Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [271]
She had lost horse and dagger and everything else she had had with her. Her shoes, too, were worn, she had no food with her, and she was alone on the shores of unfriendly country, far from any place where she was known as the King’s sister. Well, she had gone hungry before this. A flicker of a smile passed over her face. There were great houses and nunneries where she would perhaps be given bread as a beggar. She would make her way to the court of Arthur—perhaps somewhere she would come on a village where someone would need the services of a midwife, so that she could barter her skill for bread.
She gave one last longing look at the shores across the Lake. Dared she make a final attempt to speak the word of power which would bring her into Avalon? If she could speak with Raven, perhaps she could know precisely what danger threatened . . . she opened her mouth to cry out the word and drew back. She could not face Raven, either; Raven who had kept the laws of Avalon so meticulously, who had done nothing to shame her priestess garb. How could she face Raven’s clear eyes with the memories of what she had done in the outside world and in the fairy country? Raven would have them from her mind in a moment . . . at last, the shores of the Lake and the spire of the church blurring through tears, she turned her back on Avalon to find the Roman road that led away south, past the mines and at last to Caerleon.
She had been three days on the road before she met with another traveller. The first night she had slept in an abandoned herder’s hut, supperless, sheltering from the wind, but no more. On the second day she had come to a farmstead where the folk were all from home except for a half-witted goose boy; but he had let her sit to warm herself by the banked fire inside, and she had taken a thorn from his foot, so that he gave her a hunk of his bread. She had walked farther with less to eat.
But then she came nearer to Caerleon and was shocked to find two burned-out houses, and crops rotting in the field . . . it was as if Saxons had passed this way! She went into one of the houses, which looked as if it had been sacked, for there was little left; but lying in one of the rooms she found an old and faded cloak, too ragged, she supposed, even for the raiders to take, abandoned by someone when they fled the place. It was warm wool, though, and Morgaine wrapped it round herself, though it made her look more than ever like a beggar woman; she had suffered more from the cold than from hunger. Near dusk some fowls clucked in the abandoned court; hens were creatures of habit, they had not yet learned that they could not come here to be fed. Morgaine caught one of them and wrung its neck, and in the ruined fireplace kindled a small fire; if she was lucky, no one would see smoke coming from the ruins, or if they did would think it was but ghosts. She spitted the chicken and roasted it on a green stick of wood over her fire. It was so old and tough that even her strong teeth had trouble chewing it, but she had been hungry so long that she did not care, and sucked the bones as if it were the daintiest of roast birds. She found some leather, too, in one of the outbuildings which had been some sort of forge or smithy; they had carried off every tool and every last scrap of metal, but there were some bits of leather lying about, and Morgaine wrapped what was left of the hen in it. She would have mended her shoes too, but she had no knife. Well, perhaps she would come to a village where she might get the loan of one for a few minutes. What madness had prompted her to cast her dagger away?
It was several days after full moon, and when she set forth from the ruined farm, there was frost on the stone