Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

Inside, his arms were stretched to sweep her into his embrace; he shoved back the hood and stood there, his hair and beard wet with fog, holding out his arms, but she did not move toward him.

"My lord King! What is this, why do they think you are Gorlois?"

"A small magic of the Merlin," Uther said, "mostly a matter of a cloak and a ring, but a small glamour too; nothing that would hold if they should see me in full light, or uncloaked. I see that you were not deceived; I had not expected it. It is a seeming, not a Sending. I swore I would come to you, Igraine, at Midwinter, and I have kept my vow. Do I not even get a kiss for all my travail?"

She came and took the cloak from him, but she evaded his touch.

"My lord King, how came you by Gorlois's ring?"

His face hardened. "That? I cut it from his hand in battle, but the oathbreaker turned tail and fled. Mistake me not, Igraine, I come here by right, not as a thief in the night; the glamour is to save your reputation in the eyes of the world, no more. I would not have my promised wife branded adulteress. But I come here by right; the life of Gorlois is forfeit to me. He held Tintagel as the sworn vassal of Ambrosius Aurelianus; that oath he renewed to me, and now that, too, is forfeit. Surely you understand this, Lady Igraine? No king can stand if his sworn men may break oath with impunity and stand under arms against their king."

She bowed her head in acknowledgment.

"Already he has cost me the wreck of a year's work against the Saxon. When he left London with his men I could not stand against them, and I had to step aside, flee, and let them pillage the town. My people, whom I am sworn to defend." His face was bitter. "Lot, I can forgive; he refused to take the oath. A score I have to settle with Lot, indeed-he will make peace with me or I will see him off his throne and hanged- but he is not oathbreaker or betrayer. Gorlois I trusted; he took oath and forswore it, and so I am left in the wreck of the work Ambrosius spent his life to accomplish, with all of it to do again. Gorlois cost me that, and I am come to have Tintagel at his hands. And I will have his life, too, and he knows it."

His face was like stone.

Igraine swallowed hard. "And you will have his lady, too-by conquest and by right, as you have Tintagel?"

"Ah, Igraine," he said, drawing her to him with his two hands, "I know well what choice you made, when I saw you the night of the great storm. If you had not warned me, I would have lost my best men, and, no doubt, my life as well. Thanks to you, when Gorlois came against me, I was ready for him. It was then I took the ring from his finger, and would have taken the hand, and the head too, but he escaped me."

"I know well you had no choice as to that, my lord King," Igraine said, but at that moment there was a knock on the door. One of the serving-women brought in a tray with food and a jug of wine, and muttered "My lord," dropping a curtsey. Mechanically Igraine freed herself from Uther's hands, took the food and wine, shut the door behind the woman. She took Uther's cloak, which was, after all, not so very different from the one Gorlois wore, and hung it on the bedpost to dry; bent and helped him off with his boots; took his sword belt from him, Like a dutiful lady and wife, a voice remarked in her mind, but she knew she had made her choice. It was even as Uther said: Tintagel belonged to the High King of Britain; so did its lady, and it was at her own will. She had given her allegiance to the King's own self.

The women had brought dried meat seethed with lentils, a loaf of new-baked bread, some soft cheese, and wine. Uther ate like a man starving, saying, "I have been in the field these two moons past, thanks to that damnable traitor you call husband; this is the first meal I have eaten under a roof since Samhain-the good Father down there, no doubt, would remind me to say All Souls."

"It is only what was cooking for the servants' supper and mine, my lord King, not at all fitting-"

"It seems to me good enough for the keeping of Christmas, after what I have been eating in the cold," he said, chewing noisily, tearing the bread asunder with strong fingers and cutting a chunk of cheese with his knife. "And am I to have no word from you save my lord King? I have dreamed so of this moment, Igraine," he said, laying down the cheese and staring up at her. He took hold of her round the waist and drew her close to his chair.

"Have you no word of love for me?- Can it be that you are still loyal to Gorlois?"

Igraine let him draw her against him. She said it aloud. "I have made my choice."

"I have waited so long-" he whispered, pulling her down so that she half-knelt against his knee, and tracing the lines of her face with his hand. "I had begun to fear it would never come, and now you have no word of love or look of kindness for me-Igraine, Igraine, did I dream it, after all, that you loved me, wanted me? Should I have left you in peace?"

She felt cold, she was shaking from head to foot. She whispered, "No, no-or if it was a dream, then I too dreamed." She looked up at him, not knowing what else to say or do. She did not fear him, as she had feared Gorlois, but now that the moment was at hand she wondered, with a sudden wild panic, why she had come so far. He still held her within the curve of his arm. Now he pulled her down on his knee, and she let him draw her back, her head against his breast.

He said, encircling her narrow wrist in his big hand, "I had not realized how slight you were. You are tall; I thought you a big woman, queenly -and after all you are a little thing, I could break you with my two hands, little bones like a bird's-" He closed the fingers around her wrist. "And you are so young-"

"I am not so young as all that," she said, laughing suddenly. "I have been married five years and I have a child."

"You seem too young for that," Uther said. "Was that the little one I saw downstairs?"

"My daughter. Morgaine," Igraine said. And suddenly she realized that' he, too, was ill at ease, delaying. Instinctively she realized that for all his thirty-odd years, his experience of women was only with such women as could be had for the asking, and that a chaste woman of his own station was something new to him. She wished, with a sudden ache, that she knew the right thing to do or say.

Still temporizing, she drew her free hand along the tattooed serpents twining around his wrists. "I had not seen these before ... ."

"No," he said, "they were given me at my kingmaking on Dragon Island. I would you could have been with me, my queen," he whispered, and took her face between his hands, tilting it back to kiss her on the lips.

"I do not want to frighten you," he whispered, "but I have dreamed so long of this moment, so long ... "

Shaking, she let him kiss her, feeling the strangeness of it stirring something deep in her body. It had never been like this with Gorlois ... and suddenly she was afraid again. With Gorlois it had always been something done to her in which she had no part, something from which she could stand aside, watching with detachment. She had always been herself, Igraine. Now, with the touch of Uther's lips, she knew she could no longer remain apart, that she would never again be the self she had known. The thought terrified her. And yet the knowledge of how much he wanted her was racing through her veins. Her hand tightened about the blue serpents at his wrists. "I saw these in a dream ....ut I thought it was only a dream."

He nodded soberly. "I dreamed of them before ever I wore them. And it was in my mind that you had something like to them, too, about your arms ... " He picked up her slender wrist again and traced along it. "Only they were golden."

She felt the hairs rise on her back. Indeed it had been no dream, but a vision from the Country of Truth.