Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur (30 page)

And Yseult had informed him that she would never consent.

* * * *

After they recovered from their injuries, Yseult and Brangwyn were integrated into the daily routine of the rath, almost as if they were not prisoners. Guards hovered nearby when they helped with the weaving or in the house of healing or teaching the young ones; but Lóegaire's attitude seemed to be that it would be a waste to allow four healthy, talented hands to go idle. Besides, he was trying to uphold the pretense that their presence here was normal.

With Lochru dead, Lucet's health failing, and Erc more interested in learning the new wisdom than passing on the old, Dubtach had come to her and Brangwyn to ask if they would help in teaching the young. They were not druids, but from the queen they had received much of the training necessary to become ban file and healers. Yseult was watched constantly, but she was allowed to move about, and so she and her cousin had begun to pass on the old wisdom to those who cared to learn.

And then, before the second new moon since their arrival at Tara, Yseult the Wise no longer came out among them. It was as if she had disappeared from Tara.

Yseult pestered the king and tried to use her power of calling to contact her mother, but Lóegaire would not tell her why the queen was no longer allowed out of the king's quarters in the great hall, and she could no longer reach her mother's mind.

A month of such uncertainty passed, a month in which Yseult the Wise was kept close in Lóegaire's quarters. Yseult couldn't believe that anything serious had happened, sure that she would have known if her mother were in pain, but the blankness worried her.

It was almost Samhain when an assistant to the healer Imchad found her in the grove with her pupils.

"Come quickly. The queen is ill."

Yseult looked up from the circle of young faces surrounding her, her stomach cramping. Her mother ill? How could it be that she hadn't noticed?

"What is it?" she asked the warrior as she rose. She recognized him as one of her mother's guards.

"She fainted and does not wake."

Yseult turned back to the children. "Find Dubtach and see if you can join his group for the rest of the morning. I must tend the queen."

The children scurried off, and Yseult followed the warrior to the great hall, her own guard Trian close behind.

When she entered the hall, she found the healer Imchad kneeling next to her mother, chafing her hands, Lóegaire opposite him. "Is she pregnant?" the High King asked.

"Pregnant?" Yseult repeated, not even giving Imchad a chance to answer. She sat down and placed her thumb on her mother's wrist, trying to hide her shock. She had not seen her mother since the last new moon began, and in that short time she had become like one whose stores have run out long before the first harvest. The planes of her face were angular and sharp, and the bones of her wrist clearly visible beneath the skin. With a silent sob in her soul, Yseult suddenly realized that not only was her mother suffering, she might even die.

And Lóegaire was hoping to make her pregnant.

She turned to the Ard Ri, fighting back the urge to take his burly neck in her long, strong fingers. "Any fool can see that she is starving herself."

Imchad let out a sigh, and Yseult could feel his relief. He had not wanted to point out to the king that he might be mistreating his wife.

"She could still be pregnant," Lóegaire insisted.

Yseult was silent for a moment, staring at him, finding it hard to believe the extent to which his selfishness had grown. "She could be, but it is very unlikely. My mother is not healthy. Poor soil rarely takes seed. How could you allow her to get like this?" she pressed out, not caring that it was the High King she spoke to, that she was in his power. He had already done so much to them, there was little more he could do.

Lóegaire glared at her and motioned Imchad and the guards to go. "Her condition is not my fault. She eats almost nothing now."

She looked down at her mother, at her drawn face and pallor. Her mother's hand was limp in hers, and she stroked the back gently with her thumb. "You keep her shut away in your house, guarded constantly, using her at your will with no regard to hers, and you say it is not your fault? What by all the gods of your tribe makes you think you can take away the freedom of one of the Feadh Ree?"

Lóegaire rose, his lips pressed together in a thin line. "She may be Feadh Ree, but she is also my wife. According to the wise man Patraic, marriage cannot be dissolved simply by walking across a clearing."

Yseult rose too and stood facing him, glad of the extra handspan height she had on him. "But you were married by Brehon law, not Christian."

"And soon Christian law will be a part of Brehon law."

"Does Christian law say you can lock your wife up and rape her at will?"

A flush crept up from the High King's throat to his forehead. "I will not have you speak to me in such a way."

She shrugged. "I have nothing more to lose except my life, and that you will not take from me because you want to give it to a foreign king."

"Do not try me too much."

"I will try you as much as I please. And if you want the queen to recover, have her moved to a comfortable bed in the house where Brangwyn and I are staying so that we can take turns nursing her. When she awakens, I will tell her she has the freedom of the rath again."

Lóegaire was about to reply, but Yseult cut him off. "Consider this, Lóegaire: what good is the kingmaker to you dead?"

* * * *

After leaving Lóegaire, Yseult sought out Imchad, told him the arrangements she had made with the High King, creating facts, being strong. If she allowed herself the luxury of tears, precious time would be lost — and besides, she would have to share her tears with Trian, her constant companion these days.

She would not cry.

She asked Imchad to bring a generous supply of betony, milk thistle, nettles, and blackberry wine, as well as anything else he could think of that might help, to the round-house she shared with Brangwyn. Then she went in search of the wise man Patraic, her guard Trian in her wake.

She found Patraic outside the walls of the rath overseeing the construction of a small, square wooden house where his converts could worship. The sleeves of his tunic were rolled up past his elbows, and he was sawing a wide plank balanced between two thick stumps of wood.

"My mother is gravely ill," she said quietly. "Would you be willing to come with me to see her?"

Patraic was obviously surprised at the request, but he gave Ciaran and the others some hurried instructions and turned to follow her.

"What ails her?" he asked.

"She is wasting away. She doesn't eat, and this morning she fainted and couldn't be roused."

She led him to the round-house she shared with Brangwyn, and sure enough, there she found her mother on a bed covered with the finest furs to be had in Tara, Imchad beside her, trying to get her to swallow some blackberry wine. The smell of rosemary filled the air.

Beside her, Patraic drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

"The High King claims that his treatment of her is with your blessing."

Patraic was silent for a moment, gazing on her mother's pale form. "You are a clever young woman, and I think you know I could not approve of any behavior which would cause Yseult the Wise to look like this. What is it you want to tell me?"

"Your hatred of slavery is well known."

Patraic nodded.

"It was your words which provided Lóegaire his justification for capturing my mother, your ideas of marriage which allowed him to abandon the teachings he grew up with, to lock up the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann and treat her like a slave until she has become what you see now."

"He told you this?"

"He told me that according to Christian law their marriage is not dissolved. That those were your words."

"Marriage is a sacred institution," Patraic said, but his voice was empty of conviction, the statement made by rote.

"You have too much generosity in your soul to think that this is sacred," Yseult said, but she couldn't keep the anger out of her voice.

The Christian holy man didn't reply, still gazing on the motionless form of her mother.

Yseult clenched her hands at her sides. "I try not to blame your gods, although I admit, it is hard for me. You have encouraged Lóegaire and others like him to abandon their own beliefs. Now they follow the old ways only when it is in their best interests, choosing the new when it suits them better. They are between beliefs, with no morality to guide them, led only by their own greed and ambition."

"You speak of the selfish ones, the ones with no sense of good and evil."

"Yes."

Patraic lifted his gaze from her mother and looked at her, eye to eye. "You are wise beyond your years."

Yseult snorted, holding back the tears clogging her throat. Right now, she was very close to hating this man who had given Lóegaire the justification for what he had done, although she knew Patraic too thought it wrong. But she needed him.

"Wise? I merely wish to gain allies for my mother."

The Christian wise man nodded and offered her his hand. She ignored it and he lowered it again, shrugging. "Good. Even if there is to be no peace between us, I will do what I can to relieve the queen's suffering."

Yseult didn't feel obliged to thank him — she blamed him too much for that. But she was glad of the sincerity she saw in his eyes and felt in his heart.

* * * *

Her mother was so weak that she didn't regain consciousness again until the late autumn sun had nearly reached the horizon, and then only to cough up most of the gruel and broth they tried to force down her throat. Yseult sat at her side, fighting back tears. Yseult the Wise now looked like many another woman nearing her fortieth year, the skin hanging from her arms in loose folds and the sheen gone from her bright golden hair —the queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the Old Race, blessed with youthful appearance and long life. No longer. As dull as it was, the gold of her hair could almost be taken for gray, and wrinkles had appeared where once the skin was smooth and healthy.

Yseult gripped her mother's hand in both of her own, her thumb gently caressing the cold, dry skin.

The next morning when the queen awoke, she was rational, but it was not for several days that she seemed fully aware of her surroundings. Yseult was brewing a tisane of lavender, milk thistle, and meadowsweet, when her mother suddenly spoke with her accustomed energy. "Where is Brangwyn?"

Yseult hurried over to her mother's bedside, smiling. "This time of day, she is probably helping teach the young ones."

"What of Lugaid?"

"He has left her alone, although he no longer has a wife to warm his bed."

"I have been having dreams of your cousin. She must leave here."

Yseult's joy fled. How were they to leave? They were guarded constantly. Even now, Trian stood watch at the door of the round-house.

"You must find a way," her mother said.

Yseult took one of the pale hands. "At least some of your powers are returning to you."

"Not enough. It's up to you now."

"And what of you?"

"Lóegaire will not harm me any more. There is little enjoyment in it for him. But Lugaid — Lugaid enjoys inflicting pain. He's afraid now, but eventually his fear from the spell Brangwyn cast will pass."

"What should we do?"

The queen shook her head weakly. "I don't know. My wisdom has deserted me."

No
. Her mother was Yseult
the Wise
.

And her mother was starving herself and needed her daughter to be wise.

"Perhaps I can go to Lóegaire, ask him if he would let Brangwyn go. She means nothing to him, only the two of us."

Her mother smiled and pressed her hand. "Yes, do that for me, please."

Yseult nodded, and her mother closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep. She brushed the dull, golden-blond hair back from the queen's pale forehead. "If I am to be wise for you, then you must be strong for me," she whispered.