“True,” Gwydion said, “and high, I hear, in favor with the King . . . Arthur has made her stepson Uwaine a member of his own personal bodyguard, next to Gawaine, and he and Gawaine are close friends. Uwaine’s not a bad fellow—not unlike Gawaine, I’d say—tough and staunch, both of them, and devoted to Arthur as if the sun rose and set where he pissed . . .” and Morgause noted the wry smile. “But then it’s a fault many men have—and I came here to speak of this to you, Mother,” he said. “Know you anything of Avalon’s plan?”
“I know what Niniane said, and the Merlin, when they came to take you thither,” said Morgause. “I know you are to be Arthur’s heir, even though he believes he will leave the kingdom to that son of Lancelet’s. I know you are the young stag who will bring down the King Stag . . .” she said in the old language, and Gwydion raised his brow.
“Then you know it all,” he said. “But this, perhaps, you do not know . . . it cannot be done now. Since Arthur brought down this Roman who would be emperor, this Lucius, his star has never flamed higher than now. Anyone who raised a hand against Arthur would be torn in pieces by the mob, or by his Companions—never have I seen a man so loved. This, I think, is why I needed to look from afar on his face, to see what is it in a king which makes him so loved. . . .”
His voice fell away into silence and Morgause felt ill at ease. “And did you so?”
Gwydion nodded slowly. “He is a king indeed . . . even I who have no cause to love him felt that spell he creates around him. You cannot imagine how he is worshipped.”
“Strange,” said Morgause, “I for one never thought him so remarkable.”
“No, be fair,” said Gwydion. “There are not many—perhaps there is no other within this land who could have rallied all factions as he did! Romans, Welsh, Cornish, West-countrymen, East Anglians, men of Brittany, the Old People, the men of Lothian . . . all through this kingdom, Mother, all men swear by Arthur’s star. Even those Saxons who once fought Uther to the death, stand and swear that Arthur shall be their king. He is a great warrior . . . no, not in himself, he fights no better than any other warrior, not half so well as Lancelet or even Gareth, but he is a great general. And it is something . . . something in himself,” Gwydion said. “It is easy to love him. And while all worship him thus, I have no possible task.”
“Then,” said Morgause, “their love of him must somehow be made less. He must be discredited. He is no better than any other man, the Gods know that. He fathered you on his own sister, and it is well known here and abroad that he plays no very noble part with his queen. There is a name for a man who sits complacent while another man pays court to his queen, and not so pretty a name, after all.”
“Something, I am sure, can be made of that,” said Gwydion. “Though in these late years, it is said, Lancelet has stayed far from court and taken care never to be alone with the Queen, so that no shadow of scandal shall fall on her name. Yet they say she wept like a child, and so did Lancelet, when he took leave of her to go and fight at Arthur’s side against this Lucius, and never did I see man fight as did Lancelet. One would think he longed to fling himself headlong into death. But he took never even a wound, as if his life was charmed. I wonder . . . he is the son of a High Priestess of Avalon,” he mused. “It may be he bears supernatural protection of some sort.”
“Morgaine would know that,” said Morgause dryly, “but I would not suggest you ask her.”
“I do know that Arthur’s life is charmed,” said Gwydion, “for he bears the sacred Excalibur, sword of the Druid Regalia, and a magical scabbard which guards him from shedding blood. Without it, so Niniane told me, he would have bled himself to death at Celidon Wood, and after that. . . . Morgaine has been given as her first task to get this sword again from Arthur, unless he will swear anew to be true to Avalon. And I doubt not my mother is wily enough to do so. I doubt she would stop at much, my mother. Of the two, I think I like my father better—he knew not what evil he had wrought when he got me, I think.”
“Morgaine knew not that, either,” said Morgause sharply.
“Oh, I am weary of Morgaine . . . even Niniane has fallen under her spell,” said Gwydion sharply. “Do not you begin to defend her to me, Mother.”
Morgause thought, Viviane was even so, she could charm any man alive to do her will, and any woman either . . . Igraine went pliant at her bidding to wed with Gorlois and later to seduce Uther . . . and I to Lot’s bed . . . and now Niniane has done what Morgaine wished. And this foster-son of hers had, she suspected, something of that power, too. She recalled, suddenly and with unexpected pain, Morgaine with her head bent, having her hair combed like a child, on the night she bore Gwydion; Morgaine, who had been to her as the daughter she never bore, and now she was torn between Morgaine and Morgaine’s son, who was even dearer to her than her own sons. “Do you hate her so, Gwydion?”
“I know not how I feel,” said Gwydion, looking up at her with Lancelet’s dark mournful eyes. “It seems not to run with the vows of Avalon that I should so hate the mother who bore me and the father who got me. . . . I would that I had been reared at court as my father’s son and his sworn follower, not his bitterest enemy. . . .”
He laid his head down on his arms and said through them, “I am weary, Mother. I am weary and sick of fighting, and I know Arthur is so, too . . . he has brought peace in these isles—from Cornwall to Lothian. I do not like to think that this great king, this great man, is my enemy and that for the sake of Avalon I must bring him down to nothing, to death or dishonor. I would rather love him, as all men do. I would like to look on my mother—not you, Mother, but lady Morgaine—I would like to look on her who bore me as my mother, not as the great priestess whom I am sworn to obey whatever she bids me. I would that she were my mother, not the Goddess. I wish that when Niniane lay in my arms she were no more than my own dear love, whom I love because she has your sweet face and your lovely voice. . . . I am so weary of gods and goddesses . . . I would that I had been your son and Lot’s and no more than this, I am so weary of my fate. . . .” And he lay for a long moment quiet, his face hidden, his shoulders shaking. Tentatively, Morgause stroked his hair. At last he raised his head and said, with a bitter grin that defied her to make anything of his moment of weakness, “I will have now another cup of that strong spirit they brew in these hills, without the water and honey this time . . .” and when it was brought, he drained it, without even looking on the steaming porridge and bannock the girl had brought. “What was it said in those old books of Lot’s, when the house priest beat Gareth and me until our backsides were bloody, trying to teach us the Roman tongue? Who was yonder old Roman who said, ‘Call no man happy until he is dead’? My task, then, is to bring that greatest of all happiness to my father, and why should I then rebel against that fate?” He signalled for another drink; when Morgause hesitated, he seized the flask and poured the cup full again.
“You will be drunk, my dear son. Eat your supper first, will you not?”
“So I will be drunk,” said Gwydion bitterly. “So let it be. I drink to death and to dishonor . . . Arthur’s and mine!” Again he drained the drinking horn and flung it into a corner, where it struck with a metallic sound. “So let it be as the fates have ordained—the King Stag shall rule in the forest until the day the Lady has ordained . . . for all the beasts were born and joined with others of their kind and lived and worked the will of the forces of life and at last gave up their spirits into the keeping of the Lady again. . . .” He spoke the words with a strange, harsh emphasis, and Morgause, untrained in Druid lore, knew that the words were those of ritual, and shivered as he spoke them.
He drew a deep breath. Then he said, “But for tonight I shall sleep in my mother’s house and forget Avalon, and kings, and stags, and fates. Shall I not? Shall I not?” and, as the strong drink at last overpowered him, he fell forward into her arms. She held him there, stroking his fine dark hair, so much like Morgaine’s own, as he slept with his head on her breast. But even in his
dreams he twitched and moaned and muttered as if his dreams were evil, and Morgause knew it was not only the pain of his unhealed wound.
Book Four
The Prisoner in the Oak
1
In the far hills of North Wales, rain had been falling day after day, and the castle of King Uriens seemed to swim in fog and damp. The roads were ankle-deep mud, the fords swollen as rivers rushed down in spate from the mountains, and damp chill gripped the countryside. Morgaine, wrapped in cloak and heavy shawl, felt her fingers stiffening and slowing on the shuttle as she sent it through the loom; suddenly she started upright, the shuttle falling from her cold hands.
“What is it, Mother?” Maline asked, blinking at the sharp sound in the quiet hall.
“There is a rider on the road,” Morgaine said. “We must make ready to welcome him.” And then, observing her daughter-in-law’s troubled look, she cursed herself; again she had let herself slip into the half-trance which women’s work always brought upon her nowadays. She had long ago ceased to spin, but weaving, which she enjoyed, had seemed safe if she kept her wits about her and didn’t succumb to the drowsy trancelike monotony of it.
And Maline was looking at her in the half-wary, half-exasperated way which Morgaine’s unexpected seeings always evoked. Not that Maline believed there was anything wicked or even magical about them—it was just her mother-in-law’s queer way. But Maline would speak of them to the priest, and he would come again and try to be subtle about asking her whence they came, and she would have to put on a meek-woman face and pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. Someday she would be too weary or too unguarded to care, and she would speak her mind to the priest. Then he would really have something to talk about. . . .
Well, done was done, and could not be helped now. She got along well enough with Father Eian, who had been Uwaine’s tutor—he was an educated man for a priest. “Tell the Father that his pupil will be here at dinnertime,” Morgaine said, and once again realized that her tongue had slipped; she had known Maline had been thinking of the priest and had responded to Maline’s thought, not her words. She went out of the room leaving the younger woman staring.
All the winter, which had been heavy with rain and snow and repeated storms, not a single traveller had come. She dared not spin; it opened the gates too quickly to trance. Now, weaving was likely to do the same. She sewed industriously at making clothes for all the folk of the household, from Uriens down to Maline’s newest baby, but it was hard on her eyes to do fine needlework; in the winter she had no access to fresh herbs and plants, and could do little with brewing simples and medicines. She had no companion—her waiting-women were the wives of Uriens’ men-at-arms and duller than Maline; not one of them could spell out so much as a verse in the Bible and were shocked that Morgaine could read and write and knew some Latin and Greek. And she could not sit always at her harp. So she had spent the winter in a frenzy of boredom and impatience . . .
. . . the worse, she thought, because the temptation was always there to sit and spin and dream, letting her mind slide away, to follow Arthur at Camelot, or Accolon on quest—it had come to her, three years ago, that Accolon should spend enough time at court that Arthur should know him well and trust him. Accolon bore the serpents of Avalon, and that might prove a valuable bond with Arthur. She missed Accolon like a constant ache; in his presence she was what he always saw her—high priestess, confident of her goals and herself. But that was secret between them. In the long, lonely seasons, Morgaine experienced recurrent doubts and dreads; was she then no more than Uriens thought her, a solitary queen growing old, body and mind and soul drying and withering?
Still, she kept her hand firmly on this household, over countryfolk and castlefolk alike, so that all should turn to her for counsel and wisdom. They said in the country around: The queen is wise. Even the king does nothing without her consent. The Tribesmen and the Old Ones, she knew, came near to worshipping her; though she dared not appear too often at the ancient worship.
Now in the kitchen house she made arrangements for a festal dinner—or as near to it as they could come at the end of a long winter when the roads were closed. Morgaine gave from the locked cupboards some of her hoarded store of raisins and dried fruits, and a few spices for cooking the last of the bacon. Maline would tell Father Eian that Uwaine was expected at the hall for dinner. She herself should bear the tidings to Uriens.
She went up to his chamber, where he was lazily playing at dice with one of his men-at-arms; the room smelled frowsty and unaired, stale and old. At least his long siege with the lung fever this winter has meant I need not be expected to share his bed. It has been just as well, Morgaine thought dispassionately, that Accolon has spent this winter in Camelot with Arthur; we might have taken dangerous chances and been discovered.
Uriens set down the dice cup and looked up at her. He was thinner, wasted by his long struggle with the fever. There had been a few days when Morgaine thought he could not live, and she had fought hard for his life; partly because, in spite of everything, she was fond of him and did not want to see him die, partly because Avalloch would have succeeded to his throne the moment he died.
“I have not seen you all day. I have been lonely, Morgaine,” Uriens said, with a fretful note of reproach. “Huw, here, is not half so good to look at.”
“Why,” Morgaine said, tuning her voice to the broad jesting Uriens liked, “I have left you purposely alone, thinking that in your old age you had taken a taste for handsome young men . . . if you do not want him, husband, does that mean that I can have him?”
Uriens chuckled. “You are making the poor man blush,” he said, smiling with broad good nature. “But if you leave me alone all day, why, what am I to do but moon and make sheep’s eyes at him, or at the dog.”
“Well, I have come to give you good news. You shall be carried down to the hall for dinner tonight—Uwaine is riding hither and will be here before suppertime.”
“Now God be thanked,” Uriens said. “I thought this winter that I should die without seeing either of my sons again.”
“I suppose Accolon will return for the Midsummer festivals.” In her body Morgaine felt a stab of hunger so great that it was pain as she thought of the Beltane fires, now only two months away.
“Father Eian has been at me again to forbid the rites,” Uriens said peevishly. “I am tired of hearing his complaints. He has it in mind that if we cut down the grove, then the folk would be content with his blessing of the fields, and not turn away to the Beltane fires. It is true that there seems more and more of the old worship every year—I had thought that as the old folk died off, year by year, it would grow ever less. I was willing to let it die out with the Old People who could not accustom themselves to new ways. But if the young people now are turning back to heathen ways, then we must do something—perhaps, even, cut down the grove.”
If you do, I shall do murder, Morgaine thought, but schooled her voice to gentleness and reason. “That would be wrong. The oaks give pig food and food for the country people—even here we have had to use acorn flour in a bad season. And the grove has been there for hundreds of years—the trees are sacred—”
“You sound too much a pagan yourself, Morgaine.”
“Can you say the oak grove is not the work of God?” she retorted. “Why should we punish the harmless trees because foolish men make a use of them that Father Eian does not like? I thought you loved your land.”
“Well, and so I do,” said Uriens fretfully, “but Avalloch, too, says I should cut it down, so that the pagans should have no place of resort. We might build a church or chapel there.”
“But the Old Ones are your subjects too,” Morgaine said, “and in your youth you made the Great Marriage with the land. Would you deprive the Old People of the grove that is their food and shelter, and their own chapel built by the very hands of God and not of man? Would you then condemn them to die or starve as they have done in some of the cleared lands?”
“To be sure,” said Morgaine, “but I cannot lift you now. Huw will have to dress you.”
But when the man had finished his work, she combed Uriens’ hair and summoned the other man-at-arms who awaited the king’s call. The two men lifted him, making a chair between their arms, and carried him into the hall, where Morgaine placed cushions about his high seat and watched as the thin old body was deposited there.
By that time she could hear servants bustling about, and riders in the courtyard . . . Uwaine, she thought, hardly raising her eyes as the young man was escorted into the hall.
It was hard to bear in mind that this tall young knight, with broad shoulders and a battle scar along one cheek, was the scrawny little boy who had come to her, like a wild animal tamed, in her first lonely, desperate year at Uriens’ court. Uwaine kissed his father’s hand, then bent before Morgaine.
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