Externally, all honor required that he treat his wife with affection and get her with child—if he had not already done so. But the final shreds of his own self-respect demanded that he try to reestablish the single-minded commitment he had once sworn to Isolde the Blonde—even if she did not know about it, even if Mark would be delighted to learn of Tristan’s marriage.
It did not help Tristan that the feel of his wife’s breasts against his back ignited hot desire within him. These past months had marked the only time in his life that he had been able to enjoy love in a comfortable bed without always keeping an ear cocked for discovery, ready to make a furtive escape. The Cave of Lovers, in retrospect, now seemed to him like the rough camping that Isolde the Blonde had always found it, not the paradise on earth he had asserted.
He tried to remind himself that, not long ago, his revulsion at himself had killed any urge to possess his wife. He still felt self-revulsion, but now his mind was full of their love-making, the love he now felt he must renounce. Was he never again going to see the mischievous look in the dark eyes of Isolde Fair Hands as she prepared to blow out the candle? Was he ready to forsake the teasing way she nibbled his ear? Would he never again feel her naked body arching against his? It was all he could do to keep from turning around and clasping her to him.
He could not lie awake all night like this, aching with a desire he could not satisfy. With an effort to stay still, he began trying to relieve the tension himself.
Either Isolde Fair Hands had not been asleep after all, or else she woke at once at the first faint creak of the rope bed. “Sweet husband,” she whispered, “you should have told me! If love-making is more than your wound can bear, at least let me give you pleasure. We can be joined together again once you feel a little stronger.”
She kissed him and took hold of him, first gently, then more firmly once she was sure his involuntary moan was not one of pain. The sensation was intense, the physical pleasure overwhelming. Isolde continued to kiss him as Tristan lay back on the pillows and wanted to die.
III
A few months later, news came of a besieged castle two days’ ride away, near Arromanches, the town that Tristan had falsely claimed as his hometown when he first went to Cornwall. The name caught his attention—one of his first lies, in what had become over the past several years an apparently endless series.
But then an idea came to him, one he turned over and which became more appealing in his despair the more he thought about it.
“I will go to Arromanches to join the siege,” he told Kaedin and Lord Jovelin. His tongue tasted sour, and his voice was loud in his own ears, as though he were shouting. “Justice demands it.”
He wondered briefly who was fighting and why. Well, he would doubtless find out once he arrived which side had more right, and he would ally with that side. It didn’t really matter.
They all stared at him, Jovelin and Kaedin and Isolde. Were they excited by this idea, or did they just wonder why he was talking so loudly? “And I shall go with you!” said Kaedin the Bold.
This had not been Tristan’s intention at all. “No, no, you need to stay here, in case someone attacks Karke.”
“Kaedin and I shall both go,” announced Isolde Fair Hands. “Our father can defend the castle without us—you showed us all how.”
“No, dear wife,” said Tristan, the words coming out more and more awkwardly the more he tried to sound sincere. “I could not bear to put you into danger.”
“Maybe your wound will be feeling better again when you return,” she whispered in his ear.
In the end, the best Tristan could manage was to ride off with Kaedin the Bold, while his wife and Lord Jovelin stayed in Karke. His mind was full of the death of Morold of Eire. He considered sending a message secretly to Isolde the Blonde before he left, to tell her that he had always loved her, but she would not believe him. At this point, he did not believe himself.
For the two days that he and Kaedin rode side by side, going off to war, the younger man began by singing songs of heroism and great victories. But when Tristan, who had never been known not to join in a song, just rode silently, he too eventually gave up all effort to talk or sing.
Tristan himself scarcely noticed his companion. He concentrated on riding straight ahead, deliberately not thinking of what he planned to do.
The castle outside of Arromanches was still under siege when he and Kaedin arrived. The attackers had settled down to wait out the defenders. Tristan decided at once that it would be too hard to try to join the defenders, but it didn’t matter. Either side would do.
News of the battle for Karke and Tristan’s role in it had long since reached Arromanches, so the attackers were delighted to have Tristan and Kaedin join them. “Waiting for them to run out of food will take too long,” Tristan commented. “I recommend attack.”
The besiegers were surprised at this bald recommendation from someone they had been told was a master tactician. “We tried scaling ladders,” they told him, “and were repelled. Our trebuchet could not damage the walls. The moat is too wide for us to try a battering ram on the great gates. The castle is built on bedrock, so it will be nearly impossible to undermine. We’re hoping their food will give out in another month or two.”
“Taunt them,” said Tristan. “Dare them to ride out and attack you. Then you will have them.”
So great was his reputation after the brief war with the duke, in spite of the blank stares he now gave everyone, or so tired were the besiegers of their forced inactivity, that they agreed to try his plan, such as it was. They could not realize, he thought, that his real plan had nothing to do with whether or not this castle was successfully taken.
He and the leaders of the besieging army rode up toward the moat and the castle’s great gates. The others were all encased in mail, but Tristan wore no armor other than his helmet. His cloak was wrapped around him so that no one would notice.
They reined in just out of bowshot. He had thought of giving Kaedin some final message to carry to his sister, but he was afraid that doing so would give away his intention. Besides, he did not know what to say to Isolde Fair Hands. Anything he could think of would either wound her or be false.
Instead he said goodbye in his heart to Isolde the Blonde.
“We demand again that you open the gates to us!” the captain of the attackers shouted up at the castle. “Come out under a white flag, and we shall let you go unharmed!”
“Getting bored already?” the defenders shouted back. “Or just hungry? We have enough food for another year—were you hoping we’d share?”
This was not what Tristan intended, that the defenders should be doing the mocking. So he himself called out, “I’m sure you’re cozy and comfortable there in your castle! For cowards like you, it must be quite a relief not to have to fight!”
He saw the knights on the castle battlements conferring, doubtless asking each other who was this new lord who had joined the siege.
“Too frightened to answer me, are you?” he continued. “You’d rather hide than put your strength and honor to the test!”
“You must be getting desperate!” someone shouted from the castle—a bearded man with a booming voice who Tristan concluded was the castle’s lord. “Why else would you try the most transparent trick there is—daring us to open the gates and ride out, so you can cut us down and ride in through the gates yourselves?”
It looked like Tantris the Trickster’s stratagem wasn’t going to work as easily as he hoped. “All your talk of tricks is just talk!” he shouted. “Talk to cover your cowardice!”
He saw the leaders of the besieging army glance at each other. They were not sure of him either. Well, he had hoped for an open battle, in which he could take at least a few men to hell with him, but he would take what he could get.
“Bring the scaling ladders!” he yelled. “We’ll pluck those cowards out of their castle like plucking an oyster from its shell!”
And without waiting to
see if anyone was beside him, with or without scaling ladders, he kicked his horse into a gallop and charged toward the castle. As he rode he shouted, “Chevalerie de Parmenie!”
Even in fighting now he would have to dissemble, to suggest that he cared which side won this conflict or even cared why they were fighting, to suggest that he wanted to live.
He was looking up, toward the men on the battlements and in the arrow slits. He didn’t intend to but he couldn’t help it. And so he saw the spear coming, hurled straight down toward him as he approached the moat.
He jerked sideways reflexively, and the spear, aimed at his chest, struck instead into his arm. Searing pain shot through him, and it seemed to shatter the narrow black corridor through which he had mentally been moving.
He kicked his horse, clinging to the reins with his good hand, and the spear fell away, its sharp edge ripping an even larger wound as it fell. Crossbow bolts hit the ground on either side as he galloped wildly back toward the besiegers’ lines. The sky seemed brilliantly blue, the trees beyond the attackers’ camp unusually green, and the mocking voices of the defenders behind him sharp and clear, as though he had a moment ago seen everything through a mist, and the spear had split the mist apart and let in the day.
“So, now that they’ve seen you retreat, they’ll make a sortie,” said the captain of the attacking force. “Is that your plan?”
Tristan could not answer. His arm was bleeding hard now, staining his clothes. Hands reached out to catch him as he slid helplessly from his horse.
All he could think of was the duke’s son, defying his father and abandoning all good sense in order to fight against him. Maybe the boy too had been hoping to die.
Except that he now wanted to live. He stared up toward the sun, feeling the warmth of its rays and the soft touch of the breeze, while men he did not know bound up his arm and tried to staunch the bleeding.
Kaedin appeared before his eyes. “Tristan! Where is your chain mail?”
“I guess I forgot to put it on this morning,” he replied. He tried to make it sound like a joke. It came out as a gasp.
Kaedin shook his head, between worry and exasperation. “The merest page would not forget his armor!”
Weak from loss of blood, Tristan closed his eyes. He could hear the attackers commenting that, if he had hoped to lure the defenders into a dangerous sortie, then his stratagem had failed.
Two days later, telling the besiegers that he felt slightly stronger, he and Kaedin set off to return to Karke. As the towers of the castle disappeared behind them, Tristan realized that he had no idea how the quarrel that led to the siege had arisen in the first place, and he could not even remember the name of the lord whose army he had briefly joined. From their tepid farewells, he sensed that they had been extremely disappointed in the famous Tristan, hero of Karke. Well, he was disappointed himself.
He had not been killed in battle—and, for now, he was very glad, because he wanted to live. But the pain of his wound was worse than ever. He could not use the arm at all, and yellow fluid leaked from around the bandage. He recognized from the wound he had received from Morold what a badly infected cut felt like.
Should he try to go to Eire, to seek healing there again? The queen had saved his life twice, but the first time she had thought he was an intriguing and golden-voiced minstrel, and the second time she had felt grateful that because of him her daughter would not have to marry a man she detested. There was no reason to expect her help a third time—even assuming he could make it all the way to Eire.
But Isolde the Blonde had brought many herbs and potions with her to Cornwall—the love potion had been just one of many bottles and little pots. Unlike her mother, she had loved him passionately. Even though she must be furious that he was married, he hoped that she had not forgotten that love. If he could sail home to Cornwall, and he was not promptly hung as an adulterer, she might be able to save him.
By the time they reached Karke he had begun to doubt he could survive a trip to Cornwall, much less to Eire. But it was his only hope. He could scarcely stay upright in the saddle the last day, and Kaedin both had to help him down from his horse and up onto it again every time they stopped to rest. Speaking seemed like too much effort, and after a while Kaedin stopped trying to speak to him. Tristan could not eat, but he was constantly thirsty.
When they were finally in Karke’s courtyard, he slumped into Kaedin’s arms and then collapsed onto the flagstones, too weak to stand. He had survived kidnapping and shipwreck, a duel with Morold, a battle against the old duke of Bretagne, a fight with a bog-dragon, and the siege of Karke, and now he was going to die because he had, in his despair, deliberately let himself be speared.
He could almost see Morold shaking his head. This was not a warrior’s death.
IV
Isolde Fair Hands came rushing into the courtyard. “Tristan! Sweet friend! Are you wounded? Are you ill? Kaedin, what happened to him?”
She dropped to the paving stones and took Tristan’s head into her lap. She saw the blood seeping from under the bandage on his arm, took in his pale, sweat-spotted face, and her voice became strangely calm. “Kaedin,” she said again, “what happened?”
Kaedin was flustered and unhappy. “He led the attack on the castle,” Tristan heard him answering, as though from a great distance. “A spear got through his mail.”
Tristan felt that he ought to be grateful that Kaedin had not said that he had, with less sense than a child playing at being a knight, rushed the castle alone without even wearing his armor. But he could not feel anything.
“We need a herbalist, at once,” said Isolde briskly.
But Tristan managed to open his eyes and lift his head. “There is only one person who can save my life,” he muttered, his lips and throat dry. “Queen Isolde of Cornwall. She learned the healing arts from her mother, the queen of Eire.”
“The queens with the same name as me!” said Isolde Fair Hands, trying to sound cheerful and failing utterly.
Tristan was breathing rapidly and shallowly. He had to make sure she understood what he was saying. “I have to reach Cornwall. There will be a ship at Parmenie. Help me get to Parmenie.”
Isolde Fair Hands frowned, but after a moment she gave a hard nod. She summoned men to help her carry Tristan to a bed, where he fell into a fevered doze. He woke several hours later to find a herbalist rebandaging his arm. Isolde, dressed for riding, had managed to rig a litter between two horses, into which he was gently lifted. Tristan dimly heard Isolde and Kaedin bidding their father farewell, then they took off, as fast as they could go with the litter. Tristan swayed with the horses’ motion, feeling worse than ever, and dove back into unconsciousness.
He must have eaten something or at least drunk something during the journey, but he had no memory of anything until he lifted his head and saw the tall towers of Parmenie. Home. He had come home to die.
Curvenal with his wife and family were just as distressed and worried for him as Kaedin and Isolde. Tristan was almost glad that Florete, his dear foster-mother, was away on a visit; he would not have to face her agony on top of his own.
“Of course you can take our ship,” said Curvenal. “But,” dropping his voice, “do you think he will survive the journey?”
Tristan’s body felt weak and distant, almost as though it belonged to somebody else, but his mind seemed clear for the first time in days. He roused himself to speak, not wanting them talking about him as if he were already dead. “I do not believe I can make it to Cornwall. You will have to send for the queen. Only she can heal me.”
“I’ll go myself,” said Kaedin. “I’ll leave at once.”
Tristan thought that he had always gone to Isolde the Blonde. It was only appropriate that, for once, she come to him.
“But isn’t it time for the queen’s confinement?” said Isolde Fair Hands, concerned. “She can’t travel any more than you can!”
“There is no confinement,” Tristan murmured. “She wi
ll come. I know she will come. I hope she will come.” He paused, then reached out to Isolde Fair Hands. “Please, sweet wife, grant this boon. Kaedin, take this cameo ring with you. It was my mother’s ring. The queen will recognize it, even if she does not know you.”
His wife looked at his face, eyes narrow, but said nothing. She slipped off her wedding ring and handed it to her brother.
“When you come back,” said Tristan to Kaedin, then stopped as a wave of pain passed through him. “When you come back,” he tried again in a minute, “if she is with you, have the sailors hoist red sails. Then I will know she is coming. If I see red sails, then I will know I must hold out one more hour.”
“Red sails,” said Kaedin. “Red sails if I’m bringing her back with me. Right.” He jumped up from where he had been kneeling by Tristan and his sister. “If the weather is with me, I may be back in less than a week.” And he strode away before Tristan could speak again.
When he was gone, Isolde Fair Hands said quietly, “No confinement? I think, sweet husband, that you have not told me everything about your departure from Cornwall.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, barely over a whisper, tears of humiliation leaking from under closed lids. “I was ashamed to tell you. The king, my uncle, drove me out.”
Even that, he thought, was not strictly true. He had not been driven out; he had fled to escape certain punishment for adultery. Even when trying to confess his shame, he found himself lying. He wondered if he had ever been entirely honest with anyone—except Isolde the queen.
His wife seemed to see through his lies disconcertingly well. “I do not wish to pain you further, Tristan,” she said, her voice quiet but icily cold. “But I need to know. Why were you driven from Cornwall?”
He did not answer, only moaned, unable to think of any more plausible lies but also unable to tell her the truth.
Ashes of Heaven Page 33
