Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) (29 page)

“No,” Yseult whispered. “But I still need to protect myself.”

Had I always been so selfish? Thinking of my own heart, my own pain? Not recognizing the healer might herself need healing.

So we comforted one another with the simple chaste touches of our hands as I drowsed at her feet. Tonight it wasn’t our lust that needed slaking but our hearts that needed healing.

And in the quiet before midnight we found our way to a harmony of hearts that held no pain.

~ ~ ~

The scrape of the latch, expected though it was, sounded sudden in my ears. The door swung open, Mark framed in the torchlight of the guard behind him, steadying him.

“Yseult!” the king bellowed. He shook off the guard’s help as he staggered in. “
This
I can do on my own. Yseult!”

“I’m here, Your Grace.”

Her hand tensed atop the head that rested still against her knee.

“Up then, woman. All of Cornwall begs an heir.”

I growled, an almost silent rumble in my throat meant for Yseult to feel more than hear. An avowal that at her command I would make it so the king could never swive again.

She sighed and rose, her hand ruffling my ears to quiet me. In the middle of the floor, Mark tottered, hands outspread. Yseult knelt before him, unlacing and discarding first one boot then the other as he clutched at her hair to keep from falling.

Then her hands reached higher, lifting his knee-length surcoat to his hips with one hand and deftly untying his breeches with the other.

I had no shame in being the voyeur when it was she and Tris together. Their want, their need, their passion spilled freely and I sipped at its fountain, intoxicated in their presence, becoming a part of them, their love, their pleasure. As they came together, I blossomed, rising proud and strong, sharing them in a way we would never—could never—share together.

With she and Mark, however… Yseult did well in hiding her disgust from the drunken king, but it was no secret to me, blazing through her as it was in every dutiful move she made from removing his boots and leggings to stripping off his surcoat. Hound though I was, I withered in their presence. And when Mark pawed Yseult’s shift over her head, instead of finding worship in her splendor, I cringed in sorrow. She fumbled his tunic off him amid the octopus of arms all over her.

Then the tunic was off and he was kissing her, great and sloppy lips covering hers in an act of possession. When he plunged his tongue inside, I silently urged her to bite it off.

He pushed her to the bed and shoved her in. Half-limp still, he was no more ready to please her than I would have been as a man watching their passionless play. Sorrow for Yseult flooded me. What did she think of me watching, I wondered. Surely she knew a word from her would be enough to send me away.

Mark fell over her, too flaccid at first to couple, but hardening as he urgently kneaded Yseult’s breasts and kissed her face. Still, he was too drunk to find his way and after several false attempts, Yseult caught him in exasperation and guided him in.

As he labored over her, eyes closed, panting more with effort than passion, she turned her head and found me. Lips pursed and with no flicker to light the storm of her eyes, she looked more annoyed than angry or ashamed, as though she were trying to conjure memories to help find her own way to passion. Deliberately, eye-to-eye, I shifted. She gasped, in both surprise and fear.

Mark mistook the sound.

“Just… a moment… more… Yseult.” His hips shook in fatigue.

I grinned and made a crude gesture with my thumb.

Yseult stifled a laugh.

“Almost… almost…”

I shifted back.

Mark groaned and jerked once before deflating on top of her. One long shuddering sigh later and he was fast asleep. Yseult rolled him off her with such dexterity I knew she’d had practice before.

I shifted again, just long enough to assure her, “I’ll be back before morning,” and to steal a quick kiss. Then I was hound again, scrambling through the open window in search of Tris, baying as I went.

“Who knew begetting a royal heir could be such tiresome work?” I whispered to the hound.

True to his word, the hound had been curled at the foot of the king’s bed when I awoke. Mark stirred, nuzzling his beard into my neck, squeezing and pinching at me.

“My knights are jealous, Andret and Hagan especially,” Mark said into my ear. “The rumors they’ve spread… I can well believe Tristan lusts after you—what man wouldn’t? But Tristan loves me. And you… How can I believe such charms have been shared with other men when they’re here to delight me so?”

“What woman could want more?” I ran my palm across his flanks, as intimate a gesture as I could stomach so early in the day.

He caught the hand with a laugh. “Not so soon again, my Lady wench.” He nuzzled closer to my ear and whispered, “It will make it that much more pleasurable next time.”

I nodded, a student absorbing wisdom from her teacher, terribly relieved I wouldn’t be bedded by him in the stark light of day. “Then you
do
anticipate a next time?” I asked, searching his face with an anxiousness that was all too real.

“That will be for God to decide tomorrow. Well, God and that beast of yours.” He kicked a foot toward the hound who growled. “For what worth it has,” he pushed back a strand of gold from where it had fallen across my cheek, “I hope there will be many next times to come.”

“Your confidence warms my heart,” I told him in way of sincere thanks. “And what now?”

He sighed for things that might have been and levered himself from the bed. Picking my shift up from where it lay heaped on the floor, he handed it to me. “Today you spend cleansing body and soul. Tonight you spend in vigil. I won’t see you again before tomorrow.”

When I’d stood and covered myself, Mark opened the chamber door. “Escort the queen to her bower, then inform Dinas that she’s there,” he told the guard standing without.

“God
will
prove my innocence,” I assured him, backing my confidence with a smile, before following the guard to my chamber, the hound padding behind.

Alone with the hound, I waited for servants to be called and preparations to be made. “Ritual cleansing and a vigil,” I muttered. “Sounds like my wedding all over again. Only without a beautiful gown at the end.”

The hound laid a comforting paw on my thigh. Without thinking, I leaned over and embraced him, his cold nose nuzzling happily between the pillows of my breasts. I grabbed him away by the ears with a stern look. Those big emerald eyes laughed back. Helpless, I grinned.

“Thank you,” I told him and he cocked his head. “For being with me. I might be terrified otherwise, and yet you’ve made me laugh. And while I should be ashamed to have you spy on me and Mark, having you there make me feel more… pity, I think, for Mark. If he were more competent, though, like…” I hesitated over the word as I tended to keep hound and man separate in my mind, “
you
or Tris, then having another there of equal compare, I—” Flashes of emerald eyes watching from the dark during nights past intruded like a thunderbolt on a fair summer day. I held his paw between my hands and bowed my head. “I would feel too much sadness for the watcher to take any joy from the other.”

The cold tip of his nose touched my cheek.

Then the handmaids came and shoo-ed the hound away.

My knees, stiff from kneeling all night, ached in the morning when the knights commanded to hold vigil with me led me to the public courtyard. It had rained overnight and all was wet and mud. They had given me a cup of watered wine but nothing more to break fast with. Communion with God might have sustained others condemned to trial, but I credited being able to sleep on my knees with keeping my wits in the morning.

Mark stood in the center of the muddy field, the bishop who’d married us beside him and the hound sitting at his feet. Ringed close about were the faces of knights and nobles I vaguely recognized. Further out, serfs and tradesmen with no duties so early in the day had also come to watch.

When he saw me, the hound—Des, I vowed to call him in whatever his form, for he was all and always one with the hound now—loped to me, the plume of his tail waving in delight.

“Do not touch him,” the bishop warned.

What? Would I be teaching him tricks to taint the ordeal in the time it took to cross between chapel and king?

Des twined himself around me as I walked. Apparently him touching me was allowed as there was no admonishment otherwise from the bishop.

I wasn’t sure what Des was playing at when he tangled himself so thoroughly between my legs that I tripped over him.

Humiliation?

Something more sinister?

My stomach knotted in suspicion as I fell.

Strong arms caught me in a full-body embrace, saving me from landing in a puddle of mud.

“Gramercy.” I offered thanks to my benefactor, the word coming spontaneously before I even looked to see who he was. He wore the long cloak and hood of a pilgrim, what little I could see of his face grimed with days, perhaps weeks, of dust and mud.

Nothing, though, could muddy those seductive, earth-brown eyes. He winked one them as he righted me.

Tris!

Releasing me with the greatest reluctance, he ducked back among the onlookers as I and Des—the hound remarkably contrite now—walked on.

After the inner circle was thanked for their participation as witnesses, the proceedings were introduced with much Latin and bowing.

Why did men make simple justice so intimidating?

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Mark whispered. “It seems as though the hound has already turned against you.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem, Your Grace. Else we would not be here at all today.”

The bishop faced me. “The crown accuses you of infidelity to the king and betrayal of your vows to Cornwall. Do you understand these charges?”

Unlike before, this time I answered, “Yes.”

“And how do you counter? Keeping in mind you swear your answer before God and king.”

God knew my answer well enough. It was the bishop I needed to convince. I chose my words precisely that I might not offend God with any lie. “I swear that never has man born of Eve held me in his arms, save for King Mark”—I laughed lightly—“and yon pilgrim there.” I nodded toward the man who had saved me so publicly from falling in the mud.

The spattering of laughter that joined in I took for a good omen. Anything to lighten the somber mood could only be helpful to my cause. Only Andret and Hagan and the knot of conspirators that stood to the king’s right didn’t break a smile. If I proved my innocence today, they would lose esteem in Mark’s eyes and be ever turned against me. Andret, especially, for it was within Mark’s power to name another second in line to his crown after Tristan, whose place Andret hoped to win.

I could almost forgive Andret his ambition except that I had almost burned for it. And might burn still should God fail me today.

The hound, of course, I trusted implicitly.

For almost an hour he patiently pointed to objects named by the king such as
tree
and
stone
,
man
and
woman
, and brought him a shell from the shore, a flower from his courtyard and a cup from the kitchens. He rolled over, barked out the answer to ‘two plus four’, put nose to the pilgrim’s hand when asked, ‘Who saved Yseult from a fall this day?’, pointed to the bishop when asked, ‘Who here is a man of God?’ and to me when asked, ‘Who gave you power to understand men’s speech?’.

He faltered only once when Mark asked, “Who here does Yseult love the most?”

“He’s not an oracle to see into hearts and souls,” I chided.

But the hound sat, raised his paw and licked it with an air of pride.

The king chuckled along with the onlookers. “Well, I suppose it’s true you do love the hound more than any other today. He has been exemplary in this ordeal. I say we’ve seen miracle enough. Do any doubt that this hound speaks for God? Do any doubt God has affirmed Yseult’s innocence this day?” He stared pointedly at Andret who met the king’s demand stare-for-stare with jaw clenched and a determination that unnerved me. None of us had forgotten the night Tris and I had been caught, naked and together. Yet in the presence of such damning evidence, God had upheld my innocence.