Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [58]
Well, if it is so, there is good in that too, for it would mean that my sister lives and my vision of her was a delusion born of my own fears. And so she welcomed Gorlois calmly, with food and a bath and clean dry clothes, and only pleasant words. Let him think, if he would, that she was repenting her harshness and trying to curry his favor again. It no longer mattered to her what Gorlois thought or what he did. She no longer hated him or resented the early years of misery and despair. Her sufferings had made her ready for what would come after. She served Gorlois his food and drink, saw to the housing of his men as was suitable, and forbore to question him. She brought Morgaine for a moment, washed and combed and pretty, for her curtsey to her father, then had Isotta take her away to bed.
Gorlois sighed, pushing away his plate. “She grows good-looking; but she is like a fairy child, one of the folk of the hollow hills. Where came she by such blood? There is none of it among my people.”
“But my mother was of the old blood,” Igraine said, “and Viviane, too. I think her father must have been one of the fairy folk.”
Gorlois shivered and said, “And you don’t even know who fathered her—one thing that the Romans did well was to make an end of those folk. I fear no armed man that I can slay, but I fear those underground folk of the hollow hills, with their enchanted circles and their food that can lead you to wander a hundred years in enchantment, and their elf bolts which come out of the dark and strike a man down, unshriven, to send him to the hells. . . . The Devil made them for the death of Christians, and it is the work of God to kill them, I think!”
Igraine thought of the herbs and simples which the women of the fairy folk brought even to their conquerors for healing; of the poison arrows that could bring down game which could be taken no other way; of her own mother, born of the fairy people, and of Viviane’s unknown father. And Gorlois, like the Romans, would make an end of these simple people in the name of his God? “Well,” she said, “that must be as God wills, I suppose.”
“Morgaine perhaps should be brought up in a convent of holy women, so that the great evil she has inherited from your old blood will never taint her,” Gorlois mused. “When she is old enough, we will see to it. A holy man told me once that women bear the blood of their mothers, and so it has been since the days of Eve, that what is within women, who are filled with sin, cannot be overcome by a woman-child; but that a son will bear his father’s blood even as Christ was made in the image of God his father. So if we have a son, Igraine, we need not fear that he will show the blood of the old evil folk of the hills.”
A surge of anger rippled through Igraine, but she had pledged herself not to anger him. “That too must be as your God wills.” For she knew, if he had forgotten, that he would never touch her again as a man touches a woman. It did not matter now what he said or did. “Tell me what has brought you home so unexpectedly, my husband.”
“Uther, of course,” Gorlois said. “There has been a great kingmaking on Dragon Island, which is near to Glastonbury of the priests—I know not why the priests allow it to stand there, for it is a heathen place, and there they have paid homage to their Horned One of the woods, and raised serpents, and such foolishness as it is not fitting should be done in a Christian land. King Leodegranz, who is king of the Summer Country, stands with me and has refused to make compact with Uther. Leodegranz likes Uther no more than I, but he will not make war on the Pendragon now; it is not fitting that we should war among ourselves with the Saxons gathering on the eastern shores. If the Scots come this summer, we will be caught between hammer and anvil. And now Uther has sent an ultimatum