Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

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…”