Will iCloud work with Mail and a Gmail account? Does iCloud  work with Mail and a Gmail account, or do I need to necessarily create a .me account and then forward the mails from gmail to .me ?
If you have a .mac or .me account, you will use that as your iCloud email address. Otherwise, you will get a new mail account. You can either forward your gmail messages or use two different accounts (or not use iCloud for mail).