The Mists of Avalon Read online

  The man she knew to be Uther, within, laid his arm about her, and she knew that she was weeping. He pulled her face roughly up to his and kissed her, and she tasted salt from his own tears on his lips. He said, “I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!”

  Never in all her life had Igraine known a kiss such as this one, passionate, and yet it seemed as if some essence beyond mere lust held them bound to each other. At that moment memory flooded through her, of where she had first known this man—of the great marble pillars and golden stairs of the great Temple of Orion, and of the City of the Serpent below, with the avenue of sphinxes, beasts with bodies as of lions and faces of women, leading up the great road to the Temple . . . here they stood on a barren plain, with a ring of undressed stones, and a fire to the west that was the dying light of the land of their birth, where they had dwelt together in the Temple since they were little children, and where they had been joined together in the holy fire, never to be parted while they should live. And now they had done that which would join them beyond death, too. . . .

  “I love this land,” he said violently again. “Here we stand where the temples are made with unhewn stone, and not with silver and gold and orichalcum, but already I love this land, so that I willingly give my life to keep it safe, this cold land where the sun never shines . . .” and he shivered beneath his cloak; but Igraine pulled him round, turning their backs on the dying fires of Atlantis.

  “Look to the east,” she said, “for always, while the light dies in the west, there is the promise of rebirth from the east.” And they stood, clasped together, as the sun blazed, rising behind the eye of the great stone.

  The man whispered, “This is indeed the great cycle of life and death . . .” and even as he spoke, he drew her to him. “A day will come when people will forget, and this will be no more than a ring of stones. But I will remember, and I will come back to you, beloved, I swear it.”

  And then she heard the voice of the Merlin saying somberly, “Take care what you pray for, for you will certainly be given that.”

  And silence; and Igraine found herself, naked, wrapped only in her cloak, huddled before the last cold ashes of the fire in her room in their lodging; and Gorlois snoring softly in the bed.

  Shaking, she wrapped herself tightly in the shawl and crept, chilled to the bone, back to the bed, burrowing for some remnants of warmth. Morgan. Morgaine. Had she given her child that name because it was truly one she had borne? Was it only a bizarre dream sent by the Merlin, to convince her that once she had known Uther Pendragon in some former life?

  But that had been no dream—dreams were confused, bizarre, a world where all is foolishness and illusion. She knew that somehow she had wandered into the Land of Truth, where the soul goes when the body is elsewhere, and somehow she had brought back not a dream but a memory.

  One thing at least was made clear. If she and Uther had known each other, loved each other, in the past, it explained why she had this tremendous sense of familiarity with him, why he did not seem a stranger, why even his boorish—or boyish—manners seemed not offensive, but simply part of the person which he was and had always been. She remembered the tenderness with which she had dried his tears with her veil, knowing now that she had thought: yes, he was always so. Impulsive, boyish, rushing toward what he wanted, never weighing costs.

  Had they truly brought the secrets of a vanished wisdom to this land, generations ago when the lost lands were newly vanished under the western ocean, and together incurred the penalties for that oathbreaking? Penalties? And then, not knowing why, she remembered that rebirth itself—human life—was supposed to be the penalty, life in a human body rather than endless peace. She curved her lips in a smile, thinking, Is it penalty, or reward, to live in this body? For thinking of the sudden wakening of her body in the arms of the man who was, or would be, or once had been, Uther Pendragon, she knew as she had never known before that, whatever the priests said, life, whether birth or rebirth, in this body, was reward enough.

  She burrowed her body down in the bed, and lay, not sleepy now, looking into the darkness, smiling. So Viviane and the Merlin had known, perhaps, what it was fated for her to know: that she was bound to Uther by a bond which made her tie to Gorlois merely superficial and momentary. She would do as they willed; it was part of her destiny. She and the man who now was Uther had bound themselves, many lives ago, to the fate of this land, where they had come when the Old Temple was buried. Now, when once again the Mysteries were imperilled, this time by hordes of barbarians and wild men from the North, they returned together. It was given to her to bring to birth one of the great heroes who, so it was said, came back to life when they were needed, the king who was, and is, and will come again to save his people . . . even the Christians had a version of the story, saying that when their Jesus was born, his mother had had warnings and prophecies that she would bear a king. She smiled in the darkness, thinking of the fate that was reuniting her with the man she had loved so many centuries before. Gorlois? What had Gorlois to do with her fate, except to make her ready? Otherwise, she might have been too young to understand what was to happen to her.

  In this life I am not a priestess. Yet I know that I am still the obedient child of my fate; as all men and women must be.

  And for the priests and the priestesses there is no tie of marriage. They give themselves as they must, in the will of the Gods, to bring forth those who are pivotal to the fates of mankind.

  She thought of the great constellation called the Wheel, in the north. The peasants called it the Wain, or the Great Bear, shambling ever round and round the northernmost of the stars; but Igraine knew it symbolized, in its coming and going, the endless Wheel of Birth and Death and Rebirth. And the Giant who strode across the sky, the sword hanging from his belt . . . for a moment it seemed to Igraine that she saw the hero who was to come, with a great sword in his hand, the sword of the conqueror. The priests of the Holy Isle would make certain that he had a sword, a sword out of legends.

  At her side Gorlois stirred and reached for her, and she went dutifully into his arms. Her revulsion had quite gone in tenderness and pity, nor did she have any fear that he would get her with his unwanted child. That was not her fate. Poor, doomed man, he had no part in that mystery. He was one of the once-born; or, if he was not, he did not remember, and she was glad he had the comfort of his simple faith.

  Later, when they rose, she heard herself singing; and Gorlois watched her curiously.

  “It seems that you are well again,” he said, and she smiled.

  “Why, yes,” she said, “I have never been better.”

  “Then the Merlin’s medicine did you good,” Gorlois said, and she smiled, and did not answer.

  5

  It seemed that nothing else was talked of in the city for several days—that Lot of Orkney had withdrawn and gone away to the North. It was feared that this would delay the final choice; but only three days later, Gorlois returned to the lodging, where Igraine was putting the final stitches into a new gown from the woven cloth she had found in the market, to say that the Council of Ambrosius’ advisers had done as they had known, all along, that Ambrosius would have wished, and chosen Uther Pendragon to rule over all Britain as High King among the kings of the land.

  “But what of the North?” she asked.

  “Somehow he will bring Lot to terms, or else he will fight him,” Gorlois said. “I do not like Uther, but he is the best fighter we have. I am not afraid of Lot, and I am sure Uther does not fear him either.”

  Igraine felt the old stirring of t
he Sight, knowing that Lot had much to do in the years to come . . . but she kept her peace; Gorlois had made it obvious that he did not like to hear her speak of men’s affairs, and she would rather not quarrel with a doomed man in the little time remaining to him.

  “I see your new gown is finished. You shall wear it, if you will, when Uther is made High King in the church and crowned, and afterward he will hold court for all his men and all their ladies, before he goes to the West country for their kingmaking,” he said. “He bears the name Pendragon, Greatest Dragon, from the banner he bears, and they have some superstitious ritual about dragons and kingship—”

  “The dragon is the same as the serpent,” Igraine volunteered. “A symbol of wisdom; a Druidical symbol.”

  Gorlois frowned, displeased, and said that he had no patience with such symbols in a Christian country. “The anointing by a bishop should be enough for them.”

  “But all people are not fitted for the higher Mysteries,” Igraine said. She had learned this as a child on the Holy Isle, and since her dream of Atlantis it seemed to her that all the early teaching about the Mysteries, which she thought she had forgotten, had assumed a new meaning and depth in her mind. “Wise men know that symbols are not needed, but the common folk of the countryside, they need their dragons flying for the kingship, just as they need the Beltane fires, and the Great Marriage when a king is wedded to the land—”

  “Those things are forbidden to a Christian,” Gorlois said austerely. “The Apostle has said it, there is only one name under Heaven by which we may be saved, and all those signs and symbols are wicked. I would not be surprised to hear it of Uther, that unchaste man, that he entangles himself in these lewd rites of pagandom, pandering to the folly of ignorant men. One day I hope to see a High King in Britain who will keep to Christian rites alone!”

  Igraine smiled and said, “I do not think either of us will live to see that day, my husband. Even the Apostle in your holy books wrote that there was milk for babes and meat for strong men, and the common folk, the once-born, have need for their Holy Wells and their spring garlands and dancing rites. It would be a sad day for Britain if no Yule fires burned and no garlands fell into the Holy Wells.”

  “Even the devils can quote the holy words amiss,” Gorlois said, but not angrily. “Perhaps this is what the Apostle meant, when he said that women should keep silence in the churches, for they are prone to fall into those errors. When you are older and wiser, Igraine, you will know better. Meanwhile, you can make yourself as fine as you please for the services in the church and for the merrymaking afterward.”

  Igraine put on her new gown and brushed her hair until it shone like fine copper; and when she looked at herself in the silver mirror—Gorlois had sent to the market for it, after all, and had it brought to her—she wondered with a sudden fit of despondency whether Uther would even notice her. She was beautiful, yes, but there were other women, beautiful as she was, and younger, not married women who had borne children—why should he want her, old and used as she was?

  All through the long ceremonies in the church, she watched intently as Uther was sworn and anointed by their bishop. For once the psalms were not doleful hymns of God’s wrath and punishment, but joyful songs, praising and offering thanks, and the bells sounded joyous instead of wrathful. Afterward in the house which had been Ambrosius’ headquarters, there were delicacies and wine and much ceremony, as one by one, Ambrosius’ war chiefs swore allegiance to Uther.

  Long before it was over, Igraine grew weary. But at last it was done, and while the chiefs and their ladies congregated around the wine and the food, she moved a little away, watching the bright gathering. And there, at last, as she had been half aware that he would, Uther found her.

  “My lady of Cornwall.”

  She made a deep curtsey. “My lord Pendragon, my king.”

  He said roughly, “There is no need for such formalities between us now, lady,” and caught her shoulders, so much as he had done in her dream that she stared, half expecting that she would see on his arms the golden serpent torques.

  But he only said, “You are not now wearing the moonstone. It was so strange, that stone. When first I saw you wearing it, it was like to a dream I had. . . . I had fever, last spring, and the Merlin attended me, and I had a strange dream, and I know now it was in that dream I first beheld you, long before ever I laid eyes on your face. I must have stared like a country lout, Lady Igraine, for I found myself struggling again and again to remember my dream, and what part you played in that dream, and the moonstone at your throat.”

  She said, “I have been told that one of the virtues of the jewel, moonstone, is to awaken the true memories of the soul. I too have dreamed. . . .”

  He laid a light hand on her arm. “I cannot remember. Why is it that I seem to see you wearing something gold about your wrists, Igraine? Have you a golden bracelet in the form of—of a dragon, perhaps?”

  She shook her head. “Not now,” she said, paralyzed at the awareness that he had, somehow and without her full knowledge, shared that strange memory and dream.

  “You will be thinking me a boor and beyond all courtesy, my lady of Cornwall. May I offer you some wine?”

  Silently she shook her head. She knew that if she tried to take a cup in her hand she would shake and spill it all over herself.

  “I do not know what is happening to me,” Uther said violently. “All that has happened in these days—the death of my father and king, the strife of all these kings, their choosing me for High King—it seems unreal, and you, Igraine, are the most unreal of all! Have you been to the West, where the great ring of stones stands on the plain? They say that in olden time it was a Druid temple, but the Merlin says not, it was built long before the Druids came to these lands. Have you been there?”

  “Not in this life, my lord.”

  “I wish I could show it to you, for I dreamed once I was there with you—oh, don’t think me a madman, Igraine, chattering always of dreams and prophecy,” he said with that sudden, boyish smile. “Let us talk very sedately of ordinary things. I am a poor Northern chief who has suddenly wakened to find himself High King of Britain, and perhaps I am a little mad with the strain!”

  “I shall be sedate and ordinary.” Igraine agreed with a smile. “And if you were a wedded man I would ask you how your wife did and if your oldest son had trouble with—oh, what is the most ordinary thing I could ask you—whether he was done teething before the hot weather, or if he had a skin rash from his swaddling clothes!”

  He chuckled. “You will be thinking I am old not to be a married man,” he said. “I’ve had women enough, God knows. I should not say that, perhaps, to the wife of my most Christian of chiefs; Father Jerome would say I had had all too many women for the health of my soul! But I never saw one I cared for, when we rose from bedding, and I always feared that if I wedded some woman before we bedded, I would tire of her in such manner. It seemed to me always that there should be some tie stronger than that between man and women, though the Christians seem to think that is enough—what is it they say, it is better to marry than to burn? Well, I did not burn, for I slaked the fire, and when I had spent it, the fire went out, and yet I feel that there could be a burning which would not spend itself so quickly, and it should be such a one I could marry.” Abruptly he asked her, “Do you love Gorlois?”

  Viviane had asked her this, and she had said that it did not matter. She had not known what she was saying. Now she said quietly, “No. I was given to him when I was too young to care what man I married.”

  Uther turned away and paced angrily, saying at last, “And I can see you are no wench to tumble, and why in the name of all the Gods I must be bewitched by a woman who is wedded to one of my most loyal partisans—”

  So the Merlin had worked his meddlesome magic on Uther too. But now Igraine did not resent it. It was their destiny, and what would come, must come. But she could not believe it was her destiny to betray Gorlois crudely, here like this.
It was like a part of her dream of the great plain, so that she could almost see the shadow of the great ring of stones, when he laid his hand on her shoulder. But she was confused, No, that was another world, and another life. It seemed that her whole soul and body cried out within her for the reality of that kiss in their dream. She put her hands over her face and wept. He stared at her, dismayed and helpless, backing away a little.

  “Igraine,” he whispered. “What can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sobbing, “I don’t know.” Her certainty had become a miserable confusion. Had the dream been sent only to bewitch her, by magic, into a betrayal of Gorlois and her own honor and sworn word?