Tristan et Iseut

My lords, does it please you to hear a beautiful tale of love and death? In ancient times, King Mark reigned in Cornwall. His ally Rivalen, King of Lyonesse, had married his sister Blanchefleur at the minster of Tintagel, but war called him back to his distant land, where he fell beneath the blows of Duke Morgan. Blanchefleur, upon learning of his death, shed no tears: her limbs grew weak and vain, and for three days she awaited to join her dear lord. On the fourth day, she brought a son into the world, took him in her arms, named him Tristan because he came to earth through sadness, kissed him, and as soon as she had kissed him, she died.

Rohalt the Faith-Keeper took in the orphan, raised him as his own child, and entrusted him to the wise squire Gorvenal, who taught him the arts of the barons: the lance, the sword, the bow, harping, the huntsman's art, the hatred of falsehood, and the succor of the weak. Merchants from Norway lured Tristan onto their ship and carried him off as a fair prize, but the sea, which bears treacherous vessels with regret, rose up in fury and compelled them to set the boy on the shore. Tristan climbed the cliff, met King Mark's huntsmen, and, through the marvel of his hunting customs and his skill with the harp, won the king's heart without either knowing they were of the same blood. Three years passed thus, until the day Rohalt, crossing the sea, came to reveal their kinship: Tristan was Mark's nephew, the son of Blanchefleur. Knighted by his uncle, Tristan reconquered Lyonesse, slew his father's murderer, and then, out of nobility of heart, yielded his land to Rohalt and returned to serve Mark in Cornwall.

Now, the King of Ireland demanded a terrible tribute: every fourth year, three hundred youths and three hundred maidens, drawn by lot. The Morholt, a giant knight, came to deliver this challenge, and no baron dared take up his gage—none save Tristan, who knelt at the king's feet and demanded the battle. On the Isle of St. Samson, he pushed his boat with his foot back into the sea—what use were two boats, since only one of the two would return alive? No one saw the bitter combat, but at the ninth hour, the purple sail billowed out, and on the boat stood a knight, each fist raising a brandished sword: it was Tristan. His sword had been notched; a fragment of the blade remained lodged in the Morholt's skull. The delivered children waved green branches, but Tristan collapsed into Mark's arms, blood streaming from his wounds.

The Morholt's spear had poisoned him, and no remedy could save him. So odious a stench emanated from his wounds that all his friends fled him, all save Mark, Gorvenal, and Dinas of Lidan. Then Tristan had himself carried into a boat without oars or sail, his harp his only companion, and the sea bore him away. Seven days and seven nights he harped to soothe his distress, so much so that fishermen, hearing the melody skimming over the waves, thought it was the ship of Saint Brendan sailing toward the Fortunate Isles. They took him in—and the port where they brought him was Weisefort, in Ireland, and their lady was Iseult the Fair, niece of the Morholt, the only one who could heal him and the only one who desired his death. He passed himself off as a minstrel; she nursed him for forty days without recognizing him, and when the grace of youth began to return to his limbs, he fled and reappeared before Mark.

Four treacherous barons—Andret, Guenelon, Gondoine, and Denoalen—hated Tristan and urged the king to take a wife. Mark used cunning: he would only take the woman to whom belonged a golden hair brought by two swallows. Tristan recognized Iseult's hair, and to prove his loyal love to his uncle, he swore to bring her back or die in the quest. In Ireland, a dragon was ravaging the land; the king had promised Iseult to whoever slew it. Tristan confronted the monster, thrust his sword into its maw, and cleaved its heart in twain, but the venom from the tongue he had cut out struck him down in the marsh grasses. Iseult found him, tended to him once more, and discovered, while wiping the notched blade, that the fragment of steel previously drawn from her uncle's skull fitted it perfectly. She raised the great sword above her head, but Tristan, helpless in the bath, spoke so adroitly that she lowered her arm: he had not come to ravish her; he had come to seek her for King Mark, and two swallows had carried one of her golden hairs all the way to Tintagel. She kissed her guest on the lips in a token of peace.

Before the assembled barons of Ireland, Tristan confounded the cowardly seneschal who claimed to have slain the dragon, and he swore that Iseult would be the wedded wife of King Mark. Iseult trembled with shame and anguish: he who had conquered her disdained her; the beautiful tale of the golden hair was but a lie, and he was delivering her to another. Iseult's mother, before the departure, gathered herbs, flowers, and roots, infused them in wine, and brewed a potent draught which she entrusted to Brangien, the faithful handmaid: on the wedding night, she was to pour it for Mark and Iseult, for those who drank of it together would love each other with all their senses and all their thought, forever, in life and in death.

The ship cleaved the deep waves, and Iseult wept beneath her tent. One day, when the winds had fallen and the sun burned hot, Tristan came to her, and both asked for a drink. A little serving maid uncovered the flagon and cried out that she had found wine. It was not wine: it was passion, it was bitter joy and endless anguish, and death. Iseult drank deeply, then handed the goblet to Tristan, who drained it. Brangien, entering, saw the vessel almost empty, hurled it into the waves, and moaned that they had drunk their death. It seemed to Tristan that a living briar, with sharp thorns and fragrant flowers, drove its roots into the blood of his heart and bound his body and all his thought to the fair body of Iseult. For two days they sought each other like the blind, wretched when apart, more wretched still when together, trembling before the horror of the first avowal. On the third day, Iseult told him what tormented her—her love for him. He laid his lips upon hers. And as evening fell upon the ship bounding ever swifter toward King Mark's land, bound forever, they surrendered to love.

Mark married Iseult at Tintagel, and her beauty cast such a radiance that the walls were illuminated as if struck by the rising sun. Brangien took the queen's place in the nuptial bed to hide her dishonor. Iseult was queen and seemed to live in joy; Iseult was queen and lived in sorrow. The four felons prowled about, guessed the truth, and carried it to the king. Mark banished Tristan from the castle, but Tristan lacked the strength to depart: he languished in the town of Tintagel, tortured by a fever, more wounded than he once was by the Morholt's spear. Brangien devised a ruse: every evening, Tristan whittled chips of bark, slipped past the palisades of the orchard, and tossed them into the spring that flowed into the women's chambers. Iseult watched for their coming and went out to her lover beneath the shadow of the great pine. But the hunchbacked dwarf Frocin, a sorcerer in the service of the felons, led the king into the branches of the tree. The lovers caught Mark's reflection in the water of the spring and, by an admirable ruse, played innocence with such skill that the king, hidden in the foliage, smiled gently and forgave them.

This respite did not last long. The felons returned, the dwarf Frocin scattered fine flour between the beds, and Tristan, leaping through the night to join Iseult, reopened the wound that a boar's tusk had made in his leg. The blood reddened the sheets and the flour. The king condemned him to the stake. But Tristan, being led to his execution, asked to pray in a chapel built on the edge of a cliff: he seized the stained-glass window, hurled himself into the void, and the wind caught in his garments and set him down upon a broad stone at the foot of the rock—the people of Cornwall still call this stone Tristan's Leap. Gorvenal joined him with his sword and his hauberk. Mark delivered Iseult to the lepers that she might live in great dishonor, but Tristan burst from the thicket, snatched the queen from the hideous procession, and severed the ropes binding her arms. They plunged into the Forest of Morois.

There began the harsh life for the fugitives, cherished nevertheless. They wandered like hunted beasts, eating naught but the flesh of wild animals, longing for the taste of salt. Their emaciated faces grew pale, their clothes fell into rags torn by the briars. They loved each other; they did not suffer. Tristan trained Husdent, his faithful hound, to hunt without giving voice, and fashioned the bow Fail-Not, which never missed its mark. The hermit Ogrin begged them to repent, but Tristan replied that he would rather beg on the roads and live on herbs and roots with Iseult than be king of a beautiful kingdom without her. One summer day, a forester found them asleep in their leafy bower. He ran to warn the king. Mark came alone, his sword drawn, and entered the lodge—but he saw that their mouths did not touch and that a naked sword separated their bodies. He took Iseult's gloves, which he placed in the foliage to block the ray of sunlight burning her face, gently removed the emerald ring from her finger and placed his own there, laid his own sword in place of Tristan's, and departed without waking them.

Iseult had a vision: two lions were leaping upon her. She awoke, saw the ermine gloves upon her breast, Mark's ring on her finger, and the king's sword in place of Tristan's. They fled toward the edges of the forest. However, the potion had exhausted its power after three years. Regret seized the lovers: Iseult wept at being deprived of a queen's honors, Tristan suffered from the exile that eroded his prowess. They returned to the hermit Ogrin, who dictated a letter to the king. Mark agreed to take Iseult back, but Tristan had to leave the country. At the Adventurous Ford, the queen was returned to the king before the assembled barons. Tristan rode away, but could not cross the border without one last glance: he gave Iseult his dog Husdent and his green jasper ring, and she left him Mark's. Then he departed, and the forest swallowed him up.

Iseult still had to justify herself before the court through an oath and the ordeal by red-hot iron. Once more she used cunning: at the crossing of the Mal Pas, she had herself carried by Tristan disguised as a leper, so that she could swear without lying that no man had ever held her in his arms, save the king and the poor leper who had just carried her. The red-hot iron did not burn her palms. But the felons would not yield; Tristan returned incessantly, disguised as a fool, as a leper, as a pilgrim, risking his life to see her again for but a moment. Kariado, a wicked knight, came to mock Tristan in Brittany and tell him that Iseult had forgotten him. Tristan crossed the sea, had his head shaved, smeared his face, and, club in hand, presented himself at Tintagel as a madman whom no one recognized—except Husdent, who bounded toward him and greeted him joyfully, and finally Iseult, who recognized him by the green jasper ring.

Tristan had crossed into Brittany, into the service of Duke Hoel. The duke had a daughter named Iseult of the White Hands, and Tristan, seduced by the sweetness of this name which echoed the other, took her to wife. But on the wedding night, as he drew off his tunic, he saw the green jasper ring that Iseult the Fair had entrusted to him, and shame seized him. He did not touch his bride. Iseult of the White Hands long kept the secret of this humiliation, until the day when, riding beside her brother Kaherdin, a splash of water dashed up under her robe and she laughed bitterly: this water was bolder than Tristan had ever been. Kaherdin, furious, demanded an explanation, and Tristan revealed to him the truth of the potion and his love for the other Iseult. They set out together for Cornwall, and Tristan, disguised as a fool, reached the queen one last time.

Now Tristan, wounded by a poisoned lance in combat, felt the venom coursing through his veins, and knew that only Iseult the Fair, skilled in potions and balms, could heal him—as she had once healed him of the Morholt's wounds and the dragon's venom. He sent Kaherdin to seek her across the sea and told him: if you bring the queen back, hoist the white sail; if she refuses to come, the black sail. Kaherdin found Iseult, who did not hesitate an instant and boarded the ship. But when the white sail appeared on the horizon, Iseult of the White Hands, who had discovered the secret of the sails, came to Tristan's bedside and told him that the sail was black. He turned toward the wall and spoke the name of Iseult three times. On the fourth, he gave up his soul.

When Iseult the Fair landed and heard the tidings, she went up to the palace, beautiful still, and the people of Brittany marveled to look upon her. She entered the chamber, lay down beside Tristan's body, turned toward him, took him in her arms, kissed his mouth and his face, clasped him tightly, and body against body, mouth against mouth, she thus gave up her soul and died beside him for the sorrow of her lover. Mark, learning the news and the truth of the herbed wine drunk upon the sea, had the bodies carried to Cornwall and buried them in two tombs, to the right and to the left of the Tintagel chapel. During the night, from Tristan's tomb sprang a green and leafy briar, with strong branches and fragrant flowers, which, climbing over the chapel, rooted itself in Iseult's tomb. The local people cut the briar down: the next day it was reborn, just as green, just as flowering, just as vigorous, and plunged again into Iseult's tomb. Three times they tried to destroy it; three times it grew back. King Mark finally forbade it to be cut.