Avalon

by Anya Seton

  So Merewyn was allotted a small plain room in the guesthouse which stood outside the Abbey gates. The three foreign merchants were also lodged there. No special provision was made for Go da and Caw, nor did they expect any, but they were allowed to sleep on the floor in the kitchen, and eat scraps hospitably provided by the fat old woman who cooked. Before

  he left to enter the Abbey precincts and report to his Abbot, Finian's face twisted quizzically and he said with a shrug, "I'll tell Lord Rumon you're here. No doubt he'll be assisting at None this hour, but ye could see him outside later."

  "Thank you," she said. "I shall be praying at King Arthur's grave. Where is it?"

  " 'Tween two pyramids, south of the Abbey in the monks' churchyard, 'tis marked. But my child," he added kindly, "ye'd do better to pray in the httle old wattle church which God built. 'Twould be more efficacious indeed. Arthur's not a saint."

  "He's my ancestor," she said, "and that of the Abbess Mer-winna whose heart I'm carrying to the homeland of Arthur. I'll pray to the others too, you may be sure."

  "Ye moight try St. Bridget," said Finian chuckling. "We've several of her relics, and I suspect that yours is a womanish petition which a female might lend a readier ear to than a man."

  Finian blessed Merewyn rapidly, and scurried off towards the Abbey as the great bell began ringing for the service.

  Merewyn went to her room and gazed out for some moments through a tiny glassless window at the Tor. She could see the top of the dark green hill with its odd ridges running round and round it; she could see the tower, of course, but the message it had held for her earlier seeped away, giving place to uneasiness.

  The Tor, in the bright noonlit sky, no longer seemed a friend. Wliat am I praying for, she thought — why do I want to see Rumon?

  She dismissed these uncomfortable questions, with the help of action. She went down to the kitchen, where Goda and Caw were devouring pork trotters, smiled at them vaguely, and asked for a jug of hot water, which the cook provided. She took it to her room, and washed herself thoroughly then doused herself with lavender essence from a small lead vial. She combed and rebraided her hair.

  Her gown was sweaty and mud-spattered. With some re-

  luctance she donned her other gown — the yellow silk one given her by Alfrida, so long ago. Her aunt's common sense had insisted that Merewyn keep Alfrida's gifts, which included the green mantle and the brooch. Hatred of the donor was no excuse for repudiating such valuable assets.

  Embroidered silk, and velvet and a brooch were not in Mer-winna's power to give her niece, "but as long as you are in the world, my child, there will be times when you must dress suitably according to your rank."

  Yes, this was certainly such a time, and perhaps one which the Abbess had foreseen. Nor was there any real fear that Rumon would recognize the gown and be reminded of Alfrida.

  "I don't think he ever actually saw me at all in those years," she said aloud. "My blessed Aunt, pray for me that it is different now." She crossed herself, and taking the Httle bronze box, wrapped in its linen, held it tight to her chest. Her breath was uneven, her mouth dry as she left the guesthouse and entered the Abbey gates.

  The sound of chanting came through the church windows; she skirted the western end, vaguely noting the littleness of the old church, made of wattle and daub, thatched with reeds; and on entering the monk's cemetery, she easily found two small pyramids, and a flat carved stone between them. Of the Latin inscription she could make out "Arturus Rex."

  She pressed the bronze box tighter to her breast and knelt down by the slab. Her prayers for the dead rapidly gave way to a feeling of communication. She could almost see King Arthur standing beside her, and his shadoAvy Queen too, could feel him smiling at her and welcoming her as his beloved descendant.

  It was thus that Rumon saw her as he emerged from the Abbey, reluctantly yielding to Finian's information. He stopped some feet behind her, and said "Doux Jesu" under his breath. There she was, looking very pretty, praying for King Arthur

  with whom she had no connection whatsoever. It was pathetic, exasperating, and positively no concern of his. She was a reminder of all he wanted most to forget — of the agonizing, despicable time with Alfrida. But she must be greeted, of course. Finian said that she particularly wanted to see him.

  Rumon cleared his throat, and Merewyn turned around. She got up and looked at him quietly, startled by the changes in him. He wore the lay brother's brown homespun habit, whereas he had always been so richly dressed. His black hair was cut shorter, his face was leaner and paler than she remembered. Nor did he seem as tall, the dark, large, reflective eyes were about on a level with her own.

  "Good day, Merewyn," he said smiling and with constraint. "I am distressed to hear of the reason for your journey — the Abbess's death — may she rest in heavenly peace."

  "Thank you," said the girl in a small voice. She noted the constraint, and that after the first moment Rumon looked beyond her towards the Abbot's lodging. So he was not glad to see her, there was still the barrier he had always erected. Nothing had changed.

  But it had, and Merewyn's interpretations were wrong. Rumon, suddenly, and to his dismay, found the girl appealing, and reahzed that he had never forgotten her, despite the years of silence. For he had dreamed of her several times — dreams scarcely acknowledged to himself, and hastily dismissed. They had been dreams of tenderness and companionship, and once a dream of marriage. Preposterous!

  "You wanted to see me?" he asked abruptly. "You have some special reason. Come, we can sit on the bench near the Abbot's kitchen, it's not forbidden to women." He quickly crossed the cemetery and Merewyn followed. They sat down, and he turned shghtly away from her.

  "Do I need a special reason for wishing to greet an old friend?" She spoke as coolly as he did, though her heart was sore.

  He noted the traces of Cornish in her voice, and that despite the fact that this time she seemed very clean, and smelled of lavender, there was still an earthiness about her, an overpowering essence of crude womanhood. And what is she, after all, he thought, but the bastard of a pirate and an illiterate half-mad peasant woman.

  "How long do you intend stopping in Glaston?" he asked.

  She stiffened. "I beHeve I shall leave tomorrow."

  "So soon?'''' he cried involuntarily, dismayed to find that he did not want her to go. He added quickly, "I mean you'll not have time to see the place properly — pray at the shrines — and you really should cHmb the Tor."

  She was silent, staring at a little blue speedwell which grew near her foot.

  "The moon's near full tonight," said Rumon. "I'll guide you up the Tor after Compline if you like, the place has a particular feeling at night — one can see the Isle of Avalon as it used to be."

  "It is not here anymore, Avalon?" said Merewyn, puzzled by Rumon's sudden offer — uncertain what to say.

  "I don't knowr he cried with vehemence. "At least / can't find it here. For me this is not the island of the blest, where all is beauty, all is peace. Though Finian says that there is such an island in the West." He frowned, having half forgotten Merewyn, and went on to voice his doubts. "Ah, I can live here like a cabbage, sink myself into the chants, the devotions, I can illuminate manuscripts, and play the harp, I can talk to Brother Finian, I can do penance for my part in — in Edward's murder. But I do not find peace."

  Both were startled by this outburst.

  Poor Rumon, thought Merewyn, faintly aware that pity had crept in to her long obstinate love. He seemed diminished, flattened out, and yet a few minutes before, he had been the composed autocratic figure of her memories, despite the hideous lay brother's habit.

  "I shall be glad to climb the Tor tonight," she said. "I have always heard that there is magic there — from the long ago."

  Merewyn spent the rest of the day praying in the "old" church, offering pennies at the various shrines in the magnificent new one. All this she did in a daze, even when she went back to xrthur's tomb and o
ffered it a garland of wild flowers which she had made. She supped at the guesthouse, and afterwards in the twilight Rumon appeared to fetch her. He was dressed again as a nobleman — gold-embroidered tunic, red velvet mantle, the atheling's gold circlet on his head. They greeted each other politely and set off upon the road to Weary-All Hill. Two of the French merchants accompanied them, after asking ceremonious permission, and one of them — a man from Calais — was delighted to find a sort of compatriot in Rumon. At least "le prince," though coming from faraway Provence, could speak French, and seemed to be a person of importance.

  The man from Calais bombarded him with questions. Was this really such an efficacious shrine? Would this long tiresome climb to the tower of St. Michael surely add virtue to the hard pilgrimage to a dreary little spot in the middle of no place? When he got to London would the discomforts of this journey influence the London merchants in his favor? What sort of people were the English anyway?

  Rumon replied as briefly as possible. He was increasingly conscious of Merewyn, walking sturdily and at a few paces withdrawn from the men.

  The May night was balmy, and everyone was sweating as they left the ridge and began the actual climb of the Tor on a track well-worn by footsteps throughout countless centuries. Black clouds drifted across the moon, whose intermittent brightness gave Merewyn an eerie feehng. Light and shadow, hght and shadow, — was this perhaps the meaning of everything?

  Her thoughts were not formulated, they drifted through her

  mind like the clouds, and always she was conscious that just above was the stumpy dark tower.

  One must reach it — Rumon had said so — but why? Because of the wooden cross on top? But why must one do what Rumon said? What is Rumon? A barefoot lay brother this morning, an aristocrat tonight. And now speaking an incomprehensible language to the merchant. I want to be free, she thought, I want to be ME, Mere-wyn. These thoughts had never come to her before.

  They reached the tower at last. The man from Calais sat down on a stone and said, "Oof, I'm winded."

  "I've the key," said Rumon producing a large iron bar with crude flanges. "There'll be candles inside — and flint and tinder."

  "Mais oui," said the man from Calais, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. "Having come this far we must pray to St. Michel, I suppose."

  Rumon unlocked the great battered door. But the flint was nowhere to be found. There was no means of lighting the candles, and the tower remained in chilly darkness.

  "Eh bien," said the man from Calais. "St. Michel is indifferent to us. Me, I wish now to get doivn that hiU —^ le plus tot possible."

  His companion agreed, and they started off.

  Rumon looked at Merewyn. "You will Hnger a moment?" he asked diffidently, for her silence and the mysterious beauty which the night lent her, both upset him.

  She inclined her head. "It is strong up here," she said. "Not St. Michael — the others from the old time. I doubt that they are gentle."

  Rumon thought this a strange speech, but it also made him see Merewyn in a new light. The quiverings of desire long denied began to tingle.

  They sat down on the stone where the Frenchman had, and saw the glimmer of water all around Glastonbury below them;

  not only the sheet of the great Meare, but a myriad of rivulets, marshes, and ponds, shining silver and enclosing what was once the island.

  "Merewyn —" said Rumon after a moment. He put his hand over hers. She let hers lie quiescent, and looked at Rumon's hand — thin, white, nervous, and barely bigger than her own.

  "Yes ... ?" she said, turning her face up towards the moon.

  "I want you, Merewyn," he whispered, and was appalled by his own words. He threw his arms around her, and kissed her on the cheeks and then fervently on the mouth. A part of her leaped to respond. Had she not yearned for this so desperately? Yet part of her drew back. He felt the withdrawal and at once released her. "I have thought sometimes that you wanted me," he said, in a gruff biting tone.

  She gazed out over the silver and black landscape. "I always did," she said puzzled and remote. "It is because of you that I refused offers of marriage — that I did not enter the novitiate at Romsey. Now you seem of a sudden to lust for me. That is interesting. But it is not enough. Not my dream, nor the wish of my Aunt Merwinna. A woman of my birth must not be tumbled by stealth on a grassy bank."

  "A woman of your birth —" Rumon spoke through clenched teeth, and swallowed down the rest he would say. He was angry with her, and angrier with himself. "Is it marriage that you had in mind?"

  She flinched from the contempt, but spoke staunchly. "And why not? Except for my lack of dowry, and even this may be somewhat remedied when I get to Tre-Uther. Its sale should bring in some money."

  ''Moneyr he repeated. "Do you think a few silver pennies from that ramshackle hovel you lived in could possibly matter to me! I am Romieux de Provence, an Atheling of England, both Alfred and Charlemagne were my forefathers. Do you think I'd sully my hne by begetting sons of ignoble birth?"

  She gasped, and jumped to her feet. "How dare you!" she

  cried trembling. "How dare you speak to me like that! As if I were a peasant, a serf. King Edgar thought me a fit wife for anyone in the kingdom! He said so — so did the Archbishop. But you — I suppose only queens are fit to mate with you — lewd fornicating queens!"

  Rumon shrank from her rage, while his own vanished. She looked hke a pagan goddess, like the statue of the angry Juno which he had seen in Aries. There was also pathos in her trem-bhng voice, a wild hurt that he recognized. "Tell her," a voice urged him, "tell her." But he could not. He could not augment the furious hurt he had already dealt.

  "I'm sorry, Merewyn," he said feebly. "I shouldn't have spoken as I did. But I think marriage is not for me."

  "Ha!" she said, not softened. "Marriage vdth Alfrida was glorious enough for you. She would have made you miserable — but then I wonder what does not make you miserable? And I who loved you, aye, I loved you, for this you cared nothing. Shall I tell you something, Rumon — if you had forced me just now, even in lust, I would have given myself. But you drew away; hot and cold, hot and cold — Hght and shadow hke this evening on the Tor."

  The wind had begun to blow harder, and it seemed to her that in its whisde there were voices, harsh yet haunting voices, and that they were speaking to her. Her mantle flapped around her, a strand of hair blew across her face.

  Rumon's heart began pounding. He stood up and clenched her arm. "I've dreamed of you —" he said half inaudibly; the wind carried his voice away around the dark tower. "You said you loved me — is it finished? We can go in and lie down in the tower, where we'll be sheltered. Merewyn —"

  She shook his hand off her arm. "That's enough!" she cried. And turning, she began to run down the path, holding her mantle close, guided mosdy by instinct, off the Tor, onto the ridge, and thus down Weary-AU Hill, until she reached the town and her lodging. She told the porter that nobody, abso-

  lutely nobody was to be admitted who asked for her. She drank a large tankard of mead in the kitchen where Caw and Goda were snoring. She went to bed and slept without dreams.

  Rumon sat for a long while on the Tor. When he descended, he walked slowly, his head bent and there was a stinging in his eyes.

  Merewyn aroused her servants and left Glastonbury at three in the dawn light, thus missing Rumon who had spent a sleepless night pacing the floor, unable to think or pray; battered by storms of incoherent emotions, none of them pleasant. Again and again he relived the feel of the soft pink mouth beneath his, then felt the shock of her recoil. Over and over he struggled against his desire for her, knowing well to what depths of shame and crime lust had brought him in the past. He knew that his desire for Merewyn was nothing Hke what he had felt for Alfrida. For Merewyn he felt love. When the bells rang out for Prime, he could stand his turmoil no longer. He must see her, though what he wanted to say, he did not know. He ran across the precincts and through the gate to her lodging.
>
  Why, the Lady Merewyn and her servants had been gone these two hours, said the yawning porter, and before that she'd left orders not to admit anyone who might call on her. Not

  ANYONE.

  Rumon pulled a penny from his purse, and pushed it into the dirty broken-nailed hand. "Which way did they go?"

  "I wasn't watching, my lord. That way belike —" he waved vaguely toward the west, "though wi' so many tracks flooded now, no telling where they'd get through. Regular mizzy-maze getting outa here that direction."

  "Yes," said Rumon after a moment. Two hours' start. And if he did find her — what then? She clearly had not wanted to see him again.

  He walked back to the Abbey, to the Refectory where — Prime being over — the brethren were breaking their fast. Here

  he saw Finian, and was reminded of the day's exciting event which he had totally forgotten. The Archbishop was arriving. Dunstan would be here by Vespers at the latest.

  "And he'll be sorry to see ye looking so queasy," said Finian cocking an eyebrow at Rumon. "Always takes an interest in ye, does his lordship. That young woman unsettle ye?"

  Rumon did not answer, and his friend gazed at him curiously. "A comely, spirited lass," he said, "An' it might be the Devil sent her to tempt ye. Old Nick he has many a trick up his scarlet sleeve — though by St. Bridget, I'd say this was a good lass."

  "She is," said Rumon beneath his breath. "She is."

  "Ah—"said Finian. "Well, whatever it is, ye can tell his lordship all about it. He's a wise old man — is the Archbishop."

  Rumon said nothing. He went off to don his lay brother's habit, and to the amazement of the monks detailed for duty in the vegetable garden that day, he insisted upon seizing a spade and helping dig the new bean bed. Lord Rumon was never one for manual labor, and the brothers thought his rather frantic digging most peculiar.