Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [311]
“And there is this,” said Viviane, and she sounded tired. “Gwenhwyfar has done nothing wrong that we know—we cannot set her down from Arthur’s side while she keeps the bargain she has made, to be a dutiful wife to Arthur. If a scandal is made, there must be truth in it. Avalon is sworn to uphold the truth.”
“But if there were a true scandal?” Kevin said.
“Then she must take her chances,” Viviane said, “but I will not be party to any false accusations.”
“Yet she has at least one other enemy,” said Kevin thoughtfully. “Leodegranz of the Summer Country has just died, and his young wife and her last child with her, Gwenhwyfar is queen there now; but Leodegranz had a kinsman—he claims to be a son, but I believe it not—and I think he would like it well if he could claim to be king in the old manner of the Tribes, by bedding with the queen.”
Gwydion said, “It is well they have no such custom at Lot’s most Christian court, is it not?” But he spoke softly, so that they could affect not to hear him. And Morgause thought: He is angry because he is being ignored, that is all. Am I to be angry because a puppy bites me with his little teeth?
“By the old custom,” said Niniane, her pretty brow ridging into little lines, “Gwenhwyfar is not wedded to any unless she has borne him a son, and if another man can take her from Arthur—”
“Aye, there’s the question,” said Viviane, laughing. “Arthur can keep his wife by force of arms. And he would do it, too, I doubt not.” Then she sobered. “The one thing we can be certain of is that Gwenhwyfar shall remain barren. Should she conceive again, there are spells to make certain she carries not the child to birth, or past the first few weeks. As for Arthur’s heir . . .” She paused, and looked at Gwydion, still sitting like a sleepy child, his head resting on Niniane’s lap. “There sits a son of the royal line of Avalon—and son to the Great Dragon.”
Morgause caught her breath. Never once, in all these years, had it occurred to her that it was anything other than the gravest mischance that Morgaine had gotten herself with child by her half-brother. Now she saw the complexity of Viviane’s plan and was awe-stricken by the audacity of it—to set a child of Avalon and of Arthur on the throne after his father.
What of the King Stag when the young stag is grown . . . ? For a moment Morgause did not know whether the thought had been her own or had come into her head as an echo from one of the two Avalon priestesses before her; always she had had these disturbing, incomplete moments of the Sight, though she could never control when they would come or go, and, truth to tell, had not cared to do so.
Gwydion’s eyes were wide; he leaned forward, his mouth open. “Lady—” he said breathlessly, “is it true—that I, I am the son of the—of the High King?”
“Aye,” said Viviane, her mouth tight, “though the priests will never acknowledge it. To them it would be sin of all sins, that a son should get a son on his mother’s daughter. They have set themselves up holier than the Goddess herself, who is mother to us all. But it is so.”
Kevin turned; slowly, painfully, with his crippled body, he knelt down before Gwydion.
“My prince and my lord,” he said, “child of the royal line of Avalon, and son to the Great Dragon, we have come to take you to Avalon, where you may be prepared for your destiny. On the morrow you must be ready to depart.”
2
On the morrow you must be ready to depart. . . .”
It was like to the terror of a dream that they should speak thus openly of what I had kept secret all these years, even during that time when none thought I could live after his birth. . . . I could have gone to my death with none knowing I had borne a child to my own brother. But Morgause had got the secret from me, and Viviane knew . . . it was an old saying, three could keep a secret if but two of them lay in their graves. . . . Viviane had planned this, she had used me as she had used Igraine!
But the dream was beginning to break up now and shift and ripple as if it