Uther and Igraine

by Warwick Deeping

One afternoon they had a shrewd fright, and the incident led in its final development to Igraine’s leaving the manor in the meadows. She was in the garden with Eudol when two horsemen wearing Gorlois’s livery rode up to the gate and demanded entertainment with much froth and bombast. They were sturdy hot-tongued rogues, quick at liquor, quicker still at blasphemy. Eudol, much flustered, had them brought into the house and set loose upon a wine flask while he smuggled Igraine out of the garden. There was a barn standing on the other side of a little meadow near the house, and the building was screened by a fringe of pines and a thorn hedge. Eudol hurried Igraine to the barn, saw her couched on a pile of hay, closed the door on her, and scampered back to take great care of Gorlois’s gentlemen.

Eudol proved a most obsequious and attentive host. He kept the men primed with wine, watched them like a lynx, forbade his slaves and servants the room so that there should be no chance of gossip. The fellows thought themselves well harboured. Eudol, hardy old tipster, kept them going with a will, till they swore he was the best old gentleman at his cups they had met this side of the Thames. He out-drank, out-yarned, out-jested the pair of them. Grown very mellow towards evening, they vowed by all the calendar that they loved him so much they would make a night of it, and not go to bed till they were carried. Eudol could have denied himself their great esteem, but there was nothing for it but to humour them.

He got rid of the fellows next morning, when they went away sadly, very glazed about the eyes, swearing they would pay him another visit at their very earliest opportunity. Eudol, when they were out of sight, went out to the barn and found Igraine comfortably couched there on a mass of hay. The little maid who served her had brought her supper on the sly the night before, and she had fared well enough in her new quarters.

As a matter of fact Eudol had had a parting cup with the men that morning, and had hardly outbreathed as yet the maudlin heritage gotten the previous night. He kissed Igraine’s hand, mumbled his usual courtesies, excused his long absence with a warmth that nearly brought him to tears. He was somewhat flushed over the cheek bones; his eyes were bright, and his breath pregnant with the heavy scent of wine. Igraine wiped the hand he had kissed on her gown, looked at him with little love or gratitude, and told him that she had been trying to walk, and that her ankle bore her passably.

Eudol, edging near, proceeded to narrate at preposterous length how he had kept Gorlois’s men employed, made them drunk as cobblers, and packed them off innocently to Winchester that morning. He was hugely sly over it all. He came and climbed up beside Igraine on the hay, and pinched her arm with his lean fingers as he talked. There was a gaunt, red, eager look about his face. It was quite twilight in the great barn, and a mingled smell of hay and pitch-pine filled the air, while dusty beams of light filtered through in steady streams.

Eudol’s vinous and fatherly solicitude developed abruptly into an absurd revelation of his inner self. He had hold of Igraine’s arm with one hand. Leaving go suddenly, he reached for her waist, poked his grey beard into her face, and made a clumsy dab at her cheek. In a moment the girl’s arm had swept him backwards like an impotent bag of bones. She saw him overbalance and roll off the haycock on to the edge of a scythe. Without waiting for more, and with a glimpse of the old fool’s slippers still in the air, she slipped down from the hay and out of the barn, and shutting the door, pegged the catch with a piece of wood. Then she went laughing half resentfully towards the house, and told Dame Phœbe that her master had gone to the fields to oversee his slaves.

The woman had taken a remarkable dislike to Igraine, being sulky-eyed and dumb-saucy in her presence as far as she dared. The grey nun told her that she was ending her sojourn at the farm that morning, and was going on foot for the west. The woman’s face changed as suddenly as a spring sky. She was suave and smiling instanter, ready with queries as to Igraine’s ankle, very eager to pack her wallet with stuff from Eudol’s larder. Igraine, with an inward flush, saw how the wind blew. She was keen to be gone before Eudol should be loosed from the barn; even the woman’s changed mood seemed a tacit insult in itself.

She was soon treading the meadows where the backs of Eudol’s sheep stood out like white boulders on the solitary stretch of green. The country began to be as flat as a table, though there were still masses of woodland piled on either side the great white road. Igraine kept in among the trees with just a glimpse of the highway to keep her to her mark. Her grey gown passed almost unperceptibly among the mould-grown trunks as she went in the chequered light like a grey mouse through green corn. Her ankle bore her better than she had prophesied, and she made fair travelling at a modest pace. Later in the afternoon the strain began to tell in measure, and her ankle ached and felt hot, as though she had done enough. Sitting down on a fallen tree she watched the road, and waited for some one to pass.

A charcoal burner went by with a couple of asses panniered up with a comfortable load. Then came two soldiers and a couple of light wenches who haunted camp and castle and lived to the minute. Next, a great wain half ladened up with faggots came lumbering along, drawn by a pair of sleepy horses, and driven by a peasant in a green smock and leather breeches. Igraine took her choice, and going down from the trees, stood by the roadside, and begged of the man a lift.