Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [277]
“I have not thanked you, Morgaine—”
She smiled. “Oh—if there are thanks, they are to be spoken both ways, my friend—or could you not tell that?”
For a moment the scarred fingers tightened on hers . . . and then it was like a blaze of fire, she saw his ravaged face circled with a ring of fire, contorted with shrieking, and all about and all around him fire . . . fire . . . she stiffened and snatched her hand away, staring at him in horror.
“Morgaine!” he cried. “What is it?”
“Nothing, nothing—a cramp in my foot—” she lied, and avoided his hand when he would have put it out to steady her. Death! Death by burning! What did it mean? Not even the worst of traitors died that death . . . or had she seen only what had befallen him when he was lamed as a boy? Brief as the moment of Sight had been, it left her shaken, as if she herself had spoken the word that would deliver him to his death.
“Come,” she said, almost brusquely. “Let us ride.”
15
Gwenhwyfar had never wished to meddle with the Sight; did it not say in Holy Writ that no man knew what a day might bring forth? Yet she had hardly thought of Morgaine in the last year, not since they had moved the court to Camelot, but this very morning she had wakened remembering a dream she had had of Morgaine—a dream in which Morgaine had taken her hand, leading her to the Beltane fires and bidding her lie with Lancelet there. When she was well awake she could laugh at the madness of that dream. Surely dreams were sent from the Devil, for in all of hers that gave her such evil counsel that no Christian wife could heed, oftenest it was Morgaine who spoke it.
Well, she is gone from this court, I need never think of her again . . . no, I do not wish her ill, I wish she might repent of her sins, and find peace in a nunnery . . . but one very far from here. Now that Arthur had given over his pagan ways, Gwenhwyfar felt that she would even be happy if it were not for these dreams in which Morgaine led her into shameful things. And now the dream haunted her while she sat working at the altar cloth she was making for the church, haunted her so deeply that it seemed wicked to sit working a cross in gold thread while she thought of Lancelet. She put down her thread and whispered a prayer, but her thoughts went on, relentless. Arthur, when she begged him at Christmas, had promised her that he would put down the Beltane fires in the countryside; she thought he would have done it before this, except that the Merlin had forbidden him. It would be hard for any, Gwenhwyfar thought, not to love the old man—he was so gentle and good; if only he were Christian, he would be better than any priest. But Taliesin had said it was not fair to the countryfolk, either, to take from them a simple awareness of a Goddess who cared for their fields and their crops and the fertility of their beasts and their own wombs. Surely there was little that such folk could do in the way of sin, they had all they could do to toil in the fields and till their crops for enough bread to keep them out of death’s reach; it was not to be looked for that the Devil should trouble himself with such people, if there was a Devil at all. But Gwenhwyfar said, “I suppose you think they do no sin, when they go to the Beltane fires and there do lewd and heathen rites and lie with other than their husbands—”
“God knows they have little enough joy in their lives,” Taliesin responded tranquilly. “I cannot think it very wrong that four times in a whole year, when the seasons turn, they should make merry and do what pleasures them. I could not find much reason to love a God who took thought about such things and would call them wicked.