“Who is yonder knight?”
“Gorlois, my husband.”
Igraine climbed into the saddle from the girl’s knee. She dashed in the spurs and went at a gallop over the meadows towards the south. Gorlois’s white horse was coming at full stride through the feathery grass. The man was riding crosswise over the valley, bent on cutting off Igraine from the southern stretch of meadows, and driving her back upon the woods. It was Igraine’s hope to overtake Pelleas, and to put herself behind the barrier of his shield. Gorlois, guessing her desire, drove home the spurs, and hunted her in earnest.
Igraine headed the man and won a lead in the first half mile. Her grey horse plunged like a galley in a rough sea, and she held to the pommel of her saddle to keep her seat. Gorlois thundered at full gallop in her wake, the long grass flying before his horse’s hoofs like foam. He had thrown away his spear, and his eyes were set in a long stare on the galloping horse ahead. The zest of the chase had hold of him, and he used the spurs with heavy heel.
The green woods rolled down on them as the valley narrowed to its southern end. Igraine had never wandered so far from Garlotte’s cottage, and the ground was strange to her, nor did she know how the country promised. Riding at full gallop, she saw with a shudder of fear a barrier of rock running serrate across her path and closing the narrow valley like a wall. Gorlois saw it too, and sent up a shout that made Igraine’s hate flame up into a kind of rapture. To have turned right or left up the steep grass slope towards the woods, would have given back to Gorlois the little start she had of him. With a numb chill at her heart she abandoned all hope of Pelleas, and turned to face the inevitable, and Gorlois her lord.
The man came up like a wind through the grass, and drew rein roughly some ten paces away. He laughed as he stared at Igraine, an uncouth, angering laugh like the yapping of a dog. He looked big and burly in the saddle, and the muscles stood out in his neck as he tilted his square jaw and stared down at his wife. Igraine had not looked upon his face since he had been smitten in battle. Its ugliness seemed to match his soul.
Gorlois lifted up his voice and mocked her.
“Ha, my brave, you are trapped, are you? Mother of God, but you make a good figure of a man. These many months I have missed you, wife in arms. And you have served in the pay of my lord the King. Good service and good pay, I warrant, and plenty of plunder. I will have that harness of yours hung over my bed.”
Igraine suffered him not so much as a word. She was furious, and in no mood to be scoffed down and cowed by mere insolent strength. She looked into Gorlois’s libidinous face from behind the vizor of her helmet, and thought her thoughts. Gorlois ran on in his mocking fashion. His bronzed face gleamed with sweat, and a rough lascivious smile showed up his strong white teeth to her.
“Ha, now, madame! deliver, and let us have sight of you. The King loves your lips, eh! They are red, and your arms are soft. I warrant he found your bosom a good pillow. Uther was ever such a solemn soul, such a monk, such a father. It is good for the heart to hear of him knotted up in a woman’s hair.”