The Lady of the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

with his level gray regard. “Farewell, my lady” came to her through the cold silver-gray of the dawn.
    She could hardly speak for pain. “Fare you well.”
    Blue, green, and purple played around his head as he stood like a shadow of himself against the fading dark. He had the look of a faun in a midnight forest, wild and strange. Another moment and he would be gone.
    Oh, Tristan . . . Tristan . . .
    When shall I see you again?
    Already she knew it was tempting the Old Ones to ask. But never did she dream what the answer would be.

chapter 4

    I solde, Isolde . . .
    Had all the evil in the land sprung from this pagan whore? Or was his own sin to blame?
    “Lord, Lord, let me see Thy face!”
    Groaning, the priest Dominian covered his head with his cowl and drove his misshapen body into the wind. He knew the way through the wood so well that he hardly felt the tears blinding his eyes. Was it not enough that God had sent him into the world hunchbacked and lame, so malformed that his own mother had cast him away to die? Did the Almighty have to cast him out, too?
    Yet this was the way it had been all winter long. All that time, God had hidden His face. Of course the Almighty rejected those full of rage, Dominian knew that. Yet what else can I be, Lord, when You work against me? he railed inwardly, stamping along with his novice, Simeon, behind. Tell me why You have spared Isolde all these years?
    Frenziedly, he beat the dripping branches away from his face.
    “Isolde the pagan,” he muttered, “Isolde the rampant whore, who calls herself Queen when Holy Scripture forbids women to rule. And above her is Mark’s overlord, old Queen Igraine. These women are the enemies of our work. They share the friendship of their thighs with any man of their choice. Why do they flourish, Lord? We shall never win control in a land where thigh-freedom rules. We must have subject females, mute and chaste. The rule of Our Father in these islands means rooting out the Mother-right.”
    Dominian clutched his head. Surely God in His wisdom knew all this! Every time Isolde put to sea, He could have made the waves into her death waters, drowned the witch in a pool of her own tears. Once He had even held her life in His hand, when she had been accused of treachery and forced to undertake the ordeal by water to clear her name. He could so easily have done away with her then. Yet each time He had spared her to triumph over His own people. Why had God betrayed him to this dark night of the soul? Neither in church nor in his private prayers had Dominian seen God’s face as he used to do.
    Usedtodo, usedtodo, mocked the wind in the trees. The forest path narrowed and the going was harder now. The new springtime growth of leaves on the trees impeded their way and every green shoot seemed to catch at their monkish gowns. Glaring about him, Dominian loathed all he saw. What fools people were to rejoice at the coming of spring! All it meant was melting snow and clinging mud, trees dripping down every man’s neck and the lowliest brambles tearing with renewed force—
    Lord, Lord, why do you hide Your face?
    Walking at his elbow, the novice Simeon stole a quick look at Dominian’s misery and averted his gaze. Surely his master knew the weather would be foul today? With the onset of the spring thaw, all the rest of the brethren had opted for indoor tasks, the pious in the chapel chanting Offices for the Dead and the practical scouring the dormitories for cockroaches and rats.
    And with his poor hunched spine and twisted leg, Dominian might have been forgiven an effort like this. But sleet or sludge, they all knew that their leader would seek out Jerome. Even in the worst of the snow, when the drifts were over his head, Dominian had got through to his old master’s cell, week after week. Sometimes he asked the brawniest of the brothers to clear the way. More often than not he struggled through alone, working his malformed body through the snow, hands and