The Mists of Avalon

  “Lady, are you ill?”

  She shook her head, saying firmly, “No, I felt faint for a moment.” She drew a deep breath. Arthur was not in the boat—no, of course not, he had been taken by the Merlin on the Hidden Way. The Goddess is One—Mary the Virgin, the Great Mother, the Huntress . . . and I have a part in Her greatness. She made a banishing gesture and raised her arms again, swiftly drawing down the curtain of the mist through which they would reach Avalon.

  Night was falling, but, although Morgaine was hungry and weary, she made her way at once toward the Lady’s house. But at the door, a priestess stopped her when she would have entered.

  “The Lady can see no one at present.”

  “Nonsense,” Morgaine said, feeling the beginnings of anger through the merciful numbness and hoping it would hold until she had confronted Viviane. “I am her kinswoman; ask if I may come to her.”

  The priestess went away and quickly returned, saying, “The Lady said: ‘Tell Morgaine to go at once to the House of Maidens, and I will speak to her when the proper time comes.’ “

  For a moment, anger surged in Morgaine so great that she came near to shoving the woman out of the way and forcing herself into Viviane’s house. But awe still held her. She did not know what the penalty would be for a priestess who defied her sworn obedience, but through her flooding anger, a small, cold rational voice told her that she really did not want to find out this way. She drew a long breath, composing her face into the proper demeanor for a priestess, bowed obediently, and went away. The tears she had forced back, hearing church bells on the Lake, were beginning to break through, and for a moment she wished, wearily, that she could let them come. Now at long last, alone in the House of Maidens, in her own quiet room, she could weep if she must; but the tears would not come, only bafflement and pain and the anger which she had no way to express. It was as if her entire body and soul were locked into one great knot of anguish.

  It was ten days before Viviane sent for her; the full moon that had shone on the triumph of the Horned One had dwindled in the sky to a sickly dying splinter. By the time one of the young priestesses brought a message that Viviane required her presence, Morgaine had given way to smoldering anger.

  She has played upon me as I would play upon the harp. The words rang so in her mind that at first, hearing harp music from inside Viviane’s dwelling, she thought it the echo of her own bitter thoughts. Then she thought that Viviane was playing. But in the years she had been in Avalon she had learned much of music, and she knew the sound of Viviane’s harp; the older woman was, at best, an indifferent player.

  She listened now, wondering in spite of herself who the musician was. Taliesin? Before he was the Merlin, she knew, he had been the greatest of bards, renowned throughout the length of Britain. She had heard him play often enough on the great feast days, and for the most solemn of rituals; but now his hands were old. Their skill was not diminished, but even at his best he had never made such sounds as these—this was a new harper, one she knew she had never heard before. And she knew, even before she saw it, that this was a larger harp than even Taliesin played, and the strange musician’s fingers spoke to the strings as if he had enchanted them.

  Viviane had once told her some old tale from a far-off country, a tale of a bard whose strings had made the ring stones circle in their own dance and the trees drop their leaves in mourning, and when he went down into the country of the dead, the stern judges there relented and let his beloved dead go forth. Morgaine stood motionless outside the door as everything that was in her faded into the music. Suddenly she felt that all the weeping she had held back in the ten days past might come upon her again, that her rage might dissolve, if she let it, into tears which would wash it all away, leaving her weak as any girl. Abruptly she thrust the door back and entered without ceremony.

  Taliesin the Merlin was there, but he was not playing; his hands were clasped attentively in his lap as he bent forward, listening. Viviane too, in her simple house robes, was seated, not in her accustomed seat, but further from the fire; she had given the seat of honor to the strange harper.

  He was a young man, in the green robe of a bard; smooth-shaven in the Roman fashion, his curling hair darker than rusted iron. His eyes were deep-set under a forehead which seemed almost too big for him, and though Morgaine for some reason had expected them to be dark, they were instead an unexpected piercing blue. He frowned at the interruption, his hands stopping in the middle of a chord.

  Viviane too looked displeased, but ignored the discourtesy. “Come here, Morgaine, and sit by me. I know you are fond of music, and I thought you would like to hear Kevin the Bard.”

  “I was listening outside.”

  The Merlin smiled. “Come and listen, then. He is new to Avalon, but I think perhaps he may have much to teach us.”

  Morgaine went and sat on the little seat beside Viviane. The Lady of the Lake said, “My kinswoman Morgaine, sir; she too is of the royal line of Avalon. You see before you, Kevin, she who will be Lady here in years to come.”

  Morgaine made a startled movement; never before had she known that this was what Viviane planned for her. But anger drowned out her rush of gratification. She thinks she can say a kind or flattering word and I will rush to lick her feet like a bitch puppy!

  “May that day be far distant, Lady of Avalon, and may your wisdom long continue to guide us,” said Kevin smoothly. He spoke their language as if he had learned it well—she could just tell that it was not his own; a little hesitation and thought before the words, although the accent was almost flawless. Well, he had a musician’s ear, after all. He was, Morgaine surmised, about thirty, perhaps a little more. But she did not look too closely at him after that first quick surprise at the blueness of his eyes; her gaze was bent on the great harp at his knee.

  As she had guessed, it was somewhat larger than even the harp Taliesin played at the great festivals. It was made of a dark-reddish, gleaming wood, completely unlike the pale willow wood from which the harps of Avalon were fashioned, and she wondered if it was this which had given it the silken brilliant tone. The bowed edge curved in a line as graceful as a cloud, the pegs were carved of a curious pale bone, and it was painted and adorned with runic letters strange to Morgaine, who had learned, like any educated woman, to read and write in Greek characters. Kevin followed her close scrutiny and looked somewhat less displeased as he said, “You are admiring my lady.” He ran his hands caressingly over the dark wood. “I named her so when she was built for me—she was the gift of a king. She is the only woman, whether maiden or matron, whose caresses never weary me and of whose voice I never tire.”

  Viviane smiled at the harper. “Few men can boast of so loyal a mistress.”

  His smile was a cynical twist. “Oh, like all women, she will respond to whatever hand caresses her, but I think she knows that I can best make her thrill to my touch, and being like all women lecherous, I am sure she loves me best.”

  Viviane said, “It sounds to me as if you had no good opinion of women who are flesh and blood.”

  “Why, so I have not, Lady. Save for the Goddess—” He spoke the words with a faint lilt, not quite mockery. “I am content to have no mistress but My Lady here, who never chides me if I neglect her, but is always the same sweet paramour.”

  “Perhaps,” said Morgaine, raising her eyes, “you treat her rather better than you treat a woman of flesh and blood, and she rewards you as is your due.”

  Viviane frowned, and Morgaine knew she had trespassed by this bold speech. Kevin raised his head suddenly from the harp and met Morgaine’s eyes. For a moment he held her gaze, and she was astonished at his bitter hostility and with it, the sense that he understood something of her rage, had known his own and fought through it.

  He might have spoken, but Taliesin nodded to him, and he bent his face again over the harp. Now she noticed that he played it differently from most harpers, who held their small instruments across their body, playing with the left hand.
He set his harp between his knees, and leaned forward to it. It startled her, but as the music began to fill the room, like moonlight rippling from the strings, she forgot the strangeness of it, saw his face change and grow quiet and distant, without the mockery of his words. She decided that she liked him better when he played than when he spoke.

  There was no other sound in the room, only the harping that filled it to the rafters, as if the listeners had stilled even their breathing. The sound swept away all else, and Morgaine dropped her veil over her face and let the tears come. It seemed that in the music she could hear the flooding of the spring tides, the sweet awareness that had filled her body as she lay that night in the moonlight, awaiting the coming of the dawn. Viviane reached out to her and, as she had done when Morgaine was only a child, took her hand, gently stroking her fingers one after another. Morgaine could not stop her tears. She raised Viviane’s hand to her lips and kissed it. She thought, with a crushing sense of loss, Why, she is old, she has grown old since I came here . . . always before this, Viviane had seemed to her ageless, unchanging, like the very Goddess herself. Ah, but I too have changed, I am no longer a child . . . once she told me, when I came here, that a day would come when I would hate her as much as I loved her, and I could not believe it then. . . . She struggled against her weeping, afraid she would make some sound which would betray her and, even more, interrupt the flood of music. She thought, No, I cannot hate Viviane, and all her rage melted into sorrow so great that for a moment she thought she would break into the fiercest weeping. For herself, for the changes in herself, for Viviane who had been so beautiful, the very face of the Goddess, and who was now nearer to the Death-crone, and for the knowledge that she too, like Viviane, with the relentless years would one day herself come to stand as the crone; for the day she had climbed the Tor with Lancelet and lain there in the sun, hungering for his touch without clearly knowing what it was she wanted; and for something which had gone from her, irrevocably. Not virginity alone, but a trust and belief she would never know again. And Morgaine knew that beside her Viviane, too, was weeping silently behind her veil.

  She glanced up. Kevin was motionless, only his fingers alive on the strings; then the sighing madness of the music shivered into silence, he raised his head, and his fingers swept the strings, plucking them gaily to a merry tune, one sung by the barley sowers in the fields, with a dancing rhythm, and words that were far from decorous. This time he sang. His voice was strong and clear, and Morgaine, under cover of the dancing music, sat up and began to watch his hands, pushing her veil aside and contriving to wipe away the betraying tears as she did so.

  Then she noticed that for all their skill, there was something strangely amiss with his hands. They seemed somehow misshapen, and studying them, she noted that one or two of the fingers lacked a second joint, so that he played deftly with the stubs, and that the little finger was missing entirely from his left hand; and all along the hands, beautiful and supple as they seemed when he moved them, were odd discolorations. As he set down the harp, leaning to steady it, his sleeve fell away from his wrist, and she could see hideous white patches there, like the scars of burns or some ghastly mutilating wounds. Now that she looked on him closely, she could see that his face had a fine network of scars along chin and jawline. He saw her staring and raised his head, meeting her eyes again and holding them with a hard, angry stare. Morgaine looked away, flushing; after the music which had searched her very soul, she would not have wounded his feelings.

  “Well,” Kevin said abruptly, “My lady and I are always glad to sing to those who love her voice, but I do not suppose you called me here entirely to entertain you, madam; nor you, my lord Merlin.”

  “Not entirely,” said Viviane in her rich, low voice, “but you have given us a delight I shall remember for many years.”

  “And I,” Morgaine said. She felt as shy now before him as she had been bold before. Nevertheless she went forward, to look more closely at the great harp, and said, “I have never seen one made after this fashion.”

  “That I can well believe,” Kevin said, “for I had it made after my own design. The harper who taught me my craft threw up his hands in horror as if I had blasphemed his Gods, and swore it would make an unholy clamor, fit only to frighten away enemies. Like the great war harps, twice as tall as a man, that were dragged on carts up the hills in Gaul, and left there in the wind to make ghostly noises, so that they say even the legions of Rome were frightened. Well, I played one of those war harps, and a grateful king gave me leave to have a harp made exactly as I chose—”

  Taliesin broke in. “He speaks the truth,” he said to Viviane, “though I did not believe it when I heard it first—what man and mortal could play one of those monsters?”

  “I did it,” Kevin said, “and so the king had my lady made for me. I have a smaller one to the same design, but not so fine.”

  “Indeed it is beautiful,” Morgaine said. “What are the pegs? Are they seal bone?”

  He shook his head. “They are carved, so I am told, from the teeth of a great beast that lives in the warm countries far to the south,” he said. “I only know that the material is fine and smooth, yet hard and durable. It is more costly than gold, though less gaudy.”

  “You do not hold it as I have ever seen a harp played—”

  “No,” Kevin said with his twisted smile, “I have but small strength in my arms, and I had to experiment to find how I could best do so. I saw you look at my hands. When I was six years old, the house where I lived was burned over my head by the Saxons, and I was pulled out too late. No one thought I would live, but I surprised them all, and since I could neither walk nor fight, they set me in a corner and decided that with my broken hands"—he spread them out quite dispassionately before him—"perhaps I could learn to spin and weave among the women. But I showed small disposition for that, and so one day an old harper came by, and in return for a bowl of soup, set himself to amuse a cripple. When he showed me the strings, I tried to play. And I did make music, after a fashion, so he got his bread that winter and the next by schooling me to play and sing, and said he could put me in the way of earning a livelihood with my music. And so for ten years I did nothing but sit in the corner and play, until my legs at length grew strong enough that I could learn to walk again.” He shrugged, and pulled a length of cloth from behind him, wrapping up the harp in it and sliding it into a leather case embroidered with signs. “And then I became harper to a village, and at length to a king. When the old king died, his son had no ear for music, and I thought it best to get well out of the kingdom before he began to look covetously at the gold on my harp. Then I came to the Druid isle, and there I studied bardcraft, and at last I was sent to Avalon—and here I find myself,” he added, with a final shrug, “but still you have not told me why you bade me attend you, Lord Merlin, nor these ladies.”

  “Because,” said the Merlin, “I am old, and the events we set in motion this night may not come into their full flower for another generation. And when that time comes, I shall be gone.”

  Viviane leaned forward and said, “Have you had warning, Father?”

  “No, no, my dear. I would not waste the Sight on such a matter; we do not consult the Gods to tell if the next winter will bring snowfalls. And as you brought Morgaine here, so I brought Kevin the Bard, so that there may be one younger than myself to follow what may happen when I am gone. So hear my news: Uther Pendragon lies dying at Caerleon, and where the lion falls, there the kites will gather. And we have had word brought to us that there is a great army massing in the Kentish countries, where the treaty people have decided that now is the moment to rise and take the rest of Britain from us. They have sent for mercenaries from the mainland, north of Gaul, to join them in overthrowing our people and undoing what Uther has done. And this is the time for all our people to fight behind the banner we have worked so many years to raise. There is not much time—they must have their king and have him now. There is not another moon to waste, or t
hey will be upon us. Lot wants the throne, but the Southmen will not follow him. There are others—Duke Marcus from Cornwall, Uriens in North Wales—but not one of them can gain the support outside his own lands, and we could well be like the donkey who starved to death between two bales of fodder, not knowing which to eat first. . . . We must have the Pendragon’s son, young though he is.”

  Kevin said, “I had never heard that the Pendragon had a son. Or has he recognized that son his wife bore to Cornwall, soon after they were married? Uther must have been in unseemly haste to marry, if he could not even wait until she bore her child before taking her to his bed—”