Twilight of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

  Owain of Powys sat in a place on Marche’s right, near the head of the room, his pale, handsome face as smooth as always, though his finely arched brows were drawn together in a slight frown. Beside him, Huel, son of Coel, looked tired, his eyes puffy with lack of sleep—or it might have been with drink. But his mouth was set in an angry line, and he stared fixedly at Isolde, his neck rigid, his body lance-straight.

  Beyond the layers of numbness and fatigue, Isolde felt a sense of dizzying unreality, as though she might wake at any moment and find all this simply a dream. It was a moment before she realized that Marche was speaking again.

  “The first witness I give you to testify to the truth of the charge is Marcia, serving woman to the lady Isolde.”

  He seated himself, subsiding into a chair of heavily carved oak that Con had used in sessions of the council. There was a slight stir at the back of the room, and Isolde saw Marcia get to her feet. For a moment, Marcia’s gaze fastened on Isolde, and a look of smoldering hatred crossed her thin, sharp-featured face. And then she swept on to stand facing the rest of the room.

  Marcia, Isolde thought. Of course. She’d have fallen over herself in eagerness to testify. And I fairly placed every weapon she’ll need straight into her hands.

  Indeed, the maidservant’s testimony was much what Isolde would have expected. She told of the scrying bowl Isolde kept in her rooms, with its black symbols and heathen charms. And, her voice sharp with malice, her small eyes alight, she told of how the lady Isolde, on the night before her marriage to Marche, had looked into the scrying waters, cursed all that was holy, and called on Satan, summoning him as her master and lord.

  Marcia couldn’t, though, resist improving on the story. When she had finished speaking of the summoning, she lowered her voice, her eyes sweeping over the rows of watching men. “And I…I saw him come, too. I opened the door after she thought I’d gone, and I saw the Dark One come and take her in his foul embrace. I felt the chill as he swept through the air, smelled sulfur and brimstone as he passed. And I heard his cloven hooves clatter on the stone floor.”

  Several of those listening from the rows of benches drew in sharp breaths at that, and the room buzzed with angry mutterings and stirrings even after Marcia had been dismissed and waved back to her place at the back of the hall. Isolde could feel the same hunger for bloodshed she had felt once before in this hall. Though this time the death-hunger was directed at her.

  Marche rose to his feet again, his heavy face impassive, though there was a look of angry satisfaction in the set of his mouth. “The next witness I would offer the king’s council is Lord Huel, who with myself witnessed how, with her evil arts, the lady Isolde did vilely murder his father, King Coel.”

  His angry, red-rimmed eyes still fixed on Isolde, Huel rose to his feet and faced the room. He didn’t speak, though, and after a moment Marche said, “My lord Huel?”

  Isolde saw Huel’s throat contract as he swallowed. Then he nodded jerkily. “Yes. So she did.”

  Marche made an impatient movement with one hand, and the grave mask of his face cracked, briefly, as a spasm of irritation twisted his brow. Both movements were instantly controlled, though there was an edge to his tone as he said, “And will you tell us, then, what you saw?”

  Isolde’s mind had begun to drift again. Maybe it was thirst and hunger that made her head feel light, strangely disconnected to the rest of her body. Or maybe she had simply gone beyond fear. She scarcely heard Huel’s reply, his testimony of how he had seen her take his father’s hand and whisper spells under her breath. Huel’s face is so like Coel’s, she thought, and yet so unlike, as well. The courage was there, and the determination, but none of his father’s intelligence or imagination. Or, for that matter, kindness.

  Still as though from a long way off, Isolde heard again a ripple of movement and talk as Huel stepped down, and she saw several of the men turn to her with angry stares. And in none of the faces did she see a shadow of uncertainty or doubt. They condemned me long ago, she thought. From the moment I was crowned. This scene has been written, the verdict already decided these seven years.

  She still felt nothing, though, and the men’s anger hardly touched her. It was, she thought, as though she were still imprisoned. Trapped in a numbing fog—or in a tower of glass, like the Fisher King in the old tales.

  Marche called others. Serving women to testify of the spells Isolde cast as she gathered herbs at the full moon. Of how she had enchanted Cabal, King Constantine’s hunting hound, made him her familiar—a corporeal body for her master, Satan, to possess. Con, Isolde thought distantly, would have knocked the witness’s teeth down her throat, woman or no, for that. Then—Isolde felt a distant flash of bitter amusement—the guardsmen who’d captured and brought her here took the stand, telling of how she’d threatened to see their leader blasted with writhing pain.

  “And next I would call before you Gwyn, sometimes maid in Tintagel’s kitchens. Who did, five nights ago, help the lady Isolde to deliver a child of a harlot in the stables here.” Marche paused. “And with her the lady Nest, who has in her charge the woman herself. A slattern and a whore. And as guilty of witchcraft as the lady Isolde.”

  Isolde’s heart contracted. Nest’s harsh, blunt-featured face was flushed with barely suppressed satisfaction. The girl Gwyn followed on Nest’s heels, looking frightened. And then there was Dera, her arm held tight in Nest’s grasp; she was ashen pale beneath the wine-colored mark on her cheek, all the animation gone from her face, leaving it slack and gray.

  For a moment, Dera’s eyes met Isolde’s, but Isolde could read in the look the other woman gave her nothing but exhaustion and fear. Dera looked away almost at once, and as her eyes fell on Marche, waiting at the head of the room, Isolde saw her jerk instinctively back. Only a vicious tug from Nest brought her forward the rest of the way, into the open space at the front of the room.

  Abruptly, the cold, numbing mists were swept away, the glass walls about Isolde cracked and fell. She whirled in her place, rounding on Marche and speaking for the first time since she’d been brought into the hall.

  “You—” She stopped, her hands clenched, fighting for breath, unable to think of a name vile enough.

  A tide of hot, furious color ran up Marche’s throat as his eyes met hers, and she saw his hands fasten, white-knuckled, on the carved arms of the chair.

  “Keep silent!”

  Isolde drew in her breath. “Am I to be allowed no voice, then, at my own trial?”

  Marche’s eyes narrowed, dents appearing at the corners of his mouth. “If you think—” he began.

  But before he could finish, Owain of Powys had interrupted him, lifting a hand in a call for silence. “No.” He turned to Isolde, and for a long moment the luminous hazel-green eyes were intent on hers. But before Isolde could read the expression in their gaze—or wonder why Owain should suddenly speak out on her behalf—he had turned back to Marche. “The lady Isolde must, in fairness, be allowed to speak. I propose we allow the girl—and the lady Nest—to say what they have to say. And then give Lady Isolde the chance to say whatever she wishes, as well.”

  Isolde was distantly surprised to hear a murmur of agreement from the rest of the room. She would have expected the council to side with Marche. But she had small attention to spare for Owain or any of the other men there. Her attention was fixed on Dera, standing in Nest’s grasp and staring at Marche. She looked, Isolde thought, with a prickle along her spine, like a bird hypnotized by a snake, and Isolde saw her raise a hand to her breast, the fingers tracing the cross-shaped scar, hidden, now, by her gown.

  Isolde heard little more of Gwyn’s testimony than she had of all the rest. Prompted by Nest, the girl gave a stammering account of the birth of Dera’s child. Of how she suspected Isolde had lied about how the child had died. Of how Isolde had tried to trick Father Nenian into burying an unbaptized child in consecrated ground.

  And then Nest herself spoke. She wore a richly dyed gown of deep ye
llow, seeded with pearls, and her coarse black hair was held back by a pearl-studded net of golden-yellow thread. With a quick jerk, she forced Dera round to face the room. “You can see the witch-mark plain on the woman’s face,” she said. “And she’s known among the whole of the army as one who tries to bait and entrap honest men. With the aid of the Witch Queen, she killed her own child. It must have been demon-spawned. And…”

  There was more, but Isolde didn’t hear it. Her hands clenched on the folds of her gown, she waited until Nest had done, then drew in her breath and stepped a little forward, facing the room.

  The hall went abruptly silent, and Isolde let her eyes move over the rows of hostile faces and watching eyes before she began.

  “Every one of you here,” she said, “was born of a woman. A woman who labored to bring you into the world, just as Dera, the woman before you, labored to birth her child four nights since.” She stopped. Her voice was shaking slightly, but she steadied it and went on, her eyes once more sweeping up and down the benches that lined the walls.

  “And if any of you,” she said, “if any single man here, thinks that Dera wantonly killed her newborn babe, then you shame the woman who bore you and birthed you and gave you life.”

  She stopped. Another stir of movement and sound swept through the room, though the murmurs were different, somehow. For the first time, Isolde caught a faint uneasiness mingling with the charged tension of the crowd, and she thought, too, that some of the watching faces looked slightly uncertain. Marche must have felt it, too, for he rose to his feet, silencing the whispers and putting an end to all movement.

  “I bring forward Madoc of Gwynedd. He, if any, has good cause to know the power of the queen’s arts.” Again he turned to Isolde, his eyes black and chill as stone. “The devil’s whore has spread her thighs for Satan. And in return he has granted her the power to bring down and destroy honorable men.”

  There was a brief, expectant silence. And then, from the curtained doorway at the head of the room stepped Madoc of Gwynedd himself. Even as she caught her breath at the sight of him, Isolde thought, with another icy chill, that this final stroke had been masterfully executed. Carried out with the same calculation and skill that had won Marche countless fields of battle—and now won for him the High King’s throne.

  The burns that covered Madoc’s face and hands had scarcely began to heal. His lashes and eyebrows were gone, and the skin of his face was red and angry, blistered and puffed. The wounds dragged his features askew, making his face like a travesty of a human head, a child’s clumsy model in clay. Isolde could feel the waves of shock rippling through the hall, as Madoc’s eyes, glittering dark and nearly lost in the pockets of blistered, oozing flesh, swept over the rows of his fellow petty kings. Then he spoke. His voice was cracked and hoarse, scarcely above a whisper, but it carried to every corner of the silent room.

  “My lords. All of you saw how, in this very room, the traitor’s daughter—the Witch Queen—threatened me for accusing her of being what she is.” He stopped, throwing his head back so that the pale morning light fell full on his ghastly face. “Look at me. Look at what she has done in revenge. And then”—again the dark eyes went round the hall—“then, when you have gazed fully on what I now am, I challenge any man here to look me in the face and tell me she is not guilty as charged of sorcery and magic arts.”

  There was a burst of sound, beginning as a ripple of angry murmurs and then swelling to calls and shouts. Every eye in the room turned toward her, and Isolde saw several of the men surge up from their places, hands moving to clench the hilts of knives and swords, like wolves moving in for the kill.

  Even in the midst of all else, Isolde’s mouth twisted at the irony of it—that Marche should with one hand set up Madoc’s ravaging injuries as a sign from God that he himself should be crowned High King. And with the other hand present those same burns as proof that she, as Satan’s mistress, was capable of punishing any who incurred her anger or threatened her with harm.

  Madoc of Gwynedd raised his arms for silence, and the room went abruptly still, the men frozen, half of them sitting, half already on their feet. And in the stillness, Madoc’s voice rasped and crackled like autumn leaves, the word somehow more powerful, more carrying than a shout.

  “I say the filthy she-devil should burn. Burn and go to her master in a fire like the one she set on me.”

  Dera’s face had gone a shade paler; a sheen of sweat broken out on her brow. Most women in her place, four days after a birth, would be still in bed. And if she was condemned now, she would be thrown into the cell along with Isolde to await whatever sentence was decided here. And to be once again at the mercy of Marche, as well.

  Isolde turned slowly away from Dera to meet Marche’s dark gaze, and Isolde felt her stomach clench. And why, she thought, couldn’t I have stayed numb?

  There was only one path left her, though, one choice to be made. She forced herself not to break away from Marche’s look.

  “Let Dera go,” she said, “and I’ll confess to what you charge.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  IT WAS OVER EVEN FASTER than when the council had named Marche High King. Dera was released, with the injunction to leave Tintagel within the day. She passed out of the hall with a quick, final look at Isolde, in which Isolde read—what? Relief? Thankfulness? Fear on Isolde’s behalf? Then she was gone. And the Witch Queen was sentenced to die. To burn at the stake at dawn the following day.

  Even after the verdict had been spoken, the petty kings and their men-at-arms continued to mutter angrily under their breath, a few even surging forward toward Isolde, to be barely held back by Marche’s men, raising spears and shields. And through it all Isolde stood, motionless and silent, and tried to realize, fully, that her life was in fact to end the following day. No chance, she thought, of another escape. It’s over. Marche has won.

  She saw Owain of Powys turn to Marche and speak, though the angry shouts and mutterings of the crowd covered the words. Marche nodded abruptly, and then Owain threaded a way through the crowd to Isolde’s side.

  “Lady Isolde.” He sketched something almost like a bow. “I have offered to see you back to—” he stopped. Then, “To see you away from this place,” he finished smoothly.

  But just before they left the hall, Madoc of Gwynedd stepped into their path and stood, immovable, until the men-at-arms who had walked before Owain came to an uncertain halt. Madoc’s eyes met Isolde’s, and his jaw contracted, stretching the angry, blistered skin.

  “Were it my choice,” he said in a voice like metal rasping on stone, “you would die a worse death still.”

  Both hatred and fear Isolde had faced before, countless times in these seven years. And been herself sometimes angry and sometimes afraid. Now, though, meeting Madoc’s black, lash-less gaze, seeing fully the extent of the burns, she felt, all at once, nothing but pity—pity and a sense of waste.

  She said steadily, “Your wounds must, I know, be causing you a great deal of pain, so I will forgive what you’ve just said. Maybe when you are healed you’ll remember your fight with Marche—and be able to tell the difference between witchcraft and drug.”

  Then she turned away.

  OWAIN KEPT SILENT UNTIL THEY HAD reached the block of prison cells. Only then, when the door to Isolde’s own cell was open before them, did he turn to his men-at-arms and say, “Leave us.”

  The men bowed obedience and retreated to the far end of the corridor, out of earshot, though not out of sight, and Owain turned back to Isolde. “I’m sorry, my lady, to have to return you to such a place as this.”

  Isolde looked at him, uncertain what his intent had been in escorting her here—or in keeping her safe from the anger of his fellow councilmen. With Dera’s release, though, the numbness, the empty indifference seemed to have settled over her once again, and she found that she couldn’t rouse herself to care very much, one way or the other.

  She lifted her shoulders. “It hardly matters. My re
sidence here will be quite short. I’ll be released permanently in another day.”

  Owain’s hazel-green eyes were fixed on hers, and Isolde, out of habit more than anything else, tried automatically to read what lay behind their look. There was, she thought, a kind of speculative calculation in Owain’s gaze, as though he were trying to judge whether to smile or to remain sober and grave. At last, though, he said, his voice still low, “A release—one of another kind—might be arranged instead, my lady.”

  “Arranged?” Isolde repeated.

  Owain was quiet for a beat before he replied. He wore today a tunic of fine blue-dyed wool, the hem and sleeves shot with threads of silver, and the dagger at his belt was inlaid with garnets and seed pearls. He fingered the jeweled hilt idly before saying, “I admired your husband greatly, Lady Isolde. My lord King Constantine, I mean.”

  Isolde raised her brows slightly. “Did you?”

  Owain looked slightly disconcerted, but he said, still toying with the jeweled knife, “Yes. Admired, and loved him, as well. I cannot think he would feel anything but sorrow if he could see you in this place.”

  Through the numbing mist, Isolde felt a stab of the old ache of grief. She tightened her hands. No, she thought. I’ll never forgive myself if I give way to tears in front of this man—whatever he intends by this now.

  Owain went on, “And so, as Constantine’s loyal man, I feel it my duty to offer his widow the aid I know my lord king would have wished.”

  Isolde looked past him into the tiny, squalid prison cell, at the damp walls and piles of filthy straw. She seemed to hear Marche’s voice, days ago, saying almost exactly those same words, offering her the same protection in the name of loyalty to Con. Then she’d been angry. That seemed impossibly long ago. But she was beginning to feel a galling impatience at Owain’s presence—an overwhelming wish that she might be left on her own.