“My dear husband and king has spent all the weeks that you were away telling me that I should try to feel affection for you,” she answered and gave him the smile he knew so well. Before he could help himself he had sprung to his feet and taken her in his arms in a close embrace. It was all he could do to keep from kissing her.
“Enough, Tristan!” she said, laughing. “I said that I did not hate you, but not that I loved you!”
He released her, glancing around quickly and surreptitiously for Marjodoc. This would certainly fuel the rumors and accusations.
But he did not see the steward. At dinner he asked casually about him.
“He is no longer my steward,” said Mark in a flat voice. After a moment he added, “I believe he was jealous of you, Tristan, and of your importance at my court. He even tried to discredit you by telling me palpable falsehoods. We will all be much happier without him.”
“I am sorry to have caused any trouble,” said Tristan meekly, “even if unwittingly.” But he was thinking that, without the steward watching them suspiciously, it would be much easier to spend time with Isolde.
“I miss only one thing about Marjodoc,” said Mark, half embarrassed. “It is such a little thing I almost hate to admit it! But after the death of my dear Blancheflor, he was the only person in the castle who knew which were my favorite foods and made sure always to provide them at their proper season.”
“And what is this season’s favorite food?” Tristan asked absently. Isolde sat on the far side of Mark from him, and he was hoping to catch her eye without anyone noticing.
“Fresh cheese curds with green onions,” said Mark unhesitatingly. Then he shrugged. “I suppose I could ask the cooks to prepare the dish, but when they are so busy in the kitchens preparing food for the whole castle, and are doing it so well, I hate to bother them with a whim.”
A page stepped up to the high table, carrying a bowl, piled high with a white substance flecked with green. “Your majesty.”
Mark threw up his hands in delight. “Cheese curds with green onions! My favorite summer food!” He turned to the queen. “Isolde, my dear, did you order this? What a delightful surprise!”
But Isolde, frowning, shook her head.
“No, Sire,” said the page. “We prepared it at the request of Lady Brangein.”
Brangein, on the far side of Isolde, smiled and blushed. “You were not to tell anyone it was my request!” she protested.
“Oh. Yes. I remember now,” said the page awkwardly.
Mark smiled. “Do not be disturbed. Such generosity of spirit should not be hidden.” He turned to thank Brangein for requesting the cheese for him and for noticing his preferences. While he was talking to her, Tristan was able to meet Isolde’s eyes at last and give her a wink.
Not long before the summer festival, King Mark sought out Brangein. His brow was furrowed and his eyes worried. She tried to forestall what she feared he would say. “I hope you are not about to give me a list of favorite foods of yours that I have not yet noticed!” she said with a chuckle.
But he was so intent on his purpose that he hardly seemed to hear her. “You gave me excellent counsel before,” he told her, “and I would have been happier if I had followed it. Perhaps I should ask you to counsel me again.”
“I am always glad to serve you, sire,” she said gently. No chance now to avoid the conversation. “My greatest desire is to see you happy. When I left Eire I never imagined that I would grow to love anyone at the Cornish court, but I have come to admire you so much, both as a king and as husband to my lady.”
He smiled a little then. “You will laugh at me, for it is my old complaint. I keep tormenting myself, wondering if Isolde loves Tristan more than she loves me. Sometimes when I hold her in my arms, I can almost imagine that I hear her thoughts, and that she was wishing he was beside her instead of me.”
“Has she said anything like this to you?”
“No, never! And when I was told that I would catch them together, instead I found them speaking distantly, saying things that should have removed all doubt from my mind.”
“Then why allow the doubt to remain?”
“I thought I had banished the doubt for good, Brangein. After all, I have already banished Marjodoc, and I believed that he was the source of all my doubts. But the poets tell us that there cannot be simple, happy, love, that true love always contains jealousy and torment. So maybe this is only what I should expect, loving Isolde as I do. What do you think?”
“I think there can be simple, happy love, as you put it,” she said stoutly, “between those who truly love each other, regardless of what the poets imagine.”
“A love that would be heaven on earth?”
At this she shook her head. “Since I have never been part of a loving couple, perhaps I am the wrong person to ask. I do believe that one can be happy through love. Still, I would hazard that heaven on earth is too much to hope for. Since Adam’s fall, all human life is touched with sorrow.”
“How about Eve’s fall?” said Mark, a twinkle in his eye. “After all, she was the one with the apple.”
“Only because the serpent knew how much she loved Adam,” Brangein shot back, “that she would risk even God’s wrath to obtain something to please him.”
Mark laughed. “You defend women well, Brangein. And I will take your advice and put my foolish suspicions aside.” He paused. “Still, I wonder if there could be some way I might test them.”
In the king’s summer festival, Tristan won the bohort and received the floral wreath from Isolde, but she did not smile when she placed it on his head. Instead she concentrated, frowning, on placing it absolutely straight, so that it would not slip off. Tristan, seeing from the corner of his eye that Mark was observing them closely, kept his face still and expression distant.
At the climax of the festival was the great tourney, and again Tristan won. He fought better on horseback than any man in Cornwall, and indeed better than the knights from Gales who had come for the festival. But an ill-aimed spear caught him on the thigh, and he received his winner’s wreath with his saddle slippery with blood, uncomfortably reminiscent of his fight with Morold.
Afterwards in the royal pavilion, Brangein bandaged him up at Isolde’s direction, rubbing on some of the ointments that the queen had brought with her from Eire. “This is not nearly as serious a wound as your old one,” she told him. “Spears in Cornwall are not poisoned.”
Still, he was happy to lie down in a bed made up for him, exhausted from the fighting and glad to have an excuse not to take part in the dancing. He slept for several hours and then awoke when Mark and Isolde came into the pavilion.
“Shh, do not wake him,” said Mark, though he had had enough wine that his voice came out louder than he intended. “He should be well in a day or two, but he needs his sleep.”
Tristan lay quietly, listening as the two of them undressed in the dark and got into their own bed. They settled down with only a slight amount of creaking and rustling, and soon he heard their breathing become soft and regular.
He, however, was wide awake. His leg stung, but not too badly—there had been plenty of blood, but the wound had not been deep. It was memories of his great illness rather than his current wound that kept him from sleep.
That, and realizing that Isolde was not ten feet away, lying naked under the sheets.
And with her husband beside her, he reminded himself. He was excited by the very thought of her, but he had to remain absolutely still and in his own bed.
He slept at last, a bit fitfully, and woke again toward dawn. Everything was still grey, but there was just enough light to make out shapes. King Mark had sat up.
“What is it, dear love?” Isolde asked sleepily.
“The one part of the summer festival I have never liked,” said Mark, “is sleeping in the pavilion. It is fine when we are traveling, but not when my own bed is but a half mile away.”
“Then go sleep in your own bed,” said Is
olde and rolled over, her back to him.
Mark bent and kissed the top of her head. “I shall. Sleep on, dearest queen, and I shall see you in a few hours.” He threw on some clothes, spent a moment walking around the pavilion and shaking his hand in a way that Tristan did not understand, and left.
It was very quiet when he was gone. Tristan could tell from her breathing that the queen had not gone back to sleep any more than he had. “Isolde?” he whispered. “My beloved? Shall I come over there?”
“Dearest Tristan,” she whispered back, “I long to hold you in my arms. But I mistrust Mark. Look at the floor.”
He leaned over the edge of the bed. In the faint dawn light he saw what she meant. The floor around and between the two beds had been sprinkled with something—flour. If anyone walked between the beds, their footprints would show in the flour, and it would be impossible to brush it convincingly back over the marks.
He considered. “Suppose I jump from my bed to yours?” he asked quietly.
“Tristan! With your wound you could hurt yourself. And it is too far.”
“Not too far for someone in love! I wanted you even when I was dying of a much worse wound than this.”
He stood up on the bed, bounced a little, estimated the distance, and leaped. He landed almost on top of her and tumbled onto his face, laughing. The ropes supporting the mattress creaked ominously but held. “That knight would have had to aim his spear a little higher if he wanted to keep me from you!”
Laughing too, she drew him under the sheets beside her. “What a leap! Tristan, you will have to make a song about this—the lover who was also a frog!”
“I remember a story about a frog who kissed a princess—or was it a queen?” And he embraced her and began to kiss her passionately.
An hour later, the sun was up, and its rays stole into the pavilion. “I had better return to my own bed,” Tristan said reluctantly. “Someone is likely to bring us breakfast. We’ll see if I have the energy for the leap without you at the other end to inspire me!”
When he sat up and tossed back the sheets, Isolde said, “Your wound! Tristan, you are bleeding again!”
And indeed both of them were streaked with blood from waist to knee. “I didn’t even notice,” he said. “You distract me too much, dearest friend.”
And then they heard Mark’s voice, a short distance away, greeting someone else who was awake early. Tristan sprang up and leaped back to his own bed, panic giving him sudden strength. Both he and Isolde were lying quietly with their eyes closed a moment later, when Mark entered the pavilion.
From under his lashes, Tristan saw him peering at the flour on the floor, which lay undisturbed. After a moment Mark gave a satisfied grunt and walked across the flour himself to his own bed.
He bent down toward Isolde and stopped, seeing blood stains. Slowly he pulled back the sheet. “Isolde, are you wounded?”
She stretched and opened her eyes. “Is it morning already?” Then she looked down at herself. “Oh, dear! My monthly courses have come on me early. Excuse me, Mark.” She seized some clothes, wrapped her cloak around her, and ran out, barefoot, back toward the castle.
Mark looked after her, his head cocked to one side. Then he turned toward Tristan’s bed. Tristan opened his eyes slowly.
Mark took a deep breath, then pulled his mouth into a wide smile. “It’s morning, lazy bones! Let’s see how that wound is doing today.” And he flipped the covers back.
And there was Tristan, streaked with blood oozing from under the bandage, just starting now to dry.
“Your wound is bleeding,” said Mark icily, “as though you had opened it through some great exertion.”
Tristan shook his head mournfully. “It has ever been thus, since my fight with Morold. Even a slight cut or scratch will fester. The poison must never have completely left my blood.”
The king did not appear to hear him. His words came slowly and a little loudly. “Tristan, you are streaked with blood, and so is the queen. Have you been in my bed with her?”
Tristan sat up straight, doing his best to look shocked and horrified. “Sir! Such accusations impugn my lady’s honor! I cannot believe that you would suggest such things of the fairest flower of Eire.”
“I might believe them of you,” said Mark, his voice flat and dead.
Tristan swung his feet out of the bed, planting them in the untouched flour. “Sire, I cannot believe my ears. I had thought you loved me as your heir, as I love you. Before you can make this even worse, I shall leave Cornwall. Tell the queen that I regret any unwitting role I may have had in injuring her in your eyes.”
“Where are you going?” asked Mark, taken aback. “To Parmenie again?”
“I have not yet decided.” And Tristan, like Isolde before him, seized some clothes, wrapped himself up in his cloak, and strode toward the castle. Mark followed him at a distance. Other festival participants put their heads out of their tents, surprised, but Mark ignored all questions.
Back at the castle, Tristan stopped briefly in his own chamber to rebandage his wound and dress, then went to the stables, saddled his horse, and rode away.
V
Up in the hills, far inland from Tintagel, was a circle of standing stones. Usually only sheep wandered among the lichen-spotted stones. Now King Mark, the great notables of Cornwall, and the bishop of the Thames gathered there to hear the accusations against Isolde.
She was dressed all in white, wearing the golden circlet of queenship, and all her rings and bracelets. She stood quietly, her hands folded, listening to Mark’s accusations against her. The wind whispered among the stones, and high thin clouds streaked the sky.
“This gives me great pain,” he said soberly, “but a kingdom’s honor must be reflected in the honor of its king and queen. I have excellent reason to suspect that my wife has been unfaithful to me with my nephew, and I have assembled all of you here, in the ancient circle of judgment, to hear my accusations and to decide what is to be done.”
“You are right,” said the bishop, “to summon representatives of both human and divine authority to hear you, for these accusations, if true, are very serious, nearly on a level with accusations of heresy. Like heresy, adultery may, in the final judgment, be punishable by death, even though we in the Church would urge mercy. If the queen has been unfaithful to you she must certainly be punished in some way, but if she has not been, she must be cleared of the taint of all charges and returned to your affections.”
The great lords of Cornwall all nodded sagely. “Lay out these accusations for us.”
Mark glanced toward Isolde, whose face was impassive, and began. “My wife and nephew were alone, for perhaps the space of an hour, in the royal pavilion. Although they were sleeping in separate beds when I left them and again when I returned, I discovered both of them streaked with blood. My nephew had been wounded in the tourney, and his cut, though bandaged, had reopened. I have every reason to believe it was his blood that stained my wife.”
Everyone looked toward her, but her eyes were cast down, and she seemed to be studying the grass or her slippers.
“And were there bloody footprints between the beds?” the bishop asked.
Mark frowned. “No, there were no footprints at all. I had sprinkled flour on the floor, to see if I could trap them in the act, but it was unmarked. It is of course possible that one or the other leaped across the space between the beds.”
“Were the beds close together?”
“No, I would have thought they were too far apart for easy leaping.”
The bishop and the notables whispered together for a moment. “And did you not think,” one of the barons asked at last, “that you yourself were dishonoring the queen in setting a trap for her, acting as though you knew her to be untrue?”
“But the rumors!” Mark burst out. “Everyone’s been talking about them! They sometimes smile at each other, and before she became my queen, he taught her love songs!”
“Sire,” the baro
n said gently, “I was at your summer festival last year when you wed Isolde, and have visited Tintagel several times since then. Every time I saw the queen she was close beside you. I have never heard such rumors.”
“Did you inquire,” asked the bishop, “if there might be another explanation for the blood?”
“Well, she gave me a reason,” said Mark, shame-faced. “It is one I prefer not to repeat, for it is somewhat delicate. I did not believe it, for the timing was— Well, let us say that I did not believe it.”
“And your nephew? Did he deny it too? Why is he not here?”
Mark was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “He told me he was deeply insulted by my accusations. He left Tintagel at once, and I am not certain where he is now, though I have heard accounts that he reached the court of Sussex.”
Again the notables and the bishop conferred. High overhead, a hawk sailed on an updraft, wings tipped to catch the air.
“We should hear the testimony of the queen,” said the bishop.
Isolde stepped into the middle of the stone circle. Her eyes were rimmed dark with fatigue and sorrow. Her voice was low but clear.
“It grieves me deeply,” she said, “to have given my lord husband such pain, and for so little reason. Yes, he found me spotted with blood, but from a feminine complaint, with which I shall not embarrass the ears of this august and male company. Tristan’s own blood needs no explanation, for everyone saw him wounded in the tourney. We were sleeping in separate beds, a great distance apart, with, as you have heard, an unmarked floor between us. If false rumors have been spread about the king’s nephew and me, then I can swear that I have done nothing to encourage such tales. The king knows how much I love him, and I am hurt that he trusts me so little as to try to trap me in falsehood.”
The notables of Cornwall all looked at each other. “It credits you little, your majesty,” said one of the barons at last, “that you seem so eager to catch your wife in unfaithfulness that you lay traps for her and believe in rumors, even when without proof.”
Ashes of Heaven Page 23
