by Anna Elliott
It didn’t matter how much she might wish Trystan closer to her. It could never, never be now. Marche—Trystan’s father—would always be there, standing in between.
Isolde thought for a moment she was going to be sick, but she clenched her jaw shut, tightening her hands and lying absolutely still. She didn’t cry, either. Partly because Trystan would hear. Partly because crying would feel like giving the victory to Marche, and because she hated the feeling that she was wallowing in self-pity when she was hardly the first or the last woman to feel this way. But partly, too, because the hollow ache that filled her was somehow too raw and painful—and too deeply lodged in her chest—for tears.
FINALLY, THE FIRE TRYSTAN HAD BUILT died down to glowing embers, and the room began to brighten with the first gray light of dawn. A headache had settled behind Isolde’s eyes, but she sat up, ignoring the lurch of her stomach. Trystan had been bending over Hereric, but he looked up as Isolde stirred.
“How is he?” Isolde asked.
Trystan lifted one shoulder. “Well, he swallowed some of the poppy an hour or two ago, at least.” His blue eyes looked smudged with tiredness, and there were lines of fatigue about the corners of his mouth.
“How do you feel?” Trystan asked.
“Better.” Isolde got unsteadily to her feet. Her ankle hurt, but less so than it had the night before, and she found it would take her weight. The dizziness, too, was gone. “Is there somewhere nearby I can wash?”
Trystan nodded. “There’s a stream that runs across a corner of the gardens outside. Do you want me—”
“No!” The word came a shade too quickly, and Isolde drew in her breath. “No, that’s all right. I’ll find it. Someone should stay with Hereric in case he wakes.”
Outside, she leaned against one of the cracked stone columns. The air was damp and clean feeling after the night’s rain, and the sky was clear, banded with the orange of the rising sun. Cabal had padded after her when she’d stepped out through the door, and Isolde scratched his ears, holding tight to his collar to keep him by her side. She closed her eyes but found herself remembering Trystan’s face, shadowed by the firelight of the night before, feeling the brush of his fingers smoothing the hair back from her brow. Lying close beside him and finally being warm—and feeling completely, frighteningly safe.
The rustle of a breeze in the branches of the surrounding trees seemed to whisper an echo of Garwen’s weeks-ago spoken words. Everyone deserves to know that kind of love at least once in a lifetime.
Isolde jerked her thoughts back and tried to fill her mind instead with the memory of Trystan drunkenly asleep beside the empty wineskin. She half wished that he had drunk himself to sleep again last night, as well. She would have clutched at being able to be angry just now.
Instead, she thought, I’m going to have to spend day after day and night after night with him until the journey’s end. When just being in the same room with him this morning had made her skin prickle as though with the jabs of hot knives and her lungs burn as if she were trying to breathe water instead of air.
She felt steadier, though, after she had bathed her face and hands in the icy water of the stream she found running between mossy banks among the trees. If there was still a hard, cold knot in her chest, the panicked, shaking feeling had eased. Isolde combed her hair out with her fingers and then braided it tightly again before sitting down on a rock to untie the bandages on her ankle. The wounds still looked red and angry, but the swelling had gone down, and the streaks of red around the snake’s bite were starting to fade.
Isolde had brought her medicine bag; she cleaned and salved the cuts, then retied the bandages. She let herself sit still a moment longer, watching Cabal splash in the shallow water, making wild bounding leaps after the schools of minnows that darted to and fro near the surface and snapping at the water with his jaws. She stared at Cabal so long her vision blurred. Then she rose and summoned the big dog with the low whistle he’d been taught by Con.
TRYSTAN WAS WIPING HERERIC’S FACE with a damp cloth when Isolde returned.
“Here, let me.” She took the cloth from Trystan and knelt at the Saxon man’s side, putting a hand on his brow. His skin was still dry and hot, but at least no hotter than the night before. Hereric stirred, twitching restlessly at her touch, and gave an indistinct, fretful sound, though his eyes remained closed. Isolde checked the bandages on his arm, but they were still dry; as Trystan had said, there was little she could do for him beyond waiting to see whether his body was strong enough to fight free of the fever’s leeching grasp.
Trystan had found brown bread and water amidst their supplies, and he handed Isolde both a cup and a round of the bread. It was hard and dry, but dipped in the water it softened enough to chew. Isolde shared her portion with Cabal, then forced herself to swallow a few mouthfuls.
They’d not yet spoken of any plans beyond the most immediate ones, but now Isolde looked across at Trystan and said, “Trys, what are we going to do? We can’t keep on pulling Hereric on a carrying sledge.”
“I know.” Trystan tore off a piece of his own round of bread, looking down at Hereric. His eyes were still shadowed by weariness, but his look was the same one Isolde had seen the day before, shutting out all thought but straightforward consideration of the immediate questions at hand. He looked up at her. “Can you make any kind of guess at what the chances are he’ll live through this?”
Isolde’s gaze went to Hereric’s still form. It was almost a relief to let her mind slip into the familiar channels of healing and treatment, death or life for a man in her care. “He’s young,” she said slowly. She realized as she spoke that she’d never considered how old Hereric might be before. There was something almost ageless about him, the warrior’s powerfully built body without and the child’s mind within. Now, though, studying his broad, flaxen-bearded face, Isolde thought that he couldn’t be more than five and twenty, and maybe even younger still.
“Young and strong,” she said. “That will count in his favor, sick as he is now.”
She stopped and focused again on Hereric’s face, concentrating, letting the awareness of pain she’d been blocking out flood in. Pain …and beneath it …Isolde closed her eyes in an effort of concentration, trying to grasp at the feeling that flashed and slid away through her hands like the darting minnows in the stream.
“He’s in pain,” she said at last. “In pain, and he doesn’t know why or what’s wrong. He knows we’re here—or at least that he’s not alone. But he’s afraid to wake, because he knows the pain will be worse if he does.” She swallowed, then added, in a steadier tone, “I’d call his odds …even. Maybe a bit less if we move on, a bit more if we stay here.”
Trystan said nothing, but he looked at her questioningly, one eyebrow raised. Isolde could have ignored the look. But her head was still aching, and she found she was too tired to bother trying to evade the question or lie. Not that it likely matters in any case, she thought. She could remember asking Trystan in honest bewilderment when she was six and he was eight whether he didn’t hear other people’s thoughts sometimes or catch glimpses of the future in water, too.
She broke off another piece of bread for Cabal and said, “I can hear his thoughts—or not hear, exactly, but share them, in a way. Not always. I can’t tell what you’re thinking now, I mean. But I can feel anything that has to do with injury or sickness or pain.”
A faint line appeared between Trystan’s brows. “Is that why you asked me whether I’d hurt my hand in the fight two nights ago?”
“Partly.” Isolde lifted one shoulder. “But even without the Sight, I’d be a dismal healer if I couldn’t tell when someone was favoring one hand.”
She waited, but Trystan looked neither surprised nor uneasy, only weary, still, his brows drawn as though his thoughts followed some inward track of their own. Isolde asked, curiously, “You don’t think that’s strange or frightening?”
One corner of Trystan’s mouth lifted, though she though
t the smile was slightly grim. “Not if you can’t read my every thought, at any rate.” Then he shrugged and cocked an eyebrow at her. “Besides, I’m going to be afraid of the girl who used to spit apple seeds at me across the garden wall?”
Isolde smiled a bit despite herself. “I’d forgotten about that. I always won when we made it a contest.”
“Only because I let you.” Trystan’s smile faded, and he took a swallow of water, then said, frowning slightly once again, “All right. As to making plans—you still want to get to Wessex—to Cerdic.”
It wasn’t a question, but Isolde nodded. “I suppose so. I mean, yes, of course I do. I must, or all this really has been completely in vain. But we can’t move Hereric—not now. And we can’t stay here long, can we?” She rubbed the space between her brows. “I’m sorry—maybe I could see a way forward if I hadn’t been bitten by an adder last night. Or if I weren’t trying to block out feeling Hereric’s pain.”
Another grim smile tugged momentarily at Trystan’s mouth. “I doubt it. I’m not facing either of those things, and I’m not having much luck.” He took another swallow of water. “I can’t see how we’re to go on overland.” Isolde thought a brief shadow of regret might have passed across his face at the thought of the boat, but it was gone in a moment, and he went on, “It’s one thing to sail along the coast. But traveling through the border lands, we’re dead or captive as soon as a stray war band or guard patrol crosses our path.”
Trystan shifted, leaning back against the lime-washed wall, his glance flicking round the room, ending on the ashes of last night’s fire. He was silent a moment, then looked up, meeting Isolde’s eyes. “I can see only one way to go on from here. I don’t like it, because it means I’ll have to leave you and Hereric for a day or two on your own, with only Cabal for a guard. But it might gain us safe escort into Cerdic’s lands.”
He stopped, and after a moment, Isolde said, “Go on—what do you mean?”
ISOLDE MADE HERSELF TEAR HER GAZE away from where Trystan had vanished into the surrounding trees—though she couldn’t stop their final exchange of words from ringing in her mind. Just before he’d turned to go, Trystan had stopped, his eyes straying back to the ruined villa where Hereric still lay.
“Isa, if Hereric doesn’t—” He seemed to check himself, and Isolde knew he was stopping himself from saying, If Hereric doesn’t survive. He shook his head as though to clear away the words. “If he gets any worse, will you tell him from me …” Trystan stopped again, his gaze still resting on the villa’s cracked columns. “Tell him—” And then he broke off and shook his head again. “Oh, never mind. You’ll know what to say. Just”—he looked back at her, then, his eyes resting on her face—“Just take care, all right? Keep safe.”
And Isolde had swallowed the tightness in her throat and nodded. “And you.”
Now Trystan was gone to seek out the band of broken men—warriors unsworn to any lord—he’d lived wild within these parts some four years before. So he’d said—which was more that he’d ever told her of what his life had been after Camlann, after the mines.
And Isolde was left here with the realization that had struck her like a slap across the face with the flat side of a sword: that if four years ago, Trystan had been fighting as a mercenary among a gang of masterless men, it dovetailed all too neatly with what Cynlas had believed at first sight of Trystan’s face.
And if that were true—and if Cynlas had swung back to his first conviction, decided after all that Trystan was the man who’d killed his son—he would almost certainly have set himself to find out where Trystan and Isolde herself had gone. And he might well have found out, Isolde thought. No secret can be kept absolutely safe for long.
Isolde felt doubt slide like a knife blade through her skin, even she went back inside, went to kneel once more by Hereric’s side. If that should be true, she thought, it might be neither Marche’s men nor a traitor to the king’s council who set on us three nights ago and burned the boat—but instead Cynlas of Rhos, bent on blood payment for the life of his son.
Do you trust me? Trystan had asked when he’d refused to answer her question about the aftermath of Camlann. And I do trust him, Isolde thought. Whatever happened to him seven years ago, she would still trust him with her life now. Where the cold doubt crept in was when she asked herself if she could trust him with Britain’s survival as well.
She could feel the frighteningly strong pull of wanting to believe she could trust him—like being caught in the current of a fast-moving river. But wanting and knowing were two different things. And she’d been thirteen the last time she’d known—really known—Trystan. She’d never dragged from him an answer about why he turned into a lolling drunkard at night, either. Much less how he’d come to be living wild on the edges of the Saxon war lands with a band of lawless mercenary fighting men.
Isolde picked up the waterskin and a damp rag, and began to wipe Hereric’s face, concentrating on moving the cloth with smooth, even strokes across the fevered man’s skin. But even so, she couldn’t stop the memories flashing across her mind like jagged strikes of lightning across the night sky. Cynlas of Rhos’s hoarse voice and furious gaze …Trystan’s face, going abruptly and utterly still at the mention of Camlann …the reek of wine on his breath …the steady beat of Trystan’s heart under her cheek last night as he’d carried her here.
The memory of what she’d almost said to him last night beat like frantic bird’s wings at the corners of her mind as well, but she refused to let that at least in. She poured more water over the wet rag, making sure to dampen every corner and fold, and thought, I’ll journey to Wessex. And if I live to return, I’ll be wedded to Madoc. Madoc, who is the only hope I have of protecting the lands I was born to rule.
Madoc, who was a good man and who needed her—or at least needed some woman to make him a refuge and a home. Isolde thought, you’ll marry Madoc. And if you feel sick now at the thought of sharing any man’s bed, not all men are like Marche. Con wasn’t. In a year or two, you’ll maybe not be able to help loving Madoc as you loved Con. And so you’ll wait for him to return from war, as you waited for Con. And wonder whether he’ll be killed in this battle, this time—or the next—or whether he’ll be carried home with a wound it’s beyond your power to heal. And maybe in another year you’ll give him a child—a baby son, maybe, with his father’s black hair and eyes—who might live or might die and take another piece of your heart.
Isolde forced her hands to relax their grip on the damp cloth, willing the tide of panic back. Because even that, she thought, would still be safer than letting yourself even think the words you stopped yourself from saying to Trystan just in time.
Chapter Ten
TRYSTAN LEANED FORWARD TO THRUST a branch deeper into the fire. “We have an agreement then?”
He looked up to find the man opposite him sitting with eerie stillness, his eyes on Trystan’s face. The hut was hot; Fidach had to be sweltering under the weight of the bearskin cloak he wore, but he’d not taken it off, nor even unfastened the heavy bronze brooch that held it closed.
“Are you doubting my word?”
His voice was soft, but there was an undercurrent of a threat in the tone. Trystan squelched a flicker of impatience at the man and his bloody games. This was neither more nor less than what he’d expected: a sparring match of words, the steps as fixed as those of a sword fight. Play his part, he thought sourly, and he just might stand a chance of walking away from here with a whole skin.
He lifted one shoulder. “Always hard to believe a man’s telling the truth when you know you’d lie in his place.”
For a moment, Fidach was silent, still as a serpent about to strike, his face expressionless above the collar of the fur robe. Then, abruptly, he threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter. “Well said, my friend. Very well. I may be lying—as may you. But for the moment we pretend we both speak the truth. You will undertake the job I outlined. I will fetch this girl—your sister—a
nd keep her safe until you return.” Fidach paused, his smile thinning and turning faintly wintry on his narrow, sharp-featured face. “If you listen to rumor, you’ll know, at any rate, that her virtue will be under no threat from me.”
ISOLDE SAT BACK ON HER HEELS, looking down at Hereric’s immobile face. Four days had passed since Trystan had gone. And if the thought that he might never return was still a prickle of fear at the back of Isolde’s mind, she had by this time managed to isolate it, keep her thoughts focused on the immediate tasks of getting through each moment of the day. She couldn’t help Trystan, a lone man against whatever war parties he might have met with on his way. But she could keep fighting for Hereric’s life.
Over the last days, she had slept only in short snatches, sitting up with Hereric day and night, coaxing him to swallow spoonfuls of broth or water, bathing him with water from the stream in an effort to bring his fever down. She had talked to him, offered words of reassurance, rubbed his remaining hand between hers, told him how much she and Trystan wanted him to live, and tried to kindle in him the will to fight for his own life.
Hereric, though, still lay in a deep, fever-stupefied slumber, his face the color of firewood charred to pale ash. He was no worse than he’d been four days ago, but neither had he gained any ground. He simply hung in some shadowed middle ground, suspended between life and death, his breathing rasping and slow, the pulse in his neck light and thready and hectically fast.
Now it was midday but raining again, so that the abandoned villa was dimly lit, the colors of the tiled floor flattened to a uniform dusty brown. And all about them, she seemed to feel a grim, somber presence that made her remember what Trystan said about Saxons avoiding Roman dwellings for fear of the ghosts. She had by this time explored more of the ruin during the odd times when Hereric slept, searching for anything that might be of use.