Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [130]
A servant brought a tall stool with three steps and placed it beside the horse. Gracefully, as she had practiced, she gathered up her garments and alighted, one foot outstretched, as if she were a goddess slipping down from the sky. Gracefully she descended the three steps and waited for Arthur to come to her, dropping her garments to fall about her in the most becoming folds. He took her hand and bowed over it.
“Welcome, Lady Gwenhwyfar,” he said, without any hesitation when he said her name. “We rejoice at your coming.”
And that was when she felt it. The sheer force of his personality, which crashed over her like wave. It was not meant for her—not meant for anyone in particular—it was merely what he was. You felt that, the power in him—felt his wisdom, his care for his people, his strength—and all you could think was that it was not a duty to serve him but a privilege.
It was a glamorie, of course. But it was all the more powerful because beneath it, the strength, the wisdom, were real.
But when she felt it, she fought against it. She was here from duty. She would fulfill her obligations. But she was not going to be seduced into liking it by magic.
“And I to be here at last, my King,” she replied, with a slight inclination of her head.
And he led her into his palace. Which felt, as the walls closed about her, altogether too much like a prison.
Chapter Twenty
With a cloth on her lap protecting a fine gown she would rather not have protected at all, Gwen carefully laid in the feathering on another arrow. Much to the horror of her ladies, who were all gathered about her with their fine sewing and bands of embroidery.
She was beyond caring how scandalized they were. She had already horrified them by laying aside the woolen mantle and tying back the sleeves of her overgown. They shivered in the occasional draft. She was too warm by far. These rooms were heated by means of something they called a hypocaust, a contained fire that sent warm air under the floor. It was as warm as spring in here, although these fragile flowers seemed to think there would be icicles hanging from their noses at any moment. This device was Roman, of course. Arthur was . . . extremely fond . . . of all things Roman.
She laid in another line of glue from the pot on the brazier beside her and quickly laid down the line of fletching.
She was working on arrows because these charming ladies had made it painfully obvious that there was nothing she could sew that they would not have to undo and resew again. She simply was not allowed in the still-room to make medicines. That was the job of a single servant. This exhausted her repertoire of “womanly” tasks. She wasn’t going to sit there with her hands in her lap and listen to them giggle and gossip.
So she was, by the gods, doing something she could do, and do well. She was making arrows.
With both sets of vanes in, she took fine thread and bound them at the nock and the end of the vanes, laid the arrow aside to dry, and picked up a new one.
Inwardly, she seethed. Another thing that Arthur seemed very fond of. Roman customs. Such as the custom that confined women to a single section of this villa and kept them, for the most part, from mingling too much with men. Kai was in charge of the household. Not her. He set the menu for the day’s meals, he oversaw the chief servants, the housekeeper and the cook, and kept track of and dispensed the stores. She had never seen the cook. The housekeeper pretended not to understand her and went about ordering things in the way she pleased. Gwen was expected to remain here, in the queen’s chambers, until called for. Men were not supposed to come here unless they were servants or entertainers or came with Arthur. She was not supposed to mingle with the Companions, except under very supervised conditions, like meals or celebrations.
She was only at those meals perhaps once every three days, and such meals were as structured as a magic rite. She and her ladies entered the hall after the men; she