Tristan and Iseult (2 page)

It was torch-lighting time when they came to the strong gates of Tintagel, and the gate-guards passed them through, for no stranger was ever refused food and shelter there. And it was torchlight and firelight when they stood at last before King Marc in the Great Hall where he and his Court were already gathering to the evening meal.

And Tristan looked, and saw a big man with grey eyes and grey feathering in the dark of his hair, with a great hooked nose and a mouth like iron, and thought, Here is one with a gift for loving and a gift for hating, and when he hates, God help the man who earns his hatred.

And King Marc looked, and saw a stripling with grey eyes, straight hair as black as a chough’s wing, and thought, Here is a fighter’s face and a lover’s face, and there will always be fighting and loving where ever you are, my boy. But their hearts warmed to each other, though Marc did not know that they were kin.

The King bade them welcome, and beckoning to a short thickset man with the gold chain of a steward round his neck, bade him take them to the guest-place
and see that they were fed, and treated with all honour.

But Tristan shook his head and said quickly, ‘My Lord the King, we thank you for your greeting, but it is not as guests that we come; we bring you our spears, to take service with you if you will have it so, and we would sit among your warriors at table and sleep among your warriors at night.’

The King sat in silence a moment, his hands on the carved stallion-head foreposts of his great chair; and looked again from one to another of the young men before him. Then he said, ‘So. Most gladly will I accept your spear-service. But while a guest can come and go with no name asked and none given, I must know the names and country of those who sit at table and sleep at night among my warriors.’

‘We are all the sons of merchants from far off at the other end of Britain, who have no wish to follow our fathers’ trades and so have set out to take spear-service instead,’ said Tristan. ‘I am called Tristan, and this is Gorvenal, my father’s steward, who like us has little heart for trading. And this, Caerdin, and this Garhault . . .’

And so he brought each before the King by their true names, and yet without letting him know who they were. And afterwards they went and sat among the King’s warriors, and the platters of barley bannock and the great roasts of wild boar and deer-meat were brought in.

FOR UPWARD OF
two years Tristan and his companions were among King Marc’s warriors; and as it had been in Lothian, so it was in Cornwall; there was no man who could outrun or outleap Tristan, or ride swifter on the trail of the roe deer, or master him at sword-play. King Marc’s own harper could not make sweeter music; and he could throw any man in the kingdom in
a wrestling bout – and the wrestlers of Cornwall are famous to this day. There were some at the Court who were jealous of him; but for the most part he and his companions were liked well enough; and King Marc was glad of the day that had brought them to his gate.

And then a sore trouble fell upon the land; and this was the way of it.

The war with Ireland, that had first called Tristan’s father from Lothian, had flared up again a few years later. A peace had been patched together at last, but only on condition that Cornwall should pay a yearly tribute to Ireland in corn and cattle and slaves. Cornwall had paid the tribute for a year or two, and then both sides had let the matter drop. But not long before young Tristan came to Cornwall seeking his fortune, a mighty champion had arisen in Ireland; tree-tall and thunder-fierce with the strength in him of four men; and he married the King of Ireland’s sister. By the strength of his mighty sword that had been tempered in a brew of poison-twigs on the day that it was forged, he had conquered many islands and their peoples for Ireland. And the day came when he fitted out a fleet of ships and made ready to sail for Cornwall. He sent ahead to warn them of his coming, and that the time had come for paying the tribute that had not been paid for fifteen years. And he sent word that because the tribute had been so long owing it could not be paid in corn and cattle, but must be paid all in slaves; one out of every three children born in Cornwall in all those years. If they would not pay, then let them defend themselves as best they could in battle, unless they could find a champion brave enough to stand forth for them all and meet him, the
Morholt, in single combat, a champion strong and skilled enough to defeat him.

When King Marc received the terrible message he called his nobles and his bravest fighting men together to Tintagel, and told them the choice before them; to give up into slavery one in three of all their children or to take on the might of Ireland in battle. No good even to think of a single champion; for what man, however brave, would go out against the Morholt who had in him the strength of four, knowing that if he failed to conquer him, as fail he must, he would have thrown away his own life to no purpose at all?

Then there was a noise like a swarming of bees throughout the land, and the warriors began to make ready for war, rather than yield up their children to be slaves. But in truth they had little hope of victory, for Ireland had grown very strong under the Morholt’s leadership, with many conquered people to work and fight for her; and even as the men sharpened their weapons, the women wept and began to seek out places to hide their children.

Then Tristan went to the Lord High Steward, Dynas of Lidan, who had been his good friend since that first evening at Tintagel when the King had bidden him take the strangers to the guest-place.

‘It would be better than all this making ready for war, if we were to send the Morholt his champion,’ Tristan said.

‘Much better – if we had such a champion to send.’

‘I will go out as Cornwall’s champion, if you will have me.’

‘You?’ said Dynas. ‘But you are only a boy! The Morholt would eat you alive!’

‘I think that he would not. I have skills that you have not seen me use yet.’

‘Tristan, do not be throwing your life away; this is Cornwall’s sorrow and none of yours.’

‘Is it not?’ said Tristan. ‘Yet go to the King, and make him promise that
who ever
comes forward as champion, no matter how strange or unlikely it may seem, he will not refuse him.’

So at last Dynas of Lidan went to the King, and gained his promise. And when that was done, Tristan stood out before the King at supper in his Great Hall, with the eyes of all the warriors upon him, and offered himself as Cornwall’s champion.

‘You!’ said the King. ‘But you are only a boy! To do as you ask would be to let you throw your life away!’

‘I do not ask,’ said Tristan, ‘I demand that the King of Cornwall should keep his word!’

So word was sent to the Morholt that Cornwall would furnish a champion to meet him in single combat, after all. And back came word from the Morholt that he would accept only a champion who was his equal in rank.

Then King Marc sent for Tristan and told him this, half-grieving in his heart that Cornwall had lost her champion, half-glad that the young warrior whom he had grown to love would not now be able to throw his life away.

But when he had done, Tristan said, ‘The Morholt is husband to the King of Ireland’s sister, and indeed that sets him high; but would not the son of the King of Lothian and the Princess of Cornwall rank higher still?’

And then as Marc started up, staring at him, and
scarce yet fully understanding what he had said, he added, ‘When I came with my companions to your Court, I told you we were all merchants’ sons, because if I was to make my fame in this land I wished to make it for myself, and gain your favour by earning it, not for the love that you bore to your sister, my mother; not because my father was your friend.’

King Marc was silent a long while, and then he said, ‘This that you tell me makes it the more bitter hard for me to let you go to your death. But you have the right to stand forth as Cornwall’s champion, and I cannot deny it to you.’

So he sent the word back to the Morholt that a champion of the royal house of Cornwall would meet him in three days’ time, on a certain island just off the Cornish coast. But his heart was like a stone within him, for he was sure of Tristan’s death.

At dusk before the appointed day, the King with Tristan and his foremost warriors and councillors came to the coast over against the island, and made camp there for the night. And far out to sea they could make out distant fire-petals that they knew were the stern braziers of the Irish ships. And at dawn they rose and broke bread all together; and King Marc served Tristan himself as though he was his armour-bearer, and put on him his own war tunic of fine grey ringmail and plates of polished bronze, and gave him a new sword that had never been blooded before, and a shield painted with a great black boar, and a red-roan horse whose saddle was of the finest gilded leather.

Then Tristan led the horse on board the flat-bottomed boat that was waiting for him, and poled himself across the narrow strip of shallows to the island.

The Morholt was already there, and had moored his boat where the dark rocks and the hazel scrub came down to the water’s edge. But when Tristan had landed and led his horse ashore, he pushed off his boat and let the water take it.

The Morholt stood holding his black horse by the bridle, and said when he drew near, ‘That was surely a strange thing to do, to push off your boat again, when you landed.’

‘Two of us are come to this island,’ Tristan said, ‘but only one will be needing a boat to carry him away.’ And they looked at each other long and straightly, each standing by his horse. And the Irish champion saw how young the Cornish champion was,
and the clear battle-light behind his eyes. And something in his fierce heart said, It would be a poor day’s work to slay this valiant stripling.

So he said, ‘Surely this is a sorry thing, that we two who might well have been friends should seek to be each other’s death. Is there no other way?’

‘One,’ said Tristan. ‘That Ireland should forgo this unjust tribute.’

‘Not that way. When I go from here the tribute goes with me. But between you and me – here is my hand in friendship, and the half of all I own – land and gold, horses and weapons, if you will choose to turn away from this combat, for I have no wish to be your death.’

‘Are you so sure you will be?’ Tristan said. ‘Mount, and kill me if you may, and if I may I will kill you. That is all the peace that there can be between us.’

So they went up to the level space at the heart of the island; and they mounted and drew apart to the furthest ends of their battleground, then wheeled to face each other.

Then Tristan struck spurs to his horse, and on the instant the Morholt did the same, and crouching low behind their shields, they thundered towards each other with levelled spears.

They came together with a crash as of old bull and young bull when they battle together for the lordship of the herd. Each took the other’s spear-point on his shield, and both spears were shattered into jagged shards. They cast the pieces from them and drew their swords, and fell to, hand to hand from the saddle. Tristan was the swifter swordsman, but in the Morholt was the strength of four men, and his blows fell so sure and fierce that the Cornish champion was
driven back, and for a while there was little he could do but cover himself with his shield and defend himself as best he might. At last, in trying to guard his head, Tristan raised his shield too high, and the Morholt’s sword came driving in under his guard and took him in the thigh, and laid it bare to the bone so that the blood flowed out staining his horse’s shoulder crimson.

But it seemed as though the fire of his wound and the red blood flowing, that should have weakened Tristan, kindled a desperate valour in him that he had not found before, and with a yell he wrenched his horse round and crashed it into the Morholt’s charger, breast to breast, bringing horse and rider down together. The Morholt was up again on the instant, and drove his blade deep into the breast of Tristan’s horse, which reared up screaming and then crashed to the ground. Tristan sprang clear in time to see the Morholt’s horse scrambling to its feet; the Morholt, lacking his helmet, had already a hand on the saddle and his foot back in the stirrup to remount. Then strength and speed such as he had never known before came upon Tristan, and he leapt forward across the distance between, and struck the Morholt on the wrist, such a blow that his right hand with the sword still in it dropped upon the trampled turf. His next blow took the Morholt on the head, and bit so deep that when he jerked out his sword a fragment of the blade was left behind in the Irish champion’s skull.