The Hallowed Isle Book Three (23 page)

Guendivar frowned thoughtfully. Igierne had told her that she saw the figure of a goddess emerge from the Cauldron, while Julia's vision, like that of Betiver, had been of the chalice of the Christian mass. She herself had seen only luminous forms in a haze of light, and no vessel at all.

“The others who have gone said that the vision left them with an aching desire to see it again . . .” she said then.

“That is so, but when I had gone away, I found that all I truly longed for was here.”

For a moment Betiver's gaze held hers, and she flinched, seeing his unvoiced love for her naked in his eyes. She had become accustomed to recognizing lust or longing when men looked at her. One or two had threatened to seek death in battle when she would not return their passion. Only Betiver seemed able to love her without being unfaithful either to his concubine in Londinium or to his king. She had not realized what a comfort that steady, undemanding devotion was until she noted her own happiness at seeing him back again.

His tone flattened as he went on, “But the theft of the Cauldron must not go unpunished, whatever its nature may be. I have sent word to all our garrisons, and set a watch upon the ports, and having done so, see no purpose in continuing to wander the countryside when I could better serve Britannia by helping Artor.”

“The king will be grateful,” Guendivar said carefully, “and so will I. It has been very quiet here, and lonely, with all of you gone.”

The power of the Cauldron grew with the waxing of the moon. As Morgause and her men worked their way crosscountry along the edges of the sodden lowlands, travelling by night and lying up during the day, she found herself constantly aware of its presence, as even with eyes closed, one can sense the direction of a fire. But this was a white flame, cool as water, seductive as the hidden current in a stream. She could feel her moods change as they had done before her moon cycles came to an end. At some times the smallest frustration could drive her to fury or tears, and at others, and these were ever more frequent as the moon grew from a silver sickle towards its first quarter, she was uplififted on a tide of joy.

Slowly, for the paths were rough and they often had to backtrack and find a new path, they travelled westward. Presently the folded hills with their meadows and patches of woodland gave way to a high heathland where a constant wind carried the sharp breath of the sea. In the days of the empire, these hills had been well populated, for Rome needed the lead from Britannia's mines. But most of the shafts had been worked out or abandoned when the trade routes were interrupted, and grass grew on the piled earth and rock where they had been.

Morgause and her party moved more openly now, taking the old road to the mouth of the Uxela where the lead ships used to come in. Only once did they pass a huddle of huts beside a working mine shaft, and no one greeted them. At the rivermouth they saw the remains of the port, which now was home only to a few fishermen whose boats were drawn up on shore. Saltmarsh and mudflat stretched along the coast to either side of the narrow channel; at low tide the atmosphere was redolent with their rank perfume. But when it changed, the waters surged up the estuary of the Sabrina, bringing with them fresh sea air and seabirds crying on the wind.

And there, as if the gods themselves had conspired to help her, a boat was waiting.

“Go to the captain and ask where he comes from and what he carries,” she told Uinist. “If he is loading lead to take to Gallia say no more, but if he is sailing northward, ask if he will accept a few passengers.”

Morgause had meant to follow the estuary and strike across country from there, but as her awareness of the Cauldron grew, it had come to her that perhaps Igierne would be able to trace the movement of power. If tike Cauldron were at sea, surely its identity would be masked by that of the element to which it belonged.

And so it was that Morgause took ship with three of her men while the others turned back with the horses, travelling in groups of two and three to divert any pursuers who might have traced them.

Aggarban returned to Camalot on a stretcher. Hearing the commotion, Guendivar came running from the hall. For a moment she thought they had brought her a corpse to bury, then she saw his chest rise and fall.

“We heard there were strange riders in the hills to the west,” said Edrit, the half-Saxon lad whom Aggarban had taken into his service. “We caught up with them just as night was falling, and when they would not stop, we fought. In the confusion, my lord and I were separated. It took me too long to kill my man, and by the time I found my way back it was full dark. There was a dead man in the clearing, but I had to wait until morning to track my master. He was lying in his blood with the body of his opponent beside him. I bound up his wounds as best I could, and then I had to find a farm with a cart to bear him. I am sorry, my lady—” He gazed at her with sorrowful eyes. “I did the best I could.. . .”

“I am sure you did,” she said reassuringly, one eye on the old woman, of all their folk the most skilled in treating injuries, who was examining Aggarban.

“He was unconscious when I found him,” Edrit babbled on, “and by the time I came back with the cart, he was burning with fever. But now that we are here he will better. You will heal him, lady, I know!”

“If God wills it—” she answered cautiously, but he was looking at her as if she were the Goddess, or perhaps only the Tigernissa. Only now was Guendivar beginning to understand that for some, that was almost the same thing.

The healer had finished her examination

“Will he recover?” she asked.

“I believe so, with time and careful nursing,” the woman answered her. “He can make back the blood he has lost, and his wounds are not too severe. But I don't like that fever.”

No more did Guendivar, but she had promised Edrit that she would try to save his master. For three nights she took turns with the other women to sit by the wounded man, sponging his brow and listening to his mutterings, until the crisis came.

It was past midnight, and the queen herself was half asleep in her chair, when a groan woke her.

“Hold!” Aggarban spoke quite clearly but his eyes were closed. “Don't trouble to deny it—I know ye for a northern man. Is my mother tangled in this business?” There was a silence, as if someone invisible were answering, and then, once more, that terrible groan. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, edged by pain.

“Ah, my mother, you were in the Light that came through the hall—and then you abandoned us. Do you not care for your sons? But you never did, save for that red-haired brat. Festival-bastard, king's-get—oh, I have heard the tales. Can you name
any
of our fathers?” The accusations faded into anguished mutterings.

“Aggarban—” The queen wrung water from the cloth and laid it on his brow. “It's all right now, it's over . . . you must sleep and get well.”

His eyes opened suddenly, and it seemed that he knew her. “Queen Guendivar . . . you shine like the moon . . . and are you faithless too?”

She recoiled as if he had struck her, but his eyes had closed. He stopped speaking, and after a few moments she took a deep breath and laying her hand on his brow, found it cool. Guendivar rose then and called the healer to examine him; and after, she went to her own bed, and wept until sleep came.

It was sunset, and the moon, now in its first quarter, hovered halfway up the sky. To Morgause, sitting on a coil of rope beside the stern rail, it looked like a cauldron into which all the light was trickling as the sky dimmed from rose to mauve and then a soft violet blue. When her gaze returned to the sea, she saw the undulating landscape before her, opalescent with color, its billows refracting blue and purple as they caught the light and subsiding into dusk grey when they fell.

The ship flexed and dipped, angling across the waves towards her evening anchorage. She was called the
Siren
, and in a week of travel Morgause had come to know her routine. Unless the weather was exceptionally fine and the wind steady, they put in each night at some sheltered cove, trading for fresh food and water and exchanging news. In these remote places there had been no rumor of the search for the Cauldron, but even here folk had felt the storm and rejoiced in the peace that came after. Those who had not died of the great sickness were on the mend, and hope had returned to the land.

At first, such interrupted progress had frustrated Morgause to the edge of rage. If the first few villages had been able to sell them horses, she would have left the ship and gone overland—to struggle with the hazards of the mountains would have matched her mood. But as day succeeded day, ever changing and always the same, she found her anger dissolving away. Even the presence of the Cauldron did not disturb her, for at sea, she was in its element and there was no separation between them.

Moving across the surface of the waters, suspended between earth and heaven, she found herself suspended also between the time before she took the Cauldron and whatever the future might hold. Her desire for the Cauldron was unchanging, but she wondered now why she had fought so hard to rule the north? Beside its reality, even her ambitions for Medraut paled. She was beginning to understand that whatever happened now, the woman who returned to the north would not be the same as the one who had ridden away a moon ago.

Vortipor rode in to Camalot with ravens wheeling around him. When those who came out to welcome him realized that the round objects dangling from his saddlebow were severed heads, they understood why.

The man who had taken them was brown and healthy and grinning triumphantly. The heads were rather less so, and even Vortipor did not protest too much when Artor tactfully suggested that Father Kebi might be willing to give them Christian burial.

“Though I doubt very much that they deserve it. I was outnumbered, and could not afford them time to confess their sins.” He did not sound sorry.

“I trust that they deserved the death you gave them—” Artor observed, but the steel in his tone did little to dim the young man's smile.

“Oh, yes. The cave where they held me was littered with the remains of
their
victims. We'll have to send a party to give them a grave as least as good as that of their murderers.”

“They were robbers, then,” said Guendivar.

“Most certainly, but they bit off more than they could chew when they captured me! I am sorry, my lady, that I have no news of the Cauldron, but when the Light passed through the hall, what I saw was a Warrior Angel, and I can only serve the truth I see.. . .”

“None of us can say more than that,” answered the king, and led him into the hall.

Even on dry land the ground seemed to be heaving. Morgause stumbled and halted, laughing. The
Siren
had put them ashore on the north bank of the Belisama, for her master would sail no farther. A half-day's journey would set them on the Bremetennacum road. It was far enough—no one would think to look for the fugitives here. Indeed, the fear of pursuit had ceased to trouble her, as had any ambivalence regarding her theft of the Cauldron.

It was
hers
, as the gods had always intended, and the time to claim her inheritance had arrived. When Doli began to ask her about the next stage of their journey, she waved him away.

“We can take thought for that tomorrow. Tonight is the full of the moon. Carry the chest up the beach—there, beyond the trees—and let no one disturb me.” He was a Pict, and she knew he would not question his queen.

The sun was already sinking into the western sea, and as they reached the spot Morgause had chosen, a rim of silver edged the distant hill.

Swiftly she stripped off her clothes and stood, arms lifted in adoration, as the silver wheel of the moon rolled up the eastern sky. It had been long since she had saluted the moon with the priestesses, but she still remembered the beginning of their hymn.

“
Lady of the Silver Wheel, Lady of the Three-fold Way. . .”
For a moment she hummed, trying to recall how the next lines ran, then words came to her—
“Thy deepest mysteries reveal, hear me, Goddess, as I pray!”
She repeated the phrase, sinking deeper into the chant, finding new verses to continue the song.

Words of power she sang, to confirm her mastery, but gradually it seemed to her that she was hearing other voices and singing the old words after all, and she did not know if they came from memory, or whether the familiar melody had somehow linked her in spirit to the priestesses who even now would be drawing down the moon on the Holy Isle.

“
Holiness is your abode . . . Help and healing there abound
.. . .” But Morgause had not wanted healing, only power.

“
Ever-changing, you abide.. . Grant us motion, give us rest.. . 
.” As she sang the words, her strength left her and she sank down onto her scattered clothing, her breath coming in stifled sobs. It took a long time before she could find a stillness to match that of the night around her.

And all that while, the moon had continued to rise. Morgause sat watching it, and draped her mantle over her naked shoulders against the night chill. She realized gradually that the quiet was a breathing stillness, compounded of the chirring of frogs, the gentle lap of the waves against the sand, and the whisper of wind in the grass. And now, as she watched, she saw the first spark of light on the water, and the moon, lifting ever higher, began to lay down a path of light across the sea.

Ripple by ripple the moonpath lengthened. Moving with dreamlike slowness, Morgause rose, undid the hasps that had secured the chest, and raised the lid. White silk swathed the Cauldron. Gently she folded it back, and drew in her breath at the glimmer of silver inside. It was as bright as if newly polished. The priestesses on the Isle of Maidens used to whisper that it never grew tarnished or needed to be cleaned.

For a moment longer awe kept her from moving, then she lifted the Cauldron and carried it to the water's edge. The tide was fully in, and she had not far to go. The moon was high, serene in a sky of indigo, so bright that the sea showed deep blue as well, but moving across the river came a dancing glitter of light. Still holding the Cauldron, Morgause waded into the water, and when it lapped the tops of her thighs, she lowered the vessel and let it fill.