Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [76]
From that moment I loved her, so much I sometimes felt guilty because Father Columba, my mother’s confessor, told me I should honor my mother and my father above all others.
So I sat beside Viviane through the wedding feast, and I learned that she was Morgause’s foster-mother—their mother had died at Morgause’s birth and Viviane suckled her as her own. Which fascinated me, because I had been angry when Igraine refused to give my new brother up to a wet nurse and fed him from her own breasts. Uther said it was unseemly for a queen, and I had agreed with him; I had hated seeing Gwydion at Igraine’s breasts. I suppose the truth is that I was jealous, though I would have been ashamed to say so.
“Was your mother, and Igraine’s, a queen, then?” For she was robed as richly as Igraine, or any of the queens of the North.
“No, Morgaine, she was not a queen, but a great priestess, the Lady of the Lake; and I am Lady of Avalon in her place. One day, perhaps, you will be a priestess too. You have the old blood, and perhaps you have the Sight.”
“What is the Sight?”
She frowned. “Igraine has not told you? Tell me, Morgaine, do you ever see things that others cannot see?”
“All the time,” I said, realizing that this lady understood all about me. “Only Father Columba says it is the work of the Devil. And Mother says that I should be silent about it, and never speak of it to anyone, even to her, because these things are not suitable for a Christian court and if Uther knew of them he would send me into a nunnery. I do not think I want to go into a nunnery and wear black clothes and never laugh again.”
Viviane said a word for which nurse had washed my mouth out with the harsh lye soap the kitchen people used for scrubbing floors. “Listen to me, Morgaine. Your mother is right that you should never speak of these things to Father Columba—”
“But God will be angry with me if I lie to a priest.”
She said the bad word again. “Listen, dear child: a priest will be angry if you lie to him, and say it is his God who is angry. But the Great Creator has better things to do than to be angry with young people, and this is a matter for your own conscience. Trust me, Morgaine: never say any more to Father Columba than you must, but always believe what the Sight tells you, for it comes to you directly from the Goddess.”
“Is the Goddess the same as the Virgin Mary, Mother of God?”
She frowned. “All the Gods are one God and all the Goddesses are one Goddess. The Great Goddess will not be angry if you call her by the name of Mary, who was good and loved mankind. Listen, my dear, this is no talk for a festival. But I swear you shall never go into a nunnery while there is life and breath in my body, no matter what Uther may say. Now that I know you have the Sight, I will move Heaven and Earth if I must, to bring you to Avalon. Shall this be a secret between us, Morgaine? Will you promise me?”
“I promise,” I said, and she leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Listen, the harpers are beginning to play for the dancing. Is Morgause not beautiful in her blue gown?”
9
On a spring day in the seventh year of the reign of Uther Pendragon at Caerleon, Viviane, priestess of Avalon and Lady of the Lake, went out at twilight to look into her magic mirror.
Although the tradition in which the Lady was priestess was older than the Druids, she shared one of the great tenets of the Druid faith: that the great forces which created the Universe could not be fitly worshipped in a house made with human hands, nor the Infinite contained within any man-made thing. And therefore the Lady’s mirror was not of bronze or even silver.
Behind her rose the grey stone walls of the ancient Temple of the Sun, built by the Shining Ones who had come there from Atlantis, centuries before. Before her lay the great lake, surrounded by tall, waving reeds, and swathed in the mist which, even on fine days, lay now across the land of Avalon. But beyond the Lake lay islands and more lakes, all through the whole of what