Chapter 3

“Sire,” said he, “let your nephew ride hard to-morrow at dawn with a
brief drawn up on parchment and well sealed with a seal: bid him ride
to King Arthur at Carduel. Sire, he sleeps with the peers in your
chamber; go you out when the first sleep falls on men, and if he love
Iseult so madly, why, then I swear by God and by the laws of Rome, he
will try to speak with her before he rides. But if he do so unknown to
you or to me, then slay me. As for the trap, let me lay it, but do you
say nothing of his ride to him until the time for sleep.”

And when King Mark had agreed, this dwarf did a vile thing. He bought
of a baker four farthings’ worth of flour, and hid it in the turn of
his coat. That night, when the King had supped and the men-at-arms lay
down to sleep in hall, Tristan came to the King as custom was, and the
King said:

“Fair nephew, do my will: ride to-morrow night to King Arthur at
Carduel, and give him this brief, with my greeting, that he may open
it: and stay you with him but one day.”

And when Tristan said: “I will take it on the morrow;”

The King added: “Aye, and before day dawn.”

But, as the peers slept all round the King their lord, that night, a
mad thought took Tristan that, before he rode, he knew not for how
long, before dawn he would say a last word to the Queen. And there was
a spear length in the darkness between them. Now the dwarf slept with
the rest in the King’s chamber, and when he thought that all slept he
rose and scattered the flour silently in the spear length that lay
between Tristan and the Queen; but Tristan watched and saw him, and
said to himself:

“It is to mark my footsteps, but there shall be no marks to show.”

At midnight, when all was dark in the room, no candle nor any lamp
glimmering, the King went out silently by the door and with him the
dwarf. Then Tristan rose in the darkness and judged the spear length
and leapt the space between, for his farewell. But that day in the
hunt a boar had wounded him in the leg, and in this effort the wound
bled. He did not feel it or see it in the darkness, but the blood
dripped upon the couches and the flour strewn between; and outside in
the moonlight the dwarf read the heavens and knew what had been done
and he cried:

“Enter, my King, and if you do not hold them, hang me high.”

Then the King and the dwarf and the four felons ran in with lights and
noise, and though Tristan had regained his place there was the blood
for witness, and though Iseult feigned sleep, and Perinis too, who lay
at Tristan’s feet, yet there was the blood for witness. And the King
looked in silence at the blood where it lay upon the bed and the
boards and trampled into the flour.

And the four barons held Tristan down upon his bed and mocked the
Queen also, promising her full justice; and they bared and showed the
wound whence the blood flowed.

Then the King said:

“Tristan, now nothing longer holds. To-morrow you shall die.”

And Tristan answered:

“Have mercy, Lord, in the name of God that suffered the Cross!”

But the felons called on the King to take vengeance, saying:

“Do justice, King: take vengeance.”

And Tristan went on, “Have mercy, not on me—for why should I stand at
dying?—Truly, but for you, I would have sold my honour high to cowards
who, under your peace, have put hands on my body—but in homage to you
I have yielded and you may do with me what you will. But, lord,
remember the Queen!”

And as he knelt at the King’s feet he still complained:

“Remember the Queen; for if any man of your household make so bold as
to maintain the lie that I loved her unlawfully I will stand up armed
to him in a ring. Sire, in the name of God the Lord, have mercy on
her.”

Then the barons bound him with ropes, and the Queen also. But had
Tristan known that trial by combat was to be denied him, certainly he
would not have suffered it.

For he trusted in God and knew no man dared draw sword against him in
the lists. And truly he did well to trust in God, for though the
felons mocked him when he said he had loved loyally, yet I call you to
witness, my lords who read this, and who know of the philtre drunk
upon the high seas, and who, understand whether his love were
disloyalty indeed. For men see this and that outward thing, but God
alone the heart, and in the heart alone is crime and the sole final
judge is God. Therefore did He lay down the law that a man accused
might uphold his cause by battle, and God himself fights for the
innocent in such a combat.

Therefore did Tristan claim justice and the right of battle and
therefore was he careful to fail in nothing of the homage he owed King
Mark, his lord.

But had he known what was coming, he would have killed the felons.

THE CHANTRY LEAP

Dark was the night, and the news ran that Tristan and the Queen were
held and that the King would kill them; and wealthy burgess, or common
man, they wept and ran to the palace.

And the murmurs and the cries ran through the city, but such was the
King’s anger in his castle above that not the strongest nor the
proudest baron dared move him.

Night ended and the day drew near. Mark, before dawn, rode out to the
place where he held pleas and judgment. He ordered a ditch to be dug
in the earth and knotty vine-shoots and thorns to be laid therein.

At the hour of Prime he had a ban cried through his land to gather the
men of Cornwall; they came with a great noise and the King spoke them
thus:

“My lords, I have made here a faggot of thorns for Tristan and the
Queen; for they have fallen.”

But they cried all, with tears:

“A sentence, lord, a sentence; an indictment and pleas; for killing
without trial is shame and crime.”

But Mark answered in his anger:

“Neither respite, nor delay, nor pleas, nor sentence. By God that made
the world, if any dare petition me, he shall burn first!”

He ordered the fire to be lit, and Tristan to be called.

The flames rose, and all were silent before the flames, and the King
waited.

The servants ran to the room where watch was kept on the two lovers;
and they dragged Tristan out by his hands though he wept for his
honour; but as they dragged him off in such a shame, the Queen still
called to him:

“Friend, if I die that you may live, that will be great joy.”

Now, hear how full of pity is God and how He heard the lament and the
prayers of the common folk, that day.

For as Tristan and his guards went down from the town to where the
faggot burned, near the road upon a rock was a chantry, it stood at a
cliff’s edge steep and sheer, and it turned to the sea-breeze; in the
apse of it were windows glazed. Then Tristan said to those with him:

“My lords, let me enter this chantry, to pray for a moment the mercy
of God whom I have offended; my death is near. There is but one door
to the place, my lords, and each of you has his sword drawn. So, you
may well see that, when my prayer to God is done, I must come past you
again: when I have prayed God, my lords, for the last time.

And one of the guards said: “Why, let him go in.”

So they let him enter to pray. But he, once in, dashed through and
leapt the altar rail and the altar too and forced a window of the
apse, and leapt again over the cliff’s edge. So might he die, but not
of that shameful death before the people.

Now learn, my lords, how generous was God to him that day. The wind
took Tristan’s cloak and he fell upon a smooth rock at the cliff’s
foot, which to this day the men of Cornwall call “Tristan’s leap.”

His guards still waited for him at the chantry door, but vainly, for
God was now his guard. And he ran, and the fine sand crunched under
his feet, and far off he saw the faggot burning, and the smoke and the
crackling flames; and fled.

Sword girt and bridle loose, Gorvenal had fled the city, lest the King
burn him in his master’s place: and he found Tristan on the shore.

“Master,” said Tristan, “God has saved me, but oh! master, to what
end? For without Iseult I may not and I will not live, and I rather
had died of my fall. They will burn her for me, then I too will die
for her.”

“Lord,” said Gorvenal, “take no counsel of anger. See here this
thicket with a ditch dug round about it. Let us hide therein where the
track passes near, and comers by it will tell us news; and, boy, if
they burn Iseult, I swear by God, the Son of Mary, never to sleep
under a roof again until she be avenged.”

There was a poor man of the common folk that had seen Tristan’s fall,
and had seen him stumble and rise after, and he crept to Tintagel and
to Iseult where she was bound, and said:

“Queen, weep no more. Your friend has fled safely.”

“Then I thank God,” said she, “and whether they bind or loose me, and
whether they kill or spare me, I care but little now.”

And though blood came at the cord-knots, so tightly had the traitors
bound her, yet still she said, smiling:

“Did I weep for that when God has loosed my friend I should be little
worth.”

When the news came to the King that Tristan had leapt that leap and
was lost he paled with anger, and bade his men bring forth Iseult.

They dragged her from the room, and she came before the crowd, held by
her delicate hands, from which blood dropped, and the crowd called:

“Have pity on her—the loyal Queen and honoured! Surely they that gave
her up brought mourning on us all—our curses on them!”

But the King’s men dragged her to the thorn faggot as it blazed. She
stood up before the flame, and the crowd cried its anger, and cursed
the traitors and the King. None could see her without pity, unless he
had a felon’s heart: she was so tightly bound. The tears ran down her
face and fell upon her grey gown where ran a little thread of gold,
and a thread of gold was twined into her hair.

Just then there had come up a hundred lepers of the King’s, deformed
and broken, white horribly, and limping on their crutches. And they
drew near the flame, and being evil, loved the sight. And their chief
Ivan, the ugliest of them all, cried to the King in a quavering voice:

“O King, you would burn this woman in that flame, and it is sound
justice, but too swift, for very soon the fire will fall, and her
ashes will very soon be scattered by the high wind and her agony be
done. Throw her rather to your lepers where she may drag out a life
for ever asking death.”

And the King answered:

“Yes; let her live that life, for it is better justice and more
terrible. I can love those that gave me such a thought.”

And the lepers answered:

“Throw her among us, and make her one of us. Never shall lady have
known a worse end. And look,” they said, “at our rags and our
abominations. She has had pleasure in rich stuffs and furs, jewels and
walls of marble, honour, good wines and joy, but when she sees your
lepers always, King, and only them for ever, their couches and their
huts, then indeed she will know the wrong she has done, and bitterly
desire even that great flame of thorns.”

And as the King heard them, he stood a long time without moving; then
he ran to the Queen and seized her by the hand, and she cried:

“Burn me! rather burn me!”

But the King gave her up, and Ivan took her, and the hundred lepers
pressed around, and to hear her cries all the crowd rose in pity. But
Ivan had an evil gladness, and as he went he dragged her out of the
borough bounds, with his hideous company.

Now they took that road where Tristan lay in hiding, and Gorvenal said
to him:

“Son, here is your friend. Will you do naught?”

Then Tristan mounted the horse and spurred it out of the bush, and
cried:

“Ivan, you have been at the Queen’s side a moment, and too long. Now
leave her if you would live.”

But Ivan threw his cloak away and shouted:

“Your clubs, comrades, and your staves! Crutches in the air—for a
fight is on!”

Then it was fine to see the lepers throwing their capes aside, and
stirring their sick legs, and brandishing their crutches, some
threatening: groaning all; but to strike them Tristan was too noble.
There are singers who sing that Tristan killed Ivan, but it is a lie.
Too much a knight was he to kill such things. Gorvenal indeed,
snatching up an oak sapling, crashed it on Ivan’s head till his blood
ran down to his misshapen feet. Then Tristan took the Queen.

Henceforth near him she felt no further evil. He cut the cords that
bound her arms so straightly, and he left the plain so that they
plunged into the wood of Morois; and there in the thick wood Tristan
was as sure as in a castle keep.

And as the sun fell they halted all three at the foot of a little
hill: fear had wearied the Queen, and she leant her head upon his body
and slept.

But in the morning, Gorvenal stole from a wood man his bow and two
good arrows plumed and barbed, and gave them to Tristan, the great
archer, and he shot him a fawn and killed it. Then Gorvenal gathered
dry twigs, struck flint, and lit a great fire to cook the venison. And
Tristan cut him branches and made a hut and garnished it with leaves.
And Iseult slept upon the thick leaves there.

So, in the depths of the wild wood began for the lovers that savage
life which yet they loved very soon.

PART THE SECOND

THE WOOD OF MOROIS

They wandered in the depths of the wild wood, restless and in haste
like beasts that are hunted, nor did they often dare to return by
night to the shelter of yesterday. They ate but the flesh of wild
animals. Their faces sank and grew white, their clothes ragged; for
the briars tore them. They loved each other and they did not know that
they suffered.

One day, as they were wandering in these high woods that had never yet
been felled or ordered, they came upon the hermitage of Ogrin.

The old man limped in the sunlight under a light growth of maples near
his chapel: he leant upon his crutch, and cried:

“Lord Tristan, hear the great oath which the Cornish men have sworn.
The King has published a ban in every parish: Whosoever may seize you
shall receive a hundred marks of gold for his guerdon, and all the
barons have sworn to give you up alive or dead. Do penance, Tristan!
God pardons the sinner who turns to repentance.”

“And of what should I repent, Ogrin, my lord? Or of what crime? You
that sit in judgment upon us here, do you know what cup it was we
drank upon the high sea? That good, great draught inebriates us both.
I would rather beg my life long and live of roots and herbs with
Iseult than, lacking her, be king of a wide kingdom.”

“God aid you, Lord Tristan; for you have lost both this world and the
next. A man that is traitor to his lord is worthy to be torn by horses
and burnt upon the faggot, and wherever his ashes fall no grass shall
grow and all tillage is waste, and the trees and the green things die.
Lord Tristan, give back the Queen to the man who espoused her lawfully
according to the laws of Rome.”

“He gave her to his lepers. From these lepers I myself conquered her
with my own hand; and henceforth she is altogether mine. She cannot
pass from me nor I from her.”

Ogrin sat down; but at his feet Iseult, her head upon the knees of
that man of God, wept silently. The hermit told her and re-told her
the words of his holy book, but still while she wept she shook her
head, and refused the faith he offered.

“Ah me,” said Ogrin then, “what comfort can one give the dead? Do
penance, Tristan, for a man who lives in sin without repenting is a
man quite dead.”

“Oh no,” said Tristan, “I live and I do no penance. We will go back
into the high wood which comforts and wards us all round about. Come
with me, Iseult, my friend.”

Iseult rose up; they held each other’s hands. They passed into the
high grass and the underwood: the trees hid them with their branches.
They disappeared beyond the leaves.

The summer passed and the winter came: the two lovers lived, all
hidden in the hollow of a rock, and on the frozen earth the cold
crisped their couch with dead leaves. In the strength of their love
neither one nor the other felt these mortal things. But when the open
skies had come back with the springtime, they built a hut of green
branches under the great trees. Tristan had known, ever since his
childhood, that art by which a man may sing the song of birds in the
woods, and at his fancy, he would call as call the thrush, the
blackbird and the nightingale, and all winged things; and sometimes in
reply very many birds would come on to the branches of his hut and
sing their song full-throated in the new light.

The lovers had ceased to wander through the forest, for none of the
barons ran the risk of their pursuit knowing well that Tristan would
have hanged them to the branches of a tree. One day, however, one of
the four traitors, Guenelon, whom God blast! drawn by the heat of the
hunt, dared enter the Morois. And that morning, on the forest edge in
a ravine, Gorvenal, having unsaddled his horse, had let him graze on
the new grass, while far off in their hut Tristan held the Queen, and
they slept. Then suddenly Gorvenal heard the cry of the pack; the
hounds pursued a deer, which fell into that ravine. And far on the
heath the hunter showed — and Gorvenal knew him for the man whom his
master hated above all. Alone, with bloody spurs, and striking his
horse’s mane, he galloped on; but Gorvenal watched him from ambush: he
came fast, he would return more slowly. He passed and Gorvenal leapt
from his ambush and seized the rein and, suddenly, remembering all the
wrong that man had done, hewed him to death and carried off his head
in his hands. And when the hunters found the body, as they followed,
they thought Tristan came after and they fled in fear of death, and
thereafter no man hunted in that wood. And far off, in the hut upon
their couch of leaves, slept Tristan and the Queen.

There came Gorvenal, noiseless, the dead man’s head in his hands that
he might lift his master’s heart at his awakening. He hung it by its
hair outside the hut, and the leaves garlanded it about. Tristan woke
and saw it, half hidden in the leaves, and staring at him as he gazed,
and he became afraid. But Gorvenal said: “Fear not, he is dead. I
killed him with this sword.”

Then Tristan was glad, and henceforward from that day no one dared
enter the wild wood, for terror guarded it and the lovers were lords
of it all: and then it was that Tristan fashioned his bow “Failnaught”
which struck home always, man or beast, whatever it aimed at.

My lords, upon a summer day, when mowing is, a little after
Whitsuntide, as the birds sang dawn Tristan left his hut and girt his
sword on him, and took his bow “Failnaught” and went off to hunt in
the wood; but before evening, great evil was to fall on him, for no
lovers ever loved so much or paid their love so dear.

When Tristan came back, broken by the heat, the Queen said

“Friend, where have you been?”

“Hunting a hart,” he said, “that wearied me. I would lie down and
sleep.”

So she lay down, and he, and between them Tristan put his naked sword,
and on the Queen’s finger was that ring of gold with emeralds set
therein, which Mark had given her on her bridal day; but her hand was
so wasted that the ring hardly held. And no wind blew, and no leaves
stirred, but through a crevice in the branches a sunbeam fell upon the
face of Iseult and it shone white like ice. Now a woodman found in the
wood a place where the leaves were crushed, where the lovers had
halted and slept, and he followed their track and found the hut, and
saw them sleeping and fled off, fearing the terrible awakening of that
lord. He fled to Tintagel, and going up the stairs of the palace,
found the King as he held his pleas in hall amid the vassals
assembled.

“Friend,” said the King, “what came you hither to seek in haste and
breathless, like a huntsman that has followed the dogs afoot? Have you
some wrong to right, or has any man driven you?”

But the woodman took him aside and said low down:

“I have seen the Queen and Tristan, and I feared and fled.”

“Where saw you them?”

“In a hut in Morois, they slept side by side. Come swiftly and take
your vengeance.”

“Go,” said the King, “and await me at the forest edge where the red
cross stands, and tell no man what you have seen. You shall have gold
and silver at your will.”

The King had saddled his horse and girt his sword and left the city
alone, and as he rode alone he minded him of the night when he had
seen Tristan under the great pine-tree, and Iseult with her clear
face, and he thought:

“If I find them I will avenge this awful wrong.”

At the foot of the red cross he came to the woodman and said:

“Go first, and lead me straight and quickly.”

The dark shade of the great trees wrapt them round, and as the King
followed the spy he felt his sword, and trusted it for the great blows
it had struck of old; and surely had Tristan wakened, one of the two
had stayed there dead. Then the woodman said:

“King, we are near.”

He held the stirrup, and tied the rein to a green apple-tree, and saw
in a sunlit glade the hut with its flowers and leaves. Then the King
cast his cloak with its fine buckle of gold and drew his sword from
its sheath and said again in his heart that they or he should die. And
he signed to the woodman to be gone.

He came alone into the hut, sword bare, and watched them as they lay:
but he saw that they were apart, and he wondered because between them
was the naked blade.

Then he said to himself: “My God, I may not kill them. For all the
time they have lived together in this wood, these two lovers, yet is
the sword here between them, and throughout Christendom men know that
sign. Therefore I will not slay, for that would be treason and wrong,
but I will do so that when they wake they may know that I found them
here, asleep, and spared them and that God had pity on them both.”

And still the sunbeam fell upon the white face of Iseult, and the King
took his ermined gloves and put them up against the crevice whence it
shone.

Then in her sleep a vision came to Iseult. She seemed to be in a great
wood and two lions near her fought for her, and she gave a cry and
woke, and the gloves fell upon her breast; and at the cry Tristan
woke, and made to seize his sword, and saw by the golden hilt that it
was the King’s. And the Queen saw on her finger the King’s ring, and
she cried:

“O, my lord, the King has found us here!”

And Tristan said:

“He has taken my sword; he was alone, but he will return, and will
burn us before the people. Let us fly.”

So by great marches with Gorvenal alone they fled towards Wales.

OGRIN THE HERMIT

After three days it happened that Tristan, in following a wounded deer
far out into the wood, was caught by night-fall, and took to thinking
thus under the dark wood alone:

“It was not fear that moved the King … he had my sword and I slept …
and had he wished to slay, why did he leave me his own blade? … O, my
father, my father, I know you now. There was pardon in your heart, and
tenderness and pity … yet how was that, for who could forgive in this
matter without shame? … It was not pardon it was understanding; the
faggot and the chantry leap and the leper ambush have shown him God
upon our side. Also I think he remembered the boy who long ago harped
at his feet, and my land of Lyonesse which I left for him; the
Morholt’s spear and blood shed in his honour. He remembered how I made
no avowal, but claimed a trial at arms, and the high nature of his
heart has made him understand what men around him cannot; never can he
know of the spell, yet he doubts and hopes and knows I have told no
lie, and would have me prove my cause. O, but to win at arms by God’s
aid for him, and to enter his peace and to put on mail for him again …
but then he must take her back, and I must yield her … it would have
been much better had he killed me in my sleep. For till now I was
hunted and I could hate and forget; he had thrown Iseult to the
lepers, she was no more his, but mine; and now by his compassion he
has wakened my heart and regained the Queen. For Queen she was at his
side, but in this wood she lives a slave, and I waste her youth; and
for rooms all hung with silk she has this savage place, and a hut for
her splendid walls, and I am the cause that she treads this ugly road.
So now I cry to God the Lord, who is King of the world, and beg Him to
give me strength to yield back Iseult to King Mark; for she is indeed
his wife, wed according to the laws of Rome before all the Barony of
his land.”

And as he thought thus, he leant upon his bow, and all through the
night considered his sorrow.

Within the hollow of thorns that was their resting-place Iseult the
Fair awaited Tristan’s return. The golden ring that King Mark had
slipped there glistened on her finger in the moonlight, and she
thought:

“He that put on this ring is not the man who threw me to his lepers in
his wrath; he is rather that compassionate lord who, from the day I
touched his shore, received me and protected. And he loved Tristan
once, but I came, and see what I have done! He should have lived in
the King’s palace; he should have ridden through King’s and baron’s
fees, finding adventure; but through me he has forgotten his
knighthood, and is hunted and exiled from the court, leading a random
life. …”

Just then she heard the feet of Tristan coming over the dead leaves
and twigs. She came to meet him, as was her wont, to relieve him of
his arms, and she took from him his bow, “Failnaught,” and his arrows,
and she unbuckled his sword-straps. And, “Friend,” said he, “it is the
King’s sword. It should have slain, but it spared us.”

Iseult took the sword, and kissed the hilt of gold, and Tristan saw
her weeping.

“Friend,” said he, “if I could make my peace with the King; if he
would allow me to sustain in arms that neither by act nor word have I
loved you with a wrongful love, any knight from the Marshes of Ely
right away to Dureaume that would gainsay me, would find me armed in
the ring.