by Anna Elliott
Trystan was still frowning, absently scraping his thumbnail against the side of the cup. “And you want me to take you—you alone, without a guard—across the Saxon war lands? Get you inside Cerdic’s court so that you can propose an alliance to him?” He shook his head. “Powers of hell, Isolde, if you’re set on killing yourself, I can think of easier ways.”
Isolde shook her head. “It makes sense, Trys. Any war band trying to get past Octa and Marche’s forces would be caught—slaughtered. And how far do you think a formal king’s delegation would get speaking to Cerdic of alliance?”
“As far as Cerdic chose to throw them, before he ordered their heads staved in with an axe. All right, true enough.”
Isolde nodded. “But a party of three travelers—you and Hereric and I—might get through Octa and Marche’s patrols. Especially if we made part of the journey by boat, sailing around the coast. And then, I’m Modred’s daughter. Cerdic wouldn’t think me a threat.”
Trystan was quiet a long moment, blue gaze fixed on her face, and then he said abruptly, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
He made an impatient movement with one hand. “Isa, I knew you when you spoke with a lisp because you’d lost your two front teeth. Maybe you’re stubborn enough to pretend there’s nothing else troubling you. And maybe I’m cross-eyed enough with lack of sleep to believe it—or pretend I do. But if I’m going to get in the middle of this, you’d better tell me the whole if you want us both to survive.”
Why didn’t that occur to me? Isolde thought. That if I can read him, he’d be able to read me as well? She remembered him teasing her when they were growing up because she could never keep her temper—and because her every thought showed plain on her face.
The memory made her feel strangely safe—and yet almost frightened at the same time, as though she’d been swept into a fast-moving river current far beyond her power to control.
She nodded, then said, “All right. Though it doesn’t change anything—not really. It’s only that Goram did offer Madoc an alliance at a price—that price being marriage to me.”
She thought the line of Trystan’s jaw might have hardened, but apart from that, his expression didn’t change. “And you don’t want to wed Goram?”
“Would you?”
Trystan cocked an eyebrow at her again. “It’s the hell of an unlikely prospect that I’d ever have the choice to make. But I know what you mean. And no, in your place I wouldn’t give Goram a kick in the teeth, much less a marriage vow. But what do you want?”
“Since when have a woman’s wishes had the smallest influence on whom she weds?” Isolde stopped and shook her head, raised her hand and let it fall. “No, that’s not fair. Madoc refused the offer. I suppose if I thought Goram would actually honor the alliance, I’d have to agree. But I don’t trust him any more than Madoc does.”
Trystan sat without speaking again. Then: “And you think Madoc would agree to your making the journey to Cerdic’s court instead?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. But our position is desperate enough that I think he will. And he trusts me …more than he once did.”
“I’m sure he does.”
Something in Trystan’s tone made Isolde look up sharply, but he said nothing more, and after a moment, she went on. “But I can hardly tell him what I propose doing unless you’ve agreed to lend your aid.”
A line of thought appeared between Trystan’s brows. “You’ll do what you can for Hereric?”
“I said I would.”
“Sorry.” Trystan rubbed a hand along the length of his jaw, and Isolde realized just how tired he must be. “I know you did.” He looked up. “All right. You can tell Madoc whatever you choose to account for how your messenger happens to know his way through the Saxon war lands. And I’ll take you to Cerdic.”
Isolde let out a breath she hadn’t realized she held. “Thank you.”
“Thank me when you’ve actually made it to Cerdic’s court and back alive.” Trystan pulled himself to his feet, and Isolde saw him hold back a grimace, as though the movement hurt. She asked, “Trys? Are you all right?”
“Fine.” Trystan picked up the sword and cloak he’d laid at his feet. He stood watching her a moment, frowning a bit, a look she couldn’t quite read in his blue eyes. And then he asked, “What about you—are you sure you’re all right?”
The question caught Isolde completely by surprise, and to her horror she felt another of those utterly stupid presses of tears behind her eyes. She blinked, absolutely refusing to cry just because for the first time in five months—maybe longer—someone had looked at her, really looked at her, and asked how she was.
“Fine,” she echoed Trystan. “I’m fine.”
Trystan seemed about to speak, but then he shook his head and said only, “Then I’ll go, now. I’d best be getting to that bed in the guest hall Madoc offered before someone wonders why you’ve taken so long to rewrap an injured hand.”
TRYSTAN CLOSED THE DOOR QUIETLY BEHIND him. Then he leaned back, letting his eyes slide briefly shut, and wondered whether he was indeed losing his mind to agree to what Isolde asked. Though the gods knew he’d wanted to say yes badly enough. To have the chance of seeing her, being alone with her, for weeks on end.
God, after living without her these last months, the thought had been like coming on a stream of sweet, clear water when dying of thirst.
He could still see her, gray eyes smudged with shadows but very steady and clear, telling him in a frighteningly controlled voice that if she’d thought it would do any good, she would have agreed to marry King Goram. Well, that shouldn’t have surprised him. She’d never lacked courage.
And the best of luck to you and the nine companions of Arthur, he thought, if the very thought makes you want to get your hands around Goram’s neck and squeeze.
A vision of her face swam up against his closed lids: delicate features and flawless lily-white skin, soft red mouth, and wide, thickly lashed gray eyes. God, she was beautiful. Like silver moonlight. Like some distant glimmering star.
And about as far out of his reach. He could still feel the cool brush of her fingers against his as she’d handed him the cup of ale. It had run through every nerve in his body.
Gods, it had taken every last scrap of his self-control not to reach for her, pull her towards him, into his arms. And he was planning on being alone with her for a weeks-long journey?
Trystan let out his breath. He’d do as she asked. Get her safely to Cerdic’s court. Cerdic, who, the gods help him, was his own blood kin. Even the thought made a shudder ripple through him, an echo of the all too familiar shaking that always followed one of the dreams, and for a moment he felt the hilt of a knife in his hand, slippery with blood.
Trystan swore at himself under his breath. But as well to remember it. If only to fix clearly in his mind exactly why he couldn’t so much as touch Isolde or speak the word love in her hearing.
Not that she’d want him to.
Trystan waited a moment, focusing on breathing until he had himself under control. Then slowly and dispassionately he laid the steps out in his mind, as though this were any of the other missions he’d carried out in the past for one lord or the next—whoever offered the highest pay. That was how jobs like that worked. Concentrate on the pragmatics and put everything else out of your head. Get back to Hereric. Hope he was still alive. Do as Isolde asked. Get her safely across Wessex and back. So that she could be wedded. Not to Goram, but to some suitable man. Maybe even Madoc himself—he’d seen how the man looked at her in the courtyard outside, with a look on his scarred face that had made Trystan want to strangle him as well.
So bloody much for pragmatism. Wearily, Trystan pushed off from the door panel. He’d best be off. It would be dawn soon, and he still had to make it back to the guest hall without being seen.
MADOC OF GWYNEDD WAS SILENT A long moment before he spoke. Then he asked, “And this messenger of yours—he know
s the Saxon lands?”
After Trystan had gone, Isolde had sat by the hearth in her room until the rose-colored morning light showed over the eastern mountains. Then she’d changed her crumpled and dusty gown for one of pale blue wool with an over-tunic of light gold, brushed and rebraided her hair. She’d found Madoc in the king’s receiving room, at table with Dywel of Logres and several of his fighting men, Cabal asleep on the hearth, tail curled around him and head on his paws.
Madoc had dismissed the men, and Isolde had taken the place he’d indicated, a wooden chair with a high carved back opposite Madoc’s own, the table with the remains of the men’s morning meal of ale and bread spread out between them. Madoc had waited for Isolde to speak first, holding his shoulders straight, almost as if in anticipation of a blow. And Isolde, watching, had felt a stab of compunction as she realized abruptly that he thought she’d come to answer his proposal of marriage from the night before.
He’d listened with a grave face as Isolde spoke, though, repeating the arguments she’d made to Trystan hours before.
Now Isolde nodded in answer to Madoc’s question—the first he’d asked since she began. “He knows the country of Wessex, yes.”
Madoc frowned, brows drawn. “A dangerous journey,” he said. “You would put yourself at great risk in undertaking such a task.”
“No more than you do in facing Marche here.”
“Perhaps.” Madoc moved one shoulder, dismissing that. “But have you thought what will happen should you arrive at Cerdic’s court? You may be Modred’s daughter—the child of Cerdic’s old ally—but you’re also a Briton noble. Constantine’s former queen. And we both of us know how the Saxons deal with their enemies’ wives.”
Isolde started to speak, then stopped as Cabal woke with a snuffle and scrabbled to his feet, coming to sniff at Isolde’s hands. Isolde scratched his ears, then looked up at Madoc. “I do know. And I know, too, there are many, many terrible ways to die. But whatever Cerdic and his warlords might do is no worse than would happen to me should Marche and Octa prevail.”
“You’ve great courage, Lady Isolde.”
“No more than you do,” she said again, “facing Marche here.”
Madoc didn’t answer at once. His eyes, deep-set and dark in his ravaged face, were on Isolde’s, and it seemed to her that there was a shadow of sorrow in their depths. “Perhaps.”
He got abruptly to his feet. “Come outside.” The words were abrupt, and he shook his head, adding, “Your pardon. I should have said, will you walk outside with me for a time?” He glanced round the room with its rush-strewn floor and heavily carved table and chairs. “I’ve been so long on campaign that I always feel suffocated indoors.”
THE GUARDS STATIONED OUTSIDE THE RECEIVING room came to attention when Madoc opened the door and made to fall into step behind him. Madoc waved them back, though, and he and Isolde walked alone along the passage and out into the courtyard, with Cabal trotting at their heels. They passed the workrooms, as they had the night before—though the smith’s and armorer’s sheds were busy, now, filled with metallic hammering and the hiss of steam as red-hot iron was plunged into water to cool. When they reached the water cistern, set close to the fort’s outer wall, Madoc paused. The sun was rising, burning off the morning’s mist, and the air felt fresh and clear and warm with the promise of spring.
Madoc kicked lightly at the cistern’s stone cover with the toe of his boot. “It’s here Merlin is supposed to have had his vision of the dragons. Prophesying Britain’s victory over the Saxon hordes.”
A yew tree grew just to the side of the cistern, its branches covered with the first golden-green buds of spring—and covered as well by hundreds upon hundreds of knotted scraps of cloth. In less dangerous times, travelers had journeyed miles to tie their rags to the branches of the tree at Merlin’s holy pool in hopes of blessing or answer to prayer. A good harvest, cure of an ailment, a child for a barren woman’s womb.
Isolde nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“You believe it?”
Isolde fingered one of the small scraps of cloth—a tattered blue that might have been torn from a woman’s gown and had now begun to fade with the rain and sun. “Believe in the dragon story? No. Believe that we’ve a chance of victory?” Isolde lifted one shoulder. “I have to. So do we all.”
“I suppose so.” Madoc sighed and crossed his arms, looking up at the stretch of sky, clear and for once almost cloudless above the fortress’s outer stone wall. “Though I sometimes feel as though a great tide of darkness is rolling over the land. Maybe Arthur held it back for a time—but even he could not drive the dark away in the end.”
Madoc was silent, and then he shook his head, turning back to Isolde. “You wish me, then, to propose your being appointed emissary to the king’s council?”
Cabal had sat down at Isolde’s feet, and she scratched his ears, then shook her head. “No. But then neither do you wish to propose such a thing.”
Madoc sighed again and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “And why not?”
She could see the understanding, though, in his eyes and knew he didn’t need her answer. Still, she said, “Because you don’t believe that yesterday’s attack was random chance. No more does Kian. No more do I.”
Madoc looked away. From the practice yard behind them came the clash of weapons as the fighting men drilled with staffs and swords. Then, slowly, Madoc moved his head in affirmation. “Treason.”
“Yes.”
Madoc let out his breath, moving his shoulders as though seeking to ease the burden of a heavy load. He was quiet a beat, then abruptly nodded at the big dog, now resting his brindled head against Isolde’s side. “Take Cabal.”
“What?”
For the first time, a brief flash of a smile lightened Madoc’s face. “If you’re to journey to Wessex, take Cabal along. He’ll be some protection to you, at least. And he’d be useless left behind, knowing you were gone. He only follows my orders on sufferance at the best of times.”
And then the smile faded, leaving his scarred face looking all at once older than his thirty years. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I like it even less than I did suing King Goram for aid. But a king can’t worry overmuch about his own conscience.” Madoc’s mouth tightened, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. “Any more than he can worry over-much how well he’s going to sleep at night, thinking of what he’s done.”
He shook his head, looking down at his own hands, the fingers splayed, the nails still rimmed with black from the ride the day before. “How many men have I killed? How many widows have been made on my orders these last months? How many children orphaned, whose only blame was to be in an ungodly wrong place at an ungodly wrong time?”
He stopped, folding his hands into fists and locking them behind his back. “As you yourself said, Cerdic would slaughter any party of men I sent to him on sight. But a woman alone—the daughter of a man he once held as a brother in arms—yes, you might stand a chance of gaining his ear long enough to hear the alliance you propose. And if I’ve admitted already I might have asked you to marry Goram, did I trust him to keep any bargain he made, then I can hardly scruple to ask you to risk your life on a journey across the Saxon war lands.”
He paused, eyes on the cistern’s stone covering, then asked, “Do you wish a serving woman to accompany you?”
Isolde looked up, surprised. “A serving woman? Oh, for propriety’s sake, do you mean?” She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. You may say that I’ve taken one, if you wish—when you give out the story that I’m gone to Camelerd. But it’s a dangerous journey, as you said. And I’d rather my own reputation be blemished by traveling in the company of two men than see an innocent woman killed or captured by Saxons.” She stopped, then smiled briefly. “Besides, that sort of gossip would be more of an improvement than anything else over what’s been whispered about me before.”
Madoc’s face lightened as well, but he shook his head again. There
was a silence in which Isolde could hear the steady metallic hammering from the smith’s forge behind them, and the baying of a pair of war hounds, set to fight by some of the men. The hairs on Cabal’s neck rose, and Isolde rested a hand on his back. Then Madoc said, “The question I asked of you last night, Lady Isolde—”
His voice had turned gruff, and Isolde thought a faint wash of color had crept into his face, though the livid scars made it hard to tell. She felt suddenly as though an iron hand were gripping her heart, but she said, steadily, “Keep it, my lord Madoc. Until I return. You can tell King Goram that I’ve undertaken to journey to my own lands, to be sure the defenses there are as strong as may be. That will do for a story to give the rest of the king’s council as well. And then when—if—I return. …” she stopped. “Ask me again.”
She thought the shadow of sadness had returned to Madoc’s dark gaze, as though he’d heard more in her words than she’d meant him to, and she felt another twist of compunction. But then, slowly, Madoc bowed his head. “As you wish.” He looked up, meeting Isolde’s look once again and said, in a different tone, “And will you tell me now who he is, this messenger of yours?”
Isolde went still. “You know that already.”
“I know who you claim him to be.”
With another man, Isolde might have stretched the truth or invented a lie. But Madoc, she thought, deserves better than a tale he’d likely not believe in any case. So she said nothing. A faint breeze stirred the scraps of cloth on the yew tree’s branches, and after a moment Madoc sighed.
“Tell me this at least. You trust him enough to place the success of this mission—and your own life—in his hands?”
Isolde slipped her arm about Cabal’s neck, hugging the big dog lightly to her as the pieces of her talk with Trystan reassembled themselves in her mind. She thought again of Cynlas’s blanched, rigid face and hoarse voice, claiming him for the mercenary who’d betrayed his eldest son. You know me better than that, she’d told Trystan. And she would have said that she knew Trystan, too, better than to believe him the man Cynlas thought.