Arthurian Romances

by Chretien de Troyes

  My lord Yvain backed off a little and recovered his breath; covering himself completely with his shield, he rushed to clear the pass. More quickly and more easily than you could count one, two, three, and four, you could watch him dispatch four knights. And those who were with him took courage from his example; for a man with a poor and timid heart, when he sees a brave man undertake a bold deed in front of his very eyes, may be suddenly overcome with disgrace and shame, and cast out the weak heart from his body and take on steadfastness, bravery, and a noble heart. Thus these men grew bold and each stood his place bravely in the mêlée and battle.

  The lady had climbed high into her castle tower and saw the mêlée and assault to capture the pass; and she saw many dead and wounded lying upon the ground, both friends and foes, but more of the enemy than her own, for the courtly, brave, and good Sir Yvain had forced them all to cry mercy just as the falcon does the teals.

  And all those men and women who had remained in the town and were watching from the battlements said: ‘Ah, what a valiant warrior! See how he makes his enemies bow before him! How fiercely he attacks them! He strikes among them like a lion, beset and provoked by hunger, among the fallow deer. And our knights are all bolder and braver than before, because if it were not for him alone, no lances would have been broken or swords drawn for fighting. One must love and cherish a valiant man whenever he is found. See now how he proves himself: see his prominence in the battleline; now see how he stains his lance and naked sword with blood; see how he pursues them; see how he drives them back, how he charges them, how he overtakes them, how he gives way, how he returns to the attack! But he spends little time giving way and much in renewing the attack. See what little care he has for his shield when he comes into the fray: how he lets it be slashed to pieces; he doesn’t take the least pity on it, eager as he is to avenge the blows that are rained upon him. If the whole Argonne Forest11 were felled to make lances for him, I don’t believe he’d have a single one left this night; one could not place so many in his lance-rest that he’d not split them all and call for more. And see how he wields his sword when he draws it! Roland never caused such devastation with Durendal against the Turks12 at Roncevaux or in Spain. If only Yvain had in his company a few good comrades like himself the blackguard we deplore would leave in defeat or remain here in disgrace.’

  And they added that the lady to whom he granted his love was born in a lucky hour, for he was mighty in arms and as renowned above all others as a torch among candles, and the moon among the stars, and the sun above the moon. And he won over the hearts of every man and woman there to such an extent that all of them wanted him to marry their lady and rule over their land because of the prowess they perceived in him.

  Thus one and all praised him, and spoke the truth in doing so, for he had so beset their enemies that they fled in disorder. But he pursued them vigorously with all his companions close behind, for at his side they felt as safe as if they were enclosed by a high thick wall of hard stone. The chase lasted a long time, until finally those who were fleeing grew weary and their pursuers cut down and eviscerated all their horses. The living rolled over the dead, killing and slaying one another in an ugly encounter.

  And Count Alier fled on with my lord Yvain in hot pursuit. He gave chase until he overtook him at the foot of a steep hill, quite near the entrance to one of his mighty fortresses. The count was caught at this spot, and nothing could help him now. Without much discussion my lord Yvain accepted his surrender, for once he had him in his hands and they were alone, one against one, there was no escaping, no evasion, no means of defence. Instead, the count swore to surrender himself to the lady of Norison, to constitute himself her prisoner, and to make peace on her terms. And when Yvain had accepted his oath, he had him uncover his head, lift the shield from his neck, and tender him his naked sword. He had the honour of leading off the captured count; he turned him over to his enemies, whose joy was boundless.

  As soon as the news reached the town, everyone – man and woman alike – came out to meet them, with the lady of the castle leading the way. My lord Yvain, who held the prisoner by his hand, presented him to her. The count acceded fully to her wishes and demands, and assured her of his faith with promises, oaths, and pledges. He gave her his pledge and swore that he would hold peace with her from that day forth, that he would make good all losses that she could prove, and would restore as new the houses that he had razed to the ground. When these things had been arranged to the lady’s satisfaction, my lord Yvain asked for permission to leave, which she would never have given him had he agreed to take her as his mistress or his wife.

  He would not allow anyone to follow or accompany him, but left immediately in spite of all entreaties. Now he left, to the chagrin of the lady to whom he had brought great joy, and retraced his steps. And the greater the joy he had brought her, the more now it disheartened and grieved her that he refused to stay; for now she wished to do him honour and would have made him, had he agreed, the lord of all she had, or would have given him generous payment for his services, as much as he cared to take. But he refused to listen to anything anyone might say; he left the lady and her knights, though it pained him that he could remain there no longer.

  Deep in thought, my lord Yvain rode through deep woods until he heard from the thick of the forest a very loud and anguished cry. He headed immediately towards the place where he had heard the cry, and when he arrived at a clearing, he saw a dragon holding a lion by the tail and burning its flanks with its flaming breath. My lord Yvain did not waste time observing this marvel. He asked himself which of the two he would help. Then he determined that he would take the lion’s part, since a venomous and wicked creature deserves only harm: the dragon was venomous and fire leapt from its mouth because it was so full of wickedness. Therefore my lord Yvain determined that he would slay it first.

  He drew his sword and came forward with his shield in front of his face, to avoid being harmed by the flame pouring from the dragon’s mouth, which was larger than a cauldron. If the lion attacked him later, it would not lack for a fight; but with no thought of the consequences Yvain was determined to help it now, since Pity summoned and urged him to aid and succour the noble and honourable beast. He pursued the wicked dragon with his sharp sword: he cut it through to the ground and then cut the two parts in half again; he struck it repeatedly until it was hacked into tiny pieces. However, he was obliged to cut off a piece of the lion’s tail, which the wicked dragon still held in its clenched teeth; he cut off only as much as he had to, and he could not have taken off less.

  Once he had rescued the lion, he still thought that it would attack him and he would have to do battle with it; but the lion would never have done that. Listen to how nobly and splendidly the lion acted: it stood up upon its hind paws, bowed its head, joined its forepaws and extended them towards Yvain, in an act of total submission. Then it knelt down and its whole face was bathed in tears of humility. My lord Yvain recognized clearly that the lion was thanking him and submitting to him because, in slaying the dragon, he had delivered it from death; these actions pleased him greatly. He wiped the dragon’s poisonous filth from his sword, replaced it in his scabbard, and set off again upon his way. Yet the lion stayed by his side and never left him; from that day on it would accompany him, for it intended to serve and protect him. The lion moved ahead of Yvain so that, as it led the way, it scented on the wind some wild beasts grazing; driven by hunger and natural instinct, it began to prowl and hunt in order to procure its food: nature intended it to do so.

  It followed the trail enough to show its master that it had caught the scent of wild game. Then it stopped and looked at Yvain, for it wished to do his will in serving him; it did not want to go anywhere against its master’s will. Yvain perceived by the lion’s behaviour that it was awaiting his permission. He clearly understood that if he held back, the lion too would hold back, but if he followed, the lion would capture the game it had scented. So he shouted to it and urged it
on as one would a hound. The lion immediately put its nose in the air to catch the scent, which had not deceived it: it had not gone a bowshot’s distance when it saw in a valley a roe-deer grazing all alone. It would catch it at once, if it could; and it did so with its first spring, and drank its still warm blood. After killing it, the lion tossed the deer across its back and carried it until it came before its master who, because of the beast’s great devotion, cherished it ever afterwards.

  Since it was now near nightfall, Yvain chose to spend the night there, where he could strip as much from the deer as he wished to eat. Then he began to carve it: he split the hide above the ribs and cut a roast from its loin. He struck a spark from a piece of flint and started a fire with some dry wood; then straight away he placed his roast on a spit over the fire to cook. He roasted it until it was done, but it was not a pleasure to eat, for he had no bread or wine or salt, no cloth, no knife, nor anything else. While he ate, his lion lay at his feet without moving, gazing fixedly at him until he had eaten as much of his roast as he wanted. Then the lion ate what was left of the deer, down to the bones. And while Yvain laid his head all night upon his shield and took what rest he could, the lion showed such sense that it stayed awake and took care to watch over his horse, which was grazing on grass that provided it with some little nourishment.

  In the morning they set off together and when evening came, it seems to me, they did as they had done the preceding night: and this continued for nearly two weeks, until chance brought them to the spring beneath the pine tree. Alas, my lord Yvain nearly lost his mind again as he neared the spring, the stone, and the chapel. A thousand times he moaned and sighed, and was so grief-stricken he fell in a faint; and his sword, which was loose, slipped from its scabbard and pierced through the mail of his hauberk at his neck, below his cheek. The chain links separated and the sword cut the flesh of his neck beneath the shining mail, causing blood to gush forth. The lion thought it saw its companion and master lying dead. You have never heard told or described any greater grief than it began to show at this, for it writhed and clawed and bellowed and wanted to kill itself with the sword that it thought had slain its master. With its teeth, the lion took the sword from Yvain, laid it over a fallen tree, and supported it with a trunk behind, so that it wouldn’t slip or fall when it pierced its breast on it. Its intention was nearly fulfilled, when Yvain awoke from his faint; the lion, which was running headlong towards death like the mad boar that pays no heed where it strikes, stopped its charge.

  My lord Yvain had fainted, as I’ve told you, by the fountain’s stone; when he came to, he bitterly reproached himself for having overstayed the year and earned his lady’s hatred.

  ‘Why does the wretch who’s destroyed his own happiness not kill himself?’ he asked. ‘Why do I, wretch that I am, not kill myself? How can I stay here and behold my lady’s possessions? Why does my soul remain in my body? What good is a soul in such a sad body? If it had flown away, it would not be suffering so. It is fitting that I despise and blame myself greatly, as indeed I do. He who through his own fault loses his happiness and his comfort should feel a mortal hatred for himself. Truly he should hate himself and seek to end his life. And what keeps me from killing myself now when no one is watching? Have I not observed this lion so disconsolate just now on my behalf that it was determined to run my sword through its breast? And so should I, whose joy has changed to grief, fear death? Happiness and all comfort have abandoned me. I’ll say no more, because no one could speak of this; I’ve posed a foolish question. Of all joys, the greatest was the one assured to me; yet it lasted such a little while! And the man who loses such joy by his own mistake has no right to good fortune!’

  While he was lamenting in this fashion, a poor, sad prisoner who was locked within the chapel overheard this lament through a crack in the wall. As soon as Yvain had recovered from his faint, the prisoner called to him.

  ‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘What do I see there? Who is lamenting so bitterly?’

  ‘Who are you?’ he inquired.

  ‘I,’ she said, ‘am a prisoner, the saddest creature alive.’

  ‘Hush, foolish creature!’ he replied. ‘Your grief is joy and your suffering bliss compared to those that I endure. The more a man has learned to live in happiness and joy, the more, compared to another man, does grief when he suffers it upset and destroy his senses. A weak man can carry a weight, when he is accustomed and used to it, that a stronger man could never manage to carry.’

  ‘Upon my word,’ she said, ‘I know well that what you say is true; but that is no reason to think that you suffer more than I, nor do I believe you do: for it seems to me that you can go anywhere you please, while I’m imprisoned here. And moreover I am doomed to be taken from here tomorrow and put to death.’

  ‘Ah, God!’ he said. ‘For what crime?’

  ‘Sir knight, may God never have mercy on the soul in my body if I’ve deserved it in the least! Yet I shall tell you the truth and never lie about it: I am imprisoned here because I am accused of treason and I cannot find anyone to defend me from being burned or hanged tomorrow.’

  ‘Now I can assuredly say that my grief and my misery surpass your suffering,’ he said, ‘for anyone can save you from death. Am I not right?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t yet know who will. There are only two men left who would dare engage in battle for me against three men.’

  ‘What? In God’s name, are there three of them?’

  ‘Yes, my lord, upon my word: there are three who accuse me of treason.’

  ‘And who are the two knights who love you so dearly that either one would be brave enough singlehanded to face three men in order to defend and rescue you?’

  ‘I shall tell you without falsehood: one is my lord Gawain and the other my lord Yvain, for whose sake I shall be unjustly handed over tomorrow to death.’

  ‘For whose sake did you say?’ asked Yvain.

  ‘My lord, so help me God, for the son of King Urien.’

  ‘Now I have understood you clearly; yet you shall never die without him. I myself am that Yvain on whose behalf you are in these straits. And you are she, I believe, who protected me in the entry hall; you saved my life and my body between the two portcullises, where I was downcast, sad, anxious, and distressed. I would have been captured and killed had it not been for your good help. Now tell me, my sweet friend, who those men are who have accused you of treason and imprisoned you in this remote place.’

  ‘My lord, since you wish me to tell you, I’ll not hide it from you any longer. It is true that I did not hesitate to aid you in good faith. Through my urgings my lady took you as her husband; she accepted my advice and counsel, and by our Holy Father in Heaven I intended it then and still think it more to her benefit than yours. This much I confess to you now: I sought to serve her honour and your desire, as God is my help. But when it happened that you overstayed the year after which you should have returned here to my lady, she grew angry with me at once and felt very much deceived for having trusted me. And when the seneschal – a wicked, dishonest, disloyal man, who was extremely jealous of me because my lady trusted me more than him in many things – heard of this, he saw then that he could foment a real quarrel between us. In front of everyone assembled at court he accused me of betraying her for you. I had no aid or counsel except myself alone, and I said that I had never conceived or committed treason against my lady. In my confusion I replied, hastily and without advice from anyone, that I would have myself defended by one knight against three. The seneschal was not courtly enough to contemplate refusing this challenge, nor could I get out of it or change it for anything that might happen. So he took me at my word, and I had to offer assurances to produce one knight prepared to fight three within forty days. Since that time I have been to many courts: I was at King Arthur’s court but found no one there to advise me, nor did I find anyone who could tell me anything encouraging about you, for they had heard no reports of you.’

  ‘Pray tell me,’ quer
ied my lord Yvain, ‘where was the noble and kind lord Gawain. He never failed to help a damsel in distress.’

  ‘He would have made me joyful and happy if I had found him at court: I could never have asked anything of him that would have been refused me; but a knight has carried off the queen,13 they tell me, and the king was surely mad to send her off with him. And Kay, I believe, escorted her to meet the knight who has carried her off; and now my lord Gawain, who is seeking her, has embarked upon a difficult task. He will never rest a single day until he has found her. I have told you the entire truth about my situation. Tomorrow I shall die a hideous death and be burned without pity because of your shameful crime.’

  ‘May it never please God that anyone harm you on my account!’ he replied. ‘As long as I’m alive, you shall not die! Tomorrow you can look for me, equipped according to my rank, to place myself at your command, as it is fitting for me to do. But you mustn’t tell anyone who I am; no matter what happens in the battle, be careful that I am not recognized!’

  ‘Indeed, my lord, no amount of torture could compel me to reveal your name: I will suffer death first, since you wish it so. And yet I beg you not to return there on my account; I don’t want you to undertake such a desperate fight. I thank you for promising to do it so willingly, but consider yourself free of your oath; for it is better that I alone die than see them delight in your death. Were they to kill you, still they’d not spare me; so it’s better that you remain alive than for both of us to die.’

  ‘It pains me to hear what you’ve said,’ answered my lord Yvain. ‘Good friend, either you do not want to be delivered from death, or else you scorn the favour of my offer of help. I don’t want to argue with you further, for you have done so much for me, indeed, that I must not fail you in any need that you might have. I know that you are distraught; but, if it please God in whom I trust, all three of them will be put to shame. No more of this now; I must go to seek what shelter I can in this wood, for I don’t know of any lodging near to hand.’