Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [77]
Here, in fact, the inland sea was receding, year by year giving way to dry land; one day this would all be rich farmland . . . but not in Avalon. Avalon now lay eternally surrounded in the mists, hidden from all but the faithful, and when men came and went in pilgrimage to the monastery which the Christian monks called Glass Town, the Temple of the Sun was invisible to them, lying in some strange otherworld; Viviane could see, when she bent her Sight upon it, the church they had built there.
It had been there for a long time, she knew, though she had never set foot upon its grounds. Centuries ago—so the Merlin had told her, and she believed him—a little band of priests had come here from the south, and with them had been their Nazarene prophet for schooling; and the story went that Jesus himself had been schooled there, in the dwelling place of the Druids where once the Temple of the Sun had risen, and had learned all of their wisdom. And years later, when—so the story ran—their Christ had been brought to sacrifice, playing out in his life the old Mystery of the Sacrificed God which was older than Britain’s very self, one of his kinsmen returned here, and struck his staff into the ground on the Holy Hill, and it had blossomed forth into the thorn tree which blossoms, not only with the other thorn, in Midsummer, but in the depth of the winter snow. And the Druids, in memory of the gentle prophet whom they too had known and loved, consented that Joseph of Arimathea should build, in the very grounds of the Holy Isle, a chapel and a monastery to their God; for all the Gods are one.
But that had been long ago. For a time, Christian and Druid had dwelt side by side, worshipping the One, but then the Romans had come to the Isle, and, although they were widely known for tolerating local deities, against the Druids they had been ruthless, cutting and burning down their sacred groves, trumping up lies that the Druids committed human sacrifice. Their real crime, of course, had been that they heartened the people not to accept the Roman laws and the Roman peace. And then, in one great act of Druid magic, to protect the last precious refuge of their school, they had made the last great change in the world; that change which removed the Island of Avalon from the world of mankind. Now it lay hidden in the mist which concealed it, except from those initiates who had been schooled there or those who were shown the secret ways through the Lake. The Tribesmen knew it was there, and there they worshipped. The Romans, Christian since the days of Constantine, who had converted his legions wholesale on the grounds of some vision he had seen in a battle, believed that the Druids had been vanquished by their Christ, not knowing that the few remaining Druids lived and passed on their ancient wisdom in the hidden land.
Viviane could see, if she chose, with doubled Sight, for she was High Priestess of Avalon. When she chose she could see the tower they had built atop the very Tor, on the Holy Mountain of Initiation; a tower dedicated to Michael, one of their Jewish angels whose ancient function was to keep down the inferior world of demons. This struck Viviane as a blasphemy, even now, but she comforted herself with the thought that it was not in her world at all; if the narrow-minded Christians wished to think of the great old Gods as demons, the Christians would be the poorer for it. The Goddess lived, whatever the Christians thought of her. She turned her thoughts to her own business, which was to look into her magic mirror while the new moon still stood in the sky.
Although it was still light enough to see perfectly well, the Lady had carried with her a little lamp with a tiny flickering flame. She turned her back on the reeds and salt marsh, and walked inland along the path, climbing slowly along