As soon as the other woman had gone, Ygraine adjusted her girdle until it was slack, arranged her gown loosely about her for comfort and lay down on her cot, closing her eyes against the light. Her mind was buzzing with long-repressed memories of her childhood in Eire and the swarm of siblings and cousins and relatives among whom she had grown up. Some of their names and faces had been lost to her for years. Even Deirdre, her younger sister, whose name she had borrowed in her vain attempt to deceive the Cambrian, had remained walled up until now in some vault in her memory; she had chosen the name simply because it was one she thought to be safe and beyond any random association with her own. Now, however, she allowed her thoughts to drift to the terror she and all her kin had felt when the child had suffered for so long and then survived the terrifying illness that had stricken her. an illness that resembled no other sickness known to anyone, not even the eldest and most learned Druids in her father's lands.
Deirdre had clung stubbornly to life and in the end had survived, but at a terrible cost. The magnificent violet eyes that had given her her name had been faded and permanently dimmed, leached of their colour in some frightening manner by the severity of the fevers that had consumed her tiny body, so that they were pale grey forever after. Even her rich, chestnut hair had lost its lustrous colour. She had lost her voice, too, in that illness, and her hearing, and thinking back on it again, Ygraine shuddered afresh, thinking it was no wonder that the people of her father's kingdom had eyed the child uneasily thereafter and whispered among themselves of witchcraft and the interference of the dark gods of night and death.
Several years after that illness, little Deirdre fell ill again, and this time she wandered away unnoticed from their father's encampment one night in the grip of a high fever and was never seen again. Everyone mourned her then as dead, for it had been inconceivable that the child—she was a mere twelve years old, even then -might survive a second time, unable to hear or speak or to fend for herself in the wild forest that surrounded their home.
And now this upstart Cambrian Outlander brought word that Deirdre had not only survived but had married his cousin, Merlyn Britannicus of Camulod. It was inconceivable! For years now, since the days before she had come to Britain to be bride to Gulrhys Lot, she had been imbued with the tales of Uther Pendragon's savagery, his sullen, violent malevolence, and his furious lusts for blood and conquest. And hand in glove with those tales, she had heard much about the cowardly behaviour of his cousin, Merlyn of Camulod, a bird of the same plumage, fed on the same seeds of depravity since childhood, but less brave, although no less malicious, than his kinsman. And now she was being asked to believe that her own sister had married this same Merlyn Britannicus, and that her brother Donuil also lived in Camulod on friendly terms with these people? It was a ridiculous thing to suggest.
Ygraine found that she was frowning, even though her eyes were closed, and grinding her teeth as she dug deep to find and bolster the hatred that had always lain within her breast for Uther Pendragon. She could remember Gulrhys Lot describing to her father all the reasons why it was necessary for the two Kings and their two peoples to form a strong and enduring alliance. United, they would be able to withstand the advances and thwart the ambitions of this brash, hybrid tribe who called themselves Camulodians and who had but recently emerged from an alliance between the Pendragon clans of Cambria and the upstart dregs, deserters and leavings of the Roman armies that had fled Britain. Uther Pendragon and Merlyn of Camulod had always been among her greatest personal foes, the avowed enemies of the people of Cornwall.
Why then, she found herself wondering now, could she not summon up the anger and hatred that she knew was there inside her? She found herself shaking, as though she was in a fever, and she suddenly realized that she was shaking with fury, and that her rage was not directed at her captors. She sat completely upright, her eyes staring blankly at the wall, and shouted for Dyllis.
The flaps at the front of the tent were ripped open and two guards sprang in, bare blades already raised and ready to strike. Seeing her alone on her cot, sitting upright, they paused, frozen in mid-step.
"Lady?" growled one of the guards, while the other, Nemo, looked all around the tent. Ygraine shook her head, swallowing to free her voice.
"A dream," she said, huskily. "It frightened me. I was asleep. A dream, no more. My thanks."
The guards retreated slowly and went back outside, sheathing their swords and looking all about them, not yet convinced that all was well. Dyllis stood by the gap in the partition, her troubled gaze on Ygraine's face.
"Don't be concerned, Dyllis. Come over here and sit with me. I need to talk with you."
Ygraine turned sideways on her cot so that she could place her feet on the floor of the tent, which was no more than the grassy surface of the meadow surrounding them. She slipped her hands beneath her legs, palms downward between her thighs and the cot, and leaned forward to gaze directly into Dyllis's eyes.
"You are from Cornwall, Dyllis," she said. "Tell me, then, about Gulrhys Lot, my husband. But tell me as you would a friend, not as you would his wife or his Queen."
"My lady?" Dyllis's head was tilted slightly in confusion. Ygraine tried again.
"Dyllis, listen to me carefully, my dear . . . We have been together now for, what, three years? In all that time, I have never heard you or any of my women say anything about my lord and husband that might be taken as defamatory or treasonous or malicious. Or even honest, for that matter. Have I?" She shook her head and closed her eyes to shut out Dyllis's agonized look. "And yet I know that Morgas has been Gulrhys Lot's mistress since before I wed him, and so remains, from time to time. And I know, too, that this husband of mine has possessed every other one of my women, including you, since he wedded me. I know, in fact, that of all of us thirteen women, I am one of the least frequently blessed by his lustful potency." She heard a whimper from the other woman and opened her eyes quickly to see the pitiful expression on her face, a mixture of grief, fear and pain. "No, Dyllis. no, I am not angry. By all the gods, I swear I am happy for this, because—" She stopped short and drew a deep breath, conscious of the enormity of what she was about to say next and anticipating the pleasure she would gain from saying it.
"Because, Dyllis," she continued, "I, Ygraine Mac Athol of Eire, loathe and detest and hate my so-called lord and master, Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall. He is a foul and repulsive toad of a creature, for all his false, gentle smiles and winning ways. He is an evil, treacherous and overweening blot upon the earth. And it has taken me three years to acknowledge it. Since I have come to Cornwall, my ignoble lord has lain with me a total of five times. The first time, I was ecstatic, virginal, excited and afraid, and filled with wonder—and he brutalized me. The second time, more than a month later, I was no longer virgin, but even more afraid, and he tied me down and beat me and abused me, left me whimpering and terrified and sick . . . On the last three of those times I lay beneath him like a rotted log, my soul writhing in disgust and shame at what I had to do in being his wife.
"Two times, Dyllis. That was all he needed to convert his wife from a trembling novice into a disdainful, dutiful vessel into which he might relieve himself at his leisure. I have thanked all the gods in silence ever since then—the gods of Cambria and Eire and of everywhere else that gods might lurk—that there are many women willing to appease a King's lusts at any time. And I thanked the same gods doubly that he chose to send me off to live in exile with our friend Herliss in his white fortress of Tir Gwyn. There, away from his lusts and his bestiality, I have found a kind of happiness."