by Anna Elliott
Anything but a direct answer would, Isolde knew, be a mistake. So she simply said, “It is. And will you tell me your response?”
Cerdic met her gaze directly. “My answer is no. Why should I?”
“Your own mother was Briton born.”
Cerdic’s shoulders twitched impatiently. “Yes, and she died bearing my squalling brat of a brother when I was five. I have a single memory of her—her slapping my face for breaking a jar of ale. A lifetime—an old man’s lifetime—ago. My answer is still no. I will make no alliance with Britain. And should Octa’s proposals in the days to come meet with my approval, I will make peace between us and swear alliance with him.”
“Even though Octa is himself allied to Marche?”
Cerdic reached for one of the chased golden cups on the table at his elbow, poured wine, and drank deeply before replying in a voice that sounded flat, almost harsh. “Lady Isolde, even now, Octa’s armies mass not a half day’s ride from here. And in two days’ time, Octa will ride here, to this abbey, to extend to me the hand of peace.”
Isolde started to speak, but he raised a hand, cutting her off. “A hand of peace that nonetheless holds a sword. Should I refuse the offer of peace that Octa makes, his armies will attack. That is not simply a guess on my part, you understand, but the plain truth of what will occur. Born of my knowledge of Octa and his ways. I have had lands laid waste by Octa before. I have had his armies tear into mine like wolves at the kill. Cowardice has never been a weakness of mine—but neither am I a fool. And only a fool would feel no fear in the face of Octa of Kent’s attack.”
Cerdic paused, his lined face remote as a statue, his voice dry, precise, and calm, measuring each word. “The last time it came to outright battle between us, I saw a hundred and more of my men captured by Octa impaled on sharpened spikes along the road like a forest of corpses. I am told by one who was there that it took some of them two days to die. Now, my forces, too, are massed outside these walls, as you have seen. And in numbers and in fighting abilities, we equal Octa’s strength. But only just. I cannot say whether we would win or lose. But what I can say with certainty is that a fight between us would be a slaughter. And I have already seen too many fields bathed in blood in my time. I have fought too many battles.”
Cerdic stopped again, rubbing his thin, blue-veined hands together. “I have reached the twilight of my life, Lady Isolde. I no longer wish to kill—or to watch men killed in my name. I sometimes think the lives we take are irreversibly joined with ours. Some days I would swear I feel the weight of the men I have killed like a millstone round my neck. I would not make that weight any heavier than it already is.”
The Saxon king stopped, again rubbing the joints of his right hand as though the knuckles ached beneath the heavy gold rings. In that moment, he looked neither like a golden hawk or even a king, but simply a tired old man who wanted nothing more than to drink his wine and seek his bed. “We Saxons understand two things, Lady Isolde: farming and war. We come to these shores hungry for land. We are ready to fight with axe and sword to make it ours. Now, though, I am fit for neither plowing the earth nor wielding a sword. I sleep poorly. Time hangs heavy on my hands. Time to look back across the years of my life. Feel the ache of countless old war wounds and live over again deeds done when I was young.”
He gave another creaking sigh, then said, with sudden violence, “The gods protect you, Lady Isolde, from living long enough to think overmuch on who you are and what you have become.”
Something in his tone made Isolde think suddenly of Morgan, staring with bleak eyes into the scrying waters on the eve of Camlann. A memory of Morgan’s face rose before her, though the image was shadowy, less clear than it had been nights ago in her hut at the crannog.
Cerdic had gone on, shaking his head. “But I can see myself, now, with clear eyes—or clearer at least, than when I was young. I have little sentiment and a great deal of pride. I may have loved my daughter. I rather think I did. But I cannot clearly recall.” He shook his head again, snowy hair brushing the collar of his robe. “I can scarcely call to mind what she looked like anymore.”
Cerdic pressed his eyes briefly closed, and when he looked back at Isolde, the weariness and weight of age shadowed the startlingly blue gaze as well. “I was not yet thirty, Lady Isolde, when I came across the ocean to these shores, my men and all we owned packed tight into three stinking, salt-stained keels that smelled of ale and piss and vomit from the number of us aboard. I carved out a kingdom, watered its soil with the blood and sweat of my finest fighting men. And I have held that kingdom fast, throughout my lifetime. Now I am old. My bones ache. My sight begins to fail. The next time I board a keeled ship will be when my bones are laid aboard and burned on a funeral pyre to carry me to feast on boar with the warriors of Woden’s hall. But I have yet pride enough that I do not wish my final act as king of Wessex to be an ignominious defeat. Should it come to a final pitched battle between us—should Octa’s side win—Octa will ravage Wessex like a rutting boar. Make slaves of the children, slaughter the men, give the women to his army for whores. So, yes. Though Octa be an ally of Marche, who killed my child, I plan to accept the terms of the peace he offers. Should you live to be as old as I am, you may understand the choice—even find that you would do the same.”
Isolde felt a cold wash of helplessness. Expect defeat, and you have none to thank but yourself when that’s what you earn, the Morgan in her mind said again.
“Maybe,” she said at last. “But I hope that I never live so long that I cannot see that a peace founded on an oath with a man like Marche will be rancid at its core.”
But Cerdic only shook his head. “Perhaps. Yes, perhaps it is. But we have a saying, Lady Isolde. Gæð??? a wyrd swa hio scel. Fate goes ever as she shall. If the spinners that spin out the destiny of our lives have determined that Octa and Marche shall have Britain, they shall. Nothing you or I may do will stand in their way.” He paused, raised the golden cup to his mouth again, then set it down. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Lady Isolde. I admire your courage. And the gods know I held your father in high regard and would a hundred times rather ally with him than with Octa and Marche. But Modred lies buried with Arthur at Camlann. And we who remain must live our lives and guard what is ours as best we may. My answer stands. Britain must stand alone in the fight against Octa and Marche.”
There was a pause while Isolde searched for a response. And then, into the silence that had dropped between them like a stone, came the sound of someone pounding on the room’s outer door. A moment later, the door flew open to admit a man—another of Cerdic’s guard, he must be, by his leather jerkin and spear and the two knives he wore at his belt. He looked in blank-eyed astonishment from Cerdic to Isolde, then belatedly sank to his knees, head bowed.
“Forgive me, lord.” Isolde knew enough of the Saxon tongue to understand that much, but had to guess at the rest of the words. By his gestures, though, he was stammering out that he had seen the unconscious guard outside the door and feared for Cerdic’s life.
Isolde almost saw the weariness drop away, saw Cerdic don the mantle of kingship like a cloak as he rose to his feet. His voice held the clash of metal, and his eyes, as he looked down at the guardsman, were icy hard. He, too, had switched to his own native tongue, so that Isolde caught only a word or two here and there. “I …well …as see …explain …then go.”
The guardsman was a young man, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, but no more. His fair hair was plaited into two long braids, and his beard was scraggly. He stammered out a flood of words of which Isolde understood only a bare handful. Something about a party of men, seeking shelter at the abbey. One of them injured—perhaps dead.
Then abruptly Isolde sat up, the shock of the guardsman’s words momentarily darkening her vision and stopping her ears. If she’d understood the Saxon words right, the young man had just said that two of the men had skin as black as night and that a third man had only one arm.
It was a momen
t before Isolde realized that Cerdic had turned back to her and was speaking, using the British tongue once more. “I beg you excuse me, Lady Isolde. My man Ulf brings word of a party of men who claim to have been set upon by one of Octa’s raiding parties. But by their looks and the weapons they carry, they are fighting men themselves—perhaps sent by Octa as spies. I—”
The rest of Cerdic’s words, though, were lost on Isolde. Her every instinct was screaming at her to run—to get away before she could hear any more. But at the same time, she knew with sick certainty that she could do nothing but learn the truth, see with her own eyes what had occurred. Her throat had gone dry, and she had to swallow before she could make her voice work.
“Please,” she said to Cerdic, and was distantly surprised to find that she was able to hold her voice steady as before. “Let me accompany you to these men. I’m a healer. If one of them has been wounded, I may be able to help.”
CERDIC’S GUARDSMAN LED THE WAY PAST the row of abbey cells where Isolde had been housed. Cerdic walked with an old man’s hobbling gait, his pace painfully slow, so that Isolde had to clench her hands to keep from shouting at him to hurry as they made their way towards the abbess’s rooms. The same rooms where Isolde had sat with Mother Berthildis mere hours ago.
Now she felt at once as though she would snap in two if their walk lasted a single moment more—and at the same time she found herself wishing fervently that it might never end.
Then the door to the abbess’s private rooms was swinging open, and she was standing frozen in the doorway, her every muscle locked in place, unable to move. A voice in her mind was saying over and over and over again, Please, please, don’t let this be real. Let this be a nightmare—a trick. Please, please, please, don’t let this be real.
A single oil lamp burned on the room’s single table, casting yellow, flickering light over the low-ceilinged room. Eurig stood to one side, his round, homely face a tight mask of misery. Hereric was beside him, exhaustion in every line of his broad frame, his face wet with tears. Piye and Daka stood against the wall, arms folded across their chests, twin impassive, watchful guards. And on a low wooden bench, with Mother Berthildis bending over him—
He looked, Isolde thought, almost exactly as he had when she’d left him asleep in the forest the night before. Trystan’s face was peaceful, his eyes closed. Save for the patch of blood that soaked an entire side of his tunic and an angry scratch across his temple, he truly might have been only sleeping.
Isolde felt strangely detached, as though she watched herself and all the rest of the scene around her from a great height. The voice in the corner of her mind was weeping, screaming, raging at the unfairness of it—that she’d left Trystan to keep him from being harmed. And now, not even a full day later, he lay before her, gravely wounded, or—
No, not dead. Isolde felt the tightly clenched knot in her chest loosen, if only a bit, and drew breath for the first time since entering the room. Scarcely even aware of having moved, she had flung herself down on her knees beside him and found the pulse of blood in his neck. Thready and terrifyingly faint, but there nonetheless. Trystan was alive.
Still with that odd feeling of standing back and watching from a distance what she did, Isolde heard herself telling Cerdic that these men were known to her—that none of them was in Octa’s pay, and that she would vouch for them all. Making some kind of reply to the questions Eurig and the others asked. Answering Mother Berthildis in a voice that sounded tinny and hollow and far too steady in her own ears. Yes, I’m a healer. Yes, please send someone to fetch my medicine bag. It’s in the cell you granted me for the night. And thank you, yes, I’ll need clean water and bandages as well.
She watched herself checking Trystan for injury, apart from the obvious wound in his side. Gently press and move his arms and legs, feel for broken bones. Take one breath. Another. Keep her teeth clenched tight shut because otherwise the wailing in her mind would tear free of her chest and come out in a screaming sob.
Nothing was broken—save for the already cracked ribs—though when she stripped the filthy, blood-soaked garments from him, she saw that his whole body was marked with raw scrapes and angry, darkening bruises. The worst, though, was plainly the gash in his side—a sword cut, by the look of it—that had caught him just under the ribs. Deep and ugly, the wound had plainly bled a great deal. A wonder, really, Isolde thought, that it hasn’t already proved fatal.
She swallowed and looked up at Eurig, who was standing closest to her. Mother Berthildis had departed in search of the water and bandages Isolde had asked for, and Cerdic, too, had gone, leaving his young guardsman Ulf posted outside the door. The Saxon king might believe Isolde was who she claimed to be, but plainly he’d not held power this long by failing to protect himself from the unnecessary risk of four strange men. Still, for the time being, at least, Isolde and the others were alone.
“What happened?” Isolde asked Eurig.
Eurig’s gaze was fixed on Trystan’s motionless form, and he shook his head, rubbing a hand over his bald pate before answering. “Fidach found out this morning that you’d gone, the pair of you. Near ruptured himself shouting when he learned you weren’t anywhere in camp. He sent all of us—the whole band—out searching. Orders were to see you brought back to him alive. So us all”—Eurig sketched a gesture that included himself, Hereric, Daka, and Piye—“we took the direction we thought you’d have headed in. Figured we’d the best chance that way of catching up with you before any of the rest. We got to the woods west of here and split up. Hereric and me took one way—Piye and Daka the other. Wanted to give ourselves the best odds of tracking you. Hereric and I ran across Trystan and that hound of yours sometime about midday.”
Isolde felt a pang of guilt as she realized it hadn’t even occurred to wonder about Cabal. Her throat contracted as she swallowed again. “Cabal,” she said. “Is he—”
Eurig shook his head. “No. Leastways, I don’t think he was harmed. Although. …” Eurig’s voice trailed off, and he avoided meeting Isolde’s eyes.
“Just tell me,” she said. “Please.”
Unwillingly, Eurig raised his gaze to Isolde’s face. “Well, the plain truth is, he ran off after them that did this.” He jerked his head in Trystan’s direction. “So if he caught them—”
He didn’t have to finish. Isolde nodded, willing away the thought of Cabal attacking a war party, falling under a hail of their spears, dying alone and in agony amidst the dry leaf mold of the forest floor. Of herself, leaving Cabal behind with the order to guard Trystan’s life. Not now, she thought. Think of that now and you’ll be no good at all to Trystan.
“Who did this?” she asked, when she could trust her voice. “Cerdic said it was a raiding party of Octa’s men?”
Before Eurig could answer, though, Mother Berthildis, carrying Isolde’s medicine bag, reentered the room, followed by another nun, in black robes and veil, who bore a basin of water and a roll of clean rags. They set medicines, basin, and rags down at Isolde’s feet, and she soaked a cloth and started to wipe the dried blood away from Trystan’s side. There was a comfort, of a kind, in the action. In the familiarity of tasks she had performed many, many times before.
The lost, desolate cry was still sounding deep inside her, and a cold, shaking feeling had settled in her chest. She ignored both, though, concentrating fiercely on the immediate tasks of cleansing the wound, wrestling her thoughts into the familiar track of the questions she always asked at such times as this: cauterize the wound or stitch it closed? Try to get him to drink wine or broth now, or wait until she’d done tending his wounds?
All the while, too, she was weighing the circumstances as feverishly as a miser counting his gold, adding up the odds for and against Trystan’s chance of survival. In his favor was his health, his strength of constitution, his youth. She had known men to recover from wounds like his. But she’d also seen them die if the wounds turned to poison and fever set in. And against his odds she had to set the te
rrifying shallowness of his breathing. The blood he had plainly lost. The chill pallor of his skin.
In a way she was glad that whatever trick it was of the Sight still blocked her from reading Trystan; it would have been hard to work if she’d been constantly aware of Trystan’s pain. But it was horribly frustrating as well. She’d grown used to the Sight as a guide when treating injury or sickness. Without it, she felt as though she were working blind.
Isolde realized abruptly that Eurig was speaking, telling her about the encounter with Octa’s guard. She’d missed nearly the whole of his explanation and caught only the last. Something about how Trystan had taken on the five guardsmen alone so that Eurig could get Hereric—plainly in no condition to fight—to safety.
“Didn’t so much as hesitate. Just went straight out and challenged them before they could spot Hereric and me. Didn’t want to leave him, but he’d put his knife at my throat and made me swear I’d not leave Hereric’s side. Even still, oath or no, I’d have fought with him—to the death, if need be. But he got the guards’ attention and then ran like hell. Drew them off, away from us. Hereric and me followed—crashing about through the brush after them like a couple of wild hogs. By the time we caught up, Trystan had got them to follow him up a cropping of rock. There’s a hill on one side and a kind of a cliff on the other. Me and Hereric were standing in the trees at the foot of the hill—saw the whole thing.” Eurig’s eyes darkened with the memory. “Octa’s men had Trystan backed up to the edge of the rocks. He’s wounded—even from a distance you could see the blood soaking his shirt on the side. But even still, he’s holding them off. And then all of a sudden he throws down his sword. Just tosses it away. And he says, ‘My life’s yours. But give me a moment to pray before I die.’ Something like that. And Octa’s men, they just stand there a moment, looking at each other like they don’t know what to make of that at all. But before they can act one way or the other, Trystan turns around and jumps off the cliff. Just—throws himself off, the same way he threw away his sword, if you can believe it.”