Ashes of Heaven

by C. Dale Brittain

  Brangein looked up with a smile. “Yes, I would like to see that.” She put down her sewing once again, slipped her cloak around her shoulders, and went out.

  The moment she was gone Tristan threw his arms around Isolde and pulled her to him. She returned the embrace, hard, and lifted her lips to his. For the first time he kissed her—but as he did he realized that he had dreamed of this a hundred times.

  Her lips on his were warm and soft, and the cabin shrank to her scent and her eyes. She tasted of wine and summer. Their hearts beat rapidly, seeming to beat in unison. He squeezed her tighter, as though they might somehow merge into one.

  Then there came a step outside the door, and they jerked apart. Brangein was back. “I saw no whale,” she said, hanging up her cloak. “But the breeze is fresh, and the creature may have been hidden by whitecaps and spray.”

  If Brangein had seen them kissing, she gave no sign. Once again she began to embroider, sitting in the light from the small window. “I would like to hear more, Tristan, about Cornwall and its king,” she said when it became clear neither of the others was about to say anything. “Did you know that I met King Mark once?”

  “You did not,” said Isolde briskly. “You’ve never been to Cornwall in your life.”

  Brangein shook her head. “Remember, Isolde, I am older than you are. I was still a little girl, but I accompanied my cousins Isolde and Morold when they sailed from Ispania. Your mother was not yet queen. On the way to Eire our ship stopped for an afternoon in Cornwall. I am sure Mark does not remember me, but I remember him.”

  “He is a good and gracious monarch,” put in Tristan. “He may indeed remember you.”

  “This will be the second time that I have crossed the sea to a new home,” Brangein continued thoughtfully. “When we left Ispania all those years ago I felt safe with my cousins.” She smiled a little ruefully. “Now I am the older cousin, here to support and protect you, Isolde. But who will there be in Cornwall even to notice me?”

  “King Mark will be delighted to welcome you to his court,” said Tristan heartily, “as the cousin of his new bride.”

  “He gave me a red velvet ribbon,” said Brangein. “I still have it. When I was little I sometimes used to tie it around my neck on festival days. For years he was the only man who had ever given me anything—except my cousin Morold.”

  “I know my father made you gifts,” said Isolde, a little uneasily.

  “Yes, once I grew to womanhood King Gurmun was generous to his wife’s poor little cousin,” said Brangein in a neutral voice. “But I still have fond memories of Mark. He cannot have been much out of boyhood himself when I met him, but he seemed very grownup to me. It is hard to judge after the passage of years, but I do believe, Isolde, that you will be very happy with your new husband.”

  III

  Tristan and Isolde sat side by side the next day, looking out across the waves. They were on the lee side of the ship, so that the wind that drove them rapidly toward Cornwall and beat the waves to a foam scarcely stirred their hair. The air was cool in spite of the sunlight, flashing white from the waves and from the sails of the other two ships heading toward Tintagel with them.

  “It is useless to fight it longer,” said Isolde quietly. “I believe that I shall waste away from love for you. I have felt warmly toward you, indeed loved you, since first I assisted my mother in healing you of the wound in your thigh. When you taught me love songs on the harp, my heart was stirred for the first time in my life. But I would have kept my emotions well controlled if it were not for the love potion. Now it is too late.”

  Their hands were clasped together, their shoulders tight together, so that they could feel each other’s warmness even through layers of wool. “I know our love is wrong,” said Tristan, “but the fault cannot be attributed to us. Rather, it is all due to the love potion. Oh, sweet Isolde, what shall we do? I long to embrace you and kiss you right here on the deck, in spite of the sailors. There is a great emptiness within me, that only your love can fill.”

  “In the songs,” said Isolde, “lovers die from love. Could that really happen to us?”

  “I feel that it might,” said Tristan. “One minute I am racked with cold, the next burning with fever. You healed me from a poisoned wound and from the evil emanations of a bog-dragon’s tongue. Only your sweet person can heal me of the deep wound that is in my heart.”

  “From all that you have said,” commented Isolde slowly, “King Mark loves you, as his nephew, as his heir, and as a knight willing to risk his life for the people of Cornwall. It would be wrong for the ship to arrive in Tintagel harbor with his nephew’s dead body stretched upon the deck.”

  “And he has heard from me such reports of Isolde the Blonde that he would be devastated to see her dead body stretched beside mine.”

  “Brangein still remembers him, twenty years after she met him, as a good man. We could not do such harm to such a good man.”

  Tristan reached over to take a strand of Isolde’s golden hair and pressed it to his lips. “If only we could be together once, with no one else there, so that I might hold you in my arms and become one with you, then I think that might heal this wound in my heart.”

  “Your embraces, even if for one afternoon only, might keep me from death as well,” she answered. “And would that be so great a sin, compelled as we are by the love potion? I am not yet married to Mark, so it would not be adultery.”

  “And the theologians tell us that if one is compelled to do something by forces outside one’s control, it is not the same as a sin committed from self-will alone. Even killing another may be forgiven if done to save innocent life, and loving you would save both your life and mine.”

  “Mark need never know,” said Isolde, “so no harm will come to him. I will be an even better wife to him for having once loved his nephew.”

  “And I will serve the king and queen of Cornwall even better, when the queen holds a sacred place in the temple of my heart. But dearest Isolde, how shall we find this life-saving love?”

  “Come with me,” she said and rose, her expression determined. They went together, just barely not touching, back to the cabin.

  Brangein smiled as they came in. “Are you hungry? You have eaten and drunk nothing all day, Isolde.”

  Isolde closed the door behind them. “Dear Brangein, sweet cousin, we hunger, but not for meat and drink. Please let us have the cabin to ourselves, only for an hour.”

  Brangein jumped to her feet. “No! This is wrong! I cannot let you do this!”

  Her response was so immediate that Tristan thought she must indeed have seen them in each other’s arms the day before and had started talking about King Mark in order to try—unsuccessfully—to remind them both where honor lay.

  Isolde was undeterred. “Please do not lecture me, dear cousin. You confessed to me that it was a love potion that we drank. You know how skilled my mother is in brewing her potions. We are helpless before its power. Would you rather see us both dead?”

  “A love potion cannot turn your will to evil!”

  Tristan leaned back against the wall, letting Isolde do the speaking for them both.

  “There is nothing evil here, Brangein,” she said, “only the pain of love. You must allow us to ease that pain before it kills us. After all, it was your own fault we even drank the potion! If you had concealed it, or even warned me against it, this would never have happened. You say that you came with me to support and protect me, but you failed at your first task! You made us love each other, and you cannot now blame us for that love.”

  Brangein recoiled as though slapped. But in a moment she reached out and took Isolde by the hands. “This is wrong!” she said again. “It is not what your mother intended. Would you betray her by loving Morold’s killer? Would you betray King Mark before you even meet him?”

  “My mother and I both forgave Morold’s killer,” Isolde replied. “You were there—you cannot have forgotten! Since King Mark will never know of this
, and no harm will come to him, I cannot call it betrayal. It would be a greater betrayal for you to allow me to die before our wedding day! Dearest Brangein, good little cousin, we have always conceded you a place of honor at the Irish court, and I shall do so again at the Cornish court. Do not gainsay this simple request.”

  Tears started in Brangein’s eyes. “Do not ask this of me!”

  “As you love me, Brangein, do not stand against me! I shall sicken unto death, and it shall all be your fault, the potion and my untimely death, and my mother shall certainly be very angry with you when you have to skulk home to Eire!”

  For a moment the two young women stared at each other, Brangein trembling, Isolde quiet and steely. Suddenly Brangein ducked her head. She didn’t quite nod, but she seized her cloak and rushed out of the cabin. Isolde bolted the door behind her.

  “Brangein is a sweet girl,” Tristan commented. “She only wishes the best for you.”

  “And that is why she conceded—she knew this was best.” Isolde slipped off her cloak, letting it fall to the floor and crossed the cabin to him. Her eyes glinted in the room’s dimness as she reached up, almost shyly, and slipped her arms around his neck.

  And then he forgot all about Brangein as he pulled Isolde to him. Desire set his blood on fire, and he started stripping off her clothes and his as desperately as if stripping to dive into the water to rescue a drowning man. Her skin was like alabaster, glowing in the shadows, and her body all soft curves. She kicked her clothes aside and kissed him passionately, all shyness gone.

  Her mouth seemed to burn against his. He snatched her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. “Dearest Isolde, sweetest Isolde,” he murmured distractedly. “My lodestar, my angel, my gift from heaven.” He tried to be gentle as he clasped her to him. But when he found himself pressing against her maidenhead he was too excited to hesitate further, and he thrust deep into her with a cry of joy that was half a moan.

  Her arms were tight around his shoulders, and she kept saying his name over and over, half laughing and half crying. “Tristan, Tristan, I am so glad that we are one at last!”

  In a moment he shifted slightly, so that his weight would not be too heavy on her, and kissed her all over her face, her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids. “You are the most beautiful woman on earth,” he whispered, “and I love you as man has never loved woman.”

  “Is this the love of which the minstrels sing?” she whispered back. “Or is it something even higher?”

  “It is the love which is not torment but joy,” he answered. “But I fear I have hurt you when I only wish to make you as happy with me as I am with you.” He began to kiss her again, down her neck and onto her breasts, and to caress her softly until she shuddered and pressed herself tight against him.

  “This is heaven,” he said, settling her head on his shoulder. Her golden hair spread out across the pillow. “This is a foretaste of Paradise.”

  They lay, half-dozing, while the ship rocked under them and the light from the small window shifted across the room. Tristan stirred then, thinking the hour that they had promised Brangein had come and gone. But it was too hard even to think of pulling away from beside Isolde.

  He rolled around and kissed her, and said, “My father wooed and won a princess too. He married his princess, the mother I never knew, but I doubt that even they felt the delight I feel with you. For we are truly one, sharing one life, one death, one sorrow, and one joy.”

  Isolde answered, “You understand a woman’s body, Tristan. Should I be jealous? Who has taught you the ways of love?”

  He chuckled and gave her a squeeze. “No one, really. A few of the maid servants of Parmenie, gentle and affectionate women even if half again my age, would sometimes come into my bed or meet me out in the hay field. From them I learned what gives a woman pleasure. But when I think of you I cannot even remember their faces. I would be your pupil, and have you teach me all over again what it is to love.”

  “Then let us begin your lessons now!” she said. She scrambled on top of him, kissing him on the lips and cheeks and eyelids as he had kissed her, and stroking his shoulders and chest, and then down onto his side and belly. In a moment he wrapped his arms tight around her, excited all over again by her nearness and her own passion.

  This time he tried to savor the experience of being joined to Isolde, tried to make it last, thinking that they might never be together like this again. The biblical phrase flashed through his mind, “And a man and a woman shall become one flesh,” and for the first time in his life he thought he fully understood it.

  Afterwards they lay side by side again, clinging to each other as a drowning man might cling to a piece of flotsam. All else, Tristan thought, was without meaning: his knighthood training, his successful battles, the foster family who had brought him up, his uncle in Cornwall, the very crown of Cornwall. All that he knew or wanted was Isolde.

  The light shifted again and grew dimmer. Tristan murmured at last, “We have left Brangein sitting out on the deck for hours.”

  “What do I care?” said Isolde. “She tried to tell us this was wrong, even though our drinking the love potion was entirely her fault. It will only be what she deserves if she sits there all night.”

  But Tristan, with an enormous effort, forced himself to sit up and swing his feet out of the bed. “I am so happy with you, sweetest Isolde,” he said, “that I can wish only happiness for others as well. Today was a wonderful moment which can never be repeated. We should thank her for letting us have this one afternoon together.”

  Isolde threw her arms around him and tried to tug him back down beside her, but he gently pried himself loose and started looking for his scattered clothing.

  Two days later, when they had spent the afternoon in the cabin together for the third time, they dozed relaxed and warm. But then Isolde lifted her head from Tristan’s shoulder. “My dearest love, what shall we do when we reach Cornwall?”

  “We already know what must happen. You shall marry Mark, and we will never again be in each other’s arms. Nor must the king ever learn of our love for each other. Our eyes may speak of it when they meet, but our lips will remain dumb.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said a bit impatiently, “but how will we hide it from Mark that I am no longer a virgin?”

  “Well,” he said somewhat uncertainly, “I understand that different women are different, that one cannot always expect a clear physical sign of virginity. I would think that you know more about this than I do. And Mark will be so happy to have you as his bride that I doubt he will even think about such things.”

  She sat up and frowned. “But I am a king’s daughter, marrying a king. Greatness belongs to her who dares seize it, and I am seizing greatness through my marriage. A princess bride should always have a maidenhead.”

  “As did you!” he said, reaching up to stroke a soft, rounded breast.

  She smiled briefly, then frowned again. “But no longer. And he may suspect our love for each other. After all, you say that he fell in love with me because of what you told him about me! He will not doubt your affection for me, and I shall have difficulty hiding mine for you. We cannot have him begin our marriage mistrusting me!”

  “Then marry me instead,” said Tristan lazily, trying to pull her back down beside him. “Mark will be somewhat disappointed when we break the news to him, but you are now only a fantasy to him, not yet anything real. He will recover when he sees how happy we are together.”

  Isolde shook her head emphatically. “I am a princess, sent by the royal court of Eire to marry a king, to end our long wars. I was born to become a queen upon my marriage. I cannot marry a castellan’s son instead, even if he is the king’s nephew!”

  “Isolde!” said Tristan, stung. “I thought you loved me, not the idea of becoming queen of Cornwall.”

  “I do love you,” she said, leaning down to give him a kiss. “I would love you even without the action of my mother’s potion. But we have already agreed on what we must d
o when we reach Tintagel. I am just worried what will occur if rumors reach Mark’s ear—if, for example, Brangein is not discreet.”

  “But surely we can trust your cousin,” said Tristan.

  “Especially if we do what I am thinking,” said Isolde with a small smile, and jumped out of bed and started putting on her clothes.

  When they both were dressed, Isolde pulled the tumbled sheets and quilts on the bed straight, then unbolted the cabin door and went out. “Brangein!” she called. “Dear cousin!”

  Brangein appeared in a moment, her curly black hair wind-blown. “We need to discuss something,” she said determinedly.

  “Yes, yes, that is why we called you,” said Isolde. “Come in so I can close the door.”

  Brangein came in and sat in a chair. She was generally so quiet and mild that Tristan usually did not even notice or think about her, even though he had known her as long as he had known Isolde. But now she stared at them both with black eyes hard and unwavering. She could not have been more than a few years older than Isolde, he thought, and although the cousins looked very different, Brangein being dark-haired and olive-skinned where Isolde was blond and rosy, he thought her features just as fair.

  “We will shortly be in Cornwall,” she said. “I yielded to you two, unwisely, and let you be together. But I shall not protect you from further folly. This must end, now and forever.”

  “And so it will,” said Isolde quickly. “I am to be queen of Cornwall, and there must never be a stain upon my honor or upon the king’s.”

  “There will be no slipping away into the garden in the evening,” Brangein continued firmly. “There will be no lingering smiles across the banquet hall. There will be no dances where the royal heir dances all night with the queen. There will be no nights where the king is away hunting and the queen invites another into the royal chamber.”

  “We know all this,” said Isolde uncomfortably. “You do not need to tell us.”