The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  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.”

  “But the boy never answered him back,” said Gawaine gruffly at Arthur’s other side. “He could break Cai with his two hands, but when the other lads urged him on to strike Cai—once Cai made some kind of wicked joke about his parentage, saying he must be base-born and the son of scullions, since he came so naturally to such things—Handsome only looked right over the top of his head and said it would not be well done to strike a man who had lamed himself in the service of his king.”

  Lancelet said wryly, “That would be worse to Cai than being beaten senseless, I think. Cai feels he is fit for nothing but to turn the spit and serve the plates. One day, Arthur, you must find a quest for Cai, even if it is no more than to go and find traces of old Pellinore’s dragon.”

  Elaine and Meleas giggled behind their hands. Arthur said, “Well, well, I will. Cai is too good and too loyal to be soured this way. You know I would have given him Caerleon, but he would not take it. He said his father had bidden him to serve me with his own hands so long as he lived, and he would come here to Camelot to keep my house. But this boy—Handsome, you called him, Lance? Does he not put you in mind of someone, my lady?”

  She studied the boy, charging now against the last of the opposing group, his long, fair hair flying in the wind. He had a high, broad forehead and a big nose, and his hands, gripped on the weapon, were smooth and white—then she looked past Arthur at just another such nose and blue eyes, though these were hidden in a shock of red hair, and said, “Why, he is like Gawaine,” as if it were something shocking.

  “God help us, why, so he is,” said Lancelet, laughing, “and I never saw it—and I have seen much of him. I gave him that saffron shirt, he had not a whole shirt to his name—”

  “And other things, too,” Gawaine said. “When I asked him if he had all that was fitting to his station, he told me of your gifts. It was nobly done of you to help the boy, Lance.”

  Arthur turned to him and said in surprise, “Is he, then, one of your brood, Gawaine? I knew not you had a son—”

  “Nay, my king. It is my—my youngest brother, Gareth. But he would not let me tell.”

  “And you never told me, cousin?” Arthur said reproachfully. “Would you keep secrets from your king?”

  “Not that,” protested Gawaine uncomfortably, and his big, slab-sided face flushed red, so that he and his hair and his brick-red cheeks seemed all one color; it seemed strange to Gwenhwyfar that so big and rough a man could blush like a child. “Never that, my king, but the boy begged me to say nothing—he said you have favored me because I was your cousin and your kinsman, but if he won favor at Arthur’s court and from the great Lancelet—he said that, Lance, the great Lancelet—he wished it to be for what he had done, not for his name and his birth.”

  “That was foolish,” said Gwenhwyfar, but Lancelet smiled.

  “Nay—it was honorably done. Often I have wished I had had wit and courage to do the same, rather than being tolerated because, after all, I was Ban’s own bastard and needed not to win anything by merit—it was for that I strove so fiercely always to be valorous in battle, so that none might say I had not earned my favors—”

  Arthur laid his hand gently on Lancelet’s wrist. “You need never fear that, my friend,” he said, “all men know you are the best of my knights, and closest to my throne. But Gawaine"—he turned to the red-haired man—"I favored not you, either, because you were my kinsman and heir, but only because you were loyal and staunch, and have saved my life a dozen times over. There were those who told me my heir should never be my bodyguard, for if he did his d
uty too well, then would he never come to the throne, but many and many a day I have had occasion to be glad of so loyal a kinsman at my back.” He put his arm across Gawaine’s shoulders. “So this is your brother, and I knew it not.”

  “I knew it not either when he came to court,” Gawaine said. “When last I had seen him, at your crowning, he was a little lad no taller than my sword hilt, and now—well, you see.” He gestured. “But once I saw him in the kitchens and thought, perhaps, he was some bastard of our kin. God knows, Lot has enough of them—I recognized him, and then it was that Gareth begged me not to reveal who he was, that he might win fame on his own.”

  “Well, a year under Cai’s harsh teachings would make a man of any mother’s poppet,” Lancelet said, “and he has borne himself manly enough, God knows.”

  “I wonder that you knew him not, Lancelet—he came near to getting you killed at Arthur’s wedding,” Gawaine said amiably. “Or do you not remember that you handed him over to our mother, and bade her beat him soundly to keep him from under the horses’ feet—”

  “And I came near to knocking out my brains soon after—aye, I remember now,” Lancelet said, laughing. “So that is the same young rascal! But he has far outstripped the other boys, he should practice at arms with the men and knights. It looks now as if he would be among the best of them. Give me leave, my lord?”

  “Do what you like, my friend.”

  Lancelet unbuckled his sword. He said, “Keep this for me, lady,” and handed it to Gwenhwyfar. He leaped the fence, caught up one of the wooden battens kept for the boys to practice with, and ran toward the big, fair-haired boy.

  “You are too big for those fellows, sirrah—come here now, and try conclusions with someone nearer your own size!”

  Gwenhwyfar thought, in sudden dread, Nearer to your own size? But Lancelet was not so big a man, not much taller than herself, and young Handsome towered almost a full head over him! For a moment, facing the King’s captain of horse, the boy hesitated, but Arthur gestured encouragement, and the boy’s face lit up with a fierce joy. He charged at Lancelet, raising his mock weapon for a blow, and was startled when the blow descended and Lancelet was not under it; Lancelet had evaded him, spun round and caught him a blow on the shoulder. He had pulled back on the weapon as it came down so that it only touched the boy, but it tore his shirt. Gareth recovered himself quickly, caught Lancelet’s next blow before it landed, and for a moment Lancelet’s foot slipped on the wet grass and it looked as if he would go down, skidding to his knees before the boy.

  Handsome stepped back. Lancelet got to his feet, yelling, “Idiot! Suppose I had been a great Saxon warrior!” and caught the boy a great blow on the back with the flat of his sword, which hurled him, his sword flailing wildly, halfway across the yeard; he went down and lay half-stunned.

  Lancelet hurried to him and bent over him, smiling. “I did not want to hurt you, lad, but you must learn to guard yourself better than that.” He held out his arm. “Here, lean on me.”

  “You have honored me, sir,” said the boy, his fresh face coloring, “and indeed it did me good to feel your strength.”

  Lancelet clapped him on the shoulder. “May we always fight side by side and not as foemen, Handsome,” he said, and returned to the King. The youngster picked up his sword and went back to his playmates, while they clustered around and teased him. “So, Handsome, you came close to knocking down the King’s captain of horse in a fight—”

  Arthur smiled as Lancelet climbed back over the fence. “That was courteously done, Lance. He will make a bonny knight—like to his brother,” he added, nodding at Gawaine. “Kinsman, do not tell him that I know who he is—his reasons for concealing his name were honorable. But tell him I have seen him, and I will make him a knight at Pentecost, when any petitioner may come before me, if he will come before me and ask me for a sword befitting his station.”

  Gawaine’s face lighted. Now, Gwenhwyfar thought, anyone who had seen them both should have known the relationship, for their smiles were the same. “I thank you, my lord and king. May he serve you as well as have I.”

  “He could hardly do that,” Arthur said affectionately. “I am fortunate in my friends and Companions.”

  Gwenhwyfar thought that, indeed, Arthur inspired love and devotion in everyone—it was the secret of his kingship, for though he was skilled enough in battle, he was no great fighter himself; more than once, in the mock battles with which they amused themselves and kept themselves fit for fighting, she had seen Lancelet, and even old Pellinore, unseat him or knock him from his feet. Arthur was never angry or wounded by pride, but always said good-naturedly that he was glad he had such fine fighters to guard him, and better friends than foemen.

  Soon after, the boys picked up their practice weapons and departed. Gawaine went off to have a word with his brother, but Arthur drew Gwenhwyfar out toward the fortified wall. Camelot sat on a broad, high hill, flat at the top as a large town, and all over the hill, inside the wall, they had built their castle and city. Now Arthur led Gwenhwyfar up to his favorite vantage point, where he could stand atop the wall and look out over all the broad valley. She felt dizzy, and clung to the wall. From where they stood she could see the island home of her childhood, the country of King Leodegranz, and a little to the north of it, the island that coiled, from where they stood, like a sleeping dragon.

  “Your father grows old, and he has no son,” said Arthur. “Who will rule after him?”

  “I know not—like enough he will have it that you should appoint someone to reign as regent for me,” Gwenhwyfar said; one of her sisters had died in childbirth, far away in Wales, and another had died in a siege of their castle. And her father’s second wife had borne him no living son, either, so that Gwenhwyfar was heir to that kingdom. But how could she, a woman, keep it from those who were greedy for land? She looked beyond her father’s lands and asked, “Your father—the Pendragon—was he too made king on Dragon Island, I wonder?”

  “So the Lady of the Lake told me, and so he pledged his faith always to shelter the old religion, and Avalon—as did I,” said Arthur moodily, and stood staring at Dragon Island. She wondered what pagan nonsense was filling his head.

  “But when you turned to the one true God, then did he give you that greatest of victories, so that you drove the Saxons forth from this island for all of time.”

  “It is foolish to say so,” said Arthur. “Never, I think, can any land be secure for all time, but only as God wills—”

  “And God has given you all this land, Arthur, so that you may rule as a Christian king. It is like to the prophet Elijah—the bishop told me the tale—when he went out with the priests of God, and met the priests of Baal, so that they each called on their God, and the One God was the greatest and Baal but an idol, so that he answered them not. If there was anything of power in the ways of Avalon, would God and the Virgin have given you such a victory?”

  “My armies drove off the Saxons, but I may be punished hereafter for oathbreaking,” Arthur said. She hated it when the lines of sorrow and dread came into his face.

  She went a little toward the south, straining her eyes—from here, if you looked hard, you could see the very tip of the church of Saint Michael which rose on the Tor—the church which had been built because Michael was lord of the underworld, fighting to keep down the gods of the heathen in Hell. Only there were times when it blurred before her eyes, so that she saw the Tor crowned with ring stones. The nuns on Glastonbury had told her that it had been so, in the bad old heathen days, and the priests had labored to take down the ring stones and haul them away. She supposed it was because she was a sinful woman that she had this glance into heathendom. Once she had dreamed that she and Lancelet were lying together beneath the ring stones, and he had had of her what she had never given him. . . .

  Lancelet. He was so good, never did he press her for more than a Christian woman and a wedded wife could give him without dishonor . . . yet it was written that the Christ had s
aid himself, whoever looks upon a woman with lust has committed adultery already with her in his heart . . . so she had sinned with Lancelet, and there was no mitigation, they were both damned. She shivered and turned her eyes away from the Tor, for it seemed that Arthur could read her thoughts. He had spoken Lancelet’s name—

  “Don’t you think so, Gwen? It’s more than time Lancelet should marry.”

  She forced her voice to stay calm. “On the day when he asks you for a wife, my lord and my king, you should give him one.”

  “But he will not ask,” Arthur said. “He has no will to leave me. Pellinore’s daughter would make him a good wife, and she is your own cousin—don’t you think it would suit? Lancelet is not rich, Ban had too many bastards to give much to any of them. It would be a good match for both.”

  “Aye, no doubt you are right,” Gwenhwyfar said. “Elaine follows him about with her eyes as the lads in the play yard do, eager for a kind word or even a look.” Though it hurt her heart, perhaps it would be best if Lancelet should marry, he was too good to be tied to a woman who could give him so little; and then she could amend her sin with a firm promise to sin no more, as she could not do when Lancelet was near.