Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [386]
His hands trembled on her body; but when he spoke, his voice was quiet and practical.
“I think all the castle folk are abed. I knew you would be here waiting for me. . . .”
For a moment Morgaine resented his certainty; then she bowed her head. They were in the hands of the Goddess and she would not refuse the flow that carried her on, like a river; long, long, she had only whirled about in a backwater, and now she was washed clean into the current of life again. “Where is Avalloch?”
He laughed shortly. “He is gone down to the village to lie with the Spring Maiden . . . it is one of our customs that the village priest does not know. Ever, since our father was old and we were grown men, it has been so, and Avalloch does not think it incompatible with his duty as a Christian man, to be the father of his people, or as many of them as possible, like Uriens himself in his youth. Avalloch offered to cast lots with me for the privilege, and I had started to do so, then I remembered your hands blessing her, and knew where my true homage lay. . . .”
She murmured half in protest, “Avalon is so far away . . .”
He said, with his face against her breast, “But she is everywhere.”
Morgaine whispered, “So be it,” and rose. She pulled him upright with her and made a half turn toward the stairs, then stopped. No, not here; there was not a bed in this castle that they could honorably share. And the Druid maxim returned to her, Can that which was never made nor created by Man, be worshipped under a roof made by human hands?
Out, then, into the night. As they stepped into the empty courtyard, a falling star rushed downward across the sky, so swiftly that for an instant it seemed to Morgaine that the heavens reeled and the earth moved backward under her feet . . . then it was gone, leaving their eyes dazzled. A portent. The Goddess welcomes me back to herself. . . .
“Come,” she whispered, her hand in Accolon’s, and led him upward to the orchard, where the white ghosts of blossom drifted in the darkness and fell around them. She spread her cloak on the grass, like a magic circle under the sky; held out her arms and whispered, “Come.”
The dark shadow of his body over her blotted out the sky and the stars.
Morgaine speaks . . .
Even as we lay together under the stars that Midsummer, I knew that what we had done was not so much lovemaking as a magical act of passionate power; that his hands, the touch of his body, were reconsecrating me priestess, and that it was her will. Blind as I was to all at that moment, I heard around us in the summer night the sound of whispers and I knew that we were not alone.
He would have held me in his arms, but I rose, driven on by whatever power held me now at this hour, and raised my hands above my head, bringing them down slowly, my eyes closed, my breath held in the tension of power . . . and only when I heard him gasp in awe did I venture to open my eyes, to see his body rimmed with that same faint light which edged my own.
It is done and she is with me. . . . Mother, I am unworthy in thy sight . . . but now it has come again. . . . I held my breath to keep from breaking out into wild weeping. After all these years, after my own betrayal and my faithlessness, she has come again to me and I am priestess once more. A pale glimmer of moonlight showed me, at the edge of the field where we lay, though I saw not even a shadow, the glimmer of eyes like some animal in the hedgerow. We were not alone, the little people of the hills had known where we