Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [334]
“I marvel to hear you say so,” said Morgaine. “To hear you sing my kinsman Lancelet’s praises, I thought you believed no man could be a good knight unless he were handsome and full of this kind of courtly matters.”
Gwenhwyfar would not quarrel again with Morgaine. “Come, sister, I love Gawaine well, yet he is a rough Northman who trips over his own feet and has hardly a word to say to any woman. For all I know, Meleagrant too may be such a jewel in the wrappings of a knucklebone, and that is why I go thither—to judge for myself.”
So the next morning Gwenhwyfar set forth, with her escort of six knights, Ectorius, the veteran Lucan, her waiting-woman, and a nine-year-old page boy. She had not visited her childhood home since that day she left it with Igraine, to be married to Arthur. It was not far: a few leagues down the hill, and to the shores of the lake, which at this season was drying up into boggy marshes, with cattle grazing in the summer fields and lush grasses filled with buttercup and dandelion and primrose. At the shore two boats were waiting, hung with her father’s banners. This was arrogance, that Meleagrant should bear these unpermitted, but after all, it was possible that the man genuinely believed himself Leodegranz’s heir. It might even be true; perhaps her father had lied about it.
She had landed at these very shores, bound for Caerleon, so many years ago . . . how young she had been, and how innocent! Lancelet had been at her side, but fate had given her to Arthur—God knows, she had tried to be a good wife to him, though God had denied her children. And then despair washed over her again as she looked at the waiting boats. She might give her husband three or five or seven sons, and a year might come of plague, or smallpox, or the throat fever, and all her sons would be gone . . . such things had happened. Her own mother had borne four sons, yet none of them had lived to be as much as five years old, and Alienor’s son had died with her. Morgaine . . . Morgaine had borne a son to their evil God of witches, and for all she knew, that son lived and thrived, while she, a faithful Christian wife, could not bear any child, and now she might soon be too old.
Meleagrant himself was at the landing, bowing, welcoming her as his honored sister, gesturing her toward his own boat, the smaller of the two. Gwenhwyfar never knew even afterward how it had happened that she was separated from all of her escort except for the little page. “My lady’s servants may go in the other boat, I myself will be your escort here,” said Meleagrant, taking her arm with an overfamiliarity she did not like; but after all, she must bear herself with diplomacy and not anger him. At the last moment, with a momentary sense of panic, she gestured to sir Ectorius.
“I will have my chamberlain with me, as well,” she insisted, and Meleagrant smiled, his great coarse face reddening.
“As my sister and queen desires,” he said, and let Ectorius and Lucan step on to the smaller boat with her. He fussed about spreading a rug for her to sit on, and the oarsmen pulled out into the lake. It was shallow, grown heavily with weeds; in some seasons it was dry here. And suddenly, as Meleagrant seated himself beside her, Gwenhwyfar was seized with an attack of the old terror; her stomach heaved, and for a moment she thought she would vomit. She clung to the seat with both hands. Meleagrant was too near her; she moved as far away as the dimensions of the seat would allow. She would have felt more comfortable if Ectorius had been near; his presence was serene and fatherly. She noted the great axe Meleagrant