Bright Raven Skies

by Kristina Perez

  While there is no evidence of a direct connection between the Branwen of the Mabinogion and the Branwen of the Tristan legends, I find the possibility enticing and so I have merged the two into my Branwen as a forceful female protagonist with magical abilities and a strong connection to the Land.

  In the conclusion to the trilogy, I have introduced Princess Eseult Alba of Armorica, and the process of her naming reflects the ways in which my portrayal of her character deviates from the medieval legend. Now an integral part of the story, Tristan’s marriage to a second woman also named Isolt was a later addition to the tale. This double for the woman he loves is known as Isolt of Brittany or Isolt of the White Hands (Blanches Mains in Old French). For the purposes of my world building, I decided to supplement the actual Roman place name for the Brittany Peninsula and parts of Gaul: Armorica. I also wanted to keep a hint of the epithet “of the White Hands” while reinventing the princess’s relationship with the other women in the novel.

  Scholars have suggested that the “White Hands” moniker might derive from the Welsh name Essylt vynwen, which is a variant of meinwen (“slender fair”), but that a French redactor could have misinterpreted the mein as main (“hand” in French) and then combined it with the correct translation of (g)wen, which, as we saw above, means “fair/white” in Welsh. Throughout the many variations of the Tristan legends, the association of the color white remains ambivalent: sometimes it alludes to beauty and purity; other times, it signifies danger and death.

  The medieval Isolt of the White Hands that we’ve inherited is a flat, two-dimensional personage, cast as either a sniveling, unloved wife or a vengeful shrew. Her primary purpose is to serve as a foil for Isolt of Ireland. Tristan marries the second Isolt out of duty, but he does not desire her and their marriage is often unconsummated. American poet Dorothy Parker noted with her habitual acerbic wit: “How long these lovely hands have been/A bitterness to me!”

  In Thomas d’Angleterre’s twelfth-century verse romance, while Tristan lies dying from a poisoned wound, he sends for Isolt of Ireland to heal him. Enraged, Isolt of the White Hands exacts her retribution. She lies and tells her husband that the returning ship bears black sails, meaning that his true love has not come for him. Tristan dies in anguish, and when Isolt of Ireland arrives she, too, dies of a broken heart.

  From the outset, I knew that I didn’t want to perpetuate the narrative that pits one woman against the other: the inevitable “cat fight” that we see daily in literature and pop-culture. I wanted my Isolt of the White Hands to be a strong leader in her own right and to form friendships with her rivals based on mutual respect. Accordingly, I decided that she would prefer her middle name, Alba, which is entirely my own invention. However, alba is the feminine form of the Latin albus (“white”), and so I did not completely abandon her roots.

  Albus may also be the origin of Albion: the oldest recorded name for the island of Britain. Geoffrey of Monmouth, among other chroniclers, noted that Albion was once populated by giants, hence my invented Kernyvak tale about the giantess Alba who carved out the island of Monwiku. I think it’s a much better assignation for the independent, brave, and loyal Armorican princess, and I hope that readers will agree.

  IVERNIC FESTIVALS

  Imbolgos—Spring Festival of the Goddess Bríga

  Belotnia—the Festival of Lovers

  Laelugus—the Festival of Peace

  Samonios—New Year Festival

  IVERNIC LANGUAGE VOCABULARY

  comnaide—always

  derew—a pain-relieving herb

  enigena—daughter

  fidkwelsa—a strategy board game

  Iverman/Ivermen—a person or persons from Iveriu

  Iverni—the people of Iveriu

  Ivernic—something of or relating to Iveriu

  kelyos—a traditional Ivernic musical band

  kladiwos—an Ivernic type of sword

  kridyom—heart-companion

  krotto—an Ivernic type of harp

  lesana—ring-forts belonging to the Old Ones

  ráithana—hills belonging to the Old Ones

  silomleie—an Ivernic type of cudgel made from blackthorn wood

  skeakh—a whitethorn bush or tree

  KERNYVAK FESTIVALS

  Long Night—the shortest day of the year

  Hunt of the Rixula—takes place the day before Long Night

  Blessing of the Sea—a festival to mark the beginning of spring

  KERNYVAK LANGUAGE VOCABULARY

  dagos—better/good

  damawinn—grandmother

  dolos—pain

  dymatis—“hello”/ “good day”

  karid—beloved

  Kernyv Bosta Vyken—“Kernyv Forever”

  Kernyvak—something of or relating to Kernyv

  Kernyveu—the people of Kernyv

  Kernyvman/Kernyvmen—a person or persons from Kernyv

  kordweyd—a seer of the Cult of the Horned One

  kretarv—carnivorous seabird

  menantus—an apology/a deep brook

  mormerkti—“thank you”

  nosmatis—“good evening”

  penaxta—prince

  rix—king

  rixina—queen

  rixula—“little queen”/a red-breasted bird

  sekrev—“you’re welcome”

  AQUILAN LANGUAGE VOCABULARY

  ama—“I love”

  amar—love

  amare—bitter

  de—of

  en—in

  est—“is”

  eti—and

  fálkr—a broad, curved sword

  la—the

  meos—my

  misrokord—a thin dagger; literally means “mercy”

  mortis—death

  odai—“I hate”

  vita—life

  vos—you

  SOURCES, LITERARY TRANSMISSION, AND WORLD-BUILDING

  The legend of Tristan and Isolt is one of the best-known myths in Western culture, and arguably the most popular throughout the Middle Ages. The star-crossed lovers have become synonymous with passion and romance itself.

  When I first decided to write Branwen’s story, I put on my scholarly hat and reacquainted myself with the most influential versions of the Tristan tales, then followed their motifs and principle episodes backward in time before arranging them into a frame, a loom onto which Branwen’s story could come to life. Despite the numerous retellings of Tristan and Isolt throughout the medieval period, the structure remains remarkably consistent.

  The names of the main characters can be traced to post-Roman Britain (sixth or seventh century CE). There was no real Tristan or King Arthur, but there are tantalizing stone inscriptions in the British Isles that suggest local folk heroes whose names became attached to a much older body of tales, some mythological in genesis. And while there is evidence that some motifs may have been borrowed from Hellenic, Persian, or Arabic sources, the vast majority are Celtic. Rather than viewing these Celtic stories as direct sources for the Tristan and Isolt narratives, however, most scholars agree the medieval Irish and Welsh material should be viewed as analogues that presumably stem from the same, now lost, pan-Celtic source.

  These oral tales were probably preserved by the druids, and our earliest surviving versions were written down by Christian clerics in Ireland between the seventh and ninth centuries, and in twelfth-century Wales. Because Ireland was never conquered by the Roman Empire, it didn’t experience the same “Dark Age” as elsewhere in Europe. Women in early medieval Ireland also had many more rights and protections under the law, enshrined in Caín Adomnáin (Law of Adomán), ca. 679-704 CE, than their Continental counterparts—which is echoed in the strong female protagonists of its literature.

  There are three Old Irish tale-types that feed into the Tristan legend: 1. aitheda (or, elopement tales), in which a young woman runs away from her older husband with a younger man; 2. tochmarca (or, courtship tales), in which a woman takes an act
ive part in negotiating a relationship with a man of her choosing that results in marriage; and 3. immrama (or, voyage tales), in which the hero takes a sea voyage to the Otherworld.

  The Old Irish tales that share the most in common with Tristan and Isolt’s doomed affair are Tochmarc Emire (“The Wooing of Emer”), a tenth-century aithed; and Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (“The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne”), an aithed whose earliest text dates to the Early Modern Irish period but whose plot and characters can be traced to the tenth century. In these stories, the female characters wield tremendous power and are closer to their mythological roots as goddesses. Other tales that are reminiscent of Branwen’s complicated relationship with Isolt include the ninth- or tenth-century Tochmarc Becfhola (“The Wooing of Becfhola”) and the twelfth-century Fingal Rónaín (“Rónán’s act of kinslaying”).

  When the Romans withdrew from Britain in the fifth century, many residents from the south of the island immigrated to northern France. For the next five centuries, trade and communication was maintained between Cornwall, Wales, and Brittany. The Bretons spoke a language similar to Welsh and Cornish, which facilitated the sharing of the Arthurian legends, to which they added their own folktales. By the twelfth century, the professional Breton conteurs (storytellers) had become the most popular court entertainers in Europe, and it was these wandering minstrels who brought the Tristan legends to the royal French and Anglo-Norman courts—including that of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, famed for her patronage of the troubadours in the south of France.

  The Breton songs of Tristan’s exploits were soon recorded as verse romances by the Anglo-Norman poets Béroul, Thomas d’Angleterre, and Marie de France (notably, the only woman), as well as the German Eilhart von Oberge. Béroul’s and Eilhart’s retellings belong to what is often called the version commune (primitive version), meaning they are closer to their folkloric heritage. Thomas’s Tristan forms part of the version courtoise (courtly version), which is influenced by the courtly love ideal.

  The twelfth century is often credited with the birth of romance, and Tristan is at least partially responsible. Which is not to say that people didn’t fall in love before then, of course (!), but rather that for the first time, the sexual love between a man and a woman, usually forbidden, became a central concern of literature. The first consumers of this new genre in which a knight pledges fealty to a distant, unobtainable (often married) lady were royal and aristocratic women and, like romance readers today, their appetite was voracious. While the audience was female, the poets and authors were male, often clerics in the service of noblewomen. The poetry produced at the behest of female aristocratic patrons might therefore be considered the first fan fiction.

  However, while the courtly lady may have appeared to have the power over her besotted knight, in reality noblewomen were rapidly losing property and inheritance rights as the aristocracy became a closed class ruled by strict patrilinear descent. Legends like that of Tristan and Isolt provided a means of escape for noblewomen who were undoubtedly in less than physically and emotionally satisfying marriages of their own, while also reinforcing women’s increasingly objectified status. The portrayal of women in the Tristan legends therefore exemplifies the conflict between the forceful protagonists of its Celtic origins and the new idealized but dehumanized courtly lady.

  It is this conflict that particularly interests me as a storyteller and which I explore through my own female characters. Because the legend as I have inherited it is a mix of concerns from different historical epochs, I decided to set my retelling in a more fantastical context that allowed me to pick and choose the aspects of the tradition that best suited Branwen’s story. In this way, I also followed in the footsteps of the medieval authors who, while they might make references to real places or kings, weren’t particularly concerned with accuracy. The stories they produced weren’t so much historical fiction as we think of it today but more akin to fantasy.

  During the nineteenth century, the German composer Richard Wagner drew on his countryman Gottfried von Strassburg’s celebrated thirteenth-century verse romance of Tristan as inspiration for his now ubiquitous opera. Gottfried had, in turn, used the Anglo-Norman version of Thomas d’Angleterre as his source material, demonstrating the unending cycle of inspiration and adaption. The Tristan legends started as distinct traditions that were grafted onto the Arthurian corpus (possibly in Wales, possibly on the Continent) and became forever intertwined with the thirteenth-century prose romances.

  Concurrently with Gottfried, there was a complete Old Norse adaption by Brother Róbert, a Norwegian cleric, and the Tristan legends gained popularity not only throughout Scandinavia but on the Iberian Peninsula and in Italy. There were also early Czech and Belarusian versions, and it was later translated into Polish and Russian. Dante also references the ill-fated lovers in his fourteenth-century Inferno, and Sir Thomas Malory devoted an entire book to Tristan in his fifteenth-century Le Morte d’Arthur, one of the most famous works in the English language.

  The popularity of Tristan and Isolt fell off abruptly during the Renaissance but was revived by the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who sought an antidote to the changes enacted by the Industrial Revolution—although they viewed their medieval past through very rose-tinted glasses. Nevertheless, the preoccupation with Tristan and Isolt, as well as their supporting characters, has persisted for more than a millennium and it would be surprising if it did not persist for another.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kristina Pérez is a half-Argentine, half-Norwegian native New Yorker who has spent the past two decades living in Europe and Asia. She holds a PhD in Medieval Literature from the University of Cambridge and has taught at the National University of Singapore and the University of Hong Kong. Sweet Black Waves is her debut novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Map

  Dedication

  Dramatis Personæ

  Part I: Thunder Without Rain

  Smoke and Ash

  Laments of the Sea

  White Raven

  The Ties that Bind

  A Love Song

  Waiting Game

  A Sword Between them

  The Difficult Kind

  Death Stalks us All

  Hand of Dhusnos

  You Never Saw Me

  Nothing But Cinders

  Blood Price

  Not Just Magic

  Étaín’s Song

  Part II: The Burning Tide

  Too Bold to be Wise

  All that Remains

  Dance with Me

  Truth to Tell

  Wheel of Fortune

  A Life in a Moment

  The Poetry of Loss

  Living Light

  Red Right Hand

  Twilight Calm

  Washer at the Ford

  You Had Time

  A Second Sun

  Faith

  Part III: The End of the Beginning

  Rudderless

  Watchfires

  Villa Illogan

  Almost Found

  Fate Delayed

  Black Sails

  Love-Knots

  In You My Death

  In You My Life

  If Only for a Night

  The Song of Bríga

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

  Sources, Literary Transmission, and World-Building

  About the Author

  Copyright

  A part of Macmillan Pub
lishing Group, LLC

  120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271

  BRIGHT RAVEN SKIES. Copyright © 2020 by Kristina Pérez.

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-250-13287-1 (hardcover) / ISBN 978-1-250-13288-8 (ebook)

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  Series design by Ellen Duda

  Map by Virginia Allen

  Imprint logo designed by Amanda Spielman

  First edition, 2020

  fiercereads.com

  An té a dhéanfadh cóip den leabhar seo, gan chead, gan chomhairle,

  dhíbreodh é go Teach Dhuinn.