Taliesin rode a little ahead, singing a hymn to the day, choosing an easier route back to the villa. Coming upon a stream, he stopped and called back to Charis, “We will let the horses drink here. And we can” He took one look at her and leaped from the saddle. “Charis!”

She turned her head slowly and looked at him strangely, her eyes dull, her face drained of all color. “I feel tired, Taliesin,” she murmured, her speech thick and slurred. “My mouth is dry.”

“Let me help you down,” said Taliesin, his face grim. “We will rest a moment.” Draping her arm over his shoulder, he eased her from the saddle.

He did not see the blood at first. But as he turned to lead her to a rock by the stream where she could sit down, the sticky wet patch on the saddle caught his eye. “Charis, you are bleeding!”

She stared at the saddle and then down at the deep scarlet stain spreading into her clothing. She raised her eyes in bewilderment, smiled weakly and said, “I think we… should… go back.”

Taliesin helped her back onto her mount and, riding beside her with one arm around her waist for support, they made their way slowly and carefully to the villa. By the time they arrived, Charis was barely conscious. Her head lolled forward and her flesh, pale as death, was cold to the touch. She fell limply from the saddle into Taliesin’s arms when they stopped, and Taliesin carried her inside, shouting for help as he came into the hall.

Henwas, the gray-haired steward, came hurrying to him. “What is it, Master? What has happened?” He saw the blood leaking from beneath Taliesin’s hand and said, “I will bring Heilyn.”

Charis moaned as Taliesin lay her gently on their bed. He knelt beside her, frantically trying to remember a remedy he might offer, and considered using his druidic power to try to heal her. In those desperate seconds he considered many things, but what he did in the end was simply to pray for her, letting his words stream out to the Living God who delighted in and answered men’s prayers. He had no doubt that his prayers would be heard. The prayer was still on his lips when the door opened and Heilyn, the plump mistress of Lord Pen-daran’s kitchens, came bustling in, her round face red with exertion. “Now, now,” she said, much as if Taliesin had been a misbehaving boy, “what is wrong with the girl?”

“We were riding,” he explained, “and she began to bleed.”

“Lay you back,” said Heilyn, placing a warm palm on Charis’ forehead. Charis shivered on the bed, eyes closed, breath shallow; yet the woman spoke to her as if she were awake and fully conscious. “There, there… Let Heilyn have a look at you.” The woman, who had served as midwife at the birth of each of Pendaran’s sons and nearly every other child born in Maridunum in the last twenty years, bent over Charis, calling to Taliesin as she did so. “Fetch Rhuna and tell her to bring clean rags and water. Go you now and do as I say.”

Taliesin did not move. “You can do nothing standing there like a heap of stone,” Heilyn told him. “Bring Rhuna here.”

He found the girl and brought her to the room and then stood looking on helplessly until Heilyn drove him out, saying, “Leave you and haunt another place, or make yourself useful and tell Henwas to have a brazier prepared and ready to bring in here when I have finished.”

Taliesin did as he was told and then returned to wait outside. After a while the door opened and Rhuna poked her head out, saying, “Master, your wife asks for you.”

Taliesin went in then and crouched beside the bed. “She is over the worst,” Heilyn said, “but sleep you elsewhere tonight if you will, for the issue of blood does steal a woman’s strength.” Heilyn pushed Rhuna out of the room, then paused at the door and added, “I will see to her in the morning.”

She left then and Taliesin took one of Charis’ hands in his. Her eyes fluttered open. “Taliesin?” Her voice was a whisper. “I am afraid.”

“Shh, rest now. I will watch over you.” She closed her eyes once more and sank into sleep. Taliesin sat with her through the night, but she stirred only once.

As dawn came to the sky, Charis awoke and called out. Taliesin, dozing in a chair beside the bed, wakened and leaned over her. “All is well, my soul; I am here.”

She peered into the thin blue shadows of the room beyond him as if to reassure her that everything remain unchanged. “Taliesin, I have had the most distressing dream,” she said weakly.

“Rest,” he told her. “We can talk later.”

“The dream… I saw a great beast with eyes like midnight coming for me… But then a man came… A man with a sword, Taliesin, a fine, bright sword… and a smile on his face… A brave smile… But I was afraid for him…”

“Yes,” he soothed, “all is well.”

“… he smiled and said to me, ‘Know me by this, Lady of the Lake,’ and he held up the sword… Then he went down to slay the beast and… a terrible struggle commenced… He did not come back… I fear he was killed.”

“An unhappy dream,” said Taliesin softly. “But rest now and We will talk later.” He placed a hand on her head and she went back to sleep.

“I have seen this before,” said heilyn gravely, “and it is never good. The child will die and take you with it unless you do as I say. Even then nothing is certain.”

Charis gripped Taliesin’s hand hard, but her jaw was set and her glance strong. “Is there no hope at all?”

“Little enough, child. But what hope there is lies with you.”

“With me? Why, you have but to tell me and I will do all in my power to see my child born alive.”

“There is no hope for the child,” Heilyn declared flatly. “What we do, we do to save its mother.”

“But if I am to be saved, may rot the child live as well?”

The midwife shook her head slowly. “I have never known it. And often enough the husband digs two graves in the end.”

“Tell us what may be done,” said Taliesin.

“Stay you in that bed until the birth pains come on you.” She paused and shrugged. “That is all.”

“Is there no remedy?” asked Charis, thinking that four months was a very long time to lie abed.

“Rest is the remedy,” replied Heilyn tartly. “Rest-and it is no certain cure. The bleeding has stopped and that is good, but I have no doubt it will begin again if you stir from this room.’”

“Very well, I will do as you say. But even so I will not give up hope for my child.”

“Yours is the life we must look after now.” She made a slight bow of her head and turned to leave the room. “I will send food and you must eat it. That is the best way to regain your strength.”

When she had gone Charis said, “I will do as she says, but I will not give up hope.”

“And I will sit with you every day. We will pray and we will talk and sing and the time will take wings.”

“I will endure my confinement,” said Charis firmly. “I have endured more difficult trials for less worthy ends.”

And so it began: Charis became a prisoner in the room above the hall, and word spread through the villa and throughout the surrounding countryside that the bard’s beauty was with child and confined in Lord Pendaran’s high chamber. It was whispered that she would die birthing a dead and deformed baby-such was the punishment for turning away from the old gods to follow the god of the Christians.

Taliesin knew what was whispered about them in Mari-dunum and the hills beyond, but he never told Charis. He remained steadfast in his vow to stay by her side and would have spent every minute of the day in the chair by her bed if Charis had not finally chased him from it.

“I cannot bear you sitting there looking at me all day!” she told him some time later. “This is hard enough without feeling that I am keeping two people captive. Go ride with Eiddon! Go hunting! Go anywhere you like, but go away!”