Priestess of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  "But what about my vows?"

  "You should have thought about your vows last night, before they were broken! In the old days you would have burned for that crime." In her lined face, a sour satisfaction was replacing the fury.

  I stared at her. I had disobeyed her order, certainly, but surely I had given myself to Constantius as the Goddess willed.

  "You have until the sun goes down to make ready," Ganeda said then. "When the sun goes down and the festival is over, you will be banished from Avalon."

  The Christians, I had heard, had a legend that told how the first parents of humankind were exiled from Paradise. When the mists of Avalon closed behind me I understood how they must have felt. Had it comforted Eve to know that Adam was still beside her? Knowing that my own choices had forced this destiny upon me was little comfort.

  I told myself that if Constantius had gone alone, leaving me behind, I would have been weeping bitterly, but the grief that kept me numb and silent as the barge bore us through the mists was of a deeper order entirely.

  As we slid up onto the shore below the Lake people's village I felt a sudden disorientation, as if one of my senses had disappeared. I staggered, and Constantius lifted me in his arms and bore me up the bank. When he set me on my feet again I clung to him, trying to understand what had happened to me.

  "It is all right," he whispered, holding me against him. "It is all behind us now."

  I looked back across the Lake, and realized that the psychic sense that had always told me where to find Avalon was no longer there. Physical sight showed me marshland and blue water, and the beehive huts on the Christian isle. But when I had left before, I had only to close my eyes in order to sense, at an odd angle to the mortal world, the way to Avalon. I had taken the link for granted. Through it, the High Priestess could check on the well-being of her absent daughters, for even when priestesses were sent on errands away from the holy isle a thread of connection remained.

  But now, Ganeda had severed it, and I was like a sapling that the flood uproots and whirls away. By the time I ceased my weeping, a cold grey dawn was breaking once more.

  I do not know whether the fact that Constantius tolerated me for the next few weeks was a measure of his honour or his love. He told the keeper of the posting-inn where we spent the next night that I was ill, and it was true, though my sickness was not of the body, but of the soul. By day, my only comfort was Eldri's devotion, and by night, the strength of Constantius's arms. And when it became clear to him that it was a constant torture for me to live where every clear day showed me the Vale of Avalon, he concluded his business at the mines and we set out for Eburacum, where the workshops his family owned turned some of the lead into pewterware.

  Constantius hired a trader to guide us cross-country through lanes and by-ways to the great Roman road that runs northeast from Lindinis to Lindum. For the first few days I rode in dismal silence, too wrapped up in my own grief to notice my surroundings. Still, if any time of the year could reconcile one to the loss of Avalon, I suppose it must be the smiling season that follows Beltane.

  Cold though the wind might sometimes blow, the bone-deep chill of winter was gone. The triumphant sun laid a golden blessing across the land, and the land with joyous abandon made it welcome. The brilliant green of new leaves resounded with the songs of returning birds, and every hedgerow and woodland ride was adorned with flowers. As day followed glorious day, my body, like the earth, responded to that radiant light.

  For so long—too long—I had searched out herbs only for their utility. Now I picked the creamy primroses and the nodding bluebells, bright celandine and hidden violets and forget-me-nots like pieces of fallen sky, for no other reason than that they were beautiful. The training of Avalon was intended to develop the spirit, and all the resources of mind and body were put at its service, under the direction of a disciplined will. The needs of the flesh were given grudging recognition only at the festivals, and those of the heart, no honour at all. But Constantius had conquered my awakening senses, and my heart was carried along in their triumph, a willing prisoner. I made no attempt at resistance: banished from the realm of the spirit, the world and its pleasures were all that remained to me.

  We travelled slowly, staying sometimes at villas and farmsteads, and sometimes sleeping under the stars in some woodland thicket or in a field by the side of the road. The first significant town along our route was Aquae Sulis, tucked into the hills where the Abona curved round on its way to the Sabrina estuary. I know now that it was a small place, but at the time I was impressed by its elegance. Since ancient times the healing springs had been considered holy, but the Romans, for whom bathing was a social necessity, had made of the place a spa that could compete with any in the Empire.

  As we rode in I marvelled at the buildings, constructed from warm golden stone. The people who thronged the streets were well-dressed, and I became abruptly conscious of what a week of journeying had done to my only gown. And my hair—I drew my veil up hastily, and nudged my pony closer to Constantius's mule.

  "My lord—"

  He turned with a smile, and I was surprised by how naturally he fitted into this civilized scene.

  "Constantius, we cannot stay here. I have nothing to wear."

  "That is precisely why I wanted to stop here, my love," he grinned back at me. "It's little enough I have to offer in return for all you have given up for me, but Aquae Sulis contains, in miniature, the best of the Empire. I have enough funds for us to stay for a few days in a decent inn, and enjoy the baths, and buy clothing that will do justice to your beauty."

  I began to protest, but he shook his head. "When we arrive at Eburacum, I will be introducing you to my associates in business, and you must do me credit. Think of the shopping as something you can do for me."

  I sat back in the saddle, my face flaming. It was still a wonder to be reminded that he thought me beautiful. I did not know if it was true—there were no mirrors on Avalon—but it mattered little so long as I found favour in his eyes.

  Shopping in Aquae Sulis was rather overwhelming to one who had grown up with one gown for everyday and one for ritual, though even Constantius widened his eyes at the prices. I came away with a tunica the colour of terra cotta, banded at the hem with green and gold, and a palla of green wool to wear with it, and another ensemble in the rosy shades of dawn. I acceded willingly to whatever Constantius wanted me to wear, so long as it was not priestess-blue.

  Leaving Eldri to guard our gear in the inn, we dined in the garden of a taverna on the main street, and then proceeded to the temple complex that included the baths. It was becoming clear that Aquae Sulis was not an ordinary Roman town. Dominated by the religious buildings that had grown up around the sacred spring, it was as dedicated, in its own way, as Avalon. I was accustomed to fine stonework, though the carvings that adorned the buildings seemed ornate after the stark simplicity of the isle. And though it was true that my people had carved images of their deities, the Druids of Avalon taught that the gods were most truly worshipped beneath the open sky.

  Thus, I could tell myself that the image of Sulis Minerva that stood in the round tholos in the square before the bath precincts was only a statue, though I avoided meeting the calm gaze of the bronze head beneath the gilded helmet as I hurried by. I hung back as Constantius purchased a bag of incense to cast on the fire that burned on the altar in the courtyard, resenting his unselfconscious piety even as I admired it. But what had such observances to do with me, who had known the Mysteries of Avalon? Known, and lost them … a deeper self reminded me. Very well, I told myself, I would learn to survive with no gods at all.

  A Gorgon-face glared fiercely from the portico of the temple, its hair and beard writhing in contorted rays. Another solar deity reigned from the arch that led into the baths. For Constantius's sake, I thought then, I might make an exception of that one.

  He paid our fees and we passed beneath the arch, and I coughed at the sudden gust of moist, heated air. It had a f
aint odour of old eggs, not strong enough to be unpleasant, but distinctly medicinal. Before us, glimmering faintly in the light that came through the high arched window, lay the sacred pool.

  "The water rises here and is piped to the other pools," said Constantius. "This place has been sacred since long before the Divine Julius brought his legions to this isle. It is customary to make an offering…"

  He opened his pouch and took out two silver denarii. Other coins gleamed from the bottom of the pool along with lead votive tablets and other offerings. He drew the hood of his cloak up over his head, his lips moving silently, and tossed his denarius in. I followed his example, though I had no prayer to offer, only a voiceless need.

  "You are in luck: the attendant told me that the hot pools are reserved for women at this hour. I will go to the steam room at the other end of the baths and meet you at sunset by the altar outside." Coristantius squeezed my hand and turned away.

  For a moment I wanted to call him back again. But after a week on the road all other considerations were overwhelmed by the desire to get truly clean. I turned in the other direction and passed from the first chamber into the colonnade adjoining the large pool. Talk in the taverna had suggested that it was early in the season for the numbers of visitors the baths were built to receive. The warm pool was almost empty, its water green where sunlight slanted in from above, its sides mysteriously shadowed by the colonnade. I continued around it, looking for the smaller pools I had been told lay beyond it.

  The pool I chose was heated by water that rushed from beneath a stone slab, its stones blurred by an accretion of minerals from the spring. It reminded me of the Holy Well at Avalon, but this water was as warm as blood. Sinking into its embrace was like a return to the womb.

  I lay back with my head on the smooth curve of the coping, letting the water support my body, and muscles I had not known were tense began to unkink at last. The two women who had been soaking when I arrived climbed out of the pool and went off, chattering about a new cook. A slave girl came in with an armload of towels, saw I needed no assistance, and departed. The water grew still. I was alone.

  For a timeless interval I floated, without need or desire. In that moment, undisturbed by demands from either mind or body, I did not realize that the defences I had thrown up around my spirit were dissolving away. The gentle lapping of wavelets against stone faded, until the murmur of the water flowing into the pool was the only sound.

  And after a while that subtle murmur became a song—

  "Ever flowing, ever growing,

  from the earth to the sea,

  ever falling,ever calling

  ever coming to be…"

  I relaxed into the music, and without intention, my soul stirred and reached out to the spirit of the waters. The singing continued. I found myself smiling, uncertain whether my own imagination was supplying words to the music or I was indeed hearing the voice of the spring. Now new words were whispering through the hushed trickle—

  "Ever living, ever giving,

  all my children are free;

  ever turning, ever yearning,

  they return unto me …"

  But I was cut off from that eternal source, and forbidden to return. At that, a great grief rose up in me, and the tears rolled down my cheeks and mingled with the waters of the Goddess in the pool.

  It seemed an eternity before the slave girl came back into the chamber, but I suppose that in truth not so much time had passed. I felt empty, and when I left the water and saw the blood running down my inner thighs, I realized that I was empty in truth. Ganeda had been right in her calculations, and despite the ecstasy of our loving, Constantius had not got me with child.

  When the girl had provided me with clouts and padding, I sat for a long time in the moist shadow, gazing at the swirling waters and waiting for more tears to come. But for the moment I had no more emotion. My life stretched before me, devoid of magic. But not, I reminded myself, of love. By now, Constantius would be waiting. It was not he who had broken my heart—I had done that all by myself.

  Deceived, lured from his ordinary world into Avalon and then burdened with a disgraced and weeping priestess when he left it, Constantius had not complained. He at least deserved a cheerful companion. By this time my hair was drying, the shorter strands curling in moist tendrils around my brow. I called to the slave girl once more to dress it high with pins and help me to disguise my puffy eyes with kohl and my pale cheeks with rouge. When I looked into the bronze mirror I saw a fashionable stranger.

  When I came out of the baths the sun was about to sink behind the hills that sheltered the town. I turned from the dazzle of light and stopped short, facing a pediment that was the twin to the one that led to the sacred spring. But here, the dominant figure was a goddess, her hair twisted up on each side and caught in the middle by a ring. She was haloed by a crescent moon.

  For a moment I simply stood, staring, as a traveller will stop who suddenly glimpses someone from home. Then I remembered how I had come here.

  "It will do you little good, Lady, to lie in wait for me," I said softly. "It is you who cast me out—I owe you no loyalty!"

  From Aquae Sulis, the military road angled northeast across Britannia. After we left Corinium it rose gradually, passing through wild hill country as it approached Ratae. Nonetheless, we continued to find mansios and posting inns spaced a day's travel apart along the road, and from time to time I would glimpse through the trees the red-tiled roof of a villa. This, Constantius assured me, was a gentle land compared to the mountains near Eburacum, but I, accustomed to the marshlands of the Summer Country, gazed at the blue distances and wondered.

  As we neared Lindum, we came to flat green countryside like the Trinovante lands where I had lived as a child. I took refuge in those memories, and began to talk to Constantius about my father and my brothers, fitting together my memories like some Roman mosaic of the life of a British prince who had adopted, for the most part, the ways of Rome.

  "My own family is not so different," said Constantius. "My people come from Dacia, the land away to the north of Greece, where the Carpatus mountains curve around the great plain. I was born in a villa on the Danuvius, where the river cuts through the grasslands. Dacia is still a frontier province—we became Roman even later than you Britons—and the Goths keep trying to make us barbarian once again…"

  "We heard that the Emperor Claudius had beaten them at Nissa," I said when the silence had continued for too long. It had been some time since we had passed a villa, and though the road was elevated, a tangle of trees pressed close on either side. The clip-clop of our mounts' hooves seemed loud in that empty land.

  "Yes… I was there…" answered Constantius, rubbing at the spot on his thigh where I remembered seeing a scar. "But it was a near thing. They came from the east, across the Euxine Sea. Our garrison at Marcianopolis fought them off, but they sailed south and managed to break through into the Aegeum, where they split into three armies. Gallienus wiped out the Herulians in Thracia, but the Goths were still rampaging around Macedonia.

  "We finally caught up with them at Nissa. It's hard to defend against wandering bands that hit a village and run, but barbarian troops can't stand against our heavy cavalry…" His eyes were bleak with memory. "It was a slaughter. After that, it was mostly a matter of mopping up. Hunger and bad weather killed as many of the stragglers as we did. That, and the plague." He fell silent, and I remembered that the plague had killed Romans as well, including his great-uncle the Emperor.

  "Was your home safe?" I asked in an attempt to turn his mind from thoughts of battle.

  He blinked, and managed a smile. "Yes, it was—the Goths were after older and richer towns. It was one time when living on the frontier worked to our advantage. My people have been there since Trajan conquered the land."

  "My father's family ruled the country north of the Tamesis even before the Romans came," I observed a trifle smugly. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and I unhooked my broad
hat from the saddle and put it on. "But my ancestor made alliance with the Divine Julius, and took his family name."

  "Ah—" answered Constantius, "my own ancestry is less illustrious. One of my ancestors was a client to Flavius Vespasianus, the great Emperor, hence the family name. But the first of my line to settle in Dacia was a centurion who married a local girl. But that's nothing to be ashamed of. Some say that Vespasianus himself was descended from one of the founders of Rome, but I am told that the Emperor laughed at that idea, and admitted that his grandfather had been a ranker in the legions. It does not matter. We are all Romans now…'

  "I suppose so," I replied. "I know Coelius kept the Roman festivals. I remember going with him to the great temple of Claudius in Camulodunum to burn incense to the Emperor. In matters pertaining to government he was a Roman, but he kept to the old ways when it was a question of the health of the land. That is how I came to be conceived," I added unwillingly. "In the year of the great floods he appealed to Avalon, and my mother, who was the High Priestess then, travelled to Camulodunum to perform the Great Rite with him."

  "So you are royal on both sides." Constantius smiled at me, then grew thoughtful. "Did your father ever formally adopt you?"

  I shook my head. "What need?" I said bitterly. "I was always intended for Avalon… Does it matter to you?" I added, seeing his frown.

  "Not to me—" he said quickly. "It may have some legal implications… for our marriage."

  "You want to marry me?" In truth, I had not thought much about it, having grown to womanhood in Avalon, where the priestesses did not bind themselves to any man.

  "Of course! Or at least," he added, "make some legal arrangement that will protect you—was not that ceremony we performed at your festival a wedding?"

  I stared at him. "It was the union of the earth and the sun, meant to bring life to the land—the god and the goddess were wedded, as was the case with my parents, not the priest and priestess who performed the rite."