Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"No, no, I don't want it, I shall be sick again-"

"Drink it," Morgause said sternly, "and try to eat this piece of bread, it is hard and won't sicken you-you need something in your belly at these times." She laughed. "Indeed, something in the belly is what brings all this trouble on you."

Humiliated, Morgaine looked away from her.

Morgause's voice was kind again. "Come, girl, we've all been through it. So you're breeding-what of it? You're not the first or the last. Who is the father, or shouldn't I ask? I saw you looking at Viviane's handsome son-was he the lucky one? Who could blame you? No? A child of the Beltane fires, then? I'd have thought as much. And why not?"

Morgaine clenched her fists against Morgause's well-meant briskness. "I won't have it; when I return to Avalon, I know what to do."

Morgause looked at her, troubled. "Oh, my dear, must you? In Avalon they would welcome a child to the God, and you're of the royal Avalon line. I won't say I've never done the same-I told you I had been very careful never to bear a child which was not Lot's, which does not mean I slept alone all the time when he was away on his wars. Well, why should I? I don't suppose he always lay down alone! But an old midwife told me once, and she knew her business well, I must say-she told me that a woman should never try to cast out the first child she conceives, for if she did, it might injure her womb so that she could never bear another."

"I am a priestess, and Viviane grows old; I do not want it to interfere with my duties in the temple." And even as she spoke, she knew she was hiding her truth; there were women in Avalon who pursued their work to the last few months of their pregnancies, and then the other women cheerfully divided their tasks so that they could rest before the birth; and afterward, they even had time to nurse their babies before they were sent to fostering. Indeed, some of their daughters were priestess-reared, as Igraine had been. Morgause herself had been reared to her twelfth year in Avalon as Viviane's foster-daughter.

Morgause looked at her shrewdly. "Yes, I think every woman feels like that when first she carries a babe in her womb-trapped, angry, something she can't change and is afraid of. I know it was so with Igraine, it was so with me, I suppose it is so with every woman." Her arms went out and circled Morgaine, holding her close. "But, dear child, the Goddess is kind. As the child grows quick within you, the Goddess will put love in your heart for him, even if you care nothing for the man who put him there. Child, I was married at fifteen to a man far older; and on the day I knew I was with child I was ready to cast myself into the sea-it seemed the end of my youth, the end of my life. Ah, don't cry," she added, stroking Morgaine's soft hair, "you'll feel better soon. I have no liking for going about with a big belly and piddling like a babe in breechclouts all the day long, but the time will pass, and a babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain. I have borne four and would willingly have another- so often I had wished one of my sons had been a daughter. If you'd rather not foster your babe in Avalon, I'll foster him for you-what do you think of that?"

Morgaine drew a long, sobbing breath, raising her head from Morgause's shoulder. "I am sorry-I have wept all over your fine gown."

Morgause shrugged. "If nothing worse should happen to it, it is well. See? The sickness passes and for the rest of the day you will feel well. Do you think Viviane would spare you for a visit to me? You can return to Lothian with us, if you will-you have not seen the Orkneys, and a change will do you good."

Morgaine thanked her, but said that she must return to Avalon, and that before she went, she must go and pay her respects to Igraine.

"I would not counsel you to confide in her," Morgause said. "She has grown so holy she would be shocked, or think it her duty to be so."

Morgaine smiled weakly-she had no intention of confiding in Igraine, nor for that matter in anyone else. Before Viviane could know, there would no longer be anything for her to know. She was grateful for Morgause's advice, and for her goodwill and good advice, but she did not intend to heed it. She told herself fiercely that it was her own privilege to choose: she was a priestess, and whatsoever she did should be tempered with her own judgment.

All through the leavetaking with Igraine, which was strained-and interrupted, more than once, by that damnable bell calling the nuns to their duties-she was thinking that Morgause was more like the mother she remembered than Igraine herself. Igraine had grown old and hard and pious, it seemed to Morgaine, and she bade her farewell with relief. Returning to Avalon, she knew, she was returning home; now she had no other home anywhere in the world.

But if Avalon was no longer home to her, what then?

20

It was early in the day when Morgaine slipped quietly out of the House of Maidens and into the wild marsh behind the Lake. She skirted the Tor and came out into the patch of forest; with luck she could find what she wanted here without wandering into the mists.

She knew the things she needed-a single root and then the bark of a bush, and two herbs. They were all to be found in Avalon. She could have taken them from the storerooms in the House of the Maidens, but she would have had to explain why she wanted them, and she shrank from that. She wanted neither the teasing nor the sympathy of the other women; better to find them herself. She knew something of herb lore, and of the midwife's skill. She need not place herself, for this, at the mercy of any other person.

One herb she wanted grew in the garden in Avalon; she had picked it unnoticed. For the others she must go afield, and she went a considerable distance before she noticed that she had not yet gone into the mists. Looking about, she realized that she had wandered into a part of Avalon she did not know-and that was utter madness. She had lived in Avalon for ten years or more, she knew every rise and knoll, every path and almost every tree. It was impossible that she could be lost in Avalon, and yet it was true; she had wandered into a thicker patch of forest, where the trees were older and closer than any she had seen, and there were bushes and herbs and trees on which she had never laid eyes.

Could it be that she had somehow strayed through the mists without knowing it, and was now on the mainland surrounding the Lake and the Island? No; she mentally retraced every step of her journey. There had been no mist. In any case, Avalon was almost an island, and if she had trespassed its borders, she would have come only to the water of the Lake. There was the hidden, almost dry, horse path, but she was nowhere near to that.

Even on that day when she and Lancelet had found Gwenhwyfar in the mists, they had been surrounded by marsh, not forest. No, she was not on the Isle of the Priests, and unless she had somehow developed the magical ability to walk over the Lake without swimming, she was not on the mainland either. Nor was she in any part of Avalon. She glanced up, looking to take her bearings by the sun, but she could not see the sun anywhere; it was full day now, but the light was like a soft radiance in the sky, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

Morgaine began to feel the coldness of fear. She was nowhere, then, in the world she knew. Was it possible that within the Druid magic which had removed Avalon from the very world, there was a further unknown country, a world around or past Avalon? Glancing at the thick trees, the ancient oaks and hazel, fern and willow, she knew she was not in any world she had ever seen. There was a single gnarled oak, old past guessing, that she could not possibly have failed to see and know. Certainly, so old and venerable a tree would have been marked as holy by the Druids. "By the Goddess! Where am I?"