Branwen lowered her head onto her horse’s neck and cried, choked with sobs. I didn’t say a word, didn’t make any gestures. I didn’t do anything. I never know what to do when a woman cries. One minstrel I met in Caer Aranhrod in Wales claimed that the best way to deal with it is to burst out crying oneself. I don’t know if he had been serious or joking.
I carefully wiped the sword-blade. For such emergencies I carry a rag under my saddle. Wiping a sword-blade calms the hands.
Bec de Corbin was wheezing, moaning, making a huge effort to die. I could have dismounted my horse and helped him, but I didn’t feel all that good myself. Besides, I didn’t pity him enough. Life is cruel. If I remember correctly, no-one’s ever pitied me. Or so it seemed to me.
I took off the helmet, the ring-mail hood and the skull-cap. It was soaked through. I can tell you; I sweated like a mouse in labour. I felt awful. My eyelids felt as heavy as lead and my arms and elbows were slowly filling with a painful numbness. I heard Branwen crying as if through a wall made of logs, tightly packed with moss. My head rang with a dull, throbbing pain.
Why am I on these dunes? How did I get here? Where from? Where am I going? Branwen…I’d heard this name somewhere. But I couldn’t…couldn’t remember where…
My fingers stiff, I touched the swelling on my head: the old scar, the reminder of that terrible cut that had cracked my skull open, hammering in the sharp edges of my broken helmet.
No wonder, I thought, that going around with a hole like this my head sometimes feels empty. Even when I’m awake I feel as if I were still inside that black tunnel with a turbid glow at the end, just as I see it in my dreams.
Sniffling and coughing, Branwen let me know that she was ready. I swallowed a lump in my throat.
“Ready?” I asked in a deliberately hard, dry tone of voice to mask my weakness.
“Yes.” Her voice was equally hard. She wiped her tears with the top of her hand. “Sir?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You despise me, don’t you?”
“That’s not true.”
She turned away from me violently, spurred her horse and rode off, down the road amongst the dunes, towards the rocks. I followed her. I felt rotten.
I could smell the scent of apples.
I don’t like locked gates, lowered portcullises, raised drawbridges. I don’t like standing like an idiot by a stinking moat. I hate wearing out my throat answering the guards who shout at me incomprehensibly from behind the walls or through the embrasures; I’m never sure if they are cursing me, jeering at me, or asking my name.
I hate giving my name when I don’t feel like it.
It was lucky, then, that we found the gate open, the portcullis raised and the guards leaning on their picks and halberds not too officious. Luckier still, a man dressed in velvet robes who greeted us in the courtyard was satisfied with the few words he had exchanged with Branwen and didn’t ask me any questions. Holding the stirrup, he offered Branwen his arm and politely turned his eyes away while she dismounted, showing her calf and knee. Then, just as politely, he motioned us to follow him.
The castle was horribly empty. As if deserted. It was cold and the sight of cold hearths made us feel even colder. We were waiting, Branwen and I, in an empty great hall, amongst the diagonal shafts of light falling in through the arched windows. We didn’t wait long. A low door creaked.
Now, I thought, and the thought exploded in my head with a white, cold, dazzling flame, illuminating for a moment the long, unending depth of the black tunnel. Now, I thought. Now she’ll come in.
She did. It was her. Iseult.
I felt a deep shudder when she entered: the white brightness in the dark frame of the door. Believe me or not, at first glance she was identical to that other, the Irish Iseult, my cousin, the Iseult of the Golden Hair form Baile Atha Cliath. Only the second glance revealed differences: her hair was slightly darker and without the tendency to curl into locks; her eyes green, not blue, and more oval without that unique almond shape. The line of her lips was different, too. And her hands.
Her hands were indeed beautiful. I think she must have become used to all the flattering comparisons with alabaster and ebony but, to me, the whiteness and smoothness of her hands brought back the image of the candles in the chapel of Ynis Witrin in Glastonbury: burning bright in the semi-darkness, aglow to the point of transparency.
Branwen made a deep curtsy. I knelt on one knee, bowed my head and, both hands holding my sheathed sword, I stretched it towards her. Thus, as custom required, I offered my sword in her service. Whatever it might mean.
She answered with a bow, came closer and touched the sword with the tips of her slender fingers. Then the rules of the ceremony permitted me to rise to my feet. I gave the sword to the man in velvet, as custom demanded.
“Welcome to the castle Carhaing,” said Iseult. “Lady…”
“My name is Branwen of Cornwall. And this is my companion…”
Well? I thought.
“…Sir Morholt of Ulster.”
By Lugh and Lir! Now I remembered: Branwen of Tara, later Branwen of Tintagel. Of course. It was her.
Iseult watched us in silence. In the end, clasping her famous white hands, she cracked her fingers.
“Have you been sent by her?” she asked quietly. “From Cornwall? How have you got here? I look out for the ship every day and I know that it has not reached our shores yet.”
Branwen was silent. I, of course, didn’t know what to say either.
“Do tell me,” said Iseult. “When will the ship we are waiting for arrive? Who will it bring? Under what colour will it sail from Tintagel? White? Or black?”
Branwen didn’t answer. Iseult of the White Hands nodded, as if showing she understood. I envied her that.
“Tristan of Lionesse, my lord and husband,” she spoke, “is gravely wounded. His thigh was torn with a lance in a skirmish with Estult Orgellis and his mercenaries. The wound is festering…and will not heal…”
Her voice broke and her beautiful hands trembled.
“Fever has been eating him for many days now. He is often delirious, loses consciousness, doesn’t recognise anybody. I stay by his bed day and night, tend to him, trying to ease the pain. Nevertheless, perhaps due to my clumsiness and incompetence, Tristan has sent my brother to Tintagel. Apparently, my husband thinks it is easier to find a good medic in Cornwall.”
We remained silent, Branwen and I.
“But I still have no news from my brother, still no sign of his ship,” continued Iseult of the White Hands. “And now, instead of the one awaited by Tristan, you appear, Branwen. What brings you here? You, the maid and friend of the golden-haired Queen of Tintagel? Have you brought with you your love potion?”
Branwen turned pale. I felt an unexpected pang of pity. For in comparison with Iseult—tall, slim and slender, proud, mysterious and a ravishing beauty, Branwen looked like a simple Irish peasant woman: chubby-cheeked, round-hipped, as coarse as homespun cloth, with her hair still tangled from the rain. Believe it or not, I felt sorry for her.
“Tristan has already accepted the potion once from your hands, Branwen,” continued Iseult. “The potion that is still working and slowly killing him. Then, on the ship, Tristan took death from your hands. Perhaps, you have arrived here now to give him life? Verily, Branwen, if this is so, you had better hurry. There is little time left. Very little.”