The Lady of the Sea (26 page)

chapter 36

S
o then, who do we have today?”

Resplendent in all his finery, Mark lolled back on his throne and looked out over the Audience Chamber with a sense of satisfaction filling his soul. See, he could dress up grandly when he chose. No well-worn riding habit this morning, as familiar and wrinkled as a second skin, but the very best that the royal wardrobe could afford. Silently, he preened himself on his tunic of bright scarlet, the weight of the gold chains around his neck, and his cape of cloth-of-gold. From the crown on his head to the tip of his red leather boots, he fancied he looked every inch the King.

And what other king took care of his people like this? If he was choosing for himself, he’d be out in the sun right now, racing through the forest with his band of knights or plunging his overheated body in the sweet sharp shock of a freezing mountain stream. Instead, he was pent up indoors, enthroned on this dais, giving himself freely to any wretched peasant or muddy oaf who turned up at court. He could see them all now, huddled around the door, lining up to press their stinking petitions into his hand and beg him to right some ridiculous wrong.

And all this under the eye of his lords and courtiers, too, every one clustered around him, beady-eyed, waiting for him to do something wrong. His eye fell on Andred, poised and ready at the foot of the throne. Thank God he had someone to handle all this for him.

“So, then, Andred,” he huffed, “what’s on today?”

Andred cast a cold eye round the chamber, taking in the gaudy courtiers chattering round the throne and the dull motley of townsfolk and villagers clustered by the door. Gods above, how these hovel-dwellers stank!

“Today will be like every other audience, sire. We’ll be through in a trice. There’s nothing here to keep you from your sport.”

“Good, very good,” Mark yawned. “Begin, then.”

“Before we do, my lord, I have a private communication for your ears.” Andred broke off and allowed a delicate pause. “The Lady Elva craves permission to return to court.”

“Who does?” said Mark obtusely.

“Your admirer, sire. Your former mistress—”

“Yes, yes,” Mark interrupted nastily. “No need to remind me, I haven’t forgotten that. What does she want?”

“A while ago, you suggested she retire from the court. A spell in the country, you said, would be good for her health. She sends to say she feels much recovered now. Will Your Majesty allow her to come back to Castle Dore?”

The crowd ebbed and swirled in the doorway, then parted to reveal the black habit of Father Dominian, who was entering with the two Princesses in his wake. Both fixed their eyes on the throne, dropped their eyes, and curtsied fulsomely as they came in. Mark eyed them in deep appreciation and played thoughtfully with his lower lip. Perhaps it might be a good idea to have Elva back.

He turned to Andred with a careless laugh. “Would she make them jealous?”

Andred started, taken by surprise. “Who?”

“Those two.”

Mark gestured toward the two sisters, now standing with Father Dominian below the dais. Nearest to him, Theodora was decked out in a bloodred gown with floating panels of mulberry, nightshade, and gold. Beside her, Divinia wore a simple silk shift of blushing pink with a train of ivory velvet, looking for all the world like a plate of strawberries and cream. Mark’s appetite rose. He wanted to strip her and eat her, nibbling her ears, her nose, and the tips of her childish breasts.

Then his eyes turned back to the toothsome, well-bosomed creature at her side. Either one of Theodora’s luscious, trunk-like thighs was worth the whole of Divinia’s skinny carcass to a red-blooded man. Who would trifle with a girl like a bowl of fruit when he could sink his teeth into a thick slab of sirloin well marbled with fat?

Mark wagged his head owlishly and gave a braying laugh. “She loves me, you know, that girl Theodora. They both do, of course, but the younger one would never say it to my face.”

Andred fought down a seething bile. Well, could that be because she doesn’t love you at all, he wanted to say? That she laughs at your thinning hair and expanding paunch, and dreams of a lover who doesn’t stink of horses and dogs?

Mark peered at Andred. “You’ve gone a peculiar color,” he observed. “Are you all right?”

I will be when I kill you, erupted in a silent scream from Andred’s dark soul. And both those dim little Christian whores as well, and Tristan and Isolde too, don’t forget them . . .

He stroked down his mustache. “This is good news, sire,” he said unctuously. “But the Lady Elva—is it your wish she should come back to court?”

“Why does she want to come?” Mark demanded.

“To please you. She only has your interests at heart.”

“Does she, though?”

Mark paused to think. Already Elva had dwindled in his mind. For the life of him, he could not remember why he had sent her away. Oh yes, she had kept trying to order him about, that was it, nattering night and day. Always insisting that a king should do this, a king should do that, behaving as if he was the subject and she the one in command. A warm glow of resentment lit his feeble brain. She was as bad as Isolde—or worse. Neither of them ever treated him like a king.

Not like the two little Princesses from Dun Haven, who knew both their God and their King. He looked down from the dais at Theodora, who was fluttering her fleshy bosom most attractively.

“No,” he said firmly to Andred. “Elva must not return. You can tell her that from me. Now see to the petitioners, will you? They don’t all need to approach the throne; you can deal with them.”

Mark dismissed Andred with a nod of the head and the sense of a job well done. Already his mind was turning to the time after the audience when he’d have the Princesses alone. His blood thickened. He was itching to get his hands on both of them, the dainty morsel in pink and white and the older, heavier, gamier bird. Yes, of course it was a sin to lust after a woman while he still had a wife, let alone lust after two. But he wouldn’t be the first man to take a brace of fine sisters to bed, one after another like two courses at a meal.

And there was that Spanish cardinal, the fine cleric from Rome, coming in through the door, Mark noted. Well, he was the man for the task, he could sort this out.

“Good day, Dom Arraganzo,” he caroled. With one stroke of his pen, the Papal Legate could annul the marriage to Isolde, and pouf! The whole wretched union would be gone, would be no more. Then he’d be free to marry one sister and hold the other in reserve to be his mistress later on. Now, which one to marry? Better to begin with the lesser and keep the stronger for another day. He pointed to Divinia and patted his thigh.

“Come here, my dear,” he called.

“A moment, sire.”

It was Andred, pressing up to the foot of the dais with a woodman in tow. The man wore a rough coat of scarred and ill-matched pelts, cobbled up from the damaged skins he could not sell. A pair of shifty eyes looked out of a hard-bitten face, and he grunted a greeting through a mouthful of broken teeth.

Andred pushed him forward urgently. “This man has news, sire, that you’ll want to hear.”

The man grinned and showed his teeth. “There’s a knight in the forest, a huntsman as skilled as any I’ve known. He’s been slipping around, hiding out there for a few weeks now. Then a fine lady came looking for him and gave me gold. She was . . .”

Mark sat like a man made of stone. A fine lady with the sound of the Western Isle in her voice and a head of red-gold hair.

Isolde.

Looking for Tristan, who else in the world could it be?

He let out his breath in a hiss.

Issssolde.

And Tristan.

So my traitorous nephew has come secretly back to Cornwall to do me wrong, and my wife has been trailing him through the wood, like some gypsy whore cast off by her traveling man.

Isolde chasing Tristan.

And both of them utterly careless of any harm they might do to him.

Rage filled his brain. Dimly, he heard Andred’s voice above the angry roaring of his mind.

“Did she find him, fellow?”

“He’s a man of the woods, sir. He found her.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they’re living together like woodlanders, moving from place to place. They think they’ve gone unnoticed, but I know where they are.”

“Wait outside, then,” Andred said dismissively. “We’ll call on you in a while.”

“You owe me a reward,” said the forester triumphantly. “I’m a poor man, and I’ve come all this way to court.”

“You’ll be paid, forester,” Andred retorted with an ominous glint. “But for now, get out and wait to be told what to do.”

The woodman hurried out. As he did so, a furious muttering broke the silence he left behind. Both the Dun Haven Princesses had rounded on Father Dominian and were confronting the little priest.

“Isolde?
That’s the name of the Queen. So she’s come back here?” Theodora stuttered, her eyes as round as moons. “You told us she’d gone to Ireland and that she wouldn’t come back. We thought the King had finished with his wife—annulled her, or whatever it’s called. And all along—” Her eyes bulged as if they would burst.

“It’s adultery,” piped Divinia, her watery features blazing like sea fire. “And fornication, too, setting us on to court him like a single man.”

Father Dominian held up his hands. “Daughters, daughters, please—”

“And in the meantime”—Theodora was gathering fury as she spoke—“the missing Queen lies in the woodland with a runaway knight. More sin and wickedness to taint us both. And the King—what’s he doing about that?”

“Now God preserve us!” gulped Divinia. “And our immortal souls.” Clasping her hands together, she began to pray.

It’s adultery . . .

Sick to his soul, Mark contemplated the wretchedness of being once again a married man. It came to him that he had enjoyed flirting with the Princesses more than anything since his bachelor days. For a while he had felt like a single man again, and he wanted that back.

But not with these two, oh no! Listen to them now. The younger one wailing about her immortal soul and the older revealed as an angry virago all too ready for a fight. Isolde, Elva, and now this fat bitch to boot—they were all the same. All they wanted was to dominate and domineer.

And who was King here, after all? He leaned forward from the throne.

“Step forward, Princesses, and make your farewells,” he called dangerously. “I must attend to affairs of state, and you must return to Dun Haven while your father lives. When he dies, I shall vest your wardship in the hands of the Church. And in the meantime, I wish you Godspeed from Castle Dore.”

He did not heed the stunned silence that followed his words. Andred was the next to feel the weight of his angry eye.

“Get a band of men together and send for the dogs,” Mark hissed. “Tristan and Isolde have taken shelter in the forest, and we’re going to hunt them down.”

chapter 37

G
ods above, how he hated this midsummer sun! Even more than he hated every flake of winter’s snow. Hated the seasons in the forest, even when the woodland wore its fairest face. You lived out too long when Uther Pendragon died, Merlin reflected savagely as he went along. The sun, the wind, the rain, the ice, and the frost—every one of them was a little death to those who spent their lives out of doors. Even to a bard, a Druid of the seventh seal, a Lord of Light. Even to Merlin himself.

Plodding onward at his own pace, the white mule Merlin was riding rolled one blue eye and one brown, and reflected, too. What painful creatures these two-leggers were! Born without hair or fur, how poorly they withstood the weather all year round. Yet still they held themselves equal with the Gods, whereas in fact—

“Hold your tongue, fool,” said Merlin rancorously, “and let’s get on.”

The mule nodded, and both travelers gave their attention to the road ahead. At least in the greenways they were sheltered from the heat of the sun. Carved out by wanderers and drovers and millions of unknown feet, the ancient tracks were so deep and overgrown with trees that a traveler could cross the whole of the island in these green tunnels without being seen.

On! Merlin berated himself, on! Or you will come too late.

Too late to save Tristan.

Ye Gods, Merlin mourned. When would these human creatures be able to rule their own fate? Even a Lord of Light could not be everywhere. Yet who would work for these islands, if not himself? Who but Merlin, from the dawn of time?

“Who brings in the winds from the mountains?” he began in his high, bard-like chant.

“Who teaches the sun when to rise?

Who cares for the cattle on the hillside

And the child in the wood?

Who feeds a man’s hunger and heals his thatch of wounds?

Merlin! Merlin!

Merlin through all time.”

Good, yes, very good, and every word true. And how these hidden greenways soothed his soul. Merlin cast an appreciative eye up the steep banks running away toward the horizon on either side. Whoever was out and about could not see him here. No one should know how Merlin came and went.

Especially when he had failed.

Failed first of all with Igraine, when the old Queen would not choose Tristan over Mark and see that Isolde was sent out of the way. And failed again now, losing Tristan in the forest, just as he’d lost Tristan’s mother all those years ago.

Gods above, how had it come about?

Weeping with fury, Merlin cracked each of his knuckles till his fingertips shot out blue flame. How could he have missed Tristan in the wood? The young knight was there, he knew; all the woodland creatures told him so. They had seen him slipping through the trees with all the skill of a wild thing, covering his tracks, lying low, and finally going to earth.

Yes, of course, Tristan was there! Merlin moaned. He had felt him, smelled him himself. Yet even the woodman, a creature of the forest, could only detect his presence. He could not track him down.

And failing Tristan, the old enchanter groaned, he’d failed Isolde, too. He could have spared that vital spirit from all the dread events that lay ahead. But Tristan was the focus of his love. Tristan, like Arthur, was the child of his dearest soul.

And Tristan’s road ahead was dark indeed. Alas for the unmothered child and the fatherless boy. Tears sprang to Merlin’s eyes.

“Grief upon me!” he gasped. “Grief upon all of us.” He raised his eyes to the brilliant sky. “Spare Tristan!” he implored. “Spare both of them.”

“Merlin, Merlin, news—!”

There was an angry clacking from above. Hopping about on a branch overhead were four magpies, flashing their blue-black wings and chattering to themselves.

“Oh, so? What news?”

Merlin cocked a cold and weary eye. How little enthusiasm he had for these vain and noisy gossips of the wood! But even a fool said a wise thing sometimes. “Speak,” he said.

“Isolde was seen leaving Dubh Lein—” began one.

“—for Cornwall,” the second burst in self-importantly, like a child. “For Castle Dore—”

“No, no!” screeched the third. “She went to seek Tristan in the wood! In the wood! In the wood!”

They squabbled on. Merlin looked at his fingertips and toyed with the idea of blasting them all with blue fire. But as the tale unfolded, his ears began to twitch. The woodman had betrayed the lovers to Mark. The King was calling up his knights and dogs to hunt them down.

“Is it so?”

Well, then, so much for Tristan.

Isolde, too.

He lifted his eyes to the black mountains ahead and the tears flowed again. “And may the Mother take care of them now, for I cannot!”

“A
RE THE DOGS READY
?”

One look at King Mark’s livid face made Andred speak as calmly as he could. “Very nearly, sire.”

Mark looked around the stable yard with undisguised rage. All around him his knights were fighting to hold down their horses, and he could hear the dogs baying madly from their kennels behind the stable wall. The scent of a manhunt was in the air, and every creature had picked up the bloodlust of the mounted men. He glowered at Andred.

“Then tell me why the dogs aren’t here.”

Andred paused for thought. Because the kennel master had no idea that you would burst from the Audience Chamber and demand the hounds right
now,
he wanted to say. Because it’s noon, the hour when the creatures get fed. And because everything seems too slow to a man out for revenge.

“I’ll go and find out, my lord,” he said.

Mark watched the retreating figure with a sudden hot spurt of mistrust. Was Andred betraying him, just as Tristan had? Were they both working together against him? No, that was ridiculous. But why else was Andred delaying the dogs like this?

His horse tossed its head, impatient to be off, and he jabbed it savagely in the mouth. “Stand still, stand!” he snarled.

“Sire, a word?”

Pulling his horse’s head around, Mark saw Sir Nabon approaching with a heavy frown. Jesus and Mary, what did the old fool want? It was bad enough to endure him speaking his fill in the council chamber. No reason to put up with his sermonizing now.

“Later,” he called, and turned his horse away.

But Sir Nabon moved deliberately to block the horse’s path.

“Now, sire, if you please, before you do this thing,” he said trenchantly. “Your Queen and Sir Tristan are not animals to be hunted down. I beg you, my lord, give up this unworthy chase.”

“Unworthy?” Mark gasped in sarcastic disbelief. “And they’re not animals, you say? What d’you call it, then, rutting like beasts in the wood?”

Nabon’s face tightened, and he fought down the impulse to reach for his sword. He would have killed another man who spoke so grossly of the Queen. But this was the King.

“For the sake of the country, I must ask you to think again,” he said as forcefully as he dared. “The word of the forester does not mean that the Queen and Sir Tristan are guilty of adultery.”

Mark’s eyes bulged. “What else does it mean?”

“There is no proof.”

“For God’s sake, man, they’ve been alone together for weeks in the wood. What more proof d’you want?”

“They could still be chaste. They could have lain apart.”

What was old Nabon saying? Approaching from behind, Andred caught the tail end of the councillor’s speech and increased his pace. Isolde and Tristan chaste? What nonsense was this?

And worse, was Mark wavering in his revenge?

Composing his face into an air of concern, Andred hurried up.

“Indeed, sire, they could have been chaste,” he intervened. “The wise man never leaps to conclusions, as Lord Nabon says. But if they were loyal to you, why did they stay away from court for so long? What have they been doing all this time in the wood?”

He was relieved to see the thunder and lightning return to Mark’s clouded face. He bowed politely to Sir Nabon and pressed on. “They could be plotting together against the King. Even if they’re not lovers, as you say, they could be traitors to the King and the country, too.”

Mark’s stubby finger jabbed accusingly at Sir Nabon. “Well, Nabon. What d’you say to that?”

Andred slipped in again smoothly before Nabon could reply. “If they were innocent, what do they have to hide? Why not simply return straightaway to King Mark, the Queen’s loving husband and Sir Tristan’s generous lord?”

Nabon could have answered that twenty times over, but he dared not speak. He was no match for Andred’s snake-like intelligence and silver tongue.

A new edge had crept into Andred’s voice. “And besides,” he insinuated, frowning thoughtfully at Mark. “You’ll remember, sire, that they’ve ignored you before. This isn’t the first time that Sir Tristan has chosen to follow the Queen instead of you, or that the Queen has followed her own desires.”

“Desires?” Mark spat out.

Good, good! Andred thrilled at his own cleverness. Every word he said was feeding Mark’s fury and his hunger for revenge. And now see what was coming from behind . . .

Andred fervently thanked his Gods. If this did not inflame his uncle’s rage, nothing would. With luck, Tristan would not get out of the forest alive.

“Hear us, sire!”

Eripe me, Domine . . .

Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man, Dom Arraganzo prayed vigorously as he strode along. What, Mark thought he could send the Princesses back to Dun Haven after all the work that Arraganzo and Dominian had done? He thrust his elegant nose high in the air. He would not flinch from the damage to his kidskin boots plowing over these cobbles and dodging the reeking droppings as the horses pranced about. If this royal sinner was thwarting God’s holy plan, then it was surely time to intervene.

Oh, so? The Cardinal Prelate bearing down on him, and Father Dominian hobbling along, too? Struggling, Mark held down a yelp of rage. He thought he’d got rid of these two when he sent the Christian Princesses back home. Where would it end?

“Sire, I have just left two young women deep in grief,” Arraganzo fumed. “They say you plan to cancel their wardship and return them to Dun Haven at once. I have come in all haste to put an end to this.”

Mark reached for an iron-hard smile. “Sadly, it’s true.”

Arraganzo stared him in the eye. “Then I must ask you to reconsider, my lord. This must not be.”

Must, must not . . .

Mark was in no mood for this. “I am King here, sir, remember?”

Arraganzo reached for a flattering smile. “And a king has obligations. He leads his people by gracious and kingly behavior, as you do, sire. It is for this that the Princesses love and admire you so much.”

Mark’s vanity was tweaked. “They love me, eh?”

“Both of them,” said the Cardinal firmly. “Especially Theodora, who told me of her love for you in tears.”

“Theodora?” Mark was instantly suspicious again. “She’s the one who started dictating what I could and couldn’t do.”

Dominian stepped forward. “This is why God has given husbands the right to control their wives. When you marry her, she is yours to rule and to chastise till she learns your will.”

“You hear your Father confessor?” Arraganzo declaimed. “You only need to learn how to tame your wife.” Without warning, he dropped the flattering smile and fixed Mark with an eye of stone. “And you may not decide for yourself that the maidens go back. It is utterly against the will of God.”

Dominian supported Arraganzo with his coal-black eyes on fire. “The Almighty Father in his loving kindness wants you to have a pure and gentle Christian wife.”

“And now you may make a marriage with a girl you desire,” Arraganzo sailed on.

“And one who desires you, Uncle,” Andred followed with a slight but suggestive leer.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, was there no respite? When would Andred, Arraganzo, and Dominian hold their peace? Mark heard their voices buzzing like hornets and gadflies in his fevered head and felt that one or other of them would sting him to death. His father’s voice reached him from a lifetime away.

“You’ll never hold onto the throne, boy, you’re weak through and through. Any fool will always be able to tell you what to do.”