Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"Well," Morgaine said, "you will have something to tell her of this marriage."

"I will tell her that you are alive and well," said Kevin, "since she has mourned you. She has not now the Sight to see for herself. And I shall tell her of her younger son who is Arthur's chiefest Companion; indeed," he said, his lips curving in a sarcastic smile, "watching him with Arthur, I think him like that youngest disciple who leaned at dinner upon the bosom of Christ ... ."

Morgaine could not keep back a small chuckle. "Yonder bishop would have you whipped for blasphemy, no doubt, if he heard you say so."

"Well, there sits Arthur like to Jesus with his Apostles, defending Christianity to all the land," Kevin said. "As for yonder bishop, he is an ignorant man."

"What, because he has no ear for music?" Morgaine had not realized how she had starved for the banter of casual equals like this; Morgause and the gossip of her ladies were so small, so bound by little things!

"I would say that any man without an ear for music is an ignorant ass indeed, since without it he does not speak but brays," Kevin retorted, "but it is more than that. Is this any time for a wedding?"

Morgaine had been so long away from Avalon that for a moment she did not know what he meant; but he pointed to the sky.

"The moon is waning from the full. This augurs ill for a wedding, and the lord Taliesin told them so. But the bishop would have it a little after the full so that all these people would have light to travel to their homes, and because it is the feast of one of their saints-I know not which! The Merlin spoke to Arthur as well, to tell him this marriage would bring him no joy-I know not why. But there was no honorable way to stop it, it seemed, all had gone too far."

Morgaine knew instinctively what the old Druid had meant; she too had seen the way in which Gwenhwyfar looked upon Lancelet. Was it a flash of the Sight which had caused her to shrink from Gwenhwyfar, that day upon Avalon?

She took Lancelet from me forever on that day, Morgaine thought, then, remembering that she had been under a vow to keep her maidenhood for the Goddess, looked within, in dull astonishment. Would she have been forsworn for his sake? She lowered her head in shame, almost fearing, for a moment, that Kevin could read her thoughts.

Viviane had said to her that a priestess must temper everything with her own judgment. It had been a right instinct, vows or no vows, which had led her to desire Lancelet ... would have done better, even by Avalon, to take Lancelet then; then would Arthur's queen have come to him with her heart untouched, for Lancelet would have formed that mystical bond with me, and the child I bore would have been born of the ancient royal line of Avalon ... .

But they had had other plans for her, and in the wreck of that she had left Avalon forever, borne a child who had destroyed any hope that she could ever give the Goddess a daughter to her shrine: after Gwydion, she could carry no other to life. If she had trusted her own instinct and judgment, Viviane would have been angry, but they would have found someone suitable for Arthur, somehow ... .

By doing right I did wrong; by obeying Viviane's word I helped with the wreck and disaster of this marriage, for wreck I now know it will be ... .

"Lady Morgaine," Kevin said gently, "you are troubled. Can I do anything to help you?"

Morgaine shook her head, biting back tears again. She wondered if he knew she had been given to Arthur in the kingmaking. She could not accept his pity. "Nothing, lord Druid. Perhaps I share your fears for this marriage made in a waning moon. I am concerned for my brother, no more. And I do pity the woman he has wedded." And as she spoke the words she knew they were true; for all her fear of Gwenhwyfar, not unmixed with hatred, she knew that she did pity her-marrying a man who did not love her, loving a man she could not wed.

If I take Lancelet from Gwenhwyfar, then I do my brother a service, and his wife as well, for if I take him away she will forget him. She had been trained to examine her own motives in Avalon, and now she cringed inwardly; she was not being honest with herself. If she took Lancelet from Gwenhwyfar, it would not be for her brother's sake nor for the sake of the kingdom, but purely and solely because she desired Lancelet herself.

Not for yourself. For the sake of another you could use your magic; but you must not deceive yourself. She knew love charms enough. It would be for Arthur's good! It would work to the advantage of the kingdom, she told herself repeatedly, if she took Lancelet from her brother's wife; but the unsparing conscience of a priestess kept saying: This you may not. It is forbidden to use your magic to make the universe do your will.

So, still, she would try; but she must do it unassisted, with no more than her own woman's wiles. She told herself fiercely that Lancelet had desired her once, without the aid of magic; she could certainly make him desire her again!

GWENHWYFAR WAS WEARY of the feasting. She had eaten more than she wanted, and although she had sipped only one glass of wine, she felt overly hot, and slid her veil back, fanning herself. Arthur had come to speak to many of his guests, moving slowly toward the table where she sat with the ladies, and finally reaching her; with him, Lancelet and Gawaine. The women slid along the benches, making room, and Arthur sat beside her.

"It is the first moment I have really had to speak to you, my wife." She held out her small hand to him. "I understand. This is more like a council than a wedding feast, my husband and my lord."

He laughed, somewhat ruefully. "All events in my life now seem to become so. A king does nothing in private. Well," he amended, smiling, seeing the flush that spread over her face, "almost nothing-I think there will be a few exceptions, my wife. The law requires that they must see us put to bed together, but what happens after that need concern no one but ourselves, I trust."

She lowered her eyes, knowing that he had seen her blush. Once again, with the flood of shame, she realized that she had forgotten him again, that she had been watching Lancelet and thinking, with the drowsy sweetness of a dream, how very much she wished it had been to him she had been joined in marriage this day-what damnable fate had made her a High Queen? His eyes fell on her with that hungry look, and she dared not look up at him. She saw him turn his eyes from her even before the shadow fell over them and the lady Morgaine stood there; Arthur made room for her at his side.

"Come and sit with us, my sister, there is always room for you here," he said, his voice so languorous that Gwenhwyfar wondered for a moment how much he had drunk. "When the feast has worn away a little, see, we have prepared something more for entertainment, perhaps something more stirring than the bard's music, beautiful though it is. I did not know you were a singer, my sister. I knew you were an enchantress, but not that you were a musician as well. Have you enchanted us all?"

"I hope not," Morgaine said, laughing, "else I would never dare sing again-what is that old saga, about the bard who sang the evil giants into a circle of ring stones, and there they stand, cold and stone to this day?"

"That one I have never heard," said Gwenhwyfar, "though in my convent there was a tale that these were evil folk who mocked the Christ on his way to his cross, and a saint raised his hand and turned them into crows who fly over the world crying out wailing jests forever ... and another tale of a saint who transformed a circle of sorceresses, at their evil rites, into a circle of stones."

Lancelet said lazily, "If I had leisure to study philosophy instead of being warrior or councillor or horseman, I think I would try to find who built the ring stones and why."