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.
"I cannot remember all the dream," Uther said, staring over her shoulder. "Only that we stood together on a great plain, and there was something like to the ring stones ... . What does it mean, Igraine, that we share one another's dreams?"
She said, feeling her voice catch in her throat as if she were about to weep, "Perhaps it means only that we are fated for one another, my king ... and my lord ... and my love."
"My queen, and my love ... " He met her eyes suddenly, a long look and a long question. "Surely the time for dreaming is over, Igraine." He thrust his hands into her hair, pulling out the pins, letting it tumble down over her embroidered collar and over his face; smoothed the long locks down with trembling hands. He rose to his feet, still holding her in his arms. She had never guessed at the strength in his hands. He crossed the room in two great strides, and laid her down on the bed. Kneeling at her side, he bent and kissed her again.
"My queen," he murmured. "I would you could have been crowned at my side at my kingmaking.... There were rites there such as no Christian man should know; but the Old People, who were here long before ever the Romans came to these isles, would not acknowledge me king without them. It was a long road I took to come there, and some of it, I am sure, was not anywhere in this world I know."
This reminded her of what Viviane had told her about the drifting of the worlds, apart in the mists. And thinking about Viviane brought to mind what Viviane had asked of her, and how reluctant she had been.
I did not know. I was so young then, and untried, I knew nothing, I did not know how all of me could be dissolved, torn, swept away ... .
"Did they ask of you that you should make the Great Marriage with the land, as was done in the old days? I know that King Ban of Benwick in Less Britain was so required ... " and a sudden, violent stab of jealousy went through her, that some woman or priestess might have symbolized for him the land he was sworn to defend.
"No," he said. "And I am not sure I would have done so, but it was not asked of me. The Merlin said, too, that it is he, as with every Merlin of Britain, who is sworn to die if need be, in sacrifice for his people-" Uther broke off. "But this can mean little to you."
"You have forgotten," she said, "I was reared in Avalon; my mother was priestess there and my eldest sister is now the Lady of the Lake."
"Are you a priestess too, Igraine?"
She shook her head, starting to say a simple no; then said, "Not in this life."
"I wonder ... " Again he traced the line of the imaginary serpents, touching his own with his other hand. "I have always known, I think, that I lived before-it seems to me that life is too great a thing to live it only once and then be snuffed out like a lamp when the wind blows. And why, when first I looked upon your face, did I feel that I had known you before the world was made? These things are mysteries, and I think it may be that you know more of them than I. You say you are no priestess, yet you had sorcery enough to come to me, the night of the great storm, and warn me. ... I think perhaps I should ask no more, lest I might hear from you what no Christian man should know. As for these"-again, with a fingertip, he touched the serpents-"if I wore them before this life, then perhaps that is why the old man, when he pricked them into my wrists the night of my kingmaking, told me that they were mine by right. I have heard that the Christian priests have driven all such serpents from our isles ... but I do not fear the dragons, and I wear them in token that I will spread my protection over this land like the dragon's wings."
"In that case," she whispered, "surely you will be the greatest of kings, my lord."
"Call me not so!" he interrupted fiercely, bending over her where she lay and covering her mouth with his.
"Uther," she whispered, as if in a dream.
His hands moved at her throat, and he bent to kiss her bare shoulder. But when he began to pull off her gown, she flinched and shrank away. Tears flooded her eyes and she couldn't speak, but he laid his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes.
He said softly, "Have you been so mishandled, my beloved? God strike me if you ever have anything to fear from me, now or ever. I wish with all my heart that you had never been Gorlois's wife. Had I found you first ... but what is done is done. But I swear to you, my queen: you will never have anything to fear from me." In the flickering light of the lamp, his eyes seemed dark, although she knew they were blue. "Igraine, I have-I have taken this for granted, because somehow I believed you must know how I feel. I know very little about your kind of woman. You are my love, my wife, my queen. I swear to you by my crown and by my manhood, you shall be my queen and I will never take another woman before you, or put you aside. Did you think I was treating you as a wanton?" His voice was trembling, and Igraine knew that he was stricken with fear-the fear of losing her. Knowing that he could fear too, knowing that he too was vulnerable, her own fear was gone. She put her arms around his neck and said clearly, "You are my love and my lord and my king, and I will love you as long as I live, and as long thereafter as God wills."
And this time she let him pull away her gown, and, naked, came willingly into his arms. Never, never had she guessed that it could be like this. Until this moment, despite five years of marriage and the birth of a child, she had been an innocent, a virgin, an unknowing girl. Now body and mind and heart blended, making her one with Uther as she had never been with Gorlois. She thought, fleetingly, that not even a child in its mother's womb could be so close ... .