Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [32]
“I know you will do what you must do in honor, Uther. No man Ambrosius trusted so much could do otherwise.”
The flare of a lighted torch suddenly struck across their eyes; she froze on the tree branch, her veil still at Uther’s face. Gorlois said sharply, “Is it you, my lord Pendragon? Have you seen—ah, madam, are you there?”
Igraine, feeling abashed and suddenly guilty at the sharpness of Gorlois’s voice, slipped off the tree branch. Her skirt caught on a projecting limb, hauled up above her knee so that she was bare to her linen drawers; she twitched it hastily down, and heard the fabric rip.
“I thought you lost—you were not in our lodging,” Gorlois said harshly. “What do you here, in Heaven’s name?”
Uther slipped off the tree branch. The man she had seen revealed, weeping for his lost king and foster-father, dismayed at the burden laid on him, had vanished in a moment; his voice was loud and hearty. “Why, Gorlois, I grew impatient at all the gabbling of that priest, and came out to find clear air with no pious mumblings; and your lady, who had found the blitherings of the good ladies not much more to her taste, happened upon me here. Madam, I thank you,” he said, with a distant bow, and strode away. She noticed he was careful to keep his face out of the torchlight.
Gorlois, alone with Igraine, looked at her with angry suspicion. He said, gesturing her to walk before him, “My lady, you should be more careful to avoid gossip; I told you to keep away from Uther. His reputation is such that no chaste woman should be seen in private conversation with him.”
Igraine turned and said angrily, “Is that what you think of me, that I am the sort of woman who will slip away to couple with a strange man like a beast in the field? Do you think I was lying with him on the branch of that tree, like some bird of the bough? Would you like to inspect my gown to see whether it is rumpled from lying with him on the ground?”
Gorlois lifted his hand and struck her, not very hard, across the mouth. “You will not play the shrew with me, madam! I told you to avoid him; obey me! I think you honest and chaste, but I would not trust you to that man, nor hear you made the subject of the tongues of women!”
“Surely there is no more evil mind than that of a good woman—unless perhaps it is the mind of a priest,” said Igraine wrathfully. She rubbed her mouth where Gorlois’s blow had knocked her lip against her teeth. “How dare you lay hands upon me? When I betray you, you may beat the flesh from off my bones, but I won’t be beaten for talk! Do you think, in the name of all the Gods, that we were talking of love?”
“And what were you talking about with that man, at this hour, in God’s name?”
“We talked of many things,” Igraine said, “and mostly of Ambrosius in Heaven, and—yes, of Heaven and what one could hope to find in the afterlife.”
Gorlois regarded her with a skeptical glare. “That I find unlikely, when he could not show respect for the dead by staying through the holy mass.”
“He was sickened—as I was—by all those doleful psalms, as if they were mourning the worst of men instead of the best of kings!”
“Before God all men are miserable sinners, Igraine, and in the eyes of Christ a king is no better than other mortals.”
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, “I have heard your priests say so, and also they spend much time and labor to tell us all that God is love and our goodly father in Heaven. Yet I notice they are very careful not to fall into his hands, and they mourn for those who go to their eternal peace, exactly as for those who go to be sacrificed on the blood altar of the Great Raven herself.