Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [272]
The wind was brisk and cold, and she walked at a good pace, glad of the cloak, threadbare and torn though it was. The morning was far advanced, and she was beginning to think of sitting herself down by the road and eating some of the cold fowl, when she heard hooves behind her on the road, overtaking her.
Her first thought was to continue on her way—she was bent on her own affairs and had as good a right to the road as any other traveller. Then, remembering the ruin of the farm, she took thought and went to the side of the road, concealing herself behind a bush. There was no way to tell what manner of folk travelled the roads now, with Arthur too busy keeping the peace against the Saxons to have much time to create peace in the countryside and protection along the roads. If the traveller seemed harmless, she might ask him what news; if not, well, she would lie here hidden until he was out of sight.
It was a solitary horseman, wrapped in a grey cloak and riding on a tall, lean horse; riding alone, with no servant or pack horse. No, but he bore a great pack behind him—no, not that either; it was that his body was hunched over in the saddle—and then she knew who the man must be, and stepped out from her place of concealment.
“Kevin Harper!” she said.
He drew up his horse; it was well trained and did not rear or sidle. He looked down at her, scowling, his mouth twisted in a sneer—or was it but the scars he bore?
“I have nothing for you, woman—” and then he broke off. “By the Goddess! It is the lady Morgaine—what do you here, madam? I had heard last year that you were in Tintagel with your mother before she died, but when the High Queen went south to her burying, she said no, you had not been there—”
Morgaine reeled and put out a hand to steady herself on her stick. “My mother—dead? I had not heard—”
Kevin dismounted, steadying himself against the horse’s flank until he got his stick under him. “Sit you down here, madam—you had not heard? Where, in the name of the Goddess, have you been? The word came even to Viviane in Avalon, but she is now too old and too frail to go forth.”
But where I was, Morgaine thought, I heard it not. It may be that when I saw Igraine’s face in the forest pool, then was she calling to me with the news, and I never knew. Pain wrenched at her heart; she and Igraine had grown so far from each other—they had parted soon after she was eleven years old and gone forth to Avalon—yet now it tore at her with anguish, as if she were that same little girl who had wept when she left Igraine’s house. Oh, my mother, and I knew nothing of it. . . . She sat at the edge of the road, tears streaming down her face. “How did she die? Have you heard?”
“Her heart, I believe; it was a year ago in the spring. Believe me, Morgaine, I heard nothing but that it was natural and expected for her years.”
For a moment Morgaine could not control her voice enough to speak; and with the grief, there was terror, for clearly she had dwelt out of the world longer than she had thought possible. . . . Kevin said, a year ago in the spring. So more than one spring had gone by while she lingered in the fairy country! For in the summer when she left Arthur’s court, Igraine had not even been ailing! It was not a question of how many months she had been gone, but how many years!
And could she get Kevin to tell her, without revealing where she had been?
“There is wine in my saddlebag, Morgaine—I would offer it to you, but you must get it for yourself. . . . I walk not well at the best of times. You look thin and pale, are you hungry too? And how is it that I find you on this road, clothed"—Kevin wrinkled his brow in fastidious distaste—"worse than any