Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [511]
“You know not? You? Does it not seem to you that we beheld a true miracle, that God himself came before us to show that the Holy Grail should be reclaimed for his service?”
“At times, I think so,” said Arthur, slowly, “and then I wonder . . . was it not the magic of the Merlin which enchanted us, so that we should see a vision and think thus? For now are my Companions gone forth from me, and who knows whether they shall ever return?” He raised his face to her; she noticed, as from very far away, that his eyebrows were all white now, and that his fair hair was liberally silvered.
He said, “Knew you not that Morgaine was here?”
“Morgaine?” Gwenhwyfar shook her head. “No, I knew it not . . . why came she not to greet us?”
He smiled, “You ask that? She left our court under my great displeasure.” His lips tightened and again his hand sought the hilt of Excalibur, as if to reassure himself that still it lay at his side. It hung now in a leather scabbard, a coarse and ugly thing; she had never dared to ask him what had become of the one Morgaine had made for him so many years ago, but now she guessed that was behind their quarrel.
“You knew it not—that she had rebelled against me. She would have put her paramour Accolon on the throne in my place . . .”
Gwenhwyfar had thought she would never again feel wrath at any living creature after the day’s joyous vision; even now, what she mostly felt was pity for Morgaine, and pity too for Arthur, knowing how he had loved and trusted the sister who had betrayed him. “Why did you not tell me that? I never trusted her.”
“That is why,” said Arthur, pressing her hand. “I thought I could not bear it, to hear you say how you trusted her never, and how you had often warned me against her. But Morgaine was here this day, in the guise of an old peasant woman. She looked old, Gwenhwyfar, old and harmless and sick. I think that she had come in disguise for another look, perhaps, at that place where once she had held high state, and perhaps for another glimpse of her son. . . . She looked older than our mother looked when she died . . .” and he was silent, reckoning for a moment on his fingers, and saying at last, “Why, and so she is, as I am older than my father ever was, my Gwenhwyfar. . . . I think not that Morgaine came to do mischief, and if she did, why, for sure it was prevented by the holy vision . . .” and he was silent. Gwenhwyfar knew, with her sure instinct, that he did not want to say aloud that he loved Morgaine still and that he missed her.
As the years pass there are so many things I cannot say to Arthur, or he to me . . . but at least we both spoke today of Lancelet and of the love that was among us all. And it seemed to her for the moment that his love was the greatest truth in her life, and that love could never be weighed out or measured, so much for this one and so much for that, but was an endless and eternal flow, that the more she loved, the more love she had to give, as she gave it now to everyone, as it had been given her by her vision.
Even toward the Merlin, today, she felt that flow of warmth and tenderness. “Look how Kevin struggles with his harp. Shall I send someone to help him, Arthur?”
Arthur smiled and said, “He needs it not, for Nimue is ministering to him, see?”
And again she felt the flood of love, this time for Lancelet’s daughter and Elaine’s—child to two of those she had loved best. Nimue’s hand under the Merlin’s arm . . . like the old tale of the maiden who fell in love with a wild beast from the depths of the forest! Ah, but today she even felt love for the Merlin too, and was glad that he had Nimue’s strong young hands to help him.
And as the days passed in the near-empty court at Camelot, Nimue came to seem more and more like the daughter she had never had. The girl listened with attentive courtesy when she