"I am sure they will." Morgaine rose, leaving her own breakfast almost untasted. "Let me call your body servant and have everything made ready for you to depart."
She stood at his side during the long procession around the fields, standing on a little hill above the village and watching the capering dancers, like young goats ... she wondered if any of them so much as knew the significance of the phallic green wands wound about with red and white garlands, and the pretty girl with her hair streaming, who walked, serene and indifferent, among them. She was fresh and young, not fourteen, and her hair was coppery gold, streaming halfway between her waist and knees; and she had on a gown, dyed green, that looked very old. Did any of them know what they were watching, or see the incongruity of the priest's procession, following them, two boys in black carrying candles and crosses, and the priest intoning the prayers in his bad Latin; Morgaine spoke better Latin than he!
These priests hate fertility and life so much, it is a miracle their so-called blessing does not blast the fields sterile-
It was like an answer from her own mind when a voice spoke softly behind her. "I wonder, lady, if any here save ourselves truly know what they are watching?"
Accolon took her arm for a moment to help her over a rough clump of the plowed land, and she saw again the serpents, fresh and blue along his wrists.
"King Uriens knows and has tried to forget. That seems to me a worse blasphemy than not to know at all."
She had expected that would make him angry; had, in a way, been inviting it. With Accolon's strong hands on her arm, she felt the strong hunger, the inner leap ... he was young, he was a virile man, and she- she was the aging wife of his old father ... and the eyes of Uriens' subjects were on them, and the eyes of his family and his house priest! She could not even speak freely, she must treat him with cold detachment: her stepson! If Accolon said anything kind or pitying, she would scream aloud, would tear at her hair, at her face and flesh with her nails ... .
But Accolon only said, in a voice that could not have been overheard three feet away, "Perhaps it is enough for the Lady that we know, Morgaine. The Goddess will not fail us while a single worshipper gives her what is due."
For a moment she looked round at him. His eyes were dwelling on her, and although his hands on hers were careful, courteous, detached, it seemed that heat ran upward from them into her whole body. She was suddenly frightened and wanted to pull away.
I am his father's wife and of all women I am the one most forbidden to him. I am more forbidden to him, in this Christian land, than I was to Arthur.
And then a memory from Avalon surfaced in her mind, something she had not thought of for a decade; one of the Druids, giving instruction in the secret wisdom to the young priestesses, had said, If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats, again and again; for this is the message given you by the Gods, the karmic lesson you must learn for this incarnation. It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.
What has come to me again and again ... ?
Every man she had desired had been too close kin to her-Lancelet, who was the son of her foster-mother; Arthur, her own mother's son; now the son of her husband ...
But they are too close kin to me only by the laws made by the Christians who seek to rule this land ... to rule it in a new tyranny; not alone to make the laws but to rule the mind and heart and soul. Am I living out in my own life all the tyranny of that law, so I as priestess may know why it must be overthrown?
She discovered that her hands, still tightly held in Accolon's, were trembling. She said, trying to collect her scattered thoughts, "Do you truly believe that the Goddess would withdraw her life from this earth if the folk who dwell here should no longer give her her due?"
It was the sort of remark that might have been made, priestess to priest, in Avalon. Morgaine knew, as well as anyone, that the true answer to that question was that the Gods were what they were, and did their will upon the earth regardless of whether man regarded their doing one way or the other. But Accolon said, with a curious animal flash of white teeth in a grin, "Then must we make it sure, lady, that she should always be given her due, lest the life of the world fail." And then he addressed her by a name never spoken except by priest to priestess in ritual, and Morgaine felt her heart beating so hard she was dizzy.
Lest the life of the world fail. Lest my life fail within me ... he has called on me in the name of the Goddess ... .
"Be still," she said, distracted. "This is neither the time nor the place for such talk."
"No?" They had come to the edge of the rough ground. He let go of her hand and somehow her own felt cold without it. Ahead of them the masked dancers shook their phallic wands and capered, and the Spring Maiden, her long hair buffeted and tangled by the breeze, was going around the circle of the dancers, exchanging a kiss with each-a ritualized, formal kiss, where her lips barely touched each cheek. Uriens beckoned Morgaine impatiently to his side; she moved stiffly and cold, feeling the spot on her wrists where Accolon had held her as a spot of heat on her icy body.
Uriens said fussily, "It is your part, my dear, to give out these things to the dancers who have entertained us this day." He motioned to a servant, who filled Morgaine's hands with sweets and candied fruits; she tossed them to the dancers and the spectators, who scrambled for them, laughing and pushing. Always mockery of the sacred things ... a memory of the day when the folk scrambled for bits of the flesh and blood of the sacrifice ... . Let the rite be forgotten, but not mocked this way! Again and yet again they filled her hands with the sweets, and again and again she tossed them into the crowd. They saw no more in the rite than dancers who had entertained them; had they all forgotten? The Spring Maiden came up to Morgaine, laughing and flushed with innocent pride; Morgaine saw now that although she was lovely, her eyes were shallow, her hands thick and stubby with work in the fields. She was only a pretty peasant girl trying to do the work of a priestess, without the slightest idea what she was doing; it was folly to resent her.
Yet she is a woman, doing the Mother's work in the best way she has ever been told; it is not her fault that she was not schooled in Avalon for the great work. Morgaine did not quite know what was expected of her, but as the girl knelt for a moment before the Queen, Morgaine took on the half-forgotten stance of a priestess in blessing, and felt for an instant the old awareness of something shadowing her, above her, beyond ... she laid her hands for a moment on the girl's brow, felt the momentary flow of power between them, and the girl's rather stupid face was transfigured for a moment. The Goddess works in her, too, Morgaine thought, and then she saw Accolon's face; he was looking at her in wonder and awe. She had seen that look before, when she brought down the mists from Avalon ... and the awareness of power flooded her, as if she were suddenly reborn.
I am alive again. After all these years, I am a priestess again, and it was Accolon who brought it back to me ... .
And then the tension of the moment broke, and the girl backed away, stumbling over her feet, and dropping a clumsy curtsey to the royal party. Uriens distributed coins to the dancers and a somewhat larger gift to the village priest for candles to burn in his church, and the royal party went homeward. Morgaine walked sedately at Uriens' side, her face a mask, but inwardly seething with life. Her stepson Uwaine came and walked beside her.
"It was prettier than usual this year, Mother. Shanna is so lovely-the Spring Maiden, the daughter of the blacksmith Euan. But you, Mother, when you were blessing her, you looked so beautiful, you should have been the Spring Maiden yourself-"