Dark Moon of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

  Fidach paused, throat contracting as he fought off another fit of coughing. “So as you must realize now, after you and Trystan left the camp, I set my men to combing the countryside for your tracks. And eventually ran across Piye and Daka last night—who, after a good deal of persuasion on my part and oath-swearing that I meant you no harm—told me where you’d gone and why. They had gone to round up any of the other men they could find. Our plan was to break into the camp and take you back by force. But then I saw Cerdic’s men set the place on fire, and knew I had to get you out myself, without waiting for any of the others to come.”

  Isolde looked at him, still feeling dazed with weariness—and with the effort of trying to fit the man before her inside Fidach the mercenary leader’s skin. She tried to call up some kind of reply to what he’d just said. Thank you, seemed absurdly inadequate, but it was all she could think of.

  “Thank you.”

  Fidach waved that away. He cast one final look up at the abbey walls. “I understand Trystan was wounded?”

  She’d been seeing Trystan’s still, bloodlessly pale face since the moment she’d left him the night before. Even so, Fidach’s words sounded in Isolde’s ears like cracks in breaking ice. Isolde nodded, unable to trust her voice enough to speak, and Fidach’s leaf-brown eyes met hers in a long, sober look. “Then I wish him good luck.”

  And then he turned away, back to the horse, taking hold of the reins. Isolde saw his mouth tighten further with the effort of dragging himself up into the saddle, but then he was astride the gray, turning the animal’s head away from the abbey, back along the forest path they’d just traveled. He looked back at her, though, and made Isolde an odd little half bow. “And I wish you luck as well. Lady Isolde of Camelerd.”

  He spoke her name in a way that made Isolde wonder whether he’d known who she was all along. But then he urged the horse forward and was gone, vanishing into the early dawn shadows of the surrounding trees.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ISOLDE SAT BACK FROM BENDING over Trystan’s bedside, letting out a hiss of frustration through her teeth. He’d been moved overnight from Mother Berthildis’s lodgings to a room in the guest hall, and Isolde had gone to him as soon as she’d entered the abbey gates. She’d felt as though she was escaping the burning, smoke-filled hut in Octa’s camp all over again when she’d seen that his chest still rose and fell with each indrawn breath, felt the light but perceptible beat of his pulse.

  Piye and Daka had not yet returned, but she’d found Eurig and Mother Berthildis both with Trystan: Eurig asleep sitting up on the hard wooden settle by the hearth, Mother Berthildis kneeling at Trystan’s bedside and chanting a prayer in a voice that was cracked with age but surprisingly sweet. She’d heard from Mother Berthildis as much as the abbess knew of the last night’s battle. That Octa’s armies had been ambushed and routed by Cerdic’s men, and that Cerdic himself had ridden out to chase down the fleeing, tattered remains of Octa’s forces.

  Isolde had felt a distant kind of relief at hearing that her proposed plan hadn’t led Cerdic into defeat after all. But she’d not been able to manage anything else.

  She’d bathed—more thoroughly than in the forest stream—washed the lingering reek of smoke from her skin and hair, and changed her filthy, ash-streaked clothes. And she’d slept a few hours, too, because she’d been so tired that bright sparks were flashing across the field of her vision and she’d known she’d be no good to Trystan or anyone else that way. And then she’d come back here, to find that Daka and Piye had at last come back. Though of Fidach, they had no word at all.

  She’d been wholly and completely thankful to see the two brothers safely returned. And she’d felt a flicker of worry for Fidach, alone and with the unstitched cut in his arm. But now that the four men—Piye, Daka, Eurig, and Hereric—had left the room to seek rest or food, she’d no thoughts, no attention at all save for the long, broken body before her. For trying, again and again, to reach Trystan as she had Hereric—as she had Piye. Because there was absolutely nothing else she could do for him now.

  She’d checked the wound in his side and found it angry and blackened from being cauterized, but with no trace of the poison she’d feared. She’d tried—again and again—to get him to take water from a spoon, but he never swallowed. The liquid just ran uselessly onto the pillow. So she’d taken his hand and tried using the Sight to speak with him.

  Except that that effort was equally useless. Again and again, she met with blank darkness that was like running up against a solid stone wall.

  She knew, too, that despite her failure to see Marche in the scrying waters before, the Sight was still there, still a live pulse inside her, a small, growing seedling in her chest. Mother Berthildis had remained and now sat in the corner, still chanting a soft, sweet prayer that contrasted oddly with her hunched form and age-yellowed face. And if Isolde concentrated, she could feel the hot twinges of rheumatism in the prioress’s knees, feel the dull ache that settled in the joints of her hands.

  If she concentrated—Isolde’s fingers twitched with the urge to smash something—she could probably feel every stray ache and pain in every man, woman, and child in the entire goddess-blessed abbey.

  But nothing at all from Trystan.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  Mother Berthildis’s voice broke in on Isolde’s thoughts, making her look up from Trystan’s still face. “What do you mean?”

  The abbess waved one clawlike hand impatiently. “You’ve been sitting there without moving for the last four hours, at least. And it’s not just fear for that young man’s life—fear that he’ll slip away and die if you move. I’ve seen that often enough before to know what it looks like. Plainly, you’ve some purpose in being here. The look in your eyes alone would scorch leather. So what is it you’re hoping you can do for him?”

  Isolde hadn’t been going to tell the older woman. She couldn’t think of a single thing to be gained by giving the abbess a true answer to what she’d asked. And if she did tell the truth, Mother Berthildis would probably think her leagued with the devil. Or mad.

  But Isolde couldn’t find the energy to care. Against all odds, against even her own expectations, she had somehow survived to return from Octa’s camp. And she was left now standing exactly where she’d been before: looking down at Trystan’s unconscious body, his certain death staring her in the face.

  She rubbed her temples. “I’m trying to speak to him. To bring him back from wherever he is now.”

  Mother Berthildis tilted her head to one side, her wide, flat mouth pursing in thought. “You can do that?”

  Isolde nodded. “Yes.” Although a voice in the back of her mind sneered that maybe she truly was mad. Maybe nothing of the Sight was real. Maybe it was all just her own imagination and fancy.

  Mother Berthildis studied her a moment, the small black eyes shrewd. Then she nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I’ve met with skills of that kind before. A wondrous gift, it seems to me.”

  “A gift?” Isolde’s eyes strayed again to Trystan’s face. “I suppose it could be, if it weren’t that it vanishes whenever I’ve need of it most.”

  Still eyeing Isolde, Mother Berthildis tapped her fingers lightly against her upper lip. “Vanishes? What do you mean?”

  Isolde rubbed at her temples again. Her efforts with Trystan—combined with the lingering effects of breathing so much smoke the night before—had left her with a fierce headache. She tried, though, to think clearly, to look without prejudice or bias at the small old woman before her, hunched in her chair, the white nun’s veil framing her shriveled face. She tried, too, to think of a courteous way of phrasing her next question. But in the end she couldn’t summon the energy for that, either, and it came out more bluntly than she’d intended. “Why should you want to hear this?”

  But Mother Berthildis seemed to take no offense. A smile as surprisingly sweet as her singing voice touched her mouth and the corners of her tiny dark eyes. “No reason. Save th
at it seems to me that you are a young woman who carries her burdens alone, without sharing them, without drawing on anyone else for aid. Admirable, no doubt. But even the best of us come to the end of our strength at times. And even speaking of a trouble can at times be good for the soul.”

  Isolde closed her eyes a moment. And then, almost before she knew she’d made a decision to speak, she heard the words start to pour from her in a flood. Sitting there at Trystan’s bedside, she told Mother Berthildis everything. Even with Trystan, the night he’d woken her from the dream, she’d not let herself speak so freely. She kept her eyes closed and simply told Mother Berthildis the whole: everything about herself, about the return of the Sight, about Marche and the dream and being able to summon him in the scrying waters to enter his mind.

  The abbess listened in silence that was utterly undemanding—and yet somehow as audible as words might have been. And when Isolde had at last finished, Mother Berthildis sat without speaking a moment more, her eyes on Isolde, her head tilted to one side. Isolde waited in silence.

  At last the abbess cleared her throat. “And you’re sure, are you, that the reason you were granted these glimpses—these visions of Lord Marche—is because you were meant to learn from them what his movements were? Learn where and how he pitched his attacks so that you might warn your king’s council of his plans?”

  Isolde locked her hands tightly together in her lap, and instead of answering asked, “You called the Sight a gift. A gift from God, did you mean?”

  Mother Berthildis inclined her head. “I would deem it so, yes.”

  “Well, then,” Isolde said. “I’m not sure whether I agree. I’m not even sure whether I believe in God—your God—or not. But I would rather believe that the Sight was granted me for some purpose. That the dreams, the visions of Marche were sent me for a reason—a way to bring good out of harm. Not just—” Her voice cracked slightly. “Some kind of cruel trick. A way to keep me living that night over and over again.”

  “Oh, that they were sent for a purpose, I’ve no doubt. None at all.” The abbess dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “It’s what that purpose may be that I’m unclear on.”

  Isolde shook her head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Mother Berthildis again fixed her bright, glittering black gaze on Isolde’s face and was silent another moment before she spoke. Then: “I would say myself that you’ve at last forgiven yourself for wedding Lord Marche. But what about Marche himself?”

  Isolde thought of the night she’d told all this to Trystan. Remembered that afterwards she’d felt lighter, somehow. As though a bleeding wound inside her had been cauterized, burned free of poison, and could now heal. Now—now she wasn’t sure what she felt. Though it had hurt somewhat less, this time, to tell the story. She’d not had to work as hard at not choking on Marche’s name.

  It made it easier to ask, now, “What do you mean, ‘What about Lord Marche himself?’”

  Mother Berthildis’s penetrating black gaze rested on hers. “How do you feel about Lord Marche?”

  “How do I—” Isolde stopped. The abbess fixed her with a look that was as searing, in a way, as last night’s flames. The look she’d said once could make strong men crack and confess their crimes. “I—” Isolde stopped again. She thought of the man she’d glimpsed in the scrying waters, who woke weeping for all he’d lost, who filled himself with rage to drive away a constant, cold, deadly fear. She drew in a shaky breath and then said, in barely a whisper, “I …don’t hate him anymore.”

  Speaking the words brought a rush of feeling that was almost loss or grief. Because she wanted to hate him. She’d hated him since he’d killed her grandmother. Walled them both up in the plague-ridden garrison to die. Since he’d killed Con and forced her to wed him and stood her before the king’s council to be tried for a witch and burned. Had murdered Myrddin and—

  The list went on. But though Isolde told over the list of Marche’s crimes in her mind, touching each one as Octa had touched the necklace of human finger bones, she couldn’t find any of the old hatred. Nothing but a strange, hollow space where anger and hatred had been.

  Mother Berthildis was watching her, still with that look that made Isolde feel as though the older woman knew every part of her thoughts. “Christians,” the abbess said at last, “believe in forgiving our enemies. Up to seventy times seven.”

  Isolde felt again that hollow, blossoming loss inside her. She raised a hand and brushed at her cheek. Then she said, quietly, “That’s very hard.”

  Mother Berthildis snorted. “Hard? Of course, it’s hard. What virtue is there in loving only those who talk to us sweetly and do us no harm?” The abbess paused, then added, in a gentler tone but with the same fierce intensity in her eyes, “And if what God has granted you no longer comes, then maybe it’s because you no longer have need of the powers He saw fit to bestow.”

  Mother Berthildis reminded her of her grandmother, Isolde realized abruptly. The two women could hardly have been less alike. Morgan had been slender, dark, and graceful, even in age bearing the traces of very great beauty, while Mother Berthildis’s toadlike face never could have been anything but ugly, even when young. But something about the look in the old nun’s eyes made Isolde think of the grandmother who’d raised her and then died in the plague seven years before. A kind of fearlessness—a willingness to face the truth without flinching, to act with decision without care for consequence or future pain. That, Isolde thought, Morgan and Mother Berthildis might have shared.

  And all at once she was caught by a wave of longing for the past as strong as any she’d ever felt before. Because what did it honestly matter whether she hated or didn’t hate Marche? She still couldn’t reach Trystan. Without water, he had another day—or at the very most two—before he would die. And just now, Isolde wished with every part of her being that her grandmother could be here with her now. That Morgan could tell her what to do for Trystan and take the overwhelming weight of responsibility off her hands.

  But Morgan was dead, and there was no one else—no one but Isolde. She drew in her breath and turned back to Mother Berthildis, noting with a stab of compunction how tired the old woman looked. She’d likely gone entirely without sleep the night before.

  “Thank you,” Isolde said. “And now—please, you should go and rest. I’m sure you’ve many duties to see to—many others in the abbey who need your care.”

  Mother Berthildis nodded and heaved herself to her feet. “A place of this kind doesn’t run itself, that’s certain.” But instead of turning to the door, she went to Trystan’s bedside, her fingers sketching a cross in the air above his head. “I will be praying for him, though. And for you, also.”

  “Mother?” Isolde hesitated, then asked, “You truly believe, then, that praying for a man can save his life?”

  A look of remoteness, almost of sadness, passed across the abbess’s face and she shook her head. “No. If it’s God’s will that this young man die, nothing you or I or anyone else can do will alter that. But if we can’t ask God to change His will, we can pray that He will help us alter our own.”

  Isolde looked at her. “So that’s your solution? I should pray for your God to help me be glad Trystan is about to die?”

  Mother Berthildis seemed to take no offense at the bitterness of Isolde’s tone. Instead, she reached out and lightly framed Isolde’s face between her parchment-dry hands. “No. But you can pray—as I will—that God will be with you both. That you will never forget His love for you. And that if He chooses to speak to you, He will also grant you ears to hear.”

  WHEN MOTHER BERTHILDIS HAD GONE, ISOLDE sat without moving a long time, staring down at Trystan until she felt she’d memorized every line of his lean features. Until she could still see every thread of the gold-brown hair slipping free of the leather thong, every faint scrape or trace of a bruise that darkened his skin, even when she closed her eyes.

  She felt a twist of disgust with herself. Had she actual
ly thought that Mother Berthildis and her God would have anything to offer her now? The god who ordered his followers to forgive their enemies—which might be virtuous but was undeniably stupid as well. Unless you wanted your enemies to keep hurting you until you were dead.

  This was the god, too, who ordered women to keep silent and submit to men like Marche of Cornwall. Or shut them up in walled abbeys like this one, dressed them in long black robes and tight, uncomfortable veils, and set them to chanting dull-voiced prayers.

  And how strange, she thought, to believe in a God, and yet believe that fleeing the world He’d created, locking yourself away behind thick stone walls, was the best life you could live.

  Isolde thought with another of those quick aching stabs of her grandmother, raising her brows at one of the black-robed priests who’d come to try to save her soul from the fires of hell. Morgan had eyed the man coolly and then said that if he was fool enough to follow a god who’d no more power than to get himself nailed to a wooden cross, she, Morgan, had better sense. And yet—

  Isolde thought of her own answer to Madoc, weeks ago, after their return from Ynys Mon. Sometimes, she’d said, I’ve felt as though everything stops, as though the whole world pauses between indrawn breaths. So maybe that’s a god—or someone else beyond the Otherworld’s veil—thinking about me?