Arthur Rex

by Thomas Berger

  And putting a stopper therein she gave this flask to La Belle Isold.

  Now King Anguish was obliged to furnish Sir Tristram with a fine ship for the voyage to Cornwall, and this he did, but the dowry with which he filled the hold was only real gold and silver at the tops of the chests, being underneath cheap tinware of Irish tinkers, for he counted on King Mark to be so assotted with Isold that he would plunge his hands into her robe rather than deeply into the supposed treasure.

  Now when they had put to sea Sir Tristram did continue to avoid the fair Isold, as he had done while at the castle of King Anguish, for though the Irish monarch had displayed great pleasure with the marriage arrangement, Tristram could hardly suppose that Isold would be happy, for he had observed that she was of a passionate temperament. Therefore he stayed in a close cabin below decks and owing to the roughness of the waters he suffered seasickness as well as his habitual sadness.

  And because his absence made it difficult for Isold to poison him discreetly, she sent the loyal Brangwain to fetch him onto the open deck, where she sat in the sea air under a flapping silk canopy, and she was so beautiful that many flying fishes with gaping mouths leaped out of the water and soared across the boat so as to see her with their slimy bulging eyes.

  Therefore Brangwain finding Sir Tristram said to him, “Gentle knight, my lady desires your company.” And her voice was very sweet, for she adored him.

  “Can this be true?” asked Tristram woefully. “For methinks she bears me no love.”

  “Women are changeable, varium et mutabile semper femina, so saith the honey-tongued Maro,” said Brangwain, for she was literate in the Roman tongue, having been schooled by the nuns who with the monks of Ireland were the only classicists there. “And soon you will be her relative-in-law. She hath lost an uncle to gain a nephew.”

  Sir Tristram had never thought of this relationship as such, and now he was amazed. And he permitted Brangwain to conduct him to La Belle Isold.

  “Greeting to you, sir knight,” said Isold, who trembled with the effort to be gracious, for she hated him so much.

  Seeing her shudder Sir Tristram said, “Lady, you are cold in this sea wind.” And he removed his cloak, the which he presented to her for to wrap about her shoulders.

  But she drew away from it as if it were a filthy thing. “On the contrary,” said she, “I am too warm and I am fearfully thirsty. Brangwain, bring me some wine.”

  “Quite right,” said Sir Tristram, his breath steaming, “indeed, it is the hottest afternoon I have known upon the Irish Sea.”

  And though about to poison him, La Belle Isold could not forbear from contradicting him as well, in sheer bloody-mindedness. “And fetch a fur robe as well, dear Brangwain, for I am chilled to the bone.”

  Her contrariness made no impression on Sir Tristram, for looking at her white skin and blue eyes and black hair in which there were red flashes even on a gray day, he loved her so ardently and hopelessly that he wished he could drink poison while she sipped wine.

  Therefore when Brangwain brought the flask and poured from it two goblets of what Isold thought was venom and Tristram believed Rhenish, and which was neither, Isold raised the vessel to her red lips, but Sir Tristram dallied staring sadly astern into the foaming wake. And when La Belle Isold lowered her empty goblet, he had not yet tasted of his.

  And she did cry out ardently, which caused him to put down his goblet altogether, for he did think her in pain, and he asked what he could do to relieve her.

  “Kiss me, embrace me, devour me, mine own sweet love!” she cried in a voice which thrilled Tristram but also frightened him more, he the bravest of knights who could vanquish giants but he felt helpless with a woman in a transport of emotion. Therefore he seized his own goblet and drained it in one gulp, for to acquire courage from its spirituous liquors, and hardly had he swallowed when the amorous ethers enveloped his heart, and if he had already loved Isold so much that he wished to die for want of her, that passion was nothing to what he felt now.

  Indeed in the violence of the emotion which they shared, mere fleshly contact would not have sufficed, therefore they did not join together except for one burning kiss, and then they sent Brangwain to fetch both their lyres, upon which they played a duet and sang together, making music so sweet that the fearsome serpents rose from the bottom of the sea to float and listen with eyes soft as lambs’, and the melody calmed the previously truculent waters and the warm sun dissipated the gray clouds.

  And so making this music they crossed to Cornwall as if in a dream. But when they arrived at Tintagel and were received by King Mark, it was as though waking on a rainy morning after a nightmare.

  “Uncle,” said Sir Tristram to the king, “having discharged my duties to you, I must needs now return to King Arthur and the Round Table.”

  “Well,” said Mark, “thou must certainly remain for my wedding, dear Nephew, which without thy services would not be taking place! How can I thank thee enough?” And he drew Tristram aside and spake privately, with glee. “This Irish is a damned comely piece, my boy!” And in the heat of his foul lust he swore several other abominable oaths. “Would that old Uther Pendragon were still among the quick, to know I had me this fair chick to pluck. For I was one of his barons of old, and ofttimes we were constrained to watch him at his venereal sports with young virgins, but never did he enjoy such white flesh.”

  And Tristram was impatient to leave his presence, lest he be at once a regicide and an uncle-murderer. However, what the king commanded could not be denied, and therefore poor Tristram was compelled to stay at Tintagel for the nuptials.

  “And by God,” Mark said blasphemously, “thou art a faithful and honest knight, Nephew!” And he dug Sir Tristram in the belly with a forefinger. “For anyone else would have corrupted the virtue of this gorgeous princess when alone with her upon the sea.” But secretly he believed Tristram was effeminate for not having done this, or perhaps had been made an eunuch by the point of a lance in some tournament, which happened to many knights despite the codpiece of steel.

  So Tristram’s previous sadness seemed like hilarity when compared with his present state, and pretending to be ill Isold remained in her chambers and wept steadily all through the day and night during the time in which the wedding was being prepared, which was some weeks, for King Mark desired that all the regnant monarchs of the world come to watch him being married, and invitations were sent far as Ind to the heathen kings there and also to the black-faced sovereigns of Afric, whose teeth were made of diamonds. But most of all, Mark wanted King Arthur to see him take a bride he believed more beautiful than Guinevere, for he did envy Arthur and bear him no good will.

  However, this wish of King Mark’s was not to be satisfied, for God doth confound the spiteful, and King Arthur would not come to Cornwall before he received Mark’s pledge of fealty, which was not forthcoming, for King Mark was more arrogant than ever now that he was to take a queen. And it was only because of his nephew Sir Tristram, a knight of the Round Table, that Mark was not destroyed by King Arthur at this time.

  Therefore La Belle Isold and the fair Guinevere were never to be compared side by side, but the latter was the greater beauty because her hair was of the color of gold, the most precious substance on earth, for which all men search and many die.

  Now this wedding was one of great splendor, and many of the invited kings did come from all over the earth, those from Ind on elephants and the Africans wore crowns of multicolored feathers and almost nothing else, their privy parts hanging in a little bag, at the size of which the ladies did gasp.

  And King Mark enjoyed the expectation of bedding with La Belle Isold at long last, and sitting beside her at the marriage feast he did grope importunately at her under the table.

  Therefore she found an excuse to leave him briefly, and she went to the loyal Brangwain, saying, “Surely now thou shalt brew for me a poison, the which I might drink before I must share the bed with that foul old man.”

>   “My lady,” said Brangwain, “I shall do something far the better. I shall distill a potion for King Mark to drink, the which will cause him to fall dead asleep and stay so till morn, yet dream to the effect that he hath had you all the night.”

  “Good my Brangwain!” said Isold, and she returned joyfully to the table and not only found it possible to endure the king’s pawing but whispered in his ear certain aphrodisiacal sentiments, thereby distracting him while Brangwain introduced her potion into his wine.

  After he had drunk this he could no longer contain himself, and he took Isold into his bedchamber there and then, where he tore off his robe discovering his fat old belly and withered legs and plunged into bed. But no sooner had he done so than he fell fast asleep.

  Then Isold took up her lyre and went upon the balcony outside and sang sweetly to the night air, and Tristram, who was wandering disconsolately in the garden below, tearing his hands intentionally on the roses so as to assuage the worse pain in his heart, heard this song and, assuming it was for King Mark, he drew his dagger and though suicide was a terrible sin that would cause him to suffer in Hell throughout eternity, he preferred that to the torment he felt now, and he was about to plunge the blade into his heart when Brangwain found him.

  “Sir Tristram,” said the loyal Brangwain, “my lady would speak with you.”

  So he sheathed his poniard and went below the balcony, from which Isold stretched her white hand at him and said, “My love.”

  “My love!” cried he in return.

  “Come to me,” said La Belle Isold, and therefore he did climb on the vines and join her, though his hands were all sore from the thorns of the roses. Then she told him of the potion which Brangwain had administered to the king, and she showed him his uncle’s sleeping body on the bed. “Now lift him from the bed and put him upon the floor,” said she. “And then we, thou and I, shall celebrate our marriage.”

  “O impious thought,” said Sir Tristram. “Knowest thou not that adultery is a crime?”

  “I would burn in Hell for thee,” said La Belle Isold, “but in fact we were wed on shipboard, and if adultery there be, it would happen only if I bedded with King Mark.”

  Her reasoning did exceed Sir Tristram’s understanding, and he asked her to explain its process.

  “Well,” said Isold, “was it not God and God alone who did make all the ingredients in the love potion administered to us by the loyal Brangwain? And was it not He who gave to Brangwain the knowledge of how to mix them?”

  “But mine own dear love,” said Tristram, “is not this a sophistical philosophy? Can it be Christian to wed chemically and not by a priest?”

  But Isold had grown impatient of argument, being no withered clerk who computed the number of angels who might dance upon the point of a pin, and she did leave off abstract theory now and step out of her ermine-trimmed robe, and the sight of her white body did stun Tristram thoroughly in his brain so that he had only one thought, and that was to eliminate the separation between them.

  Therefore he did lift his uncle from the bed, but he was not so bereft of decency as to leave him on the floor, but rather carried him to a closet and laid him within.

  And then Sir Tristram and La Belle Isold did join themselves in the connection which for true lovers can never be too close.

  Now at dawn Tristram arose and left the chamber silently, climbing down the vines into the garden, and King Mark was still within the closet, for the lovers had forgot him utterly. But the loyal Brangwain, who had stayed the night in an antechamber for to guard them against intrusion, remembered the king, and after wistfully feeling with her hand the place in the bed where Tristram had lain, she did awaken her mistress Isold, and then she went to the closet and easily lifted the king’s body, for she was of robust Irish stock, and she carried him to the bed.

  Then she went away, and he soon woke up, at the which awakening Isold rose and left the bed.

  Now King Mark did babble and slaver over the passionate episode he seemingly remembered, owing to the potion that had confused his wits, and he would have handled his bride further had she been within his reach, but you can be sure she was not, and complained of weariness and headache. And therefore he gloated over the evidence of her shattered virginity on the satin sheets.

  Meanwhile, unhappily, Sir Tristram had been seen descending the vines by a vile dwarf named Frocin, who detested persons of normal size and forever lurked about Tintagel to spy upon their failures and if possible use such information for their ruin, for though he was powerless to punish God for making him with a tiny body and a large head, he could revenge himself on the handsome and gallant knights the like of which he could never be, and the beautiful and gentle ladies whose love he could never earn. And he did this secretly, whereas in public he performed as a buffoon, making those laugh whom he hated.

  And this Frocin was in the garden now, where he came before the castle awakened to pull the blossoms off the roses and put lizards and toads upon the ground, for he was an enemy to all that lived in beauty, and seeing whence Sir Tristram descended, he was much pleased that Mark had been made a cuckold, for he wished his monarch no good, but he was all the same in a rage against Sir Tristram for his evident happiness.

  Therefore Frocin went unto the royal bedchamber, for being considered no truly human person, he was admitted everyplace, like unto a spaniel or cat which doth scratch at a door, and when La Belle Isold had been dressed behind a screen by the loyal Brangwain and had gone out, Frocin went to the king, who was yet lolling in bed, and to amuse him he stood upon his head, waving his feet to produce a tinkle from the bells on the curly toes of his slippers.

  “Tiny rogue,” said Mark, and he amiably threw a satin pillow at him. “Minuscule monstrosity, what dost thou do for venereal pleasure? Never have I seen a miniature woman. Doth God make only little men, and are ye all therefore sodomites?” And he then did roar with coarse laughter.

  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.”