Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [155]
As for me, I was not priest-bred or priest-ridden. The child now in my womb—I resolved this firmly—had not been gotten by any mortal man. He had been sent to me by the King Stag, the Horned One, as was lawful for the first child of a sworn priestess.
So I turned my steps toward the North, without fear of the long journey over moorland and fell which would bring me at last to the kingdom of Orkney, and to my kinswoman Morgause.
Book Two
The High Queen
1
Far to the north, where Lot was king, the snow lay deep on the fells, and even at midday there was often no more than a twilit fog. On the rare days when the sun shone, the men could get out for some hunting, but the women were imprisoned in the castle. Morgause, idly twirling her spindle—she hated spinning as much as ever, but the room was too dark for any finer work—felt an icy draft from the opened door and looked up. She said in mild reproof, “It is too cold for that, Morgaine, and you have been complaining of the cold all day; now would you turn us all into icicles?”
“I was not complaining,” said Morgaine. “Did I say a word? The room is as stuffy as a privy, and the smoke stinks. I want to breathe—no more!” She pushed the door shut and went back to the fire, rubbing her hands and shivering. “I have not once been warm since Midsummer.”
“I doubt that not at all,” said Morgause. “Your little passenger in there steals all the heat from your bones—he is warm and snug, and his mother shivers. It is always so.”
“At least Midwinter is now past, the light comes earlier and stays later,” said one of Morgause’s women. “And perhaps in another fortnight, you will have your babe with you. . . .”
Morgaine did not answer but stood shivering near the fire, chafing her hands as if they ached. Morgause thought that the girl looked like her own ghost, her face sharpened and fined to deathly thinness, her hands bony as skeleton sticks contrasted with the huge bulging of her pregnant belly. There were great dark circles under her eyes, and the lids were red as if sore with long weeping; but in all the moons Morgaine had been in this house, Morgause had not seen the younger woman shed a single tear.
I would comfort her, but how can I, if she does not weep?
Morgaine was wearing an old gown of Morgause’s own, a faded and threadbare kirtle of dark blue, grotesquely too long. She looked clumsy, almost slatternly, and it exasperated Morgause that her kinswoman had not even troubled to take needle and thread and shorten the dress somewhat. Her ankles, too, were swollen so that they bulged over her shoe tops; that was from having only salt fish and coarse vegetables to eat at this time of year. They all needed fresh food, which was not easy to come by in this weather. Well, perhaps the men would have some luck at hunting and she could induce Morgaine to eat some of the fresh meat; after four pregnancies of her own, Morgause knew the near-starvation of late pregnancy. Once, she remembered, when she was pregnant with Gawaine, she had gone into the dairy and eaten some of the clay they kept for whitening it. An old midwife had told her that when a pregnant woman cannot keep herself from eating such strange things, it is the child that hungers and she should feed him whatever he wishes for. Maybe tomorrow there would be fresh herbs by the mountain stream—that was something every pregnant woman craved, especially in late winter like this.
Morgaine’s beautiful dark hair was tangled, too, in a loose braid—it looked as if she hadn’t combed or rebraided it for weeks. She turned from the fire now, took down a comb that was kept on the shelf, picked up one of Morgause’s little lapdogs and began combing it. Morgause thought, You would be better occupied at combing your own hair, but she held her peace; Morgaine had been so edgy lately that there was no speaking to her at all.