Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [45]
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 Merlin, 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,