Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur (29 page)

Finally the darkness and the smell of smoke made good its threat. To the west, they heard the battle cry, "Ui Neill!" answered by their own troops, "Ui Cheinnselaig!"

At almost the same time, the southern gate between the earthwork defenses burst open, and the enemy began pouring in.

In their midst was High King Lóegaire himself.

Although they were soon joined by more warriors awakened by Fiachra or the sounds of battle, they were at a disadvantage with the enemy already through their gates. Illann's only strategy was to push the intruders back towards the gate as well as they could. Back-to-back, she and Ailbe slashed into the enemy, trying to protect each other as much as possible while they kept the Ui Neill from slipping between their forces and making their way farther into the rath.

Among the fighters of the Ui Neill, Yseult recognized Lóegaire's son Lugaid. Unfortunately, he recognized her as well. He and a small band of warriors began to fight their way through to her. Ailbe was engaged in single combat by one of the Ui Neill and she no longer had his protection at her back. Ahead, she saw Senach fall with a short sword through the throat, followed by Guaire. The metallic smell of blood filled her nostrils and the ring of blade against blade filled her ears. Despite the cool night air, sweat ran down her forehead and into her eyes, stinging, almost blinding her. She wiped it away as best she could with a bloody forearm.

Then more of their own forces were joining the battle, several surrounding her, protecting her. She noticed Aidenn next to her and presumed Brangwyn was somewhere nearby, but she couldn't turn her head to look. The warriors of the Ui Neill were not attacking her directly, only defending themselves from her thrusts, and she had to take advantage of that as much as possible.

She saw an opening and thrust her sword into the neck of a man attacking Aidenn. The Ulaid warrior fell at her feet with a gurgle when she pulled her sword out, but she fought back the nausea, turning to block another sword meant to cut down Dongal on her other side.

It soon became obvious to the defenders that they were outnumbered. Not only that, the Ui Neill warriors were utterly single-minded, holding their position near the south gate and driving a wedge between Yseult and the men fighting with her. As far as she could determine, they were not even attempting to fight their way farther into the rath. One party of warriors engaged Illann and those nearest him, while Lugaid and his followers relentlessly drove Yseult and her defenders away from the rest of the Laigin warriors. She had lost sight of Lóegaire.

This time there was no mud and no rain, and they were defending Dun Ailinne and not Ard Ladrann, but the sense of similarity crept over her again. Only rarely had Yseult been on the side of the defenders — her experience was primarily in cattle raids, where little or no killing occurred. Not like this.

Yseult had no awareness of who might be injured or fallen. Her world had collapsed to the sword in her right hand and the shield in her left, Aidenn on her right and Dongal on her left, and warriors attacking them who had been her playmates as a child. Moonlight and blood and the ache of her fighting arm. She could no longer distinguish the individual cries and grunts of battle, the sound of sword on bone, the squish of feet in ground soaked with blood.

Dongal next to her fell, and she had to block her mind from his agony. She drove her sword into the breast of his murderer, and his scream merged with the screams of the others. The smell of sweat and blood, the smell of blood and earth, all were mixing together in her mind with the pain of those injured and not yet past pain, their final thoughts of their sweethearts or their favorite hounds or the raths where they had grown up. She must have sustained an injury at some point: she could no longer shut it all out, the memories of the dying. Her concentration was going, gone.

And then Aidenn fell.

Yseult felt the burst of pain in Brangwyn's mind as if it were her own, and her sword arm faltered. At that moment, one of Lugaid's men knocked her weapon out of her hand, and in one smooth movement, grabbed her around the waist and heaved her over his shoulder. With the world upside-down, she could see Lugaid lifting Aidenn's decapitated head high in the air and letting out a blood-curdling cry of victory. She bit down hard on the bare arm of the man who was carrying her, and he began to yell curses by all the gods of his tribe. Suddenly she was thrown on the ground, in the midst of the mud made of blood, the wind knocked out of her.

"Lóegaire made us swear not to hurt you, but I don't see any other way of getting you out of this rath." With the first kick, the small shield was out of her hand, and with the second, the world around her went black.

* * * *

When she came to, she was in a bare round-house with her mother and her cousin. There were no decorations on the walls, no swords or shields or herbs or wall-hangings, and no fire in the fire-pit. The other two women sat on either side of her, and her mother was bathing Yseult's head with a tisane that smelled of marigold, rue and wormwood.

Her mother she had expected to see, but not Brangwyn.

Yseult struggled to sit up. "You too, Cousin?"

Brangwyn shrugged. "The last thing I remember before waking, I was clinging to Lugaid like a madwoman out for revenge. They must have decided they had no choice but to take me along."

Suddenly, Yseult's memories washed over her, and she saw Aidenn's head dangling from Lugaid's fist. She took her cousin's hand and squeezed tightly. Brangwyn squeezed back, but there was nothing in her eyes, nothing in her mind.

"What about the others?" Yseult asked, afraid to hear the news.

"Lithben is dead," her mother said quietly.

"Illann and Ailbe were still alive when I was taken," Brangwyn added. "We know little else."

"I saw Dongal, Senach and Guaire fall," Yseult added with a catch in her voice.

The three of them leaned into each other, and their arms slipped to each others' shoulders. Yseult felt dizzy and weak and half-dead with loss. It was no wonder that her cousin felt completely dead to her mind.

The door opened and Lugaid appeared. "I hear Brangwyn is finally awake," he said.

It was immediately obviously to all three of them what he wanted. Yseult drew in a sharp breath and clutched her cousin's hand.

"It wouldn't matter whether I am awake or not," Brangwyn said, her hand limp in Yseult's.

"The Ui Neill have now lost all respect for the old ways, it seems," her mother said. "Does your father think that too will give him more days in this world?"

"At least now that he has you again it will give him more days as king," Lugaid said sharply. Then he turned to Brangwyn. "Come."

She rose. "By Danu, I swear you will have no joy of what you are about to do."

Yseult could feel his hesitation, feel the turns of his mind and the tricks he used to persuade himself to do what he wanted. Brangwyn looked too appealing with her thick black braid and the bruises on her arms and neck: the visible evidence that there was nothing to fear from the Old Race, that their people could be overpowered too, just as the Gael could. And the thought of having this haughty young woman at his mercy, overpowering
her
, paying her back for the long scar which now graced his jaw, was stronger than the respect he had grown up with for the Feadh Ree.

He grabbed Brangwyn's wrist and pulled her through the door after him.

Yseult tried to stand, but her mother's hand and her own dizziness stopped her. "You don't have the strength to protect her, my love. She must protect herself."

* * * *

By the time Lugaid got Brangwyn into his own house, he was already hard at the thought of forcing himself into her, brutal and fast, hearing her cries of pain and pleas for mercy.

His wife Roisin was at her loom, and he ordered her out. She rose slowly from her stool, gazing from him to Brangwyn and back, her open, merry face closing to him. Without a word, she snapped her fingers at the small dog at her feet. The lapdog sprang up, eager at the prospect of a walk, and followed her out of the round-house.

"You will never see her again," Brangwyn said after the door closed behind her.

"What do you know?" Lugaid said. "Look at your bruises. You are a woman like any other." He was growing progressively more confident. Here he had forced Brangwyn, a woman with the blood of the Old Race, into his house, and the great Danu her tribe swore by had yet to appear to strike him down.

He pushed her to the rushes of the floor and his cock throbbed when he saw her wince with pain. He quickly undid the tie of his breeches and pushed them down, pushed her legs apart with his foot and fell on her greedily, pulling up her tunic with one hand while he guided himself into her with the other. It was painful forcing himself in at first, but once he'd gotten past the physical sign of her reluctance, she was gloriously tight. He closed his eyes and hammered into her, thinking of her bruises and her pain, and came almost immediately. He groaned and opened his eyes, looking down at her to revel in the fear and suffering on her face.

And screamed.

Beneath him was not beautiful, dark-haired Brangwyn, but a corpse, a mask of death, the skin almost black with decay, the eyes hollow, the teeth brown as old ivory.

He screamed again and scrambled up, tripping over the breeches around his ankles as he tried to run out of the house.

Lugaid would not rape another woman for a very long time.

* * * *

Brangwyn was left in peace after that, but Yseult the Wise was not so lucky. Lóegaire stayed away from her for the first few days while she was nursing her daughter back to health, but after the princess got up from her pallet and joined her mother and Brangwyn in the herb garden, Lóegaire had his former consort brought to him.

It was said that those of the race of the Feadh Ree kept their youth longer than the Gaels, and if anyone was proof of that, it was the tall figure before him who refused to kneel, with chin high and hair of gold past her waist. His blood stirred.

"You will return to my house and bed as of tonight," Lóegaire demanded. "I do not recognize the divorce you spoke and will have you back as wife."

"Just because you will it does not make it so," the Tuatha Dé queen said.

Lóegaire gave a bitter laugh. "I would call it more than will. I have you here and that makes you mine again."

"If that is enough truth for you, than I pity you, Lóegaire."

It wasn't quite enough truth for him, but he tried to fool himself into believing it; tried to fool himself while she lay motionless, unprotesting beneath him; tried to fool himself as the color left her cheeks and the flesh left her bones and the light went out of her eyes. She was the kingmaker and he was the king and she was his. That was truth.

* * * *

The truth was too much for Yseult the Fair. She was cursed with awareness. She had felt Brangwyn's rape, and now she felt her mother's, over and over, watched her mother slip away, becoming less and less with each passing night.

"Why hasn't Crimthann come for us yet!" Yseult stormed, pacing the small round-house she shared with Brangwyn.

"Perhaps he has tried. Have you seen the number of warriors Lóegaire has amassed here at Tara? Do you even notice what is going on around you anymore?"

"No."

"Yseult, you need to block yourself off from your mother. She is not herself now and she forgets to shield her thoughts."

"That is precisely why I must stay open to her."

"But it will drive you mad!"

Yseult stopped pacing and turned to stare at her cousin. By now her bruises from the battle and the mistreatment she had suffered at Lugaid's hands had faded, but Yseult could still see them, every last one, the ones between her thighs and on her shoulders and circling her wrists.

Lóegaire was careful never to leave a mark on her mother because that would be grounds for divorce which even he would have to recognize, but of the three of them, the queen was the most to be pitied.

And Yseult? She was guarded, nothing more. No rape, no abuse, nothing. Only guilt.

"It
is
driving me mad. Look what they have done to you and my mother. Me they treat as if I were a valuable broodmare."

"You are."

Yes, she was. They wanted to keep her in good shape so they could trade her to Marcus Cunomorus for peace. Drystan's father. Soon after they arrived in Tara, Lóegaire had informed her that he had sent to Dumnonia to resume negotiations.