Tristan and Iseult by Rosemary Sutcliff
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.
‘If she is to die a shameful death, we can offer her one more shameful than the fire. Slower than the fire, but maybe uglier.’
And the lepers behind him clamoured, ‘Give her to us! Give! Give!’
And the King’s stone face broke up into a sudden agony of rage, and he shouted to the executioners, ‘Cut the Queen loose, and give her to these creatures!’
Then Iseult began to scream and scream, and cling to the stake as though it were her only hope; and when Tristan in his leper’s guise sprang up on to the piled faggots to seize her, she fought him like a wild thing, while the crowd set up a ragged shout of angry protest, though with the King’s eye upon them and his nobles and his bodyguard all about, they dared no more. And then Iseult, thrusting the leper away with both hands, caught a glimpse of crimson silk at his breast and felt the skin clean and healthy under his foul cloak, and heard his whisper close to her ear, ‘Iseult! It is I! Do not betray me!’
She went on screaming, but many of those standing round saw that she ceased to fight, as though despair had come upon her, and allowed herself to be dragged down from the pyre and into the midst of the little knot of lepers, and away up the track towards the woods. And again the people parted to let them through.
10
The Sword and the Glove
MEANWHILE, THE WARRIORS waiting before the little clifftop chapel had long since grown impatient. ‘He is over-long at his prayers,’ they said. And at last when they had called and got no answer, they broke the door down – and found the place empty.
The Captain sprang for the window and peered down, thinking to see Tristan’s broken body on the rocks below. But there were only the waves, and the seabirds wheeling by.
When word of Tristan’s escape was brought to the King, his wrath was terrible, and he sent his warriors to seek him out and bring him back, living or dead. But no sign of Tristan was to be found. They came up with the lepers, but the Queen was no longer with them, and they had a tale to tell of how a mighty and terrible warrior had sprung out upon them as they passed some bushes, and snatched her away from them. And under a hawthorn tree the searchers found Tristan’s sea-wet cloak lying where it had been tossed aside. But there was nothing that it could tell them.
And of Tristan and Iseult, they found no sign at all. They and Gorvenal had vanished into the wild as completely as so many rags of morning mist when the sun climbs above the hills.
Only one living thing out of Tintagel knew the way that they were gone, and that was Bran, Tristan’s favourite hound, who followed them by scent, and came up with them next day. And it was well for them that he did so, for they had need of a hunting dog in time to come.
They held eastward and eastward, away and away from Tintagel, pushing on all day and lying up in some thicket for a few hours each night. When Iseult grew faint with weariness and could walk no more, Tristan or Gorvenal carried her; and so they came at last to a little lost valley by which a stream threaded down from the high black moors where the stone circles of forgotten people stood against the sky. Hawthorn and alder and hazel shaded it over, and the small dark thickset oak trees of the ancient forest reached up from below as though they held up their arms to receive it. And between the moors and the forest, the stream broadened into a little pool, where the deer came to drink at dawn and sunset.
‘Surely here we shall be safe,’ said Tristan. ‘We are full three days from Tintagel and it is many years since the King hunted these hills.’
‘The hunting will be good here,’ said Gorvenal, ‘and since we must turn hunter if we are to live . . .’
And Iseult said in a voice that was soft as the wood-pigeons among the trees, ‘This is such a place as our valley in Wales. We shall know happiness here – for a while.’
So there Tristan and Gorvenal built a hut beside the stream; and there the three of them took up their lives. Iseult had no garment but her white shift, and so t
Above all, they were happy. Iseult missed nothing of being a queen; and Tristan had his friend and his hound, his harp to make music, and Iseult beside him, and there was nothing more he hungered for in all the world. And if Gorvenal regretted anything at all, there was no one but himself knew of it.
It was young summer when they came to the hidden valley; and three times the hawthorn trees were rusted with berries and the hazelnuts fell into the stream. And three times winter came and they huddled about the fire in the smoky bothie and threw on logs from the wood-store outside, while Tristan woke the music of his harp and sang to them the haunting story-songs of Lothian and Cornwall and of Ireland too. Three times the hazel catkins shone yellow as pale sunshine against the dark of the moors, and three times the hawthorns were white-curdled with blossom and the blossom fell and the foxgloves stood tall along the woodshore and the cuckoos called all day.
And then on the edge of another autumn, one evening Tristan and Iseult sat before the hut watching the stream run by and the twilight come creeping up from the trees. They were alone, for Gorvenal had taken Bran as he sometimes did, and gone off on a solitary hunting trip. And Iseult drew close to Tristan as though suddenly she were afraid, and said, ‘Do you feel anything?’
‘A little shiver of wind,’ said Tristan.
‘No, not that.’
‘A moth brushed by my cheek.’
‘No, not that.’
‘What is it then, Iseult?’
‘A shadow. There is a shadow fallen over us.’
‘Heart-of-my-heart, it is only the twilight.’
‘No, it is not the twilight,’ said Iseult.
‘Then it is the time of year, and the leaves falling.’
‘No, it is not that, for I have ever loved the winter, and the hut sheltering us like wings folded close between us and the cold.’
And she got up and went into the hut, and when in a little he followed her, she was combing her hair by the light of a rush dip, as she had been combing it by the light of a fine wax taper when he had come to tell her that they were sailing for Cornwall on the morning tide.
Now that very day, far off in Tintagel, the King called for his hounds to ride hunting. In the long three years he had hunted the hills of Cornwall far and wide, he and his Court, like the wild riders of Gwyn ap Nudd; for he had no more pleasure in feasting or harpsong; and when the work of kingship was done, there was nothing gave him any pleasure but to be out after the red deer or the black boar or the fanged and red-eyed wolf of the wilderness. So yet again, he ordered out his horses and his hounds for next day; but this time he said to his Chief Huntsman, ‘I am weary of the old hunting-runs; are there no hills in Cornwall where we have not hunted before?’
‘There are the moors away eastward beyond the Tamar River,’ said the Chief Huntsman. ‘It is many years since you hunted so far afield.’
So the next day King Marc and his companions rode eastward towards the high moors. And three days later they set up their hunting camp. All next day they hunted; the hunting was good, and they killed three times; but when the hound-pack was counted at feeding time that evening, one of them was missing. It was a good hound, and one of the King’s favourites, and the Chief Huntsman at once called out some of his men and set off to find it.
Tristan and Iseult had heard no sound of that day’s hunting; but at dusk as they sat once more before the hut doorway, Iseult said suddenly, ‘What sound is that?’
And Tristan listened, and said, ‘It sounds like a lost hound, but like enough it is a wolf.’
And they listened together for a long time, but it did not come again. And presently they went into the hut and lay down on the bedplace, leaving the fire burning in the doorway as they had done often enough before when there were wolves about. And Tristan drew his sword from its sheath and laid it naked beside him.
All night long the King’s Chief Huntsman searched for the lost hound, until at last, at the dark hour before dawn, he came to the edge of the trees and saw the white thread of a stream coming down from the high moors; and above him among the stream-side hazels the gleam of a fire; and thinking that it might belong to some shepherds or charcoal burners, he dismounted and hitched his horse to a low-hanging branch, and turned upstream towards the red flicker, meaning to ask the people up there if they had seen any sign of a strayed hound.
So he came to the fire, his feet silent on the stream-side grass, and found that it burned before the doorway of a hut, and peering in, he saw by the dying firelight a man and a woman asleep on the piled bracken of the bedplace. Their faces were in shadow, but the flame-light struck answering flame from the red of the woman’s outflung hair; and the man’s sword, lying ready to his hand, had a small piece broken out of the blade. No one knowing Tristan could mistake that notched blade.
The Huntsman turned silently away and went back down the streamside to where he had left his horse; and mounted and rode back towards the King’s camp, and before he had gone three bow-shots on his way, there was a yelping and a rustling in the undergrowth and the lost hound came bounding out to follow at his horse’s heels.
The camp was still asleep when he reached it, and he roused Marc’s armour-bearer from before the entrance of the King’s bothie, and went in to him.
‘Have you found Gelert?’ said the King.
‘Aye, but it was not for that I woke you. I found something else.’
‘And what is that, that because of it you must rouse me from my sleep?’
‘A few miles from here,’ said the Huntsman, and suddenly he was afraid of what he had to tell, ‘there is a hut, and a fire burning before it, and inside a man and a woman sleeping on the bedplace.’
The King came to his elbow. ‘What man? And what woman?’
‘I could not see their faces,’ said the Huntsman, ‘but the woman had red hair, and the man a piece broken out of his sword blade.’
The King held silent a long moment. Then he said, ‘Bid my armour-bearer to fetch my horse and have it ready beyond the camp as soon as may be; for I would see this man and this woman.’
So the King’s horse was made ready, and he and the Chief Huntsman set out. It was just at daybreak when they reached the place where the stream came down from the high moors, and the last light of the dying fire still glimmered among the hazel trees. Then the King bade his Huntsman wait with the horses. And he went on up the stream-side, his own sword naked in his hand. He came to the entrance of the hut, and stood looking in. And he saw by the grey dawn light Tristan and Iseult lying on the bedplace; and he knew that he had only to step over the threshold and use his sword, first on Tristan and then on the Queen, for they were completely at his mercy. And because they were so completely at his mercy, he could not do it. He stood there so long that the grey light began to be watered with gold, and soon he knew they must wake. And as he looked, it seemed to him that he had never seen Iseult so beautiful, and his heart had never longed for her more. And when he looked at Tristan his old love for his kinsman knotted in his belly.
At last he unsheathed his sword, and stooping, took up Tristan’s and laid his own blade where it had been. And he stripped off one of his hunting gloves, and laid it lightly on Iseult’s breast. For an instant she caught her breath and stirred in her sleep; then returned to her quiet breathing. And King Marc turned and went his way, sheathing the notched blade in place of his own.
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The Ring
WHEN TRISTAN AND Iseult awoke, they found the King’s sword lying in place of Tristan’s, and the King’s glove on the Queen’s breast, and they knew that they were discovered.
‘We must leave this place at once,’ Iseult said. ‘We dare not wait even for Gorvenal! Leave a sign for him, that he may follow the way we go; and we will strike further into the wilds.’
‘If we do that thing now that the King has found us and knows that we are together, it is in my heart that he will hunt us down,’ Tristan said. ‘We shall never hear a dog howling in the night without fearing the hunt on our trail. And yet – he found us here and could have slain us, and did not.’
‘What does it mean?’ said Iseult.
Tristan shook his head. ‘I know only that he left us his message: the sword for me, and the glove for you.’ (And he remembered how on the day he brought Iseult from Ireland into Cornwall, King Marc had taken her hands in his and said that they were cold but his were large enough to warm them.) ‘The way back is clear – at least for you, Iseult.’
‘I would not be taking it, without you.’
‘There may be a way back for me, too. I do not know. I must put myself at the King’s mercy; that is the meaning of the sword.’
‘I have been happy here, and there’s no wish in me to be Queen of Cornwall again.’
‘Better to be Queen of Cornwall than listen for hounds baying on your trail for as long as life lasts.’
And at that instant they heard a hound baying in the distance and Iseult shuddered and drew herself together with a gasp, and looked at Tristan through widened eyes.
‘You see?’ said Tristan, and put his arms round her and held her close. ‘Heart-of-my-heart, that is Bran. Gorvenal is back from his hunting – but, you see how it would be?’
When Gorvenal appeared, and flung down the buck that he had killed, while Bran came to lick Tristan’s hand and then lay down panting and pleased with his hunting, Tristan told his friend the thing that had happened; and Gorvenal agreed that the time had come to be going back to Tintagel.