Arthur Rex (48 page)

“Aye,” agreed Kaherdin, “that can I do, for my ship hath two different sets of mainsail, one in white and the other in black. Now when approaching the coast of Lesser Britain it shall show the white if Isold be aboard.”

“And the black if not,” said Sir Tristram, and he fell back onto his pillow.

“But that is surely unlikely,” said Kaherdin. “Thou must be of good cheer.” And soon he left to travel to Cornwall.

And Tristram was carried to his stone on the cliff which looked onto the sea, and a pavilion was erected there to protect him from the weather when it was foul. And there he lay on his bed and he watched the horizon all day. And Isold of the White Hands attended him, and she knew only that he awaited the coming of a physician, but she knew not who that physician was.

Now when Kaherdin reached the castle of Terrabil in Cornwall and came to Queen Isold and told her that Sir Tristram would surely die unless she came to treat him, she agreed to leave for Brittany immediately. And King Mark gave his hearty assent to this journey, for he grieved greatly for his nephew.

And La Belle Isold and Kaherdin began the return voyage, and with them they took the loyal Brangwain, who as we know was the source of the curative ointments and potions used by La Belle Isold to heal wounds (and also, alas! to drink and so to fall eternally in love).

Now Kaherdin was pleased to be near Brangwain, whom he loved greatly, and in return that loyal handmaiden, who had never expected to attract a prince (or indeed any other man) and who had adored Sir Tristram at a distance, was not long in falling in love with Kaherdin, who was a handsome man as well as the ruler of Lesser Britain. And were they not on a desperate mission they would have made greater joy together at this time.

Meanwhile Sir Tristram did weaken throughout the many days Kaherdin was gone, and finally his vision darkened so that he could not have discerned a sail had it appeared upon the horizon. And therefore he asked Isold of the White Hands to watch for him through a spyglass, and to tell him, so soon as a ship came into view, what be the color of its sail.

And his wife Isold promised to do this. But she asked him as to the significance of the respective colors.

“If white, I live, at least for a while,” said Sir Tristram. “But if the sail be black, I am dead.”

But Isold of the White Hands believed she still did not understand this scheme, and she questioned him further, and he was so weak that he fell into a delirium, in the which he came to take her for La Belle Isold at the time when they had been together in the wilds, and he spoke with great passion, and at length Isold of the White Hands came to know the truth in its entirety.

Now any truth concerning love is all but unbearable in the best of times, and to Isold of the White Hands, who had been gently reared and as yet had never been invaded by a man, the present moment was the worst in which she had ever lived. For she could have endured being an untouched bride had her husband been chaste for any other reason than that he could love only one other woman in the world.

And her great love for him turned into bitter hatred (for between these two feelings at no time is there the breadth of an hair). And when at last the ship appeared on the horizon and its sail was quite white, she put down her glass and she said to Sir Tristram, “The ship hath come, my lord.”

And hearing this Sir Tristram found the strength to raise his head and to take from her the spyglass and put it to his eye. But his vision was as of night and he could see nothing, and therefore he dropped the glass and fell back.

“Tell me for the love of God!” he cried. “Is it white, or is it black as death?”

And not knowing what she did in her hatred, for she was young and wounded in the heart, Isold of the White Hands spake but one harsh word to Tristram.

“Black,” she said, and she went away, for she did not think he would die through one word (but in truth she did not think of him at all, but rather of herself, after hearing that he loved another: for in love there is oft little mercy, which must be sought in loving-kindness or nowhere. And Sir Tristram himself, in leaving La Belle Isold because of his principles of honor, had been ruthless towards everybody concerned and he had brought unhappiness to all).

Now Isold of the White Hands was wrong in her doubt that one word could kill a man, and the heart of that great knight Sir Tristram of Lyonesse did burst when he heard her single word, and his life, the which had been so sad throughout, ended there and then.

And when the ship came into the harbor and La Belle Isold and Kaherdin and Brangwain had climbed up the cliff, they found the corse of Sir Tristram, and his dear physician had arrived only to bury him.

And when Sir Tristram had been lowered into the grave La Belle Isold suddenly stopped weeping, for her grief was too much for tears to express, and then she died herself on the instant, and her body was laid with Tristram’s and at last they were together eternally.

And when the earth was thrown onto the bodies, La Belle Isold was seen miraculously to be transformed again into a young maiden with hair of raven-black and cheeks of rose.

Now watching this, young Isold of the White Hands lost all of her hatred, and she might well have gone mad with grief at what she had done had she not been so pious, for God never intended that Sir Tristram should be made well upon earth, let alone happy, and in using Isold of the White Hands as His instrument He would not demand the loss of her reason as penance. Therefore she entered an holy order, and immured herself in a convent for the rest of her life, doing many good works, and she lived to a great age, but from the time of Tristram’s death on, though she was but seventeen when that happened, her hair was white and her skin turned yellow and withered, so that she seemed much older.

Yet one happy thing did result from the sad love of Sir Tristram and La Belle Isold. For after the period of mourning had passed, the noble Kaherdin took the loyal Brangwain as his wife, and they lived together happily thereafter.

But as for King Mark of Cornwall, who had become a good king for a while, when he heard of the deaths of his queen and his nephew he first made the greatest grief, but then he came to reflect that being kind and decent had had no effect on the events of his life, and he waxed greatly bitter about this. And therefore he henceforth determined to be bad again, for he was alone in the world now and to be good by himself, with no intimates to share his virtue, did bore him, and he began to reign in a very cruel manner once more.

And you can be sure that King Arthur would have punished him had he known about this, but he did not. For King Arthur could think of nothing but the quest for the Holy Grail, which he had decided was to be the true work of the Round Table, and one by one he sent all of his knights upon it.

N
OW WHEN WE LEFT SIR
Launcelot he was living like a beast in the wild, and though he had lost his weapons and armor he was yet the most formidable man in the world, and when he was attacked by lions and boars and great serpents he destroyed them with his bare hands or he crushed them with great trees which he tore up by the roots, and then he ate these creatures raw. And it may well have been that, as some have written, he did lose his reason for a while, yet never could he forget Guinevere, in which feeling he was like Tristram with regard to Isold, but also he hated Guinevere for evoking it from him, whereas Sir Tristram did never hold hatred in his heart for anybody.

Now not even the great Launcelot had the kind of constitution which would sustain him in this sort of life forever, and eventually he fell into a faint on the floor of the forest and he lay there so long that the dead leaves of autumn did cover him up and then the first snows of winter, and no doubt he would have been dead by Christmas had not a party of poachers come there, looking for a bear in hibernation, the which they might unearth while he lay helplessly sleeping and take him captive and sell him to be tortured for the public entertainment of children at Yuletide, than which nothing would provide more merriment, especially when the savage beast had been blinded and was then whipped while bound in chains.

And these poachers coming where Launcelot lay saw steam arising from the mound of snow-covered leaves, and believing it was an hibernating bear, they quietly uncovered it and threw a net upon it and dragged it along for some distance through the snow before they knew it for a man, so long had his hair grown and his fingernails, and his skin was black with filth.

But when they determined his proper breed they took him for a detestable felon who had been hiding there to elude punishment for his misdeeds, and therefore they carried him to the castle of the king of that country, who was named Pelles, and they hoped to be rewarded for his capture. And Sir Launcelot being very ill could not speak during this time.

Now the guards on the gate of the castle relieved the poachers of Sir Launcelot and they cast him into a dungeon. And when the poachers asked for their reward these guards said, “With pleasure,” and they beat these men with sticks until they ran away.

And King Pelles, who was maimed and lay upon a bed always, was not told of this, and therefore Sir Launcelot might have died in the dungeon, where he lay forgotten by all, had not King Pelles had a fair daughter who did kind things at all times but especially in the season of Christmas, when she took warm clothing and sweetmeats to the poor wretches who were imprisoned.

And therefore after Mass on Christmas Day she descended to the dungeons beneath the castle, and there she found Sir Launcelot, who was covered with filth and hair and unconscious. But being a princess she could see that he was too fine a man underneath the filth to be a criminal, and therefore she had him brought out of that dungeon and carried to a chamber in the castle, where he was washed and shaved and put into costly clothing. And then though he was very pale and thin he was very handsome, and this princess fell in love with him, and her name was Elaine.

And so it came about that another Elaine was to save his life, for that is what this princess did, and she cared for him and she fed him from her hand for many days, and finally he was able to speak in a murmur though he still did not come awake.

And what he said was the name of Guinevere.

Now Elaine went to her ladies-in-waiting and she asked them had they ever in their lives heard the name Guinevere, and they all said surely it was the name of King Arthur’s queen.

“Indeed it is,” said the fair Elaine, “but is it the name of anyone else as well?”

But they none of them had heard of anybody else with that name in all the world, and they all believed it unique unto that noted queen (which it was, unlike Elaine, the name of this princess and also the dead maid of Astolat and the third half-sister of King Arthur, who was a good woman and did keep to her wifely duties and was never heard from in an ill way).

Therefore Princess Elaine returned to the sick knight, and to him she asked, “And what of Guinevere?”

And Sir Launcelot, who was not yet awake and in his right mind, said, “Alas! She is loved criminally by Launcelot.”

And Elaine was therefore the first noble person to know of this illegal love (though it was well known to the base). But at this time she still did not know who this knight might be, for it was possible that he was a man so shocked by knowing of the love between Guinevere and Launcelot that he spake of it in his sleep-of-illness, for he looked to be a knight of the most austere virtue and when he spake the name of the queen he did not do so in tenderness.

And when he finally came to full consciousness in the succeeding days Sir Launcelot did not tell to Princess Elaine his true name, for he was full of shame when he learned of how he had been found and brought to the castle, and he called himself Sansloy. And when he talked with Elaine it was of piety. And therefore she did not believe that he was Sir Launcelot, and she did not wish to believe it, for she wanted his love for herself.

But it was again as it had been with the maid of Astolat (and as it would have been with any other woman named Elaine or indeed anyone else except Guinevere), for Launcelot had no interest in her as a woman, whilst her love for him grew ever stronger. And he returned her look of adoration with but distant kindliness, and she had the feeling that if she replaced herself at his bedside with any of her ladies-in-waiting Sir Launcelot would not have noticed the change.

And when at length he was fully cured he asked to see King Pelles, to thank him for his hospitality, and Elaine took him to the room where the king used a bed as his throne, for he had been maimed for many years and never could walk.

“Royal Pelles,” said Sir Launcelot to this maimed king, “I thank you for the care I have been given at your castle. Obviously you are a king of great worship.”

“Well,” said King Pelles from his bed, “as decent folk we offer succor to any man of virtue in distress, but never have I seen such a fine-looking knight as thee! Methinks thou art of King Arthur’s Round Table. And what is thy name?”

“Sansloy,” said Sir Launcelot.

“And dost have a question for me, Sir Sansloy?” asked King Pelles, and shifting his position slightly on the bed he did wince painfully, for his old wound had never healed.

“I do, Majesty,” said Launcelot. “I would know the names of the maids who attended me, so that I might reward them when my circumstances have improved. At the moment I have nought, having even lost mine armor and my weapons, and the clothes I wear were given me here.”

Now King Pelles did look unhappy for a moment. “Alas!” said he, “’tis not the question that would cure me, I fear. But thine is easy enough to answer: these maids which to thee in thy delirium have seemed many, are in truth but one, and she is my daughter the princess Elaine.”

Now it can be imagined how disappointed was Elaine to hear that this knight had never distinguished her as being unique, when she loved him with all her heart. But this Elaine was of quite another character than the poor maid of Astolat (perhaps because she was a princess), and she determined to make her mark upon Sir Sansloy, though as yet she did not know how.