by Anna Elliott
ISOLDE STEPPED FROM THE OUTER COURTYARD into the chapel, balancing in her arms a basin of water and a bundle of clean linen rags. The chapel at Dinas Emrys was cool and silent, though the courtyard outside was alive with the shouts of men as the added guards Madoc had posted scrambled to their posts. Twilight was falling, and the candles in the wall torches were lighted, casting a flickering light over the narrow room—and over the man’s lifeless body that lay on a table before the high altar, roughly shrouded in a gray traveling cloak.
Isolde set the water basin down, soaked one of the rags, and began to make Bedwyr ready for burial, wiping the dirt and blood away from his white marble face. This, too, she had done many times before.
They had reached Dinas Emrys without further attack, though the nerves of all had remained on edge throughout the long ride, and as soon as he’d swung himself down from the saddle, Madoc had ordered scouting parties out to cover the surrounding countryside and be sure all was secure.
Now Madoc stood a little distance away with King Dywel of Logres, Cynlas of Rhos standing between the other two.
“Are you certain you want your son buried here, and not on your own lands?” Madoc asked.
Isolde had seen a sheen of moisture come into Cynlas’s eyes hours ago on the forest track as he looked down at the body of his son, but his face now, though streaked with the dirt of travel, was still and hard and almost as lifeless as that of his son.
“When a warrior dies, you bury him and walk away. My son would care little for where his grave lies.” Cynlas was silent, his gaze fixed straight ahead. Then he turned to Madoc and said, with sudden violence, “What I can’t understand is why you continue to trust her.”
Isolde’s hands went still, and then she looked up to see Cynlas’s gaze fixed on her. His face was still all but immobile, though oddly that only made his fury more keenly felt, as though a caged wild beast looked out from behind the frighteningly blank eyes.
Beside him, Dywel put a restraining hand on Cynlas’s shoulder and spoke with the slightly awkward, toothless lisp. “My lord Cynlath. This is hardly the time—”
His voice was quiet, and Isolde thought how strange it was that again Dywel’s should be the voice of peace. She’d seen his face in the forest as he fought the Saxon attackers with the rest, and had known that what Con had told her had been true. Dywel fought like a man possessed of demons, his handsome face so distorted by rage as to be all but unknowable, save for the head of tightly curling coal-black hair.
Now, though, it was Cynlas’s mouth that contorted in a spasm of anger, and he shook off the other man’s hand.
“Yes, you.” Cynlas’s voice had a harsh, metallic edge, and his hands were balled into fists as he took a step nearer Isolde. “You were wedded to Marche, as King Goram said. You knew where Marche was. How do we know you’re not a traitor? Sent here by Marche to betray us all?”
Isolde, standing beside the body of Cynlas’s son, with the touch of his lifeless flesh still at her fingertips, found she couldn’t resent Cynlas’s suspicion—or even be angry at his tone. Though she was suddenly aware of just how tired she was, her every muscle stiff and aching from the long day’s ride. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d sat in the ferryman’s round coracle and felt the salt breeze on her face as they crossed the sea back from Ynys Mon.
“You’re quite right,” she said to Cynlas. “You have no reason to trust me—none. And if you believe I’m a traitor, I know there’s little I can say that will change your mind. But I can promise you that if Marche had known I’d be one of the party riding back from Ynys Mon—if he’d had any part of the attack today—I’d be lying here, dead, next to your son. And that I can’t possibly say how much I wish I could have saved Bedwyr’s life.”
For a long moment, Cynlas’s eyes held hers. And then, without warning, the grim immobility of his face shattered, twisted in a spasm of pain, and he sank down on one of the chapel’s wooden benches, his head buried in his hands.
Both Madoc and Dywel stood looking down at the other man as his shoulders shook. Dywel shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hands clasped behind him, as though he were wishing himself anywhere but here, and after a moment he said, his voice sounding slightly embarrassed, “Always better for a man to theek vengeance than to grieve.”
Madoc’s eyes, though, were grave and pitying, and Isolde could see him hesitate as though wondering whether Cynlas would only take a word or gesture from him as an insult.
But before Madoc could either move or speak, Cynlas had drawn himself stiffly upright, dragging a hand across his red-rimmed eyes and drawing a ragged breath.
“I beg pardon, Lady Isolde.” He spoke stiffly, and with an attempt at dignity that might have been pathetic in a man less self-assured, but his gaze was very direct. “You gave my son a quick death, and a clean one—the kind of death every man hopes to meet. And you eased his passing. I am in your debt.”
Isolde’s face must have mirrored her shock at the words, for Cynlas said, almost fiercely, “You didn’t think I’d believe, did you?”
“No,” Isolde said. “I didn’t.”
Cynlas jerked his chin in confirmation. Beneath the shock of russet hair, his face was still fiercely controlled, but his voice, when he spoke, was low and rough with feeling. “You said, Lady Isolde, that you couldn’t say how much you wish you could have saved my son’s life. But you needed no words—the look on your face as you spoke told me clearly enough.”
He passed a hand across his face again, and Isolde saw a long, jagged scratch on his wrist that had trailed dried blood onto his sleeve. “I’ve a reputation for temper, I know—and well deserved it is, as I’d be the first to say. I don’t suffer fools—I don’t coddle weakness. And I don’t”—his jaw hardened, and Isolde thought he gave the briefest flicker of a look in Madoc’s direction—“forgive those who have crossed me or done me a wrong.” Cynlas paused, then let out his breath, his eyes again fixed on Isolde’s. “But I’d make a poor king, Lady Isolde, did I not recognize the truth when it hits me in the face—or looks out at me from a woman’s eyes.”
Almost, Isolde would have wished he’d stayed angry. Suspicion was somehow easier to bear than trust just now. She felt a lump come into her throat, but she let Cynlas take her hand, and said, “Thank you, my lord Cynlas.”
She remembered all Bedwyr’s restless, belligerent energy at the feast on Ynys Mon. And she could still hear the echo of his voice. Lady …don’t let me die. And do all fighting men actually believe they hope for such a death, she thought, or is that only a bed tale to comfort children when they cry?
The words almost choked her, but she made herself say, “If you think that I made Bedwyr’s death easier, then I’m glad.”
And then she turned, taking up the wet rag once again and rubbing the blood and dirt gently from Bedwyr’s hands and arms. The three men stood in silence for a time, and then Madoc cleared his throat, turning to Cynlas again. “I know this is a poor time for such a question, but I must know. What did Goram mean when he spoke of your having lost another son?”
Glancing up, Isolde saw a tide of color sweep up Cynlas’s neck then ebb away, leaving his face starkly pale against the russet hair, and for a moment she thought he would refuse to speak. But then he let out his breath, something of the stiff, immobile mask creeping once more over his face.
“It was three years ago—nearly four, now.” Cynlas looked down at his hands resting on his knees. The knuckles of the right hand were grazed, and he rubbed at them absently before going on.
“Goram and his men had been raiding the settlements along our shores. Small surprise, there.” Cynlas’s mouth thinned. “Every spring brings more of the sea wolves to our shores. We try to guard the coast—but we’ve not forces enough to cover the whole. And they strike fast—sail into shore their boats. By the time we’ve got troops there, a whole settlement’s burned to the ground. The men slaughtered like so many sheep. The women and children taken in fetters to be
sold as slaves.”
Cynlas paused. “My son—my eldest son, Gethin—insisted we’d only put a halt to the raids if we moved to the attack instead of constant defense. Carried the fight onto Goram’s shores. And to carry out the campaign, he contracted with a band of mercenaries—masterless men for hire to the highest pay. I was against it. An allegiance bought is an allegiance just as easily sold to someone with a fatter purse. But Gethin was bent on his own way. He engaged the services of the band I speak of. Wild men. Mongrels and half-breeds. Saxons—Britons—men of Ireland and Gaul. Their leader—”
Cynlas stopped again, his eyes moving once more to the body of his second son, his jaw tightening, as though he forced himself to speak the words through his clenched teeth. “Their leader was such a one. Saxon to look at, though his speech was that of a man Briton-born. He said he could guide our ships to Goram’s shores. That he knew Goram’s country—knew what Goram’s defenses would be.” Cynlas’s mouth stretched again, and he gave a short, mirthless bark of laughter. “He was telling the truth there, at least.
“We arrived in Ireland. Made camp on the crest of a hill. A good position for battle, as my son’s mercenaries pointed out. We pitched our tents and posted a guard just as the sun was going down.”
Cynlas broke off once more and was silent so long that Dywel asked, “And then?”
Cynlas looked up. “And then?” he repeated. He gave another short, harsh laugh. “And then we woke the next morning to find the mercenary dogs decamped in the night and gone. And Goram’s army massed at the foot of the hill. The whole campaign was a fool’s trap—and we’d walked straight in. Been sold out by men who change allegiance as other men change their whores.”
Cynlas’s eyes were still fixed on Bedwyr’s body but had darkened as though, lost in memory, he scarcely saw even his dead son. “Nothing to be done but fight. We charged—and it was a slaughter. Two hundred and more of our men were killed. A hundred more taken captive—Gethin was one of those. I called a retreat—drew back to the crest of the hill. Sent a messenger to Goram, offering to ransom my son and the others of my men he held. That was at sundown. All that night we waited—watched the Irish campfires and waited for Goram to respond. And at dawn we got our answer. Goram had built a gallows in the no-man’s-land between our two camps.”
Cynlas stopped. Isolde saw his hands clench again, but his voice, when he went on, was flat and all but expressionless. “He hung my messenger first. Then the men-at-arms. He kept my son for last. The gallows was some distance away. But I knew Gethin by the color of his hair. Red. Like my own.”
For a long moment after Cynlas ceased speaking, the chapel was silent, the only sound the men’s voices and the occasional bark of a war hound from the courtyard outside. Then Madoc cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I’d known, I would never have asked you to join the delegation to Goram.”
Cynlas’s face quivered briefly, then hardened once more. “What Goram did was war. Men are taken, men die. It’s the way battles are waged. But the mercenary dog who betrayed us—”
Cynlas paused, then said, in the same flat tone, “Him I would know again. And one day I will find him and pay him for the deaths of both my sons and my men.”
And then he straightened his shoulders and turned to Madoc, his weathered face still granite hard, though his eyes were fixed and bright once more. “The deaths of both my sons must have a purpose, my lord Madoc.” His tone made the words almost a threat. “Otherwise they are not to be borne.”
Chapter Five
ISOLDE STOOD A MOMENT, LOOKING down at Bedwyr’s face, and thought as she often had before that any claim of death resembling sleep was another bed tale for children. Bedwyr’s face was peaceful, all trace of pain smoothed away by death’s hand, but she would never have mistaken him for a man asleep. She had finished here, though. The young man’s body was washed and dressed in clean breeches and an ermine-trimmed tunic and shrouded in a long white cloak. Ready for burial.
She had thought the silent chapel empty, save for Bedwyr and herself, but as she turned to go, she saw a man seated on one of the benches at the far rear of the room, his face in shadow. She was too tired for either fear or surprise, only took up the basin and bundle of dirtied rags and started down the chapel’s central aisle. Night had fallen, and the chapel was lighted by the wall candles alone, but as Isolde moved towards the door, he rose and she recognized his form.
“My lord Madoc. I thought you’d gone with King Cynlas.”
Madoc made her a brief bow, then fell into step beside her. “I had. He abruptly remembered, though, why I was about the last man at Dinas Emrys he would have chosen to share his grief, so I returned. And besides, he’s best on his own just now.”
Madoc remained silent as they stepped from the chapel into the outside courtyard. The fortress’ main gates lighted by a pair of burning resin torches, and the night sky was gray and luminous with rain clouds. Here and there, along the looming bulk of the outer ramparts, a helmeted sentry stood alert, spear and shield at the ready, staring out into the night.
“I wanted to speak with you in private, Lady Isolde. If you would.”
“Of course.” Isolde was too tired as well to wonder about what Madoc might wish to say. But even so, his first words took her by surprise.
“Do you believe, Lady Isolde, in a life after this one?”
Isolde raised a hand and rubbed the aching muscles at the nape of her neck. “You waited in the chapel all this while to ask me that?” Then she stopped. She could still see Bedwyr’s lifeless face every time she closed her eyes. “I’ve just come from preparing a man’s body for burial. And if you ask me whether I felt anything of his presence—whether I felt anything was left of Bedwyr but a kind of empty husk—I’d have to say no. But then—”
Isolde paused again, her gaze on the luminous sky above. “Sometimes I’ve felt as though …as though the world were an endlessly spinning wheel that sometimes—just rarely—stops and rests on a balance. So I don’t know. Maybe that is a god—or someone else beyond the veil to the Otherworld—thinking about me?”
Madoc looked at her curiously and then said, “Do you have faith in the gods, Lady Isolde?”
Isolde was silent a moment before answering. But this was, after all, why she made herself see Marche in the scrying waters time after time. Because she wanted to believe herself meant to use the power of seeing Marche for Britain’s defense. Because she would rather believe that there was a purpose in the Sight’s having flooded back to her now.
She looked up at Madoc and said, “Hope, maybe, if not quite faith.” The silence rested between them a beat, and then she said, “Why do you ask me, though? You believe in the Christian God already. And doesn’t your holy book promise heaven to all believers?”
“So it does.” Madoc’s broad-set shoulders jerked impatiently.
They were passing beneath a pair of wall-mounted torches, and by their flickering orange light Isolde saw the bleakness carved into Madoc’s scarred face. “The Bible also says, Thou shalt not kill. And in such times as these, that sometimes seems to me about as much use as telling a man to take a piss into a strong wind.”
He pushed a hand through his wiry dark hair, his mouth twisting in a quick, mirthless smile. “You know, I thought of taking the cowl and becoming a monk when my wife died three years ago. Instead—”
He broke off, and then said with a brief, bitter laugh. “King Arthur’s the lucky one. Eternally riding out at twilight to wreak vengeance on his enemies. While the rest of us poor mortal fools are left to battle amidst the wreckage he left behind.”
Isolde thought as she had once before of the Old Ones, who had built their own timber halls in this place long before—and had killed a king by the triple death every seven years, so that his blood might water the earth and renew the land. Maybe, she thought, watching Madoc’s scarred face, not so much has changed since that time after all.
Then Madoc shook his head as though throw
ing off the thought. “But to answer your question, no. I didn’t wait in the chapel just to drivel on about the fate of the dead. What I wished to speak to you about was the meeting on Ynys Mon.”
They were passing the work buildings—the armorer’s and smith’s sheds, bake houses and weaving rooms, all dark and deserted at this hour of the night. Madoc gestured to a stone bench, sheltered by an overhang of thatched ramparts. “Will you sit?” he asked. “Or had you rather be inside, out of the rain?”
The rain had slowed to little more than a fine, light mist, and the air was warmer than it had been, with the earth-scented promise of spring. Isolde shook her head. “No, this will be fine.” She sat down, drawing her cloak about her, and then looked up at Madoc. “I’m sorry for what I said—for losing my temper with King Goram and Hywell, I mean.”
Madoc seated himself, leaning back against the wall behind them and shook his head. “Don’t be. It would have made no difference what you said. My own guess is that Goram’s mind was made up before ever he set foot on Ynys Mon.”
In the time she’d known him, Isolde had seldom seen Madoc so much as smile, but now he gave a sudden laugh, sounding all at once younger and without the usual burden of cares. “Besides, I’ll have to say I enjoyed seeing Goram and his old goat of a druid shown up for the liars they are.” He shook his head. “The look on Hywell’s face. I thought he’d dirty that disgusting robe of his.”
Then Madoc sobered. “But no. That wasn’t what I wanted to say, either.” He paused and was silent a beat, then turned to Isolde. “King Goram sent me a messenger this morning—before we left Ynys Mon. Saying that he had reconsidered yesterday’s refusal and naming the price of his allegiance.”
“I see.” Isolde was silent. “I don’t suppose I need to ask what that price was.”
“No.”
Isolde waited until she could trust her voice enough to speak. “Is this, then, what you want from me?” she asked. “That since the council has ruled my marriage to Marche invalid, I now wed King Goram to secure an alliance?”