Ashes of Heaven

by C. Dale Brittain

  “The young woman, of course!” the ladies all pronounced. “Death is always the worst of all.”

  Tristan shook his head with a rueful smile. “I should have known it. Ladies do not understand rational arguments! They will take a woman’s part every time, no matter what. If we had taken the opposite sides of the debate, my queen, they would still have judged you the winner.”

  “Only because my points are always more insightful,” said Isolde with a toss of her head. “And because you made the fateful error in your argument of suggesting that women are more inconstant than men.” She laughed and looked out across the orchard and saw King Mark, standing behind an apple tree. He was perfectly still, and there was no way of telling how long he had been there.

  “Why stand apart to listen?” she called with a smile. “Why do you not come join us?”

  “I was enjoying your playing,” he said, but his voice sounded sad, not joyful. “You make a lovely picture, my dear, here among the blossoms, and you know that I have always found your singing delightful.” His mouth drooped, and he fell silent.

  “Come sit with us, Sire!” called Tristan. “The ladies brought honey cakes and wine, and I believe there are still some left.”

  The king shook his head. “No, I am not hungry.”

  The ladies shifted uneasily, feeling his gaze on them and not liking his silence. But Isolde took out one of the last honey cakes, bit into it, and took it to Mark. “Eve tempted Adam in an orchard, I understand,” she said, holding it up to him, eyes dancing. “But there is nothing forbidden about this sweetmeat!”

  At that Mark finally smiled. He finished the cake, then turned away, his mournful expression back. “Continue your singing and debating,” he said. “I need to return to the castle, for I fear that duties summon me.”

  “Shall I assist you?” asked Tristan, not liking the king’s expressionless tone.

  “No, no.” Mark started off, then stopped after only a few steps. He turned, and his eyes found Brangein among the ladies. “You always gave me good advice,” he said. “Do not blame yourself if I do not follow it.” And he strode quickly away, leaving the ladies looking after him in wonder.

  That evening as dinner was ending, Mark rose from the table and said, “I have a momentous announcement.”

  The court looked up, surprised, and immediately fell silent. Tristan raised his eyebrows questioningly to Isolde, but she just shook her head, as puzzled as he was.

  “Please come before me, my lady Isolde of Eire, and my nephew Tristan of Parmenie,” said Mark, and his voice was low. His spoke steadily, but everyone near the dais could see that he was shaking.

  Tristan and Isolde shot each other startled looks—of Eire and Parmenie, not of Cornwall?—but rose and stood quietly before the king.

  “It is no use,” said Mark. “You know how long the dire rumors have flourished in Cornwall that the two of you love each other. I have set traps for you, spied on you, even subjected you to trial. In all this I hoped that you would recognize your folly and give up your love for one another. But today I see that you have refused to do so.”

  Both Tristan and Isolde started to speak, but he waved them to silence. “It is no use denying it, for I know. I am not such a fool as not to recognize by your behavior how much you love each other. I have seen the way you look at one another, the way that you speak together. No matter how much distance I have tried to put between you, your hearts are never separated.”

  Now Tristan, Isolde, and Brangein all tried to interrupt, but Mark only spoke louder. “This must now end. Do not try to persuade me that you do not lie together, for it is entirely possible that you do not. But you love him, Isolde, more than you love me, and I can no longer bear the suffering and grief. You are dearer to me than life, and my heart is stabbed within from knowing that you do not return my feelings. From now on, I shall no longer endure this dishonor.

  “But do not fear, dearest queen, that I shall seek to avenge myself. I once tried to hold a trial and to involve the bishop, and all that happened was that you were threatened with death. I love you, both of you, far too much to ever hurt you. I can no longer bear the pain of your falseness, but to my shame I shall never be able to do you any harm.”

  He paused, and the hall was dead quiet, as everyone held their breaths. After a moment Tristan said, “Then, Sire, what do you intend to do?”

  “I shall send you away,” said Mark with a great sigh. “Since you love each other, you may henceforth be together. Here, take each other by the hand. Leave my court at once. A king who allows another to share in his queen’s love is beneath contempt, and I shall no longer be part of any such arrangement. Go wherever you wish, and do whatever you wish. Live and love as you please, but you shall no longer do so at Tintagel. And may God guide you and keep you both.”

  When he had finished speaking, Isolde abruptly stamped her foot. “Enough!” she cried. “I am queen of Cornwall, and have done nothing to deserve this slander! If my honor means nothing to you, then I no longer desire to be your queen.” She snatched the golden circlet from her hair and hurled it at the king’s feet.

  There was a shocked silence. But she was not through. “I deny it all! You have tested me, tried to trap me, even put me on trial in peril of my life, and have always found me innocent! You may imagine falsity, but your suspicions have always been proven utterly without foundation. Today you say that you realize I am untrue to you, but on what basis? You saw your nephew and me sitting and talking in the orchard, with a dozen witnesses who will swear that nothing untoward passed between us. If you want me to go, I shall do so, but I go protesting my innocence! My own mother was unjustly forced to leave Ispania for exile in Eire, and I shall not fear exile any more than she did.” She whirled away from Mark. “Tristan, take my hand. We are no longer welcome in Cornwall.”

  Tristan took Isolde’s hand, and they turned and walked slowly the length of the great hall. Members of the court stepped aside without a word to let them pass. They proceeded to the stables, and Tristan sent for his sword and bow and both their harps.

  As they were saddling their horses, Brangein came running in with an armful of blankets and extra clothing. “Dearest cousin!” she cried. “Where will you go? Shall I accompany you?”

  “It is no use your coming with us,” said Isolde, very soberly, “for we are going into exile. Stay here, and perhaps you can soften the king’s heart so that we might someday regain our position at court. I know that you have always been a true friend.” She embraced and kissed her, then swung up onto her palfrey. “May the Maiden Mother’s blessings be on you, dear cousin.”

  But as they rode away, Isolde did not look back. She and Tristan were smiling at each other.

  PART SIX - Isolde Fair Hands

  I

  Far back in the hills of central Cornwall, many miles from any castle or village, was a dwelling dug deep in a mound, known to those few who had seen it as the Cave of Lovers. Tristan had come across it the year before. While hunting, he had become separated from his companions and had sought refuge there from the rain.

  Now he and Isolde drew up their horses before the doors. It was the evening of the day after Mark had expelled them from Tintagel. They had made their bed the first night on pine boughs at the edge of a small woods, where they could watch the stars wheeling across the sky from their blankets. Locked in close embrace, they had slept very little, then dozed and kissed long into the morning.

  But now they came to the Cave as soft shadows spread under the trees and birds called back and forth from the treetops. A flowering meadow with a little brook lay below a great mound of earth and stone, grown with pines, and the Cave was within the mound.

  “The story,” said Tristan, “is that in days of old the same giants who erected Cornwall’s standing stones erected this mound. They built it as a chapel to the god of love, whom they worshipped as the greatest of the gods. Ever since, those who love passionately may open the doors and step within, but the d
oors remain locked to anyone who does not follow love’s dictates.”

  Isolde laughed and dismounted. “This sounds like a story worthy of the minstrel Tantris. Shall we try the doors and see if we qualify as passionate lovers?”

  A tall doorway in the side of the mound was closed with heavy wooden doors, fastened with a hook. But the doors swung open at a touch, showing a room under a high stone ceiling. There were shuttered windows on either side, cut through the earth between the stone slabs that formed the walls. Tristan opened the shutters to let in the last of the twilight. Entwined hearts had been painted all the way around both windows. A platform for a bed was on one side, and a fire pit at the far end, with a narrow passage dug up through the mound for a chimney.

  “Not as luxurious as Tintagel,” said Tristan, “but if you are here with me it shall seem the most glorious place on earth.”

  They swept the room out, piled their blankets on the bed platform, built a fire, and ate the last of the bread and cheese they had brought with them. “It does indeed look like a chapel,” commented Isolde, sitting with Tristan’s arms around her, enjoying the fire’s warmth as the night breeze wafted in through the windows. “Here one could forget God and all the saints and devote oneself to love alone.”

  The following days were filled with an unrestrained joy they had not felt since their days on the ship coming from Eire. With no need to worry about being discovered, they could lie together for hours and often paused for kisses even while doing something else.

  Many evenings they stayed out until midnight or later, looking at the bright, cold stars seeming to burst out from the black sky above the mound. Most mornings they strolled in the meadow at dawn, watching the golden light coming up the sky and listening to the birds’ exuberant song, then went back to bed for a few hours. The brook gave them water, and when they drank it from cups carved of wood it seemed sweeter than wine. Tristan hunted for meat, and the woods were full of mushrooms and wild berries. For entertainment they played their harps and sang.

  High summer came, the leaves dark green, the days long and nights short. Nature seemed to have forgotten that winter could even exist. But Isolde had not.

  She sat by the fire on a rainy afternoon, her legs drawn up, feeding twigs to the flames. “What shall we do in the autumn, dearest Tristan?” she asked.

  “Autumn?” he said with a chuckle. “In the house of the god of love, it is always summer. The rest of Cornwall may lie under three feet of snow, but here our love alone shall keep us warm.”

  She smiled but was not distracted. “Carpeting for the windows and the floor would help once the weather turns bitter. And all our clothes are wearing out; we shall need more, and warmer ones.” She absently scratched an insect bite on her arm. “I should have thought to bring some money or my jewels; then we could have gone to a town and bought supplies.”

  “The god of love knows and numbers the very sparrows in the meadow,” Tristan replied, refusing to be serious. “He will not neglect those who worship so assiduously at his altar. Why should we toil or spin when he shall provide?” He pulled her to him and kissed her. “Let us perform his liturgy yet again!”

  But in the following days Isolde several times asked if it would be possible to trap enough ermine or other furry creatures to make themselves winter cloaks, and if they ought to think of smoking meat to have something to eat on days when it might be impossible to find game, much less berries.

  “Do you grow weary of my company, beloved of my heart?” Tristan asked, frowning. “Do you not believe that we can live on love alone?”

  “No!” she cried. “I could never grow weary of you. You are always my heart’s balm and delight. But the songs that suggest lovers can subsist on glances and embraces alone are nothing more than songs, not guidelines for lovers spending the summer camped in the woods.”

  “I’ll get my harp,” said Tristan with a grin, “and make a song about lovers camping in the woods. Will that then satisfy you?”

  Isolde laughed, but in the following weeks she found herself more than once thinking of the comforts of Tintagel, of the food stored away in the cellars for the winter, of wood split and stacked to feed the fires, and of furs heaped high on the beds. As lady of the castle, she had taken on more and more responsibility for all these things after the steward Marjodoc had left. But she had always had plenty of people to help her, not just a single knight: a delightful and loving one, to be sure, but also one who refused to take her seriously.

  In August the air was just as warm, the meadow flowers just as bright, but something had changed. The birds sang less and were no longer nesting. They seemed restless, as if considering their long trip south. The deep green leaves on the forest trees were worn and insect-frayed. Even the sun did not ride so high in the sky.

  And one early morning in August they heard a distant baying and the note of hunting horns.

  They were strolling in the meadow as they usually did at dawn, serenaded by both lark and nightingale, and Isolde was plaiting flowers together to make herself a necklace. She stopped and listened over the voices of the birds. “That sounds like the hunting call of Tintagel.”

  “I am surprised that any hunters should venture this far back in the hills,” said Tristan. But it had been last August when he himself had been hunting and had first come here.

  They listened for several minutes, but the note of the horn grew fainter and was soon lost on the breeze. The sun by now had fully risen. Tristan and Isolde returned to the cave, where they gave themselves over for a time to each other’s embraces, then started to settle down.

  “I wonder if that really could have been Mark,” commented Isolde. “If so, he will be surprised if he discovers us.”

  “He can have no idea we are here,” Tristan agreed. “He will have expected us to go to some other royal court—perhaps even to Eire.”

  “It would shock him to see us lying here together.”

  “Not really,” said Tristan with a chuckle. “After all, he exiled us because he knew we loved each other.”

  “Still, we dare not startle him with that on top of the surprise of discovering our hiding place. He exiled us rather than condemning us to death, but only because he has never actually seen us in each other’s arms. I would not wish to arouse his anger.”

  “Well, he’s gone,” said Tristan sleepily, closing his eyes.

  But Isolde lay quietly for a moment, then lifted her head to listen, rolled first one way, then the other, and listened again. After a few minutes she rose, fetched Tristan’s sword from across the room, and brought it back to bed. “With this between us, he will have one less shock if he comes—and we will be ready to defend ourselves if he comes in a rage.”

  King Mark’s hunting party had gone far inland, well beyond where they usually hunted. But he remembered that they had found plentiful game here last summer, when he and Tristan had led the hunting, not long after Isolde’s trial. This summer had proved blank and empty, with neither his wife nor his nephew at court, and he had hoped a wide-ranging and vigorous hunt might distract him from his melancholy thoughts.

  The company spent the night camped under the trees and rose before dawn to continue the hunt. This morning, however, the game proved elusive. After several hours, the king became separated from the rest of the court, when he rode enthusiastically after what he thought was a white hart. By the time it disappeared, he could no longer hear the huntsman’s horn.

  But he did not immediately turn back, for he was surprised to see before him two horses grazing by a brook. They were sleek and well-fed, like horses who had not been ridden very much for many weeks. One was a palfrey, the other a war horse.

  Very curious, Mark looked around and saw a thin plume of smoke emerging from a rocky mound. He dismounted and walked slowly across the meadow. There was a window in the side of the mound.

  The morning sun sent a beam in through the window. He stood on tiptoe and peeked in.

  He caught his breath. Ther
e, sound asleep, was Isolde, even more beautiful than he remembered. Her face was fresh and pink from days outdoors, her golden hair sun-lightened. Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, and her breast rose and fell softly beneath the sheet.

  Beside her lay Tristan, also asleep, his curls tousled, one arm thrown up to shield his eyes from the sun. But between the two was a naked sword. The sunlight glinted on the sharp steel blade.

  “Merciful God,” Mark murmured to himself, “what can this mean?” They could not, he told himself, have had any inkling that he would spy upon them, for the hunt had been many miles away last night when, he thought, Tristan and Isolde would have retired to bed. So they must routinely sleep with a sword between them.

  An unexpected bubble of joy and hope rose within him: the hope that he had been wrong. This scene certainly suggested innocence. He had sent them forth with no resources except each other, so it was not surprising that as they tried to survive here in the wilderness they should lie down side by side. But the naked blade suggested a determination not to touch each other dishonorably, even in sleep.

  And with hope came sharp regret, that he had accused them unjustly and deprived them of their home in Tintagel—and himself of their company. All his old love for Isolde coursed through him, as strong as ever.

  The sun’s beam was on the pillow by her head, moving toward her face. Mark reached down and picked up some sticks and leaves, with which he made a little screen in the corner of the window, to shield her so that the sun should not wake her. Then, scarcely able to credit what he had seen, he returned to his horse and rode back the way he had come, to find the rest of the hunt.