Morgaine buried her face in her ragged cloak to smother a giggle. Raven, hearing, turned an indignant face to Morgaine, but Morgaine shook her head; they must keep still and not be noticed.
The knights were seating themselves in their accustomed places. Lancelet, as he took his seat, raised his head, looking sharply round the hall, and for a moment it seemed to Morgaine that he sought her out where she stood, that his eyes met hers-shivering, she ducked her head. Chamberlains were moving at both ends of the hall, pouring wine for the Companions and their ladies, pouring good brown beer from great leather jacks down among the peasants crowded in at the lower end. Morgaine held out her cup and Raven's, and when Raven refused, she said in a harsh whisper, "Drink it! You look like death, and you must be strong enough for whatever is coming." Raven put the wooden cup to her lips and sipped, but she could hardly swallow. The woman who had said that the lady Morgaine was pretty enough in her way asked, "Is she sick, your sister?"
Morgaine said, "She is frightened, she has never seen the court before."
"Fine, aren't they, the lords and ladies? What a spectacle! And we'll get a good dinner soon," said the woman to Raven. "Hey, doesn't she hear?"
"She is not deaf, but dumb," Morgaine said again. "I think maybe she understands a little of what I say to her, but no one else."
"Now you come to speak of it, she does look simpleminded, at that," said the other woman, and patted Raven on the head like a dog. "Has she always been like that? What a pity, and you have to look after her. You're a good woman. Sometimes when children are like that, their folks tie them to a tree like a stray dog, and here you take her to court and all. Look at the priest in his gold robes! That's the bishop Patricius, they say he drove all the snakes out of his own country ... think of that! Do you think he fought them with sticks?"
"It's a way of saying he drove out all the Druids-they are called serpents of wisdom," Morgaine said.
"How'd the likes of you know a thing like that?" Morgaine's interrogator scoffed. "I heard for sure that it was snakes, and anyhow all those wise folk, Druids and priests, they hang together, they wouldn't quarrel!"
"Very likely," said Morgaine, not wanting to draw further attention to herself, her eyes going to Bishop Patricius. Behind him there was someone in the robes of a monk-a hunched figure, bent over and moving with difficulty-now what was the Merlin doing in the bishop's train? She said, her need to know overcoming the risk of attracting attention, "What's going to happen? I thought surely they would have heard their mass in the chapel this morning, all the lords and ladies-"
"I heard," said one of the women, "that since the chapel would hold so few, there would be a special mass here today for all the folk before meat -see, the bishop's men carrying in that altar with the white cloth and all. Sssshh-listen!"
Morgaine felt that she would go mad with rage and despair. Were they going to profane the Holy Regalia beyond any possibility of cleansing, by using it to serve a Christian mass?
"Draw near, all ye people," the bishop was atoning, "for today the old order giveth way to the new. Christ has triumphed over all the old and pretended Gods who shall now be subservient to his name. For the True Christ said unto mankind, I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. Also he said, No man may come to the Father except he come in my name, for there is no other name under Heaven in which you may be saved. And by that token, then, all those things which once were devoted to false Gods before mankind had knowledge of the truth, now shall be devoted to Christ and newly dedicated in service to the True God ... ."
But Morgaine heard no more; suddenly she knew what they were planning to do-No! I am sworn to the Goddess. I must not allow this blasphemy! She turned and touched Raven's arm; even here, in the midst of this crowded hall, they were open one to the other. They would use the Holy Regalia of the Goddess to summon the Presence ... which is One ... but they would do it in the narrow name of that Christ who calls all Gods demons, unless they invoke in his name!
The cup the Christians use in their mass is the invocation of water, even as the plate whereon they lay their holy bread is the sacred dish of the element of earth. Now, using the ancient things of the Goddess, they would invoke their own narrow God; yet instead of the pure water of the holy earth, coming from the clear crystal spring of the Goddess, they have defiled her chalice with wine!
In the cup of the Goddess, O Mother, is the cauldron of Ceridwen, wherein all men are nourished and from which all men have all the good things of this world. You have called upon the Goddess, O ye willful priests, but will you dare her presence if she should come? Morgaine clasped her hands in the most fervent invocation of her life. I am thy priestess, O Mother! Use me, I pray, as you will!
She felt the rushing downward of power, felt herself standing taller, taller, as the power flooded through her body and soul and filled her; she was no longer conscious of Raven's hands holding her upright, filling her like the chalice with the sacred wine of the holy presence ... .
She moved forward and saw Patricius, stunned, draw back before her. She had no fear, and though she knew it was death to touch the Holy Regalia unprepared-how, she wondered in a remote corner of her waking mind, did Kevin manage to prepare the bishop? Had he betrayed that secret too? She knew with certainty that all her life had been preparation for this moment when, as the Goddess herself, she raised the cup between her hands.
Afterward, she heard, some said that they saw the Holy Chalice borne round the room by a maiden clothed in shimmering white; others said that they heard a great rushing wind fill the hall, and a sound of many harps. Morgaine knew only that she lifted the cup between her hands, seeing it glow like a great sparkling jewel, a ruby, a living, beating heart pulsing between her hands . .. she moved toward the bishop and he fell to his knees before her as she whispered, "Drink. This is the Holy Presence ... ."
He drank, and briefly she wondered what it was that he saw, but then he fell away behind her as she moved on, or the cup itself moved, drawing her with it ... she could not tell. She heard a sound as of many wings, rushing before her, and she smelled a sweetness that was neither incense nor perfume ... . The chalice, some said later, was invisible; others said that it shone like a great star which blinded every eye that looked on it.... Every person in that hall found his plate filled with such things as he liked best to eat ... again and again later she heard that tale, and by that token she knew that what she had borne was the cauldron of Ceridwen. But for the other tales she had no explanation, and needed none. She is the Goddess, she will do as she will ... .
As she moved before Lancelet she heard him whisper in awe, "Is it you, Mother? Or do I dream? ... " and set the cup to his lips, filled with overflowing tenderness; today she was mother to them all. Even Arthur knelt before her as the cup briefly passed before his lips.
I am all things-Virgin and Mother and she who gives life and death. Ignore me at your peril, ye who call on other Names ... know ye that I am One ... . Of all those in that great hall, only Nimue, she thought, had recognized her, had looked up in astonished recognition; yes, Nimue too had been reared to know the Goddess, whatever form she might take. "You too, my child," she whispered with infinite compassion, and Nimue knelt to drink, and Morgaine felt somewhere through her the surging of lust and vengeance, and thought, Yes, this too is a part of me ... .
Morgaine faltered, felt Raven's strength bearing her up ... was Raven beside her, holding the cup? Or was it illusion, was Raven still crouching in her corner, holding her upright with a flow of strength which poured through them both into the Goddess bearing the cup ... ? Later, Morgaine never knew whether in truth she had borne the chalice or whether that, too, had been part of the vast magic she had woven for the Goddess ... yet it seemed to her, still, that she bore the cup around the great hall, that every man and every woman there knelt and drank, that the sweetness and the bliss flooded her, that she walked as if borne along on those great wings she could hear ... and then Mordred's face was before her.