Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [192]
By doing right I did wrong; by obeying Viviane’s word I helped with the wreck and disaster of this marriage, for wreck I now know it will be. . . .
“Lady Morgaine,” Kevin said gently, “you are troubled. Can I do anything to help you?”
Morgaine shook her head, biting back tears again. She wondered if he knew she had been given to Arthur in the kingmaking. She could not accept his pity. “Nothing, lord Druid. Perhaps I share your fears for this marriage made in a waning moon. I am concerned for my brother, no more. And I do pity the woman he has wedded.” And as she spoke the words she knew they were true; for all her fear of Gwenhwyfar, not unmixed with hatred, she knew that she did pity her—marrying a man who did not love her, loving a man she could not wed.
If I take Lancelet from Gwenhwyfar, then I do my brother a service, and his wife as well, for if I take him away she will forget him. She had been trained to examine her own motives in Avalon, and now she cringed inwardly; she was not being honest with herself. If she took Lancelet from Gwenhwyfar, it would not be for her brother’s sake nor for the sake of the kingdom, but purely and solely because she desired Lancelet herself.
Not for yourself. For the sake of another you could use your magic; but you must not deceive yourself. She knew love charms enough. It would be for Arthur’s good! It would work to the advantage of the kingdom, she told herself repeatedly, if she took Lancelet from her brother’s wife; but the unsparing conscience of a priestess kept saying: This you may not. It is forbidden to use your magic to make the universe do your will.
So, still, she would try; but she must do it unassisted, with no more than her own woman’s wiles. She told herself fiercely that Lancelet had desired her once, without the aid of magic; she could certainly make him desire her again!
Gwenhwyfar was weary of the feasting. She had eaten more than she wanted, and although she had sipped only one glass of wine, she felt overly hot, and slid her veil back, fanning herself. Arthur had gone to speak to many of his guests, moving slowly toward the table where she sat with the ladies, and finally reaching her; with him, Lancelet and Gawaine. The women slid along the benches, making room, and Arthur sat beside her.
“It is the first moment I have really had to speak to you, my wife.”
She held out her small hand to him. “I understand. This is more like a council than a wedding feast, my husband and my lord.”
He laughed, somewhat ruefully. “All events in my life now seem to become so. A king does nothing in private. Well,” he amended, smiling, seeing the flush that spread over her face, “almost nothing—I think there will be a few exceptions, my wife. The law requires that they must see us put to bed together, but what happens after that need concern no one but ourselves, I trust.”
She lowered her eyes, knowing that he had seen her blush. Once again, with the flood of shame, she realized that she had forgotten him again, that she had been watching Lancelet and thinking, with the drowsy sweetness of a dream, how very much she wished it had been to him she had been joined in marriage this day—what damnable fate had made her a High Queen? His eyes fell on her with that hungry look, and she dared not look up at him. She saw him turn his eyes from her even before the shadow fell over them and the lady Morgaine stood there; Arthur made room for her at his side.
“Come and sit with us, my sister, there is always room for you here,” he said, his voice so languorous that Gwenhwyfar wondered for a moment how much he had drunk. “When the feast has worn away a little, see, we have prepared something more for entertainment, perhaps something more stirring than the bard’s music, beautiful though it is. I did not know you were a singer, my sister. I knew you were an enchantress, but not that you were a musician as well. Have you enchanted us all?”
“I hope not,” Morgaine said,