Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [6]
She went down to the kitchen, her long skirts trailing on the stone steps. Morgause was there, in her finest gown, and she had put Morgaine into a holiday dress, dyed saffron, so that the child looked dark as a Pict. Igraine picked her up, holding her with pleasure. Small, dark, delicately made, so small-boned it was like handling a little soft bird. How had that child come by her looks? She herself and Morgause were tall and red-haired, earth-colored like all of the Tribeswomen, and Gorlois, though dark, was Roman, tall and lean and aquiline; hardened from years of battle against the Saxons, too filled with his Roman dignity to show much tenderness to a young wife, and with nothing but indifference for the daughter who came in the place of the son she should have borne him.
But, Igraine reminded herself, these Roman men considered it their divine right to have power of life and death over their children. There were many, Christians or no, who would have demanded that a daughter not be reared, so that their wives might be free at once to give them a son. Gorlois had been good to her, he had let her keep her daughter. Perhaps, though she did not give him credit for much imagination, he knew how she, a woman of the Tribes, felt about a daughter.
While she was giving orders for the entertainment of guests, for wine to be brought up from the cellars and for the roasting of meat—not rabbit, but good mutton from the last slaughtering—she heard the squawk and flutter of frightened hens in the court and knew that the riders had come across the causeway. The servants looked frightened, but most of them had become resigned to the knowledge that the mistress had the Sight. She had pretended it, using clever guesses and a few tricks; it was just as well that they should remain in awe of her. Now she thought, Maybe Viviane is right, maybe I still have it. Maybe I only believed it was gone—because in those months before Morgaine was born, I felt so weak and powerless. Now I have come back to myself. My mother was a great priestess till the day of her death, though she bore several children.
But, her mind answered her, her mother had borne those children in freedom, as a Tribeswoman should, to such fathers as she chose, not as a slave to some Roman whose customs gave him power over women and children. Impatiently, she dismissed such thoughts; did it matter whether she had the Sight or only seemed to have it, if it kept her servants properly in order?
She went slowly out to the courtyard, which Gorlois still liked to call the atrium, though it was nothing like the villa where he had lived until Ambrosius made him Duke of Cornwall. She found the riders dismounting, and her eyes went at once to the only woman among them, a woman smaller than herself and no longer young, wearing a man’s tunic and woolen breeches, and muffled in cloaks and shawls. Across the courtyard their eyes met in welcome, but Igraine went dutifully and bent before the tall, slender old man who was dismounting from a raw-boned mule. He wore the blue robes of a bard, and a harp was slung across his shoulder.
“I bid you welcome to Tintagel, Lord Messenger; you bestow a blessing upon our roof and honor it with your presence.”
“I thank you, Igraine,” said the resonant voice, and Taliesin, Merlin of Britain, Druid, Bard, clasped his hands before his face, then extended them to Igraine in blessing.
Her duty done for the instant, Igraine flew to her half-sister and would have bent for her blessing too; but Viviane bent and prevented her.
“No, no, child, this is a family visit, time enough later to do me honors if you must. . . .” She clasped Igraine close and kissed her on the mouth. “And this is the babe? It is easy to see she has the blood