Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"Make way!" they were crying. "Make way! Lights, here, lights!" Father Columba came into the hall, thrust a torch into the banked fire and set it ablaze. He hastened to fling the door wide. "What is this outcry-"

"Your duke is slain, men of Cornwall," someone shouted. "We bring the Duke's body! Make way! Gorlois of Cornwall lies dead and we bring his body for burying!"

Igraine felt Uther's arms holding her up from behind, else she would have fallen. Father Columba protested loudly, "No! This cannot be! Why, the Duke came home last night with a few of his men, he's asleep upstairs now in his lady's chamber-"

"No." It was the voice of the Merlin, quiet, but ringing to the farthest corners of the court. He took one of the torches and thrust it against Father Columba's torch, then gave it to one of the soldiers to hold. "The oath-breaker Duke came never to Tintagel as a living man. Your lady stands here with your overlord and your High King, Uther Pendragon. You shall marry them today, Father."

There were cries and mutterings among the men, and the servants who had come running stood numbly watching as the rough bier, animal skins sewn into a litter, was borne into the hall. Igraine shrank away from the covered face and body. Father Columba bent over, briefly uncovered the face, made the sign of the cross, then turned away again. His face was grieved and angry.

"This is sorcery, this is witchcraft." He spat, brandishing the cross between them. "This foul illusion was your doing, old wizard!"

Igraine said, "You will not speak so to my father, priest!"

Merlin lifted his hand. "I need no woman's protection-nor no man's, my lord Uther," he said. "And it was no sorcery. You saw what you willed to see-your lord come home. Only your lord was not the oathbreaker Gorlois, who had forfeited Tintagel, but the true High King and lord who came here to take what was his own. Keep you to your priestcraft, Father, there is need of a burying, and when that is done, of a nuptial mass for your king and for my lady whom he has chosen queen."

Igraine stood within the curve of Uther's arm. She met the resentful, contemptuous look in Father Columba's eyes; she knew that he would have turned on her, called her harlot and witch, but his fear of Uther kept him silent. The priest turned away from her and knelt beside Gorlois's body; he was praying. After a moment Uther knelt too, his fair hair gleaming in the torchlight. Igraine went to kneel at his side. Poor Gorlois. He was dead, he had met a traitor's death; he had richly deserved it, but he had loved her, and he had died.

A hand on her shoulder prevented her. The Merlin looked into her eyes for a moment, and said gently, "So it has come, Grainne. Your fate, as it was foretold. See that you meet it with such courage as you may."

Kneeling at Gorlois's side, she prayed-for Gorlois, and then, weeping, for herself; for the unknown fate that lay before them now. Had it indeed been ordained from the beginning of the world, or had it been brought about by the sorcery of the Merlin, and of Avalon, and by her own use of sorcery? Now Gorlois lay dead, and as she looked on Uther's face, already beloved and dear, she knew that soon others would come and he would take up the burdens of his kingdom, and that never again would he be wholly hers as he had been on this one night. Kneeling there between her dead husband and the man she would love all her life, she fought the temptation to play upon his love for her, to turn him, as she knew she could do, from thoughts of kingdom and state to think only of her. But the Merlin had not brought them together for her own joy. She knew that if she sought to keep it, she would rebel against the very fate that had brought them together, and thus destroy it. As Father Columba rose from the dead man's side and signalled to the soldiers to carry the body into the chapel, she touched his arm. He turned impatiently.

"My lady?"

"I have much to confess to you, Father, before my lord the Duke is laid to rest-and before I am married. Will you hear my confession?"

He looked at her, frowning, surprised. At last he said, "At daybreak, lady," and went away. The Merlin followed Igraine with his eyes as she came back to him. She looked into his face and said, "Here and now, my father, from this moment, be witness that I have done forever with sorcery. What God wills be done."

The Merlin looked tenderly into her ravaged face. His voice was gentler than she had ever heard it. "Do you think that all our sorcery could bring about anything other than God's will, my child?"

Catching at some small self-possession-if she did not, she knew, she would weep like a child before all these men-she said, "I will go and robe myself, Father, and make myself seemly."

"You must greet the day as befits a queen, my daughter."

Queen. The word sent shudders through her body. But it was for this | that she had done all that she had done, it was for this that she had been born. She went slowly up the stairs. She must waken Morgaine and tell her that her father was dead; fortunately the child was too young to remember him, or to grieve.

And as she called her women, and had them bring her finest robes and] jewelry and dress her hair, she laid her hand wonderingly over her belly. Somehow, with the last fleeting touch of magic before she renounced it forever, she knew that from this one night, when they had been only lovers and not yet king and queen, she would bear Uther's son. She wondered the Merlin knew.

MORGAINE SPEAKS ...

I think that my first real memory is of my mother's wedding to Uther Pendragon. I remember my father only a little. When I was unhappy as a little girl, I seemed to remember him, a heavyset man with a dark beard and dark hair I remember playing with a chain he wore about his neck. I remember that as a little maiden when I was unhappy, when I was chidden by my mother or my teachers, or when Uther-rarely-noticed me to disapprove of me, I used to comfort myself by thinking that if my own father were alive, he would have been fond of me and taken me on his knee and brought me pretty things. Now that I am older and know what manner of man he was, I think it more likely he would have put me into a nunnery as soon as I had a brother, and never thought more about me.

Not that Uther was ever unkind to me; it was simply that he had no particular interest in a girl child. My mother was always at the center of his heart, and he at hers, and so I resented that-that I had lost my mother to this great fair-hair boorish man. When Uther was away in battle-and there was battle a good deal of the time when I was a maiden-my mother Igraine cherished me and petted me, and taught me to spin with her own hands and to weave in colors. But when Uther's men were sighted, then I went back into my rooms and was forgotten until he went away again. Is it any wonder I hated him and resented, with all my heart, the sight of the dragon banner on any horsemen approaching Tintagel?

And when my brother was born it was worse. For there was this crying thing, all pink and white, at my mother's breast; and it was worse that she expected me to care as much for him as she did. "This is your little brother," she said, "take good care of him, Morgaine, and love him." Love him? I hated him with all my heart, for now when I came near her she would pull away and tell me that I was a big girl, too big to be sitting in her lap, too big to bring my ribbons to her for tying, too big to come and lay my head on her knees for comfort. I would have pinched him, except that she would have hated me for it. I sometimes thought she hated me anyhow. And Uther made much of my brother. But I think he always hoped for another son. I was never told, but somehow I knew-maybe I heard the women talking, maybe I was gifted even then with more of the Sight than I realized -that he had first lain with my mother when she was still wedded to Gorlois, and there were still those who believed that this son was not Uther's but the son of the Duke of Cornwall.