The Mists of Avalon

  Arthur took her by the arm. He said, “Morgaine—my sister—” and she thought that in another moment she would weep . . . as he had wept in her arms, that morning when first he knew how Viviane had trapped them both. . . .

  Her mouth was dry and her eyes burned. She said, “I spoke—of your son—only to comfort Gwenhwyfar, Arthur. She feared you could not give her a child—”

  “Would you had spoken so to comfort me,” said Arthur, but his smile was only a grimace stretching his mouth. “All these years have I thought I could beget no son, even to save my kingdom—Morgaine, now you must tell me the truth.”

  Morgaine drew a long breath. In the dead silence inside the room she could hear a dog barking somewhere beyond the windows, and some small insect chirping somewhere. At last she said, “In the name of the Goddess, Arthur, since you will have it said at last—I bore a son to the King Stag, ten moons after your kingmaking on Dragon Island. Morgause has him in her keeping, and she swore to me that you should never hear it from her lips. Now you have had it from mine. Let it end here.”

  Arthur was white as death. He caught her into his arms, and she could feel how he was trembling. Tears were streaming down his face and he made no effort to check them or wipe them away. “Ah, Morgaine, Morgaine, my poor sister—I knew I had done you a great wrong, but I dreamed never that it was so great a wrong as this—”

  “You mean this is true?” Gwenhwyfar cried out. “That this unchaste harlot of a sister of yours, she is such a one as would practice her whore’s arts on her own brother—!”

  Arthur swung round to her, his arm still around Morgaine. He said in a voice she had never heard before, “Be silent! Speak not one word against my sister—it was neither her doing nor her fault!” He drew a long, shaking breath, and Gwenhwyfar had time to hear the echo of her own ugly words.

  “My poor sister,” Arthur said again. “And you have borne this burden alone, nor ever laid the fault rightly at my door—no, Gwenhwyfar,” he said earnestly, turning to her again, “it is not what you think. It was at my kingmaking, and neither of us knew the other—it was dark, and we had not seen one another since I was so small that Morgaine could carry me about in her arms. She was to me no more than the priestess of the Mother, and I was no more to her than the Horned One, and when we knew one another, it was too late and the harm was done,” he said, and it was as if he forced his voice past tears. And he held Morgaine close to him, crying out, “Morgaine, Morgaine, you should have told me!”

  “And again you think only of her!” Gwenhwyfar cried. “Not of your own greatest of all sins—she is your own sister, the child of your own mother’s womb, and for such a thing as this God will punish you—”

  “He has punished me indeed,” said Arthur, holding Morgaine close. “But the sin was unknowing, with no desire to do evil.”

  “Maybe it is for this,” Gwenhwyfar faltered, “that he has punished you with barrenness, and even now, if you repent and do penance—”

  Morgaine pulled herself gently free of Arthur. Gwenhwyfar watched, with a rage she could not speak, as Morgaine dried his tears with her own kerchief, almost an absentminded gesture, the gesture of a mother or older sister, with nothing in it of the harlotry she wished to see. She said, “Gwenhwyfar, you think too much of sin. We did no sin, Arthur and I. Sin is in the wish to do harm. We came together by the will of the Goddess, for the forces of life, and if a child came to birth, then it was made in love, whatever brought us together. Arthur cannot acknowledge a son begotten on his sister’s body, it is true. But he is not the first king to have a bastard son whose very existence he cannot admit. The boy is healthy and well, and safe in Avalon. The Goddess—for that matter, your God—is not a vindictive demon, looking about to punish somebody for some imagined sin. What happened between Arthur and me, it should not have happened, neither he nor I would have sought it, but done is done—the Goddess would not punish you with childlessness for the sins of another. Can you blame your own childlessness on Arthur, Gwen?”

  Gwenhwyfar cried, “I do so! He has sinned, and God has punished him—for incest, for fathering a son on his own sister—for serving the Goddess, that fiend of foul abominations and lechery. . . . Arthur,” she cried, “tell me you will do penance, that you will go on this holy day and tell the bishop how you have sinned, and do such penance as he may lay on you, and then perhaps God will forgive you and he will cease to punish us both!”

  Arthur, troubled, looked from Morgaine to Gwenhwyfar. Morgaine said, “Penance? Sin? Do you truly believe that your God is an evil-minded old man, who snoops around to see who lies in bed with another’s wife?”

  “I have confessed my sins,” Gwenhwyfar cried, “I have done penance and been absolved, it is not for my sins that God punishes us! Say you will do so too, Arthur! When God gave you the victory at Mount Badon, you swore to put aside the old dragon banner, and rule as a Christian king, but you left this sin unconfessed. Now do penance for this too, and let God give you the victory of this day as he did at Mount Badon—and be freed of your sins, and give me a son who can rule after you at Camelot!”

  Arthur turned and leaned against the wall, covering his face with his hands. Morgaine would have moved toward him again, but Gwenhwyfar cried, “Keep away from him, you—! Would you tempt him into sin further than this? Have you not done enough, you and that foul demon you call your Goddess, you and that evil old witch whom Balin rightly killed for her heathen sorceries—?”

  Morgaine shut her eyes, and her face looked as if she were about to weep. Then she sighed and said, “I cannot listen to you curse at my religion, Gwenhwyfar. I cursed not yours, remember that. God is God, however called, and always good. I think it sin to believe God can be cruel or vindictive, and you would make him meaner than the worst of his priests. I beg you to consider well what you do before you put Arthur into the hands of his priests with this.” She turned, her crimson draperies moving silently around her, and left the room.

  Arthur turned back to Gwenhwyfar as he heard Morgaine go. At last he said, more gently than he had ever spoken to her, even when they lay in each other’s arms, “My dearest love—”

  “Can you call me so?” she said bitterly, and turned away. He followed her, laying a hand on her shoulder and turning her round to face him.

  “My dearest lady and queen—have I done you such a wrong?”

  “Even now,” she said shaking, “even now all you can think of is the wrong you have done to Morgaine—”

  “Should I be happy at the thought of what I have brought on my own sister? I swear to you, I knew her not until the thing was done, and then, when I recognized her, it was she who comforted me, as if I had been the little boy who used to sit in her lap. . . . I think if she had turned on me and accused me, as she had every right to do, I would have gone away and drowned myself in the Lake. But I never thought what might come to her . . . I was so young, and there were all the Saxons and all the battles—” He spread his hands helplessly. “I tried to do as she bade me—put it behind us, remember that what we had done was done in ignorance. Oh, I suppose it was sin, but I did not choose to sin. . . .”

  He looked so wretched that for a moment Gwenhwyfar was tempted to say what he wanted to hear, that indeed he had done no wrong; to take him in her arms and comfort him. But she did not move. Never, never had Arthur come to her for comfort, never had he acknowledged that he had done her any wrong; even now, all he could do was to insist that the sin which had kept them childless was no sin; his concern was only for the wrong he had done that damned sorceress of a sister of his! She said, crying again and furious because she knew he would think she wept from sorrow and not from rage, “You think it is only Morgaine you have wronged?”

  “I cannot see I have harmed any other,” he said stubbornly. “Gwenhwyfar, it was before ever I set eyes on you!”

  “But you married me with this great sin unconfessed, and even now you cling to your sin when you might be shriven and do penance, and freed of your pun
ishment—”

  He said wearily, “Gwenhwyfar mine, if your God is such a one as would punish a man for a sin he knew not he committed, would he then abate that punishment because I tell a priest, and mouth such prayers as he gives me, and I know not what all—eat bread and water for a space, or what have you—?”

  “If you truly repent—”

  “Oh, God, do you think I have not repented?” Arthur burst out. “I have repented it every time I looked on Morgaine, these twelve years past! Would it make my repentance stronger to avow it before one of these priests who wants nothing more than to have power over a king?”

  “You think only of your pride,” Gwenhwyfar said angrily, “and pride too is a sin. Would you but humble yourself, God would forgive you!”

  “If your God is such a God as that, I want not his forgiveness!” Arthur’s fists were clenched. “I must rule this kingdom, my Gwen, and I cannot do that if I kneel before some priest and accept whatever he chooses to lay on me for penance! And there is Morgaine to think of—already they call her sorceress, harlot, witch! I have no right to confess to a sin which will call down scorn and public shame to my sister!”

  “Morgaine too has a soul to be saved,” said Gwenhwyfar, “and if the people of this land see that their king can put aside his pride and take thought for his soul, repent humbly for his sins, then it will help them to save their souls too, and it will be to his credit even in Heaven.”

  He said, sighing, “Why, you argue as well as any councillor, Gwenhwyfar. I am not a priest, and I am not concerned with the souls of my people—”

  “How dare you say so?” she cried. “As a king is above all his people and their lives are in his hand, so are their souls too! You should be foremost in piety as you are in bravery on the battlefield! How would you think of a king who sent his soldiers out to fight, and sat safe out of sight and watched them from afar?”

  “Not well,” said Arthur, and Gwenhwyfar, knowing she had him now, said, “Then what would you think of a king who saw his people pursue ways of piety and virtue, and said he need have no thought to his own sins?”

  Arthur sighed. “Why should you care so much, Gwenhwyfar?”

  “Because I cannot bear to think that you will suffer hellfire . . . and because if you free yourself of your sin, God may cease to punish us with childlessness.”

  She choked at last and began to cry again. He put his arms around her and stood with her head against his shoulder. He said gently, “Believe you this truly, my queen?”

  She remembered; once before, when he had first refused to bear the banner of the Virgin into the battle, he had spoken to her like this. And then she had triumphed and brought him to Christ, and God had given him the victory. But then she had not known he had this sin unconfessed on his soul. She nodded against him and heard him sigh.

  “Then I have done you wrong too, and I must somehow amend it. But I cannot see how it is right that Morgaine should suffer shame for this.”

  “Always Morgaine,” said Gwenhwyfar, in a blaze of white rage. “You will not have her suffer, she is perfect in your eyes—tell me then, is it right that I should suffer for the sin that she has done, or you? Do you love her so much better than me that you will let me go childless all my days so that sin may be kept secret?”

  “Even if I have done wrong, my Gwen, Morgaine is blameless—”

  “Nay, that she is not,” Gwenhwyfar flared, “for she follows that ancient Goddess, and the priests say that their Goddess is that same old serpent of evil whom our Lord drove from the Garden of Eden! Even now Morgaine clings to those filthy and heathenish rituals of hers—God tells us, yes, that those heathen who have not heard the word of the Lord may be saved, but what of Morgaine, who was brought up in a Christian household, and afterward turned to the filthy sorcerous ways of Avalon? And all these years at this court, she has heard the word of Christ, and do they not say that those who hear the word of Christ and do not repent and believe in him, they shall surely be damned? And women especially have need of repentance, since through a woman sin came first into the world—” Gwenhwyfar was sobbing so hard that she could hardly speak.

  At last Arthur said, “What do you want me to do, my Gwenhwyfar?”

  “This is the holy day of Pentecost,” she said, wiping her eyes and trying to control her sobs, “when the spirit of God came down to Man. Will you go to the mass and take the sacrament with this great sin on your soul?”

  “I suppose—I suppose I cannot,” said Arthur, his voice breaking. “If truly you believe this, Gwenhwyfar, I will not deny it to you. I will repent as far as it is in me to repent for something I cannot think a sin, and I will do what penance the bishop lays on me.” His smile was only a thin, harried grimace. “I hope, for your sake, my love, that you are right about God’s will.”

  And Gwenhwyfar, even as she put her arms around him, crying with thankfulness, had a moment of shattering fear and doubt. She remembered when she had stood in the house of Meleagrant, and known that all her prayers could not save her. God had not rewarded her for her virtue, and when Lancelet came to her, had she not sworn to herself that never again would she hide or repent, because a God who had not rewarded her virtue would surely not punish her sin. God could not care either way. . . .

  But God had punished her indeed; God had taken Lancelet from her and given him to Elaine, so for all that perilling of her soul she had won nothing . . . she had confessed and done penance, but God punished her still. And now she knew it might not be all her fault, but that she was bearing the weight of Arthur’s sin too, the sin he had done with his sister. But if they were both freed of sin, if he did penance for that great sin unconfessed, and humbled himself, then no doubt God would forgive him too. . . .

  Arthur kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair. Then he moved away, and she felt cold and lost when he took his arms away from her, as if she were not safely within walls but out under the huge open sky, bewildering, huge, filled with terror. She moved toward him again, to take refuge in his arms, but he had dropped into a chair and sat there, exhausted, beaten, a thousand leagues away from her.

  At last he raised his head, and said, with a sigh that seemed ripped from the very depths of his being, “Send for Father Patricius.”

  8

  When Morgaine left Arthur and Gwenhwyfar in their chamber, she snatched a cloak and fled out into the weather, uncaring of the rain. She went to the high battlements and walked there, alone; the tents of Arthur’s followers and Companions, of the lesser kings and the guests, crowded the level space at the brow of the hill that was Camelot, and even in the rain, all the banners and flags fluttered brightly. But the sky was dark, and thick low clouds almost touched the brow of the hill; pacing, restless, Morgaine thought that the Holy Ghost could have chosen a finer day to descend on his people—and especially on Arthur.

  Oh, yes. Gwenhwyfar would give him no peace until he had given himself into the hands of the priests. And what of his vow to Avalon?

  And yet if it should be Gwydion’s fate that one day he should sit on his father’s throne, if that was what the Merlin planned . . . no man could escape fate. Morgaine thought mirthlessly, No woman either. Taliesin, who knew all manner of music and old tales, had once told her a story from the ancients who dwelt to the south in the Holy Land or somewhere near to there, of a man who was born under a curse that he should slay his father and wed with his mother. So the parents listened to the curse and cast him out to die, and he was reared by strangers, and one day, meeting with his father, unknowing, he quarrelled with him, killed him, and wedded with his widow; so that the very means they had taken to prevent the falling of the curse had brought it to pass—had he been reared in his father’s house, he would not have done what he did in ignorance. . . .

  She and Arthur had done what they did in ignorance, too, yet the fairy woman had cursed her son: Cast forth your babe, or kill it as it comes from the womb; what of the King Stag when the young stag is grown? And it seemed to her th
at all round her the world grew grey and strange, as if she had wandered into the mists of Avalon, and there was a strange humming in her brain.

  There seemed a terrible clanging and banging in the air all round her, deafening her . . . no, it was the church bells, ringing for the mass. She had heard, too, that the fairy folk could not abide the sound of the church bells, and it was for that reason they had taken to the far hills and hollows . . . it seemed to her that she could not go and sit quietly, as she usually did, listening with polite attention because the Queen’s waiting-women should set an example to all the others. She thought that the walls would stifle her and the mumbling of the priests and the smoke of the incense would drive her mad; better to stay out here in the clean rain. Now she thought to draw up the hood of the woolen cloak over her head; the ribbons in her hair were all wet, likely they were spoilt. She fumbled with them and the red came off on her fingers; poorly dyed they were, for materials so costly.

  But the rain was slowing a little, and people were beginning to move about in the spaces between the tents.

  “There will be no mock battle games today,” said a voice behind her, “or I would ask you for one of those ribbons you are casting about, and carry it into battle as a flag of honor, lady Morgaine.”