by Anna Elliott
And, with Trystan’s hand still warm on her bare skin, the fingers of his other hand twined with her own, she pushed all thought of Marche, all memory away—easily, this time, and without any struggle. Pushed it away to the place where she could bear to hold it, closed and locked the door. “You won’t,” she said again.
ISOLDE WOKE TO THE ROSY GLOW of dawn filtering through the room’s single narrow window. Her head was on Trystan’s shoulder, and her curled hand rested on his chest. For a moment, she lay absolutely still, unwilling to let go of the moment, unwilling to let anything dislodge the memory of the night before. The memory of another of those moments when time had seemed to stop, the whole world balancing on in indrawn breath before it shattered into a hundred fragments, swirled, and then slowly drifted back together, leaving her whole, the same and yet also forever—and miraculously—changed.
Trystan’s breathing now was even and slow, but as soon as she stirred, his arms tightened around her.
“Awake?”
Isolde nodded, then drew away a little, propping herself up on one elbow so that she could look down at him. She thought his eyes looked tired and a little shadowed in the pale gray light, and she put her hand on his cheek, a prick of concern piercing the rosy glow of her own happiness.
“Didn’t you sleep?”
He shrugged. Smiled up into her eyes. “A bit. But I’ve done nothing but sleep for the past—God, I don’t even know how long.”
“Three days.”
“There you are, then.” He raised a hand to smooth a tangle of hair back from her face and smiled again, a slow, one-sided smile that stopped her heart. “I don’t mind watching you sleep, though.”
Isolde reached out and, very lightly, as she had once before, traced a line with her fingertips from his brow to cheek to jaw. Trystan let out a breath and caught her hand. Then he said, his eyes still on hers, “What are you thinking?”
“I was thinking—” Isolde stopped. When she went on, her voice was a whisper. “I was thinking that sometimes I’ve wished I could go back—back to the time before Camlann, and to being myself, the way I was then. But now I wouldn’t—not for anything. Because this—right now—is the most perfect thing that’s ever happened to me.”
For a long moment, Trystan was silent, simply looking at her. The way he’d looked at her the day before, when he’d told her he loved her ever since he could remember. As though his whole heart was there, in his intensely blue eyes. He started to speak, stopped, and then wordlessly pulled her down to him, into his arms, and when he finally spoke his voice was low and muffled by her hair. “Warn me when you’re going to say something like that, all right?”
Chapter Twenty–one
ISOLDE GLANCED UP FROM THE wound she was stitching—a nasty sword cut in the arm of the big, blond-haired man before her—and caught Trystan watching her. He was sitting a little distance away on a makeshift seat fashioned from a fallen log, with Cabal lying at his feet amidst a group of Cerdic’s fighting men who were watching a game of dice, trading news and friendly challenges and insults.
The day was warm, the air smelling of freshly turned earth and the wild meadow sweet flowers that were blooming on the hill. Isolde had already taken off her cloak, and still the noonday sun above felt hot on her skin, making her halfway wish she’d chosen to work inside one of the tents instead of out here, in the open air of the encampment’s practice yard.
More than a week had passed since the battle between Cerdic and Octa, and some of the men wounded in the fighting had begun to trickle back to Cerdic’s encampment on the hills surrounding the abbey. Cerdic himself had still not returned, but one of his chiefs had sent a message through Mother Berthildis to Isolde, asking for her skills as a healer among the wounded and sick.
Isolde had agreed readily, thankful for the chance of hearing word of the fighting that was still going on—ever more distantly, now, as Octa and his army fled back towards Kent. And the news she’d had was good; Octa had lost nearly a third of his fighting men in the trap Cerdic had sprung on him the week before, and the remains of his forces were continuing to scatter in the face of Cerdic’s advance.
Isolde knew she couldn’t yet count that her own undertaking had succeeded in full. Cerdic had made her no promises about making alliance with Britain. But at the very least, the threat Octa posed to Britain had been considerably reduced. And she was thankful, in a way, that she could do nothing—go nowhere—until Cerdic himself returned to say whether he would agree to talks of peace with Madoc and the king’s council.
Her eyes found Trystan again, leaning back in his place among the other men, booted feet stretched out in front of him, arms crossed on his chest, ostensibly joining in the conversation going on around him. Isolde knew he was giving the men’s talk only half his attention, though.
As though feeling her gaze on him, Trystan looked up and smiled at her in a way that made Isolde’s heart squeeze tight in her chest and carried her back to the night before. Back to Trystan drawing her mouth to his and kissing her so tenderly, slowly, and almost reverently, in the way that never, ever failed to make her pulse skip a beat and her very bones seem to melt. As though she’d just given him a gift indescribably precious and sweet.
Now, meeting Trystan’s eyes, Isolde felt a blush of color rise to her cheeks, but she gave him an answering smile, again grateful that for now, at least, they didn’t even have to speak of what would happen when—eventually—they had to leave this place.
“Thank you, lady.” The voice of the man whose wound she was stitching made her jerk her attention back to him and the cut in his arm.
“You’re welcome.”
Isolde hadn’t expected Cerdic to speak of their bargain, or of the role she’d played in the battle. One thing to rely on a woman to gain the upper hand over Octa and the Kentish forces—another to admit it to his men. But plainly a rumor at least of Isolde’s own part had spread even down to Cerdic’s infantrymen. There were more than two dozen wounded here, and all of them crowding round her, anxious for Isolde to see to their hurts. Even the ones whose wounds were already healing well wanted her to touch the bandages for luck.
Fortunate, in a way, that she’d passed beyond the point where she could be surprised by anything—anything at all that happened now. If she’d seen in the scrying waters that she’d end this journey surrounded by a group of Saxon foot soldiers begging her reverently to salve their wounds and touch their bandaged legs and arms, she’d have thought it another completely fantastical joke on the part of whatever controlled the Sight.
The sun was sinking in the horizon when at last she’d finished and turned away from the last man. She and Trystan left the camp, walking back towards the abbey through the deepening twilight. Cabal raced ahead of them through the tall grass, came bounding back, and then swerved to race ahead again. Trystan still winced a bit when a movement jarred his healing ribs or stretched the wound in his side. But his long strides kept pace with hers easily, and he climbed the hills without any change in his breathing, one arm resting across Isolde’s shoulders.
In the purple shadows of the hills, with the rays of the setting sun casting a last, lingering glow over the valley floor, the stolidly built abbey walls were transformed to something almost otherworldly. Like one of the fairy dwellings that appeared at the hour of change only once in a hundred years. Or a shrine to the old gods of the rocks and streams and hills, instead of the new God of the Christ.
When they’d come nearly to the halfway mark between the abbey and Cerdic’s camp, Trystan broke the silence between them to ask, “What did that man mean—the one with the broken leg—who said they’d never have broken Octa’s shield wall and set him on the run if not for you?”
Isolde knew at once which man Trystan meant, though at the question she realized abruptly that if Cerdic’s armies knew the truth of what she’d done, Trystan still knew nothing at all. She’d not told him before—not because she’d wanted to keep anything from him. More becau
se she’d not wanted to live over that endless night she’d spent in Octa’s camp again, even in thought. The whole of it felt like a nightmare, so far separate from the rest of the past days as to seem scarcely real.
Now, turning to look up at Trystan, Isolde hesitated a long moment. Trystan’s eyes moved over her face, reading her expression, and he cocked an eyebrow at her.
“I’m going to like it that much, am I?”
Isolde laughed shakily despite herself. “Something like that. But I suppose I’d better tell you the whole.”
So, standing with him in the flower-scented darkness beyond the abbey, Isolde told Trystan everything. About drugging Cerdic’s guards to gain admittance to his rooms. About the bargain she’d struck with him, about the nighttime walk across the countryside to Octa’s camp, about persuading the guard to let her inside to speak with Octa himself. Her voice wobbled a little, but she went on, told him about meeting with Octa. About the fire and the smoke and being trapped in the prisoner’s hut, and about Fidach’s unbelievable appearance in time to save her life.
She told him everything. And when she’d finished, Trystan stood in silence, just looking at her, for a long time. Then, finally, he shook his head, and said, “You …Holy mother of Christ, Isa. And you tell me I take insane chances with my life.”
Isolde smiled just a little. “And so you do.”
“You actually walked into Octa of Kent’s war tent and—” Even in the rapidly fading light, Isolde saw the unwilling smile beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth. “And convinced him you were Cerdic’s cast-off slave girl and about to bear Cerdic’s child?”
Isolde nodded, and Trystan shook his head helplessly and started to laugh. And then he stopped, cupped her cheek with one hand, and said, his voice turning suddenly husky and low, “God, I love you.”
And then, all at once, Isolde found herself turning to him, clinging to him, hiding her face against the breast of his linen shirt. “I was so frightened, Trys. More terrified than I’ve ever been.” She swallowed hard. “I thought you were as good as dead—that even if I lived through the night, I’d get back to the abbey and find you were gone.”
She felt his arms come around her, warm and solid and strong, and he held her tightly while her whole body shook with the memory. And then, when the fit of shivering had passed, he said, his arm still around her shoulders, “I …heard you. That sounds crazy, I know. But I had—I was in this place where everything had just …stopped. And then I heard your voice. I couldn’t tell what you were saying. I just knew I …had to come back, that’s all.” Trystan shook his head. “And then the next I remember is waking and finding you there in the bed with me, sound asleep.” From somewhere nearby came the soft call of a night bird, and Trystan smiled a bit. “I thought I really must have died.”
Isolde tipped her head back to look up at him through the gathering dusk. “You don’t remember what I said?”
Trystan shook his head.
So Isolde told him that, too, standing with her arms about him as she had that night, feeling again the beat of his heart under her cheek. Though the beat was strong and steady now, and his arms came up to hold her. When she’d finally finished, he was silent a long time, and then he held her off at arm’s length, looking down at her. It was too dark by now to see his face clearly, but his hand came up, lightly touching her brow, her temple, her hair, as though he were still unsure whether he was awake or dreaming, and half afraid she’d vanish at the touch. Finally he said, “I don’t deserve you.”
Isolde captured his hand. It was his left hand; she could feel the disfigured fingers, the rough edges of the scars. She turned the hand, raised it, and pressed her lips lightly against his palm. Then she smiled up at him. “I think you do.”
And then an odd jolt of fear struck her seemingly from nowhere—struck with a force that was almost a physical pain—and she had a sudden flash of the vision she’d glimpsed before leaving for Octa’s camp. Trystan and Marche, locked in a desperate battle with swords.
She blinked to clear the memory from her eyes. Whether the Sight had shown her will be or only may be, she couldn’t know. She’d made peace with that, at least, about the workings of the Sight.
But she drew Trystan’s head down, kissed him almost fiercely, and said, “Just remember it and keep yourself safe, that’s all.”
IT HAD TO BE NEAR MIDNIGHT. Trystan could hear the call of a nightingale in the orchard outside the guest hall. He lay on his back, with Isolde curled close beside him, the slender shape of her a now familiar warmth. Even if he’d dared let himself fall asleep more often than he did, he wasn’t sure he’d have wanted to. He wouldn’t have wanted to miss a moment, a single heartbeat, of these nights.
Tonight, though, he knew by Isolde’s breathing she wasn’t asleep either.
“Isa?”
She stirred, turning her head, the soft cloud of her hair whispering against his shoulder. “Yes?”
“Are you. …” He stopped, hesitating, knowing she deserved to have him ask this, but unable to find the right words. “Are you sure this—the two of us, like this—is what you want? Are you sure you’re all right?”
She didn’t even hesitate. God help him. Just lifted her head and pressed her mouth lightly to his, one hand reaching to touch his face. The warm sweetness of her lips was almost enough to make him forget where he was, the cool touch of her fingertips on his skin—Christ, it was almost enough to make him forget his own name. Then she pulled away just enough to whisper, “Of course I’m sure.”
She held back, though, when he started to draw her towards him again.
“Are you sure you’re really all right, Trys? I don’t want to hurt you, and—don’t laugh. I’m a healer and it’s not that long ago that you had two broken ribs and—”
She broke off as Trystan pulled her head down, stopping her mouth with his. He felt her melt against him, like sweet living fire in his arms, but he made himself draw back and say, “I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing because you may be a healer—but right now you’re a healer without any clothes on, sharing my bed. And you expect me to have wits enough to put two coherent words together and answer questions about broken ribs?”
They were both laughing as he kissed her again, but then he stopped and drew back, one hand trailing lightly from her cheek to her neck to her bare shoulder and down, tracing her body’s perfect, delicate curve. Her skin was impossibly smooth and soft. Holy gods, he didn’t want this ever to end. Or if this was a dream, he didn’t ever want to wake.
“What’s that line in the old stories about the Land of Youth?”
“An earthly paradise is the land, delightful beyond all dreams. Fairer than aught thine eyes have ever seen.” Her voice was low and sweet and sounded a little breathless in the dark.
Trystan drew her mouth back to his, and then said, his own voice cracking on a husky whisper, “If this isn’t paradise, I think it’s the closest I’m ever likely to come.”
ISOLDE WOKE WITH A START AND automatically put out a hand to reach for Trystan. In the days following the worst of the fighting between Octa and Cerdic, the abbey guest hall had been crowded with those seeking refuge within the abbey walls. Isolde had offered to give up her own room so that it might be put to use by some of those taking flight, and Mother Berthildis had accepted, though she’d then fixed her keen black gaze on Isolde’s face.
“I thank you for it,” the abbess said, “for it’s quite true we can do with the extra space. Every time I visit the abbey kitchens I expect to see an entire family taken up residence in the soup tureen. But if you’re intending to share a bed with that young man whom you’ve pulled back from death, you’d assuage my conscience considerably if you’d tell me that I may add prayers for your marriage to my list of supplications tonight.”
Isolde thought of the night she’d stood in the courtyard outside the chapel, listening to the nuns chanting their evening prayers, and asked for courage to face the choice she’d in her hea
rt already made. Then she’d smiled at Mother Berthildis and answered, “I told you before that your God may not mean to me what He does to you. But you’ve promised me your prayers all the time I’ve sheltered here. And I’ve had more escapes from danger and death than should be possible in anyone’s life. And I’ve seen Trystan healed as well. So I do thank you. Truly. I would welcome either your Christian God’s blessing or yours.”
The abbess nodded and then smiled, wrinkles fanning out across her yellowed face. “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re properly wedded. Though truth be told, I’d not have blamed you too harshly either way. He’s handsome, your young man.” She shook her head. “Ah, well. I knew long before I was your age that I’d best devote my life to Christ, because for certain no living man would want to wake and find me in his bed.”
Her voice had been dryly amused, but Isolde thought she saw a faintly wistful look in the old woman’s small black eyes. As though picking up the thought, though, Mother Berthildis had straightened her round shoulders and said with her usual briskness, “Of course, marriage to Christ doesn’t leave you with a man’s muddy boot prints all over your clean floor. Or with another babe in your belly year after year until you’re worn out before you’re thirty. I’m well content with my lot.” She’d firmed up her mouth, but then softened slightly as she looked at Isolde. “I will keep the both of you in my prayers, though.”
In the nearly three weeks, now, that she’d slept beside Trystan, Isolde had grown used to waking when he moved. She always knew when he was dreaming because he would mutter or twist in sleep. She could hardly ever distinguish the words of what he said. The words were too low and indistinct, and usually in the Saxon tongue. He almost never woke, but he usually quieted at her touch. She would put her arms about him and curl up close against his side until his ragged breathing steadied and she no longer felt the frantic hammer of his heart against her breast. She wasn’t sure, either, whether he remembered the dreams the next morning. If he did, he never spoke of them.