Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [366]
“The need seems not too likely,” she said, “even the wild Northmen turn elsewhere these days. Do you miss the days of battle and glory?”
He had, she thought, a nice smile. “I fought at Mount Badon,” he said. “It was my first battle, and came near to being my last. I think I prefer mock battles and tourneys. I will fight if I must, but it is better to fight in play against friends who have no real desire to kill, with pretty ladies looking down and admiring us—in real battle, lady, there is none to admire gallantry, and indeed, little of gallantry, for all they talk of courage. . . .”
They had moved, as they spoke, nearer to the church; and now the sound of the bells nearly drowned his voice—a pleasant, musical voice, she thought. She wondered if he played upon the harp. She turned abruptly away from the sound of the bells.
“Are you not going to the holy day mass, lady Morgaine?”
She smiled and looked down at his wrists, where the serpents twined. She ran a light finger over one of them. “Are you?”
“I do not know. I thought I might go to see the faces of my friends—no, I think not,” he said, smiling at her, “when there is a lady to talk to. . . .”
She said, tingeing her voice with irony, “Do you not fear for your soul?”
“Oh, my father is pious enough for both of us . . . he has no wife now, and no doubt he wishes to study out the land and see how it lies for his next conquest. He has listened well to the Apostle and knows it is better to marry than to burn, and he burns oftener than I would think dignified for a man of his years. . . .”
“You have lost your mother, sir Accolon?”
“Aye, before I was weaned; and my stepmothers one, two, and three,” Accolon said. “My father has three sons living, and it is certain he can have no further need of heirs, but he is too pious only to take a woman to his bed, so he must marry again. And even my oldest brother is married, and has a son.”
“You were the son of his old age?”
“Of his middle age,” Accolon said, “and I am not so young as all that. If there had not been war when I was younger, I might have been destined for Avalon and the lore of the priests. But my father has grown Christian in his old age.”
“Yet you wear the serpents.”
He nodded. “And know something of their wisdom, yet not enough to content me. In these days there is not much for a younger son to do. My father told me he would also seek a wife for me at this gathering,” he said with a smile. “I would that you were the daughter of some lesser man, lady.”
Morgaine felt herself blushing like a girl. “Oh, I am too old for you,” she said, “and I am only the King’s half-sister by his mother’s first marriage. My father was Duke Gorlois, the first man Uther Pendragon killed as a traitor. . . .”
There was a brief silence before Accolon said, “In these days it is dangerous, perhaps, to wear the serpents—or will be, if the priests grow more powerful. When Arthur came to the throne, I heard he had the support of Avalon, that the Merlin gave him the sword of the Holy Regalia. But now he has made this so Christian a court . . . my father told me that he feared Arthur would move this land back to the Druid rule, but it seems he has not. . . .”
“True,” she said, and for a moment anger stifled her. “Yet still he wears the Druid sword. . . .”
He looked at her closely. “And you bear the crescent of Avalon.” Morgaine blushed. All the people had gone into the church now, and the doors were shut. “It has begun to rain harder—lady Morgaine, you will be drenched, you will take cold. You must go inside. But will you come and sit beside me at the feast this day?”
She hesitated, smiling. It was certain that Arthur and Gwenhwyfar would not seek her company at the high table this day of all days.
She who must remember what it was like to fall prey to Meleagrant’s lust . . . should she blame me, she that comforted herself in the arms