Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [44]
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