“We were riding,” he explained, “and she began to bleed.”
“Lay you back,” said Heilyn, placing a warm palm on Charis’ forehead. Charis shivered on the bed, eyes closed, breath shallow; yet the woman spoke to her as if she were awake and fully conscious. “There, there… Let Heilyn have a look at you.” The woman, who had served as midwife at the birth of each of Pendaran’s sons and nearly every other child born in Maridunum in the last twenty years, bent over Charis, calling to Taliesin as she did so. “Fetch Rhuna and tell her to bring clean rags and water. Go you now and do as I say.”
Taliesin did not move. “You can do nothing standing there like a heap of stone,” Heilyn told him. “Bring Rhuna here.”
He found the girl and brought her to the room and then stood looking on helplessly until Heilyn drove him out, saying, “Leave you and haunt another place, or make yourself useful and tell Henwas to have a brazier prepared and ready to bring in here when I have finished.”
Taliesin did as he was told and then returned to wait outside. After a while the door opened and Rhuna poked her head out, saying, “Master, your wife asks for you.”
Taliesin went in then and crouched beside the bed. “She is over the worst,” Heilyn said, “but sleep you elsewhere tonight if you will, for the issue of blood does steal a woman’s strength.” Heilyn pushed Rhuna out of the room, then paused at the door and added, “I will see to her in the morning.”
She left then and Taliesin took one of Charis’ hands in his. Her eyes fluttered open. “Taliesin?” Her voice was a whisper. “I am afraid.”
“Shh, rest now. I will watch over you.” She closed her eyes once more and sank into sleep. Taliesin sat with her through the night, but she stirred only once.
As dawn came to the sky, Charis awoke and called out. Taliesin, dozing in a chair beside the bed, wakened and leaned over her. “All is well, my soul; I am here.”
She peered into the thin blue shadows of the room beyond him as if to reassure her that everything remain unchanged. “Taliesin, I have had the most distressing dream,” she said weakly.
“Rest,” he told her. “We can talk later.”
“The dream… I saw a great beast with eyes like midnight coming for me… But then a man came… A man with a sword, Taliesin, a fine, bright sword… and a smile on his face… A brave smile… But I was afraid for him…”
“Yes,” he soothed, “all is well.”
“… he smiled and said to me, ‘Know me by this, Lady of the Lake,’ and he held up the sword… Then he went down to slay the beast and… a terrible struggle commenced… He did not come back… I fear he was killed.”
“An unhappy dream,” said Taliesin softly. “But rest now and We will talk later.” He placed a hand on her head and she went back to sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I have seen this before,” said heilyn gravely, “and it is never good. The child will die and take you with it unless you do as I say. Even then nothing is certain.”
Charis gripped Taliesin’s hand hard, but her jaw was set and her glance strong. “Is there no hope at all?”
“Little enough, child. But what hope there is lies with you.”
“With me? Why, you have but to tell me and I will do all in my power to see my child born alive.”
“There is no hope for the child,” Heilyn declared flatly. “What we do, we do to save its mother.”
“But if I am to be saved, may rot the child live as well?”
The midwife shook her head slowly. “I have never known it. And often enough the husband digs two graves in the end.”
“Tell us what may be done,” said Taliesin.
“Stay you in that bed until the birth pains come on you.” She paused and shrugged. “That is all.”
“Is there no remedy?” asked Charis, thinking that four months was a very long time to lie abed.
“Rest is the remedy,” replied Heilyn tartly. “Rest-and it is no certain cure. The bleeding has stopped and that is good, but I have no doubt it will begin again if you stir from this room.’”
“Very well, I will do as you say. But even so I will not give up hope for my child.”
“Yours is the life we must look after now.” She made a slight bow of her head and turned to leave the room. “I will send food and you must eat it. That is the best way to regain your strength.”
When she had gone Charis said, “I will do as she says, but I will not give up hope.”
“And I will sit with you every day. We will pray and we will talk and sing and the time will take wings.”
“I will endure my confinement,” said Charis firmly. “I have endured more difficult trials for less worthy ends.”
And so it began: Charis became a prisoner in the room above the hall, and word spread through the villa and throughout the surrounding countryside that the bard’s beauty was with child and confined in Lord Pendaran’s high chamber. It was whispered that she would die birthing a dead and deformed baby-such was the punishment for turning away from the old gods to follow the god of the Christians.
Taliesin knew what was whispered about them in Mari-dunum and the hills beyond, but he never told Charis. He remained steadfast in his vow to stay by her side and would have spent every minute of the day in the chair by her bed if Charis had not finally chased him from it.
“I cannot bear you sitting there looking at me all day!” she told him some time later. “This is hard enough without feeling that I am keeping two people captive. Go ride with Eiddon! Go hunting! Go anywhere you like, but go away!”
Taliesin accepted this without argument and rose to leave. “And another thing,” she said, “you have not sung in the hall since I took to my bed. I want you to begin singing again-it will do us both more good than sitting here.”
“ ‘What will you do with yourself, my soul?”
“I have my thoughts to keep me company,” Charis answered. “And I have been thinking of writing some things to keep if I…to keep for later.”
“Yes,” Taliesin agreed. “I will send Henwas to see if there is writing material hereabouts so that you can begin at once.”
A few days later the steward burst into Charis’ chamber with a thick roll of parchment under one arm and a pot of ink in his hand. “Lady,” he ducked his head as he came in, “forgive my intrusion. I have just this moment come from the market. Look what I have brought you!”
Charis took the parchment and unrolled a length in her hands. “Oh, Henwas, it is very fine. Where did you find it?”
“I sent to Caer Legionis thinking that the tribune there might have some in his stores. I was not wrong and as he owes my lord much for past service, he was happy to let me have it.”
“But it is so costly! I cannot accept it, Henwas.” She made to hand it back.
“It is yours, lady.” He placed the pot of ink on the table which had been set up beside the bed.
“What will your lord say?”
“Lord Pendaran,” Henwas sniffed, “defers to me in all matters concerning his house. He would want you to have it anyway. In fact, he is no doubt castigating himself at this moment for not anticipating this simple need.”
Charis laughed. “Thank you, Henwas. I am certain Lord Pendaran need never castigate himself as long as you look after his affairs.”
“It is ever my pleasure to serve you, lady.”
When Taliesin joined her later, she showed him the parchment and told him what she intended. “It is a story worth telling,” he said. “Will you tell me as you go?”
“No,” she said. “I have not the bard’s art. But tell me your life so that I can write it in my book as well.”
Taliesin distrusted the idea of writing that which had previously only been spoken; nevertheless, Charis prevailed and he began telling her of his life, including much he had been told by Rhonwyn and Hafgan. She set to work the next day with a pen Taliesin made for her, finding release from the bone-aching boredom of her captivity in committing words to
the prepared skin.
So began a routine that was to continue through the long months of Charis’ confinement: upon rising she would break fast and write through the entire morning; Heilyn would bring her dinner and she and Taliesin ate and talked-sometimes about his life, sometimes about his vision of the Kingdom of Summer-describing the intimate details of his thoughts to her so that she began to know him almost as well as she knew herself. Charis rested through the warm afternoon, sometimes allowing her bed to be moved into the sun, with the merlin on its perch nearby. Supper found her once more inside, and when the rushlights and candles were kindled for the night the doors would be opened so Taliesin’s voice could come to her from the hall Below as he sang. Taliesin joined her for their night’s rest when he had finished in the hall and they would end the day as they had begun it-asleep in each other’s arms.
The days passed, and each one saw the parchment record grow-through autumn’s cool harvest and into the chill deeps of winter. Sometimes in the snail hours of the night Charis wakened to take up her pen again, writing to hold back the fear always clawing at the back of her mind. Taliesin rose with the first faint threads of daylight to find her wrapped in a soft white fleece, hunched over the parchment roll, her fingers stained with ink, scratching away furiously.
“You should sleep,” he told her.
She smiled sadly and said, “Sleep is no comfort to me, my love.”
She wrote through the too-short hours of thin daylight but more often by glowing candlelight, surrounded by coal-filled braziers. She wrote through the long empty winter nights, taking up her pen even as Taliesin took up his harp in the hall below. She wrote with his song drifting up to her like music from another world as time crawled slowly by.
One day near to the coming thaw of spring Charis felt the first pang of birth. Taliesin, sitting in the chair next to the bed, saw the wing of fear pass across her features. “What is it, my soul?”
She lay her head back against the wooden post of the bed, spreading her hands across her round Belly. “I think Heilyn should come now.”
The old midwife took one look at Charis and, pressing a hand to her stomach, said, “Pray to your god, girl-the birthing time has come.”
Charis took Taliesin’s hand and squeezed it hard. “I am afraid, Taliesin.”
He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. “Shhh, remember your vision-who was the woman carrying the child if it was not you?”
“There will be no men under my feet,” interrupted Heilyn. “Take yourself away from here-the farther away the better. And fetch Rhuna on your way. That will be more help to your lady wife than anything else you can contrive.”
Taliesin made no move, but Charis said, “Do as she says- only stay near so that you can hear your child’s first cry.”
“Go you now and bring Rhuna,” said Heilyn, pushing him toward the door.
The painful spasms established a regular rhythm, the muscles of her distended stomach contracting and subsiding for a time, only to begin contracting again. This continued through the morning, with Taliesin hovering in the doorway until at last Rhuna called for Eiddon to come and take the bard away.
“These things take time,” Eiddon told him. “Let us go hunting. It will do us both good to feel the cold wind on our faces.” Taliesin stared uncertainly at the chamber door, which had been closed against him. “Come on-we will return before anything happens.”
Taliesin agreed reluctantly and they left the birthing to the women. Bundling furs against the cold, they departed into the hills. The hunting was a dismal sham; Taliesin could not give himself to it and rode recklessly, scaring the game before they could come upon it. Eiddon cautioned him but did not greatly mind whether they caught anything or not, as long as it kept Taliesin occupied. Although they rode long, Eiddon made certain they were never out of sight of the villa’s hill.
At last, however, Taliesin reined up, saying, “I think it is time to go back.”
Eiddon put a hand on the bard’s shoulder. “You, my friend, never left.”
“I have been disagreeable?”
“Not disagreeable, but I have ridden with more companionable hounds.”
Taliesin turned his eyes toward the hill once more. “We will ride together another time, Maelwys Vawr. But my child is being born today and I must be there-although Heilyn holds out little enough hope.”
“If so, it is only because she has seen much, Taliesin,” Eiddon replied. “But we will go back now if you like.”
They rode back to the villa and Taliesin went directly to the chamber above the hall. Lord Pendaran and Henwas stood outside talking quietly to one another. Taliesin came and clasped the king by the hands. “There is no word yet,” Pendaran told him, answering the unasked question in Taliesin’s eyes. “But such is the nature of these things.”
“I have made everything ready that can be made ready,” said Henwas. “There is nothing to be done but wait.”
Evening came on, and the hearthfires were banked and can-dletrees brought to the chamber. When the door was open, Taliesin glimpsed his wife lying in the bed, Heilyn beside her holding her hands. He thought to go in, but as he watched, her face convulsed in agony. Charis cried out, thrashing her head from side to side. Rhuna stepped from the room with an armload of blood-soaked bedclothes, and the door was quickly closed again.
“Drink some wine,” offered Pendaran. “It will calm you.”
Taliesin accepted the cup but did not raise it. Charis cried out again and Taliesin winced. “I can do nothing here,” he said, setting the cup down. “I must go somewhere quiet to pray.”
“The temple has been empty these many months,” Hen-was remarked. “Perhaps your god would not mind if you went there to meet him.”
Leaving the hall, Taliesin walked around the villa and up the little mound to the small temple. The square building stood dark in the falling twilight, its square bulk rising from the mound like a crown of stone. The sky was pale green and the air briskly cold. The gray cloud-bound day had given way to a clear, crisp night, aad overhead a curlew voiced its lonely cry as it darted among the treetops.
The inner temple was filled with dry leaves that rustled as Taliesin entered. There as an altar at one end of the cell; otherwise the building was empty. Taliesin went to the altar and after a moment pushed it over. It gave a hollow crash as it toppled against the wall and dust puffed up-the residue of unanswered prayers grown thick like the leafmold under foot.
Taliesin sat down on one of the altar stones, crossed his legs, and put his elbows on his knees, lowering his chin to his clasped hands. He could feel the lingering presence of other gods-their whispered voices brittle like the restless sigh of the dry leaves on the floor. “Father God,” he said aloud, “you who are greater than all the gods worshiped here before now, hallow this place with your presence and hear my prayer. I pray for the one you have given me, that she may be safely delivered of the child now mat the hour of her trial is come upon her. Give her strength and courage, Father, as you give all who turn to you in need.”
He remained in the temple, waiting on the god and watching through the open windows as the night drew its veil over the land. A scattering of early stars shone as hard icepoints in the sky when he finally emerged to stand for a moment on the threshold of the temple, his breath hanging in the air above him, glowing faintly in the light of the rising moon.
Away in the distance, on the crests of the hills, fires burned brightly, creating a necklace of sparkling flame around Mar-idunum. Taliesin gazed through the crystalline air at the fires and remembered what day it was: Imbolc, the first day of spring.
On those far hilltops people observed a rite far older than the circles of stone wherein burned their celebration fires.
King Winter, Lord of Death, was vanquished and driven from the land, forced by the Goddess Dagda to return to his underworld throne, leaving earth ready to receive the seed of new life once more.
He remembered all the times he had stood on f
reezing hilltops and watched the same fires that now burned into the chill darkness. There had been a time, not long past, when he would have kindled those flames himself. “Tempt me not,” he whispered, “I follow a living God now.” He watched for a moment longer and then hurried back to the villa.
In the time between times when the world hangs between darkness and light, the time when all forces are held in balance for that briefest of moments, the child was born.
In the end Charis gave a cry of pain and pushed, her stomach held in the sure hands of the midwife, veins showing purple on her forehead and neck, sweat soaking into the sodden bedclothes, a piece of thick leather between her teeth. “Harder!” urged Heilyn, “I can see it! Push, girl! Push it out-now!”
Charis pushed again and the babe came into the world.
Heilyn, her face grave, gathered the tiny blue body into a length of cloth and turned away. Through a haze of exhaustion and pain, Charis saw the movement and cried, “My child! Where is my child?”
“Shhh,” said Heilyn. “Rest you now. It is over.”
“My baby!”
“The babe is dead, lady,” whispered Rhuna. “Its caul did never burst and it smothered.”
“No!” Charis screamed, her voice echoing along the sleeping corridors of the villa. “Taliesin!”
Taliesin was immediately in the room. Charis, pale with exhaustion, struggled up, reaching her hand to his. “My baby! My child!”
“Where is the child?” he asked.
Rhuna nodded toward Heilyn, who turned with the bundle, lifting a comer of the cover as she did. Taliesin saw the tiny blue thing in its membranous sac and his heart dropped like a felled beast. He took the bundle from Heilyn and cradled it to him, falling to his knees. He placed the babe on the floor before him and, taking the caul in his hands, ripped it open, freeing the child. The body lay inert, unmoving, gray-blue in the semidarkness of the chamber. Charis gazed in horror at the tiny dead creature, her mouth moving in silent, uncomprehending grief. Surely the child that had moved in her Belly could not be so still and silent.
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