"That seems to me dangerous doctrine," Gwenhwyfar said, "for if people believed that all men must at last be saved in some life or other, what would keep them from committing sins in this one, in the hope that at last God's mercy would prevail?"
"I do not think that fear of the priests, or of God's wrath, or anything else, will ever keep mankind from committing sins," said Nimue, "but only when they have gained enough wisdom in all their lives that they know that error is useless and evil must be paid for, sooner or later."
"Oh! Hush, child," Gwenhwyfar said. "Suppose someone should hear you speaking such heresies! Although it is true," she said after a moment, "that since that day of Easter, it seems to me that there is infinite mercy in God's love, and perhaps God does not care so much about sin as some of the priests would have us believe ... and now I am talking heresy too, perhaps!"
Nimue only smiled again, thinking to herself, I did not come to court to bring enlightenment to Gwenhwyfar. I have a more perilous mission, and it is not for me to preach to her the truth, that all men, and all women too, must one day come to enlightenment.
"Do you not believe Christ will come again, Nimue?"
No, thought Nimue, I do not, I believe that the great enlightened ones, like Christ, come but once, after many lives spent in attaining wisdom, and then they go forth forever into eternity; but I believe the divine ones will send other great masters to preach the truth to mankind, and that mankind will always receive them with the cross and the fire and the stones.
"What I believe does not matter, cousin, what matters is the truth. Some priests preach that their God is a God of love, and others that he is evil and vengeful. Sometimes I feel that the priests were sent to punish people; since they would not hear Christ's words of Love, God sent them the priests with their message of hatred and bigotry." And then she stopped short, for she did not want to anger Gwenhwyfar. But the Queen only said, "Well, Nimue, I have known priests like that."
"And if some priests are bad men," said Nimue, "I find it not wholly beyond reason that some Druids might be good ones."
There must, thought Gwenhwyfar, be some error in that reasoning, but she could not make it out. "Well, my dear, you may be right. But it makes me queasy to see you with the Merlin. Although I know Morgaine thought well of him ... it was rumored here at court, even, that they were lovers. I wondered often how a woman so fastidious as Morgaine could have let him touch her."
Nimue had not known that and she thrust it away in her mind for reference. Was that how Morgaine had known of his undefended fortresses? She said only, "Of all I learned in Avalon, what most I loved was music, and what I have heard in Holy Writ that pleases me most was the psalmist who told us to praise God with the lute and the harp. And Kevin has promised me that he will help me to find a harp, for I came away without my own. May I send for him here, cousin?"
Gwenhwyfar hesitated, but she could not resist the sweet entreaty in the young girl's smile and said, "To be sure you may, my dearest child."
11
After a time, the Merlin came-no, thought Nimue, I must remember; he is no more now than Kevin the Harper, traitor to Avalon-and behind him a servant carrying My Lady. Nimue thought, Now he is a Christian, there is no law that no other may touch his harp; it is simpler than keeping an initiated man about him to bear My Lady when his strength fails.
He walked with two sticks, dragging his tortured body after them. But he smiled at the ladies and said, "You must consider, my queen and my lady Nimue, that somehow my spirit has made to you the courtly bow that my unruly body is no longer able to make."
Nimue whispered, "I beg you, cousin, ask him to sit-he cannot stand for long."
Gwenhwyfar waved permission, glad for once of her near sight that meant she need not clearly see the misshapen body. For a moment, Nimue was afraid that Kevin's man was from Avalon and would recognize and perhaps greet her, but he was only a servant in the dress of the court. How had Morgaine, or old Raven, been able to see so far ahead, to order her as a child into seclusion, so that when she came to womanhood, there would be one fully trained priestess in Avalon whom the Merlin would not know by sight? She understood that she was merely a pawn in the great work of the world, sent forth with no weapons but her beauty and her guarded virginity to work the vengeance of the Goddess on this man who had betrayed them all.
Nimue placed another cushion from her own chair under the Merlin's arm. His bones seemed to protrude through the skin, and when she barely touched his elbow, it seemed that there was so much heat in the swollen joints that it burned her. And she felt a moment's pity and rebellion.
Surely the Goddess already works her own vengeance! This man has surely suffered enough! Their Christ suffered a day on the cross; this man has been crucified in his broken body for a lifetime!
Yet others had been burned for their faith and had not broken, nor betrayed the Mysteries. She hardened her heart and said sweetly, "Lord Merlin, will you play your harp for me?"
"For you, my lady," Kevin said in his rich voice, "I will play what you will, and I could wish I were that ancient bard who could play till the trees danced!"
"Oh no," said Nimue with mocking laughter. "What would we do if they came dancing in here! Why, we would have earth all over the hall, and all our maids with mops and brooms would not be able to clean it! Leave the trees where they are, I beg you, and sing!"
The Merlin put his hands to the harp and began to play. Nimue sat beside him on the floor, her great eyes looking up, intent, into his face. The Merlin looked down on the maiden just as a great dog might watch its master-with humble devotion and utter preoccupation. Gwenhwyfar took such emotion almost for granted. She herself had been the object of intense devotion so often that she never thought twice about it-it was simply the homage that men paid to beauty. Perhaps, though, she should warn Nimue, lest her head be turned by it. Yet she could not imagine how Nimue could sit so close to his ugliness or look at him so attentively.
There was something about Nimue that puzzled Gwenhwyfar. Somehow, the girl's concentration was not quite what it seemed. It was not the delight taken by one musician in another's work, nor was it the artless admiration of a naive maiden for a well-travelled and mature man. No, thought Gwenhwyfar, and it was not a sudden passion, either; that she could have understood and, in a sense, sympathized with-she herself had known that sudden overpowering love which sweeps away all obstacles. It had struck her like lightning and had ruined all her hopes that her marriage with Arthur could be a good and proper one. It had been a curse, yet she had known it was something that came of itself, over which neither she nor Lancelet had any power. She had come to terms with it, and she could have accepted that it had happened to Nimue-even though Kevin the Merlin seemed the most unlikely object for such a passion. But it was not that ... she did not know how she knew, but she knew.
Simple lust? It might have been that on Kevin's part-Nimue was beautiful, and even though the Merlin had been most circumspect, she might have kindled any man; but Gwenhwyfar could not believe that Nimue had been likewise roused by such a one when she had remained courteous but cool and unattainable to all of Gwenhwyfar's handsomest young knights.
From where she sat at the Merlin's feet, Nimue sensed that Gwenhwyfar was watching her. But she did not turn her eyes away from Kevin. In a way, she thought, I am enchanting him. Her purpose demanded that she have him completely at her mercy-her slave and her victim. And again she stifled the flash of pity that she felt. This man had done worse than simply revealing the Mysteries or the secret teaching; he had given the holy things themselves into the hands of the Christians, to be profaned. Ruthlessly, Nimue refused to consider her next thought, that the Christians had not intended profanation but hallowing. The Christians knew nothing of the inner truths of the Mysteries. And in any case the Merlin had betrayed a sworn oath.
And the Goddess appeared to prevent that profanation ... . Nimue had had enough training in the Mysteries to know what she had witnessed; even
now a shiver went over her at the thought of what had passed among the Companions on that festival day. She had not wholly understood, but she knew that she had touched the greatest holiness.
And the Merlin would have profaned this. No, he must die like the dog he was.
The harp was silent. Kevin said, "I have a harp for you, lady, if you will accept it. It is one which I fashioned with my own hands when I was a lad on Avalon, and first come there. I have made others, and they are better, but this is a good one and I have carried it long. If you will accept it, it is yours." Nimue protested that such a gift was all too valuable, but inwardly she was overjoyed. If she should possess something so valuable to him personally, something he had fashioned with his own hands and labor, then would it bind him to her, just as if it were a lock of his own hair or a drop of his blood. There were not many, even in Avalon, who knew that the law of magic went so far, that something which had been so intimately intertwined with the mind and the heart and the passions-and Nimue grasped that music was his deepest passion-retained even more of the soul than hair clipped from the body retained the essence of the body.
She thought with satisfaction, He himself, of his own free will, has put his soul into my hands. When he sent for the harp, she caressed it; small and crudely made as it was, the post had been worn smooth with resting against his body, and his hands had touched the strings with love ... even now they lingered on it tenderly.
She touched the strings, testing their music. In truth, the tone of the harp was good; he had somehow managed that perfect curve and structure that made the soundingboard echo the strings with the sweetest tone. And if he had done this as a boy, with those mutilated hands ... again Nimue felt the surge of pity and pain, Why did he not keep to his music and meddle not in the high affairs of state?
"You are too kind to me." She let her voice tremble, hoping he would think it was passion instead of triumph ... with this, soon he will be mine, possessed body and soul.
But it was too soon. The great tides of Avalon running in her blood told her that the moon was waxing; such great magic as this could be worked only in moon-dark, the slack time when the Lady sheds none of her light on the world, and her hidden purposes are made known.
She must not let his passion grow beyond bounds, nor her own sympathy with him.
He will desire me at full moon; this bond I am forging is a double-edged sword, a rope with two ends ... I will desire him as well, I cannot prevent that. For an enchantment to be total, it must involve both enchanter and enchanted, and she knew, with a spasm of terror, that this spell she was weaving would work on her too, and rebound on her. She could not pretend passion and desire; she must feel them as well. She knew, with a fear that wrung her heart, that even as the Merlin would be helpless in her hands, so it might well be that she would come to be helpless in his. And what of me, O Goddess, Mother ... that is all too great a price to pay ... let it not come on me, no, no, I am afraid ... .
"Well, Nimue, my dear," Gwenhwyfar said, "now that you have the harp in your hands, will you play and sing for me?"
She let her hair curtain her face as she looked timidly at the Merlin and murmured, "Shall I, then?"
"I beg you to play," he said. "Your voice is sweet and I can hear that your hands will bring enchantment from the strings ... ."
They will indeed if I am favored of the Goddess. Nimue set her hands to the strings, remembering that she must not play any song of Avalon that he would remember and recognize. She began to play a drinking song she had heard at the court, with words none too proper for a maiden; she saw Gwenhwyfar looking scandalized, and thought, Good, if she is shocked by my unmaidenly behavior, she will not inquire too deeply into my motives. Then she played and sang a lament she had heard from a northern harper, the mournful song of a fisherman out on the sea, looking for the lights of his home on the shore.
At the end of the song she rose, looking shyly at him. "I thank you for the use of your harp-may I borrow it again, that my hands may keep their skill?"
"It is my gift to you," said Kevin. "Now that I have heard what music your hands can bring from it, it could belong to no other. Keep it, I beg you-I have many harps."
"You are too kind to me," she murmured, "but, I beg you, now that I can make music for myself, do not abandon me or deprive me of the pleasure of listening to yours."
"I will play for you whenever you ask me," Kevin said, and she knew that his heart was in the words. She contrived to brush against him as she leaned forward to take the harp.
She murmured, softly so Gwenhwyfar would not hear, "Words alone cannot express my gratitude to you. Perhaps a time will come when I can express it more fittingly."
He looked at her, dazed, and she discovered that she was returning his gaze with the same intensity.
A double-edged spell indeed. I am victim too ...
He went away, and she sat obediently by Gwenhwyfar and tried to turn her attention to her spinning.
"How beautifully you play, Nimue," said Gwenhwyfar. "I need not ask where you learned ... I heard Morgaine sing that lament once."
Nimue said, averting her eyes, "Tell me something of Morgaine. She had departed from Avalon before I came there. She was married to a king in-Lothian, was it?"
"In the north of Wales," Gwenhwyfar began.
Nimue, who knew all this perfectly well, was still not completely false. Morgaine remained a puzzle to her, and she was eager to know how the lady Morgaine had appeared to those who knew her in the world.
"Morgaine was one of my ladies-in-waiting," Gwenhwyfar was saying. "Arthur gave her to me as such on our wedding day. Of course he had been fostered apart from her and hardly knew her, either ... ."
As she listened attentively, Nimue, who had been trained to read emotions, realized that beneath Gwenhwyfar's dislike for Morgaine, there was something else: respect, awe, even a kind of tenderness. If Gwenhwyfar were not so fanatically, mindlessly Christian, she would have loved Morgaine well.
At least while Gwenhwyfar was talking of Morgaine, even though she condemned her as an evil sorceress, she was not mouthing the pious nonsense that bored Nimue almost to weeping. But she could not give Gwenhwyfar's tales her full attention. She sat in an attitude of passionate interest, she made the proper sounds of attention or astonishment, but within, her mind was in turmoil:
I am afraid; I can come to be the Merlin's slave and victim as I would have him mine ... .
Goddess! Great Mother! It is not I who must face him, but you ... . The moon was waxing; four nights until full, and she could already feel the stirring of that tide of life. She thought of the Merlin's intent gaze, his magical eyes, the beauty of his voice, and knew that already she was deeply entangled in her own spell weaving. Already she had ceased to feel the slightest revulsion against his twisted body, feeling only the strength and life force flowing within it.
If I give myself to him at full moon, she thought, then will the tides of life within us both be taken at the flood, then will my purposes become his own, then will we blend together as one flesh ... she felt an ache and agony of desire, longing to be caressed by those sensitive hands, feel his warm breath against her mouth. Everything in her ached together in hunger which, she knew, was at least partly an echo of his own desire and frustration; the magical link she had created between them meant that she too must be tormented with his torment.
When life runs full at the rounding of the moon, then shall the Goddess receive the body of her lover ... .
It was not altogether beyond belief. She was the daughter of the Queen's champion and the King's closest friend. Kevin, the Merlin, unlike a Christian priest, was not forbidden to marry. The court would be pleased at a marriage so high-placed, even though some of the ladies would be shocked that she could yield up her delicate body to a man they considered a monster. Arthur surely knew that Kevin could not, after what he had done, return to Avalon, but he had a place at court as the King's councillor. Also, he was a musician of surpassing skill. Th
ere would be a place for us, and happiness ... when the moon is full, brimming with life, he will plant a child in my womb ... and I will bear it joyfully ... he is not monster born, his deformity is from childhood injuries ... his sons would be handsome ... and then she stopped herself, disturbed by the power of her own fantasies. No, she must not become so deeply entangled in this spell. She must deny herself, even though the waxing moon made the surging blood in her veins a very agony of frustration. She must wait, wait ...
As she had waited all those years.... There is a magic that comes with yielding to life. The priestesses of Avalon knew it when they lay in the fields at Beltane, invoking the life of the Goddess in their own bodies and hearts ... but there is a deeper magic which comes from guarding the power, damming up the stream. The Christians knew something of this, when they insisted that their holy virgins live in chastity and seclusion, that they might burn with the darker flame of that harnessed force; that their chaste priests might pour all their contained power into their Mysteries, such as they were. Nimue had felt that power in the lightest word or gesture from Raven, who had never wasted words on anything trivial, so that her force, when she spent it, was tremendous. She had wondered often, alone in the temple at Avalon, when she was forbidden to mingle with the other maidens or to go to the rites, when she felt that life force in her veins with such power that she sometimes burst into hysterical crying or tore at her hair and her face ... why had they set her aside for this, why must she bear the terrible weight of all this without relief? But she had trusted the Goddess and obeyed her mentors, and now they had entrusted this great work to her, and she must not fail them through her own weakness.
She was a charged vessel of power, like the Holy Regalia which it was death to touch unprepared, and all this power of her long preparation would be hers to bind the Merlin to her ... but she must wait for the tide to slacken and fill again; at the dark moon she must take the other tide which came of the other side of the moon ... not fertile but barren, not of life at all but of dark magic older than human life ... .
The Mists of Avalon Page 111