Twilight of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

  Abruptly, Isolde felt the control she’d been hoarding slip from her grasp. All at once, she was as angry with him as she’d ever been.

  “And do you think I should have trusted you?” she demanded. “When you didn’t even trust me enough to tell me who you really were?”

  And then she stopped, drawing a steadying breath. “I didn’t remember you,” she said, more quietly. “I’ve told you why. But I did remember what you told me, all those years ago.”

  Trystan turned away abruptly, jerking the saddle girth into place. He gave a harsh, angry laugh. “That the stars will still shine tomorrow?” He stopped and straightened, pushing the hair back from his brow. He looked at her a moment, and then shook his head. “Maybe not so much has changed as I thought. I’d no real help to offer you then, either.”

  “And that’s why you’re leaving?” Trystan didn’t answer, and Isolde, said slowly, “No. It’s because of him, isn’t it? Because of Marche.”

  She saw Trystan’s mouth tighten, but she was too angry to keep from going on.

  “I was right,” she said, “when I guessed that your mother was Saxon and your father Briton-born. Your mother was Saxon. A Saxon princess—sent to strengthen the alliance my father had made with Cerdic. And married to Marche. Your father.”

  She stopped, her eyes moving to the bruises on his face, the brand marks on his neck and shoulders, just visible above the collar of his tunic. She said softly, “You can’t keep running away from him, you know.”

  Trystan swung round. “You think that’s what happened seven years ago? That I ran away?”

  Isolde shook her head. “No. Not then. I remember—”

  She saw a muscle tighten in Trystan’s jaw, but when he spoke his voice was once more taut and dangerously controlled. “What do you remember?”

  Isolde closed her eyes briefly in an effort of remembrance. Those days were still a blur of fragmented memories, a jumbled haze of grief.

  “It was just before Camlann,” she said at last. “You left to fight, and never returned. We all thought you were among those dead—or captured.”

  She stopped. Even now, she felt an ache in her chest at the remembrance. When her father was dead, and Morgan taken ill, and the plague tightening its grip on the land. And then the word had come back at last that Trystan, too, was among those lost in the final battle between Arthur and his son.

  Trystan’s eyes were flat and opaque as blue stones, and his mouth was pulled into a humorless smile. “Captured? Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

  But before he could go on, the stable door beside him opened, and Hereric ducked his head to step inside. The big man’s face was still pinched and gray-looking, and his steps were slightly unsteady, but the slow, spreading smile he gave Isolde was as broad as before.

  Trystan drew in a breath. Then: “Rode in this morning with Kian,” he said curtly, in answer to Isolde’s look.

  Hereric touched Trystan’s shoulder to attract his attention, then made a rapid series of signs. It was a long moment before Trystan turned back to Isolde. His eyes, weary and startlingly blue against the bruised skin, met hers.

  “Hereric says he’s well again,” he said. “And that you saved his life.”

  Isolde let out a breath. For Hereric’s sake—for Hereric, who was standing at Trystan’s side, watching her, his broad face a little anxious—she smiled.

  “I’m glad you’re better, Hereric.”

  Hereric made another sign.

  “He says—” Trystan began.

  “I know what that one means.” Isolde squeezed Hereric’s hand and said, “You’re welcome, Hereric. And a blessing go with you, when you leave here.”

  Then, slowly, she turned back to Trystan. Silence stretched between them once more, and something in Trystan’s face made Isolde remember those echoing flashes that had come to her since first she’d seen him again. That had brought back her past, called until at last she’d had no choice but to listen and hear. Fragments…memories…of her and Trystan—years ago, she thought they’d been. Of Trystan—

  She frowned, trying to call the lingering echoes back. But no. Whatever the flashes had shown her was gone, vanished as completely as the words themselves.

  She had her own memories, though. Of Trystan mending a broken toy cart for her when she was small. Of taking her out fishing with him in the boat he’d made himself. Of bullying him into letting her doctor the hurts he’d show to no one else—the lash marks and bruises he’d gotten at his father’s hands.

  “You were—”

  Isolde stopped. What had Trystan been? Her companion? The brother she’d never had? Her only friend?

  She looked up into his face again, her eyes on his. “You were the only person I’ve ever counted on, Trys, besides my grandmother and myself. I won’t part from you in anger now. A blessing go with you, as well.”

  Unconsciously, she had reached out to touch Trystan’s hand as she had Hereric’s, but as her fingers brushed his, Trystan jerked back as though burned.

  Of course, Isolde thought, her eyes moving again to the lashes of the whip, the marks of the branding iron on his skin. He must hate me now.

  And then she shivered, shocked—and frightened, as well—by how much that realization hurt. She turned quickly away and forced herself not to look back. She’d lost him seven years ago, when she was thirteen, and grieved with all her heart, because he’d been her childhood companion, her protector, her only friend—all that and more besides. In the seven years since, he’d changed. They both had. And she’d not expected that losing him now, again, would be a grief almost as sharp.

  She’d gone halfway across the great courtyard when a touch on her arm made her turn.

  “Kian!”

  Kian’s scarred face looked tight with weariness, and he held himself stiffly, his right arm still bound to his chest by the strappings she’d tied the morning before.

  “I saw Hereric with Trystan,” Isolde said. “How did you get in, the two of you?”

  Kian’s shoulder on the uninjured side lifted. “Easy enough. Borrowed Brother Columba’s mule and waited at the gates here with all the others come to beg aid.”

  “Didn’t you trust me to get Trystan free?”

  At that, one side of Kian’s mouth tilted in a brief, unexpected smile, and it occurred to Isolde how much had changed between them, too, since their first encounter in the dank sea cave, when Trystan had only just stopped him from going after her with the knife.

  “Well, I thought maybe you’d need a bit of help, at any rate.” He paused, then said, his face again grave, “You saved Trystan. And Hereric, as well. If it hadn’t been for you, they’d neither of them be alive now. And so I wanted to say thank you. And that I—”

  Kian stopped, as though having trouble speaking the next words. “I was unfair to you,” he finished at last. He straightened his shoulders, meeting her look squarely. “I can’t take back the things I said, when first Hereric brought you into the camp. I can only say that I’m sorry for them. And ask your pardon.”

  “You have it. It is—it already was—yours.” Isolde paused, then said, her eyes on Kian’s, “I can’t change the past, either. Or erase what my father did. I can only do what I can to see that the same wrongs aren’t committed again.”

  Kian studied her. “You mean to take a hand in it, then? In getting ready for the war that’s on its way?”

  Isolde’s gaze traveled slowly around them, her eyes moving over the gray stone walls and towers of Tintagel, shrouded by mist and echoing like harp strings with all that had gone before. With Uther’s love for Ygraine, and Arthur’s birth. With Myrddin’s prophesies and Modred’s betrayal and war. And now with Brychan’s death, and all the others who’d died at Marche’s hands. And with her memories of Con, who’d fought to hold on to Arthur’s victories. To raise the Pendragon banner in triumph once again.

  All about them, soldiers were passing to and fro, making ready to march out to meet the coming assault. Mad
oc and Huel, their differences forgotten, at least temporarily, in the face of a common foe, were drilling their men in formation. Though how long the alliances established in the council hall last night would last, Isolde didn’t know. And in a corner of the courtyard, Father Nenian stood handing out bread and mead to the exhausted-looking travelers come to beg for aid. As Isolde watched, a small, dirty boy wriggled out of his mother’s grasp and ran, shrieking with delight, toward the soldiers lined up with spears and swords.

  The time was ended, she knew, when she could think simply of stitching one wound, setting one bone. And she was remembering, too, that moment of paralysis on the headland the night before—and been utterly unable, for that space of time, to move or go on. She’d told Trystan, just now, that he couldn’t keep running away. And I’m going to have to face Marche as well, she thought. Sooner or later. It won’t be ended for me until I do.

  And so she nodded in response to Kian’s questioning look. “I’ve won a voice on the king’s council—for now. So, yes. I mean to do what I can.”

  Kian, one eyebrow raised, looked at her. “You think there’s much chance of success? Of holding out against the Saxons again?”

  Isolde lifted her shoulders. “There’s always a chance. And we’ve the lady Nest—Marche’s kinswoman—as hostage. Marche may be willing to come to terms in exchange for her.”

  Privately, Isolde doubted Marche would care enough, even about Nest, to bargain for her freedom or life, and she was silent, recalling the scene in the council chamber the night before. Nest, roused from her bed and flushed with sleep, had been brought in by a pair of Madoc’s men, and had faced the council angrily when she’d learned what was to be done. But it had been Isolde her eyes had fixed on at last, her thin mouth twisting.

  “It’s a low, filthy trick,” she’d spat. “Using a woman as hostage and bargaining piece in war.”

  And Isolde had nodded. “Yes. It is. And so was trying to have Dera burned for witchcraft along with me.”

  Isolde came back to the present to realize that Kian was speaking, though she caught only the last of what he said.

  “Reckon you can do with every able-bodied fighting man. Though it will be a day or two before my shoulder’s fit for raising a sword.”

  For a moment, Isolde could only stare, unable to quite believe what she’d heard. Then she asked, “Kian, are you sure?”

  Kian gave short nod. “Sure enough.”

  “Trystan—”

  “Told Trystan the same. He’s not best pleased, but he’ll not try to stop me.”

  Isolde looked into the weathered face of the man beside her, at the scar he’d won on the battlefield at Camlann. Camlann was over. Arthur and Modred, Myrddin and Morgan and Gwynefar lingering now only as names in the bards’ tales and, perhaps, as voices in the wind. One age is ended, she thought. And another, perhaps, begun.

  “You needn’t, you know,” she said at last. “I’d grant you a holding on my own lands—in thanks for what you’ve done. You’d have your land and your farm.”

  Kian was silent a beat, but then he shook his head. “Farm’s not much good if the Saxons come and burn it to the ground, is it? No. I fought for Britain once before—I reckon I can do it again. Besides—” He stopped, and that small, unaccustomed smile tugged at his mouth again. “Probably I’d be bored to tears after a week of plowing and hoeing and scattering corn for hens. Do me a favor if you’ll take me on to fight.”

  Isolde hadn’t cried last night—hadn’t even cried at bidding Trystan goodbye. But now, all at once, she felt tears stinging her eyes.

  Before she could speak, though, a powerful white-and-brown-spotted form galloped toward her from across the great courtyard, and jumped at her, half knocking her to the ground. Kian smiled again as Cabal whined, thrusting his nose into Isolde’s palm.

  “Looks like there’s another here who’d not be forgotten.”

  Isolde bent, briefly, over the big dog’s head, hiding her face in his bristling fur until the tears were gone. Then she straightened.

  “If you’re sure, then you can join and welcome,” she told Kian. “We’ve need of every man if Britain is to survive this coming storm.”

  Historical Note

  BOTH THE TRYSTAN AND ISOLDE legend and the King Arthur legend of which it is a part are steeped in magic. The world of the tales is filled with the voices of prophesy, with enchanted swords and Otherworld women and the magical Isle of Avalon, where Arthur lies in eternal sleep, waiting to ride once more to Britain’s aid.

  In fact, if a historical Arthur existed, he was probably a Celtic warlord of the mid-sixth century, a warrior who led a triumphant stand against the Saxon incursions onto British shores. Tristan was likely a roughly contemporaneous warrior, possibly the son of a Cornish petty king, whose cycle of tales was eventually absorbed into the legends growing up around Arthur and his war band.

  The Arthurian legend as we know it today is a result of roughly fourteen hundred years of revisions, retellings, and graftings onto the story’s original frame. The version that forms the backdrop for Twilight of Avalon is one of the earliest tellings of the Arthur story: that recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain, written in the mid-twelfth century. In this version, the now-famous Guinevere-Lancelot-Arthur love triangle does not exist; in fact, Lancelot is not yet even present as one of Arthur’s fighting men. Instead, it is Modred, Arthur’s nephew and heir, who betrays the king by seizing both Guinevere and the throne.

  Likewise, I have taken the earliest reference to the historical figures of Tristan and Marche as the basis for the characters in my story; this is a memorial stone in Cornwall with the inscription Drustans hic iacet Cunomori filius, which means “Drustanus lies here, the son of Cunomorus.” Many scholars have plausibly suggested that the characters referred to are the Tristan and King Mark of later medieval tales, Drustanus being a recognized variant of the name Tristan (or Trystan) and Cunomorus being the Latinized version of the name Cynvawr, identified by the ninth-century historian Nennius with King Mark.

  Beyond that single reference, though, almost nothing is known of the historical figures who inspired the later tales of romance centering on the love triangle between Tristan, Isolde, and King Mark, tales now widely known through poetry, painting, opera, and even popular film. I have given the characters a story which, beyond names and a few basic structural points, bears small resemblance to these tales, but which I felt might plausibly—or at least conceivably—have formed the foundation on which the later stories were laid.

  The other characters in Twilight of Avalon are entirely fictional, barring Madoc of Gwynedd, who is loosely based on Maelgwn Gwynedd, the sixth-century king of what is now North Wales, and Myrddin, who may indeed have been a famed Welsh bard. Apart from these, though, Twilight of Avalon’s Britain is a blending of legend and truth, an attempt to portray the historical world of sixth-century Cornwall while still honoring the legends that are, after centuries of telling and retelling, as real as historical fact.

  Acknowledgments

  THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO thank the following:

  My daughter, Isabella, who was born halfway through the first draft of this book, for being such an incredibly good sleeper and all-around great kid—without your kind cooperation, I could never have gotten through several more drafts and found both an agent and a publisher all before your first birthday. My husband, Nathan, who has provided peerless technical support and every other kind of support imaginable for the last ten years—but then, you always knew marrying an English major would pay off, didn’t you? My mom and dad, who have been my own personal editors, cheerleaders, babysitters, chauffeurs, and fashion consultants ever since this journey began. Sarah, my writing partner and personal encyclopedia of all things historical. Cindy and baby Michael, for wardrobe and technical assistance. David Nash Ford, whose excellent website www.earlybritishkingdoms.com was of tremendous help in creating a plausible geography for Britain in the mid sixth cent
ury. My superb agent Jacques de Spoelberch, who offered incredibly keen and helpful editorial advice, guided me through every step of the submission and publication process, and every time we spoke made me feel like I was his only client, though of course he has many, many more. And last, but by no means least, my wonderful editor Danielle Friedman, whose insights and enthusiasm were an invaluable guide, and without whom I would never have uncovered the book I’d intended to write all along.

  Thank you all.

  Twilight of Avalon

  For Discussion

  1. In the prologue Morgan says, “If a soul lives with each mention of its name, I will be forever young and beautiful as the Morgan in tales”. How can storytelling keep a person alive?

  2. Throughout the novel various men offer Isolde protection. What protection can a man offer her physically? Politically? Do you think she needs a man to protect her?

  3. The story takes place during the early years of Christianity in Europe. How did this affect the action of the story? Where do you think Isolde stands in terms of religious beliefs? How do you think the emerging Christianity contributed to the fear that she was a witch?

  4. From the moment Con dies all of the men begin treating Isolde differently. Does her role as queen offer her any protection? At what times does her life seem to have worth? When does she seem disposable?

  5. The phrase “The stars will still shine tomorrow, whatever happens to me here” is repeated throughout the story. How did this phrase help Isolde find hope? What do you think it means? How did learning who originally said it to her change it’s meaning for you?

  6. Isolde says that “No man is evil to himself, he will always find reason enough to justify his acts, at least in his own mind”. How did men in this novel seem to justify their acts? Do you agree with Isolde’s statement above?

  7. After Dera loses her baby Isolde recommends that she “listen to the pain. It will never go away. But listen to it, and it dulls enough that you can keep living, after a time”. How could Isolde benefit from taking her own advice? Have you found that paying attention to emotional pain helps to diminish it? What result can come from masking or ignoring the pain?