Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [356]
Goddess! Shut away the Sight from me, let me not see Elaine in his arms . . . writhing, racked, Morgaine did not know whether it was her own imagination or the Sight that tortured her with the awareness of Lancelet’s naked body, of the touch of his hands . . . how clearly she felt them in memory. . . . She went back into the hall where the servants were clearing the tables and said roughly, “Give me some wine.”
Startled, the man poured her a cup. Now they will think me a sot as well as a witch. She did not care. She drank down the wine and asked for more. Somehow it cut away the Sight, freed her from her awareness of Elaine, frightened and ecstatic, pinned down under his rough, demanding body. . . .
Restlessly, like a prowling cat, she paced the hall, flickers of the Sight coming and going. When she judged the time was ripe, she drew a long breath, steeling herself for what she knew she must do now. The bodyservant who slept across the king’s door started awake as Morgaine bent to rouse him.
“Madam, you cannot disturb the king at this hour—”
“It concerns his daughter’s honor.” Morgaine took a torch from the wall bracket and held it aloft; she could sense how she looked to him, tall and terrible, feeling herself merge into the commanding form of the Goddess. He drew aside in terror, and she moved smoothly past.
Pellinore lay in his high bed, tossing restlessly in pain from his bandaged wound. He, too, started awake, looking up at Morgaine’s pale face, the torch held high.
“You must come quickly, my lord,” she said, her voice smooth and taut with her own controlled passion. “This is betrayal of hospitality . . . I felt it right that you must know. Elaine—”
“Elaine? What—”
“She is not asleep in our bed,” Morgaine said. “Come quickly, my lord.” She had been wise not to let him drink; she could not have roused him had he slept heavily with wine. Pellinore, startled, incredulous, threw on a garment, shouting for his daughter’s women. It seemed to Morgaine that they followed her down the stairs and out the doors as smoothly as the writhing of a dragon, a procession with herself and Pellinore at the serpent’s head, and she thrust back the silken flap of the pavilion, holding the torch high and watching with cruel triumph as Pellinore’s outraged face was lighted by the torch. Elaine lay with her arms wound around Lancelet’s neck, smiling and blissful; Lancelet, coming awake in the torchlight, stared around in shock and awareness, and his face was agonized with betrayal. But he did not say a word.
Pellinore shouted, “Now you will make amends, you lecherous wretch, you who have betrayed my daughter—”
Lancelet buried his face in his hands. He said through them, strangled, “I will—make amends—my lord Pellinore.” Then he raised his face and looked straight into Morgaine’s eyes. She met them, unflinching; but it was like a sword through her body. Before this, at least, he had loved her as a kinswoman.
Well, better that he should hate her. She would try to hate him, too. But before Elaine’s face, shamed and yet smiling, she wanted to cry instead, and beg for them to pardon her.
Morgaine speaks . . .
Lancelet was married to Elaine on Transfiguration; I remember little of the ceremony save Elaine’s face, joyous and smiling. By the time Pellinore had arranged the wedding, she knew already that she bore Lancelet’s son in her belly, and although he looked wretched, thin and pallid with despair, he was tender with Elaine, and proud of her swelling body. I remember Gwenhwyfar too, her face drawn with long weeping, and the look of ineradicable hatred that she turned on