Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [52]
But no word or message came from Avalon, and Igraine was not allowed by the men-at-arms even to ride to the market town; Gorlois, so the men said respectfully, had forbidden it because of the state of the country. Once, looking from the high window, she saw a rider approaching, and on the inner causeway stop to parley with the head man of the guards. The rider looked angry, and seemed to Igraine to look up at the walls in frustration, but finally he turned his back and rode away, and Igraine wondered if this had been a messenger sent to her whom the guardsman would not allow access.
She was, then, a prisoner in her husband’s castle. He might say, or even believe, that he had placed her there for her own protection, against the turmoil in the land, but the truth was otherwise: his jealousy had led him to imprison her here. She tested her theory a few days later, calling the head of the guards to her.
“I wish to send a message to my sister, asking her to come and visit,” she said. “Will you send a man with a message to Avalon?”
It seemed to her that the man avoided her eyes. He said, “Well, now, lady, I can’t do that. My lord of Cornwall said very explicitly that all of us were to stay right here and protect Tintagel in case of a siege.”
“Can’t you hire a rider in the village then, to make the journey, if I paid the man well?”
“My lord wouldn’t like that, lady. I’m sorry.”
“I see,” she said, and sent him away. She had not yet come to the point of desperation at which she would try to bribe one of the men. But the more she pondered this, the angrier she grew. How dared Gorlois imprison her here, she who was sister to the Lady of Avalon? She was his wife, not his slave or servant! At last she resolved on a desperate step.
She had not been trained in the Sight; she had used it a little, spontaneously, as a girl, but except for her brief vision of Viviane, she had never used it at all as a grown woman, and since her vision of Gorlois as death-doomed she had closed herself firmly to further visions. That one, the Gods knew, had come to nothing, for Gorlois was still very much alive. Yet somehow, she supposed, she might now manage to see what was to happen. It was a dangerous step—she had been reared on tales of what befell those who meddled in arts to which they were not trained, and at first she sought to compromise. As the first leaves began to turn yellow, she called the chief of the men-at-arms to her again.
“I cannot stay here forever, shut like a rat in a trap,” she said. “I must go to the market fair. We must buy dyes and there is need of a new milk goat, and of needles and pins, and many things for the winter which comes.”
“Lady, I have no orders to let you go abroad,” he said, and turned his eyes from her. “I take my orders from my lord, and I have heard nothing from him.”
“Then I will stay here and send one of my women,” she said. “Ettarr or Isotta shall go, and the lady Morgause with her—will that suffice?”
He looked relieved, as she had hit upon a solution to save him from disobeying his lord; for indeed it was necessary that someone from the household should visit a fair before the winter, and he knew it as well as she did. It was outrageous to keep the lady of the house from what was, after all, one of her proper duties.
Morgause was wildly happy when Igraine told her she was to go. Small wonder, Igraine thought. None of us has been abroad all this summer. The very shepherds are freer than we, for they at least take the sheep to graze on the mainland! She watched, frankly envious, as Morgause put on the crimson cloak Gorlois had given her, and, with the chaperonage of two men-at-arms as well as both Ettarr and Isotta and two of the kitchen women to carry packages