The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She had not been trained in the Sight; she had used it a little, spontaneously, as a girl, but except for her brief vision of Viviane, she had never used it at all as a grown woman, and since her vision of Gorlois as death-doomed she had closed herself firmly to further visions. That one, the Gods knew, had come to nothing, for Gorlois was still very much alive. Yet somehow, she supposed, she might now manage to see what was to happen. It was a dangerous step—she had been reared on tales of what befell those who meddled in arts to which they were not trained, and at first she sought to compromise. As the first leaves began to turn yellow, she called the chief of the men-at-arms to her again.

  “I cannot stay here forever, shut like a rat in a trap,” she said. “I must go to the market fair. We must buy dyes and there is need of a new milk goat, and of needles and pins, and many things for the winter which comes.”

  “Lady, I have no orders to let you go abroad,” he said, and turned his eyes from her. “I take my orders from my lord, and I have heard nothing from him.”

  “Then I will stay here and send one of my women,” she said. “Ettarr or Isotta shall go, and the lady Morgause with her—will that suffice?”

  He looked relieved, as she had hit upon a solution to save him from disobeying his lord; for indeed it was necessary that someone from the household should visit a fair before the winter, and he knew it as well as she did. It was outrageous to keep the lady of the house from what was, after all, one of her proper duties.

  Morgause was wildly happy when Igraine told her she was to go. Small wonder, Igraine thought. None of us has been abroad all this summer. The very shepherds are freer than we, for they at least take the sheep to graze on the mainland! She watched, frankly envious, as Morgause put on the crimson cloak Gorlois had given her, and, with the chaperonage of two men-at-arms as well as both Ettarr and Isotta and two of the kitchen women to carry packages and goods, set forth on her pony. She watched from the causeway, holding Morgaine by the hand, until they were out of sight, and felt that she could not endure to reenter the castle which had become a prison to her.

  “Mother,” Morgaine asked at her side, “why can we not go to the market with Auntie?”

  “Because your father does not wish us to go, my poppet.”

  “Why does not he want us to go? Does he think we will be naughty?”

  Igraine laughed and said, “Indeed, I think that is what he believes, daughter.”

  Morgaine was silent—a small, quiet, self-possessed little creature, her dark hair now long enough to plait into a little braid halfway down her shoulder blades, but so fine and straight that it slipped out into loose elf locks around her shoulders. Her eyes were dark and serious, and her eyebrows straight and level, so heavy already that they were the most definite feature of her face. A little fairy woman, Igraine thought, not human at all; a pixie. She was no larger than the shepherd girl’s babe who was not yet quite two, though Morgaine was nearing four, and spoke as clearly and thoughtfully as a great girl of eight or nine. Igraine caught up the child in her arms and hugged her.

  “My little changeling!”

  Morgaine suffered the caress, and even kissed her mother in return, which surprised Igraine, for Morgaine was not a demonstrative child, but soon she began to stir fretfully—she was not the kind of child who wished to be held for long; she would do everything for herself. She had even begun to dress herself and buckle her own shoes on her feet. Igraine set her down and Morgaine walked sedately at her side back into the castle.

  Igraine sat down at her loom, telling Morgaine to take her spindle and sit beside her. The little girl obeyed, and Igraine, setting her shuttle in motion, stopped for a moment to watch her. She was neat-handed and precise; her thread was clumsy, but she twirled the spindle deftly as if it were a toy, twisting it between her small fingers. If her hands were bigger, she would already spin as well as Morgause. After a time Morgaine said, “I do not remember my father, Mother. Where is he?”

  “He is away with his soldiers in the Summer Country, daughter.”

  “When will he come home?”

  “I do not know, Morgaine. Do you want him to come home?”

  She considered a moment. “No,” she said, “because when he was here—I remember it just a little—I had to go sleep in Auntie’s room and it was dark there and I was afraid at first. Of course I was very little then,” she added solemnly, and Igraine concealed a smile. After a minute she went on, “And I do not want him to come home because he made you cry.”

  Well, Viviane had said it; women did not give babes enough credit for understanding what was going on around them.

  “Why do you not have another baby, Mother? Other women have a baby as soon as the older one is weaned, and I am already four. I heard Isotta say you should have given me a baby brother. I think I would like to have a little brother to play with, or even a little sister.”

  Igraine actually started to say, “Because your father Gorlois—” and then stopped herself. No matter how adult Morgaine might sound, she was only four years old, and Igraine could not confide such things to her. “Because the Mother Goddess did not see fit to send me a son, child.”

  Father Columba came out on the terrace. He said austerely, “You should not talk to the child of Goddesses and superstition. Gorlois wishes her to be reared as a good Christian maiden. Morgaine, your mother did not have a son because your father was angry with her, and God withheld a son to punish her for her sinful will.”

  Not for the first time, Igraine felt that she would like to throw her shuttle at this black crow of ill omen. Had Gorlois confessed to this man, was he aware of all that had passed between them? She had often wondered that, in the moons that had passed, but she had never had any excuse to ask and knew he would not tell her if she did. Suddenly Morgaine stood up and made a face at the priest, “Go away, old man,” she said clearly. “I don’t like you. You have made my mother cry. My mother knows more than you do, and if she says that it is the Goddess who did not send her a child, I will believe what she says, and not what you say, because my mother does not tell lies!”

  Father Columba said angrily to Igraine, “Now you see what comes of your willfulness, my lady? That child should be beaten. Give her to me and I will punish her for her disrespect!”

  And at this all Igraine’s rage and rebelliousness exploded. Father Columba had advanced toward Morgaine, who stood without flinching. Igraine stepped between them. “If you lay a hand on my daughter, priest,” she said, “I will kill you where you stand. My husband brought you here, and I cannot send you away, but on the day you come into my presence again, I will spit on you. Get out of my sight!”

  He stood his ground. “My lord Gorlois entrusted me with the spiritual well-being of this entire household, my lady, and I am not given to pride, so I will forgive what you have said.”

  “I care as little for your forgiveness as for that of the billy goat! Get out of my sight or I will call my serving-women and have you put out. Unless you want to be carried out of here, old man, get from here and do not presume to come into my presence until I send for you—and that will be when the sun rises over western Ireland! Go!”

  The priest stared at her blazing eyes, at her uplifted hand, and scuttled out of the room.

  Now that she had committed an act of open rebellion, she was paralyzed at her own temerity. But at least it had freed her from the priest, and freed Morgaine, too. She would not have her daughter brought up to feel shame at her own womanhood.

  Morgause came back late that night from the fair, having chosen all her purchases carefully—Igraine knew she could not have done better herself—with a lump of loaf sugar for Morgaine to suck, which she had bought with her own pocket money, and full of tales from the marketplace. The sisters sat until midnight in Igraine’s room, talking long after Morgaine had fallen asleep, sucking on her sugar candy, her small face sticky and her hands still clutching it. Igraine took it away and wrapped it for her, and came back to ask further news
of Morgause.

  This is ignoble, that I must hear news from the marketplace about the doings of my own husband!

  “There is a great gathering in the Summer Country,” Morgause said. “They say that the Merlin has made peace between Lot and Uther. They say, too, that Ban of Less Britain has allied with them, and is sending them horses brought from Spain—” She stumbled a little over the name. “Where is that, Igraine? Is it in Rome?”

  “No, but it is far in the south, nearer than we to Rome by many, many leagues,” Igraine told her.

  “There was a battle with the Saxons, and Uther was there with the dragon banner,” Morgause told her. “I heard a harper telling it like a ballad, how the Duke of Cornwall had imprisoned his lady in Tintagel—” In the darkness Igraine could see that the girl’s eyes were wide, her lips parted. “Igraine, tell me true, was Uther your lover?”

  “He was not,” Igraine said, “but Gorlois believed he was, and that is why he quarreled with Uther. He did not believe me when I told him the truth.” Her throat choked tight with tears. “I wish now that it had been the truth.”

  “They say King Lot is handsomer than Uther,” Morgause said, “and that he is seeking a wife, and it is whispered in gossip that he would challenge Uther to be High King, if he thought he could do so safely. Is he handsomer than Uther? Is Uther as godlike as they say, Igraine?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Morgause.”

  “Why, they say he was your lover—”

  “I do not care what they say,” Igraine interrupted her, “but as for that, I suppose as the world reckons such things, both of them are fine-looking men, Lot dark, and Uther blond like a Northman. But it was not for his fair face that I thought Uther the better man.”

  “What was it then?” asked Morgause, bright and inquisitive, and Igraine sighed, knowing the young girl would not understand. But the hunger to share at least a little of what she felt, and could never say to anyone, drove her to say, “Why—I hardly know. Only—it was as if I had known him from the beginning of the world, as if he could never be strange to me, whatever he did or whatever befell between us.”

  “But if he never so much as kissed you . . .”

  “It does not matter,” Igraine said wearily, and then at last, weeping, said what she had known for a long time now, and had been unwilling to admit. “Even should I never again look upon his face in this life, I am bound to him and I shall be so bound until I die. And I cannot believe the Goddess would have wrought this upheaval in my life, if I was meant never again to see him.”

  By the dim light she could see that Morgause was looking at her with awe and a measure of envy, as if in the younger girl’s eyes Igraine had suddenly become the heroine of some old romantic tale. She wanted to say to her, no, it is not like that, it is not romantic at all, it is simply what has happened, but she knew there was no way to say that, for Morgause had not the experience to tell romance from this sort of ultimate reality, rock-hard at the bottom of imagination or fantasy. Let her think it romance, then, if it pleases her, Igraine thought, and realized that this kind of reality would never come to Morgause: it was a different world she lived in.

  Now she had taken the step of alienating the priest who was Gorlois’s man, and another step in confessing to Morgause that she loved Uther. Viviane had said something of worlds drawing apart one from the other, and it seemed to Igraine as if she had begun to dwell on some world apart from the ordinary one in which Gorlois perhaps had a right to expect that she be his faithful chattel, servant, slave—his wife. Only Morgaine now bound her to that world. She looked at the sticky-handed, sleeping child, her dark hair scattered wildly around her, and at her wide-eyed younger sister, and wondered if, at the call of this thing that had happened to her, she would abandon even these last hostages which held her to the real world.

  The thought gave great pain, but inside herself she whispered, “Yes. Even that.”

  And so the next step, which she had feared so greatly, became simple to her.

  She lay awake that night between Morgause and her child, trying to decide what she must do. Should she run away and trust to Uther’s part in the vision to find her? Almost at once she rejected that thought. Should she send Morgause, with secret instructions to flee to Avalon and bear a message that she was imprisoned? No; if it was common talk—a ballad in the marketplace—that she was imprisoned, her sister would have come to her if she thought that it would help. And ever at her heart gnawed the silent voice of doubt and despair. Her vision had been a false one . . . or perhaps, when she had not flung all aside for Uther, they had abandoned the plan, found another woman for Uther, and the saving of Britain, as, should the high priestess be ill for the great Celebration, they would choose another for her part.

  Toward morning, as the sky was already paling, she fell into a dazed sleep. And there, when she had ceased to hope for it, she found guidance. Just as she woke, it was as if a voice said inside her mind, Rid yourself for this one day of the child, and the maiden, and you will know what to do.

  The day dawned clear and shining, and as they broke their fast on goat’s cheese and new-baked bread, Morgause looked at the shining sea and said, “I am so weary of staying withindoors—I did not know till yesterday at the market how weary I am grown of this house!”

  “Take Morgaine, then, and go out for the day with the shepherd women,” Igraine suggested. “She too would like to go abroad, I imagine.”

  She wrapped up slices of meat and bread for them; to Morgaine it was like a festival. Igraine saw them go, hoping now for some way to evade the watchful eyes of Father Columba, for, although he followed her will and had not spoken to her, his eyes followed her everywhere. But at midmorning, as she sat weaving, he came into her presence and said, “Lady—”

  She did not look up at him. “I bade you stay away from me, priest. Complain of me to Gorlois when he comes home if you will, but do not speak to me.”

  “One of Gorlois’s men has been hurt in a fall from the cliffs. His comrades think he is dying, and have bidden me to come to him. You need not be afraid; you will be properly guarded.”

  She had known that—it had never occurred to her that, if she could get rid of the priest, she might somehow make her escape. In any case, where could she go? This was Gorlois’s country and none of his people would shelter an escaped wife from his wrath. Simple flight had never been her intention. “Go and the Devil take you, so that you come not into my presence,” and turned her back.

  “If you presume to curse me, woman—”

  “Why should I waste my breath with a curse? I would as willingly bid you Godspeed to your own heaven, and may your God find more pleasure in your company than I do.”

  Once he had gone, hurrying on his little donkey across the causeway, she knew why she had felt she must rid herself of the priest. In his own way he was an initiate of the Mysteries, though they were not her Mysteries, and he would be quick to know and to disapprove of what she meant to do. She went to Morgause’s room and found the silver mirror. Then she went down to the kitchens to ask the serving-women to make a fire in her room. They stared, for the day was not cold, but she repeated it as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and fetched herself a few other things from the kitchen: salt and a little oil, a bit of bread and a small flask of wine—these, no doubt, the women thought she wanted for her noon meal—and she took a bit of cheese too to conceal her intent, and later flung it to the sea gulls.

  Outside in the garden she found lavender flowers and managed to find a few wild-rose hips. Boughs of juniper, too, she cut with her own small knife, only a few symbolic branches, and a small piece of hazel. Once in her room again she drew the bolt and stripped off her garments, standing naked and shivering before the fire. She had never done this, and knew Viviane would not approve, for those who were unskilled in the arts of sorcery could cause trouble for themselves by meddling with it. But with these things, she knew, she could conjure the Sight even if she had it
not.

  She cast the juniper on the fire, and as the smoke rose, bound the branch of hazel to her forehead. She laid fruit and flowers before the fire, then touched salt and oil to her breast, took a bite of the bread and a sip of the wine, then, trembling, laid the silver mirror where the firelight shone on it and, from the barrel which was kept for washing the women’s hair, poured clear rainwater across the silver surface of the mirror.

  She whispered, “By common things and by uncommon, by water and fire, salt and oil and wine, by fruit and flowers together, I beg you, Goddess, let me see my sister Viviane.”

  Slowly, the surface of the water stirred. Igraine, in a sudden icy wind, shivered, wondering for a moment if the spell would fail, if her sorcery were blasphemy as well. The blurred face forming in the mirror was first her own, then slowly it shifted, changed, was the awesome face of the Goddess, with the rowanberries bound about her brow. And then, as it cleared and steadied, Igraine saw; but not, as she had hoped and foreseen, into a living, speaking face. She looked into a room which she knew. It had once been the chamber of her mother at Avalon, and there were women there, in the dark robes of priestesses, and at first she looked in vain for her sister, for the women were coming and going, and moving back and forth, and there was confusion in the chamber. And then she saw her sister, Viviane; she looked weary and ill and drawn, and she was walking, walking back and forth, leaning on the arm of one of the other priestesses, and Igraine knew, in horror, what she saw. For Viviane, in her pale robe of undyed wool, was heavy with child, her belly swollen, her face dragged down with suffering, and ever she walked and walked, as, Igraine remembered, the midwives had made her do when she was in labor with Morgaine. . . .