by Jay Ruud
“Palomides,” Sir Dinadan retorted. “Did the sun boil your brains back in the desert where you grew up, you crazy Saracen? You’ve got the truth and you’ve got fairy tales. What can you do but accept it?”
“I do not accept it,” Palomides insisted. “I will write the story of Tristram and Isolde in verse, and I will tell the story my way. Look, I can think of a beginning already. It should go something like this:
Attend, my lords and ladies dear
Unto my words, and you shall hear
A tale of unequaled woe
Of Tristram’s life and love and death,
His call for Isolde with his dying breath,
And how she saw him lying low,
And fell down, fainting dead away—
Dead of a broken heart, all the people say.
I’ll have to clean up some of the meter, you understand, but that will be the general direction of my verse. You spread your story, old man, and I will circulate my poem, and let us see which version of the tale people remember after some years, shall we?”
“All right, have it your way,” Merlin grumbled. “I must needs report the truth—the facts—to the king and queen. What foolish romantics end up believing, I have no control over.”
Sir Palomides smiled, his wide smile revealing teeth that shone a brilliant white against his dark skin. “It is finally the poet who has control, is it not? Surely you agree with me, young Gildas? There is some poet in you, no? Oh yes, for you have written your own poems, for your lovely Rosemounde, eh?”
I felt myself coloring. Since we had left Brittany, the eagerness I felt at being able to meet with Rosemounde, to be able to reveal to her that her brother and sister were innocent of wrongdoing in the Tristram and Isolde affair, even to bring her greetings from her long estranged brother at his request, these things had made me impatient to get here, all the more impatient at spending another night on the road before returning to Camelot and Rosemounde. All of these things my blush, I feared, displayed to the world.
But a strange look came suddenly over Sir Palomides’ face. His brow furrowed again and the corners of his mouth turned down, and he looked away from me, to the floor at my left.
“Oh dear,” he said. “I was so caught up with my own concerns about my sainted beloved that I almost forgot. You have been away from Camelot these past two weeks. You will not have heard about the wedding.”
“Wedding?” Dinadan responded. “So we missed some merriment, did we? One of the knights tie the knot?”
“Indeed,” Palomides answered, still not meeting my eye. “The king’s nephew, the newly knighted Sir Mordred.”
“Mordred!” Dinadan exclaimed. “Who on earth would ever marry that sourpuss? There’s a woman who’s got a miserable time ahead of her, wouldn’t you say?”
Palomides did not respond. “The lady…” he began, “the lady was given away by her father. It was a political match worked out between King Arthur and the lady’s father.” I was not sure why, but a wedge of hot emotion had begun to well up from my bowels and into my chest, attacking the back of my neck and then, just as quickly, draining all the blood from my face. I could see Merlin glancing at me askance from under his lowered brows. Palomides went relentlessly on. “Her father had come for the induction on Pentecost and then stayed to negotiate the marriage treaty with the king, and it was decided that, since he was already in Camelot, the nuptials should be celebrated immediately, before the duke could return to Brittany. As I said, I’ve come here to negotiate Duke Hoel’s accommodation for his trip home.”
“You’re saying…” I rasped, “My lady Rosemounde has married Sir Mordred?”
Palomides was still for a moment, and then silently nodded. “It is finished,” he said.
The room went dark, though there was fire behind my eyes. My head was spinning and I tried to hold it between my knees to keep from passing out. My blessed lady, gone from me. Yoked for life to that…that…that brute of a human being, a person with no grace, no joy, no courtesy, no love in him. I found myself wishing, and not for the last time, that King Arthur had been successful in his attempt to exterminate the child before he became a man, if that’s what you could call him. Nothing in my life would ever be the same. But I can tell you this: I truly wanted to kill him. And I would have there and then had the means and opportunity been present. For I surely had the motive. Oh Lord, I had the motive indeed.
Epilogue
Saint Dunstan’s Abbey
The old monk was quiet now. After a few moments, the six young novices realized that there would be nothing more to the story, and a few of them began to object.
“What? Is that all?” cried the youngest of them, his blond curls bouncing indignantly about his tonsure. “You can’t leave us hanging like that!”
The red-headed youth flashed burning green eyes at Brother Gildas, complaining, “Surely there is more to tell than this! Surely this marriage of Lady Rosemounde and Sir Mordred was broken, or annulled, or something. The story cannot end this way.”
“I’m afraid this story does,” the aged monk responded. He leaned back in his seat along the wall of the monastery’s chapter house, where the others had gathered to hear him hold forth.
Brother Gildas, forty years a Benedictine monk of Saint Dunstan’s Abbey in Hereford, near the Welsh border, enjoyed regaling the young initiates during the hour between vespers and compline. Officially, the monks were expected to spend this time in meditation and study. But both the prior and abbot turned a blind eye on Brother Gildas’s storytelling sessions, figuring, after all, that his stories were instructive, in their own way, and besides, both prior and abbot had been novices under Brother Gildas’s tutelage themselves some twenty years earlier.
“Surely you will tell us about that marriage another day?” Brother Nennius suggested. Nennius of Wales, who had been hearing Brother Gildas’s stories longer than any of the younger monks present, was always the most curious of his audience, and always pressed for more details, as if he were memorizing the stories to tell them himself one day. Gildas found nothing wrong in that. He himself was two generations removed from these novices, and King Arthur had been another generation older. If Brother Nennius told these stories to youths young enough to be his own grandchildren many years hence, did that not suit Brother Gildas’s purpose? He kept Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Merlin, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and Gareth and Dinadan and yes, even Tristram alive in more than just name, and if he could keep the lady Rosemounde alive, his life may have some wider purpose after all, beyond singing the lord’s service hourly for two score winters within these stark but by now comfortable and homely walls. In the end, he thought, Sir Palomides was right: it was the poets, the storytellers, who kept the spirit alive, and who always had the last word.
“Another time, yes. We’ll talk about it another time,” the old monk agreed.
“But tell us, at least, whether that marriage turned out to be a wise or happy one,” the blond youth pleaded.
Gildas shook his head. “Not wise. Not happy. And it was not only my own biased view that saw it that way. But there is no time today. Compline is drawing on, and it will be dark soon.”
The monk with the considerable ears, which made him look like a great bird about to take off, added, “I want to know more about Sir Galahad, too. You will tell us about the quest of the Grail sometime, Brother?”
“Yes, yes,” Brother Gildas agreed, his old eyes looking tired, his hands, palms down, suggesting that he had had enough of such requests for now. “Everyone wants to know about the Holy Grail. Another day, another day.”
“I…I h-have heard this st…st…story of T-t-Tristram and Isolde befo…before,” began Brother Notker, the dark-eyed monk they called the Stammerer. “I am sure Isolde d-died of a b-b-broken h-heart.”
Brother Gildas closed his eyes. “Another romantic,” he muttered to himself. “S
ir Palomides wins again.”
“But what happened when you finally met with Lady Rosemounde, after you returned to Camelot? How did you face that interview?” Asked the handsome, blue-eyed youth with the dark wavy hair surrounding his fresh tonsure.
The aged monk sighed and rubbed his eyes with his right hand, hanging his head. This story had been most difficult to tell, since it had ended with one of his life’s most trying moments. Finally he revealed, “I never had that interview. I did not meet with Rosemounde. Merlin told the story to the queen and, I assume, the lady Rosemounde. When I got back to Camelot, I spent the first few nights with Merlin and my dog in his cave, away from anyone but him, and he knew not to speak to me about it. When I felt I could be among people again, I returned to Sir Gareth, and lost myself in the work of being his squire. Finally a royal command came down: I was to come to the queen for an audience.”
“Did she chide you again for your obsession with the woman you could not have?” Nennius wanted to know. Sometimes there was a little too much thought behind his questions, Gildas reflected, but answered honestly, “No. Not this time. She knew that I had lost my beloved, that she was now beyond all hope, and spoke only words of comfort and sympathy. She even offered to marry me off to one of her other ladies in waiting, if I so chose. But I did not so choose. Those others were not my Rosemounde, and if I could not have her, I did not want to take another wife as a consolation prize. I had learned the folly of that through my interview with Isolde of the White Hands, thank you, and wanted no such situation for myself. In fact, it was at that point that I first began to think about life as a monk. The kindnesses of people like Master Oswald, Abbot Urban, and Abbot Hugh had made me think there may be some good to be done in the world after all, although the case of Brother Aaron made it clear to me that the monastic habit could not shield me from the love, temptation, and grief of the outside world. But I was still many years from finally putting on the habit.”
“Brother Gildas,” the red-headed novice asked. “Was anything more ever heard of Melias?”
“Nothing for many years. I did hear a rumor once that he had died in the Holy Land, battling the infidels as part of a crusading army. I have no notion whether that is true or not, but it gives me some hope that he found something to give his life some meaning at last.”
“What about Sir Dinadan?” Inquired brother Big-ears. “His wounds healed all right, I take it?”
“Oh yes, and we spent many good times together…until the Grail. He did eventually have the chance to take part in that quest, as he wished.”
“What about Guinevere?” asked the young blond novice.
“Guinevere?” The old monk scratched his dry tonsured scalp. “Why, she remained queen, of course, until the end, until Arthur’s table finally fell…”
“No, no,” the blond monk colored visibly. “I meant the dog.”
The aged monk smiled for the first time since the end of his story. “Oh, Gwenny! Yes, she stayed with me. I kept her in the kennels, with the hunting hounds, when I couldn’t have her at my side, and she loved to go on the hunt. But she also just liked to be with me, and she was my companion for many years before she finally died. I buried her outside the kennels at Camelot, so she could watch the dogs go out to the hunt, if it’s not too heretical to think that kind of thing. She loved me better than any person I’ve ever come in contact with in my life. If I can see her again in heaven, I would say that God had finally made the pain of living worthwhile.”
The bells rang, calling the abbey to compline, and the seven monks got up and began their walk down the cloister toward the abbey church to sing the service. Brother Gildas, using his advanced age as an excuse, brought up the rear of the group, but Brother Nennius fell back to walk at the old monk’s side. “Speaking of the pain of living,” he said quietly to Brother Gildas, so that none of the other novices could hear. “When did you see the lady Rosemounde again? Or did you ever?”
“Not for many months,” Brother Gildas revealed. “Perhaps it was years, I do not recall precisely. She went to live on her husband’s estate in Orkney, though she did finally return to Camelot under the queen’s protection, but that was much later. And she was much altered.”
“But still your beloved?” Nennius asked.
“Still my only love,” Brother Gildas answered, his eyes filling.
He had told a small untruth, Brother Gildas thought to himself shuffling now in silence along the cloister. He had seen Rosemounde. He had seen her every day of his life, in his mind’s eye, even as he saw her now, at more than four decades’ distance. Her face shone before him in all its youthful beauty, her eyes sparkling mischievously, the corners of her mouth drawn up in her knowing smirk, her brown hair cascading free over her shoulders.
But through his misting eyes he also saw the grim, dark features of Sir Mordred, and his ancient blood raged within him. For the things the bastard had done to Rosemounde—for the things he had done to his father Arthur—for the things he had done to Camelot in general, Brother Gildas was absolutely certain he could have committed murder. That knowledge, when he let himself dwell on his hatred, made his life bleak and empty as the sea. He had prayed, sincerely prayed, over the years for God to lift him out of this sin, but he always returned to it, and he returned to it now. But that, he said to himself as if he were still addressing his band of novices, was a different story, and would be told at a different time. All he could think of right now, as he began to finger the rosary that hung from his belt, were the twin poles of his hatred and his love. His was, he had to admit to himself, just another story of love and jealousy. “All stories are the same story,” he mumbled to himself as he shuffled along.
In one of the trees within the cloister, he thought he heard the song of a nightingale.
Cast of Characters
Aaron: Brother Aaron is a very young monk attached to the Cathedral of Saint Vincent of Saragossa. He is assigned to wait upon the Lady Brangwen when she stays in the cathedral, and develops a strong attraction to the older woman.
Agravain of Orkney: Sir Agravain is a nephew of King Arthur, one of the brothers of Gawain and Gareth.
Andred: Sir Andred is cousin and close adviser to Kaherdin, lord of Saint-Malo. A native of Cornwall, Andred is a grim and tight-lipped knight, loyal to Kaherdin and suspicious of outsiders and jealous of his master’s rights.
Arthur: King of Logres, holding sovereignty as well over Ireland, Scandinavia, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, Brittany, Normandy, and all of Gaul. And he is claimant to the emperor’s throne in Rome. He is the son of Uther Pendragon and Ygraine, former Countess of Cornwall.
Bleoberis: Sir Bleoberis is not known for any of his individual feats of arms, but is a reliable knight of the Round Table and a member of the group of knights that forms Sir Lancelot’s usual entourage.
Brangwen: Known as “the faithful Brangwen,” she is lady-in-waiting to La Belle Isolde. She is known to be devoted to her mistress, even to the point of duping Isolde’s husband King Mark in the marriage bed. The lady Brangwen is known to be a skilled herbalist and healer like her mistress, and is reputed to have concocted the love potion that drew Tristram and Isolde together.
Claude: Proprietor of the Cock and Bull Inn, and ally to Captain Jacques.
Dinadan: Sir Dinadan was Sir Tristram’s closest companion. He is a skilled knight but better known for his sharp tongue than his prowess. He eagerly joins Merlin and Gildas in investigating Tristram’s suspicious death.
Florent of Orkney: Eldest son of Sir Gawain, recently knighted by King Arthur. Florent was accused of rape in the previous novel, but was saved by the testimony of Nimue, who married him and took him to live in the palace of the Lady of the Lake.
Gaheris of Orkney: Sir Gaheris is son of King Lot of Orkney and Queen Margause—whom he is known to have beheaded when he found her in bed with Sir Lamorak. Gaheris resembles his younger brother Si
r Gareth in coloring, but not in temperament.
Galahad: Son of Sir Lancelot and the lady Elaine of Corbenic Castle, daughter of King Pelles. He will become vitally important in the story of the Grail quest.
Gareth of Orkney: Knight of the Round Table and younger brother to Sir Gawain, Sir Gaheris, and Sir Agravain, and half-brother to Mordred. He is son of King Lot of Orkney and Margause, the daughter of Ygraine and Duke Gorlois of Cornwall and so Arthur’s half –sister, which makes him King Arthur’s nephew. Gildas is squire to Sir Gareth.
Gawain of Orkney: Sir Gawain is Arthur’s nephew and heir apparent. He is son of King Lot of Orkney and Arthur’s half-sister Margause, and the older brother of Sir Gareth, Sir Gaheris, Sir Agravain, and Mordred, and father of Sir Florent and Lovel, his new squire.
Gildas of Cornwall: Son of a Cornish armor-maker, squire to Sir Gareth, former page to Queen Guinevere. Gildas narrates the story and is Merlin’s assistant in his investigations.
Guinevere: Queen of Logres, and married to King Arthur. Gildas was formerly a page in her household. She is the daughter of Leodegrance, king of Cameliard, an early ally of Arthur’s. Her long-standing affair with Sir Lancelot, Arthur’s chief knight, is a perilous secret in the court.
Hoel: Duke of Brittany, and Arthur’s vassal and close ally from the beginning of his reign. He is the father of Lady Rosemounde. He is also the father of Isolde of the White Hands and her brother, Kaherdin.
Hugh: Abbot of the new Cistercian abbey at Beaulieu, stopover for Merlin, Dinadan, and Gildas on their return from Saint-Malo, where Galahad is being fostered.