Aye, Trystan could draw beauty from strings, but there were times when a disease crept through them to produce eerie chords stained with subtle dissonance. These wordless songs were usually rhythmed by an odd, three-note figure that dominated all and seemed to obsess Trystan himself. Guenevere’s women withdrew to a respectful distance, but

202

Firelord

Wheel of Shadow, Wheel of Sun

203

close enough to hear: Trystan was always news. Gwen leaped at me, hugging and swinging off her feet to hang on my shoulders.

“Now, what’s this? Where is he? Is he all right?”

“Your favorite harper’s coming home.”

“Wonderful, wonderful! I knew he wasn’t dead. That scamp, would he die without an audience of tearful women and a bard to catch his last, singing words? Never! Where is he?”

“The messenger said he took the word at Wight. His ship stopped there.”

“Wight?” Gwen’s brows knitted in bewilderment. “That’s Saxon.”

And it was virtually a Saxon who entered our private chambers some days later. Trystan in a thick beard, wide-skirted blue tunic, gartered wool leggings with a seaxe knife and a purse full of Saxon silver hung on his belt. And a gift for us we couldn’t buy: a knowledge of the Saxon mind.

“The truth is, I get bored,” he told us over a private supper. “Nothing seems to be enough. Once it’s there, I need something new to keep me thinking. Or from thinking. The world’s a ghastly, ghostly place, but at least when I’m drunk the phantoms are my own.”

Gwen said tenderly, “You fool, why don’t you marry?”

“And be court musician to my queen? There’s a life. Who played for you when I was gone?”

Gwen made a face. “Lord Pwyll, and he keeps missing notes.”

“His mind’s on women.” I dipped a morsel of fish in liquamen. “That man’s four wives now and still hunting.”

“Stuff.” Guenevere would have none of that. “The truth is, he hates women and keeps wiping off the last with the next. Though it would be easy and a pleasure to arrange a match for Tryst. I believe you grow handsomer each year.”

“You flatter me, and I don’t believe a word.”

“Of course you do.” Gwen patted his wrist. “You’re the vainest peacock in Arthur’s brood. The beard and the lines help. You look traveled and interesting.”

Oh, it was good to sit and watch mem both. “Take him back out of the grave, Gwen. He’s not yet thirty.”

“And where’s my growling, scowling Bedivere?” Trystan asked.

“Home with wife and bairn,” said Guenevere.

“And happy?”

“Disgustingly,” she trilled. “The way he iugs poor little Rhonda about, you’d think he bore her alone.”

Trystan grinned wickedly. “1 hear Myfanwy bore her nine months to the day after nuptials.”

“Six,” purred Guenevere. “We counted. The doctors considered it a wonder of anatomy.”

I threw a shrimp at her. “You nasty little gossip. As if a queen didn’t have better things to think on.”

“Oh, sweet, we were delighted, all of us. To think somebody got the Gryffyn off a horse for five minutes. I used to think he grew out of it.”

Good to see her laugh so freely again. When the servants withdrew, Trystan spoke of his time among the barbarians. Maelgwyn, it seemed, kept a Saxon scald, a harper like Tryst, and from this man Trystan learned to appreciate the language he once likened to the sound of a dying crow.

“But it beats like a drum, it strides! And by my gods, you can hear that drum like a messenger riding ahead of fate, riding toward Asgard and the final war with evil. They’re fatalistic, they see all going into darkness anyway. The struggle is what counts.”

The language fascinated him. When his mission for me was done, he had clothes made in the Saxon style and began to sing for his supper among the pagan tuns of the east. He represented himself as a Belgae with a Saxon father, raised in the Brit language by his mother. No matter, a harper is welcome anywhere. He sang for thanes and farmers alike, learned their language and how they thought.

“Forget the warriors, they’re only a few around the chiefs. The man to understand is the farmer. Each man has his own. He doesn’t huddle close to his kin, but spreads out and settles where he pleases. If there’s a lord at all, he owes him certain duties and no more. He’s frugal. And no wonder, you should see what they live on waiting for a crop. May I never taste another turnip again. And he farms with a passion I’d reserve for bed or music.”

There was another vital difference in them which eluded Trystan entirely until he stopped thinking like a British lord. Power was based on property more than blood. Land gave a man power and a certain amount of it could give him rank.

“Would we do that?” Trystan challenged. “Perhaps here and \ there a Bedivere or Gareth. But Saxons are born knowing they

204

Firelord

might be landowners for a little effort. If Cerdic doesn’t lead this ambitious man west, mark me, he’ll come by himself.”

Guenevere found that outlandish. “By themselves? Peasants?”

“Lady, your notion of peasant doesn’t exist in Saxon. They have their slaves, but anyone else can own land. And if all the east is claimed by others, where to go but west?”

It cast a new light on our old problem. We could make a treaty border with Cerdic. That might stop expansion for a time, but it would be interpreted as legally recognizing Saxon right over the east. No British king has done that, or will.

We could launch a massive campaign to take back the east a piece at a time. This would require years and ample foot legions, and these my princes would not part with.

Conclusion: we must skirmish continually with what we had, two hundred combrogi. A half measure, like skimming the tops off weeds and leaving the roots untouched. But that’s the story of Britain. Maelgwyn had promised a bit of help at least. We would commence in early summer to push the new settlers back.

For services already rendered, I would have left Trystan at Camelot as lord-milite under Guenevere but he turned it down.

“You’ll want an interpreter.” He poured his cup too full of Falernian wine. “And the truth is, as I said, one gets bored.”

Those words and that act were the story of his life. Trystan did not have long to serve me.

A few days after he returned, we received an envoy from Marcus Conomori. The prince would attend my planned meeting of the Council. Queen Yseult would accompany him to pay her respects to Guenevere. They’d met only once or twice, but Gwen defended Yseult where others turned up their noses.

“A simple soul and fragile as an egg. And, when it comes to mat, no more a slut than a dozen 1 could summon without raising my voice.”

But there were problems. “Arthur, can we keep Trystan sober or out of sight? Or both?”

On a sultry, sunless day, Marcus stepped off his ship onto our quay followed by the most beautiful woman in Britain.

Guenevere and I waited, flanked by Gareth and Kay in their formal best. My own queen was radiant, the flawless product of her women’s maximum efforts. An affection for Yseult did not include being outshone by her, but they embraced like sisters.

Wheel of Shadow, Wheel of Sun

205

“Two such women together,” Gareth eulogized. “Is it wonder the poor sun hides for jealousy?”

He was to be Yseult’s escort of honor. After the formal greetings, I presented him to Marcus and then Gareth kneit, saluting Yseult in her own dialect.

“Cead mille failtt. A thousand welcomes and yet a thousand waiting for the Lady of Cornwall.”

No woman ever brightened faster. “You must be from home with such a tongue. Of Leinster, Lord?”

Married and faithful Gareth was, but not deceased. His chest swelled visibly under the dazzle of her. “Of nowhere else, Lady.”

“Then no other will wait on me.” And yet her dark eyes swept quickly up the quay and through the knot of my people for someone else, and in them I read a mixture of disappointment and relief.

Suddenly, Yseult clapped her hands. “Gwinny, sweet, can you even guess what it is I’ve brought?” “You’re too generous, whatever it is.” “Not a whit, not a bit. Grapes!” Yseult gestured with a flourish toward the gangplank where several of her entourage were carefully unloading sack-covered vines. “Snippets, cuttings alt the way from Rome, no less of a place.”

She could bring nothing to endear her more to my wife. “Oh, you angel! Yes, they look good and healthy. Come along now, tell me how they fared and how did you cut. Did you keep them from the sea air?” “Like sick children.” “It’s so bad for them, you know.” Arm in arm, they chattered up the steps to the palace. “Marcus.” I took his arm. “Most welcome.” “My duty to my king. Prince Caius, greeting.” Yseult’s husband seemed to search the quay as she did. “I hear my nephew’s safe. You don’t know how glad that makes me. Why isn’t he here to greet his loving uncle?”

Because I damned well made sure he wasn’t. “On an errand of state just now. I’m afraid we keep him quite busy. The Silures—most important. Do hope you’ll forgive it.”

“Of course, of course.” Marcus was expansive. “Come, I’m anxious for dinner and talk of the Council. Now, these hill forts you want me to restore. Is the need really so great, Artorius? Not to mention the expense …”

“Yseult is a dear,” Gwen decided that night before bed. “She

206

Firelord

Wheel of Shadow, Wheel of Sun

207

tended those vines herself the whole voyage from Dore. Such a country girl, really. Before she married she had two turtles to her name and a tatty old shift to sleep in. And credulous as a babe: she still wonders why priests don’t do magic. To her, they’re just druids in different clothes.”

She went on nimbly plaiting her hair as she talked. “But how these damned women go on about her. She’s this, she’s that when the plain truth is, she’s just beautiful and they hate her for it.” Guenevere frowned critically at the mirror, patting her chin. “But she is putting on weight.”