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There is a pain deep in my body, curling around in my belly and wrapping around me until I cannot breathe at times. When my courses come upon me, I must often stay in bed for whole weeks—sometimes at my father's command and others at my own body's insistence. I can tell that even my maid feels sorry for me.
On occasion, my brother comes in from a hunt to see me, and the way he looks at me, as if I were still just a child, makes me feel small.
Today, I am not just a weak, pale girl, though. I cannot be afforded the luxury.
My father has asked to see me.
- - -
The meal spread before me is rich—too rich for an everyday or even a family occasion, during this time of winter. The pain in my stomach has worsened, too, so I'm left gripping at the blanket I have been permitted to bring into the large, open hall where my father takes his supper.
We are alone tonight. My brother is nowhere to be seen, and I try picking at my food, wishing he were there to finish it for me. Having such a feast in the middle of winter is an extravagance, even for us.
Albion is at war.
I am not always sure I understand who is at war with whom. My father tries to avoid talking about it in front of me, as if talk of men spilling blood could somehow make my body spill more of its own. Perhaps it is merely because I am a woman—merely because I am a girl—but there are women who honor us with a visit sometimes that surely are not kept from this talk of the world.
They all wear red—deep, dark red, like the wine being poured into my father's cup—once, twice, three times before he finally abstains from another.
Other times, they wear black and woolen gray—the colours of mourning even when there have been no prominent deaths. When I was a child, I was often sent out of their presence. Even when I was allowed to stay, they rarely spoke of anything that matched the weight I could feel around them. They were like the lingering shapes and shadows in nightmares, but beautiful and not entirely frightening.
Still, when they smiled, something about the way they bore their teeth reminded me of a savage wolf in a beautiful gown—sometimes dark like fur and at others reddened with the blood of their prey. But they smiled with a courtly way, and my father seemed to love them.
I have hardly touched my wine, but given the richness of the food, I can only imagine that it is good wine, too. The eagerness with which my father swallows it down, hardly tasting it at all, not taking time to savour its warmth even on such a cold night, makes me think he is chasing after its numbing effects on the mind. He wishes to find drunkenness, or some measure of it, while he is sitting at the head of the table just to my left, not saying a word.
It frightens me a little.
Just when I am nearly ready to gather the blanket tighter around myself or to ask to be excused to my chambers, he clears his throat and I know he is about to speak.
“Ygraine,” he addresses, his voice solemn and, as always, a little pitying. “You are a Lady.”
I look down at my more than half-full plate of food and consider the way I had just been trying to pick at it with my fingers—anything to make it easier to eat something on days like today before my blood weakens even more. I am not sure what he wants me to say, but when I look at the table again I begin to think that all of this was for me. All of this was to honour me somehow, though I cannot imagine why.
I pick again at the roasted bird in front of me, drawing another small bite of the meat into my mouth. I can taste dried herbs and the rich, replenishing fat in it almost overwhelms me, but I swallow anyway. This is meant for me, somehow, and my father has seen that we and the people around us have not gone hungry—even in the winter, even in a time of war. Telling him that the decadent food is almost repulsive would be more ungrateful than a sick daughter could ever afford to be.
“... You are a Lady. You have a title, a name,” he reminds me. I realize I am being prompted to reply, so I look up and nod a little, meeting his eyes.
“We have an opportunity, daughter. An opportunity for your marriage.”
“My marriage?” I repeat, perhaps out of turn because it surprises me.
“Albion has not seen peace in many years,” my father says, patiently, as if he cannot imagine that I have been listening even to those things which I have been allowed to hear. “The balance of power has shifted, and I am growing old. … There is an upstart king who has taken over Camelot of late. He wishes to form an alliance with our house.”
Many questions beg for my voice, but there are too many of them to try and voice them all at once. I look upon my father, think of all the wine he has forced himself to drink with no enjoyment and wonder if this alliance might spell something far worse for me than the loneliness and the pity I find here with my family. After a while, though, I realize that there is only one real question I can ask:
“Do you think he is a good man, Father?”
My father's response is to smile, reaching up to touch his freshly-trimmed beard, but I can't read the expression.
“He is a fighter, Ygraine. He has wrested control of a kingdom. He is a dangerous young man. A formidable one. But a good one?” He takes the time to actually consider it, but the quirk of his lips never fades entirely as he meets my eyes again. For the first time, I think perhaps he is a little impressed with my question. There is no immediate pity in his gaze. “I think so.”
The honest answer almost takes me by surprise, but instead I reach for my glass of wine, finding the sharp smell less repugnant than before.
“Then I accept,” I say, answering the question my father had not asked. He smiles, and for once I am certain he is not pitying me.
- - -
The first time I see Uther Pendragon, he is wearing a suit of armour covered with a cape of a familiar shade of deep red. There is a splash of golden thread woven inside that catches the light despite its dinginess. He is flanked to either side by two people who keep in step precisely one pace behind, followed by the rest of his guard.
His clear companions are a man to his right, not quite old enough to be his father, and a woman to his left who looks no older than him, no older than me, and yet both of them have eyes that seem piercing, ageless and strange. Uther's look young and steady in comparison.
They approach my father and me until they are so close I can easily see the woman look up along Uther's shoulder as she and the other man stop to allow him to step forward to meet my father, who stands to greet him.
Uther greets me with a formal kiss to my hand, and as I look into his gaze I see determination there, more than anything. It doesn't seem directed toward me, though, and I wonder if he wishes he were somewhere else.
- - -
Three days later, I am in Camelot and we are married.
- - -
When he comes to me on the night following our wedding, I am aware of what to expect.
I am now a queen, and Uther is my king. Uther needs a son of noble birth.
I do not know him, and he does not know me, but we will grow to know one another, for the sake of our people.
I sit on the edge of my new bed between the folds of sheer fabric that encircle and enclose it and I lean my weight back on my hands a little, not sure if I mean to lie back or somehow get away. Looking into Uther's eyes now, I see some reflection of the strangeness of his friends' eyes, but then he blinks and it's gone.
I realize it is the first time I have seen him without armour. He wears plain black breeches and a shirt made of a fabric so white and pure that it's soft to look at well before he is close enough for me to touch it. It is lined at the edges with a band of that same dark, bloody red that matches the woman who stays with him in court and the women who came to visit my father from time to time. For a moment, I wonder if I should ask about it—if I should finally learn what the colour could mean off a battlefield, but then I'm looking at his eyes again and find that determination mingled with something else.
“... I'm... not sure what you need for me to do,” I say. I hadn't intended to be the one to break the silence, but something in his gaze almost invited it. He smiles, surprisingly easily after his eyes seemed so cool, like the metal in his armour or sword.
“I need you not to be afraid,” he says, and I'm not sure if he had been planning to say it all along. It seems so readied on his lips but also something boyish and almost like a plea. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
I can see his Adam's apple bob up and down once as I nod. Then, he draws a deep breath and moves toward me, his calloused fingertips the first thing to touch me, brushing along my jaw until he catches a strand of my hair. His touch lifts up my chin, and he's leaning forward too.
His lips meet mine before his hand touches my waist through the sheer gown my new maid gave me to wear. They are so much softer than his hands, which seem warmer now that he begins to kiss me. Not the formal kiss he had given me at our ceremony—instead, he parts my lips with his own and I feel several kinds of awareness running through me at once. One of them is purely one of heat, pleasant and spreading all through me. Another is that he has clearly done this before while I haven't, but his touch remains gentle even when he begins to remove my clothes.
He already has my breasts bared by the time he stops to speak again, his fingertips stilling on the laces of my gown. My skin is hot and I'm trying not to tremble, wondering if I'm allowed to like this, if I should. Common people marry because they love one another, and common people have children, share children and make them between them. Surely it must be something others want.
“Now you,” he says, and it startles me a little. I know my brow must be furrowing more than I realize when he stops toying with the lace and touches my temple just beyond the edge of my eyebrow. Then he reaches down and takes my hand, taking it to the bottom of his tunic and helping me grip it. I glance back and forth between his eyes and my fingers tangled in the white fabric and he nods, smiling.
I start laughing for a moment, nervous and afraid, but then he laughs too and I'm not so certain of the fear.
He is slow, gentle, and he treats me as if I might break. Everyone does, always has, but when he begins to move within me, I don't feel sorry for it. It hurts—but it's nothing like the pain the months bring on me, but still he asks and genuinely frowns when he realizes it hurts the most. Then he moves a little over me and it gets better, and I am a little surprised that it doesn't make me feel ashamed. But when it doesn't hurt so much, when I stop closing my eyes and look up at him, sometimes he meets mine and I feel less alone, and other times he's not looking at me either.
We're both thinking of something else, something greater that what we might want if we were common people. I hear, perhaps, that he was common once.
I don't know him, but I will.
- - -
I overhear them one day, when I come into court early one morning. The air is still gray before the mists have faded.
“I am more highborn than you will ever be,” Nimueh—the beautiful, ageless woman who is with him far more than I think I will ever be—says to him. “Do not think to command me as if I were a subject to your will, Uther Pendragon. It was not that way in the beginning and it won't be now.”
“I haven't commanded—“ he begins to argue, but her simply looking away silences him. He catches her arm, just below her wrist, and the motion looks almost violent but I can see even from a distance that the grip is careful—steady but light.
I turn away without knowing what they were talking about. I turn away without really knowing why. There's pain in my stomach again, but it's higher. He is a good man, but we are not common people. We do not marry for love.
- - -
The next time Uther comes to my chamber, he is still kind. I realize that nothing has changed, but I cannot stop thinking about all the things I don't know about him as I pull the blankets over me and he sits on the edge of the bed to fix his shirt against the winter cold.
“Do you love her?” I ask, almost feeling sorry for them both if he does. Then I wonder if I should. He had been with a woman before me—I never asked, but I can tell. Maybe it was her. Maybe it's still her. Perhaps I shouldn't let myself wonder at all.
“... Love who?” Uther asks, startled by the question.
“Nimueh.”
Uther laughs freely. Too freely. Somehow, it makes me more certain that if I were to love him, the aching in my stomach and chest might run so deep that it would kill me.
“Gaius is my brother through all of this, and she has been there with us just the same.”
“You're telling me she's a sister to you?”
Uther turns to me again and tilts his head, giving me a compassionate expression. He reaches out, touches my face with his thumb and leans in to kiss me without further intent.
He doesn't answer my question.
- - -
When I awake, I feel pain in my stomach again. This time I am certain it is not the pain borne of emotion. My fingers grip in the sheets as I've found sometimes helps, but then I open my eyes and realize Uther is still asleep beside me.
Looking over at his face, he looks almost too young, his hair dark and hanging down over pale skin and his eyes. I wonder if a son of his would look like him. Then another gripping pain moves through me and I let a whimper through my clenched together teeth.
Immediately Uther is awake, propped up on his elbow and straightening still. He looks over at me and then looks around the room for any threat, but I reach out and touch his forearm, not quite the way he had touched hers. Touching him is familiar now, at least, and it's hard to hesitate even if I should.
“It's... only me,” I tell him, because I know he often wakes up in search of some danger. “I'm sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” he asks quietly, dismissing my apology with a slight creasing of his brow.
“... I... have not given you an heir,” I explain delicately, glancing down and hoping he will not look upon the blood I know I must wash away between my thighs. Then, before I can take in his reply, I wince and grip the sheets again. It's worse this time, and it seems the more awake I become the more it draws unnatural, sickening heat into me.
I feel him shift his weight in the bed, and then he's on the edge, finishing dressing, putting on his boots, and I want to apologize again, and the tears in my eyes make me feel a little angry in a way I know I will never be able to express. I am just his queen, and we are not common. We do not marry for love—and I have not given him what he needs from me.
“Wait here,” he says, and it's a command—the first direct one he has ever given me.
Then he's gone.
- - -
I obey because I don't have a choice. I obey because the pain in my stomach keeps me still, and for years I have been taught to stay in bed with it. I stay in bed because since I have been old enough to bleed, it has never gotten better—each month it has grown worse.
- - -
Someone comes to me after a time. I blink open my eyes from trying desperately against the pain to sleep.
Uther hasn't returned, and it isn't my maid. Instead, she is standing there, with the door closed behind her but she seems to be waiting permission before she steps any further into my chamber.
“Nimueh,” I say, her name strange on my tongue. She is wearing the same dark red today, and her hair falls in bunched together strands that are at once beautiful and wild. I almost hope she doesn't smile, because as beautiful as she is, when I am in this kind of pain I am certain I will see jagged teeth.
“Might I approach you?” she asks, smiling but not enough to let her teeth show.
“... I would stand to greet you--” I try to tell her. She is a member of Uther's court.
“No,” she commands. She commands me, too. “... No, don't stand.”
She crosses the stone floor and the rugs before the bed, and then she sits down on the edge of my bed on the same side where Uther lies. Something in the way she does it makes it hard for me to object, and for the first time I see a sense of age in her eyes, and she too seems young. She reaches into the folds of her dress and draws out one of the tiniest bottles I have ever seen Gaius use, but it seems too ornate for his taste.
“Uther sent me,” she explains, and it serves as more justification than she needs for being there. Instead of forcing the bottle to my lips, as I half-expect, she presses it into my hand lightly. Then, she slowly reaches across and puts her hand on my belly, sliding down until it rests right over the place where I know the pain resides, right over my treacherous womb. She closes her eyes and takes a deep, steady breath. Then she opens them again and whispers some words in a language I don't understand. Her eyes glow a more brilliant gold than I have ever seen up close—then, the pain in my stomach is all but gone.
She smiles again—a little self-satisfied with some look I've also seen on Uther's face.
“Uther sent me for you.”
I can't tell if it's bitterness in her tone or not, but her smile for me seems warm, just like the place where the pain used to be.