"Still, my queen, none can be the master of another's conscience. Even if you think it wicked and shameful, would you pretend to know what is right for another? Even the wise cannot know everything, and perhaps the Gods have more purposes than we, in our little knowledge, can see."

"If I knew right from wrong-as I do and as the priests have taught us, and as God has taught us in Holy Writ-then should I fear God's punishment if I did not make such laws as would keep my people from sin?" Gwenhwyfar demanded. "God would require it at my hands, I think, if I allowed evil to take place in my realm, and if I were king I should already have put it down."

"Then, lady, I can say only that it is the good fortune of this land that you are not king. A king must protect his people from outsiders, from invaders, and lead his people to defend themselves-a king must be the first to thrust himself between the land and all danger, just as a farmer stands to defend his fields from any robber. But it is not his duty to dictate to them what their innermost hearts may do."

But she had debated with him hotly. "A king is the protector of his people, and what good is it to protect their bodies if he lets their souls fall into evil ways? Look you, Lord Merlin, I am a queen, and mothers in this land send their daughters to wait upon me and be schooled in courtly ways -understand you? Well, what manner of queen should I be, if I let another woman's daughter behave immodestly and get herself with child, or-as did Queen Morgause, I have heard-let her maidens go to the king's bed, if he wished to have his way with them? Mothers entrust me with their daughters because they know I will protect them-"

"It is different, that you should be entrusted with maidens too young to know their own will, and be even as a mother to bring them up rightly," Taliesin said. "But a king rules over grown men."

"God has not said there is one law for the court and one other for the country folk! He wishes all men to keep his commandments-and suppose the laws were not there? What do you think would happen to this land if I and my ladies went out into the fields and behaved so immodestly? How can such things be allowed to go on within the very sound of the church bells?"

Taliesin smiled. He said, "I do not think, even if there was no law against it, that you would be very likely to go into the fields at Beltane, my lady. I have marked it-that you like not to go out of doors much at all."

"I have had the good of Christian teaching and priestly counsel and I choose not to go," she said sharply.

"But Gwenhwyfar," he said very gently, his faded blue eyes looking at her out of the network of lines and patches on his face, "think of this. Suppose a law was made against it, and your conscience told you that it was the right thing to do, to give yourself to the Goddess, in acknowledgment that she is over us all, body and soul? If your Goddess wished for you to do so-then, dear lady, would you let the passing of a law forbidding the Beltane fires stop you from it? Think, dear lady: not more than two hundred years ago-has Bishop Patricius not told you of this?-it was strictly against the laws here in the Summer Country that any should worship the Christ, for so they should defraud the Gods of Rome of their just and righteous due. And there were Christians who died rather than do such a little thing, cast a pinch of incense before one of their idols-aye, I see you have heard the story. Would you have your God be as great a tyrant as any Roman emperor?"

"But God is real, and they are but idols fashioned by men," Gwenhwyfar said.

"Not so, no more than the picture of Mary Virgin which Arthur bore into battle ... " said Taliesin, "a picture to give comfort to the minds of the faithful. It is strictly forbidden to me, a Druid, that I may have any representation of any God, for I have been so taught, in many lives, that I need none-I can think upon my God and he is with me. But the once-born cannot do that, and so they need their Goddess in round stones and pools, as your simple people need the picture of Mary Virgin and the cross which some of your knights bear on their shields, so that men may know they are Christian knights."

Gwenhwyfar knew there was a flaw in this argument, but she could not debate with the Merlin; and in any case, he was only an old man, and a heathen.

When I have borne Arthur a son-once he said to me that then I might ask of him anything he could give, and at that time I will ask him to forbid the Beltane fires and the harvest fires.

Gwenhwyfar remembered this conversation, months after, on the morning of her dream. No doubt Morgaine would have counselled her so, that she should go with Lancelet to the fires ... Arthur had said he would ask her no question if she should bear a child, he had all but given her leave to have Lancelet as a lover ... she felt her face flaming as she bent over the cross; she was not fit to touch such stuff. She put the altar cloth from her and wrapped it in a piece of coarser cloth. She would work on it when she was more tranquil.

Cai's uneven step sounded at the door of the room. "My lady," he said, "the King has sent to ask if you would come down to the arms field to watch. There is something he would show you."

Gwenhwyfar nodded to her ladies. "Elaine, Meleas, come with me," she said. "You others, you may come or stay here and work, as you like."

One of the women, who was elderly and somewhat shortsighted, chose to stay and go on with her spinning; the others, eager for a chance to get out into the sunlight, flocked after Gwenhwyfar.

In the night there had been snow, but the strength of the winter was past, and now the snow lay melting quickly in the sun. Little bulbs were poking leaves through the grass; in another month, this would be a wilderness of flowers. When she had come here to Camelot, her father Leodegranz had sent her his favorite gardener, so that he could decide what vegetables and pot herbs would grow best in this site. But this hilltop had been fortified long before Roman times and there were some herbs growing; Gwenhwyfar had had him transplant them all into her kitchen garden, and when they found a patch where flowers were growing wild, Gwenhwyfar begged Arthur that she should be left it for her own lawns, and he had built the arms field further along the hilltop.

She looked up timidly, as they moved across the lawns. It was so open here, so near to the sky; Caerleon had nestled close to the earth. Here at Camelot, on rainy days, it was like being on an island of fog and mist- like Avalon-but on clear days of sunlight, such as this one, it lay high and exposed, so that it could command all the country round, and standing at the edge of the hilltop she could see miles and miles of hill and forest ... .

It was like being too near to Heaven; surely it was not right that human beings, mere mortals, should see so far-but Arthur said, even though there was peace in the land, the King's castle should be difficult to come at.

It was not Arthur who came to meet her, but Lancelet. He had grown even handsomer, she thought. Now that he need not keep his hair always hacked short for the war helmet, he had let it grow long, and it curled around his shoulders. He wore a short beard-she liked the fashion on him, though Arthur teased him about it and said he was vain; Arthur himself kept his hair clipped short like a soldier, and had himself shaved every day by his chamberlains, as carefully and as closely as he combed his hair.

"Lady, the King is waiting for you," said Lancelet, and took her arm to escort her to the set of seats Arthur had had built close to the wooden railings of the exercise field.

Arthur bowed to her, thanking Lancelet with a smile as he took Gwenhwyfar's hand. "Here, Gwen, sit beside me-I brought you here because I want to show you something special. Look there-"