Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [565]
No. He would love her still, but he would never forget by whose blood he had come to possess her. Never would one or the other—love or hate—take power over him, but he would live with them both, tearing doubly at his heart, and one day they would tear his mind to bits and he would go mad again. She clung close to the warmth of his body, leaning her head against his back, and wept. She knew, for the first time, that she was stronger than he, and it cut at her heart with a deathly sword.
And so when they paused again, she was dry-eyed, though she knew that the weeping had moved inward to her heart and never would she cease to mourn. “I will not go overseas with you, Lancelet, nor will I bring strife among all the old Companions of the Round Table. When—when Mordred has his way, they will all be at odds,” she said, “and a day will come when Arthur will need all his friends. I will not be like that lady of old time—was her name Helen, that fair one in the saga you used to tell to me?—who had all the kings and knights of her day at strife over her in Troy.”
“But what will you do?” She tried not to hear that even through the bewilderment and grief in his voice, there was a thread of relief.
“You will take me to the Isle of Glastonbury,” she said. “There is a nunnery there where I was schooled. There I will go, and I will tell them only that evil tongues made a quarrel between you and Arthur for my sake. When some time has passed, I will send word to Arthur so that he knows where I am, and knows that I am not with you. And then he can with honor make his peace with you.”
He protested, “No! No, I cannot let you go—” but she knew, with a sinking at her heart, that she would have no difficulty persuading him. Perhaps, against all odds, she had hoped that he would fight for her, that he would carry her off to Less Britain with the sheer force of his will and passion. But that was not Lancelet’s way. He was as he was, and whatever he was, so and no other way he had been when first she loved him, and so he was now, and so she would love him for the rest of her life. And at last he strove no more with her, but set the horse’s head on the road toward Glastonbury.
The long shadow of the church lay across the waters when they set foot at last on the boat that would bring them to the island, and the church bells were ringing out the Angelus. Gwenhwyfar bent her head and whispered a word of prayer.
Mary, God’s Holy Mother, have pity on me, a sinful woman . . . and then for a moment it seemed to her that she stood beneath a great light, as she had stood on that day when the Grail passed through the hall. Lancelet sat in the prow of the ferry, his head lowered. He had not touched her from the moment she had told him what she had decided, and she was glad; a single touch of his hand would have worn away her resolve. Mist lay on the Lake, and for an instant it seemed to her that she saw a shadow, like the shadow of their own boat, a barge draped in black, with a dark figure at the prow—but no. It was only a shadow, a shadow. . . .
The boat scraped on the shore. He helped her from it. “Gwenhwyfar—are you certain?”
“I am certain,” she said, trying to sound surer than she felt.
“Then I will escort you to the doors of the convent,” he said, and it suddenly struck her that this took, for him, more courage than all the killing he had done for her sake.
The old abbess recognized the High Queen, and was awed and amazed that she should return, but Gwenhwyfar told the tale she had decided on—that evil tongues had wrought a quarrel between Arthur and Lancelet for her sake, and she had chosen to take refuge here so they might amend their quarrel.
The old woman patted her cheek as if she were the little Gwenhwyfar who had been lessoned here when she was a child. “You are welcome to stay as long as you wish it, my daughter. Forever, if that is your will. In God’s house we turn no one away. But here you will not be a queen,” she warned, “only one of our sisters.”
Gwenhwyfar sighed