by Anna Elliott
Instead of answering, Madoc watched her a moment and then said, his voice very quiet, “I am truly sorry, Lady Isolde, that you were ever forced into marriage to Marche.”
There was genuine sorrow, genuine pity and understanding in his black eyes. Isolde’s muscles tensed, and she gritted her teeth, telling herself that Madoc didn’t deserve to have her snap back that he should save his sympathy for when it was wanted or might do any good.
She might loathe being pitied almost as much as she hated to feel as though she was pitying herself. But Madoc had been unconscious, nearly dead of the burns that marked his face on the night she’d married Marche. She could hardly blame him for not having come to her aid.
So she said, quietly, “It was no fault of yours. And you saved my life afterwards, my lord Madoc. I’ve not forgotten that.”
“Perhaps.” She thought the pity was still there, darkening Madoc’s gaze, but then he shook his head. “But in any case, I gave you my word, Lady Isolde, that I would not force you to marry against your own will.” He stopped and sighed, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Though if I’m honest, maybe I would ask it of you. Not gladly—but yes, if I had any faith that Goram would honor such a pact, I might beg you to put your own feelings about the match aside. But I wouldn’t take Goram’s word that his own breath reeked—much less believe him when he says he’ll send his forces to our aid if only I hand over you and Camelerd first.” Madoc laughed shortly. “It would be liking giving a wolf house-room in your hen yard. Let Goram take Camelerd for a toehold in Britain and he’ll have his war parties raiding every part of the land within reach. But all the same—”
Madoc broke off and shook his head. “All the same, I must have a reason—a credible reason—for refusing the match. One that doesn’t depend on my own unwillingness to trust Goram any farther than a child could throw a warrior’s spear. Otherwise, the refusal will be taken as insult—one that would turn him from a neutral force to an enemy. And God knows, we’ve enough of those.” Again the silence rested between them, and then Madoc went on, “I had thought, with your permission, to tell him that you were betrothed already. To me.”
In the mist-filled shadows, Madoc was a little more than a deeper shadow on the bench beside her, his outline broad-shouldered and tall. Isolde realized that she must have jerked back involuntarily, because before she could answer, he said, his voice both wry and, she thought, a little sad, “All right. You needn’t tell me your initial response to the idea.” He stopped and looked away from her a moment before asking, “Is it because of this?” His hand lifted, indicating the burn marks on his face, all but invisible, now, in the dark.
Isolde found herself touched by the gesture and the unexpected vulnerability it betrayed. She said, quickly, “Of course not. You mistake me, my lord Madoc. I was …taken aback, that’s all.”
Something in the quality of Madoc’s silence made Isolde think that he’d recognized more in her reaction than simple surprise. He said nothing, though, and after a moment, she went on, “But asking the council to accept me as your queen can only weaken your own position as High King. You saw yourself just now how quick Lord Cynlas’s suspicions were to rouse.”
“But still you won his trust.”
“This time.” Isolde remembered standing in the chapel with Cynlas and the body of his son, and half wishing that he might be angry with her still. Why? Because of Bedwyr? Or maybe because after seven years of being suspected and doubted at every turn, it felt almost dangerous to think that she might sometimes be able to relax her guard?
“But I was High Queen once before, my lord Madoc,” she went on. “From the time I was thirteen until five months ago when Constantine was killed. I know exactly the council’s response—most will never be able to look at me without seeing my father, Britain’s traitor, or remembering King Arthur, dead at Camlann.”
Beside her on the bench, Madoc frowned, and then said, as though choosing his words with difficulty, “I know I myself said a number of ugly things, Lady Isolde. Made accusations against you. I’d hoped you might have …not forgotten. But forgiven them, perhaps.”
Madoc’s voice sounded so unhappy that Isolde felt a pang of compunction and said quickly, “I have forgiven them. And I’m grateful to you for your offer—more than I can say.” She turned to look up into Madoc’s face, his dark eyes just a gleam of reflected light. “But you’re the High King—perhaps the only man who can ensure Britain survives beyond a few months more. I can’t ask you to risk all that just for the sake of protecting me—you must see that. It was you the council chose High King when Marche turned traitor. And rightly so. Britain needs you.”
“Britain needs me?” Madoc’s voice was tinged with irony, and he shook his head. “Maybe. But I’ve stood at the graves of many other men who thought themselves invaluable to Britain, these last years. That’s beside the point, though. You. …” He passed a hand across the back of his neck, sounding suddenly younger once again. “I’m doing this badly. I—”
He broke off, as though searching for words. “I’ve few friends, Lady Isolde—fewer, since I took the throne as king. And it’s a hard life—and a rough one—spending day after day caught up in battles and raiding parties and war. I’m accustomed to it by now. It’s all I’ve known since I was old enough to raise a sword. But still, I’ve wished …what I mean is that it would be good to have …someone to come home to, after the battle was done.” He stopped again, then said, in the same quiet tone, “I would be …very happy, Lady Isolde, if that could be you.”
Isolde felt her mind go momentarily blank with the shock of the words. Because until now, she’d not have said that Madoc, at heart, either liked or trusted her any more than his councilmen. She could feel, though, in Madoc’s words the ache of desperate loneliness and grief for the wife he’d lost in childbed, three years before. And she knew how much it must be costing him to lay bare his innermost self to her this way.
“I am …honored that you would ask this of me, my lord Madoc. Truly. I—”
She had to stop, because despite the compassion she felt for the man beside her, a sharp stab of panic pulled tight in her chest and made her want to jump up from the bench and get away—anywhere else but here. This was one of those times when she wished more than ever that it didn’t hurt so much, now, to recall the words Trystan had spoken to her years before.
The stars will still shine tomorrow, whatever happens to me here.
Isolde said suddenly, “You never asked me how I could know Hywell and his gods were wrong about where Marche is now.”
“No.” It was too dark too see Madoc’s expression, but she could hear the flicker of a smile in his words. “I’m learning, you see.” And then, before Isolde could respond, he said, “You needn’t …you don’t have to give me an answer now. I can give you until morning—I can’t send word back to Goram until then in any case. So just …think on it for tonight.”
“SHE’S NOT LIKE TO WAKE AGAIN, is she?”
Isolde looked from Marcia’s still, tallow-pale face to Garwen, sitting and spinning in her chair by the bed. She shook her head. “I doubt it, no.” She looked down at Marcia again. The rise and fall of her breathing scarcely lifted the blankets that covered her chest, and her pocked, sharp-featured face was for once relaxed, lines of spite and anger and tension smoothed as though by some unseen hand. “At least she’s beyond pain.”
Garwen bowed her head in agreement, making the heavy jeweled ornaments in her ears flash in the firelight that was the only source of illumination in the room. The soft orange glow was kind to Garwen’s face, as well, softening the marks of age and bringing her nearer that Isolde had yet seen to the lovely young woman she must have been years ago.
“Do you want me to sit with her awhile? If you want to rest—”
But Garwen shook her head, fingers still deftly fashioning a smooth, slender thread of pale cream-colored wool. “No, I will stay. Maybe I’ll doze a bit here beside her. But I’ll be her
e, whether she knows it or no.” She looked up at Marcia. “Poor child. As you say, she’s already passed beyond us. But no one should die alone.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the hiss and crackle of the fire, and the soft whirr of Garwen’s spindle. Then Garwen looked up at Isolde again and said, “I knew your mother, you know. Gwynefar.”
After the long day’s journey and Bedwyr’s death, Isolde had been half drifting in a haze of fatigue, and Garwen’s sudden words caught her completely off guard. She couldn’t even think of any answer to make, and after a moment Garwen smiled. “You’re very like your grandmother Morgan—I expect you’ve heard that before—but you’ve your mother’s eyes.”
Isolde found her voice. “I’ve heard that as well.” She paused, uncertain whether to ask the next question—uncertain even whether she wanted to. But Garwen, as though reading her thoughts, smiled again. A slightly grim smile, this time, and quite unlike her usual one.
“If you are wondering how Arthur’s mistress came to be acquainted with Arthur’s wife, I can tell you that more than besides you have wondered as well. But Arthur was ever a man unable to see through but one pair of eyes—his own. And if it suited him to keep his whore and his lady under one roof, then he was not to be persuaded that it might not suit the rest of us as well as him.”
For a moment, Garwen’s voice sharpened almost into anger, but then she sighed, looking down at the spindle and thread lying idle now across her lap. “Though God help me and may God forgive me, I loved him well. Too well, perhaps. He was stubborn, he could be hard, even cruel, sometimes. But he was also—” Garwen broke off, pressing her lips tight together, her large, misty blue eyes glimmering with unshed tears. But then she blinked, shook her head, and focused her gaze again on Isolde. “You never knew your mother, did you?”
Isolde shook her head. “No. She fled into a convent and died there almost as soon as I was born. Arthur had returned to Britain. She was afraid to face him, after what she’d done—that was the way my grandmother told it, at least.”
“And you blamed her for it, perhaps?”
Isolde had been staring into the fire, but at that she looked up to find Garwen watching her, head tilted a bit to one side. Isolde shook her head. “No. I never blamed her.”
Her mother had never been much more to her than a name in the bard’s tales. Gwynefar of the white hands and golden hair. Beautiful queen or traitorous harlot, depending on the tale.
Isolde could still hear the suppressed contempt that had edged her grandmother’s voice on the rare occasions when she’d persuaded Morgan to speak of her. But she’d always known, too, that beneath the contempt Morgan had nursed for all weakness, her grandmother had concealed a half-unwilling pity for Gwynefar.
Isolde watched a log flare red and then crumble to ash, sending out a shower of sparks over the hearth. She thought of herself, thirteen and left utterly alone after Camlann, sold into marriage with Con by the king’s council for the sake of peace. Gwynefar had been scarcely any older when she’d been wedded to Arthur—a warrior nearly twice her age, instead of the good-hearted if awkward boy of twelve Con had been.
She thought, too, of herself on trial for witchcraft, after Con’s death. Forced into marriage with Marche because it was that or die.
No, she couldn’t blame her mother for any of the choices Gwynefar had made.
She looked up at Garwen. “I’ve heard some claim that Camlann would never have been fought if not for her. That Arthur would still be alive and Britain still whole. But I never believed it. Men fight because they choose to—not because of a woman’s honor or the lack. And besides”—her mouth lifted in a small smile—“besides, if she’d not chosen to wed Modred, my father, I’d never have been born. How can I fault her?” She shook her head. “I used to wish, sometimes, that I’d had the chance to know her. Especially when I was small. I used to pretend that she’d not really died—that it was only a tale made up to keep her safe from Arthur. And that she’d come riding up on a white horse to see me one day. But I never blamed her or felt anything but pity for her for all that had happened.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Garwen said quietly, “She used to pray every day for a child when I knew her. It was her greatest grief that she never bore Arthur an heir.” Garwen’s eyes turned distant, her face softening as she looked back across half a lifetime’s worth of years. “But all the same, she was kind to me, always, even though I’d given Arthur the son she never could. She never slighted me—never made me feel she despised or resented me for what I was. And she loved Amhar, my boy. I can still see them playing together with a set of wooden horses one of Arthur’s men had carved. She was very beautiful, Gwynefar. She had the loveliest smile and the most beautiful hair—like spun gold.”
Garwen was silent a moment, gaze still faraway. Then she blinked again and turned back to Isolde. “Did Modred truly love her, do you know? Or was marrying her only a means to the throne?”
Slowly, Isolde shook her head. “I’ve wondered the same. But I’ve no idea. My father never spoke of her that I can remember. I suppose that might mean that he loved her very much—or not at all.”
Garwen let out a breath and picked up her spindle and thread again. “Well, I have always hoped he did—I hope it still.” The firelight gleamed on her gold necklaces, the heavy brooches and jewels. And just for a moment, she and all her finery looked not absurd at all, but regal, like the queen of one of those same impossible tales. “Everyone deserves to know that kind of love at least once in a lifetime.”
Isolde blinked an unexpected press of tears from her eyes. She wasn’t sure even who the tears were for. Garwen …Gwynefar …Marcia …Morgan. She’d be completely disgusted if she were crying like a child for herself. As though weeping ever made a road easier to walk or a burden easier to bear.
She felt her gaze drawn back towards Marcia’s face, still and pale as the linen sheets on which she lay, already wandering halfway between this world and the next. And she thought of Bedwyr, dying a choking, blood-soaked death on a bed of dirt and dried leaves.
“Perhaps everyone does deserve it,” she said softly. “But I think it’s very rare anyone actually finds that kind of love. And getting to keep it must be rarer still.”
AS IT HAPPENED, HE MADE IT over the outer wall without being spotted by any of the guards posted at intervals along the narrow walk. Nice, he supposed, to know that he’d not lost the skill—if inconvenient, in this case. He could hardly go crashing around the fortress for the rest of the night, hoping he’d eventually run into Isolde. Best get it over with, then.
He had to practically hit the three guards stationed at the main gate over the head to get their attention, then spend what seemed a short eternity answering their questions and cross-questions about the story he’d told. Finally, one of the men—a beefy man with a black mustache and beard—went to summon help, leaving his two fellow guards behind.
The men left behind were younger than the third. In the light of the torches above, they looked pink and scrubbed, with wispy, straggling beards, and they shifted uneasily from one foot to the next, keeping their spears directed at Trystan’s chest. A nervous man being a greater danger than an angry one, Trystan was keeping still, and wouldn’t have said he’d moved. But abruptly one of the guards glanced at Trystan’s sword belt, then lunged forward, the tip of his spear jabbing over Trystan’s heart.
“Don’t try to draw your sword.”
Trystan felt a trickle of blood start under his shirt and let out an exasperated breath. “Oh, for the love of a flaming goat. I had time to kill you both and do a dance on your graves before you noticed me getting over the wall. Even now I could probably slit one of your throats before the other one got me in the back. So do you want to draw lots, or can you just take me at my word and put the spear away?”
ISOLDE STEPPED OUT FROM THE NARROW stairwell out onto the ramparts. She had been exhausted enough to fall asleep almost as soon as she reac
hed her own bed, but she’d woken sometime about the middle watch of the night and lain staring into her darkened room, unable to sleep again. And so she’d dressed by the light of the glowing embers of her fire, taken up her traveling cloak, and come up here.
The rain had stopped, and the night sky cleared to a deep, bottomless black, hung with a net of stars. The shapes of the surrounding mountains were just visible as hunched, craggy shapes, vast and looming, as though they’d indeed been the backs of slumbering dragons, as in the old tales.
Isolde walked to the parapet and looked out, letting the night breeze tug at her loosened hair. She’d told Madoc that she’d felt nothing of Bedwyr’s spirit having survived death or crossed into a world Other than this—and that was true. But all the same, standing here alone in the darkness atop the mountain fortress, she could imagine she heard the voice of those who had gone before and were now west of the Sunset Isles, or wherever the land of the dead might lie.
The voice was not Myrddin’s—neither the enchanter of the harper’s tales whose eyes saw the future and whose spells could trap the wind in knots of cord. Nor even the white-haired druid man she had known. For her, at least, Dinas Emrys spoke in a voice that held the smooth, rippling cadence of a stream, bubbling up from deep within the earth and spoke of tales told, not by bards, but by women spinning wool or singing their children to sleep.
Tonight Dinas Emrys seemed more than ever a place of the Old Ones, who had on these hills raised ramparts long ago crumbled to earth. Who had carried bronze spears against the cold iron weapons of invaders who built in stone—and who had long, long since been driven away, to dwell as little more than a memory in the hollow hills.
The voice in her ears now seemed filled with those memories, a tale of loss and grief now long since vanished into the swirling mists of time. Though it might of course be, she thought, that voice is inside me, and I’m only imagining its echo on the mountainsides.