Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [482]
Gwenhwyfar welcomed her with a chilly embrace and invited her to a seat near the fire and Gwenhwyfar’s own chair.
“What are you working at?” Morgaine asked, examining Gwenhwyfar’s fine tapestry work.
The Queen proudly spread it out before her. “It is a hanging for the altar of the church—see, here is the Virgin Mary, with the angel come to tell her she will bear the son of God . . . and there stands Joseph all in amazement—see, I have made him old, old with a long beard—”
“If I were old as Joseph, and my promised wife told me, after being closeted with such a handsome young man as yonder angel, that she were with child, I would ask myself some questions about the angel,” Morgause said irreverently. For the first time Morgaine wondered how miraculous had that virgin birth been after all? Who knew but the mother of Jesus had been ready to conceal her pregnancy with a clever tale of angels . . . but after all, in all religions but that one, for a maiden to be pregnant by a God was nothing so strange. . . .
I myself, she thought, at the edge of hysteria, taking a handful of carded wool and beginning to twirl the spindle, I myself gave up my maidenhood to the Horned One and bore a son to the King Stag . . . will Gwydion set me on a throne in Heaven as Mother of God?
“You are so irreverent, Morgause,” Gwenhwyfar complained, and Morgaine quickly complimented Gwenhwyfar on the fineness of her stitches and asked who had drawn the pattern for the picture.
“I drew it myself,” said Gwenhwyfar, surprising Morgaine; she had never believed Gwenhwyfar had talents of this sort. “Father Patricius has promised, too, that he will teach me to copy letters in gold and crimson,” the Queen said. “He says I have a good hand at it for a woman. . . . I never thought I could do so, Morgaine, and yet you made that fine scabbard Arthur wears—he told me that you broidered it for him with your own hands. It is very beautiful.” Gwenhwyfar chattered on, as artlessly as a girl half her age. “I have offered to make him one, many times—I was offended that a Christian king should bear the symbols of heathendom, but he said it was made for him by his own dear, beloved sister and he would never lay it aside. And indeed it is beautiful work . . . did you have gold threads made for it in Avalon?”
“Our smiths do beautiful work,” said Morgaine, “and their work in silver and gold cannot be bettered.” The spindle’s twirling made her sick. How long would it be before the wrenching sickness of the drug would seize on her? The room was close and seemed to smell of the stuffy, airless lives these women led, spinning and weaving and sewing, endless work so that men might be clothed . . . one of Gwenhwyfar’s ladies was heavily pregnant and sat sewing on infant’s swaddling cloths . . . another stitched an embroidered border to a heavy cloak for father or brother or husband or son . . . and there was Gwenhwyfar’s fine stitchery for the altar, the diversion of a queen who could have other women to sew and spin and weave for her.
Round and round went the spindle; the reel sank toward the floor and she twisted the thread smoothly. When had she learned to do this work? She could not even remember a time when she could not spin a smooth thread . . . one of her earliest memories was of sitting on the castle wall at Tintagel, beside Morgause, spinning; and even then, her thread had been more even than her aunt’s, who was ten years her senior.
She said so to Morgause, and the older woman laughed. “You spun finer thread than I when you were seven years old!”
Round and round went the spindle, sinking slowly toward