Again Morgaine could hear the chanting of the monks—Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison . . . Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy. . . . The Holy Regalia were but tokens, surely the Goddess had let this befall them as a sign that Avalon needed these things no more, that they should go into the world and be in the service of men. . . .
The flaming cross burned still before Morgaine’s eyes; she covered them and turned away from the light. “Even I cannot abrogate the Merlin’s vow. He swore a great oath and made the Great Marriage with the land in the King’s stead, and now he is forsworn and his life forfeit. But before I deal with the traitor, I must deal with the treachery. The Regalia must be returned to Avalon, even if I must bring them hither again with my own hands. I will go forth to Camelot at dawn.” And she suddenly saw her plan complete as Nimue whispered, “Must I go forth too? Is it mine to avenge the Goddess?”
She, Morgaine, would deal with the Holy Regalia. They had been left in her care, and if only she had taken her proper place here instead of revelling in sorrow and considering her own comfort, this could never have come to pass. But Nimue should be the instrument of the traitor’s punishment.
Kevin had never seen Nimue. Of all those who dwelt on Avalon, the Merlin had never seen that one who dwelt in seclusion and silence. And as always transpires when the Goddess brings down punishment, it should be the Merlin’s own undefended fortresses which should bring him to ruin.
She said slowly, clenching her fists . . . how had she ever softened to that traitor? . . . “You shall go forth to Camelot, Nimue. You are Queen Gwenhwyfar’s cousin and the daughter of Lancelet. You will beg her that you may dwell among her ladies, and beg her to keep it secret, even from King Arthur, that you have ever dwelt in Avalon. Pretend even, if you must, that you have become a Christian. And there you will come to know the Merlin. He has a great weakness. He believes that women shun him because he is ugly and because he is lame. And for the woman who shows no fear or revulsion of him, for that woman who shows him again the manhood he craves and fears, he will do anything, he would give his very life. . . . Nimue,” she said, looking straight into the girl’s frightened eyes, “you will seduce him to your bed. You will bind him to you with such spells that he is your slave, body and soul.”
“And then—” said Nimue, trembling, “what then? Must I kill him?”
Morgaine would have spoken, but Niniane spoke first.
“Such death as you could give would be all too swift for such a traitor. You must bring him, enchanted, to Avalon, Nimue. And there he shall die a traitor’s cursed death within the oak grove.”
Trembling, Morgaine knew what fate awaited him—to be flayed alive, then thrust living within the cleft of the oak, and the opening stopped with wattle and daub, leaving only enough space so that his breath would not fail, lest he die too quickly. . . . She bowed her head, trying to conceal her shudder. The blinding sun was gone from the water; the sky dripped with pale dawn clouds. Niniane said, “Our work is done here. Come, Mother—” but Morgaine pulled herself free.
“Not done—I too must go forth for Camelot. I must know to what use the traitor has put the Holy Regalia.” She sighed; she had hoped never again to go forth from the shore of Avalon, but there was no other to do what must be done.
Raven put out her hand. She was shaking so terribly that Morgaine feared she would fall; and now she whispered, her ruined voice only a distant hiss and scratching like wind against dead branches, “I too must go . . . it is my fate, that I shall not lie where all those before me have lain in the enchanted country . . . I ride with you, Morgaine.”
“No, no, Raven,” Morgaine protested. “Not you!” Raven had never set foot off Avalon, not in fifty years . . . surely she could not survive the journey! But nothing she could say shook Raven’s determination; shivering with terror, she was adamant: she had seen her destiny and must go with Morgaine at any cost.
“But I am not going as Niniane would travel, in the pomp of priestess garb, in the litter of Avalon, riding in state to Camelot,” she argued. “I am going in disguise as an old peasant woman, as Viviane travelled so often in the old days.” But Raven shook her head and said, “Any road you can travel, Morgaine, I too can travel.”
Morgaine still felt a deadly fear—not for herself, but for Raven. But she said, “Be it so,” and they made ready to ride. And later that day they took their secret ways out of Avalon, Nimue travelling in state as the kinswoman of the Queen, riding on the main roads, and Morgaine and Raven, wrapped in the somber rags of beggar women, out of Avalon by the back ways and side roads, making their way on foot toward Camelot.
Raven was stronger than Morgaine had believed; as they made their way, day by day, slow-paced and afoot, at times it seemed that she was the stronger. They begged broken meats at farm doors, they stole a bit of bread left for a dog at the back of a farmstead, they slept once in a deserted villa and one night beneath a haystack. And on that last night, for the first time on their silent journey, Raven spoke.
“Morgaine,” she said, when they were lying side by side, wrapped in their cloaks, under the shadow of the hay, “tomorrow is Easter at Camelot, and we must be there at dawn.”
Morgaine would have asked why, but she knew Raven could give her no answer but this—that she had seen it as their fate. And so she answered, “Then we shall leave here before dawn. It is no more than an hour’s walk from here—we might have kept walking and slept in the shadow of Camelot, if you had told me this before, Raven.”
“I could not,” Raven whispered. “I was afraid.” And Morgaine knew that the other woman was weeping in the darkness. “I am so frightened, Morgaine, so frightened!”
Morgaine said brusquely, “I told you that you should have remained in Avalon!”
“But I had the work of the Goddess to do,” whispered Raven. “In all these years I have dwelt in the shelter of Avalon, and now it is Ceridwen, our Mother, who demands my all in return for all the shelter and safety I have had from her . . . but I am afraid, so afraid. Morgaine, hold me, hold me, I am so frightened—”
Morgaine clasped her close and kissed her, rocking her like a child. Then, as if they entered together into a great silence, she held Raven against her, touching her, caressing her, their bodies clinging together in something like frenzy. Neither spoke, but Morgaine felt the world trembling in a strange and sacramental rhythm around them, in no light but the darkness of the dark side of the moon—woman to woman, affirming life in the shadow of death. As maiden and man in the light of the spring moon and the Beltane fires affirmed life in the running of spring and the rutting which would bring death in the field to him and death in childbearing to her; so in the shadow and darkness of the sacrificed god, in the dark moon, the priestesses of Avalon together called on the life of the Goddess and in the silence she answered them. . . . They lay at last quiet in each other’s arms, and Raven’s weeping was stilled at last. She lay like death, and Morgaine, feeling her heart slowing to stillness, thought, I must let her go even into the shadow of death if that is the will of the Goddess. . . .
And she could not even weep.
No one took the slightest notice of two peasant women, no longer young, in the turmoil and tumult about the gates of Camelot this morning. Morgaine was used to this; Raven, who had lived so long in seclusion even on quiet Avalon, turned white as bone and tried to hide herself under her ragged shawl. Morgaine also kept her own shawl about her—there were some who would recognize the lady Morgaine, even with her hair streaked with white and in the garb of a peasant woman.
A drover striding through the yard with a calf ran into Raven and came near to knocking her down, and he cursed her when she only stared at him in dismay. Morgaine said quickly, “My sister is deaf and dumb,” and his face changed.
“Ah, poor thing—look, go up by there, they’re giving everybody a good dinner at the lower end of the King’s hall. You two can creep in at that door and watch them when they come in—the King’s got some big thing planned
with one of the priests in the hall today. You’ll be from upcountry and not know his ways? Well, everyone in this countryside knows that he makes it a custom—he never sits down to his great feasts unless there’s some great marvel arranged, and we heard today that there is to be something truly marvelous.”
I doubt it not, Morgaine thought disdainfully, but she only thanked the man in the rough country dialect she had used before and drew Raven along with her toward the lower hall, which was filling rapidly—King Arthur’s generosity on feast days was well known, and this would be the best dinner many people had all year. There was a smell of roasting meat in the air, and most of the people jostling round her commented greedily on it. As for Morgaine, it only made her feel sick, and after one look at Raven’s white terrified face, she decided to withdraw.
She should not have come. It was I who failed to see the danger to the Holy Regalia; it was I who failed to see that the Merlin was traitor. And when I have done what I must do, how will I manage to flee to Avalon with Raven in this condition?
She found a corner where they would be disregarded, but where they could see reasonably well what was happening. At the higher end of the room was the great mead-hall table, the Round Table which was already almost legendary in the countryside, with the great dais for the King and Queen, and the painted names of Arthur’s Companions over their customary places. On the walls hung brilliant banners. And after years spent in the austerity of Avalon, this all seemed gaudy and garish to Morgaine.
After a long time there was a stir, and then the sound of trumpets somewhere, and a whisper ran through the jostling crowd. Morgaine thought, It will be strange to see the court from outside, after being a part of it for so long! Cai was opening the great doors to the upper end of the hall, and Morgaine shrank—Cai would know her, whatever garb she wore! But why should he even look in her direction?
How many years had she spent quietly drifting in Avalon? She had no idea. But Arthur seemed even taller, more majestic, his hair so fair that no one could have told whether or no there were silver strands among the carefully combed curls. Gwenhwyfar, too, although her breasts sagged under the elaborate gown, bore herself upright and seemed slim as ever.
“Look how young the Queen looks,” muttered one of Morgaine’s neighbors, “yet Arthur married her the year I had my first son, and look at me.” Morgaine glanced at the speaker, bent and toothless, stooped like a bent bow. “I heard that witch sister of the King, Morgaine of the Fairies, gave them both spells to keep their youth. . . .”
“Spells or no,” mumbled another toothless crone tartly, “if Queen Gwenhwyfar had to muck out a byre night and morning, and bear a babe every year and suckle it in good times and bad, there’d be none of that beauty left, bless her! Things are as they are, but I wish some priest’ud tell me why she gets all the good in life and I get all the misery?”
“Stop grumbling,” said the first speaker. “You’ll have your belly full today, and get to see all the lords and ladies, and you know what the old Druids used to say about why things are what they are. Queen Gwenhwyfar up there gets fine gowns and jewels and a queen’s business because she did good in her last lives, and the likes of you and me are poor and ugly because we were ignorant, and someday, if we mind what we do in this life, there’s a better fortune for us too.”
“Oh, aye,” grunted the other old woman, “priests and Druids are all alike. The Druid says that, and the priest says if we do our duty in this life we’ll go to Heaven and live with Jesus and feast with him there and never come back to this wicked world at all! It all winds up the same, whatever the lot of them say—some are born in misery and die in misery, and others have it all their own way!”
“But she’s none so happy, I’ve heard,” said another of the group of old women wedged in together. “For all her queening it, she’s never borne a single babe, and I have a good son to work the farm for me, and one daughter married to the man at the next farm, and another who’s servant to the nuns on Glastonbury. And Queen Gwenhwyfar has had to adopt sir Galahad there, who’s the son of Lancelet and of her own cousin Elaine, for Arthur’s heir!”
“Oh, aye, that’s what they tell you,” said a fourth old woman, “but you know and I know, when Queen Gwenhwyfar was absent from court in the sixth or seventh year of his reign—something like that—don’t you think they were all counting on their fingers? My stepbrother’s wife was a kitchen woman here at court, and he said it was common talk all round here that the Queen spent her nights in another bed than her husband’s—”
“Keep quiet, old gossip,” said the first speaker. “Just let one of the chamberlains hear you say that aloud, and you’ll be ducked in the pond for a scold! I say Galahad’s a good knight and he’ll make a good king, long live King Arthur! And who cares who his mother is? I think meself he’s one of Arthur’s by-blows—he’s fair like him. And look yonder at sir Mordred—everybody knows he’s the King’s bastard son by some harlot or other.”
“I heard worse than that,” said one of the women. “I heard Mordred’s the son of one of the fairy witches and Arthur took him to court in pawn for his soul, to live a hundred years—you’ll see, he’ll not age, sir Mordred there. Just look at Arthur, he must be past fifty and he could be a man in his thirties!”
Another old woman spoke a barnyard obscenity. “What’s it to me, all of that? If the Devil were about business like that, he could have made yonder Mordred in Arthur’s own image so anyone could accept him as Arthur’s son! Arthur’s mother was of the old blood of Avalon—did you never see the lady Morgaine? She was dark too, and Lancelet, who’s his kin, was like that. . . . I’d rather believe what they said before, that Mordred is Lancelet’s bastard son by the lady Morgaine! You’ve only got to look at them—and the lady Morgaine pretty enough in her way, little and dark as she was.”
“She’s not among the ladies,” one of the women remarked, and the woman who had known a kitchen woman at court said authoritatively, “Why, she quarreled with Arthur and went away to the land of Fairy, but everybody knows that on All Hallows Night she flies round the castle on a hazel twig and anyone who catches sight of her will be struck blind.”
Morgaine buried her face in her ragged cloak to smother a giggle. Raven, hearing, turned an indignant face to Morgaine, but Morgaine shook her head; they must keep still and not be noticed.
The knights were seating themselves in their accustomed places. Lancelet, as he took his seat, raised his head, looking sharply round the hall, and for a moment it seemed to Morgaine that he sought her out where she stood, that his eyes met hers—shivering, she ducked her head. Chamberlains were moving at both ends of the hall, pouring wine for the Companions and their ladies, pouring good brown beer from great leather jacks down among the peasants crowded in at the lower end. Morgaine held out her cup and Raven’s, and when Raven refused, she said in a harsh whisper, “Drink it! You look like death, and you must be strong enough for whatever is coming.” Raven put the wooden cup to her lips and sipped, but she could hardly swallow. The woman who had said that the lady Morgaine was pretty enough in her way asked, “Is she sick, your sister?”
Morgaine said, “She is frightened, she has never seen the court before.”
“Fine, aren’t they, the lords and ladies? What a spectacle! And we’ll get a good dinner soon,” said the woman to Raven. “Hey, doesn’t she hear?”
“She is not deaf, but dumb,” Morgaine said again. “I think maybe she understands a little of what I say to her, but no one else.”
“Now you come to speak of it, she does look simpleminded, at that,” said the other woman, and patted Raven on the head like a dog. “Has she always been like that? What a pity, and you have to look after her. You’re a good woman. Sometimes when children are like that, their folks tie them to a tree like a stray dog, and here you take her to court and all. Look at the priest in his gold robes! That’s the bishop Patricius, they say he drove all the snakes out of his own country . . . think of that! Do you think
he fought them with sticks?”
“It’s a way of saying he drove out all the Druids—they are called serpents of wisdom,” Morgaine said.
“How’d the likes of you know a thing like that?” Morgaine’s interrogator scoffed. “I heard for sure that it was snakes, and anyhow all those wise folk, Druids and priests, they hang together, they wouldn’t quarrel!”
“Very likely,” said Morgaine, not wanting to draw further attention to herself, her eyes going to Bishop Patricius. Behind him there was someone in the robes of a monk—a hunched figure, bent over and moving with difficulty—now what was the Merlin doing in the bishop’s train? She said, her need to know overcoming the risk of attracting attention, “What’s going to happen? I thought surely they would have heard their mass in the chapel this morning, all the lords and ladies—”
“I heard,” said one of the women, “that since the chapel would hold so few, there would be a special mass here today for all the folk before meat—see, the bishop’s men carrying in that altar with the white cloth and all. Sssshh—listen!”
Morgaine felt that she would go mad with rage and despair. Were they going to profane the Holy Regalia beyond any possibility of cleansing, by using it to serve a Christian mass?