Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [539]
“God forbid, madam. And I too have ridden this road often, yet somehow, it seems, we are lost,” Cormac said, and Morgause felt she would choke with her exasperation. Mentally she retraced the road she had travelled so often from Lothian, leaving the Roman road and taking the well-travelled way along the edge of the marshes to Dragon Island, then along the ridge till they should strike the road to Camelot, which Arthur had had broadened and resurfaced until it was almost as good as the old Roman road.
“Yet somehow you have missed the Camelot road, dolt, for there is that old fragment of Roman wall . . . somehow or other we are half an hour’s ride past the turn to Camelot,” Morgause scolded. There was no help for it now but to turn the whole caravan about, and already darkness was closing down. Morgause drew up her hood over her head and urged her plodding horse through the grey lowering twilight. At this time of year there should have been another hour of sunlight, but there was only the faintest glimmer of light in the west.
“Here it lies,” said one of her women. “See, that clump of four apple trees—I came here one summer to take a graft of apples for the Queen’s garden.”
But there was no road, only a little track winding upward on a barren hill, where there should be a broad road, and above it, even through mist, there should have been the lights of Camelot.
“Nonsense,” she said brusquely, “we have lost the way, somehow—are you trying to tell me that there is no more than one clump of four apple trees in Arthur’s kingdom?”
“Yet that is where the road ought to be, I swear it,” grumbled Cormac, but he got the whole line of riders, horses, and pack animals into motion again and they plodded on, rain coming down and down as if it had been coming down since the beginning of time and had forgotten how to stop. Morgause was cold and weary, longing for hot supper at Gwenhwyfar’s table and hot mulled wine and a soft bed, and when Cormac rode up to her again she demanded crossly, “What now, dolt? Have you managed to lose us again, and miss a wide wagon road once more?”
“My queen, I am sorry, but somehow—look, we are back again where we paused to rest the horses after we turned off the Roman road—that bit of rag I dropped, I’d been using it to clean the muck off one of the packs.”
Her wrath exploded. “Was ever a queen plagued with so many damnable fools about her?” she shouted. “Must we look for the biggest city north of Londinium all over the Summer Country? Or must we ride back and forth on this road all night? If we cannot see Camelot’s lights in the dark, we could at least hear it, a castle with more than a hundred knights and serving-men, horses and cattle, Arthur’s men patrolling all the roads about—everything that moves on this road is clearly in sight of his watchtowers!”
Yet in the end there was nothing to do but to have lanterns lighted and turn southward again; Morgause herself rode at the head of the line, next to Cormac. The fog and rain seemed to damp out all sound, even echoes, until, through the foggy rain, they found themselves again at the ruined patch of Roman wall where they had turned about before. Cormac swore, but he sounded frightened too.
“Lady, I am sorry, I cannot understand it—”
“Damnation seize you all!” Morgause shrieked at him. “Will you have us riding hither and thither on this road all night?” Yet she too recognized the ruined wall. She drew a long breath, exasperation and resignation in one. “Perhaps by morning the rain will have ended, and if we must we can retrace our steps to the Roman wall. At least we will know where we have come!”
“If indeed