Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [48]
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?”
And inside her was a new rage, that even Uther should think of her as a woman to be given away without her own consent, that he went to Gorlois and besought him to give the unwanted woman, even as Gorlois himself had asked her of the Lady of Avalon! Was she a horse to be sold at the spring fair, then? One part of her quivered with a secret pleasure—Uther wanted her, he wanted her enough that he would quarrel with Gorlois and alienate his allies by this quarrel over a woman. And with another part of her being she was enraged. Why had he not besought her, of herself, that she should put away Gorlois and come to him of her free will?
But Gorlois was attending seriously to her question. “You swore to me that you were not an adulteress. And no Christian man may put his wife away save for the sole cause of adultery.”
Between impatience and sudden compunction, Igraine held her peace. She could not be grateful to him, but at least he had listened to what she said. Yet it occurred to her that it was mostly his pride; even if he believed she had betrayed him, he would not want his soldiers to think that his young wife preferred another man to himself. Perhaps he would even rather condone the sin of adultery than let them think he could not keep the loyalty of a young woman.
She said, “Gorlois—” but he silenced her with a gesture.
“Enough. I have no patience to change many words with you. Once in Tintagel, there you may forget this folly at leisure. As for the Pendragon, he will have quite enough to do at war on the Saxon Shores. If you were glamoured by him, well, you are young and a woman, with small knowledge of the world or of men. I will reproach you no more; within a year or two, you will have a son to take your mind from this man who has struck your fancy.”
In silence, Igraine allowed Gorlois to lift her to her horse. He must believe whatever it was that he believed, there was nothing she could say to penetrate that iron surface. Yet her mind went back stubbornly to what Viviane and the Merlin had said: that her destiny and Uther’s were bound. After her dream she believed it, she knew why they had come back together. She had begun to accept that this was the will of the Gods. Yet here she was, riding away from Londinium with Gorlois, the alliance in ruins, and Gorlois evidently determined that Uther never set eyes on her again. Certainly with a war on the Saxon Shores Uther would have no leisure to journey to the world’s end at Tintagel, and even if he could, there was no way he could make his way into that castle, which could be defended by only a few men until the sky fell. Gorlois could leave her there, and there she would stay till she was an old woman, shut up bleakly behind walls and the great chasms and crags of rock. Igraine put her cloak over her face and wept.
She would never see Uther again. All the plans of the Merlin were in wreck and ruin; she was bound to an old man she hated—she knew, now, that she hated him, which she had never before allowed herself to know—and the man she loved could think of nothing better to do than to try and bully the proud Gorlois into giving her up of his own free will! Later, she thought she must have wept all through the long journey, all the days and nights which they travelled across the moors and down through the valleys of Cornwall.
On the second night they camped and pitched tents for a proper rest. She welcomed hot food and a chance to sleep within a tent, even though she knew she could no longer avoid Gorlois’s bed. She could not cry out and struggle with him, not when they slept in a tent ringed about by his soldiers. She had been his wife four years; no one alive would believe a tale of ravishment. She would not have