I raised a hand to protest, and the woman looked indignant, and now I remembered that twice she had tried to coax me to eat with these very things. But she went to do his bidding, and when she returned, Kevin took the bread and soaked it in the milk and fed it to me, gently, a few mouthfuls at a time.
"No more," he said. "You have been fasting too long. But before you sleep, you must drink a little more milk with an egg beaten into it... I will show them what to do. The day after tomorrow, perhaps, you will be strong enough to ride."
And suddenly I began to cry. I wept, at last, for Accolon lying dead on his pall, and for Arthur who hated me now, and for Elaine who had been my friend ... and for Viviane, lying dead beneath a Christian tomb, and for Igraine, and for myself, for myself who had lived through all these things ... and he said again, "Poor Morgaine, poor girl," and held me against his bony breast, and I cried and cried until at last I was quiet, and he called my women to carry me to my bed.
And for the first time in many days, I slept. And two days later, I rode to Avalon.
I remember little of that northward journey, sick in body and mind. I did not even wonder that Kevin left me before I came to the Lake. I came to those shores at sunset, when the waters of the Lake seemed to run crimson and the sky was all afire; and out of the flame-colored water and sky appeared the barge, painted and draped all in black, oars muffled to the silence of a dream. And for a moment it seemed to me that it was the Sacred Boat on that shoreless sea of which I may not speak, and that the dark figure at the prow was She, and that somehow I bridged the gap between earth and sky ... but I do not know whether that was real or a dream. And then the mists fell over us, and I felt within my very soul that shifting which told me I was once again within my own place.
Niniane welcomed me at the shore, taking me in her arms, not as the stranger I had seen but twice, but as a daughter greets a mother she has not seen for many years; then she took me away to the house where once Viviane had dwelt. She did not, this time, send young priestesses to tend me, but cared for me herself, putting me to bed in the inner room of the house, bringing me water from the Sacred Well; and when I tasted it, I knew that although the healing would be long, I was not yet beyond healing.
I had known enough of power. I was content to lay down the burdens of the world; it was time to leave that to others, and to let my daughters tend me. Slowly, slowly, in the silence of Avalon, I recovered my strength. There at last I could mourn for Accolon-not for the ruin of my hopes and plans ... I could see now what madness they had been; I was priestess of Avalon, not Queen. But I could mourn the brief and bitter summer of our love; I could grieve, too, for the child who had not lived long enough to be born, and suffer once again that it had been my own hand that had sent him into the shades.
It was a long season of mourning, and there were times when I wondered if I should mourn all my life and never again be free of it; but at last I could remember without weeping, and recall the days of love without unending sorrow welling up like tears from the very depths of my being. There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever; even in dreams, I never saw again his face, and though I longed for it, I came at last to see that it was just as well, lest I live all the rest of my life in dreams ... but at last there came a day when I could look back and know that the time for mourning was ended; my lover and my child were on the other shore, and even if I should somehow meet them beyond the gates of death, none of us would ever know ... but I lived, and I was in Avalon, and it was my task now to be Lady there.
I do not know how many years I dwelt in Avalon before the end. I remember only that I floated in a vast and nameless peace, beyond joy and sorrow, knowing only serenity and the little tasks of every day. Niniane stood ever at my side; and I came, too, to know Nimue, who had grown to a tall, silent, fair-haired maiden, as fair as Elaine when first I knew her. She became to me the daughter I had never known, and day after day she came to me, and I taught her all those things I had learned from Viviane in my own early years in Avalon.
In those last days, too, there were some who had seen the tree of the Holy Thorn in its first flowering for the followers of Christ, and worshipped their Christian God in peace, seeking not to drive out the beauty of the world, but loving it as God made it. In those days they came in numbers to Avalon to escape the harsh and shrivelling winds of persecution and bigotry. Patricius had set up new forms of worship, a view of the world wherein there was no room for the real beauty and mystery of the things of nature. From these Christians who came to us to escape the bigotry of their own kind I learned something, at last, of the Nazarene, the carpenter's son who had attained Godhead in his own life and preached a rule of tolerance; and so I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.
I know not whether it was three years, or Jive, or even ten, before the end. I heard whispers of the outside world like shadows, like the echo of the church bells we heard sometimes even on that shore. I knew when Uriens died, but I did not mourn him; he had been dead to me for many years, but I could hope that in the end he had found some healing for his griefs. He had been kind to me as best he might, and so let him rest.
Now and again some rumor of Arthur's deeds and those of the knights would come to me, but in the serenity of Avalon it seemed not to matter; those deeds sounded like old tales and legends, so that I never knew whether they spoke of Arthur and Cai and Lancelet, or of Llyr and the children of Da'ana; or when tales were whispered of the love of Lancelet and Gwenhwyfar, or later, of Marcus' wife, Isotta, and young Drustan, they were not after all retelling some old tale of Diarmid and Grainne from the ancient days. It seemed not to matter, it seemed that I had heard all these tales long ago in my childhood.
And then, one spring when the land lay beautiful before us and the first apple trees of Avalon were white with blossom, Raven broke silence with a cry, and perforce my mind returned to the things of that world I had hoped to leave forever behind.
9
The sword, the sword of the Mysteries is gone ... now look to the cup, now look to all of the Holy Regalia ... it is gone, it is gone, taken from us ... ."
Morgaine heard the cry out of sleep, and yet, when she tiptoed to the door of the room where Raven slept, alone and in silence as ever, the women who attended her slept; they had not heard that cry.
"But there is nothing but silence, Lady," they told her. "Are you certain it was not an evil dream?"
"If it was an evil dream, then it came to the priestess Raven as well," Morgaine said, staring at the untroubled faces of the girls. It seemed to her that with every passing year, the priestesses in the House of Maidens grew younger and more like children ... how could little girls like this be entrusted with the holy things? Maidens whose breasts had scarcely formed ... what could they know of the life of the Goddess which was the life of the world?
Again, it seemed, that shattering cry rang through Avalon, rousing alarm everywhere, but when Morgaine asked, "There-did you hear?" they looked at her again in dismay and said, "Do you dream now, Lady, with your eyes wide open?" and Morgaine realized that in the bitter cry of terror and grief there had been no actual sound.
She said, "I will go to her-"
"But you may not do that-"one of them began, then stepped back, her mouth open, as she realized the full meaning of who Morgaine was, and she bent her head as Morgaine stepped past her.