Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [108]
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “but you were the lover of my mother who was Lady here before me, and you fathered two of my sisters. Together we have served the Goddess and Avalon for more years than I can number, and perhaps I long for the comfort of a father’s voice this night . . . I do not know. I feel very old this night, Fa—Taliesin. Is it that you think me too old to be your daughter?”
The old Druid smiled. “Never that, Viviane. You are ageless. I know how old you are—or I could reckon up your age if I chose—but still you seem a girl to me. You might even now have as many lovers as you chose, if you willed it.”
She dismissed that with a gesture. “Be sure I have never found any man who meant more to me than necessity, or duty, or a night’s pleasure,” she said. “And only once, I think, any man save yourself who came near to matching me in strength—” She laughed. “Though, had I been ten years younger—how, think you, would I have befitted the throne as the High King’s queen, and my son the throne?”
“I do not think Galahad—what is it he would have you call him now? Lancelet?—I do not think he is the stuff of which kings are made. He is a visionary, a reed shaken by the wind.”
“But if he had been fathered by Uther Pendragon—”
Taliesin shook his head. “He is a follower, Viviane, not a leader.”
“Even so. That comes from being reared at Ban’s court, as a bastard. Had he been reared as a king’s son . . .”
“And who would have ruled Avalon in those years, had you chosen a crown in the Christian lands outside?”
“If I had ruled them at Uther’s side,” she said, “they would not have been Christian lands. I thought Igraine would have power over him, and use it for Avalon. . . .”
He shook his head. “There is no use in fretting after last winter’s snow, Viviane. It is of Uther I came to speak. He is dying.”
She raised her head and stared at him. “So it has come already.” She felt her heart racing. “He is too young to die. . . .”
“He leads his men into battle, where a wiser man of his years might leave it to his generals; he took a wound, and fever set in. I offered my services as healer, but Igraine forbade it, as did the priests. I could have done nothing anyway; his time has come. I saw it in his eyes.”
“How does Igraine as queen?”
“Very much as you would have foreseen,” said the old Druid. “She is beautiful, and dignified, and pious, and goes always in mourning for the children she has lost. She bore another son at All Hallows; he lived four days, no more. And her house priest has convinced her it is the punishment for her sins. No breath of scandal has ever touched her since she married Uther—save for the birth of that first child, so soon. But that was enough. I asked her what would become of her after Uther’s death, and when she had done weeping for that, she said she would retire into a convent. I offered her the shelter of Avalon, where she could be near to her daughter, but she said it would not be seemly for a Christian queen.”
Viviane’s smile hardened a little. “I never thought to hear that of Igraine.”
“Viviane, you must not blame her, even in thought, for what you yourself have wrought. Avalon cast her out when most she needed it; would you chide the girl because she has found comfort in a simpler faith than ours?”
“I doubt it not—you are the only man in all of Britain who could speak of the High Queen as a girl!”
“To me, Viviane, even you are a little girl at times—that same little girl who used to climb on my knee and touch the strings of my harp.”
“And now I can hardly play. My fingers lose their suppleness with the years,” Viviane said.
He shook his head. “Ah, no, my dear,” he said, holding out his own thin, gnarled old fingers. “Next to this, your hands are young, yet daily I speak to my harp with them, and you could have done so as well. Your hands chose to wield power, not song.”
“And what would have become of Britain if I had not?” she flared at him.
“Viviane,” he said, with a touch of sternness, “I did not censure you. I merely spoke the thing which is.”
She sighed