Isolde: Queen of the Western Isle (15 page)

Isolde looked away. "I will know my knight when he comes." Unconsciously her fingers sought her father's ring.

"Who is he?" he cried jealously. "How will you know?"

"I learned it—" She caught herself up. She should not share such things with the Saracen knight. "No matter. You must go your way, sir, while I go mine."

"Princess, this cannot be!"

She looked up into an expression she had never seen before, black and scowling, cold and set. Her back stiffened. "My lord, I—"

"You will learn I am not to be scorned," he interrupted, staring intently into her eyes. "You are my—"

"Lady, a ship, a ship!"

There was a distant cry from far below and a bustle of sudden action down on the shore. The evening landscape was fading before their eyes, and a veil of silver mist lay over the sea.

Sir Palomides leaned forward, peering into the dusk. "A stranger ship at the dock," he announced suspiciously. Then he stiffened, and his lustrous eyes grew opaque. "They have come for you."

She started. She had heard that the men of his race had the gift of Sight. "For me—why?"

He turned his unseeing gaze upon the ship. "Its sails are dark, like death," he said at last. "And you—" he fell silent, staring down the twisting road of time. "You," he resumed, "are life. You are what they seek." He gave a bitter laugh, and she knew he had seen more than he would say. "Death seeks life as the land seeks the sea."

"Lady!" came the distant cry again.

She looked at the stranger ship with its black sails. A small group was struggling down the gangplank, carrying the body of an unconscious man. Behind them limped a crooked old pilgrim, waving his arms and trying to take charge. She hastened down the path to meet them with Sir Palomides on her heels.

Halfway between land and sea she encountered the ragged procession moving slowly through the gathering dusk. Coming toward her were four sailors bearing a rough litter and, lying on it, the figure of a man. The glimmering light played over his sleeping face and one battle-scarred hand rested lightly on his heart. She heard a rushing in the skies like the wind off the sea.
Who are you, sir?

She moved forward like a woman in a dream. The stranger was dressed in the humble garb of a pilgrim, with a few traces of a more distinguished past. A cunning bronze brooch held his robe in place, and a fillet of gold held back his thick fair hair. By his side lay a harp and a broadsword in a plain leather sheath, and he wore an emerald ring on the little finger of one hand. In good health, she could see, he would be a fine-looking man. Now his skin was gray, his breathing was harsh, and his skin was like clay to the touch. Around him hung the stink of impending death.

Did it matter? No. Never had she seen a man more beautiful. The moonlight lovingly caressed his face, sharpening the strong lines of his jaw, etching his cheekbones, deepening the shadows of thought around his eyes. His thick, glossy hair fell back from a broad forehead and a thousand little lovelights gleamed around his mouth.

Oh—

The world faded, and she trembled from head to foot. The old pilgrim thrust his way forward and bent over the man on the litter, and she saw his lips working but could not follow a word. Dropping through the veils of evening came one sound alone, a low, rich voice from distant Avalon.
Hear me, Isolde
—
you will know your knight when he comes.

And now her mother's voice sounded again in the great quiet all around.

When the doors of the Otherworld stand open for love, a woman awakens to the man of the dream
—

A man from another country, tall and unsmiling, shining in the dark
—

Far away she heard the slow, sad roar of the incoming tide. Suddenly she was salmon and dolphin, sea-wife and mermaid, at home by land and sea. Her sisters were the kittiwakes crying in the air, and her brothers the otters whistling from their dam. Written in the sand she saw the footprints of a man, alone, unseen, coming her way. A wind from the Otherworld brushed her face, and she felt the approach of the great wave at the ending of the world.

Goddess, Mother, tell me
—

Can it be?

She looked up and saw a ring around the moon. A sweet mist rose from the sea and the tall stranger lay on the litter, shining before her eyes. But he was sick, he was dying, perhaps already gone. She laid her hand on his forehead and he stirred and looked up with the sweetness of a child. Then his wondrous lips parted and he laughed.

She heard the tuneful ringing of the stars echoing the music of her heart. She threw back her head, holding down a famished howl of fear and hope. "
Who are you?
" she cried.

He asked them to lay him with his mother, and he thought they had. He knew it must be her, because he remembered the touch of her hand, and the look in her eyes as she watched him, full of pain. She had asked him,
Who are you?
and he did not know. He saw her now with stars flaming round her head, all robed in clouds. Then he heard her voice, and knew that he was wrong. She was not his mother. She was a spirit, a saint.

"Who is this knight?" her voice said.

"No knight, lady, but a poor pilgrim like myself," came an old man's whine. "We were sailing to the land of the Picts when a drunken sailor stabbed him with a poisoned knife. He gave me the last of his gold to bring him here."

Did I do that? wondered Tristan. Perhaps I did. He felt the light touch again, and laughed for joy.

"Can you save him, Princess? He's a lovely lad," the old man moaned.

Who was this ancient, who seemed to know more about him than he did himself? It seemed to Tristan that he had heard the voice before. But that had been an old beggar on a clifftop when he saw the Lady of the Sea, not a pilgrim at all. His mind wandered off. It was all too hard.

"Believe me, old sir, we will do all we can."

The lady's footsteps retreated and he drifted peacefully again. Then he heard the old man's voice hissing in his ear. "Hear me! You are in Ireland, the land of your mortal foes. If you want to live, forget all you were. You are Tantris the pilgrim now, harper and bard."

Tantris? He wanted to laugh. But the old man's voice came again, whispering inside his head like the sweet silver song of the sea.
Sleep, Tantris, sleep
—

Suddenly there was nothing else he wanted to do.

Sleep, Tantris, sleep
—

Kneeling beside Tristan's litter, Merlin watched the fluttering eyelids as the young knight slipped away. Then he tugged his pilgrim's gown tighter around his thin chest and got to his feet. So far, so good—now would the Princess come to Tristan's aid?

He stiffened. Who was this gorgeous pampered stranger coming up? Merlin eyed the newcomer and felt the hackles rising on his neck. He knew with an animal certainty that the Saracen knight was his enemy and Tristan's, too, and bared his teeth in a feral grin.

Who was that ancient loon? With a surge of anger, Palomides returned the glare and strode over to Isolde's side.

"Let me help you, Princess," he said solicitously. He turned and raised a hand to summon his knights. "We can take care of these men."

Isolde gave him a smile.
He means well
—
and I should treat him well
.

"Thank you, sir." She gestured toward the litter. "This man is very sick. Let's get him and the old pilgrim up to the castle as fast as we can."

Palomides's eyes widened. "You mistake me, lady," he said. "You must have nothing to do with riffraff like this. My knights will deal with them."

Isolde stared. "But he's come to me to be healed."

Palomides waved a contemptuous hand. "He's a dead man, Princess— the only thing to do is send him back to his ship."

She could feel her face flaming. "If we help him fast enough, he might live."

"And bring diseases to Dubh Lein that would kill us all." Palomides's eye flickered over Merlin in his shabby robes. "Like his unsavory friend. Why concern yourself with wretches like these?"

She drew a breath. "Sir Palomides, you are a stranger here at court. In my own country, I know what to do."

His anger now was plain. "I tell you, Princess, they are not for you."

He tells me?

Gods and Great Ones!

Her temper flared. "This man is dying while we wrangle here!" She turned to the sailors and pointed the way up the hill. "Sirs, bring him up to the castle. We'll take care of him."

"I'll prepare the infirmary, lady," Brangwain said, moving briskly away.

"Till tomorrow then, Princess." Sir Palomides was taking a furious leave, tugging at the point of his beard.

Isolde shivered.
Did I think this man could he my knight?
The next thought was even colder.
And the stranger, too
—
what was
I
thinking of?

A lonely wind was coming in off the sea. Torn, ragged clouds were fleeting across the sky, and the moon was gone.

It was madness
—
moon madness—
I lost my mind. Lost my mind to a dream, not to love itself. When my knight comes, he will not be a dream
.

The castle lay ahead in the gathering dusk. The lights of the infirmary beckoned through the dark, countless tiny swan lamps flickering like stars. She forced herself to move up the castle hill.

Hurry, hurry
—

The infirmary was blazing with light through the open door. "Are we ready, Brangwain?"

"Vervain, antinomy, lady," the maid called, "all here. And we've taken care of the old man who brought him in. He was offered a bed for the night, but he wanted to be on his way."

Hastily Isolde wrapped herself in a clean apron as Brangwain bound up her hair. She hurried over to the figure on the table in the center of the room. "How is he?"

Brangwain followed. "The wound's in his leg, they say."

"Let me see."

He lay on his back, his eyes closed and his face as pale as his shirt. A rough length of linen lay across his loins, and his legs were bare. A shallow pulse was fluttering in his neck, and he had a huge engorged wound in the front of his thigh. The flesh around it looked like a rotten plum, and she could see the quick of the sore, black and festering.

She stood irresolute. Never had she missed her Druid father as she did now.
What if I fail and he dies like Marhaus?

Brangwain's voice came again. "We're ready, lady," she said steadily. "The men are standing by to hold him down."

Isolde drew a breath. "Good." She rolled up her sleeves and reached for her instruments. "Then let's begin."

Afterward Tristan could remember crying out, but only in the caverns of his mind. He knew he must not flinch or make a sound as the small steely fingers probed his wound, in case the grip faltered on which his life now turned. He floated out of his body on a sea of pain and his spirit grew strong as it roamed the air. With his senses heightened beyond their normal pitch he could hear the two women murmuring as they worked, and rested in the soft cat's cradle of their voices weaving to and fro.

At the end he could feel their sadness in the air like dew. You have done your best, he wanted to say, but could not. His whole being dwindled down to a pinpoint of pain, and he drifted away.

Goddess, Mother, save him
—

Holding his wrist, Isolde felt the feeble pulse fluttering in and out, and threw down her instruments in distress.

"It's not enough!" she cried. "The poison has entered his bones, and nothing will cure the flesh that does not scour the whole body to drive the evil out."

She turned to the shelves along the walls of the room. The light from the swan lamps shone over bottles and jars of greenish glass. She moved between them, her fingers remembering their contents from their smooth, cold sides: juniper, sundew, foxglove, wild bryony-—

"Every poison has its opposite," she said stubbornly. "Somewhere in here lies the answer to his grief."

Her sight shivered and she saw a woody dell, deeply overshadowed by a thick forest roof. Nothing grew in the gloom but nightshade, hemlock, and yew, and she knew she was looking into a poison grove. In the center a small yellow many-headed flower burned with a sickly flame, and its thin leaves groped like witches' fingers in the air. Its little mouths turned to her with a venomous grin.
Do you know me, Isolde!

Isolde smiled. Yellow spurge.
Oh yes, I do. I know your name, my dear.

The lamplight danced in and out of the bright fluids on the shelf. Her hand went to a pale liquid the color of life itself. "This is the antidote."

She looked back toward the table and her smile vanished. "Hurry, Brangwain, hurry," she panted, reaching for the jar, "while there's still time."

The lamps in the infirmary burned late that night, and for many nights. And outside, Palomides prowled the shadows like a watcher of the deep, while Isolde never left the sick pilgrim's side. At last the Saracen could bear it no longer. Pale and heavy-eyed after a night of fitful sleep, he rose early and dressed with unusual care. Then he crossed the courtyard, surrounded by his knights, and knocked at the door of the Queen's House to see the Queen.

The distraught, thin-faced girl who answered looked as if she had not slept for a week. She stared at Sir Palomides with fear in her eyes. No, the Queen could not—she dared not—the Queen had forbidden any visitors—she'd be whipped—

Only when he threatened to have her whipped himself did she conduct them to the Queen's chamber and vanish inside. There was an interminable wait in the drafty corridor, then the maid's pale eyes reappeared round the door, a finger beckoned, and he was within.

The chamber stretched before him like a cave. The maid closed the door behind him and whisked away. Black drapes blocked the windows and the only light came from a few flickering swan lamps hidden in holes round the walls. A moment of doubt darkened the Saracen's soul. This was a house of mourning— why was he here?