Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [429]
. . . the worse, she thought, because the temptation was always there to sit and spin and dream, letting her mind slide away, to follow Arthur at Camelot, or Accolon on quest—it had come to her, three years ago, that Accolon should spend enough time at court that Arthur should know him well and trust him. Accolon bore the serpents of Avalon, and that might prove a valuable bond with Arthur. She missed Accolon like a constant ache; in his presence she was what he always saw her—high priestess, confident of her goals and herself. But that was secret between them. In the long, lonely seasons, Morgaine experienced recurrent doubts and dreads; was she then no more than Uriens thought her, a solitary queen growing old, body and mind and soul drying and withering?
Still, she kept her hand firmly on this household, over countryfolk and castlefolk alike, so that all should turn to her for counsel and wisdom. They said in the country around: The queen is wise. Even the king does nothing without her consent. The Tribesmen and the Old Ones, she knew, came near to worshipping her; though she dared not appear too often at the ancient worship.
Now in the kitchen house she made arrangements for a festal dinner—or as near to it as they could come at the end of a long winter when the roads were closed. Morgaine gave from the locked cupboards some of her hoarded store of raisins and dried fruits, and a few spices for cooking the last of the bacon. Maline would tell Father Eian that Uwaine was expected at the hall for dinner. She herself should bear the tidings to Uriens.
She went up to his chamber, where he was lazily playing at dice with one of his men-at-arms; the room smelled frowsty and unaired, stale and old. At least his long siege with the lung fever this winter has meant I need not be expected to share his bed. It has been just as well, Morgaine thought dispassionately, that Accolon has spent this winter in Camelot with Arthur; we might have taken dangerous chances and been discovered.
Uriens set down the dice cup and looked up at her. He was thinner, wasted by his long struggle with the fever. There had been a few days when Morgaine thought he could not live, and she had fought hard for his life; partly because, in spite of everything, she was fond of him and did not want to see him die, partly because Avalloch would have succeeded to his throne the moment he died.
“I have not seen you all day. I have been lonely, Morgaine,” Uriens said, with a fretful note of reproach. “Huw, here, is not half so good to look at.”
“Why,” Morgaine said, tuning her voice to the broad jesting Uriens liked, “I have left you purposely alone, thinking that in your old age you had taken a taste for handsome young men . . . if you do not want him, husband, does that mean that I can have him?”
Uriens chuckled. “You are making the poor man blush,” he said, smiling with broad good nature. “But if you leave me alone all day, why, what am I to do but moon and make sheep’s eyes at him, or at the dog.”
“Well, I have come to give you good news. You shall be carried down to the hall for dinner tonight—Uwaine is riding hither and will be here before suppertime.”
“Now God be thanked,” Uriens said. “I thought this winter that I should die without seeing either of my sons again.”
“I suppose Accolon will return for the Midsummer festivals.” In her body Morgaine felt a stab of hunger so great that it was pain as she thought of the Beltane fires, now only two months away.
“Father Eian has been at me again to forbid the rites,” Uriens said peevishly. “I am tired of hearing his complaints. He has it in mind that if we cut down the grove, then the folk would be content with his blessing of the fields, and not turn away to the Beltane fires. It is true that there seems more and more of the old worship every year—I had thought that as the old folk died off, year by year, it would grow ever less. I was