Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [50]
Morgause gathered up the pretty things and went weeping to her room. Igraine saw that Gorlois followed the girl with his eyes. She thought, appalled, Morgause is only fourteen, then remembered in dismay that she herself had been but a year older when she was given to Gorlois as his bride.
Later she saw them together in the hall, Morgause laying her head confidingly on Gorlois’s shoulder, and saw the look in her husband’s eyes. Hard anger struck her, not so much for the girl as for Gorlois. She saw that they moved uneasily apart as she came into the hall, and when Gorlois had gone away, she looked at Morgause, her eyes unsparing, until Morgause giggled uneasily and stared at the floor.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Igraine? Are you afraid that Gorlois likes me better than you?”
“Gorlois was too old for me; is he not that much older than you? With you, he thinks he would have me back as he first knew me, too young to say him nay or to look at another man. I am no longer a pliant girl but a woman with a mind of her own, and perhaps he thinks you would be easier to deal with.”
“Perhaps, then,” Morgause said, insolent now, “you should look to keeping your own husband content, instead of complaining that some other woman can do for him what you cannot.”
Igraine raised her hand to slap the girl, then by sheer force of will, kept herself still. She said, summoning all her self-discipline, “Do you think it matters to me whom Gorlois takes to his bed? I am certain he has had his share of trollops, but I would rather my sister was not among them. I have no wish for his embraces, and if I hated you, I would give you to him willingly. But you are too young. As I was too young. And Gorlois is a Christian man; if you let him lie with you and he gets you with child, he will have no choice but to marry you off in haste to whatever man-at-arms will have used goods—these Romans are not like our own people, Morgause. Gorlois may be smitten with you, but he will not put me away and take you to wife, believe me. Among our own people, maidenhood is of no great consequence—a woman of proven fertility, swelling with a healthy child, is a most desirable wife. But it is not so with these Christians, I tell you; they will treat you as one shamed, and the man he persuades to marry you will make you suffer all your life long that he did not have the planting of the child you bear. Is that what you want, Morgause, who could marry a king if you chose? Will you throw yourself away, sister, to spite me?”
Morgause went pale. “I had no idea—” she whispered. “Oh, no, I do not want to be shamed—Igraine, forgive me.”
Igraine kissed her and gave her the silver mirror and the amber necklace, and Morgause stared at her.
“But these are Gorlois’s gifts—”
“I have sworn I will never again wear his gifts,” she said. “They are yours, for that king the Merlin saw in your future, sister. But you must keep yourself chaste till he comes for you.”
“Have no fear,” Morgause said and smiled again. Igraine was glad that this reminder had caught Morgause’s ambition; Morgause was cool and calculating, she would never be swayed by emotion or impulse. Igraine wished, watching her, that she too had been born without the capacity to love.
I wish I could be content with Gorlois, or that I could seek coldly—as Morgause would surely do—to rid myself of Gorlois and be Uther’s queen.
Gorlois stayed at Tintagel only four days, and she was glad to see him go. He left a dozen men-at-arms at Tintagel, and when he left, he called her to him.
“You and the child will be safe here, and well guarded,” he said curtly. “I go to gather the men of Cornwall against Irish raiders or Northmen—or against Uther, should he seek to come and take what is not his own, woman or castle.”
“I think Uther will have too much to do in his own country for that,” Igraine said, tightening her mouth against despair.
“God grant it,” Gorlois said, “for we have enough enemies without him, too. But I could wish him to come, so that I might