by Anna Elliott
Now, though, her fingers met only empty space on Trystan’s side of the bed, and she sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her eyes. This, too, had happened once before. She’d come awake sometime in the darkest watches of the night to find Trystan standing absolutely still, back against the opposite wall, his every muscle rigid as stone and his breathing quick and hard. She wasn’t sure whether he’d been dreaming still, or half awake, but he’d let her draw him back to bed, and as soon as she’d lain down beside him he’d fallen into a deep—dreamless—sleep.
Now, turning to search the darkened room, Isolde found him standing in the shadows under the room’s single narrow window. He was standing absolutely motionless, and yet his whole body looked braced, the broad muscles of his back and shoulders tensed in the faint, pale threads of moonbeams that were the only light.
Isolde swung her legs out of bed, shivering a bit as her bare feet touched the cold flagstone floor. She crossed to touch Trystan’s arm lightly, as she had before, and said softly, “Trys?”
Before, she’d only had to touch him, speak his name to have him relax enough that she could bring him back to the bed. This time, though, he jerked violently away as soon as her fingers brushed his skin, whirling to seize her arm in an iron hard grip, dragging her forward and then spinning, pinning her between him and the wall. The movement caught Isolde off balance, knocking the breath out of her as her back struck the wall with bruising force. Not that it would have made a difference if she’d been prepared. At any time, Trystan would be able to overpower her easily if he tried.
The room was too dark for her to see his face, but she could hear his harsh, ragged breathing, smell the faint salt tang that told her he was covered in cold sweat. His fingers dug painfully into her shoulders and she thought for a moment that he was going to slam her into the wall again. For a moment, she thought of what she’d been thinking to tell him in the morning, and her heart started to hammer because she knew there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop him breaking her skull open against the wall if he didn’t wake in time.
Instead, though, he flung her halfway across the room, so that the frame of the hard wooden bed caught her in the ribs, making her gasp aloud. She was out of his reach, though. She had a choice. She could sit here, not go near him again, and wait for him to wake on his own. Or she could leave the room entirely, seek a bed in one of the novices’ cells or another room of the guest lodgings—several of them empty, now, as the fighting grew distant and the refugees began to gather their belongings and return to their homes.
Isolde could leave—and a part of her acknowledged that that would likely be the wisest thing to do. But she didn’t hesitate, even as from across the room she caught a word or two—intelligible, this time—of what Trystan was whispering in a voice flat with rage. Isolde drew in her breath, steadied herself against the bed, and then crossed back towards Trystan, this time keeping up a soft, soothing murmur, a string of comforting nonsense words as she moved to lightly touch his wrist again.
“It’s all right. I’m here. You’re safe. Completely safe.”
She felt his muscles bunch and tighten under her hand as before, and braced herself, expecting him to seize her or throw her off again. But then she heard his breath catch and he relaxed, if only a bit. Cautiously, and still murmuring her string of soothing words, Isolde slipped her hand up his arm, eased herself closer until she could put her arms around him. He was damp with sweat, his skin almost as chill as it had been when Eurig and the others had first carried him to the abbey. Isolde felt a convulsive shiver shake him, though he hadn’t woken yet.
Still moving carefully and very slowly, Isolde started to draw him back towards the bed. “You must be cold. Come with me, now. Come and get warm.”
She managed to get Trystan back to the bed, managed to coax him into lying down under the blankets, and all still without having woken. And when she lay down beside him, he turned to her, gathering her against his chest in his sleep. Isolde didn’t sleep again, though, but lay with her eyes wide open, staring unseeingly into the darkened room and wondering how she could possibly have been so stupidly, utterly blind.
She could see Kian, muddied and with lines of weariness about his mouth, sitting beside her in the woods after the ambush on the journey from Ynys Mon. The echo of Kian’s voice was overlaid with a memory of Trystan, drinking himself on board the ship, night after night. You get yourself stinking drunk if you can before battle, Kian had said. And if you can stay drunk enough after the battle’s over, you’ve a chance of keeping the nightmares away.
DAWN WAS BREAKING WHEN ISOLDE FELT Trystan come awake with a jolt. He lay still without speaking, though, without even moving. Then he turned towards her, raising himself so that he could look down at her. His eyes looked shadowed and faintly bruised, and his face was stubbled with a day’s growth of beard. Wordlessly, he took Isolde’s wrist, lifted her arm up to the light. She heard the breath hiss between his teeth, but then, still without speaking, he collapsed back onto the bed, throwing an arm up across his eyes.
Looking down, Isolde realized that darkening bruises had appeared on both her arms, marks of Trystan’s grip on her the night before. She silently castigated herself for not thinking of that and putting on something that would have covered them. She likely had bruises on her back and ribs, too, but at least her shift made them invisible for now.
“Trys—” she began. But he cut her off, one arm still across his face.
“Please tell me I didn’t hurt you any worse than that.”
“You didn’t—”
Trystan sat up in a sudden explosion of movement, not even wincing at pain the movement must have caused his still healing ribs. “Powers of hell, Isa, tell me the truth.” His voice was almost angry, but then he drew a breath and said, more quietly, “Please. Just tell me. What did I do to you? I remember—”
Isolde put a hand on his arm. “You really didn’t, Trys. You. …” She stopped, searching for the mildest possible way she could describe it. “You were dreaming. I touched your arm, and you took hold of me and pinned me against the wall, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Trystan pushed a hand through his hair. “Jesus God, Isa, that’s all? I could have killed you. I could have woken up and found you dead at my feet. I—” He stopped, dropping his head into his hands. “I told you I didn’t deserve you. I should never have—”
“Stop it.” Isolde pulled on his arm, trying to make him look up at her, but she might as well have tried to shift stone. Instead, she slipped out of bed, dropping to kneel in front of him so that he was forced to look down into her face. “Don’t ever, ever say that.”
“Isa—” Trystan reached out as though about to touch her cheek, but then clenched his hand so hard she saw the muscles quiver as he seemed to force his arm back to his side. He closed his eyes as though he couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. When he spoke, his voice was rough, almost desperate, though still low with the effort of control. “Please. I …couldn’t stand it if I ever hurt you again.” He looked down at his right hand, held palm up, so that the mark of the handfasting cut—healed now to only a thin pink line—showed plain. “And it’s not as though we could ever have—”
Before he could finish, though, an urgent knock sounded on the door. In an instant, Trystan had sprung up, dragging on his breeches and, by force of long practice, reaching automatically for the knife that lay on the room’s single wooden table. When Trystan opened the door, though, it was to find Eurig standing on the threshold outside.
Eurig, Piye, and Daka had left the abbey some weeks ago but remained camped in the area, together with the rest of Fidach’s band. After hearing Isolde’s story of Fidach’s saving her on the night of the great battle, first Eurig, Piye, and Daka, and then the rest of the band had combed the area, searching for sign of their chief. They’d searched with a single-minded devotion that made Isolde understand that Fidach could not, after all, owe the allegiance of his men to fear alone. Tr
ystan, as he recovered enough, had joined in the searching as well. But all their efforts had come up empty. After Fidach had parted from Isolde outside the abbey gates, he might truly have vanished among the surrounding forest for all the traces found of him.
Now, despite the nightmare, despite all Trystan had just said to her, Isolde saw him come instantly alert, at the ready for whatever might have brought Eurig here at this hour.
Trystan slipped the knife into his belt and asked, “Something wrong?”
Eurig looked past Trystan and caught sight of Isolde, perched on the edge of the bed and dressed only in her shift and the shawl she’d quickly tugged round her bruised shoulders before Trystan opened the door. Eurig’s eyes widened a bit and he gave a start of surprise at sight of her, then quickly turned back to Trystan. Isolde could see his ears reddening, and he cleared his throat twice before answering Trystan’s question. “There’s a trader outside—come from the east. Daka stopped him on the road yesterday. Thought you’d maybe want to hear what he has to say.”
Isolde could almost feel Trystan deliberately setting all thoughts of the night before aside, summoning the resolve to cast one quick, questioning glance at her. She nodded. “Of course. Go. I’ll be fine.”
Eurig cleared his throat again and drew out a roll of parchment, glancing briefly back at Isolde and then just as quickly away. “Got a message for you, too. Left with the porter at the abbey gates this morning. I said I’d take it, seeing as how I might be seeing you, though I didn’t expect—” Eurig stopped, the flush spreading over his face. “Well, anyway, here you are.”
Another time Isolde might have smiled at the way he thrust the rolled parchment into her hands without ever actually looking at her again. This morning she only thanked him and drew the shawl a little more closely around her shoulders.
She waited until Eurig and Trystan had gone before breaking the seal on the message and unrolling the parchment. The message was brief, and in Latin of so fine a hand that she knew it must have been written by a paid scribe.
To the Lady Isolde of Camelerd:
Octa has gone to ground among his network of shore forts and sent for reinforcements. Marche’s troops are on the move. Send to your king Madoc of Gwynedd to bring every man he can rally, and we may crush the pair of them once and for all.
And it was signed GEVVISSÆ CYNING. King Cerdic of Wessex.
Isolde sat looking down at the message for some time. Then she got up, washed her face and hands in cold water from the basin, dressed in her old gown—travel worn but clean now, thanks to the washerwomen of the abbey. She combed and smoothed and braided her hair.
When she went out into the abbey courtyard, she saw Trystan and the others standing grouped about a man she didn’t recognize: an immensely fat man with bushy eyebrows and a small, pursed-up red mouth like a baby’s. Trystan seemed to be asking the stranger questions, Eurig interjecting a word from time to time as Piye and Daka looked on, dark faces impassive and grave. Hereric was there as well. The big Saxon man had nearly regained the flesh the fever had stripped from him; save for the empty sleeve pinned up over the stump of his arm, he looked almost his old self.
Isolde saw Trystan’s head lift as she came into the courtyard, saw his glance move briefly in her direction before turning back to the stranger, so she knew he’d seen her. She knew, too, that he would have motioned her over if she could have done any of them any good, so she sat down on a hard wooden bench that stood against the courtyard’s outer wall.
Though many of the refugees had departed by now, the abbey was still bustling and busy. Groups of the black-robed sisters moved this way and that, carrying water, baskets of clean linen, and platters of bread, and in one corner of the court a mother was keeping watch over two black-haired little girls, setting them to spin course woolen thread on drop spindles. The younger of the two kept breaking her thread and getting loudly taunted for it by her sister before their mother stepped in to settle the quarrel.
Isolde watched them until she realized with a start that Trystan had left the group and come to stand beside her. She tipped her head back and looked up at him, shading her eyes against the rising sun at his back. He was outwardly calm, but his face was as grim as ever Isolde had seen it, his eyes distant and hard.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s about Fidach,” Trystan said. “He’s a prisoner. Captured by Octa’s men.”
Isolde nodded. She felt cold begin to spread through her like ripples on a pond—but no surprise—so she supposed a part of her must have expected something of the kind. She sat still and listened while Trystan repeated for her what the trader—the man she’d seen him questioning—had said. That he’d traveled along the old Roman road network into Kent and had heard of a band of Octa’s men who traveled with a man bound in chains. A gaunt-bodied man with swirling blue tattoos over his cheekbones.
When Trystan had finished, Isolde closed her eyes and saw Fidach coughing from the smoke of the fire, his face streaked with ashes and his hair singed. Just because I cultivate the reputation of a man without honor, he’d said, it does not follow that I have none. And she saw again the pitiful, broken man who’d escaped Octa’s torture all those years before, only to die at Morgan’s hand because she’d deemed that kinder than letting him live.
Even still, there were at least a dozen things Isolde could have said: You don’t know this trader—he may be lying. Fidach is dying in any case. Trys, you’re barely recovered yourself.
She never for a moment actually considered saying any of them, but a horrible, cowardly part of her wished she might have. She did think, though, of what she’d planned to tell Trystan this morning.
Isolde opened her hand and looked down at the cleanly healed scar of the handfasting across her palm. Three weeks since she and Trystan had exchanged that vow. Just time enough for her to be almost entirely sure that the past days’ glimmer of a guess was now certainty. And she felt something twist in her chest, tight to the point of breaking at the thought of sending him off to fight—maybe to die—without ever knowing.
“I think I’m—” She actually started to speak the words, but then she clamped her jaw tight shut before she could finish, forcing herself not to go on. If she could finally say I love you, to Trystan, she now had something else she couldn’t tell him. Or at least not here, today.
She opened her eyes, looked up at Trystan, and saw his shadowed blue gaze, the small twitch of a muscle at the corner of his mouth. She remembered his ragged whisper in the depths of the nightmare the night before. And she knew she absolutely couldn’t burden him any further. Or make it any harder for him to leave.
So instead she drew a shaky breath, looked up into his face, and said steadily, “I know. I know you have to go.”
HE WAS PACKED IN SCARCELY ANY time at all. Sword belt. Knife. Pack with a meal and a change of clothes. That was all. Isolde had followed him to their room and sat on the edge of the bed while he made ready to leave. The bruises on her arms were covered now, but still Trystan flinched inwardly every time he looked at her. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from watching her, sitting there, beautiful and delicate, like a princess in one of the tales she told.
Trystan turned away and told himself for the—Jesus, what was it now?—hundredth time that it was better this way. Better. Right. Like having a nice clean cut throat instead of bleeding to death drop by drop. But better for her, anyway.
Only when he’d hoisted the traveling pack onto one shoulder did Isolde break the silence.
“Did you know about Fidach—what he was really like, I mean—when you first went to ask him for aid?”
“You mean did I know he was more or less a decent man when he stopped being a posturing fool?” Trystan nodded. “I thought we’d better not take a chance on my judgment of him—when Piye said he’d plans to sell us to Octa. That’s why I said we’d better leave. That and I didn’t trust that another of the band wouldn’t deal with Octa for our capture, even if Fida
ch refused. But I fought with Fidach for a whole season. And you can’t fight with a man without coming to know his character as well as your own. Or better, sometimes. I knew I could trust Fidach to honor a bargain.” He’d sworn to himself he wasn’t going to touch her, but somehow he couldn’t keep himself from reaching out, touching her cheek. “If I hadn’t, I’d never have let you within a day’s journey of him.”
And then—he didn’t know how it happened—she was somehow up, off the bed, and in his arms. He didn’t kiss her, because that would have shattered the last remaining fragments of his self-control. Just held her tight against him, burying his face in the softness of her hair, trying to imprint this feeling on every nerve in his body. Every single separate sensation of holding her this way.
Finally, he said, “The message Eurig brought you—it was from Cerdic?”
He felt Isolde nod against his shoulder. “He says that if Madoc will send troops to join in fighting Octa, Cerdic will agree to a treaty with Britain.”
“And you still don’t know if there’s a traitor on the king’s council. If one of the council sent the men who attacked us on the boat.”
Isolde shook her head. “No.”
Trystan silently ticked off every possible danger on an overland journey back to Gwynedd. A series of imagined outcomes flashed across his mind, each hitting like a punch in the gut. He closed his eyes. “Isa, I know you’ll want to go to Madoc yourself, but—” He stopped, trying to think of something to say that would persuade her. Telling her it would be dangerous would be about as useful as telling her she might get wet in the rain. God knew, she’d never lacked courage or flinched away from facing danger before. Finally, he gave up and said, “Please. Don’t go. The abbey must have riders to carry messages. Send one of them. Just stay here.”