NO ONE took the slightest notice of two peasant women, no longer young, in the turmoil and tumult about the gates of Camelot this morning. Morgaine was used to this; Raven, who had lived so long in seclusion even on quiet Avalon, turned white as bone and tried to hide herself under her ragged shawl. Morgaine also kept her own shawl about her-there were some who would recognize the lady Morgaine, even with her hair streaked with white and in the garb of a peasant woman.
A drover striding through the yard with a calf ran into Raven and came near to knocking her down, and he cursed her when she only stared at him in dismay. Morgaine said quickly, "My sister is deaf and dumb," and his face changed.
"Ah, poor thing-look, go up by there, they're giving everybody a good dinner at the lower end of the King's hall. You two can creep in at that door and watch them when they come in-the King's got some big thing planned with one of the priests in the hall today. You'll be from upcountry and not know his ways? Well, everyone in this countryside knows that he makes it a custom-he never sits down to his great feasts unless there's some great marvel arranged, and we heard today that there is to be something truly marvelous."
I doubt it not, Morgaine thought disdainfully, but she only thanked the man in the rough country dialect she had used before and drew Raven along with her toward the lower hall, which was filling rapidly-King Arthur's generosity on feast days was well known, and this would be the best dinner many people had all year. There was a smell of roasting meat in the air, and most of the people jostling round her commented greedily on it. As for Morgaine, it only made her feel sick, and after one look at Raven's white terrified face, she decided to withdraw.
She should not have come. It was I who failed to see the danger to the Holy Regalia; it was I who failed to see that the Merlin was traitor. And when I have done what I must do, how will I manage to flee to Avalon with Raven in this condition?
She found a corner where they would be disregarded, but where they could see reasonably well what was happening. At the higher end of the room was the great mead-hall table, the Round Table which was already almost legendary in the countryside, with the great dais for the King and Queen, and the painted names of Arthur's Companions over their customary places. On the walls hung brilliant banners. And after years spent in the austerity of Avalon, this all seemed gaudy and garish to Morgaine.
After a long time there was a stir, and then the sound of trumpets somewhere, and a whisper ran through the jostling crowd. Morgaine thought, It will be strange to see the court from outside, after being a part of it for so long! Cai was opening the great doors to the upper end of the hall, and Morgaine shrank-Cai would know her, whatever garb she wore! But why should he even look in her direction?
How many years had she spent quietly drifting in Avalon? She had no idea. But Arthur seemed even taller, more majestic, his hair so fair that no one could have told whether or no there were silver strands among the carefully combed curls. Gwenhwyfar, too, although her breasts sagged under the elaborate gown, bore herself upright and seemed slim as ever.
"Look how young the Queen looks," muttered one of Morgaine's neighbors, "yet Arthur married her the year I had my first son, and look at me." Morgaine glanced at the speaker, bent and toothless, stooped like a bent bow. "I heard that witch sister of the King, Morgaine of the Fairies, gave them both spells to keep their youth ... ."
"Spells or no," mumbled another toothless crone tartly, "if Queen Gwenhwyfar had to muck out a byre night and morning, and bear a babe every year and suckle it in good times and bad, there'd be none of that beauty left, bless her! Things are as they are, but I wish some priest'ud tell me why she gets all the good in life and I get all the misery?"
"Stop grumbling," said the first speaker. "You'll have your belly full today, and get to see all the lords and ladies, and you know what the old Druids used to say about why things are what they are. Queen Gwenhwyfar up there gets fine gowns and jewels and a queen's business because she did good in her last lives, and the likes of you and me are poor and ugly because we were ignorant, and someday, if we mind what we do in this life, there's a better fortune for us too."
"Oh, aye," grunted the other old woman, "priests and Druids are all alike. The Druid says that, and the priest says if we do our duty in this life we'll go to Heaven and live with Jesus and feast with him there and never come back to this wicked world at all! It all winds up the same, whatever the lot of them say-some are born in misery and die in misery, and others have it all their own way!"
"But she's none so happy, I've heard," said another of the group of old women wedged in together. "For all her queening it, she's never borne a single babe, and I have a good son to work the farm for me, and one daughter married to the man at the next farm, and another who's servant to the nuns on Glastonbury. And Queen Gwenhwyfar has had to adopt sir Galahad there, who's the son of Lancelet and of her own cousin Elaine, for Arthur's heir!"
"Oh, aye, that's what they tell you," said a fourth old woman, "but you know and I know, when Queen Gwenhwyfar was absent from court in the sixth or seventh year of his reign-something like that-don't you think they were all counting on their fingers? My stepbrother's wife was a kitchen woman here at court, and he said it was common talk all round here that the Queen spent her nights in another bed than her husband's-"
"Keep quiet, old gossip," said the first speaker. "Just let one of the chamberlains hear you say that aloud, and you'll be ducked in the pond for a scold! I say Galahad's a good knight and he'll make a good king, long live King Arthur! And who cares who his mother is? I think meself he's one of Arthur's by-blows-he's fair like him. And look yonder at sir Mordred-everybody knows he's the King's bastard son by some harlot or other."
"I heard worse than that," said one of the women. "I heard Mordred's the son of one of the fairy witches and Arthur took him to court in pawn for his soul, to live a hundred years-you'll see, he'll not age, sir Mordred there. Just look at Arthur, he must be past fifty and he could be a man in his thirties!"
Another old woman spoke a barnyard obscenity. "What's it to me, all of that? If the Devil were about business like that, he could have made yonder Mordred in Arthur's own image so anyone could accept him as Arthur's son! Arthur's mother was of the old blood of Avalon-did you never see the lady Morgaine? She was dark too, and Lancelet, who's his kin, was like that. ... I'd rather believe what they said before, that Mordred is Lancelet's bastard son by the lady Morgaine! You've only got to look at them-and the lady Morgaine pretty enough in her way, little and dark as she was."
"She's not among the ladies," one of the women remarked, and the woman who had known a kitchen woman at court said authoritatively, "Why, she quarreled with Arthur and went away to the land of Fairy, but everybody knows that on All Hallows Night she flies round the castle on a hazel twig and anyone who catches sight of her will be struck blind."