by Anna Elliott
But she’d not asked him when she’d had the chance, sitting with him in her workroom. If she were honest with herself, she’d not asked him because she was afraid of what the answer might be. Trystan had changed. He must have.
Because the Trystan I knew, she thought, wouldn’t have left five months ago. Or at the very least, he would have found a way to send her word, so that she’d not be left not knowing whether he was alive or lying dead somewhere facedown in a muddy ditch. Neither would he have sought a living as a Saxon spy. Isolde thought of all the men whose wounds she’d stitched these last years—all those she’d helped die as she had Bedwyr—and wondered how many might be alive today if Trystan hadn’t gained intelligence for the enemy side.
The thought made her a little sick to her stomach. But it wasn’t entirely fair. She’d long since passed a point where she could believe Britain’s fighting men blameless in the seemingly endless war. And it was certainly unfair—and more than that, dishonest—to blame Trystan for having been in a Saxon warlord’s pay, when it was for exactly that reason that she could now call on him for help in reaching Cerdic of Wessex.
And she could still see the damaged fingers on Trystan’s left hand, the Saxon mark of slavery at his neck. And she thought again of her father’s man Emyr, tortured into madness by Octa of Kent, whom Morgan had simply put to sleep as she might a suffering dog.
It was only in the bard’s tales that a hero walked through cruel trials unchanged. In life, men’s bodies were maimed and scarred, their spirits broken or turned bitter by what they’d endured. Isolde had been healer to more of them than she could count, and she knew how very, very rarely did such men pick up the shattered pieces of themselves and walk on with their spirits not unscarred exactly, but at least whole.
Though that didn’t mean that Trystan hadn’t done what Cynlas claimed—or worse. Only that it wasn’t entirely fair to blame him if he had.
Beside her, Cabal whined, and as though the sound had been a signal, Isolde made up her mind. If she couldn’t judge Trystan on the past, she could judge him on the journey they’d shared five months before. She’d doubted Trystan then, and it had nearly cost him his life—though he’d still risked himself again and again without hesitation to save hers. She watched the fluttering scraps of cloth dance in the breeze, seeing—the memory hit her like a slap in the face—angry lashes on Trystan’s back, black-crusted burns on his skin. My fault, all of it, she thought.
“Yes,” she said, meeting Madoc’s dark gaze. “I trust him enough.”
To her surprise, Madoc asked nothing more, only nodded again and said in a quiet voice, “Then I wish you godspeed on your journey, Lady Isolde. And a safe return.”
For a moment Isolde thought he would touch her. She felt a cold tightening in the pit of her stomach, but held still, ordering herself not to flinch or pull away if he took her hand. Unfair to Madoc, she thought, when he would inevitably think it was because of the scars on his face after all.
But instead Madoc frowned, brows drawn, and shook his head. “It’s strange, though.” He spoke more to himself than to Isolde. “I’d swear I’d seen the man before, too. Not just those months ago at Tintagel. But years ago. At Camlann.”
Book II
Chapter Seven
TRYSTAN SAT WITH HIS BACK against the gunwale. He’d moored for the night under a grove of willow trees, and the light of the moon sifting through the branches above cast wavering shadows over the sailboat’s deck. He broke the seal on a jar of wine and took a swallow, suppressed a shudder as the burning liquid ran down his throat, and wondered just how long he would be able to keep this up. Long enough? Maybe. With the luck of Satan and all his devils.
The dog Cabal lay on the deck at Trystan’s feet. Ordinarily, he refused to leave Isolde’s side, but tonight, to Trystan’s surprise, the big dog had stayed out with him when Isolde went into the cabin to be with Hereric. He’d thought Cabal asleep, but now the animal stiffened, suddenly, his ears lifting, and rose, scenting the air.
“What is it, boy?”
Cabal whined, shifting his weight from side to side and thrusting his nose under Trystan’s arm. Trystan set the wine jar down. “Something wrong?”
The cry from the cabin had him upright and on his feet almost before he realized, and in another moment he had crossed the deck and jerked open the cabin door. The interior space was narrow, just large enough for a bed, a row of storage bins, and a pallet spread on the floor.
“Isolde?”
She’d been sleeping on the pallet; the single oil lamp burning showed the imprint of her head on the woolen blanket. Now, though, she was sitting bolt upright, her dark eyes wide and fixed, her whole body shaking. She made no response, and he dropped to his knee in front of her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Isa?”
She stiffened instantly at his touch, and he heard her breath catch as she came awake, her eyes losing their fixed, glassy look and gradually focusing on his face. The black hair was loose on her shoulders, and she raised a hand to push it out of her eyes, then nodded shakily.
“I’m all right. I—”
She froze, suddenly, then drew back a little, mingled disgust and anger beginning to flicker in the wide gray eyes. The wine. Of course. He must fairly reek of the stuff.
“Trys?” Her voice sounded a little shaky still, and she rubbed a hand across her eyes again. “Is there something—”
Trystan allowed himself a silent inward curse. In a single movement, he had dropped his hand and pulled himself to his feet, turning away.
“I’ll be outside.”
Once on deck, he leaned against the gunwale, as he’d been before, then picked up the wine jar and took another swallow, grimacing again. And if she didn’t despise you before this, he thought wearily, she certainly will by the time this journey is done.
Cabal had followed him out of the cabin, and now the big dog padded over to butt his head against Trystan’s shoulder. Trystan absently scratched him behind the ears and drained the last few swallows of wine.
“What do you think, boy? Long enough to get through Wessex and back?”
Cabal flopped to the deck beside him, his head resting on his paws, and Trystan set the wine jar down. “Yes, right,” he muttered. “Barely a week out of Gwynedd and already I’m talking to a dog.”
ISOLDE WATCHED THE CABIN DOOR CLOSE. Her skin was clammy, and the memory of the dream still clung, sticky as a spider’s web. Tonight, as she’d lain in the great carved bed and listened to the approaching footsteps, she’d known it was Madoc she waited for, not Marche. I must have screamed, too, she thought. Or Trystan wouldn’t have heard and come in.
She shuddered, then pushed back the coarse woolen blankets and went to kneel beside the small basin of water on the floor, feeling a cowardly relief that she need not, this time, try to see what settlement or farm Marche and his troops had now sacked and burned. This time it truly had been only a dream.
She splashed water on her face, shockingly cold against her clammy skin. Then, as the dream’s panic subsided, she sat back on her heels, her gaze falling on the cabin door Trystan had shut behind him when he went back out on deck.
Why, she thought, didn’t I think of this? She knew why, though. She’d been so thankful for an excuse to escape, to delay agreeing to marry Madoc, that she’d not realized fully until setting out what the journey would mean. That she would be all but alone with Trystan, day after day.
It was harder even than she might have thought. Sitting with him while the strained silences between them stretched on and on. Watching him drink himself into a heavy slumber night after night.
Is There Something Wrong? she’d been about to say before he’d left. Which was an idiotic question, really. Because clearly there was. The Trystan she’d known had rarely even touched wine. But even if she’d managed to finish, she knew with a bone-deep certainty that he wouldn’t have answered. She’d tried a few times before to ask him why he drowned himself in wine nigh
t after night. And always he’d avoided giving any answer at all—changing the subject or discovering some task about the boat that needed his immediate attention.
Isolde felt a flare of anger, hot and unexpectedly painful, at the memory of his wine-drenched breath, though it helped to drive away the lingering memory of the dream that twisted like a knife blade under her ribs.
And then feeble motion from the roughly made bed in the corner made her turn, and the sight of the man who lay there was enough to banish anger and fear both. Hereric had always been a big man, with massive, powerful shoulders, and a broad, fair-skinned face, the blond hair and light-colored eyes clear marks of his Saxon birth. Now, though, the flesh seemed to have shrunk, pulling tight across the heavy bones, and his eyes were sunken.
The bone of his forearm had been shattered below the elbow by a blow from a wooden club, and when Isolde had first seen it, was stuck in jagged, blood-smeared points through the mangled twists of muscle and sinew. She had set and splinted it, bandaging the whole with linen soaked in garlic and honey. But in spite of all she tried, the fingers on that hand were turning black, and streaks of angry red were spreading up from the elbow, a little higher each day.
Isolde took up a pottery cup of milk, poured a little into a spoon, and then held it to Hereric’s lips. He only turned his head fretfully away, though, the liquid dribbling down his cheek.
She wiped up the spilled liquid, then once more took up cup and spoon, and began in a low voice, “Cuchulain was marching from the field of battle, when a young woman appeared before him, clad in a mantle of many colors, her face as beautiful as the dawn.”
She’d lost count of the number of stories she’d told for Hereric this way in the nine days since they’d set sail from Gwynedd. She doubted Hereric heard, but the sound of her voice quieted him, sometimes, when his head turned restlessly on the pillow and he groaned aloud in pain.
“‘I have heard tales of thy bravery, Cuchulain,’ the maiden said. ‘And I have come to offer you my love.’ But Cuchulain replied shortly that he was worn and harassed with war, and had no mind to bother with women, beautiful or no. ‘Then it shall go hard with thee,’ the maiden said. ‘And I shall be about thy feet as an eel in the bottom of the ford.’ Then she vanished from sight, and he saw but a crow sitting on a branch of a tree. And Cuchulain knew that it was the Morrigan he had seen.’”
The tale of the great hero Cuchulain was one of the longest she knew, with battles and beautiful maidens and sea voyages enough to last a bard many nights in his lord’s fire hall. Isolde went on with the story, keeping her voice to a soothing murmur as she held the spoon to Hereric’s lips again.
Again Hereric turned his head and the milk was spilled, but the third time she managed to slip the spoon between his lips, and she saw the muscles of his throat contract as the liquid went down. What must have been an hour later, though, the muscles of Isolde’s wrists and arms aching with holding the spoon steady, and Hereric had swallowed only twice more. At last he whimpered like a tired child when she brought the spoon to his mouth, and she couldn’t bring herself to force him any longer.
She set the cup and spoon down on the floor beside the bed and instead took up the vial of poppy syrup. She put her hand on Hereric’s forehead, steadying him, and managed to trickle a few drops between his lips.
“It will help with the pain,” she told him softly, though she knew he was far beyond understanding.
Isolde stood looking down at Hereric, watching as his breathing deepened and slowed, seeing the sickly gray color stealing like nightfall along the line of his jaw. And she wondered whether it was only chance that had made her choose a tale of the Morrigan—the death maid, who flew over a battlefield in raven form and chose the men who would fall.
She closed her eyes, and as she often did when she faced a patient she feared was beyond her power to heal, tried to summon up an image of her grandmother. Tried to imagine what Morgan the enchantress would do or say if she were here.
She could see her grandmother’s face vividly: her long snow-white hair, her fiercely proud, still beautiful face with its delicate, fine-cut features and flashing dark eyes. A wave of longing caught her, sharp enough to stop her breath. Goddess mother, she wished Morgan were actually here. She would have been desperately glad, just now, to have an older authority to whom she could defer. Or at least her grandmother’s listening ear.
What haven’t I thought of? she asked the shadow Morgan silently. What else can I try?
Isolde could almost imagine she heard an echo of her grandmother’s voice in the soft, lapping whisper of water against the boat’s hull. Herbs themselves cannot heal. They can only remind the body of the feeling of health, so that it heals itself.
She could almost believe she saw the shadow Morgan she’d conjured from the air take a step nearer the bed and give a gentle shake of her head, a shadow of sadness or pity crossing her dark eyes. When the body has forgotten health for too long, all herbs will be powerless to help.
Isolde let out her breath. Now she knew she was purely imagining her grandmother’s presence here. Morgan might have loved her, might have taught her the healer’s craft and the ways of the Sight. Might have been the most skilled healer Isolde had ever known. But she’d never in her life seen Morgan either gentle, pitying, or sad.
The shadowy Morgan firmed her mouth as she turned from the bed back to Isolde, her dark eyes stern. Stop hiding your head under the blankets like a frightened child. You know very well there’s only one hope left for this man.
Isolde might almost have smiled, if the image of Morgan hadn’t been overlaid with one of Hereric’s ashy gray face and shattered arm. Well, that sounds more like you, at any rate.
Hereric did have only one hope left. She did know. One last measure she might try to save his life. And she had no idea—none—how she was going to tell Trystan.
But it couldn’t be tonight, at any rate. Now Hereric seemed to have fallen into a deeper sleep. Isolde rose, stretching muscles stiff with bending over the bed, went to open the cabin door, and stepped out onto the deck. She paused, drawing a long breath of the clean, cool air. The sky was a deep, fathomless black, as yet untouched by dawn, and the night was silent save for the steady lap of the water against the boat’s side and the soft creak of wood and rope as the boat rocked gently in the current.
They had sailed around the southern tip of Demetia to reach the coast of Cornwall, at the point where the River Camel joined the Severn Sea. Now they were making their way upriver, the winds carrying them against the current towards Camelerd. The moon was a silver crescent overhead but bright enough that Isolde could make out Trystan, lying asleep on a pile of old sails near the prow of the ship.
Cabal, visible only as a lean, dark shadow, padded towards her to snuffle into her hand, and Isolde ran her hand over his back, then abruptly went still, her whole body tensing as she strained to listen. The sound she’d heard came again. Above the lap of water against the hull, she caught the steady creak, dip, and splash of oars.
Isolde reacted instinctively, even before the conscious part of her mind had registered that no fisherman would be on the river at this hour of night. Almost instantly, she was across the deck and kneeling at Trystan’s side. She didn’t dare risk speaking aloud, and so she took him by the shoulder and shook him.
Trystan didn’t stir. He lay sprawled, one arm flung out along the deck, and Isolde saw the empty wine jar lying on its side near his outstretched hand. She gritted her teeth and shook him again, harder, but the jolt of fury was overshadowed a moment later by cold fear, as she felt the boat rock on its moorings and heard a thump, followed by the shriek of wood against wood. The other boat had come alongside.
Isolde felt panic hit her like rain driven on a gusting wind, and she looked quickly round the deck, willing herself to think. Her eye fell on the mooring ropes, stretching out over the side, and in another moment she had snatched the knife from Trystan’s belt and was up and sawing at the ti
es. The first rope broke with a snap, and she felt the boat lurch beneath her feet so that she lost her balance for a moment and nearly fell. From somewhere behind her, she heard a splash and an angry shout that ran like ice up her spine, but she forced herself not to look round, starting on the second rope instead. It broke as well, and she felt the boat spin out into the current and begin to move.
Bracing herself against the side, she turned at last, then froze. A man’s figure crouched on the deck across from her, a black shadow against the night sky. It was too dark to see his face, but he wore a leather war helmet and had a sword and two knives at his belt. And then, as Isolde stood still, her blood running cold, a second shadowy form hauled himself up over the gunwale, landing on the deck with a thump and a muttered oath.
Both men had seen her. Slowly, they started to advance, moving with arms outstretched and legs braced as the boat, now free of its moorings, lurched and swayed in the river’s flow. Both men had drawn their weapons, and the moonlight ran silver along the blades of their upraised swords. They came at her, faces too much in shadow to see more than palely gleaming eyes.
Isolde felt a scream building inside her, but she forced it back, making herself stand motionless against the rail. Her gaze flicked from one man to the other, trying to gauge the space on either side of the human wall they formed. Not far enough for her to get past. They’d have her in a moment if she tried. Her hand was clenched on the knife, hard enough to drive the hilt’s ridges into her palm. And then, out of nowhere it seemed, Cabal was launching himself at the nearest man, catching him square in the chest.
They fell to the deck with a crash that shook the boards under Isolde’s feet, the man’s shoulders striking first, followed a moment later by the back of his head. It must have knocked him unconscious, for though Isolde heard him give a low groan, he lay still and unmoving and made no effort to rise. Cabal twisted up from where he’d landed and in a flash was between her and the second man, the fur on his neck standing on end, teeth bared in a snarl.