Tristan and Iseult (14 page)

‘A leper’s face? What sight is that for the Queen?’ Brangian cried, thrusting her horse between them.

But the Queen said gently, ‘Surely it is a small thing to ask,’ gestured Brangian back and urged her horse towards him. And Tristan stood at her stirrup and looked up, his face hidden by his hood from all but her. She bent and looked into it, and he saw her eyes widen and her face change. She looked at him long and hard; and then she said, her voice ringing clear and sweet and cold as a glass bell, ‘I have looked. Now go your way, leper.’ And swung her horse aside.

‘Not yet!’ Tristan shouted.

‘I have looked, and I am sickened with looking!’ said Iseult, and then to the courtiers and the hunt servants nearest about her, ‘Drive him away! Away! Stone him if he will not go! I pray God I never see that face again!’

And then they were all shouting, ‘Off! Away with you, leper!’ and stones from the track came spattering about him. But Tristan did not hear the shouts nor feel the stones. All that he heard, all that he felt, was Iseult’s high cruel laughter, as he turned and blundered away.

Long after the hunting party was far behind him, he seemed to hear that laughter in every bird-call among the trees.

It was nightfall when he came again to the three who waited for him by the stream, but they saw his face cut and bruised in the firelight, and they saw the look in his eyes, and they asked no questions.

So they returned to Brittany, and Iseult of the White Hands came out to meet them at the castle gate; and Tristan, swinging down from his horse, put his arms round her and kissed her as he had never done before.

And Iseult of Cornwall? She began as the months went by to regret most bitterly that she had driven Tristan from her in so cruel a way, and to think that maybe he had been telling truth after all. She grew to wish more than anything in the world that he might come back; and never any stranger came near her, but she hoped he might have brought her the ring, and never a man in a hooded cloak passed by, but her heart quickened and leapt into her throat at the thought that it might be Tristan himself.

But the months went by and the years went by, and the ring never came. And the face under the hood was never Tristan’s. And her heart grew weary with waiting, and the Queen of Cornwall’s crown was cold and heavy on her brow.

FOR TRISTAN ALSO,
the months and years went by. He had thrust Iseult of Cornwall from his life; and he had found a kind of peace that was sometimes almost happiness with Iseult White-hands. He had never told her of the other Iseult, but she had always guessed the meaning of the woman’s ring that hung round his neck, and because she loved him she knew the rest without being told, and knew when he turned from the owner of the ring, and did all she could to heal the hurt, and yet could not help being glad that the hurt was there for her healing.

And then one day news came to Tristan that his father was dead, and war broken out among the lords of Lothian; and he went to King Hoel and told him that he must return to his own country. The old King gave him three hundred warriors to follow him; and with Gorvenal he went his way, leaving Iseult of the White Hands to wait for his return.

He was gone two years, dealing with the warring nobles and setting his kingdom to rights. And then, leaving Gorvenal behind to rule the land for him, he returned to Brittany.

He found that Hoel was dead, and Karherdin was now King. But the friendship between them was as strong as ever, and one day as they rode hawking together outside the city walls – they had left the old
fortress of Carhaix long ago and returned to Karherdin’s royal city, which was on the coast – Tristan said to his friend, ‘Now that you are King, you should be thinking of taking a wife.’ And watching the flight of his falcon, he thought how he had joined with the Cornish lords in saying the selfsame thing to King Marc – and what had come of it.

‘You are not the first to tell me so,’ Karherdin said. ‘And indeed I know that you are right. But . . .’

‘But it is still Gargeolain who holds your heart.’

‘Aye, so.’

‘Then go to her once more, as I did to the Queen of Cornwall – for see what a contentedly married man I am now,’ said Tristan, light and bitter. And far off against the sky, the falcon stooped upon a climbing heron, and a puff of dark feathers blew down the wind.

Karherdin thrust a hand into the breast of his tunic and brought out a great key and held it towards Tristan. ‘The thought has been in my mind often enough.’

‘The key to her lord’s castle?’ said Tristan, looking at it.

‘I bribed one of the servants long ago to get me a wax impression made, and my own smith did the rest.’

‘You have never used it?’

‘Never, until now,’ said Karherdin. And they checked their horses, and sat turned in the saddle to look at each other. Then Karherdin laughed, and said, ‘Come with me, then. I went with you.’

And in an ill moment, Tristan said, ‘I will come.’ And they rode on together after the falcon that had made her kill.

A few days later, when the Lord Bedenis had ridden hunting as usual, Tristan and Karherdin rode out from the trees and drew rein before the gates of his stronghold. Karherdin was dressed in his gayest clothes, like a bridegroom, and on his sandy head he wore a garland of honeysuckle and wild columbine; but as they rode across the causeway that spanned the three great ditches of the stronghold, the fitful summer wind caught it from him and tossed it into the water. They came to the gates, and Karherdin beat upon them with the pommel of his sword; and a woman’s voice cried out to know who was there; and women’s braided heads came over the high battlements.

Karherdin called up to them, ‘Go, tell the Lady Gargeolain that Karherdin the King is at her gates and begs to be let in.’

Then the women exclaimed and twittered among themselves, ‘The King! It is the King!’ And one of them called down, ‘Gladly and gladly would our mistress welcome you in; but there is but one key to the gate, and the Lord Bedenis carries it always with him. And without it, we cannot let you in.’

‘There is another key,’ said Karherdin, ‘and it is here in my hand. Go and ask your mistress’s leave that I may turn it in the lock and come in.’

Then one of the women went, and came back in a while, and called down to him, ‘The Lady Gargeolain bids you turn the key in the lock and enter!’

And when, bending down from his horse, he did so, the women within crowded round, gay as a flock of birds in their broidered gowns, to bid him and Tristan welcome and draw them in and take their horses for
tending, and lead them to the Great Hall. In the Great Hall, the Lady Gargeolain waited. And Tristan saw that she was little and gentle; she had a face like a flower and she would be as easily crushed as a flower, and he wondered that Karherdin loved her. She held out her hands to the tall, gay, ugly man, and Tristan wondered how such little foolish hands could hold this strong and valiant heart; but then he saw the faces of both of them as they drew together, and he wondered no more.

But after the first moment, Gargeolain held the King off a little, trying to remember her courtesy to a guest, and said to her women, ‘Bide here and make our other guest welcome; tend to his comfort in all ways; it is long since my Lord Karherdin and I were last together, and we have many things to say to each other.’ Then, holding him still by the hand, she drew him away through an inner doorway.

Then the other women brought wine and fine white bread and scarlet strawberries in a bowl for Tristan, and he ate and drank, and made himself pleasant to them in all courtesy. And the time went by, and Karherdin and Gargeolain did not return. So he took up the little harp that someone had left lying on a cushioned bench, and tuned it, and played to them, waiting all the while for the inner door to open. And then when still the two did not return, he began to while away the time with tricks of the hand, for with being so much shut away, they were somewhat flitter-witted, and found such things enchanting. And amongst his other tricks, he took a handful of strong reeds from among the strewing-rushes on the floor, and breaking them off short, he skimmed the first at
the wall so that it pierced the embroidered hangings and stood there quivering, just as he had skimmed his green reed for a signal into the mane of Iseult’s horse, so long ago. Then he flicked a second reed after it, so that the tip went into the hollow end of the first, and a third into the hollow end of the second, and so on. And this he did many times, for the ladies never seemed to tire of watching the trick, which none of them had ever seen before, since Tristan alone had the knack of it.

At last, Gargeolain and Karherdin returned, with their farewells all said. The horses were brought round, and he and Tristan took their leave, and went out from the castle, locking the gates again behind them. But Karherdin never thought of his garland floating among the water-weeds of the inner ditch, and Tristan never thought of the reeds clinging to the wall hangings of the Great Hall. And as they rode back towards the city they put up a roe deer, and though they had no hounds with them, they chased it, being in a mood for any foolishness; and so they wearied their horses to no purpose.

Now, by an ill chance, the Lord Bedenis returned early from his hunting. He saw Karherdin’s garland floating among the white water-buttercups, and knew that somebody had been that way. And when he came into his Great Hall, he saw the reeds hanging in the tapestry; and he knew that no one in all Brittany had the skill for that trick, excepting Tristan. He knew that Tristan was heart-friend to Karherdin the King, and he knew that it was Karherdin his wife had loved before she was forced to marry him. And he was no fool.

‘Who has been here?’ he demanded of Gargeolain.

‘No one,’ she said. But she was deadly pale and trembled like a white poplar.

And the red fury rose in Bedenis so that he drew his sword, and seizing her by the hair, forced her to her knees, the blade-point at her throat. ‘
Who has been here?
’

‘No one; indeed, my lord, no one!’ she protested still.

He pricked her throat till a crimson fleck of blood stood on the white skin. ‘It was the King! Come, lady, it was the King! Tell me, and I may spare that soft throat of yours!’

And at last she cried out in his face, ‘It was the King!’

He flung her from him, sprawling among her terrified women, and rushed out, shouting for fresh horses and his men to follow him. And soon they were crashing away through the forest towards the coast and the royal city.

Tristan and Karherdin heard the distant sounds of the hunt behind them. ‘Brother,’ said Tristan, ‘I hear horses, and I am thinking I know who hunts on our trail.’

‘Brother,’ said Karherdin, ‘I also hear horses; and I am thinking it is Death hunts on our trail.’ And he laughed, full-throated, as he had laughed at most things in his life.

‘Our horses are weary, and it’s small hope we have of out-riding this black hunt,’ said Tristan, ‘and for myself, I will not be taken from behind. If you are with me, let us find a good place to turn and fight our last fight.’

‘I am with you,’ said Karherdin.

And they spurred their horses to one last burst of speed, towards the place where a limestone ridge cropped through the forest and would give them cover for their backs. And there they turned, sword in hand, to wait for the hunt to come up with them.

‘I had thought to die in battle,’ Karherdin said, ‘a death for the harpers to make into a song. And I shall die with a jealous husband’s sword in my throat. Life is a bad joke!’

‘We can still make a battle to die in,’ Tristan said. ‘A small battle, but a red one – enough for a short song.’ And his hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, as Bedenis and his followers crashed into sight on the other side of the clearing.

The birds rose screaming from the tree-tops at the clash of weapons. It was twenty against two; but Tristan and Karherdin made their battle. Their horses were killed under them, and they fought on on foot. Then Karherdin, with three dead men about him, went down with a last defiant shout cut short by the red blood spurting from his throat; and Tristan bestrode his body and fought on alone. He saw Bedenis’ face snarling before him and raised his sword for a great stroke; but he was growing slow with weariness, and another man’s blade came in from the side under his guard; and took him in the groin. He stumbled to his knees and tried to struggle up again, that he might meet death on his feet; the sky above the tree-tops turned to a spinning black, and he knew nothing more.