Arthur Rex Read Free Page B

So saying he threw the door handle and plunged into the chamber beyond.
    Now this proved to be but an anteroom, and he did hurl himself through it emerging in a chamber of which the walls were hung with silken tapestries, these illuminated by a fire which cast its glow as well on a bed upon which lay, under a robe of white fur, the most beautiful woman in Christendom, the fair Ygraine, her hair flowing down the velvet pillow like unto streams of molten gold.
    And she had been in a slumber, but the clamor of Uther Pendragon’s arrival (he whose stride was unruly by reason of his concupiscence conjoined with the duke’s borrowed shanks, to which he was not yet used to walking with) caused her blue eyes to open and display their sapphire stars.
    But recognizing her husband’s mean figure she did corrupt her beauty with a grimace and say in ill-humor, “Gorlois! How in heaven’s name—” But seeing him begin to divest himself of his clothing she left off the expression of disagreeable amazement at his return alive, and she hastened to inform him of the sickness that had claimed her on his departure this fortnight, which surely was the pestilence, association with which would kill him quickly as it was killing her by degrees.
    Saying the which she swathed herself tightly within the white robe, making an impenetrable mummy-wrapping like unto those of the kings of Egypt who when living bed their own sisters and have skins as black as night.
    But if the king heard these exceptions to his purpose he gave no answer, being occupied, damnably, with the to him foreign fastenings of the duke’s garb, which did defy his fingers, and soon in frenzy he abandoned all restraint and tore himself altogether naked, dropping the tatters where they fell, and then he vaulted onto the bed, discovered the fair Ygraine within the white robe as lackeys unroll a carpet, and then he closed with her alabaster body as a ram doth address an ewe.
    Now the fire had dwindled to powdery ash before Uther Pendragon did unjoin himself, though now much against the will of the fair Ygraine, but as after much killing even a king must rest, so in love, and he did stretch his limbs and cool himself and clear his throat and then, thrusting his tongue into the cavern of his cheek, he spake as follows.
    “My dear Ygraine, I confess to thee that I am greatly relieved to find that thou hast been faithful to me—for no appetite that had been fed within the last fortnight could yet be so keen as thine.”
    “Methinks,” said the fair Ygraine, “that absence hath also done thee a world of good, my dear Gorlois.”
    And Uther Pendragon grimaced sternly to repress his gloat, and elevating himself upon one of the duke’s sharp elbows he said, “I never liked the gleam in the king’s eye which fell upon thee at the Easter festival at London.”
    “The king, my lord?” asked the fair Ygraine, a faint flush introducing itself into her snowy forehead.
    “The mighty and most puissant Uther of the Lion’s Head,” said himself. “Terror of the Paynims, Defender of the Faith, King of all Britain—”
    “And most luxurious man, by reputation,” said the fair Ygraine. “Thief of Maidenheads, Ravisher of Chastity, Scepterer of Subjects—”
    “Be thou not too severe upon thy sovereign,” said Uther, “whom we call Sire with respect to his divinely appointed role as father of his people. In submitting to him, a woman doth serve God.”
    “Thy wife as well, Gorlois?” asked the fair Ygraine with a peculiar flare of flawless nostril and stare of starry eye.
    “Naturally!” roared Uther Pendragon, for an instant forgetting he was in the guise of the duke, and then with the quick wit which in combination with his keen sword had made him king, he said, “Naturally I should not assent to mine own cuckolding, not even by my king, to whom in all else I am a loyal vassal. But there are extraordinary situations of great extremity, enterprises of moment, pitch,