The Apex Book of World SF 2

The Malady ^{Andrzej Sapkowski Translated by Wiesiek Powaga}

For as long as I can remember, I have always associated Brittany with drizzle and roaring waves breaking on its jagged, rocky shore. The colours of Brittany that I remember are grey and white. And aquamarine of course, what else.

I spurred my horse gently and moved towards the dunes, pulling the cloak tighter around my shoulders. Tiny raindrops, too small to soak in, fell thick and fast on the cloth and on the horse’s mane, dulling the sheen of the metal parts of my outfit with a thin veil of steam. The horizon kept spitting heavy, swirling, grey-white clouds that rolled across the sky towards the land.

I rode up the hill covered with tufts of hard, grey grass. Then I saw her: black against the sky, motionless, as still as a statue. I moved closer. The horse stepped heavily on the sand, breaking the thin, wet crust with its hooves.

She sat on a grey horse the way ladies do, wrapped up in a long cloak, the hood thrown to her back. Her fair hair was wet; the rain twisted it into curls and made it stick to her forehead. Sitting still, she watched me calmly as if sunk in thought. She radiated peace. Her horse shook its head; the harness rattled.

“God be with you, sir knight,” she spoke first, before I could open my mouth. Her voice was calm, too; just as I had expected.

“And with you, my lady.”

She had a pleasant oval face, unusually cut full lips and above her right eyebrow, a birth mark, or a small scar, the shape of a crescent turned upside down. I looked around. Nothing but dunes. No sign of an entourage, servants or a cart. She was alone.

Just like me.

She followed my eyes and smiled.

“I am alone,” she confirmed the undeniable fact. “I’ve been waiting for you, sir knight.”

Hmm. She was waiting for me. Strange, for I didn’t have a clue who she was. And I didn’t expect anyone on this beach who might be waiting for me. Or so I’d thought.

“Well then,” she turned her calm face towards me, “let’s go, sir knight. I am Branwen of Cornwall.”

She was not from Cornwall. Or from Brittany.

There are reasons I sometimes fail to remember things, things which may have happened even in the recent past. There are black holes in my memory. And conversely, sometimes I remember things I’m sure have never taken place. Strange things happen inside my head. Sometimes I’m wrong. But the Irish accent, the accent of the people from Tara—this I would never get wrong. Ever.

I could have told her that. But I didn’t.

I bowed with my helmet on, and with a gloved fist I touched the coat of mail on my breast. I didn’t introduce myself. I had the right not to. The shield hanging by my side, turned back to front, was a clear sign that I wished to remain incognito. The knightly customs had by then assumed the character of the commonly accepted norm. I didn’t think it a healthy development but then the knights’ customs grew odder, not to say more idiotic, by the day.

“Let’s go,” she repeated.

She started her horse down the hill, amongst the mounds of dunes bristling with grass. I followed her, caught up with her, and we rode side by side. Sometimes I moved ahead and it looked as if it were me who was leading. It didn’t matter. The general direction seemed correct. As long as the sea was behind us.

We didn’t talk. Branwen, the Cornish impostor, turned her face towards me several times as if she wanted to ask me something. But she never did. I was grateful. I was not disposed to giving answers. So I, too, remained silent and got on with my thinking, if the laborious process of putting facts and images whirling inside my head into a semblance of order could be called thinking.

I felt rotten. Really awful.

My thinking was interrupted by Branwen’s stifled cry and the sight of a serrated blade pointed at my chest. I lifted my head. The blade belonged to a spear, which was held by a big brute wearing a horned fool’s hat and a torn coat of mail. His companion, with an ugly, gloomy face, held Branwen’s horse by the bridle, close to its mouth. The third, standing a few steps behind us, was aiming at me with a crossbow. I can’t stand it when someone is aiming at me with a crossbow. If I were a Pope, I would have banned crossbows with the threat of excommunication.

“Keep still, sir,” said the one with the crossbow, aiming straight at my throat. “I will not kill you. Unless I have to. And if you touch your sword, I’ll have to.”

“We need food, warm clothes and some money,” announced the gloomy one. “We don’t want your blood.”

“We are not barbarians,” said the one in the funny hat. “We are reliable, professional robbers. We have our principles.”

“You take from the rich and give to the poor, I suppose?” I asked.

Funny Hat smiled broadly, revealing his gums. He had black, shiny hair and the tawny face of a southerner, bristling with a few days’ stubble.

“Our principles don’t go that far,” he said. “We take from everybody, as they come. But because we are poor ourselves, it comes to the same thing. Count Orgellis disbanded us. Until we join up with someone else we’ve got to live, haven’t we?”

“Why are you telling him all this, Bec de Corbin?” spoke Gloomy Face. “Why are you explaining yourself? He is mocking us, wants to offend us.”

“I’m above it,” answered Bec de Corbin proudly. “I’m letting it pass. Well, Sir Knight, let’s not waste time. Unstrap your saddle bag and throw it here, on the road. Let your purse sit next to it. And your cloak. Mind, we are not asking for your horse or your armour. We know how far we can go.”

“Alas,” said Gloomy Face, squinting his eyes horribly, “we will have to ask you for this lady. But not for long.”

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot.” Bec de Corbin bared his teeth again. “Indeed, we need this lady. You understand, sir, all this wilderness, the solitude…I’ve forgotten what a naked woman looks like.”

“Me, I can’t forget that,” said the crossbow-man. “I see it every night, the moment I close my eyes.”

I must have smiled, for Bec de Corbin quickly raised the spear to my face, while the crossbow-man, in one move, put the crossbow to his cheek.

“No,” said Branwen. “No, there is no need.”

I looked at her. She was growing pale, gradually, from the mouth up. But her voice was still quiet, calm, cold.

“No need,” she repeated. “I don’t want you to die on my account, sir knight. I’m not that keen to have my clothes torn and my body bruised either. It’s nothing… After all, they are not asking much.”

I’m not sure who was more surprised—me or the robbers. But I should have guessed earlier: what I took to be her calm, her inner peace and immutable self-possession, was simply resignation. I knew the feeling.

“Throw them your saddle bag,” Branwen continued, growing paler still, “and ride on. I beg you. A few miles from here there is a cross where two roads meet. Wait for me there. It won’t take long.”

“It’s not everyday that we have such sensible customers,” said Bec de Corbin, lowering his spear.

“Don’t look at me that way,” whispered Branwen. No doubt, she must have seen something in my face, though I always thought myself good at self-control.

I reached behind me, pretending I was unstrapping the bag, and pulled out my foot from the stirrup. I spurred the horse and kicked Bec de Corbin in the face so that he reeled back, balancing with his spear as if he were running on a tightrope. Pulling out my sword I leant forwards and the bolt aimed at my throat banged on my helmet and slipped. I swung in one nice, classic sinister move at Gloomy Face; the leap of my horse helped in pulling the blade out of his skull. It’s not really that difficult if one knows how to do it.

Bec de Corbin, had he wanted to, could have run for the dunes. But he didn’t. He thought that before I could turn the horse he would run me through with his spear.

He thought wrong.

I slashed him broadly, right across his hands holding the spear-shaft, and then again, across his belly. I wanted to reach lower but failed. No-one is perfect.

The crossbow-man didn’t belong to the cowardly, either. Rather than run, he pulled the bowstring again and tried to take aim. I reined in the horse, caught the sword by the blade and threw it. It worked. He fell down so conveniently that I didn’t have to get off the horse to retrieve the weapon.

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.”

Branwen didn’t stir. Her face was expressionless: the wax face of a doll. Their eyes, hers and Iseult’s, fiery and powerful, met and locked. I could sense the tension, creaking like an overstretched rope. To my surprise, it was Iseult who turned out to be stronger.

“Lady Iseult—” Branwen fell down to her knees and bowed her head “—you have the right to feel bitter towards me. But I do not ask you for forgiveness as it wasn’t you whom I offended. I beg you for grace. I want to see him, beautiful Iseult of the White Hands. I want to see Tristan.”

Her voice was quiet, soft, calm. In Iseult’s eyes there was only sorrow.

“Very well,” she said. “You shall see him, Branwen. Although I swore I wouldn’t allow foreign hands to touch him again. Especially Cornish hands, her hands.”

“It’s not certain that she will come here from Tintagel,” whispered Branwen, still on her knees.

“Rise, Branwen.” Iseult of the White Hands lifted her head and her eyes glittered with moist diamonds. “It is not certain, you say. Yet…I would run barefoot through the snow, the thorns, the red-hot embers, if only…if only he called me. But he does not call me, although he knows… He calls only her, on whom he cannot depend. Our lives, Branwen, never cease to surprise us with ironies.”

Branwen rose from her knees. Her eyes, I saw, were also filled with diamonds. Eh, women…

“Go to him, then, good Branwen,” said Iseult bitterly. “Go and take to him that which I see in your eyes. But prepare yourself for the worst. For when you kneel by his bed, he will throw in your face a name that belongs not to you. He will throw it like a curse. Go, Branwen. The servants will show you the way.”

Iseult, wringing the fingers of her white hands, watched me carefully. I was looking for hatred and enmity in her eyes. For she must have known. When one weds a living legend, one gets to know that legend in its tiniest detail. And I, after all, was no trifle, not to look at, anyway.

She was looking at me and there was something strange in her gaze. Then, having gathered her long dress, she sat in a carved chair, her white hands clasping the arm-rests.

“Sit here, Morholt of Ulster,” she said. “By my side.”

I did.

There are many stories, mostly improbable or untrue from beginning to end, circulating about my duel with Tristan of Lionesse. In one of them, I was even turned into a dragon whom Tristan slew, thereby winning the right to Iseult of the Golden Hair. Not bad, eh? Romantic. And justified, to a point. I did in fact have a black dragon on my shield, perhaps it all started with that. After all, everyone knows that after Cuchulain, there are no dragons in Ireland.

Another story has it that the duel took place in Cornwall before Tristan met Iseult. That’s not true. It’s a minstrels’ tale. King Diarmuid sent me to Mark, to Tintagel, several times, it’s true, where I haggled over the tribute Cornwall was due to the King, gods only know on what grounds, I wasn’t interested in politics. But I didn’t meet Tristan then.

Nor did I meet him when he came to Ireland for the first time. I met him during his second visit, when he came to ask Iseult of the Golden Hair for Cornwall. Diarmuid’s court, as usual in such situations, divided between those who supported the match and those who were against it. I belonged to the latter faction, though, in all honesty, I didn’t know what all the fuss was about; as I said, I wasn’t interested in politics, or intrigues. But I liked and knew how to fight.

The plan, as far as I could see, was simple. It didn’t even merit the name of “intrigue”. We wanted to break up King Mark’s match and prevent the marriage with Tintagel. Was there a better way than to kill the envoy? The opportunity presented itself easily enough. I offended Tristan and he challenged me. He challenged me, you understand, not the other way round.

We fought in Dun Laoghaire, on the shore of the Bay. I didn’t think I would have much of a problem with him. At first glance, I was twice his weight and had at least as much experience. Or so it seemed to me.

How wrong I was, I discovered soon after the first encounter, when we crushed our lances into splinters. I almost broke my back, so hard did he push me against the back of my saddle. A bit harder and he would have pushed me over together with my horse. When he turned around and, without calling for another lance, he drew his sword—I was pleased. The thing about lances is that with a little bit of luck and a good mount, even a green horn can thrash an experienced knight. The sword, in the long run, is a fairer weapon.

To start with, we felt each other around the shields for a bit. He was as strong as a bull. Stronger than I’d thought. He fought in the classical style: dexter, sinister, sky-below, blow after blow, very fast; his speed didn’t allow me to take advantage of my experience, to impose my own, less classical style. He was tiring me out, so at the first opportunity I dodged the rules and slashed him across the thigh, just below the shield adorned by the rearing lion of Lionesse.

Had I struck from the ground it would have felled him. But it was from the mount. He didn’t even blink, as if he hadn’t noticed that he was bleeding like a pig, squirting dark crimson all over the saddle, the housing, the sand. The onlookers were shouting their heads off. I was sure the loss of blood was taking its toll and, because I was nearing my limits, too, I launched myself into attack, impatiently, recklessly. I went for the kill. And that was my mistake. Unwittingly, thinking perhaps that he would repay me with a similar, unfair cut from the side, I lowered my shield. Suddenly, I saw the stars burst with light and…didn’t know what happened next. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened next, I thought, looking at the white hands of Iseult. Was it possible? Was it only that flash of light in Dun Laoghaire, the black tunnel and then the grey-white coast and the castle of Carhaing?

Was it possible?

And immediately, like a ready-made answer, like a hard proof and an irrefutable argument, there came images, faces, names, words, colours, scents. It was all there, every single day. The short, dusky winter days seeping through the fish-bladders in the windows. Those warm, fragrant-with-the-rain days near Pentecost, and those long, hot summer days, yellow with sunshine and sunflowers. It was all there: the marches, the fights, the processions, the hunts, the feasts, the women, and more fights, more feasts, more women. Everything. All that had happened since that moment in Dun Laoghaire till this drizzly day on the Armorican coast. It all took place. It all happened. It passed. Only I couldn’t understand why it all seemed to me so…

Never mind.

It didn’t matter.

I sighed. This reminiscing wore me out. I felt almost as tired as then, during the fight. Just like then, my neck hurt and my arms felt like slabs of stone. The scar on my head throbbed furiously.

Iseult of the White Hands, who for some time had been looking out of the window, watching the overcast horizon, slowly turned her face towards me.

“Why have you come here, Morholt of Ulster?”

What was I to tell her? About the black holes in my memory? Telling her about my black, unending tunnel wouldn’t make sense. All I had at my disposal was, as usual, the knights’ custom, the universally respected and accepted norm. I got up.

“I am here to serve you, Lady Iseult,” I said, bowing stiffly.

I saw Kai bowing like that in Camelot. It struck me as a dignified, noble bow worth copying.

“I have come here to carry out your orders, whatever they may be. My life belongs to you, Lady Iseult.”

“Sir Morholt,” she said softly, wringing her fingers, “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

I saw a tear, a narrow, glistening trickle making its way from the corner of her eye till it slowed down and stopped on the wing of her nostril. I could smell the scent of apples.

“The legend is about to end, Morholt.”

Iseult didn’t dine with us. We were alone at the table, Branwen and I, except for a chaplain with a shiny tonsure. But we didn’t bother with him. He muttered a short prayer and having blessed the table he devoted himself to stuffing his face. I soon forgot about his presence. As if he’d always been there.

“Branwen?”

“Yes, Morholt.”

“How did you know?”

“I remember you from Ireland, from the court. I remember you well. No, I doubt you remember me. You didn’t pay any attention to me then; although, I can tell you this now, Morholt, I did want you to notice me. It’s understandable; when Iseult was around one didn’t notice others.”

“No, Branwen. I remember you. I didn’t recognise you today because…”

“Yes, Morholt?”

“Because then, in Atha Cliath… you always smiled.”

Silence.

“Branwen?”

“Yes, Morholt?”

“How is Tristan?”

“Bad. The wound is festering, doesn’t want to heal. The rot’s set in. It looks horrible.”

“Is he…?”

“As long as he believes, he will live. And he believes.”

“In what?”

“In her.”

Silence.

“Branwen?”

“Yes, Morholt?”

“Is Iseult of the Golden Hair…is the Queen…really going to sail here from Tintagel?”

“I don’t know, Morholt. But he believes she will.”

Silence.

“Morholt?”

“Yes, Branwen?”

“I told Tristan you were here. He wants to see you. Tomorrow.”

“Very well.”

Silence.

“Morholt?”

“Yes, Branwen?”

“There, on the dunes…”

“It doesn’t matter, Branwen.”

“It does. Please, try to understand. I didn’t want, I couldn’t let you die. I could not allow an arrow butt, a stupid piece of wood and metal, to spoil… I couldn’t let that happen. At any price, even the price of your contempt. And there…on the dunes, the price they asked didn’t seem so high. You see, Morholt…”

“Branwen…it’s enough, please.”

“I have paid with my body before.”

“Branwen. Not a word more.”

She touched my hand and her touch, believe me or not, was the red ball of the sun rising after a long, cold night. It was the scent of apples, the leap of a horse spurred to attack. I looked into her eyes and her gaze was like the fluttering of pennons in the wind, like music, like a stroke of fur on the cheek. Branwen, the laughing Branwen of Baile Atha Cliath. Serious, quiet, sad Branwen of Cornwall, of the Knowing Eyes. Was there anything in that wine we drank? Like the wine Tristan and Iseult drank on the sea?

“Branwen…”

“Yes, Morholt?”

“Nothing, I only wanted to hear the sound of your name.”

Silence.

The roaring of the sea, monotonous, hollow, carrying persistent, intrusive, stubborn whispers…

Silence.

“Morholt.”

“Tristan.”

He had changed. Then, in Baile Atha Cliath, he was a child, a cheerful boy with dreamy eyes, always with that engaging little smile that sent hot waves up the maids’ thighs. Always that smile, even when we had bashed each other with swords in Dun Laoghaire. And now… Now his face was grey, thin, withered, cut with glistening lines of sweat, his lips chaffed and frozen in a grimace of pain, black rings of suffering around his eyes.

And he stank. He stank of illness. Of death. Of fear.

“You are alive, Irishman.”

“I am, Tristan.”

“When they carried you off the field they said you were dead. Your head…”

“My head was cracked open and the brain out,” I said, trying to make it sound casual.

“A miracle. Someone must have been praying for you, Morholt.”

“I doubt that,” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Inscrutable is Fate.” His brow furrowed. “You and Branwen…both alive. While I…in a silly scuffle…I had a lance thrust into my groin; it went right through me, and it snapped. A splinter must have got stuck inside; that’s why the wound is festering. God’s punished me. It’s the punishment for all my sins. For you, for Branwen. And above all…for Iseult…”

His brow furrowed again; his mouth twisted. I knew which Iseult he meant. My heart ached. Her black-ringed eyes, her hand-wringing, the fingers cracked out of her white hands. The bitterness in her voice. How often she must have seen it: that involuntary twist of the mouth when he spoke the name of “Iseult” and could not add “of the Golden Hair”. I felt sorry for her—her, married to a legend. Why had she agreed to it? Why had she agreed to serve merely as a name, an empty sound? Hadn’t she heard the story about him and the Cornish woman? Maybe she thought it unimportant? Perhaps she thought Tristan was just like any other man? Like the men from Arthur’s retinue, like Gawaine, Gaheris, Bors or Bedivere, who started this idiotic fashion to adore one woman, sleep with another and marry the third without anyone complaining?

“Morholt…”

“I’m here, Tristan.”

“I have sent Caherdin to Tintagel. The ship…”

“Still no news, Tristan.”

“Only she…” he whispered. “Only she can save me. I’m on the brink. Her eyes, her hands, just the sight of her, the sound of her voice… There is no other cure for me. That’s why…if she is on that ship, Caherdin will pull out on the mast…”

“I know, Tristan…”

He fell silent, staring at the ceiling, breathing heavily.

“Morholt… Will she… come? Does she remember?”

“I don’t know, Tristan,” I said and immediately regretted it. Damn it, what would it cost me to confirm with ardour and conviction? Did I have to reveal my ignorance to him as well?

Tristan turned his face to the wall.

“I wasted this love,” he groaned. “I destroyed it. And through it, I brought a curse on our heads. I am dying because of it, unsure that she will answer my plea and come, that she would, even if it were too late.”

“Don’t say that, Tristan.”

“I have to. It’s all my fault. Or perhaps my fate is at fault? Maybe that’s how it was to be from the beginning? The beginning born of love and tragedy? For you know that Blanchefleur gave birth to me amidst despair? The labour began the moment she received the news of Rivalin’s death. She didn’t survive my birth. I don’t know whether it was her, in her last breath, or Foyenant, later… who gave me this name, the name which is like doom, like a curse? Like a judgement. La tristesse. The cause and effect. La tristesse, surrounding me like a mist… Exactly like the mist swathing the mouth of the river Liffey when for the first time…”

He fell silent again, his hands instinctively stroking the furs with which he was covered.

“Everything, everything I did turned against me. Put yourself in my position, Morholt. Imagine yourself arriving at Baile Atha Cliath, you meet a girl… From the first sight, from the very moment your eyes meet, you feel your heart wants to burst out of your breast, your hands tremble. You wander to and fro the whole night, unable to sleep, boiling with anxiety, shaking, thinking about one thing only: to see her again in the morning. And what? Instead of joy—la tristesse…”

I was silent. I didn’t understand what he was talking about.

“And then,” he carried on, “the first conversation. The first touching of the hands, as powerful as a lance’s thrust in a tournament. The first smile, her smile, which makes you… Eh, Morholt. What would you do in my place?”

I was silent. I didn’t know what I would have done in his place. I had never been in his position. By Lugh and Lir, I had never experienced anything like it. Ever.

“I know what you would not have done, Morholt,” said Tristan, closing his eyes. “You would not have sold her to Mark, you would not have awakened his interest, babbling all the time about her. You would not have sailed for her to Ireland in his name. You would not have wasted love, the love that began then, then, not on the ship. Branwen doesn’t have to torture herself with that story about magic potion. The elixir had nothing to do with it. By the time Iseult boarded the ship she was already mine. Morholt… If it were you boarding that ship with her, would you have sailed to Tintagel? Would you have given her to Mark? I’m sure you would not. You would have rather sailed to the edge of the world, to Brittany, Arabia, Hyperborea, the Ultima Thule. Morholt? Am I right?”

I couldn’t answer this question. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.

“You are exhausted, Tristan. You need sleep. Rest.”

“Look out… for the ship…”

“We will, Tristan. Do you need anything? Shall I send for…for the lady of the White Hands?”

A twist of his mouth:

“No.”

We are standing on the battlement, Branwen and I. A drizzle. We are in Brittany, after all. The wind is growing stronger, tugging at her hair, wrapping her dress tightly around her hips. It thwarts our words, squeezes tears out of our eyes, which are fixed on the horizon.

No sign of a sail.

I’m looking at Branwen. By Lugh, what a joy it is, watching her. I could look at her till the end of time. Just to think that when she stood next to Iseult, she didn’t seem pretty. I must have been blind.

“Branwen?”

“Yes, Morholt?”

“Were you waiting for me then, on the beach? Did you know…?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. I don’t… I can’t remember… Branwen, enough of these mysteries. My head is not up to it. Not my poor cracked head.”

“The legend cannot end without us. Without our participation. Yours and mine. I don’t know why, but we are important, indispensable to this story. The story of great love that is like a whirl, sucking in everything and everyone. Don’t you know that, Morholt of Ulster? Don’t you understand what an almighty power love can be? A power capable of turning the natural order of thing? Can’t you feel that?

“Branwen… I do not understand. Here, in the castle of Carhaing…”

“Something will happen. Something that depends only on us. That’s the reason we are here. We have to be here, whether we want it or not. That is how I knew you would turn up on that beach. That is why I couldn’t allow you to die on the dunes…”

I don’t know what made me do it. Perhaps her words, perhaps the sudden recollection of the eyes of the golden-haired lady. Maybe it was something I had forgotten, journeying down the long, unending black tunnel. I don’t know, but I did it without thinking, without any deliberation. I took her into my arms.

She clung to me, willingly, trustfully, and I thought that, indeed, love can be an almighty power. But equally strong is its prolonged, overwhelming, gnawing absence.

It lasted only a moment. Or so it seemed to me. Branwen slowly freed herself and turned around. A gust of wind pulled her hair.

“Something depends on us, Morholt. On you and me. I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of the sea. Of the rudderless boat.”

“I’m with you, Branwen.”

“Please be, Morholt.”

This evening is different. Completely different. I don’t know where Branwen is. Perhaps she is with Iseult, nursing Tristan who is again unconscious, tossing and turning in the fever. Tossing and turning, he whispers: “Iseult…” Iseult of the White Hands knows it’s not her that Tristan calls, but she trembles when she hears this name. And wrings the fingers of her white hands. Branwen, if she is with her, has wet diamonds in her eyes. Branwen… I wish… Eh, the pox on it!

And I… I’m drinking with the chaplain. What is he doing here? Perhaps he’s always been here?

We are drinking, and drinking fast. And a lot. I know it’s not doing me any good. I shouldn’t, my cracked head doesn’t take kindly to this kind of sport. When I overdo it, I have hallucinations, splitting headaches, sometimes I faint, though rarely.

Well, so what? We are drinking. I have to, plague take it, drown this dread inside me. I have to forget the trembling hands. The castle of Carhaing. Branwen’s eyes, full of fear of the unknown. I want to drown the howling of the wind, the roaring of the sea, the rocking of the boat under my feet. I want to drown everything I can’t remember. And that scent of apples which keeps following me.

We are drinking, the chaplain and I. We are separated by an oak table, splattered with puddles of wine. It’s not only table that separates us.

“Drink, shaveling.”

“God bless you, son”

“I’m not your son.”

Since the battle of Mount Badon, I carry the sign of the cross on my armour like many others, but I’m not moved by it as they are. Religion and all its manifestations leave me cold. The bush in Glastonbury, professedly planted by Joseph of Arymatea, looks to me like any other bush, except it’s more twisted and sickly than most. The Abbey itself, about which some of Arthur’s boys speak with such reverence, doesn’t stir great emotions in me, though I admit it looks very pretty against the wood, the hills and the lake. And the regular tolling of the bells helps to find the way in the fog, for it’s always foggy there, the pox on it.

This Roman religion, although it has spread around, doesn’t have a chance here, on the islands. Here, in Ireland, in Cornwall or Wales, at every step you see things whose existence is stubbornly denied by the monks. Any dimwit has seen elves, pukkas, sylphs, the Coranians, leprechauns, sidhe, and even bean sidhe, but no-one, as far as I know, has ever seen an angel. Except Bedivere who claims to have seen Gabriel, but Bedivere is a blockhead and a liar. I wouldn’t believe a word he says.

The monks go on about miracles performed by Christ. Let’s be honest: compared with things done by Vivien of the Lake, the Morrigan, or Morgause, wife of Lot from the Orkneys, not to mention Merlin, Christ doesn’t really have much to boast about. I’m telling you, the monks have come and they’ll go. The Druids will stay. Not that I think the Druids are much better than the monks. But at least the Druids are ours. They always have been. And the monks are stragglers. Just like this one, my table companion. The devil knows what wind’s blown him here to Armorica. He uses odd words and has a strange accent, Aquitan or Gaelic, plague take him.

“Drink, shaveling.”

I bet my head that in Ireland, Christianity will be a passing fashion. We Irish, we do not buy this hard, inflexible, Roman fanaticism. We are too sober-headed for that, too simple-hearted. Our Ireland is the fore-post of the West, it’s the Last Shore. Beyond, not far off, are the Old Lands: Hy Brasil, Ys, Mainistir Leitreach, Beag-Arainn. It is them, not the Cross, not the Latin liturgy, that rule people’s minds. It was so ages ago and it’s so today. Besides, we Irish, are a tolerant people. Everybody believes what he wants. I heard that around the world different factions of Christians are already at each other’s throats. In Ireland, it’s impossible. I can imagine everything but not that Ulster, say, might be a scene of religious scuffles.

“Drink, shaveling.”

Drink, for who knows, you may have a busy day tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow you will have to pay back for all the goodies you’ve pushed down your gullet. The one who is to leave us, must leave us with the full pomp of the ritual. It’s easier to leave when someone is conducting a ritual, doesn’t matter if he is mumbling the Requiem Aeternam, making a stink with incense, or howling and bashing his sword on the shield. It’s simply easier to leave. And what’s the difference where to—Hell, Paradise or Tir Na Nog? One always leaves for the darkness. I know a thing or two about it. One leads down the black tunnel which has no end.

“Your master is dying, shaveling.”

“Sir Tristan? I’m praying for him.”

“Are you praying for a miracle?”

“It’s all in God’s hands.”

“Not all.”

“You are blaspheming, my son.”

“I’m not your son. I’m a son of Flann Uarbeoil whom the Normans hacked to death on the bank of the river Shannon. That was a death worthy of man. When dying, Flann didn’t moan “Iseult, Iseult”. When dying, Flann laughed and called the Norman yarl such names the poor bastard forgot to close his gob for an hour afterwards, so impressed was he.”

“One should die with the name of Lord on one’s lips. And besides, it’s easier to die in a battle, from the sword, than to linger on in bed, being eaten away by la maladie. Fighting la maladie is a lonely struggle. It’s hard to fight alone, harder still to die alone.”

“ La maladie? You’re drivelling, monk. He would lick himself out of this wound, just like he did from that other one, which… But then, in Ireland, he was full of life, full of hope. Now the hope’s drained out of him, together with his blood. If he could only stop thinking about her, forget about this accursed love…”

“Love, my son, also comes from God.”

“Oh, it does, does it? Everybody here goes on about love, racking their brains where it comes from. Tristan and Iseult… Shall I tell you, shavling, where this love, or whatever it is, has come from? Shall I tell you what brought them together? It was me: Morholt. Before Tristan cracked my head, I poked him in the thigh and thus sent him to bed for several weeks. But he, the moment he felt a bit better, he dragged the lady of the Golden Hair into it. Any healthy man would do that, given time and opportunity. Later, the minstrels were singing about the Moren Wood and the naked sword. Balls, that’s what I say. Now you see yourself, monk, where the love comes from. Not from God, from Morholt. And it’s worth accordingly, this love. This maladie of yours.”

“You are blaspheming. You are talking about things you do not understand. And it would be better if you stopped talking about them.”

I didn’t punch him between the eyes with my tin mug, which I was squeezing in my hand. You wonder why? I’ll tell you why. Because he was right. I didn’t understand.

How could I understand? I was not conceived amidst misfortune, or born into tragedy. Flann and my mother conceived me on the hay and I’m sure they had plenty of good, healthy joy doing it. Giving me a name, they didn’t put any secret meanings into it. They gave me a name that it would be easy to call me by. “Morholt! Supper!” “Morholt! You little brat!” “Fetch some water, Morholt!” La tristesse? Balls, not la tristesse.

Can one daydream with a name like this? Play a harp? Devote all one’s thoughts to the beloved? Sacrifice to her all the matters of everyday life and pace the room unable to sleep? Balls. With a name like mine one can drink beer and wine and then puke under the table. Smash people’s noses. Crack heads with a sword or an axe or, alternatively, have it done to oneself. Love? Someone with the name Morholt pulls off a skirt, pokes his fill and falls asleep. Or, if he happens to feel a wee stirring in his soul, he will say: “Eh, ye’re a fine piece of arse, Maire O’Connell, I could gobble you whole, yer teats first.” Dig through it for three days and three nights, you won’t find in it a grain of la tristesse. Not a trace. So what, that I like looking at Branwen? I like looking at lots of things.

“Drink, monk. Pour it, don’t waste time. What are you mumbling?”

“It’s all in God’s hands, sicut in coelo et in terris, amen…”

“Maybe in coelo but not in terris, that’s for sure.”

“You are blaspheming, my son. Cave!”

“What are you trying to scare me with? A bolt from the blue?”

“I’m not trying to scare you. I fear for you. Rejecting God you reject hope. The hope that you won’t lose what you have won. The hope that when it comes to making a choice, you will make the right one. And that you won’t be left defenceless.”

“Life, with God or without God, with hope or without it, is a road without an end or beginning, a road that leads along the slippery side of a huge tin funnel. Most people don’t realise they are going round and round passing the same point on the narrow slippery slope of the circle. There are some who are unfortunate and slip. They fall. And that’s the end of them; they’ll never climb up, back to the edge; they won’t resume the march. They are sliding down, till they reach the bottom of the funnel, at the narrow point of the outlet where all meet. They meet, though only for a short while because further down, under the funnel, there awaits an abyss. This castle pounded by the waves is just such a place. The funnel’s outlet. Do you understand it, shavling?”

“No. But then I do not think you understand the cause behind my failure in understanding.”

“To hell with causes and effects, sicut in coelo et in terris. Drink, monk.”

We drank late into the night. The chaplain survived it admirably well. I didn’t do so well. I got pissed, I can tell you. I managed to drown… everything.

Or so it seemed to me.

Today the sea has the colour of lead. Today the sea is angry. I feel its anger and I respect it. I understand Branwen; I understand her fear. I don’t understand the cause. Or her words.

Today the castle is empty and terribly silent. Tristan is fighting the fever. Iseult and Branwen are at his side. I, Morholt of Ulster, stand on the battlements and look out into the sea.

Not a sign of a sail.

I was not asleep when she came in. And I was not surprised. It was as if I had expected it. That strange meeting on the beach, the journey through the dunes and salty meadows, the silly incident with Bec de Corbin and his friends, the evening by candlelight, the warmth of her body when I embraced her on the battlement, and above all that aura of love and death filling Carhaing—all this had brought us close to each other, bound us together. I even caught myself thinking that I would find it difficult to say goodbye…

To Branwen.

She didn’t say a word. She undid the brooch on her shoulder and let the heavy cloak drop onto the floor, and then quickly took off her shirt, a simple coarse garment, exactly like the ones worn everyday by Irish girls. She turned around, reddened by the flames flickering on the logs in the fire that was spying on her with its glowing eyes.

Also without saying a word, I moved to the side and made room for her next to me. She lay down, slowly, turning her face to me. I covered her with furs. We were both silent, lying still, watching the fleeting shadows on the ceiling.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “The sea…”

“I know. I hear it, too.”

“I’m scared, Morholt.”

“I’m with you.”

“Please be.”

I embraced her as tenderly and delicately as I could. She slipped her arms round my neck and pressed her face to my cheek, overpowering me with her hot breath. I touched her gently, fighting the joyous urge to embrace her fully, the need for violent, lusty caress, just as if I were stroking a falcon’s feathers or the nostrils of a nervous horse. I stroked her hair, her neck and shoulders, her full, wonderfully rounded breasts with their small nipples. I stroked her hips which, not so long ago, seemed to me too round and that in fact were wonderfully round. I stroked her smooth thighs, her womanhood, that place I didn’t have a name for, for even in my thoughts I wouldn’t dare to name it as I used to, with any of the Irish, Welsh or Saxon words I knew. It would be like calling Stonehenge a pile of rubble, or Glastonbury Tor a hillock.

She trembled, giving herself forth to meet my hands, guiding them with the movements of her body. She asked, she demanded with groans, with rapid uneven gasps of breath. She pleaded with momentary submissions, warm and tender, only to harden the next moment into a quivering diamond.

“Love me, Morholt,” she whispered. “Love me.”

She was brave, greedy, impatient. But helpless and defenceless in my arms. She had to give in to my quiet, careful, restrained love. My love. The one I wanted. The one I wanted for her. For in the one she was trying to impose on me, I sensed fear, sacrifice, resignation, and I didn’t want her to be afraid, to sacrifice anything for me, to give up anything for me. I had my way.

Or so it seemed to me.

I felt the castle shudder in the slow rhythm of the pounding waves.

“Branwen…”

She pressed her hot body to mine; her sweat had the scent of wet feathers.

“Morholt… It’s good…”

“What’s good Branwen?”

“It’s good to live…”

We were silent for a long while. And then I asked a question. The question I shouldn’t have asked.

“Branwen… Will she… Will Iseult come here from Tintagel?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You? Her confidant, who…”

I shut up. By Lugh, what an idiot I am, I thought. What a bloody blockhead.

“Don’t torture yourself, Morholt,” she said. “Ask me.”

“About what?”

“About Iseult and King Mark’s wedding night.”

“Ah, this. Believe me or not, Branwen, I’m not interested.”

“I think you’re lying.”

I didn’t answer. She was right.

“It was just like people say,” she said quietly. “We swapped in Mark’s bed, soon after the candles were put out. I’m not sure if it was necessary. Mark was so charmed with Iseult of the Golden Hair that he would accept her lack of virginity without reproach. He was not that fussy. But that’s what we did. I did it because of my bad conscience after what had happened on the ship. I thought it was all my doing, mine and that of the magic potion’s I had given them. I assumed the guilt and wanted to pay for it. Only later, it turned out that Tristan and Iseult slept with each other even in Baile Atha Cliath. And that I was not guilty of anything.”

“It’s all right, Branwen. Spare me the details. Leave it alone.”

“No. Listen to the end. Listen to what the minstrels will never sing about. Iseult ordered that as soon as I had given proof of my virginity I should sneak out of bed and swap with her again. Perhaps she was afraid the king would find out, or maybe she didn’t want me to get used to him, who knows? She was with Tristan in the room next door, both busy with each other. She freed herself from his arms and went to the Cornishman as she stood, naked, without even combing her tangled hair. I stayed, naked, with Tristan. Till dawn. I don’t know how or why.”

I was silent.

“That’s not the end,” said Branwen, turning her face towards the fire. “After that, there was the honeymoon during which the Cornishman wouldn’t leave Iseult even for a minute. Thus, Tristan could not get close to her. But to me he could. To spare you the details, after these few months I was in love with him. For life and death. I know you are surprised. It’s true, the only thing we had in common was the bed where, it was obvious to me even then, Tristan was trying to forget his love for Iseult, his jealousy of Mark, his guilt. He treated me as a substitute. I knew that and it didn’t help.”

“Branwen…”

“Be patient, Morholt. It’s still not the end. The honeymoon passed, Mark resumed his normal royal duties, and Iseult began to have plenty of free time. And Tristan…Tristan ceased to notice me. Worse, he began to avoid me. While I was going crazy with love.”

She fell silent, found amongst the furs my hand and squeezed it tightly.

“I made several attempts to forget him,” she carried on, staring at the ceiling. “Tintagel was full of young, uncomplicated knights. But it didn’t work. One morning I took a boat to the sea. When I was far enough from the shore, I jumped.”

“Branwen,” I said, pulling her close, trying to smother with my embrace the shudders convulsing her body. “It’s all past now. Forget about it. Like many others, you were sucked into the whirl of their love, love that proved unhappy to them, and fatal to others. Even I…I caught it on the head, though I merely brushed against this love, knowing nothing about it. In Dun Laoghaire, Tristan defeated me, although I was stronger and more experienced. That’s because he fought for Iseult, for his love. I didn’t know about it, got a good bash on the head and, like you, I owe my life to those who happened to be near me and who thought it right to help me. To save me. To pull me out of that unfathomable depth. And so we were saved, you and me. We are alive and to hell with everything else.”

She slipped her arm under my head and stroked my hair. She touched the swelling that ran from the temple right down to my ear. I winced. The hair on the scar grows in all directions and a touch can sometimes cause an unbearable pain.

“The whirl of their love,” she whispered. “Their love pulled us in. You and me. But were we really saved? What if we are still falling into that depth, together with them? What fate awaits us? The sea? The rudderless boat?”

“Branwen…”

“Love me, Morholt. The sea is asking for us, can you hear? But as long as we are here, as long as the legend isn’t over…”

“Branwen…”

“Love me, Morholt.”

I tried to be gentle. I tried to be considerate. I tried to be Tristan, King Mark and all the uncomplicated knights of Tintagel rolled into one. From the mass of desires whirling inside me, I kept only one: I wanted her to forget, forget about everything. I tried to make her believe, if only for as long as I held her in my arms, that there was only me. I tried. Believe me.

In vain.

Or so it seemed to me.

Not a sign of sails. The sea…

The sea has the colour of Branwen’s eyes.

I pace the room like a wolf in a cage. My heart is pounding as if it wanted to shatter my ribs. Something is squeezing my chest, my throat, something strange, something that’s sitting inside me. I hurl myself on the bed. To hell with it. I close my eyes and see the golden sparks. I can smell the scent of apples. Branwen. The scent of a falcon’s feathers as it sits on my glove when I return from hunting. The golden sparks. I see her face. I see the curve of her cheek, the small perky nose. The roundness of her arm. I see her… I carry her…

I carry her on the inner side of my eyelids.

“Morholt?”

“You are not asleep?”

“No, I can’t… The sea…”

“I’m with you, Branwen.”

“For how long? How much time have we got left?”

“Branwen…”

“Tomorrow… Tomorrow the ship from Tintagel will be here.”

“How do you know?”

“I simply do.”

Silence.

“Morholt?”

“Yes, Branwen?”

“We are bound together. Tied to this wheel of torture, sucked into the whirl. Chained. Tomorrow, here in Carhaing, the chain will break. I knew that the moment I saw you on the beach. When I realised that you were alive. When I realised I was alive, too. But we do not live for each other, not any more. We are merely a tiny part in the fates of Tristan of Lionesse and Iseult of the Golden Hair from the Emerald Isle. Here, in the castle of Carhaing, we found each other only to lose each other. The only thing that binds us together is a legend about love, which is not our legend. In which we play a role we cannot understand. A legend that perhaps won’t even mention our roles, or it will warp and falsify them, will put into our mouths words we never said, will ascribe to us deeds we never did. We do not exist, Morholt. There is only a legend that is about to end.”

“No, Branwen,” I said, trying to make my voice sound hard, determined and full of conviction. “You mustn’t say that. It’s sorrow, nothing else, that makes you say these words. True, Tristan of Lionesse is dying and even if Iseult of the Golden Hair is on the ship sailing from Tintagel, I’m afraid she may be too late. And even though I, too, am saddened by this, I shall never agree that the only thing that binds us together is the legend. I’ll never agree with this, Branwen, lying next to you, holding you in my arms. At this moment, it’s Tristan who doesn’t exist for me, the legend, the castle of Carhaing. There is only the two of us.”

“I, too, hold you in my arms, Morholt. Or so it seems to me. But I do know that we don’t exist. There is only the legend. What will become of us? What will happen tomorrow? What decision will we have to make? What will become of us?”

“Fate will decide. An accident. This entire legend to which we so stubbornly return, is a result of an accident. A series of accidents. If it weren’t for this blind fate, there would be no legend. Then, in Dun Laoghaire, just think Branwen, if it weren’t for blind fate…it could have been him, not I…”

I stopped, frightened by the sudden thought, horrified by the words pressing onto my lips.

“Morholt,” whispered Branwen.” Fate’s done with us all there was to do. The rest cannot be the result of an accident. We are beyond the rule of accident. What is ending, is ending for both of us. It’s possible…”

“What, Branwen?”

“That perhaps then, in Dun Laoghaire—”

“Branwen!”

“—that your wound was mortal? Perhaps…I drowned in the bay?”

“Branwen! But we are alive!”

“Are you sure? Where had we come from to find ourselves on that beach, you and me, at the same time? Do you remember? Don’t you think it possible we were brought by the rudderless boat? That very same boat which one day brought Tristan to the mouth of the river Liffey? The boat from Avalon, looming out of the mist, filled with the scent of apples? The boat we were told to get into for the legend cannot end without us, without our participation? For it was us, no-one else, who are to end this legend? And when we end it, we shall return to the shore, the rudderless boat will wait for us, and we will have to get into it and drift away and be swallowed by the mist? Morholt?”

“We are alive, Branwen.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m touching you, Branwen. You exist. Lying in my arms. You are beautiful, warm, you have a smooth skin. You smell like my falcon sitting on my glove when I return from hunting and the rain is rustling in the birch leaves. You are, Branwen.”

“I am touching you, Morholt. You exist. You are warm and your heart is beating just as strongly. You smell of salt. You are.”

“And so…we are alive, Branwen.”

She smiled. I didn’t see it. I felt that smile pressed into my arm.

Later, deep in the night, lying still with my arm numb from the weight of her head, careful not to break her shallow sleep, I listened to the roaring of the sea.

For the first time in my life this sound, dull and monotonous like toothache, made me feel uneasy, irritated me, kept me awake. I was afraid. I was afraid of the sea. I, an Irishman, brought up on a seashore, from birth familiar with the sound of the surf.

Later still, in my sleep, I saw a boat with a high, upturned stem and a mast adorned with garlands. The rudderless boat, tossed on the waves. I could smell the scent of apples.

“Good Lady Branwen…” the page was gasping for breath. “Lady Iseult asks you to come to Sir Tristan’s chamber. You and Sir Morholt of Ulster. Please hurry, milady.”

“What happened? Has Tristan…?”

“No, it’s not that. But…”

“Speak, boy.”

“The ship from Tintagel… Sir Caherdin is coming back. There was a messenger from the cape. It can be seen…”

“What colour are the sails?”

“It’s impossible to say. The ship is too far, far beyond the cape.”

The sun came out.

When we entered, Iseult of the White Hands was standing with her back to the half-open window, which threw off flashes of light from the little panes of glass fitted in little lead frames. She was radiating an unnatural, turbid, deflected light. Tristan, his face glossy with sweat, was breathing irregularly, with difficulty. His eyes were closed.

Iseult looked at us. Her face was drawn, disfigured by two deep furrows etched by pain on both sides of her mouth.

“He is barely conscious,” she said. “He is delirious.”

Branwen pointed to the window:

“The ship…”

“It’s too far, Branwen. It’s hardly passed the cape. It’s too far…”

Branwen looked at Tristan and sighed. I knew what she thought.

No, I didn’t.

I heard it.

Believe me or not, I heard their thoughts. Branwen’s thoughts, anxious and full of fear, like waves frothing amongst the shore’s rocks. The thoughts of Iseult, soft, trembling, fluttering like a bird held in the hand. The thoughts of Tristan, loose and torn, like wisps of mist.

We are all at your side, Tristan, thought Iseult. Branwen of Cornwall who is the Lady of Algae. Morholt of Ulster, who is Decision. And I, who loves you, Tristan. I who love you more and more with every minute that passes and takes you away from me, that takes you away no matter what colour the sails of the ship approaching the shores of Brittany. Tristan…

Iseult, thought Tristan. Iseult. Why aren’t they looking out of the window? Why are they looking at me? Why aren’t they telling me what colour the sails are? I must know it, I must, otherwise…

He will fall asleep, thought Branwen. He will fall asleep and he will never wake up. He has reached the point as far from the luminous surface as it is from the green algae covering the seabed. The point where one stops struggling. From that point there is only peace.

Tristan, thought Iseult. Now I know I was happy with you. Despite everything. Despite all the time you have been with me and thought only about her. Despite you rarely calling me by my name. You always called me “my lady”. You’ve tried so hard not to hurt me. You were trying so hard, putting so much effort into it that it was your very trying that hurt me most. Yet I was happy. You’ve given me happiness. You’ve given me the golden sparks flickering under my eyelids. Tristan…

Branwen was looking out through the window. At the ship appearing slowly out from behind the land’s edge. Hurry up, she thought. Hurry up, Caherdin. Sharp to the wind. No matter what colour, turn your sail sharp to the wind, Caherdin. Hail, Caherdin, welcome, we need your help. Save us, Caherdin…

But the wind, which for the last three days had been blowing, freezing us and lashing us with rain, now abated. The sun came out.

All of them, thought Tristan. All of them. Iseult of the White Hands, Branwen, Morholt… And now I…Iseult, my Iseult… What colour are the sails of this ship…? What colour…?

We are like blades of grass that stick to the cloak’s hem when one’s walking through a meadow, thought Iseult. We are those blades of grass on your cloak, Tristan. In a moment you’ll brush off your cloak and we shall be free…borne away by the wind. Do not make me look at those sails, Tristan, my husband. I beg you, don’t.

I wish, thought Tristan, I wish I could have met you earlier. Why did Fate bring me to Ireland? Armorica is closer to Lionesse… I could have met you earlier… I wish I had loved you… I wish… What colour are the sails of this ship? I wish…I wish I could give you love, my lady. My good lady Iseult of the White Hands… But I can’t…I can’t…

Branwen turned her face to the tapestries, her shoulders shaking with sobs. She, too, must have heard.

I took her in my arms. On all the Lir’s Tritons! I cursed my bear-like clumsiness, my wooden hands, my cragged fingertips catching on the silk like tiny fishhooks. But Branwen, falling into my arms, had filled everything out, put everything right, rounding off all the sharp edges like a wave washing over a sandy beach trampled by horses’s hooves. Suddenly, I felt we were one person. I knew I couldn’t lose her. Ever.

Above her head, pressed onto my chest, I saw the window. The sea. And the ship.

You can give me love, Tristan, thought Iseult. Please give it to me, before I lose you. Only once. I need it very much. Don’t make me look at the sails of this ship. Don’t ask me what colour they are. Don’t force me to play a role in a legend, a role that I don’t want to play.

I can’t, thought Tristan. I can’t. Iseult, my golden-haired Iseult… My Iseult….

It’s not my name, thought Iseult. It’s not my name.

“It’s not my name!” she shouted.

Tristan opened his eyes, looked around, his head rolling on the pillows.

“My lady…” he whispered. “Branwen…Morholt…”

“We are here, all of us,” answered Iseult very quietly.

No, thought Tristan. Iseult is not here. So…it’s like there is no-one here.

My lady…

Don’t make me…

My lady… Please…

Don’t make me look at the sails, Tristan. Don’t force me to tell you…

Please… His body tensed. I beg you…

And then he said it. Differently. Branwen shuddered in my arms.

“Iseult.”

She smiled.

“I wanted to change the course of a legend,” she said very quietly. “What a mad idea. Legends cannot be changed. Nothing can be changed. Well, almost nothing…”

She stopped, looked at me, at Branwen, both still embracing and standing next to the tapestry with the apple tree of Avalon. She smiled. I knew I would never forget that smile.

Slowly, very slowly, she walked up to the window. Standing inside it, she stretched her hands up to its pointed arch.

“Iseult,” groaned Tristan. “What…what colour…”

“They are white,” she said. “White, Tristan. They are as white as snow. Farewell.”

She turned around. Without looking at him, without looking at anybody, she left the room. The moment she left I stopped hearing her thoughts. All I could hear was the roaring of the sea.

“White!” shouted Tristan. “Iseult! My Golden Hair! At last…”

The voice died in his throat like the flickering flame of an oil-lamp. Branwen screamed. I ran to his bed. Tristan’s lips moved lightly. He was trying to raise himself. I held him up and gently forced him to lie back on the pillows.

“Iseult,” he whispered. “Iseult. Iseult…”

“Lie still, Tristan. Do not try to get up.”

He smiled. By Lugh, I knew I would never be able to forget that smile.

“Iseult…I have to see it…”

“Lie still, Tristan…”

“…the sails…”

Branwen, standing in the window where a moment ago had stood Iseult of the White Hands, sobbed loudly.

“Morholt!” she cried. “This ship…”

“I know. Branwen…”

She turned.

“He is dead.”

“What?”

“Tristan has died. This very moment. This is the end, Branwen.”

I looked through the window. The ship was closer than before. But still too far. Far too far to tell the colour of its sails.

I met them in the big hall, the one where we had been greeted by Iseult of the White Hands. In the hall where I had offered her my sword and my life, whatever it might have meant.

I was looking for Iseult and the chaplain. Instead I found them.

There were four of them.

A Welsh druid named Hwyrddyddwg, a sly old man, told me once that a man’s intentions, no matter how cleverly disguised, will be always betrayed by two things: his eyes and his hands. I looked closely at the eyes, then at the hands of the knights standing in the great hall.

“My name is Marjadoc,” said the tallest of them. He had a coat of arms on his tunic—two black boars’ heads, crested with silver, against a blue-red field. “And these are honourable knights—Sir Gwydolwyn, Sir Anoeth and Sir Deheu of Opwen. We come from Cornwall as envoys to Sir Tristan of Lionesse. Take us to him, sir.”

“You’ve come too late,” I said.

“Who are you, sir?” Marjadoc winced. “I do not know you.”

At this moment Branwen came in. Marjadoc’s face twitched, anger and hatred crept out on it like two writhing snakes.

“Marjadoc.”

“Branwen.”

“Gwydolwyn, Anoeth, Deheu, I thought I would never see you again. They told me Tristan and Corvenal put you out of your misery then, in the Wood of Moren.”

Marjadoc smiled nastily.

“Inscrutable is Fate. I never thought I would see you again either. Especially here. But never mind, take us to Tristan. The matter is of utmost urgency.”

“Why such a hurry?”

“Take us to Tristan,” repeated Marjadoc angrily. “We have business with him. Not with his servants. Nor with the panderess of the Queen of Cornwall.”

“Whence have you come, Marjadoc?”

“From Tintagel, as I said.”

“Interesting,” smiled Branwen, “for the ship has not yet reached the shore. But it’s nearly there. Do you wish me to tell you what sails it is sailing under?”

Marjadoc’s eyes didn’t change for a second. I realised he had known. I understood everything. The light I saw at the end of the black tunnel was growing brighter.

“Leave this place,” barked Marjadoc, putting his hand on the sword. “Leave the castle. Immediately.”

“How have you got here?” asked the smiling Branwen. “Have you, by any chance, come on the rudderless boat. With the black, tattered rag for a sail? With the wolf’s skull nailed to the high, upturned stem? Why have you come here? Who sent you?”

“Get out of the way, Branwen. Do not cross us or you’ll be sorry.”

Branwen’s face was calm. But this time it was not the calm of resignation and helplessness, the chill of despair and indifference. This time it was the calm of an unshaken iron will. No, I mustn’t lose her. Not for any price.

Any? And what about the legend?

I could smell the scent of apples.

“You have strange eyes, Marjadoc,” said Branwen suddenly. “Eyes that are not used to daylight.”

“Get out of our way.”

“No. I won’t get out of your way, Marjadoc. First you will answer my question. The question is: why?”

Marjadoc didn’t move. He was looking at me.

“There will be no legend about great love,” he said, and I knew it was not him who was talking. “Such a legend would be unwanted and harmful. The tomb made of beryl and the hawthorn bush growing from it and spreading itself over the tomb made of chalcedony would be a senseless folly. We do not want tombs like that. We do not want the story of Tristan and Iseult to take root in people’s minds, to become an ideal and an example for them. We do not wish it to repeat itself. We won’t have young people saying: ‘We are like Tristan and Iseult’. Ever. Anywhere.”

Branwen was silent.

“We cannot allow something like the love of these two to cloud minds destined for higher things. To weaken arms whose purpose is to crush and kill. To soften the spirit of those who are meant to hold power with iron tongs. And above all, Branwen, we shall not allow what has bound Tristan and Iseult to pass into a legend as an imperishable love that dares all dangers and makes light of hardships, binding the lovers even after their death. That is why Iseult of Cornwall has to die far away from here, bringing into the world another descendant of King Mark, as befits a queen. As for Tristan, if he has already gone to rot before we got to him, he must be laid at the bottom of the sea, with a stone tied to his neck. Or burnt. Yes, that would be best. And the castle of Carhaing should go up in flames with him. And soon, before the ship from Tintagel sails into the bay. Instead of a tomb of beryl—a heap of stinking, smouldering rubble. Instead of a beautiful legend—an ugly truth. The truth about a selfish infatuation, about stepping over dead bodies, about trampling the feelings of other people and the harm done to them. Branwen? Do you really want to stop us, us the Knights of Truth? I repeat: get out of our way. We have nothing against you. We do not want to kill you. There is no need. You have played your role, a rather contemptible one, now you can go. Go back to the shore, where they are waiting for you. You, too, Sir… What is your name?”

I was looking at their eyes and their hands, and I thought that the old Hwyrddyddwg was right: their eyes and hands indeed showed their intentions. For in their eyes there was cruelty and determination while their hands held swords. I didn’t have my sword, that same sword I had offered to Iseult of the White Hands. Well, I thought, tough titties. After all, it’s not a big deal to die fighting. It won’t be the first time, will it?

I am Morholt! The one who is Decision.

“Your name, sir,” repeated Marjadoc.

“Tristan,” I said.

The chaplain appeared out of nowhere, sprang from the ground like a pukka. Groaning with the effort, he threw across the hall a huge, two-handed sword. Marjadoc leapt at me, raising his sword. For a moment the swords were up in the air—the Marjadoc’s and the one flying towards my outstretched hands. It seemed I could not move quickly enough. But I did.

I cut Marjadoc under his arm, with all the strength, in half-swing. The blade went in diagonally, as far as the line dividing the fields on his coat of arms. I turned back, letting the sword slide out. Marjadoc fell down, right under the feet of the other three who were running towards me. Anoeth tripped on the body, which meant I could easily crack his head. And I did.

Gwydolwyn and Deheu rushed at me from both sides. I stepped in between them, whirling round with the stretched sword like a spinning top. They had to back off. Their blades were a good arm’s length shorter than mine. Kneeling down, I cut Gwydolwyn on the thigh. I felt the blade grate on bone. Deheu swung his sword and tried to get to me from the side. But he slipped on the blood and fell on one knee. His eyes were full of fear now, begging for mercy, but I found none. I didn’t even look for it. It’s impossible to parry a thrust with a two-hander delivered from close range. If you cannot move out of its way, the blade will sink two-thirds of its length till it stops on the two little iron wings placed there especially for this purpose. And it did.

Believe me or not, but none of them let out as much as a squeak. While I…I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I dropped the sword on the floor.

“Morholt!” Branwen ran and clung to me, her body shuddering with waves of terror that were slowly dying away.

“It’s all right now, dear. It’s all over,” I said, stroking her hair, but at the same time looking at the chaplain kneeling by the dying Gwydolwyn.

“Thank you for the sword, monk.”

The chaplain lifted his head and looked me in the eyes. Where had he sprung from? Had he been here all the time? But if he had been…then who was he? Who the devil was he?

“It’s all in God’s hands,” he said, and bent over the dying Gwydolwyn. “…Et lux perpetua luceat ei…”

Still, he didn’t convince me. He didn’t convince me with the first saying, nor with the second.

Then we found Iseult.

In the baths; her face pressed to the well. Clean, pedantic Iseult of the White Hands, could not have done it anywhere else but on the stone floor by the gutter meant for draining away water. Now this gutter glistened dark clotted red along its entire length.

She had opened her veins on both hands. With expertise. Along the forearms, on the inner side, and then, to make sure, on her wrists with the sign of the cross. We would not have been able to save her even if we’d found her earlier.

Her hands were even whiter than before.

And then, believe me or not, I realised that the rudderless boat was leaving the shore. Without us. Without Morholt of Ulster. Without Branwen of Cornwall. But it was not empty.

Farewell, Iseult. Farewell. For ever. Be it in Tir Na Nog, or in Avalon, the whiteness of your hands will last for centuries. For eternity.

Farewell, Iseult.

We left Carhaing before Caherdin’s arrival. We didn’t want to talk to him, or to anyone who might have been on that ship from Tintagel. For us, the legend was over. We were not interested in what the minstrels were going to do with it.

The sky was overcast again, it was raining, a drizzle. Brittany, the usual stuff. There was a road ahead of us: the road through the dunes towards that rocky beach. I didn’t want to think what to do next. It didn’t matter.

“I love you , Morholt,” said Branwen without looking at me. “I love you whether you want it or not. It’s like an illness. A weariness that drains me of my free will, that pulls me into the deep. I’ve lost myself within you, Morholt, and I shall never find myself the way I was before. If you respond to my love, you, too, will lose yourself; you will perish, drown in the deeps and never find the old Morholt again. So think well before you give me your answer.”

The ship stood by the rocky shore. They were unloading something. Someone was shouting, cursing in Welsh, hurrying the men. The sails were being rolled. The sails…

“It’s a terrible sickness, this love,” carried on Branwen, also looking at the sails. ” La maladie, as they say in the south, on the mainland. La maladie d’espoir, the sickness of hope. The selfish infatuation, bringing harm to everyone around. I love you, Morholt, selfishly, blindly. I’m not worried about the fate of others, whom I may unwittingly draw into the whirl of my love, hurt, or trample upon. Isn’t it terrible? If you respond to my love… Think well, Morholt, before you give me your answer.”

The sails…

“We are like Tristan and Iseult,” said Branwen, and her voice came dangerously close to breaking point. ” La maladie… What shall become of us, Morholt? What will happen to us? Will we, too, be joined finally by bushes of hawthorn and brier-rose growing on our graves? Think well, Morholt, before you answer.”

I was not going to do any thinking. I suspected Branwen knew as much. I saw it in her eyes when she turned her face towards me.

She knew we’d been sent to Carhaing to save the legend. And we had. The simplest way. By beginning a new one.

“I know how you feel, Branwen,” I said, looking at the sails, “for I feel exactly the same. It’s a terrible sickness. Terrible, incurable malady. I know how you feel. For I, too, have fallen ill.”

Branwen smiled, and it seemed to me that the sun had broken through the low-hanging clouds. That’s what this smile was like. Believe me or not.

“And the pox on the healthy, Branwen!”

The sails were dirty.

Or so it seemed to me.