Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur

by Nestvold, Ruth

  Yseult knelt on the opposite side of the pallet from Brangwyn, wishing she had not allowed her temper to get the better of her. Luckily, her mother was too busy to notice. She and her cousin took the bard's shoulders and upper thighs in their strong hands while the queen bent over his leg and applied the heated dagger to the inflamed skin, making a slit where the flesh was mottled angry red and sick greenish-yellow, refusing to heal. The vile smell of the wound was compounded by the smell of singing hair and flesh. Her mother was right; it wasn't pleasant. With the cut, ugly green pus began to seep out of the wound, making it even more foul-smelling than before.

  With a violent jerk and a cry, the bard woke, but Yseult and her cousin held him fast. His eyes flew open, and she found herself staring down into irises of the deepest green she had ever seen, a green of sea and faraway places, dark and filled with pain. Her hands tightened convulsively on his shoulder and leg.

  "Bite on this," her mother commanded, handing the young man a piece of the precious mandrake root. "It will dull the pain." He bit down as instructed and closed his eyes again.

  "We will need a dressing for the wound when I'm done," the queen said, addressing Yseult. "Make one with the herbs and some moss."

  Yseult nodded and got up. She set a pot on the fire for more hot water and hurried out of the rath to gather moss. The color reminded her of the bard's eyes, and she clenched her hand around a fistful, fighting unreasonable tears. She didn't know anything about him but those eyes and the planes of his face and the thick braid of his hair, but she did not want him to die. The wound looked as if it had been deep and jagged, but with Yseult the Wise caring for him, surely it could be cured.

  When she returned, her mother was still draining the wound, applying as much pressure as she dared. The bard gasped, his eyes clenched shut. A mixture of pus and blood seeped out of the cut, and the queen cleaned it with the herbal infusion Brangwyn had made. She was more thorough than gentle, and the young man's jaw and the cords of his neck stood out with the effort to fight the pain. After cleansing the wound, she applied the poultice to the cut in his thigh, and over that, the hot sack of moss Yseult prepared. Then the three women bound it with a roll of linen.

  The queen gave the young man a glass of her medicinal wine with essence of nightshade. "Sleep now, bard," she said. "We will have to empty the wound regularly until we have drawn all the poisons out, and you will need your strength."

  He opened his eyes again, and his gaze fixed on Yseult rather than her mother. "Thank you, Lady. I am in your debt." The fishermen had been right: he spoke the dialect of Armorica. As with the language of the Bretain, it was a little difficult to understand, but close enough to the language of Eriu for their peoples to communicate.

  Whether she could understand him or not, she would be happy to listen to that voice. Even as ill as he was, it had the sweetness of running water, deep and pure, washing over her like a clear stream over smooth stones. She could well imagine he sang like the greatest of filid.

  "The wound," he said. "Was it poisoned?"

  Yseult could see that her mother was almost tempted to smile, despite the seriousness of the situation. "If it had been poisoned, you would have been dead long ago," she said gently. "What is your name, bard?"

  "Tandrys," he replied before his eyelids fell closed over his green, green eyes.

  Yseult stared at the prone form of the young Armorican, at the eyelashes resting on his cheeks and the braid of golden-brown hair draped across his shoulder, and hoped passionately that he would recover. She wanted to gaze into those deep green eyes, wanted to hear the voice like running water again.

  * * * *

  Autumn was one of the busiest times of the year. The crops had to be brought in and the grain stored in the grain pits and sealed with loam. Fruit and vegetables had to be harvested and stored or dried, and the earth of the gardens and fields turned over and early winter sowing completed. There were so many things to be seen to, it was easy for Yseult to persuade her mother she should take over the care of the stranger.

  Yseult showed more patience and perseverance with the foreign bard than anyone would have thought her capable of. She sat beside him and applied a poultice of oats, self-heal and mallow to his wound, paying only little attention when Crimthann and his war band returned from a successful raid with a dozen captured cattle in their wake. She drained the wound, ignoring the putrid stench. She fed him gruel and thick broth when he awoke and spoke with her in languages that were strange to her. She looked into his distant green eyes and let the voice from distant places wash over her, and when he was in too much pain, she gave him valerian or nightshade to make him sleep again. With ferfaen she brought down his fever, and for his wound she made sacks of borage and marigold and moss and poultices of plantain and bread mold and birch. She bathed his heated body with cool water, admiring the sleek lines of his chest and belly and thighs, the way his manhood rested in its nest of golden-brown curls. She prayed to Danu and Dian Cecht that he would live. When the harvest celebration began and the first races were held, she told her mother and Brangwyn and Aidenn and Boinda that she wouldn't take part because she couldn't leave her patient. But of course she did leave her patient, when the queen came to check on him herself, or when she was too tired to watch for signs that his condition might be getting worse.

  Finally, on the last day of the fat month, just before day changed to night and a new moon began, just when the door between the worlds was weak, the raging fever in his body broke. Yseult had continued to watch over the bard during the festivities, so that her mother was free to celebrate with Crimthann and Brangwyn with Aidenn, and she would stay with him during the in-between-time. She would guard him from the spirits invoked whenever thanks were given, would ensure that it was not his soul they took in payment for a fat harvest.

  But the spirits did not come for the bard. The next day, the heat of his skin was almost normal, the color of his wound less angry, and Yseult no longer had an excuse to remain by his side.

  * * * *

  Drystan awoke sluggishly, as if swimming to the surface from the bottom of a deep lake, dragging a heavy weight behind him. He was lying on a pallet of straw, in a round, dark room graced with a filtering of sunlight. The roof above him was thatched and the walls around him rough. There was the pungent smell of herbs in his nostrils and the whisper of soft voices at the edge of his consciousness.

  He turned his head slowly in the direction of the voices. At the sight of the vision next to his bed, he wondered if perhaps he was still asleep after all.

  She was tall and proud and very blond, and her figure was encased in a downy green cloak of finest wool over a white linen tunic; winter draped in spring. A filigree fibula of gold pinned the cloak together at her shoulder. Brooches of silver representing twin deer, mirrors of each other, adorned the tunic above her breasts. The silver caught and reflected the firelight, and the deer seemed to shimmer and dance. A torc of gold encircled her neck, proclaiming her high rank. Her hair was arranged in two tresses, adorned with glass beads at the end; white-blond hair, gold in one light and silver in another. Soft light, like moonlight, radiated from her brow, and in her cheek she had a dimple that came and went. But her eyes outshone everything, of a blue so pale they seemed to glow. She was a tall, white flame, and Drystan had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

  He decided he was still dreaming.

  "His fever broke just before the new moon. He should survive now, shouldn't he?" the vision asked. He thought he heard anxiety in her voice.

  "I think so. The infection is receding," another woman said, nearly as beautiful as the first. But her beauty did not have the drama of the younger woman's. While they were very similar, the older woman had hair more golden and eyes more blue.

  "The wound still smells putrid, though," the vision pointed out.

  Perhaps he wasn't dreaming after all. Drystan chuckled despite the pain.

  The two women turned to him, pleased smiles
on their faces. "I hope my daughter didn't offend you, fili," the elder said. "We were merely discussing your recovery."

  Fili? They were addressing him with the title of a druid? Perhaps he was still dreaming. "I'm no druid."

  "We still respect our bards here in Eriu, Tandrys. To us you are fili, and a very great artist, I hear. Do you remember anything of your illness?"

  Drystan shook his head. "Nothing after the fishermen pulled me into their boat."

  "Then we must make ourselves known to you. We are the Yseults of Eriu. I am known as 'the Wise' and my daughter as 'the Fair.' We have been treating your injury."

  Of course. He was recovering, so Yseult the Wise must have found him. "How did I get here?"

  "The fishermen brought you."

  "They seemed to think you deserved treatment by a queen," the younger Yseult added with a teasing smile.

  He tried not to stare. "Then I am very lucky."

  "How did you come to be drifting off the coast of Rath Inber with a festering wound in your leg?" the queen asked, and Drystan dragged his attention away from her daughter. Yseult the Fair. Meant for Marcus of Dumnonia.

  His father.

  "I was traveling with a merchant ship to Hispania when we met with pirates."

  "And the pirates set you out."

  He nodded.

  "Why didn't they kill you outright?"

  "They said it was bad luck to kill a bard."

  The younger Yseult chuckled and he glanced back at her, at those eyes that seemed to come straight from the Otherworld. The rims of the pupils were blue-gray, but toward the middle they seemed almost white.

  "Are you well enough to tell us your story?" the queen asked gently.

  "I think so." He was very tired, his head spun, and his leg ached, dull and throbbing, but he owed them a story if nothing else, owed them at least an entertainingly elaborate lie. Murchad's sister and niece probably would have given their fame to see the man they were doing their best to save dead. But without the lie, it would be his life — and he never would have been blessed with the sight of Yseult the Fair. He clung to both.

  "Perhaps not yet, mother," the young Yseult said, touching the queen's elbow.

  Drystan shook his head. "No, no. I have enough energy for a few words. I was training to become a bard in Armorica," he began slowly. "I had talent enough, but the training is long and the rewards limited. One of my uncles is a merchant, and he offered me a position on his ship and a share of the profits. Greed won and I set off with them for Hispania."

  "Hispania is far from this coast."

  "We headed for Eriu first to buy hounds to sell in Brigantium." One lie begets other lies, as Blodewedd used to say. Already his own web of lies was becoming more complex, and he was hardly in a condition to think. He closed his eyes.

  "We should change the dressing and leave him now," he heard the younger Yseult murmur. He would have opened his eyes to take in the shock of her beauty again, but sleep was advancing on him rapidly. He would take the memory of her into his dreams.

  * * * *

  The next time Drystan awoke, he appeared to be alone. Alert enough to be curious, he examined his surroundings in more detail, something he had been too groggy to do before. The round-house where he found himself was a far cry from the massive stone fortress of Dyn Tagell, with its low couches lined with pillows and its Roman bath. By comparison, this was a small building, little more than twice as large as the turf-walled lodgings of the common soldiers at Dyn Tagell, with doors on either side, wicker walls, open wooden beams and a thatched roof. A peat fire burned slowly in a fire pit in the middle of the room. The roof was conical and the peak high, and in the upper reaches along the sides hung bundles of herbs.

  He turned his head, even such a small movement making him dizzy. A woman he had not previously noticed stepped out of the shadows, her hair as dark as Yseult's was light, her beauty as quiet as Yseult's was dramatic.

  "How are you feeling?" she asked, laying a cool palm on his forehead.

  "Weak, but better," Drystan said.

  The dark-haired woman nodded and withdrew her hand. "Your fever still has not returned. But it will be some days before you are recovered enough to walk again."

  Drystan grinned. "I noticed."

  A smile touched the young woman's serious face. "The food and drink we have prepared for you will help you to regain your strength."

  "Thank you for your help. You are ...?"

  "I am Brangwyn ingen Murchada, the queen's niece and Yseult's cousin."

  It was a good thing he was still too ill to show his surprise. He closed his eyes.

  "Before you fall sleep again, you must eat and drink," she insisted, and Drystan nodded weakly before she moved to the fire to fetch him something.

  Brangwyn, daughter of Murchad — the man he had killed. He had not known the giant had a daughter, and now she was nursing him back to health.

  He swallowed the soup Brangwyn brought, but as he did, he saw the giant falling again, saw the blood bubbling out of his mouth and himself puking into the ground near the dead man's feet. Drystan choked and put the bowl to the side, then lifted a hand to his mouth to keep from retching.

  "You can't eat, fili?" Brangwyn asked. He shook his head. She hurried away, a look of concern on her face, and Drystan sought the blessed oblivion of sleep again.

  * * * *

  With the passing days, he began to spend more time awake than asleep, and each time he woke, the return to consciousness was less of a struggle. He learned he had been at Ard Ladrann for almost a month, most of that time asleep or delirious. He remained groggy, his brain as fogged as if he had been drinking wine all day, but he could concentrate more and more on what was going on around him, and the retching incident did not repeat itself.

  When his wound had lost the vile stench and they judged him strong enough to be moved, he was put on a litter and carried from the house of healing to a larger round-house where they could keep an eye on him without leaving their work. Now when he awoke, it was to the sing-song voice of a bard or soft conversation and laughter. And often, Yseult the Fair was there, if not by his side, then somewhere not far away.

  As now. When he turned his head to look, a pale figure detached itself from the circle around the fire and moved in his direction.

  "How are you this evening, fili?" she asked. In the light of the fire, she looked more like her mother, more day than night, her moon-coloring muted by the orange glow.

  "Better every time I awake, thanks to you."

  She smiled, a smile he realized with a start he hungered to see every day for the rest of his life. How could he have feelings so strong when he himself was so weak? Perhaps it wasn't surprising; if he were stronger, he might have himself more under control. Few things would be as stupid as falling in love with Yseult the Fair, princess of Eriu, daughter of the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

  A woman his father had intended to marry.

  The queen joined them in the shadows at the foot of his bed. "Good evening, Tandrys."

  "Good evening, Lady."

  Yseult the Wise mustered him critically. "Good, there is more color in your cheeks now."

  "The poultices of comfrey are bringing down the swelling," young Yseult said.

  He could understand their speech — there had been several Erainn warriors at Bro Leon — but it often took more concentration than he was capable of with his brain still muddled from weeks of fever.

  "How do you feel?" the queen asked.

  "I'm tired much of the time, but at least now of an evening I can watch and listen to the other bards. Even three days ago, I could not have done so."

  The queen smiled, and Drystan presumed it was his habit of counting the time in days. Here in Eriu, the measure of time was nights.

  "Soon you will be able to play for us yourself," she said, and they all chuckled. He was recovering, but it was obvious to all that it would still be some time before he had the energy to perform.
/>   "As soon as I can, Lady. I could never perform enough to repay you for saving my life."

  "Perhaps there is something else you can do for us."

  "Certainly."

  "Yseult has not worked much on the harp since she left Druim Dara over a year ago, and Ard Ladrann has few bards. If you could work with her when you feel strong enough, we would consider that sufficient payment for treating you."

  Drystan glanced back at the younger Yseult standing next to him, at that smile he longed for, and wondered what daily contact would do to his peace of mind. Somehow, he couldn't find it in him to worry. "Gladly, Lady."

  "Don't bother trying to teach me to sing, though," the younger Yseult added. "I cannot. So in order not to dishonor myself or my rath, I don't."

  Drystan grinned. His fair one had a sense of humor.

  "Of course," the queen continued, "if you are willing to take on the duties of a bard here at Ard Ladrann once you recover, you can earn a place for yourself at the rath. The tuath takes care of its own. An ordinary patient would need to reimburse the tuath and its healers in gold or cattle or slaves for his treatment, but not filid."

  He shook his head, finding it hard to believe how quickly they were willing to make a place for him here. "I can hardly claim treatment as a fili. I am not even fully trained."

  "Perhaps one of the other bards will work with you."

  The bards of Eriu were known as the greatest in the world. "I would be honored. You are far better to me than I deserve."

  "It is we who are honored," the queen said, sounding almost stern, and Drystan had to smile. "According to the fishermen who brought you here, the world would be a poorer place if you had been allowed to die. A talent as fine as that deserves whatever we can do to save it and keep it. Perhaps you will bring honor to Ard Ladrann before you leave again."

  Drystan stared at the queen. Her attitude was even more difficult to understand than the language. Because of his voice and his ability on the harp, talents which meant little in Armorica or Dumnonia, he was to be given a place of honor among strangers?