Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [329]
Lancelet slid his sword back into its scabbard. “I will do your will, my lord. But if you do not punish this murder, then I beg leave to depart from your court.”
“Oh, I will punish it.” Arthur’s face was grim. “Balin, are you sane enough to listen to me? Then this is your doom: I banish you forever from this court. Let this lady’s body be made ready and put on a horse bier, and I charge you to take it to Glastonbury, and tell all your tale to the Archbishop and do such penance as he shall lay on you. You spoke but now of God and Christ, but no Christian king allows private vengeance to be taken by the sword before his throne of justice. Do you hear what I say, Balin, once my knight and Companion?”
Balin bent his head. His nose had been broken by Lancelet’s blow; his mouth was streaming blood, and he spoke thickly through a broken tooth. “I hear you, my lord King. I will go.” He sat with his head bowed.
Arthur gestured to the servants. “I beg you, bring someone to remove her poor body—”
Morgaine broke away from the hands that held her and knelt beside Viviane. “My lord, I beg you, allow me to ready her for burial—” and struggled to hold back the tears she dared not shed. This was not Viviane, this broken dead thing, the hand like a shrunken claw still clutching the sickle dagger of Avalon. She took up the dagger, kissed it, and slid it into her own belt. This, and only this, would she keep.
Great merciful Mother, I knew we could never go together to Avalon. . . .
She would not weep. She felt Lancelet close beside her. He muttered, “God’s mercy Balan is not here—to lose mother and foster-brother in one moment of madness—but if Balan had been here it might not have happened! Is there any God or any mercy?”
Her heart ached for Lancelet’s anguish. He had feared and hated his mother, but he had worshipped her, too, as the very face of the Goddess. A part of her wanted to pull Lancelet into her arms, comfort him, let him weep; yet there was rage too. He had defied his mother, how dared he grieve for her now?
Taliesin was kneeling beside them, and he said, in his broken old voice, “Let me help you, children. It is my right—” and they moved aside as he bowed his head to murmur an ancient prayer of passage.
Arthur rose in his place. “There will be no more feasting this day. We have had too much tragedy for a feast. Those of you who are hungry, finish your meal and go quietly.” He came slowly down to where the body lay. His hand rested gently on Morgaine’s shoulder; she felt it there, through her numb misery. She could hear the other guests quietly leaving the hall, one after another, and through the rustle she heard, softly, the sound of a harp; only one pair of hands in Britain played such a harp. And at last she melted and tears streamed from her eyes as Kevin’s harp played the dirge for the Lady, and to that sound, Viviane, priestess of Avalon, was slowly borne from the great hall of Camelot. Morgaine, walking beside the bier, looked back only once at the great hall and the Round Table, and the solitary, bowed figure of Arthur, standing alone beside the harper. And through all her grief and despair, she thought, Viviane never gave to Arthur the message of Avalon. This is the hall of a Christian king, and now there is no one who will say otherwise. How Gwenhwyfar would rejoice if she knew.
His hands were outstretched; she did not know, perhaps he was praying. She saw the serpents tattooed about his wrists and thought of the young stag and the new-made king who had come to her with the blood of the King Stag on his hands and face, and for a moment it seemed to her that she could hear the mocking voice of the fairy queen. And then there was no sound but the anguished lamenting of Kevin’s harp and Lancelet weeping at her side as they bore Viviane forth to rest.
Morgaine speaks . . .
I followed the body of Viviane from the great hall of the Round Table, weeping for only the second time that I could remember.