Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur Read online

  The bard laughed out loud, despite his weariness, and a feeling of happiness stole over Yseult, mixing with the excitement and the physical awareness. She would probably miss much of the Samhain festivities caring for him, but his laughter was fine and strong, and she would trade any number of the handsome young men they had watched playing at the games for it.

  * * * *

  In the weeks following Samhain, Drystan felt stronger every day. He spent more and more time on his feet, leaning on Boinda and Brangwyn and Yseult less each time. During the days, he explored the rath and studied with Boinda and taught Yseult Latin, while the evenings were spent in the main round-house, learning from Laidcenn and any visiting bards who happened to seek out Ard Ladrann. Every night, twenty to thirty people collected around the fire to listen to the filid recite tales and sing songs. Women worked on their spinning or weaving during the entertainment, while the men polished weapons or carved wooden toys for the children.

  Drystan sat up on his pallet, his back propped against the wall. He listened to the stories and music and gazed on Yseult when she wasn't looking, allowing a quiet happiness to invade his soul. It was illusory, he knew; the way he had to shield his thoughts made him constantly aware just how illusory. He didn't know what would happen to him if his true identity were discovered, but for some reason, fear refused to take hold in his soul. He was alive, and the fairest woman in the world was not far away.

  Laidcenn put aside his harp, and a round of applause and thanks followed.

  "Perhaps Tandrys will perform for us next?" Yseult said, looking across the room at him with those unnaturally light eyes. "We are all curious to hear the voice it would have angered the Dagda to lose."

  "Anger the Dagda?"

  "That is how the fishermen who found you described your voice," Brangwyn said with a smile.

  "Are you feeling well enough?" the queen asked.

  Drystan nodded, getting up. "I think so." He got his harp out of the wicker box where his belongings were stored next to his pallet and ran his fingers over the strings. He didn't think he would disgrace himself, even though his fingers weren't as limber as they were in the best of times. At least in the last few weeks he'd had a chance to practice again: Boinda had begun teaching him the seven times fifty stories he needed to know to become a bard in Eriu.

  He moved to the center of the round-house and the place of honor next to the fire reserved for the bard. And next to Yseult.

  Drystan sat down in the seat vacated by Laidcenn. "Shall I sing a tale from Armorica?" he asked, plucking out a tune on his harp. He looked up from the strings into the light, bright eyes that haunted his night dreams and daydreams.

  "Please do," she said.

  He drew in a sharp breath and looked back down at the strings. "This is one of my favorites: a tale of woman at home both on land and at sea and the king who finds her and loves her and betrays her. It is the story of the beautiful Melusan." When he looked up again, he had himself under control.

  Drystan set into his song, gazing around the room from one member of his audience to the next. At least his voice carried over the usual small noises from a large group of people, the shuffles and whispers and clink of glasses and thunk of wooden tankard against wooden table. He was out of practice, but he knew he sang fine and true. He loved the story, and it was easy enough to lose himself in the music and the words. When Melusan's husband broke his oath and gazed upon her on the seventh day, he could see in their expressions that his audience was rapt. Nonetheless, he was unprepared for the reaction when he was finished. As the last note faded, the round-house was silent except for the crackling of the flames in the fire pit. Drystan looked up from the strings of his harp to see that many eyes were no longer dry. Then cheering and clapping broke out, and Boinda stepped forward to present Drystan with a tankard of wine.

  "It is a good thing that you saved the voice of this bard, my love," Crimthann said, and gave Yseult the Wise a kiss full on the lips. The queen smiled and shook her head.

  "Where in Armorica are you from?" the warrior Gamal asked.

  "Bro Leon."

  "Are you familiar with the court of Riwallon there?"

  Drystan nodded, schooling his face and thoughts.

  "Then perhaps you are acquainted with Drustanus of Dumnonia. He is said to have spent several years at that court."

  "I am acquainted with him, yes." He glanced briefly from Gamal to Boinda. The druid's gaze was steady, and Drystan took strength from it.

  "You know him?" Yseult asked, her unnaturally light eyes bright.

  Drystan regarded her calmly and nodded again.

  "He murdered my uncle."

  "Murdered?"

  The queen rose, went to Yseult, and laid a hand on her forearm. "Yseult, Tandrys is still not completely well. We shouldn't distress him."

  "Will you write a satire on the son of Marcus Cunomorus for me?" Yseult asked, ignoring her mother.

  Drystan shook his head. "Even if he is your enemy, I owe too much to him. I can't."

  "To us you owe your life."

  "Yes."

  "Is what you owe him more?"

  "No."

  "It is good that he doesn't abuse his power as a bard," Boinda said from his place on the other side of the fire. "Would you trust a bard who wrote a satire against someone who had shown him kindness?"

  Yseult was silent, and her mother turned to Laidcenn. "Laidcenn owes no such loyalty to the Dumnonian prince," the queen said. "Perhaps he can compose a satire on Drustanus."

  "I would be happy to," the Laigin bard replied.

  Drystan returned to his pallet and put away his harp, relief flooding him that he would not be required to compose a satire against himself. But why? He didn't believe in the literal power of satire, did he?

  This land of magic was taking hold of his mind.

  * * * *

  After he refused to write a satire for her, Yseult began to avoid him. He saw her from a distance, but only Brangwyn and the queen came to check his wound. He had nearly convinced himself it was for the best, that it would be easier to leave again in the spring if he saw little of her during the winter, when she came to him with her harp and asked him to teach her the Armorican song he had sung in the round-house a few nights before.

  And for him she sang. She had a low, throaty voice and no range, but it had its own charm, wild somehow, suggestive. Yseult, however, was not content with less than perfect and she preferred not to sing at all. Except for him.

  So he gave her lessons on the harp and lessons in Latin, watched the head of white gold bent over a piece of slate as she tried to copy the Roman letters he had scratched out for her in chalk or limestone. When the cold wind let up, they walked the perimeters of the rath, and he scratched more words into the dirt with a stick. As his leg grew stronger, they went farther, outside the rath and down to the seashore. Yseult learned everything as fast as he could teach her, and soon they were writing jokes to each other in the sand in Latin, words whipped away by the wind as fast as they could write them.

  In the evenings, he and Laidcenn, and sometimes even the old druid Boinda, sang songs and told tales, entertaining Ard Ladrann with music and words. Prince Crimthann and Yseult the Wise lived by the motto of a tale a night between Samhain and Beltaine.

  And Drystan was one of their bards. This was joy.

  His days were filled with a bright young woman with hair the color of the moon and eyes like the glow of the moon at harvest, a woman with laughter as clear as a running brook and a voice like the warm, sharp stones on the bank. This too was joy.

  Every day, the old bard Boinda sat with him beside the fire of the round-house, teaching him the tales of Eriu, the wisdom of the trees, and the laws of the Brehon. Slowly, Drystan began to slip away, and he became Tandrys, an Armorican bard, the prince of song instead of Dumnonia. On days when the sky was clear and the winter wind forgot to bite, people would travel from the nearby raths to Ard Ladrann to hear the bard with a voice to
make warriors weep who had been saved from the sea by a pair of fishermen and a Feadh Ree miracle.

  They wanted him to sing for them. He looked into their expectant faces, his hands on the strings and the fire at his back, with Yseult watching him intently. Here was his place, with the harp in his lap, gathering the evening attention to him with his fingers and his voice — not training for kingship or a role in the army of Ambrosius, not fighting giants or dragons or Saxons — or the Erainn.

  This too was joy, great joy. Drystan wished he could forget the danger of the role he played as easily as he forgot himself. He wished he could forget the tears Kurvenal had shed before he set Drystan out in the small boat of hide and wood. He wished he could forget the need to leave this island, wished he could remain and become the bard of Yseult the Fair.

  Sometimes, he almost did forget.

  When his leg was whole again and they went out hunting together, the princess of the Tuatha Dé Danann racing before him, her laughter mingling with the belling of the hounds and the crashing of the stag through the underbrush, then he almost forgot. Did forget.

  The air was cold and clear, and frost dusted the ground and bare branches like silver filigree. The hounds loped ahead, sure in their pursuit of their prey — those famous Erainn hunting dogs which commanded such great prices in all the known world, from Constantinople to Carthage to Cordoba. Between his thighs, the muscles of the horse moved in rhythm with the pounding of the hooves on the dry winter ground and the swish through the fallen leaves.

  He forgot everything but the pursuit, the woman before him, her pale blond braid whipping behind her, a rope taunting a drowning man. He forgot himself in the pursuit.

  But sometimes he wasn't allowed to forget.

  * * * *

  "The fire is not yet burned down; perhaps we can have another poem before we go to bed? Laidcenn?"

  Drystan rose, relinquishing the seat by the fire in the middle of the mead hall to Laidcenn. The older man sat down and brought his harp to his lap.

  "I have completed my satire on Drustanus, son of Cunomorus. Shall I play it?"

  "Oh, yes," Yseult said fervently. The queen nodded agreement.

  Drystan froze, the muscles in his stomach tightening. Then the moment of surprise passed and became a slight hesitation in his movement, a part of the limp he still suffered from his wound. He was lucky all attention was on Laidcenn — he had surely dropped his guard for an instant. He continued to move away from the fire and into the shadows, wondering if he could leave the round-house without drawing attention to himself. It was said a satire was most effective if the object of the satire was present to hear it. Of course, Drystan didn't really believe it was possible to harm someone with a poem, but before he had come to Eriu, he hadn't believed it possible that one person could read another's mind.

  Behind him, near the warmth of the fire, Laidcenn picked out a series of dark chords on his harp, while Drystan escaped to the darkest reaches of the building.

  "Drustanus, son of Cunomorus," the bard chanted.

  "Who stole from us father,

  "Who stole from us brother,

  "Who stole from us uncle,

  "A foster father in truth,

  "Let the betrayal visit you

  "Which has been visited on us.

  "May your joy be pain;

  "May your marriage bed be cold.

  "No children of your loins

  "Will play at your hearth;

  "Cold it will be, barren.

  "The kingship of Dumnonia

  "Will pass you by ..."

  Drystan slipped out into the cold night air, feeling the cold of Laidcenn's words slipping into his soul. He could hear no more. What he believed or didn't believe mattered not; he had felt the power of the words, hard and crisp and sharp, the dread they conveyed, the future they foretold. He didn't know if this was magic, but he knew for a fact that a satire heard could do more harm than one spoken many miles away.

  He made his way between the round-houses, colder inside than out, and sought out the alcove he had been given in the house of filid. In bed, he bundled the woolen blankets tightly around himself, but he couldn't get warm. It was not the fair Yseult he dreamed of that night.

  Chapter 10

  liebe ist ein also saelic dinc,

  ein also saeleclich gerinc,

  daz nieman ane ir lere

  noch tugende hat noch ere.

  (Love is such a glad thing, so blessed an enterprise, that without knowledge of it, virtue and honor are impossible.)

  Gottfried von Straßburg, Tristan

  "What are you making?" Brangwyn asked, examining the pattern of lambswool on Yseult's loom.

  "A cloak for the Armorican bard," Yseult said. "He still has so little of his own." She passed the shuttle of lighter wool through the loom strung with shades of blue. The filid often wore different colored cloaks to mark their areas of expertise: green for the makers of law, white for the makers of magic, and blue for the makers of music.

  "He is a fine one to make a cloak for," Brangwyn teased.

  Yseult refused to allow her cousin to rile her. "Yes, he is." And in the last few days, something had come between them, she knew not what. She had seen the way he looked at her, had seen the light in his green eyes when she approached. She knew that look, the look of desire, a bright hunger, greed almost. But now when she approached, he looked away. If the light was still there, he didn't allow her to see it.

  "As Danu is my witness, all of the women in the rath are in love with his voice," Brangwyn said. "And most of them are in love with the rest of him as well."

  Yseult raised one light eyebrow. "Even you?"

  Brangwyn chuckled. "Aidenn keeps me much too busy for me to pine after a well-shaped bard. But if he didn't, I might well be making a cloak for the fair Tandrys too."

  "You are in an unusually playful mood, Cousin. Is there any occasion?"

  "Crimthann has given Aidenn command of a band of warriors and has promised him a tract of land in the spring."

  Yseult jumped up from her loom and threw her arms around her cousin. With a tract of land, Aidenn's honor price would be increased tenfold. "That is good news! I must congratulate him myself."

  She followed Brangwyn between the houses and out of the gates of the rath. The weather had turned mild at the full moon, and a number of warriors were taking advantage of it for weapons practice. Yseult felt a sudden urge to join them. She had laid aside her sword long enough. Perhaps if she took it up again, the memory of Latin letters in the sand, of a warm arm around her shoulders and laughter in her ears, would not haunt her as often.

  They found Aidenn with the new recruits, boys of fourteen and fifteen still practicing with wooden swords. He marched between the pairs, calling out criticism and encouragement, his curly brown hair ruffled by the mild breeze. Lithben was working with some of the additional warriors sent for the defense of Ard Ladrann, little more than boys themselves. When she looked at these "recruits," Yseult could only be glad that they were so far from the territory of the Ui Neill.

  Aidenn saw Brangwyn, hurried over, and took her in his arms for a sound kiss. Only after this infatuated welcome for his wife of over two years did he turn to Yseult. "Good day, Cousin."

  "Brangwyn told me the news. Shall we have dancing around the fire tonight?"

  Aidenn laughed, his blue eyes alight. "Will you lead me out?"

  There was a touch on Yseult's arm and she turned. Gamal. Since she had joined Crimthann's court, she dreaded these moments. Gamal still had not accepted that their relationship was at an end.

  She pulled the cloak more tightly around her shoulders. "Good day, Gamal."

  "Yseult," he said, his once jolly voice intense. "May we talk?" His hand was on her arm, and he leaned into her like a lover.

  "There is no need," she said quietly.

  "Not for you, perhaps."

  She placed the flat of her hand on his chest, pushing ever so slightly. "Leave us now, Gama
l. Please."

  He looked down at her hand, and then took it in a quick fist so she couldn't escape. "As you will," he said, raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back. Then he released her and strode away quickly.

  * * * *

  From just outside the gates of the rath, Drystan watched the love play. When the red-headed warrior took Yseult's hand to his lips, he slipped back into the shadows so as not to be seen and leaned against the earthworks. It mattered not what he told himself, that his place was not here, that he was living a lie, that in a few months when the seas were calm again and the wind did not roar as loudly, he would leave this place and return to friends and family and the world he knew. That she was not for him. But when he saw her with another man, saw her touch him, saw him raise her hand to his lips, the twist in his gut told him that the truth was as much a lie as the lie he was living. She was not for him, but his body told him otherwise.

  He pushed away from the ramparts and limped back to his bed.

  * * * *

  He was working on a song, sitting near the fire in the house of druids, his harp on his lap and a flat rock he used as a slate next to him, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He went still, trying to still his mind as well. It was her, he could tell, by the feel of her hand, by her scent.

  "What is that?" she asked, bending over him. Her soft breasts beneath the fabric of her tunic brushed his upper arm, and he felt himself rise to attention.

  He took a deep breath. "A new song."

  "You write our language in the Latin script?"

  He nodded. She was still there, beside him and behind, one hand on his shoulder, one breast casually brushing his upper arm. It robbed him of reason.

  "I do not know the holy alphabet of the druids well," he said finally. "As you know, in many things I was raised in the Roman way."

  "But also in the old ways."

  "What is left of them in Armorica, yes."