by Anna Elliott
Isolde closed her eyes. Let Trystan die, and I will never believe in you for as long as I live, likely wasn’t what Mother Berthildis had meant by asking God for help. Besides, if anything listening to her now needed her belief to be a god, he wasn’t worth praying to at all.
She sat in silence a moment, the image of Trystan’s face still imprinted on the blackness of her lids. Then she whispered into the silent room, “Everything that I may have to bear, I can. I ask nothing for myself. But please, please show me how to help Trystan.”
Before she could decide whether she heard or felt anything, though, beyond the stillness of the room and the blackness of her own closed lids, a sound at the door made her start, her eyes flying open. The men had returned: Eurig, Piye and Daka, and Hereric, with Cabal padding along at their heels. They moved silently into the room, darting quick, tension-filled looks at the still, blanket-shrouded figure on the bed. Eurig was the first to speak.
“Is he—”
“Still alive,” Isolde said. “No change.”
Eurig nodded, and he and the others filed to take up the places they’d held before: Hereric on the settle by the hearth, Eurig on the room’s single chair, Piye and Daka against the far wall. Night must be falling, Isolde realized. The room was growing dark. Sitting and watching Trystan’s face, she’d not noticed the fading light and lengthening shadows, but now she could scarcely see the other four men.
She pulled herself to her feet and lit the room’s single oil lamp, blinking as the sudden flare of light hurt her eyes. Then she sat down again by Trystan. Her stomach clenched as she saw how pale and lifeless his face looked. Like an effigy carved in stone. Eurig’s voice made her look up.
“Can he hear us?” He nodded at Trystan. “Does he know we’re here?”
Isolde shook her head, feeling frustration twitch at her fingertips once again. “I’ve no idea. Maybe. Why do you ask?”
“I just—” Eurig stopped and cleared his throat. The tips of his ears reddened, but he pressed on. “I just wanted to …talk to him, like.”
“Go ahead.” Isolde moved to make space for Eurig at Trystan’s bedside. She rubbed tiredly at her eyes. “Maybe you can do him more good than I can just now.”
Eurig stood by the bed, feet planted squarely apart, hands clasped behind his back. He cleared his throat again, then began, eyes bright in his round, homely face as he looked down at Trystan. “I just wanted to say …to tell you thanks,” he began. “That doesn’t exactly cover saving a man’s life. But I just wanted to tell you that I’ve never forgotten what you did. Getting me out of the mines.”
Piye interrupted with a burst of rapid speech in his own tongue, and Eurig nodded heavily. “Daka and Piye say the same. We’d none of us have lived through that battle between Goram and Cynlas of Rhos if it hadn’t been for you. So …thanks. From all of us.”
Eurig swallowed convulsively, then took a step back from the bed. Isolde’s vision had blurred, and she blinked, feeling drearily that she had done almost nothing else on this journey but cry or try to stop herself from crying. And then she stopped and sat up, as the sense of Eurig’s words slowly worked its way through the muffling gray fog.
“What do you mean?” She turned to Eurig. “What fight between Goram and Cynlas of Rhos?”
Eurig blinked at her, surprised at the question, but he said after a moment’s hesitation, “This would be three years ago, or as near as makes no difference. King Cynlas and his son took a raiding party across to Goram’s lands in Ireland. Wanted to take the fight onto Goram’s own ground instead of theirs. And they were willing to pay anyone willing to come and swell their ranks.”
“Can you. …” Isolde swallowed, her eyes straying to Trystan’s face. “Can you tell me what happened?”
At the moment she didn’t particularly care whether Trystan had betrayed Cynlas and his son three years ago. But it was something of a shock to find that she might learn the truth of it now, of all places and times.
She looked back at Eurig, though, at his wearily slumped shoulders and reddened eyes, and added quickly, “I’m sorry—never mind. You can’t have slept at all last night. You look as though you need rest more than anything else.”
Eurig smiled at that, his face lightening for a moment as he shook his head. “Not half as much as you do, I’ll wager. I’ll do well enough. As long as you want us here, we stay.” His words were echoed by nods and murmurs from the other three men, and Eurig went on. “And as far as telling you what happened goes, I don’t mind. That is—” He cast a doubtful look at Isolde. “If you’re sure you want to hear. It’s an ugly story. And not one to sound any sweeter for being retold.”
Isolde shook her head. “Please. I’d like to hear.”
Eurig dropped once more onto his chair. For all he’d said he’d not mind telling the story, Isolde thought he braced himself before speaking, as though in expectation of pain, and a spasm passed across his face. “I told you once,” he said at last, “that years ago I was a different man, living a different life from what I have now. A man with a future. A home. A wife and son.” He stared straight ahead, and Isolde knew that whatever he saw, it was not the unadorned plaster of the opposite wall. “I was oath sworn to Gethin, son of King Cynlas of Rhos. Gethin commanded his own army, and I was one of his fighting men.” Eurig’s face worked again, as though he tasted something bitter. “Not that Gethin deserved the oaths I or his other men swore. He was ambitious. Greedy for power and wealth. It weren’t enough for him to be just a king’s son.”
Eurig paused, looking down at his own blunt-fingered hands. “This was five—no, nearer six years ago now. Not so long after the fighting at Camlann. Things were peaceful, or mostly so. So Gethin, he ordered the body of his troops to guard the western border of his lands. The rest of us he left guarding the eastern shore—the coast. Just as skeleton force of fifty or so, we were. And not expecting any trouble.”
Eurig stopped and was silent a long moment, his brown eyes looking back across the years. “We were hit—hard. A raid from Goram of Ireland’s forces. Tore through us like wolves through a flock of lambs. Bad enough, you may say, but it happens. But it weren’t just chance that Goram’s men had struck just then. Not just chance, either, that left just a handful of us to face him when he and his men came. Gethin had planned it all. Paid Goram a price in gold to attack. The idea was to give Cynlas a defeat so that he’d have to retaliate against Goram. Not too big a defeat.” Eurig’s mouth worked again. “Just the fifty or so of us, after all. But enough that Cynlas would take up the insult. With luck—luck for Gethin, anyway—his father would be killed. Especially if he, Gethin, could play snake in the grass amidst his father’s camp.”
Eurig stopped speaking, still looking down at the hands planted squarely on his knees. After a moment’s pause, Isolde said, “You sound very sure.”
Eurig glanced up. “Sure? Oh, aye. I’m sure. Goram thought it was a right good joke. I can still hear him laughing while he was watching his men clap us in leg irons—those of us that had survived the fighting, anyway—and drag us off like so many head of cattle to be sold as slaves. Gave us each the brand of murder, too.” Eurig pulled back the sleeve of his tunic to show the mark on his inner arm, his mouth twisting. “On account of the men of his we’d killed, defending our own lives.”
The knuckles of Eurig’s hands had whitened beneath the skin, but he drew breath and went on, after only a moment’s pause. “I ended up a slave worker in the tin mines. But I told you about that already. And how I got free.” His eyes went to Trystan, and he reached up reflexively to touch the scar on his neck, the mirror of Trystan’s own. “That’s when we met up with Hereric here.” He jerked his head in Hereric’s direction, and Hereric, who had been following the story with a slight frown, gave a brief nod of confirmation.
Eurig went on. “I’ve no idea what happened between Gethin, Cynlas, and Goram. I was too busy crawling on my belly through some filthy tunnel, choking on air you could cut with a kn
ife it was so hot and filled with dust. Cynlas survived, so Gethin’s great plans couldn’t have worked out after all.”
“But why—” Isolde checked herself before she could finish what she’d been about to ask.
Eurig’s eyes lifted once again, and she saw in his gaze the same shadow of pain as when she’d told the story of the fisherman and his selkie wife back at the crannog. “Why didn’t I go back to my wife and son, you were going to say?” Eurig let out his breath. “I meant to. Got as far back as the next valley over to where our settlement had been. Night was falling when I got there. So I stopped and begged shelter off an old man and woman with a holding up in the hills—just a cow and a goat and a patch of rocky soil. They’d no idea of who I was. But they were friendly folk, willing to offer a stranger a bed and a hot meal. And while I was sitting at their table and eating their bread and stew, they talked over the news of those parts. And they let fall that my wife had married again—a farmer with a settlement not so far from this old couple whose bread I was sharing for the night. She’d thought I was dead, of course.”
Eurig’s hands tightened on his knees again, then he looked up and said, as though answering a question, “Oh, aye, I could have gone and claimed her back. She’d wedded me first, after all. And I would have, if I’d thought she was fretting for me—or if this new man had been mistreating her. But he wasn’t. And she wasn’t. The next morning, I went down to their holding and spied a bit—kept to the trees so that I wouldn’t be seen. I saw Carys, my wife, sitting outside on the front stoop of the house, churning butter with her sleeves rolled up. And she was happy—every bit of her fair shouted it. She’d always been a pretty woman.” Eurig gave a small, sad twist of a smile. “Too pretty by half for the likes of me. But now she was …like a rose. Just blooming. I saw this new husband of hers come back from the fields, and her run to greet him and put her arms about his neck and him swing her off her feet and plant a kiss square on her mouth. Saw my son—he’d been just a baby the last I’d seen him—go running out, too, and have his new da’ hoist him up and give him a ride on his shoulders all the way back to the house.”
Eurig stopped and shook his head, shoulders hunching. “What did I have to offer ’em in exchange if I turned up, back from the grave? Make my wife trade a husband with land and property for one with none? And it wasn’t only that. I wasn’t the man who’d gone away anymore. Was I going to give my son that kind of father—a broken man who’d scare him at nights, waking up screaming with nightmares of time spent as a slave in the mines?”
Eurig shook his head again, big hands clenching so that the muscles in his forearms bunched under the skin. “No. They deserved better than that. Better than what I’d become.” He stopped. He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them and cleared his throat. “I’d loved them both well enough to think of nothing but making my way back to them when I was free of the mines. But I loved them too well to make them live with me as I was.”
He stopped speaking, bowing his head. Isolde’s throat ached, and she touched his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“Aye, well.” Eurig looked up and gave her a painful twist of a smile. “At least I can think of them still and know that they’re happy.” He paused, then began again. “I watched them a bit that day, my wife and her new man and my son. And then I turned around and started walking. Met up with Trystan again—he’d told me where he’d be. Him and Hereric both.”
Eurig cast another glance at the big Saxon man still sitting on the settle by the hearth, and Hereric nodded again. Eurig shrugged. “We joined up with Fidach’s band after a time. Not a bad life, all in all. But all the same, when Gethin himself approached Fidach to ask for help in another raid on Goram, it seemed like some god somewhere had heard every prayer I’d uttered in the mining camp after all.” Eurig shook his head. “I’d spent those years praying for the chance to get back at Gethin for betraying us. For killing off his own oath-sworn men as easy as you might wring a litter of stray kittens. And all for nothing, too. Because Cynlas still lived. He was still king of Rhos. But the thing was, Gethin had a mind to try again—that’s why he’d come to Fidach.”
Isolde looked up, surprised, and Eurig nodded. “Aye, we knew that from the first. The idea was that Cynlas would be ambushed and killed by Goram’s forces—but it would look to be on account of the mercenaries he’d hired had betrayed him for more gold in the end. What can you expect of a lot of outlaw, broken men after all? Cynlas would be dead, and Gethin would be left without a stain on his hands. Well—” Eurig’s gaze strayed to the bed once again. “Trystan knew the whole of what Gethin had done years before. He’d heard it all from me. So when Gethin comes to Fidach, offering gold in exchange for this job he has in mind, Trystan stands up, cool as you please, and offers to be leader of the group Fidach sent. Piye and Daka went, too.” He nodded at the brothers. “And I was one of the band, as well. Took care to keep my beard long and my face dirty, in case Gethin should recognize me. But the truth was, I needn’t have bothered.” Eurig’s face worked as though he tasted something bitter. “He’d likely forgotten what I and all the rest of the men he betrayed looked like as soon as I was out of his sight years before—if he’d ever known.”
Eurig stopped, looking down at Trystan again, and rubbed a hand across his fatigue-reddened eyes. “Well, I don’t know the whole of what went on. But Trystan went to Goram—alone, I know that, because we all thought he was as good as dead—and somehow got Goram to believe Gethin was fixing to double-cross him.” Eurig’s features tightened. “It was still a fight. Goram wasn’t exactly going to pack up his armies and go home without striking a blow at Cynlas’s forces. But at the end of it, Gethin was dead, and Cynlas was alive. And Trystan had got the three of us”—he nodded at Daka and Piye again—“and himself out of the fighting and on our way out of reach of both Cynlas and Goram.”
Eurig stopped speaking. While he’d been talking, the night had closed in, the room utterly dark save for the light of the burning oil lamp. Outside in the passage, Isolde heard the now familiar shuffle of footsteps that meant the abbey sisters were making their way to the chapel for prayers. She hesitated, then asked, even though she already knew what the answer would be, “And Cynlas never found out the truth about his son?”
Eurig shook his head. “Not from us, he didn’t. I asked Trystan in the beginning whether we shouldn’t just tell Cynlas what Gethin planned. But Trystan said no. If Cynlas had managed to get through twenty-odd years of Gethin’s life without knowing his son’s character, he wasn’t going to take the word of men like us about it. Besides, well. …” Eurig stopped again. “Cynlas may be a hard man, and have a devil of a temper on him, too. But he’s a good leader. You’d go a long way and find many a worse king before you found a better one. Trystan said he deserved not to know that his own son had been plotting his death. Especially since the knowing wouldn’t do him any good.”
Isolde nodded. She was still sitting beside Trystan’s bed, and now she looked down at him again. At the angry, purpling bruises showing above the blankets she’d drawn across his chest. The stubble of beard on his cheeks, gold in the lamplight. She wasn’t, she realized, even surprised by what Eurig had just told her. At some point on this journey, unknown even to her, any doubts she might have had of Trystan had simply and silently dried up and blown away.
Now, hearing the truth of Gethin’s death at King Goram’s hands, she felt no shock, only the sense that she’d known this all along. She looked down at Trystan’s face and traced in its lines both the boy she’d grown up with and the man he was now. And she thought that somehow, somewhere along the way, she’d come to know them both equally well.
Still, the wave of guilt that crashed over her for ever having had doubts of him—and for everything that had happened to him on this journey because of her—was almost unbearable. Isolde pressed her eyes tightly closed, willing back that sobbing wail that started again in the back of her mind. A cry against the unfairness of it, that s
he’d broken her own heart in trying to keep Trystan safe. Only to have him brought before her again to die.
A hand fell on Isolde’s shoulder, making her look up. She’d been expecting Eurig, but it was Hereric who had come to stand beside her. Hereric, with his flaxen-colored beard and pale blue eyes, who touched her on the shoulder and looked down into her face, and with his one hand made a series of signs.
Isolde tell a story. Like for Hereric. Hereric’s eyes were still shadowed by his illness, but their gaze was clear, unafraid, and absolutely sure. Isolde tell a story. Like for Hereric. And Trystan will live.
Isolde choked on something midway between a laugh and a sob. Because she could just see herself telling her little children’s story about the two stupid giants and their stupid fight over the hammer, and having Trystan get up from his sickbed, his wounds miraculously healed. But she had to say something. Hereric was looking down at her, still with that look of utter confidence in his eyes. And maybe a tale wasn’t such a bad idea after all. At the least, it might keep them—all of them—from talking anymore. Stop anyone’s asking how much longer she thought Trystan might last, and her having to say, Unless he drinks something, maybe just one more day.
It might stop all of them thinking about how hideously fragile a man’s life was, how easily it could slip away. Which was, after all, Isolde remembered, the reason she’d walked the ramparts back at Dinas Emrys and wished with every part of her strength that she could never have to love anyone again.
And then she stopped, her whole body going suddenly still. She thought of Taliesin singing her his tale as payment for intruding on her peace. And herself, as she’d listened, having one of those moments where time seemed to stop and stand still. Feeling afterwards as though the sound of the harper’s voice had somehow lifted her up and then set her back down in a different place from where she’d been.