Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [553]
The younger woman laughed. “No, cousin. He is the same, bearded or shaven. Ah, look, there rides King Ceardig, and others—are they all to be guested here at Camelot? Madam, shall I go and tell the stewards?”
“Please do, my dear,” Gwenhwyfar said, and Niniane moved toward the hall. The girls were shoving one another to get a better view, and Gwenhwyfar said, “Come, come—all of you, back to your spinning. It is unseemly to stare at young men this way. Have none of you anything better to do than talk so immodestly about the men? All of you now, be off with you, you will see them this night in the great hall. There is to be feasting, which means work for all of you.”
They looked sulky, but they went obediently back to the hall, and Gwenhwyfar sighed and shook her head as she walked back at Morgause’s side. “In Heaven’s name, was there ever such a lot of unruly girls? And somehow I must keep them all chaste and under my guidance—it seems they spend all their time gossiping and giggling instead of minding their spinning. I am ashamed that my court should be so filled with empty-headed and immodest little hussies like this!”
“Oh, come, my dear,” said Morgause lazily, “surely you too were fifteen once? Surely you were not such a model maiden as all that—did you never steal a look at a handsome young man and think and gossip about how it would be to kiss him, bearded or shaven?”
“I do not know what you did when you were fifteen,” Gwenhwyfar flared at her, “but I was behind convent walls! It seems to me that would be a good place for these unmannerly maids!”
Morgause laughed. “When I was fourteen, I had an eye for everything that wore breeches. I recall that I used to sit in Gorlois’s lap—he that was married to Igraine before Uther’s eyes fell on her—and Igraine knew it well, for when she married Uther, her first act was to pack me off to be married to Lot, which was about as far from Uther’s court as she could send me without crossing the ocean! Come, Gwenhwyfar, even behind your convent walls can you swear you never peeped out at any handsome young man who came to break your father’s horses, or the crimson cloak of any young knight?”
Gwenhwyfar looked down at her sandals. “It seems so very long ago—” and then, recollecting herself, spoke briskly. “The hunters brought in a deer last night—I shall give orders that it be cut up and roasted for dinner, and perhaps we should have a pig killed too, if all these Saxons are to be guested here. And fresh straw must be spread in the rooms where they will sleep, there will never be enough beds for all these people!”
“Send the maidens to see to that too,” said Morgause. “They must learn to manage guests in a great hall—for what other reason are they in your care, Gwenhwyfar? And it is the duty of a queen to welcome her lord when he returns from war.”
“You are right.” Gwenhwyfar sent her page to give the orders, and they walked toward the great gates of Camelot together. Morgause thought, Why, it is exactly as if we had been friends all our lives. And she thought, there were so few of them who had been young together.
She had much the same feeling when she sat that night in the great hall that was hung with decorations and brilliant with the fine clothes of the ladies and the knights. Almost it was like the great days of Camelot. Yet so many of the old Companions were gone in war, or on the Grail quest, and would never return. Morgause did not remember often that she was old, and it frightened her. Half the seats of the Round Table, it seemed, were filled now with hairy Saxons with their great beards and their rough cloaks, or with young men who seemed hardly old enough to hold weapons. Even her baby, Gareth, was one of the older knights of the Round Table, and the newer ones deferred to him amazingly, calling him sir, and asking his advice, or hesitating to argue with him if they differed. As for Gwydion—most of them called him sir Mordred—he seemed quite a leader among the younger men,