Ashes of Heaven

by C. Dale Brittain

  “The blood on both of them seems suspicious,” added the bishop, “but the undisturbed flour tells a different story.”

  “But I want to know for sure!” cried Mark.

  “There is nothing in the circumstances that will convict the queen,” said the baron, “even though we all agree that the circumstances are suspicious. Suppose she were to clear herself by trial and oath?”

  “You mean right now?” asked Mark, frowning.

  “If I am to clear myself,” put in Isolde, “I would ask for a space of a month, in which to undergo purgation, to demonstrate the sincerity of my oath and to ensure the validity of the ordeal.”

  The bishop nodded. “The queen’s request is entirely reasonable. I would trust,” turning to Mark, “that you would believe the queen if she thus cleared herself, and would cease to be wracked by doubts?”

  Mark nodded unhappily. “I would have to believe her.”

  “Good,” said the bishop. “We shall all reassemble here in a month.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Isolde, “I ask permission, my dear king and husband, to retire to the nunnery in Somerset. There I shall fast and pray and undergo the discipline, to prepare myself for my trial.”

  “You will not return to Tintagel with me?” Mark asked in surprise.

  “It is not right,” she said firmly, “that I should share your bed and board when under such suspicion. In a month I shall prove my innocence, and then I shall happily lie beside you again, as husband and wife should lie. But now I shall repair to the nunnery, accompanied only by my faithful Brangein.”

  One of Mark’s ships took Isolde from Tintagel along the coast to Somerset, where it rowed a short way up the river before letting her off a mile from the nunnery. “I shall see you in a month,” she told the sailors, very serious and very sad. “Between now and then, pray both for the king and for me.”

  As she and Brangein walked across the water meadows toward the nunnery, Brangein said, “It is too late to give you any counsel or warning, cousin. But I would like to know: are you planning to seek sanctuary in the nunnery for the rest of your life?”

  “Of course not,” said Isolde briskly. Her sorrowful mien had fallen from her as soon as the ship was out of sight. “I intend to be returned to my rightful and honorable position as queen of Cornwall.”

  “You cannot be planning to swear a false oath before the bishop!”

  “That is why I have to spend this month at the nunnery,” said Isolde, “to show Christ by my fasting and prayers how much I repent of any evil Tristan and I may have done.”

  Brangein looked at her suspiciously. “You are suggesting, then, that Christ will allow you to make a false oath, in return for promising Him to give up your love for Tristan.”

  “You know perfectly well,” Isolde shot back, “that Tristan and I did not sin intentionally, but were forced into error by that perfidious love potion. Christ knows this as well. He will support us and will not consider our love a sin, as long as I give a true oath. And besides,” and she smiled a little, “the example of self-styled holy men shows us that Christ is little more than a wind-blown sleeve, ready to be sent this way or that by a passing gust.”

  Brangein made a hasty sign of the cross on her breast. “I hardly dare ask you, but how do you intend to make Christ blow in your direction?”

  “There is a reason, dear Brangein, that I brought you with me, and it is not so that you could share in my purgation. I want you to find Tristan for me. I understand that he is at the court of Sussex.”

  VI

  A month later, Mark’s ship returned to Somerset. Isolde, thinner and more wan looking than when she had left Cornwall, was helped aboard. Brangein stood on the deck beside her, an arm around her cousin.

  Isolde nodded to the sailors but did not speak. Her eyes, usually gay and laughing, looked haunted, and several times her lips moved, as in silent prayer. The sailors kept their distance, though giving her concerned glances.

  When the ship reached the sea and the sails were raised, Isolde whispered to Brangein, “Fear for my body but not my soul, dearest cousin. I shall not swear falsely. But if my true oath does not satisfy, then you may see me put to death.”

  Brangein embraced her, tears in her eyes. “Dearest Isolde, I pray I shall never see that. This is all my fault, for allowing you two to drink the love potion in the first place and then not insisting that you stay apart.”

  “I forgive you for any fault,” Isolde murmured. “But I pray that Tristan shall come in time.”

  The ship sailed along the coast until it reached Tintagel on the second morning. The tide was out, too far for a plank between ship and jetty. The sailors slung their ropes and hopped over the railing, to walk in across the mud.

  Waiting for them were King Mark, the bishop, and the great notables of Cornwall. Standing to one side, watching, was a pilgrim.

  His hood was pulled far down so his face was hidden, except for a short, ruddy beard. He leaned on a heavy staff. His shapeless linen robe gave no indication whether he was thin or fat, old or young.

  Isolde, who had been too frightened and worried to eat since leaving the nunnery, noted the pilgrim and, for the first time, began to feel real hope.

  A sailor handed Brangein down, where another positioned her on his back and carried her across the mud to shore, her arms around his neck and legs around his waist. “A lot sweeter burden than many sacks I’ve had to carry!” he said with a chuckle as he returned for Isolde. “I can’t say I’ve ever had a queen ride me before,” he added, looking up at her and waiting. “This will be an experience I can tell the grandchildren.”

  But she, dressed in a simple white dress and without jewels, looked askance at him. “Your majesty,” she called to Mark, “given my situation, I prefer not to have this sailor carry me ashore. Could I request that the pilgrim carry me instead? It might be more fitting for a man devoted to God to bring me from the ship.”

  Mark seemed to notice the pilgrim for the first time. “Come here, my good man,” he said with a brusque gesture. “Your assistance is required.”

  “Yes, yes, God’s blessings, God’s blessings,” the pilgrim mumbled, sounding as though he was speaking through a pebble in his mouth. He took a step or two toward Mark and stopped as if abashed.

  Mark shook his head, murmured, “This man is simple,” to those next to him, but called out anyway, “Go out onto the tide flats and take the queen onto your back, so she can come to shore. Do not drop her!”

  The pilgrim nodded, hunched his shoulders, and immediately started walking across the mud, sinking in an inch with each step and pulling his boots free with great sucking noises. Only a shout from the king kept him moving toward rather than away from the ship.

  Isolde, leaning over the rail, frowned as he approached. “I hope he is not too frail for me to ride on his back.”

  “Oh, you’ll be fine with me,” the pilgrim mumbled. “God’s blessings on you and on the ship and on the court and on the jetty and—”

  “Stop talking and bring her ashore!” Mark shouted. In a lower voice he said, “Perhaps I should have carried her myself.”

  “Not and ruin your finery in the mud,” said a courtier next to him. “And while she is accused of adultery, you do best to avoid any intimate encounter with her. It will humble her to have to ride on a simple pilgrim’s back.”

  With the assistance of the sailors, Isolde was lowered over the side of the ship onto the pilgrim’s bent back. She rode him astride as Brangein had ridden the sailor, arms around his neck and legs around his waist.

  “I’m a horse,” he announced. “Do you want me to gallop or to trot?”

  “Just walk slowly and carefully across the mud to shore,” she said shortly.

  The pilgrim complied, taking long, slow steps, swaying from side to side as he went, so that Isolde had to hang on tight to avoid sliding off. With her on his back he sank deeply with each step. “God’s blessing on the mud,” said the pilgrim.


  “At last!” cried Isolde as he finally reached the stony shingle and the seaweed that marked the high tide mark.

  “Now I can gallop!” the pilgrim cried—or rather mumbled loudly. He began to run, swaying even more markedly, up over the rough stones.

  “Stop, stop!” cried Isolde. But it was too late. A stone turned under his foot just as he reached the edge of the turf, and he tumbled to the ground, Isolde on top of him. For a few seconds they rolled together, limbs all entangled, as she cried, “Keep your hands away! Good sir, forgive me, but you are the most clumsy pilgrim I have ever seen!”

  Those at the royal court who had been moved at seeing Isolde so sad and penitent were pleased to see a flash of her old spirit. “That pilgrim has been where many a knight imagines Paradise to reside,” one courtier quipped. Mark glared at him until he turned away, abashed.

  Isolde stood up and straightened her clothing. She had escaped mud on slippers or dress, but her white dress now had several grass stains, which she tried ineffectively to brush away. Several of the king’s knights rushed forward and stood over the pilgrim with staves and clubs, waiting only Mark’s signal to beat him.

  “Forgive me, sweet lady!” the pilgrim begged from his knees. “In the name of all-merciful Christ, do not kill me!”

  She frowned, hands on her hips. “I am not going to kill you.”

  “But these knights are!”

  Isolde looked toward Mark. “Forgive this pilgrim, your majesty. He is old and infirm. I should have come ashore on my own feet. The mud would have been nothing more than an additional penance, all that I deserve for having lost your trust.” Mark grunted and waved his knights away. “But I must say,” she added, “that this complicates the oath that I must give, for I cannot now say truthfully that I have had no man but you between my legs.”

  Several members of the court chuckled at this until Mark turned his glare on them. The bishop, stony-faced, pretended not to hear. Horses were brought out, and the whole company mounted up; a palfrey had been provided for the queen. The pilgrim slipped away, unnoticed, as the royal party, the bishop, and the great notables of Cornwall rode off toward the judgment circle on the downs.

  The sky was cloudy, threatening rain, as they assembled. The downs, as always, were deserted except for a few sheep. The tall standing stones, in spite of the yellow lichen and the weathering that had worn away any marks they might once have borne, seemed almost intelligent presences, cold to the touch even on this summer’s afternoon.

  The bishop brought out a reliquary and set it in the center of the circle, on a low stone almost buried in the turf. To one side was a deep, square pit, half full as always of rain water, and those of the court who had carried jugs of water up from Tintagel set about filling it.

  A final rider came rapidly through the gorse to the standing stones: the pilgrim. The court normally would have begun commenting on how well the simple pilgrim sat his steed, but the queen held all their attention. The pilgrim dismounted and stood unobtrusively to one side, watching and listening.

  “I am ready to swear, your majesty,” said Isolde, standing with her hands folded, just inside the stone circle. “What oath would you have me give?”

  “Swear that you have never lain with Tristan,” one courtier suggested, and, “Try swearing that you are not an adulteress,” said another. Others, more sympathetic to the queen, suggested, “Swear that you have always tried to honor your marriage vows,” and “Swear that the king is your one true love.”

  But Isolde ignored them all. “You are the only one whose opinion I value,” she said to Mark. “Tell me if the following will satisfy you. ‘I swear that I have never lain beside any man or had carnal knowledge of any man but you.’ I must, however, except that poor silly pilgrim from my oath, for everyone saw him lying beside me! With that exception, will you accept my oath?”

  Mark grunted. “It will do.”

  Isolde walked slowly to the center of the circle. With her hand on the reliquary and the bishop beside her, watching closely for any hesitation or deviant word, she said, “I swear before Christ and His angels that I never lay beside any man or held any man in my arms, except for King Mark and the pilgrim who carried me to shore today.”

  Her voice was clear and steady, and nothing in her oath suggested falsity. She did not stop suddenly with her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, as several men there expected to happen, and no fire from heaven struck her, though there were distant rumblings of thunder. When she finished she gave a little bow toward Mark, her face full of sorrow.

  “The queen has absolved herself by her oath on relics,” the bishop announced.

  “But we still need to test her through trial by water,” said one of the barons.

  By this time Mark was looking very unhappy, ready to accept the oath without the trial, but Brangein stepped up beside him and slipped her arm through his. “The trial must proceed, your majesty,” she murmured. “Otherwise the barons will later voice doubts—and you yourself will later feel doubts.”

  He squeezed her arm with his and nodded. “As always, you give excellent counsel, Brangein.” He waved to his courtiers. “Let the trial begin.”

  Isolde let herself be picked up, rather unceremoniously, and carried to the water-filled pit. Those carrying her paused at the edge, and she took a deep breath and said, “Let the water prove the truth of my oath. If I am a liar, may the water reject me.”

  Then she squeezed her eyes shut, as those carrying her dumped her in, with a great splash. She immediately disappeared from sight.

  Two barons knelt on the edge of the pit, peering into the murky depths. “The water has accepted her, your majesty.”

  “Then, in the name of God, pull her out before she drowns!”

  Several men, lying flat on the ground, reached down into the pit’s waters, found her, and tugged. Isolde came up sputtering, her hair streaming with dirty water, her slippers gone, and her dress clinging to her body in a most unseemly way.

  “The water has confirmed the judgment of the oath!” the bishop cried. “Let all know, the charges of adultery against the queen were entirely false! Let them be utterly forgotten, as she is returned to all her honors.”

  Isolde looked at Mark and smiled, and the smile returned all the beauty to her wan and water-streaked face. No one noticed when the pilgrim quietly slipped away.

  VII

  Everyone at Tintagel was happy to welcome Tristan home just two days later. Before all his court, Mark said, “Forgive me, dearest nephew. I spoke to you harshly, out of entirely unfounded suspicion. It was very wrong of me, for you have never given me any reason to think anything but the best of you. The queen has begged me to make peace with you, and I am most anxious to do so.”

  Tristan accepted this apology with a deep bow and kissed the king’s hand. In the following days the court quickly settled into its old routine. Mark brought out jewels long stored in the treasure-house of Cornwall and had them made into a new necklace for his wife, and he smiled whenever he caught her eye, which was often, for she was constantly with him.

  For the next few weeks, Tristan and Isolde never spoke to each other except when others were close by, and even Brangein, observing them with a rather despairing sense of futility, saw nothing the least suspicious in their behavior.

  The first touch of autumn was in the air, and the night’s stillness had been broken by the calls of geese starting south, when the queen summoned Tristan to the solar.

  She was sitting alone and pensive when he arrived. He entered with a smile, but seeing her expression distant and a bit sad, he sat down quietly beside her and took her hand, rather than putting his arms around her.

  She squeezed his hand. “Dearest Tristan,” she said, “I have loved you ever since you were the wounded minstrel Tantris. My mother’s love potion only intensified the feelings I already had for you. I would never have wished to give my maidenhead to any other man, and I do not regret a single moment of our love.”

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nbsp; Tristan, knowing what was coming, nodded but kept silent.

  “But we must give up our love for each other,” she continued, lifting her eyes to his. “My oath was sworn on relics and tested in water, and I was cleared of all charges of adultery. I shall not be put to death, and you shall not be exiled forever from the kingdom that should be yours. But I know that this was only a reprieve granted us, a final chance to save ourselves from hell. While I was in the nunnery I prayed without ceasing, that Christ would allow me to pass cleanly through the ordeal, in return for our giving up our love forever, or until such time as He should free us from that promise. We must, from here on, restrict ourselves to glances, to smiles, and to occasional words said in passing. That stolen hour in the royal pavilion was our last time to be truly together.”

  He did not answer at once, but turned over on his tongue and rejected several possible responses. He would not say bitterly that he should have realized that she had always loved Mark more than she loved him. He would not beg her abjectly to change her mind. He would not even tell her that, whatever weakened emotion she might feel, his own love was as strong as ever.

  Instead he said, “That hour was a delight and a joy, as all our hours together have been.”

  “We can still delight in each other’s nearness,” she said, and her expression seemed relieved.

  “It will be difficult,” he said slowly, “as all our happiness turns to ashes.”

  “Love is torment,” she said with a small smile. “All minstrels are agreed on that—even the minstrel Tantris. The agony of not being together will be a sorrowful joy.”

  Tristan again rejected several possible responses. Instead he said, “This then is farewell. We shall see each other daily, but it shall be the queen and the royal heir who greet each other politely, not the Tristan and Isolde of whom I made the song:

  “A man, a woman,

  A woman, a man,

  Tristan, Isolde,

  Isolde, Tristan.”

  He took her then in his arms, holding her close. He ran one hand through her soft, golden hair, turning her face up to him. Her lips found his, and for a moment they were lost in each other’s nearness, their chests rising and falling as one, even their hearts beating together.