“Where is Uther?”
“At Sarum town. He rode, they say, to the great camp there looking like a ghost, or as though he had been playing Simeon on a pillar.”
Igraine merely nodded.
“Uther always looks a serious soul. Have you ever seen him, sister?”
“Never. A dark man?”
“With a face like a sun and a thunder-cloud rolled into one.”
“A good man!”
“So they say; he has a clean look.”
A little bell began to sound to call them away to complines. Igraine went with the rest into the solemn chapel, and let the chant sweep into her soul, and the prayers take her heart to heaven. Incense floated down, colours shone and glimmered on the walls, the dim lamps shivered like stars under the roof. Igraine felt her hollow heart warm as a rose in the full blaze of a golden noon. She said her prayers very fervently that night, for love was awake in her and glad of her new-blossomed hope. She would go to the great camp at Sarum and see this Uther for herself.
She had little comradeship with sleep in the great dormitory that night. When the matins bell rang she was up and ready for her flight like a young lark in the day. After chapel she begged a pittance from the cellaress and stowed it with her bundle in the little wallet Lilith had given her, excusing her early going on the plea that she had far to walk that day. She set out briskly from the grey shadows of the abbey. The place lay quite close by the western gate, so that she was soon beyond the walls and in the fields and orchards where all was goldly quiet at that early hour.