The boy bowed his head. “Sir, it is for my king to say. But it seems to me that this knighthood comes from God and it does not matter who bestows it. I—I do not mean that quite as it sounds, sir—I mean, the vow is made to you, but mostly to God—”
Arthur nodded, slowly. “I know what you mean, my boy. It is much the same with a king—he vows to rule over his people, but the vow is given not to the people but to God—”
“Or,” said Morgaine, “to the Goddess, in her name, as token of the land the king shall rule.” She looked directly at Arthur as she spoke and he shifted his eyes, and Gwenhwyfar bit her lip . . . Morgaine reminding Arthur again that his allegiance had been given to Avalon—damn her! But that was past and Arthur was a Christian king . . . under no authority but that of God.
“We will all be praying for you, Galahad, that you make a good knight, and that one day, you will make a good king,” said Gwenhwyfar.
“So, as you make your vows, Galahad,” said Gwydion, “you are making, in some form, the same kind of Sacred Marriage to the land that the King used to make in the old days. But you will not, perhaps, be so hard tested.”
The color rose in the younger boy’s face. “My lord Arthur came to the throne proved in battle, cousin, but there is no way I can now be so tested.”
“I could think of a way,” said Morgaine softly, “and if you are to rule over Avalon as well as the Christian lands, one day you must come to that, too, Galahad.”
He set his mouth firmly. “May that time be far—surely, my lord, you will live many, many years—and by then all those old folk who still believe they must give allegiance to the pagan ways will have gone.”
“I trust not,” said Accolon, speaking up for the first time in that company. “The sacred groves still stand, and in them, the old ways are done as they have been done from the beginning of the world. We do not anger the Goddess by denying her worship, lest she turn upon her people and blight the harvests and darken the very sun that gives us life.”
Galahad was startled. “But this is a Christian land! Have no priests come to you to show you that the evil old Gods among whom the Devil had sway have no more power now? Bishop Patricius has told me that all the sacred groves have been cut down!”
“Not so,” said Accolon, “nor will be while my father lives, or I after him.”
Morgaine opened her mouth to speak, but Gwenhwyfar saw Accolon lay his hand on her wrist. She smiled at him and said nothing. It was Gwydion who said, “Nor yet in Avalon, while the Goddess lives. Kings come and kings go, but the Goddess shall endure forever.”
What pity, Gwenhwyfar thought, that this handsome young man should be a pagan! Well, Galahad is a good and pious Christian knight, who will make a Christian king! But as she reassured herself with that thought, a faint shiver went through her.
As if Gwenhwyfar’s thoughts disturbed him, Arthur leaned forward to Gwydion, and his face was troubled. “Have you come to court to be one of my Companions, Gwydion? I need not tell you that the son of my sister is welcome among my knights.”
“I admit I brought him here for that,” said Morgause, “but I did not know that this was Galahad’s great ceremonial. I would not steal the luster from this occasion. Surely another time will do as well for that.”
Galahad said ingenuously, “I would not mind sharing my vigil and vows with my cousin.”
Gwydion laughed. “You are too generous, kinsman,” he said, “but you know little of kingcraft. The King’s heir must be proclaimed without any to share that moment. If Arthur should knight us both at the same time, and I am so much the older, and resemble Lancelet so much more—well, there is gossip enough about my parentage; it should not shadow your knighthood as well. Nor,” he added, laughing, “my own.”
Morgaine shrugged. “They will gossip about the King’s kin, whether or no, Gwydion. Let them have some morsel to chew on!”
“Yet another thing,” Gwydion said lightly. “I have no intent ever to watch by my arms in any Christian church. I am of Avalon. If Arthur will admit me among his Companions for what I am, that will be well, and if not, that too will be well.”
Uriens raised his knotty old arms so that the faded serpents could be seen. “I sit at the Round Table with no such Christian vow, stepson.”
“Nor I,” said Gawaine. “We won our knighthoods, all of us who fought in those days, and needed no such ceremonial. Some of us would have been hard put to it, had knighthood been fenced about by such courtly vows as now.”
“Even I,” Lancelet said, “would be somewhat reluctant to take such vows, such a sinful man as I am. But I am Arthur’s man for life or death, and he knows it.”
“God forbid I should ever doubt it,” said Arthur, smiling with deep affection at his old friend. “You and Gawaine are the very pillars of my kingdom. If I should ever lose either of you, I think my throne would split and fall from the very top of Camelot!”
He raised his head as a door opened at the far end of the hall, and a priest in white robes, with two young men dressed in white, came in. Galahad rose, eagerly. “By your leave, my lord—”
Arthur rose too, and embraced his heir. “Bless you, Galahad. Go to keep your vigil.”
The boy bowed and turned to embrace his father; Gwenhwyfar could not hear what Lancelet said to him. She reached out her hand and Galahad bent to kiss it. “Give me your blessing, lady.”
“Always, Galahad,” Gwenhwyfar said, and Arthur added, “We will see you to the church. You must keep your vigil alone, but we will come a little way with you.”
“You do me too much honor, my king. Did you not keep vigil when you were crowned?”
“He did indeed,” said Morgaine, smiling, “but it was far other than this.”
as the whole party moved toward the church, Gwydion dropped back until he was walking at Morgaine’s side. She looked up at her son—he was not as tall as Arthur, who had the height of the Pendragons, but at her side he seemed tall.
“I had not expected to see you here, Gwydion.”
“I had not expected to be here, madam.”
“I heard that you had been fighting in this war, among Arthur’s Saxon allies. I knew not that you were a warrior.”
He shrugged. “You have had little opportunity to know much of me, lady.”
Abruptly, not knowing what she was going to say until she heard herself saying it, she asked, “Do you hate me that I abandoned you, my son?”
He hesitated. “Perhaps—for a time when I was young,” he said at last. “But I am a child of the Goddess, and this forced me to be so in truth, that I could look to no earthly parents. I bear you no grudge now, Lady of the Lake,” he said.
For a moment the path blurred around her; it was as if the young Lancelet stood at her side . . . her son steadied her gently with his arm.
“Take care, the path here is not smooth—”
She asked, “How is it with all in Avalon?”
“Niniane is well,” he said. “I have few ties with any other there, not now.”
“Have you seen Galahad’s sister there, the maiden called Nimue?” She frowned, trying to remember how old Nimue would be now. Galahad was sixteen—Nimue would be at least fourteen, almost grown.
“I know her not,” said Gwydion. “The old priestess of the oracles—Raven, is it?—has taken her into the silence and into seclusion. No man may look upon her face.”
I wonder why Raven did that? A sudden shudder went through her, but she said only, “How does Raven, then? Is she well?”
“I have not heard that she was otherwise,” said Gwydion, “though when I last saw her at the rites she seemed older than the very oaks. Still, her voice was sweet and young. But I have never had private speech from her.”
Morgaine said, “Nor has any man living, Gwydion, and few women. Twelve years I spent there as a maiden, and I heard her voice but half a dozen times.” She did not wish to speak or to think of Avalon and said, trying to keep her voice commonplace, “So you have had battle experience with
the Saxons?”
“True, and in Brittany—I spent some time at Lionel’s court. Lionel thought me Lancelet’s son and would have had me call him Uncle and I told him nothing contrary. It will do Lancelet no harm to be thought capable of fathering a bastard or so. And, even as with the good Lancelet, the Saxons around Ceardig gave me a name. Elf-arrow they called him—any man who accomplishes anything gets a name from those folk. ‘Mordred,’ they called me—it means in our tongue something like to ‘Deadly counsel’ or even ‘Evil counsel,’ and I think not that they meant it as compliment!”
“It takes not much craft in counsel to be wilier than a Saxon,” she said, “but tell me, then, what prompted you to come here before the time I had chosen?”
Gwydion shrugged. “I felt I might well see my rival.”
Morgaine glanced fearfully around her. “Say that not aloud!”
“I have no reason to fear Galahad,” he said quietly. “He looks not to me like one who will live long enough to rule.”
“Is that the Sight?”
“I need not the Sight to tell me it would take one stronger than Galahad to sit on the throne of the Pendragon,” Gwydion said. “But if it will ease your mind, lady, I will swear to you by the Sacred Well, Galahad will not die by my hand. Nor,” he added after a moment, seeing her shiver, “by yours. If the Goddess does not want him on the throne of the new Avalon, I think we may leave it to her.”
He laid his hand for a moment on Morgaine’s; gentle as the touch was, she shivered again.
“Come,” he said, and it seemed to Morgaine that his voice was as compassionate as a priest’s giving absolution. “Let us go and see my cousin to his arms. It is not right that anything should spoil this great moment of his life. He may not have many more.”
5
As often as Morgause of Lothian had come to Camelot, she never tired of the pageantry. Now, conscious that as one of Arthur’s subject queens and the mother of three of his earliest Companions, she would have a favored place at the mock games which marked this day, she sat beside Morgaine in church; at the end of the service, Galahad would be knighted, and he knelt now beside Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, pale and serious and shining with excitement.
Bishop Patricius himself had come from Glastonbury to celebrate the Pentecost mass here in Camelot; he stood now before them in his white robes, intoning: “Unto thee have we offered this bread, the body of the Only-begotten. . . .”
Morgause put a plump hand over her mouth, smothering a yawn. However often she attended Christian ceremonies, she never thought about them; they were not even as interesting as the rites at Avalon where she had spent her childhood, but she had thought, since she was fourteen or so, that all Gods and all religions were games which men and women played with their minds. None of them had anything to do with real life. Nevertheless, when she was at Pentecost, she dutifully attended mass, to please Gwenhwyfar—the woman was her hostess, and the High Queen, after all, and a close relative—and now, with the rest of the royal family, she went forward to receive the holy bread. Morgaine, attentive at her side, was the only one in the King’s household who did not approach the communion table; Morgause thought lazily that Morgaine was a very great fool. Not only did she alienate the common people, but the more pious among the King’s household called Morgaine witch and sorceress, and worse things, among themselves. And, after all, what difference did it make? One religious lie was as good as another, was it not? King Uriens, now, he had more sense of what was expedient; Morgause did not think Uriens had any more religion than Gwenhwyfar’s pet house cat. She had seen the serpents of Avalon around his arms; yet, like his son Accolon, he went forward to take part.
But when the final prayer came, including one for the dead, she discovered that she had tears in her eyes. She missed Lot—his cynical cheerfulness, his steadfast loyalty to her; and he had, after all, given her four fine sons. Gawaine and Gareth knelt near her, among Arthur’s own household—Gawaine, as always, close to Arthur; Gareth side by side with his young friend Uwaine—Morgaine’s stepson; she had heard Uwaine call Morgaine mother, heard a genuine maternal note in Morgaine’s voice when she spoke to him, something she had never thought Morgaine capable of.
With a rustle of gowns and the small chink of scabbarded swords and such gear, Arthur’s household arose and moved to the church porch. Gwenhwyfar, though a little haggard, was still beautiful with the long bright golden braids over her shoulder and her fine gown belted in with a brilliant golden girdle. Arthur looked splendid, too. Excalibur hung in its scabbard at Arthur’s side—the same old red velvet scabbard he had worn for more than twenty years now. She supposed that Gwenhwyfar could have embroidered him a handsomer one at any time in the past ten years.
Galahad knelt before the King; Arthur took from Gawaine a handsome sword and said, “For you, my dear kinsman and adopted son, this.” He gestured to Gawaine, who belted it around the boy’s slender waist. Galahad looked up with his boyish smile and said clearly, “I thank you, my king. May I bear it only and always in your service.”
Arthur laid his hands on Galahad’s head. He said, “I gladly receive you among the company of my Companions, Galahad, and confer on you the order of knighthood. Be always faithful and just, and serve the throne and the righteous cause always.” He raised the youngster, embraced him and kissed him. Gwenhwyfar kissed him too, and the royal company went out toward the huge field, the others behind him.
Morgause found herself walking between Morgaine and Gwydion, with Uriens, Accolon, and Uwaine just behind them. The field had been decorated with green staves wound with ribbons and pennants, and the marshals of the games were pacing off the fighting areas. She saw Lancelet with Galahad, embracing him and giving him a plain white shield. Morgause said, “Will Lancelet fight today?”
Accolon said, “I think not—I heard he is to be master of the lists; he has won the field too many times. Between ourselves, he is no longer so young, and it would hardly suit the dignity of the Queen’s champion to be unseated from his horse by some youth hardly made knight. I’ve heard that he’s been beaten by Gareth more than once, and once by Lamorak—”
Morgause said smiling, “I think well of Lamorak that he forbore to boast of that conquest—few men could resist bragging that they had overcome Lancelet even in a mock battle!”
“No,” said Morgaine quietly, “I think most young knights would be unhappy at the thought that Lancelet was no longer king of the field. He is their hero.”
Gwydion chuckled. “Do you mean that the young stags forbear to challenge the knight who is King Stag among them?”
“I think none of the older knights would do so,” said Accolon, “and of the young knights, there are few with enough strength or experience to challenge him. If they did, he would show them a trick or two still.”
“I would not,” said Uwaine quietly. “I think there is no knight at this court who does not love Lancelet. Gareth could overthrow him any time now, but he will not shame him at Pentecost, and he and Gawaine have always been evenly matched. Once at a Pentecost like this they fought for more than an hour, and once Gawaine knocked his sword from his hand. I do not know if I could best him in single combat, but he may stay champion while he lives, for all I will ever do to challenge it.”
“Challenge him, someday,” Accolon said, laughing, “I did so, and he took all the conceit out of me in five minutes! He may be old, but he has all his skill and strength.”
He handed Morgaine and his father into the seats reserved for them. “By your leave, I will go and enter the lists before it is too late.”
“And I,” said Uwaine, bending to kiss his father’s hand. He turned to Morgaine. “I have no lady, Mother. Will you give me a token to bear into the lists?”
Morgaine smiled indulgently and gave him a ribbon from her sleeve, which he tied about his arm, saying, “I have arranged to challenge Gawaine to a trial of strength.”
Gwydion said with his charming smile, “Why, lady, you had better take
back your favor—would you have your honor so easily disposed of as that?”
Morgaine laughed up at Accolon, and Morgause, watching her face come alight, thought, Uwaine is her son, far more than Gwydion; but Accolon, it is plain to see, is more than that. I wonder if the old king knows—or cares?
Lamorak was approaching them, and Morgause felt warmed and complimented—there were many pretty ladies on the field, he could have a favor from any of them, yet, before them all, before all Camelot, her dear young man would come and bow before her.
“My lady, may I wear a token into battle?”
“With pleasure, my dear.” Morgause gave him the rose from the nosegay she wore at her bosom. He kissed the flower; she gave him her hand, pleasantly conscious that her young knight was one of the handsomest men there.
“Lamorak seems enchanted by you,” said Morgaine, and although she had given her favor to him before the whole court, Morgause felt herself blush at Morgaine’s detached voice.
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