by Anna Elliott
Isolde had a sudden flash of the image of Octa of Kent laughing as he spurred his horse onwards towards the fleeing old woman. Running her through with his sword. And overlaid with the image was memory of Marche’s face as he’d spoken of his Saxon ally five months before. His eyes those of a man trapped and at bay, as though he’d set events in motion that now spiraled beyond his control. Octa of Kent would make a bad enemy. And should he decide that alliance with Marche was worth less than alliance with Cerdic of Wessex, Marche had good reason to be afraid.
Isolde blinked away the image of Marche’s face, slammed the door on whatever feelings the thought had aroused. Bad enough that he walked into her dreams without his haunting her waking hours as well.
She turned back to Kian, starting to wind a bandage about his other wrist. Marche’s son by Cerdic’s daughter could, she knew, pose the greatest threat to an alliance with Cerdic. He would likely know exactly how his mother Aefre had died in the days just before Camlann, when Marche planned to turn to Arthur’s side. And a marriage tie to a Saxon king might have damaged fatally his chance of acceptance by Arthur and his men.
Which is almost certainly, she thought, why Marche is seeking word of his son now. That and because Marche would spill his last drop of blood—spend his last ring of gold—to hunt down and punish anyone who had beaten him in a fight.
Isolde could feel Madoc’s eyes on her, and he asked, after a moment, “You don’t know yourself where Marche’s son might be?”
Isolde knotted the bandage before asking, without looking up, “Why?”
“Might make a hostage—a bargaining point for dealings with Marche. God knows, we’ve need of any advantage just now.”
“I see.” Isolde was silent a moment, then at last rose from her place beside Kian and set the jar of salve back on its shelf. “But I can’t help you. I don’t know where Marche’s son might be now. He could be anywhere.” She paused, her eyes still on the ordered row of bottles and jars. “He could even be dead.”
There was a brief moment of stillness in the room, and then Isolde turned back to Madoc. “Is that why you came? To ask me about Marche’s son?”
Madoc’s eyes were dark, deep-set, and very intent in his scarred face, but he shook his head. “Only part.” He was silent a moment, brows drawn in thought, then said, “Two more parties will be riding in over the course of the next day or two. I expect Cynlas of Rhos and Dywel of Logres to arrive with their war bands.”
Isolde had begun to shred dried comfrey leaves for a poultice to work on Kian’s bruised torso and ribs, but at that she looked up, surprised. She had met Cynlas, ruler of the northern kingdom of Rhos, a handful of times. A giant of a man, forty or forty-five, with a brutal, blunt-featured face and flaming red hair.
“Cynlas of Rhos? Isn’t he—”
“My oath-sworn enemy?” Madoc finished, mouth tightening briefly beneath the black beard. “He is.” He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Isn’t that what’s always doomed Britain from the time the Romans broke the power of the tribes? That we’d always rather tear at each other’s flanks instead of uniting to face a common foe?”
Isolde saw a muscle jump in Madoc’s jaw, but then he gave another short laugh.
“And what is it they say? Keep your enemies closer than your friends if you want to live?” He was silent once more, his gaze momentarily abstracted, as though his thoughts again followed some inward path of their own, then shook his head.
“We’ve need of fresh allies. All the more since Owain of Powys joined his armies to Marche and Octa’s united force.” He turned from the window to look back at Isolde. “You’ll remember what happened. Owain had betrayed us once—allied himself to Marche and repented of it, so he claimed. I’d small choice but to take him at his word. Powys can raise an army two hundred strong—and we’d need of every man, every spear, with Marche and Octa breathing down our spines.”
Madoc paused, his scarred face hardening, eyes turning dark as he went on, striking one closed fist against his open palm. “And you know what happened. Three months ago, Owain sent one of his bloody limp-wristed messengers to me and named the price, in gold, of his continued allegiance—without it, he’d take his two hundred spears and join Octa and Marche. And I sent a message back that he could take his spearmen to Marche and onward to hell before I’d pay him a single copper. And that I’d tear out the liver of any messenger he sent me after this one.”
Cabal whined and started to rise, but Madoc quieted him with a hand on the big dog’s head. Isolde could almost feel the anger radiating off him in waves, though in the end he only drew breath, raised a hand, and let it fall. “I believed—I still believe that an allegiance that can be bought isn’t worth having at any price. And yet—” He broke off, mouth twisting, and gave another of those short, unpleasant laughs. “And yet what am I proposing but to try buying the friendship of a man I trust even less than Owain?”
Isolde started to speak, but Madoc held up a hand again. “I’ll explain. But let me set out what I intend in order. We’ve not much time—and there is a favor I would ask of you, Lady Isolde.”
Isolde felt her muscles tense themselves, but she turned to set a copper pan of water over the coals of the brazier. “Go on.”
“The king’s council has been split, these last months. There are those—Cynlas and Dywel among them—who say we should never have retreated from Cornwall. That we should have rebuilt the old fortifications, dug in, and prepared for Octa and Marche’s siege.”
Kian had been sitting in silence, head tipped back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and his single eye shut, but at that he snorted. “Rebuilt the forts in Cornwall? Why? So that we could be living warm and snug when Marche’s forces slaughtered us all? We might as well dig our own graves, lie down, and shovel the dirt back over our heads.”
For a moment Madoc stood with his arms braced against the stone window frame, and Isolde, watching, saw the muscles of his back and shoulders bunch and tighten beneath the fabric of his tunic. Madoc had accepted the High Kingship only because his leadership was the council’s best hope in the face of Marche’s betrayal and coming attack—accepted, Isolde knew, even though he himself had neither sought nor wanted the High King’s crown.
And now, Isolde thought, he shoulders the burden not only of defending against Octa and Marche but also of uniting all the council’s warring factions. Keeping the quarrels and animosities among the rest of the country’s petty warlords and kings under control—and the rest of the councilmen’s ambitions as well. If Madoc held the High Kingship out of duty alone, there were many others who would seize it from him for their own gain. Small wonder if Madoc’s face showed gaunt and worried beneath the scars.
Now Madoc seemed to make a deliberate effort to relax his grip on the stones and turned to Kian with a short nod.
“As you say. We might as well dig up the stones here and expect to find Merlin’s dragons as think we could hold out against a prolonged siege—any more than we could face Marche and Octa’s forces in set battle and not simply water the earth with our blood. Their numbers are simply too great. And so instead—”
He paused, anger and frustration edging into his tone once again. “Instead, we have drawn off into the Welsh hills, where the terrain is too rough and food and supplies too scarce for Marche and Octa’s armies to remain banded together in united assault. We defend hill forts like this one. Meet their raiding parties from time to time. Pick off as many of their men with our archers as we may.”
He stopped and drove a fist once more into the palm of his open hand. “And wait and watch while they raid a settlement here—burn a farm there—like wolves taking down the weak and young from a herd of deer.”
A vision of the burned settlement she had seen in the water basin seemed to gather and press against Isolde’s eyes once again. The water she’d set over the brazier was boiling, though, and she poured it over the bowl of shredded comfrey leaves, watching the fragrant steam rise and tryi
ng to block the echo of Marche’s thoughts from replaying again and again in her mind. Do what you must, she’d told Marcia. And live with it after. Except that she sometimes felt as though that one night had marked her, like one of the swirling blue-colored tattoos the Old Ones had pricked with needles into their skin. A poisoned tattoo that was slowly eating its way through to her bones. And I’m lucky, she thought, I could have been born into Aefre’s life and been fifteen years wedded to Marche instead of just the one night.
Madoc was speaking again, his hands clasped behind him, feet spread slightly apart, and his voice quieter now. “Which brings me to the reason I’ve come—and the favor I would ask of you, Lady Isolde. What do you know of King Goram of Ireland?”
Isolde set the empty water pan down and looked up, startled. Whatever she’d expected, it was not this.
“King Goram?” she repeated.
“He was at one time—”
“Another ally of my father’s in his war with Arthur,” Isolde said. “Yes, I know. My father had three allies. Cerdic of Wessex, as you said before. Goram of Ireland. And Marche. Marche was wedded to Cerdic’s daughter. And Goram was wedded to a daughter of Marche. Carys, her name was. A bastard daughter—he had no children by Aefre but his son. But it made for a blood tie, all the same.”
Isolde looked up at Madoc. “I never knew her. Marche had sent her to a convent to be raised by the holy women. And I was only seven or eight when she was sent to Ireland to marry King Goram. But I do remember after Camlann—after Marche had betrayed my father and his other allies. Goram joined Arthur and so survived the battle on the winning side—”
Isolde stopped and was silent a moment, working to keep her voice steady and calm, telling herself angrily again that she didn’t flinch away from speaking Marche’s name. Or from recalling that time, now that her memory of it had returned. “The king’s council—or what remained of it, at least—made Marche guardian of my grandmother and myself. So that I was there when the messenger arrived from Goram. This would have been …I don’t know. A week? Maybe two weeks after the battle at Camlann. Goram’s messenger brought Marche a bag—a finely tooled leather saddle bag—with the compliments of his king.”
Isolde took up the bowl of comfrey leaves. “And when Marche and his men opened it, they found Carys’s head inside. Packed in salt, to preserve it on the road from Ireland. Though the flesh was starting to rot and come away from her skull all the same.”
Madoc was silent a moment, his scarred face expressionless, and then he said, “I see. I’d like to say that I don’t care a goat-rutting goddamn whether or not Goram—”
And then he stopped himself, with an apologetic look at Isolde. “Your pardon again, Lady Isolde.”
“Granted,” Isolde said again. Goat-rutting goddamn. She sometimes wondered whether men were taught to curse at the same time they learned to ride and hunt and fight with swords. Madoc would have passed the lessons easily, at any rate. He’d as coarse a mouth as any foot soldier or smith. And yet the mere fact that he’d checked himself from swearing in front of her spoke of just how much he’d changed since the council had chosen him High King.
But then, Madoc of Gwynedd was a man of contradictions in many ways. He heard mass sung every morning, even had a priest ride out with his army on campaign. And Isolde remembered Con telling her once of how Madoc had walked barefoot about a chapel seven times in the dead of winter as penance for taking the name of the Christ in vain.
Isolde glanced up at Madoc now before turning her attention back to the bowl in her hands. “You may as well speak freely, Lord Madoc. I’ve stitched and cauterized wounds for more men than I can count from the time I was thirteen. I can almost guarantee I’ll have heard at least the equal of any curses you can find.”
Madoc’s tight features relaxed, and he gave a short laugh—an easier one, this time. “All right, then,” he said. “I’d like to say I don’t give a rat’s piss whether Goram eats his own young or needs a map and both hands to find his own ass—so long as he’s willing to lend his spearmen to fight Octa and Marche. I’d like to say it—but I’d be lying if I did.”
Madoc stopped, raising one hand and then letting it fall. “And I’d be lying, as well, Lady Isolde, if I claimed I was happy about the favor I ask of you. All the same, though, I can’t see that we’ve any other choice. Marche and Octa between them have the power to crush Britain entirely. And King Goram has agreed to a meeting on Ynys Mon, in four days’ time, to listen to the offer we make as the price of his allegiance.”
“Ynys Mon?” Isolde repeated.
Madoc nodded. “A midway point between Gwynedd and Ireland. You’ve traveled there before?”
Isolde shook her head. “No, never.” She had a sudden, piercingly clear memory of her grandmother speaking of the place, though, when Isolde herself had been no more than eight—an image of Morgan twisting up her mouth and spitting before she told the story of Suetonius of Rome and Ynys Mon.
Ynys Mon, the Dark Isle, had been holy ground, once—the sacred isle of the druids—before the Roman legions had crushed the tribes of Britain under their sandaled feet, scarred the land with their knife-straight roads, cut down the trees, and plowed up the earth to build thick-walled temples of gleaming white stone. And Suetonius, desperate to break the druids’ power, had marched his forces to the holy isle, burned the sacred groves, defiled and violated the pools. And, so Morgan had said, with a brief, angry shimmer of tears in her age-dulled eyes, driven a knife blade between Britain and the gods for all time.
Now Madoc had gone on, a weary tinge of bitterness again creeping into his tone. “Goram won’t come cheap, of that much I’m sure. But what you tell me. …” He paused, then looked up at Isolde, his dark eyes hard and a little bleak in his disfigured face. “I might think I’d sooner make my bed in a pigsty and sleep on a bed of sh— filth than ally with Goram. But what you tell me means that he may hate Marche enough still that he’ll send his spearmen to our aid.”
“He may.”
Isolde was silent, a picture forming in her mind’s eye of the Irish king, as she remembered from the handful of times she’d seen him as a child. A bandy-legged, bull-chested man with gray eyes and black hair that hung loose to his shoulders, draped in a heavy bear-pelt cloak and wearing a golden torque as thick as her wrist around his heavily muscled neck. Certainly, Goram was a man slow to forgive an insult or wrong.
Madoc passed a hand through his cropped black hair. “And I’ve seen what’s left of the raided villages after Octa and his forces have done with them.”
Not only you, Isolde thought. She kept silent, though, and Madoc went on, his face darkening, “Some say he’s mad. I don’t know. But mad or sane, he’s one that fights for the sake of killing. Because he likes the blood and watching men die. I’ve seen bodies on a battlefield that he carved up with his sword just for pleasure. And there was one place—a settlement in the south—where he’d lost some of his men in the fight. And he rounded up every woman in the place—old and young, even the small girls. Had them buried alive in the grave he’d dug for his warriors—for their pleasure in the afterlife.”
“I know. Octa was an enemy of my father, as well—before Camlann. ‘Octa of the Bloody Knife,’ he was called by my father’s men. And with reason.” Isolde thought of Emyr—one of her father’s fighting men taken prisoner by Octa in battle. He’d lived—had escaped Octa’s camp and somehow made his way back to Modred’s hall. A miracle, really, because he’d been tortured until his wits were entirely gone. When Isolde had seen him, he’d been a weeping, cringing shadow of a man, gibbering in pain, soiling and wetting himself at any sudden movement or loud noise.
Her grandmother had taken one look at him and then, without hesitation, given him a draft that ensured he went to sleep and never woke again.
Something of the memory must have showed on her face, because Madoc opened his mouth as though about to ask a question. Isolde shook her head, glancing over at Kian.
“No
, don’t ask. It would tell you nothing but what you already know.”
Madoc watched her a moment, but then nodded and said, “At any rate, we are agreed that an alliance with even King Goram may be justified if it will prevent Marche and Octa from wholesale slaughter across the countryside. Cynlas of Rhos and Dywel of Logres have already pledged their attendance at Ynys Mon—that is why they ride in with their war bands today. So that we may make the journey to Ynys Mon as one party. And that, then, is the favor I would ask of you, Lady Isolde. That you accompany us to Ynys Mon—speak to King Goram on Britain’s behalf. He may be more inclined to listen to you, for the sake of the oath he swore as your father’s ally.”
Isolde nodded slowly. “I suppose he may,” she said. “Though he wouldn’t remember me. I don’t think I was more than seven or eight the last time I saw him.”
She paused and glanced at Kian, still slumped in the corner. His eyes were closed, but she knew he was not asleep. Only retreated to a space deep within himself where he could ride the pain she could still feel grinding at him like waves pounding the shore.
Her eyes moved briefly to the vial of poppy syrup she kept on an upper shelf. That would grant him sleep. But the poppy would also trap him in dreams from which he couldn’t awake—which would almost certainly be crueler, just now, than the pain.
She turned back to Madoc and said, “Tell me, though—the rest of the council has approved my attendance at the talks with King Goram?”
Madoc studied her with something like appraisal at the back of his eyes, then he gave a short nod. “Very well. Several of my councilmen spoke out against the idea of your attending. Cynlas of Rhos said a woman’s only use was to warm a man’s—” Madoc broke off once more, and Isolde saw a faint tide of color creep up his neck under the beard.
