Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [374]
Our first bedding was about what I expected. He stroked me and fussed and pumped away atop me for a little while, snorting and breathing hard, and then was suddenly done and away from me and asleep. Having expected no better, I was not disappointed, nor particularly sorry to curl up in the curve of his arm; he liked having me there, and although after the first few weeks he lay with me but seldom, still he liked having me in his bed and would sometimes hold me in his arms for hours, talking of this and that, and what was more, listening to what I said. Unlike the Romans of the South, these men of the Tribes never scorned to listen to a woman’s advice, and for that, at least, I was grateful, that he would hear what I said and never put it aside as being but a woman’s counsel.
North Wales was a beautiful country, great hills and mountains that reminded me of the country of Lothian. But where Lothian was high and barren, Uriens’ country was all green and fertile, lush with trees and flowers, and the soil was rich and the crops good. Uriens had built his castle in one of the finer valleys. His son Avalloch, and Avalloch’s wife and children, deferred to me in all things, and his youngest son, Uwaine, called me “Mother.” I came to know what it might have been to have a son to bring up, to look after all the little daily concerns of a growing child, climbing trees and breaking bones, outgrowing his clothes or tearing them in the woods, being rude to his tutors or taking dog’s leave to go hunting when he should have been at his book; the priest who taught Uwaine his letters despaired, but he was the pride and joy of the arms master. Troublesome as he was, I loved him well; he waited on me at dinner, and often sat in hall to listen to me when I played the harp—like all the folk of that country he had an ear for music and a clear and tuneful voice; and like all of that court, Uriens’ family would rather make music themselves than listen to paid minstrels. After a year or two I began to think of Uwaine as my own son, and of course he could not remember his own mother. Wild as he was, he was always gentle with me; boys that age are not easy to control, but there were endearing moments, after days of rudeness or sullenness, when he would suddenly come and sit by me in the hall and sing to my harp, or bring me wild flowers or a clumsily tanned hareskin, and once or twice, awkward and shy as a young stork, he would bend and brush my cheek with his mouth. Often I wished, then, that I had had children of my own that I could rear myself. There was little enough else to do at this quiet court, far away from the wars and troubles to the south.
And then, when I had been married to Uriens for a year, Accolon came home.
9
Summer on the hills; the orchard in the queen’s garden covered with pink and white blossoms. Morgaine, walking beneath the trees, felt an aching homesickness all through her blood, remembering the Avalon spring and the trees covered with those white and rosy clouds. The year was swinging toward the summer solstice; Morgaine reckoned it up, realizing ruefully that at last the effects of half a lifetime in Avalon were wearing away—the tides no longer ran in her blood.
No, need I lie to myself? It is not that I have forgotten, or that the tides no longer run in my blood, it is that I no longer let myself feel them. Morgaine considered herself dispassionately—the somber costly gown, suitable for a queen . . . Uriens had given her all the gowns and jewels which had belonged to his late wife, and she had her jewels from Igraine as well; Uriens liked to see her decked out in jewels befitting a queen.
Some kings kill their prisoners of state, or enslave them in their mines; if it pleases the King of North Wales to hang his with jewels and parade her forth at his side, and call her queen, why not?
Yet she felt full of the flow of the summer. Beneath her on the hillside she could hear