Avalon

by Anya Seton

The Mass was over. He watched as she crossed herself, and rose. She had not seen him lying in the chair litter at the corner by the chancel rail. She hurried out of the Abbey. She went to the hostel to collect her housecarls. Brother Laurence met her at the gate. "I'll guide you back across Dartmoor," said the monk. "The mists are rising, and Brother Rumon —" the monk made a peculiar sound, and Merewyn who had not really seen him as a person before, looked up at the gaunt face.

  "Brother Rumon has requested this, and also that I give you a last message, lady. That if what he has asked of you is too hard, you may wait until you feel you can do it. And also —" here the monk paused because he understood nothing of all this himself, "that your race will soon, very soon make a better England ... he had a vision, I think." Brother Laurence finished apologetically. "I don't know what he meant, was it the Cornish, or the Welsh? I know that you have the ancient British royal blood — Arthur's."

  "I haven't," said Merewyn flatly. "No royal blood of any kind."

  The monk stared at her. But any vagaries this lady had were no concern of his. He had been told to guide her back across the moor, and he would obey whatever superior gave him an order. Yet this one from Rumon was especially important. He had a great reverence for Brother Rumon, who had several times been his confessor, and who had listened to some murky details of his past life with compassion.

  Merewyn and the housecarls arrived near Ashley Manor on a midafternoon, and Merewyn hesitated. Down that lane to the right would be Wulfric, and the Manor— farther on eight miles was Winchester.

  "Ask at the alehouse," she said pointing to a hut with a bush sticking out over the door, "if the King is in Winchester now."

  One of her servants went into the alehouse.

  "They think the King is back at the Palace, m'lady," he reported.

  "Then we'll go on to Winchester," she said. "You will amuse yourselves there, no doubt — here is a penny for each of you, to insure it."

  She gave each of the three a silver penny, and accepted their thanks with a tight, remote face.

  They got to Winchester as the new Minster bell was ringing the summons to Vespers. They could see black-robed monks, walking two by two through the cloister garth towards the Minster. Merewyn led the way on to the Palace. "I don't know how long I shall be here," said Merewyn to her housecarls. "If I don't return, you'll have your own ways of finding out through the Palace carls what has happened to me."

  " 'Appened to ye, my lady?" said the senior of her servants. "Wot could 'appen?"

  "Anything," answered Merewyn.

  At the Palace gate, she was at once recognized. The Gate Ward bowed, the knot of pages, retainers and hangers-on all bowed. Several hounds barked and were shushed, while the Gate Ward swung back the huge iron gate for her to enter.

  "Where are the King and Queen?" she asked the Gate Ward, who was astonished.

  "Feasting i' the Hall, at this hour, surely," he answered. He had seen the Lady Merewyn come and go to Court for many years, and he thought it odd that she should ask such an obvious question. Come to think of it, she looked odd too. Her face had lost its rosiness, her eyes didn't seem to see you. Before she'd always been a courteous lady, and would even remember to ask about his sickly grandson.

  He stared after her as she walked to the Palace, and Wulfric's three housecarls joined him.

  "She don't seem right," said the Gate Ward. "Wot ails her?"

  "Don't know," said the senior housecarl. "But she's a good

  mistress. Give us each a penny, she did. Might as well drink 'em up. At the Sign o' the Boar."

  Merewyn walked into the Palace. She mounted the stairs to the Great Hall. She entered it and stood for a moment by the door.

  There were many people in the Hall. Ethelred's usual retinue of King's thanes, and more foreign faces than she remembered. Norman faces, no doubt, recently brought over by Queen Emma, who sat on her chair near the King, and was picking at her food in a discontented way.

  Mereviyn stood where she was, at the entrance. Then she heard above the din of drinking and toasting, a noise from the left.

  Merewyn advanced, and her husband, Wulfric, rushed towards her. "So glad ye got back safely, m'dear," he said. "Was afraid ye might stop at the Manor, and not find me."

  "I might have, but I'm glad you're here. It'll all be over sooner."

  " 'Tis the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin," said Wulfric in a slightly aggrieved voice. "The King always has a special feast, you know that."

  "Yes, I knew it but I'd forgotten." She walked,past Wulfric, and went directly up to the thrones, to Ethelred who was half drunk but made a vague nod of recognition, and went on fondling the neck of Cild Aelfric who sat on his right. Merewyn curtsied to Queen Emma whose bright dark eyes sparkled. During the endless feasting she was glad of any novelty, and saw at once that there might be one now. Lady Merewyn's face was set in a strange way. The httle Queen looked at it, and said gently, "I've been away, but now I'm in Winchester, will you come back to me as Bower Lady?"

  Merewyn hardly heard. The pupils of her eyes were huge. "I doubt that you'd want me again," she said. Her voice rose almost to a shout. "I am not the Lady Merewyn! I am not descended from King Arthur, though I thought so once in good

  faith. Good faith . . ." she repeated in a much quieter voice.

  "What's all this?" said Ethelred removing his arm from Cild Aelfric's neck, and drinking. "What are you talking about, Lady Merewyn?"

  Emma gave a short laugh. She looked at the King. "Did you not hear vat the poor vi^oman said? Or vere you too much occupied by the Earl of Mercia?"

  Ethelred drained the rest of his flagon, and gestured to a dish thane for more. "I heard," he said angrily.

  "A-ha!" said the Queen. She turned back to Merewyn, who was beginning to droop in front of the thrones. "So you 'ave come to us, to confess a long deception?"

  "Yes," said Merewyn.

  "Vat are you really?" asked the Queen.

  Merewyn threw her head back. "I am a bastard, the product of a Cornish woman of lowly birth, and of a Viking raider. My father was Norse."

  "Mon Dieu," said the Queen, after a moment, and she began to laugh. She turned to her French' courtiers. "Vous avez compris? Cette dame est vraiment nordique, comme je Favais bien soupgonne. Son pere etait Viking!"

  The Normans all murmured and strained to look at Merewyn.

  Ethelred's befuddlement was penetrated. He slammed his hand on the table and reached for his dagger. "By the Blood of Jesus!" he cried. "Treachery! She's a Dane! All these years at my Court, she's been plotting behind my back. I'll have her killed!"

  Both Emma and Cild Aelfric put a restraining hand on his arms.

  Merewyn drew back from the brandishing dagger, but her eyes flashed. "I've been a loyal subject to you, Ethelred, and to your mother before you, and though I was sickened at the way you got your throne, I know that Edivard's murder,^^ she paused and repeated deliberately, "Edward's murder was not your fault. And that you have suffered for it!"

  "Oui," said the little Queen, giving her husband another contemptuous glance. "II a des cauchemars — nightmares you say." Merewyn's gaze was steady on the King's face. "I've known you since you were a child, King Ethelred," she said, "and I think you have enough murders on your conscience without adding mine."

  Ethelred's dagger hand wavered. Suddenly he slumped back and began to weep — maudlin tears mixed with hiccups.

  The little Queen said, "Ciel — vat a king!"

  Wulfric had been stupefied by all this. He now came to Merewyn's side and addressed the weeping King. "Forgive my wife, my lord. It's the weather. She's just returned from a journey to the south. The heat must've addled her wits."

  "No, Wulfric," said Merewyn. She unclasped her garnet necklace, she held out a large pouch full of her other jewelry, including the royal circlet. "I'm telhng the truth now, and give you back these to which I have no right."

  "But you're my wife," stammered Wulfric, utterly bewildered. "And I mis
sed ye whilst ye were gone, I did."

  "Remember," Merevyn spoke with tight control, "that besides having Norse blood, of which I'm proud now, yes, proud — I am a bastard." •

  The Queen, who had been following this with increasingly sympathetic eyes, now said, "/ vas une batarde, until my parents married."

  "Were ye now, Lady," said Wulfric, looking helplessly dov^oi at the garnet necklace and at the large heavy pouch of jewels iMerewyn had given him back. "But we're wed — in the church," he said.

  "Under false pretenses," said Merewyn. "You can easily annul it."

  "Peut-etre," said the Queen. "Eet could be done, but is that vat you both vant? You, Lady Merewyn — I still call you that — vat vould you like? Vous avez eu du courage aujourdhui."

  "I don't know . . ." Merewyn whispered. Strength drained

  out of her. She could think of nothing but a quiet bed in a dark room. "I might go to Romsey Abbey."

  "Alors," said the Queen decidedly. "I shall geef it endowments, so the Abbess may not look down her nose at you."

  Wulfric suddenly spoke up and made the longest speech of his life. "I don't want her to. I won't say this hasn't been a bit of a shock. But I'm fond o' her, whatever her birth, and I see ye are too. Queen Aelgifu-Emma. And if Merewyn will put up wi' me, and I know 'tis a quiet life for her at Ashley, I'll forget all this. And whatever she isn't, or was, she can always be a Thane's lady, mine."

  "Ah — vous I'aimez —" said Emma very softly. "Tout va bien," she said to her cluster of Normans, who had edged forward as close as they dared.

  Is this what I want? Merewyn thought, and at once came the answer. Yes, it is. There would be boring days ahead, but never again the depressions and miseries of before her trip to see Rumon. She felt cleansed, peaceful, and there was much gratitude to Wulfric. She would make him content in the ways he needed. And I, she thought, shall be able to turn my spirit to God again.

  She put her hand on her husband's, and he with startling gallantry refastened the garnet necklace around her neck. "There," he said, and kissed her on the forehead.

  The little Queen watched and sighed. Her dark eyes glinted with tears. She glanced sideways at the King, who had stopped blubbering and was now fast asleep on Cild Aelfric's shoulder.

  Emma turned back to Wulfric and Merewyn. "Somes-day," she said carefully, "un de ces jours — eet vill be different here. Ven the day comes —" she broke off, "per'aps before that, ven eet ees safe, and 'e 'as forgotten —" she shrugged towards Ethel-red, "I ask you again. Lady Merewyn, to come and see me at Court."

  "I will, of course," said Merewyn, aware that Wulfric was pleased, also aware of how much the Queen's support had shored

  up his undoubted fondness for his wife. Nor did that matter.

  "May God bless you, Lady," she said, curtsying again to the Queen. "And bless your little son."

  Emma smiled very sweetly.

  Wulfric and Merewyn quit the Great Hall just as the bards began to play their harps softly so as not to disturb the King.

  Merewyn heard the harps, and at once thought of Rumon.

  There was joy in this thought. She felt his approval like a benediction. "My dear, dear love," she murmured.

  "What?" said Wulfric, who was looking for his housecarls. "What you say, m'dear.?"

  "Nothing, except that it's a lovely evening, and we'll be home before it's really dark, and that you're a fine man, Wulfric."

  "Hold that bridle, m'girl. That's one of m'horses, and some blasted fool has let it loose!"

  "Yes," she said smiling. "Yes, Wulfric." And took the bridle.

  afteRW0R6

  There may be some who will want to know what happened historically after the personal story of Merewyn and Rumon. The facts can be dug from dozens of source books but they are conflicting. Those who consult the gie^it'Dictionary of National Biography must be warned that most of these people are inserted under diphthongs. "AE, or EA" are particularly confusing. Queen Alfrida, for instance, is listed as "Aelfthryth." But Ethel-red, also spelled "Aethelred," is found under "E". I have simplified names throughout.

  But the facts, in so far as they may be found through the chroniclers, who wrote much later than the events they were describing, are briefly as follows.

  England went to pieces under the rule of Ethelred the Unready, who finally died in London, April 23, 1016. By natural causes or not, nobody is sure. Even during Ethelred's lifetime, the conquering Danish Sweyn became virtually King of England. And after him his son, Canute, whom the little Norman Queen, Emma, rather surprisingly married. He was considerably younger than she was, but she bore him at least one son — Harthacanute.

  Edward the Confessor, her son by Ethelred, came to the throne, and either could not or would not produce children. The great line of Cerdic and Alfred petered out.

  The Norman Conquest in 1066 seems to have been inevitable, and the wedding of Emma and Ethelred was the spearhead.

  I have tried to trace these people who lived so long ago. For this purpose I have as usual made many trips to England, to the places one can still see, such as Corfe Castle in Dorset, to Pad-stow in Cornwall, to Tavistock, Shaftesbury (where one will find Httle King Edward's pathetic broken bones), Romsey Abbey, and Winchester, of course.

  I also made a trip to Iceland, where I went to the North with a dear Icelandic friend and saw the present-day homestead at Langarfoss in the Borg District.

  There seems to be no doubt of Norse discoveries in America, long before Columbus came. The recent finds in Newfoundland by Dr. and Mrs. Helge Ingstad certainly prove Norse occupation around a.d. iooo. I share the opinion with many others that the successive Greenland colonizers (including Leif Erikson "the lucky") explored, and tried to settle, a good deal of the American eastern seaboard. And that later on, the Norse even got inland. Many mysterious runestones haye been found besides the "Minnesota" one. There are what seem to be Viking mooring holes all over the coast in New England. There is the disputed "Newport Tower" which, from the evidence, can NOT have been a mill, constructed by Governor Arnold of Rhode Island, though he used it.

  As the Sagas, and the Icelandic "Landnamabok" are so accurate on genealogy, why should we distrust the essentials of their traditional facts?

  Ari Marson's unexpected voyage to the West comes straight from the "Landnamabok."

  There is some doubt about the extraordinary "Place of Stones" on the Merrimac, at North Salem, New Hampshire. I've ex-

  amined it three times myself, and have chosen the most reasonable theory. But it is today aptly called "Mystery Hill."

  Rumon is, at present, considered a sort of presiding saint at Tavistock Church, in Devonshire; as he is remembered in various Cornish places, particularly on the Lizard. I have done quite a lot of research on Rumon, and traced him back to Provence, with the help of a French librarian at Avignon.

  My chronology for the years covered by this book is as accurate as the sources would let me make it — notably "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," "William of Malmesbury," "Florence of Worcester," and the splendid English Historical Documents edited by Dorothy Whitelock.

  With deep gratitude I append a list of credits to some of the people who have helped me personally.

  In England, to Sir Frank and Lady Stenton, with a bow to his chssic Anglo-Saxon England. (London: Oxford, 1943.)

  To Sir Thomas and Lady Kendrick, with thanks for hospi-tahty, and help at the British Museum.

  To Mr. and Mrs. John Ryder who Hve at Rempstone Hall near Corf e Castle.

  To the Prideaux-Brunes at Padstow.

  To Mrs. J. M. Foster of Bristol, and Geoffrey Ashe of Maidstone, Kent.

  The latter's Land to the West (London: Collins, 1962) and his other books greatly enlarged my thinking, as did Mr. Ashe's friendly interest.

  In America, I am indebted to Charles Michael Boland's They All Discovered America. (New York: Doubleday, 1961.) It was Mr. Boland's provocative book that first sent me to the stone caves at "Mystery Hill," New Hampshire, and
I am also indebted to him for introductions in Iceland.

  Iceland was fascinating. Everyone was warm and hospitable. Particular thanks to the two sisters — Sehna and Blaka Jons-dottir. And to Professor Einar Sveinsson, who gave me generous

  time, and straightened out for me the genealogies of some of the men who went from Iceland to Greenland.

  I have used many history books for this venture into Tenth Century England, and the Norse Discoveries of America.

  I have all the Lives of the Saints by S. Baring-Gould; I have Charles Oman's England Before the 'Norvian Conquest (London: 1910); I have the invaluable, though somewhat biased third edition of The History of the Norman Conquest of England by Edward A. Freeman (London: Oxford, 1877); Eleanor Shipley Duckett's Saint Dunstan of Canterbury (New York: Norton,

  1955)-

  In the effort to reconstruct history in an era so far removed from us, there are two things to remember. The task of an author is to communicate, and since this book could not be written in Anglo-Saxon or old Norse, one must accept an approximation of our present-day speech.

  And the other thing to remember is that people's psychology and motivations do not change very much through the centuries. Though the expression of these may.

  At any rate I have tried to tell an accurate story, and to illuminate a shadowy corner of the past.

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  ANYA SETON is known for her distinguished contributions to our knowledge of English and American history. In reviewing Katherine for the New York Herald Tribune, Geoffrey Bruun wrote: "Miss Seton combines the historian's respect for chronology and milieu with a novelist's flair for concrete description, drama, and dialogue." Fanny Butcher, in the Chicago Tribune, described The Win-throp Woman as "that rare literary ac-compHshment — living history." James Gray wrote in the Saturday Review that DeviJ Water "conquers space, time, and fate — and, what is even more remarkable, tedium too — in its at once tumultuous and tidy reconstruction."