Ashes of Heaven Page 12

  “These songs you have taught me all show that true love is torment,” she answered. “Should you not want to embrace the pain, like the lovers in the songs, rather than shy away from it?”

  He smiled again, a little uneasily, trying to think of plausible stories about this supposed wife he could tell her if he had to. He wondered if they had any children. But he just said, “The songs speak to the heart, for music enters there more easily even than the sights before our eyes, certainly more easily than reasoned thought. But the philosophers teach us that the mind should rule the heart, not the heart the mind.”

  She gave him a quick, sideways glance. “You do not believe that, Tantris, or you would not be a minstrel. And if your mind ruled, you would rejoice at your good fortune in being welcomed at the royal court of Eire, and would no longer think about some woman back across the sea in Gales.”

  III

  One clear autumn day Brangein and the princess Isolde rode out to gather herbs and roots for potions. According to the queen, the potency of the herbs increased as they became dry and brown, and as the leaves died back it was easy to poke into the dry earth for roots. A faint blue haze hung over the brown and gold of the trees. There had been a hard freeze already, but the air off the sea was still mild, and the sun was warm on their backs. The princess pushed back her hood to feel its rays on her golden hair.

  Brangein led the way along narrow tracks in the folds of the hills to a glade, rimmed by hills, where she had first accompanied the queen over a dozen years earlier. A standing stone, spotted yellow with lichen, rose like the broken trunk of a long-dead tree. The wind was still, and the only sound was the faint lowing of distant cattle. Mushrooms sprouted among the sprawling dark leaves of rare herbs. Here grew many of the plants that Queen Isolde had especially requested as ingredients for her potions, depleted by healing Tantris. Brangein and the princess dismounted and set to work with their knifes and digging sticks, while the knights who had escorted them stayed outside the glade.

  When they had been working for twenty minutes, starting to fill their baskets, the princess paused and sucked a scraped finger. “I wonder why Mother never learned to play the harp. It is much more enjoyable than searching for herbs.” But then she laughed and said, without waiting for an answer, “Yet if she had known the harp, she would have taught me herself, rather than making Tantris my tutor, and if she had not known herbcraft, he might be dead now!”

  Brangein glanced at her cousin sideways, then said, somewhat diffidently, “Remember, Isolde, we still know very little about this minstrel Tantris. All we have is his own word for how he came to be wounded and why he came to Eire. We cannot even be sure he really is a minstrel.”

  Isolde laughed. “Why this suspicion, sweet cousin? Of course he is a minstrel! He plays and sings divinely and knows hundreds of songs.”

  “Your own playing and singing is lovely,” Brangein countered, “and you are learning more songs every day, yet no one will ever think you a minstrel! And remember that, in the worst of his illness, I bathed him daily. He is muscled like a horseman and a fighter—like your Uncle Morold.”

  At the mention of Morold, Isolde grew sober, but in a moment she said, “All this suspicion suits you ill, dear Brangein. After all, what do you know of deception or hidden identities?”

  “I know much,” said Brangein slowly. “I was with your mother and Morold when they first came to the Irish court. I did not understand it all at the time, but over the years I have come to realize why we left Ispania for a new beginning here.”

  Isolde frowned, a crease between her well shaped eyebrows, and tugged and hacked at a tough root. “What is there to realize? Our family is of the noblest grandee blood. Morold came here as a messenger of the king of Ispania, and by the time that he was ready to return home, my father had fallen in love with my mother and begged you all to stay. Or so my parents always told me.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Brangein, not meeting her eyes. “But I worry, Isolde, that if Tantris is not all he seems, he may yet hurt your affectionate heart.”

  At this Isolde laughed. The root at which she had been working came free, and she tossed it triumphantly into her basket. “You are afraid that I will fall in love with him? Well, I certainly intend that he should love me, and should, in years to come, always treasure a melancholy memory of the princess more beautiful than that wife of his in Gales. But you need not worry that I shall be hurt.”

  Brangein shook her head in exasperation but smiled. “I helped raise you from a baby, indeed many days have had the sole care of you. Your mother was often too busy with her duties as queen, especially as the castle was being rebuilt and expanded. I shall never stop caring for your happiness. And if the minstrel Tantris is not all he seems, and he harms your sweet innocence in any way, I shall never forgive him.”

  Isolde suddenly thrust her cutting knife into the earth. “Aha! I have unmasked a deception myself! You feel the stirrings of love for Tantris in your own heart, and you wish to warn me away so that you can have him all to yourself!”

  Brangein shook her head, laughing. “A clever reply, dearest Isolde, but you are completely wrong! He must be younger than I am, closer to your own age, and I have always preferred older men.” Then she added, more soberly, “But is it not curious, now that you raise the question, that he has never tried to pay suit to me? A true minstrel would, I think, believe that his wooing would be more successful with a poor cousin than with a princess.”

  “So your feelings for him are not returned!” said Isolde in smiling mockery. “Besides,” with a new frown, “visitors at court never do pay attention to you, do they?”

  “Not successfully,” said Brangein with a shrug. “But I do think that the attentions he gives you suggest he is more than a minstrel.”

  “Maybe he is the son of the king of Scotia in disguise,” said Isolde, still mocking. “If so, let us hope that he reveals all before my father’s steward finds the courage to demand my hand for himself.” She stood, stretched, and tossed back her hair. “The shadows are growing long, and my fingers are raw. I think we have quite enough roots and herbs to keep my mother busy brewing potions all winter!”

  During the winter the royal city was hung with fog, smelling of peat smoke, and all was dank and cold. “I have never grown accustomed to these northern winters,” the queen told Tristan, shivering inside a heavy fur robe. “My daughter, like the king, was bred to it, but even they cannot enjoy these dark, cold days—if they can even be called days, when the sun scarcely rises.”

  The king sometimes went hunting, but for the most part everyone stayed in the castle. In the long evenings King Gurmun often asked his daughter to read something aloud to the company, or to play her lyre and sing. After one afternoon in which the king came to stand by Brangein and listen to the music lesson, he asked Tristan and Isolde to play a harp duet after dinner.

  “You both have such sweet voices,” he said, “that the court will be gladdened, even at this dark time of year.”

  “Are you certain the princess is ready to perform on the harp before all eyes and ears?” asked Tristan, concerned. “I would not wish her to appear as in any way short of her usual perfection.”

  He was also worried that he might be recognized by someone at court, for when he glanced in the glass the healthy young man he saw there was the same one he had seen before his fight with Morold, not the dying minstrel who had drifted into the harbor. He still carried a crutch, but he had not needed it for weeks.

  “I shall perform perfectly if you are there too,” said Isolde, giving him a challenging look. “Do not tell me a minstrel is afraid to appear before a company!”

  “Well, no,” he muttered, “but I have been sick so long that my skills are diminished.”

  “And thus you know that I shall sing and play better, though I have studied the harp just a few short months,” she said decisively. “Father, we shall be happy to play a duet this evening.”

  And so after dinner the
tables and benches were pushed back, and Isolde, as she often did, played an estampie on her lyre, so that all the court were soon singing with her and some even rose and danced a little. Then she set down the lyre and said, “Tonight I will give you a new song, one I have been learning on the harp. This one is sad rather than merry, but its meaning may stir your hearts.”

  Then her harp was brought out, and Tristan, with his own harp, came and sat beside her. He felt the eyes of the court on him; a sharp-faced man dressed all in grey seemed to be giving him especially bitter glances.

  “Who is that man?” he asked Isolde in an undertone as they tuned the harps. “He seems ill-disposed to enjoy our singing.” To himself he was wondering if the man recognized him, though he did not look very much like a warrior such as would have accompanied Morold to Cornwall.

  “That is Paranis, my father’s steward,” she whispered back. “I do believe he imagines himself in love with me. Unfortunately for him, the feeling is not returned!” She gave Paranis a wide smile, then turned back to Tristan with a suppressed giggle. “He cannot bear to see me sitting this close to another man, much less speaking low to him! Let us give our song special feeling, to make him writhe. He is always following me and attempting to talk to me, and if he suffers it is exactly what he deserves.”

  Their harps tuned, they began their canso. Those that had been talking and laughing quickly became quiet, listening. The notes rose softly into the shadows of the high hall, poignant and powerful with the strength to make one forget all else. Tristan and Isolde went through the melody together once, without the words, then she began to sing.

  “I am fated to sing of that I would willingly forget,

  For I feel tormented by him that I adore.

  I love him more than anything in this world,

  Yet he seems not to see me, not my manners or my courtesy,

  Not my beauty, my high birth, or even my mind.

  By him I feel cheated and betrayed,

  I am low and ugly before him, for he loves me not.”

  Tristan played the chords as she sang, her voice clear and high. Paranis the steward leaned forward, looking at her hungrily as though trying to convey that he saw her perfectly clearly. Then it was Tristan’s turn for the next verse.

  “The strength and beauty of your heart,

  Your depth of feeling, all dismay me.

  For woman I know not, near or far,

  To whose love I could be more well inclined.

  But you, dearest friend, must first be wise,

  And learn who it is who loves you most.

  Hear my verses: they are meant for you.”

  The final verse they sang together, his voice an octave below hers. Their voices blended together, over the sweet music of the harp, and as they sang their eyes met, until both almost forgot there was anyone else in the hall.

  “Esteem is due me for my worth and wealth,

  For my beauty and my noble sentiments.

  Tell me then, gentle friend who is so harsh,

  Why you are so cold to me, so cruel and unfeeling?

  Do you hate me? Does your pride spurn me?

  Let my verses be a messenger to you,

  To tell you of my love and my torment.

  I pray you, messenger, tell my love

  That pride and cruelty have brought many low.”

  When the song was over, they both sat for a moment in silence, still looking at each other. But then King Gurmun called out, “Beautifully played and sung!” and the spell was broken.

  Tristan slipped away into the shadows, away from the hearth, while Isolde returned to her lyre and another estampie. But he was thinking to himself, either he needed to leave for Cornwall at once, or else stay in Eire forever.

  IV

  The next day Tristan gave Isolde her harp lesson as he always had before, and when she spoke it was in the same laughing, teasing tone as always. But several times their eyes met, and then they stopped what they were doing and sat still, as though their eyes were speaking all their lips could not say. Brangein, embroidering, appeared not to notice.

  “How many love songs do you know, Tantris?” Isolde asked at one point. “For however many you teach me, there are always more!”

  “I know them in countless numbers,” he said airily, for he had been thinking what he needed to say. “A minstrel hears new songs all the time, and it has long been my practice to sing them first to my wife. Her name is Florete.” He did not think his foster-mother would object to having her name used for a woman Tristan loved. “Her voice is even lovelier than yours, princess, and we often used to travel and sing together before the children were born.”

  “Children?” said Isolde, her voice a bit cold.

  “Yes, yes, we have seven of them now! Four boys and three girls. Two of the girls are twins.” He had a moment of panic as he spoke, hoping that Isolde was not about to ask their names.

  But she was considering another aspect. She frowned, her head cocked to one side. “You cannot be much older than I am, Tantris, and if your wife is the same age, she must have begun bearing children when still a child herself!”

  “No, no,” he said quickly, wishing he had thought of this. “I must be at least ten years older than you, princess. It is only your mother’s healing draughts that make me appear youthful. And my dear Florete was a widow already when she married me.” Isolde was still frowning, so he hurried on to what he had originally planned to say. “You always ask me for love songs, so I suspect that you too have felt the sweet sadness of love for some man. It must be someone other than your father’s steward, but I shall not ask his name!”

  He put a hint of playfulness into his final words, hoping he had distracted her from the wife and the seven children. Brangein, across the room, looked up from her embroidery.

  “Isolde has loved,” she said, “and it is the same man who was always closest to my own heart: Morold, my cousin and her uncle.”

  Isolde sighed, and there was no sign now of laughter in her face. “We all loved him, my mother, Brangein, and I. It was not the love my mother bears for my father, or that Brangein and I may someday feel for our husbands if we marry, but it was no less strong for that. He was a good man, gentle, wise, and merciful. I would hope someday to love a man like him.”

  “His spirit and soul were always strong,” put in Brangein. “He taught us that greatness belongs to him who dares to seize it. When he first came to Eire Gurmun was High King only by courtesy, but Morold soon made his court wealthy and splendid beyond all others, and his power was respected by all. The lesser kingdoms not just of Eire but of the great British isle paid Gurmun tribute, until Morold was treacherously killed.”

  Isolde shook her head as though the memories were almost too painful. “My mother found his loss very hard to bear, for all that he had spent his life as a warrior, so that she said she never knew for certain if he would come home again. He was killed most shamefully in Cornwall, while rightfully requesting the tribute. She would not eat or drink for a week when his body was brought home to us. She keeps, in a little chest like a reliquary, the shard of the weapon that killed him, the shard we found in his skull.”

  Tristan deliberately kept his face without expression. “It is always difficult to lose someone that one loves.” He stood up abruptly. “The day is drawing to a close, and I am sure none of us feel like singing further. We can resume our lessons tomorrow.”

  After that Tristan tried to restrict the time that he spent with Isolde. He was so well healed by this time that it was no further use dissembling that he needed a crutch, but he turned down King Gurmun’s invitations to go hunting with him, fearing that in daylight and from close up one of the king’s warriors might recognize him.

  He also did not volunteer for an expedition that the steward Paranis was attempting to organize, to attack a bog-dragon that was said to be found not twenty miles from the castle. Everyone was talking about it, a great beast with a very long neck and teeth like knives,
a creature that was made to swim deep in a lake but could also lever itself along on the ground with its flippers. Several people said confidently that such beasts were routinely found in the long lakes of Scotia, but they were seen much less commonly in Eire. This one, however, had recently established itself in a boggy lake less than a day’s ride from the royal capital. From the lake it made raids by night on the flocks of nearby villages, slithering across the earth when all were asleep, hidden by darkness.

  Tristan noticed that, in spite of his bold words about banishing the menace of the great beast, Paranis seemed far from eager to go himself. Tristan of Cornwall would have willingly gone to see or even to fight a bog-dragon, but the minstrel Tantris was much more cautious.

  Instead he borrowed an old horse and often rode out for days at a time to visit harpists in nearby towns and castles or to hear the songs of minstrels. He learned many haunting Irish melodies to add to the songs he had brought from Bretagne and Cornwall, some of which he taught Isolde. By winter’s end he was pleased to note that her attitude toward him had grown somewhat distant, and she no longer asked for new love songs.

  When the violets first began to bloom on the woodland floor he sought out the queen.

  “May God reward you in His everlasting kingdom,” he said in his most courtly style, “for the aid and comfort you have given me. My life is henceforth yours, for without you I would have long been dead. I shall always be grateful to you, but I must now seek permission to sail home to Gales.”

  “I do not know if I should wish to grant you permission,” she said, the hint of a smile on her lips, “for you have been a most excellent tutor for my daughter. This has been a long, sad winter, but it has been much less sad for her because of your presence.”

  “Your words give me pleasure, most noble queen, but I know you would not wish to continue to separate a man from his loving wife.”