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.