“Trystan, die guard who saw it said Pwyll didn’t even draw his knife. And Pwyll always spoke you fair. They said he just walked up to you and then he was dead. For nothing.”

“Let it go, Arthur.”

“Fool! Kay loves you, and even he has to vote for death. The Dobunni consider it an insult to their whole tribe. If there’s anything you can say—did he insult you, anything—say it now.”

Trystan leaned back against the rough stone wall. The aftermath of drink made his face look battered. “Arthur?”

“Will you talk to me now?”

“I’ve been thinking on my soul.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

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“And on him, too. If he walked in with a drink, he’d have a

convert.”

I sent a guard for a jug, not uisge but thick barley beer and better for his stomach. Not that he had that much time left.

I pressed him. “Now, what of Pwyll?”

“Simpleminded, single-minded. Good Lord Pwyll with all his pride in his crotch.”

“Are you going to talk to me or not? I don’t have much time. Did he do anything to provoke you?”

Silence.

“Tryst, give me something to help you with. Please.”

He drank some more beer, staring at the walK “You have it already. I wanted to kill something, even you. He got in my way. I had no argument with him, that uncomplex engine of procreation. He was just there.”

I gave up with a sigh. “Do you want to die?”

“No, strangely enough.” He rubbed bleary eyes. “But a little sleep wouldn’t hurt. You might leave the beer, my lord.”

He said no more then or later at his trial before Guenevere and myself, the vengeful Dobunni and my assembled lords-comite, but stood silent in his chains while voice after voice condemned him—Pwyll’s widows, his kinsmen, the guards who saw it

happen.

One small humanity lit the miserable scene. Bedivere came specially from home to be Trystan’s guard, Gareth another. They would hear of no others to stand by him in the court, pleading for his life and banishment. Others echoed them, men of Trystan’s old fourth squadron who knew the man as well as the demon.

There was no question of guilt, only sentence. In the final judgment, the voices for death far outweighed those for mercy. Marcus and Yseult absented themselves entirely from the trial. Marcus, of course, sent a courteous and reasonable plea for mercy couched in language that wouldn’t dissuade a child from stealing pastries. At last he was rid of Trystan.

The moment of sentencing came, and all in my hands. The Dobunni were always my strongest support in the west. Much as I hated the verdict, 1 couldn’t overturn it without ponderous

reason.

All through the trial, Guenevere and I had sat on our dais apart from the crowd. Now I took her hand with a funereal sigh. “Might as well get it over with.”

She held onto my fingers, leaning close. “Now that there’s a moment, you should know that Yseult sent her vote for ctemency.”

“She has no voice in this, no more than Mark.”

“A very loud voice,” Guenevere corrected calmly. “Those hill forts, for instance, that you want Mark to build.”

I kept my face a mask of state gravity. “A bargain?”

“Strictly.”

“I’m listening. Can she do it?”

Gwen patted my hand. “Darling Arthur. You’re not a goat like Pwyll or a fool like Trystan, but if such a woman invited you to bed, what would you refuse her?”

Dawning light. Perhaps not the radiance by which kings get to heaven, but how they safeguard kingdoms. “Does Mark love her that much?”

“But not that frequently.”

I had to pass a hand over my mouth to hide the glow of relief. “Tell Yseult she has my gratitude and respect. And if she doesn’t deliver, we’ll take it out of her hide.”

“With a blunt knife,” said Guenevere. “She knows. Go banish poor Tryst and let’s be done with this.”

“The Dobunni will disown me, but shake your head if I look too pleased out there.”

I rose and stepped to the edge of the dais. “Lord Trystan, you stand condemned and dishonored. Will you speak before we pronounce sentence?”

Barely audible: “Nothing, my lord.”

A murmur rippled through the hall as I stepped down to the anvil with Trystan’s sword laid across its face.

“Then hear the judgment of the crown. We declare, for the death of Lord Pwyll ap Evan, first that your lands and goods in toto be forfeit to his heirs. For the oath you dishonored, we .break you from our service and the fellowship of combrogi and the rank of lord-comite forever, even as we break this blade.”

I slammed the flat of the sword over the anvil’s edge. It shattered with a dull sound, the point half clanging to the floor at Trystan’s feet. He didn’t look at it. With the broken hilt in my hand, I finished the sentence.

“And we further rule that within two days you quit Camelot—”

“No.” The dissent began to flare like grass fire among the Dobunni. “No, death to the murderer.”

“Cornish pig!”

“Death!”

“Kill him!”

“—And within five days you quit our lands altogether, never within your life to return on pain of death.”

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“No.” “No!”

“The sentence has been given!” I faced them all with the broken sword in my hand, Bedivere and Gareth led Trystan away, his head bowed; he might have been weeping. With one glance at Guenevere, I stood at bay before the seething Dobunni, saw my brother’s unbelieving expression before he turned his back on me, and it was not Merlin’s voice in my mind then, but that of old Anscopius: We both know the mob, Arthur. Ave.

“Dangerous, Artorius,” Kay raged later in private. “Suicidal. / didn’t want his death, but there was no choice and certainly no question of his guilt. Our own people, and what justice can they expect from now on when you overturn a clear, just verdict for personal friendship?”

Maddening, but until Yseult copulated us into some forts I couldn’t confide my reasons. “Kay, the emperor’s mercy is above the will of the tribes.”

“But not his welfare,” my brother shot back. I didn’t know what he meant. “Is mat a threat, Kay?” “I’m a cautious man, Artorius. I don’t threaten. It’s a warning.” Marcus fortified the southern coast. Neither he nor the Dobunni knew I traded their revenge for their safety. Probably they wouldn’t care.

The galley wallowed back and forth against the quay in early morning fog, the squeak of hoisting sail and the rusty-hinge scree of sea gulls muffled and eerie.

A dreary little train clumped down the path from the palace and onto the ship. Two servants, one carrying a small chest. Two horses, one pack-saddled. Trystan’s accumulated life to be stowed on the ship bound for every port between Severn and Antioch. In one of them, Trystan would lose himself.

He came down the path alone in an old sea robe like a monk’s habit. In the.mist he didn’t recognize me until we were close.

“You needn’t have come, Arthur.”

“There’s something I want to ask.”

Trystan looked back up the path. “Thanks for my life. I was terribly frightened. Can’t think why I should want to live, but I do.”

“Will you answer one question?”

He kept glancing over his shoulder. “A dozen now.”

“You never said a word, just that Pwytl got in your way. Was that all? Was it that meaningless?”

“You’re not going to be sentimental?” The hard smile accented the deepening lines around his mouth. “I won’t have that-from a comet.”

“Was it, Tryst? Because I don’t believe it.”

He looked back along the path again. She wasn’t there, would never be there. “Oh, you know Lord Pwyll. He’d a drink or two himself, and he said—with the delicacy that endears him—that he liked Irish dishes and would be tasting of her himself now I was done. Poor man. And paradise so celibate, by report.”

I sighed, looking away at the dim form of the ship. “I almost knew it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Good-bye, Arthur.”

“Why didn’t you speak? God damn you! Always the gesture, the graceful irony. You think I’m going to feel sorry for you? s Well, I’m not. Go to hell. Go away and stay away and mutilate yourself where I don’t have to watch.”

For a moment the ironic smile vanished. “Arthur, I know my uncle and what you need from him. If I claimed Pwyll insulted .me, I’d have to declare how on oath.”

We understood each other. One word of Yseult at the trial and I could whistle for her husband’s loyalty.

“Arthur, was there—?” He hated to ask but had to. “There was no message?”

Only that she loved him enough to save his life, and I couldn’t even tell him that because he’d wrap his heart around that one fact and keep it alive forever.

“No.”

“Well, then.” Trystan struck his hands together, rubbing them briskly. “Time to go.”

This time I had to ask. “Where?”

“I’ve a notion to see Rome,” he said. “Do they still perform Plautus there?”

Damned fool, talking of Plautus in the middle of a fog. “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Pity,” said Trystan. “I’d be good at comedy. Farewell, and mind out for Cerdic and his lot. They’ll be coming. Kiss Gwen for me.”

We stood awkwardly for a moment, then Trystan knelt quickly— “Long life to my King”—and hurried up the gangplank. , End of the story, or at least my part in it; not the end for “Trystan. Our singers have a way of turning plain history into

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plumed legend. He ended in Brittany, married to another girl named Yseult and holding a castle for her father. The immigrant Britons there were at war with Clovis every other week. Trystan rode out his years on the borders as soldier, husband and—I hope—musician now and then.

He took his mortal wound in some two-penny skirmish, and they say Yseult crossed the sea to be with him at the end. If so, she went with Marcus’ approval. They were older then and some tilings mattered much less. I like to think she went. It makes a good end to the song.

You see, it’s a piece of music that ends the tale for me. Years later, barging up Severn to see Kay, I heard an old harper of the ship’s company playing something familiar and asked him what