The Romance of Tristan and Iseult Part 6

?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.?

?G.o.d 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 f.a.ggot, and wherever his ashes fall no gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s from me nor I from her.?

Ogrin sat down; but at his feet Iseult, her head upon the knees of that man of G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed into the high gra.s.s and the underwood: the trees hid them with their branches.

They disappeared beyond the leaves.

The summer pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 gra.s.s, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sed 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 va.s.sals a.s.sembled.

?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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 f.a.ggot and the chantry leap and the leper ambush have shown him G.o.d 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 G.o.d?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 compa.s.sion 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 G.o.d 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 compa.s.sionate lord who, from the day I touched his sh.o.r.e, 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.?