by Smith, JD
The hall falls silent. When she has finished everyone erupts with applause. She has become a source of entertainment to our people. They watch her. Every man in the room is becoming infatuated with her. Mark is still smiling as she takes her seat. He too is under her spell. It is why I will not approach her, or take the time to know her better. She is a being from another world, and to the Irish coast she will go. That is what I dread: her departure which will surely come with Oswyn’s return.
Three days and no sighting of a ship bearing my cousin. I long for its approach so that the girl with the silver hair will return to Ireland. I find myself drawn to her. She lingers on my every thought, and yet I spoke with her only briefly on her arrival to our lands.
My mother wishes to visit the priory and I am to accompany her. The skies are bright and calm as I saddle the horses ready. My mother worships the old gods of Briton, but even so her sympathies to the orphans cared for by the sisterhood see her take food and coin weekly to ease their suffering.
I wait for her by the castle’s forge, watching the rhythmic beating of iron and feeling the heat of the coals on my face. I see Rufus in the glowing embers. The blood from his wound. And I hear his voice as we spoke to one another in our tent each night, alone.
When I look up I see not only my mother approach, but Iseult too. I curse inwardly. She will ride with us to the priory. A good half day round trip.
‘I thought Iseult might join us,’ my mother says.
‘The brothers will need to take confession after seeing Iseult,’ I say. I realise a moment too late the words I have spoken. My mother pretends not to have heard, but Iseult will not meet my eye. I realise they are words Rufus would have spoken.
I call for a squire to saddle another two horses.
‘I had not thought we would ride,’ Iseult says quietly to my mother.
‘You do not ride?’ I ask. I am shocked by this news. Remind myself she is the daughter of a king. She would have always ridden in a cart, not upon horseback.
My mother says: ‘She can ride with you, Tristan.’ And I feel greater dread than standing in a shield wall. I am sweating and have lost the order of my thoughts.
Iseult waits as I take the reins of my horse and guide him across to her.
‘I will lift you up.’
She is in front of me. Her eyes downturned, the long, fair lashes resting on her cheeks. I take hold of her waist and she grips my shoulders. I lift her easily into the saddle. The horse moves under the weight of his rider, but before I can soothe him she is already stroking his neck and he calms.
I mount behind her, loop my arms either side of her waist and take the reins. We set off and her hair flutters in the breeze. I smell camomile and lavender. She is tense, I notice.
‘Relax, he is friendly enough.’
She rides side-saddle, but looks ahead. As I think of her, what thoughts occupy her mind? Is she restless to be back amongst her own people? Is she still afraid of us, even after the days she has spent in Kernish company?
Others’ company, for I have offered her none.
Is that the cause of her unease? Her silence? Am I a cause of fear?
‘What do you make of our country?’ I ask.
‘It is as wet and cold as Ireland.’ I sense the smile in her voice. The ease with which we spoke on the shore when she first arrived on our coast.
‘Do you spend much time out in the wet and cold?’ I curse myself. A foolish question.
‘I sleep on the beach at home.’
Her voice is light. I wonder if her words are a jest.
‘I hope you sleep outdoors only on dry nights,’ my mother says, ‘if Ireland is as wet and cold as Briton.’
The horse treads rough ground. The motion causes Iseult to lose balance. I take the reins in one hand and grip her waist with the other. She tenses, but after a moment her body relaxes against mine and the thought of her in my bed enters my mind for a heartbeat. I dismiss it. She is a girl from Ireland; a daughter of a king. I should not encourage nor harbour ideas of her, not when she is to return to Ireland. Not when her safety here could forge a treaty to end war with the Irish and see us a hundred years of peace.
She turns and glances at me. Blushes. Her eyes are so blue as to be almost violet.
‘Isabel is a kind woman,’ she says, her voice low so that my mother does not hear.
‘She likes to impress guests. If only you knew her better …’
‘Ah! You mean she is like you?’
‘Me?’ I feign offence and laugh.
She turns her head and looks at me again. This time there is no embarrassed moment as our eyes meet. She raises a brow, smirks.
‘I am glad to be of amusement,’ I say.
‘You are a natural.’
‘That I am. I once pleaded for the position of court jester, but Mark would not have it on the grounds that I cannot juggle or play the lute.’
‘But can you dance? That is the question.’
‘Of course I can.’
‘Well?’
‘Dreadfully.’
She laughs, and through her laughter says: ‘Then you are the perfect jester. The poorer the dancing, the better the act!’
‘Then it appears by your low standards of court jestering that I am qualified.’
‘You are, if only you could escape your future as king, your dreams could be fulfilled.’
‘I could wear the hat, king or not.’
‘You would still need to polish the bells as you would need to polish your crown.’
She is laughing hard now. At my expense or her joke I do not know. I do not care. I like that she is laughing with me. Her mood is the lightest I have seen, and her humour is much the same as mine. Much the same as Rufus’.
‘I did not expect the welcome we have received here.’ Her voice is serious. Her tone one that does not invite mocking, but I have no control over my words.
‘If we sent you back to Ireland battered and bruised, there would be no treaty.’
Iseult does not reply. I have offended, I am sure.
‘Will I go back to Ireland?’ She asks as if she does not wish to return.
‘Mark will see you safely home.’
‘Ireland is no home for me,’ she says. ‘I was at home with the sea and the sand and the shingle of my shores, with the salt spray in my hair.’
‘And you will have them again.’
She turns from me. Her body is tense once more and wish I knew her thoughts.
‘We share the same shores,’ she murmurs.
Chapter 28
Iseult
Darkness lingers in the priory as it did in my Lord Morholt’s chambers. The scent of incense drifts on the cold, damp air even though the day outside shines hot, and candles fight to illuminate the corners of this vast place. I do not hear what the priests say, nor the hum of prayer or the soft steps of the sisterhood. Tristan’s voice is in my head. Swirling and curling around words that are becoming familiar to me. Amusement and dreadfully and jestering. I long to hear him say my name, and wonder if I might laugh as he stumbles upon the lilt of it.
He is walking beside his mother as we follow a priest, glancing back at me now and then, smiling. Reassurance? Friendship? I am not sure. I do not care. His face, his smile, his eyes. I wish to study them more closely and for longer. To trace a map of the shores upon him and feel skin on skin the warmth I felt through his tunic as we rode.
Does he suspect my thoughts? Can he know that I am thinking of him now? When he looks to me again I feel my cheeks grow hot and I am thankful then for the dimness in which we walk.
I have never thought on my appearance, how I look, the gowns I wear. I am a creature of the sea and the sand and the shingle of the shores. I detest the need to dress the part, to comb my hair and be a king’s daughter. It has brought me no pleasure in the past to appear well groomed, but now I am conscious of my walk, my hands, the shape of my face and the movement of my lips. Each part now moves of its own accord. I am no
longer in control of a collected self.
We have stopped. Tristan and I wait as Isabel is led into a room. She is to confess and I wonder does she see the way the priest looks at the coins she carries, the ones I think she always brings with her.
Tristan sits upon a bench as if this place were as familiar as his own home. He has been here many times I think. A weekly task, this visit. We are alone. More alone than we have ever been with the priest gone and the hall quiet.
I look about me, but the only seat is on the bench beside Tristan.
‘Sit down,’ he beckons. And so I do. We are not as close as we were when I rode with him, but still the distance feels less.
‘Your mother comes here often?’
‘More so since Rufus died. She used to come to see the children and bring coin and food for them. I did not know she now confessed.’
He speaks the name of Rufus evenly but his disguise of the pain he shares with his mother is clear.
‘Rufus was the king’s son?’
‘And my mother’s nephew.’
‘What happened to him?’
He seems surprised by my question and appears reluctant to speak, but after a moment he says: ‘He died fighting the Saxon in Dumnonia.’
I keep silent, for I think he has more to say and I am eager to hear his words and be the ear to aid his grief.
‘I knew before we ever left Kernow that he was no warrior.’
‘You could not have stopped him, I think.’
He looks at me as if I understand little of this world. That I was not there and could not comprehend the loss he knows.
‘I could have,’ he says. ‘But it would have been a blow for him, to know that his father and I did not think him, the king’s son, fit to fight in battle. I am unsure if I should have found the courage to do so.’
‘You do not lack courage, of that I am certain. You would have fought my Lord Morholt had your king not been determined to do so himself.’
‘I would have, you are right. I owe Mark everything I have. He has given my mother a good life, raised me like his own, given me opportunity to become a warrior. Now he has named me his heir. Of that I do not know what to think. It should have been Rufus. I take his place yet I all but took his life.’
I see his hurt but I have no way to relieve it. There is no bandage to cover it or compress to soothe. He must live with his guilt and his sorrow until it is light enough to bear.
‘I am glad you did not fight Morholt,’ I say.
‘Why is that?’
‘He might have killed you.’
Tristan grins and leans back on the bench and says with confidence: ‘I am the better fighter.’
‘Of King Mark or Lord Morholt?’
‘Of both, of course.’
‘Had King Mark not defeated Morholt I would be his wife now.’
‘A prospect you did not cherish?’
I smile at him and the need to ask me this question. I had always thought my feelings at the prospect of marrying Lord Morholt were obvious.
‘Does wishing a man dead make you the worst of men?’ I ask.
‘Of women, you mean?’ he says, smiling.
‘Of women, of people, yes. Does it? I wished Lord Morholt dead many times.’
‘I think he was a man any god would excuse you for wishing dead.’
‘Each time Lord Morholt travelled to Briton I prayed that he would not return. I asked each and every god to take him away and bring my father back. They have granted me the former and now I wait for the latter which I know can never come.’
Tristan’s expression becomes grave, and yet I feel lighter having said the words.
‘Morholt killed your father?’
‘He poisoned him, I think. I know.’
Tristan takes hold of my fingers and squeezes them.
I look down at our hands and know that this man, this Tristan, is a good man. His guilt and his fears make him so and I know too that for a moment our sadness is lifted by the words we have spoken and shared.
He lets go my fingers and runs his hand through his hair. It is lighter than when I first met him, rain-soaked and dark.
‘You call Morholt lord even now.’
‘He was a man to be feared.’
Silence. I am thinking of Tristan’s fingers upon mine. His questions. The openness with which we talk as I can talk with Acha.
‘I do not wish to return to Ireland,’ I say.
Tristan looks at me, as if weighing my sincerity. Perhaps he does not believe Kernow is a country in which anyone should wish to stay with Saxons harrying their lands, but a new chapter has begun and I feel there to be a place for me here in his court.
‘It is for your uncles and Mark to decide whether or not you return to Ireland.’ His voice is guarded, careful. Does he not wish me to stay? Is there no room for a girl from across the sea in this land of Britons? Am I no better than a Saxon? I had thought I felt the warmth of wanting but it seems I did not.
Isabel emerges. Her face is wet with tears and her sad eyes pull at my heart. She looks first to me and then to Tristan, as if she knows every word we have spoken and I feel exposed. Isabel is kind and caring and she is observant, I think. She has deduced from two expressions an age of conversation.
Why, suddenly, do I feel I have something to hide? The heat creeping into my face betrays me and I cannot look at Tristan. My mind and my heart are a wave crashed into rocks, scattered and sprayed.
‘Are you ready to leave?’ Tristan asks Isabel.
She nods and we walk to the stables where our horses are being fed.
We set off back to the castle. I am tired yet I am not. My body is exhausted but my mind is running away of its own accord and I cannot rein my feelings and thoughts.
Not a word has Tristan breathed since our departure. His body is pressed against me, his chest against my back, and I feel safe; much safer than I have felt since my father’s death. Unspoken words I do not know rest on the tip of my tongue, unwilling to take flight. I think of our jesting earlier, but I have little humour in me and now is not the time.
We pause beside a beck and the horses drink. Isabel is tired, I can see her eyes heavy and I know she wishes to lie down. It cannot be far now, I think.
‘Do you wish to rest, mother?’ Tristan asks.
‘I am fine,’ she says, but I know she is not.
‘I would rest, Tristan,’ I say, his name awkward on my tongue.
He dismounts and helps me down and then his mother, and I see her relief at our pause. She sits on a tree stump by the beck and bathes her neck.
Tristan loops the reins of the horses over a tree branch and silently gestures for me to walk with him. We pause out of Isabel’s hearing.
‘You are kind. My mother is not a stubborn woman, but she is embarrassed to admit when she feels weakness.’
‘It was no trouble.’
‘Iseult, did you mean what you said? You wish to stay here in Briton?’
My name on his lips. How I savour his perfect pronunciation and softness with which it is spoken. I will him to say it again so that I might bathe in the sound.
‘I do.’ I want to add with you, but do not. I am drawn to him but I am afraid of acting foolishly. I do not know if he feels the same, or what the reason behind his reserve might be. Is he afraid, as I am?
‘I shall speak to Mark,’ he says. ‘It would depend on your family, but Mark might know of a way for you to stay in Briton should you want to.’
Words seem lost to me. I do not know how to thank him for what he has offered, for my life to be lived here in Briton amongst a new people. Away from my homeland and the people I no longer know, the men who saw my father dead, and my mother who is empty and broken.
‘You would not mind our staying here?’
Tristan laughs.
‘Of course not. Why would I mind?’
I shrug his question away. Perhaps he does not mind because he cares little either way.
We walk back to
the horses and mount. Isabel looks more tired than she did before, her hair grey in the dying light. We ride carefully and I am pondering so many thoughts and visions of a future on these shores. What would happen if I stayed, I wonder. Would Tristan want me as Morholt had wanted me? Would it be to secure his position as King of Kernow, and an alliance with my uncles that coin could never buy? A woman of the blood. I remember it as suddenly as if I had tripped upon it. Which man would ever marry me for me and me alone when the blood of Irish kings flows in my veins? What escape am I to find from my history and my fate?
Chapter 29
Tristan
We approach the castle. The sun hides from the day and mist begins to rise. My mother is unwell. Her distance is greater than when I first told her of Rufus and I wonder what the priests said to her; what portents they have conjured for her nightmares.
If I ask Mark whether Iseult can stay in Kernow, will he have any power to make it happen? She is a prisoner on our shores. A future queen of Ireland and in no future can I see her uncles allowing her to reside here. What would Mark say if I confessed of my attachment to an Irish girl? Would he think me stupid? Compassionate? Lustful? Then it comes to me. A light so blinding, so warm, that I can do nothing but bask in it.
A new treaty. Forged with blood.
I feel Iseult against me. She is no longer tense. Her body has relaxed against mine and I dare myself to think that she enjoys the pressure of being pressed against me as much as I do. I can no more let her leave than I would have let Rufus die if I could have stopped it.
Excitement fills me as I think on my words to Mark. This is why I have been destined to Kernow’s throne; to allow me this chance. I will tell Mark of my proposition; to agree a unity between Iseult and myself, an alliance between the Irish and the Kernish secured with marriage.
I drift into my own world. It is brighter than before. I forget the Saxon and the field of blood, death and mud in Dumnonia. My aching for Rufus does not disappear, but it eases. Our enemies seem far away if they exist at all. I think of my bed and I think of Iseult beside me, her silver hair on my pillow and the sons and daughters she could bring. I had thought life began with a sword in your hand, but now I know it begins with this bond for which I cannot find words. We do not speak to one another, yet our silence is comfortable.