Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [571]
“I thought as much,” said the monk, “for they called him Lancelet at the court of Arthur, in the old days, but here among us we called him Galahad. He had been with us for many years, and he was made priest but a few days ago.”
So far you came in your search for a God who would not mock you, my cousin!
The monks who carried him raised him again to their shoulders. The one who had spoken with her said, “Pray for his soul, sister,” and she bowed her head. She could not feel grief; not now, when she had seen the reflection of that faraway light on his face.
But she would not follow him into the church. Here the veil is thin. Here Galahad knelt, and saw the light of the Grail in the other chapel, the chapel on Avalon, and reached for it, reached through the worlds, and so died. . . .
And here at last Lancelet has come to follow his son.
Morgaine walked slowly along the path, half ready to abandon what she had come to do. What difference did it make now? But as she paused, irresolute, an old gardener, kneeling at one of the beds of flowers behind the path, raised his head and spoke to her. “I know you not, sister, you are not one of those who dwell here,” he said. “Are you a pilgrim?”
Not as the man thought; but so she was, in a way. “I seek the burial place of my kinswoman—she was the Lady of the Lake—”
“Ah yes, that was many, many years ago, in the reign of our good King Arthur,” he said. “It lies yonder, where pilgrims to the island may see it. And from it, the path leads up to the convent of the sisters, and if you are hungry, sister, they will give you something to eat there.”
Has it come to this, that I look like a beggar? But the man had meant no harm, so she thanked him, and walked in the direction he had pointed out.
Arthur had built for Viviane a noble tomb indeed. But what lay there was not Viviane; nothing lay there but bones, slowly returning to the earth from which they had come . . . and all things at last give up their body and their spirit into the keeping of the Lady again. . . .
Why had it made so much difference to her? Viviane was not there. Yet when she stood with bent head before the cairn, she was weeping.
After a time, a woman in a dark robe not unlike her own, with a white veil over her head, approached her. “Why do you weep, sister? She who lies here is at peace and in God’s hands, she has no need of mourning. But maybe she was one of your kin?”
Morgaine nodded, bending her head against the tears.
“We pray always for her,” said the nun, “for, though I do not know her name, she was said to be the friend and benefactor of our good King Arthur in the days that were gone.” She lowered her head and murmured some prayer or other, and even as she prayed, bells rang out, and Morgaine drew back. So, in place of the harps of Avalon, Viviane had only these clanging bells and doleful psalms?
Never did I think I would stand side by side with one of these Christian nuns, joining with her in prayer. But then she remembered what Lancelet had said in her dream.
Take this cup, you who have served the Goddess. For all the Gods are One . . .
“Come up to the cloister with me, sister,” said the nun, smiling and laying a hand on her arm. “You must be hungry and weary.”
Morgaine went with her to the gates of their cloister, but would not go in. “I am not hungry,” she said, “but if I might have a drink of water—”
“Of course.” The woman in black beckoned, and a young girl came and brought a pitcher of water, which she poured into a cup. And she said, as Morgaine lifted it to her lips, “We drink only the water of the chalice well—it is a holy place, you know.”
It was like Viviane’s voice in her ears: The priestesses drink only the water of the Sacred Well.
The nun and the young girl, robed in black, turned and bent their heads before a woman who came from the cloister, and the nun who had guided her said, “This is our abbess.”
Morgaine thought, Somewhere I have seen her. But even as the thought crossed her mind, the woman said, “Morgaine,