It was the fairest part of the summer, and this morning Gwenhwyfar brought a white rose from the convent garden and laid it on Igraine's pillow. Igraine had struggled to her feet last night to go to evensong, but this morning she had been so weary and without strength she could not rise. Yet she smiled up at Gwenhwyfar and said in her wheezing voice, "Thank you, dear daughter." She put the flower to her face, sniffing delicately at the petals. "Always I wanted roses at Tintagel, but the soil there was so poor, little would grow. ... I dwelt there five years and never did I cease from trying to make some sort of garden."

"When you came to take me to be wedded, you saw the garden at my home," Gwenhwyfar said, with a sudden twinge of homesickness for that faraway walled garden.

"I remember how beautiful it was-it put me in mind of Avalon. The flowers are so beautiful there, in the courts of the House of Maidens." She was silent for a moment. "A message was sent to Morgaine at Avalon?"

"A message was sent, Mother. But Taliesin told us Morgaine had not been seen in Avalon," said Gwenhwyfar. "No doubt she is with Queen Morgause in Lothian, and in these times it takes forever for a messenger to come and go."

Igraine drew a heavy sigh and began to struggle with a cough again, and Gwenhwyfar helped her to sit upright. After a time Igraine murmured, "Yet the Sight should have bidden Morgaine to come to me-you would come if you knew your mother was dying, would you not? Yes, for you came, and I am not even your own mother. Why has Morgaine not come?"

It is nothing to her that I have come, Gwenhwyfar thought, it is not me she wants here. There is no one who cares whether I am here or elsewhere. And it seemed as if her very heart was bruised. But Igraine was looking at her expectantly, and she said, "Perhaps Morgaine has received no message. Perhaps she has gone into a convent somewhere and become a Christian and renounced the Sight."

"It may be so.... I did so when I married Uther," Igraine murmured. "Yet now and again it thrust itself on me undesired, and I think if Morgaine was ill or dying I would know it." Her voice was fretful. "The Sight came upon me before you were married ... tell me, Gwenhwyfar, do you love my son?"

Gwenhwyfar shrank from the sick woman's clear grey eyes; could Igraine see into her very soul? "I love him well and I am his faithful queen, lady."

"Aye, I believe you are ... and you are happy together?" Igraine held Gwenhwyfar's slender hands in her own for a moment and suddenly smiled. "Why, so you must be. And will be happier yet, since you are bearing his son at last."

Gwenhwyfar's mouth dropped open and she stared at Igraine. "I-I -I did not know."

Igraine smiled again, a tender and radiant smile, so that Gwenhwyfar thought, Yes, I can believe it, that when she was young, she was beautiful enough for Uther to cast aside all caution and seek her with spells and charms.

Igraine said, "It is often so, though you are not really so young-I am surprised you have not already had a child."

"It was not for lack of wanting, no, nor praying for it either, lady," Gwenhwyfar said, so shaken that she hardly knew what she was saying. Was the old Queen falling into delirium? This was too cruel for jesting. "How -what makes you think I am-am with child?"

Igraine said, "I forgot, you have not the Sight-it has deserted me for long and long I renounced it, but as I say, it steals upon me unawares, and never has it played me false." Gwenhwyfar began to weep, and Igraine, troubled, reached out her thin hand and laid it over the younger woman's.

"Why, how is this, that I give you good news and you weep, child?"

Now she will think I do not want a child, and I cannot bear to have her think ill of me ... . Gwenhwyfar said shakily, "Only twice in all the years I have been married have I had any cause to think myself pregnant, and then I carried the child only a month or two. Tell me, lady, do you-" Her throat closed and she dared not speak the words. Tell me, Igraine, shall I bear this child, have you seen me then with Arthur's child at my breast? What would her priest think of this compromise with sorcery?

Igraine patted her hand. "I wish I might tell you more, but the Sight comes and goes as it will. God grant it come to a good end, my dear; it may be that I can see no more because by the time your child is born, I shall not be here to see-no, no, child, do not weep," she begged. "I have been ready to leave this life ever since I saw Arthur wedded. I would like to see your son, I would like to hold a child of Morgaine's in my arms, should that day ever come, but Uther is gone and it is well with my children. It may be that Uther waits for me beyond death, or the other children I lost at birth. And if they do not-" She shrugged. "I shall never know."

Igraine's eyes closed, and Gwenhwyfar thought, I have wearied her. She sat silent until the older woman slept, then rose and went quietly into the garden.

She felt numbed; it had truly not seemed to her that she might be pregnant. If she had thought anything at all about it, it was that the stress of travel had delayed her courses ... for the first three years of her marriage, every time it had been late, she had thought herself with child. Then, in the year in which Arthur had been, first, away for the battle of Celidon Wood and the long campaign before it, then wounded and too weak to touch her, the same pattern had persisted. And finally she had realized that her monthly rhythms were inconstant-there was no way to keep track of them by the moon, for sometimes two or three months might pass with no sign.

But now that Igraine had spoken, she wondered why she had not thought of this before; it never occurred to her to doubt the Queen. Something inside Gwenhwyfar said, Sorcery, and there was a small voice that persisted in reminding her, All these things are of the Devil, and have no place in this house of holy women. But something else said, How could it be wicked to tell me this? It was more, she thought, as when the angel was sent to Mary the Virgin to tell her of the birth of her son ... and then for a moment Gwenhwyfar was struck with awe at her own presumption; and then she began softly to giggle, at the incongruity of Igraine, old and dying, as an angel of God.

At that moment the bell rang in the cloister for prayers, and Gwenhwyfar, though here as a guest, and without obligation, turned and went into the sisters' chapel, kneeling in her accustomed place among the visitors. But she heard little of the service, for her whole heart and mind were caught up in the most fervent prayer of her entire life.

It has come, the answer to all my prayers. Oh, thank you, God and Christ and our Blessed Lady!

Arthur was wrong. It was not he who failed. There was no need ... and once again she was filled with the paralyzing shame she had felt when he had said that thing to her, all but giving her leave to betray him ... and what a wicked woman I was then, that I could even have considered it ... . But now in the very midst of her wickedness God had rewarded her when she deserved it now. Gwenhwyfar raised her head and began to sing the Magnificat with the rest, so fervently that the abbess raised her head and looked sharply at her.

They do not know why I am thankful ... they do not know how much I have to be thankful for ... .

But they do not know how wicked I was either, for I was thinking here in this holy place of the one I love ... .

And then, even through her joy, suddenly it was like pain again: Now he will look upon me big with Arthur's child, and he will think me ugly and gross and never look on me again with love and longing. And even through the joy in her heart, she felt small and cramped and joyless.

Arthur gave me leave, and we could have had each other, at least once, and now never ... never ... never ... .