Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) Page 4

  “Yseult, come, sit beside me!” Father turned to the vacant seat at his side and would have pulled out the chair himself had not Patrice, his favored knight, claimed that honor first. I had come to expect all sorts of courtesies from the knights and knew many expressed more than a passing interest in me for all the obvious reasons, but none of my father’s favored had ever caught my eye. And I was more than willing to wait till one did.

  With a smile toward my mother, who didn’t return the greeting, I took the proffered seat. At once a trencher and cup appeared. When Father didn’t sit but banged a dagger hilt against his plate to get the hall’s attention, I took a hasty sip of the watered wine. And at mother’s continued stern look I took another.

  “My dear guests,” Father began rather expansively, making it obvious he had been enjoying his wine for quite some time.

  Settling in for whatever speech he was about to make, I looked for somewhere easy to rest my eyes. Drustan and Palomides were seated together on a bench with its back to the high table. Palomides had turned to straddle the bench to get a look at the king, but Drustan’ back remained steadfastly turned our way. I frowned at that, until my father’s words distracted me.

  “King Mark of Cornwall”—he waved a dismissive hand at the angry grunts the name produced among those gathered—“has made an interesting proposal. In good faith, he has sent the man second dearest to his heart to deliver it, his nephew Baron Andret.” He gestured toward the man at the table I didn’t know who nodded curtly at the introduction.

  “I’m sure,” the baron said, “you’ll understand why King Mark sent me rather than his first dearest nephew, Sir Tristan.”

  It was a deft way to get out in the open what we all knew—that it was Tristan who slew The Morholt and brought grief to all of Whitehaven. Tristan would never have been welcome within these walls. As it was, the baron was barely being tolerated as evidenced by the murmur that grumbled its way through the hall. By all, that is, save Father who seemed rather pleased at hosting Mark’s man.

  Father held up a hand to stave the noise. “Cornwall and Ireland have had a long history of taxation, oppression and outright war. For fifteen years King Mark has refused to pay tribute to Ireland as law demands. His interpretation of the treaty, however, has always been that it ended with his father’s death. I sent the queen’s brother—The Morholt, Sir Marhaus—to Cornwall to extract the levy. When Mark refused, Sir Marhaus proposed a challenge to settle the law for once and all. Mark offered up Tristan as his champion. And you know the rest.” Father lowered his eyes for a moment along with everyone in the hall, save for the three strangers—the baron, Palomides and Drustan. Then he raised a cup in silent toast to Marhaus.

  “The challenge has been fought and the law struck down,” Father continued. “And now it is time to mend our differences and strengthen the bonds between Cornwall and Ireland. That is why I’ve gathered you tonight—to bear witness to my acceptance of King Mark’s proposal. He has asked for Yseult’s hand in marriage, to which I am agreeing.”

  The room spun. I gripped the edge of the table to keep from spinning with it. My heart pounded in my chest and I could feel three score pairs of eyes staring into my torment. I tried to be a queen, accepting the sentence—for that is how I thought of it—in public with gracious passivity. God knows I tried. But how does anyone with a heart and soul accept the death of all their dreams with stone-faced silence?

  I did not collapse or swoon, though had I been standing, I’m not sure my knees would have held me. But emotion overwhelmed me. I swallowed hard, shook my head, shut my eyes and let the tears flow for all to see. I stifled the sobs as best I could but they were all I could hear in the moments after my father betrayed me. Betrayed my mother too. Though he wasn’t giving me to the man who’d actually killed her brother, he was giving me to the man who ordered the trial go on when he could have refused it or stopped it with a word.

  Duty alone held me to that table as surely as it held my mother. How desperately I wanted her arms around me, to cry together in commiseration, she who had been given to my father who now gave me away for the good of Ireland.

  My father’s speech didn’t go on much longer, though I was beyond caring what more he might say anyway. I could only feel relief when he at last slammed down his cup at the end and ordered more wine for everyone. I had embarrassed him, but I didn’t care. That I’d embarrassed myself didn’t concern me either. Not in that moment with my world crumbling around. My reputation was not my first care—which likely meant I was not worthy to be a queen. Maybe when King Mark heard from his messenger, the baron, how I’d reacted, he wouldn’t want me.

  No. I knew better. It was a political marriage, naught to do with want but with need. When I got to Cornwall, Mark could simply lock me away where I’d have no chance to embarrass him. Keep me in a room where he’d visit me daily till I was great with child, then once an heir was ensured, spirit the babe away to be reared as a proper king and never see me again. I’d die broken-hearted, alone, and not yet twenty-two winters old.

  Eventually the tears dried, my future faded away, and I opened my eyes. Most everyone who had been watching me with pity quickly dropped their stares, focusing them studiously elsewhere, when I looked out over the guests. Only Palomides watched me still, his expression a queer mix of rage and sadness and confusion. I fell into that gaze, grateful for any connection that didn’t shout with pity. Emboldened once again, I dared seek out Drustan. He sat still with his back to the high table, but I caught him casting covert glances over his shoulder. No pity in the way he avoided my eyes, but rather what seemed a curious guilt. And a curious need to not be seen.

  I shifted my gaze back to Palomides, drawing strength till I was certain I could stand and flee without my knees betraying me.

  “By your pardon,” I said to Father, my voice thready and cracking. I didn’t wait for his permission, sure as I was he would not have granted it if I had. Instead, I gathered the skirts of the blue gown I’d worn specifically to call attention to my eyes, now puffed and red and filled yet with unspilled tears, then exited in a graceless rush, terrified that Father would recall me before I made it out the door.

  Once outside, I leaned against the stone wall, welcoming its coolness against my flamed cheek. Brangien came first out the door after me. Her loyalty touched me even through my tears, which had started flowing once again.

  “You look too pretty to be out here,” I sniffed at her, having to carefully articulate each word to make them understandable. “Go back inside.”

  “Nonsense.” She draped a comforting arm across my shoulders. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  “She isn’t.” Mother’s voice was warm steel in the night. She gestured to Brangien and her own handmaid, Elaine. “Leave us for an hour. We’ll need your comforts soon enough. Right now, Yseult and I need each other.”

  With a gentle kiss on my wet cheek, Brangien withdrew, disappearing back into the hall with Elaine.

  Mother’s arm replaced Brangien and she guided me towards my room. “I begged your father not to do this. Neither entreaties for your honor or my brother’s memory moved him. He loves you, Yseult. But he loves Ireland more. And it’s Ireland you must think about too. You are the sacrifice that will broker peace between Cornwall and Ireland. And perhaps your union with Mark will produce the sacrifice to unite all the bickering tribes around.”

  She stopped me in the courtyard and leaned her head into mine. A part of me registered surprise that somewhere in time I’d grown taller than she. “I know what it’s like to be that sacrifice. I know the hate and the resentment—the feeling of betrayal that will at some future time turn into resignation and acceptance.”

  “And regret,” I agreed.

  “No.” She took my face between her weathering hands and stared me eye-to-eye. “Not a moment of regret for a union that produced a child as beautiful as you. Not a moment of regret for the lasting peace forged between North Ireland and South. I d
on’t—can’t—regret my duty. I did mourn that which I thought I’d lost for many years. But when I finally understood what my sacrifice had won, not just for the men who arranged it, but for the world itself, I came to celebrate the role I’d played. Few people are born who can effect so much change by their actions. Fewer women still who have that power.

  “I don’t expect you to stop thinking of yourself right now. Just as I don’t expect my grief at your leaving to diminish any time soon. It’s natural for our hearts to despair and rage against Fate and kings’ edicts and God Himself. To spit on words like duty and honor. But for all that I hate your father right now for what he’s doing to you, I have to admire him for putting Ireland first. Just as for all I want to hate King Mark for challenging Ireland, I have to concede that God—not him—granted his champion victory over my brother. Duty slew Marhaus. Not Cornwall. Not Mark. My brother was a sacrifice too.” Her voice grew heavy. “It seems some families are just doomed to that role.”

  We continued on to my room in silence where we sat on the bed together after Mother lit the brazier herself. I knew she had been bargained to my father, but she’d never spoken of her struggles. She’d always been, I thought, the epitome of mother, wife and queen. She’d seemed happy, content. We’d laughed much together as she taught me her talent with herbs and potions, creating medicants and gentle spells to heal both bodies and souls. I had never gained her mastery, but she hadn’t forced me to love her craft the way she did either. She had always been happy to let her fledgling flit where my heart directed.

  “Do you love him?” I finally asked.

  “The king?”

  Not even my husband or your father.

  I nodded.

  “When I was your age, I thought love was strict in its simplicity. You either loved a thing or not. Wisdom and experience have since taught me that everything is complicated, inextricably tied to one another as all things are. The world seems harsh in its contradictions—life and death, love and hate, despair and joy. But we need each contradiction to appreciate its opposite. And some contradictions can even reside within the same emotion. I can hate the circumstances that brought Anguish and I together. I can hate what he’s doing to you now. I can disagree with him on how he runs his House or the decisions he makes for Ireland. But I can also appreciate the difficulties he faces. I can forgive his mistakes, knowing we must all make them. And I can love the gentleness and patience he has always had with you. And,” she blushed a bit, “I can love the way he holds me at night when we are made one.

  “I never felt the intensity of heartsong for him the harpers sing of. I do sorrow that I missed that passion completely. But there are many degrees of love; having missed out on one doesn’t mean you miss out on love completely.”

  “Father was young, too, when you were given to him.”

  “Yes. Strong, fair to look upon, with prowess on the field, in his court… and in the bedchamber.”

  We both blushed at that.

  My tears were drying listening to things Mother and I had never spoken of, that I had never guessed. But I was still pitying myself. “King Mark is old.”

  Mother’s lips eased into a gentle smile. “Not so old as Methuselah, no. But he is older than your father, yes, and last I heard his beard is gray.”

  I shuddered, my thoughts skittering to Drustan’s hard but supple body pliant beneath my hands as I tended his wound and to the radiance that passed as Palomides’ mortal face.

  Mother wrapped her arms around me. “It’s not his age that frightens you, Yseult. It’s the unknown. I was frightened beyond measure too.”

  “How long—” I gulped in air to give myself courage to finish the question—“how long till I must leave?”

  “After the tourney,” she said, her voice coming from far away. “Whitehaven’s champion will have the pleasure of escorting you.”

  Too soon! I wailed inside. But I knew the date mattered not. Whatever the appointed day, it would be far, far too soon for me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TRISTAN

  From the moment I saw the messenger from Cornwall I knew there would be something of grave importance to the feast. No simple serf this, chosen to carry a missive with the king’s seal. The man with the full red-blond beard was not only a baron but Mark’s nephew—my cousin. And as well as I knew him by face so he knew me. So I sat with my back to the king’s high table and hid my harp away in a corner of the hall so none might spontaneously ask me to play.

  I was neither coward nor fool to announce my presence here.

  The evening proved full of surprises. Shortly after Yseult had put Palomides into my charge, he had disappeared, only to return an hour later, meeting me at the doors to the hall and entering beside me with quiet command and confidence.

  “Where were you?” I demanded.

  He lifted a sun-red eyebrow in response. “Marking my territory.”

  I grinned at the jest and let it go.

  Funny how some of the most deadly truths we only recognize in hindsight.

  When Anguish announced the proposal of marriage, it hit me like a gut blow. Mark’s first queen, Gwennol, had died, childless, from a wasting illness many years ago. He had taken her from an obscure chieftain in Cornish lands to solidify the clans of Cornwall as he expanded his kingdom. After Gwennol died, Mark held himself a bachelor for an occasion such as this, appointing his heirs in lieu of any son of his own. As favorite, and by right of arms, Tintagel—and Cornwall—would be mine when Mark died.

  Second in line was Baron Andret.

  Even at the back of the hall I could feel Yseult’s despair, mirrored in the face of the stranger knight who sat beside me. In other circumstances, the play of emotions across Palomides’ face as the news drove the radiance from his eyes and as his features turned dark and terrible would have been merely fascinating. Here, it was chilling. He seemed to have no thought for the alliance and peace, only for the tears of the pawn in this elaborate political game.

  Of course, Yseult’s tears could move any man. They tore at my soul as well. But where Palomides found only despair, I saw salvation. Perverse though it was, my heart rejoiced that Yseult would be removed to Tintagel, my home, where I could look upon her forever.

  Perhaps I would have felt differently had I known Mark to be other than a decent man required to make crushing decisions as king. Anguish had made similar choices to keep his own kingdom together. I liked my uncle. More than that, I respected him. If Yseult had to go to a man who was not me, then Mark was a better choice than many.

  Funny how the mind can reason away tragedy while the heart can never be fooled. And even then, my heart, I think, was already plotting betrayal.

  CHAPTER TEN

  PALOMIDES

  I damned Fate and her endless trials. To have stumbled upon a woman who would soon enough be taking her mother’s crown as Queen of Ireland only to have her snatched away…

  My mortal heart sang at sight of Yseult. More, she seemed amenable to my wooing. By the time dusk fell, I knew, harper or no, in time I would make her mine.

  Compelled by my curse to shift at dusk, I welcomed my hound. Taking to the woods, I ran, howling my heart’s delight at the prospect of love that would lift my curse. I ran with wild abandon, choosing not to look beyond this moment, choosing not to examine too closely the trap that held me. Refusing to recognize the truth that twisted me. While I was plotting to capture Yseult’s heart, she had already captured mine.

  In the hall, I sat stunned as my world turned on a marriage vow. Yseult shed my own tears of rage and frustration. How could I allow her to be taken from me now—and against her will at that?

  The harper’s eyes on me as my despair deepened was a distraction, nothing more. Then Yseult and her mother swept from the room, taking my tears with them, leaving me devastated in their wake.

  In the awkward silence that fell, my anger grew toward my own father for conceiving this lesson to begin with, the Lady of the Lake for her joy in
carrying it through, Fate for her wicked ways, and myself for allowing my heart to take the lead. I was already building my defenses against them when Yseult’s handmaid appeared.

  “My Lords.” Though she addressed both Drustan and myself, her eyes were on me alone. “Please, if you wish me to take word of any sort to Lady Yseult, I am at your service.” She took a deep breath, her stare intense, her voice lowered. “Day… or night.”

  Even I, so untrained in the baser customs of men, recognized her invitation. My hound would have caught scent of her interest long before now. While I was in a cursing mood, I damned being forced to live by man’s dull senses. Still, I was not bound by his archaic sensibilities. Fae might mate for life, but we remain free to find pleasure as we will. Acts of the flesh are not acts of the heart, and fae do not confuse the two.

  Yseult’s handmaid had a pretty enough face, with high cheekbones and lips that trembled as my gaze swept over her, settling briefly on her features one by one. Her hair was red, though a darker shade than mine, her skin as fair as Yseult’s. I had never paid much attention to clothes, preferring as fae did the natural state. But the emerald gown she wore flattered her body, hiding and outlining her attributes in a way that teased the eye while pricking the flesh.

  My heart, devastated, thudded dully in my chest. There was no stir of song in the presence of this handmaid though any other night I was confident she could stir me in other ways.

  “Your name, should I desire to call you?”

  “Brangien, my Lord.”

  I knew that flicker of fire that kindled in her eyes well. Hope. Hope for a thing that could not be. Too late I understood what she truly desired. Though I smiled a soft dismissal her way, I would not be calling for her. With regret, I watched the sway of her hips as she returned to her seat at the servants table.