Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [300]
“And so you always do, my dear,” she said, looking at the small dark hand holding the berry. It was bramble-scratched and the knuckles grimed and grubby like any active boy’s hand, but she noted, too, that he had scrubbed it long and hard and that the nails were not dirty and broken but carefully pared short. “But why have you put on your holiday tunic this morning?”
“Did I put on my holiday tunic?” he asked, his small dark face innocent. “Yes, I suppose I did. Well—” He paused, and she knew that whatever his reason, and of course he would have a good one, she would never know it. At last he said calmly, “I soaked my other one in the dew picking your berries, madam.” Then, suddenly, he said, “I thought I should hate sir Lancelet, Mother. Gareth talked of him early and late as if he were a God,” and Morgause remembered that, though he would not weep before her, Gwydion had been heartbroken when Gareth had gone south to King Arthur’s court. Morgause had missed him too—Gareth had been the only person alive who had real influence with Gwydion and could make him do as he would with only a light word. Since Gareth had gone there was no one alive to whose counsel Gwydion would listen.
“I thought he would be a fool full of his own importance,” Gwydion said, “but he is nothing of the sort. He told me more about lighthouses than even Lot knew, I think. And he said when I was older I should come to Arthur’s court and be made a knight, if I was good and honorable.” His deep-set dark eyes considered that. “All the women said I look like him—and they asked, and I was angry that I did not know how to answer them. Foster-mother"—he leaned forward, his dark, soft hair falling loose over his forehead, lending the composed small face an unusual vulnerability—"tell me true—is Lancelet my father? I thought that might be why Gareth was so fond of him. . . .”
And you are not the first to ask that question, my love, she thought, stroking the boy’s soft hair. The unusual childishness in his face as he asked made her voice gentler than usual.
“No, my little one. Of all the men in the kingdom, Lancelet could not be your father—I made it my business to ask. All that year you were begotten, Lancelet was in Less Britain, fighting at the side of his father, King Ban. I thought so too, but you look like him because Lancelet is your mother’s nephew, as he is mine.”
Gwydion surveyed her skeptically, and Morgause could almost read his thoughts; that she had told him exactly what she would have told him if she had known Lancelet was his father. He said at last, “Perhaps one day I shall go to Avalon, rather than to Arthur’s court. Does my mother dwell now in Avalon, foster-mother?”
“I know not.” Morgause frowned . . . once again, this oddly adult foster-son of hers had led her on to speak to him as if he were a grown man; he did that so often. It came to her that now Lot was gone, Gwydion was the only person in this household with whom she spoke from time to time as one adult to another! Oh, yes, Lochlann was man enough in bed at night, but he never had much more to say than one of the shepherds or even the housemaids!
“Go out now, Gwydion my love, I am going to be dressed—”
“Why should I go?” he asked. “I have known well enough what you look like, ever since I was five years old.”
“But you are older now,” she said, with that old sense of helplessness. “It is not fitting you should be here while I dress.”
“Do you care that much what is fitting, foster-mother?” he said ingenuously, his eyes resting on the depression in the cushion where Lochlann had lain, and Morgause felt the sudden upward rush of frustration and wrath—he could entangle her in these arguments as if he were a grown man and a Druid! She said sharply, “I need not account to you for my doings, Gwydion!”
“Did I say you must?” His eyes were all injured innocence. “But if I am older, then I will need to know more about women than I did when I was