Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [239]
“Is it so, lady?” The abbess’ lined face wrinkled up in pleasure at being the confidante of the Queen. “Indeed we shall pray for you. It will give all the sisters pleasure to think we are the first to say prayers for our new prince.”
“I shall make gifts to your convent—”
“God’s gifts and prayers may not be bought for gold,” the abbess said primly, but she looked pleased nevertheless.
In the room near Igraine’s chamber, where she had slept these last nights, her serving-woman was moving about, putting garments and gear into saddlebags. As Gwenhwyfar entered, she looked up and grumbled, “It suits not well with the dignity of the High Queen, madam, to travel with only one servant! Why, any knight’s wife would have as much! You should get you another from one of the houses here, and a lady to travel with you as well!”
“Get one of the lay sisters to help you, then,” said Gwenhwyfar. “But we shall travel all the more quickly if we are but few.”
“I heard in the courtyard that there were Saxons landing on the Southern Shores,” the woman grumbled. “It soon will not be safe to ride anywhere in this country!”
“Don’t be foolish,” Gwenhwyfar said. “The Saxons on the Southern Shores are bound fast by treaty to keep peace with the High King’s lands. They know what Arthur’s legion can do, they found it out at Celidon Wood. Do you think they want more work for ravens? In any case we will soon be back at Caerleon, and at the end of summer, we shall move the court to Camelot in the Summer Country—the Romans defended that fort against all the barbarians. It has never been taken. Even now Sir Cai is there, building a great hall fit for Arthur’s Round Table, so that all the Companions and kings may sit at meat together.”
As she had hoped, the woman was diverted. “That is near your own old home, is it not, lady?”
“Yes. From the heights of Camelot, one may look a bowshot across the water and see my father’s island kingdom. Indeed, I went there in childhood once,” she said, remembering how, when she was a little girl, even before she went to school with the nuns on Ynis Witrin, she had been taken up to the ruins of the old Roman fort. There had been little there then, except for the old wall, and the priest had not stinted to make this a lesson on how human glories faded away. . . .
She dreamed that night that she stood high on Camelot; but the mists drew in around the shore, so that the island seemed to swim in a sea of cloud. Across from them, she could see the high Tor of Ynis Witrin, crowned with ring stones; although she knew well that the ring stones had been thrown down by the priests a hundred years ago. And by some trick of the Sight it seemed that Morgaine stood on the Tor and laughed at her and mocked her, and she was crowned with a wreath of bare wicker-withes. And then Morgaine was standing beside her on Camelot and they looked out over all the Summer Country as far as the Isle of the Priests, looking down over her own old home where her father Leodegranz was king, and over Dragon Island shrouded in mist. But Morgaine was wearing strange robes and a high double crown, and she stood so that Gwenhwyfar could not quite see her, but only knew she was there. She said, I am Morgaine of the Fairies, and all these kingdoms will I give to you as their High Queen if you will fall down and worship me.
Gwenhwyfar woke with a start, Morgaine’s mocking laughter in her ears. The room was empty and silent except for the heavy snores of her serving-woman in a pallet on the floor. Gwenhwyfar made the sign of the cross and lay down to sleep again. But on the very edge of sleep it seemed to her that she looked into the clear and moonlit waters of a pool, and instead of her own face, Morgaine’s pale face was reflected back at her, crowned with wicker-withes like the harvest dolls some of the peasant folk still made, and very far away. And again Gwenhwyfar had to sit up and make the sign of the cross before she could compose herself to sleep.
It seemed all too soon that she was wakened, but