Tristan of Dintagell
Leah McDaniel
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2008 Leah McDaniel
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Tristan of Dintagell and The Tristan Stone Appendix
Pronunciation Guide and Glossary
Smashwords - Tristan of Dintagell and The Tristan Stone appendix - A book by Leah McDaniel
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Prologue
Tintagel, Cornwall
Spring, 646
It was a rare, quiet day in Dintagell, the winds unnaturally still, when Marc finally returned. He too was quiet, mirroring the mood of the wind, so that when he entered the cool dark of the chamber she did not see him at first. He dropped his daypack with a soft rustle, and unbuckled his belt to drop with a quiet thunk on the floor, startling her from her seat. Turning to face the intrusion, she found Marc and grimaced at the defeat writ plainly in his clear blue eyes. Isuelt had only ever seen his eyes that way once before, and seeing them now caused her heart to constrict with remembered pain.
Marc’s gaze wandered from her startled expression to the cradle at her knees, and back. “How long?” He rasped, then cleared his throat, shaking his unbound wheaten hair away from his eyes and asked again, more clearly, “How long?”
Unexpectedly, Isuelt’s face began to crumple, and she raised her fingers to her mouth to stem the tremble in her lips, then just as quickly, her expression cleared, and she said softly, “Nearly a season. It will be three months come Wednesday next.”
Bright, sharp pain, like a knife cut flashed through him, dimming his eyes for a moment before he could master himself, and he nodded, unable to find the words. Taking a deep breath, he hissed it out slowly like a kettle coming to steam. “Well.” He began. “Well.” He took another step into the room while Isuelt waited, tense and unsure of what to say or do. He made a circuit around the chamber, examining the tapestries, running his rough dry fingers over a tabletop, a chair back, the top of chest and bureau, and along the rough stone wall, all the while never really seeing or feeling.
“I would have come, if I was able.” He said at last, his voice rough and indistinct. Dropping his deep baritone to a whisper, he repeated, “I would have come.”
Isuelt started in his direction, but stopped short, unable to breach the distance between them, powerless to help him find direction in his disorientation, unwilling to trespass upon his pain.
“I know.” The simple words hung there in the air between them, reverberating faintly against the stone. Unexpectedly, a lump rose painfully in her throat and her eyes pricked with tears before she could turn from Marc, and put away her grief. Surprise unmanned her, for she had not yet shed a single tear in the three months of her sorrow, and to shed them now would be her undoing.
Marc narrowed his eyes in his short journey from grief to anger and hissed, “Weep not! You’ve not the right.”
Isuelt nodded vigorously, and the light from the high embrasure shot across her ebony hair like lightening. She pressed her fingers to her lips again, but could not calm the tremor in them this time, and so she turned away, hiding her face as the tears fell, betraying herself with each dew-dropping sniff.
Marc’s anger grew like a living thing, strong and hot and dangerous. “Weep not, wife,” Marc barked at her. “For you’ve not lost a husband.” Marc turned abruptly and paced stiffly away, only to turn on his heels and march right back to her. “I shall never rid myself of the burden of him now, curse him. You will ache for him all the more now that he’s dead.” His words were clipped and angry, and she flinched as though they pelted her, like stones on her back.
Isuelt shook her bowed head in denial, still unable to speak. Marc watched in distracted fascination as the reflected sunlight caught his eye, shimmering like quicksilver across the inky silk of her hair, and felt his rage burn itself into smoldering ashes of fear. At that moment he was certain that he could not continue to live if he lost her again. He wondered impotently at his desperate love for her despite her heart’s infidelity, and sank defeated into the chair by the cradle.
A soft mewling came then, up out the blankets in the wooden box at his knees, and Marc leaned forward in surprise, remembering then, what in his anger he forgot. Isuelt twisted around wiping her green, tear-bright eyes with the back of her fingers, and reached for the puling bundle. Marc stayed her with a soft look, and reached himself for the baby as the whimper matured into a soft bleating. He pulled the blankets away and gasped at the startling grey eyes watching him widely from beneath blond brows, and a thick thatch of nearly white, stick straight hair. Gently, he reached for the child, lifting him with long, straight fingers, strong hands belying a gentle touch. Marc closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the milky scent of him, before opening them to find Isuelt watching him hopefully. He looked back at the baby, studying him for several long minutes before he said quietly, “He has his father’s eyes.”
Nodding, Isuelt answered just as quietly, “Aye.” Swallowing audibly, she ran her fingers lightly through the creamy thatch of down and said, “And his mother’s coloring.” The child strained his head toward Isuelt’s soft voice, and when he found her, he gave her a toothless, slobbery grin before grunting and gnawing on a tightly curled, pink fist.
Marc filled his lungs deeply, and released his breath in a long, slow sigh. His face softened and his eyes grew misty and distant as he cradled the wriggling child. “I remember well, another day, not unlike this one.”
Isuelt nodded, her heart soft, her expression tender. “Do you?” She asked, mildly as she raked her fingers lightly now, through Marc’s blond hair, brushing it back from his eyes. “Tell me.” She continued quietly. “If it does not grieve you to do so.”
A frown shadowed his face for a moment, but quickly passed, and he nodded slowly, his eyes still on the babe. “Tristan,” Marc began, the word harsh and full of woe on his lips, “Was born into sorrow, his father killed in battle, and his mother killed in childbed.”
Isuelt knelt in the rushes at Marc’s feet, curling her legs beneath herself, tucking her skirts gracefully around her legs. The baby looked from Marc to Isuelt, and began to squirm and fuss until Isuelt gave over her forefinger to his greedy, chewing gums. He settled contentedly in Marc’s arms, grasping Isuelt’s finger in his drool-slickened fist, and studied with owl-eyed interest the two faces hovering near his own.
Sighing, Marc’s eyes fell upon the babe again, and he let slip a small, sad smile. “I was young then, aye? My kingship had been thrust upon me with the death of my own father after the battle of Caerllion Fawr.”
“I did not know your father died in battle.” Isuelt replied quietly. “I have never heard you speak of it.”
Nodding solemnly, Marc said, “Dark days, those were. The bards don’t sing of them often.” Marc laid the baby gently along the length of his thighs, resting the bright blond head upon his knees, and swayed the boy smoothly back and forth, rocking him in the steady slow tempo of his heartbeat.
“I bloodied my blade for the first time on that field of slaughter.” His eyes grew distant again looking inward as the memories ran fresh and vivid through his mind. “We,” he started, “The Britons, I mean.” He clarified, “For once we put aside our border disputes and petty ambitions to unite against Aethelfrith of Bernicia.”
Isuelt pried her finger from the baby’s grasp to turn toward Marc, giving him the sum of her attention.
“Oh, aye.” He answered her unvoiced question. “We had suffered a great outrage by his hand. Enough so to unite us for a time.”
Isuelt did not interrupt, giving him the space and time he needed to tell the story, and he smiled at her in a distracted way while his memory, saddled with melancholy and regret galloped into the misty landscape of reverie.
“Aethelfrith had driven Edwin of Northumbria into exile, and he seeking to preserve his life begged the hospitality in the British courts of Cadfan of Gwynedd and Selyf of Powys. This enraged Aethelfrith, and in its doing, he sought to punish these Cymric kings for sheltering him. He could not breach the mountains and forests in their lands, and even should he do so all they need do was go to ground in their fortresses. So Aethelfrith in a great and towering rage turned he his wrath upon the monastery at Bangor, slaughtering there one-thousand and two hundred monks, innocent of any violence themselves, unarmed and vulnerable.”
Isuelt gasped, but did not otherwise interrupt.
“Only fifty souls escaped the massacre, but even this infuriated Aethelfrith for he raged that the gentle monks employed their prayers like weapons, and their words were no different than pike or sword or stone, if used against him.”
Marc narrowed his eyes, pausing for a moment to brush back a tuft of downy hair on the baby’s sleeping head. “Well, as you kent, this was enough of an outrage to draw us out of our lands. Cynan Garwyn, father of Selyf of Powys, and Selyf himself were the first to arm. Cadfan of Gwynedd joined him quickly, and then followed Prince Cadwal Cryshalog of Rhos; and my father, King Bledric, with me, an untried youth trotting at his heels, panting for the coming battle.”
He waxed silent again for several long minutes before continuing. “The fighting was fierce, and the killing was brutal; much more so than I could have dreamed in the youthful desires of my imagination. I had heard the stories of war and the glories therein, aye? The bardsong does not do it fair.”
Isuelt did not comment, for what could she say to that, she wondered?
“When the fighting erupted around me, I was stunned into inaction while in every direction fell my friends, common and noble alike, screaming in agony as they bled their life into the ground. My sword was as heavy as my heart; I could not lift it even for my own defense, and surely I would have fallen too, save for Bersules, for it was his blade that stopped the Saxon one coming for me. I can hear still, the shriek of metal against metal screaming for my blood. It was that sound that snapped me from my stupor; my heart leapt in my throat, and my arms swung and slashed my blade, driving deep into bodies, spilling foreign blood to churn with our own on the field of gore that day.”
Marc looked down, avoiding Isuelt’s eyes and continued softly, “It was not until that day that I really kent myself; what I was truly capable of doing. I found out then what it meant to be a soldier, and very soon after, what it meant to be a king.”
Sitting a little straighter, his voice more distinct, he continued, “Cadfan of Gywnedd, Selyf of Powys, and Cadwal, good kings all, lost they their lives in that battle along with a great quantity of men. And yet, when the last of us grew too weary to lift our swords, or nock our bowstrings, and we fell back from the fighting, exhausted and disheartened, the outcome could not be decided. The victor was unclear, for we had slain a great multitude as well. Another battle was fought, hard on the heels of Caerllion Fawr. We came together again, what was left of us, clashing and shouting, and bleeding the ground red in the Battle of Bangor-is-Coed, and there fell my father.”
The babe sighed in his sleep, dropping back into it, deep and sweet as only a child can, and Marc carefully fitted him back into his nest in the cradle. “It was a shocking thing, to lose my father so abruptly. The brilliant mantle of youth was still upon him, and in my eyes nothing could diminish his strength and vitality; I, in my innocence could not conceive that he could, or would, be cut down with such little effort.”
Isuelt laid her hand on his knee, but still did not interrupt as the coracle of his thought rode the turbulent seas of remembrance. At first he seemed to take no notice, but after a time, he covered her hand with his, rough and weatherworn, but light and quiet upon her skin.
“An unlucky arrow caught him in the throat.” He lightly squeezed her hand, unaware of even doing so. “With each heartbeat his strength pumped out of his body, and I helpless to stop it, wept. As I sat there in the dirt next to his body, my hands and arms red to the elbows with my failed efforts to save him, Bersules snatched me from the dragon’s jaws yet again. He jerked me to my feet trying frantically to pull me from the field. All the while I was kicking and clawing at him, trying desperately to return to my father, but he persisted. The day is theirs, he said to me. And he screamed in my face, We must away with our lives, for they be forfeit otherwise.”
Isuelt moaned lightly, unable to stop herself, for she saw for the first time in the man her husband, the sorrow in the boy he had been. Suddenly aware of himself again, Marc released the pressure on her hand, and lifted it to lightly stroke the soft satin of her hair, as if to comfort her.
“Bersules was finally able to pull me from the warring grounds, and lucky he did so, for it was only a few moments later that the Saxon fyrd descended like a plague and began scavenging the dead. They fell on my father like beasts of the field, stripping him of his regalia with a maniacal joy, and I, to my utter despair left him there, under the assault of their brutal hands, in order to preserve my own life.”
Isuelt reproved softly, “What other choice had you? You would have done your father a grave injustice to sacrifice your life in order to save his body.”
Marc sighed. “I do understand this now. But some part of me would still rather see his bones picked clean by the carrion crows, than by the Saxons.”
Tilting her head, she lifted a brow and made a vague noise in her throat for him to continue.
“We escaped with our lives, and little else, and who was left of us made our way south, to Caer Uisc. We there held a council, and I despite my youth was elected king, for the counselors held that my father’s blood would show its strength in me.”
Isuelt nodded. “They were wise.”
Marc shrugged. “Mayhap. There are times when I thought it would have been wiser to elect Bersules. But no matter; what was done then will not be undone now.”
The babe stirred in the cradle, stretching his tiny arms above his head, but instead of coming awake, he rested there with outstretched arms, a peaceful expression on his cherubic face. Marc lowered his voice a bit. “I fear I have strayed from the footpath of my original thought, for I was going to tell you of another child, so resembling this one that it is like an echo in time.”
Isuelt’s face began to crumple involuntarily and she bit the inside of her cheek to restrain her grief before it burst forth again of its own will. Taking a long slow breath, she released it in a shuddering sigh before she was able to clear her expression. Shooting a glance at Marc, she was silently thankful that his mind was otherwise occupied, and he did not notice her near fall into deep, consuming sorrow again. He was battling his own demons, and she determined to keep the fiends that plagued her in check, and deal with them on her own, later. She would not again she vowed, cause him heartache or sorrow. She would put the past away, looking only to the future.
“Conomor, Tristan’s sire, was not with the Cymbrogos… Compatriots as we called ourselves, at Caerllion Fawr, or Bangor-is-Coed, for he had taken himself across the sea to wage different wars. He was over-king in Cerniw, and my father one of the lesser kings under him, but that did not satisfy his ambition. Through cunning, intrigue, and crafty marriages, Conomor grew great in Brittany. My sister, his last wife, heavy with child he left at Caer Dor, and made he his way back to Brittany to fight one last great battle. Conomor brought with him mercenaries from Briton, numbering among them Danes, Northmen and Frisians, and this in our eyes was a paradox. We Britons wanted nothing more than these Saxon invaders gone from our soil, yet the taste was vile in our mouths that a Briton king would put them in his employ.”
Marc shrugged, his eyes again distant, but soon recovered from his digression to continue. “Anyhap, with his forces thus strengthened, he crossed the sea and marched his army north to clash with Iuduael and Clothair of the Franks. At first, fortune seemed to favor Conomor, for he overwhelmed the Frankish infantry for two entire days. Iuduael would not be undone though, and on the third day he broke them with a charge from his formidable horse-warriors, putting Conomor’s spurious army to flight.”
Shifting in his seat, an old sorrow filled Marc as he remembered, and he closed his eyes as the ghost of decades old pain skittered across his heart. “There are times when I think that perhaps there is a pattern to the universe, not unlike the tempo of a song or the rhythm of a poem. Our Lord God, for his own amusement perhaps, has mankind play out the verses, each one different and unique, telling its own distinct story.”
Isuelt furrowed her brow, waiting patiently for Marc to make his meaning clear, for in his musings he would not be rushed, he allowing the value of his thoughts to unfold itself like a flower, one petal at a time until the whole was vivid and brilliant under the sunlight of comprehension.
“But in the fullness of time,” He continued, “We also hear the refrains in the poetry, or the choruses in the songs of the ages. Like in our earthly songs and poems, there are regular, reoccurring phrases, familiar in their regularity. And at this time the universe began its chorus.”
Taking a deep breath, Marc confronted this old sorrow. “My sister, as I told you, was heavy with child and quit of her husband for his Breton ambitions, quite alone save for a dozen servants. She was a woman grown, older than I, a queen in her own right, and quiescent in her pregnancy, yet more vulnerable than we knew. My father and I standing against the Saxons, and my mother holding the kingdom together in the stead of the king, and her own lord and husband gone to his own battle, who was left for her? Who was at hand to help?”
Isuelt laid a hand of comfort on his arm, inert and slack in his remembrance, and he responded unthinkingly to the consolation laying his hand over her own, again.
“On the third day of his war, when the horse broke through his lines, Conomor, in his retreat was wounded in flight. When the bards recount his story, they sing of his bravery, sustaining he sword thrusts, and blows from pike and javelin, and still he manages to stay astride his horse. Weak from his injuries, he rides, but suddenly his horse stumbles and he falls beneath the iron shod hooves of the pursuing cavalry, and is trampled to death in the rout. All the while my sister, in time’s cruel irony, has taken to childbed to deliver herself of a son, the prince of both Cerniw and Brittany.”
“Like Conomor’s battle all begins well, and for two days, it seems her struggle will be a success as she fights bravely onward, but on the third day, she too is defeated, perishing in an agony of blood and sweat and exhaustion, alone in her terror, save a few frightened servants, outlanders to our house, and to my sister’s heart.”
Isuelt made a soft sound in her throat, a quiet moan of distress for Marc’s loss, so long ago but still distinct in his heart. He rubbed her hand gently playing the soft flesh over the fine bones of her hand, but the rest of him was lost still in the mists of time, pushing through them like cobwebs, wandering the moors of reminiscence to find his way to finish his story.
“I did not know for a long while of my sister’s death, and Tristan’s birth. I was not aware of Conomor’s death, and my new status as over-king, for I was almost immediately occupied with Wessex. Cynegils and his son Cwichelm, like wolves on the wounded, caught the scent of opportunity to push further west and expand their borders at the expense of the exhausted and decimated Cymru forces, and fell they on us at Beandun, slaying there two-thousand and sixty five Britons. We were forced to retreat back to Caer Uisc, and Wessex took again what has been ours for centuries. By the time I made my way home in defeat and utter exhaustion, to deliver the news of my father’s death, and the defeat of our armies in battle, and the loss of our lands in the west, my mother awaited me with sad tidings for my ears, and a silver-eyed babe in her arms, very like this one, sleeping here at my feet.”
Marc gave the cradle a gentle rock, but still the babe did not stir. “My mother had named him for the sadness of his birth and the disastrous fortunes of the times, and that name has followed him to his death, lapping over onto the birth of his own son, into similar tragic circumstance, for so like Tristan, his own son was born an orphan. Like Tristan, his own son has come to the court of Dintagell for his upbringing. And like Tristan, his own son, has by my eyes, stolen your heart.”
Isuelt gasped, and started to sputter a protest, but Marc continued rubbing her hand placidly, and there was no malice in his expression; only a deep and abiding sadness, and resolution that destiny played by its own set of standards, and he powerless to stop it.
“Do not fret Isuelt.” He said quietly, kindly. “There is no sin in loving a babe.” Then he quirked his head to the side as a new thought struck him, and asked, “What is this child called? He cannot be raised in my house if he hasn’t a name.”
Isuelt stared at him openmouthed for a moment, before she realized what she was doing, then snapped it shut before opening it again to answer softly, “Cystennin.”
Smiling softly, Marc nodded. “’Tis a fine and fitting name; a name of my line.”
Marc stroked the child’s face, slack still in sleep. Retreating in thought once again, he frowned. “Mayhap what you name a child, burdens him or buoys him throughout his life. Mayhap my mother did Tristan a great wrong in labeling him with the terrible name of Sorrow. Mayhap you did this child a great favor in lending him the strength of his name, for you have foreshadowed his future with potency in giving him the name, Constant.”
Isuelt climbed to her knees, crushing the fabric of her gown into the floor, and took both of Marc’s hands in hers. With bright eyes and trembling lips she whispered, “I pray you are right Marc. I would give to God years of my life to undo the sins of the past, and it is my great frustration that I cannot. I would instead give us, and this child, many tomorrows of happiness. Could you Marc, would you, raise up this child as our own? I will be the wife to you that you did not have. Let him be the son we cannot have. Mayhap we can unmake some of the history following us, following him. Mayhap we can change our tomorrows, despite our yesterdays.”
Marc was shocked into silence by her pleading words and beseeching eyes. This was a side to her he had not ever seen, and he was not sure if this pleased him or not. After a while, he lifted her from her knees, wrapping his long arms around her like a mantle, and buried her face into the welcoming crook of his neck. “Aye.” He murmured into her hair. “Aye. Let us begin again.”
Escaping their notice, the chamber door slid quietly home. Brengain lingered there, on the other side, her fingertips resting silently on the handle, reflecting on the tender scene in the darkled chamber, and at long last, she smiled.
Chapter One
Cornwall, 630
“Mam-gu!” Tristan shouted, bursting into the main hall, his cry ringing against the cold stone enclosure. His echoing words hung in the air a moment, dying in the empty room unanswered. “Mam-gu!” He repeated, impatiently striding across the room to shout up the stairwell. When this second call went unanswered, Tristan leapt up the first three stone steps, meaning to take long-legged bounds the length of the flight, but was stopped short by his grandmother’s stocky brown handmaid growling a note of disapproval deep in her throat.
“What do you mean by baying you like a hound in this house?” She growled from the landing above him. “You are a pup no longer, so come you not into this quiet keep tripping you over your muddy feet, and shouting you for your good grandmother like some common lout.”
Tristan took a step backward, misjudged the distance of the step and tumbled the remaining two steps back down to the floor. Sheepishly, he picked himself up and grinned at the handmaid who still stood on the top landing, hands on hips as though daring him to cross her. Sighing, she rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath that sounded to Tristan suspiciously like, ‘buffoonery’, and ‘having the patience of a saint’, before she addressed him again directly.
Tapping her foot impatiently she said, “Well, get on with you. Your grandmother is up here in her chamber. But come you softly for she does not feel herself today.”
Taking the bottom three steps with a bound again, the short, brown handmaid slowed him with a shake of her head, and another growl in her throat. Grinning at her again, his cheeks dimpling endearingly, he stepped as sedately as his gangling youthful vigor would allow, consuming the remainder of the steps in a subdued trot. When he reached the landing, he said with sparkling eyes, “I thank you, Gwennol.” Then bowed before her with a deep, sweeping extravagance before popping up to stride with dancing grey eyes, quickly to the chamber.
Scratching on the heavy oak door, he didn’t wait for a response before pulling it to and peering into the room. “Mam-gu?” He queried, a bit more quietly.
She turned her head; her unbound hair a slaty cascade in the dim light, and answered, “Ah Tristan. Was that you who was bellowing?”
“Mam-gu, why do you sit in the shadows? The day is too fine to mew yourself away from the light.” Stepping through the portal and to the embrasures, he folded back the shutters, allowing the sunlight in to chase away the shadows and warm the damp stonewalls of the room.
Collwen winced, blinking against the intrusion, and Tristan closed the distance between them in three long strides, folding his lanky legs to sink beside her on a stool.
“Are you unwell Mam-gu? Gwennol said you are not feeling yourself.”
Collwen smiled thinly and gave him a knobbly-knuckled pat. She sighed, studying him for a moment with tired eyes. “Of all weights, Tristan, old age is the heaviest.”
“You are not old Mam-gu.” He took her gnarled, bent hand in his, the long, fine fingers stroking her weary flesh, and amended, “At least, you aren’t to me.”
“Am I not?” She smiled again and reclaimed her fingers to pull them through his hair, long and knotted, the chestnut curls weather burnished against his shoulders. “My bones, I am afraid, would quarrel with you.”
Ducking his head to shake her fingers out of his hair, he grimaced slightly in response to the flash of hurt in her eyes at his unthinking rebuff and tried with temperate dignity to explain. “I am a man grown now. I do not need you to comb the knots from my locks, or smooth the rucks from my weeds.”
The hurt was replaced by an ill concealed amusement as she eyed the sorry state of his hair and clothing, and she said quietly, “Do you not?”
He shook his head and shrugged off his leather pack, giving it a thorough search before finally pulling out a length of leather. Smoothing his hair away from his face, he tied it back, leaving a lumpy, tangled, curling queue to dangle between his shoulder blades. “I do not. I can care for my own needs. I do not need to be petted and preened.” He snorted. “Would you follow me to battle to comb out my hair?”
Mild alarm spurred her heart into an unsteady coursing, and she asked, perhaps too quickly, “What battle?”
“Aye, well that is why I come seeking you. Have you a thought to where is my uncle?”
“I do not. He may have gone to Lannwedhenek though, for he is expecting his ships in to port.”
Tristan’s face fell a little. “Oh. Aye. He did speak of it recently.”
“Tristan.” Collwen prodded gently. “Why do you seek Marc? Is trouble come?” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.
Eyeing her thoughtfully, Tristan said slowly, “Nay Mam-gu. Everything is quiet here at Dintagell, as always it is. The fishers are fishing, the farmers are farming, and the peasants are still plucking tin ore from the rivers.” Stifling a yawn and rolling his eyes, he said with thinly veiled impatience, “The monks are scribbling and chanting and scourging their flesh, and fasting, and refusing as always to indulge in any kind of joy.” He sniffed. “And seeking to preserve me from doing so as well. ‘Tis only the warriors who are unemployed, moldering in their armor, gone brittle and useless with neglect.”
Collwen nodded slightly, understanding him, as she always so easily did. “’Tis difficult, aye, to be the last yellow chick amongst the old cocks and hens.”
“Oh Mam-gu. I have told you already. You are not so old, and I am not so young!”
She smiled sadly, and despite her years, her teeth shown full and alabaster in the shining chamber. “If you could see clearly Tristan, you would see that you have said it backwards. But no matter; on this we shalln’t agree ‘til you have some wisdom upon you, but alas that comes only with age.” Quickly changing course, before he could argue, she asked mildly, “Why then do you seek Marc?”
“There is talk among the people that the heathen Cynegils of Wessex has built his army again, and is growling in the direction of Gwent. I would speak to Marc of lending my sword arm to the King Meurig ap Tewdrig for the coming battle.”
Furrowing her brow in deliberation, Collwen took a breath as though to speak, but Tristan spit out his words in a hurry, trying to change her mind before she even spoke it. “Since the carnage at Beandun, Cynegils has made no new inroads into Briton, but it has taken an age for the Cymru to recover from his crippling blows. I would not stand idle while our brothers and sisters fall victim to his greed and ambition yet again.”
Collwen compressed her lips, biting back her words of worry, and sat silent for a time. Finally she answered him, her expression shuttered. “It is a very noble thought. I know how your blood must cry out for you to champion our people, but your time is not yet come.”
He started to sputter a protest, but she stilled him with her hand, her bearing regal, her say final. “Speak if you must to Marc, but his words will only bear out my own. You are a prince of Cerniw, and to Cerniw are you bound. Should Meurig of Glywysing call upon Cerniw to ally with him against the West Saxons, and King Marc binds Cerniw to Glywysing, only then shall you lift your sword in this battle.”
“But Mam-gu,” he complained, “Now that Cynegils has married Penda of Mercia’s sister, these two Saxon kings will not clash between themselves. They will turn their ambitious eyes toward us! Were we not happy when several years ago Cynegils occupied himself with adding to the old Roman wall on its western frontier to keep the Mierce and their new king Penda at bay? Were we not delighted when King Cynegils and the prince Cwichelm clashed blades with Penda in their battle at Caer-Ceri?”
“Cirencester.” His grandmother corrected.
“What?” He asked, his momentum broken by the interruption.
“The Saxons have called it Cirencester since they tore it from Cyndyddan’s bloody hands a generation past.”
“Corinium, Cirencester, Caer-Ceri; does it matter what the place is now called? It has been chipped away from Briton, like so many of our cities and towns and farmsteads. If I don’t take a stand, ‘haps Dintagell will one day be called by some foreign word, it in the hands of the Saxons as well.”
“You alone, Tristan, will not make the difference.” She was sitting regally, her back as stiff and straight as a pikestaff, and her words had the ring of authority and finality. “Let some other one bleed for Glywysing. Your duty is to Cerniw. It may not hold the excitement that a young man’s heart longs for, but for now, this is your lot.”
She winced and closed her eyes again, rubbing her temples while he stewed in her words. When she opened her eyes again, she saw his misery, and her heart softened toward him. “Ah Tristan, you are so dear to me, so very fine. I would give my life for your happiness, but there are things greater than you and I.”
Sighing, he tried to check his disappointment. “I know Mam-gu.”
“You are Marc’s heir. You ken he has no wife, no child. My other children, including your own dear mother, have long gone to dust. There is no one else of my line to inherit the responsibility of leading and protecting the people of Cerniw. This is your honor, and your burden, should Marc perish.”
His frustration bubbled to the surface. “Yes Mam-gu, I know, and that is what I would do, if you would but let me go to Meurig. We must stop the Saxons where they stand; even push them back further, lest they find it in their minds to move south, to the very lintels of our doors.”
“And I have told you, the time for that is not come. You would better serve Cerniw by making haste to the monastery and rejoining your lessons. Learned men are effective leaders Tristan.”
He snorted. “You will not draw me into this old quarrel.” He popped up and kissed her quickly on the forehead. “I can never win the day when we argue Mam-gu. You are too clever for me, and so I will instead retreat before I am too badly trounced.”
Collwen smiled serenely, dropping her shoulders a bit with relief. “Stay Tristan. Have you your harp in your satchel? You have not played for your Mam-gu in a long while and I do miss the hearing of it.”
Straightening to his full height, he stretched his idle muscles. Though he longed to flee the confines of the chamber to ride out onto the moorlands into the whipping winds and rustling grasses, he noticed for the first time the strain on his grandmother’s face, and the pain behind her eyes. Reaching again for his satchel, he flashed her a deeply dimpled smile and asked, “What would you have me play?”
“Something soft.” She said quietly, her regal bearing eroding with the upright will of her bones. “Mayhap I shall close my eyes and rest a bit while you play.” Surrendering her façade, she admitted, “My head is aching dreadfully.”
“I shall play for you Mam-gu. Lie back and rest.” He smoothed the silver hair from her brow, and sat back to coax the soothing notes from his harp strings until at last, his grandmother slept.
Sweat ran down Tristan’s back soaking his tunic between his shoulder blades and armpits, and it dripped off his brow stinging his eyes. Yet he grinned with each sword thrust, and he laughed when he blocked Dinadin’s advances, the blunted swords shrieking as they collided. The two of them found their rhythm; thrust, parry, feint, parry, thrust, their feet stirring the dust in the practice yard, dancing to the steady tempo of their labored breathing, accompanied by the ringing staccato tones as their swords clashed and chattered and rang in the dying light of the day. Tristan’s arms and back and shoulders were burning with fatigue, and he could see that Dinadin’s must be as well, for his friend was starting to make elementary mistakes, and as his responses slowed, his reflexes grew sluggish. Ignoring the protests of his body, Tristan pushed himself harder until the pain gave way to an odd, detached sort of euphoria. Feint, thrust, feint, thrust, parry, parry; there it was! He seized the opportunity, taking advantage of Dinadin’s mistake and fatigue, and with a ringing blow that sent a hand-numbing shock down his own arm he slapped his blade against Dinadin’s near the balance point. The sword flew from Dinadin’s numb fingers landing in the dust, out of sight in the darkling yard. They stood there panting raggedly and sweating, too weary for words just yet, but they grinned at one another, their camaraderie unspoiled by the one defeating the other. As they recovered their breath, Dinadin began to laugh, shaking his hand as though to shake the tingling out of his fingers.
“That was quite a blow.” Dinadin said, rolling his hand and flexing his fingers.
Grinning, Tristan nodded, then tried to shake the hair out of his eyes, for it had escaped the leather binding. “Aye, though in truth I did not seek to deliver it with quite so much force. Have I injured you?”
“Not a bit.” Dinadin assured him happily, though he continued to flex his fingers and rub his hand. “That knack might have served you well against the Saxons at Cirencester, were you able to join Meurig and fight.”
“That knack might get you killed.” Came a gravelly voice out of the murky twilight. Tristan and Dinadin swiveled their heads toward the voice, and watched as a shadowy form flicked the forgotten blunt with the tip of his boot, catching it in mid arc. As he came toward them he deftly flipped the blade by the tip, catching it neatly by the grip, ready for use. “In battle, it is the soldier’s aim to kill. You would not have even wounded him, and it is unlikely that in battle, that maneuver would have even disarmed him.” The words were rough and contemptuous, and Tristan recognized the voice before his eyes could identify the man.
“Bersules.” Tristan began.
“If you would give me the courtesy due my station, ‘tis Lord Bersules, Prince Tristan.” His eyes were cold and inky in the twilight, peering out from beneath an untamed black mane.
“Lord Bersules then. I protest. You cannot have seen much in this waning light. I do believe that both Dinadin and I would be an asset to any army.”
“Do you now?” He grinned, but it was more menacing than mirthful, and Tristan shifted away from him slightly, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. “I see much more than you ken. It would be wise if you long remember that.”
The tip of Tristan’s sword was planted in the soil at his feet, and he leaned upon it like it was a staff. Bersules raked Tristan’s posture with his black, snapping eyes, and he huffed loudly in disdain. “As for your worthiness as a soldier, boy, you, and a legion like you could not defeat an army of children.”
Before Tristan could respond, he kicked the tip of Tristan’s sword out from under his weight, and Tristan stumbled forward, unbalanced.
“That,” he began, “be not a staff.” He swung the blunted sword at Tristan, and Tristan raised his own sword to fend off the blow. “This blade be your bosom friend.” He punctuated his words with another ringing blow to Tristan’s blade. “Keep it closer than a lover.” He swung again, connecting with Tristan’s parry. “It will feed you. It will keep you warm in the night, and it can preserve your miserable,” clang, “indulged,” clang, “coddled,” clang, “soft,” clang, “life.” With his last word, uttered softly, though there was no mistaking the enmity there, he feinted towards Tristan’s right ear, the sword hissing in the night, poised to bite him. Tristan blocked the thrust, the sword in his right hand, his weight upon his right leg, foot forward, knee bent to support his weight and still leave him agile. Bersules, grinning at his calculations coming to fruition, swung the blade down hard, slapping Tristan’s exposed hamstring with the flat of his blade. Tristan’s leg buckled beneath his weight and he fell helplessly forward, the breath hissing out of him in anguish and rage, his leg deadened from hip to knee.
Bersules pitched the sword to Dinadin and growled at them both, “Make ready yourselves and your horses. We are for Caer Uisc to defend her against the Mierce. We depart at cock-crow.” Turning, he melted away from them, his black cloak an effective camouflage in the now tarry night.
“Wait.” Tristan ground out. “Lord Bersules.” He called, panting. “Where is Marc?”
“The king,” Bersules answered from a distance, an edge to his voice, “be there already.”
The following day they set off for Caer Dor, the leagues falling behind them swiftly as they held to the rapid pace that Bersules set. Once at Caer Dor, Tristan had no time to linger at his ancestral home, but instead they left their horses at pasture there. The hastily assembled battle group boarded one of Marc’s ships at the port at Fowey, and set sail eastward, following the jagged and meandering coastline until after many tense days and nights the ship bore them past the red sandstone cliffs with their crumbling red marls standing sentry at the estuary entrance to the River Uisc.
“Why must we hasten to defend Caer Uisc?” Dinadin pondered as they trod awkwardly over the shifting, sharp fragments of quartz and grit of the Pebble-Beds. Taking a wrong step, he hissed as he turned his ankle, stumbled, then righted himself, earning a clay-red streak and a ragged hole in his woolen bracea as reward for his carelessness. Both of them ignored the fall, and as he patted the dust from his legging then wiped his red stained palms on his tunic, he continued, “I don’t complain, mind you, for like you I relish the chance to stain my blade with Saxon blood. There are few left though, in the city now save for the holy community there, and the farmers plowing over the old Roman sections close to the outer walls. The city is in decline, and has been, I am told, for two centuries.”
Tristan raised his eyebrows at him, but there was no censure in his voice when he answered. “The Anglish have shown no hesitation to slaughter our holy men, whether the monks have in their hands a sword, or a simply a shepherd’s staff.” Their feet crunched over the quartzite shards for several strides before he added as an afterthought, “The city may be in ruins, our people pulled back into the old quarter, but it is still British. It was British before the Romans came to our shores, British when they abandoned us to the lawlessness and slaughter of the invaders, British during the Peace of Artur, and will remain British, though plucked at by the greedy, reaching fingers of the Saxons. It is part of our heritage.”
Bersules snorted nearby, startling them both. How did he continue to appear so, intruding upon them without their notice, Tristan wondered?
“A fine speech, from a fancy speaker, aye? But flawed.” Bersules growled, his voice as gravelly as the Pebble-Beds of the Dewnans. “Did you learn nothing from the seasons and years those ineffectual monks gave to the folly of your education?”
He turned cold, black eyes, the pupils pinpoint in the sharp noon light, to Dinadin. “Yours be not to question. If you be called to fight, then come you without comment, and die you at my discretion. That be your lot.”
He shifted his dagger gaze to Tristan and said to him with no less hostility, “As your destiny be that of kings and leaders of men, you have no place with me in the theatre of war. Your utter lack of knowledge of all things martial does not inspire me to place my life in your hands.”
Tristan colored, the heat slowly creeping up his throat to burn like the cherry-red coals of a brazier, in his face. He compressed his lips in a tight line and waited, like a dog at the mercy of a cruel master, for the upbraiding to end.
“Were it to my discretion, stayed you at home, you would, with the women and children, for a boy are you still, despite your sixteen years. Our king, who has my fealty, my loyalty, would have you here, so here you be, and it be my regrettable task to keep you breathing.”
His eyes had not yet left Tristan as they marched over the shifting stratum, and Tristan cut his own gaze to his red dusted boots in anger and shame.
Lowering his voice to a rumble Bersules closed in on Tristan until he could smell the foul stink of the hard man’s biting words. “You have fashioned a weakness in my king, like the rot a worm brings to an apple. You cursed him with your birth, shaping a softness in him that a king cannot afford. I will not allow you to bring about his downfall. I shall not let that come to pass.”
Tristan did not give him the pleasure of a reaction, and trudged carefully forward, concentrating as he placed each foot on the uneven shingle. After several silent minutes with Bersules pacing beside him, Tristan cut his gaze to Bersules’ face and found it unreadable, save for the unchangeable hostility of his ebony eyes. A shadow of a smile passed quickly over Bersules’ face, and instead of softening his features, somehow it made him more sinister. Tristan shuddered lightly, a chill of faint foreknowledge tripping casually down the staircase of his spine. As suddenly as the dread hit him, it was replaced with loathing and anger at this public criticism, and he determined in the future to keep out of Bersules’ way. He could not complain to Marc, for though his uncle was the king, Bersules was the king’s man, and they had a long, secure history together. Childish whining, he decided, would accomplish nothing of merit.
“Have you decided, what the true purpose for defending Caer Uisc be?” Bersules barked loudly, for the benefit of all within the hearing of his carrying voice. Tristan gritted his teeth and wondered frantically how to answer, but wasn’t given the opportunity, for Bersules’ brisk words followed on the heels on the brusquely worded question.
“Your feeble education hasn’t yet served you?” Muffled laughter fell on Tristan’s ears, like stones from the sky.
“Caer Uisc, in case the Monks at Dintagell have not taught you, is the lowest point at which an army can cross the Uisc. Steep banks on either side guard this low point. This makes Caer Uisc the gateway in which armies can enter The Horn. The ancients kent this, the Romans kent this, and your enemies ken it too.”
Flames crept up Tristan’s neck again, but he held his head high, his eyes fixed on the horizon, though he wished for nothing more at the moment, than a hole to crawl into. He could not bear the look of triumph in the black eyes to his right, of the pity in the brown eyes to his left, so he marched in silence, isolating himself in a bubble of chilly indifference for many leagues.
Finally, finding nothing else with which to bait Tristan, Bersules lengthened his stride, outpacing the defeated companions. It was not until Bersules was the head of the twisting snake of the battle group of Dintagell winding along the Uisc Valley did Dinadin dare to speak again.
Whispering, lest his words somehow make his way up the spine of the serpent all the way to Bersules’ ears, Dinadin hissed, “I surely do not ken why he hates you so.”
Tristan too was wary, and held his tongue for a time. It wasn’t until the walls of the city were in sight that he answered, “Dinadin, neither do I.”
Chapter Two
Exeter, Devon
Summer, 630
They had been marching on the old Roman road for some time, but Tristan was too distracted by Bersules’ criticism to notice. He felt the pace quicken, sensed the anticipation of the men, the soldiers’ goal now within sight, which is what drew his attention to the square towers, like massive twin sentries standing vigilant on either side of the east gate. As they approached, they were challenged from atop one of the crenellated towers, the guard’s voice feeble against the winds. Bersules answered the challenge, his own voice deep and rumbling like thunder. The guard recognized them, then directed them around to the south gate.
They skirted the moat that lay in front of the roughly coursed, volcanic, grey stonewall. Tristan noticed that the deep ditch had recently been excavated and studded like the quills on a hedgehog with thousands of sharpened ash saplings, menacing in their numbers and proximity. Bypassing the corner gate, the southeastern most section of the Roman wall, and the nearest point of the fortress to the river, Tristan took note that there was no central carriageway at this smaller gate, only a minor pedestrian entrance, though it had a heavy contingent of soldiers guarding it. It would be most vulnerable, he noted, in a siege, for it admitted a carefully constructed watercourse, lined with expertly fitted stonework, ushering river water from the Uisc to the heart of the city.
The soldiers granted them passage, and they made their way to the south gate, where they were challenged again from atop one of the twin crenellated edifices flanking the roadway which was nearly parallel to the bend in the Uisc. Bersules barked up at the watchmen, and waited as one of the pair of narrow pedestrian entrances was opened.
As they passed through the gate, Tristan raked his eyes over the layer upon layer of coursed blocks of grey trap, the wall at the base he supposed ten feet thick, tapering as it grew in height. He caught a glimpse as they began their march on the recently re-graveled Roman interior road, of the banked earth mounded over the wide foundation, ramparts bulging against the wall to a height of at least twelve feet, leaving the wall rising still above the earthen hillocks by approximately the height of a man. He strained his gaze, peering down the length of the barrier as far as his eyes would allow his sight, and studied the crumbling remains of what once must have been many square watch towers, evenly spaced along the wall’s interior. Only the most important defenses must have remained, he thought, the extraneous pillaged by the inhabitants of Caer Uisc for the changing needs of the population over the centuries since Rome established her presence in Briton, then abandoned her like mist in the summer sun.
Tristan finally broke his amazed gaping away from the fortifications and he and Dinadin exchanged wondering glances. Neither of them had seen this city with their own eyes, but instead had imagined it, relying on the poets and bards for their vision, as they told and retold the stories of the early days of Marc’s kingship, and of the monks striving to educate them in their history. Sometimes, older stories were told by the flickering firelight in Marc’s hall, stories older than the bards themselves, of the glory days of Caer Uisc, when she was the regional capital of the Dewnans and the Cerniw hundreds of years in the past. No longer under Roman authority, the Dumnonii had ruled themselves for a time in a similar fashion, briefly retaining the old Roman knowledge that provided a life of ease, (the stories which had grown in mythic proportion over the centuries), and ushered its inhabitants into a prosperity that had not been seen since.
Tristan and Dinadin goggled about silently as their feet marched automatically on, for some ghost of the past, some tangible sign that life had once been that way, here enclosed within these impressive walls of rough, grey stone.
They both were disappointed, for the reality of this place could not compete with the polished images so craftily conveyed by the bards. Where the suburbs of the city had once been, fields of corn and pasture, and arable land standing fallow now supplanted houses of wood, and masonry and of stone, their colorful tile floors pulled up or tilled under. As they progressed nearer the center of the city, traversing one of two main roads that transected Caer Uisc into quarters, the fields and pastures gave way to animal pens and mews. Individual homesteads began appearing, though most looked abandoned and decrepit, weary with age and neglect. Some were crumbling, to the benefit of others, for their parts were scavenged; the living feeding off of the flesh and bones of the dead.
Remnants of the old wall came into view, a reminder of a time when the city was merely a regional outpost for Rome; a token presence only, for Rome had never truly conquered The Horn.
Isca Dumnoniorum, the Romans had named the fort, and the wall had only originally enclosed about thirty-seven acres when it was founded for the Legio II Augustus.
Bitter satisfaction welled up in Tristan. That part of his education had stuck, but it probably would make no difference at all to Bersules, he thought, even if he recited those lessons verbatim to his sour, scowling face.
The monks, he recalled, had told him that by the time Rome departed, the town had grown beyond the limits of the old fortress, and her dwellers had to quarry new stones and scavenge old ones from the original wall to build the new one, the one they had passed through, which enclosed a considerably larger ninety-three acres.
Dinadin nudged Tristan, and bobbed his head in the direction of the first large building they had yet seen. Tristan gave him a very slight nod to acknowledge the sight. They both knew they must be approaching the city center, and that they would soon be nearing the old basilica and the forum. For some reason, the monks’ descriptions had excited both of their imaginations, and they were keen to see them with their own eyes.
They did not, however, march past this first large building, but stopped instead in front of it. New timbers, carefully adzed and fitted, stood upon an old foundation of that same roughly faced trap, and Tristan carefully studied it while Bersules shouted out to the group that they were to use this building as a barracks. He then pivoted abruptly and marched briskly off, disappearing around the far corner and down a smaller lane, out of sight. The men milled around a bit before dispersing to sift into the timber building where they dropped their packs and unbuckled their weapons, settling in to wait.
Tristan and Dinadin exchanged bright and eager glances, hesitating to enter the building with the rest.
“I should like to go and see the rest of the city.” Tristan said, tugging at his daypack to settle it more comfortably on his shoulder.
“As would I.” Agreed Dinadin. “But should we not wait upon Lord Bersules?” He cut his eyes to the doorway and back in uncertainty.
“Pah!” Tristan waved the back of his hand in the general direction of Bersules’ withdrawal. “Did he say we were to stay here? He said only that this would be our barracks.” He flashed a deeply dimpled grin, his grey eyes dancing, his white teeth flashing in the sharp sunlight. “Come. We won’t linger at any one place. We shall return before that old black bear knows we are gone.”
Dinadin cut his eyes to the doorway again, and back to Tristan, giving himself over rather quickly to Tristan’s plan. His own smile spread slow and sweet like sun-warmed honey, and he nodded. “Oh, aye then. We shalln’t linger.”
Nodding, his hair tangled and curling in his eyes before he pushed it impatiently away, Tristan added, “For what else is there to be done but to wait upon the whims of Bersules, and for he to growl them out at us like some old baying hound. Who knows when he shall even return?”
Dinadin grunted his agreement, though he couldn’t resist one last guilty look at the door.
Thus justified, they set off at a shuffling trot to see the city.
They continued down the road, intending to find where it intersected with the second road at the city’s center, but as they approached this crossroads, activity increased, as did the population. Not wishing to happen upon Bersules, they retreated to a quieter quarter.
“What do you suppose that is?” Dinadin asked, pointing to a jumbled mound in the distance.