The Mists of Avalon

  “Oh, my son, my son—” Uriens cried out, despairing.

  “Rest here, Father, you must be strong,” he said. “But now let me care for my mother. She is ill, too—”

  “Your mother, you call her!” Uriens cried out, starting upright and staring at Morgaine with implacable wrath. “Never again let me hear you call that abominable woman Mother! Do you think I know not that by her sorcery she led my good son into rebellion against his king? And now I think by her evil witchcraft she must also have contrived the death of Avalloch—aye, and of that other son she should have borne to me—three sons of mine has she sent down into death! Look out that she does not seduce you and betray you with her witchcraft, into death and destruction—no, she is not your mother!”

  “Father! My lord!” Uwaine protested, and held out a hand to Morgaine. “Forgive him, Mother, he does not know what he is saying, you are beside yourselves with grief, both of you—I beg you in God’s name to be calm, we have had enough grief this day—”

  But Morgaine hardly heard him. This man, this husband she had never wanted, he was all that was left of the wreck of her plans! She should have left him to die in the fairy country, but now he was doddering around in the fullness of his useless old life and Accolon was dead, Accolon who sought to bring back all that his father had pledged and forsworn, all that Arthur had vowed to Avalon and forsaken . . . and nothing was left but this ancient dotard. . . .

  She snatched the sickle knife of Avalon from her girdle and thrust away Uwaine’s restraining arms. Rushing forward, she raised the dagger high; she hardly knew what it was she meant to do as it flashed down.

  An iron grip caught her wrist, wrenching at the dagger. Uwaine’s hand came near to breaking her wrist as she struggled. “No, let it go . . . Mother!” he pleaded. “Mother, is the Devil in you? Mother, look, it is only Father . . . ah, God, can you not show some pity for his grief? He does not mean to accuse you, he is so miserable he does not know what he is saying, in his right mind he will know that what he says is wild nonsense . . . I do not accuse you either . . . Mother, Mother, listen to me, give me the dagger, dear Mother. . . .”

  The repeated cries of “Mother!” and the love and anguish in Uwaine’s voice finally reached down through the mist that blurred Morgaine’s eyes and mind. She let Uwaine wrench away the little knife, noticing, as if from a thousand leagues away, that there was blood on her fingers where the razor edge of the sickle had cut her as they struggled. His hand was cut too, and he put his finger in his mouth and sucked at it as if he had been ten years old.

  “Father dear, forgive her,” Uwaine begged, bending over Uriens, who lay white as death. “She is distraught, she loved my brother too—and remember how ill she has been, she should not have left her bed today at all! Mother, let me send for your women to take you back to bed—here, you will want this,” he said, pressing the sickle back into her hand. “I know you had it from your own foster-mother, the Lady of Avalon, you told me that when I was just a little boy. Ah, poor little mother,” he said, encircling her shoulders with his arms. She could remember when she had been taller than he, when he was a thin little boy with bones as small and green as a bird’s, and now he towered over her, holding her gently against him. “Mother dearest, my poor little mother, come now, come, don’t cry, I know you loved Accolon just as you loved me—poor Mother—”

  Morgaine wished that she could cry indeed, that she could let all this terrible grief and despair rush out of her with tears, as she felt Uwaine’s hot tears falling on her own forehead. Uriens too stood weeping, but she stood tearless and cold. The world seemed all grey, crumbling at the edges, and everything she looked on seemed to take on some giant menacing shape and yet to be very small and far away, as if she could pick it up like a toy . . . she dared not move lest it should fall to bits at her touch, she hardly knew it when her women came. They took her stiff and unresisting body and lifted her and carried her to bed, they took off the queenly crown and the gown she had put on for her triumph, and distantly she knew that her shift and underlinen were soaked again with blood, but it seemed not to matter. A long time after, she came to herself and knew that she was washed clean and dressed in a clean shift and lying in bed beside Uriens, with one of her women drowsing on a stool at her side. She raised herself a little and looked down at the sleeping man, his face sunken and reddened with weeping, and it was as if she looked on a stranger.

  Yes, he had been good to her in his own way. But now that is all past and my work in his land is done. I will never see his face again while I live, nor know where he lies in death.

  Accolon was dead and her plans in ruins. Arthur still bore the sword Excalibur and the enchanted scabbard which gave him a charmed life, and since the one to whom she had entrusted that task had failed her, escaping into death where she could not follow, then she herself must be the hand of Avalon to strike him down.

  Moving so silently that she would not have wakened a sleeping bird, she put on her clothes and tied the dagger of Avalon at her waist. She left all the fine gowns and jewels that Uriens had given her, wrapping herself in her plainest dark robe, not unlike the dress of a priestess. She found her little bag of herbs and medicines, and in the dark, by touch, she painted her brow with the dark moon. Then she took the plainest cloak she could find—not her own, embroidered with gold thread and precious stones, but a servant’s rough hooded wrap—and stole noiselessly down the stairs.

  From the chapel she heard sounds of chanting; somehow Uwaine had arranged this over Accolon’s body. Well, it did not matter. Accolon was free, what did it matter what mummery the priests made with the tenantless clay? Nothing mattered now but reclaiming the sword of Avalon. She turned her back on the chapel. One day she would have leisure to mourn him; now she must carry on where he had failed.

  She went silently into the stable and found her horse, managing to bind on the saddle with clumsy hands. She led the animal to the small side gate.

  She was almost too dizzy to climb into the saddle, and for a moment she sat swaying, wondering if she would fall. Should she wait, or try to summon Kevin to attend her? The Merlin of Britain was vowed to follow the will of the Lady. But she could not trust Kevin either, he had betrayed Viviane into the hands of those priests who now chanted their hymns over Accolon’s helpless body. She whispered to the horse, felt him break into a trot beneath her, and from the foot of the hill turned back to look her last on Camelot.

  I shall come here but once again in this life, and then there will no longer be a Camelot to which I might return. And even as she whispered the words, she wondered what they meant.

  As often as Morgaine had travelled to Avalon, she had only once set foot upon the Isle of the Priests; Glastonbury Abbey, where Viviane lay buried and Igraine, too, had spent her last years, was a stranger journey to her than the crossing of the mists into the hidden lands. There was a ferry there, and she gave the ferryman a small coin to row her across the Lake, wondering what the man would do if she suddenly rose as she would do with the Avalon barge and cast the spell that would lead it into the mists and bring it forth in Avalon . . . but she did not. Is it only that I cannot? she asked herself.

  The air was cool and fresh in the hour just before sunrise. Overhead, the sound of church bells was soft and clear, and Morgaine could see a long line of grey-robed forms pacing slowly toward the church. The brothers rose early to pray and chant their soft hymns, and for a moment Morgaine stood quiet, listening. Her mother, and Arthur’s, lay buried there. Viviane, too, had been laid to rest within the sound of those hymns. The musician in Morgaine, always quickly moved, listened to the soft song, borne on the early-morning breeze, and for a moment she stood motionless, tears burning her eyes; was she planning outrage on this holy soil? Let it go, let there be peace among you, children . . . it seemed that it was Igraine’s forgotten voice murmuring to her.

  Now all the grey forms were within the church. She had heard much of the abbey here . . . she knew there was a brother
hood of monks, and at some distance from them, a house of nuns where women dwelt, vowed to be virgins of the Christ till they died. Morgaine wrinkled her face in distaste; a God who chose to keep men and women with their thoughts on Heaven rather than on this world, which had been given to them for learning and growing in spirit, seemed alien to her, and now that she actually saw men and women mingling this way in worship with no thought of any other touch or communication, she felt sickened. Oh yes, there were holy virgins in Avalon—she herself had been secluded that way till the proper time, and Raven had given not only her body but her very voice to the Goddess for her use. There was her own foster-daughter, Lancelet’s daughter Nimue, who had been selected by Raven to dwell unseen in solitude . . . but the Goddess recognized that this was a rare choice, not one to be imposed on every woman who sought to serve her.

  Morgaine did not believe what some of her companions in Avalon had said, that monks and nuns merely pretended holiness and chastity to impress the peasants with their purity and behind the closed doors of their monasteries did whatever wantonness they would. Yes, she would have despised that. Those who had chosen to serve spirit rather than flesh should do so in truth; hypocrisy was always disgusting. But the knowledge that they really lived that way, that any force calling itself divine could prefer barrenness to fruitfulness—that seemed to her a terrible betrayal of the very forces which gave life to the world.

  Fools and worse, narrowing their lives and thus wishing to narrow all other lives to their own mean compass . . .

  But she must not linger here. She turned her back on the church bells and stole toward the guest house, her mind reaching out, calling on the Sight to lead her to where Arthur lay.

  There were three women in the guesthouse—one dozing beside the door, another stirring a kettle of gruel in the kitchen at the back, and yet a third at the door of the room where very dimly she could feel Arthur’s presence; he was deep in slumber. But the women in their somber robes and veils stirred as she came; they were holy women in their own way, and they had something very like the Sight—in her presence they could sense something inimical to their lives, the touch, perhaps, of the strangeness of Avalon.

  One of them rose and confronted her, asking in a whisper, “Who are you, and why have you come here at this hour?”

  “I am Queen Morgaine of North Wales and Cornwall,” Morgaine said in her low, commanding voice, “and I am here to see my brother. Will you dare to forbid me?”

  She held the woman’s gaze, then waved her hand in the simplest of the spells she had been taught, to dominate, and the woman sank back, unable to speak or forbid her. Later, she knew, the woman would tell a tale of enchantments and of fear, but in truth it was no more than this: the simple domination of a powerful will over one which had been given up, deliberately, to submission.

  A soft light burned inside the room, and by its dimness Morgaine could see Arthur, unshaven, haggard, his fair hair darkened with sweat. The scabbard was lying on the foot of his bed . . . he must have anticipated some such action on her part, he would not let it out of his reach. And in his hand he held the hilt of Excalibur.

  Somehow, somehow, his mind gave him warning. Morgaine was filled with dismay. He had the Sight, too; though he looked so fair and unlike the dark people of Britain, he too was of the ancient royal line of Avalon and he could reach her thoughts. She knew that if she reached out to take Excalibur from his hand, he would sense her intent, would wake—and he would kill her; she had no illusions about that. He was a good Christian, or so he thought himself, but he had been set on the throne to kill his enemies, and in some mystical way Morgaine only half understood, the sword Excalibur had grown entangled with the very soul and spirit of Arthur’s kingship. If it had not been so, if it had only been a sword, then would he have been willing to render it back to Avalon and had another made for himself, a stronger sword and a better . . . but Excalibur had become for him the visible and ultimate symbol of what he was as King.

  Or perhaps it is the sword itself which has entangled itself with Arthur’s soul and kingship and will kill me of its own will, should I seek to take it from him . . . and dare I set myself against the will of such a magical symbol? Morgaine started and told herself not to be fanciful. She laid her hand on her dagger; it was razor sharp and she could move, when she must, as swiftly as a striking snake. She could see the small vein in his throat and knew that if she could cut swift and deep to where the great artery lay beneath it, he would be dead almost before he could cry out.

  She had killed before this. She had sent Avalloch without hesitation to his death, and not three days since, she had slain the harmless child in her womb . . . he who lay sleeping before her was the greater traitor, surely. One stroke, swift and quiet . . . ah, but this was the child Igraine had placed in her arms, her first love, the father of her son, the Horned God, the King. . . . Strike, fool! For this you came here!

  No. There has been too much death. We were born from a single womb and I could not face my mother in the country beyond death, not with the blood of my brother on my hands, and for a moment, knowing she moved at the very edge of madness, she heard Igraine calling impatiently, Morgaine, I told you to take care of the baby . . .

  It seemed to her that he stirred in sleep, as if he too heard that voice; Morgaine slid the dagger back into its sheath, reached out her hand, and took the scabbard. This at least she had a right to take—with her own hands she had fashioned it, the spells she had woven into it were her own.

  She hid the scabbard under her cloak and went swiftly out through the thinning darkness to the ferry. As the ferryman rowed her across, she felt the prickling of her skin and seemed to see, like a shadow, the barge from Avalon . . . on the far shore they were all around her, the crew of the Avalon barge. Now quickly, quickly, she must get back again to Avalon . . . but the sun was rising and the shadow of the church lay across the water, and suddenly the sun flooded the landscape and with the dawn a ringing of church bells was everywhere. Morgaine stood as if paralyzed; through that sound she could not summon the mists, nor speak the spell.

  She said to one of the men, “Can you take us to Avalon? Quickly?”

  He said, shivering, “I cannot, lady. It grows harder, without a priestess to speak the spell, and even so, at dawn and at noon and at sunset, when they ring the bells for prayer, there is no way to cross the mists. Not now. The spell no longer opens the way at these times, although, if we wait till the bells are silent, it may be that we can manage to return.”

  Why, Morgaine wondered, should this be so? It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was . . . year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world.

  Oh yes, she could still call the mists . . . but not here, not where the shadow of the church’s spire lay across the water and the clamor of the bells struck terror into her heart. They were trapped on the shores of the Lake! And now she was aware that a boat was pushing out from the shores of the priests’ Isle, to cross the Lake and find her here. Arthur had wakened and found her scabbard gone from him, and now would pursue her. . . .

  Well, let him follow her as he could, there were other ways into Avalon where the shadow of the church did not prevent her passage. She climbed quickly into her saddle and began to ride along the shores of the Lake, circling; she would come at last to a place where, at least in summer, she could cross through the mists; the place where she and Lancelet had once found Gwenhwyfar strayed from the nunnery. It was not Lake but swampland, and they could get into Avalon by the back way, behind the Tor.

  She k
new that the little dark men were running behind her horse, that they could run for half a day at her horse’s tail if they must. But now she heard hoofbeats . . . she was pursued, Arthur was hard on her heels, and there were armed knights with him. She dug her feet into the horse’s side, but this was a lady’s horse, not intended for the chase. . . .

  She slid down her horse’s side, the scabbard in her hand. “Scatter,” she whispered to the men, and one by one it was as if they melted into the trees and mists . . . they could move like shadows if they must, and no man alive could find them if they did not want to be found. Morgaine grasped the scabbard in her hand and began to run along the shores of the Lake. In her mind she could hear Arthur’s voice, feel his rage. . . .

  He had Excalibur; she could feel it, like a great shining in her mind, the holy thing of Avalon . . . but the scabbard he should never bear again. She took it in both hands, whirled it over her head, and flung it, with all her strength, far out into the Lake, where she saw it sink into the deep and fathomless waters. No human hand could ever reclaim it—there it would lie till leather and velvet rotted and the silver and gold thread tarnished and twisted and at last the spells woven into them vanished utterly from the world.