Arthur was riding in pursuit, Excalibur naked in his hand . . . but she and her escort were gone. Morgaine drew herself into silence, a part of shadow and tree as if some essential part of herself had gone into Fairy; while she stayed there motionless, covered in the silence of a priestess, no one from the mortal world could see so much as her shadow. . . .
Arthur shouted her name.
“Morgaine! Morgaine!” A third time he called, loud and angry; but the very shadows were still, and at last, confused from riding in circles—once he came so close that Morgaine could feel the breath of his horse—he wearied, and called to his escort, and they came to find him swaying in his saddle, the bandages slowly soaking through with blood, and they led him away the way they had come.
Then Morgaine raised her hand, and once again the normal sound of bird and wind and tree came back into the world.
Morgaine speaks . . .
In later years I heard the tale told of how I took the scabbard by sorcery, and how Arthur rode after me with a hundred knights, and I too had a hundred fairy knights all round me; and when Arthur’s pursuit grew near, I turned myself and my men into ring stones. . . . Someday, no doubt, they will add that when I had done, I called for my chariot with the winged dragons, and flew away into Fairy.
But it was not so. It was no more than this, that the little people can hide in the forests and become one with tree and shadow, and that day I was one of them, as I had been taught in Avalon; and when Arthur had been taken away by his escort, near to fainting with the long pursuit and the cold in his wound, I said farewell to the men of Avalon, and rode away to Tintagel. But when I came to Tintagel it mattered little to me what they did in Camelot, for I was sick even to death for a long time.
I know not, even now, what ailed me; I know only that summer faded and the leaves began to fall while I lay in my bed, tended by the servants I had found there, neither knowing nor caring whether I would ever rise. I know I had a low fever, a weariness so great that I could not force myself to sit upright or to eat, a heaviness of mind so great that I cared not whether I would live or die. My servants—one or two of them I recalled from the days when I lived there as a little child, with Igraine—thought me enchanted; and it may even have been true.
Marcus of Cornwall sent to me in homage, and I thought, Arthur’s star rides high, no doubt he believes that I have come here at Arthur’s will, and he will not—now—challenge Arthur even for these lands he believes his own. A year ago, I might have laughed at this, or even made common cause with Marcus, promising him lands here in return for leading a party of the disaffected against Arthur. And even now it crossed my mind; but with Accolon dead, it seemed to matter nothing. Arthur had Excalibur . . . if the Goddess wished that it should be taken from him, she would have to come and take it herself, for I had failed, I was her priestess no more. . . .
. . . I think it was that which hurt me worst, that I had failed, failed Avalon, that she had not put forth her hand to help me do her will. The strength of Arthur and the priests and of the traitor Kevin had been stronger than the magic of Avalon, and there was no one left.
No one left. No one. I mourned without ceasing for Accolon, and for the child whose life had barely begun before it was ended, cast aside like offal. I mourned too for Arthur, lost to me now, and my enemy, and, unbelievably, even for Uriens, and for the wreck of my life in Wales, the only peace I had ever known.
I had killed or thrust from me or lost to death everyone in this world I had ever loved. Igraine was gone, and Viviane lost to death, murdered and lying among the priests of their God of death and doom. Accolon was gone, the priest I had consecrated to do that last battle against the Christian priests. Arthur was my enemy; Lancelet had learned to hate and fear me, and I was not guiltless for that hate. Gwenhwyfar feared and loathed me, even Elaine was gone now . . . and Uwaine, who had been as my own son, hated me too. There was none to care whether I should live or die, and so I did not care either. . . .
The last of the leaves had gone and the fearful storms of winter had begun to beat over Tintagel when one day one of my women came to me and said that a man had come to seek me.
“At this season?” I looked out beyond the window, where unceasing rain beat down from skies as grey and bleak as the inside of my own mind. What traveller would come through this bitter weather, struggling through storms and darkness? No; whoever he might be, I cared not. “Say to him that the Duchess of Cornwall sees no man, and send him away.”
“Into the rain on a night such as this will be, lady?” I was startled that the woman should protest; most of them feared me for a sorceress, and I was content to have it so. But the woman was right; Tintagel had never failed in hospitality when it was in the hands of my long-dead father, or of Igraine . . . so be it. I said, “Give the traveller hospitality fitting his rank, and food, and bed; but tell him that I am ill, and cannot receive him.”
She went away and I lay watching the fierce rain and darkness, feeling its cold breath through the slit of the window and trying to find my way back into the peaceful blankness where now I felt most like myself. But after a very little, the door opened again and the woman returned, and I started upright, shaking with anger, the first emotion I had let myself feel in many weeks.
“I have not summoned you, and I did not bid you return! How dare you?”
“I am charged with a message for you, lady,” she said, “a message I didn’t dare say no to, not when one of the high ones speaks. . . . He said, ‘I speak not to the Duchess of Cornwall but to the Lady of Avalon, and she cannot refuse the Messenger of the Gods when the Merlin seeks audience and counsel.’ ” The woman paused and said, “I hope I’ve got it right . . . he made me say it over twice to be sure I had it all.”
Now, against my will, I felt the stirrings of curiosity. The Merlin? But Kevin was Arthur’s man, surely he would not have come like this to me. Had he not aligned himself firmly with Arthur and with the Christians, traitor to Avalon? But perhaps some other man now held that office, Messenger of the Gods, Merlin of Britain . . . and now I thought of my son Gwydion, or Mordred as I supposed I must now think of him; perhaps this was his office, for he alone would now think of me as Lady of Avalon. . . . After a long silence, I said, “Tell him I will see him, then.” After a moment I added, “But not like this. Send someone to dress me.” For I knew that I was too weak to put on my own clothes. But I would not receive any man this way, weak and ill and in my bedchamber; I, who was priestess of Avalon, would manage to stand on my feet before the Merlin, even if what he brought was sentence of death for all my failure . . . I am still Morgaine!
I managed to rise, to have my dress put on and my shoes, and my hair braided down my back and covered with the veil of a priestess; I even painted, after the woman’s clumsy hands had twice botched it, the symbol of the moon on my forehead. My hands—I noted it incuriously, as if they belonged to someone else—were shaking, and I was weak enough that I let the woman give me her arm as I crawled down the steep stairs. But the Merlin should not see my weakness.
A fire had been built in the hall; the fire was smoking a little, as always here when it rained, and through the smoke I could see only a man’s figure seated by the fire, turned away from me, draped in a grey cloak—but at his side stood a tall harp I could not mistake; from My Lady I knew the man. Kevin’s hair was all grey now, but he dragged his stooped body upright as I came in.
“So,” I said, “you call yourself still Merlin of Britain, when you serve only Arthur’s will and defy that of Avalon?”
“I know not what to call myself now,” said Kevin quietly, “save perhaps servant of those who serve the Gods, who are all One.”
“Why have you come here, then?”
“Again, I know not,” said the musical voice I had loved so well, “save perhaps in repayment of some debt laid down before these hills were raised, my dear.” Then he raised his voice to the serving-woman.
“Your lady is ill! Get her to a seat!??
?
My head was swimming and a grey mist seemed to waver around me; the next thing I knew I was seated by the fire across from Kevin, and the woman was gone.
He said, “Poor Morgaine, poor girl,” and for the first time since Accolon’s death had turned me to stone, I felt that I could weep; and clenched my teeth against the weeping, for if I shed one tear, I knew that everything within me would melt, and I would cry and cry and cry and never cease crying until I melted into a very lake of tears. . . .
I said tightly, clenched, “I am no girl, Kevin Harper, and you have won your way to my presence falsely. Now say what you will say, and go your way.”
“Lady of Avalon—”
“I am not,” I said, and remembered that the last time I saw this man, I had driven him from my presence, shrieked at him, called him traitor. It seemed not to matter; perhaps it was fate that two traitors to Avalon should sit here before this fire, for I too had betrayed my oath to Avalon . . . how dared I judge Kevin?
“What then are you?” he asked quietly. “Raven is old, and silent now for years. Niniane will never have the power to rule. You are needed there—”
“When last we spoke,” I interrupted him, “you said Avalon’s day was done. Why then should there be any to sit in Viviane’s place except a child half-fitted for that high office, waiting for the day when Avalon fades forever into the mists?” I felt a scalding bitterness in my throat. “Since you have forsaken Avalon for the banner of Arthur, will it not make your task easier if none reigns in Avalon save an ancient prophetess and a powerless priestess . . . ?”
“Niniane is Gwydion’s love and his creature,” said Kevin. “And it comes to me that your voice and your hands are needed there. Even if Avalon is fated to pass away into the mists, will you refuse to pass with it? I never thought you a coward, Morgaine.” And then he raised his eyes to mine and said, “You will die here, Morgaine, die of grief and exile . . .”
I turned my face away and said, “For that I came here . . .” and for the first time I knew indeed that I had come here to die. “All I have tried to do is in ruin, I have failed, failed . . . it should be your triumph, Merlin, that Arthur has won.”
He shook his head. “Ah, no, my dear, no triumph,” he said. “I do what the Gods have given me to do, no more, and you do the same. And indeed if your doom shall be to see the end of the world we have known, why then, my dearest love, let that doom find us each in our appointed place, serving what our God has given us to serve. . . . It is laid on me to recall you to Avalon, Morgaine, I know not why. My task would be simpler with only Niniane there, but, Morgaine, your place is in Avalon, and mine where the Gods shall decree. And in Avalon you can be healed.”
“Healed.” I said it in contempt. I did not care.
Kevin looked at me sadly. “My dearest love,” he had called me. It seemed to me now that he was the one person alive who knew me as I was; before every other person alive, even Arthur, I had worn a different face, seeking always to appear other and better than I was; even to Viviane, that she might find me more worthy to be a priestess. . . . For Kevin I was Morgaine, thus and no other. It came to me that even if I stretched forth my hand to him as the Death-crone he would see nothing but my own face, Morgaine. . . . I had always felt that love was other than this, was that burning I had felt for Lancelet, for Accolon. For Kevin I had felt little save for that detached compassion, friendship, kindness; what I had given him had meant but little to me, and yet . . . and yet he alone had taken thought to come to me, to care whether or no I died here of grief.
But how dared he break in upon my peace, when I had almost won through to that utter quiet which was beyond life? I turned away from him and said, “No.” I could not come back to life again, could not struggle and suffer, and live with the hatred of those who had once loved me. . . . If I lived, if I returned to Avalon, I must enter again into a death struggle with Arthur whom I loved, I must see Lancelet still in Gwenhwyfar’s prison of love. I had ceased to care, I could endure no further the pain that was in my heart. . . .
No. I was here, in silence and peace, and before long, I knew it now, I would pass even further into peace . . . the dizziness that was near to death was drawing closer and ever closer, and this Kevin, this traitor, would bring me back? I said, “No,” again and turned away, my hands covering my face. “Leave me in peace, Kevin Harper. Hither I came to die. Leave me now.”
He did not move, nor did he speak, and I sat very still, my veil over my face. After a little time, surely, now he would arise and leave me, for I had not the strength to go forth from him. And I . . . I would sit here until I was carried back to my bed by the women, and then I would never rise again.
And then, into the silence, I heard the soft sound of the harp. Kevin played, and after a moment he sang.
I had heard a part of this ballad, for he had sung it often at Arthur’s court, of that bard in ancient times, sir Orfeo, who made the trees to dance and the stones on the plain to stand in a ring and dance, and all the beasts of the wood to come and lay themselves at his feet when they should have rent him with their claws. But beyond that, today, he sang the other part of the song, which was a Mystery, and which I had never heard before. He sang of how the initiate, Orfeo, had lost her that he loved, and had descended into the Afterworld and spoken there before the Lords of Death, and pleaded for her, and was given permission to go into the dark lands, and bring her forth, and then he had found her there on the Undying Plains. . . .
And then his voice spoke from the soul . . . and I heard what seemed my own voice pleading.
“Seek not to bring me forth, when I am resigned to stay here in death. Here within these undying lands all is at rest, with neither pain nor struggle; here can I forget both love and grief.”
The room faded away around me; no longer could I smell the smoke from the fireplace, the chill breath of rain beyond the window, I was no longer conscious of my own body, ill and dizzy where I sat. It seemed to me that I stood in a garden filled with scentless flowers and eternal peace, with only the distant voice of the harp breaking unwillingly through the silence. And that harp sang to me, undesired.
It sang of the wind from Avalon, with the breath of apple blossom and the smell of ripened apples in their season; it brought to me the cool freshness of the mist over the Lake, and the sounds of the running deer deep in the forest where the little folk live still, and it brought me the sun-soaked summer where I lay in the sun beneath the ring stones, with Lancelet’s arms round me and the blood of life rising like sap within my veins for the first time. Then I felt again in my arms the heavy softness of my little son, his soft hair against my face, his milky breath sweet and soft . . . or was it Arthur himself in my lap, clinging to me, his little hands patting my cheek . . . again Viviane’s hands touched my brow in blessing, and I felt myself a bridge between earth and sky as I stretched my own hands forth in invocation . . . high winds swirled through the grove where I lay with the young stag in the darkness of the eclipse, and Accolon’s voice spoke my name. . . .
And now it was not the harp alone but the voices of the dead and the living crying out to me: “Return again, return, life itself is calling you with all its pleasure and pain . . .” and then a new note came into the voice of the harp.
“It is I who calls you, Morgaine of Avalon . . . priestess of the Mother . . .”
And I raised my head, seeing not Kevin’s twisted body and sorrowing features, but where he had stood was Someone, tall and shining, a sunlit glory about his face and in his hands the shining Harp and Bow. I caught my breath before the God, as the voice sang on . . . “Return to life, return again to me . . . you who have sworn . . . life awaits you beyond this darkness of death. . . .”
I struggled to turn away. “It is not the God who can command me, but the Goddess. . . .”
“But,” said the familiar voice in the silence of that eternity, “you are the Goddess and it is I who call you . . .” and for a moment, as if in the calm waters o
f the mirror of Avalon, I saw myself robed and crowned with the high crown of the Lady of Life. . . .
“But I am old, old, I belong now to death, not to life . . .” I whispered, and in the silence, words heard again and again in ritual suddenly came to life on the lips of the God.
“. . . she will be old and young as it shall please her . . .” and before my eyes my own mirrored face was again young and fair as the maiden who had sent forth the young stag to challenge the running deer . . . yes, and I had been old when Accolon came to me, yet I had sent him forth to the challenge heavy with his child . . . and even old and barren, yet life pulsed within me as within the eternal life of the earth and the Lady . . . and the God stood before me, the eternal One who summoned me forth to life . . . and I took one step and then another, and then I was climbing, climbing from the darkness, following the distant notes of the harp that sang to me of the green hills of Avalon, and the waters of life . . . and then I found I was on my feet, reaching for Kevin . . . and he put the harp gently aside and caught me, half-fainting, in his arms. And for a moment the shining hands of the God burned me . . . and then it was only Kevin’s sweet, musical, half-mocking voice that said, “I cannot hold you, Morgaine, as well you know,” and he placed me gently into my chair. “When did you eat last, Morgaine?”