Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [275]
After a time, through the fast-falling snow, they could make out the dark shape of an abandoned building. Not even Morgaine could enter it walking upright; likely it had been a cattle byre, but the beasts had been gone so long that there was not even a smell, and the thatch-and-daub roof was mostly in place. They tethered the horse and crawled in, Kevin directing her with a gesture to lay the old ragged cloak on the filthy floor, and they each wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down side by side. But it was so cold that at last, hearing Morgaine’s teeth chattering, Kevin said they must spread the two cloaks over them both and lie close together for warmth. “If it will not sicken you to be so close to this misshapen body of mine,” he said, and she could hear the pain and anger in his voice.
“Of what is misshapen about you, Kevin Harper, I know only that with your broken hands you make more music than I, or even Taliesin, with hands that are whole,” Morgaine said, and moved gratefully into his warmth. And at last she felt she could sleep, her head resting in the curve of his shoulder.
She had been walking all day and was weary; she slept heavily, but wakened when the light began to steal through the cracks in the broken wall. She felt cramped from the hard floor, and as she looked around the mud-daubed walls she felt a surge of horror. She, Morgaine, priestess of Avalon, Duchess of Cornwall, lying here in a beast shelter, cast out from Avalon . . . would she ever return? And she had come from worse places, from the Castle Chariot in the fairy country, out of all knowledge of Christendom and heathendom alike, out of the very doors of this world . . . she who had been so delicately reared by Igraine, she who was sister to the High King, schooled by the Lady of the Lake, accepted by the Goddess . . . now had she cast it all away. But, no, she had not cast it away, it had been taken from her when Viviane sent her to the kingmaking and she had come away with child by her own brother.
Igraine is dead, my mother is dead, and I cannot come again to Avalon, never in this world . . . and then Morgaine was weeping hopelessly, muffling her sobs in the coarse stuff of the cloak.
Kevin’s voice was soft and husky in the half-light.
“Do you weep for your mother, Morgaine?”
“For my mother—and for Viviane—and perhaps most of all for myself.” Morgaine was never certain whether she had spoken the words aloud. Kevin’s arm circled her, and she let her head fall against his chest and wept and wept until she could weep no more.
He said, after a long time, still stroking her hair, “You spoke truth, Morgaine—you do not shrink from me.”
“How could I,” she said, nestling closer, “when you have been so kind?”
“All women think not so,” he said. “Even when I came to the Beltane fires, I heard—for some folk think that because my legs and hands are lame, I am also deaf and dumb—I heard more than one, even of the maidens of the Goddess, whisper to their priestess that she should place them afar from me, so that there would be no chance I would look upon them when the time came to go apart from the fires. . . .”
Morgaine sat straight up in dismay. “Were I that priestess, I would drive such a woman forth from the fires, because she dared to question the form in which the God might come to her . . . what did you do, Kevin?”
He shrugged. “Rather than interrupt the ritual or put any woman to such a choice, I went away so quietly that none knew. Even the God could never change what they see or think of me. Even before I was forbidden by the Druid vows to couple with women who barter their bodies for gold, I could pay no woman to accept me. Perhaps I should seek to be a priest among the Christians, who, I have heard, teach their priests the secret of living without women. Or perhaps I should wish that when the raiders broke my hands and body they had gelded me too, so that I should not care one way or the other. I am sorry—I should