CHAPTER 22

Dawn over Avalon—was there anything more beautiful on the face of God’s good earth?

His soul swelling with bliss, Brother Boniface gave humble thanks to the Creator, who had placed him here. He loved Avalon more than a good Christian should, nd the dawn walk with his fellow monk was the glory of the day. From its smooth rounded top to the green flanks sloping away below, it was easy to see why the pagans saw the island as the shape of their Goddess asleep.

Ahead of them the upward swell of the great Tor gleamed with the first rays of the rising sun. On all sides, surrounding the grassy isle, the still waters of the Lake shone like glass. Boniface filled his young lungs with the soft summer air, and glowed with content. He had thought himself happy enough in London, God only knew, serving his order there with work and prayer. He loved the slow, sad rhythm of the monastic hours, vespers, prime, nones all chiming with majestic certainty night and day. With the confidence of his twenty-odd years, he had looked forward to living and dying in the abbey to which God had called him as a boy.

But then the Father Abbot had heard the voice of the Lord, summoning His servant to another task. Boniface was to bring Christ to a place where the Devil had ruled before. He was to go to Avalon, and beg the pagans there to allow him to join his prayers to theirs. So he would be a bridgehead for the Lord, allowing His soldiers entry when the time came.

What a glory, what a terror, what a challenge, what a call! Boniface knew he would have a brother-in-arms for his task, and a young monk from Rome had joined him as soon as he began. But this work would always be the greatest thing he had done. His fair cheeks still flushed every time he thought of it. How long was it now since he had come to the Sacred Isle? And still he loved the place more every day.

And today would bring a new turn to their task. At last they would meet the ruler of this place.

“They worship a great goddess,” the Abbot had said, “in plain defiance of God’s ordinance that women are subject to men.” Boniface could still remember the pale fire of anger in the Father’s eyes. “They believe that women have the right of thigh-freedom, and may choose the men they summon to their beds. A priestess of the Goddess holds sway there as the ruler of the Isle. She keeps young women around her, and trains them up in these whorish ways.”

He leaned forward, one jabbing finger lending weight to every word. “Get to know her,” he said intently. “Win her confidence, show her you mean no harm. Treat her maidens like the Mother of Our Lord and, in God’s time, we may give them back the dignity of pure womanhood they have lost.”

“Yes, Father.”

Boniface had embraced his task with all his soul. Season after season, he had labored to win an audience with the Lady, without success. But now at last she sent word that they might meet. One of her maidens would bring them to her house. And Giorgio and he were going to the meeting now.

Boniface turned to his companion, brimming with joy. But before he could speak, his fellow monk cut him off.

“And this they call summer?” the other said, looking heavily around. “Pia Maria!” He groaned. “When we see the sun?”

Boniface looked at Giorgio with concern. All these months of sharing a cell had made the young Italian more than a brother to him, more than a friend. He knew how Giorgio suffered for their cause, translated from his native land for this cold and remote place of pagans, whose tongue he did not speak. These days Giorgio’s fine aquiline features were haunted with a look of loss. How long would he keep the bloom of his golden skin, the laughter in his dark eyes, his flashing smile?

Boniface sighed. After Rome, he knew, Giorgio could find little to admire in the island’s apple orchards, her fluttering doves, all too pale and fragile for a young man of the full-blooded south. And Giorgio badly missed his monastery in Rome. When he spoke of his church and the holy brotherhood there, Boniface could see what a fine ideal of the godly life his friend had left behind. Against that, to be living two to a small cell, keeping their own hours of worship and trying to interest the islanders in the love of Christ, must seem a poor thing. Boniface bit his lip, and determinedly squared his chin. He must try harder to make Giorgio happier here. Perhaps when they had seen the Lady, he would see God’s will for them revealed.

Boniface’s spirits soared. He strode up the Tor, mentally making magic for the Lord. Walking alongside, Giorgio stole a look at Boniface, and shook his head. How little his friend knew or understood!

Of course this innocence, along with his fair good looks, must have been Boniface’s passport here. The Father Abbot in London would have chosen him for that purity of his, that wide-eyed stare. And Boniface could have known nothing of this at all.

His own abbot had been plainer with him from the start. The head of his order had dispatched him from Rome with a smile as old as the hills on which the city stood.

“Remember that a little sin may make a great good for the Lord,” he had said, spreading his wrinkled hands. “The Father Abbot in London needs a fine young man of ours to win an old whore’s heart. The witch of Avalon shows thigh-friendship to any man. If she favors you, sin for the Lord. I grant you absolution in advance.”

“For everything?” Giorgio said hopefully.

The tortoise-lidded eyes had been as cold as stone. “For all that you may do.”

His superior must have known, Giorgio realized now, that women did not call to him at all. Leaving Rome, bad as it was, was not as hard as leaving the boy his heart doted on, the twelve-year-old who sang in the monastery choir. Never had he known such bliss as the stolen moments behind the choir stalls, the secret sessions in the vestry when he had made the boy his own. Each night when he prayed he thought of the boy’s silky lips, the peachlike bloom on his buttocks, and the hardness of his young hands, and vowed them all to God. The boy and he were both God’s creatures, both given to His service, worshiping Him together when they joined in love like this. When the heart was pure, there was no sin in the deed. And now his own abbot had blessed him, and said as much.

So if he had to sin for God with the whore of Avalon he would, Giorgio accepted, though he approached the thought without enthusiasm, and Boniface, he knew, had never dreamed of it at all. Yet God had not called either of them to that task. The Lady had shown no interest in them at all.

Until now. And already Giorgio was convinced that whatever happened, the whore of Avalon would not drop into their hands. Yet every day God made miracles of a stranger kind. He brightened. Perhaps it could yet be.

Boniface was striding on. “God does not blame those who have never known His love,” he said earnestly. “These women have never known God’s plan for them.”

They were climbing the side of the Tor, passing through silvery apple groves and, higher up, plunging through dark, tightly clustered stands of woody pine. Somewhere near the top lay the Lady’s house, they knew, though they had never before approached so near. Even now they could not see the hidden guardians they knew must be there. But ahead of them, the close-knit pines shimmered and parted, and they saw a woman between the trees, standing beside the path.

She was robed in shades of green like the living wood, and her draperies moved with the light breath of the breeze. Her lean body and taut carriage made her look taller than she was, and beneath the veil covering her hair, her face had the age-old detachment of another world. Her neat brown hands were folded before her like paws, not far, Boniface noted with a frisson of alarm, from the formidable forked dagger at her waist. Did she always carry the means of dealing death? And what did she want from them? But there was nothing to be gleaned from her small pansy face and dusky, secret eyes. She stared at them with an indeterminate gaze as she waited for them to draw near.

“God’s plan for women?” Giorgio grinned in an effort to keep his spirits up. “God’s lesser kind, deserving the curse of Eve?” He nodded to the figure standing ahead. “I hope we can explain that to her.”

“Hush, brother!” Boniface hissed in agitation, turning a furious red.

If the woman had caught the whispered exchange, she gave no sign. “I am Nemue, the chief Maiden of the Lady of the Lake,” she murmured in a rough voice unaccustomed to speech. “The Lady welcomes you into her house.”

She waved her hand. Dissolving and emerging through the trees, they saw a frontage of white stone with a pair of massive doors set into the side of the hill. Nemue waved them forward. At their first uncertain steps, the doors opened of their own accord.

“Enter!”

The force of Nemue’s command propelled them forward into the gloom. The doors closed behind them, and Giorgio let out a sharp cry of fear.

“Courage, brother!” urged Boniface in a trembling voice. “Remember we do God’s will.” Salvi nos fac, Domine, he began to pray. Dear God, make us safe...

Slowly their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. They stood in a darkened chamber lit only by flickering dragon lamps, tiny pinpoints of flame crouched in niches in the walls. The loam-washed space was low, and domed like the inside of the earth, and the little lights shone all around like stars. Above them they could feel the earthy mass of the great Tor, but here in the Lady’s palace the air was warm and sweet. Beyond sweet—Boniface snuffled at the living fragrance half in delight, half in dread. Already he knew that once he let it into his lungs, his soul would crave it for the rest of his life.

As they waited, growing more fearful every moment, they made out a tall throne against the wall, with a sprawl of dogs lying at its foot. Their sleek red fur and long limbs revealed them for a pack of water hounds, and each wore a collar of jeweled gold carved with runes. Rearing up on guard, they kept their eyes on the visitors, and did not move. But the glint of their white teeth was enough to make the bowels of both young men quake. Boniface renewed his prayers. How long, O Lord, how long?

It started as a whisper, hardly a breeze. Then the earth shivered, and there she was at the far end of the lamp-walled chamber, a tall female figure veiled in filmy draperies from head to foot. She wore a crystal diadem in the shape of the moon, and held another moon of rock crystal in her hand. Without movement she grew until she filled the room, and the space around her echoed with the soundless cries of creatures overhead, and the soft insistent murmur of lake water below.

“Lady?” ventured Boniface, almost weeping with fear.

The muffled figure slowly turned her head.

“What is your will?”

To Boniface it was the voice of his childhood nurse, to Giorgio the kiss of his beloved grandmother, long dead.

“Lady, we have come to offer our thanks,” Boniface began. Already he felt heartened, though he did not know why.

“For what?”

Giorgio felt his spirits revive a little. If he had not known she was a witch, he could have sworn he heard both humor and humanity in her tone.

Boniface plowed on. “When we came here, you graciously granted us the welcome of your isle.”

The veiled figure nodded. “You asked if you could join your prayers to ours. And truly, you have shown yourselves men of faith.”

Boniface threw a delighted glance at Giorgio. “We are strong in our love of God!” He beamed. “We came only to share that love with you.”

“Is that all?”

Suddenly the voice from within the fluttering gauze was as cold as it had before been warm.

“All?” Boniface started. “Yes, in God’s truth, that is all that brought us here.”

The chill indictment went on. “But we hear that your Christian Fathers have another aim. They plan to take our Hallows for their own.”

Boniface raised his head. “How could that be?” he said in wonderment. “They are the articles of your faith, not ours.” His face was translucent with sincerity. “Believe me, Lady, all we seek is a union of holy truth.”

The Lady inclined her head. “You perhaps,” she murmured. “Yes indeed.” She turned her head toward Giorgio and raised her hand. “But you?”

The air in the chamber dropped, and an unseen force seized Giorgio in its grip. The fluttering finger seemed to probe into his heart.

Giorgio felt faint. “Lady, I—” he stuttered.

Sin for the Lord. The voice of his Father Superior came tolling like a knell.

Giorgio reached for his flashing smile, and threw back his head. Swiftly he ran through the phrases he had ready in his mind.

“Lady, we hear of you far away in Rome,” he said winningly. “I am here to see you, and you alone. We beg to learn from you, we would sit at your feet. We pray we know you better in days to come. Any man would be glad to be admitted to your sight.” He tried for a respectful yet roguish smile. “Perhaps one day we see your face unveiled. For me, that would be a fair sight above all.” He composed his handsome face in a flattering gaze, and just in time remembered not to wink.

“Well said, brother!” Boniface glowed approvingly.

There was an endless pause. It stretched out to the edge of endurance and beyond. In the silence, Giorgio suddenly came to know that the Lady had heard his thoughts, and seen into his mind. Shame flooded him. He felt naked, humiliated, cruelly exposed, like the whores in Rome stripped to receive the lash.

“Is it so, Brother Giorgio?” came the soft query.

Giorgio felt his soul slipping out of his grasp. God in heaven, could the witch suck the life out of him too?

Nonplussed, Boniface was looking at him, anxiety on his face. A new dread burst upon Giorgio’s disordered mind. The Lady might forbid them to continue here. If they were ordered to leave the Sacred Isle because of him, what punishments would be waiting for him in Rome?

“We beg you, allow us to continue our worship here,” he burst out, made frantic by the silence and his fear. “For the love of God!”

The still figure on the throne inclined her head. As she moved, the crystals in her moon-shaped diadem flashed with pale fire. “Love, yes,” came a slow voice like music. “Religion should be kindness. Faith should be love.”

“Lady—”

Alarmed, Boniface threw himself into restoring the goodwill he had felt when they began. After a while, a chastened Giorgio seconded his attempts. In the whispering dark, the great muffled shape listened patiently to their stumbling pleas.

At last she held up her hand. “Enough,” she said heavily. “What will be, will be. Even the Mother cannot turn back the tide.”

Her sigh held all the sadness of the world. “Very well, then. You and your brothers may continue here.”