Book Four. The Prisoner in the Oak
1
In far hills of North Wales, rain had been falling day after day, and the castle of King Uriens seemed to swim in fog and damp. The roads were ankle-deep mud, the fords swollen as rivers rushed down in spate from the mountains, and damp chill gripped the countryside. Morgaine, wrapped in cloak and heavy shawl, felt her fingers stiffening and slowing on the shuttle as she sent it through the loom; suddenly she started upright, the shuttle falling from her cold hands.
"What is it, Mother?" Maline asked, blinking at the sharp sound in the quiet hall.
"There is a rider on the road," Morgaine said. "We must make ready to welcome him." And then, observing her daughter-in-law's troubled look, she cursed herself; again she had let herself slip into the half-trance which women's work always brought upon her nowadays. She had long ago ceased to spin, but weaving, which she enjoyed, had seemed safe if she kept her wits about her and didn't succumb to the drowsy trancelike monotony of it.
And Maline was looking at her in the half-wary, half-exasperated way which Morgaine's unexpected seeings always evoked. Not that Maline believed there was anything wicked or even magical about them-it was just her mother-in-law's queer way. But Maline would speak of them to the priest, and he would come again and try to be subtle about asking her whence they came, and she would have to put on a meek-woman face and pretend she didn't know what he was talking about. Someday she would be too weary or too unguarded to care, and she would speak her mind to the priest. Then he would really have something to talk about ... .
Well, done was done, and could not be helped now. She got along well enough with Father Eian, who had been Uwaine's tutor-he was an educated man for a priest. "Tell the Father that his pupil will be here at dinnertime," Morgaine said, and once again realized that her tongue had slipped; she had known Maline had been thinking of the priest and had responded to Maline's thought, not her words. She went out of the room leaving the younger woman staring.
All the winter, which had been heavy with rain and snow and repeated storms, not a single traveller had come. She dared not spin; it opened the gates too quickly to trance. Now, weaving was likely to do the same. She sewed industriously at making clothes for all the folk of the household, from Uriens down to Maline's newest baby, but it was hard on her eyes to do fine needlework; in the winter she had no access to fresh herbs and plants, and could do little with brewing simples and medicines. She had no companion-her waiting-women were the wives of Uriens' men-at-arms and duller than Maline; not one of them could spell out so much as a verse in the Bible and were shocked that Morgaine could read and write and knew some Latin and Greek. And she could not sit always at her harp. So she had spent the winter in a frenzy of boredom and impatience ...
... the worse, she thought, because the temptation was always there to sit and spin and dream, letting her mind slide away, to follow Arthur at Camelot, or Accolon on quest-it had come to her, three years ago, that Accolon should spend enough time at court that Arthur should know him well and trust him. Accolon bore the serpents of Avalon, and that might prove a valuable bond with Arthur. She missed Accolon like a constant ache; in his presence she was what he always saw her-high priestess, confident of her goals and herself. But that was secret between them. In the long, lonely seasons, Morgaine experienced recurrent doubts and dreads; was she then no more than Uriens thought her, a solitary queen growing old, body and mind and soul drying and withering?
Still, she kept her hand firmly on this household, over countryfolk and castlefolk alike, so that all should turn to her for counsel and wisdom. They said in the country around: The queen is wise. Even the king does nothing without her consent. The Tribesmen and the Old Ones, she knew, came near to worshipping her; though she dared not appear too often at the ancient worship.
Now in the kitchen house she made arrangements for a festal dinner -or as near to it as they could come at the end of a long winter when the roads were closed. Morgaine gave from the locked cupboards some of her hoarded store of raisins and dried fruits, and a few spices for cooking the last of the bacon. Maline would tell Father Eian that Uwaine was expected at the hall for dinner. She herself should bear the tidings to Uriens.
She went up to his chamber, where he was lazily playing at dice with one of his men-at-arms; the room smelled frowsty and unaired, stale and old. At least his long siege with the lung fever this winter has meant I need not be expected to share his bed. It has been just as well, Morgaine thought dispassionately, that Accolon has spent this winter in Camelot with Arthur; we might have taken dangerous chances and been discovered.
Uriens set down the dice cup and looked up at her. He was thinner, wasted by his long struggle with the fever. There had been a few days when Morgaine thought he could not live, and she had fought hard for his life; partly because, in spite of everything, she was fond of him and did not want to see him die, partly because Avalloch would have succeeded to his throne the moment he died.
"I have not seen you all day. I have been lonely, Morgaine," Uriens said, with a fretful note of reproach. "Huw, here, is not half so good to look at."
"Why," Morgaine said, tuning her voice to the broad jesting Uriens liked, "I have left you purposely alone, thinking that in your old age you had taken a taste for handsome young men ... if you do not want him, husband, does that mean that I can have him?"
Uriens chuckled. "You are making the poor man blush," he said, smiling with broad good nature. "But if you leave me alone all day, why, what am I to do but moon and make sheep's eyes at him, or at the dog."
"Well, I have come to give you good news. You shall be carried down to the hall for dinner tonight-Uwaine is riding hither and will be here before suppertime."
"Now God be thanked," Uriens said. "I thought this winter that I should die without seeing either of my sons again."
"I suppose Accolon will return for the Midsummer festivals." In her body Morgaine felt a stab of hunger so great that it was pain as she thought of the Beltane fires, now only two months away.
"Father Eian has been at me again to forbid the rites," Uriens said peevishly. "I am tired of hearing his complaints. He has it in mind that if we cut down the grove, then the folk would be content with his blessing of the fields, and not turn away to the Beltane fires. It is true that there seems more and more of the old worship every year-I had thought that as the old folk died off, year by year, it would grow ever less. I was willing to let it die out with the Old People who could not accustom themselves to new ways. But if the young people now are turning back to heathen ways, then we must do something-perhaps, even, cut down the grove."
If you do, I shall do murder, Morgaine thought, but schooled her voice to gentleness and reason. "That would be wrong. The oaks give pig food and food for the country people-even here we have had to use acorn flour in a bad season. And the grove has been there for hundreds of years-the trees are sacred-"
"You sound too much a pagan yourself, Morgaine."
"Can you say the oak grove is not the work of God?" she retorted. "Why should we punish the harmless trees because foolish men make a use of them dial Father Eian does not like? I thought you loved your land."
"Well, and so I do," said Uriens fretfully, "but Avalloch, too, says I should cut it down, so that the pagans should have no place of resort. We might build a church or chapel there."
"But the Old Ones are your subjects too," Morgaine said, "and in your youth you made the Great Marriage with the land. Would you deprive the Old People of the grove that is their food and shelter, and their own chapel built by the very hands of God and not of man? Would you then condemn them to die or starve as they have done in some of the cleared lands?"