Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [140]
“I will be glad to have my kinswoman Morgaine,” said a soft voice, and Morgaine looked up to see the very image of her own mother as she remembered her from her own childhood: stately, robed richly in bright silks, with jewels and hair braided into a bright coronal on her brow. “Why, you were such a little girl, and now you are grown, and a priestess!” Morgaine was folded into a warm and scented embrace. “Welcome, kinswoman, come here and sit by me. How does our sister Viviane? We hear great things of her, that she is the moving force behind all the great events which have brought Igraine’s son to the throne. Even Lot could not stand against one backedby the Merlin and the fairy folk and all the Tribes and all the Romans. And so your little brother is to be king! Will you come to court, Morgaine, and advise him, as Uther would have been well advised to have the Lady of Avalon do?”
Morgaine laughed, relaxing into Morgause’s embrace. “A king will do as seems good to him, that is the first lesson which all who come near him must know. I suppose Arthur is like enough to Uther to learn that without much lessoning.”
“Aye, there is not much doubt who had his fathering now, for all the talk there was about it then,” Morgause said, and drew breath in swift compunction. “No, Igraine, you must not weep again—it should be joy to you, not sorrow, that your son is so much like his father, and accepted everywhere in all of Britain because he has pledged himself to rule all the lands and peoples.”
Igraine blinked; she had, Morgaine thought, been doing overmuch weeping in the last days. She said, “I am happy for Arthur—” but her voice choked and she could not speak again. Morgaine stroked her mother’s arm, but she felt impatient; always, always, ever since she could remember, her mother had had no thought for her children, only for Uther, Uther. . . . Even now when he was dead and lay in his grave, her mother would push her and Arthur aside for the memory of the man she had loved enough to make her forget everything else. With relief she turned back to Morgause.
“Viviane said you had sons—”
“True,” Morgause said, “though most of them are still young enough to be here among the women. But the oldest is here to pledge loyalty to his king. Should Arthur die in battle—and not even Uther was immune to that fate—my Gawaine is his nearest kinsman, unless you already have a son, Morgaine—no? Have the priestesses of Avalon embraced chastity like nuns, then, that at your age you have given the Goddess neither son nor daughter? Or have you shared your mother’s fate and lost many children at birth? Forgive me, Igraine—I did not mean to remind you—”
Igraine blinked back tears. “I should not weep against God’s will; I have more than many women. I have a daughter who serves the Goddess to whom I was reared, and a son who will tomorrow be crowned with his father’s crown. My other children are in the bosom of Christ.”
Name of the Goddess, thought Morgaine, what a way to think of a God, with all the generations of the dead clinging to him! She knew it was only a way of speaking, a comfort to a sorrowing mother, yet the blasphemy of the idea troubled her. She remembered that Morgause had asked her a question and shook her head.
“No, I have borne no children, Morgause—until this year at Beltane I was kept virgin for the Goddess.” She stopped abruptly; she should say no more. Igraine, who was more Christian than Morgaine could have believed, would have been horrified at the thought of the rite in which she had played the part of the Goddess for her own brother.
And then a second horror swept over her, worse than the first, so that she felt a wave of sickness follow in its wake. It had come about at full moon, and though the moon had waned and filled and waned again, her moon-dark bleeding had not yet come upon her, nor showed any sign it was about to do so. She had been relieved that she would not have this nuisance at the crowning, and had thought it was reaction to the great magic; no other explanation had suggested