Gwenhwyfar looked pleased; Galahad was flushed with joy. But Morgaine was white with rage, and Morgause heard her whisper to Uriens. “He has dared to put the sacred sword of Avalon to such uses! I will not, as priestess of Avalon, sit and witness it in silence!” She began to rise, but Uriens gripped her wrist. She struggled silently, but old as Uriens was, he was a warrior, and Morgaine a little woman; for a moment Morgause thought he would break the small bones of Morgaine’s wrist, but she did not cry out or whimper. She set her teeth, and managed to wrench her wrist away. She said, loud enough that Gwenhwyfar could certainly hear, “Viviane died with her work unfinished. And I have sat idle while children unconceived grew to manhood and were knighted, and Arthur fell into the hands of the priests!”
“Lady,” said Accolon, leaning over her chair, “even you cannot disrupt this holy day, or they will serve you as the Romans served the Druids. Speak in private with Arthur, remonstrate with him there if you must—I am sure the Merlin will help you!”
Morgaine lowered her eyes. Her teeth bit into her lip.
Arthur embraced the Saxon kings one by one, welcoming them and leading them to seats near his throne. “Your sons, if they show themselves worthy, will be welcome among my Companions,” he said, and had his servants bring gifts—swords and fine daggers, a rich cloak for Adelric. Morgause took up a cake, sticky with honey, and put it between Morgaine’s clenched lips.
“You are too fond of fasting, Morgaine,” she said. “Eat this! You are pale, you will swoon where you sit!”
“It is not hunger that makes me pale,” said Morgaine, but she took the cake in her mouth. She drank a little wine too, and Morgause could see that her hands were shaking. On one wrist there were dark bruises left by Uriens’ fingers.
Then Morgaine rose. She said quietly to Uriens, “Do not worry, my most beloved husband. I will say nothing to offend you or our king.” Then, turning to Arthur, she said loudly, “My lord and brother! May I ask a favor of you?”
“My sister and the wife of my loyal subject king Uriens may ask what she will,” said Arthur genially.
“The least of your subjects, sir, may ask for audience. I ask that you will grant me such an audience,” she said. Arthur raised his eyebrows, but took his formal tone from her.
“Tonight before I sleep, if you will. I will receive you in my own room, with your husband if you wish.”
I wish, thought Morgause, that I could be a fly on the wall at that audience!
6
In the chamber Gwenhwyfar had assigned King Uriens and his family, Morgaine combed her hair again with leaden fingers and had her waiting-woman lace her into a fresh gown. Uriens was complaining that he had eaten and drunk too well and was not looking forward to the audience.
“Go to bed then,” she said. “It is I who has a thing to say to him, it has nothing to do with you.”
“Not so,” said Uriens. “I too was lessoned in Avalon. Do you think I take pleasure in seeing the holy things put to the service of the Christian God who would strip all other knowledge from the world? No, Morgaine, it is not you alone as priestess of Avalon who should show your outrage at this. It is the kingdom of North Wales, I myself as ruler, and Accolon, who is pledged to rule when I am gone.”
“Father is right, madam.” Accolon met her eyes as he said, “Our people trust us that we will not betray them, nor let church bells ring in their holy groves—” and for a moment it seemed, though she knew that neither she nor Accolon had moved, that they were standing together in one of the magical groves, joined before the Goddess. Uriens, of course, had seen nothing. He urged, “Let Arthur know, Morgaine, that the kingdom of North Wales will not fall meekly under the rule of the Christians.”
Morgaine shrugged. “As you wish.”
I was a fool, she thought. I was priestess at his kingmaking, I bore Arthur a son, I should have used that hold I had on the King’s conscience—made myself, not Gwenhwyfar, the ruler behind the throne. While I hid like an animal licking wounds, I lost my hold on Arthur. Where, at one time, I could have commanded, now I must beg, without even the power of the Lady!
She had already turned toward the door when there was a knocking; a servant went to open it, and Gwydion came in. He was still wearing the Saxon sword that Lancelet had given him at his knighting, but he had taken off his armor and wore a rich gown of scarlet; she had not known he could look so fine.
He saw her eyes light on him. “Lancelet gave it me. We were drinking in the hall, and word came from Arthur that the King wished to see me in his chambers. . . . I said that my only tunic was bedraggled and blood-soaked and he said we were of a size and he would lend me a gown. When I had it on, he said it became me better than it did him and I should keep it—that I had had few enough gifts at my knighting, while the King had given Galahad many rich presents. Does he know Arthur is my father, that he said that?”
Uriens blinked and looked surprised, but said nothing. Accolon shook his head. “No, stepbrother. Lancelet is the most generous of men, that is all. When Gareth came first to court, unknown to his own kinsmen, Lancelet gave him clothes and weapons, so that Gareth should be dressed according to his station. And if you should ask if Lancelet likes it overmuch, seeing his gifts on the bodies of handsome young men, well, that has been said too before now, though I know of no man at this court, young or old, who has ever had a word from Lancelet beyond knightly courtesy.”
“Is it so?” Gwydion asked, and Morgaine could see him taking this piece of information and putting it away like gold in a miser’s chest. “Now I recall,” he said slowly, “a tale that went about of some feast at Lot’s court when Lancelet was no more than a youth—something of a ballad made when they thrust a harp into his hand and bade him play, and he sang some lay of Rome or the days of Alexander, I know not what, of the love of knightly companions, and they jeered at him for it. Since then, his songs are all of the beauty of our queen, or knightly tales of adventure and dragons.”
Morgaine felt she could not bear the scorn in his voice. She said, “If you came to claim a gift for your knighting, I will speak with you when I have seen Arthur, but not now.”
Gwydion looked down at his shoes. It was the first time she had ever seen him less than self-assured and confident. “Mother, the King has sent for me too—may I go in your company?”
She liked him a little better, that he should confess his own vulnerability this way. “Arthur means you no harm, my son, but if it will please you to go with us before him, he can do no worse than send you away and say he would rather speak to you separately.”
“Come, then, stepbrother,” said Accolon, taking Gwydion’s arm in such a way that the younger man could see the serpents tattooed on Accolon’s wrists. “The King shall go first with his lady, and you and I will follow. . . .”
Morgaine, at Uriens’ side, thought that she liked it well that Accolon should befriend her son and acknowledge him brother. At the same time she felt herself shiver, and Uriens took her hand. “Are you cold, Morgaine? Take your cloak . . .”
In the King’s apartments a fire burned, and Morgaine heard the sound of a harp. Arthur sat in a wooden chair heaped with cushions. Gwenhwyfar was setting stitches in a narrow band which twinkled with gilt thread. The servant announced ceremoniously, “The King and Queen of North Wales, and their son Accolon, and sir Lancelet—”
Gwenhwyfar looked up at Lancelet’s name, then laughed and said, “No, though he is very like. Sir Mordred, is it not, that we saw knighted this day?”
Gwydion bowed to the Queen but did not speak. But in this family gathering Arthur was not one to stand upon ceremony.
“Sit down, all of you—let me send for wine—”
Uriens said, “I have had enough wine this day, Arthur, to float a ship down to the shore! None for me, thank you—perhaps the young men have better heads for it.”
Gwenhwyfar moved toward Morgaine, and Morgaine knew that if she did not speak now, Arthur would begin his parley with the men and she
would be expected to sit in a corner with the Queen and keep silence, or talk in whispers of women’s things—embroidery, servants, who at the court was breeding . . .
She gestured to the servant with the wine. “I will have a cup,” she said, remembering, like a pain within her, when as priestess of Avalon she had been proud to drink only of the Holy Well. She sipped and said, “I am deeply distressed at the welcome of the Saxon envoys, Arthur. No—” She silenced him as he would have spoken. “I do not speak as a woman meddling in affairs of state. I am Queen of North Wales, and Duchess of Cornwall, and what concerns the realm touches me too.”
“Then you should be glad for peace,” Arthur said. “I have worked all my lifetime, it seems, since I was old enough to hold a sword, to end the wars with the Saxons. At that time I believed the war would be ended by driving them back over the seas whence they came. But peace is peace, and if it comes by making treaty with them, let it be so. There are more ways to deal with a bull than roasting him for dinner. It is equally effective to geld him and make him pull your plow.”
“Or save him to serve your cows at stud? Will you ask your subject kings to marry their daughters to Saxons, Arthur?”
“That too, perhaps,” said Arthur. “Saxons are no more than men—do you call to mind that song Lancelet sang? They have the same longings for peace—they too have lived on lands ravaged and burned again and again. Will you say I should have fought on till the last of them was dead or driven out? I thought women longed for peace.”
“I too long for peace, and welcome it, even with Saxons,” Morgaine said, “but have you made them give up their Gods too, and accept your own, that you made them swear to you on the cross?”
Gwenhwyfar had been listening intently. “There are no other Gods, Morgaine. They have agreed to put aside the devils they worshipped and called Gods, that is all. Now they worship the one true God and the Christ sent in his name to save mankind.”
Gwydion said, “If you truly believe that, my lady and queen, then for you it is truth—all the Gods are One God and all the Goddesses one Goddess. But would you presume to declare one truth for all of mankind throughout the world?”
“Call you that presumption? It is the one truth,” Gwenhwyfar said, “and a day must come when all men everywhere will acknowledge it.”
“I tremble for my people that you say so,” said King Uriens. “I have pledged myself to protect the sacred groves, and my son after me.”
“Why, I thought you a Christian, my lord of North Wales—”
“And so I am,” said Uriens, “but I will not speak ill of another’s God.”
“But there are no such Gods,” Gwenhwyfar began.
Morgaine opened her mouth to speak, but Arthur said, “Enough of this, enough—I did not bid you here to discuss theology! If you have the stomach for that, there are priests enough who will listen and argue. Go you and convert them if you must! What did you come here to say, Morgaine? Only that you are wary of the good faith of the Saxons, oaths on the cross or no?”
“No,” Morgaine said, and as she spoke, she noted that Kevin was in the room, sitting in the shadows with his harp. Good; the Merlin of Britain could witness this protest in the name of Avalon! “I call the Merlin to witness, you had them swear an oath on the cross—and you transformed the holy sword of Avalon, Excalibur, the very sword of the Holy Regalia, into your cross for the oath! Lord Merlin, is this not blasphemy?”
Arthur said quickly, “It was only a gesture, to catch the imagination of everyone, Morgaine—such as the gesture Viviane made, when she bade me fight for peace in the name of Avalon with that selfsame sword.”
The Merlin said in his rich low voice, “Morgaine, my dear, the cross is a symbol older than Christ and venerated before ever there were followers of the Nazarene. In Avalon there are priests brought here by the patriarch Joseph of Arimathea, who worship at the side of the Druids. . . .”
“But they were priests who did not try to say that their God is the only God,” Morgaine said angrily, “and I doubt not that Bishop Patricius would silence them if he could, and preach only his own brand of bigotry!”
“Bishop Patricius and his beliefs are not at issue here, Morgaine,” said Kevin. “Let the uninitiated think that the Saxons swore on the cross of Christ’s sacrifice and death. We too have a sacrificed God, whether we see him in the cross, or in the sheaf of barley which must die to the earth and be raised again from the dead—”
Gwenhwyfar said, “Your sacrificed Gods, Lord Merlin, were sent only that mankind might be ready when the Christ came to die for man’s sins—”
Arthur moved his hand impatiently. “Be quiet, all of you! The Saxons swore to peace on a symbol meaningful to them—”
But Morgaine interrupted him. “It was from Avalon you received the sacred sword, and to Avalon that you swore an oath to preserve and guard the Holy Mysteries! And now you would make the sword of the Mysteries into the cross of death, the gallows for the dead! When Viviane came to court, she came to demand of you that you fullfil your oaths to Avalon. Then she was struck down! Now I am come to finish that work she left undone, and to demand from you that holy sword of Excalibur which you have presumed to twist into the service of your Christ!”
Gwenhwyfar said, “A day will come when all false Gods shall vanish and all pagan symbols shall be put to the service of the one true God and his Christ.”
“I did not speak to you, you canting fool,” said Morgaine furiously, “and that day will come over my corpse! You Christians have saints and martyrs—do you think Avalon will have none?” And as she spoke she shuddered, knowing that, unaware, she had spoken through the Sight, and there was the body of a knight, draped in black with a cross banner over his body. . . . She wanted to turn, as she could not do here in this company, and throw herself into Accolon’s arms.
“How you exaggerate all things, Morgaine!” said Arthur with an uneasy laugh, and that laugh maddened her, driving away both the fear and the Sight. She drew herself up to her full height, and knew that for the first time in many years she spoke mantled in all the power and authority of a priestess of Avalon.
“Hear me, Arthur of Britain! As the force and power of Avalon set you on the throne, so the force and power of Avalon can bring you down into ruin! Think well how you desecrate the Holy Regalia! Think never to put it to the service of your Christian God, for every thing of Power carries its own curse—”
“Enough!” Arthur had risen from his chair, and his frown was like a storm. “Sister or no, do not presume to give orders to the King of all Britain.”
“I do not speak to my brother,” she retorted, “but to the King! Avalon set you on the throne, Arthur, Avalon gave you that sword you have misused, and in the name of Avalon I now call on you to render it back again to the Holy Regalia! If you wish to treat it only as a sword, then call your smiths to make you another!”
There was a dreadful silence, and it seemed to her for a moment that her words were falling into the great echoing empty spaces between the worlds, that far away in Avalon the Druids must wake, that even Raven must stir and cry out against Arthur’s betrayal. But the first sound she heard was nervous laughter.
“What nonsense you are talking, Morgaine!” It was Gwenhwyfar who spoke. “You know Arthur cannot do that!”
“Do not interfere, Gwenhwyfar,” Morgaine said, with deadly menace. “It has nothing to do with you, except that if it was you who bade Arthur break oath to Avalon, beware!”
“Uriens,” said Gwenhwyfar, “will you stand idle and let your unruly wife speak so to the High King?”
Uriens coughed; his voice when he spoke sounded as nervous as Gwenhwyfar’s. “Morgaine, perhaps you are being unreasonable . . . Arthur made a dramatic gesture for political reasons, to catch the imagination of the crowd. If he did so with a sword of power, well, so much the better. The Gods can take care of their own worship, my dear—do you think the Goddess needs your help to protect her own?”
At that moment,
if Morgaine had had a weapon, she would have struck Uriens down. He had come to support her, and now he deserted her this way?
Arthur said, “Morgaine, since you are so troubled, let me say this for your ears alone: I intended no desecration. If the sword of Avalon also serves as a cross for an oath, does it not mean that Avalon’s powers are joined in the service of this land? So Kevin advised me—”
“Oh, aye, I knew him traitor when he had Viviane buried outside the Holy Isle—” Morgaine began.
“Be it so or otherwise,” said Arthur, “I gave the Saxon kings the gesture they wanted, to swear on my sword!”
“But it is not your sword!” Morgaine retorted, at white heat. “It is the sword of Avalon! And if you bear it not as you have sworn, then shall it be given into the hands of one who will be true to his oath—”
“Sword of Avalon it may have been a generation ago,” said Arthur, who was now as angry as Morgaine; he clenched his hand over the hilt of Excalibur, as if someone would take it from him that very moment. “A sword is his who uses it, and I have won the right to call it mine by driving forth all enemies from this land! I bore it in battle, and I won this land at Mount Badon—”