Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"I think everyone knows that," she said, stroking his hand. She felt immobilized by his grief.

"I do not think Ambrosius could be happy, even in Heaven, if he looks down and sees the sorrow and confusion here, the kings already plotting, each one seeking to seize power for himself! I wonder if it would have been his will that I should murder Lot to take power? Once he made us swear the oath of blood brothers; I would not violate that," Uther said. His face was wet with tears. Igraine, as she would have done with her child, took the light veil around her face and dried them.

"I know you will do what you must do in honor, Uther. No man Ambrosius trusted so much could do otherwise."

The flare of a lighted torch suddenly struck across their eyes; she froze on the tree branch, her veil still at Uther's face. Gorlois said sharply, "Is it you, my lord Pendragon? Have you seen-ah, madam, are you there?"

Igraine, feeling abashed and suddenly guilty at the sharpness of Gorlois's voice, slipped off the tree branch. Her skirt caught on a projecting limb, hauled up above her knee so that she was bare to her linen drawers; she twitched it hastily down, and heard the fabric rip.

"I thought you lost-you were not in our lodging," Gorlois said harshly. "What do you here, in Heaven's name?"

Uther slipped off the tree branch. The man she had seen revealed, weeping for his lost king and foster-father, dismayed at the burden laid on him, had vanished in a moment; his voice was loud and hearty. "Why, Gorlois, I grew impatient at all the gabbling of that priest, and came out to find clear air with no pious mumblings; and your lady, who had found the blitherings of the good ladies not much more to her taste, happened upon me here. Madam, I thank you," he said, with a distant bow, and strode away. She noticed he was careful to keep his face out of the torchlight.

Gorlois, alone with Igraine, looked at her with angry suspicion. He said, gesturing her to walk before him, "My lady, you should be more careful to avoid gossip; I told you to keep away from Uther. His reputation is such that no chaste woman should be seen in private conversation with him."

Igraine turned and said angrily, "Is that what you think of me, that I am the sort of woman who will slip away to couple with a strange man like a beast in the field? Do you think I was lying with him on the branch of that tree, like some bird of the bough? Would you like to inspect my gown to see whether it is rumpled from lying with him on the ground?"

Gorlois lifted his hand and struck her, not very hard, across the mouth. "You will not play the shrew with me, madam! I told you to avoid him; obey me! I think you honest and chaste, but I would not trust you to that man, nor hear you made the subject of the tongues of women!"

"Surely there is no more evil mind than that of a good woman-unless perhaps it is the mind of a priest," said Igraine wrathfully. She rubbed her mouth where Gorlois's blow had knocked her lip against her teeth. "How dare you lay hands upon me? When I betray you, you may beat the flesh from off my bones, but I won't be beaten for talk! Do you think, in the name of all the Gods, that we were talking of love?"

"And what were you talking about with that man, at this hour, in God's name?"

"We talked of many things," Igraine said, "and mostly of Ambrosius in Heaven, and-yes, of Heaven and what one could hope to find in the afterlife."

Gorlois regarded her with a skeptical glare. "That I find unlikely, when he could not show respect for the dead by staying through the holy mass."

"He was sickened-as I was-by all those doleful psalms, as if they were mourning the worst of men instead of the best of kings!"

"Before God all men are miserable sinners, Igraine, and in the eyes of Christ a king is no better than other mortals."

"Yes, yes," she said impatiently, "I have heard your priests say so, and also they spend much time and labor to tell us all that God is love and our goodly father in Heaven. Yet I notice they are very careful not to fall into his hands, and they mourn for those who go to their eternal peace, exactly as for those who go to be sacrificed on the blood altar of the Great Raven herself. I tell you, Uther and I were talking of what the priests know of Heaven, which I think is not very much!"

"If you and Uther spoke of religion, it is for certain the only time that man of blood ever did so!" Gorlois grumbled.

Igraine said, and now she was angry, "He was weeping, Gorlois; weeping for the king who had been as a father to him. And if it shows respect for the dead to sit and listen to the caterwauling of a priest, then may I never have such respect! I envied Uther, that he was a man and could come and go as he chose, and for sure, if I had been born a man, I would never have sat peacefully and hearkened to yonder foolishness in the church. But I was not free to go, being dragged thither at the word of a man who thinks more of priests and psalms than of the dead!"

They had reached the door of their lodging; Gorlois, his face turning dark with wrath, pushed her angrily within. "You will not speak to me in that voice, lady, or I shall beat you in earnest."

Igraine realized that she had actually bared her teeth like a hunting cat, and her voice hissed as she said, "Touch me at your peril, Gorlois, or I shall teach you that a daughter of the Holy Isle is no man's slave nor servant!"

Gorlois opened his mouth for an angry retort, and for a moment Igraine thought he would strike her again. Instead, with an effort, he mastered his anger and turned away from her. "It is not fitting that I stand here brawling when my king and my lord lies still unburied. You may sleep here tonight, if you are not afraid to be alone; if you are so, I shall have you escorted to the house of Ectorius, to sleep with Flavilla. My men and I will fast and pray until sunrise tomorrow, when Ambrosius will be laid in earth to rest."

Igraine looked at him with surprise and a curious, growing contempt. So, for fear of the dead man's shade-even though he called it by another name and thought of it as respect-he would not eat nor drink nor lie with a woman till his king was buried. Christians said they were free of the superstitions of the Druids, but they had their own, and Igraine felt that these were even more distressing, being separated from nature. Suddenly she was very glad that this night she need not lie with Gorlois. "No," she said, "I am not afraid to be alone."

4

Ambrosius was buried at sunrise. Igraine, escorted by a Gorlois still angry and silent, watched the ceremonies with a strange detachment. Four years she had struggled to compromise with the religion Gorlois followed. Now she knew that, while she would show his religion a courteous respect so as not to anger him-and indeed, her early teaching had taught her that all Gods were one, and no one should ever mock the name by which another found God-she would try no more to be as pious as he was. A wife should follow her husband's Gods, and she would pretend to do so in a seemly and proper fashion, but she would never again fall prey to the fear that their all-seeing, all-vengeful God could have power over her.

She saw Uther during the ceremonies; he looked haggard and worn, his eyes red-rimmed, as if he, too, had fasted, sleepless; and somehow the sight touched her heart. Poor man, with none to care if he fasted, or to tell him what nonsense it was, as if the dead loitered near the living to see how they fared, and could be jealous of their eating and drinking! She would wager that King Uriens had committed no such folly; he looked fed and rested, and suddenly she wished that she were as old and wise as Uriens' lady, who could speak to her husband and tell him what he should do in such matters.

After the burial Gorlois took Igraine back to their lodging and there broke his fast with her, but he was still silent and grim, and immediately afterward excused himself. "I must attend the Council," he said. "Lot and Uther will be at one another's throats, and somehow I must help them to recall what Ambrosius wanted. I am sorry to leave you alone here, but I will send a man to escort you around the city, if you wish." He gave her a piece of coined money and bade her to buy herself a fairing at the market if she chose, and told her that his man would bear a purse as well, if she wished to choose spices and other things for the household in Cornwall. "For there is no reason for you to come so far, without purchasing some of the things it is needful for you to have. I am not a poor man, and you may buy whatever you need to keep a proper household, without consulting me; remember I trust you, Igraine," he said, and laid his hands on either side of her face and kissed her. Although he did not say so, she knew he was in his own gruff way apologizing for his suspicions and his angry blow, and her heart warmed to him; she returned his kiss with real tenderness.