep his hair always hacked short for the war helmet, he had let it grow long, and it curled around his shoulders. He wore a short beard-she liked the fashion on him, though Arthur teased him about it and said he was vain; Arthur himself kept his hair clipped short like a soldier, and had himself shaved every day by his chamberlains, as carefully and as closely as he combed his hair.

  "Lady, the King is waiting for you," said Lancelet, and took her arm to escort her to the set of seats Arthur had had built close to the wooden railings of the exercise field.

  Arthur bowed to her, thanking Lancelet with a smile as he took Gwenhwyfar's hand. "Here, Gwen, sit beside me-I brought you here because I want to show you something special. Look there-"

  She could see that a group of the younger knights and some of the youngsters who served in the King's house were working at a mock battle in the yard: divided into two groups, they were fighting with wooden battens and big shields. "Look," said Arthur, "the big one in the ragged saffron shirt. Does he not put you in mind of someone?"

  Gwenhwyfar looked at the boy, following his skillful work with sword and shield-he broke away from the others, attacked like a fury, toppling them over, caught one lad so hard a blow on his head that he left him stretched senseless, sent another reeling with a fierce blow on the shield. He was only a youngster-his rosy face was fuzzed with the first beginnings of beard, so that he still looked like a cherub-but he was near to six feet tall, and big and broad-shouldered as an ox.

  "He fights like the fiend," Gwenhwyfar said, "but who is he? I seem to have seen him about the court-"

  "He is that young lad who came to court and would not give his name," Lancelet said at their elbow, "so you gave him to Cai to help in the kitchens. He's the one they called 'Handsome' because his hands were so fine and white. Cai made all sorts of rude jokes about spoiling them by turning the spit and scrubbing vegetables. Our Cai has a rough tongue."