"I said not that." Morgaine could not bear the wretchedness in the younger woman's face. "Gwenhwyfar, my sister, none has accused you-"
But Gwenhwyfar turned away. She said between clenched teeth, "No, and I want not your pity either, Morgaine."
Want it, or want it not, it is yours, Morgaine thought, but she did not put the thought into words; she was not a healer, to probe old wounds and make them bleed. "Are you ready to break your fast, Gwenhwyfar? What will you choose to eat?"
More and more, in this court, since there is no war, it is as if I were her servant, and she nobler than I. It was, Morgaine thought dispassionately, a game they all played, and she did not begrudge it to Gwenhwyfar. But there were in this kingdom noblewomen who might; and she liked it not, either, that Arthur accepted this, that now there were no wars to be fought, Arthur assumed that his old Companions should now be his personal attendants, even though they might be kings or lords in their own right. At Avalon she had willingly served Viviane because the old woman was the living representative of the Goddess, and her wisdom and magical powers put her almost beyond the human. But she had known, too, that the same powers were available to her, if she would work seriously to attain them; and a day could come when she would have the reverence, too, if she took on the power of the Goddess.
But for a war leader of the land, or for his consort-no, such powers were not suitable except in war itself, and it angered her that Arthur should keep his court in such state, assuming a power which should belong only to the greatest Druids and priestesses. Arthur bears the sword of Avalon still, and if he keeps not his oath to Avalon, they will require it at his hands.
And then it seemed to Morgaine that the room grew still all around her and seemed to open itself out as if everything were very far away; she could still see Gwenhwyfar, her mouth half opened to speak, but at the same time it seemed she could see through the woman's body, as if she were in the fairy kingdom. Everything seemed, all at once, distant and small and looming over her, and there was a deep silence within her head. In that silence she saw the walls of a pavilion, and Arthur sleeping with Excalibur naked in his hand. And she bent over him-she could not take the sword, but with Viviane's little sickle knife she cut the strings that bound the scabbard to his waist; it was old now, the velvet frayed and the precious metal of the embroideries dulled and tarnished. Morgaine took the scabbard in her hand, and then she was on the shores of a great lake, with the sound of reeds washing around over her ... .
"I said, no, I do not want any wine, I am weary of wine for breakfast," Gwenhwyfar remarked. "Perhaps Elaine could find some new milk in the kitchens-Morgaine? Have you gone into a swoon?"
Morgaine blinked and stared at Gwenhwyfar. Slowly she came back, trying to focus her eyes. None of it was true, she was not riding madly along the shores of a lake with the scabbard in her hand ... yet all this place had the look of the fairy world, as if she saw everything through rippling water, and it was somehow like a dream she had had once, if she could only remember ... and even while she assured the other women that she was quite all right, promising to go herself to the dairy for fresh milk if there was none in the kitchen, still her mind led her through the labyrinths of the dream ... if she could only remember what it was that she had dreamed, all would be well ... .
But as she went down into the fresh air, cool even in summer, she felt no longer as if this world might melt at any moment into the world of fairy. Her head ached as if it had been split asunder, and all that day she was held captive by the strange spell of her waking dream. If only she could remember ... she had flung Excalibur into the Lake, that was it, so that the fairy queen might not have it ... no, that was not it, either ... and her mind would begin again to try and unreel the strange obsessive path of her dream.
But past noon, when the sun was falling toward evening, she heard the horns announcing Arthur's arrival, and felt the stir which ran all through Camelot. With the other women she ran out to the earthworks at the edge of the heights and watched the royal party riding toward them, banners flying. Gwenhwyfar was trembling at her side. She was taller than Morgaine, but somehow, with her slender pale hands and the fragility of her narrow shoulders, it seemed to Morgaine that Gwenhwyfar was only a child, a tall, lanky child, nervous at some imaginary mischief which must be punished. She touched Morgaine's sleeve with her trembling hand.
"Sister-must my lord know? It is done and Meleagrant is dead. There is no reason for Arthur to make war on anyone. Why should he not think that my lord Lancelet reached me in time-in time to prevent-" Her voice was only a thin treble, like a little girl's, and she could not speak the words. "Sister," said Morgaine, "it is for you to tell or not."
"But-if he heard it elsewhere-"
Morgaine sighed; could not Gwenhwyfar have said for once what she meant? "If Arthur hears aught to distress him, he will not hear it from me, and there is no other has the right to speak. But he cannot lay it to your charge that you were trapped and beaten into submission."
And then she knew, as if she had heard it, the voice of a priest speaking to the trembling Gwenhwyfar-was it now or when Gwenhwyfar was a child?-saying that no woman was ever ravished save she had tempted some man to it, as Eve led our first father Adam into sin; that the Holy Virgin martyrs of Rome had willingly died rather than lay down their chastity ... it was this made Gwenhwyfar tremble. Somewhere in her mind, dismiss it how she might or try to smother the knowledge in Lancelet's arms, she truly believed it was her fault, that she merited death for the sin of having lived to be ravaged. And since she had not died first, Arthur had the right to kill her for it ... no reassurances would ever quiet that voice in Gwenhwyfar's mind.
She feels this guilt over Meleagrant so that she need feel none for what she has done with Lancelet ... .
Gwenhwyfar was shivering at her side, despite the warm sun. "I would he were here, that we might go indoors. Look, there are hawks flying in the sky. I am afraid of hawks, always I am afraid they will swoop down on me ... ."
"They would find you too big and tough a mouthful, I am afraid, sister," Morgaine said amiably.
Servants were heaving at the great gates, opening them for the royal party to ride through. Sir Ectorius still limped heavily from the night he had spent imprisoned in the cold, but he came forward at Cai's side, and Cai, as keeper of his castle, bowed before Arthur.
"Welcome home, my lord and king."
Arthur dismounted and came to embrace Cai.
"This is an overly formal welcome to my home, Cai, you rascal-is all well here?"
"All is well here now, my lord," said Ectorius, "but once again you have cause to be grateful to your captain."
"True," said Gwenhwyfar, coming forward, her hand laid lightly in Lancelet's. "My lord and king, Lancelet saved me from a trap laid by a traitor, saved me from such a fate as no Christian woman should suffer."
Arthur laid one hand in his queen's and the other in that of his captain of horse. "I am, as always, grateful to you, my dear friend, and so is my wife. Come, we shall speak about this in private." And, moving between the two of them, he went up the steps into the castle.
"I wonder what manner of lies they will hurry to pour into his ears, that chaste queen and her finest of knights?" Morgaine heard the words, spoken low and very clear, from somewhere in the crowd; but she could not tell from where they came. She thought, Perhaps peace is not an unmixed blessing: without a war, there is nothing for them to do at court, with their usual occupation gone, but pass on every rumor and bit of scandal.
But if Lancelet were gone from the court, then would the scandal be quieted. And she resolved that whatever she could do to accomplish that end, would be done at once.
THAT NIGHT at supper Arthur asked Morgaine to bring her harp and sing to them. "It seems long since I heard your music, sister," he said, and drew her close and kissed her. He had not done this in a long time.
"I will sing gladly," she said, "but when will Kevin return to court?" She thought wit
h bitterness of their quarrel; never, never should she forgive him his treason to Avalon! Yet, against her will, she missed him and thought regretfully of the time when they had been lovers.
I am weary of lying alone, that is all ... .
But this made her think of Arthur, and her son at Avalon ... if Gwenhwyfar should leave this court, then surely Arthur would marry again; but it looked not like that at this moment. And should Gwenhwyfar never bear a son, then should not their son be acknowledged as his father's heir? He was doubly of royal blood, the blood of the Pendragon and of Avalon ... Igraine was dead and the scandal could not harm her.
She sat on a carven and gilded stool near the throne, her harp on the floor at her feet; Arthur and Gwenhwyfar sat close together, hand in hand. Lancelet sprawled on the floor at Morgaine's side, watching the harp, but now and again she saw his eyes move to Gwenhwyfar and she quailed at the terrible longing there; how could he show his heart like this to any onlooker? And then Morgaine knew that only she could see his heart-to all other eyes he was only a courtier looking respectfully at his queen, laughing and jesting with her as a privileged friend of her husband.
And as her hands moved on the strings, the world again seemed to fall into the distance, very small and far and at the same time huge and strange, things losing their shapes so that her harp seemed at once a child's toy and something monstrous, a huge formless thing smothering her, and she was high on a throne somewhere peering through wandering shadows, looking down at a young man with dark hair, a narrow coronet around his brow, and as she looked on him, the sharp pain of desire ran down her body, she met his eyes and it was as if a hand touched her in her most private part, rousing her to hunger and longing ... . She felt her fingers falter on the strings, she had dreamed something ... a face wavering, a young man's smile at her, no, it was not Lancelet but some other ... no, it was all like shadows-
Gwenhwyfar's clear voice broke through. "See to the lady Morgaine," she said, "my sister is faint-!"
She felt Lancelet's arms supporting her and looked up into his dark eyes -it was like her dream, desire running through her, melting her ... no, but she had dreamed that. It was not real. She put her hand confusedly to her brows. "It was the smoke, the smoke from the hearth-"
"Here, sip this." Lancelet held a cup to her lips. What madness was this? He had barely touched her and she felt sick with desire for him; she thought she had long forgotten that, had had it burned out of her over the years ... and yet his touch, gentle and impersonal, roused her to fierce longing again. Had she dreamed about him, then?
He does not want me, he does not want any woman save the Queen, she thought, and stared past him at the hearth, where no fire burned in this summer season, and a wreath of green bay leaves twined to keep the empty fireplace from gaping too black and ugly. She sipped at the wine Lancelet held for her.
"I am sorry-I have been a little faint all the day," she said, remembering the morning. "Let some other take the harp, I cannot. ..."
Lancelet said, "By your leave, my lords, I will sing!" He took the harp and said, "This is a tale of Avalon, which I heard in my childhood. I think it was written by Taliesin himself, though he may have made it from an older song."
He began to sing an old ballad, of Arianrhod the queen, who had stepped over a stream and come away with child; and she had cursed her son when he was born, and said he should never have a name till she gave him one, and how he tricked her into giving him a name, and later how she cursed him and said he should never have a wife, whether of flesh and blood, nor yet of the fairy folk, and so he made him a woman of flowers ... .
Morgaine sat listening, still twined in her dream, and it seemed to her that Lancelet's dark face was filled with terrible suffering, and as he sang of the flower woman, Blodeuwedd, his eyes lingered for a moment on the queen. But then he turned to Elaine, and sang courteously of how the blossom woman's hair was made of fine golden lilies, and how her cheeks were like the petals of the apple blossom, and she was clad in all the colors of the flowers that bloom, blue and crimson and yellow, in the fields of summer ... .
Morgaine sat quietly in her place, cushioning her aching head in her hand. Later Gawaine brought out a pipe from his own northern country, and began to play a wild lament, filled with the cries of sea birds and sorrow. Lancelet came and sat near to Morgaine, taking her hand gently.
"Are you better now, kinswoman?"
"Oh, yes-it has happened before," Morgaine said. "It is as if I had fallen into a dream and saw all things through shadows-" And yet, she thought, it was not quite like that either.
"My mother said something like that to me once," said Lancelet, and Morgaine gauged his sorrow and weariness by that; never before had he spoken to her, nor to any other as far as she knew, of his mother or of his years at Avalon. "She seemed to think it was a thing which came of itself with the Sight. Once she said it was as if she were drawn into the fairy country and looking out from there as its prisoner, but I know not if she had ever been within the fairy country or if this was but a way of speaking. ..."
But I have, Morgaine thought, and it is not like that, not quite ... it is like trying to remember a dream that has faded ... .
"I myself have known it a little," Lancelet said. "It comes at a time when I cannot see clearly, but only as if all things were very far away and not real ... and I could not quite touch them but must first cross a weary distance ... perhaps it is something in the fairy blood we bear-" He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I used to taunt you with that, when you were only a little maiden, do you recall, I called you Morgaine of the Fairies and it made you angry?"
She nodded. "I remember well, kinsman," she said, thinking that for all the weariness in his face, the new lines there, the touch of grey in the crisp curls of his hair, he was still more beautiful to her, more beloved, than any other man she had ever known. She blinked her eyes fiercely; so it was and so it must be: he loved her as kinswoman, no more.
Again it seemed to her that the world moved behind a barrier of shadows; it mattered nothing what she did. This world was no more real than the fairy kingdom. Even the music sounded faraway and distant- Gawaine had taken up the harp and was singing some tale he had heard among the Saxons, of a monster who dwelled in a lake and how one of their heroes had gone down into the lake and ripped off the monster's arm, then faced the monster's mother in her evil den ... .
"A grim and grisly tale," she said under her breath to Lancelet, and he smiled and said, "Most Saxon tales are so. War and bloodshed and heroes with skill in battle and not much else in their thick noddles. ..."
"And now we are to live at peace with them, it seems," Morgaine said.
"Aye. So it shall be. I can live with the Saxons, but not with what they call music ... though their tales are entertaining enough, I suppose, for a long evening by the hearth." He sighed, and said, almost inaudibly, "I think perhaps I was not born for sitting by a hearth, either-"
"You would like to be out in battle again?"
He shook his head. "No, but I am weary of the court." Morgaine saw his eyes go to where Gwenhwyfar sat beside Arthur, smiling as she listened to Gawaine's tale. Again he sighed, a sound that seemed ripped up from the very deeps of his soul.
"Lancelet," she said, quietly and urgently, "you must be gone from here or you will be destroyed."
"Aye, destroyed body and soul," he said, staring at the floor.
"About your soul I know nothing-you must ask a priest about that-"
"Would that I could!" said Lancelet with suppressed violence; he struck his fist softly on the floor beside her harp, so that the strings jangled a little. "Would that I could believe there is just such a God as the Christians claim ... ."
"You must go, cousin. Go on some quest like Gareth's, to kill ruffians who are holding the land to ransom, or to kill dragons, or what you will, but you must go!"
She saw his throat move as he swallowed. "And what of her?"
Morgaine said quietly, "Believe this or no,
I am her friend too. Think you not, she has a soul to be saved as well?"
"Why, you give me counsel as good as any priest." His smile was bitter.
"It takes no priesthood to know when two men-and a woman as well -are trapped, and cannot escape from what has been," said Morgaine. "It would be easy to blame her for all. But I, too, know what it is to love where I cannot-" She stopped and looked away from him, feeling scalding heat rise in her face; she had not meant to say so much. The song had ended, and Gawaine yielded up the harp, saying, "After this grim tale we need something light-a song of love, perhaps, and I leave that to the gallant Lancelet-"
"I have sat too long at court singing songs of love," said Lancelet, rising and turning toward Arthur. "Now that you are here again, my lord, and can see to all things yourself, I beg you to send me forth from this court on some quest."
Arthur smiled at his friend. "Will you be gone so soon? I cannot keep you if you are longing to be away, but where would you go?"
Pellinore and his dragon. Morgaine, her eyes cast down, staring and seeing the flicker of the fire past her lids, formed the words in her mind with all the force she could manage, trying to thrust them into Arthur's mind. Lancelet said, "I had it in mind to go after a dragon-"
Arthur's eyes glinted with mischief. "It might be well, at that, to make an end of Pellinore's dragon. The tales grow daily greater, so that men are afraid to travel into that country! Gwenhwyfar tells me Elaine has asked for leave to visit her home. You may escort the lady thither, and I bid you not return until Pellinore's dragon is dead."
"Alas," protested Lancelet, laughing, "would you exile me from your court for all time? How can I kill a dragon who is but a dream?"
Arthur chuckled. "May you never meet a dragon worse than that, my friend! Well, I charge you to make an end for all time of that dragon, even if you must laugh it out of existence by making a ballad of it!"
The Mists of Avalon Page 75
