Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"No," said Morgaine, with unexpected anger.

Arthur came to the bedside and picked up Lancelet's limp hand. The injured man moaned, stirred, and looked up, blinking. "Arthur?"

"I'm here, my friend," said Arthur, and Morgaine thought she had never heard a man's voice so tender.

"Is your horse-all right?"

"The horse is fine. Damn the horse," Arthur said. "If you'd been killed, what good would a horse be to me?" He was almost weeping.

"How did it-happen?"

"A damned goose flew up. The goose boy's in hiding. I think he knows he'll be beaten within an inch of his life!"

"Don't do that," Lancelet said. "He's only a poor stupid creature without all his wits. He's not to blame that the geese are cleverer than he is, and one wandered loose. Promise me, Gwydion." She was astonished that he used the old name. Arthur pressed his hand, and bent down to kiss Lancelet on the cheek, carefully avoiding the bruised side.

"I promise, Galahad. Sleep, now."

Lancelet gripped his hand hard. "I came close to wrecking your wedding night, didn't I?" he said, with something Morgaine recognized as her own hard irony.

"Believe you did-my bride has wept so hard over you, I wonder what she would do if 7 had broken my head?" Arthur demanded, laughing.

Morgaine said fiercely, "Arthur, even if you are the King, he must be kept quiet!"

"Right." Arthur straightened. "I will send the Merlin to look in at him tomorrow; he should not be left alone tonight, though-"

"I'll stay with him," she said angrily.

"Well, if you are sure-"

"Go you back to Gwenhwyfar! Your bride is waiting for you!"

Arthur sighed, subdued. After a moment he said, "I don't know what to say to her. Or what to do."

This is ridiculous-does he expect me to instruct him, or to instruct his bride? At the look in his eyes she lowered her own. She said, very gently, "Arthur, it is simple. Do as the Goddess prompts you."

He looked like a stricken child. At last he said, hoarsely, fighting the words, "She-she isn't the Goddess. She's just a girl, and she's-she's frightened." After a moment he blurted out, "Morgaine, don't you know that I still-"

She could not bear what he might be going to say. "No!" she said violently, holding up her hand, commanding silence. "Arthur, remember one thing at least. To her you will always be the God. Come to her as the Horned One ... ."

Arthur crossed himself and shivered. He whispered at last, "God forgive me; this is the punishment ... " and fell silent. They stood, looking at each other, unable to speak. Finally he said, "Morgaine, I have no right -will you kiss me once?"

"My brother-" She sighed, stood on tiptoe and kissed his forehead. Then she signed his head with the sign of the Goddess. "Bless you," she whispered. "Arthur, go to her, go to your bride. I promise you, I promise in the name of the Goddess, it will be well, I swear it to you."

He swallowed-she saw the muscles in his throat move. Then he broke away from her eyes and muttered, "God bless you, sister." The door closed behind him.

Morgaine dropped down on a chair, and sat, unmoving, staring at Lancelet's sleep, tormented by pictures in her mind. Lancelet's face, smiling at her in sunlight on the Tor. Gwenhwyfar, water-draggled, her skirts soaked, clinging to Lancelet's hand. The Horned God, his face smeared with deer's blood, drawing aside the curtain at the mouth of the cave. Lancelet's mouth frantic on her breasts-had it been only a few hours ago?

"At least," she muttered aloud fiercely, "he will not spend Arthur's bridal night dreaming of Gwenhwyfar." She laid herself down along the edge of the bed, pressing her body carefully against the hurt man's body; she lay there silent, not even weeping, sunk in a despairing misery too deep for tears. But she did not close her eyes that night, fighting the Sight, fighting dreams, struggling for the silence and the numb absence of thought she had been taught in Avalon.

And far away, in the furthest wing of the castle, Gwenhwyfar lay awake, looking in guilty tenderness at Arthur's hair shining in the moonlight, his chest that rose and fell with his quiet breathing. Tears trickled slowly down her cheeks.

I want so much to love him, she thought, and then she prayed. "Oh, God, holy Mary Virgin, help me to love him as I ought to do, he is my king and my lord and he is so good, he deserves someone who will love him more than I can love." All around her, it seemed, the night breathed sadness and despair.

But why, she wondered. Arthur is happy. He has nothing with which to reproach me. Whence comes this sorrow in the very air?

7

On a day in late summer, Queen Gwenhwyfar, with several of her ladies, sat in the hall at Caerleon. It was afternoon and very hot; most of them were making a pretense of spinning, or of carding the last of that spring's wool for spinning, but the spindles moved sluggishly, and even the Queen, who was the best needlewoman among them, had ceased to set stitches in the fine altar cloth she was making for the bishop.

Morgaine laid aside the carded wool for spinning and sighed. At this season of the year she was always homesick, longing for the mists that crept in from the sea over the cliffs at Tintagel ... she had not seen them since she was a little child.

Arthur and his men, with the Caerleon legion, had ridden out to the southern coast, to examine the new fort that the Saxons of the treaty troops had built there. This summer had brought no raid, and it might well be that the Saxons, except for those who had made treaty with Arthur and were living peacefully in the Kentish country, would give up Britain for lost. Two years of Arthur's horse legion had reduced the Saxon fighting to a sporadic summer exercise; but Arthur had taken this season of quiet to fortify all the defenses of the coasts.

"I am thirsty again," said Pellinore's daughter, Elaine. "May I go, my lady, and ask for more pitchers of water to be sent?"

"Call Cai-he will attend to it," Gwenhwyfar said.

Morgaine thought: She has grown a great deal; from a scared and timid child she has become a queen.

"You should have married Cai when the King wished for it, lady Morgaine," said Elaine, returning from her errand and sitting down on the bench beside Morgaine. "He is the only man under sixty in the castle, and| his wife will never lie alone for half a year at a time."

"You are welcome to him, if you want him," Morgaine said amiably.

"I still wonder that you did not," Gwenhwyfar said, as if it were an | old grievance. "It would have been so suitable-Cai, the King's foster-brother and high in his favor, and you, Arthur's sister and Duchess of Cornwall in your own right, now that the lady Igraine never leaves her nunnery!"

Drusilla, daughter of one of the petty kings to the east, snickered. "Tell me, if the King's sister and brother marry, how is it other than incest?"

"Half-sister and foster-brother, you goose," said Elaine. "But tell me, lady Morgaine, was it only his scars and lameness that deterred you? Cai is no beauty, certainly, but he would be a good husband."

"I am not deceived by you," Morgaine retorted, pretending a good humor she did not feel-did these women think of nothing but marriages? "You care nothing for my wedded happiness with Cai, you merely wished for a wedding to break the monotony of the summer. But you should not be greedy. Sir Griflet was married to Meleas last spring, and that should be weddings enough for now." She glanced at Meleas, whose dress had already begun to grow tight over her pregnant body. "You will even have a babe to fuss and coo over this time next year."

"But you are long unmarried, lady Morgaine," said Alienor of Galis. "And you could hardly have hoped for a better match than the King's own foster-brother!"

"I am in no great haste to be wed, and Cai had no more mind to me than I to him."