“I greet you, kinsman. Lancelet, your brother, sent you some wine from the King’s table.”
“I beg you to sip it first, lady,” he said, then blinked. “Morgaine, is it you? I hardly knew you, you have grown so fine. I think of you always in the dress of Avalon, but you are like to my mother, indeed. How does the Lady?”
Morgaine set the cup to her lips—mere courtesy at this court, but perhaps stemming from a time when gifts from the King were tasted before a guest, when the poisoning of rival kings was not unknown. She handed it to him, and Balan drank a long draught before looking up at her again.
“I had hoped to have news of Viviane from you, kinsman—I have not returned to Avalon for many years,” she said.
“Aye, I knew that you were in Lot’s court,” he said. “Did you quarrel with Morgause? I hear that is easy done by any woman. . . .”
Morgaine shook her head. “No; but I wished to be far enough away to stay out of Lot’s bed, and that is not easy done. The distance between Orkney and Caerleon is hardly far enough.”
“And so you came to Arthur’s court to be waiting-woman to his queen,” said Balan. “It is a more seemly court than that of Morgause, I dare say. Gwenhwyfar guards her maidens well, and makes good marriages for them, too—I see Griflet’s lady is already big with her first. Has she not found you a husband, kinswoman?”
Morgaine forced herself to say gaily, “Are you making an offer for me, sir Balan?”
He chuckled. “You are all too close kin to me, Morgaine, or I should accept your offer. But I heard some gossip that Arthur had intended you for Cai, and that seemed a good match to me, since you have left Avalon after all.”
“Cai had no more mind to me than I to him,” said Morgaine sharply, “and I have never said I would not return to Avalon, but only on that day when Viviane sends for me to come thither.”
“When I was but a lad,” Balan said—and for a moment, his dark eyes resting on Morgaine, she thought that indeed she could see the resemblance to Lancelet even in this great coarse man—"I thought ill of the Lady—of Viviane, that she did not love me as it was fit for a mother to do. But I think better of it now. As a priestess, she could not have had leisure to rear a son. And so she gave me into the hands of one who had no other work than that, and she gave me my foster-brother Balin. . . . Oh, yes, as a lad I felt guilty about that too, that I cared more for Balin than for our Lancelet, who is of my own flesh and blood. But now I know Balin is truly my own heart’s brother, and Lancelet, though I admire him for the fine knight he is, will always be a stranger to me. And too,” Balan said seriously, “when Viviane gave me up to Dame Priscilla for fostering, she put me into a household where I would come to know the true God and Christ. It seems to me strange, that if I had dwelt in Avalon with my own kin, I should be a heathen, even as Lancelet is. . . .”
Morgaine smiled a little. “Well,” she said, “there I cannot share your gratitude, for I think it ill done of the Lady that her own son should abandon her Gods. But even Viviane has often said to me that men should have such manner of religious and spiritual counsel as liked them best, that which she could give, or other. Had I been truly pious and Christian at heart, no doubt, she would have let me live by the faith which was strong in my heart. Yet, though I was reared till I was eleven by Igraine, who was as good a Christian as any, I think perhaps it was ordained that I should see the things of the spirit as they come to us from the Goddess.”
“Balin would be able to argue that with you better than I,” said Balan, “for he is more pious than I and a better Christian. I should probably say to you what no doubt the priests have said, that there is only one true faith in which man and woman may trust. But you are my kinswoman, and I know my mother to be a good woman, and I have faith that even Christ will take her goodness into account on the last day. As for the rest, I am no priest and I see not why I should not leave all those matters to the priests who are schooled in them. I love Balin well, but he should have been a priest, not a warrior, if he is so tender of faith and conscience.” He looked toward the high table and said, “Tell me, foster-sister, you know him better than I—what lies so heavy on our brother Lancelet’s heart?”
Morgaine bent her head and said, “If I knew, Balan, it is not my secret to tell.”
“You are right to bid me mind my own affairs,” said Balan, “but I hate seeing him miserable, and miserable he is. I thought ill of our mother, as I said, because she sent me so young from home, but she gave me a loving foster-mother, and a brother of my own age, reared at my side and as one with me in all things, and a home. She did less well by Lancelet. He was never at home—neither in Avalon nor yet at the court of Ban of Benwick, where he was dragged up as just another of the king’s unregarded bastards. . . . Viviane did ill by him indeed, and I wish Arthur would give him a wife, so he might have a home at last.”
“Well,” said Morgaine lightly, “if the King wishes me to wed Lancelet, he need only name the day.”
“You and Lancelet? Are you not too close kin for that?” Balan asked, then thought for a moment. “No, I suppose not—Igraine and Viviane were but half-sisters, and Gorlois and Ban of Benwick are not in any way akin. Though some of the church folk say foster-kin should be treated as blood kin for marriage . . . well, Morgaine, I will drink to your wedding with pleasure on that day Arthur gives you to my brother, and bids you love him and care for him as Viviane never did! And neither of you need leave court—you the Queen’s favorite lady and Lancelet our King’s dearest friend. I hope it comes to pass!” His eyes dwelt on her with kindly concern. “You too are well past the age when Arthur should give you to some man.”
And why should it be for the King to give me, as if I were one of his horses or dogs? Morgaine wondered, but shrugged; she had lived long in Avalon, she forgot at times that the Romans had made this the common law, that women were the chattels of their menfolk. The world had changed and there was no point in rebelling against what could not be altered.
Soon after she began to skirt the edges of the great mead table which had been Gwenhwyfar’s wedding gift to Arthur. The great hall here in Caerleon, large as it was, was not really large enough; at one point she had to clamber over the benches because the table pushed them so close to the wall, to get by the great curve of it. The pot boys and kitchen boys, too, had to sidle past with their smoking platters and cups.
“Is Kevin not here?” asked Arthur. “Then we must have Morgaine to sing for us—I am hungry too for harps and all the things of civilized men. I am not surprised the Saxons spend all their time in making war. I have heard the dismal howling of their singers, and they have no reason to stay home!”
Morgaine asked one of Cai’s helpers around the castle to fetch her harp from her chamber. He had to climb around the curve of the bench, and lost his footing; only the quickness of Lancelet, reaching out to steady boy and harp, kept the instrument from falling.
Arthur frowned. “It was good of my father-in-law to send me this great round mead table,” he said, “but there is no chamber in Caerleon large enough for it. When the Saxons are driven away for good, I think I must build a hall just to hold it!”
“Then will it never be built.” Cai laughed. “To say ‘when the Saxons are driven away for good’ is like to saying ‘when Jesus shall come again’ or ‘when Hell freezes’ or ‘when raspberries grow on the apple trees of Glastonbury.’ “
“Or when King Pellinore catches his dragon,” Meleas giggled.
Arthur smiled. “You must not make fun of Pellinore’s dragon,” he said, “for there is word it has been seen again, and he is off to find it and slay it this time—indeed, he asked the Merlin if he knew any dragon-catching spells!”
“Oh, aye, it has been seen—like a troll on the hills, turned to stone by daylight, or the ring stones dancing on the night of the full moon,” Lancelet gibed. “There are always people who see whatever vision they will—some see saints and miracles, and some see dragons or the old fairy folk. But
never did I know of living man or woman who had seen either dragon or fairy.”
Morgaine remembered, against her will, the day in Avalon when she had gone searching for roots and herbs and strayed into the strange country where the fairy woman had spoken with her and had sought to foster her child . . . what, indeed, had she seen? Or had it been only the sick fantasy of a breeding woman?
“You say that, when you were yourself fostered as Lancelet of the Lake?” she asked quietly, and Lancelet turned round to her. He said, “There are times when that seems unreal to me—is it not so for you, sister?”
She said, “It is true indeed, but at times I am homesick for Avalon. . . .”
“Aye, and I too, kinswoman,” he said. Never since that night of Arthur’s marriage, by word or look had he implied that he had ever felt anything more for her than for a childhood companion and foster-sister. She had thought she had long accepted the pain of that, but it struck her anew as his dark, beautiful eyes met hers in such kindness.
Soon or late, it must seem even as Balan said: we are both unmarried, the King’s sister and his best friend. . . .
Arthur said, “Well, when the Saxons are driven away for good—and do not laugh as if that were a fabulous event! It can be done, now, and I think they know it—then I shall build myself a castle, and a great hall big enough for even this table. I have already chosen the site—it is a hill fort which was there long before Roman times, looking down on the Lake itself, and near to your father’s island kingdom, Gwenhwyfar. You know the place, where the river flows into the Lake—”
“I know,” she said. “When I was a small child I went there one day to pick strawberries. There was an old ruined well, and we found elf bolts there. The old folk who lived on the chalk had left their arrows.” How strange, Gwenhwyfar thought, to remember that there had been a time when she had liked to go abroad under the wide, high sky, not even caring whether there was a wall or the safety of an enclosure; and now she grew sick and dizzy if she went out from the walls, where she could not see or touch them. Sometimes now she felt the lump of fear in her belly even when she walked across the courtyard, and had to hurry to touch the safety of the wall again.
“It is an easy place to fortify,” Arthur said, “though I hope, when we are done with the Saxons, we may have leisure and peace in this island.”
“An ignoble wish for a warrior, brother,” said Cai. “What will you do in time of peace?”
“I will call Kevin the Bard to make songs, and I will break my own horses and ride them for pleasure,” Arthur said. “My Companions and I will raise our sons without putting a sword in every little hand before it is full grown to manhood! And I need not fear they will be lamed or slain before they are full grown. Cai—would it not be better if you need not have been sent to war before you were old enough to guard yourself? Sometimes I feel it wrong that it was you, not I, who was lamed, because Ectorius wanted me kept safe for Uther!” He looked with concern and affection at his foster-brother, and Cai grinned back at him.
“And,” said Lancelet, “we will keep the arts of war alive by holding games, as they did in the days of the ancients, and crown the winner of the games with laurel wreaths—what is laurel, Arthur, and does it grow in these islands? Or is it only in the land of Achilles and Alexander?”
“The Merlin could tell you that,” Morgaine said, when Arthur looked perplexed. “I know not either, but whether or no we have laurel, there are plants enough to make wreaths for the victors at your games.”
“And we will give garlands to harpers too,” Lancelet said. “Sing, Morgaine.”
“I had better sing for you now,” Morgaine said, “for I do not suppose, when you men hold your games, you will let women sing.” She took up the harp and began to play. She was sitting nearly where she had been sitting this afternoon when she saw blood spilled forth on the King’s hearth . . . would it truly come to pass, or was it fantasy? Why, indeed, should she think she still possessed the Sight? It never came upon her now save in these unwelcome trances. . . .
She began to sing an ancient lament which she had heard at Tintagel, a lament of a fisherwoman who had seen the boats swept out to sea. She knew that she held them all with her voice, and in the silence of the hall she fell to singing old songs of the islands, which she had heard at Lot’s court: a legend of the seal woman who had come out of the sea to find a mortal lover, songs of the solitary women herders, songs for spinning and for carding flax. Even when her voice grew weary they called for more, but she held up her hand in protest.
“Enough—no, truly, I can sing no more. I am hoarse as any raven.”
Soon after, Arthur called the servants to extinguish the torches in the hall and light the guests to bed. It was one of Morgaine’s tasks to see that the unmarried women who waited on the Queen were safely put to sleep in the long loft room behind the Queen’s own chamber, at the opposite end of the building from the soldiers and armsmen. But she lingered a moment, her eyes on Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, who were bidding Lancelet good night.
“I have told the women to prepare the best spare bed for you, Lancelet,” said Gwenhwyfar, but he laughed and shook his head.
“I am a soldier—it is my duty to see horses and men bedded safe for the night before I sleep.”
Arthur chuckled, his arm around Gwenhwyfar’s waist. “We must get you married, Lance, then you will not spend your nights so cold. I made you my captain of horse, but you need not spend your nights lying down among them!”
Gwenhwyfar felt a pain within her breast as she met Lancelet’s eyes. It seemed to her that she could almost read his thoughts, that he would say aloud again, as he had said once, My heart is so full of my queen I have no room there for any other lady. . . . She held her breath, but Lancelet only sighed and smiled at her, and she thought, No, I am a wedded wife, a Christian woman, it is sin even to think such thoughts; I must do penance. And then, feeling her throat so tight she could not swallow, she felt the thought come unbidden. Penance enough that I must be apart from the one I love . . . and she gasped aloud, so that Arthur turned startled eyes on her.
“What is it, love, have you hurt yourself?”
“A—a pin pricked me,” she said, and turned her eyes away, pretending to hunt for the pin at the folds of her dress. She saw Morgaine watching her, and bit her lip. She is always watching me . . . and she has the Sight; does she know all my sinful thoughts? Is that why she looks on me so scornfully?
Yet Morgaine had never shown her anything but a sister’s kindness. And when she had been pregnant, in the first year of their marriage—when she had taken a fever and miscarried the child within five months—she could not bear to have any of her ladies about her, and Morgaine had cared for her almost like a mother. Why, now, was she so ungrateful?
Lancelet bade them good night again, and withdrew. Gwenhwyfar was almost painfully conscious of Arthur’s arm around her waist, the frank eagerness in his eyes. Well, they had been apart a long time. But she felt a sudden, sharp resentment. Not once, since that time, have I been pregnant—can he not even give me a child?
Oh, but surely that was her own fault—one of the midwives had told her it was like a sickness in cattle when they cast their calves unborn, time after time, and sometimes women took that sickness too, so they could not carry a child more than a month or two, three at the most. Somehow, through carelessness, she must have taken that illness, gone perhaps into the dairy at the wrong time, or drunk of milk from a cow who had cast her calf, and so the life of her lord’s son and heir had been forfeit, and it was all her doing. . . . Torn with guilt, she followed Arthur into their chamber.
“It is more than a jest, Gwen,” said Arthur, sitting to draw off his leather hose. “We must get Lancelet married. Have you seen how all the lads run to him, and how good he is with them? He should have sons of his own. I have it, Gwen! We will marry him to Morgaine!”
“No!” The word was torn from her before she thought, and Arthur looked at her, startled.
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“What is the matter with you? Does it not seem perfect, the right choice? My dear sister and my best friend? And their children, mark you, would be next heirs to our throne in any case, if it should be that the Gods send us no children. . . . No, no, don’t cry, my love,” he begged, and Gwenhwyfar knew, humiliated and shamed, that her face had twisted with weeping. “I meant not to reproach you, my dearest love, children come when the Goddess wills, but only she knows when we will have children, or if we will ever have them at all. And although Gawaine is dear to me, I have no will to put a son of Lot on the throne if I should die. Morgaine is my own mother’s child, and Lancelet my cousin—”
“Surely it cannot matter to Lancelet whether or no he has sons,” said Gwenhwyfar. “He is fifth—or is it sixth—son to King Ban, and bastard-born at that.”