Tristan and Iseult (11 page)

‘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.

So they left the little bothie beside the stream, for the grass to grow fresh over the scars where the hearth fire had been, and went back to Tintagel and the King.

It was torch-lighting time when they came to King Marc sitting in his High Seat with the stallion-carved foreposts; and he sat unmoving, his eyes upon them, as Tristan and Iseult walked up the empty Hall to stand before him.

The silence dragged out long and heavy as the stillness between lightning flash and thunder peal. And a dog at the King’s feet whimpered, smelling grief and anger and love and hate hanging like the thunder in the air.

At last the King said, ‘So you read my message.’

‘We read your message,’ Tristan said, ‘and we came.’

‘That is well,’ said the King. ‘Listen now; I will take the Queen back into my Hall, into my heart. As for you, Tristan, whom once I loved most dearly of all men in this world, I say to you only – “the world is wide”.’

Tristan looked straight and long into the King’s eyes. ‘I had a hope that the way back was for me also, but it was only a small hope. The world is wide, as you say, my Lord the King.’

‘I will give you until tomorrow’s sun-up to gather what you would take with you and be gone from Tintagel. I give you three days to be out of Cornwall. You will never come back!’

Tristan bowed his head, then raised it and looked once more straight at the King. ‘In three days I will be gone from Cornwall. But if ever harm or sorrow come to Iseult at your hands, I shall hear of it,
and I shall come back!
’

Then Iseult spoke for the first time. ‘My Lord the King, if I am to be with you and be your wife again, I must end what has been between my Lord Tristan and me, not leave it hanging like a torn sleeve. Let you grant us a little time alone, to take our leave of each other.’

The King pointed to a log on the fire already crumbling to white ash. ‘You have until that log burns through.’ And he rose and went to the inner doorway. But they knew that from the chamber beyond, he would hear when the log burned through and fell.

When they were alone, they moved close together; but they had no goodbyes to say, for they had said
them all so many times that they were empty. And Tristan said only, speaking at half breath, ‘I leave Bran with you. Love him for my sake.’

And Iseult said, ‘He shall be dearer to me than anything else in Cornwall, because he is your gift. And for you also I have a gift,’ and she pulled from her finger a heavy gold ring formed of curiously twined and twisted serpents, that had come with her from Ireland. ‘If ever you are in sore enough need of me, send me this back, and I will come to you though you send from the other end of the world. But be careful how you send it, for if you do, then I will come, though it be the death of both of us.’

And Tristan took the ring and kissed it, and stowed it in the breast of his outworn shirt.

‘One thing more,’ Iseult said. ‘Make me this promise, that all your life, if anything is asked of you in my name, you will do it. No matter how strange, or difficult, or perilous, or great, or small, if it be asked of you in the name of Iseult of Cornwall.’

And this she asked so that she might know in her heart thereafter that she still held power over him, and power to call him back, even though she never used it to her dying day.

And Tristan knew why she asked, and he promised, ‘It shall be as you ask.’

Iseult set her hands on either side of his face and drew him close and looked into his eyes. ‘I do not ask. I set you under
Geis
, according to the custom of my own people, for remember, Iseult of Cornwall is an Irishwoman still. And remember also that if you break your
Geis
you break your own honour with it, and your own life, and maybe all that is left of mine as well.’

The burned log collapsed with a slipping and rustling and a last shower of sparks, into the red heart of the fire.

Tristan went back to his old lodging, and gathered his own clothes and few belongings that were still there, and put on his fine mail shirt, while Gorvenal brought horses from the stable. And at dawn he rode out from Tintagel and headed eastward into the sunrise, with Gorvenal riding at his side. He never saw King Marc again, save once when King Marc did not know of it, but the King’s sword was still in his scabbard and his own notched blade in the King’s.

TRISTAN AND GORVENAL
wandered up and down Britain and through other lands; and many the adventures they had, until at last they came to Brittany, and a part of Brittany that had once been fair but was now a wilderness. For three days they rode through it, and saw halls and strongholds and the traces of fields; but the halls were roofless and their hearths cold, and the fields lost under docks and brambles. And in all the land nothing moved but the creatures of the wild.

But on the third evening they came to a little chapel on a hill, and a hermit’s cell beside it; and from the hermit’s cell came the first gleam of firelight they had seen since they entered that land. So they rode towards it, and the old bent hermit came to the door, and asked, ‘What would you have of me, my sons?’

‘A night’s shelter,’ Tristan said. ‘A place by your fire, old father, since it seems there is no other warm hearth in all this land.’

So that evening they sat by the hermit’s fire, though they would take nothing from his meagre store of food, but ate what little they had in their own saddlebags. And when they had eaten, Tristan asked the meaning of the desolation all about them.

‘Well may you ask,’ said the hermit, ‘for this land used to be as rich as any in the world, until sorrow came upon it . . .

You must know, then, that our King, Hoel, has a most beautiful daughter, and she was sought in marriage by one of his vassal lords, Duke Jovelin of Nantes. The King refused him – some say he was too proud to give his daughter to a vassal; some say she was unwilling. Then Jovelin thought to take her by force, and he roused out many of the other nobles to join him against the King. They have laid waste the land as you see, they have broken down all the royal castles, except Carhaix; and there, in his last remaining stronghold, the King is even now besieged, with his son Karherdin and a few chiefs who remain true to him.’

‘And where is this Castle of Carhaix?’ asked Tristan.

‘Scarce two miles from here.’

‘Then if you will let us sleep by your fire tonight, it will be an easy ride in the morning.’

‘Dragons,’ said Gorvenal, ‘always there must be more dragons for you. Let you remember what came of the last time.’

‘I am remembering, and I am remembering,’ said Tristan, gentling his sword hilt.

Next morning they took their leave of the hermit, and set out for Carhaix. They found Duke Jovelin’s warhost encamped round about, but seeing that they were but two horsemen, no one thought it worth while to turn them back, and so they came beneath the timber walls of the castle. The King himself – Tristan knew it must be the King by the golden crest on his helmet – stood on the ramparts, looking out over the rebel warhost, and Tristan brought his horse close and called up to him, ‘My Lord the King, have you use for two more swords?’

The King looked down at him and laughed, like an old dogfox barking. ‘We have no use for two more mouths; supplies are short enough as it is. It was a valiant offer, strangers, but this is not your quarrel. Take my thanks with you and ride away.’

‘As to the mouths, my sword-brother and I have seen lean times before now, and we’re knowing well enough how to take a knot in our bellies. I am in need of a good quarrel – may I not have a share in yours?’

And a tall ugly young man with sandy hair and a big nose and a laughing mouth, who stood close beside the King, said quickly, ‘Two good swords are worth half a loaf a day, my father; and if this bold stranger wants a share in our quarrel – well, it’s big enough, there’s no need to play the miser with it!’

So in the end the timber gates were swung back just wide enough to let horse and rider through, while the warriors stood ready against a rush by Jovelin’s men. And the first hand that came out to greet Tristan as he clattered over the gatesill with Gorvenal still behind him, was the big bony hand of the Prince Karherdin.

But Tristan and Gorvenal were not the only riders to draw rein before the great gates of Carhaix that day, for a while after noon, a herald rode out from the rebel warhost, to bring a challenge from Duke Jovelin to any man in the castle who would come out to meet him in single combat.

When he had received the message, the King said, ‘If I were but twenty years – but ten years – younger and quicker . . .’

And the Prince Karherdin shrugged and said, ‘If I could do any good by taking up the challenge, I’d not hang back. But I know Jovelin’s fighting strength;
there’s not a man in the kingdom to stand a moth’s chance in a candle flame, in single combat with that one.’

And the rest of the warriors looked at each other and away again. And some half reached for their swords; but no one offered to take up the challenge.

Then Tristan, who had waited for the others, feeling that they had first right, said, ‘My Lord the King, I have been but a few hours among you, but give me leave, none the less, to meet this Duke Jovelin. I have answered a like challenge before, against worse odds, and that time I had the victory.’

So the herald went back from Carhaix with word that Tristan of Lothian (for he could no more be calling himself Tristan of Cornwall) would take up the challenge of Duke Jovelin, and come out to meet him an hour before sunset. And at the appointed time, the great gates opened again, and Tristan walked out, with his sword naked in his hand. And in the clear space below the walls, Duke Jovelin strode out to meet him. The westering sun jinked on their weapons, and their shadows streamed out from them sideways like the shadows of giants on the grass. And from the ramparts of Carhaix and the ranks of the rebel warhost, beseigers and defenders looked on.

Then the heralds cried out the challenge and acceptance, and the fight began. It was a long and bitter struggle, slow and wary at first as when hounds circle each other seeking for an opening; both champions striving for position with the sun behind them and dazzling into the other’s eyes, then growing swifter and more fierce as they closed in and the blades began to ring together and the sparks to fly
from their blows. Once Jovelin took a gash in the thigh, and once Tristan took a thrust in the shoulder; but for a long while neither could gain an advantage over the other. And then at last, as Tristan stepped back from a savage flurry of strokes, Jovelin, pressing after, missed his thrust and Tristan had their blades locked together; for an instant they battled, eye to eye and hilt to hilt, and then the Duke’s sword, wrenched from his grasp, spun a shining arc through the air to land, point down, far over towards the rebel camp. And Duke Jovelin stood defenceless with Tristan’s blade at his throat.

Then the rebel warriors set up a shout and broke forward to their leader’s aid; but Jovelin shouted to them where he stood, ‘Back, dogs! Back, I say! I’ll not have my honour blackened for me by my friends!’ And they checked and drew back to their watching line. And to Tristan he said, ‘Tristan of Lothian, it seems that I must yield to you for life or death.’

Tristan lowered his sword. ‘These are my terms: that you shall bid your men to bring out from your camp enough food to provision Carhaix for one week, or you shall lie in the castle dungeons and we’ll fight on hungry as we are. The choice is yours, my Lord Jovelin.’

The Duke Jovelin smiled, and they looked at each other not as enemies but simply as two fighting men. And he said, ‘I’ve no liking for dungeons. I choose to provision Carhaix for a week.’

‘That is a wise choice, and I for one am glad of it,’ said Tristan. ‘I’m thinking it would be a fine and pleasant thing that the first of the supplies arrives in time for supper.’