Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [509]
“Gawaine, must you go—Galahad—? Not you too, my son? Bors, Lionel—what, all of you?”
“My lord Arthur,” called out Mordred. He wore, as always, the crimson which suited him so well and which exaggerated, almost to the point of caricature, his likeness to the young Lancelet.
Arthur’s voice was gentle. “What is it, my dear boy?”
“My king, I ask your permission not to go on this quest,” he said. “Though it may be laid on all your knights, someone must remain at your side.”
Gwenhwyfar felt an overflowing tenderness for the young man. Ah, this is Arthur’s true son, not Galahad, all dreams and visions! Had there ever been a time when she had disliked and distrusted Mordred? She said, heartfelt, “May God bless you, Mordred,” and the young man smiled at her. Arthur bowed his head and said, “Be it so, my son.”
It was the first time Arthur had called him so before other men; Gwenhwyfar gauged his disturbance by that. “God help us both, Gwydion—Mordred, I should say—with so many of my Companions scattered to the four corners of the world, and God alone can say whether or no they will ever return. . . .” He reached out and clasped Mordred’s hands, and for a moment it seemed to Gwenhwyfar that he leaned on his son’s strong arm.
Lancelet came to her side and bowed. “Lady, may I take my leave of you?”
It seemed to Gwenhwyfar that tears were as near the surface as joy. “Ah, love, must you go on this quest?” and cared not who heard her speak the words. Arthur too looked troubled, holding out his hand to his cousin and friend. “Will you leave us, Lancelet?”
He nodded; there was something rapt, otherworldly, shining in his face. So it had come to him, too, that great joy? But why, then, did he need to go forth to seek it? Surely it was within him as well?
“All these years, my love,” she said, “have you told me that you are none so good a Christian as all that. Why then must you run away from me on this quest?”
She saw him struggling for words, and at last he said, “All those years, I knew not whether God was nothing but an old tale told by the priests to frighten us. Now I have seen—” He wet his lips again with his tongue, trying to find words for something beyond them. “I have seen . . . something. If a vision such as this can be shown, whether of Christ or of the Devil—”
“Surely,” interrupted Gwenhwyfar, “surely it came of God, Lancelet—”
“So you say, for you have seen, you know,” he said, holding her hand against his heart. “I am not sure—methinks my mother mocked at me, or all Gods are one as Taliesin used to say—I am torn now between the darkness of never knowing, and the light beyond despair, which tells me—” And again he fumbled for words. “It was as if a great bell called to me, far away, a light like to the faraway lights in the marsh, saying, Follow . . . and I know that the truth, the real truth, is there, there, just beyond my grasp, if I can only follow it and find it there and tear away that veil which shrouds it . . . it is there if only I can reach it, my Gwenhwyfar. Would you deny me the search, now that I know there is truly something worth the finding?”
It seemed as if they were alone in a room, not in the court before all men. She knew she could prevail on him in all else, but who can come between a man and his soul? God had not seen fit to give him this sureness and joy, and she did not wonder that he must now go seeking for it, for if she had sensed it was there, yet without the surety, she too would have spent the rest of her life in that seeking. She reached both hands to him, and said, feeling as though she embraced him before all men in the clear light of day, “Go then, my beloved, and God reward your search with the truth you seek.”
And he said, “God remain with you always, my queen, and may he grant that someday I return to