Tristan and Iseult (9 page)

But Iseult knew that she must not seem too eager. ‘Truly I am thankful that the shadow between us is past,’ she said. ‘But it was through Tristan that your anger first fell upon me, and if you bring him back to Court, can I be sure that the thing will not happen again?’

‘Sweet,’ said the King, ‘I have begged your forgiveness for doubting you; be generous to both of us, and I will never doubt you or him again.’

So Tristan returned to Court. And for a while, all was as it had been in the early days between himself and King Marc and Iseult the Queen.

AGAIN THE SUMMER
turned to autumn, and the winter passed, and the gorse flamed along the headlands. And the love between Tristan and Iseult would not let them be, dragging at them as the moon draws the tides to follow after it, until at last, whether they would or no, they came together again.

And all the while Andret watched.

One night on the edge of summer the Queen went early to her bower, saying that her head ached for there was thunder in the air, and she would be alone. And soon after, Andret saw that Tristan’s place in the King’s Hall was empty, and he, too, rose and slipped out, following the champion of Cornwall.

He knew that it would be useless to go himself to the King, for Marc would not believe any word he said, but there were others about the Court who would carry a message for a gold piece slipped into the hand; and so later still, one of the castle servants came to the King with word that the Queen begged him to go to her instantly in her bower.

And when he came striding into the bower, brushing aside Brangian who tried to hold him back, he found Tristan there, with the Queen in his arms.

Then the King’s wrath was terrible, all the more terrible because of the love he had for his queen and his kinsman, and he waited to hear no more excuses, but shouted up the guard. They came bursting in as Tristan snatched up his sword. He fought like a wild boar at bay, but he was one blade against many, and he was beaten back to the wall, and made captive and dragged away. And all the while Iseult crouched beside the hearth as still as though she had been turned to stone. And the King never once looked her way. Only when all was over, and she rushed to the door, she found her way barred by crossed spears.

Next day, Tristan and Iseult were brought before a council of the chiefs and the churchmen and the lawmakers of Cornwall, to be tried for their betrayal of the King. They made no defence, for they would no
longer make their love for each other seem smaller and less worthy by denying it. And they were found guilty and condemned to die; Iseult by fire, which by the law of the land was the proper punishment for a queen who had betrayed her lord; Tristan by being broken over a great wheel.

In the time before the day appointed for their deaths, only one of the King’s lords dared to speak to Marc at all, let alone plead for mercy for them; and that one was Dynas the High Steward.

‘This is surely a cruel thing that you do,’ said Dynas, and knew that he took his own life in his hands by saying it. ‘And the cruelty is against yourself as well as the Queen and the Lord Tristan; for in slaying them, I know well enough that you slay the two who are dearest to you on earth.’

‘You were never a man to care much for danger,’ said the King, ‘but you were never in greater danger than you are now.’ And he spoke between shut teeth, like a man speaking through the pain of a spear wound.

‘I do not think so,’ said Dynas. ‘For you are a just man, and to slay me for speaking the truth would be unjust – even more unjust than to slay those two. My Lord King, neither man nor woman can choose who their love goes out to; and death is too great a price to demand, and cannot bring love back to you. Banish Tristan from Cornwall – I will take it upon my own honour to see that he does not return – and take the Queen once more into your life; use her gently, and it may be that she will turn to you yet.’

‘No,’ said the King, ‘
I will make an end
.’

By dawn on the appointed day, all the preparations
had been made. People had been summoned from far and wide to witness the deaths of Tristan and the Queen. And great was the grief, and loud the wailing of the women; for Tristan was dear to all the ordinary folk of Cornwall, their champion and their hope; and Iseult had made herself beloved in her husband’s kingdom as she had been in her father’s.

Tristan was to die in the morning, and Iseult after noon; and so he was led out first by the men of the King’s bodyguard. Now the chosen place of execution was some distance from the castle; and on the way to it they passed a little chapel, set high on the very lip of the cliffs above the sea; and when they came close to it, Tristan said to the Captain of the Guard, ‘The sun is scarce yet clear of the hills, and we have time to spare on this walk that we are taking. And indeed you thrust me forth this morning so early that I have had no time to make my peace with God, as I have sore need to be making it. Therefore give me leave to go in yonder and pray.’

The Captain of the Guard considered a moment, and then he shrugged. ‘There’s no harm, that I can see. But I and another of us will come in with you.’

‘What I have to say is for God’s ear, not for yours,’ said Tristan. And then, as the man hesitated, he added, half-smiling, ‘Are you afraid that I shall escape you? I know that chapel as well as you do. There is but one narrow door to it, and one small high window above a sheer drop to the sea. I’d as soon be broken on the wheel as on the black rocks down yonder.’

And they knew that it was true as to the door and the window, and so they let him go into the little
chapel alone and close the door behind him. ‘It is but common charity to allow him – and he about to die,’ they said among themselves.

But as soon as the door was shut behind him, Tristan shot the bolt, taking care to make no sound that could be heard from outside. Then he crossed to the window that showed a tiny square of blank blue above the altar. He reached up and caught the sill and pulled himself up to it. He got his head and shoulders through, then a knee. Below him, far, far below, a sea as blue as a kingfisher’s mantle creamed upon fanged black rocks; and a gull skimmed the chapel wall, almost brushing his face with its wings. He thrust himself further out, reached for a stone that gave a handhold above the window, and drew the other leg under him. The gulls wove their white curves of flight across the face of the cliffs below him; the jump would have been death to any other man, but Tristan had learned well from his masters in his Lothian boyhood, and had not forgotten how to make the Hero Leap. He filled himself with air until he felt as light as the wheeling seabirds, and drew himself together and sprang out and down.

He took the sea like a down-flung javelin, and the water closed over his head; but he leapt up again into the light, and the next wave gathered him and flung him shoreward. He clung to a rock, and between wave and wave, pulled himself ashore. And keeping close in under the cliffs, he made his way along to a place where he could regain the cliff top well out of sight from the chapel and the King’s warriors watching at its door. Then he set off back towards Tintagel.

He had not gone far when rounding a bend in the
track where it circled a tump of wind-shaped hawthorns, he came face to face with Gorvenal!

They made no outcry of greeting; but Gorvenal stood stock still and the colour drained from his face till he was white to the lips. And seeing his look, Tristan said ‘Och, no! It is I, not my seadripping ghost – it was to be the wheel, not drowning for me, remember?’

But even as he spoke, Gorvenal flung his arms round him, and hugged him fiercely close, then held him off at arms’ length to look at him. ‘Swift now, is the hunt behind you?’

‘Not yet,’ Tristan said, ‘I will tell you all the story later, there is no time now.’

‘There’s not indeed,’ said Gorvenal, ‘for the sooner we are many miles from here, the better. See, here are your sword and your harp. I would not be spending one night more in Tintagel, and I would not be leaving them behind me.’ And from under his cloak he pulled out the embroidered harp-bag that he had slung across his shoulder, and Tristan’s beloved sword with the notched blade.

Tristan took the sword from him and belted it on. ‘Was there ever a time when I could not count on Gorvenal in my need? I shall have need of this. Let you keep my harp for me, until maybe I have a need for that also.’

And he set his hand an instant on Gorvenal’s shoulder, and then walked on, the way that he had been going.

Gorvenal swung round and went after him. ‘Are you mad? This is the way back to Tintagel.’

‘I am knowing that well enough. Could I make my
escape and leave Iseult to die in the flames? I must save her today, or die with her; there is no other way for me. But the hazard is mine and none of yours. Go your way, brother, with my thanks for bringing me my sword.’

‘As to that, I have my own sword also, and two blades are better than one,’ said Gorvenal. ‘And if you are for Tintagel again, then so am I.’

And they went on together.

Soon, coming to the edge of the woods, they looked out towards the fortress on its headland, and saw the place made ready for the Queen’s execution, between the woods and the sea, with the pyre already built in the midst of it, and all about it the great crowd of people who had gathered to see her die.

‘And now what would you have us do?’ asked Gorvenal crouching behind a hawthorn bush.

‘They have not yet brought her out; when they do, maybe God will help us to know the thing that must be done. Meanwhile there is nothing we can do but wait.’

And as they waited, just as the far-off gates of Tintagel opened, and the King himself, amidst the rest of his bodyguard, came down between the timber halls and the apple orchards towards the execution place, another band of men came down the track from the woods behind Tristan and Gorvenal. A little band, a terrible band, wearing the long hooded cloaks and carrying the wooden warning clappers that marked them for lepers, who counted as already dead.

Gorvenal drew further from the track, as all men did when such a company came by, and Tristan made to do the same; then checked, and stepped forward directly into their path.

‘Where are you away to, friends?’

The lepers checked, for they were not used to being spoken to by living men, then one who seemed to be the leader among them said in a cracked and husky voice, ‘To Tintagel as all Cornwall goes today, though with heavy hearts, to see them burn the Queen.’

‘Then you would save the Queen if you could?’ said Tristan.

‘If it were worth our while.’

‘Lend me your cloak and clapper, and there will be no burning in Tintagel today,’ Tristan said. And to Gorvenal, ‘Have you any money? It’s a gold piece I am needing for this man and his comrades.’

‘You are mad!’ said Gorvenal.

‘Maybe; that is the second time today that you have told me so. But I need the gold piece.’

And while the others looked on, he took the coin his friend brought from the breast of his tunic, and dropped it into the bandaged hand that the leper held out for it.

‘It’s many a long year since any man would wear my cloak of his free will,’ the man said. And he pulled off his stinking rags; and Tristan took them, scarcely even shuddering for there was no time, and flung on the cloak, pulling the hood forward over his face.

‘Here is my cloak; it is wet from the sea, but it will serve to cover your sores. Bide here in hiding, while I go on with your companions.’

‘I also,’ said Gorvenal.

But Tristan shook his head. ‘Bide you here. If all goes well, one of us will be enough for the task; if aught goes ill, then I may need you, still free, to get the Queen away.’

So Tristan went on with the lepers, swinging his wooden clapper, and with their dreadful cry in his ears: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’

When they reached the execution place, the Queen, clad in nothing but a white shift, and her wonderful red hair falling loose about her, was already being bound to the stake, while men waited with lighted torches, and the King stood by with a frozen face to see it done.

‘Come,’ said Tristan to the rest of the grey band behind him; and they made towards the King. No man sought to bar their passage, and so they came to him up a clear road, the people falling back on either side like barley when a reaping-hook cuts its swathe. And Tristan knelt before the King, keeping his hands that had no sores on them hidden in his sleeves, and his face that was not eaten away hidden in the shadows of his hood.

‘O Lord King! A boon!’ he cried, making his voice cracked and hoarse.

And, ‘A boon! A boon!’ cried the lepers crowding behind him.

The King looked at them with stone eyes in a stone face. ‘You choose a strange moment to come asking a boon.’

‘Not so strange,’ said Tristan, ‘for the boon we ask is this, that you give us the Queen, to be of our company.’

A gasp ran through the crowd, but King Marc never moved. ‘
Give you the Queen?
’ he said; and his voice was stony as all else about him.