Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [554]
Gwenhwyfar’s ladies and stewards had done their task well; there was roast and boiled meat in plenty, and great meat pies with gravy, platters of early apples and grapes, hot bread and lentil porridge. At the high table, when the feasting was done and the Saxons were drinking and at their favorite game of asking riddles, Arthur called Niniane to sing for them. Gwenhwyfar had Lancelet at her side, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling—he had been wounded by a Northman’s battle-axe. He could not use his arm, and Gwenhwyfar was cutting his meat for him. No one, Morgause thought, paid it the slightest attention.
Gareth and Gawaine were seated further down the table, and Gwydion close to them, sharing a dish with Niniane. Morgause went to greet them. Gwydion had bathed and combed his hair into curls, but one of his legs was bandaged, propped on a stool.
“Are you hurt, my son?”
“It does well enough,” he said. “I am too big now, Mother, to run and climb into your lap when I stub my toe!”
“It looks worse than that,” she said, looking at the bandage and the crusted blood at the edges, “but I will leave you alone, if you wish. Is that tunic new?”
It was made in a fashion she had seen many of the Saxons wearing, with sleeves so long that they came down past the wrist and half covered the knuckles of the hand. Gwydion’s was of blue-dyed cloth, embroidered with crimson stitchery.
“It was a gift from Ceardig. He told me it was a good fashion for a Christian court, for it conceals the serpents of Avalon.” His mouth twisted. “Perhaps I should give my lord Arthur such a tunic for a New Year’s gift this winter!”
“I doubt if anyone would know the difference,” said Gawaine. “No one, now, thinks of Avalon, and Arthur’s wrists are so faded no one sees or would criticize if they did.”
Morgause looked at Gawaine’s bruised face and eyes. He had in truth lost more than one tooth, and his hands, too, looked cut and bruised.
“And you too are wounded, my son?”
“Not from the enemy,” Gawaine growled. “This I got from our Saxon friends—one of the men in Ceardig’s army. Damn them all, those unmannerly bastards! I think I liked it better when they were all our foes!”
“You fought him, then?”
“Aye, and will do so again, should he dare to open his clacking jaw about my king,” Gawaine said angrily. “Nor did I need Gareth to come to my rescue, as if I were not big enough to fight my own battles without my little brother coming to my aid—”
“He was twice your size,” said Gareth, putting down his spoon, “and he had you on the ground, and I thought he would break your back or crack your ribs—I am not sure yet that he did not. Was I to sit aside while that foul-tongued fellow beat my brother and slandered my kinsman? He will think twice and then thrice before he opens his evil mouth again with such words.”
“Still,” said Gwydion quietly, “you cannot silence the whole Saxon army, Gareth, especially when what they say is true. There’s a name, and not a pretty one, for a man, even when that man’s a king, who sits back and says nothing while another man does his husband’s duty in his wife’s bed—”
“You dare!” Gareth half rose, turning on Gwydion and gripping the Saxon tunic at the neck. Gwydion put up his hands to loosen Gareth’s hold.
“Easy, foster-brother!” He looked like a child in the giant Gareth’s grip. “Will you treat me as you treated yonder Saxon because here among kinsmen I speak truth, or am I too to keep to the pleasant lie of the court, when all men see the Queen with her paramour and say nothing?”
Gareth slowly relaxed his grip and eased Gwydion back to his seat. “If Arthur has nothing to complain of in the lady’s conduct, who am I to speak?”
Gawaine muttered, “Damn the woman! Damn her anyhow! Would that Arthur had put her away while there was still time! I have no great love for so Christian a court as this has become, and filled with Saxons. When I was first knight at Arthur’s side, there was not a Saxon in all this land with more of religion than a pig in his sty!