Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur (24 page)

"Ui Cheinnselaig!" the warriors of Ard Ladrann bellowed as they fell on their attackers.

"Ui Neill!" the call came back.

Yseult nearly stumbled on the skirt of her tunic, and she sliced off the bottom with her dagger and flung it aside. Her clothes were already wet almost all the way through.

Tandrys was at the front of the defenders, between Crimthann and Aidenn, fighting as if he had never had a life-threatening wound.

When Crimthann saw her, he waved her back. "Stay back!" he yelled. "It's you they want!"

While his attention was on her, one of the Ui Neill charged him, but Tandrys swung his own sword down and took off the man's forearm with a sickening crunch of breaking bone. The Ui Neill warrior's scream of pain temporarily drowned out the clash of metal and the squish of feet in the mud. This morning the area outside the rath had been grass; now it was a quagmire.

Yseult tried to make her way back to the gates of the rath as Crimthann had ordered, but then two of the attackers were in her way. Before they could overpower her, Lithben was at her side, slashing at the enemy like Morrigu herself. Strands of iron-gray hair were plastered to her forehead and temples, and her tunic and breeches were already splattered with blood. Yseult was no longer aware of where anyone else was besides herself and Lithben and their opponents; the world around them was wet shades of gray, and the smell of blood and sweat and dirt filled her nostrils as she fought off the Ui Neill. Crimthann was right. The warrior facing her wasn't trying to kill her, he was trying to weaken her. If it hadn't been for Lithben, he and his companion probably would have taken her.

She heard the wet thud of metal piercing flesh and saw out of the corner of her eye as Lithben yanked her sword out of the other man's chest. When he crumpled to the ground, she turned her attention to Yseult's opponent. As soon as the second attacker saw he no longer had a chance of taking the princess, he turned tail.

"You have more bravery than brains," Lithben panted, wiping the sweat and rain out of her eyes. "Now get back to the gate. If they fight through to the ramparts, we're lost and so are you."

The battle was soon over. Either the attackers had underestimated the force at Ard Ladrann, or they had expected to gain more from the surprise attack. The change in weather had certainly been to the advantage of the defenders — if the buildings outside the rath had caught fire, it could have spread to the gate and from there into the rath itself.

Yseult watched from a protected spot in the shelter of the corner between the earthworks and the gate, hugging her arms to her sides to keep warm. The battle fever was leaving her, and all she felt now was sick, cold, wet, and chagrined. But how could she have known the attackers would try to take her? It was her mother Lóegaire wanted.

When she saw she would no longer be needed to defend the rath, she hurried back inside to the house of healing to help her mother tend the injured. There would be no sleep for her this night.

* * * *

The man whose arm Drystan had severed bled to death in the mud outside the rath. When the last attacker had fled or was captured, Drystan collapsed. His wounds were minor, but the pain in his leg had come back in a rush, and nausea at the smell of blood and mud and murder made him nearly ill.

"Aidenn! Domnall!" Crimthann called out to the warriors closest to them. "Bring this man to the house of healing and be sure that the queen or her daughter look to him." Grateful, Drystan allowed the other men to take him up. He didn't know if he would have been able to walk.

When he next awoke, he found himself in the round-house of the prince. Daylight streamed through the skylight in the roof. He pushed himself to his elbows, wondering why he wasn't in the house of healing or the house of druids as was his wont, and at the movement, a slave scurried out of the door. Soon Crimthann was striding through the double doors to Drystan's pallet.

"Yseult told me you had no serious wounds," the prince said. Drystan was awake enough to realize he probably meant the queen rather than her daughter. "I'm glad to see she was right."

"What am I doing here?"

"There was no more room in the house of healing. And here there is someone to care for you."

Drystan swung his legs over the side of the pallet. "I am well enough."

"Last night you fainted from pain."

And disgust
, Drystan thought. "What is the toll?" he asked.

"We lost two, they lost twelve. Seven of our men lie in the house of healing. Three of their warriors are captured."

He nodded, his brain still fogged with exhaustion and the aftermath of pain.

"I owe you my life," the prince said quietly.

Drystan's head shot up, and his gaze locked with that of the chieftain of the rath. "And I would not have survived without the treatment of Yseult the Wise."

Crimthann was silent for a moment. "Tandrys, you are not only a gifted bard, you are more than just handy with a sword. I know you intend to return to Armorica in the spring, but perhaps what I can offer you is more than what awaits you across the sea. If you stay, I will bestow on you the honor price of a fili of the fifth rank, the highest for a bard of song among my people."

Drystan stared at the prince. There were a total of seven ranks of fili in Eriu, but young bards with no training in law or magic generally joined the court of a king or prince at the lowest rank.

"I have spoken with Boinda on this," Crimthann continued. "And he thinks you could still do the training necessary to raise your honor price even higher. If you so wish, I would sponsor you at one of the schools. But even if you do not, you would be aes dana, with right of passage throughout Eriu, regardless of king or kingdom."

"I — but I still do not know the required number of songs."

"You have saved the life of a prince." Then Crimthann grinned. "Besides, I'm quite sure you will increase my fame even without the required songs. In a few short months, you have already made a name for yourself with your memorable voice and your talent on the harp."

Drystan didn't feel awake enough to understand what was happening, and he rubbed his eyes. "I am honored. But I hadn't thought to stay here in Eriu."

The prince nodded as if he had expected the objection. "You need not decide now. Think on it. You would not have to remain a bard at Ard Ladrann. I am a member of the kinship group which could be chosen king of the Laigin and am counted one of the most likely candidates. And remember, a fili of a king's son might look as high as a daughter of a queen for a wife."

There it was, the true temptation, the final bribe. Crimthann had not said as much, but he had surely seen the way Drystan looked at Yseult. It did not take the power of knowing to read a look. The prince was putting a notion in Drystan's head which he had been fighting for months, putting a possibility into words, giving them shape and power.

"I need time to think," he said quietly.

"Of course. Can you walk now?"

Drystan stood, hoping last night's skirmish had not set him back too much. His old wound ached dully, but he could stand well enough.

"Come, I will take you to the house of healing, and someone there can look at your wound again." Drystan pulled the blue cloak Yseult had given him over his shoulders, and Crimthann put his arm around him and helped him to the small house near the gates of the rath. Drystan was grateful for the prince's help; standing was one thing, but walking another entirely.

The rain had stopped in the night, and the sky was a bright gray, the ground beneath their feet still wet. The house of healing was full, as Crimthann had said, the pallets taken by the seven injured Laigin warriors as well as two of the Ui Neill. After helping Drystan to a chair, Crimthann joined the elder Yseult, who was changing a poultice on the shoulder of one of the Ui Neill warriors.

"Now that you are awake, I demand to know your name and tribe and who will ransom you," Crimthann said to the injured man.

"I am Setnae of the Ui Macc. The High King of all of Eriu, Lóegaire, will pay my ransom — if you dare send to him."

"What, will he not treat our messenger with honor?"

"He will. But any ransom you have from him, he will win back. Lóegaire will take the boruma by force to punish the Laigin for their treachery. And he will retake his queen. This I swear by all the gods of my tribe."

Yseult the Wise stood, and Crimthann slipped an arm around her waist. "Are you aware who has been treating your wounds?" he asked quietly. Setnae said nothing. "It is none other than the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann herself. If you are ransomed and returned to Lóegaire, perhaps you will tell him of what you saw." The prince turned her face to his and placed a deliberate kiss on her lips, his hands wandering from her face to her shoulders to her waist. The queen returned the kiss and then gently pushed Crimthann back.

"Enough," she said.

Crimthann grinned, a question in his eyes, and Yseult the Wise laughed and shook her head. The Ui Neill warrior looked on, his expression grim.

"Perhaps you should advise Lóegaire to get himself a queen before the next Feis of Tara," the prince said. "The people will not hold a feis for a king with no queen. Come, my love, I have brought the bard with me."

As the queen examined the cuts and bruises on his legs and arms and checked the old wound again, Drystan watched Yseult and Brangwyn brewing tisanes and changing dressings, washing wounds and feeding healing teas to injured men. He remembered the sight of them last night in the rain, Yseult a white fury in the dark, battling the intruders with the strength of a man, a lioness protecting her lair. He watched her and remembered Crimthann's words — if he were the bard of a king's son, she would be within his reach. If he were not her mortal enemy. But the possibility spoken sent desire curling in his belly, fire in his flesh and his mind.

* * * *

The next day, his leg and the weather were both much improved, and Drystan took his harp and fled the close confines of the rath. With his instrument slung across his back and the blue wool cloak whipping around his ankles, he walked through the winter forest, its trees bare of leaves, until he could hear the pounding of the surf and smell the salt in the air and see the dark gray-green water come up to meet the mottled iron gray sky.

Before the grass gave way to sand and the trees could no longer find a grip in the shifting ground, he found a stump and sat down, settling his blue cloak around him. He liked to imagine that it carried the scent of her fingers, the scent of a life beyond his reach, liked to imagine them working the wool which surrounded him now, long fingers, quick and strong, as capable with a loom as with a sword.

Ah, how would he ever be able to forget her?

He pulled the harp from his shoulder and began to play a random succession of chords, allowing his fingers to drift over the strings at will, picking out a haphazard melody. After a while, he found a pattern which appealed to him and hummed beneath his breath, adding words as they came to him, using the dialect of Armorica, his first language when it came to music. He had discovered his love for music before going into fosterage with Blodewedd and Riwallon, but only with them had he been able to indulge in his passion as he pleased. Good foster parents, they saw that he received the training of a prince, a complete course in arms and horsemanship and Latin, the language of the world, but as long as he completed the required lessons, he was free to spend as much time as he wanted with the bards of Bro Leon, learning whatever they were willing to teach him.

The music he played blended in with the rhythm of the surf and the calls of the gulls, and his soul was soothed, at least for the moment. He remembered how he used to flee to the cave at Dyn Tagell, where all he could see were the sea and the sky, and the only sound was the crash of the waves against the rocky cliffs of his home. Here in Eriu they said the water held spirits, and he could readily believe it; spirits that were sometimes angry, sometimes benign. His song became a paean to the spirits of the sea, the korrigans and sea serpents and water women. He sang, his voice lifting above the bare gray trees and gray waves and gray winter sky.

She was here, he felt it. His fingers stilled and he turned. She stood between the bare trees, a white flame flanked by her two sleek Erainn hounds.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," she said. "The gatekeeper was starting to get worried, you had been gone so long."

He glanced up at the sky. It was already late afternoon, and he hadn't noticed. "If you hadn't come, I probably would have stayed until dark and not found my way back," he said with a smile.