Gorlois sat up in bed beside her. "It is the church where Ambrosius goes to mass. Make haste to dress yourself, Igraine, and we will go together."
While she was winding a woven silk girdle around her linen overdress, a strange serving-man knocked at the door, saying he would like to speak with the lady Igraine, wife of the Duke of Cornwall. Igraine went to the door and it seemed to her that she recognized the man. He bowed to her, and now she remembered that she had seen him, years ago, rowing Viviane's barge. It made her remember her dream, and she felt cold inside.
"Your sister sends you this from the Merlin," he said, "and bids you to wear it and remember your promise, no more." He gave her a small parcel wrapped in silk.
"What is this, Igraine?" asked Gorlois, frowning, coming up behind her. "Who is sending you gifts? Do you recognize the messenger?"
"He is one of my sister's men from the Isle of Avalon," said Igraine, unwrapping the package; but Gorlois said sternly, "My wife does not receive gifts from messengers unknown to me," and took it roughly from her. She opened her mouth in indignation, all her new tenderness for Gorlois vanishing in a single breath; how dared he?
"Why, it is the blue stone you wore when we were wedded," Gorlois said, frowning. "What is this of a promise? How did your sister, if it is truly from her, come by the stone?"
Gathering her wits quickly, Igraine lied to him deliberately for the first time in her life. "When my sister visited me," she said, "I gave her the stone and its chain to have the clasp put right; she knows of a goldsmith in Avalon who is better than any in Cornwall. And the promise she spoke of is that I will care better for my jewels, since I am now a grown woman and not a heedless child who cannot take proper care of precious things. May I have my necklace, my husband?"
He handed her the moonstone, frowning. "I have smiths in my employ who would have put it right for you without reading you a lesson your sister no longer has a right to give. Viviane takes too much upon herself; she may have stood in a mother's place to you when you were a child, but you are not now in her care. You must strive to be more a grown woman, and less dependent upon your home."
"Why, now I have had two lessons," said Igraine crossly, putting the chain about her neck. "One from my sister and one from my husband, as if I were an unlessoned child indeed."
Over his head it seemed that she could still see the shadow of his death, the dread fetch of the death-doomed. Suddenly she hoped, with a passionate hope, that he had not gotten her with child, that she did not bear a son to a doomed man ... she felt icy cold.
"Come, Igraine," he coaxed, putting out his hand to stroke her hair, "do not be angry with me. I shall try to remember that you are a grown woman in your nineteenth year, not a mere child of fifteen! Come, we must be ready to go to the King's mass, and the priests do not like it if there is much coming and going after the mass has started."
The church was small, made of daub and wattle, and the lamps inside were lighted against the cold dankness; Igraine was glad of her thick woolen mantle. Gorlois whispered to her that the white-haired priest, venerable as any Druid, was Ambrosius' own priest who travelled with the army, and that this was a service of thanksgiving for the King's homecoming.
"Is the King here?"
"He is just coming into the church, at the seat over there before the altar," Gorlois muttered, inclining his head.
She knew him at once by the dark red mantle, worn over a dark, heavily embroidered tunic, and the jewelled sword belt at his side. Ambrosius Aurelianus must, she thought, have been about sixty; a tall, spare man, shaven in the Roman fashion, but stooped, walking with a careful crouch as if he had some inner hurt. Once, perhaps, he had been handsome; now his face was lined and yellow, his dark moustache drooping, nearly all grey, and his hair grizzled. Beside him were two or three of his councillors or fellow kings; she wanted to know who they were, but the priest, seeing the King enter, had begun reading from his great book, and she bit her lip and was silent, listening to the service which even now, after four years in Father Columba's instruction, she did not fully understand, nor care to. She knew it was ill-mannered to gaze about her in church, like a country bumpkin, but she peeped below the hood of her mantle at some of the men around the King: a man whom she supposed to be Uriens of North Wales, and a richly dressed man, slender and handsome, dark hair cut short in Roman fashion around his chin. She wondered if this was Uther, Ambrosius' companion and heir apparent. He stood attentively at Ambrosius' side all through the long service, and when the aging King stumbled, the slight dark man offered him an arm. He cast his eyes attentively on the priest; but Igraine, trained to read people's thoughts in their faces, knew that he was not really listening to the priest or to the service, but that his thoughts ran inward on their own purposes. He raised his head, once, and looked straight at Gorlois, and briefly met Igraine's eyes. His own eyes were dark beneath heavy dark brows, and Igraine felt an instantaneous shiver of revulsion. If this was Uther, she resolved, she would have nothing to do with him; a crown would be too dearly bought at his side. He must be older than he looked, for this man was surely no more than five-and-twenty.
Partway through the service there was a little stir near the door, and a tall, soldierly man, broad-shouldered but lanky, in a thick woven plaid like those the Northmen wore, came into the church, followed by four or five soldiers. The priest went on, unruffled, but the deacon who stood at his side raised his head from the Gospel book and scowled. The tall man uncovered his head, revealing fair hair already worn thin and balding on top. He moved through the standing congregation, the priest said, Let us pray, and as Igraine knelt she saw the tall, fair-haired man and his soldiers quite near them; his soldiers had knelt around Gorlois's men and the man himself was at her side. When he had gotten himself down on his knees he gave one quick look round to see that all of his men were placed, then bent his head piously to listen to the prayer.
Through all the long service he did not raise his head; even when the congregation began to approach the altar for the consecrated bread and wine, he did not go. Gorlois touched Igraine's shoulder, and she went at his side-the Christians held that a wife should follow her husband's faith, so that God of theirs could just blame Gorlois if she went to the communion ill prepared. Father Columba had argued with her a long time about proper prayer and preparation, and Igraine had decided that she was never properly prepared for it. But Gorlois would be angry with her, and after all she could not interrupt the silence of the service to argue with him, even in a whisper.
Returning to her place, her teeth on edge from the coarse bread and the sourness of wine on an empty stomach, she saw the tall man raise his head. Gorlois gave him a curt nod and passed on. The man looked at Igraine, and it seemed for a moment that he was laughing at her, and at Gorlois too; she felt herself smile. Then at Gorlois's repressive frown she followed him and knelt meekly at his side. But she could see the fair-haired man watching her. From his Northman's plaid she supposed that this could be Lot of Orkney, the one Gorlois had called young and ambitious. Some of the Northmen too were fair as Saxons.