Avalon (27 page)

The May night was balmy, and everyone was sweating as they left the ridge and began the actual climb of the Tor on a track well-worn by footsteps throughout countless centuries. Black clouds drifted across the moon, whose intermittent brightness gave Merewyn an eerie feehng. Light and shadow, hght and shadow, — was this perhaps the meaning of everything?

Her thoughts were not formulated, they drifted through her

mind like the clouds, and always she was conscious that just above was the stumpy dark tower.

One must reach it — Rumon had said so — but why? Because of the wooden cross on top? But why must one do what Rumon said? What is Rumon? A barefoot lay brother this morning, an aristocrat tonight. And now speaking an incomprehensible language to the merchant. I want to be free, she thought, I want to be ME, Mere-wyn. These thoughts had never come to her before.

They reached the tower at last. The man from Calais sat down on a stone and said, "Oof, I'm winded."

"I've the key," said Rumon producing a large iron bar with crude flanges. "There'll be candles inside — and flint and tinder."

"Mais oui," said the man from Calais, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. "Having come this far we must pray to St. Michel, I suppose."

Rumon unlocked the great battered door. But the flint was nowhere to be found. There was no means of lighting the candles, and the tower remained in chilly darkness.

"Eh bien," said the man from Calais. "St. Michel is indifferent to us. Me, I wish now to get doivn that hiU —^ le plus tot possible."

His companion agreed, and they started off.

Rumon looked at Merewyn. "You will Hnger a moment?" he asked diffidently, for her silence and the mysterious beauty which the night lent her, both upset him.

She inclined her head. "It is strong up here," she said. "Not St. Michael — the others from the old time. I doubt that they are gentle."

Rumon thought this a strange speech, but it also made him see Merewyn in a new light. The quiverings of desire long denied began to tingle.

They sat down on the stone where the Frenchman had, and saw the glimmer of water all around Glastonbury below them;

not only the sheet of the great Meare, but a myriad of rivulets, marshes, and ponds, shining silver and enclosing what was once the island.

"Merewyn —" said Rumon after a moment. He put his hand over hers. She let hers lie quiescent, and looked at Rumon's hand — thin, white, nervous, and barely bigger than her own.

"Yes ... ?" she said, turning her face up towards the moon.

"I want you, Merewyn," he whispered, and was appalled by his own words. He threw his arms around her, and kissed her on the cheeks and then fervently on the mouth. A part of her leaped to respond. Had she not yearned for this so desperately? Yet part of her drew back. He felt the withdrawal and at once released her. "I have thought sometimes that you wanted me," he said, in a gruff biting tone.

She gazed out over the silver and black landscape. "I always did," she said puzzled and remote. "It is because of you that I refused offers of marriage — that I did not enter the novitiate at Romsey. Now you seem of a sudden to lust for me. That is interesting. But it is not enough. Not my dream, nor the wish of my Aunt Merwinna. A woman of my birth must not be tumbled by stealth on a grassy bank."

"A woman of your birth —" Rumon spoke through clenched teeth, and swallowed down the rest he would say. He was angry with her, and angrier with himself. "Is it marriage that you had in mind?"

She flinched from the contempt, but spoke staunchly. "And why not? Except for my lack of dowry, and even this may be somewhat remedied when I get to Tre-Uther. Its sale should bring in some money."

''Moneyr he repeated. "Do you think a few silver pennies from that ramshackle hovel you lived in could possibly matter to me! I am Romieux de Provence, an Atheling of England, both Alfred and Charlemagne were my forefathers. Do you think I'd sully my hne by begetting sons of ignoble birth?"

She gasped, and jumped to her feet. "How dare you!" she

cried trembling. "How dare you speak to me like that! As if I were a peasant, a serf. King Edgar thought me a fit wife for anyone in the kingdom! He said so — so did the Archbishop. But you — I suppose only queens are fit to mate with you — lewd fornicating queens!"

Rumon shrank from her rage, while his own vanished. She looked hke a pagan goddess, like the statue of the angry Juno which he had seen in Aries. There was also pathos in her trem-bhng voice, a wild hurt that he recognized. "Tell her," a voice urged him, "tell her." But he could not. He could not augment the furious hurt he had already dealt.

"I'm sorry, Merewyn," he said feebly. "I shouldn't have spoken as I did. But I think marriage is not for me."

"Ha!" she said, not softened. "Marriage vdth Alfrida was glorious enough for you. She would have made you miserable — but then I wonder what does not make you miserable? And I who loved you, aye, I loved you, for this you cared nothing. Shall I tell you something, Rumon — if you had forced me just now, even in lust, I would have given myself. But you drew away; hot and cold, hot and cold — Hght and shadow hke this evening on the Tor."

The wind had begun to blow harder, and it seemed to her that in its whisde there were voices, harsh yet haunting voices, and that they were speaking to her. Her mantle flapped around her, a strand of hair blew across her face.

Rumon's heart began pounding. He stood up and clenched her arm. "I've dreamed of you —" he said half inaudibly; the wind carried his voice away around the dark tower. "You said you loved me — is it finished? We can go in and lie down in the tower, where we'll be sheltered. Merewyn —"

She shook his hand off her arm. "That's enough!" she cried. And turning, she began to run down the path, holding her mantle close, guided mosdy by instinct, off the Tor, onto the ridge, and thus down Weary-AU Hill, until she reached the town and her lodging. She told the porter that nobody, abso-

lutely nobody was to be admitted who asked for her. She drank a large tankard of mead in the kitchen where Caw and Goda were snoring. She went to bed and slept without dreams.

Rumon sat for a long while on the Tor. When he descended, he walked slowly, his head bent and there was a stinging in his eyes.

Merewyn aroused her servants and left Glastonbury at three in the dawn light, thus missing Rumon who had spent a sleepless night pacing the floor, unable to think or pray; battered by storms of incoherent emotions, none of them pleasant. Again and again he relived the feel of the soft pink mouth beneath his, then felt the shock of her recoil. Over and over he struggled against his desire for her, knowing well to what depths of shame and crime lust had brought him in the past. He knew that his desire for Merewyn was nothing Hke what he had felt for Alfrida. For Merewyn he felt love. When the bells rang out for Prime, he could stand his turmoil no longer. He must see her, though what he wanted to say, he did not know. He ran across the precincts and through the gate to her lodging.

Why, the Lady Merewyn and her servants had been gone these two hours, said the yawning porter, and before that she'd left orders not to admit anyone who might call on her. Not

ANYONE.

Rumon pulled a penny from his purse, and pushed it into the dirty broken-nailed hand. "Which way did they go?"

"I wasn't watching, my lord. That way belike —" he waved vaguely toward the west, "though wi' so many tracks flooded now, no telling where they'd get through. Regular mizzy-maze getting outa here that direction."

"Yes," said Rumon after a moment. Two hours' start. And if he did find her — what then? She clearly had not wanted to see him again.

He walked back to the Abbey, to the Refectory where — Prime being over — the brethren were breaking their fast. Here

he saw Finian, and was reminded of the day's exciting event which he had totally forgotten. The Archbishop was arriving. Dunstan would be here by Vespers at the latest.

"And he'll be sorry to see ye looking so queasy," said Finian cocking an eyebrow at Rumon. "Always takes an interest in ye, does his lordship. That young woman unsettle ye?"

Rumon did not answer, and his friend gazed at him curiously. "A comely, spirited lass," he said, "An' it might be the Devil sent her to tempt ye. Old Nick he has many a trick up his scarlet sleeve — though by St. Bridget, I'd say this was a good lass."

"She is," said Rumon beneath his breath. "She is."

"Ah—"said Finian. "Well, whatever it is, ye can tell his lordship all about it. He's a wise old man — is the Archbishop."

Rumon said nothing. He went off to don his lay brother's habit, and to the amazement of the monks detailed for duty in the vegetable garden that day, he insisted upon seizing a spade and helping dig the new bean bed. Lord Rumon was never one for manual labor, and the brothers thought his rather frantic digging most peculiar.

Dunstan duly arrived that afternoon, and his Utter was set down before the Abbot's lodging. Abbot Segegar came rushing out, followed by the Prior and by Finian, and other ranking ojSicials of the monastery. They all knelt to kiss the amethyst ring, and then helped the Archbishop emerge from his leather-curtained litter.

He had grown frailer since his last visitation to Glastonbury; his white tonsure was sparser; he had lost all his teeth but his cheeks were pink, and his voice as mellow as ever.

" 'Tis ever good to return," he said looking around the beloved Abbey. "I see you've a new carved door to the chapel — and there's a fine stand of early peas." He waved towards the vegetable garden, then peered more closely. "Surely that's not Lord Rumon wielding a spade! Come here and greet me, my son!" he called.

Rumon slowly obeyed, murmured apology for his tardiness, but he did not meet Dunstan's probing eyes, and the old man saw that there was something amiss. "Come to my chamber, immediately after Vespers," said the Archbishop, and turned to precede the Abbot into his lodgings for an hour of questioning, consultation and report.

Rumon later reluctantly presented himself as he had been told, and found that Dunstan was alone, meditatively sipping mead, and glancing over the list of novices the Abbot had given him.

"Well," said the old man smiling, "since when have you taken to rough work? You must save your hands for the crafts at which they are so skilled. Or was it some penance?"

"Perhaps, my lord," said Rumon, and clamped his mouth shut. He could see the Tor through the open window behind Dunstan's chair, and he stared at it. His dark eyes were glum.

Dunstan pushed aside the parchment, folded his hands in his sleeves and considered Rumon, who had never before been so curt or shown so little affection. "Sit down, my son," said Dunstan. "I can see you're troubled. I insist that you tell me what it is."

"My troubles could scarce interest you again, my lord; there must be plenty of far worthier men in this monastery who need to unburden themselves."

"No doubt," said Dunstan dryly. "And they shall have opportunity either by interviews or in the confessional. At the moment I wish to hear from you."

Rumon sat down on the extreme edge of a stool and continued to look beyond the mitred head towards the Tor.

The Archbishop had dealt with hundreds of recalcitrants before this but there were few of whom he had been so fond. Yet, why, he thought, should I be astonished at any human behavior? Oh, Blessed Christ, he thought wearily, it must be a woman again — but surely not that woman who was known to be moping in Winchester, or quarreling with Ethelred, and —

by reports Dunstan received — ailing with a sldn disease much Hke Lord Alfhere's.

"Rumon," said the Archbishop quietly, "I have always looked upon you as a son. I always remember you in my prayers. I observe with sadness that again you are not on the list of apphcants for the novitiate. Let that pass."

As Rumon said nothing, and continued to gaze at the Tor, Dunstan continued in a neutral voice. "Did I understand from Brother Finian that you've had a visitor? In fact, the Lady Merewyn?"

The young man's start, and sharp intake of breath were answer enough. Dunstan sighed and nodded slowly. *'So is that good reason for you to look tormented?"

Rumon clenched his hands and whirled around on the stool. "I desire her!" he said fiercely. "By God, I love her!"

"Well—"said Dunstan raising his grizzled brows. "Is that such a tragedy? I believe that she has always loved you. It seems that it is not God's will that you become a monk now, and if so 'tis better to wed. Our Blessed Lord has said so. St. Paul has said so. 7 said so to you, long ago, here in Glastonbury. This girl of high birth — in these latter years most carefully trained by her aunt —"

Rumon jumped to his feet, interrupting Dunstan with vehemence. "The Abbess of Romsey was not her aunt!"

"Not her aunt . . . ?" the Archbishop repeated, frovming. "What is this nonsense?"

Rumon threw back his shoulders and confronted the old man. "Shall I break a vow I took?" he asked with a mixture of defiance and anxiety. "A sacred vow to a dying woman. I swore by the Cross, and kissed her crucifix. Shall I break a vow, my lord?"

Dunstan took a sip of mead. "That is a difficult matter to answer," he said slowly, "but I am inclined to think that you have already broken it when you said that the Abbess Merwinna was not Merewyn's aunt, and I also think there is little sin in

telling ME this secret, which I shall treat as though you were in the confessional."

"Very well, my lord," said Rumon in a rush. "Merewyn has no drop of Arthur's blood — nor Uther's. She was sired by a chance-come Viking raider, whose name nobody knows."

"Ah — h," said Dunstan on a long breath. He shook his head. "Poor child, poor child . . . Now tell me exactly how you know this, Rumon."

Rumon, full of rehef, quickly described the actual events at Padstow eight years ago, the interview with Poldu the prior — the pitiful confirmation given by Breaca.

"I see," said Dunstan at the end. "This is indeed distressing. Especially for a man of your pride. From the worldly viewpoint, it is most distressing. But search yourself, Rumon. If Merewyn were what she thinks she is, would you then wish to wed her?"