by Jack Whyte
He looked around the tent, noting that the lamps were all burning brightly and steadily. Satisfied, he looked back at her and nodded.
"They should be bringing you some food soon, and I will make sure that someone brings you a jug of hot water before you retire. Sleep well."
Then, before she could think of a single thing to say to arrest him or to put him in his place, he spun on his heel and walked away, out of the tent, leaving her fuming and decidedly out of sorts.
Morgas was not accustomed to having men ignore her physical attractions. Since the days when womanhood first began to emerge in her, she had been blessed not only with a winsome, lovely face and soft, wide, sensual lips, but with high, heavy breasts and a narrow back and waist that swelled out to lushly rounded hips above long, clean-lined legs. All males lusted after her at one time or another, she knew, and most of them did it all the time, devouring her with hungry eyes. That was something she had come to take for granted over the years, and now she expected no less. Even the King, Gulrhys Lot, had fallen under her spell after only a very short time, and no man to whom she herself had fell attracted had ever refused her, let alone ignored her, as had this upstart Cambrian. She consoled herself by planning exactly how she would behave at their next encounter and what she would say to him, how she would spurn his approach and shrivel him with disdain.
What she was completely unprepared for, however, was that it would be three entire days and nights before she saw him again.
On the morning after Morgas's "abduction" by Uther, the women were surprised to receive a visit from the senior surgeon of the Camulod raiding party, who introduced himself to them as Mucius Quinto and explained his position within Uther's group before offering them his assistance, should any of them have need of his medical services. His visit set off a buzz of scandalized discussion among the women, none of whom had ever heard of professionally trained and educated surgeons or physicians. In their kingdom, all illnesses and medical conditions were treated by those Druids who specialized in herbal knowledge and medicaments. Ygraine held herself aloof from all their talk, thinking instead about Morgas and Uther and wondering what had happened between them.
A short time later, when one of the guards brought word that three women might go and visit "the Queen" in her quarters, Ygraine stood immediately as one of the three. Her eyes never stopped moving, seeing and cataloguing everything there was to see as she and two others were escorted from the command tent to the smaller tent that was Uther's own. Morgas's prison—the King's Tent, as it was called—lay under heavy guard some hundred paces along the riverside on a stony bank above the water in a glade that was surrounded on three sides by thick-growing willows.
Ygraine was more than surprised to find, in answer to her first question, that Uther had not entered the tent at all the previous night, apart from having delivered Morgas there. How could it be that Uther Pendragon, whose monstrous behavior and rapacious sexual appetites were legendary, could have disdained the obvious and available lushness of Morgas's body? She began racking her brains to uncover a potential explanation for such uncharacteristic behaviour from the Pendragon King.
It did not even occur to Ygraine that Uther might simply have left the camp again that same night so soon after arriving. They did not discover that until much later in the day when they discovered, too, that Huw Strongarm had ridden out this time with Uther and the cavalry that Uther called his Dragons, leaving the camp in the charge of a subordinate commander, and Morgas, as Uther had promised, in the charge of the decurion called Nemo. And so for three days, the women established a pattern of waiting and being bored.
When the rumours reached Morgas that Uther had returned, she commanded one of her guards to take a message from her to the King, demanding that he come to speak with her. The man gazed at her in silence for a time, offered a derisive "humph" and returned stolidly to his post, leaving her to fume impotently and eventually to compose herself and wait in patience for her captor to return. This was his tent, she told herself. His belongings were here, as was his bed, and she believed that, having spent the last three nights on the ground beneath the open sky, he might wish to sleep in his cot for a change. She was determined to be ready for him when he did.
She dressed with particular care that day, taking pains to make herself look as alluring and as seductively attractive as she possibly could. The results were spectacular, drawing and holding the eyes and the stares even of her regular guards, who had all been selected, she had begun to believe, for their ability to remain undistracted by her charms. She wore a flowing, voluminous gown of material so fine as to be almost translucent, with nothing else between its draperies and her skin, so that the garment revealed breathtaking glimpses of her curves and swooping, fleetingly outlined silhouettes of breast and belly, hip and thigh as she passed between men's eyes and the bright light of the sun—which she contrived to do as often as possible, the better to gauge and evaluate the effect of such sightings. Overall she was encouraged by the slack-mouthed awe of her observers, who stood watching her, rather than pacing their posts as usual. So successful was she, in fact, that the sheer freedom of her unconfined body beneath the gown began to affect her erotically as her skin, and particularly her nipples, became sensitized to the gentle friction of the garment's fabric. But as her erotic tension increased, the afternoon drew towards evening, night fell, and her evening meal was served without any sighting of Uther Pendragon. Eventually she retired to her own cot, where she tossed and turned for a long time before finally falling asleep, angry and distempered.
She awoke some lime later; perhaps hours later or perhaps only a fraction of that time, she had no idea. She knew only that she had been awakened by a heavy, muffled noise close by, and when she opened her eyes, startled and disoriented, she had no memory of where she was. It was dark and quiet, but there was a yellow effulgence on one side of her, a dim radiance that lit one side of the enclosure in which she found herself. Rigid, she lay wide-eyed, fighting down panic, and as her heartbeat fell back towards its normal pace, she began to think coherently again. She remembered where she was, and she remembered, too, that just beyond the walls of the tent wherein she lay at least two guards stood vigilantly, not merely guarding her, but guarding against any attempt she might make to flee.
Then came the noise again. This time she heard it clearly, and she saw an accompanying movement of shadows against the backlit leather wall close by her cot. Uther Pendragon had returned to his tent and was now in the act of removing his armour, evidently attempting to do so quietly without disturbing her. Then she heard a muffled voice speaking very quietly and saw the massive shadow on the wall split into two human shapes, one moving off to the right, where she could no longer see it, while the other remained in place. A picture sprang into her mind immediately of the cruciform wooden rack that was made to hold a full set of armour—cuirass and sword belt, helmet and kilt of armoured straps—and she knew that Uther was being assisted by a trooper, who had carried his discarded armour to hang it upon the device while his master looked to his own comfort.
A moment later the remaining shadow, which she presumed to be Uther's, also moved out of sight, looming first to engulf the entire wall and then disappearing completely, so that she knew he had now moved beyond the light, leaving it between him and her. She heard a quiet splashing as water was poured from a jug into a bowl, and then a muttered farewell as the trooper left the tent, evidently taking a light away with him, since the brightness on the far side of the wall decreased sharply as soon as he left.
Morgas lay quietly for some time after that, holding her breath for long stretches and straining her ears to make out every sound of movement from beyond the partition, but she heard only the sound of softly splashing water and occasionally the sound of breathing from the man on the other side. She heard a sudden, muffled grunt and then a sharp intake of breath, and then another silence stretched out, during which she heard nothing at all. A renewed sound of gently pourin
g water and a soft, scrubbing sound, and a vision formed in her mind to accompany the sounds to which she listened, a vision that excited her and brought a swelling of her heartbeat and a shortness of breath as she envisioned the man close by her, naked in the dim light of a taper, washing himself completely in the almost-dark. Before she knew what she was doing, she had risen from her bed and moved soundlessly to where she could see into the other part of the tent.
There, sure enough, she saw him naked at his ablutions, washed in the gentle radiance of a single candle so that much of him shone golden in the light while the rest of him was shrouded in darkness. So tall was he and so broad across his back and shoulders that he appeared gigantic, his bulk amplified and enhanced by the giant black shadow thrown now by the candle onto the wall opposite her. His slightest movement caused the flame to flicker and sent the shadow leaping to engulf fully half of the tent wall beyond him and the roof of the tent above him.
Aware but uncaring of her own nudity, knowing that he could not see into the blackness that contained her, Morgas approached the opening in the partition cautiously, making sure that she remained clear of the wedge of pale light spilling into her sleeping area from his candle. Moving slowly through the pitch blackness, she felt her heart begin to hammer in her chest as she allowed her lust to stir and stretch itself.
His chest was broad and deep, coated with crisp, curling black hair that tapered downward to his loins and blended with the dark, impenetrable shadows on the front of him. Behind, the golden candlelight limned the edges of his arms and torso and threw liquid light to outline the edge of his left buttock and the strong sweeping column of his thigh and rounded calf. As she watched, he raised one foot and placed it upon a low stool while he soaked the cloth he held in one hand and used it to wash his crotch, stooping and reaching backwards as he scrubbed and cleansed himself thoroughly. She could not see much in detail, but her imagination served her requirements admirably, and when he dropped the cloth into the bowl and reached for a length of towel behind him, she was delighted when he failed to reach it easily and had to take a small half-step towards it, turning towards the light to pick it up, so that she saw him completely. Then, standing thus, his every movement sensuous and redolent of lazy pleasure, he dried himself at leisure and turned back finally to the basin, where he took himself in hand and pissed, in an arcing stream, into the water wherein he had washed. That done, he took up the basin carefully in both hands and carried it to the doorway of the tent, where he shouldered his way through the flaps and flung the contents of the basin out onto the ground. He returned immediately, emptied the remaining water from the jug into the bowl, swirled it around and took it outside again, repeating the procedure. Returning again, he dried his hands once more with the towel and threw it into the bowl before turning quickly and picking up the candle, cupping his hand around the flame to keep it from guttering.
So directly and unexpectedly did he move in doing this that he caught Morgas completely by surprise, giving her no time to react or even to attempt to regain her cot. She froze, holding her breath, and watched the light move quickly across the front of the tent until its glow appeared behind the panel of the partition between the sleeping chambers. But then, just as she was about to move back to where she ought to be, it reversed direction and came swiftly and silently back towards her. Uther had obviously decided to check up on her before going to sleep, and she backed away hurriedly from the opening in the partition until she could go no farther, blocked by the rear corner of the tent. Less than three steps brought him to the gap opposite where she stood in the dark, but he did not see her as quickly as she saw him. He had not quite entered the sleeping chamber but had paused just outside it, bending forward and peering around the edge of the thin leather wall to where her cot lay empty. She heard the surprised hiss as he saw that she was not there, and then he straightened up immediately, moving quickly, and swept his candle into the chamber, until the light fell across the paleness of her naked form.
In another man, at another time, Morgas might have laughed at the evident play of his thoughts as they swept across his face. She saw surprise, doubt, incomprehension and finally a kind of wide-eyed wonder as his initial alarm subsided and he realized not only that she was safe and had not escaped, but that she was awake and out of bed and beautifully bared to his gaze. In another place, at another time, she herself might well have responded far differently than she did, but this time and place were all she had. and she found her own mind filled with contradictions. She had been instantly prepared to lash out in scorn, in words dripping with irony, to give him the lie for his former protestations of disinterest. But the words died on her lips unspoken as she watched his eyes take note of her. She had immediately formed the intent, too, to stalk across the chamber and snatch up a blanket, throwing it across her to mask herself from his gaze, but she found her feet unable or unwilling to move as his eyes moved slowly down and then back up the length of her body. She knew she should do something, scream for assistance or attempt to run from him, but instead she remained motionless, her heart fluttering harder in her chest as his gaze moved from one breast to the other, then down to her navel. And she knew, as the last possible moment when she might have done so died and was forever lost, that she should have said something, anything, should have protested and complained, but now it was far, far too late. So she stood silent, staring at the man, saying nothing, aware of his increasing arousal and of her own, less obvious but no less powerful.
Finally, it was he who broke the silence, swallowing audibly, and then opening his mouth with a dry, sucking sound, to speak in a quiet tone that, while not quite breathless and not quite a whisper, suggested nonetheless that he was surprised, and moved, and aware of others close by.
"By the gods, lady . . . I did not expect this."
Morgas believed him—the truth of it was stamped plainly on his face—but even more than that, she knew exactly how he was feeling, because experience had taught her that the kind of excitement she was feeling at that moment was never ever one-sided. On the contrary, she knew that it was born of acute and mutual anticipation, and she knew, too, that it would not be denied. She began to speak, then stopped, simply staring at him, feeling her insides turn hot and then melt, flowing downward to her centre.
"What did you expect?" she asked, whispering too, aware that she had to say something. He shook his head, gazing at her breasts again and running the tip of his tongue across his lips, and she continued. "You said you would not take . . . what you were expected to take . . ."
He shook his head again, drawing in a great, deep breath and letting it out with a shudder as he fought to master himself. "True," he said at length. "I did."
"And . . . and will you now?"
Again a head shake, this time stronger, more determined. "No."
"Not even be it freely offered?"
"What. . .?'
She allowed the silence to hang there, vibrating in the air between them as he thought about what she had said last, and then she brought up her hands, moving slowly, and cupped them beneath her breasts. "Freely offered," she whispered.
Slowly, not taking his eyes away from hers for a moment, he half knelt and placed the candle sconce on the ground. Then he straightened up again and stepped slowly towards her. He stopped when he was almost but not quite touching her, gazing into her eyes, and she moved closer so that her belly came into contact with his hardness and he flinched, jerking away involuntarily. And then he took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her gently to him, stooping his mouth to hers as his arm dropped down about her waist and he brought her up to meet his kiss. She let herself be gathered and went limp, filling his arms with the weight of her inert body, anticipating that the unexpectedness of it would pull him forward and off balance. Instead, however, he caught her close with the arm that encircled her and swept his other arm up behind her knees, lifting her as effortlessly as he might a child. Then he carried her directly to the cot in the corner, wh
ere he knelt and lowered her down softly as she wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled him to her.
Chapter TWENTY-SIX
For more than a week Uther kept his distance from Ygraine and the other women, although he kept himself precisely informed of their well-being and their morale through his intermediaries. The only woman who saw him in all that time was Morgas, because he came to her bed each night. He made no attempt to speak to her about any of his plans, however, nor did he respond in any way to her questions of him. He came only to rut with her, and he rutted magnificently, which pleased Morgas immensely, since her lustful appetites matched his own. When he was sated, however, as he eventually was each night, he would rise and seek his own cot, and on the two occasions when Morgas sought to follow him and question him, he left the tent and went to sleep elsewhere instead. Morgas was angry at first, but then she accepted the situation. All things change, she knew, and she was confident that, given time, Uther would come to confide in her. She informed Ygraine that Uther was entwined in her clutches, but remained vague about what they discussed in bed.
Then, on the tenth day after the capture, came word that threw the King into a towering rage, a fury so overpowering that he knew he would have to leave the camp in order to rid himself of the temptation to do violence to the Queen and her women. Owain of the Caves had brought him the ill tidings that a party of envoys sent to Gulrhys Lot on the first day of the Queen's captivity had been received by Lot and then butchered out of hand as soon as they had delivered their message. Owain and a squadron of bowmen had accompanied the envoys—a mounted squad of Dragons under the command of a gifted young decurion called Lodder—but had remained nearby, securely hidden, when Lodder and his men rode forward openly to attract Lot's attention.