Only her sensible Gwydion had not gone on the quest, but had remained at Camelot, close to Arthur’s side. Would that Gawaine and Gareth had had the wit to do the same! Now at last her sons had come into the place that should always have been theirs with Arthur.
Yet she had another way to know what was happening. Viviane had told her, in her youth at Avalon, that she had not the patience nor the hardihood for initiation into the Mysteries, and Viviane—she knew it now—had been right; who would wish to forsake life for so long as that? For many years she had believed that the doors of magic and of the Sight were closed to her, save for such little tricks as she had mastered on her own. And then she had begun to understand, when first she had used her sorcery to discover Gwydion’s parentage, that the magical art was there, awaiting her, needing nothing but her will; having nothing to do with the complex Druidical rules and limitations about its use, or lies about the Gods. It was simply a part of life, there and accessible, nothing to do with good or evil, but available to anyone who had the will and the ruthlessness to use it.
All those who pretend to religions, Morgause thought, wish only to keep the sources of power in their own hands. But now I have them freely and of my own making, without binding myself by oaths about their use or direction.
So now, on this night, shut away from her servants, she made her preparations. She felt a dispassionate sympathy for the white dog she had brought in, and a moment of genuine revulsion as she cut its throat and set forth the dish of hot blood she had caught; but, after all, it was her own dog, as much hers as a pig she might have slaughtered for the table, and the power of spilled blood was stronger and more direct than the power built up by the long prayers and disciplines of the Avalon priesthood. Before the fireplace, one of her servant-women was lying, drugged and ready, before the fireplace; not one, this time, for whom she had any affection or any real need. She had learned that lesson when last she had attempted this. She spared a regretful thought for the waste of a good spinning woman that time; at least this one would be no loss to anyone, not even the cook who had half a dozen more helpers than she needed.
She still felt a certain squeamishness at the preliminaries. The blood marking her hands and forehead was unpleasantly sticky, but it seemed to her that she could almost see, billowing forth from the blood like smoke, the thin streams of magical power. The moon had shrunk to the thinnest of glimmers in the sky, and she knew the one who awaited her call in Camelot would be ready. At the precise moment the moon moved into the proper quarter of the sky, she poured the rest of the blood into the fire and called three times aloud.
“Morag! Morag! Morag!”
The drugged woman by the fireside—Morgause vaguely recalled that her name was Becca, or something like that—stirred, her vague eyes taking on depth and purpose, and for a moment, as she arose, it seemed that she was wearing the elegant garb of one of Gwenhwyfar’s waiting-women. Her voice, too, was not the rough dialect of the dim-witted country girl, but the careful speech of a southern court lady.
“I am here at your call. What would you have of me, Queen of the Darkness?”
“Tell me of the court. What of the Queen?”
“She is much alone since Lancelet has gone, but often calls young Gwydion to her. She has been heard to say that he is like the son she never had. I think she has forgotten that he is the son of Queen Morgaine,” said the girl, the careful speech so incongruous from the empty-eyed, rough-handed kitchen girl in her shapeless smock of sacking.
“Do you still put the medicine in her wine at bedtime?”
“There is no need, my queen,” said the alien voice which came through and behind the kitchen girl. “The Queen’s courses have not come upon her now for more than a year, and so I have ceased to give her the drug. But in any case the King comes very seldom to her bed.”
So Morgause’s last fear could now be quieted—that somehow, against all odds, Gwenhwyfar would bear a belated child to endanger Gwydion’s position at court. Besides, the King’s subjects would never accept a child for king, after the long peaceful years of Arthur’s reign. Nor, she supposed, would Gwydion have any scruples about making an end to a small, unwanted rival. But it was better not to chance it; Arthur himself, after all, had escaped all Lot’s plotting and her own, and had lived to be crowned.
I have waited too long. Lot should have been King of these lands many years ago, and I Queen. Now there is none to stop me. Viviane is gone; Morgaine is old; Gwydion will make me Queen. I am the only woman living to whose word he will listen.
“What of sir Mordred, Morag? Is he trusted by the Queen, by the King?”
But the voice grew thick and heavy. “I cannot stay—Mordred is often with the King—once I heard the King say to him—eh, my head aches, what am I doing here by the fire? Cook will skin me alive . . .” It was the idiot voice of Becca, thick and sullen, and Morgause knew that far away in Camelot, Morag had sunk back into her bizarre dream in which she faced the faraway Queen of Lothian or the Queen of Fairy. . . .
Morgause seized the pan of blood, shaking the last remaining drops into the fire. “Morag, Morag! Hear me, stay, I command!”
“My queen,” came the faraway ladylike voice, “sir Mordred has always at his side one of the damsels of the Lady of the Lake, they say that she is somehow kin to Arthur—”
Niniane, daughter of Taliesin. Morgause thought, I did not know she had left Avalon. But why now should she stay?
“Sir Mordred has been named captain of horse while Lancelet is gone from court. There are rumors . . . Eh, the fire, my lady, will you set the whole of the castle afire?” Becca was rubbing her eyes and whimpering on the hearth. Infuriated, Morgause gave her a savage push, and the girl fell screaming into the fire; but she was still bound and could not pull herself away from the flames.
“Damn her, she will wake the whole household!” Morgause reached out to pull the girl from the flames, but her dress had caught fire, and her shrieks were dreadful, striking Morgause’s ears like red-hot needles. She thought, with a trace of pity, Poor girl, there is nothing to be done for her now—she would be so burnt, we could not help her even if she should live! She pulled the screaming, struggling girl out of the fire, not regarding the burns on her own hands, and leaned close for a moment, laying her head on the girl’s brow as if to soothe her; then, with a single stroke, she cut her throat from ear to ear. Blood poured into the fire, and the smoke rushed high up into the chimney.
Morgause felt herself shaking with the unexpected power, as if she were spreading out through the whole of the room, through the whole of Lothian, through the whole of the world . . . she had never dared so much before, but now it had come to her, unsought. It seemed that she hovered bodiless over all the land. Again after years of peace there were armies on the road, and on the west coast hairy men in high-beaked dragon ships landed, plundering and burning cities, laying monasteries waste, carrying away women from the walled convents where they lived . . . like a crimson wind, sweeping down even to the borders of Camelot . . . she was not sure whether what she saw now was even at this moment moving in the land or was yet to come.
She cried out through the growing darkness, “Let me see my sons on the quest of the Grail!”
Darkness filled the room, sudden, black and thick, with a curious smell of burning, while Morgause crouched, beaten to her knees by the rush of power. The smoke cleared a little, with a small stirring and coiling in the darkness, like the boiling of a pot. Then Morgause saw, in the widening light, the face of her youngest son, Gareth. He was dirty and travel-worn, his clothing ragged, but he was smiling with the old gaiety, and as the light grew, Morgause could see what he was looking at—the face of Lancelet.
Ah, Gwenhwyfar would not fawn on him now, not this sickly and wasted man with grey in his hair and the traces of madness and suffering in the lines round his eyes . . . he looks indeed like something hung up in the field to scare birds from the grain! The old hatred surged through her: it was intolerable,
that her youngest and best son should think kindly of this man, should love him and follow him as he had when he was a little child prattling to carved wooden knights. . . .
“No, Gareth"—she heard the voice of Lancelet, soft in the curdled silence in the room—"you know why it is that I will not return to court. I will not speak of my own peace of soul—nor yet of the Queen’s—but I am vowed to follow the Grail for a year and a day.”
“But this is madness! What the devil is the Grail, against the needs of our king? I was sworn to him, and so were you, years before any of us heard of the Grail! When I think of our King Arthur at court with none of his faithful men save such as are lame or infirm or cowardly . . . times, I wonder if perhaps it was the work of the fiend, masquerading as a work of God and come to scatter Arthur’s Companions out of his hands!”
Lancelet said quietly, “I know that it came from God, Gareth. Do not try to deprive me of that.” And for a moment it seemed that again the light of madness flickered in his eyes.
Gareth said, and his voice was oddly subdued when he spoke, “But when God does the same work as the Devil? I cannot think it is God’s will that all Arthur has wrought in more than a quarter of a century should thus be cast aside! Do you know there are wild Northmen landing on the shores, and when the men of those lands cry out for Arthur’s legions to come and help them, there are none to send to their aid? And so the Saxon armies are gathering again, while Arthur sits idle in Camelot and you seek for your soul—Lancelet, I beg you, if you will not return to court, at least seek for Galahad and make him return to Arthur’s side! If the King is old and his will grows weak—and God forbid I should ever have to say so much—then perhaps your son may stand in his place, for all men know he is the King’s adopted son and heir!”
“Galahad?” Lancelet’s voice was somber. “Think you I have much influence with my son? You and the others swore to follow the Grail for a year and a day, yet I rode for a time with Galahad, and I know it is with him even as he said on that day, that if need be he would follow it lifelong.”
“No!” Gareth leaned from his horse and gripped Lancelet by the shoulders. “That is what you must make him see, Lancelet, that at all costs he must return to Camelot! Ah, God, Gwydion would call me traitor to my own blood, and I love Gwydion well, but—how can I say this even to you, my cousin and my heart’s brother? I trust not that man’s power over our king! The Saxons who send to Arthur find themselves always speaking with him, they think of him as the sister’s son of Arthur, and among them, know you not, the sister’s son is heir—”
Lancelet said, with a gentle smile, “Recall then, Gareth, that it was even so with the Tribes before the Romans came—we are not Roman, you and I.”
“But will you not fight for the rights of your own son?” demanded Gareth.
“It is for Arthur to say who shall follow him on his throne,” said Lancelet, “if indeed there shall be any king after him at all. Sometimes, it seemed to me when I wandered among the visions of my madness—nay, I mean not to speak of that, but I think perhaps it was a little akin to the Sight—that a darkness would fall over this land when Arthur had gone.”
“And then it should be as if Arthur had never been? What of your vow to Arthur?” Gareth demanded, and Lancelet sighed.
“If it is your will, Gareth, I will seek out Galahad.”
“As quickly as you can,” Gareth urged, “and you must persuade him that his loyalty to the King is beyond all quests and Grails and Gods—”
Lancelet said sadly, “And if he will not come?”
“If he does not,” Gareth said slowly, “then perhaps he is not the King we will need after Arthur. In that case, we are in God’s hands, and may he help us all!”
“Cousin, and more than brother,” said Lancelet, embracing him again, “we are all in God’s hands whatever comes. But I vow to you, I will seek for Galahad and bring him with me to Camelot, I swear it. . . .”
And then the stirring and the brightness were gone, Gareth’s face faded and went into the dark, and for a moment it was only Lancelet’s eyes, lustrous and so like Viviane’s that for a moment Morgause felt that her sister and priestess was looking on her with frowning disapproval, as if to say, Morgause, what have you done now? Then that too was gone, and Morgause was alone with her fire, still belching smoke from which all the clouds of magical power had faded, and the limp, bloodless body of the dead woman lying on the hearth.
Lancelet! Lancelet, damn him, he could still play havoc with her plans! Morgause felt her hate like a pain that struck through, a tightness in her throat that travelled down her body to her very womb. Her head was aching, and she felt deathly sick with the aftermath of magic. She wanted nothing more than to sink down on the hearth and sleep for hours, but she must be strong, strong with the powers of sorcery she had called to herself; she was Queen of Lothian, Queen of Darkness! She opened the door and flung the body of the dog onto the midden heap there, disregarding the sickening stench.
She could not handle the body of the kitchen girl alone. She was about to call out for help, when she stopped, her hands to her face, still marked and sticky with blood; they must not see her like this. She went to the basin and ewer of water, poured it out and washed her face and hands and braided her hair afresh. There was nothing she could do about the bloodstains on her dress, but now that the fire was out, there was little light in the room. At last she called out for her chamberlain, and he came to the door, avid curiosity in his face.
“What is it, my queen? I heard shouts and screams—is anything amiss here?” He held up the light, and Morgause knew very well how she looked to him—beautiful, dishevelled—as if she could see herself through his eyes in the aftermath of the Sight. I could stretch forth my hand now and have him over the girl’s body, she thought, feeling the strange cramping pain and pleasure of desire, and inwardly she laughed, but she put it willfully aside; there would be time enough for that.
“Yes, there is grave trouble. Poor Becca—” She indicated the limp corpse. “She fell into the fire, and when I would have helped her burns, she grabbed the knife from my hand to cut her throat—she must have been maddened with the agony, poor thing. See, her blood is all over me.”
The man cried out in consternation and went to examine the lifeless form of the girl. “Well, well, the poor lass had not all her wits. You should not have let her in here, madam.”
Morgause was disturbed at the hint of reproach she heard in the man’s voice; had she actually thought of taking this one to her bed? “I did not call you hither to question my deeds. Take her out of here and have her decently buried, and send my women to me. I ride at dawn for Camelot.”
Night was falling, and a thick drizzling rain was blurring the road. Morgause was cold and wet, and it only annoyed her when her captain of horse came up and asked, “Are you sure, madam, that we are on the right road?”
She had had her eye on this one for months; his name was Cormac, and he was tall and young, with a hawklike face and strong shoulders and thighs. But it seemed to Morgause now that all men were stupid, she would have done better to leave Cormac at home and lead this party herself. But there were things even the Queen of Lothian could not do.
“I do not recognize any of these roads. Yet I know from the distance we have ridden this day that we must be near to Camelot—unless you have somehow lost your way in the fog and we are riding northward again, Cormac?”
Under ordinary conditions she would have welcomed another night on the road, in her comfortable pavilion, with all the comforts she could provide, and perhaps, when all her women slept, this Cormac to warm her bed.
Since I found the way to sorcery, all men are at my feet. Yet now, it seems, I care for none . . . strange, I have sought out no man since word came to me of Lamorak’s death. Am I growing old? She recoiled from the thought, and resolved she would have Cormac with her tonight . . . but first they must reach Camelot; she must act there to protect Gwydion’s interest and to advise him. Sh
e said impatiently, “The road must be here, dolt. I have made this journey more times than I have fingers on my two hands! Do you think me a fool?”
“God forbid, madam. And I too have ridden this road often, yet somehow, it seems, we are lost,” Cormac said, and Morgause felt she would choke with her exasperation. Mentally she retraced the road she had travelled so often from Lothian, leaving the Roman road and taking the well-travelled way along the edge of the marshes to Dragon Island, then along the ridge till they should strike the road to Camelot, which Arthur had had broadened and resurfaced until it was almost as good as the old Roman road.
“Yet somehow you have missed the Camelot road, dolt, for there is that old fragment of Roman wall . . . somehow or other we are half an hour’s ride past the turn to Camelot,” Morgause scolded. There was no help for it now but to turn the whole caravan about, and already darkness was closing down. Morgause drew up her hood over her head and urged her plodding horse through the grey lowering twilight. At this time of year there should have been another hour of sunlight, but there was only the faintest glimmer of light in the west.