There was one other factor, however, over and above all others that would have prevented him from ever making advances to Ygraine of Cornwall, and that was his own sense of culpability over what had happened to her unfortunate sister Deirdre. Even now, years removed from the tragic events that had estranged him from his cousin Merlyn, the memory of what took place that night in the games room at Camulod still had the power to make Uther writhe and cringe within his own mind.
Uther Pendragon had little experience of guilt in his life; it was an alien emotion to him and one that he was ill-equipped to handle.
He could be awe-inspiring in his rages and utterly implacable in his anger, but he seldom had cause to regret or to reconsider the consequences of his actions at such times. He had not fought in anger since the incident with Nemo's three assailants. Instead, he had learned to give his rage full rein, vociferously, concealing his displeasure from no one, but once his initial anger had spent itself, he would then act calmly, dealing out redress dispassionately for the wrongs he had suffered. He had no truck with guilt, and no need to bear it.
Shame, however, was an entirely different matter, and sufficiently close to guilt to be indistinguishable from it in Uther's mind. His sense of shame was highly developed, despite the fact that he had never consciously recognized its overriding presence in his life, and it was shame and not guilt that made him squirm and brought him his worst mental anguish. He would struggle awake at night sometimes, drenched in sweat and writhing with half-remembered sensations of the aftermath of follies he had committed as a boy, in his hare-brained, determined and unnecessary attempts to perform wonderful deeds that would earn his Grandfather Ullic's approval. His grandfather and his father had been men of great probity, and he could well remember their stern disapproval of people who brought shame of any kind close to them or theirs. What had happened that night in the games room—his precipitation of the ensuing events—appalled Uther and was his darkest, most shameful secret.
He had ridden away from Camulod that night in the blackest of foul moods, spurring his horse savagely and plunging the few men he had conscripted into reckless, careering danger, leading them blindly through a stormy night that was as black as his own despair, a swirling, wind-churned chaos of cold, rainy squalls. And as he rode, rowelling his unfortunate horse and driving it far more savagely than his needs dictated, he raved and cursed silently in his head, damning and condemning the girl for daring to bite him, for scorning him, for rejecting him. As his first unsustainable rage ebbed away, he realized, from the pain in his chilled, clenched hand, that he was brandishing his sword for no reason, behaving like a madman, and the shame began to well up in him.
The child had done no wrong. She had merely defended herself in the only way open to her. She was a frightened, threatened little animal—mute, deaf and defenceless. He, in willful arrogance, had thrust his penis into her unwilling mouth, and when she had bitten him deservedly, he had been swept up by an insensate fury and attempted to thrash her. Only Merlyn had stopped him. Uther shuddered with revulsion at his own behaviour and flushed with burning shame, despite the chilling, wind-swept rain.
Thereafter, he rode his mount more gently and thought more penetratingly than he had thought in many a year, stripping himself of false protestations and facing the unpalatable truth. His mother lay sick, perhaps dying, and he had been avoiding his obligation to return home to her, vainly seeking to convince himself that his true duty lay in Camulod. To that end, he had sought diversion in the games room that night with willing women . . . willing but ineffectual in distracting his mind from the knowledge that he was behaving abominably, betraying himself with his fear of returning to bleak, inhospitable Cambria and Tir Manha, the home he resented and the people he despised for their dour, bleak lack of tolerance and compassion. Recognizing the truth now that he had faced it, he was horrified by the knowledge that his own vain, indefensible dislikes should have deprived his mother of his presence in a time of need, and he wondered, not for the first time, at the deep-buried, bitter harshness in him that had the power to make him behave as he sometimes did, against all the urgings and concerns of his better nature.
It was a long, miserable journey to Tir Manha, and he would never forget the aching relief he felt on arriving to discover that his mother had recovered from her sickness. His shame, however, did not abate. On the contrary, many weeks later, when he discovered the whole truth of what had happened in Camulod after he left, it grew enormously, for he knew beyond dispute that had he, in his rage, not driven the terrified girl out into the night, she would never have met the man, or men, who had savaged her, leaving her for dead, battered and bleeding, ravished and sodomized, so that she survived only by some miracle. So great was his self-loathing then that he was incapable of defending himself in the face of Merlyn's suspicions that he had been responsible. In Uther's own mind, he had been responsible for the girl's flight. But it pained him and saddened him more than he would have thought possible that Merlyn could suspect him of such foul baseness as had been perpetrated under the cover of darkness upon the poor little waif. That pain would remain with him for the rest of his life, and because of it, he would never have imposed himself knowingly upon another member of Cassandra's family. Whatever lusts he had, however intense, he would direct them elsewhere.
Ygraine, on the other hand, had no such scruples. But neither had she any sexual appetites—or so she believed. She would have ridiculed the notion that she might ever indulge in sexual pleasure with anyone, let alone her Cambrian captor. Ygraine of Cornwall had known no man in almost three years and believed that she had purged herself forever of the need to know another. Her few physical encounters with her own husband had been terrifying and depraved, and they had appalled and disgusted her, frightening her and scarring her deeply. She had come to believe, deep within her being, that no man could possibly be attracted to her after the defilements her husband had heaped upon her, and at the same lime she had convinced herself that all men were as he was, and that no man would ever again have occasion or opportunity to defile her as he had.
The two of them were destined to rut, nevertheless, and months later they would agree that the die was cast for both of them at some point on that first afternoon when they had admitted Herliss to their newly hatched plan to save his life. The huddled, conspiratorial intimacy brought them close enough to each other mentally and physically to ignite their awareness of each other, and it was like the explosive combustion that engulfs and consumes a moth that has fluttered too close to a candle flame—a completely unexpected turn of events that took both of them unawares and swept them irresistibly up and out of themselves as it hurled them into each other's arms with the inevitability of death.
Uther was vibrant with excitement over their plan, and at one point he reached out spontaneously and squeezed her forearm, easing the pressure of his grip almost immediately but making no attempt to remove his hand as he spoke earnestly to her, gazing directly into her eyes. That was when she first felt the awareness— the lusty thing, as she thought of it afterwards—stirring in her belly.