by Anna Elliott
Isolde leaned against the stone parapet and remembered Cynlas, standing beside the body of his son, demanding of Madoc—and, she thought, of whatever presence might dwell in the chapel, too—that there be a purpose in his son’s death. And then she turned her face upwards to the night sky and thought, one by one, of all those she’d watched torn away from life these last years.
Morgan, her dark hair turned white and her face all but unrecognizable, swollen with the black running sores of plague. Myrddin, lying in a pool of his own blood, his throat cut by Marche’s guard. And Con, resting in his oaken coffin, gold coins weighting his eyes.
Isolde pressed her eyes shut. What had Madoc said? I’ve seen eyes like yours—looking back at me from an enemy’s face across the divide of a shield wall.
She thought of Con at twelve, just after they’d been wedded, a tall, broad-shouldered boy with a shock of baby-fine brown hair, clear-eyed and brave and desperately afraid he’d prove unworthy of his place as Arthur’s heir. She could see him again, now, his face pale against the pillows, laughing up at Myrddin as she reset the stitches in the wound he’d carried back from his first battle. A wound that could easily have killed him if it had turned to poison. Or if it had been a hand’s breadth closer to his heart.
From somewhere far below, Isolde caught the murmur of men’s voices, carried to her on the clear, silent night air. Some of the sentries, maybe, breaking up the boredom of their watch by a drinking song or a game of dice. Isolde listened a moment, then turned away, sinking down so that her back rested against the stone parapet, drawing her feet up and hugging her knees.
She’d been thirteen when she’d been wedded to Con. Just after Britain had been broken on the battlefields of Camlann. When King Arthur had died at Modred’s hand, a father slain by his own traitor son.
Did Modred truly love Gwynefar? Garwen had asked. She didn’t know—likely never would know, now. And she wasn’t sure whether to hope for her mother’s sake that he had or no. But she had known that Con had loved her, in his way—for all he had a different plump, pretty maidservant in his bed for every turning of the moon.
She’d never let herself think of loving Con, though. By the time they’d been wedded, she’d had her heart shredded by grief so many times that she’d built a darkening wall in her mind to shut out both memory and pain. But then, even so, after he was dead and buried, the yawning ache inside her chest had told her that she must have loved him, after all. As a comrade and friend—and maybe as a younger brother, too—more than as a husband. But she’d loved him all the same.
Isolde opened her eyes, feeling her chest begin to tighten with the same panic she’d felt with Madoc on the stone bench below. The thought of being wedded to King Goram had made her skin crawl and brought a familiar sickness to the pit of her stomach. But in a way, the idea of marrying Madoc was worse. Because she’d felt nothing like love for Con when first they’d been wed. But even that had been no protection when he’d died. And Madoc was a good man—as Con had been.
In time, she thought, I might come to love Madoc as well.
And then she bowed her head as another memory broke over her and hung in the still night air like the silent echo after thunder. A hurt that never stops bleeding, Garwen had called losing a child. And even now, Isolde could see with aching clarity the tiny, waxen face and flowerlike hands of her stillborn baby girl. Could feel under her fingertips the swirling fuzz of hair on a fragile, rounded skull.
And she could feel, still, an echo of the pain that had racked her, fierce as the birthing pangs themselves that had seemed to tear her body in two. Another shiver shook her from head to foot. Just at that moment, she could understand the panic of a wolf who gnaws through his own leg to escape a hunter’s snare.
There were the herbs, of course. The same ones she had used with Marche five months before. But they didn’t always work. Marcia, Isolde thought, probably knew about those herbs, as well.
Isolde rested her forehead against her upraised knees and tried to stop the cold shaking inside her. She could always enter a convent, as her mother Gwynefar had. Plead devotion to the Christ as reason for rejecting Madoc and Goram both.
Isolde pressed her eyes more tightly shut. She might never have blamed Gwynefar for making the choice she had, for fleeing the world and leaving her baby daughter behind. But all the same, for her to likewise flee into the convent’s sanctuary now was so patently the coward’s choice that even thinking it made her sneer at herself.
Yes, she thought. You could enter a convent and be safe behind its solid stone walls. And Camelerd would be divided, carved up among the men of the king’s council. Men who might rule well and justly—or might prove of the same ilk as Goram or Marche.
An image of the burned and plundered settlement rose before her mind’s eye, and Isolde raised her head, staring unseeingly out at the night sky. I could enter a convent, she thought. And then someone else could explain to the people of Camelerd that their homes had been burned and their children enslaved and their villages pillaged because Isolde, the lady of Camelerd, didn’t want to bear another child. Or love anyone, ever, ever again.
HOW LONG ISOLDE HAD BEEN SITTING there she didn’t know, when a step close by made her start up with a jolting heart, straining her eyes to see into the shadows. She scrambled quickly to her feet, then relaxed as she recognized the bard Taliesin, brother to Dywel of Logres, who had played for the feasting on Ynys Mon. Beneath a dark cloak, Taliesin wore still the tunic and breeches of fine cream-colored wool, and the fabric seemed to glow pearly white in the moonlight. He walked with a limp, the left leg dragging slightly behind, and as he came closer, Isolde saw that his left foot was crippled, clubbed, and turned inwards, with a boot of fine dark leather crafted specially to fit.
He saw her and made a slight bow before limping slowly across the remaining distance between them to stand at her side. He was silent a moment, looking out over the parapet as Isolde had done, then turned.
“My lady Isolde. We have not met formally, I don’t believe. I am Taliesin, brother and bard to King Dywel of Logres.”
Isolde let him bow again over her hand, trying to gather her scattered wits into something like order, then said, “I enjoyed your playing on Ynys Mon greatly. You have a rare gift for song.”
“A rare gift.” There was a note of mockery in Taliesin’s voice, and Isolde saw in his face the same smoldering bitterness she’d noticed before. He gestured with one soft, white hand to the crippled left foot. “I suppose you might put it that way. If I can’t fight at my great ox of a brother’s side, I can at least journey with him to battle and watch the killing and the rending of men into small bleeding bits. And then go home and turn it all into a song.”
Isolde’s glance moved to the heavy gold torque about Taliesin’s neck, the small jeweled and gilded harp he wore strapped at his belt. She’d said nothing, but the bard was quick to see the look, and he gave a faintly grating laugh.
“Yes, you’re quite right. It does pay well. My brother’s warriors take care to pay me handsomely and to stay in my good graces if they want to be shown favorably in the songs I compose. How a man is remembered in this life is at least as important as what he actually does.”
Taliesin turned his face upwards to the night sky, the moon running silver threads through his sleekly oiled beard. “So, Lady Isolde. What trouble brings you out in the darkest watch of the night to sit under the stars?”
Isolde heard again snatches of men’s voices below, coming, she thought, from the direction of the fortress’s eastern gate.
“No trouble,” she answered at last. “I came to sit quiet for a time, that’s all.”
“And to be alone, no doubt.” The faint note of mockery was audible in Taliesin’s voice once more, but his eyes were steady on Isolde’s face, with a grave, thoughtful look that belied the tone. He was silent a time, watching her, and Isolde shivered, feeling as though his cool, dark gaze were reading, weighing, and judging her on some private
balance or scale all Taliesin’s own.
Then the bard reached for the small gilded harp at his side. “And since I’ve intruded on you, I owe you a gift. A song. To atone for my presence here.”
He swept out his cloak and knelt down, resting the instrument on his knee, raised his head once more to the sky, and began to play. The notes were soft, silvery clear in the night stillness, like drops of crystal rain. And then he opened his mouth and began to sing, his voice neither grating nor mocking, but sweet and soft and very true, the song seeming almost a part of the moonlight all around.
“In a time that once was, is now gone forever, and will come back again soon, a young maid’s lover was stolen from her by the Fair Folk to pay their seven year’s tiend to the gods of the earth.”
Isolde leaned against the stone balustrade and let the words wash over her. The story was an old one, and one she knew, of a maid cast out by her father and mocked and scorned by all, for she was to bear her lover’s child—but her lover was vanished, nowhere to be found.
But the maid’s love for her man was strong and true. She would not believe him inconstant, and though it was autumn and winter’s bitter chill coming on, she set out to search for him, across hills and wide valleys, the forests and fields. And whenever she doubted or grew so weary she thought she could not go on, she would feel the child’s tiny flutter of life inside her. And she would take one step more.
At last, then, she caught sight of her love. He was sadly altered from the man she’d known. His face was blanched and thin, his clothes in tatters, and his hair wild and long. The maid knew him, though—knew him at once, despite the change in his look. And she threw her arms around him for joy of finding him alive.
But her arms slid through him as through the empty air. And her man stepped away and told her what had befallen him. That he had been made captive by the Fair Folk, a mortal sacrifice to pay the tiend to their gods at Samhain.
And pleasant is the fairy land,
But, an eerie tale to tell,
Aye, at the end of seven years,
We pay a tiend to hell.
And the maid wept to hear her love’s tale. But then she dried her tears and said that she would save him, if such a thing might be. And her love sighed and said that there was a chance—just one. But that he could not ask it of her. It was too great a trial, too hard. But she begged him to tell her, with the tracks of tears still on her cheeks and her hands clasped over the child in her womb. And at last her man told her what she must do.
And so on the night of Samhain, when the veil between the Otherworld and this lifts, the maid watched the Fairy host ride past her along the road. She let pass a steed as black as night, and one brown as earth. And then came a man mounted on a steed as white as snow, and she knew him for her love and caught his hand to pull him down.
And all about her, the Fair Folk screamed in fury, but she held fast to her love, put her arms about him, and would not let go. And then, the man’s form she held began to shift and change. His skin grew scaled and slimy, his body writhed, and she clasped a great, hissing, thrashing serpent in her arms, its fanged mouth opened wide.
And the maid’s heart pounded in terror, but she repeated to herself what her man had told her, for he had known the magic of the Fair Folk and what they would do.
“They’ll turn me in your arms, lady,
Into an esk and adder,
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
I am your babe’s father.”
And so she held the serpent fast. And again felt the form in her arms begin to change, until she held a great, snarling bear. The beast struck at her with its claws and roared with rage, and she could smell the blood of a kill on its mouth and fur. But again she held fast, and the bear’s body began to shift and change.
And then the maid held in her arms a glowing, red-hot iron rod that burned her arms and hands until she almost screamed aloud with the pain. But she held in her heart the memory of her love’s own face, the feeling of his true self held fast in her arms. And she would not let go.
And another great howl of rage went up from the Fair Folk, so that a chill of fear ran up the maid’s spine. But she could feel the burning iron rod in her arms shifting, changing again. And then it was her own man she held in her arms. And the Fair Folk were vanished, nowhere to be found. For she had won him free.
TALIESIN STOPPED PLAYING, AND FOR A moment, all was utterly still, not even a breath of wind stirring the night air. Sometimes—just rarely, Isolde had said to Madoc, I’ve felt as though everything stops and rests on a balance. So maybe that is a god—or someone else beyond the veil to the Otherworld—thinking about me?
“Thank you,” she said. “That was—”
A cry from down below made her break off. A shout of alarm, coming, she thought, from somewhere along the fortress’s outer palisade. When she looked back at Taliesin, she found him watching her again with the same measuring look—a look that made her feel as though his gaze lifted her up and then set her back down in not quite the same place she’d been before.
Isolde thought suddenly of Myrddin. Myrddin, who had never in his life worn gold rings like Taliesin’s or been anything but bony-shouldered and thin—but who sang as Taliesin did and had walked with the dragging gate of lameness as well.
The moment seemed to stretch out between them. When at last Taliesin spoke, his voice, like the mountain itself, seemed to hold the chiming cadence of a stream flowing from deep underground.
“Yes,” he said. “You should go.”
THE FLARE OF TORCHES IN THE great courtyard was dazzling after the darkness atop the ramparts. Isolde stepped out from the stairwell, blinking at a knot of Madoc’s guardsmen grouped near the main gate. She’d reached the courtyard almost at the same moment as Kian, who stepped from the shadows of the passage leading to the hall where the men ate and slept.
“Do you know what’s happened?” Isolde asked him.
Kian’s single eye was bloodshot, his hair rumpled, and his clothes and sword belt looked as though they’d been snatched up and flung on without care. He shook his head.
“No idea. Heard someone sound the horn for an alarm, that’s all I—”
The rest of his words, though, were lost to Isolde. Her eyes had adjusted to the light, and she saw, amidst the group of Madoc’s guards, another man. A man dressed in a plain linen shirt, breeches, and a forest-green traveling cloak instead of the blue and gold of Madoc’s men.
He was tall and strongly built, his face lean and hard, with a thin, flexible mouth. His eyes were startlingly blue, set deep under slanted golden-brown brows. And he looked more impatient than either angry or afraid, despite the spears Madoc’s guard held pointed at his chest. There was a line of annoyance between his brows, as of temper rigidly controlled, and Isolde thought he looked tightly strung, as if there were a task he had laid on himself to accomplish and now begrudged the men around him this delay.
For the space of several heartbeats, Isolde stood staring, frozen in place. Beside her, she heard Kian suck in his breath and say in a voice blank with shock, “Sweet bleeding Jesus.”
And at the same moment Kian spoke, her own lips formed a name without any conscious thought. “Trystan.”
Chapter Six
THAT MAN—WHO IS HE?”
Isolde turned to find that Cynlas of Rhos had come up to stand beside her and was speaking to her, his voice urgent and hoarse. She felt as though a wall of water had crashed over her, temporarily blocking both hearing and sight. With an effort, Isolde kept her voice even and unconcerned. “A messenger from my own lands, my lord Cynlas. As he—and as I—said just now. And lucky to get through Marche and Octa’s patrols on the borderlands. I’ve had no word of how Camelerd fares for some months, now.”
She’d listened as Trystan told his story, his voice sounding distant and far off in her ears. And in the same distant way, she’d heard her own voice making appropriate responses, offering confirmation of the story Trystan tol
d in response to Madoc’s questions.
Madoc had listened, asked a question or two, and Trystan had answered easily enough—though Isolde had the impression he was exercising a deliberate, tight-muscled control to maintain the look of ready calm.
Now Cynlas ignored her response, giving an impatient shake of his head. “That’s not what I mean. Where does he come from? How long has he been in your service?”
Isolde felt a faint warning tug of premonition and glanced round, looking for Kian. He had melted away, though, almost as soon as he’d caught sight of Trystan’s face and hadn’t returned during Trystan’s brief account to Madoc and the rest of who he was and why he had come to Dinas Emrys. And now Kian still was nowhere to be seen among the men grouped about the courtyard.
Isolde looked back at Cynlas. “Why do you ask?”
Cynlas’s throat worked before he looked up, blinking, like a man waking from black nightmare.
“I—” His voice was still hoarse, and he licked his lips before beginning again. “I spoke in the chapel, Lady Isolde, of the mongrel dog who betrayed us and cost me the life of my eldest son. I said one day I would find him again. And so I have. This is the man.”
Isolde had been expecting Cynlas to say something about Marche—or about their time at Tintagel, five months before. For a moment, she could only stare at him, registering distantly that this was one shock too many for her mind to absorb in what was beginning to seem an endlessly long day.
Then, before she could speak, Dywel of Logres broke in. He wore, still, his mud-stained riding clothes, and though his eyes looked puckered with weariness, his curling hair was tidy, his cloak straight.
“No,” Dywel said. “I know this man—I’ve seen him before, at Tintagel. Just after Marche’s betrayal. A messenger in the service of the lady Isolde, captured and tortured by Marche’s men.”