Sunrise of Avalon
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Praise for Anna Elliott’s
TWILIGHT OF AVALON trilogy
“Fans of the TV series Camelot and of epic historical fiction will relish Anna Elliott’s gritty, passionate evocation of Arthurian Britain. Magic, adventure, romance, and betrayal entwine in this sweeping account of the famous star-crossed lovers. Haunting and unforgettable, Sunrise of Avalon held me spellbound!”
—C. W. Gortner, author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
“Enthralling! A deftly plotted, fast-paced tale of love and war, with well-drawn characters, sharp suspense, and an original portrait of Trystan and Isolde you’ll never forget—I loved it!”
—Nancy McKenzie, author of Queen of Camelot
“Set in a dark, richly detailed Tolkienesque world, the poignant love story of Trystan and Isolde is given shining new life in this magical retelling by Anna Elliott. Sunrise of Avalon kept me spellbound until the last page.”
—Sandra Worth, author of Pale Rose of England
“Passion, conflict, danger, and magic combine for an irresistible love story which will keep you turning the pages!”
—Michelle Moran, author of Madame Tussaud and Nefertiti
“Elliot brings the Arthurian world to rich life, creating a Britain both familiar and distinctly alien to fans of medieval romances.”
—Publishers Weekly on Dark Moon of Avalon
“Elliott’s reworking of a timeworn medieval tale reinvigorates the celebrated romance between Trystan and Isolde. . . . She paints a mystical, full-bodied portrait. . . . Fans of the many Arthurian cycles will relish this appropriately fantastical offshoot of the Arthurian legend.”
—Booklist on Twilight of Avalon
“Unique and delightful . . . a most promising first novel filled with passion, courage, and timeless magic.”
—Library Journal on Twilight of Avalon
“A dark vision, inspired by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of disunity and treachery among the British leaders . . . it maintains powerful tension throughout as it exposes the suffering of those affected by their cruelty and shortsightedness. Strongly recommended.”
—Historical Novels Review on Twilight of Avalon
“Anna Elliott takes the aerie-fairy out of the fabled Arthurian tale of Trystan and Isolde, gives us a very plausible version. Our heroine has the spunk of a woman of our era, and this Isolde is one we can all admire and aspire to.”
—Anne Easter Smith, author of A Rose for the
Crown and Daughter of York
“From out of the swirling mists of legend and history of sixth-century Dark Age Britain, in Twilight of Avalon Anna Elliott has fashioned a worthy addition to the Arthurian and Trystan and Isolde cycles, weaving their stories together with Isolde’s personal one. This Isolde steps out from myth to become a living, breathing woman and one whose journey is heroic.”
—Margaret George, author of Helen of Troy
ALSO BY ANNA ELLIOTT
Twilight of Avalon
Dark Moon of Avalon
Touchstone
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Anna Grube
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone trade paperback edition September 2011
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Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elliott, Anna.
Sunrise of Avalon : a novel of Trystan & Isolde / by Anna Elliott.—1st
Touchstone trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
“A Touchstone book.”
1. Iseult (Legendary character)—Fiction. 2. Tristan (Legendary
character)—Fiction. 3. Avalon (Legendary place)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.L443S86 2011
813'.6—dc22
2011011984
ISBN 978-1-4165-8991-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-6457-0 (ebook)
To my mom
You may have tangible wealth untold.
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be—
I had a mother who read to me.
—Strickland Gillilan
Contents
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
BOOK I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
BOOK II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
BOOK III
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
BOOK IV
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Afterword
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Dramatis Personae
Dead Before the Story Begins
Arthur, High King of Britain, father of Modred, brother of Morgan; killed in the battle of Camlann
Constantine, Arthur’s heir as Britain’s High King, first husband to Isolde
Gwynefar, Arthur’s wife; betrayed Arthur to become Modred’s Queen; mother to Isolde
Modred, Arthur’s traitor son and Isolde’s father; killed in fighting Arthur at Camlann
Morgan, mother to Modred, believed by many to be a sorceress
Myrddin, Arthur’s chief druid and bard
Rulers of Britain
Cynlas, King of Rhos
Dywel, King of Logres
Isolde, daughter of Modred and Gwynefar, Constantine’s High Queen, Lady of Camelerd
Madoc, King of Gwynned and Britain’s High King
Marche, King of Cornwall, now a traitor allied with the Saxon King Octa of Kent
Saxon Rulers
Cerdic, King of Wessex
Octa, King of Kent
Others
Fidach, leader of an outlaw band of mercenaries
Eurig, Piye, and Daka, three of Fidach’s men, friends to Trystan
Goram, an Irish king
Hereric, a Saxon and friend to Trystan
Kian, a former outlaw and friend to Trystan, now one of King Madoc’s war band
Nest, cousin and former chatelaine to King Marche
Marcia, Nest’s serving maid
Mother Berthildis, abbess of the Abbey of Saint Joseph
Taliesin, brother to King Dywel of Logres, a bard
 
; Trystan, a Saxon mercenary and outlaw, son of King Marche
Isolde’s Britain
Prologue
A ship sails on gentle seas
At its prow a maiden stands,
Forever young, forever fair,
Her raven locks caught on the wind.
She calls the magic from her heart
It runs through her fingers,
Like sand, like time.
The sea whitens; the moon fetches light.
All is peace at last
The King’s wounds are healed.
Arthur sleeps
In Ynys Afallach, the realm of Avalon.
STRANGE HOW NOW, AT THIS twilight end of my days, the harpers’ songs sung of me run again and again through my mind. An endlessly repeating curve. Like time. Like serpents of eternity, eternally swallowing their tails.
I was once that maiden of the raven hair. Morgan, half sister to Arthur the king. Morgan the enchantress, whose magic arts trapped the High King like a golden web. Morgan the sorceress, whose spite for her brother-king poisoned the land and broke Britain’s hope of ever driving back the Saxon hordes.
Never do the tales mention King Marche of Cornwall, who betrayed his lord, Modred, my son. Marche, whose treason cost my son the victory at Camlann. Cost him his life.
And now Marche, ever ready to trim his sails to the way the winds of power blow, has taken my life, as well as my son’s. Has walled me up in a plague-ridden garrison that I may die with all the others whose faces blacken and run with sores.
But the bards never speak of Marche. That Britain’s fall was brought on by a woman’s magic, a woman’s spite, makes for a far better tale to sing.
Always when I hear the tales, I feel as though I have stepped into a lake, crystal clear and still. As though, with the water lapping around my waist, I draw nearer and nearer to the wavering reflection that looks back at me with my own eyes. Always and even now.
Who knows how such tales are born? To find their beginning is like unwinding the weft in a weaving on the loom. But once begun, they spread like the ripples on a pond, like dry leaves scattering before the blast of the storm.
And now new tales will be spun and told. Camlann has been fought. Arthur is dead and gone, slain by Modred, his traitor son. Our son. Arthur’s and mine.
And the bards will turn all into a song of a king who was and shall be. Who sleeps in the mists of the sacred isle, and will come again in the hour of Britain’s greatest need. Though whether the tales will be an eternal candle flame in the dark, or only lies to comfort children, I cannot say.
The Sight has shown me much, in my time. May be and has been and is and shall be. But now I see only dark. Perhaps the Goddess has turned her back and forgotten me. Or perhaps, with Arthur gone, there is nothing left inside me that can See.
So I lie in bed, burning with the fever of the plague that has struck the land. A punishment for my sins, I might think, did it not make me sound like some grim, black-robed and shaven follower of the Christ.
A girl sits beside me, bathes my face and brushes my hair and tries to coax me to swallow simples and drafts of herbs. I taught her the healer’s craft, and she has learned it well.
She, too, might be the raven-haired maiden of the tales. Forever young, forever fair. Face a smooth, lovely oval. Skin lily pale and pure. Wide, thickly lashed gray eyes.
Isolde, daughter born to Arthur’s wife, Gwynefar, by Modred, my son.
I have feared for her in the past; I fear for her still. For I have Seen love for her. Love amidst the rising dark that sweeps the land.
Perhaps one day the harpers will sing songs and tell tales of her. Isolde the fair. Isolde of the healing hands.
But how the tales will end—whether with happiness or with tears—that, too, I cannot say.
Cannot See.
BOOK I
Chapter 1
ISOLDE STARED INTO HER OWN pale face: wide across the brow, small chin, thickly lashed gray eyes. Raven-dark hair. The face was hers. Unquestionably her own. Almost as though she looked in a mirror. Except that instead, she was standing apart from herself, seeing through another’s eyes.
She felt . . . pity. Pity and dread, both. She was sorry for the young woman before her. Sorry that her world was about to end.
The pity curled and soured in the pit of her stomach as she opened her mouth and spoke in a voice that was at once alien and her own. “I’m sorry, Lady Isolde. He was wounded. Fatally so. He didn’t—”
AND THEN THE VISION BROKE, SHATTERED, leaving her standing by an open window in the infirmary of the abbey of Saint Eucherius, her skin clammy, her breath coming quick and unsteady, the echo of the words beating in time to the drum of her own pulse. I’m sorry, Lady Isolde. He was wounded. Fatally so.
No name had been spoken in that brief flash of vision. But the hammering beat of her heart supplied one now. Trystan. Whoever it was whose eyes she’d briefly seen through had been bringing her word of Trystan. She knew it with a certaintly that sank to her bones like the bite of a winter wind.
Isolde made herself draw first one breath, then another, telling herself fiercely that the Sight didn’t always show true. That sometimes these flashes of the future she caught were only may be, and not will be. That the vision needn’t mean that sooner or later, some man as yet unknown—the man whose pity and dread she’d just felt—was going to come and tell her that Trystan was dead.
The tight knot inside her remained, though, and the image of this vision was blotted out in her mind’s eye by the memory of another, glimpsed in the scrying waters nearly three months before. Two men, locked in fierce, deadly combat, blades ringing as they slashed and struck at one another with their swords. One older, with long black hair and a coarse, heavily handsome face. The other younger, with strikingly blue eyes set under slanted brown brows. Both their faces grim and set, chests heaving, their strikes brutal as they moved in a circling dance that would plainly end only in the death of one.
Two men. Trystan and Marche of Cornwall. Marche and Trystan. Father and son.
The recollection of that vision, together with the flash that had just come, made the room seem to tilt all around her—made the queasy sickness that always assailed her at this hour of the day seem to rise up in a churning wave.
Isolde made herself turn away from the window, back to the room behind her. Daylight was breaking, making dust motes spark and dance in the air above the rush-covered floor, casting a pale, rose yellow light across the rows of wounded men who lay here in her care. She shut her eyes for just a moment, calling up a memory from two months before.
She’d been changing the bandages on a sword cut in Trystan’s side. Before he’d left the abbey to get Fidach free.
Before she’d let him go.
The wound had been healing well—and she’d tended far worse hurts than Trystan’s—but still she couldn’t stop the sudden rush of tears to her eyes. She’d kept her face averted, not meaning for him to see, but he’d tilted her chin up.
“Isa? You’re crying. What’s wrong?”
Isolde shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just . . .” She drew an unsteady breath. “I was just thinking that this wound could have killed you. It nearly did. And I—”
Trystan lifted her, bent to rest his forehead against hers. “I’m not going to die on you.”
“You can’t promise that. No one can.” She gave him a small, crooked smile. “Especially you. Not that I’d want you to change. Even if you are too brave and reckless by half—too determined always to protect others at risk to yourself. I love you too much as you—”
She stopped as he pulled her to him, kissed the corners of her mouth, her jaw, her throat.
A long while later, he whispered against her hair, “I swear I’d come back even from the dead for you.”
I’D COME BACK EVEN FROM THE dead. Now, in the dawn-lit infirmary, Isolde tried to fix that memory in place of the earlier vision in her mind.
 
; Trystan had gone to break Fidach, friend and brother in arms, free from the prisons of Octa of Kent. Octa of the Bloody Knife, who laughed while he killed. Trystan might be in danger. But that was like saying the men who lay on straw pallets all around her in the Abbey of Saint Eucherius’s infirmary might be in pain.
And those in pain needed her now.
Isolde started to move among the rows of soldiers, unwrapping the bandages of one to check for any sign of a poisoned wound, stooping and laying a hand on another’s brow, murmuring a few words that stopped his restless turning and muttering in a dream. There were the greater hurts—the broken limbs, the sword cuts and arrow wounds—but also smaller ones, as well, to be seen to. At this season any warrior who’d been living in an army encampment was covered with the red and itching bites of insects that had to be salved with elderflower water and ivy juice if the men were to get any rest at all. Or they came to her with faces reddened, the skin hot and tight with too much time in the open sun, and needed the salve of white daisy and plantain.
This morning the sunrise was as yet only a faint thread of rose gold along the horizon, but still it was a relief to see the darkness of another night fading with the coming dawn. Death seemed, somehow, to steal into the infirmary most often in the darkest watches of the night. And as Isolde moved quietly among the men in her care, it was easier to ignore the fear that throbbed inside her like an open wound. The men in her care had lived—all of them—through one night more.
They were the High King’s own men, most of them, sworn to Madoc of Gwynedd—though some wore the badges of Cynlas of Rhos and Huel of Rhegged, as well. The petty kings and lords who made up the High King’s council might quarrel and jockey for power among themselves. But with a chance of halting the Saxon invasions once and for all, they were fighting united, at least for now.
As Isolde stood, looking over the rows of wounded men, she could hear two or three of the soldiers nearest her speaking in low-voiced murmurs. Their features were shadowed, little more than pale smudges in the early half-light, but the words were clear.