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Niniane bent her head and said, "Gwydion, no, it ca
"I am her consort," he said implacably, "and shall win it there ... it is not the time for a virgin-the priests make much of that nonsense. I call upon her as the Mother to give me my due and my life ... ."
Niniane felt as if she were trying to stand against some relentless tide that would sweep her away. She said, hesitating, "So it has always been, that in the ru
Yet there was reason in what he said. Surely it was better to have a priestess for the rites who knew what she was doing, rather than some half-trained child new come to the temple, whose only qualification was that she was not yet old enough to feel the call to the Beltane fire.....wydion spoke truth: the Mother ever renews herself, Mother and Crone and again the Maiden, even as the moon who hides herself in the dark sky.
She bent her head and said, "Let it be so. You shall make the Great Marriage with the land and with me in her name."
But when she was alone again she was frightened. How had she come to agree to this? What, in the name of the Goddess, was this power in Gwydion, that he could make all men do his will?
Is this, then, his heritage from Arthur, and the blood of the Pendragon? And ice flooded her again.
What of the King Stag ... Morgaine was dreaming ...
Beltane, and the deer ru
And then she was in the dark cave, and the signs painted there were painted on her body, she was one with the cave, and all around her the Beltane fires flared, sparks crashing skyward-there was the taste of fresh blood on her mouth, and now the cave mouth was shadowed with the antlers ... it should not befall moon, she should not see so clearly that her naked body was not the slender body of a virgin, but that her breasts were soft and full and pink as they had been when her child was born, almost as if they were dripping with milk, and surely she had been tested that she came virgin to this rite ... what would they say to her, that she came not as the Spring Maiden to the King Stag?
He knelt at her side and she raised her arms, welcoming him to the rite and to her body, but his eyes were dark and haunted. His hands on her were tender, frustrating, toying with pleasure as he denied her the rite of power ... it was not Arthur, no, this was Lancelet, King Stag, who should pull down the old stag, consort of the Spring Maiden, but he looked down at her, his dark eyes tormented by that same pain that struck inward through her whole body, and he said, I would you were not so like to my mother, Morgaine ... .
Terrified, her heart pounding, Morgaine woke in her own room, Uriens sleeping at her side and snoring. Still caught up in the frightening magic of the dream, she shook her head in confusion to ward the terror away.
No, Beltane is past ... she had kept the rites with Accolon as she had known she would do, she was not lying in the cave, awaiting the King Stag ... and why, she wondered, why should this dream of Lancelet visit her now, why did she dream not of Accolon, when she had made him her priest and Lord of Beltane, and her lover? Why, after so many years, should the memory of refusal and sacrilege strike inward at her very soul?
She tried to compose herself for sleep again, but sleep would not come, and she lay awake, shaken, until the sun thrust the rays of early summer into her chamber.
11
Gwenhwyfar had come to hate the day of Pentecost, when each year Arthur sent out word that all his old Companions should come to Camelot and renew their fellowship. With the growing of peace in the land, and the scattering of the old Companions, every year there were fewer to come, more who had ties to their own homes and families and estates. And Gwenhwyfar was glad, for these Pentecost reunions put her too much in mind of those days when Arthur had not been a Christian king but bore the hated Pendragon ba
She stood behind him now as he sealed the two dozen copies his scribes had made, for every one of his fellow kings and many of his old Companions. "Why do you send out a special call for them to come this year? Surely all those who have no other business will come without your calling."
"But that is not enough this year," said Arthur, turning to smile at her. He was going grey, she realized, though he was so fair-haired that none could see unless they were standing quite close. "I wish to assure them of such games and mock battles as will make all men aware that Arthur's legion is still well able to fight."
"Do you think any will doubt this?" Gwenhwyfar asked.
"Perhaps not. But there is this man Lucius in Less Britain-Bors has sent me word, and as all my subject kings came to my aid when the Saxons and Northmen would have overrun this island, so I am pledged to come to theirs. Emperor, he calls himself, of Rome!"
"And has he any right to be emperor?" Gwenhwyfar asked.
"Need you ask? Far less than I, certainly," Arthur said. "There has been no Emperor of Rome for more than a hundred years, my wife. Constantine was emperor and wore the purple, and after him Magnus Maximus, who went abroad over the cha
Gwenhwyfar did not answer that, not directly. She shuddered. "I do not want to see this land touched by war again, and torn apart by slaughter-"
"Nor do I," said Arthur. "I think every king would rather have peace."
"I am not so certain. There are some of your men who never cease speaking of the old days when they fought early and late against the Saxons. And now they begrudge Christian fellowship to those same Saxons, no matter what their bishop says-"
"I do not think it is the days of war they regret," Arthur said, smiling at his queen, "I think it is the days when we were all young, and the closeness that was between us all. Do you never long for those years, my wife?"
Gwenhwyfar felt herself coloring. Indeed, she remembered well ... those days when Lancelet had been her champion, and they had loved ... this was no way for a Christian queen to think, and yet she could not stop herself. "Indeed I do, my husband. And, as you say, perhaps it is only longing for my own youth ... I am not young," she said, sighing, and he took her hand and said, "You are as beautiful to me, my dearest, as the day when we were first bedded," and she knew that it was true.
But she forced herself to be calm, not to blush. I am not young, she thought, it is not seemly that I should think of those days when I was young and regret them, because in those days I was a si