Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [226]
Balin saw also, and he turned on her, shouting incoherently, “Murder! Treachery, sorcery—! Foul, murdering witch—!”
Gawan wrapped restraining arms around his son. “You will not speak so over your mother’s very body to one she trusted and loved!”
But Balin raved and shouted, straining to come at Viviane. She tried to speak, to quiet him, but he would not hear. At last she went out into the kitchen and sat by the fire.
Balan came and took her hand and said, “I’m sorry he is receiving it in this way, my lady. He knows better, and when the shock is past he’ll be grateful to you as I am—poor little mother, she suffered so, and now ’tis ended, and I bless you too.” He lowered his head, trying not to sob aloud. “She was—was like mother to me too—”
“I know, my son, I know,” Viviane murmured, patting his head as if he were the clumsy little boy he had been more than twenty years ago. “It’s only right you should weep for your foster-mother, you would be heartless if you did not—” and he broke down and sobbed, kneeling at her side, his face buried in her lap.
Balin came and stood over them, his face drawn with fury. “You know she killed our mother, Balan, and yet you come to her for comfort?”
Balan raised his head, snuffling back sobs. “She did our mother’s will. Are you such a fool you could not see—even with God’s help our mother could not have lived another fortnight, do you grudge her that last pain she was spared?”
But Balin only cried desolately, “My mother, my mother is dead!”
“Be still, she was my foster-mother, my mother too,” said Balan angrily, and then his face softened. “Ah, brother, brother, I grieve too, why should we quarrel? Come now, drink some wine, her suffering is ended and she is with God—better we should pray for her than be all at odds this way. Come, brother, come and eat and rest, you are weary too.”
“No,” cried Balin, “I will not rest under the roof that shelters the foul sorceress who slew my mother!”
Gawan came, pale and angry, and struck Balin across the mouth. He said, “Peace! The Lady of Avalon is our guest and our friend! You shall not sully the hospitality of this roof with such blasphemous words! Sit down, my son, and eat, or you will speak words we shall all regret!”
But Balin stared about him like a wild animal. “I will neither eat nor rest under this roof while it holds that—that woman.”
Balan demanded, “Dare you offer insult to my mother?”
And Balin cried, “You are all against me, then—I shall go forth from this roof which shelters my mother’s slayer!” He turned his back and ran from the house. Viviane sank down in a chair, and Balan came to offer his arm and Gawan to pour her a cup of wine.
“Drink, Lady—and accept my apologies for my son,” he said. “He is beside himself; he will come soon enough to sanity.”
“Shall I go after him, Father, for fear he should do himself some hurt?” Balan asked, but Gawan shook his head.
“No—no, son, stay here with your mother. Words will do him little good now.”
Trembling, Viviane sipped at her wine. She, too, was overcome with sorrow for Priscilla, and for the time when they had been young women together, each with her baby son in her arms. . . . Priscilla had been so pretty and merry, they had laughed together and played with their babies, and now Priscilla lay dead after a wasting illness, and Viviane’s own hand had held the cup of her death. That she had done Priscilla’s own will only eased her conscience, it did not blunt her sadness.
We were young together, and now she lies dead and I am old, old as the Death-crone’s very self; and those pretty babies who played about our feet, one has grey in his own hair, and the other would kill me if he could, as a foul sorceress and murderer. . . . It seemed to Viviane that her very bones rattled with an icy grief. She stood near to the fire, but still she shivered and could not get warm. She clutched her shawl about