V
NOT a word of Uther yet, no sound of his name in Winchester, though Igraine lived on in Radamanth's house, and hoped for light in the dark.
Gorlois had had the truth, and she wondered what would come of it. Lulled by an ingenuous reasoning into the belief that she would be free of the man, she began to breathe again and to take liberty in her hand. She did not think Gorlois could plague her longer after the blunt answer she had given him. His pride would drag him aside, make further homage impossible, and there the matter would end.
If Igraine believed this, then she was in very gross error. Many men never show their true fibre till they are given the blunt lie, and Gorlois was never more himself than when baffled. There was much of the hawk about him, and Igraine had underrated his pride if she expected it to take league with her against its kinsman passion. Her measure only uncovered the darker side of the man's nature, and sounded the doom of a lighter, gayer chivalry. Gorlois's pride and self-love never dragged in the wind, but held him taut to the storm, as though determined to weather all the perversities of which a woman's heart is capable. In truth, Igraine had done the very thing least likely to free her from the man's thought; she had taunted his passion and thrown down a challenge to his pride.
Gorlois kept his own counsel, and frowned down the mischievous curiousness of his friends when they laughed at him and asked how the girl framed for a wife. He struck Brastias his squire to the ground for daring to jest sympathetically on the subject. Those who went about his house and hunted and diced with him soon found that he was in no temper for light raillery or the sly privileges of an intimate tongue. The fabric of a mere nice romance had stiffened into sterner, darker proportions. There was the look of a dry desire in the man's eyes, a lean hungry silence about him that made his men whisper. Some of them had seen Gorlois when he hunted down the heathen. They knew his temper, and the cast of his features when there was some lust of enterprise in his heart.
About that time a knight came from Wales thrusting a woman's beauty upon every man with the point of his spear. As had been his custom elsewhere, he set up a green pavilion outside the walls, and daily rode out armed to the sound of a trumpet to declare a certain Amoret of Caerleon the fairest gentlewoman in Christendom. He was a big man, red and burly, and had overthrown every like fanatic for love's sake on this particular adventure. Gorlois heard of the fellow with no little satisfaction. Every finger of him itched to spill blood, and he took the deed on him, vowing it should be the last peace-offering to Igraine.
Arming one morning, he rode down and fought the Green Knight in his meadow outside the walls. It took them an hour to settle the matter. At the end thereof the errant from Wales was lying impotent and bloody in his tent, and the name of Amoret aped the ineffectual moon. Afterwards Gorlois rode into the town, war-stained as he was, found Igraine at her window, and presented her the Green Knight's token on the point of his spear.
It was a woman's sleeve in green silk, and edged with pearls. Igraine saw a crowd of upturned faces about the man on the white horse. His bright arms seemed to burn in upon her, and to light a sudden impatience in her heart. She took the green sleeve from the spear, and looking Gorlois full in the face, in reckless mood she threw the thing down under his horse's hoofs.
There was a great hush all through the street at the deed, and Gorlois started red as a man struck across the face with a whip. His eyes seemed to grow large, like the eyes of an angry dog. Never had folk seen him look so black. He stared up a moment at Igraine, shook his spear, and trampling the green sleeve under the hoofs of his horse, rode away without a word through the glum and gaping crowd.
Igraine had thrown down the glove with a vengeance. It was a mad enough method of beating off the pride of a man such as Gorlois whose temper grew with the blows given, and who knew no moderation in love or in hate. Gorlois had ridden home through the town that day to have his wounds dressed, and to spend half the night in a fury of cursing. Yet for all his bitterness he had the power of level thought, and of taking ground for the future. He would read this woman a lesson; that much he swore on the cross of his sword; and the early morning saw him again at Radamanth's, strenuous to speak his mind.