Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

They could retrace their steps to the Roman road ... but Morgause felt a curious growing fear: would they find that the Roman road too was gone, was Lothian gone, was she alone on the face of the earth with these few men and women? Shivering, she recalled a few words of Scripture she had heard preached by Gwenhwyfar's house priest, about the end of the world ... I say to you, two women will be grinding grain side by side, and one will be taken, and the other one will be left ... . Had Camelot and all those within it been taken up into the Christian Heaven, had the world ended, with a few stragglers like herself left to wander on the face of the stricken world?

But they could not stand staring at the empty track. She said, "We will retrace our steps toward the Roman road." If, she thought, it is still there, if there is anything there at all. It seemed, as she looked on the mists rising like magical smoke from the marshes, that the world had vanished and even the rising sun was unfamiliar. Morgause was not a fanciful woman; she told herself, it was better to move and try to make their way back, than to stand in that otherworldly silence. Camelot was real, a place in the real world, it could not vanish entirely away.

Yet if I had had my way, if Lot and I had been successful in our plotting against Arthur, perhaps the whole land would be like this, silent and desolate and full of fears ... .

Why was it so quiet? It seemed in all the world there was no sound but their horses' hooves, and even these seemed to fall like stones dropped into water, muffled and dying away in ripples. They had nearly reached the Roman road-or where the Roman road should have been-when they heard hoofbeats on a hard road; a rider was coming, slow and deliberate, from Glastonbury. They could make out a dark figure through the fog, some kind of heavy-laden pack animal behind him. After a moment one of her men cried out, "Why, look there, it is sir Lancelet of the Lake-God give you good morning, sir!"

"Hallo! Who rides there?" It was indeed Lancelet's well-known voice, and as he came closer, the homely sound of the hooves of horse and pack mule seemed to release something in the world around them. Sounds carried a long way in the fog, and this was a simple sound, dogs barking somewhere, a whole pack of dogs, perhaps quarrelling over their food after a hungry night, but it broke the unworldly stillness with its simple, normal noise.

"It is the Queen of Lothian," called Cormac, and Lancelet rode toward them, halting his horse before her.

"Well, Aunt, I had not hoped to meet with you here-are my cousins with you, perhaps, Gawaine or Gareth?"

"No," she said, "I ride alone for Camelot." If, she thought irritably, such a place still exists upon the face of this earth! Her eyes rested intently on Lancelet's face as he said some polite words of greeting. He looked weary and travel-worn, his clothing ragged and not overly clean, a cloak of fustian worse than he would have given his groom. Ah, the beautiful Lancelet, Gwenhwyfar will not find you so handsome now, even I would not stretch out my hand to invite him into my bed.

And then he smiled, and she realized, In spite of all, he is beautiful.

"Shall we ride together then, Aunt? For indeed I come on the most sorrowful of missions."

"I had heard that you were on the quest of the Grail. Have you found it, then, or failed to find it that you are so long-faced?"

"It is not for such a man as I to find that greatest of Mysteries. Yet I bring with me one who did indeed hold the Grail in his hands. And so I have come to say that the quest is ended, and the Grail gone forever out of this world."

And then Morgause saw that on the pack mule, covered and shrouded, was the body of a man, She whispered, "Who-?"

"Galahad," said Lancelet quietly. "It was my son who found the Grail, and now we know that no man may look on it and live. Would that it had been I-if only because I bear such bitter news to my king, that the one who should be King after him has gone before us into the world where he may forever follow his quest unspoilt-"

Morgause shuddered. Now indeed will it be as if Arthur had never been, the land will have no king save for the king in Heaven, ruled over by those priests who have Arthur in their hands ... but angrily she dismissed those fancies. Galahad is gone. Arthur must choose Gwydion to rule after him.

Lancelet looked sorrowfully at the pack mule with Galahad's body, but he said only, "Shall we ride on? I had not intended to rest a night by the road, but the mists were thick, and I feared to lose my way. I would have thought it Avalon itself!"

"We could not find Camelot in the mists, no more than Avalon-" Cormac began, but Morgause interrupted him fretfully.

"Have done with that foolishness," she said. "We mistook the road in the darkness, and rode back and forth half the night! We too are in haste to come to Camelot, nephew."

One or two of her men present knew Lancelet and had known Galahad, and now they crowded close to the body, with soft expressions of sympathy and kindly words. Lancelet listened to all they had to say, his face sorrowful, then, with a few soft words, brought it to an end.

"Later, my lads, later, there will be time enough to mourn. I am in no haste, God knows, to bear such news to Arthur, but delaying will make it no kinder. Let us ride on."

The mist was thinning and burning away fast as the sun gained height. They set off down the road where Morgause and her men had ridden back and forth for hours in search of Camelot, but before they had gone very far there was another sound that broke the strange silence of the haunted morning. It was a trumpet call, clear and silver in the still air, from the heights of Camelot. And before her at the clump of four trees, broad and unmistakable in the growing sunlight, lay the wagon road built by Arthur's men for his legions to ride.

IT SEEMED appropriate that the first man Morgause should see on the heights of Camelot was her son Gareth. He strode forth to challenge them at the great gates of Camelot; then, recognizing Lancelet, hurried to him. Lancelet flung himself headlong from his horse and took Gareth into a strong embrace.

"So, cousin, it is you-"

"Aye, it is that-Cai is too old and lame to be patrolling the walls of Camelot in these days. Ah, it is a good day in which you return to Camelot, my cousin. But I see that you found not Galahad, Lance?"

"Aye, but I did," said Lancelet sorrowfully, and Gareth's open face, still boyish despite his full beard, was struck with dismay as he looked at the outlines of the dead man under the pall.

"I must bear this news to Arthur at once. Take me to him, Gareth."

Gareth bowed his head, his hand resting on Lancelet's shoulder. "Ah, this is an evil day for Camelot. I said once before, it seemed to me that yonder Grail was the work of some devil, not of God at all!"

Lancelet shook his head, and it seemed to Morgause that something bright shone through him, as if his body were transparent; and through his sad smile there was hidden joy. "No, my dear cousin," he said, "you must put that from your mind forever. Galahad has had what God gave to him, and, God help us, so have we all. But his day is finished, and he is free of all human fate. Ours is still to come, dear Gareth-God grant us that we meet it with as much courage as he."

"Amen to that," said Gareth, and to Morgause's horrified surprise he crossed himself. Then, with a start, he looked up at her.

"Mother, is it you? Forgive me-yours is the last company in which I would expect to find Lancelet." He bent over her hand with a dutiful kiss. "Come, madam, let me summon a chamberlain and take you to the Queen. She will make you welcome among her ladies while Lancelet is with the King."

Morgause let herself be led away, wondering now why she had come. In Lothian she ruled as queen in her own right, but here in Camelot she could only sit among Gwenhwyfar's ladies, and know no more of what was going on than what one of her sons might see fit to tell her.