by Anna Elliott
Trystan had neither spoken nor moved while she spoke. He sat there, looking at her, the untasted water cup still in his hand. Isolde swallowed and went on, determined this time to give him the whole unvarnished truth, regardless of whether or not he ever wanted to speak to her again when she had. Regardless of whether she was inviting him to break her heart all over again.
“And if I’m being completely honest, I wanted …I wanted to leave before you could. Because sooner or later you were going to—not that night, I don’t mean, but after you’d seen me safely to Cerdic and back. And I. …” Isolde’s chest was starting to ache and her eyes stung, but she ordered herself to go on. “You were the best—the only—true friend I’ve ever had, Trys. I didn’t want to watch you walk away, out of my life for good.”
There. Isolde let out her breath. She’d finished. She’d told him the whole. Trystan was still watching her, his face all but expressionless. Then he said, in the same level tone, “That’s what you thought I’d do? Walk away and never look back?”
For all his still-muscled calm, there was something in his voice Isolde didn’t understand. She shook her head, looking up to meet his eyes, and said, “You did once before, remember?”
“Gods and demons and serpents of hell!” With one sudden, violent movement, Trystan hurled the cup he’d been holding against the opposite wall, where it smashed into fragments, water dripping to pool on the floor. Isolde stared at him in shock, a distant part of her mind registering that she’d known him to lose his temper this way maybe only twice before in all the years she’d known him.
“What would you have had me do? Tell you the truth? Tell you that I’d loved you ever since I could remember? That you were the only good thing that’s ever happened to me in my life? Maybe start making up godawful rhymes about love and the angels above? Tell you what it did to me to find you and then have to leave you again? By all that’s holy, Isa, you’d just seen your husband killed and his throne taken by his murderer. Do you think I’d have burdened you with what I felt for you as well?”
Trystan drew in a breath and then went on, with only slightly less violence than before, “I’d sooner have crawled naked across a bed of swords than leave you. But I knew Marche would want to settle the score between us—that I’d only be a danger to you if I stayed. And I knew that if I let myself spend another day—Christ, another hour, even—near you, I’d be throwing myself on the ground at your feet, asking—begging—you to let me stay. Even if it meant risking your life.”
He stopped, passing a hand across his face. Isolde sat frozen in place, unable to speak, unable even to move. She felt as though a giant hand was wrapped around her chest, wringing the breath from her lungs. Trystan looked at her, his voice softening a bit at the expression on her face. “Look, I know that even the thought of the two of us together is …impossible. Unimaginable. A woman in your place and someone like me. And even apart from that—God, I’m like a walking curse. Look at Kian. Look at Hereric. Even if things were different—if I hadn’t—”
He stopped. “Even if I weren’t an outlaw and a mercenary and a Saxon spy, I’d not ask you to come anywhere near me. But all the same—” Trystan shook his head, his blue eyes on hers. “Christ’s bleeding wounds, Isa, if anything had happened to you that night when you left me behind in the forest, if you’d been killed, I’d have—”
He was silent so long that Isolde asked, in a voice barely above a whisper, “You’d have what?”
“I don’t know.” One side of Trystan’s mouth tightened in a humorless smile, and he let out a breath, shaking his head again. “I don’t know. I was going to say I’d have put a knife through my chest, or kept walking until I got to the sea and thrown myself in.” He pushed a hand through his hair and made a sound, half disgusted, half angry. “I suppose I couldn’t have left Hereric on his own like that. But still—” His hand lifted as though about to touch her cheek, but then he seemed to check himself, his fingers tightening and his arm falling back to his side. He shifted, wincing at the movement. “I’d have wanted to—powers of hell, I’d have wanted to.”
Isolde sat motionless, still frozen in place. She tried to make her mind work, to think of something to say, but the effort was like trying to catch hold of fog in both hands. Before she even knew what she’d done, she was on her feet and out of the door, and then she was almost running blindly down the passage.
She’d no idea where she was going—she’d no coherent thoughts at all. She felt as though she’d been plunged abruptly from darkness into painfully dazzling light. Or maybe from light into dark. She passed through another door and found herself outside, in the abbey courtyard, where she stood, her whole body shaking as she drew in gulps of the cool, grass-scented spring air. Then, when she no longer felt as though she were trying to breathe underwater, she closed her eyes and played out every part of the journey from Dinas Emrys in her mind. Every moment, every day.
She thought about herself, frightened all the time of letting herself care anything for Trystan. Afraid of loving him, afraid of breaking her own heart. And yet never so much as wondering what he felt about her. Not even once. And then she thought about Madoc, whose proposal she’d promised to answer if and when she returned. And about Camelerd, the land hers by birth, the land she was bound by duty to protect. She thought about King Goram of Ireland.
She thought about Con, lying cold in his grave in Cornwall. And about her tiny stillborn girl. And about waking that morning in Trystan’s bed, with her head on his shoulder and her arms around him and his body warm and solid against hers. About the dream she’d had the night before, and feeling absolutely safe, as though she’d finally come home.
I know that even the thought of the two of us together is …impossible.
Plainly, Trystan didn’t remember what had happened the night before, or anything about what she’d told him. That made everything at once easier and harder still.
She stood in the dark, silent courtyard listening to the abbey sisters singing the evening prayers in the chapel for a long, long time. She wondered for a moment whether all those prayers were ever answered. Whether she would get an answer, if she closed her eyes now and asked for another sign from whatever had sent her the story she’d told for Trystan the night before.
She didn’t ask, though. Maybe some part of her knew that her choice had already been made, her way ahead fixed and immovable as the ending of Taliesin’s tale. Maybe that was an answer in itself.
Instead, she found herself closing her eyes and whispering into the surrounding dark, as passionately as she’d ever asked anything in her life, “Please, let me be brave enough for this.”
Then she drew in her breath, opened her eyes, and turned back towards the guest hall.
TRYSTAN LAY ON HIS BACK, STARING up at the ceiling and trying not to think. Which was more or less a laughably futile effort. He felt as though Isolde’s words were being pounded into his ears like wooden tent stakes. You were the best—the only—true friend I’ve ever had.
Yes, right. She’d saved his life as well. As hazy as his memories of the last days were—and he wasn’t even sure how long he’d been in this place—he knew he’d not be alive at all if not for Isolde. And in payment he’d thrown all that at her.
Trystan let out a disgusted breath, seeing again the stricken look in her gray eyes, the way the blood had drained from her already pale face, leaving her white to the lips.
Well done. Making her cry had been an especially good touch.
It didn’t help, either, that every time he closed his eyes he saw Isolde as she’d looked that morning, sound asleep beside him, her black hair tumbling all around her face and her body warm and soft against his. Or that every time that happened, every single smallest twinge of desire he’d suppressed over the last weeks—or years—jumped out and hit him collectively with the force of another couple of broken ribs.
The whole goddamn bed still smelled like her, too—sweet and fresh, a compound of whatever it wa
s she used to wash her hair and something unique to her.
Gritting his teeth, he curled himself forward and into a sitting position, swearing as every muscle in his body seemed to scream in protest. But for all that, it wasn’t as bad as last time. The stiffening bruises had started to relax their hold. When he’d managed to drag himself upright, he was breathing hard, but that was all. A day or two more and he might actually be able to walk.
Trystan closed his eyes. Breath of the saints. If he’d any shred of decency left, he’d haul himself out of this bed, here and now, and be gone before Isolde could return. Whatever she’d said before, she’d hardly want him anywhere near her now. Trystan shifted again and then froze as the door of the room swung open again.
Isolde stood very still in the doorway, then stepped inside.
Chapter Twenty
ISOLDE STOOD IN THE DOORWAY, looking across at Trystan. While he’d lain unconscious, she’d watched him, memorized every lean, chiseled line of his face until she’d have said she knew it as well as her own. Now, though, with Trystan looking back at her, she felt as though she were seeing him for the first time. She’d planned what she was going to say—practiced saying it over and over again in her mind on her way here. But as her eyes met Trystan’s, the words completely deserted her, leaving her standing in silence, as frozen as before.
Finally, Trystan cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”
Whatever Isolde had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that, and astonishment broke her moment’s paralysis. “You’re sorry?” she repeated. “Trys, I was just standing here wondering how you can possibly not hate me after all that’s happened to you because of me. And you say you’re sorry?”
“Yes, well.” Trystan gave her a faint, crooked smile. “It takes a lot to change my mind.” Then he stopped, sobering. “Come over here.”
Isolde felt her heart lurch and then quicken. “Why?”
Trystan let out a breath, part exasperated, part a short laugh. “Because if someone put a knife to my throat right now, I might—possibly—manage to drag myself out of bed and walk across the room to where you’re standing. But I doubt I’d have breath enough to speak when I got there. And I’d rather have you closer than a room’s length away to say this.”
Slowly, Isolde crossed the room, sat down on the wooden stool at the bedside. Trystan had pulled himself upright enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly to look up at him. He was silent a long moment before he spoke, just looking at her, and then he shook his head and said, softly, “God, Isa.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “I thought I’d gotten over thinking about you all the time, you know that? Locked you away with the part of my past that was over and done. But then, when I saw you again, six months ago, standing in the doorway of that filthy prison cell, it was as though—” He stopped, shook his head again, and let out a breath. “It’s too late for me. I can’t imagine not loving you. Nothing you say now is going to alter that. So just tell me what you need from me. If you want me to stay with you, I will, and I swear on my life I’ll never mention this night—never so much as speak the word love to you again. If you want me to go, I’ll leave. Whatever happens next, the choice is yours.”
Isolde looked into Trystan’s eyes, the startlingly clear blue eyes of the boy she’d grown up with. The eyes of a mercenary, an outlaw, a former slave. A Saxon spy and the grandson of a Saxon king. She drew in her breath and said, “Marry me.”
For a half heartbeat, Trystan’s face was absolutely blank. Then he passed a hand across the back of his neck and stared at her. “What did you say?”
Isolde took another unsteady breath. “I said marry me.” She smiled a bit, one sided, looked down at her own hands and then back up at Trystan again. “Though I should probably have added a ‘please.’”
Her smile faded, though, and she went on, part, at least, of the speech she’d practiced all the way from the courtyard outside coming back to her. “You said that the two of us togeth-er was impossible—a woman in my place, and someone like you. But that’s not true. Or if it is, it’s the other way round from what you meant. You’ve never told me what happened after Camlann, but I don’t have to know. I don’t have to know what else you’ve done these last seven years. I know you. And I know you’re—” Her voice wavered, but she made herself go on, the words coming in a tumbled rush. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known. And I don’t think I deserve to have you love me that way—the way you said you do. But if you do, I love you the same. I always have—I must have been in love with you from the time I was six years old. Part of me didn’t want to, because …because everyone I’ve ever loved has died.” She swallowed. “And the thought of loving you still scares me to death, because I do know you. And I know you’ll never just sit back and stay out of danger and keep yourself safe. But at the same time—” She stopped, feeling tears pricking behind her eyes. She shook her head. “I do know you, Trys. And I know you’re the only man I would have for my husband. If you still want me.”
“If I still—” Trystan shook his head helplessly. “God, Isa,” he said again. “But you don’t—you can’t—”
Isolde reached out, stopping him, putting her fingers across his lips. Her heart was still beating quickly, but she felt as though she’d crossed a fast-moving river to safety on the opposite shore. All doubts behind her now. “I can. I do.”
“I—” Trystan took her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers. He looked down a long moment, at their joined hands, resting on the blankets between them, and then he gave a shaky laugh and said, “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find I’m dreaming this.” He looked up at her. “Did you really just ask me if I’d marry you?”
Isolde smiled, and the movement made one single tear escape her brimming eyes. She wiped it away, though, with the back of her hand and nodded.
Trystan looked at her a long moment, and then, very lightly, he raised his free hand and very lightly brushed it across her cheek. His eyes were the color of a clear morning sky. He said, very quietly, “I would love that.”
There are three fountains
In the mountain of roses,
Each, I pledge to you.
One of love, to drink deeply together,
The second of desire, to trail our hands in its heated flow,
The third of fidelity, that quenches our thirst
When all other waters fail.
We are young; we are old.
In heaven, in earth, at the end,
In straits, in expanse, in form,
In body, in blood, in soul,
In the valleys and mountains, under the stars
“Thou art always, husband.”
“Thou art always, wife.”
WIFE. TRYSTAN HEARD HIMSELF SPEAK THE word. He looked down at their hands, bound together with the thread of ribbon Isolde had taken from the girdle of her gown. He could feel the sweet sting of the knife mark on his palm, fitted against Isolde’s own cut hand. In body, in blood, in soul. He held himself utterly still, afraid to move. Knowing he should. Knowing he shouldn’t be ignoring the voice in the back of his head that said he couldn’t—shouldn’t—be here. Knowing that there was no possible way he was going to be able to keep this.
I said marry me. Though I should probably have added a please. She’d said it with a smile and a look in her eyes that made her so beautiful it actually hurt. And he’d wanted to say yes to her—Jesus God, he’d wanted to—with a force that still made his chest ache. The wave of longing had almost choked him. Maybe making her happy now would make up for whatever happened after tonight.
She did look happy. There were tears sparkling in the lashes of her wide gray eyes, but she looked up at him and smiled. The sheer shining gladness in her smile made him feel like he’d been kicked in the chest.
And it terrified the hell out of him.
Trystan cleared his throat. “You can’t be this happy just to be marrying me.”
Isolde shook her head. She smiled again, the
tears still brimming in her eyes. “Trys, I would be this happy just to know that you’re still here with me, still alive. Marrying you is—”
She stopped, shook her head again. Then she leaned forward, their joined hands still between them, and pressed her mouth against his. Her lips were warm and soft and impossibly sweet, but he made himself draw back, before the last lingering remnants of his self-control could entirely shatter apart. His heart was hammering, and he had to hold still a moment while he tried to remember how to breathe. “I’m not sure …I’m in the best of shape for a wedding night.”
Isolde turned away to cup her hands about the single lamp’s flame. But before she blew it out, she turned and gave him another smile over her shoulder. The kind of smile she’d given him in every impossible fantasy he’d ever had, waking or asleep. Except that this time it was—merciful God—real.
And then she blew out the lamp, darkness falling across the room like a sword stroke, and he heard her whisper, the smile still in her voice, “I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.”
HE KISSED HER AS SHE SLIPPED into the bed beside him. Kissed her as though she were both the only light on a dark path and the only warmth on a cold night, his hands sliding lightly across her throat to tangle in her hair. It was the softest, sweetest kiss. The pressure of his mouth was dizzyingly gentle and tender. But before Isolde could move towards him, he drew away again, holding her at arm’s length. She heard him draw an unsteady breath.
“Isa, I can’t—” Maybe it was the utter darkness that made his voice sound so different, low and shaky. “You know I love you. And I want you so much I can’t breathe. But if I start kissing you again I won’t be able to stop. And I’m afraid—” He stopped. “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you—do something that will remind you of—”
“You won’t.” Isolde reached for his hand, found it in the darkness and threaded her fingers through his. She didn’t know whether she had—or would ever—forgive Marche, as Mother Berthildis had said. And just for a moment, at the thought of his name, she felt his presence move into the room—shadowy and indistinct, as though reflected in rippling water. But the hate—both for him, and for herself—was gone, the bleeding wound inside her still healed and finally clean. The abbess had been right about that.