Arthur laid one hand in his queen's and the other in that of his captain of horse. "I am, as always, grateful to you, my dear friend, and so is my wife. Come, we shall speak about this in private." And, moving between the two of them, he went up the steps into the castle.
"I wonder what manner of lies they will hurry to pour into his ears, that chaste queen and her finest of knights?" Morgaine heard the words, spoken low and very clear, from somewhere in the crowd; but she could not tell from where they came. She thought, Perhaps peace is not an unmixed blessing: without a war, there is nothing for them to do at court, with their usual occupation gone, but pass on every rumor and bit of scandal.
But if Lancelet were gone from the court, then would the scandal be quieted. And she resolved that whatever she could do to accomplish that end, would be done at once.
THAT NIGHT at supper Arthur asked Morgaine to bring her harp and sing to them. "It seems long since I heard your music, sister," he said, and drew her close and kissed her. He had not done this in a long time.
"I will sing gladly," she said, "but when will Kevin return to court?" She thought with bitterness of their quarrel; never, never should she forgive him his treason to Avalon! Yet, against her will, she missed him and thought regretfully of the time when they had been lovers.
I am weary of lying alone, that is all ... .
But this made her think of Arthur, and her son at Avalon ... if Gwenhwyfar should leave this court, then surely Arthur would marry again; but it looked not like that at this moment. And should Gwenhwyfar never bear a son, then should not their son be acknowledged as his father's heir? He was doubly of royal blood, the blood of the Pendragon and of Avalon ... Igraine was dead and the scandal could not harm her.
She sat on a carven and gilded stool near the throne, her harp on the floor at her feet; Arthur and Gwenhwyfar sat close together, hand in hand. Lancelet sprawled on the floor at Morgaine's side, watching the harp, but now and again she saw his eyes move to Gwenhwyfar and she quailed at the terrible longing there; how could he show his heart like this to any onlooker? And then Morgaine knew that only she could see his heart-to all other eyes he was only a courtier looking respectfully at his queen, laughing and jesting with her as a privileged friend of her husband.
And as her hands moved on the strings, the world again seemed to fall into the distance, very small and far and at the same time huge and strange, things losing their shapes so that her harp seemed at once a child's toy and something monstrous, a huge formless thing smothering her, and she was high on a throne somewhere peering through wandering shadows, looking down at a young man with dark hair, a narrow coronet around his brow, and as she looked on him, the sharp pain of desire ran down her body, she met his eyes and it was as if a hand touched her in her most private part, rousing her to hunger and longing ... . She felt her fingers falter on the strings, she had dreamed something ... a face wavering, a young man's smile at her, no, it was not Lancelet but some other ... no, it was all like shadows-
Gwenhwyfar's clear voice broke through. "See to the lady Morgaine," she said, "my sister is faint-!"
She felt Lancelet's arms supporting her and looked up into his dark eyes -it was like her dream, desire running through her, melting her ... no, but she had dreamed that. It was not real. She put her hand confusedly to her brows. "It was the smoke, the smoke from the hearth-"
"Here, sip this." Lancelet held a cup to her lips. What madness was this? He had barely touched her and she felt sick with desire for him; she thought she had long forgotten that, had had it burned out of her over the years ... and yet his touch, gentle and impersonal, roused her to fierce longing again. Had she dreamed about him, then?
He does not want me, he does not want any woman save the Queen, she thought, and stared past him at the hearth, where no fire burned in this summer season, and a wreath of green bay leaves twined to keep the empty fireplace from gaping too black and ugly. She sipped at the wine Lancelet held for her.
"I am sorry-I have been a little faint all the day," she said, remembering the morning. "Let some other take the harp, I cannot. ..."
Lancelet said, "By your leave, my lords, I will sing!" He took the harp and said, "This is a tale of Avalon, which I heard in my childhood. I think it was written by Taliesin himself, though he may have made it from an older song."
He began to sing an old ballad, of Arianrhod the queen, who had stepped over a stream and come away with child; and she had cursed her son when he was born, and said he should never have a name till she gave him one, and how he tricked her into giving him a name, and later how she cursed him and said he should never have a wife, whether of flesh and blood, nor yet of the fairy folk, and so he made him a woman of flowers ... .
Morgaine sat listening, still twined in her dream, and it seemed to her that Lancelet's dark face was filled with terrible suffering, and as he sang of the flower woman, Blodeuwedd, his eyes lingered for a moment on the queen. But then he turned to Elaine, and sang courteously of how the blossom woman's hair was made of fine golden lilies, and how her cheeks were like the petals of the apple blossom, and she was clad in all the colors of the flowers that bloom, blue and crimson and yellow, in the fields of summer ... .
Morgaine sat quietly in her place, cushioning her aching head in her hand. Later Gawaine brought out a pipe from his own northern country, and began to play a wild lament, filled with the cries of sea birds and sorrow. Lancelet came and sat near to Morgaine, taking her hand gently.
"Are you better now, kinswoman?"
"Oh, yes-it has happened before," Morgaine said. "It is as if I had fallen into a dream and saw all things through shadows-" And yet, she thought, it was not quite like that either.
"My mother said something like that to me once," said Lancelet, and Morgaine gauged his sorrow and weariness by that; never before had he spoken to her, nor to any other as far as she knew, of his mother or of his years at Avalon. "She seemed to think it was a thing which came of itself with the Sight. Once she said it was as if she were drawn into the fairy country and looking out from there as its prisoner, but I know not if she had ever been within the fairy country or if this was but a way of speaking. ..."
But I have, Morgaine thought, and it is not like that, not quite ... it is like trying to remember a dream that has faded ... .
"I myself have known it a little," Lancelet said. "It comes at a time when I cannot see clearly, but only as if all things were very far away and not real ... and I could not quite touch them but must first cross a weary distance ... perhaps it is something in the fairy blood we bear-" He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I used to taunt you with that, when you were only a little maiden, do you recall, I called you Morgaine of the Fairies and it made you angry?"
She nodded. "I remember well, kinsman," she said, thinking that for all the weariness in his face, the new lines there, the touch of grey in the crisp curls of his hair, he was still more beautiful to her, more beloved, than any other man she had ever known. She blinked her eyes fiercely; so it was and so it must be: he loved her as kinswoman, no more.
Again it seemed to her that the world moved behind a barrier of shadows; it mattered nothing what she did. This world was no more real than the fairy kingdom. Even the music sounded faraway and distant- Gawaine had taken up the harp and was singing some tale he had heard among the Saxons, of a monster who dwelled in a lake and how one of their heroes had gone down into the lake and ripped off the monster's arm, then faced the monster's mother in her evil den ... .