Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

He said, "Still the same old song, Lady? I thought I gave you my answer when last I saw you."

"Galahad," she said, "you were twelve years old. That is too young to know the better part of life."

He moved his hand impatiently. "No one calls me Galahad now, save you alone, and the Druid who gave me that name. In Brittany and in the field I am Lancelet."

She smiled and said, "Do you think I care for what the soldiers say?"

"So you would bid me sit still in Avalon and play the harp while outside in the real world the struggle goes on for life and death, my lady?"

Viviane looked angry. "Are you trying to say this world is not real, my son?"

"It is real," said Lancelet, with an impatient movement of his hand, "but real in a different way, cut off from the struggle outside. Fairyland, eternal peace-oh, yes, it is home to me, you saw to that, Lady. But it seems that even the sun shines differently here. And this is not where the real struggles of life are taking place. Even the Merlin has the wit to know that."

"The Merlin came to be as he is through years when he learned to know the real from the unreal," said Viviane, "and so must you. There are warriors enough in the world, my son. Yours is the task to see farther than any, and perhaps to bid the warriors come and go."

He shook his head. "No! Lady, say no more, that path is not mine."

"You are still not grown to know what you want," Viviane said flatly. "Will you give us seven years, as you gave your father, to know whether this is your road in life?"

"In seven years," said Lancelet, smiling, "I hope to see the Saxons driven from our shores, and I hope to have a hand in their driving. I have no time for the magics and mysteries of the Druids, Lady, and would not if I could. No, my mother, I beg you to give me your blessing and send me forth from Avalon, for to tell the truth, Lady, I will go with your blessing or without it. I have lived in a world where men do not wait for a woman's bidding to go and come."

Morgaine shrank away as she saw the white of rage sweep over Viviane's face. The priestess rose from her seat, a small woman but given height and majesty by her fury.

"You defy the Lady of Avalon, Galahad of the Lake?"

He did not shrink before her. Morgaine, seeing him pale under the dark tanning of his skin, knew that inside the softness and grace was steel to match the Lady's own. He said quietly, "Had you bidden me this when I still starved for your love and approval, madam, no doubt I would have done even as you commanded. But I am not a child, my lady and mother, and the sooner we acknowledge that, then the sooner we shall be in harmony and cease from quarrelling. The life of a Druid is not for me."

"Have you become a Christian?" she asked, hissing with anger.

He sighed and shook his head. "Not really. Even that comfort is denied me, though in Ban's court I could pass as one when I wished. I think I have no faith in any God but this." He laid his hand on his sword.

The Lady sank down on her bench and sighed. She drew a long breath and then smiled.

"So," she said, "you are a man and there is no compelling you. Although I wish you would speak of this to the Merlin."

Morgaine, watching unregarded, saw the tension relax in the young man's hands. She thought, He thinks she has given way; he does not know her well enough to know that she is angrier than ever. Lancelet was young enough to let the relief show in his voice. "I'm grateful to you for understanding, madam. And I will willingly seek counsel of the Merlin, if it pleases you. But even the Christian priests know that a vocation to the service of God is God's gift and not anything that comes because one wants it or does not. God, or the Gods if you will, has not called me, or even given me any proof that He-or They-exist."

Morgaine thought of Viviane's words to her, many years ago: it is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting. But for the first time she wondered, What would Viviane really have done if at any time during these years I had come to her and told her that I wished to depart? The Lady is all too sure that she knows the will of the Goddess. Such heretical thoughts disturbed her, and quickly she thrust them from her mind, resting her eyes again on Lancelet. At first she had only been dazzled by his dark handsomeness, the grace of his body. Now she saw specific things: the first down of beard along his chin-he had not time, or had not chosen, to shave his face in the Roman fashion; his slender hands, exquisitely shaped, fashioned for harp strings or weapons, but callused just a little across palm and the insides of the fingers, more on the right hand than the left. There was a small scar on one forearm, a whitish seam that looked as if it had been there for many years, and another, crescent-shaped, on the left cheek. His lashes were as long as a girl's. But he did not have the androgynous, boy-girl look of many boys before their beards have grown; he was like a young stag. Morgaine thought she had never seen so masculine a creature before. Because her mind had been trained to such thoughts, she thought, There is nothing of the softness of a woman's training in him, to make him pliable to any woman. He has denied the touch of the Goddess in himself; one day he will have trouble with her ... . And again her mind leaped, thinking that one day she would play the role of the Goddess at one of the great festivals, and she thought, feeling a pleasant heat in her body, Would that he might be the God ... . Lost in her daydream, she did not hear what Lancelet and the Lady were saying until she was recalled by hearing Viviane speak her name, and she came back to herself as if she had been wandering somewhere out of the world.

"Morgaine?" the Lady repeated. "My son has been long away from Avalon. Take him away, spend the day on the shores if you will, you are freed for this day from duties. When you were children both, I remember, you liked it well, to walk on the shores of the Lake. Tonight, Galahad, you shall sup with the Merlin, and shall be housed among the young priests who are not under the silence. And tomorrow, if you still wish for it, you shall go with my blessing."

He bowed profoundly, and they went out.

The sun was high, and Morgaine realized that she had missed the sunrise salutations; well, she had the Lady's permission to absent herself, and in any case she was no longer one of the younger priestesses for whom the missing of such a service was a matter for penances and guilt. Today she had intended to supervise a few of the younger women in preparing dyes for ritual robes-nothing that could not wait another day or a handful of days.

"I will go to the kitchens," she said, "and fetch us some bread to take with us. We can hunt for waterfowl, if you like-are you fond of hunting?"

He nodded and smiled at her. "Perhaps if I bring my mother a present of some waterfowl she will be less angry with me. I would like to make my peace with her," he said, almost laughing. "When she is angry she is still frightening-when I was little, I used to believe that when I was not with her she took off her mortality and was the Goddess indeed. But I should not speak like that about her-I can see that you are very devoted to her."

"She has been as devoted to me as a foster-mother," Morgaine said slowly.

"Why should she not be? She is your kinswoman, is she not? Your mother-if I recall rightly-was the wife of Cornwall, and is now the wife of the Pendragon ... is it so?"

Morgaine nodded. It had been so long that she could only half remember Igraine, and now sometimes it seemed to her that she had been long motherless. She had learned to live without need of any mother save the I Goddess, and she had many sisters among the priestesses, so she had no need of any earthly mother. "I have not seen her for many years."