Tristan and Iseult (5 page)

Then he turned himself to the wilds, meaning to lie up like a wounded beast through the day, and somehow drag himself back to rejoin his companions and the ship after nightfall. But his hurts were very sore, and it seemed to him that his body was still lapped in flame, and the world swam before his eyes and beneath his feet; and he all but stumbled into the stream where it came down towards the dragon’s lair. It ran cool now, among the blackened tree snags and long trailing branches; it called to him, singing of coolness and rest; and he slipped into the water and lay down still fully armed under the bank, with only his head above the surface. And the water flowed through the links of his mail, hushing the parched pain of his wounds with coolness; and he slipped into a deep, black nothingness, half-sleep and half-swoon.

NOW ONE OF
the men who Tristan had seen flying from the dragon’s lair was the King’s Steward, who had long desired to marry the Princess Iseult, though she had no liking for him at all. And when he saw that Tristan went onward despite their warnings, he slipped away from the rest, and turned back on his tracks. For though he had not the courage to face the dragon himself, he most times contrived to be near when anyone braver than he went against the monster, so that if by any chance they succeeded in the quest, he might perhaps be able to claim a share in the killing. And so he was near at hand when he heard the dragon’s last terrible roar; and he said to himself, Nothing could have made that sound that was not in its death-agony. The creature must be dead or dying! Courage now, my heart, and we will see what there is in this for us! And he spurred his horse in the direction from which the sound had come.

And so, searching among the rocks, he came upon the dead dragon and the torn remains of Tristan’s horse, and the charred shield – and of the dragon-slayer, no sign at all. Surely the monster has eaten him, thought the Steward. Ah well, he is not the first to be losing his life so; and if that is the way of it, his loss may be my gain. And drawing his sword, he fell to hacking away most valiantly at the dead dragon until the blade was bloodstained to the hilt. And then remounting his horse, he galloped away back to Wexford town, shouting that he had slain the dragon, and waving his bloodstained sword for all to see. He sent for a cart, and gathered his henchmen to return with him to cut off the monster’s head; and when they had done so, and brought it in triumph into the town, he made for the King’s hall to show him the blooded sword and grizzly hacked-off head, and claim the Princess’s hand in marriage.

Now the King was torn between joy that Ireland was rid of the terror that had laid it waste so long, and grief that his daughter must be married to a man she loathed. But his promise had been given, and could not be broken. He sent for the Princess to come down to her betrothal.

The Princess sat at her embroidery, in her bower on the sunny side of the King’s house, and she heard the distant shouting as she stitched at the fine gold-work of a lily petal; and she said to Brangian who was chief among her maidens, ‘Let you go and look from the window, and tell me why are the people shouting?’

And Brangian ran and looked, and said, ‘Someone has slain the dragon! There is a cart in the forecourt, and in the cart is the dragon’s head – oh, most horribly hacked and blood-dabbled – and a man stands beside the cart with a bloody sword in his hand – and your father the King is there – and – and –’

‘And the man with the bloody sword?’

‘Oh, my lady, it is the Steward!’

Now at this it was as though all the blood in the Princess’s body sped back to her heart, leaving her icy cold; but she said, ‘There is some trickery here. I know the Steward; I know how little he has of courage. He could never have killed the dragon. He is stealing some other man’s glory.’

And in that instant, there came the King’s messenger, bidding her come down to her betrothal!

The Princess set another stitch in the golden lily petal and said to the messenger, ‘Tell the King my father that I bow myself to his will, and I will come down to my betrothal, but not this evening nor yet tomorrow’s evening, for I am weary and must rest.
On the third day, when I have rested, I will come.’

And when the man was gone, she said to Brangian, ‘Go to Perenis my cupbearer, and bid him have three horses saddled and ready by the side gate into the orchard an hour before dawn. We will be riding out and looking at whatever there is still to be looked at, in the place where the dragon was slain. There is some mystery here, and it may be that we shall find the answer to it.’ And she ran her needle into her embroidery so fiercely that it pricked her finger through the silk, and the lily petal was flecked with crimson. And she said, ‘We
must
find the answer to it; for rather than wed with that man, I will die.’

Next morning, darkly cloaked and with their hoods pulled over their faces, the Princess and Brangian let themselves out through the small side gate into the orchard. Perenis was waiting for them with the horses, and they mounted and rode off towards the hills. They came to the valley, and found first the torn remains of the horse, and Perenis dismounted and bent over it to look at the harness. ‘This is such horsegear as I never saw in Ireland!’ he said. And they rode on, following the signs of the struggle, and found the headless body of the dragon lying among the rocks; and the Princess Iseult dismounted, and went close and looked at the spear in its throat. ‘This is not an Irish spear.’ she said. ‘Some stranger from across the sea has delivered Ireland from the monster, and it seems that death has been all his reward.’

But it chanced that at that moment Brangian, who had wandered a little apart from them, glanced over towards the stream, and the morning sun, striking where it had not struck last evening, showed her a glint of bronze under the blackened alder branches. She called, ‘There is something – it looks like a helmet – over yonder in the stream.’ And Perenis and the Princess came running, and so all together they came down through the rocks and the alder and hazel scrub, and found Tristan lying in the water where he had lain for nearly a night and a day.

At first they thought him dead; but when they had dragged him up the bank and taken off his helmet,
Iseult saw that he yet lived. ‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Help me to unlace his mail and strip it off him, that we may see the wounds he has.’ And when they did so, they found him clawed as though he had been battling with a giant cat, and sorely burned from head to heel. ‘But given care, there is no death wound here,’ said Iseult, and she looked at the tiny packet of crimson silk that hung about his neck, and said, ‘We will leave it there. Maybe it is a talisman, or a keepsake from a maiden.’ And she took up another thing that had been thrust inside his mail, and said, ‘And this, I am thinking, by the look and the smell of it, is the tongue of the dragon that lies dead yonder.’

Brangian said, ‘Dear mistress, you will not go to your betrothal to the Steward tomorrow.’

‘Nor any day,’ said Iseult, ‘nor any day.’ And she put the wet dark hair back from Tristan’s bruised forehead and looked long into his closed face.

Then she and Brangian helped Perenis to lift him on to one of the horses, and Perenis mounted behind him and carried him like a woman across his saddlebow. And so they brought him back to Wexford, and into the King’s house, by the side door from the orchard, no man knowing of it, and up to the women’s apartments, where they laid him on a bed, and the Princess began to tend his wounds as only she in all Ireland knew how.

Soon, like a swimmer drifting up from the dark-most depths of the sea, Tristan became aware of light above him, and soft voices and movement, and hands that touched him; and he opened his eyes and came back into the world. The light swam like water, but through it he saw two women bending over him; and
one had hair as black as the deepest moonless midnight; and the other had hair that glowed like hot copper, where the evening sunlight shone in upon it from an open window. And he thought, Now whoever she may be, this is the maiden I came seeking, for surely no other woman in all the countries of the world can have hair of just that colour. And he moved his hand upward and felt the little silken packet about his neck, in which the single hair was safely stowed. The red-haired maiden looked from tending his wounds, and said, ‘It is quite safe. And this also is safe, that we found stowed in the breast of your mail shirt.’ And she took up the silver bowl in which she had laid the forked tip of the dragon’s tongue.

Tristan was so weak that his voice would barely come. But he managed to answer her. ‘It is well for me that you found and kept that wicked thing, for it is my only proof that it was I who slew the dragon.’

‘It was for that reason,’ said the Princess, ‘that I kept it with such care – and not for your sake, but for my own. My father, the King, has promised me in marriage to whoever can free Ireland of the monster, and his steward is claiming to be the dragon-slayer.’

And then she knew what she had said, and flushed as deeply as a foxglove, and looked away.

And Tristan said quickly, to cover her embarrassment, ‘So you are the Princess Iseult. I should have known, for I have heard that Iseult of Ireland is the most beautiful of all women – and the most skilled in the healer’s art.’

‘At this present time I am nothing but your most grateful handmaiden,’ said Iseult. ‘And now I have done tending your wounds, and you must drink some
broth, and then you must sleep. And while you sleep, I will be your armour-bearer, and clean your harness and your sword.’

Indeed, sleep was already coming upon Tristan, and when he had drunk the broth that she held to his lips, he lay back and let it take him. And the last thing he saw as he closed his eyes, as it had been the first thing he saw when he opened them, was Iseult’s face bending over him; but now the light had faded, and the red of her hair had grown dark as bramble stems when the sap rises in the spring.

When he was asleep, the Princess and Brangian took his armour and weapons into another room, so as to work without disturbing him. And while Brangian began to burnish his helmet, Iseult took up his sword and drew it from its sheath. There was a small piece broken out of the blade midway down. ‘This sword has seen hard service,’ she said; and she held it to the torchlight to see more clearly. And as she looked, it seemed to her that the shape of the small jagged gap was familiar. She laid the sword on the table without a word, and went to a carved and painted chest in the corner of the room, and brought from it something small and wrapped in silk. Coming back to the table, she unwrapped the packet and took out the splinter of iron that she had removed from the Morholt’s skull.

Very delicately, she held it to the gap in the sword blade – and it fitted perfectly!

Across the table where it lay, she and Brangian looked at each other. And a cold and terrible change came over Iseult’s face. ‘It seems that the dragon-slayer is the slayer also of my kinsman, the Morholt,’
she said after a while. ‘And he is sick, and in my hands for killing or curing.’ And her eyes glittered like fire in ice.

Brangian, who was gentlehearted, cried out against her, ‘No! Oh no, my mistress!’

‘Yes!’ said Iseult. ‘Fate has given him into my hands, that I may avenge Ireland’s champion.’

‘You cannot kill him! A man lying helpless at your mercy!’

‘I can,’ said Iseult, softly. ‘But I shall not need to, I have but to show this sword to my father the King.’

‘And destroy the dragon’s tongue! If this valiant warrior can prove that though he slew the Morholt he also slew the dragon, do you not think that the King must forgive him the one killing in return for the other?’ Brangian said. ‘And oh, my Lady Iseult, remember, he is all that stands between you and marriage with your father’s steward! Is vengeance for a kinsman so sweet to you that you will pay
that
price for it?’

And Iseult was silent a long while, staring down at the sword on the table before her. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘There is nothing, neither hate nor love nor life itself that I would pay
that
price for.’ And she began to laugh, shaking out her hair in a cloud of dark flame round her head.