Arthur Rex (20 page)

Then Frocin rose upon his feet, saying, “Sire, herewith an epithalamium of my own invention:

All brides are true—

Sing cuckoo!

Isold’s eyes are blue—

Sing cuckoo!

A stag is
cornu
—

Sing cuckoo!”

“Bloody little bugger!” said the king in genial abuse. “There’s bad rhyme in thy song and no reason. I shall have thee whipped, not wreathed, with laurel.” But in truth he found Frocin an entertaining fellow and he called him to the bedside, but the dwarf’s head rose not so far as the level of the sheets, and therefore he could not see what the king was pointing to thereupon.

“Wert thou taller, thou couldst see,” said the king detestably, “the spoor of an Irish cat, late wild but now domesticated.”

“Methinks,” said the vile Frocin, “that after it was wounded it leaped from the window and clambered down the vines to the garden.” He indicated the trail of bloodstains that did lead from bed to the embrasure of the window, the which had been dropped by Sir Tristram from his rose-torn hands on his entry the night before.

Now Mark did leap from bed and trace these, but he could provide no explanation for them.

Therefore said Frocin, smirking evilly, “Sire, did you see your nephew Sir Tristram in this chamber less than an hour ago?” And of course King Mark had not. Then the dwarf told him of watching Tristram’s descent on the vines.

“This I can not understand at all,” said King Mark. “Unless it be that my nephew did visit the loyal Brangwain, taking this route, but he is a very handsome knight who might have any lady (except one) in the castle, whereas Brangwain hath the face of a sheep.” And he did not tell Frocin that he suspected Tristram of being a capon, for he knew the dwarf for a malicious gossip.

“Did you never close your eyes all night?” asked Frocin.

And divining his meaning, King Mark said, “Thine innuendo, loathsome dwarf, will cause thy skin to be flayed off and stretched to dry upon a wall. Sir Tristram is the knight of most worship in all of Cornwall, as the queen is the most virtuous lady.” And he was about to call for his guards to take Frocin to the torture chamber, where had been installed an Iron Maiden the which Mark had got from the Saxons, who had brought it from Germany, when the dwarf said to him, “Sire, have you reflected upon the inordinate long time it did take Sir Tristram to bring La Belle Isold across the Irish Sea?”

And though this time had not been unduly long, men are easily made suspicious in the degree to which they know carnal passion. Therefore King Mark began to have the beginnings of a doubt.

“Truly,” said he, “I have some vague memory of a dream, in which I seemed to be locked within a closet, next a close-stool which had not been slopped out and stank dreadfully. Therefore I must have slept, if only briefly. Still, the tongue with which thou speakest this evil will be cut out, unless thou canst provide more evidence of my betrayal.”

“Then pray spare my skin until tomorrow,” said Frocin, “for tonight I shall collect what you require.”

And King Mark granted this request, for it was true that the vile little man had previously furnished him much information that had been damaging to his barons and knights, and all of it had proved correct when the persons accused had been put into the rack and pulled apart, for God had not saved any of them at this time, as He would have done had they been innocent.

Now all that day the king did watch to see whether La Belle Isold and Sir Tristram behaved towards each other in a peculiar way that would suggest they had been illicit bedfellows, but he saw nothing untowards in the manner of either. And when he spake privately to the queen, asking her for her opinion of his nephew, Isold said, “I must accept him as your relation, and as the first knight of Cornwall, but never can I have fondness for him, for he did kill mine uncle the Morholt.”

Reassured by this, Mark did plead the case of Tristram, saying, “My dear Isold, thy father himself hath forgiven Tristram, who triumphed in a fair fight, and the Morholt was the very brother of Anguish, a much closer tie than thine.”

“My lord,” saith Isold, “if you love me, do not mention to me the name of this knight unduly, whom I purpose to avoid.”

Therefore King Mark was very happy with his wife, though he pretended to be distressed in complying with her wishes. And he was also pleased with the prospect of submitting Frocin to the torture and determining whether his Iron Maiden would perform effectively on a dwarf, for though he made use of Frocin’s intelligences and found him entertaining, he would enjoy even more causing such a tiny man to suffer intense pain with the sanction Heaven doth give for the correction of liars.

Now when night came King Mark conducted La Belle Isold into their chamber, but before he joined her in bed he went to the closet for to bog into the stool there, and he seemed to remember it as the place he had seen in his dream the night before, and he was some vexed by the suspicion that he had sleepwalked there during the preceding night, as one sometimes does when nocturnally going to void urine, and there lingered unduly, dozing, while his nephew stole in and performed the uncle’s office ’twixt the sheets with the aunt. O unnatural lese-majestical incestuous act!

But then wiping his breech he emerged from the closet and saw the beautiful Isold, her sable hair spread over the white satin pillow, and he could believe her the cause of no evil that could come to him.

And she smiled beautifully and gave him a goblet, saying, “My lord, the loyal Brangwain, who is an adept in white-witchery, hath concocted for us an aphrodisiacal potion, the which causes an increase in the passionate humors and, more, their long endurance.”

And King Mark did grasp this goblet and gulp down the contents thereof, for he was not young, whereas his queen was but a girl, and in truth he did wonder, what with his memory of the preceding night, whether he could stand so soon again to the occasion, for all the ardency of his brain.

Now he had hardly swallowed the potion when he fell fast asleep, on seeing which La Belle Isold did go out upon the balcony and signal with a lighted lamp to Sir Tristram, who awaited in the garden below, and he began to mount the vines. But whilst he was climbing, Isold returned to the bedchamber and, to spare her lover the work of removing the king’s body to the closet, she summoned the robust Brangwain to do this job.

Meanwhile the vile Frocin, who had concealed his tiny body in the shadows of the balcony, did sprinkle flour onto the railing there and also upon the floor, and when Tristram arrived he did unwittingly make marks in it with his hands and boots.

Now Tristram and Isold did have their joy together until the coming of the dawn, and in the morning he departed, and Brangwain returned King Mark to the bed, where once again he awoke with the assumption that he had exerted himself all the night in the labors of Venus, which art their own reward, and he supposed he should soon have the further pleasure of torturing Frocin for his malicious prevarications.

Therefore so soon as Isold had gone away, he summoned to him the vile dwarf, saying, “Sirrah, prepare for thine agonies, for I did lie here all the night, not leaving bed at all, and therefore thou shalt die horribly for thy libels against the queen and my nephew.”

But Frocin said, “Then what explanation for these footprints in the flour?” And he pointed to the traces of white on the carpet, and then led King Mark onto the balcony, to show him its floor and the railing. But a strong wind had come up during the night, the which had blown away the loose flour, and then some rain had fallen which dampened that which remained and made little particles of dough from it.

And looking at these King Mark said, “Caitiff, this is but the turd of birds. Beg God quickly to bring thee the balm of death, for I shall have thy tiny testes torn away with hot pincers.”

“Hold you, for the love of Christ,” cried Frocin. “If I take these pellets to the kitchens and have them baked into tiny biscuits, shall I have proved they are never avian mards but rather dough-balls, rolled by wind and rain from the flour I sprinkled here to show the spoor of adultery?”

Now King Mark was frustrated, certes, and perplexed as well. “Whoever did or did not creep here, I lay within that bed all the night.”

“Sire,” said Frocin, “may I suggest the possibility of your being captive of a spell?”

“Worked by whom?” asked the king. “For certainly La Belle Isold doth not have demoniac powers, and I was near no other person.” But then he remembered the potion he had drunk, and also that Brangwain was an adept in white magic, but perhaps it was rather black, for the white came from God and could never be used to the detriment of a king. Therefore once again he had sufficient doubt to stay the torture of Frocin, and when the dwarf returned with the pellets of dough baked into little cakes, proving they were not the shit of birds, his suspicion burgeoned, and as to the traces of white on the carpet of the chamber, which came to and fro between bed and window, he was no longer certain they had their source in the Arabic powders used by Isold to dust her soft body.

So when Frocin begged his leave to prepare another trap, he agreed. But he said, “Yet if they are so cunning as somehow to have fooled me when I was here all the night, I have the paradoxical sense that I can never catch them at it unless I go away!”

“Or to pretend to, Sire,” said Frocin, “while actually watching from a place of concealment.”

Therefore did King Mark announce to all the court that day that he would leave before noon for to go boar-sticking in a remote forest and not to return to Tintagel until the following day. And with a great entourage he left, but he had not gone far beyond the horizon when he ordered them to halt and make camp, and he secretly returned to the castle, where in the subterranean dungeons he pleasantly passed the day in watching the punishment of malefactors, his presence there unsuspected by La Belle Isold and Sir Tristram, who as ever maintained only polite relations during the day if indeed their paths crossed at all.

But Frocin went to him who but for Tristram would have been the foremost knight of Cornwall, Sir Andret, and knowing he suffered great envy, said to him, “My lord, there is a game afoot the issue of which will mean the ruin of all who now have worship: not only Sir Tristram and our Queen Isold, but King Mark as well. For the first two will this night be proved foul adulterers, and when Mark discovers that his kicky-wicky doth bed with his nephew, he will order her burned at the stake. Sir Tristram will never suffer this, but will kill the king, whose other knights, restrained by you, will not defend him until he is well dead. Then you shall run Tristram through from behind, while he is distracted. You may then take the crown for yourself, and if you wish, La Belle Isold.”

But this Andret, who was secretly a vile sodomite (which Frocin knew), did never lust for Isold, and also he was suspicious of the loathsome Frocin, of whom he worried that he might espy him with his varlets and report this impious perversity to King Mark. Therefore he asked, “And how would this profit thee, shameful dwarf?”

“You would perhaps reward me for making you king,” said Frocin, “and you would rely on my subsequent intelligences to make your crown secure, so that treachery of the kind that we practiced against King Mark could never be performed by others against you.”

Now Sir Andret pretended to agree with this plan, but privately he did intend to kill Frocin as well, for never could a dwarf be trusted.

And as for Frocin, he made the same suggestion to three other knights: Denoalen, Guenelon, and Gondoïne, with the difference that to each he gave the plan to kill the man who came before him, so that Andret would run Tristram through; then Denoalen would kill Andret; Guenelon, Denoalen; and finally Gondoine would thrust his sword to the hilt between the shoulders of Guenelon. Thus would Frocin rid Cornwall of all its foremost knights but one, and then he would poison him, and so ruin the country absolutely for persons of normal size, and become himself the first dwarf-king in the British island, for of an evil race he was the evilest. (And the only good dwarf was the one who guarded King Arthur’s treasure at Caerleon, who could turn into a dragon, and who was in the service of the Lady of the Lake.)

Now when night fell, though he believed that King Mark was gone away, Sir Tristram went towards Isold’s balcony using his old route through the garden, for it would never do for anyone to see him in her hallway within the castle. And as he approached the wall the previously cloudy heavens opened to admit the light of a full moon, and though it was a windless night, a leaf fell from an oak in this light and looking aloft Tristram saw from behind a crouching figure on a high branch which did command a view of Isold’s chamber.

And believing this to be a wretch who was up to no good, Sir Tristram shook the branch violently, and the king fell down to the ground and was knocked senseless, and not knowing who he was, for the moon went behind a cloud again, Tristram tied him fast with the king’s own belt and threw him behind a bush, and then he mounted to the chamber of La Belle Isold, where he stayed till dawn.

Therefore the king was unconscious for another night, and when he awakened in the morning it was after Tristram had gone away through the garden, forgetting him in his transports of remembered bliss. And Mark did cry out for some hours before he was found and released by his gardeners, who thinking he was gone boar-sticking were malingerers.

Now, sore and dirty, he summoned to him the vile Frocin and would have sent him to torture had not the malicious dwarf blamed this latest miscarriage on Sir Andret, whom he did call a sodomite and traitor.

And King Mark swore a terrible oath, crying out in chagrin whether there was anyone he could trust? And a young page was there, who was one of Sir Andret’s male harlots, and he stole away to Andret and reported this to that knight, who thereupon fled from that land. Therefore Guenelon became the second knight of Cornwall, and you can be sure he hated Tristram for being first, and conspiring with Frocin he did make many plans to discredit Sir Tristram, but they were all frustrated by God for a long time, for He doth not always permit the punishment of some sinners by others more evil, and He allowed Sir Tristram and La Belle Isold to enjoy their stolen love for many a year before demanding from them a grievous payment.