Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [208]
“Enough—no, truly, I can sing no more. I am hoarse as any raven.”
Soon after, Arthur called the servants to extinguish the torches in the hall and light the guests to bed. It was one of Morgaine’s tasks to see that the unmarried women who waited on the Queen were safely put to sleep in the long loft room behind the Queen’s own chamber, at the opposite end of the building from the soldiers and armsmen. But she lingered a moment, her eyes on Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, who were bidding Lancelet good night.
“I have told the women to prepare the best spare bed for you, Lancelet,” said Gwenhwyfar, but he laughed and shook his head.
“I am a soldier—it is my duty to see horses and men bedded safe for the night before I sleep.”
Arthur chuckled, his arm around Gwenhwyfar’s waist. “We must get you married, Lance, then you will not spend your nights so cold. I made you my captain of horse, but you need not spend your nights lying down among them!”
Gwenhwyfar felt a pain within her breast as she met Lancelet’s eyes. It seemed to her that she could almost read his thoughts, that he would say aloud again, as he had said once, My heart is so full of my queen I have no room there for any other lady. . . . She held her breath, but Lancelet only sighed and smiled at her, and she thought, No, I am a wedded wife, a Christian woman, it is sin even to think such thoughts; I must do penance. And then, feeling her throat so tight she could not swallow, she felt the thought come unbidden. Penance enough that I must be apart from the one I love . . . and she gasped aloud, so that Arthur turned startled eyes on her.
“What is it, love, have you hurt yourself?”
“A—a pin pricked me,” she said, and turned her eyes away, pretending to hunt for the pin at the folds of her dress. She saw Morgaine watching her, and bit her lip. She is always watching me . . . and she has the Sight; does she know all my sinful thoughts? Is that why she looks on me so scornfully?
Yet Morgaine had never shown her anything but a sister’s kindness. And when she had been pregnant, in the first year of their marriage—when she had taken a fever and miscarried the child within five months—she could not bear to have any of her ladies about her, and Morgaine had cared for her almost like a mother. Why, now, was she so ungrateful?
Lancelet bade them good night again, and withdrew. Gwenhwyfar was almost painfully conscious of Arthur’s arm around her waist, the frank eagerness in his eyes. Well, they had been apart a long time. But she felt a sudden, sharp resentment. Not once, since that time, have I been pregnant—can he not even give me a child?
Oh, but surely that was her own fault—one of the midwives had told her it was like a sickness in cattle when they cast their calves unborn, time after time, and sometimes women took that sickness too, so they could not carry a child more than a month or two, three at the most. Somehow, through carelessness, she must have taken that illness, gone perhaps into the dairy at the wrong time, or drunk of milk from a cow who had cast her calf, and so the life of her lord’s son and heir had been forfeit, and it was all her doing. . . . Torn with guilt, she followed Arthur into their chamber.
“It is more than a jest, Gwen,” said Arthur, sitting to draw off his leather hose. “We must get Lancelet married. Have you seen how all the lads run to him, and how good he is with them? He should have sons of his own. I have it, Gwen! We will marry him to Morgaine!”
“No!” The word was torn from her before she thought, and Arthur looked at