The Lady of the Sea (36 page)

“Hear me, all of you,” Nabon rasped. “King Mark is dead. So the throne of Cornwall reverts to his overlord, Queen Igraine. Swear on your knighthood that you and your fellows will follow whoever she appoints as her new vassal here. And in the meantime, take Sir Tristan as your new lord.”

“We shall, sir.” White-faced, the man obeyed, then retreated to the ranks.

Isolde knelt beside Sir Nabon, drowning in grief. “Don’t leave us, old friend.”

He favored her with another rueful smile. “Madam, alas I must. I must now take the way of the swallow, the eagle, and the swan. I shall make the great voyage into the unknown and tread the void to the Islands of Delight.” He laughed, coughing up blood and painfully turning his eyes to where Mark lay. “And I’ll attend my master there as I did here. Bury me at his side, I beg you, for in my lifetime I was never far away.”

Isolde bowed her head. “Sir, it shall be. And be assured Cornwall will never forget your name.”

Hands clasped, she watched the old man’s eyes droop in death as Tristan and Gawain murmured their farewells. Then Tristan moved across to Mark and closed his eyes. Lovingly, he straightened out his body where it fell, giving him a dignity he had never had in life.

“Oh, my lord,” he wept. “You were my mother’s brother and my only kin. To you I swore my first knighthood oath, and for you I fought many cruel battles as Cornwall’s champion and your own. You wronged me, sir, as a man should never wrong his kin and a lord should not wrong a knight. But your soul will have honor from me as long as I live. I shall bury you like a king and protect your grave. And I shall never forget you while my spirit walks.”

Behind him, Isolde closed her eyes and soared soundlessly into Mark’s last lament.

Go, sir, take your soul’s flight, wherever it may lead.

This day you planned to take three innocent lives, a deed of disgust to all men and women alive.

But still we lament your passing and bid you a sad farewell. And we wish you an easeful passage as you go.

In your life, you were starved of love. But all your hungers are rewarded now. You are going home. For all of us, a shining star waits on high, where there is no sorrow, no emptiness, no more cold.

Look, Mark, your ship stands ready at the quay. Your star beckons. Go with the Mother, then, start your immortal flight.

And may your God and mine feed your starving soul and take your lost spirit into Her endless grace.

chapter 52

Y
et the lament still went on in the depths of her soul.

Oh, Mark. What you might have been. What you will never be.

And Gods above, how should she bury him now?

A husband who was no husband, a king who was never a king?

A knight who never lived by his knighthood oath?

An uncle who would have killed his nephew, a monarch who tried to destroy his only heir? And a man about whom the question would always remain: what good did he do in his life? Why did he live?

Enough, no more. After days of hard grieving, Isolde steeled her bruised heart to action. Mark had to be laid to rest, and she would do what had to be done.

But first they buried Sir Nabon, the loyal old lord who had given his life to save theirs. And to save his beloved Cornwall, which was foremost in his thoughts to the very end. Before confronting King Mark, and knowing that this could well cost him his life, he had sent a messenger back to Castle Dore. The man’s task had been to rouse all the lords of the Council with a warning to be ready to take command and keep the peace, whatever happened in the wood.

So Isolde and Tristan found that all was calm when they rode back into Castle Dore at dawn the next day. Some had feared that there might be panic and unrest as soon as the word ran round that Mark had been killed. Instead, they found old Sir Wisbeck in the palace firmly at the helm, while Sir Quirian was busy patrolling the streets. There they encountered shock and sorrow at Mark’s death, but no loss or grief. Mark would end his life as he had lived it, loved by none.

Or, perhaps, by one. At Sir Nabon’s last rites, all the townspeople followed his coffin in tears to its resting place. When Mark was carried up to the chapel on the rock, many lined the streets, dry-eyed, but no one cared to see him to his grave. But a tall, lean woman with midnight black eyes and hair was seen haunting the clifftop before the funeral procession arrived.

Afterward, it was said she was seen there again, cursing and raging at the lowering skies, her long hair streaming in the bitter wind. The Lady Elva for sure, Isolde nodded sadly to herself. Once Mark’s mistress, she had almost become his Queen, thrusting herself forward to take Isolde’s place. If any woman had loved Mark, Elva had. No one could begrudge her mourning his passing now.

And the meanest soul deserves respect in death. They buried Mark equipped as the King he might have been, had his choices been better and his fates more kindly disposed. They laid him to rest with the battle-sword of his forefathers that no son of his would ever now wield in war, and the carved ivory warhorn that would never sound again. Then they blessed his spirit chariot as it embarked on its great journey, and prayed for its safe landing wherever it came to rest.

“He had no God to anchor his wandering soul,” Tristan said heavily. “No woman or child to teach him the secret of love, no soul on earth to love more than himself.”

Isolde closed her eyes and brought her clasped hands to her lips. “Take him to yourself, Great One, I beg. Somewhere in your vast realm, find his spirit a home.”

“Amen to that, Lord God,” muttered Father Dominian, hunched over Mark’s grave. The little priest had not yet grasped the reality of his protector’s death, Isolde knew. It would be hard for him to accept that from now on, Cornwall would follow the Mother faith again and would no longer be a country where his God would be enforced. But Dominian had taken the sudden change without protest, numbly resigned to what would happen now.

Not so the Pope’s messenger, the Cardinal Legate Dom Arraganzo of Seville. No sooner had Mark been laid beside Andred in the chapel on the rock than the lordly Spaniard was knocking at Isolde’s door. Admitted to her presence, he wasted little time in pleasantries, but went straight to his concern.

“Who rules this land,” he demanded, “now that King Mark is dead?”

Isolde drew a breath. “That is for Queen Igraine to decide. King Mark held his throne as her vassal, and the right to rule Cornwall died with him. Sir Tristan is Mark’s kin and his next heir, but the Queen may appoint anyone she likes.”

Arraganzo nodded, his worst fears confirmed. “Perhaps even you, madam,” he said silkily.

God, God! he cried inwardly, closing his eyes in dread, what is Your plan? You have surrounded us with pagans and sinners here. There’s the old Queen Igraine, then Tristan and Isolde, unbelievers all, and the last one the worst. Lord, in Your wisdom, strike Isolde down!

And take the life of the old Queen in Tintagel too, he prayed on. These ruling Queens are against Your will. Why have you placed us at the mercy of these women here?

“So, sir?”

Opening his eyes, Arraganzo saw with a shock that Isolde had clearly overheard his thoughts. The smile on her lips blended pity and amusement in a way he could hardly endure. And was she trying to goad him when she opened her mouth and spoke?

“As you say, Queen Igraine might choose to give power to me, or to any other woman in the land. Would that be such a bad thing in your view?”

Arraganzo curled his long, elegant lip. “God has ordained that only men should rule. Why should we share that rightful power with you? Why should men give power to women at all? Think what you are, my lady, all of you. You’re no more than a rib of Adam, the serpent’s plaything, the dust of the earth.”

Isolde sighed. “Ah, Christian, your ignorance is vaster than oceans, darker than a starless sky. Woman is the circle of the Goddess, through which every man passes at three key moments of his life. The first is in childhood when he is born, the second when a woman takes him into her as her man, and the last when he dies and the Mother takes him home. Every woman is the vessel of the Goddess, bringing new life to the world. And she is the Goddess in her life, in her family, in her home.”

“Goddess?” Arraganzo’s eyebrows lifted in raging scorn. “There is only one God—”

“And you Christians have stolen from our Goddess to deck him out,” Isolde broke in as her faith flooded her veins. “Your holy Trinity is only our Goddess in her threefold incarnation of Mother, Maiden, and Crone. Your holy communion is our Goddess’s feast of love, where all are served and none are sent empty away. Even your Grail—why, priest, every woman is a grail! Every man is born to seek the woman of the dream and to find his finest self in that great search. And when he finds her—why then, little man, what you call the Grail is a woman’s vessel of her womanhood, forever rich, moist, and full.”

The priest was quivering with disgust. When he spoke, he displayed his gathered bile. “Yes, always foul, lustful, and full of sin. How dare you talk of a woman’s body to a man of God? Her instrument of generation, her noxious fluids, her rottenness within? These are loathsome things. They’re all God’s punishment on you for the sin of Eve.”

“On the contrary.” Isolde threw back her head with a full-blooded laugh. “Our religion encourages us to delight in our bodies and to share with our lovers the joy the Goddess gives. And that sharing, that love, brings forth our offspring, the children we love in the way that the Mother loves us. That’s why we stand for birth, while you glorify death. Regeneration, not crucifixion, is our faith.”

“But Jesus died for you.” He paused, and she could hear his wondering thought. Even for you, madam, pagan and whore.

Isolde shook her head. “Why do I need your man-god from the East, when I have a Mother who was here before us all? All the earth is in the hands of our Great One, who is both land and sea. From her dim cavern underneath the earth she works at two mighty looms. At the first, she weaves life upward through the trembling grass, and at the second, she weaves death downward through the kindly mold. The sound of her weaving is all eternity, and the name we give it here is ‘time.’ But it is the warp and weft of all that is rich and rare. It is all we know of beauty in this world, though from time to time it comes to us as pain.”

Arraganzo spread his fine hands. “Come to us, lady,” he said winningly. “The love of our God takes away all pain.”

A smile of great wisdom passed over Isolde’s face. “Hear me, priest. There is no life worth living without pain. Even love becomes pain when our loved ones fail and die. But the pain of change is the price we pay for growth. Without love, without life, without growth, we are hollow husks. The Great One gave us this world to enjoy it to the full.”

Arraganzo felt his restraint slipping away. “Your Great One, madam,” he spat out, “is a Great Whore. When women have the thigh-freedom you preach, it is the end of the world.”

Isolde laughed, feeling the joyous mirth surging up uncontrolled. “Our Goddess gives all women the right to choose the man they lie down with, and whose children they will bear. One day even your dark god from the East will accept that women may name their own partners of bed and board.”

“That can never be. God has made women weak in body and mind. They must have men to tell them what to do.”

Isolde suppressed another wide smile. “Like the two Christian Princesses you brought here to Castle Dore?”

Arraganzo shuddered. God in Heaven, what a witch the fat older girl had turned out to be! And the younger one acting as her familiar spirit, howling and screeching all night like a black cat. Ever since they heard Mark had been killed, they had never let up their caterwauling refrain, What’s to become of us, Father, what about us? And neither he nor Dominian had the slightest idea.

“We won’t go back to our father,” Theodora had threatened with a red-eyed glare. “Don’t try to make us do that.”

“When we left, he was glad to see us go,” wept the pale Divinia, as full of tears as a month of rainy days. “And we never want to see Castle Dun Haven again.”

Never again . . .

Arraganzo came to himself with a shudder. Never again would he tangle with women, however Christian, however young. From now on he would leave it to others to match Christian Kings and virgins as they liked.

Isolde leaned forward. “We can return them to their father’s house if they want to go,” she said. “Or else they can stay here in Cornwall. You are welcome to leave them with us here in the Queen’s House. My ladies in waiting will take care of them.”

What, leave them in the home and heartland of a pagan whore? Well, they deserved no better. It took Arraganzo only seconds to make up his mind.

“Madam, I embrace your offer with both hands,” he said briskly. “And now I must take my leave.”

“Go with our blessing,” Isolde returned. “I know I speak for Lord Tristan as well as myself. But when you Christians return, as I know you will, have more respect for the old faith of this magical place. Try to remember that the spirits in the hills and mountains, in the woodlands, in the rushy glens and streams, were here before any human foot trod this soil.”

“As you say, madam.”

With a flurry of farewells, the Papal Legate bowed himself out of the room. Shortly afterward, Tristan was at her door.

“Lady, I heard the Papal Legate had been with you. What did he want?”

“He wanted to know who ruled the country now that Mark was dead.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him Queen Igraine would decide.”

Tristan nodded. “Tomorrow we must set out for Tintagel to find out how she plans to dispose of her kingdom here.”

Isolde laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Before we go, there’s something I can’t forget. I want to ask Sir Wisbeck and the Council to get the lepers out of that hovel in the wood and find a better place for them to live. In time, we’ll build a new refuge for them with a proper infirmary, and I’d like to put the woman called Madrona in charge. She’s the one who fed and succored me, and without her help, I might not have survived.”

Tristan leaned forward, somber-faced. “I, too, came across a sick soul in the wood. Like your fellow prisoners in the leper house, she is not responsible for the illness she suffers day by day.”

Briefly he outlined the story of Lady Unnowne, alone and unloved in her great castle, struggling to hold on to her wits.

“She may never recover her reason,” he finished at last. “And she has only old servants to care for her now.”

Isolde shivered and reached out to take his hand. “Alas, poor soul. Let’s send help tomorrow, as soon as we can. It must be the cruelest torment of all, to lose your mind.”

Tristan nodded fiercely. “And no cure in sight.”

“At least we have good people who’ll take care of her and ease her pain.”
As I can ease yours, my true love.

She took him in her arms. In the deep, loving comfort of his embrace, his scent came to meet her, warm and strong. We are safe now, she thought.
Safe at last.

She turned to Tristan and marveled at the words she never thought she’d be able to say openly, without fear.

“It’s late, my love. Shall we go to bed?”