Arawn came to a halt in the middle of his antechamber, watching the women fuss around Ilsa. They settled her in the chair, adjusted the folds of her gown about her knees and ankles and wrapped the warm cloak about her shoulders. Ilsa accepted the assistance without complaint, even though her helplessness would act as a burr under the saddle for a woman like her.
He was pleased to see her.
The sensation was still a novel one, even though it was not the first time he had experienced it. It was also too new for him to dare speak of it. It sat in his chest like a warm coal, red and glowing. If he revealed its existence to anyone, then maybe the petty gods who cursed him would see and take even this from him.
Perhaps he did not deserve this contentment. He’d sat beneath an oak in the forest for three days, without food and with little water, acquainting himself with the blackness of his nature and how everything he touched crumbled into ruin.
He had been driven there by the reminder that he was cursed, which he had almost forgotten in the press of affairs and the pleasantness of days with Ilsa in them. He’d sat beneath the oak and reminded himself it was not his lot to love others, not if the gods intended to take them away.
Only it was too late. He had forgotten his role and now he was being punished for daring to bring into his life what every other man and woman enjoyed every day.
Except, except…Ilsa was a part of his life now. If she did not die and not even Nimue would assure him she would not—then, if she died, it would be his fault.
If she did not die—and oh, how he longed that she lived!—if she did not die, then he must treat her as objectively and distantly as he had in the first days of their marriage. It was safer that way.
Even before Colwyn found him under that bleak, damp oak, Arawn had been preparing to return, to find what news awaited him.
Colwyn assured him Ilsa lived and Arawn staggered, reaching out to support himself against the trunk.
She lived!
Moments passed before Arawn thought to ask after the child.
On the ride back to Lorient, Arawn railed at himself. He must keep his distance once more. To draw close to her only brought the curse down upon her and everyone around her.
Only, when he saw her lying so still and small upon his bed, every iron intention melted. He’d sunk upon the chair, knowing he was too weak to defy the gods. Ilsa was in his heart and he wanted her there. He wanted her to stay there.
Arawn recalled the startling moment of realization now, as he stood in his antechamber and watched Ilsa prepare for supper and for his arrival. She had not seen him yet.
A light hand touched his arm. Nimue, Lady of the Lake, stood by his side. She had glided there in her silent way, undetected. Her gaze was calm.
“If there really is no hope, Arawn of Brocéliande, then it does not matter what you do or how you think, does it?”
Startled, Arawn considered her. He had long ago ceased to be surprised by what the Lady—no matter which Lady it was—knew of thoughts and feelings he spoke of to no living soul. “I suppose, no, there is not,” he said, thinking it through.
Ilsa saw him, then. Her smile was small and warm, unlike the polite expression she used for everyone else.
Arawn’s heart shifted. “How do I keep her, Nimue? How do I break this curse? There must be a way. Tell me.”
“It was not my curse, Arawn,” she said softly. “It was not Rhonwen’s either. She only saw the outcome.”
“My first-born,” he said bitterly.
“Take comfort in the fact that no man knows what lies in the future,” Nimue said. “Not even the gods who cursed you can control all fates.”
“You know the future. You control fates.”
“Even I must work around them, Arawn. Shall we go in? Ilsa looks worried.”
They moved to the table.
“Thank you, ladies,” Ilsa told her women.
Gwen touched Ilsa’s shoulder, then gathered up the other women and sailed from the suite. They would take their own suppers in the dining room. They passed the servants bringing the meal platters.
“You two look anxious,” Ilsa said, as the plates were laid out. “What were you talking about?”
Nimue sat on the small stool while Arawn took his usual chair. He glanced at the Lady, trying to warn her not to answer truthfully.
Nimue did not glance at him. She gave a small shrug, her expression rueful. “Only that I must return to my lands tomorrow. I am no longer needed here.”
“Oh,” Ilsa said, with a sad note. “You must?”
“There is much to do,” Nimue said. “We will see each other in Campbon the summer after this one, and it will be as if only a few days have passed when we do.”
Arawn shook his head. He had not told anyone yet, not even Elaine, that Ban’s claim to Benoic had been upheld by Ambrosius. No date for a wedding had been mentioned. Apparently, it would be decided the wedding should take place the year after this.
The servants left, closing the door behind them, leaving the three of them alone in the room.
Ilsa put down her knife. “Lady du Lac, if I may ask…” She bit her lip.
Nimue considered her. “You want to know if the curse is real.”
Ilsa’s gaze flickered toward Arawn. She looked back at Nimue. “Merlin said death would come. Only he said it would come to all first children. He did not say ‘first-born’. If I am to have another child…” Her cheeks tinged pink. “Then it would not be my first, would it?”
Nimue sighed. “I do not know,” she said, her tone honest. “Prophecy is a slippery tool. The more people who use it, the less clear the future becomes. I did not know Merlin told you that. For one like him to speak of children and matters of the hearth tells me my own sense of the future is true.”
Ilsa frowned.
“As usual, my Lady,” Arawn told her, “You have failed to answer the question.”
“If Arawn is so cursed, then why did he get sick, too?” Ilsa demanded, the words bursting from her as if she had been holding them back with great effort. “If he is the source of the blights upon the kingdom, then he should walk among the terrors unscathed. Yet he fell, just as we all did.”
“He was spared, just as you all were,” Nimue replied. “The gods spared you, Ilsa, so you can help Ambrosius win Britain from the usurper and the Saxons. He will need every hand in the next few years…even yours.”
Arawn’s gut tightened. His chest hurt.
Ilsa stared at Nimue, her eyes wide.
“There, is that a direct enough answer for you, my lady queen?” Nimue asked, with a smile.
Ilsa swallowed. “I am to help? Me?”
“We all will, in the years to come. History will call this Ambrosius’ victory, yet he will take the High King’s chair only because every willing hand across Lesser and Greater Britain raises him to it.”
Arawn shivered. “Years…” he breathed, excitement and hope bubbling in him. Nimue had spoken of years with Ilsa in them.
Nimue turned her head to meet his gaze. “Remember, to even glimpse the future is to change it,” she murmured.
His hope dimmed.
The sick, sinking sensation angered him. He shook his head. “I will no longer believe or listen to anything about the future or curses or hope. I refuse to. I will live only for this day as any other normal man.”
Yet it sounded like shallow bravado, even to him.
Once Nimue left and the servants cleared the table, Arawn helped Ilsa back to the bed. She sighed as she settled on it. Even the simple movement to the table and back exhausted her.
Arawn surprised her by sitting on the bed beside her. “Do you need Gwen? Or can you manage?”
“I may just rest as I am and sleep for days,” Ilsa admitted. “I will manage,” she added, as Arawn frowned.
He reached into the pouch at his hip. “There is something I have been meaning to return to you.” He held out his hand.
The heavy ring he had given her on the
ir wedding night laid on his palm.
Ilsa pressed her left hand with her right. “I can never keep it on my hand,” she confessed with a sigh. “Even more so, now.” Her fingers were thinner. The ring constantly dropped from her hand.
“I know,” Arawn said. He picked up her hand and threaded the ring back onto the correct finger. “That is why I had this made.” He reached into the pouch once more and held up a smaller, finer ring, which was unadorned and rounded in the middle. He pushed the second ring onto the same finger. It slid over her knuckle and came to rest just above it. It was small enough that it stayed firmly in place.
She stared at it, puzzled.
Arawn lifted her wrist and shook her hand, smiling.
The larger ring slid down her finger to clink against the small one. It stayed there, the rounded middle of the little ring too wide for the larger one to slide over and escape.
Ilsa gave a soft laugh. “The small one is so tight, I may never be able to remove it.”
“Which is just as it should be,” Arawn said. He turned the big ring so the stone was facing outward. “It is yours to keep, now.”
He leaned and touched his lips to her cheek. “Sleep well.”
For a while after he was gone, Ilsa rested with her hand on the pillow beside her, staring at the big ring and the small one. Seeing the two of them together made her heart beat heavily with an emotion she did not understand.
Chapter Twenty-One
Two summers later.
Ilsa waved her hand to disperse the dust the riders kicked up, as the Lady’s white gelding settled beside Mercury. The gelding snorted in recognition which made Mercury’s eyes roll. Ilsa patted his neck to settle him, as the other riders in Nimue’s party fell in with the rest of the company.
Nimue was exactly as Ilsa remembered her—fair and glowing, dressed in white, slender and wise beyond her years, even though she was still young. She peered at the world with the eyes of a soul which had seen more than any human ought.
Yet the Lady’s smile was warm. “Queen Ilsa. It is two summers later. Has the time between flown as I thought it would?”
Rhodri gave a soft call. The horses moved forward again. They were a large company. Budic and Arawn had sent patrols up and down the Via Strata for years, to make the road safer for travel. The journey so far had been smooth and swift.
Ilsa considered Nimue, startled. She remembered the supper when Nimue had spoken of the next time they would meet. “I believed everything else you said that night,” Ilsa said now. “I just did not believe that.”
The time had streaked by like a falling star. Each day was filled with work and more work, as Arawn found fresh ways to help people collect water and thrive.
There had been rain both spring seasons, although not nearly enough to declare the drought broken. No rain had fallen at all last summer, which had been dry and hot and exhausting.
The water-making equipment Ilsa devised was now used across the kingdom to routinely create water for drinking. Even that water was rationed, for the source water used to make it was often stagnating river water, of which there was very little.
Carts filled with water barrels heading for the ocean to collect seawater for the stills had become common, passing along either side of the Blavet.
It took a full barrel of seawater to make just under half a barrel of potable water. Not enough water was made to irrigate the fields, which lay dusty and dry. Domestic animals were turned loose to fend for themselves. When Ilsa hunted to restock the household’s stores and help the people of Lorient, her prey was just as likely to be a village pig or a goat.
The stills and the hunting helped everyone. Ilsa used hunting as an excuse to escape Lorient and the king’s house, and the mutters and sidelong glances of the people in both.
It would be two years, this solstice, since she had fallen ill and lost the child. In all that time, she had not quickened again with child, although it was not for want of trying.
The first time anyone dared suggest to Arawn that he put Ilsa aside and find another wife, his fury had driven every man from the room but Stilicho, who silently picked up the books and slates and cups Arawn flung after them.
Ilsa had been in the bed chamber that day. His anger was so intense, she was afraid to move from the table where she was writing a letter to Evaine, not even to see if she could mitigate Arawn’s temper in some way.
Instead, Arawn came to her. He bent over the table, his hands upon it, his head hanging, as he breathed deeply. Then he blew out his breath in a gusty sigh and kissed her temple. “They are fools, all of them. I would be just as foolish to cast you aside. I have no intention of suffering through the loss of another first child.”
Ilsa let herself be reassured by him, although she was not blind to the murmurs and speculation and the sharp examinations of her waist wherever she went. Hunting took her away from all that. No one measured her girth when she delivered fresh meat to them.
Both she and Arawn clung to the sliver of hope Merlin’s muttered prophecy had given them. They had each lost a first child. Now, perhaps, if they could endure the tribulations of the land, they may yet make a second child. Perhaps that child would break the curse, for it would still be the first born child.
“It does, indeed, seem only a few days ago when we last met,” Ilsa told Nimue.
Nimue wore a small smile, as if she had followed the train of Ilsa thoughts back over the seasons. Then, the Lady bent forward to look past Ilsa to Elaine, who rode beside Ilsa.
“Princess, you look quite glorious,” Nimue observed.
Elaine, who rarely wore anything but a deeply happy smile these days, laughed freely. “You may blame Ilsa for that. The flax all died in the fields so Ilsa had us beat and spin sea grass, of which there is an abundance.” She tugged at the sleeve of her travel gown, which was a variegated blue, for sea grass did not take kindly to dyes. “I do believe it is tougher than wool. But for seagrass, I would be riding naked.”
Ilsa smiled, as Nimue’s brow lifted.
“I do believe you have grown at least three hand spans taller, Elaine,” Nimue decided. “No wonder you are in need of new garments.”
“I’m far taller than Ilsa now,” Elaine said.
“Only when you do not slouch upon your horse,” Ilsa replied calmly.
Elaine straightened her back with a tiny scowl and Nimue laughed.
It was a pleasant journey to Vennes. As they had for Evaine’s wedding, Budic and his people waited to join the company there. Among them was Budic’s queen, Hefina, and their son, Hoel, who was still a child and sat in the wagon with other children.
This time, Ambrosius, Uther and Ambrosius’ senior officers and other staff were also waiting in Vennes. There were new faces among Ambrosius’ company, including women and children. An officer whom Ilsa did not remember from the last time she visited Carnac sat upon a great black horse on Ambrosius’ other side from Uther. The man was older than either of them, with a sharp, clear gaze and heavy shoulders which spoke of a lifetime spent fighting.
Ambrosius introduced him to Arawn as Cadfael, recently from the northern mountains of Britain, “and one of my most loyal men there.”
A woman sat on the new officer’s left whose beauty was as great as Elaine’s. While Elaine was raven dark and clear skinned, this woman was brown of hair and eyes, conveying warmth and gentleness. She wore Roman-styled garments, her cloak spread out upon the rear of her horse, her cream-colored veil fluttering down her back, calm and self-possessed.
It was not until they camped that night that Ilsa learned of her name. Lynette was Cadfael’s wife and the mother of their five children. Two of those children were traveling to the wedding with them. The tall boy of sixteen, Bricius, looked exactly like his father, down to the scowl he wore most often. Bricius wore a sword which looked too large for his young, lanky body. The other child was a daughter, Alis, who was on the verge of womanhood.
“I have three more at home in Carnac,”
Lynette said, with a fond smile as she sent her two to collect their supper at the cooking pot. She turned to Nimue. “Lady, I have heard much about you since I arrived in Carnac. I believe you have the Sight, yes?”
“I am not the first lady you’ve met with that gift.” Nimue’s tone took the question out of her words.
Lynette’s smile was wise. “You know the answer.”
“The Princess Vivian,” Nimue said.
“Merlin’s mother,” Lynette replied. “When we were forced to abandon Britain, I did not suspect I would find Merlin here. His whereabouts has not traveled to Britain, while everyone knows Ambrosius is here.”
Queen Hefina, Budic’s wife, who stood in the circle of older women, frowned. “Vivian of Dyfed? Vivian is my cousin. We once wrote to each other all the time, until she cloistered herself in the nunnery.”
Lynette’s smile was warm. “I was Vivian’s companion. It was I who wrote her letters.”
Hefina’s shoulders relaxed. “How odd to meet you here, after all this time.”
“Not as odd as it seems,” Lynette replied. “From Nimue’s expression I can tell that our meeting was not a happy accident.” She raised her brow at Nimue.
For the first time since Ilsa had met Nimue, the Lady of the Lake looked surprised by something. “A good guess, Lady Lynette?” she asked.
Lynette’s smile grew. “I spent years with Vivian. I know the signs.”
Nimue put her hands together. “Then I have no need to remind you of the great circle which binds us and brings us together as needed.”
“And I thought it was my wedding doing that,” Elaine said lightly, making the women laugh.
They were on the road once more, heading for Guannes and Campbon, when Lynette told Ilsa the reasons why they had fled Britain. Nimue listened with sharp attention, while Elaine’s gaze grew unfocused. The shift of power among leaders was not yet one of Elaine’s interests.
Lynette’s gray rubbed shoulders with Ilsa’s Mercury, matching step for step, as Lynette spoke. “Cadfael wanted to stay there until Ambrosius came himself and continue to recruit men to Ambrosius’ banner, as he has for many years now. Only, Vortigern’s son, Catigern, split from his father nearly five years ago. Catigern has been stirring up the eastern kingdoms, pulling them to his banner because of his wild promises of a richer future. His talk is empty, only the eastern lands have borne the brunt of the Saxon incursions for generations and are easily swayed by his lure.”
Once and Future Hearts Box One Page 36