When the day of Iseult’s livery to the Lords of Cornwall drew near,
her mother gathered herbs and flowers and roots and steeped them in
wine, and brewed a potion of might, and having done so, said apart to
Brangien:
“Child, it is yours to go with Iseult to King Mark’s country, for you
love her with a faithful love. Take then this pitcher and remember
well my words. Hide it so that no eye shall see nor no lip go near it:
but when the wedding night has come and that moment in which the
wedded are left alone, pour this essenced wine into a cup and offer it
to King Mark and to Iseult his queen. Oh! Take all care, my child,
that they alone shall taste this brew. For this is its power: they who
drink of it together love each other with their every single sense and
with their every thought, forever, in life and in death.”
And Brangien promised the Queen that she would do her bidding.
On the bark that bore her to Tintagel Iseult the Fair was weeping as
she remembered her own land, and mourning swelled her heart, and she
said, “Who am I that I should leave you to follow unknown men, my
mother and my land? Accursed be the sea that bears me, for rather
would I lie dead on the earth where I was born than live out there,
beyond. …
One day when the wind had fallen and the sails hung slack Tristan
dropped anchor by an Island and the hundred knights of Cornwall and
the sailors, weary of the sea, landed all. Iseult alone remained
aboard and a little serving maid, when Tristan came near the Queen to
calm her sorrow. The sun was hot above them and they were athirst and,
as they called, the little maid looked about for drink for them and
found that pitcher which the mother of Iseult had given into
Brangien’s keeping. And when she came on it, the child cried, “I have
found you wine!” Now she had found not wine — but Passion and Joy most
sharp, and Anguish without end, and Death.
The Queen drank deep of that draught and gave it to Tristan and he
drank also long and emptied it all.
Brangien came in upon them; she saw them gazing at each other in
silence as though ravished and apart; she saw before them the pitcher
standing there; she snatched it up and cast it into the shuddering sea
and cried aloud: “Cursed be the day I was born and cursed the day that
first I trod this deck. Iseult, my friend, and Tristan, you, you have
drunk death together.”
And once more the bark ran free for Tintagel. But it seemed to Tristan
as though an ardent briar, sharp-thorned but with flower most sweet
smelling, drave roots into his blood and laced the lovely body of
Iseult all round about it and bound it to his own and to his every
thought and desire. And he thought, “Felons, that charged me with
coveting King Mark’s land, I have come lower by far, for it is not his
land I covet. Fair uncle, who loved me orphaned ere ever you knew in
me the blood of your sister Blanchefleur, you that wept as you bore me
to that boat alone, why did you not drive out the boy that was to
betray you? Ah! What thought was that! Iseult is yours and I am but
your vassal; Iseult is yours and I am your son; Iseult is yours and
may not love me.”
But Iseult loved him, though she would have hated. She could not hate,
for a tenderness more sharp than hatred tore her.
And Brangien watched them in anguish, suffering more cruelly because
she alone knew the depth of evil done.
Two days she watched them, seeing them refuse all food or comfort and
seeking each other as blind men seek, wretched apart and together more
wretched still, for then they trembled each for the first avowal.
On the third day, as Tristan neared the tent on deck where Iseult sat,
she saw him coming and she said to him, very humbly, “Come in, my
lord.”
“Queen,” said Tristan, “why do you call me lord? Am I not your liege
and vassal, to revere and serve and cherish you as my lady and Queen?”
But Iseult answered, “No, you know that you are my lord and my master,
and I your slave. Ah, why did I not sharpen those wounds of the
wounded singer, or let die that dragon-slayer in the grasses of the
marsh? But then I did not know what now I know!”
“And what is it that you know, Iseult?”
She laid her arm upon Tristan’s shoulder, the light of her eyes was
drowned and her lips trembled.
“The love of you,” she said. Whereat he put his lips to hers.
But as they thus tasted their first joy, Brangien, that watched them,
stretched her arms and cried at their feet in tears:
“Stay and return if still you can … But oh! that path has no
returning. For already Love and his strength drag you on and now
henceforth forever never shall you know joy without pain again. The
wine possesses you, the draught your mother gave me, the draught the
King alone should have drunk with you: but that old Enemy has tricked
us, all us three; friend Tristan, Iseult my friend, for that bad ward
I kept take here my body and my life, for through me and in that cup
you have drunk not love alone, but love and death together.”
The lovers held each other; life and desire trembled through their
youth, and Tristan said, “Well then, come Death.”
And as evening fell, upon the bark that heeled and ran to King Mark’s
land, they gave themselves up utterly to love.