Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [381]
For Uriens, any woman could be queen, he wants only a smiling face and kind hands to cosset him. Well, he shall have them while it suits my purpose.
“And now it looks as if we would have a fine day for the blessing of the crops. We never have rain at Midsummer-day,” Uriens said. “The Lady shines on her fields when they are consecrated to her—that is what they used to say when I was young and a pagan, that the Great Marriage could not be consummated in the rain.” He chuckled. “Still, I remember once when I was very young, when the fields had been rained on for ten days, and the priestess and I might have been pigs wallowing in the mud!”
Against her will, Morgaine smiled; the picture he made in her mind was ludicrous. “Even in ritual, the Goddess will have her joke,” she said, “and one of her names is the Great Sow, and we are all her piglets.”
“Ah, Morgaine, those were good times,” he said, then his face tightened. “Of course, that was long ago—now what the folk want in their kings is dignity. Those days are gone, and forever.”
Are they? I wonder. But Morgaine said nothing. It occurred to her that Uriens, when he was younger, might have been a king strong enough to resist the tide of Christianity washing over the land. If Viviane had tried harder to put a king on the throne who was not bound hard and fast to the rule of the priests . . . but of course, who could have foreseen that Gwenhwyfar would be pious beyond all reason? And why had the Merlin done nothing?
If the Merlin of Britain and the wise folk at Avalon had done nothing to stem this tide that was drowning the land and washing away all the old ways and the old Gods, why should she blame Uriens, who was after all only an old man, and wanted peace? There was no reason to make him an enemy. If he was content, it would not matter to him what she did . . . she did not know yet what she meant to do. But she knew that her days of silent compliance were over.
She said, “I wish I had known you then,” and let him kiss her on the forehead.
If I had been married to him when first I became marriageable, North Wales might never have become a Christian land. But it is not too late. There are those who have not forgotten that the king still wears, however faded, the serpents of Avalon about his arms. And he has married one who was a High Priestess of the Lady.
I could have done her work better here than all those years at Arthur’s court, in Gwenhwyfar’s shadow. It occurred to Morgaine that Gwenhwyfar would have been content with a husband like Uriens, whom she could keep within her own sphere, rather than one like Arthur, living an entire life in which she had no part.
And there had been a time, too, when Morgaine had had influence with Arthur—the influence of the woman he had first taken in coming to manhood, who wore, for him, the face of the Goddess. Yet, in her folly and pride, she had let him fall into the hands of Gwenhwyfar and the priests. Now, when it was too late, she began to understand what Viviane had intended.
Between us, we could have ruled this land; they would have called Gwenhwyfar the High Queen, but she would have had Arthur only in body; he would have been mine in heart and soul and mind. Ah, what a fool I was. . . . He and I could have ruled—for Avalon! Now Arthur is the priests’ creature. And he bears, still, the great sword of the Druid Regalia, and the Merlin of Britain does nothing to hinder him.
I must take up the work that Viviane let fall. . . .
Ah, Goddess, I have forgotten so much. . . .
And then she stopped, shaking at her own daring. Uriens had reached a pause in his tale; she had ceased rubbing his feet, and he looked down questioning at her, and she said hastily, “I am quite sure you did the right thing, my dear husband,” and spread some more of the sweet-smelling salve on her hands. She had not the slightest idea what she