Lady of Avalon (48 page)

Their stay in Londinium was marred by a major row between Vortimer and his father, who, having prepared himself to hail his son as heir apparent, was understandably upset when he learned of Vortimer’s intention to, as he put it, throw away his victory. It occurred to Viviane that Vortigern and her mother could commiserate quite comfortably about their disobedient children, but she did not say so. Vortimer suffered all the more because he could see his father’s point of view. He had spoken often of how Vortigern had labored to undo the mistake he had made by inviting the Saxons into Britannia. Though admitting the old man’s faults, he honored his father, and it hurt to be at odds with him. When at last they took the Calleva road he was pale and silent.

But it was not until they reached the relative comfort of the
mansio
in Calleva that Viviane realized that not all of Vortimer’s suffering was of the soul. When they stripped to bathe, she saw that the flesh around his wound had grown red and swollen. He swore it did not hurt him, and she swore he lied, and made him promise to let her treat it with hot compresses.

That night he seemed much easier, and when they went to bed, for the first time since the battle he drew her to him.

“We should not,” she whispered as he kissed her throat. “It will hurt you-”

“I won’t notice…” His lips found her breast, and she gasped.

“I don’t believe you,” she said in a shaken voice, astonished to realize how accustomed she had become to their lovemaking, and how much she had missed it.

“Then we will have to be inventive…” He raised himself on one elbow, and then eased onto his back, but one hand was still caressing her. “You are such a little thing-if you could ride that roan nag all this way, surely you can ride me!”

Viviane felt herself blushing even in the darkness, but his roving hand was waking a need she could not deny. After that, the intensity of their lovemaking escalated rapidly beyond the power of either of them to control. It was like that first time, when their joining had become a channel for forces beyond humanity, and for that night, the bedchamber in Calleva was also holy ground.

“Ah, Viviane…” he whispered when the glory departed and they began to remember they were only mortal once more. “How I love you. Don’t leave me, my dear one. Don’t let me go…”

“I will not,” she said fiercely, kissing him once more. And only much later did she wonder why she had not said she loved him as well.

In the morning they rode out toward Glevum, but by noon on their second day of travel, Vortimer grew fevered. He refused to stop, however, and he would not allow her to examine his wound. As the afternoon drew on, the men in their escort began to share her concern, and when she ordered them to turn toward Cunetio instead of taking the northerly fork in the road they did not argue.

That night the leg was very hot and hard. It was clear to Viviane that, despite her care, some dirt must have been caught in the wound: after soaking it, she cut through the stitches, and foul matter poured from the opening. The
mansio
at Cunetio was small and poorly maintained, but she did her best to make Vortimer comfortable. Still, he slept uneasily, and so did she, worrying about how long her supply of herbs would last and what she would do when they were gone.

She judged Vortimer’s pain by the fact that he did not object to staying another day. His wound was still draining, and if it was not much better, at least it was not worse. On the following morning, she sat down beside his bed and took his hand.

“You cannot ride, and in this condition you cannot go to Glevum,” she said soberly. “And this is not a good place to nurse you. But we are not so far from Avalon. Their stores of herbs are great, and their skill in using them surpasses mine. If you will let us build a horse litter to take you to Avalon, I am sure you will be healed.”

For a long time, it seemed, he gazed into her eyes. “When we went into the Giants’ Dance,” he said, “I knew that one of us would be sacrificed. I am not afraid. It comes to me that I have died for Britannia before.” And then, at her look of alarm, he smiled. “Let it be as you will. I have always wanted to go back to Avalon…”

Two days’ journey brought them to Sorviodunum. Viviane felt ill, realizing how close they were to that circle of stone where her life with Vortimer had begun, but, then, she had been sick with anxiety for the past three days. She knew that the jolting of the horse litter must be hurting him, but all her skill could barely hold the infection at bay. Vortimer was a strong man; surely he would be cured if they could reach Avalon. And so they went on, and shortly after leaving the town turned onto the ancient trackway that led westward across the hills.

On the second night, they camped on a round hilltop above the road. The place was much overgrown, but as she moved about seeking firewood, Viviane realized that the top had once been leveled and surrounded by ditches and earthen walls to make a fortress such as men built in the ancient days. She said nothing-she knew spells to quiet such spirits, and she did not want to alarm the men.

They were anxious enough, for, while she was gone, Vortimer had been restless, muttering about battles. They thought he must be reliving the battle of Rutupiae, where he had gotten the wound, but when she listened, she heard other names-the Brigantes, Father Paulus, and sometimes he babbled of Gesoriacum and Maximian.

The firelight showed her how gaunt he had grown with even a few days of fever, and when she uncovered the wound she was appalled to see the telltale dark streaks of mortification raying up toward his groin. But she cleaned and bandaged it as usual and did not speak of her fear.

That night, she sat late, sponging Vortimer’s heated body with cool water from the spring. If it had been drawn from the holy well, it would have cured him. Without intending it, she fell asleep, still holding the cloth.

She woke to Vortimer’s cry. He was sitting bolt upright, babbling of spears and enemies at the gate, but this time he spoke in an archaic version of the speech the marsh men used. Frightened, she called him, first in that language, and then in their own. And at that, recognition came back into his eyes and he collapsed onto his blankets, breathing hard. Viviane pushed more wood onto the coals, and the flame leaped up once more.

“I saw them…” he whispered. “Painted men with golden necklaces and bronze spears. They looked like you…”

“Yes…” she said softly. “This is a place of the ancient ones.”

He looked at her in sudden fear. “They say that from such a place the fairy folk can take you.”

“I wish they would. We should come all the sooner to Avalon.”

Vortimer closed his eyes. “I think I shall never come there. Take me back to Cantium, Viviane. If you bury me on that shore where I won the battle, I will guard it, and the Saxons will never again settle there, whatever other British port they may hold. Will you promise me that, my dear?”

“You will not die, you cannot!” she said frantically, clutching his hand. But it was hot, and so thin she could feel his bones.

“You are the Goddess…but you would not be so cruel as to keep me alive in such pain…”

Viviane stared at him, remembering that first ritual. The Lady had given him victory, and now, as She had promised, She was accepting his offering. And Viviane, as a priestess of the Goddess, had been the means by which that promise had been made. She had meant to help Vortimer, and herself to escape the magic to which she had been born. And all she had accomplished was to bring him to this lonely death where the ghosts of ancient warriors haunted the hills.

“I have betrayed you…” she whispered, “but I never meant to-” She held his wrist and felt the pulse flutter frantically.

Vortimer’s eyes opened, darkened by pain. “Was it all for nothing, then? Was all the killing in vain? Hold on to me, Viviane, or I will go mad again. Let me at least die sane!”

Abruptly she understood that he was calling on her as a priestess, and that if she failed him now she would have betrayed him indeed. She could
see
the life in him wavering like a dying flame. And although she wanted to cast herself upon his breast, wailing, she nodded, and forced herself to remember lessons she had hoped never to be grateful she had learned.

Viviane took his hands, and held his gaze until his breathing matched her own. “Be easy…” she whispered. “All will be well. As you breathe out, let go of the pain…” His energy steadied, but it was low, so low. For a little while they sat in silence; then his eyes widened.

“The pain is gone…my Queen…” His eyes fixedon her, but Viviane did not think it was herself that he was seeing. “May the gods watch over you…until we meet…again.”

Automatically her lips began to move in a chant that had once been sung in far Atlantis for the deathbed of a king.
This time, at least, I am here to ease your passing!
she told herself, and then wondered from what lifetime that thought had come. She felt his fingers tighten on her own. Then he let go of her hands, and of life itself, sighing like a man who, having fought to the end, sees, beyond hope, his victory.

“That is so, my sweet,” said Taliesin, looking down at her. “And can you tell me what is two?” Beyond the blue water the land had ripened into all the colors of autumn beneath a pale sky.

“Two…is
somethings,
things that She turns into, like the Lord an’ the Lady, or Dark and Light.”

“That is
very
good, Igraine!” He put his arm around her. This child, at least, he was allowed to love.

His gaze moved toward that other daughter, who walked along the shore, her cropped head bent, pausing from time to time to gaze away toward the Watch Hill where they had buried Vortimer. Almost two moons had passed since the marsh folk had found her with his body at the old hill-fort and brought them back to Avalon, and still she grieved. She had begged them to let her take him back to Rutupiae, but it was too dangerous, with the remnants of the Saxon host still ranging that shore. Was that why her face had grown so thin? And yet this gauntness had not affected her body. As she turned, her silhouette dark against the bright water, he could see the lovely shape of her breasts-

“An’ three is when the Two have a baby!” Igraine exclaimed triumphantly.

Taliesin let out his breath in a long sigh. Viviane, whose chest had always been almost as flat as a boy’s, had a woman’s shape now. Why had she not told them that she was carrying a child?

“Was I right?” Igraine tugged at his sleeve impatiently.

“Indeed you are…” At five, she was as bright as any little one he had ever known, but of late she seemed to need reassurance as she had not before.

“You will tell Mama, please? An’ she will be happy with me?” The words carried clearly in the still air, and Viviane turned. Her eyes met Taliesin’s, and he saw the sorrow in them turn to anger, as if she were remembering her own childhood. Then they gentled, and she came quickly and took the little girl into her arms.

“
I
am happy, Igraine. When I was your age I could not say my lessons half so well.”

That was not quite true, thought the bard, but by the time she was six Viviane had been sent away with Neithen. In the years between, she had forgotten, and had it all to learn over when she returned to Avalon.

“Now you may run along the shore and look for pretty stones.” Taliesin bent to kiss the child. “But do not go out of sight, or into the water.”

“Igraine is confused, and no wonder,” said Viviane, looking after her. At this season there was not much danger; the level of the lake had fallen with prolonged dry weather, so that one could practically walk across. “Ana no longer has time for her, has she? I remember how it was when she began to turn away from me…”

Taliesin shook his head at the bitterness in her tone. “But she was so loving when Igraine was a baby-”

“Some women are, I have been told. They enjoy being pregnant and adore little children, but do not seem to know what to do with them when they begin to have minds of their own.”

“You are wise,” he answered, accepting the truth of her observation. “I am sure you will not make the same mistake with yours…”

Viviane sat up, all color leaving her face so suddenly he thought she would fall. “My child?” Her hand went in an instinctive gesture of protection to her belly.

“You are expecting, I would guess, around Beltane-my dear, surely you knew!” But she had not. As Taliesin saw the color come and go in her face, that was clear. He reached out and gripped her hand. “Come now, this is reason for rejoicing! I suppose it is Vortimer’s?”

Viviane nodded, but she was weeping-for the first time, he realized, since she had brought her lover’s body home.

At Samhain, when the dead come back to feast with the living and the Goddess completes Her half-year of rule and transfers sovereignty to the God, the people of Britannia went in procession from village to village, singing and cavorting in costumes of straw. The folk of the marshes traveled in boats with torches whose light ran across the water like liquid flame. On the Christian isle, the monks sang to repel the evil powers that walked on this night, when the doorways opened between the worlds. From time to time some hapless monk, scuttling between the church and his cell, would see the lights on the water float into the mists and disappear. Those who glimpsed this did not speak of what they had seen. But for the people of the marshes it was a time of rejoicing: on this night, as on Beltane Eve, they completed their circle on the Isle of Avalon.

The Lady of the Lake sat on a throne of lashed branches covered with a white horsehide, facing the bonfire they had built on the big meadow below the holy well. Soon it would be midnight, and the people were dancing; the earth throbbed to the stamp of bare feet and the beating of their drums. She bore the sigils of the white mare and crescent moon of the Goddess on breast and brow and nothing more, for on this night she was the priestess of the Great Mother for them all.

It was not yet time for the feasting, but the heather beer had been flowing freely. The beer was not very alcoholic, though a pleasant buzz resulted if you drank enough of it, but Ana drank spring water from a cup of horn bound in silver. Like her ornaments, it was very old. Perhaps it was the inebriation of the drumming that made her want to laugh. Watching her daughter begin to glow with the beauty of early pregnancy, she had felt ancient, but tonight she was young once more.

She gazed at the top of the Tor, where torches flitted like fairy lights against the dark sky. In a sense that was what they were, for it was said that those spirits who had neither passed beyond the circles of the world nor been reborn might dwell for a time in Faerie. On this night the priests and priestesses of Avalon made of their bodies an offering, allowing the spirits of the ancestors to displace their own so that they might feast with the living, and those who at any other time would shun ghosts or the fairy folk equally, on this night welcomed them.

Viviane was watching the Tor as well, with an intensity that her mother found disturbing. Did she think her lover was going to come back to her? Ana could have told her otherwise-for a year and a day the dead stayed in the Summerland, for the healing of their souls. Even too much grieving could hinder them, and they must not be summoned back until that time had passed. But a soul with unfinished business in the world might linger. Was it grief, or guilt for something left undone, that haunted Viviane?

Someone threw more wood on the fire, and Ana’s gaze followed the exploding sparks upward until they were lost among the cold fires of the sky. It was nearing midnight, and her anticipation grew. Then from the watcher by the well came a ululating cry that pierced through the noise of the dancing. The torches were moving, winding down the Processional Way around the Tor. The drummers lifted their hands, and silence spread like a spell.

Very softly, the drumming began once more, an insistent heartbeat that throbbed in the flesh and the earth below. The people drew back, crouching down by the food they had brought for the feasting, as the ghostly procession neared. The faces of the priests were whitened and their bodies painted with signs that had been ancient when the priests of Atlantis came over the sea to this isle, for this was a very old magic. Ana did not recognize Taliesin among them, though it was hard to be sure. No one knew in advance where the Horned One’s lot would fall, but her pulse quickened in anticipation.

Stepping in unison, the ancestors circled the fire. The people began to call out names, and as they did so, the anonymous white faces seemed to alter, taking on personality. Now an older woman cried out in recognition, and one of the dancers, limping and mumbling like an old man, left the line and sat down beside her. A girl, perhaps their daughter, knelt before him, patting her belly as she begged him to reincarnate in her womb.

One by one the ancestors joined the feasting. Viviane, who had watched them come in with a desperate hope in her eyes, turned away, weeping. Ana shook her head. Perhaps next year, if Viviane still desired it, she would see Vortimer and show him their child.

Her lips twisted. She herself had borne her first babe much younger, but it still did not seem right that her daughter should be pregnant. At the Giants’ Dance, she had felt ancient; her courses had stopped for several moons and she had been ready to proclaim herself a crone. But then they had returned. Ana thought now it was worry that had stopped them. She was still in her prime.

A marsh woman knelt before her with a platter, offering strips of beef still smoking from the fire. Her stomach growled, for she had come to the ritual fasting, but she waved the food away. Around her, the feast continued. Some of the ancestors, satisfied, left the bodies who had hosted them, and the priests were taken away to wash off their paint and get some food for themselves. Ana felt a tingling in her flesh and knew that the astral tides were turning. Soon the ways would open between past and future, linking the worlds.

From the pouch at her waist she took three tiny mushrooms, brought to her by one of the wisewomen of Heron’s tribe. They were still plump and fresh; her mouth puckered at the bitter taste, but she chewed carefully. She was riding the first wave of disorientation when Nectan came to her, bowing.

“It is time; the well is waiting. Let us see what fate it holds…”

Ana swayed a little as she rose, smiling at the buzz of mingled apprehension and curiosity that swept through the crowd, and the old Druid steadied her. Together they moved up the hill. The Mirror Pool lay still under starlight, the reversed image of the Hunter of Worlds striding through its depths as he mounted the sky. Reflected firelight swirled dizzyingly across the surface. The High Priestess waved the torchbearers back, and silently the people took up position around the pool.

Viviane stepped forward to look into the water, as she had each Samhain since her first vision in the Pool, but Ana grabbed her arm.

“Stupid girl, you cannot See while you are carrying a child!”

That was not entirely true-it was difficult, for when a woman was pregnant she was more firmly connected to her body than at other times, and the energies she channeled could be dangerous for the baby. But as Ana pushed past her daughter, she knew that was not why she had stopped her from claiming this task.

She blinked, forcing her eyes to see normally for just a few moments longer. It was time to show them all why she was still High Priestess of Avalon.

A piece of sheepskin had been placed at the edge. Nectan assisted her to kneel, and very carefully, for now the mushrooms were reaching full potency, Ana gripped the cold stone. The discipline of long practice locked her muscles. Her long hair fell down to either side, blocking peripheral vision. She stared down into darkness and her eyes lost focus. One deep breath steadied her; another, and a shudder racked her frame; with the third breath, her awareness floated free.

The ripples in the water became hills and valleys. The crossed rays of ley lines veined the land with light. Tonight those tracks were thronged with spirits hastening toward the flickering Samhain fires.

“White Mare, I beg you, speak to us.” Nectan’s voice came floating from the world she had left behind. “Tell us what you see.”

“The land is at peace and the ways lie open; the dead are coming home…”

“And what of the coming year? Will rain and sun bless our fields?”

Grey filled Ana’s vision and she coughed, as if she were drowning. “Fill your storehouses and repair your houses, for a wet winter is coming, and all the lowlands of Britannia will lie beneath the floods…” Somewhere back in that other world people were murmuring unhappily, but Vision rushed onward. “In the spring, I see more storms, and rivers overflowing their banks across the fields. It is a hard year that comes to you, and a thin harvest…”

There was a pause. Ana floated in a place beyond time, watching rainbow patterns form and fade.

“But will we have peace?” Nectan’s voice pulled her back toward the world. “Will Britannia be safe from danger from men?”

She was shaken by sudden laughter. “Men live in this land-how can it be safe from them?”

Another voice, her daughter’s, interrupted. “Will the Saxons come again?”

Sight spiraled dizzyingly, showed her the grey sea and the lands beyond it, where brown floodwaters spread across the low-lying fields. Ana’s lips moved, but, gripped by the vision, she did not hear her own words. She saw drowned men and cattle, and a harvest worse than the one she had foreseen for Britannia. More seasons passed, equally wet, though not so cold. After a time men began to dismantle their halls and build warships from the timbers. She saw armies hosting, the three keels in which Hengest had fled multiplying a hundredfold.

“No-” Ana heard herself denying the vision, but she could not escape it. “I don’t want to-”

“What do you see?” Viviane’s voice was implacable.

“Five winters pass, and the Saxons gather, winging like the wild geese over the sea. And they are many-there have never been so many-and they fall screaming upon our shores…”

She whimpered, wanting to reject, to deny, the knowledge that forced itself upon her. She had to stop this disaster! They had suffered enough; she would do anything to keep this from coming to be-