Twilight of Avalon
Page 10
Her skin still felt clammy from her encounter with Marche, and all at once she wanted nothing—nothing—so much as to snatch off the jeweled necklace and golden diadem she wore and fling them, with all her strength, against the gray stone wall.
Yes, she thought, and what then? Nest’s women would come in and curtsy and quietly sweep up the broken pieces. The jewels would be taken to Tintagel’s metalworkers to be repaired. And Nest would have yet one more tale to carry back to Marche and the rest of the council. One more reason that the dowager queen must be forced to accept the protection of another man.
Isolde drew in a slow breath. The stars will still shine tomorrow, whatever happens to me here.
“I might have expected nothing less of you, Lady Nest.” She rose. “And now I must beg you would excuse me. The hour is late.”
Nest, though, didn’t move. “There was another matter, my lady.” The older woman lowered her lids, veiling her eyes. “I am sorry to bring you more ill news at such a time, my lady. But it’s about Branwen.”
Isolde looked up, startled. “Branwen?” Whatever she had expected, it was not this. The girl was one of the youngest of her serving women, the daughter of Con’s steward. A thick-limbed, plump girl of maybe fifteen or sixteen with curling nut-brown hair and a round, pretty, gap-toothed face. Isolde could see her, laughing when Con pulled her onto his knee in the banquet hall—and preening herself because for nearly two months, now, the High King had called her almost nightly to his bed.
“What of her?”
Nest’s eyes were still on the large, square-knuckled hands folded in her lap, and she said, with no change of voice, “She is dead, my lady.”
Isolde stiffened. “Dead? How?”
“A sudden illness, my lady. She died last night.”
Nest’s dark eyes lifted to meet Isolde’s, and Isolde worked to draw another breath.
Of course, she thought. Nest would not leave a girl alive who might be carrying Con’s child. Such a child could be used as a pawn all too easily by one who would challenge Marche’s claim on the throne.
It might have hurt her, once, to think of Branwen bearing Con a daughter or son, though since the girl had caught Con’s eye, Isolde had felt nothing but simple pity for Branwen herself. Pity, because she knew the girl would keep Con’s favor no longer than any of the rest. Though he’d have seen her as generously rewarded with jewels as the others—and probably married to one of his men-at-arms, as well.
And now Nest had killed her. As carelessly as she might have drowned a stray kitten.
Abruptly, Isolde rose to her feet, signaling an end to the visit.
“Very well,” she said shortly. “I will speak to Father Nenian about the burial. And I will tell her father and mother myself.”
Chapter Seven
ONLY WHEN NEST WAS GONE, the door closed behind her, did Isolde allow herself to let out a long, shuddering breath. For a long moment she stood in the center of the room, eyes closed. Then she turned and crossed to the curtained doorway that led to the bedchamber.
Someone—it must have been Hedda—had banked the bedroom fire so that it still glowed red and warm. A lamp had been lighted as well, showing walls hung with tapestries and, in the center of the room, a massive carved bed. The bed was made of wood nearly black with age and was hung with fur-lined scarlet curtains against the autumn chill, and the rest of the furnishings were of the same solid, carved wood.
Isolde paused in the doorway, her eyes drawn by a bowl that stood to one side of the hearth, the bronze sides thin with age and etched with serpents of eternity, tails in their mouths, the eyes picked out with bloodred stones. Then, with an effort, she turned away, crossing to the room’s deep circular recess, part of the turret that here, on Tintagel’s westernmost side, perched on the very brink of the sea.
The space held a single narrow window, as yet uncovered by the scraped and oiled hide that would be tacked over it in winter, so that now the ocean’s salt tang and cooling mist came freely through. Isolde sank down on a chair, staring unseeingly out at the night and listening to the steady crash of waves against the rocks below.
It must have been easy enough, she thought, for Nest. A brew of something—nightshade or another poison—dropped into Branwen’s cup of beer. She remembered the rumors still whispered about Nest, even now. Rumors of Marche’s wife, dead these seven years.
She, too, belonged to the time Isolde had blotted out completely, but Isolde had heard Nest’s women speak of her in sly, frightened whispers, when Nest was not there to hear. Marche’s wife had been a Saxon princess, sold by her father, King Cerdic of Wessex, into marriage as part of Modred’s alliance with the Saxon king. A slight, fair-haired girl, so the stories went, who crept about Marche’s castle with a bruised face and terrified eyes.
And then, conveniently for Marche, she had died after the battle of Camlann, when alliance with the Saxons was spoken of as treason and shame, and a Saxon wife could cost a man his place on the newly reformed king’s council, made up almost wholly of Arthur’s surviving men.
Isolde had thought herself alone, but now a touch against her hand made her start and turn, then let out her breath as she saw the big white-and-brown hunting dog that had come to lay a massive paw across her knee and thrust his nose against her palm. Isolde stroked his head, and he answered her with an anxious whine.
“Good dog, Cabal. Good fellow.”
As she spoke, the curtain lifted and Hedda slipped in, her fair hair laden with droplets of the mist from outside. She looked from Cabal to Isolde and shook her head.
“I not understand. That dog not come near you before. And now he not leave your side.”
“He knows something is wrong, poor fellow.”
Isolde stroked the big dog’s head again. Cabal had been Con’s hunting dog, and his war-hound, as well. Isolde’s fingers traced the raised scar—left by a Saxon sword—that ran along the animal’s shoulder beneath the creamy brindled fur, and all at once a memory rose before her, vivid as a scene tapestried in colored wool. Con riding out at the head of the army—nearly a half-moon’s time ago, now—the red Pendragon banner flying in the wind above, and Cabal, running alongside Con’s horse, keeping pace with the galloping hooves in a series of great, effortless leaps.
One of the king’s council—Isolde thought it might have been Coel—had brought Cabal home to Tintagel three days ago, alongside the body of his king. And ever since, the big dog had stayed in Isolde’s rooms, setting up a pitiful howl when one of the serving women tried to take him away. He’d refused to eat and had lain all but unmoving, head pillowed on his paws, liquid eyes dark with a look of almost human grief.
Now he whimpered again, and Isolde ran a hand along his back. “It’s all right, Cabal. That’s a good fellow.”
The dog subsided onto the floor at her feet, and Isolde looked up to find Hedda watching her.
“What has happened, my lady?”
Isolde was suddenly unable to check herself, unable to stop from answering Hedda’s look of concern. One hand still on Cabal’s head, she said, “Lord Marche has offered me an alliance of marriage. And there is word that Owain of Powys means to offer for me, as well.”
For all that Hedda was less guarded with her than with anyone else at the fortress, it was seldom they spoke together like this. Isolde waited for the blank, dull look to return to Hedda’s eyes, the expression of stolid calm to settle over her face once more. Instead, though, Hedda said, “You expected that?”
“Yes, I expected it.” Isolde paused, then added bitterly, “Camelerd is too rich a prize for any man of ambition to risk losing his chance by waiting until the king is cold in his grave.”
Hedda nodded slowly. “And you think one of them—Owain or Marche—will be chosen the next High King?”
“I think them the most likely. Madoc of Gwynedd might have had a chance at the throne as well, but that he spoke as he did against the kingship in the council hall tonight. And Coel is too old.”
“You believe Marche’s talk of sign tomorrow night?” Hedda asked.
Isolde sat down on the edge of the bed and began to untie the laces of her overtunic, though her eyes went, almost involuntarily, to the bronze bowl, tracing the threads of light that ran along its serpent-twined sides.
“I think,” she said at last, “that maybe there was once a place in Britain for magic and signs. That once, before the Christ-God came, there were gods in the hills and pools and sacred groves. And a time when druid-men could walk untouched over beds of burning hazel boughs and read the future in the flight of the birds above.” She looked up at Hedda, lifting one hand and letting it fall. “Maybe the God of the Christ isn’t a god of magic. I don’t know. But I think that time is now gone.”
Hedda seemed to hesitate. Then: “You think Marche lied?”
Isolde was silent, ice settling in the pit of her stomach at the memory of Marche’s grip on her throat. She was remembering, too, the anger that had simmered in him, the impression she’d had of desperation and ragged nerves. Something more was at stake for him than simply winning the wealth her own lands would yield. But what, she thought, I don’t know.
“Lied?” she repeated. “I can’t be sure. I mistrust him and his talk of a miraculous sign. But I have no father, no brother—and now no husband. And there are none among the king’s council I would trust—”
Isolde stopped. Hedda had been helping her off with the embroidered overtunic of her gown. The Saxon girl didn’t pause in her movements, but Isolde caught the brief stiffening of her frame and saw one of those quick, tight spasms flash across the broad planes of her face. “I’m sorry, Hedda,” she said quietly. “You lost your family as well.”
Hedda was still a moment longer, and then she turned, kneeling before the carved chest to fold the overtunic and gown away. When she spoke, her voice was once more flat and dull, the Saxon accent strong as it had ever been.
“True. Though in different way.” She let the lid of the trunk fall with a heavy thud. “I go where the gods send—take what I can.”
Her face was still turned away, but Isolde saw the blunt fingers clench and tighten on the edge of the wood.
“I’m sorry, Hedda,” she said again.
Hedda drew in a long breath, and when she rose to her feet and turned, Isolde saw the weariness in her broad, heavy face, the shadows about her eyes. She looked pale, too, her mouth tight and drawn.
Isolde hesitated a moment. Then: “Hedda, are you well? You look as though you’ve been ill.”
As though unconsciously, Hedda’s hands went to her middle, grasping the rope girdle of her gown. And, watching, Isolde remembered the men in the council hall, with their drunken shouts and roving hands. She wondered for a moment whether she should speak. But before she could decide, Hedda had pushed the heavy braid of hair back over her shoulder and said, her voice flat, “I’m well, lady. And if not for you, I would have been sold into far worse life than what I have here.”
She turned and began to sponge the dirt from the hem of Isolde’s workday gown. “You spoke of the king’s council. Is there…?” Hedda seemed to hesitate again, then looked up. Her eyes, pale and unaccustomedly keen, searched Isolde’s face, and then she said softly, “You think my lord King not die of battle wounds?”
Isolde hadn’t meant to burden—or endanger—the girl with the knowledge she had carried these last three days. She’d not have suspected, though, that Hedda would guess so much, and something inside her seemed to crack at the unexpected question.
She’d taken up the bone and silver comb from her dressing table, but stopped. “I don’t think,” she heard herself say. “I know. I saw him killed. I watched him die.”
Isolde was distantly aware of Hedda’s sharp gasp, but the remnants of the vision were gathering and forming before her once more, and the sound seemed to come from a long way off.
“It was three nights ago,” she said, “the night the king’s messengers came to tell us the battle was won, the Saxon army in retreat, and that Con had taken a wound in the final skirmish. An injury—but by no means a grave one.”
Her own voice, too, sounded distant to her, the words coming like something she had learned by heart. “I was sitting here, in this room, alone. I was watching the fire, and thinking of Con, wondering whether he would soon send me a message of his own. And then…”
And then, slowly, a scene had taken shape at the glowing heart of the flames. A circle of men, crouched about another fire, but this one open, built on a field under a star-studded night sky. The air was thick with smoke, but Isolde could see them vividly. The streaks of mud and sweat on their faces, the stubble of several days’ growth of beard on their chins. Their stiff leather war tunics, emblazoned with the king’s crest, and the battle-hardened weariness in their eyes. They were passing a skin of ale around the circle, and one man was speaking, the words rhythmic and low. A tale of Arthur, it had been—of how the king had slain nine hundred Saxons with his own sword at Badon Hill.
After seven years of empty gray, without even a flicker of Vision or Sight, the suddenness—and the clarity of the image—had made Isolde gasp with shock. And then, even as she felt, still, the heat of her fire on her hands and face, the hard wood of the chair at her back, she was also there—able to feel the damp, chill bite of the wind, hear the distant nickerings of the warhorses tied a few yards away, even feel the pull of the mud beneath her feet as she moved about the circle—though the men one and all looked through her as though at empty air.
A strange burning, like cold fire, rippled through her veins, and she felt herself move as though she stood apart from herself, as though compelled by a will other than her own. A tent, larger than any of the others and flying the dragon banner, stood beyond, and she turned toward it, walking with her heart beating hard in her ears, though she could not have said why. The tent flaps were drawn and tightly tied, but she had no need of an opening or door. One moment she stood before the tent, surrounded by the smoke of campfires and the stench of battlefield rot. And the next she was inside, looking down at Con’s sleeping form.
He slept on his back, his hands folded over his chest. His face, in the orange glow from the fire without, looked peaceful and frighteningly young beneath a scattering of bruises and a smear of dried mud. His tunic hung open, and she could see the wound he had taken in the side, covered by bandages held in place with a bronze pin. And all was silent, utterly deserted and still, the only movement the soft rise and fall of Con’s breast. But it should not have been. There should have been guards here. Men-at-arms who slept at the feet of their king.
Isolde had time to see it, to see that the guards were gone, and that Con was alone save for Cabal, likewise asleep, in the tent’s corner. And then with a soft rustling of leather, the tent flaps were drawn aside, and a figure, a man’s dim form, slipped into the room. The man wore an ordinary soldier’s garb, and a hood of some dark material had been drawn over his head, concealing his face. Isolde stood frozen, watching as he approached the bed, her veins still burning with those strange, cold flames that seemed to compel her to keep still, and only to look. And, slowly, she saw the figure draw out from his belt a dagger, a tiny thing, almost a child’s toy, but for the narrow blade that gleamed in the fire’s light.
Isolde stopped speaking. Her throat had gone dry as she told the story, and she swallowed, turning at last to meet Hedda’s gaze. Hedda hadn’t moved. There was something new in her eyes, though, as her pale blue gaze met Isolde’s. A look almost of wonder, or fear. For whatever Isolde had pretended to others, she had never tried to make Hedda believe she had any of the old power left.
At last Hedda looked away. “What did you do, my lady?”
Isolde realized that her hands were clenched so tightly about the bone comb
that the teeth had left marks in her palms, and when she relaxed her grip a few drops of blood rose to the surface of her skin. She looked down at the tiny beads of crimson, a shudder twisting through her.
“I screamed,” she said at last. “And ran to Con—I could move, then. And speak. But he didn’t hear. And when I tried to rouse him, to shake him awake, my hands only passed through his skin as though I—or he—were nothing. No more solid than mist or the smoke outside. And then—”
Isolde stopped, waiting until her voice was steady enough to go on. “And then the man struck,” she said in a whisper. “A thrust to the heart. It’s an easy enough blow to find on a sleeping man. And it kills almost at once. Con didn’t even cry out. Just a little gasp—almost a sigh. And then he was gone. The physicians”—Isolde’s mouth twisted—“the physicians said when they found his body in the morning that the battle wound must have been graver than anyone believed. It had opened during the night and bled until he died.”
Hedda’s eyes met Isolde’s, and again there was a look of unguarded understanding in their pale gaze. “Lord Marche’s physicians?”
Hedda, Isolde thought, knows far more than anyone suspects. Even I would not have thought she would guess so quickly at the truth.
She nodded. “As you say.”
The vision had faded, then, as suddenly as it had come. The fire-lit tent, the smell of mud, the sight of Con—all had vanished, leaving her sitting once more before her own hearth, her whole body icy cold, her head throbbing with the familiar sickening pain that marked always a return from Sight. The hearth held only common fire once more, nothing but the comfortable hiss and crackle of the flames.
But she’d had no doubt, either then or since, that the vision had been true. And she’d seen for herself the narrow, blue-lipped wound in Con’s side when his body was brought home.
Isolde looked toward the window to clear her eyes of the memory, then went on. “I never saw the man’s face…the man who struck the blow. But it wasn’t Marche himself. This man was younger—not as heavily built. And he walked without any of the limp Marche has.”