A hand fell on her shoulder, heavy and disapproving. Gorlois looked angry and suspicious.
“What is this unseemly matter, my lady? What have you been saying, my king, that my wife looks so wretched? I know you a man of lewd manners and little piety, but even so, sire, common decency should restrain you from approaching a vassal’s wife at your crowning!”
Igraine raised her face to him in anger. “Gorlois, I have not deserved this of you! What have I ever done that you should cast such an accusation at me in a public place?” For indeed heads were turning now, hearing angry words spoken.
“Then why, lady, do you weep, if he has said nothing unseemly to you?” His hand, gripping her wrist, felt as if he would crush it.
“As for that,” Uther said, “you must ask the lady why she weeps, for I do not know. But loose her arm, or I will make you. Husband or no, no one shall handle any woman roughly in my house.”
Gorlois let go of Igraine’s arm. She could see the marks of his fingers already reddening into dark bruises; she rubbed the marks, tears streaming down her face. Before the many faces surrounding them she was appalled, as if she had been taken and shamed; she covered her face with her veil and wept harder than ever. Gorlois pushed her before him. She did not hear what he said to Uther; only when they were outside in the street did she stare at him, amazed.
He said in a rage, “I will not accuse you before all men, Igraine, but God is my witness I should be justified in doing so. Uther looked at you just now as a man looks at a woman he has known as no Christian man has a right to know any other man’s wife!”
Igraine, feeling her heart pounding in her breast, knew it was true, and felt confusion and despair. In spite of the fact that she had seen Uther only four times, and dreamed twice of him, she knew that they had looked at each other and spoken to each other as if they had been lovers for many years, knowing all and more than all about each other, body and mind and heart. She recalled her dream, where it seemed that they had been bound for many years by a tie which, if it was not marriage, might as well have been so. Lovers, partners, priest to priestess—whatever it was called. How could she tell Gorlois that she had known Uther only in a dream, but that she had begun to think of him as the man she had loved so long ago that Igraine herself was not yet born, was a shadow; that the essence within her was one and the same with that woman who had loved that strange man who bore the serpents on his arms in gold. . . . How could she say this to Gorlois, who knew, and wished to know, nothing of the Mysteries?
He pushed her ahead of him into their lodging. He was ready, she knew, to strike her if she had spoken; but her silence frustrated him even more. He shouted, “Have you nothing to say to me, my wife?” and gripped her already bruised arm so strongly that she cried out anew with the pain of his hand. “Did you think I did not see how you looked at your paramour?”
She wrenched her arm away from him, feeling as if he would actually tear it out of the socket. “If you saw that, then you saw me turn away from him when he would have had no more than a kiss! And did you not hear him say to me that you were his loyal supporter and he would not take the wife of his friend—”
“If I was ever his friend, I am so no more!” Gorlois said, his face dark with fury. “Do you truly think I shall support a man who would take my wife from me, in a public place, shaming me before all his assembled chiefs?”
“He did not!” Igraine cried out, weeping. “I have never so much as touched his lips!” It seemed all the more vicious since she had indeed desired Uther but had kept herself scrupulously away from him. Why, if I am to be accused of guilt when I am innocent of any wrongdoing even as he would call it so, why should I not have done what Uther wished?
“I saw how you looked at him! And you have kept apart from my bed since first you set eyes on Uther, you faithless whore!”
“How do you dare!” she gasped, raging, and caught up the silver mirror he had given her, flinging it at his head. “Take back that word, or I swear I will throw myself into the river before ever you touch me again! You lie, and you know you lie!”
Gorlois ducked his head and the mirror crashed against the wall. Igraine snatched off her amber necklace—another new gift from her husband—and flung it after the mirror; with hasty fingers tore off the fine new gown and hurled it at his head. “How dare you call me such names, who have loaded me with gifts as if I were one of your camp followers and fancy women? If you think me a whore, where are the gifts I have received from my lovers? All the gifts I have are given me by my husband, the whoreson foul-mouthed cullion who tries to buy my goodwill for his own lusts because the priests have made him half a eunuch! From now on I will wear the weaving of my own fingers, not your disgusting gifts, you knave whose mouth and mind are as foul as your filthy kisses!”
“Be silent, you evil-minded scold!” Gorlois shouted, striking her so hard that she fell to the ground. “Now get up and cover yourself decently as a Christian woman should, not tearing off your clothes so that I will go mad with looking at you like that! Is that how you seduced my king into your arms?”
She scrambled to her feet, kicking the ruins of the gown as far as she could, and rushed at him, striking his face again and again. He grabbed her, trying to hold her motionless; crushed her into his arms. Igraine was strong, but Gorlois was a big man and a warrior, and after a moment her struggles subsided, knowing they were useless.
He whispered, pushing her toward the bed, “I will teach you better than to look at any man that way except your rightful husband!”
She flung her head back in contempt and said, “Do you think I would ever look at you again except with the loathing I would feel for a snake? Oh, yes, you can take me to bed and force me to do your will, your Christian piety permits you to ravish your own wife! I do not care what you say to me, Gorlois, because I know in my own heart that I am innocent! Until this very moment I felt guilty that some witchcraft or spell had made me love Uther. Now I wish I had done what he begged of me, if only because you were as ready to believe lies of my guilt as the truth about my innocence, and while I was anxious for my own honor and yours, you were prepared to believe I would fling mine to the winds!”
The contempt in her voice made Gorlois drop his arms and stare at her. He said, his voice husky, “Do you mean that, Igraine? Are you truly innocent of wrongdoing?”
“Do you think I would stoop to lie about it? To you?”
“Igraine, Igraine,” he said humbly, “I know well I am too old for you, that you were given to me without love and without your will, but I thought, perhaps, in these days, you have come to think a little better of me, and when I saw you weeping before Uther—” His voice choked. “I could not bear it, that you should look like that at that lustful and vicious man, and look on me only with duty and resignation—forgive me, forgive me, I do beg it of you—if indeed I wronged you—”
“You wronged me,” she said, her voice stinging with ice, “and you do well to beg my pardon, which you shall not have until the hells rise and the Earth sinks beneath the western ocean! Better you should go and make your peace with Uther—do you truly think you can stand against the wrath of the High King of Britain? Or will you end by buying his favor as you sought to buy mine?”
“Be still!” Gorlois said angrily, his face flushing; he had humbled himself before her, and she knew he would never forgive her for that either. “Cover yourself!”
Igraine realized that she was still bare to the waist. She went to the bed where her old gown was lying and pulled it leisurely over her head, doing up the laces. He gathered up her amber necklace from the floor, and the silver mirror, and held them out to her, but she turned her eyes away and ignored them and after a while he laid them on the bed, where she let them lie without looking at them.
He stared at her for a moment, then pushed the door and went out.
Left alone, Igraine began to put her things into her saddlebags. She did not know what she meant to do; perhaps she would go and find the Me
rlin, take him into her confidence. It was he who had begun this train of events that had put her and Gorlois at such odds. At least she knew she would no longer dwell with complacency under Gorlois’s roof. A pain struck at her heart: they had been wedded under Roman law and by that law Gorlois had absolute power over their daughter, Morgaine. Somehow she must contrive to dissemble until she could get Morgaine away to a place of safety! She could perhaps send her to Viviane, at the Holy Isle, for fostering.
She left the jewels Gorlois had given her lying on the bed, packing with her only the gowns she had woven with her own hands at Tintagel, and for jewels, only the moonstone Viviane had given her. Later she realized it was this moment or two of delay which had cost her escape, for while she was laying out the gifts he had given her on the bed, separating her own things from them, Gorlois came back into the room. He cast one swift glance at her packed saddlebags, and nodded curtly. “Good,” he said, “you are making ready to ride. We will leave before sunset.”
“What do you mean, Gorlois?”
“I mean that I have cast back my oath in Uther’s face and told him what I should have told him at once. Henceforth we are enemies. I go now to organize the defense of the West against the Saxons and the Irish, should they come there; I have told him that if he seeks to bring his armies into my country I will hang him like the felon he is from any handy tree.”
She stared at him; at last she said, “You are mad, my husband. The men of Cornwall cannot hold the West country alone if the Saxons should come there in force. Ambrosius knew that; the Merlin knows that; God help me, I know it, and I am no more than a home-keeping woman! Will you strike down in one moment of madness everything that Ambrosius lived for and spent his last years struggling for because of some insane quarrel with Uther over your own mad jealousy?”
“You are quick to care for Uther!”
“I should be quick to pity the Saxon chief himself, if he lost his hardiest supporters in a quarrel with no foundation! In God’s name, Gorlois, for our very lives and the lives of the people who look to you for help if the Saxons come, I beg of you to amend this quarrel with Uther, and not to break up the alliance this way! Lot has already gone; if you go, there will be none but treaty troops and a few minor kings to follow him in the defense of Britain!” She shook her head in despair. “Would that I had thrown myself from the cliffs at Tintagel before ever I came to Londinium! I will take any oath you like, that I have never so much as touched Uther Pendragon’s lips! Will you break the alliance for which Ambrosius died, because of a woman?”
Gorlois glowered at her and said, “Even had Uther never set eyes on you, my lady, I should not in conscience follow a man of lewdness, so bad a Christian; I trust Lot not at all, but I now know that I should trust Uther less. I should have listened from the first to the voice of my conscience, and I would never have agreed to support him at all. Put my clothing into the other saddlebag. I have sent for the horses and our men-at-arms.”
She looked at his implacable face and knew that if she protested he would beat her again. Silently, with seething anger, she obeyed. Now she was trapped, she could not flee, not even to the Holy Isle under her sister’s protection—not while Gorlois held her daughter at Tintagel.
She was still laying folded shirts and tunics into the saddlebags when she heard alarm bells begin to ring. Gorlois said curtly, “Stay here!” and hurried out of the house.
Angry, Igraine hurried after him, only to find herself faced by a burly man-at-arms, one of Gorlois’s men she had not seen before. He thrust his pike sideways across the house door, preventing her from stepping across the sill. His Cornish dialect was so thick that she could hardly understand his words, but she made out that the Duke had commanded his lady was to keep safely within the house; he was there to see that she stayed so.
It would be beneath her dignity to struggle with the man, and she had a shrewd suspicion that if she did he would simply bundle her like a sack of meal across the threshold. In the end, she sighed and went back inside the house, finishing her packing. From the street she heard cries and clamor, the sounds of men running, bells ringing in the nearby church, although it was not the hour for services. Once she heard a clashing of swords and wondered if the Saxons were in the city and among them—it would indeed be a good time for an attack, when Ambrosius’ chiefs were all at odds! Well, that would solve one of her problems, but what would become of Morgaine, alone at Tintagel?
The day wore on, and near nightfall Igraine began to be afraid. Were the Saxons at the gates of the city, had Uther and Gorlois quarreled again, was one or the other of them dead? When at last Gorlois thrust open the door of the room, she was almost glad to see him. His face was drawn and distant, his jaw clenched as if in great grief, but his words to Igraine were brief and uncompromising.
“We ride at nightfall. Can you keep your saddle, or shall I have one of my men carry you on a pillion? We shall have no time to delay for a lady’s pace.”
She wanted to batter at him with a thousand questions, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeming to care. “While you can ride, my husband, I can keep to my saddle.”
“See that you do, then, for we shall not halt long enough for you to change your mind. Wear your warmest cloak; it will be cold riding at night, and the sea fog is coming in.”
Igraine tied up her hair into a knot and wrapped her thick cloak over the tunic and breeches she always put on for riding. Gorlois lifted her to the horse’s back. The street was thickly clustered with the dark forms of men-at-arms with their long spears. Gorlois spoke in low tones to one of the captains, then strode back and mounted; there were a dozen horsemen and soldiers riding behind Gorlois and Igraine at their head. He took the reins of Igraine’s horse himself and said with an angry jerk of his head, “Come.”
She was not sure of the way; she rode in silence where Gorlois led, through the falling dusk. Somewhere against the sky there was fire, but Igraine did not know whether it was a soldier’s watch fire, or a house somewhere in flames, or simply the cooking fires of the travelling peddlers encamped in the marketplace. She had never learned her way through the thickly clustered houses and streets to the river, but as the thick fog began to blow in wisps across their path, she supposed they were coming to the riverbank, and after a time she heard the creaking of the rope windlass which controlled the heavy planking rafts of the ferry.
One of Gorlois’s men, dismounting, led her horse aboard; Gorlois rode at her side. A few of the men swam their horses. She realized it must be very late—at this time of year the light lingered long, and it was almost unheard of to ride at night. Then she heard a cry from the shore.
“They are going! They are going! First Lot, and then my lord of Cornwall, and we are unprotected!”
“All the soldiers are leaving the town! What will we do when the Saxons land on the south coast?”
“Cowards,” someone yelled from the shore as the ferry, with a great creaking, began to move away. “Cowards, running away with the countryside aflame!”
A stone came whizzing out of the dark. It struck one of the men-at-arms on his leather breastplate. He swore, but Gorlois spoke to him in a sharp undertone and he grumbled into silence. There were a few other insults hurled from the shore and a few more stones, but they were quickly out of range. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark Igraine could see Gorlois, his face pale and set like a marble statue. He did not speak to her all that night, although they rode till dawn, and even when the dawn came up red and dripping behind them, turning the world to crimson fog, they stopped only a little while for horses and men to rest. Gorlois laid a cloak for Igraine to lie down on for a little while, and brought her some hard bread and cheese and a cup of wine, soldier’s rations, but still he did not speak to her. She was weary and bruised from riding, and confused; she knew that Gorlois had quarreled with Uther and withdrawn his men, but nothing more. Would Uther have let him go without protest? Well, Lot had been let go.
After a sho
rt rest, Gorlois brought the horses again and would have lifted her into the saddle, but here Igraine rebelled.
“I will ride no further until you tell me where we ride, and why!” She kept her voice down, not wanting to shame Gorlois before his men, but she faced him fearlessly. “Why do we steal from Londinium like thieves in the night? Now you will tell me what is happening, unless you wish to have me tied to my horse’s back and carry me screaming aloud all the way to Cornwall!”
“Do you think I would not do that if I must?” Gorlois said. “Don’t seek to cross me, you for whom I have forsworn a lifetime of honor and oaths kept, and set the memory of my king at nothing!”
“How can you dare to blame me for that,” Igraine flung at him. “You did it not for me but for your own insane jealousy! I am innocent of whatever sins your evil mind believes I have committed—”
“Silence, woman! Uther, too, swore that you were innocent of wrong. But you are a woman and you put some enchantment on him, I suppose—I went to Uther, hoping to mend this quarrel, and do you know what proffer that evil and lustful man made to me? He demanded of me that I should divorce you and give you to him!”
Igraine stared at him with wide-open eyes. “If you think so evil of me, that I am adulteress, witch, all these ill things, why then did you not rejoice at the prospect of getting quit of me so simply?”