Mother, Goddess, what a tangle we have made. He says he will always love me and long for me, and that is the one thing he must not do! If Lancelet only felt so ... She sighed, and Igraine came and took her hand.
"You are tired, daughter. That long standing in the sun this morning has wearied you. You are sure you would not rather come back with me to the convent where it is so quiet? No? Well, then, Morgause, take her back to your tent, if you will."
"Yes, dear sister, go and rest." She watched the young men walk away, Arthur tactfully tempering his pace to Cai's halting step.
MORGAINE RETURNED with Morgause to their tent; she was weary, but she had to remain alert and courteous while Lot talked of some plan Arthur had spoken of-fighting on horseback, with attack tactics which could strike down armed bands of Saxon raiders and foot soldiers, most of whom were not trained battle troops.
"The boy's a master of strategy," Lot said. "It might well work; after all, it was bands of Picts and Scots, and the Tribes, fighting from cover, who could demoralize the legions, so I am told-the Romans were so used to orderly fighting by the rules, and to foes who stood to give battle. Horsemen always have an advantage over any foot soldiers; the Roman cavalry units, I have been told, were always the ones who had the greater victories."
Morgaine remembered Lancelet, talking with passion of his theories of fighting. If Arthur shared that enthusiasm and was willing to work with Lancelet to build cavalry units, then a time might come, indeed, when all the Saxon hordes were driven from this land. Then peace would reign, greater than the legendary two hundred years of the Pax Romana. And if Arthur bore the sword of Avalon and the Druid regalia, then indeed the ensuing time might be a reign of wonder ... . Viviane had spoken once of Arthur as a king come out of legend, bearing a legendary sword. And the Goddess might rule again in this land, not the dead God of the Christians with his suffering and death.... She drifted into daydream, waking to reality only when Morgause shook her shoulder lightly.
"Why, my dear, you are half asleep, go to your bed; we will excuse you," she said, and sent her own waiting-woman to help Morgaine from her garments, to wash her feet and braid her hair.
She slept long and deeply, without dreams, the weariness of many days suddenly descending on her. But when she waked, she hardly knew where she was or what had happened, only that she was deathly sick and must stumble outside the tent to vomit. When she straightened up, her head ringing, Morgause was there, a firm and kindly hand to help her back inside. So Morgaine remembered her from earliest childhood, Morgause intermittently kind and sharp. Now she wiped Morgaine's sweating forehead with a wet towel and then sat beside her, telling the waiting-woman to bring her kinswoman a cup of wine.
"No, no, I don't want it, I shall be sick again-"
"Drink it," Morgause said sternly, "and try to eat this piece of bread, it is hard and won't sicken you-you need something in your belly at these times." She laughed. "Indeed, something in the belly is what brings all this trouble on you."
Humiliated, Morgaine looked away from her.
Morgause's voice was kind again. "Come, girl, we've all been through it. So you're breeding-what of it? You're not the first or the last. Who is the father, or shouldn't I ask? I saw you looking at Viviane's handsome son-was he the lucky one? Who could blame you? No? A child of the Beltane fires, then? I'd have thought as much. And why not?"
Morgaine clenched her fists against Morgause's well-meant briskness. "I won't have it; when I return to Avalon, I know what to do."
Morgause looked at her, troubled. "Oh, my dear, must you? In Avalon they would welcome a child to the God, and you're of the royal Avalon line. I won't say I've never done the same-I told you I had been very careful never to bear a child which was not Lot's, which does not mean I slept alone all the time when he was away on his wars. Well, why should I? I don't suppose he always lay down alone! But an old midwife told me once, and she knew her business well, I must say-she told me that a woman should never try to cast out the first child she conceives, for if she did, it might injure her womb so that she could never bear another."
"I am a priestess, and Viviane grows old; I do not want it to interfere with my duties in the temple." And even as she spoke, she knew she was hiding her truth; there were women in Avalon who pursued their work to the last few months of their pregnancies, and then the other women cheerfully divided their tasks so that they could rest before the birth; and afterward, they even had time to nurse their babies before they were sent to fostering. Indeed, some of their daughters were priestess-reared, as Igraine had been. Morgause herself had been reared to her twelfth year in Avalon as Viviane's foster-daughter.
Morgause looked at her shrewdly. "Yes, I think every woman feels like that when first she carries a babe in her womb-trapped, angry, something she can't change and is afraid of. I know it was so with Igraine, it was so with me, I suppose it is so with every woman." Her arms went out and circled Morgaine, holding her close. "But, dear child, the Goddess is kind. As the child grows quick within you, the Goddess will put love in your heart for him, even if you care nothing for the man who put him there. Child, I was married at fifteen to a man far older; and on the day I knew I was with child I was ready to cast myself into the sea-it seemed the end of my youth, the end of my life. Ah, don't cry," she added, stroking Morgaine's soft hair, "you'll feel better soon. I have no liking for going about with a big belly and piddling like a babe in breechclouts all the day long, but the time will pass, and a babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain. I have borne four and would willingly have another- so often I had wished one of my sons had been a daughter. If you'd rather not foster your babe in Avalon, I'll foster him for you-what do you think of that?"
Morgaine drew a long, sobbing breath, raising her head from Morgause's shoulder. "I am sorry-I have wept all over your fine gown."
Morgause shrugged. "If nothing worse should happen to it, it is well. See? The sickness passes and for the rest of the day you will feel well. Do you think Viviane would spare you for a visit to me? You can return to Lothian with us, if you will-you have not seen the Orkneys, and a change will do you good."
Morgaine thanked her, but said that she must return to Avalon, and that before she went, she must go and pay her respects to Igraine.
"I would not counsel you to confide in her," Morgause said. "She has grown so holy she would be shocked, or think it her duty to be so."
Morgaine smiled weakly-she had no intention of confiding in Igraine, nor for that matter in anyone else. Before Viviane could know, there would no longer be anything for her to know. She was grateful for Morgause's advice, and for her goodwill and good advice, but she did not intend to heed it. She told herself fiercely that it was her own privilege to choose: she was a priestess, and whatsoever she did should be tempered with her own judgment.
All through the leavetaking with Igraine, which was strained-and interrupted, more than once, by that damnable bell calling the nuns to their duties-she was thinking that Morgause was more like the mother she remembered than Igraine herself. Igraine had grown old and hard and pious, it seemed to Morgaine, and she bade her farewell with relief. Returning to Avalon, she knew, she was returning home; now she had no other home anywhere in the world.
But if Avalon was no longer home to her, what then?