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.