Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur (22 page)

"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.