by Anna Elliott
Isolde was silent, as once more remembrance—this time of where Trystan was now—hung between them in the salty air. Again, though, Kian remained silent, and after a moment she said, “Trystan has a mark of slavery, though, on his neck. Do you know how he came by that?”
Kian shook his head. “Never asked—and he’s never said.” He paused, beginning to carefully chip away again on the little seagull carving in his lap before going on. “We served Gorlath for some time, Trystan, Hereric, and me. But…well, it’s not much of a life. Mostly fighting off cattle raiders and a lot of filthy tattooed Picts. Cut free after a time. And then…what Trystan proposed seemed as good a way of making a living as any. Fighting for whoever offered us the best pay, Saxon or Irishman or what have you.” His brows drew together and he said, still speaking half to himself, “Suppose I’d a grudge against the kings of Britain, as well.”
Isolde studied the weathered face opposite her, the puckered scar running like a seam down one side. “And now?” she asked after a moment. “What is it you want now?”
“What do I want?” Kian shifted positions, and seemed to consider, letting the knife blade rest idly against his thigh, eyes going distant as they looked out across the waves. “I want what I’ve not had these forty years and more. A settled home. A plot of land—just a few fields, enough to live on. Enough to stand on and say, ‘This is mine.’”
Then he snorted and shook his head, seeming to come back to himself. “And what do I have instead? A third-part share in a leaky boat.” He gestured, the movement taking in the listing mast, the slightly warped deck boards, and the ragged sails. “And about as much chance of owning my own farm as of finding a cow byre in the middle of the Irish Sea. Still…”
He stopped and took up the knife and the carving once more, bending again to chip at the seagull’s feathered wings. “Still, I’ve no regrets. Trystan’s a good partner. And a good friend.”
The silence rested between them a beat, and then Isolde said, “Kian, I know you must blame me. For Bran’s death. And now for what’s happened to Trystan.”
But Kian shook his head, squinting toward the line of cloud visible on the horizon. “Bran was a good lad,” he said. “A good lad who deserved better than the end he got. But this is a war, in a way. And in a war there are always casualties. No point in asking why or thinking of blame. And Trystan?” He stopped again. Then, “No,” he said slowly. “What’s happened to Trystan is not your fault. Or rather, perhaps it is, but I don’t blame you.”
He glanced up at Isolde. “Suppose you acted as anyone would, thinking they’d been betrayed. But all the same, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Trystan would have traded you to Marche’s guard.”
“Maybe not.” Isolde watched a floating bit of driftwood as it was tossed by a wave, then carried to shore. “What does Hereric say?”
Kian grunted. “Precious little. He was half out of his head with fever by the time I saw him. Just said he’d been hurt getting away from the guard—and that Trystan had been the one to get him free.” He paused, shifting position against the rail. “Not much you don’t know, though, about a man when you’ve fought alongside of him a couple of years. Trystan would lie to God Almighty himself and rob Christ blind if that’s what it took to live another day. But break his word? No. Still”—he paused and glanced up at Isolde before turning back to frown over his bird carving—“he made his choice to stay and let you get free. No point blaming yourself. He’d not want that.”
Isolde didn’t speak, but for the first time the silence between them was oddly restful. Kian nodded slowly, then looked up, answering the question she had not asked.
“I saw what you did with Hereric last night. And I’ll not say you’re not a sorceress yet. But maybe there’s all kinds of witches in this world.”
IN THE DEEPENING TWILIGHT, HERERIC’S FACE gleamed white as bone against the blanket of the makeshift carrying sledge, his eyes closed, his face twisted in a grimace of pain. Dropping back to walk beside him, Isolde laid a hand on the big man’s brow, but the skin was dry and cool. At least the fever hadn’t returned, though she wondered, looking down at him, how much other damage had been done by the day’s long trek over rough ground.
Ahead, Cabal froze, the hair on the back of his neck rising as a black-robed figure emerged from the stone-built hut. The hut was just as Isolde remembered, nestling against the rising hill as though it had grown out of the bracken-covered slope. The small brown mule was still browsing in the paddock, the towering shapes of the standing stones rising behind, made secretive and shadowed, now, by the gathering dusk. Beside her, Kian shifted the burden of Hereric’s sledge and came to a halt, frowning as he eyed the figure in the doorway.
“That’s your holy man, then?”
Isolde nodded, and Kian rubbed his thumb along the length of his scar, from cheekbone to chin.
“And you’re sure he’ll not turn us—or Hereric—in to Marche’s men?”
Isolde’s muscles were aching with the long walk; her throat was dry. “No. I only think he won’t. But we agreed that Hereric needs more help than I can give.”
Kian hesitated, then jerked his head in unwilling agreement, though Isolde saw his hand move reflexively to the hilt of his knife. “Suppose we’ve no choice about it, then. Best get on.”
Isolde started forward, but she heard him add, grimly, “I’ll leave it to you to explain just who we are and why we’re here.”
But Brother Columba asked for no explanation, merely bid them welcome with the same incurious, tranquil calm he’d shown before, helping Kian to lift Hereric from the blanket sledge and carry him inside the hut. The lintel of the door was low, and both men had to stoop slightly to pass through. Isolde followed, Cabal padding along at her heels, then blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dimness within.
The hut was small, furnished with a low wooden bench that must serve as both seat and bed, a rough wooden table, and a cupboard, of sorts, that stood against the wall nearest the hearth. The rafters were hung with drying herbs, as in Isolde’s workshop at Tintagel, and the air had the comfortingly familiar scent of lavender mingled with the more homely cooking smells of onions and beans. A little niche had been cut into one wall and a small altar stood within, draped with a fine white cloth and set with a pair of wax candles and a central wooden cross.
When he’d seen Hereric settled on the bench and covered with the single rough woolen blanket, Brother Columba reached for the small oil lamp that stood on the table.
“I seldom light it, unless I’m working over a preparation that needs to be tended through the night. It saves on oil. But now—”
He struck a spark and lit the wick, then set the lamp back in place and turned, his thoughtful brown eyes moving over Hereric before settling on the pad of bandages at the big man’s ribs.
“Ah,” he said. “Not just illness, then?”
Isolde had moved to kneel at Hereric’s side and now began to peel back the cloth wrappings. The outer layers of bandage were dry, but the wound had bled again; the inner layers were wet and red. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kian shoot her a warning glance, but she nodded. No point, she thought, in lying when Brother Columba could recognize the truth well enough for himself.
“A sword cut,” she said.
Brother Columba stood where he was, watching as she drew back the last layer of cloth, shaking his head as the ugly wound was revealed. Then he said briskly, “Tell me what you need, and I’ll see whether I can find it for you. My store of medicines is small, but I think it will serve.”
ISOLDE LAY CURLED BESIDE THE STONE-BUILT hearth, the echo of Brother Columba’s voice, pitched in a low, musical chant, running continually through her mind. Hereric had woken while she was covering his wound with one of Brother Columba’s salves, and had started up, wide-eyed and terrified at finding himself in a strange place. And Brother Columba had, with slow calm, seated himself beside the bed and begun to chant in a soft, soothing rhythm words Isolde recog
nized vaguely as one of the psalms Father Nenian read at Mass.
Reassured, Hereric had lain back down and had drifted off to sleep even before Isolde finished her work. He was still asleep now, as were Cabal and the two other men. Isolde could hear their soft breathing, punctuated by an occasional snuffle or whine from the dog who lay beside her, his powerful muscles relaxed. The fire in the hearth had died to embers, and she watched as a log turned slowly from glowing orange to gray to black, the edges crumbling into ash.
Isolde shifted position, then went abruptly still.
“DON’T GO, PLEASE. PROMISE ME.” HER voice was almost unrecognizable.
“You know I can’t.”
He’d been bracing himself for anger, but instead her face went pale and all but blank with a look that was almost worse still. “This is only the beginning, you know.”
“Have you…can you see something?” He hesitated as he asked, because she hardly ever spoke of how she sometimes knew what no human power could have shown.
She shook her head. “No. I’m afraid to try.” Her face was still white and strained, and it came to him that he’d never before heard her admit to fear.
“I’m still afraid of what may happen,” she said. She drew a shuddering breath and looked up at him, gray eyes bleak. “Trys, what if my father’s army is beaten? What if you’re killed?”
Say something, he ordered himself. Don’t worry…it will be all right.
Any words he could think of sounded hollow in his own ears. Besides, he’d learned long ago that lying to her was wasted breath.
At last he put his arm around her, though it was scarcely ever he let himself touch her now.
“Then Arthur’s armies will win the day at Camlann. And the stars will still shine tomorrow.”
ISOLDE CAME BACK TO THE TINY hut and the light of the hearth and the warmth of Cabal at her side. The blood was drumming in her ears and her throat felt swollen and painfully dry. The echoing words were gone, like all the rest, dying into the voice of the wuthering moorland wind. But instead of vanishing entirely, these echoes clung, sticky as cobwebs, and she felt once more that terrifying press of memory from behind the shadowed wall in her mind. As though the voice were there, part of the time and the self that she’d lost, and now called her like the seal-men in tales who lured maids into the sea.
All at once, the little, herb-scented room felt airless. Isolde couldn’t breathe—couldn’t get free of the iron bands that had suddenly fastened around her chest. Nor, suddenly, could she lie there, still, before the hearth a moment more. She got to her feet and was at the door and through it out into the night, stumbling a little on the stones of the hut’s flagged path. When she reached the garden wall, a dark looming shape in the blackness of night, she stopped and sat down, her chest still burning and tight.
At last her breathing steadied and her pulse slowed. Her taut muscles were starting to relax, when a rustle close behind her made her look round, expecting to find that Cabal had followed her outside. But it was Brother Columba’s black-robed figure that stood there, outlined by the light of moon and stars.
“I was awake to sing the holy office,” he said, “and I saw that you were not inside.”
He paused, his silence an invitation, though not a request or demand that she explain. After a moment, Isolde said, “No. I found I…couldn’t sleep. I came out for some air.”
Brother Columba stood studying her. The moon had risen, its pale glow softening the rugged, square-jawed face and lighting the mild brown eyes. After a pause, he said, “I thought perhaps you might like to join me. It’s nearly the hour for the midnight office.”
“Join you?”
Brother Columba nodded. “I often go up to the stones for the night prayers,” he said. “It seems a fitting place for them, somehow.”
Isolde was silent, and then, slowly, she rose to her feet, brushing crumbles of lichen from her gown. “Thank you,” she said. “I’d like to come.”
ISOLDE STOOD AMID THE TALL, SHADOWED god-stones, letting the sound of Brother Columba’s voice wash past her.
“Sanctus Deus, sanctus fortis, sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.”
Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.
There was a strange comfort in the words, as well as in being in the presence of something so old as the stones. Something that must have seen the sway of countless battles, the rise and fall of countless kings, and yet stood here, unchanged. Even the air felt strangely still, filled with a presence that seemed to wait, breath held. The presence seemed to her neither threatening nor beneficent, neither ominous nor kind. It simply was. Steady as a beating heart and with a voice as ancient as the moor and the hill and the earth itself.
“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me…. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
Brother Columba’s voice seemed to mingle with the shadows and the beating stillness all about them, the low words settling into the darkness like folded wings.
“O Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise.”
Isolde had been watching the icy pale net of stars above, and it was a moment before she realized that Brother Columba had stopped chanting and was watching her, his thoughtful gaze on her face.
“You feel it, too,” he said.
Isolde didn’t have to ask what he meant. She nodded. “Yes.”
Brother Columba turned his head, has gaze traveling over the looming stones that circled them round.
“I’ve often wondered,” he said, “whether that’s why the circle was built here. Whether this hill is a place of power. Or whether that only came later, with the stones themselves. Or,” he added meditatively, as though speaking aloud something he’d gone over in thought many times before, “whether it’s only that worship—worship of any kind—leaves a mark on a place that lasts long after the worshippers, and even their gods, are dead and gone.”
“You think the old gods are dead, then?”
Brother Columba lifted his shoulders slightly. The moonlight carved deep shadows into the planes of his square-jawed face, making the once-broken nose look even more crooked than before.
“Dead…nonexistent…sleeping. It hardly matters. I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Either I’m right or wrong. I’ll find out when my days on earth are at an end. As will we all.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
Brother Columba caught the dryness in Isolde’s tone and smiled slightly. “In the meantime,” he said, “I come here to sing the holy office. So, right or wrong, old gods or new, perhaps I’m safe either way.”
In spite of herself, Isolde smiled as well. “Is there anything more left?”
“Only the hundred-and-twentieth Psalm.”
Brother Columba drew in his breath, then in a low voice began the chant: “In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me.”
The soft, rhythmic chant mingled and blended with the murmuring presence of the stones, and Isolde tilted her head back to look up at the vaulted night sky above.
The stars will still shine tomorrow, whatever—
Then she froze. The familiar words echoed in her mind, but in a different voice, this time. A voice she both did not know and knew.
And then, in a burst like the crack of a lightening bolt or the spark of two clashing swords, the wall of forgetfulness in her mind cracked, rumbled, and fell, and memory flooded in. For a moment, there was still herself before Camlann and herself after. But then the two halves joined, swam together, became one.
Balanced on the knife-edge moment of Trystan—a Trystan she knew as well as she knew her own self—speaking those words to her, years ago.
And then he’d gone to fight at Camlann and never returned.
It was some time before Isolde realized that Brother Columba had once more stopped chanting and was standing as though in prayer, hand
s clasped lightly before him, head slightly bowed.
Isolde looked from him up to the stone nearest her, tracing the line of a jagged, moonlit crack in one of the towering stone slabs, struggling to take in the recollection that had just burst upon her. She’d not chosen to remember, not sought the knowledge that now lay like a dull ache in her heart. Remembrance of who Trystan was. Why he’d not answered that question himself, that night camping on the moors.
But there’s no going back, she thought. I remember, now. I know.
Brother Columba stirred and looked up, and Isolde drew in her breath.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said.
Brother Columba’s head dipped in brief acknowledgment, and Isolde went on, “There is one thing more you could do for me, if you would.”
“Of course, my lady. Anything in my power.”
Isolde looked up at him quickly. “You know who I am?”
Silently, Brother Columba bowed his head again, and Isolde took another steadying breath.
“Good,” she said. “That makes this easier, I suppose. I’d like to make my confession before…before I leave this place. Will you hear it?”
Brother Columba’s brows drew together. “I have no claims to the priesthood, my lady. I have no authority to hear confessions—or offer absolution from sin.”
Isolde made a brief, dismissive gesture. “That doesn’t matter. I don’t want absolution. Only for you to listen.”
Brother Columba studied her a moment, and then a slight smile lightened his face.
“I can do that, my lady, of course.” He gestured to one of the great stones that had fallen and now lay flat on the ground, tufts of grass growing round its sides. “Shall we sit? Unless you’d prefer to return to the hut?”
Isolde shook her head. “No. Here will do very well.”
She settled herself beside him on the stone, drawing her cloak around her. There was a pool of moonlight at their feet, pale and almost liquid-looking amid the shadows cast by the stones.
