Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [501]
Raven was stronger than Morgaine had believed; as they made their way, day by day, slow-paced and afoot, at times it seemed that she was the stronger. They begged broken meats at farm doors, they stole a bit of bread left for a dog at the back of a farmstead, they slept once in a deserted villa and one night beneath a haystack. And on that last night, for the first time on their silent journey, Raven spoke.
“Morgaine,” she said, when they were lying side by side, wrapped in their cloaks, under the shadow of the hay, “tomorrow is Easter at Camelot, and we must be there at dawn.”
Morgaine would have asked why, but she knew Raven could give her no answer but this—that she had seen it as their fate. And so she answered, “Then we shall leave here before dawn. It is no more than an hour’s walk from here—we might have kept walking and slept in the shadow of Camelot, if you had told me this before, Raven.”
“I could not,” Raven whispered. “I was afraid.” And Morgaine knew that the other woman was weeping in the darkness. “I am so frightened, Morgaine, so frightened!”
Morgaine said brusquely, “I told you that you should have remained in Avalon!”
“But I had the work of the Goddess to do,” whispered Raven. “In all these years I have dwelt in the shelter of Avalon, and now it is Ceridwen, our Mother, who demands my all in return for all the shelter and safety I have had from her . . . but I am afraid, so afraid. Morgaine, hold me, hold me, I am so frightened—”
Morgaine clasped her close and kissed her, rocking her like a child. Then, as if they entered together into a great silence, she held Raven against her, touching her, caressing her, their bodies clinging together in something like frenzy. Neither spoke, but Morgaine felt the world trembling in a strange and sacramental rhythm around them, in no light but the darkness of the dark side of the moon—woman to woman, affirming life in the shadow of death. As maiden and man in the light of the spring moon and the Beltane fires affirmed life in the running of spring and the rutting which would bring death in the field to him and death in childbearing to her; so in the shadow and darkness of the sacrificed god, in the dark moon, the priestesses of Avalon together called on the life of the Goddess and in the silence she answered them. . . . They lay at last quiet in each other’s arms, and Raven’s weeping was stilled at last. She lay like death, and Morgaine, feeling her heart slowing to stillness, thought, I must let her go even into the shadow of death if that is the will of the Goddess. . . .
And she could not even weep.
No one took the slightest notice of two peasant women, no longer young, in the turmoil and tumult about the gates of Camelot this morning. Morgaine was used to this; Raven, who had lived so long in seclusion even on quiet Avalon, turned white as bone and tried to hide herself under her ragged shawl. Morgaine also kept her own shawl about her—there were some who would recognize the lady Morgaine, even with her hair streaked with white and in the garb of a peasant woman.
A drover striding through the yard with a calf ran into Raven and came near to knocking her down, and he cursed her when she only stared at him in dismay. Morgaine said quickly, “My sister is deaf and dumb,” and his face changed.
“Ah, poor thing—look, go up by there, they’re giving everybody a good dinner at the lower end of the King’s hall. You two can creep in at that door and watch them when they come in—the King’s got some big thing planned with one of the priests in the hall today. You’ll be from upcountry and not know his ways? Well, everyone in this countryside knows that he makes it a custom—he never sits down to his great feasts unless there’s some great marvel arranged, and we heard today that there is to be something truly marvelous.”
I doubt it not, Morgaine thought disdainfully, but she only thanked