The King in the Tree

The King in the Tree

The Queen is a whore — cut off her nose. The Queen is lecherous — burn her. Such are the interesting remarks one hears at court, from those who dislike the King’s new bride. Others, it is true, speak of the Queen’s exceeding beauty. By this they mean the Queen is guilty and should be hanged. For my part, I believe the young Queen is beautiful and must be watched closely.

I, Thomas of Cornwall, faithful counselor of a once happy King.

The King is a vigorous man, well favored in countenance, deep-chested and hard-muscled, youthful in appearance despite his forty-four years. His forehead is smooth, his eyes large and dark. His broad hands, well tested in the managing of horse and sword, are remarkable for their long fingers, which lend a suggestion of grace and even delicacy, though I have seen him crush a man’s collarbone with a single blow of his fist. When, in his crimson mantle trimmed in ermine, he walks beside the Queen, the eye is pleased with its vision of power joined with beauty.

There is nothing in the King that can incite ridicule.

I have noticed one change. Before his marriage to Queen Ysolt, the King was master of his countenance: no one studying the King’s face could see anything behind the smooth brow, the broad planes of his cheeks, the still mouth, the clear, intelligent eyes. Now, in that well-loved face, one can see adoration, suspicion, jealousy, yearning, sudden doubt.

The ladies of the court speak continually of love.

Love, they say, ennobles the heart and exalts the soul. Love is a divine gift that permits us to enter the Earthly Paradise, from which we have been banished because of our base natures and which is a type and reflection of the Heavenly Kingdom. I have heard the wife of a baron maintain in the middle of a summer afternoon that love is a purifying flame which burns only in a lofty heart, and I have seen that same baroness in the dark of night standing against the wall of the granary with her robes raised above her waist while her gallant lover, grunting like a bull, charms her with his delicate attentions. Love, I have heard the court ladies say, is not a contractual obligation upheld by the brute authority of law, but a form of spiritual consent, freely given. By this they mean that love is possible only outside of marriage. It is these same ladies who whisper about the Queen, glance at her with malicious disapproval, gossip about the King’s nephew, and smile kindly at their husbands while devoting every instant of their waking hours to the arrangement of clandestine meetings with their virile young lovers.

The ladies of the court are very beautiful.

The immediate source of the court rumors is Oswin, the chief steward. It is he who first reported to the King the glances exchanged by the Queen and his nephew. The steward is a loyal servant of the crown, skilled in all that relates to household management, scrupulous in his accounts, exact of speech, proud, censorious, secretive, disinclined to laughter. He is fond of rich cloaks trimmed in miniver, jeweled rings, cups of gold. He has two weaknesses. Because he is the son of a burgher and has made his way at court through talent, tireless work, and steadfast purpose, he nurses a grievance against the rich and well-born. This failing leads him to overestimate his own considerable accomplishments and to imagine slights in the eye-blink of a baron. His second weakness lies in his displeasing looks. Although Oswin is not an ugly man, his features make a disagreeable impression: his eyes are small and cold, his nose thrusts forward, one upper tooth grows at an angle. The lady Fortuna, he believes, has treated him unjustly, while lavishing upon fools her gifts of landed estates, hereditary titles, and pretty teeth. His lust for highborn ladies, which appears inexhaustible, is not pleasant to contemplate. His successes never satisfy him.

Oswin follows the Queen ruthlessly with his eyes. His lust shows on his face like a knife-gash.

It is easy to imagine that Oswin’s report to the King was caused by injured pride and thwarted desire. When the Queen smiles at the steward, her gray, faintly melancholy eyes do not see him; more often she passes him by without a look. His invisibility, his terrible transparency, must exasperate him beyond measure. But such an explanation, however reasonable, is true only up to a certain point. In judging the motives of a man like the steward, one must bear in mind his loyalty to the crown; Oswin’s obedience has never been in doubt. It is his duty to report to the King any sign of disorder in the household, any form of behavior unbefitting a vassal or a wife. In this sense his spiteful report is the laudable act of a servant devoted to his master. It is also true that Oswin has always been jealous of the King’s nephew, whom the King loves immoderately.

No one can deny that the young Queen and Tristan take pleasure in one another’s company.

The Queen’s beauty is remarkable but difficult to account for. Each of her features, considered separately, is exceeded in perfection by the exquisite eyelid, the flawless cheek, the incomparable lip of a court lady, and yet, united, they compose a pattern of beauty that surpasses any other at court. Is it the harmony of her parts that is so beguiling? I believe the secret lies elsewhere. The Queen, like all beautiful women, has about her a remoteness, a coolness of perfection, such as one feels in a jewel or a silver goblet. Such beauty holds us at a distance, chills us, in truth repels us a little. In this sense it may be argued that the highest expression of beauty is nothing but a rare and enigmatic form of ugliness. But working against the chill of the Queen’s beauty is some other force — a force of imperfection, of unruliness. Her plaited yellow hair, a hint of which is visible at her temples, where the wimple is joined to her head covering, is so richly golden and perfectly arranged that it appears to have been fashioned by a master goldsmith with repeated blows of his small hammer, yet here and there a strand escapes and glitters in the sun. These are the strands that break the heart. Her lips are perfectly formed, but when she smiles, one side of her mouth begins to turn upward before the other. Her left eyelid dips at the outer corner. Her elegant nostrils, shaped by the delicate chisel of a carver of Old Testament scenes on the panels of a cathedral door, do not match precisely. When she laughs, however mildly, something leaps into her cheeks and eyes that was not there before — something that bursts out of her like a force of disruption.

The secret of the Queen’s beauty lies in what shatters it.

Is it surprising that gossip and slander have joined the young Queen and Tristan? They are radiant with youth, disarming in beauty. When the King, the Queen, and Tristan are seen walking together, the eye helplessly binds the young Queen and Tristan, separating them cruelly from the King. It is also true that the King has formally requested Tristan to love and protect the Queen; when the King is meeting with his counselors in the great hall, or following his hounds in the royal forest, she is always with Tristan. They walk in the Queen’s garden, stroll among the trees of the orchard, ride in the forest, talk in the women’s quarters above the royal bedchamber. Such behavior can lead only to malicious gossip. The Queen is very busy, say the court ladies: she has one husband by night, and one husband by day. They fail to understand that it is precisely the King’s love for Tristan that makes him place his beloved Ysolt under his protection. Would they leave her open to the attentions of the steward?

Tristan is honorable. He would lay down his life for his King. The Queen walks beside him with downcast eyes. Strands of her yellow hair catch the sun.

They are too much together. I do not like these rumors.

This morning I was summoned to the King’s private chamber in the northwest tower. I found the King seated alone at a small table before his chessboard. He motioned for me to sit down across from him and, after taking thought, moved the white king’s pawn two squares forward. His long fingers lingered caressingly on the artful folds of the sleeves of the stern-faced pawn, before releasing it; of his nine sets of chesspieces, these are his favorite, carved from walrus tusks. In reply I moved the pawn of my black king two squares forward. He immediately moved the queen’s pawn two squares forward, inviting a capture. At this point an odd look came into his eyes, and he raised his hand to stop me from moving. “Now, Thomas,” he said, “if you were King of Cornwall, which move would you anticipate?”

“If I were King of Cornwall, my lord, I would anticipate one of three moves: a direct capture, the move of my king’s knight to the square before the bishop, or the advance of my queen’s pawn.”

The King, who plays chess well, listened closely to this uninteresting reply. He stared down at the three pawns and looked at me again. “I have never forgotten what you said to me that day in the garden.”

The King’s fondness for this memory, which in truth I can scarcely summon, always pleases me. He was twelve years old — a Prince in his father’s castle. I was a young man of twenty, knighted and well tutored in my uncle’s manor, brought to instruct the Prince in fencing and dialectic. We often played chess in his mother’s garden, in a bower of lime trees. It was an old story, which he liked to remember over the chessboard.

“You pointed to the three pawns and said, ‘The last move of the game lies right here, if we could but see it.’ ”

“We could indeed see it, if two conditions were true: if we could always anticipate our enemy’s moves precisely, and if our own moves were always perfect.”

The King pushed back his chair and stood up. I rose immediately. The chess game was over. He walked to the chamber window, which looked out upon the orchard and the forest, glanced down without interest, and moved before a wall hanging that showed a bleeding stag surrounded by silver greyhounds.

“Do you think the Queen is happy?” he said.

“She appears well content, my lord.”

“Ah,” he said, in a tone of impatience. “But you know, Thomas, I sometimes think — a young woman brought to a foreign court, a place of strangers. How difficult it must be for her! I should like you to keep an eye out for her. Let me know if she is ever — unhappy.”

“Very well, my lord.”

“I know I can rely on you, Thomas.” He swept his arm toward the window. “Look! A fine day for hawking.”

It is night now, and I haven’t been able to dispel a sense of oppression. The meaning of our interview is all too clear: the King wishes me to spy on his wife. He has not been himself since the steward whispered in his ear.

I would think nothing of the Queen’s keeping company with Tristan, whom the King has set over her as a protector, were it not for certain looks that sometimes pass between them. Even those looks might easily be explained as entirely familial, since each has been instructed by the King to love the other well. Might they not love each other as brother and sister — she in a strange land, he without father and mother? The reverence she owes her husband requires her to cherish his nephew. Oswin says the Queen gives herself to Tristan in every bed, upon every stairway, behind every tree.

I fear that something is going to happen.

There are those at court who would not be unhappy to witness Tristan’s disgrace. Tristan has always attracted an ardent following, especially among the younger knights, but the extreme love of the King for his nephew has bred secret jealousies. Among the barons, some fear his prowess in battle, some are jealous of the King’s favor, some resent the King’s long refusal to marry for the sake of making his nephew heir to the throne. Others, to be sure, remain bound to him in passionate friendship. Yet even they may sometimes feel, at the center of their loyalty, a secret tiredness, such as one feels at the back of the neck after gazing up too long at a splendid tower.

I do not mean that Tristan is disliked. Even those who are jealous and resentful acknowledge his daring, his fearlessness, his high sense of honor, his love of comradeship. The story is told how Tristan, hunting one day with companions in the royal forest, came to a spring. As the company kneeled to drink, Tristan’s servant presented to the young lord a single bottle of wine, which he had brought along to slake his master’s thirst. Tristan, seizing the bottle and holding it high, cried, “Thus do I drink!” and poured the bottle of wine into the spring, inviting all to partake of it.

The King’s love for Tristan runs so deep that it is like the love of a man for his own life.

Oswin the Proud, Oswin the Lascivious, is not the only source of disorder at court. Often he is seen in the despicable company of Modor. Of the three dwarves at court, Modor is the only one of consequence. Modor! — a strutting little ugly man, tyrannical, boastful, obsequious, vengeful, a puffed-up little piece of malevolence. He bullies the other dwarves cruelly, sends them on trivial errands, humiliates them before laughing barons. His harsh face puts me in mind of a clenched fist. His sole passion is intrigue. The barons laugh at him but are uneasy in his presence; he is believed to be skilled in the art of poison. He professes to revere Tristan, while letting it be known that the King favors him unduly; he ingratiates himself with the Queen, while whispering against her; his loyal service to the King does not prevent him from hinting to Tristan’s followers that the King’s marriage to Ysolt of Ireland will deprive his nephew of the promised kingship. He betrays everyone and is universally detested. Why then is his presence tolerated? It is more than tolerated: Modor is sought after eagerly. Is it that an idle court, weary of familiar pleasures, seeks the diversion of the grotesque? Or is there a deeper reason? Modor is the concentrated essence of everything base and ugly in the soul of a courtier. To see him is to experience a thrill of recognition, as when anything hidden is brought to light, followed at once by a pleasing sense of moral superiority.

When I see Oswin and Modor standing together in the angle of a shady wall, or walking side by side on a path at the edge of the forest, then I confess that I am overcome by a feeling of gratitude to the Creator for the wisdom and goodness of His divine plan, whereby the end of life is the beginning of punishment, and death is inevitable.

Something has happened — something disturbing and unexpected — something I cannot understand. I am seated at my writing table late at night, gripping my quill tightly, with trembling fingers. I must make an effort to calm myself. Calm yourself, Thomas! Writing will calm me.

It is my custom, before I retire for the night, to leave the castle by the postern and take a walk in the orchard. The rows of fruit trees — quince and pear, cherry and plum, apple and peach — stretch for acres beyond the castle wall. Here and there cleared paths, broad enough for wagons to pass at harvest-time, run all the way to the palisade of pointed stakes that encloses the orchard and makes of it another garden. Beyond the palisade flows the river, which at this point is no wider than a brook, and on the other side of the brook rises a second palisade, which marks the boundary of the royal forest. It is pleasing, on a warm summer night when the moon is nearly full, to leave the orchard paths and walk among the fruit trees themselves. Here, away from the voices of the castle, in a world of black leaves and white moonlight, a world of silence broken only by the cry of an owl, the rustle of a mouse among the grass, and the distant bark of a greyhound in the courtyard, one can possess one’s soul in peace.

Tonight I walked a little farther than usual, making my way along the wagon paths, striking suddenly into the trees, crossing a stream, entering open places not yet under cultivation, plunging again under the branches — for I was restless and wished to tire myself for sleep. Overhead, like a piece of glass stained deep blue in a cathedral window through which the sun is shining, the night sky was blue and radiant. I had come to a stretch of orchard not far from the palisade when I saw a movement in the shadows and heard a footfall. I halted, placed my hand on my sword hilt, and was about to call out when I saw two figures walking among the trees.

I knew at once it was Tristan and the Queen. They were walking so slowly that they were scarcely moving, and they seemed to lean against each other lightly. Their hands were clasped at their sides and their faces were turned toward each other, his more sharply than hers. Shadows of branches rippled across their faces and backs. The Queen’s mantle, which trailed on the ground, was decorated with small crescent moons made of silver. Over her hair she wore a simple head covering, fastened around her temples by a fillet of gold. Now and then they stepped from the rippling shadow-branches into the sudden light of the moon, before the shadows reclaimed them. As I watched their slow, dreamlike walk, under the silence of the moon, I seemed to forget that I was witnessing an act of treason punishable by death, and I felt — but it is difficult to say precisely what I felt. But I felt I was witnessing something that was of the night — an emanation of the night, as surely as the moonlight dropping softly on the leaves and branches. It was something old, older than marriage, older than kingship, something that belonged to night itself. Then I seemed to feel, rising from those scarcely breathing shadows, an exalted tenderness, a night ecstasy, an expansion of their very being, as if at any moment the night sky would crack open and reveal a dazzling light; and I turned my face away, there in my spying place, as if I had been rebuked.

When the lovers had advanced beyond earshot, I turned quietly and made my way back to the castle.

One detail I neglected to mention. Upon first seeing the pair, I had gripped my sword hilt, with the instinct of an old warrior. When I finally turned to go, I discovered that my hand was still on my sword, the fingers tense, the tendons thrust up, the muscles of my arm sore, as though I had just returned my sword to the scabbard after a battle.

Up at cockcrow, after little sleep. It is good, when the mind is troubled, to walk in the courtyard in the early morning. In the half-light of dawn, the grooms were sweeping out the stables. Peacocks and peahens strutted about. A servant was emptying a chamber pot into the cesspit. A second servant, carrying an armful of rushes for the floor of the great hall, climbed the outer stairway at the base of the keep and disappeared into the arch above. At a great wooden trough, the big-armed laundress was soaking tablecloths and sheets, which she would later pound and hang up to dry in the morning sun. Through the door of the forge I saw the smith examining a broken cart-axle. I stopped for a moment before the mews, to look through the small window at the falcons on their perches, the long-winged peregrines and gyrfalcons, the short-winged goshawks and sparrow hawks. I continued past the well, with its windlass and bucket; a hen fluttered up to the stone rim. The greyhounds were feeding in the kennels, barrels of live chickens stood piled by the kitchen gate, bales of sweet-smelling hay stood before the door of the granary, and on the high walls, against the graying sky, men-at-arms with crossbows were replacing the night watch.

In the afternoon I was alone with the King and did not speak. He waited for me to speak, but I spoke of other things. My silence I condemn as an act of treason against the crown. What bound my tongue was not doubt about whether I ought to speak, but the knowledge that, if I spoke, I would be guilty of an act of disloyalty to the Queen, whom I dislike, and to Tristan, whom I do not love as I love the King.

My duty is clear. Is my duty clear? I have no proof of adultery. Tristan is the Queen’s protector and is often alone with her. The King from the beginning has encouraged their intimacy, has repeatedly praised Tristan for attending to the Queen. What is it that I know? I know that the Queen and Tristan were walking together in the orchard late at night. Is this a fact to be lightly reported to a jealous and suspicious King, in an atmosphere of gossip and slander? A word from me, the King’s trusted counselor and companion, carries more weight than the malice of fools. It is also possible, however unlikely, that there are reasons for their nocturnal walk which, once understood, will set everything in a new light. I did not witness a kiss or a single embrace — merely the holding of hands, as if they were children. Perhaps the unusual hour, my mental agitation, the enchantment of moonlight, an overzealous imagination, a pardonable but highly questionable sense of foreboding, united to produce in my mind the troubling sensations of that night. I must observe them carefully, and accumulate more telling evidence before reporting to the King.

A madness of preparation has seized the court, diverting its attention from the Queen. The Count of Toulouse and some two hundred attendants will be arriving on these shores within the week and will lodge with us for some days before making their way to London. Oswin complains bitterly that there is no room in the stables, that the visitors will devour our pigs and sheep and capons, kill our deer, seduce our women, steal our treasure; he speaks as if he were anticipating a plague of locusts. The King laughs and orders him to spare no expense. Already, in the southwest field outside the castle walls, new stables are being erected. Bedchambers are being cleaned, tents set up, horses curried, walls hung with silks. Wagonloads of hay and grain roll in from the outlying farms. There is talk of feasting, games, entertainments of all kinds. The King hunts all day; Tristan visits in the women’s quarters, or is seen passing with the Queen and her handmaid into the Queen’s garden.

From high windows, ladies look out expectantly, searching for the first sign of movement on the horizon.

Is it possible I was mistaken? They walk together like the best of friends. No one speaks of them, in the tumult of preparation. Only now and again, as I step round a corner of the stables, or emerge from the shady arch of a doorway, I see the steward staring after them as they pass into the tower that opens into the Queen’s garden.

These men of Toulouse do nothing but sing, dance, and play from daybreak to midnight. Laughter rings out from every tent and stairway. Are they a race of children, these knights and nobles of Toulouse? No, in truth they care nothing for childhood: they are of a race who celebrate the joys of full-blooded youth. One can see it in their fashions, in their games and amusements. Their minstrels sing of love — only of love. Never do they sing of battles, of fallen heroes, of ruin and misery. Their songs know nothing of our stern world, with its bitter burdens and sorrows; for them all is youth, zephyrs, the green buds of a perpetual May. The Count is a man of fifty, who wears his unnaturally blond hair to his shoulders. He is said to be a musician and a scholar, a poet, a skilled chess player, a bold swordsman, a lover of the chase who never travels without his hawks. He presented to the King a silver ewer in the shape of a knight on a horse; when the ewer is filled with water and tipped, the water pours from the horse’s mouth. The Count and the King spend hours bent over the chessboard or walking in the King’s garden. Today they hunted in the forest, with a large company. The Count is good for the King, he distracts him from jealousy.

Last night the Count’s minstrel sang for us in the great hall, seated on a low stool and accompanying himself on a harp. The songs were all love songs, written by the Count himself. Afterward the King’s minstrel, seated on a cushion and accompanying himself on the vielle, sang an adventure of Reynard the Fox and Ysengrim the Wolf, which was well applauded. It was after this, as the singer rose to give way to a juggler of knives, that a curious incident took place. A stranger entered the hall, dressed like a pilgrim in a broad-brimmed hat and a hooded cloak, bearing in one hand an ashwood staff and carrying a harp on his back. Seashells were sewn onto his cloak, as a sign that he had traveled in distant lands; his feet were bare. He approached the Count and asked if he might play a song before the court. To the consternation of the King, the Count laughed and urged the pilgrim to entertain the company if he could. Thereupon the stranger took the harp from his back and played his melancholy song with such surpassing skill that the company listened in hushed wonder. When he had finished playing, there was great applause; the Count, visibly moved, said he had never before heard playing of that kind, and asked where he learned to play so well. “In Lyonesse,” replied the pilgrim, who at once tossed off his humble cloak, beneath which was a purple surcoat with silver sleeve-borders decorated with gold lions, and removed his pilgrim’s hat, revealing himself to be — Tristan. Then there was great laughter and rejoicing in the hall, for these men of Toulouse like nothing better than a bold and playful spirit.

It is only two days since my last entry, but everything has changed. Disaster has struck. The Count and his followers departed at daybreak. The spirit of revelry has been broken, the fraternal warmth between the Count and the King has suffered a chill. The Queen refuses to leave her chamber, the King paces alone in his garden, Modor sits in the tower prison. I am partly to blame, for I sensed trouble but was unable to foresee the direction from which it erupted.

The idea for a mime appears to have come from the Count, although I cannot believe that Modor did not guide him from the very beginning. It is unimportant. The Count’s love of pleasure, his need for diversion, his childlike delight in surprise, his openness to suggestion of every kind — all this was bound to present itself as a temptation to Modor’s sharp sense of opportunity, his habit of machination, his single-minded devotion to furthering his own ends. The Count’s two dwarves proved to be his way in. These are the clownish dwarves one often sees in the entourage of a great nobleman, dwarves without pride or dignity — dwarves who accept without protest their repellent destiny as the playthings of the strong. Their grotesque names were Roland and Bathsheba. They were man and wife, both skilled in small entertainments such as juggling, tumbling, and mime. A small harp had been specially constructed for him, a little set of bells for her. Modor has always detested dwarves of this kind; he quickly befriended them. The mime was to take place in the evening, after supper, when the King and the Count had returned from the hunt.

A stage was erected on the dais, surrounded by seats for the King, the Queen, the Count, and the highest nobles of both courts; all others sat on benches in the lower part of the hall. Tallow candles in iron candelabra lit the stage, bare except for a single stool on which sat an emerald-green silk cushion. When Modor appeared, gasps and murmurs sounded. His brash impudence astonished me. He wore a brilliant crimson mantle, edged with ermine — the unmistakable robe of the King. On his head sat a gilt paper crown. With ridiculous majesty he strode to the cushioned stool and sat down on that throne with his arms folded across his chest. Enter Roland and Bathsheba. He wore the jeweled mantle of Tristan; from Bathsheba’s shoulders hung the crescent-covered mantle of the Queen. Her hair, only partly concealed by a head covering, had been dyed a gaudy, brilliant yellow — the yellow of bitter laughter. Tristan le Petit led his little Ysolt to King Modor, who took her hand and gawked at her with oafish adoration. As Tristan walked away, she turned to watch him and stretched out one arm in a gesture of yearning. Now Dwarf King and Dwarf Queen leave the stage and Dwarf Tristan is seen groping his way among invisible trees. He stops, cups his ear. Ysolt appears. They embrace passionately. Beside me, the King drew in a sharp breath. On stage, King Modor appears, wearing his crown. He sees the lovers and throws off his mantle; he is wearing a white-and-gold surcoat over a shirt of ring mail. He draws his sword. Two dwarf attendants appear and swiftly arm him: they pull on the mail gauntlets, fasten his leg mail, lace his helmet, present him with a shield. Ysolt-Bathsheba gives a silent cry, presses both hands to her cheeks, and flees. Dwarf Tristan throws off his mantle: he wears an azure surcoat over a glittering hauberk. In the flamelight one can see the small interlocking rings of iron on his arms. The dwarf attendants complete his armor.

The sword fight between Modor and Roland was a brilliant piece of stagecraft. Their short but dangerous blades flashed in the light of candles, rang out in high-pitched tones, flung showers of sparks. Both dwarves were expert swordsmen— Roland more graceful, more resourceful, more constrained, as if he disdained to make a single motion more than was absolutely necessary; Modor fierce, nimble, relentless, at times awkward, a lover of the wild and unexpected motion. His eyes in the flamelight glittered like magic stones. Suddenly the edge of Modor’s sword strikes Tristan’s upper arm, cutting through the mail. Blood runs through the iron rings. Dwarf Tristan falls to one knee and drops his sword. As if maddened by the sight, Modor strikes wildly with his blade — rings of iron go spinning into the air. Suddenly he plunges his sword into Tristan’s side. Dwarf Tristan falls forward and lies face down on the stage.

Now Modor bends to unlace the helmet, swiftly removes it. He flings his own shield over his back, where it hangs by the shield strap, raises his sword in both hands, and in a single blow cuts off Roland’s head. Ladies cry out, the Count rises from his chair. Modor, his face crazed with triumph, seizes the dripping head by the hair, strides to the King, and holds it up to him. The Queen cries out, raises one arm across her eyes, and falls sideways in a swoon. The King, roused from his trance, holds the Queen awkwardly and attempts to rise. On the stage, Bathsheba utters a piercing scream.

The Count, inconsolable over the loss of his favorite dwarf, agreed to accept thirty thousand pieces of gold, three greyhound bitches, and an annual gift of grain. Modor sits chained in the tower prison. It is difficult to know which is worse: the murder of the Count’s dwarf or the humiliation of the King. The King speaks to no one. What I find interesting in these troubling events is the moment when Modor held the head up to the King. I had the distinct sensation that the King was about to stretch forth his hand, before coming to his senses and calling for his guards.

This morning the King summoned me to his tower chamber. His face was drawn, his eyes melancholy and streaked with very fine lines of blood. He came directly to the point. There was no proof against the Queen, no evidence of wrongdoing, but the atmosphere of suspicion and gossip had put him in an intolerable position. Although Modor’s murderous rage was inexcusable, he did not entirely blame the dwarf, who in his brutal and bloody way had delivered a timely warning. The King was able to see three possibilities of action. First, banish Tristan from the court. Second, allow Tristan to remain at court, but forbid him to be alone with the Queen. Third, set a trap and take them unawares. The first possibility was repugnant to him, for two reasons: first, he did not wish to punish Tristan without evidence, of which there was none, and second, he loved Tristan as a son and the mere imagination of his absence made his heart hurt. The second possibility — allowing Tristan to remain at court, but forbidding all intimacy with the Queen — was likewise unacceptable, for three reasons: first, he did not wish to deprive Tristan unjustly of the Queen’s company; second, he did not like to publish his suspicions by a decree resulting in a conspicuous show of change; and third, he did not wish to deprive Queen Ysolt of the company and protection of Tristan, for not only did she feel warm friendship for him, as was only proper, but she was protected by him from the unwanted attentions of other members of the court, some of whom he knew to be far less honorable and trustworthy than his loyal nephew. The third possibility — the trap — though distasteful to him, was therefore the one he favored, for if the two were indeed guilty of treason against the crown, it was important to have evidence before bringing charges against them for a crime punishable by death.

As the King spoke, he became animated, as if the act of utterance were filling him with decisive energy, but his eyes remained melancholy, withdrawn, and — an impression that struck me — as if indifferent to the strategy he was urging.

He knew, he said, that I disliked Oswin, who nevertheless was trustworthy in most ways. Oswin had reported to him that the Queen had been meeting secretly with Tristan, at night, in the orchard. The steward had followed them twice to their trysting place, where a broad apple tree grew beside a brook. There, although Oswin had not witnessed it himself, he believed they consummated their treasonable love. The King proposed to have Oswin lead him to the spot, whereupon he would dismiss the steward — on pain of death — and conceal himself in the tree. He would arm himself with a bow and two arrows.

It is my duty to lead Oswin back to the castle, after which I am to return and join the King in the tree.

I loathe this plan, which seems to me to carry with it something alien to the King, something that belongs to Oswin, like a borrowed sword.

For my part, I think of the Count of Flanders, who, when a vassal sighed in the presence of the Countess, ordered that the man be beaten and suspended head first in a cesspit.

The King is pleased by his decisiveness, which is nothing but the cunning form assumed by his indecisiveness.

It is very late, but I cannot sleep before setting down the surprising events of this memorable night.

Not long after the King took his leave of the company to return to his bedchamber, I made my way alone to the orchard, where I lay in wait for the King and Oswin not far from the gate in the orchard palisade. I soon saw the gate open and the King and Oswin pass through. I followed, keeping well behind. The moon, a brilliant crescent, was low in the sky — a clear night, dark, with many stars. Oswin did not speak. He led the King silently along wagon paths, through clusters of fruit trees and arbors of grapes, over streams and ditches; in the starlight I saw an abandoned wagon, a pile of empty baskets, a broken wheel with tall grass growing between the spokes. In time we came to an older part of the orchard, where thick-branched apple trees rose high overhead. A narrow brook ran nearby. At the base of an immense apple tree that grew beside the stream, Oswin stopped. One low branch, thick with leaves and small unripe apples, grew out over the stream. Handing his bow and quiver to Oswin, the King with a sudden leap seized a branch and climbed into the tree. Swiftly he concealed himself in the middle branches. Then he reached down for his bow and quiver, which Oswin handed up to him.

“Why are there three arrows, Sire?” Oswin asked.

“The third arrow is for you,” the King replied, “if you fail to return to the castle. Thomas will see you safely to the gate.”

At this I stepped forth. Oswin, outraged, banished all expression from his face and accompanied me in silence back to the orchard gate, where he took his leave coldly. Only when the gate closed did I make my way back through the orchard to the apple tree beside the stream. There I stood looking up at the thick-leaved branches, until the King ordered me to climb up and keep watch with him.

When I was settled not far from him on a neighboring branch, the King said in a whisper, “Tell me, Thomas. When did you last climb a tree?”

At once I saw myself in the orchard of my uncle’s manor, plucking a handful of cherries.

“Forty years ago,” I whispered.

At this the King gave a sudden, disarming grin, a mischievous grin, as it seemed to me, and my heart was moved, for despite the solemnity of the occasion, he was still boyish, in some things.

His mind darkened as we waited. He seemed restless, sorrowful, gloomy with anticipation, half inclined to abandon the grotesque enterprise — for how could he desire to discover what he could not bear to know? And beneath his burst of boyish high spirits, I sensed that he was ashamed to be hiding in a tree, spying on the Queen and Tristan; for he was no comic cuckold in a minstrel’s tale, but King of all Cornwall.

Suddenly Tristan was there, under the tree. I had not heard a sound. Shadow branches showed sharp and black on the moonlit grass. He seemed uneasy and kept pacing, keeping a careful watch in the dark.

At the sound of the Queen’s footsteps I felt the King grow violently still, as if his body were a hand that had closed over a struggling bird.

Tristan did not step forward to meet the Queen. Instead he drew back, almost as if he wished to avoid the meeting. As Queen Ysolt came near I could see her face in the moonlight, anxious and uncertain. She stopped some ten feet from Tristan, who stood directly below us.

“Why have you asked me to come here?” she said, in a cold, majestic voice I had never heard before. I had the odd sensation that I was watching a court play.

“To ask for your help, my lady. Enemies have turned the King against me; God knows the love I bear him. If, in your kindness. .”

So they declaimed, two actors under the moon. For I understood — suddenly and absolutely — that they knew they were being watched, up there in the branches. I felt like leaping down and crying, “Well done, Tristan! A fine speech!” On the ground, among the leaf shadows, I saw the shadow of the King’s face. Tristan must have seen it there and passed a signal to the Queen. So the two played out their little drama under the apple branches: the Blameless Lady and the Injured Knight. It was well acted, though a little long; the speeches, though rather florid, were delivered with strong feeling. And I marveled at the sheer daring of it, the air of impassioned conviction with which they assumed their parts. Of course they were in a trap, fighting to get out. But wasn’t there more to it than that? Tristan truly did love the King, who had taken him into the Cornish court at the age of fifteen and brought him up like a father; the Queen surely considered herself blameless, for she had been married against her will — and in any case, what can one do against the power of Love? And what of the King? Can he really have been deceived? I believe he grasped at the little drama gratefully, eager to be deluded — for the one thing he could not permit himself to find was the truth he sought.

When the two had left — first the blameless Queen, and later, after a proper interval, the melancholy and misunderstood knight — the King said nothing for a long while. Then he turned to look at me from his branch. With passion, with a kind of crazed delight, he whispered, “You see, Thomas! You see!”

“I see our shadows, my lord,” I replied sharply, but the King, with a burst of energy, swung down from the tree and looking up at me cried out, “Come down, Thomas! What the devil are you doing up there? A grown man like you! Come down, Thomas, come down!”

Oswin is in disgrace. The King dotes on the Queen, sings Tristan’s praises, hunts the red deer and the fallow deer and the roe deer, drinks deep from his gold flagon, throws back his head in laughter: all is splendid, all is well. Only I am uneasy. Is it because I detect in the King’s heartiness a note of excess, as if by sheer effort of will he hopes to banish the doubt that devours him? His eyes glitter with a mad merriment. He embraces Tristan, looks admiringly at the Queen. “Thomas!” he cries. “Is she not beautiful?” “Yes, my lord.” The Queen lowers her eyes.

Because the King cannot bear the thought that his wife and Tristan are lovers, he has again placed her under Tristan’s protection. In this way he demonstrates to himself that they are innocent and he is wise — for if they were guilty, he would be a fool to leave them alone together. All morning and afternoon he hunts in the forest, while Tristan attends the Queen everywhere. He walks with her in the garden, climbs the winding stairs that lead to her tower chamber. Oswin is forbidden to be in her presence, on pain of imprisonment. In the early evening, Tristan returns Ysolt to the King. The King and Queen retire early. At night, in the royal bedchamber, I hear cries of lovemaking.

Anyone who reports ill of Tristan or the Queen is threatened with banishment.

It is precisely now, when the Queen and Tristan ought to exercise exceptional caution, that they behave as if the King’s trust, his air of cheerful unconcern, has deceived them. They exchange glances full of longing, flush and grow pale, emerge from hidden chambers drowsy and languorous. When Tristan hands the Queen to the King, his face is full of tender sadness. The Queen, walking beside the King, looks about for Tristan, catches his eye. Are they mad? One might almost think they are trying to provoke the King into punishing them. Is it possible that his inflexible good cheer, his stubborn insistence on being deceived, exasperates them into public shows of affection? Do they feel he is tempting them to see how much he can bear? Or is it that, swept up as they are by an irresistible power, they do not think about the King at all?

Really, they go too far. Have they no sense? No shame? The King has been absent for two days. He announced that he would spend two nights in one of his hunting lodges and not return until the third day; in the presence of his Council he placed the Queen in Tristan’s care. All day they walk like lovers, seeking out secluded places. A servant saw the Queen and Tristan emerge at dawn from the door at the base of her tower that leads into the garden. At dinner they sit side by side at the royal board; he permits his hand to graze her hand while her throat flushes above the gold brooch clasping the lappets of her brilliant green mantle. Fearing the King’s wrath, everyone turns away, remains unwatchful and ill at ease. Oswin stares at them coldly. One can almost hear, from the high prison of the south-east tower, the rattle of Modor’s chains.

A trap! Was it a trap? In the middle of the night I was wakened by the King’s hand on my shoulder and the light of a candle glaring on his cheek. He had returned alone, secretly, in the night. My door remains always unbarred, so that the King may find me when sleep eludes him. In his hunting lodge he had dreamed that Ysolt had been gored in the side by a wild boar. I rose quickly from my bed, groped for my tunic and sword belt in the flickering dark, and followed the King to the royal bedchamber. Slowly he pulled aside the curtain, which rattled on its rings. He thrust in the candle. The bed was empty.

The King motioned me to follow him. We climbed the winding stairs to the women’s quarters; the guard admitted us into a large hall with curtained bench-beds along the walls, where the Queen’s companions sleep. Here and there on the rush-strewn floor, servant women lay on quilts beneath bed-covers. A small adjoining chamber served as the Queen’s private quarters. The room with its bed and clothes chest was empty.

We descended to the courtyard, crossed to the northwest tower, and climbed the winding stairs to the Queen’s high chamber. With a large iron key the King unlocked the door. Dark bedposts topped by gilt wooden swans glowed in the moonlight; the bed curtains were open. On the coverlet lay a silk girdle brocaded with gold. We descended the dark stairs to the ground floor — a storage chamber with locked chests— where a narrow door admitted us into the Queen’s garden. Under the summer moon we walked along the sanded paths of the garden; a shimmering peacock moved before us and disappeared. The King stepped behind a tree, peered into wall recesses supplied with turf seats, turned suddenly at the sound of a rat. At an arched opening in a hedge he drew his sword and led me into a maze of hedgerows, which brought us to a grove of fruit trees. Nothing stirred in the moonlight.

We returned through the garden and made our way across the courtyard to the castle keep. On the broad steps leading up to the great hall we passed a sleeping black hen. Through an arch I followed the King up the winding stairs. I had thought we were returning to my chamber, but the King stopped before Tristan’s door. With another iron key he entered.

The curtains of Tristan’s bed were closed. At the top of the bedposts sat carved falcons with gilt beaks and wings. The King, holding his candle and beckoning me to follow, approached the bed and slowly drew aside the curtain.

The Queen lay in the bed, alone and fast asleep. The covers were partly thrown back; she was fully dressed, and wore a head covering, held in place by a gold fillet set with emeralds and jacinths. In the light of the candle I saw the King’s uncertain, sorrowing eyes.

“My lord,” said Tristan, standing behind us. The King, turning quickly, splashed candle-wax on his hand.

“I hope your hunt was successful,” Tristan said, sheathing his sword. He was fully dressed, in green tunic and crimson surcoat; in the flamelight a network of tiny pearls glittered on his mantle, one end of which was thrown over his right shoulder. He nodded at the bed. “The Queen was frightened — a rat in the dark. I have guarded her with my life.”

“Indeed you have,” the King replied. “But as for me, the wild boar escaped. A long day — I’m tired now. Come, Thomas.”

“Shall I wake the Queen?” Tristan asked.

“By no means,” replied the King. “But when she wakes, please tell her that her husband bids her good morning.”

I made my way with the King to his chamber, where I wished him good night before returning to my bed.

A new feeling is in the air. The lovers, no doubt alarmed by the King’s nocturnal visit, have become uncommonly circumspect, while the King, abandoning the strategy of frivolous jollity, watches them with visible suspicion. He continually sends for the Queen on trivial pretexts: asks her if she is satisfied with her attendants and servants, inquires after her health, requests her to play the rote or harp for him. The Queen is resolutely obliging, but it is clear that she finds his attentions wearisome. Tristan spends long hours following his hawks. Once, when the Queen was playing a melancholy song on her harp, the King suddenly ordered her to stop and began pacing restlessly. “Continue to play for Thomas,” he said irritably, and strode from the chamber. For a moment the Queen raised her eyes and glanced at me, before taking up the harp again. We both understood that the King had suspected her of dreaming of Tristan, as she played her mournful song.

It is not good to pity one’s King.

When I try to imagine Queen Ysolt, I see only an enigma, a contradiction. In all her dealings at court, she is honorable, forthright, and entirely trustworthy; and yet, whenever it is a question of Tristan, she does not hesitate to lie. Although she is frank by nature, she conceals a treacherous secret; although she is obedient by habit, her obedience surrounds and conceals a fierce, unwavering disobedience. One is tempted to think that she is loyal in all things pertaining to Tristan, and disloyal in all things pertaining to the King, but such a formulation provides I think far too easy and shallow a way of grasping her: for although she is loyal to Tristan, she is also loyal to the King, and although she is disloyal to the King, she is also disloyal to Tristan. She is loyal to the King because night after night she lies naked with him in the royal bed, night after night the sounds of lusty lovemaking come from the King’s bedchamber. It is possible, of course, that at such moments she is thinking of Tristan. But who can imagine that, even as she longs for Tristan, she is entirely forgetful of the King?

I have said that although she is disloyal to the King, she is also disloyal to Tristan. For if, when she is with the King, she is haunted by Tristan, is it not also true that when she is with Tristan, she is haunted by the King? To be Tristan’s lover is to betray the King; the act of love is an act of disobedience. But disobedience, by its very nature, includes an awareness of the one who is disobeyed. The Queen can never be alone with Tristan; even as she lies in Tristan’s arms she will see, rising before her, the King’s troubled face, she will feel, falling across her, the shadow of the King.

Sometimes, when I watch the Queen unobserved, the calmness of her pale, smooth face and heavy-lidded eyes takes me by surprise. Then I notice a slight tensing between the eyebrows; the beautiful dawn-gray eyes stare unseeing; and, like someone for whom the outside world has fallen away, she raises a slender hand to her forehead, as if to wipe away a loose hair.

Is it possible? Even now I scarcely believe the news. Just when an uneasy harmony has been restored, just when caution and propriety have become the order of the day, the King has taken the very step that many felt he should have taken during his period of false heartiness. He has banished Tristan. More precisely: he has forbidden Tristan to pass the bounds of the castle wall, or to enter the orchard or the forest.

He informed the Council that the action was made necessary by charges of misconduct injurious to the reputation of the Queen, the King, and Tristan, and touching upon the honor of his court and kingdom.

With Tristan he was gentle, even tender. Rumors had come to his attention. The Queen’s reputation was at stake. He gazed at Tristan fondly. For a moment I thought his eyes would fill with tears.

The barons friendly to Tristan say the King’s decree is arbitrary and unjust, but they fail to understand the subterrestrial workings of a jealous and fretful mind. When Tristan and the Queen were parading their love, devouring each other with their ardent gazes, the King was unable to act because to act would have been to draw attention to the inadmissible, to display his secret fear. Only now, when the lovers have become circumspect — when, in a sense, it no longer matters — does the decree of banishment become possible.

For my part, I believe it is a mistake the King will learn to regret. With many opportunities for secrecy and solitude, the lovers were able to afford the luxury of discretion. Separation breeds recklessness. Can the King have forgotten Tristan’s talent for adventure, his habit of daring?

Oswin is once again in the King’s good graces.

In the afternoon, the order was given to release Modor from the tower.

The King, fearing some bold stroke by Tristan, has set extra guards at the main gate and the postern and has placed the Queen under the protection of the steward. She is not permitted to be out of Oswin’s sight when the King is absent, unless she is in the women’s quarters. The Queen shuts herself up all day with her women and leaves only to walk in the garden with her handmaid, Brangane. She is cold to Oswin and will not speak to him. She eats little and never laughs.

The rigor of her bearing is unnatural and disturbing, as if only a relentless vigilance over every motion of her body can prevent collapse.

The King rises before dawn and hunts all day. When he returns he consults with Oswin, walks in his garden, seems restless and preoccupied. Sometimes, after the last candle has been put out, after the knights and men-at-arms have retired to their barracks in the courtyard, after the horses are asleep in the stables, I imagine that I can hear, through the stout oak planks of my unbarred door, the King in his chamber, pacing and pacing over the rush-strewn floor.

It is almost daybreak and I am writing quickly. Two visits! — like dreams in the night. Or was I dreaming after all? The first was from the King, who shook me awake. I dressed quickly and followed him across the courtyard and up the winding stairs to his tower chamber. A single candle burned on the table beside the chessboard. He sat down and I sat across from him. For a long time he stared at the pieces, then picked up the white king’s pawn, seemed to hesitate, closed his fist over it, and leaned back, out of the flamelight.

“Have you heard news of Tristan?” he asked, a shade speaking to a shade.

“Nothing, my lord. Is he still in Cornwall?”

“No one knows. The Queen is unhappy.” He paused. “Speak.”

“You’ve tried to find him?”

“No. Yes: of course. Was I unjust to Tristan?”

“There were rumors.”

“There are always rumors. There was no proof.”

“They were much together.”

“By my orders. By predilection. You believe I was unjust.”

“I believe you acted as you found it necessary to act.”

“And if I had asked for your advice?”

“I would have advised you to wait — to watch.”

He looked at me. “Thank you, Thomas.”

The King rose in the dark. “Tristan is true. I would cut off my arm to have him back. If you hear anything—”

“Of course.”

The King started for the door and abruptly returned to the table. I waited for him to speak, but in the light of the candle he silently replaced the white pawn on its starting square.

The King’s visit was not in itself disturbing, for he has long had the habit, when he cannot sleep, of coming to my chamber and inviting me to walk in the garden, or play chess, or follow him through one of the secret passages in the walls of the castle to one of his hidden chambers. What troubled me, as I made my way back across the courtyard, was the knowledge that the exile of Tristan had not put an end to the King’s suffering. What further troubled me, as I climbed the winding stairs to my chamber, was the knowledge that the return of Tristan was also not going to put an end to the King’s suffering. As I approached my door, holding in one hand a candle on an iron stick, I became aware of a movement in the dark. I reached for my sword and heard a single whispered word: “Please.”

In the light of the flame I saw a young woman staring at me with fearful but determined eyes. My surprise was so great that I did not immediately recognize the Queen’s handmaid, Brangane.

I ushered her into my chamber, where she stood stiffly with her hands clasping her elbows and her arms pressed against her stomach. She refused to sit at my writing table or on my clothes chest. For a few awkward moments I stood looking at her with my candle held out before me. Her eyes were darker than the King’s. Coils of hair, visible at the edges of her head covering, were black and shining as the ink in my oxhorn. With a sudden motion of one hand she closed the heavy door behind her. As if in obedience to a sign, I set down the candle on my table and turned to face her in near darkness.

“The Queen sends her greetings,” she began.

“The Queen honors me.”

“The Queen believes you are a just man.”

“The Queen flatters me.”

“The Queen”—she stepped toward me and lowered her voice—“begs for news of Tristan.”

“There is no news.” I stepped back. Had the Queen sent her handmaid to me in a moment of desperation? Or had she detected in me a softness that she wished to explore?

Brangane looked at me as if to take my measure. Abruptly she retreated toward the door, into deeper darkness.

Almost invisible, a black ghost, she breathed forth in a whisper, “I fear for the Queen’s life.” I heard the door opening and listened to her footsteps hurrying away.

Every action is composed of two parts: the outward, visible part, which reveals what the actor wishes us to see, and the inward, invisible part, which is its true meaning. Outwardly, Brangane had come for news of Tristan. But inwardly, did she not have a deeper purpose, the purpose of discovering how far the Queen might go in making use of me? The Queen, emboldened by longing, desperate for news of Tristan, sends her woman to the King’s trusted companion and counselor. She is taking a chance, but not a very great one, for although my allegiance to the King is well known, so is my discretion. It ends with a master stroke: “I fear for the Queen’s life.” That is to say: “If you reveal this visit to the King, you will kill the Queen.” And this: “You can save the Queen’s life by finding Tristan.”

Another thought comes, far more troubling: that my attempts at understanding are superfluous, that the Queen already knows she can rely on me.

Four days have passed since my last entry, and again I am seated at my table late at night. This evening, as usual, I took a walk in the orchard. On my return to the courtyard I stopped not far from the wall of the Queen’s garden, beside the granary. The wall rises to a height of nine feet and is composed of blocks of cut stone secured by mortar and topped by three thousand tiles of many colors. High overhead, in the blue-black night sky, stands the northeast tower, at the top of which is the Queen’s private chamber, where she retires whenever she craves solitude. A dim light shone at the upper window. Was the Queen sitting on her window seat, looking down at her garden? I could see no one from where I stood. I turned my gaze to the northwest tower, where the King and I play chess in the uppermost chamber, above the King’s garden. A dim light shone there too. As I gazed at the two towers, imagining the Queen alone in her chamber, looking down at her garden, and the King alone in his chamber, looking out at the Queen’s tower, I became aware of a nearby sound and stepped back against a wall of the granary.

At the base of the garden wall I saw a figure in the dark. Something about its stealth — its wary silence — put me in mind of Oswin. As my fingers closed over my sword hilt the figure leaped, gripped the top of the wall, and pulled himself nimbly up along the stones. For an instant he crouched like an animal at the top of the wall, before plunging to the other side. In that instant I recognized Tristan.

I released my sword and became aware of the tumultuous beating of my heart. What was it that so unsteadied me, there by the garden wall? Was it an old knight’s love of youthful daring? Or was it some more dubious feeling, a secret sympathy with wayward and forbidden things? There was no question of reporting what I had seen to the King: and as I turned away, I felt in my chest — my arms — my throat — a dark, secret exultation.

One imagines that it is no longer necessary to fear for the Queen’s health.

I have had a note from Brangane. She pressed it into my hand as she passed me on the winding stair leading from the great hall to the bedchambers above. In it she thanks me for my kindness in receiving her and says that the Queen’s health is much restored. Does she mean for me to read through these too-innocent words to the unwritten message, that Tristan has returned? Or is it her intention to throw me off the scent, to dismiss me, now that the Queen has found her cure?

Much to the court’s surprise, the Queen has begun to spend a good part of each day in the company of Oswin. Sometimes she even sends Brangane in search of him. The whisperers are busy and begin to weave lascivious designs, but the true explanation is surely less tedious. Made wretched by Tristan’s absence, the Queen loathed Oswin as the cause of that absence. Now, made happy by Tristan’s presence, she need not shun Oswin. Indeed, she makes use of him: she deceives the world into believing she is obedient.

Two weeks have passed since I last sat down to record my thoughts. Events crowd thick and fast. Already great changes have taken place. How shall I begin?

The castle walls are twenty-two feet thick. They are built of blocks of ashlar, smoothed by the mason’s chisel and topped by crenellated battlements; between the outer and inner layers of stone lies a core of rubble, composed of crushed rock, pebbles, and mortar. Here and there a portion of the core has been removed, leaving a hollow passage large enough for a man to walk in. The walls are in fact honeycombed with passages of this kind, located at different heights, some joined to the ones above and below, and here and there the stone has been hollowed out to form small, hidden chambers. Although only the King is permitted to know the design of these labyrinthine tunnels and the location of the many chambers — information that is passed to him, during the ceremony of coronation, in a letter sealed by the previous king — it is a tradition among the kings of Cornwall to reveal parts of the design to one or more trusted companions, who are sworn to secrecy; and so complex is the pattern of these intersecting passages, many of which lead nowhere, that it would be impossible for a single mind to hold them in memory, even if, as is certainly not the case, the passages corresponded faithfully to the information contained in the sealed letter. In the course of the twenty-four years of his reign, the King has taken me a score of times into the labyrinth; and on several of those occasions, he has invited the steward or Tristan to accompany us.

The passages are entered through concealed openings in four of the castle’s twelve towers. Narrow spaces between blocks of stone are hidden behind painted wall hangings. The stones on each side of the narrow space are hollow and are pierced by an iron rod that permits them to be turned; they then form an opening wide enough for a single man to enter.

Some of the small chambers contain locked chests in which are stored royal documents, deeds, treaties, lists of vassals. Others are storerooms containing old hauberks, battered helmets, crossbows, piles of swords, fifty-pound rocks for defensive catapults. Still other chambers are empty, or house mysterious objects, such as the decayed robes of a vanished queen or a small casket containing the bones of a child; and it is said that there are passages and chambers no one has ever seen, hidden in the depths of our mighty walls.

Three days ago, as I was climbing the winding stairs of the southwest tower on my way to the wall walk, where I wished to stretch my legs and look out from the battlements at the clear sky and the dark forest stretching away, I heard above me the sound of hushed, urgent voices, coming from what I knew to be a recessed window not yet in sight, which looked down at the courtyard. I hesitated, stopped; one of the voices was that of the steward, with its clipped, overprecise syllables, and the other was the Queen’s. “Tomorrow,” Oswin was saying. “Very well, very well,” I heard her say, with a kind of impatient weariness. I prepared to make my presence known, thought better of it, and withdrew quietly.

I disliked the hushed tones, the sound of irritable acquiescence in the Queen’s voice, above all the word “tomorrow,” for the King had announced that he would be hunting all day and would not return before nightfall. Once in my chamber I considered whether to keep the steward under close surveillance— several household servants act for me as spies, when I have reason to think the King’s interest might be well served in this manner — but I decided to send first for Brangane.

We met at the wicker gate of the King’s garden. I opened the gate for her and led her past beds of white and red roses to a turf bench beside the fountain of leopards. I had last spoken with her in the dark, and in the sharp light of day she surprised me; she seemed timid and mistrustful, like a child accused of stealing an apple. I came to the point quickly. I swore her to secrecy, reported what I had overheard, and asked whether she knew anything she might wish me to know.

She hesitated, then turned to me with an almost angry look. “The steward follows us — everywhere. I don’t like him.”

“And the Queen?”

“The Queen hates him — but doesn’t fear him.”

“And you fear him?”

She looked at me with contempt. “I fear for my lady.” She paused. “He wants to show her something — a place he speaks of. A bower.”

“And she goes tomorrow?”

“After morning mass, when the King hunts.”

“Thank you.” I stood up. “I will have him watched.”

“The Queen is in danger?”

“All will be well.”

She stood up and followed me to the wicker gate. “Thank you,” she said simply, looking at me with eyes that partly thanked and partly searched me.

When I returned to my chamber I sent for one of the steward’s servants, whose life I had once saved and who performed for me small favors from time to time. Behind my thick oak door, double-barred, I asked him to watch his master closely and report to me any action of a suspect or unusual kind.

The steward, a rigorously correct but secretive man, was the subject of a number of rumors, one of which concerned a grotto or bower said to be located deep within the labyrinth of passages in the castle wall. There he was said to amass treasure stolen from the household, to seduce male and female servants, and to practice magical arts.

After supper I sat with the assembled company in the hall and listened distractedly to the songs of a visiting Breton minstrel in a feathered cap before climbing the stairway to my chamber. At the door I found Oswin’s servant waiting for me. Once within he reported that directly after supper the steward had crossed the courtyard to the sixth tower, where in a storage chamber on the ground floor he had moved aside a painted cloth picturing a deer and disappeared.

I instructed him to keep his master under close watch and to report to me any movements or actions that concerned the Queen. I then returned to the King, who was still seated beside the Queen at the royal board, and with whom I requested a word in private. The King led me up to his bedchamber and barred the door. I was deliberately mysterious, for I knew his immoderate love of hunting. I implored him not to join the hunt tomorrow but to let it go forward without him and to meet me secretly in my chamber. The King, displeased by the prospect of a delayed hunt, but scenting adventure, impatiently agreed. Suddenly he leaned forward, seized me by the shoulder, and said, “You have something to tell me, Thomas.”

“Tomorrow,” I replied, and it was as if I were on the stair again, overhearing Oswin as he said: “Tomorrow.”

I returned to my chamber, where I lay wondering what the next day would bring.

In the early morning, directly after chapel, I climbed the stairs to my chamber to await the King. His hunting party had left at dawn. When he entered I saw at once that his mood was dangerous, wavering between curiosity and irritation. He paced restlessly, went to the window, which looked down upon the courtyard, sat on my bed, continued pacing. “Well, Thomas!” he cried. “And why have you imprisoned me in my own castle?” The image pleased him, distracted him. He pretended that he was the victim of a plot: I was scheming to usurp the crown. He often assumed a playful air of this kind, attributing to me secret designs, but today the tone was a little wrong, there was an edge in his playfulness; he did not like to miss his hunt. I was about to reveal the conversation I had overheard between Oswin and the Queen when the King said from the window, “One of Oswin’s lads is running this way.”

The servant appeared breathless at my doorway, reporting that Oswin had just led the Queen under the deer.

I hurried with the King down the stairway and across the courtyard to the sixth tower. The painted linen hanging pictured a white hind attacked by a greyhound biting into a foreleg. A bright red gash showed in the flank. On the opposite wall a torch burned in an iron ring. Under the hanging I turned the stones. Quickly I lifted the torch from its ring and led the King into a narrow black passage.

The path was strewn with small stones. I walked ahead of the King, holding high the sputtering smoky torch. Sparks scattered in the dark like handfuls of flung sand. The walls were so close that our mantles brushed the rough rock; bits of mortar and chipped stone sifted down. On the path I stepped on something soft that scampered squeaking into the dark.

Behind me I heard a shrill scrape of iron against stone— the King had drawn his sword, and in the narrowness of the passage his blade had dragged against the wall. As I turned with my torch, I saw the gleaming blade held out before me. A rat hung from the sword-tip. Dark blood dripped onto the ground. He shook the creature off — it landed with the sound of a dropped sack.

The King sheathed his sword fiercely, looking up in angry surprise as the blade again scraped against the wall.

As we continued forward I noticed that side paths had begun to appear, some wide enough to enter and some no broader than a sword blade; all at once we came to a branching of the main path. It was impossible to know which passage to follow. “This way,” I whispered, turning in to the broader way. Soon another branch appeared; and after a time I understood not only that I had forgotten the many branchings and forkings of these secret paths, but that I was leading the King deeper and deeper into a maze that might be taking us farther and farther from the steward.

The King, sensing my doubt, had begun to question me in urgent whispers, when a shout or cry sounded in the dark. I turned in the direction of the cry, which seemed to come from behind us; and following the King, who strode boldly forward with drawn sword held upright like a torch, I found myself on a broadening path covered with sweet-smelling rushes. The path led to a stout-looking oak door set in an arch. Muffled sounds came from behind the door; something appeared to have fallen. “Open!” cried the King as he rattled the iron handle. “In the name of the King!” Behind the door I heard an iron bar slide back through iron rings. The King pushed the door open and I stepped behind him into a flickering chamber hung with silks and lit by many candles resting on corbels on the walls.

Tristan stood with drawn sword over the supine body of Oswin, who lay at his feet staring fearfully up at the sword at his throat. Beside Tristan stood the Queen, staring coldly, clinging to Tristan’s arm.

“You must guard the Queen more wisely, Uncle,” Tristan said, leading her to the King.

In one corner of the chamber stood a bed with gilt bedposts hung with crimson curtains. On a small table stood a gold goblet of wine and a basket of glimmering grapes. A second goblet lay on its side. Above the table the ceiling was decorated with intertwisted vines, whose gold and silver leaves glittered in the flamelight.

The King looked at Oswin lying on the ground, at Tristan standing over him, at the motionless Queen. In the candlelight the King’s eyes were dark as stones.

“Tristan!” he cried, sheathing his sword violently and holding out his arms to receive Tristan in a fierce embrace. Tears cut the King’s cheeks like streaks of blood.

Dawn is breaking. I cannot write another word.

I seize these few moments to finish the narrative begun in my last entry.

We returned from Oswin’s Bower to the light of day, where three events took place: the Queen retired to the royal bedchamber, Oswin was led away by a guard to the tower prison, and the King and Tristan and I climbed the stairs of the northwest tower to the King’s private chamber, where Tristan told his tale.

He had received a message from Brangane, warning him of Oswin’s invitation to the Queen. Queen Ysolt, who disdained the steward and therefore did not sense danger, had agreed to accompany Oswin into the depths of the wall, where he proposed to show her his secret bower. Brangane had supplied her with a dagger which she concealed in her robes. Tristan, who had heard tales of Oswin’s Bower, and who in any case distrusted the steward as a companion for the Queen, returned to the castle disguised as a Breton minstrel — the very minstrel in a feathered cap who had played for the assembled company on the evening when I returned to my chamber to find the steward’s servant at my door. That night, Tristan made his way under the white hind and through the labyrinth of passages to the bower, where he concealed himself in Oswin’s bed. In the black chamber buried in the depths of the wall he could hear nothing, not even the crowing of the cocks. The sudden jangle of keys was like the ring of a hammer in the forge. Candle flames leaped up. Oswin spoke to the Queen of his bower, which he called a garden of delights. He described the shaping of the vines and leaves in the shop of a goldsmith, and showed her several precious objects that he explained in detail, such as a silver drinking cup lined with gold, a copper figurine playing a silver trumpet, and a pen case of walrus ivory carved in relief with human-headed beasts. He offered her grapes and wine. The Queen asked to leave. “But I must show you the bed, a work of great cunning,” Oswin said. When the Queen refused, he seized her arm and attempted to lead her toward the bed by force. At that instant the curtains opened and Tristan sprang out, sword in hand. Oswin started back in terror. He struck the table, knocking over the goblet of wine, and fell to the tiled floor. A moment later the King’s voice cried out, “Open!”

There were many things in this narrative to disturb the King — how, for example, had Brangane discovered Tristan’s place of exile, and did the Queen know of it too? — but he listened closely, asked no questions, and at the end thanked Tristan warmly.

The next morning the King met in Council with his advisers and chief barons, who were divided over the question of punishment for Oswin. Some urged death by hanging, others demanded that the steward be blinded for the crime of looking upon the Queen lasciviously, and still others pleaded for mercy because of the steward’s record of long and honorable service to the crown. In the end the King took a middle course: he ordered that one of Oswin’s eyes be put out, as a warning to the second eye, and that the steward be confined in the tower prison, his duties and privileges to be assumed by the under-steward, John de Beaumont.

The King praised Tristan as a protector of the realm and a true and loyal knight.

After the Council, a festive dinner was held in the late morning, in celebration of Tristan’s return. The feast began with a boar’s head decorated with red and green banners, and there followed peacocks and plovers, cranes and suckling pigs, platters of swans roasted in their feathers. Pears spitting out juice turned slowly over the hearth fire. The Queen sat at the King’s left hand, Tristan at his right. All the court could see the King turning his head from one to the other, his eyes shining, his face eloquent with affection.

In the afternoon the King gave up his hunt to walk in his garden with the Queen and Tristan. Afterward, in the King’s bedchamber, Tristan played the harp and drew tears from the King’s eyes.

Games, songs, and dances are planned for the evening. It is said that two acrobats from Anjou will dance on balls while juggling apples.

The King hunts rapturously from early morning to nightfall, leaving the Queen and Tristan behind. More: he has requested Tristan to keep watch over the Queen, to remain in her company whenever possible, to guard and protect her, to cheer her when she is sad, to read to her from the royal chest of ivory-bound books, to play the harp for her. Tristan and the Queen are much alone.

Sometimes I see ladies exchange knowing glances, after the Queen and Tristan pass by.

This afternoon I overheard a baron speaking in a low voice to two admiring ladies. Does the King know what he is doing? the baron wondered. Does he understand that he is inviting his own betrayal?

To be satisfied with such questions — questions that naturally present themselves, and that seem to strike boldly at the innermost workings of the King’s mind — is to reveal nothing but a courtier’s worldly cleverness. In order to understand the King, we must be at once more simple and more devious. The King is by no means oblivious; he has not forgotten the rumors surrounding his wife and Tristan. But the King’s love for Tristan runs deeper than his jealousy, and what he loves in Tristan is above all his trustworthiness, the purity of his honor. When the King leaves Tristan alone with the Queen, he is displaying to the world the drama of his deepest conviction: my wife is beautiful, my wife is desirable, but Tristan is true. Whisper, barons, whisper, world — but Tristan is honorable. The King is not ignorant of the whispers; he may even wish to encourage them, in order to sharpen his trust against them.

To say it another way, the King arranges opportunities for betrayal precisely because it cannot take place. In the same way, he does not arm himself before Tristan, for he knows that Tristan will not suddenly draw his sword and plunge it treacherously through his side.

These thoughts, in the pauses of my day, do not bring peace.

Last night the King reported to me a marvelous dream. He was standing in the middle of a dark chamber between two windows that faced each other. The windows were brilliant with light, but the light did not enter the room. He looked now at one, now at the other, and felt a great yearning to see the view. His body began to strain in both directions. With burning pain he felt himself ripping and tearing; there were sounds like breaking sticks. One half of his body moved toward one window, and one half toward the other. Blood, black and thick, poured from the open sides.

He did not ask me to interpret his dream.

Sometimes at night I hear, in Tristan’s nearby chamber, the sound of the iron bar sliding back, scraping through rings of iron. I listen for the prolonged creak of the door, like the cry an animal might make if it had been turned to wood, and the pad of Tristan’s footsteps as he leaves his chamber. Sooner or later I hear the more distant cry of another door; footsteps emerge from the King’s bedchamber. The two pairs of footsteps move off together and vanish in the night.

Where do they go? Upstairs, through the women’s quarters, to the Queen’s private chamber? Across the courtyard into the Queen’s garden or tower? Through the postern that leads out into the orchard?

And if the King should wake?

It cannot continue much longer. The King, clinging fiercely to Tristan’s loyalty, but troubled by doubts and suspicions, studies his nephew’s face sharply while contriving new occasions for disaster. Today the Queen and Tristan went hunting with the King and his barons. I too was of the party. The King, observing that the Queen grew tired, led her to one of his well-furnished hunting lodges, where he instructed her to remain with Tristan until he returned to fetch them at nightfall. The Queen protested; the King insisted. Scarcely had we ridden off when the King came to a halt and asked me to wait while he returned to ask something of the Queen. I waited in great uneasiness, dismounting and mounting again. Not long afterward the King came riding through the trees, looking displeased.

“Is the Queen well?” I called.

“After all,” he cried back at me, “I did not wish to disturb her.” He spurred his horse sharply and rode off in the direction of the hunt.

In the night the King came to me. I sat up in readiness, but he urged me to lie down, for he wished only to talk. He climbed into the bed and lay down beside me in the dark.

“Like old times, Thomas,” he said, and I remembered the days when the young Prince would come to my chamber at night, to lie down beside me and speak his heart.

“In the night,” the King began, “one can say anything.

“I know what the court is saying,” he said.

“And yet,” he continued, “it is absolutely right that they should wish to be together. Who dares to say no? Speak, Thomas.”

“No one, my lord.”

“I want Tristan to love her.”

“Then all is well.”

“All is not well. Rumors — touching upon my honor — the honor of my court—”

“You invite them to be alone.”

“When she is with Tristan, she is with me.”

“Then she is always with you.”

“Tristan — Tristan would never shame me. He would die for me. Thomas! Speak from the heart.”

I hesitated for the breath of an instant. “Tristan would die for you.” It was true: Tristan would defend the King to the death.

I could hear the King breathing heavily in the dark. I thought of Tristan walking with the Queen in the orchard, their hands clasped, walking so slowly that they were scarcely moving.

The King seized my arm. “Thank you, Thomas.” Within moments he had fallen asleep beside me, while I lay waking in the dark.

How much longer? Two days have passed since the King’s night visit, and he is more suspicious than ever. This morning he announced that he would not go hunting, then suddenly changed his mind and rode off furiously, but returned at midday. He found the Queen alone with her companions in the women’s quarters. Tristan was at the mews, training a young falcon to stand on his wrist.

The day before, when the King was hunting, I sent a message to Brangane. We met at the King’s garden, in the shadow of the wall. I opened the wicker gate for her and led her to the turf bench beside the fountain of leopards. Gone was her timid and mistrustful look; she was now alert, expectant, tensely still. Her hands lay not quite crossed in her lap, one hand grasping the wrist of the other. There was no need for courteous indirection. I spoke of the rumors, and of the King’s suspicions, and urged her to warn her mistress to be more careful — to avoid behavior that might give rise to talk.

She took it in thoughtfully — I imagined her turning over my words as if they were pieces of fruit she was examining for bruises — then turned to me sharply. “The Queen is in danger?”

“The Queen’s reputation is in danger.”

“The King sends you to say this?”

“I send myself.”

She sat brooding there; then—“The Queen fears nothing.”

Her vehemence surprised me. It was as if she were saying that everything was lost.

“It isn’t a question of the Queen’s courage,” I said.

I waited for her to speak, but she only looked at me, waiting.

“But rather of her — honor.”

“Honor comes from within,” she declared, and rapped her breastbone with her knuckles.

I hadn’t summoned the Queen’s maid to discuss the fine points of honor. She must have felt something flash from my face, for she then said, “And the King believes these rumors? You believe them?”

“I don’t know that he believes them. He dislikes their existence.”

“So does the Queen,” she said, looking at me as though in triumph.

“If you would urge her to be more careful — warn her—”

“And this warning is from — a friend?”

I considered it. “From someone who isn’t an enemy.”

She looked at me. “I will speak to her. The Queen — does as she likes.”

I rose and accompanied her to the gate.

“The Queen — thanks you,” she said, pausing for a moment as if she intended to say more, but instead turning abruptly into the courtyard.

What troubles me about this conversation is the unexpected image of the Queen. The Queen fears nothing? The Queen does as she likes? Suddenly the Queen has become a bold woman, scornful of authority, impatient with duty — a woman for whom a King is an irritating encumbrance — a woman who declares to her handmaid, as a hard-won truth wrung from experience, “Honor comes from within.” Consider: the Queen has been thinking about honor. “Honor comes from within.” What can this mean except: honor comes not from what I do, but from what I feel?

It is the philosophy of a dissolute baron.

And the King’s honor? What of that?

It is difficult to reconcile this Ysolt, the fierce Ysolt sprung from the words of her handmaid beside the fountain of leopards, with that other Ysolt, the gentle, courteous, and mild Ysolt who has been growing slowly within me, like a pear tree in a walled garden.

I know nothing of the Queen.

But the Queen is wild! Is mad! She searches for Tristan eagerly, devours him with her eyes, hurries from the King’s side to greet her darling Tristan. Is she feverish? Delirious? At the royal board she looks only at Tristan, leans in front of the King to seize Tristan’s glance. It is as if she wished to defy the King— to provoke his wrath. Can this be the fruit of my warning to Brangane?

Tristan is ill at ease. The King pretends to see nothing and suddenly turns his head to look at the Queen, who impatiently adjusts her gaze, searching beyond the edges of his face for Tristan.

This morning I saw the King inclining his head to Modor in the shade of the garden wall.

Shortly after noon, as I walked in the courtyard, Brangane stepped out from the narrow alley between the wall of the Queen’s garden and the granary.

“I have spoken to her,” she said simply.

“Did you tell her to mock the King?”

“She feels — she doesn’t like to be accused.”

“No one accuses her.”

“She thinks you plot with the King against her.”

“Splendid! You think so too?”

“I told her I thought — I believed — you can be trusted.”

I was startled by a burst of gratitude, like a rush of wind. Why should I care what these women thought of me? — I who loved my King and would gladly have died for him.

“The King is unhappy,” I then said.

Brangane looked at me as if waking from a trance. “We’re all unhappy!” she said; it was almost a cry. “Goodbye,” she said, and was gone.

As I sit at my table, writing these words in the light of a single candle, I can hear, through my partly open door and the closed door of the royal chamber, the noises of love, a sudden cry from Ysolt, silence. It is the second time this night. In Tristan’s chamber, two sounds: the scrape of a table leg, the bang of a shutter thrown open or shut.

Sometimes a strange thought comes: to murder the lovers in their sleep, to destroy this ugly plague of love that causes nothing but ruin and despair.

It is even worse than I feared.

This morning the King called a meeting of his barons in the great hall. He announced that the rumors surrounding his wife and nephew were harmful to the honor of the court and the kingdom; that although he had no evidence of dishonor, it was plain to him, and to all the court, that his wife and nephew bore one another a love beyond that which was proper and fitting; that although it was within his power to exact punishment, he would not, for the love he bore both of them, take revenge, and demanded only that they leave the court together, to seek in another place the life denied them here; that he had tried to live in a fellowship of three — the King and Ysolt, Ysolt and Tristan, Tristan and the King — but that he could do so no longer, for he saw that they were against him, in a fellowship of two; and for the love he bore them, he wished them well.

This speech — which made a deep impression — struck me as most artful. The King, while speaking continually of the love that was in his heart, was at the same time driving from his castle, and from his protection, the objects of that love. He forgave them for the wrong they had done him, while by the decree of banishment he left no doubt that he had been terribly wronged. He sent them forth to live their lives together, lawfully, without interference from him, while letting it be known that those lives were so shameful that they could not be led at the Cornish court, bright home of honor, but only elsewhere, in some other world, invisibly.

The Queen, who stood beside the King during the entire performance, never once lowered her eyes.

The King has surprised me. He is cheerful, energetic, full of schemes. The absence of Tristan and the Queen, which I feared would be harmful to him, appears to have freed him from some impediment in his nature. He inspects the wall walks and gatehouse, consults with a visiting military engineer about defense catapults to be mounted on the towers, bestows a large gift on a Cistercian monastery, speaks with the chamberlain about new curtains for his bed and new tiles for his fireplace. Above all he oversees a burst of castle repairs and construction: carpenters extend the length of the stables, masons construct a new wall for the bake house, the old wooden granary has been torn down and in its place rises a sturdy building of dressed stone. In the chapel the cracked wooden statue of the Virgin, her right arm extended and one finger raised, has been replaced by a new statue in bright colors, while a sculptor repairs the wings of a stone angel.

The King has invited to the court an artificer, Odo of Chester, a monkish man remarkable for his long face, his long nose, his long thin fingers, and his large moist mournful eyes. On one of his fingers he wears a black stone carved in the shape of a tiny hand. Odo has brought with him a curious device: a wooden box with a small window and a handle on one side. When you look through the window you see a rural scene: a windmill, a stream, a tree, a barn. But turn the handle, and behold! — the windmill turns, the stream flows, the leaves of the tree shake in a breeze, the barn door opens and a cow steps out.

This toy is well liked by the ladies of the court.

The King spends many hours closeted with Odo of Chester in his tower chamber. They are preparing something; in the King’s face I can read a quiet excitement.

The King has revealed his secret. I confess I was taken entirely by surprise.

In the early afternoon, directly after dinner, the King summoned me to the royal bedchamber, where I found him seated on a clothes chest speaking with Odo, who leaned back on a window seat with one long leg resting along the stone. Together with them I descended to the courtyard and passed the stables and the mews on our way to the King’s tower. I had expected to climb to the privacy of the King’s high chamber, but instead the King led us to the storage room on the ground floor, where in a dim corner behind a locked chest stands one of the four entrances to the inner labyrinth. The King supplied each of us with a small horn lantern, turned the stones, and led us into the castle wall. Like the passage that leads from beneath the white hind in the sixth tower, this one began to branch and turn. The King moved slowly but without hesitation, taking now one branch and now another, until he came to a small chamber hollowed out of the rock. A wooden bench with two silk cushions faced a wall, upon which hung a linen cloth painted with a likeness of the King in his crimson robe trimmed in ermine. On each side of the cloth, a small horn lantern hung from an iron ring on the wall. The King set down his lantern and sat on the bench, where he faced the cloth and motioned for me to sit beside him.

Odo — long, gaunt Odo, with his bony nose and his chin like the knob of a chicken bone — stood at one side of the wall hanging. Reaching up with his pale fingers, he pulled what appeared to be a cord concealed behind the edge of the cloth. Slowly the cloth divided, breaking the image of the King in half. The two cloths had been placed side by side so artfully that I had not been able to detect the jointure.

Behind the curtain stood the Queen. She stood very still, in her mantle of green samite trimmed with sable and ermine, fastened at the throat by a gold brooch. She wore a head covering and a white linen wimple. Her head was turned to one side, her lips parted slightly. Her right arm was raised and extended toward us; the finger beside the thumb was lifted a little, as if in supplication or admonition. Her cheeks and eyes shone in the dim light of all five lanterns. She was very lifelike. Only the turned head, the parted lips, the raised, extended arm with its lifted finger brought to mind the old wooden Virgin in the chapel. The face, half concealed by the wimple, had been powdered and vermilioned like the Queen’s. Yellow hair showed beneath the head covering, which was held in place by a gold fillet set with emeralds and jacinths.

Now Odo reached behind the Queen and withdrew his hand. Slowly the extended arm rose higher; the head began to turn. She looked directly at us, her eyes large, tender, welcoming. The arm began to lower to its original position; slowly the head turned away. The Queen stood motionless with slightly parted lips.

When I turned to the King, he was unnaturally still. His arm was raised as if frozen in the act of reaching toward the Queen, his head erect, his eyes wide, his lips parted as if in speech.

The King has released Oswin, who at once resumes his position as chief steward with all its privileges and powers. It is very strange. Perhaps the banishment of the Queen has rendered the steward’s imprisonment superfluous. Another explanation is possible: the King, tormented by longing for the Queen, feels a kinship with the disgraced steward, who also has desired the Queen. Oswin wears a patch over his blinded eye and behaves with impeccable propriety. He meets no one’s gaze, sits rigidly at the royal board, avoids the company of Modor, and tyrannizes over his servants, whom he punishes mercilessly for the most trivial faults.

Odo of Chester has departed for the court of the Count of Toulouse, where I have no doubt his art will be celebrated as a wonder of the age, while deep in the castle wall the King continues to visit the Queen in his secret chapel. I do not like these visits. Sometimes the King asks me to accompany him, in order to operate the curtain and the lever. Sometimes he visits the Queen alone. The visits take place suddenly, at any moment of the day or night. Last night, summoned by the King from sleep, I followed him to the chapel, where I drew open the curtain and pressed the lever concealed in the Queen’s back. When I turned to the King, I saw him staring fixedly at the slowly moving Queen, his eyes wide and unblinking. He then began to make low sounds, a mumble of speech that alarmed me. “My lord,” I said. The King seemed to awaken, and giving me one of his mischievous grins, which did not sit naturally on a face marked by sorrow and longing, he said, “Now tell me, Thomas. Isn’t the Queen looking well?”

The King’s sorrowing face, made oddly youthful by melancholy — the face of an unhappy boy.

No! My speculations have proved to be mistaken. The King’s reason for releasing Oswin lies elsewhere.

This afternoon I was summoned by a royal messenger to the prison tower. I was admitted by the guard, who thrust back the double iron bar of the door. Inside it was so dark that at first I could see nothing. A single small window, the width of an arrow loop, sat high up on the wall. A shaft of sunlight, frenzied with silent dust, lay slantwise across the dark air and struck the middle of the opposite wall. On the wooden planks of the floor I made out a crude pallet of straw and, in one corner, an iron chamber pot. Against a dark wall sat the King. He was wearing his royal robes; his hair, not bound in a net, lay loose on his face.

“Sit, Thomas,” he said. I immediately sat down beside him, on the bare floor.

“Assure them,” he then said, gesturing vaguely with one arm, “that all is well.”

“All is not well.”

“All is as it must be. Only this: they feed me too well. Water and bread: you will speak to Hainault.”

“There will be talk. The barons—”

“It is by my order. Let them know. Assure them, and they will be content. Your word, Thomas.”

“You have my word. They will not be content.”

“They will be less discontent.”

I remembered my sharp-minded pupil, fourteen years old, sitting in his father’s garden, battling with me over some question of logic. If each of the three persons of the Trinity has a real existence, how can it be maintained that God is a unity? If each of the three persons of the Trinity does not have a real existence, in what sense are they three?

A sudden flutter startled me. I leaped to my feet with drawn sword. In the deep dusk of the chamber I saw the King’s raven, settling on his knee. I felt uneasy — even ashamed — standing in the half-dark above my King, holding a sword.

“Let me leave my sword,” I pleaded.

“Prisoners have no swords.”

“And if it had been a rat?”

“Then I should have made him an archbishop, to absolve me of my sins.”

“The court misses you.”

“Court? There is no court. Here is my court: three spiders, a raven, and a fly. Am I not richer than the King of Cornwall, who rules nothing but an empty kingdom?”

“My lord—”

“I am tired, Thomas.”

Outside the prison door I instructed the guard to observe the King closely and inform me in detail about his diet, his health, his words, his movements — his thoughts, I wished to say. I then returned to my chamber.

The King has ordered his own imprisonment. Evidently he desires to punish himself, but the reason behind his desire is less clear. Does he feel that he must punish himself because he has wronged the Queen and Tristan by banishing them without proof, with nothing to justify his judgment but suspicion and rumor? Or is there a less elementary explanation? The King is suffering because he cannot live without the Queen and Tristan. By having himself imprisoned, he isn’t so much punishing himself as finding a way to display his suffering, to give it a definite and recognizable shape.

There is yet another possibility. The King, heavily burdened by the duties of kingship, longs for the purity of a suffering that eludes him. Freed by imprisonment from the distractions that prevent him from suffering enough, at liberty to enter his unhappiness as completely as he can, does the King sometimes feel, in his new kingdom, a dark consolation, a secret joy?

The royal bedchamber is empty. The King is in prison, Tristan and the Queen have been banished into the realm of faery, the castle tosses in its sleep — and I, Thomas of Cornwall, sit at my table before a sheet of smooth-scraped parchment, dipping my quill in ink blacker than night, writing words that gleam for a moment in the light of my candle like drops of black blood.

For six days the King has remained his own prisoner, sleeping on straw, eating crusts of bread, seeing no one. The knight entrusted with the King’s care reports that the King moves very little, standing only to cross the small room to another wall, where he sits with his great head bowed. He has asked for his crown, which he wears like a heavy punishment. Sometimes he removes the crown to strike weakly at a rat. His eyes, when he opens them, are unusually large above his hollow cheeks. He stares emptily, looking at nothing. Mostly he sleeps. On the ninth day of the King’s self-imprisonment, a knight came striding into the great hall, while we were at supper. This was his story.

He had been hunting in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage, some three leagues from the King’s forest, when, pursuing a stag, he crossed a stream and entered a thicker and wilder part of the woods, where he made his way with difficulty among the trees. In the near distance he saw a small clearing with a rude hut. As he drew closer to the clearing, the door of the hut opened and a man stepped out. He recognized Tristan. The knight, abandoning all thought of the hunt, spurred his horse toward our castle.

I informed the King, who upon hearing the news rose unsteadily to his feet. Leaning on my shoulder, he left his wretched cell and returned with me to the royal bedchamber.

Tomorrow, despite his weakened condition, he insists on leading a hunting party into the Forest de la Roche Sauvage.

I will try to record only the most important events of this memorable day.

The King, refreshed by nourishment and sleep, but still seriously weakened after his nine days in the tower, rose at dawn, attended mass at the chapel, ate a breakfast of bread and ale, and ordered our party to depart. Except for a moment of faintness immediately after he mounted his horse, he sat erect in the saddle; I marveled at the return of his strength, while at the same time I had the uneasy sense that he was animated less by physical vitality than by the unnatural glow of a devouring fervor. In the Forest de la Roche Sauvage — named for the bare crag rising at its eastern extremity — our party of two dozen broke into pairs. Each man carried an ivory hunting horn, which he was to sound at the first sign of Tristan or the Queen. I rode with the King.

It is possible to ride for days in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage without coming to a clearing. Sometimes the growth is so thick that one can ride no farther; here and there among the oaks and pines stand towering tangles of thorn, with immense black spikes the size of spear points. The King’s proud face, with its still-gaunt cheeks, had begun to show signs of weariness. Urging my own tiredness, I persuaded him to dismount and sit with me on the mossy roots of a massive oak, through whose dark and prickly leaves only small pieces of blue sky were visible.

A white brachet hound, which had accompanied us on our journey, sniffed about as we sat against the broad trunk. The King, settling back, half closed his eyes. Suddenly the brachet darted off after a rabbit, disappeared into the undergrowth, and was gone.

This was one of the King’s favorite hounds. He called out to it, then rose with a sigh to fetch it back. I followed him through trees growing so close that no horse could have entered. The undergrowth thickened, ferns as long as sword blades thrust up, and suddenly we came to a small opening in the trees. Before us stood a peasant’s hut. It had a roof of thatch and a frame of rough timber, filled in with clay over a weave of branches that poked through here and there.

The King placed his hand on his sword, and I followed him across the sun and shade of the clearing to the single small window in the side of the hut.

On an earthen floor covered with rushes, the Queen and Tristan lay asleep on their mantles. They were fully clothed, in tunic and surcoat, and lay facing each other so that their mouths were no more than a hand’s width apart. Between them on the blanket lay Tristan’s naked sword. A ray of sunlight, coming through the window, lay slantwise along the dark, striking the Queen’s cheek, the tip of the sword, and Tristan’s shoulder.

The King watched for a long time as the two lay there breathing gently. A wisp of the Queen’s hair stirred in Tristan’s breath.

I looked at the King’s face, with its terrible tumult of despair and joy, and turned my face away.

Raising a finger to his lips, the King drew his sword and made his way stealthily around the hut toward the door. Through the little window I watched the door open. The King stepped over to the sleeping pair and stood looking down at them with his sword held out as if in readiness. Then he bent over, carefully lifted Tristan’s sword, and laid his own sword between them.

He looked down at Tristan and the Queen lying side by side, the sun on her cheeks, wisps of her hair stirring in Tristan’s breath. For a moment I had the strange sensation that he was going to lie down beside them. Then he turned and made his way out of the room, into the clearing.

Not until we returned to our horses did the King speak. “Lovers lie naked,” he said. At a nearby rustling he whirled, gripping Tristan’s sword.

It was only the white brachet, bursting through the undergrowth, its tail wagging wildly, its coat matted with burrs.

Lovers lie naked; the Queen and Tristan are innocent. Between them the sword: the very sign and symbol of that innocence. Tristan and the Queen, wronged by jealousy and evil rumors, flee to the dark forest, where he watches over her like a brother. When she bathes in a stream, he stands guard beside the water, his sword drawn, his eyes scanning the woods for danger. At night they remove only their mantles. The sword lies between them when they sleep.

How deeply, in order to believe this, the King must have suffered.

There is great rejoicing in the castle. In the high hall the tables and benches are removed for games and dancing; minstrels sing the adventures of Arthur and Gawain. Tristan and the Queen have returned! — summoned by the King, pardoned in Council, welcomed before the entire court. The King’s laughter rings out among the revelers. Tristan sits at his right hand, the Queen at his left; he looks from one to the other joyously. It is as if we were celebrating the visit of a young prince and his bride.

He has given them freedom to go and come as they like. Indeed, the King has asked the Queen to stay close to Tristan, whenever he himself is not with her. As the days pass, the King absents himself more and more, hunting with his knights and barons in the royal forest beyond the orchard. One has the impression that he is abandoning the Queen to Tristan by day, in exchange for the Queen in his bed at night.

They, for their part, do not devour each other with adoring looks but behave with modesty and discretion, as befits the King’s wife and nephew. It is true that the Queen, accompanied by Tristan, occasionally visits the women’s quarters, or her walled garden, but these absences are of such short duration that they cause puzzlement rather than slander. It is almost as if, since their return from the Forest de la Roche Sauvage, the Queen and Tristan had agreed to remain apart from each other, in order to demonstrate their gratitude to the King.

Is it possible that something has changed between them?

Stranger and stranger. A week has passed, and the Queen and Tristan continue to behave with a circumspection so complete that it becomes difficult to think of them as lovers at all. He is gentle toward the Queen, listens with interest to all that she says to him, smiles mildly, is perhaps a little pensive. At supper he speaks vigorously with the King, throws back his head in laughter. Has their ardor cooled? Did they enjoy each other so ferociously in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage that they are now content to be only amicable? Is it possible that they were never what they seemed to be, that the rumors have been false from the beginning?

Even the King is aware of the change that has come over them. He studies their faces, unable to surprise a surreptitious glance, a revelatory pallor. They are gentle and innocent as children. Sometimes Tristan goes hawking with the King, while the Queen plays the harp or embroiders among her companions in the women’s quarters.

The King, who was unable to bear the ardent looks of the lovers, is made uneasy by this new decorum.

At night the King makes love to the Queen in the royal bedchamber. No longer do I hear the sound of the creaking oak door, or the pad of footsteps stealing from Tristan’s chamber.

A great peace has come over the castle.

I have it! I have it! A small incident occurred this morning, which revealed to me, in one of those sudden bursts of understanding — sharp as a smell — swift as a sword thrust— precise as a scarlet oriflamme against an azure sky — but whence these rhapsodic flourishes, highly unpleasing in an old knight scarred in battle? Calmly, Thomas.

It happened late this afternoon at supper, directly after grace. The King had returned from his hunt somewhat earlier than usual, and sat in his carved chair at the head of the table, with the Queen at his left side and Tristan at his right. Suddenly he reached out both arms and seized the Queen’s hand and Tristan’s hand, looking at each of them in turn with a gaze of ardent affection. He released their hands and turned his attention to the pantler, who was approaching with a platter of bread and butter. At that moment the Queen and Tristan exchanged a look so rapid that it was less a look than the failure of a look, less a look than a pause in a gaze directed elsewhere — but in that flicker of a glance, in that shadow of a pause, I understood, in a flash of feeling that made my skin warm, the history of their enigmatic behavior. I saw in that glance a satisfaction, as if they were acknowledging the successful operation of a plan — a plan that was luminously clear to me. They had agreed, in the strength of their rapturous love, to abstain for a while from amorous dallying, out of pity for the King. It was as if they were so sure of themselves, after the Forest de la Roche Sauvage, that they could bear to be obedient.

Does the King understand they are being kind to him? Is this the source of his uneasiness?

The King cannot conceal his discontent. It is possible of course that he imagines a trick of some kind, as if the resourceful lovers were deceiving him in a new way. Or does he sense the terrible strength of a love that permits itself such denials?

In the morning, after chapel, the King and I took a walk in the courtyard. We stopped at the mews, to see a new gyrfalcon from Norway that is said to be faster than any of our hawks. Inside we found Tristan, standing in the dusky light with a hooded merlin on his wrist. The King and Tristan spoke for a few moments about the new gyrfalcon, which the falconer was training in the field beside the orchard. The King then urged Tristan to visit the Queen, who was with her companions in the women’s quarters. Tristan hesitated and said he had promised to be present at the training of the new gyrfalcon, after which, if the King desired it, he would visit the Queen. The King strongly repeated his request. Tristan placed his bird on a perch, bowed his head lightly, and set off slowly for the women’s quarters.

Does the King fear their abstinence, suspecting it to be the sign of a love higher than his own? Or is it that, although he cannot bear to be betrayed, he can bear even less the shame of being spared?

The King’s bizarre behavior continues. Does he wish to hurl Tristan into the arms of the Queen?

Tonight as I lay in bed I heard the sound of the bar sliding back in the door of the royal bedchamber. Footsteps— unmistakably the King’s — moved directly to Tristan’s chamber. A knock, a sliding bar, low voices. Two sets of footsteps— the King’s and Tristan’s — departed from his room and entered the royal chamber. What could it mean?

I must have drifted into sleep, for when I woke I saw the light of a candle flickering on the ceiling above my drawn bed curtains. Suddenly the curtains rattled open and I saw the King’s face, bending toward me. His eyes were excited and impatient. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, threw a mantle over my nakedness, and followed the King into the royal bedchamber.

In the dark, lit only by the candle, I saw Tristan lying on his back on the floor. One arm was flung out; his eyes were closed. I turned in alarm to the King, who stood over the immobile body of his nephew as if in a trance; by the light of the candle I bent over fearfully for a closer look. Tristan’s eyes opened. He looked at me without surprise, smiled frankly, then sprang up, with the swift grace that has always been his, and stood before the King.

Tristan spoke in a whisper. “The Queen is sleeping soundly, my lord.”

The King appeared to be waking from a dream. He turned his face toward me, while continuing to gaze at Tristan, and said in a low voice, “The Queen was having nightmares. I thought perhaps Tristan—”

Seated now at my table, I write these lines hastily. How much longer can these disturbances continue? Disorder in the bedchamber, division in the castle, unease in the kingdom. I fear for the King, fear for Tristan. They are playing a dangerous game that cannot end well. The King, feigning concern for his wife, invites Tristan into the royal bed; Tristan lies chastely on the floor. Move and countermove, trap and escape. Where will it end? Must sleep now.

I ask myself: why did the Queen and Tristan return to the castle? Is it that their idyll in the forest was born in secrecy and could not survive secrecy’s end? But surely they might have fled to another forest, in another kingdom. You forget, Thomas, that the King summoned them. Why then did they obey? Can it be that, even as they betray the King, they remain loyal subjects whose deepest impulse is obedience?

Another explanation presents itself. The love of Tristan and the Queen has always flowed around and against the King. Banished from the court, alone in the forest, did they find themselves sometimes thinking of him? Were they growing a little restless, there in the forest? In order for their love to flourish — in order for them to love at all — do they perhaps need the King?

A brilliant stroke! The King has summoned the Queen and Tristan before his Council, and in the presence of his leading barons has praised them for putting slander to rest by their exemplary behavior. Since their return to court, he said, they have in all things been obedient to the royal will, and anyone guilty of words touching upon the honor of his house will be punished swiftly.

By this speech the King has accomplished two things. He has transformed the lovers’ freely chosen abstinence, which galls him and provokes him at every instant, into an act of obedience to the royal will. But hidden within his praise is a second, darker, and more brilliant stratagem.

The King divines, with the keenness of a sharpened jealousy, that the Queen and Tristan are not obedient — that although they play the game of renunciation, at the hidden center of their renunciation is the opposite of self-denial: an utter abandonment of themselves to each other. For if, in the fullness of their triumphant love, they delude themselves into a concern for the King’s well-being, if they take pleasure in obedience, if they savor the delights of renunciation, in truth they renounce nothing, they obey no one, they are bound to each other above all earthly and heavenly things. And because the King divines this, which they themselves have not yet divined, swept up as they are in their little drama of renunciation, the King has seized an advantage in the dangerous game all three are playing.

Baffled at every turn, outwitted time and again in his effort to find evidence of a betrayal he cannot bear to know, the King has discovered, as if by following some impulse deep in his being, the one way likely to accomplish the end he dreads and longs for.

The King watches. The court goes about its pleasures. Tristan and the Queen are the very picture of propriety. Nothing changes.

And yet I ask myself: is there not a change? It is like a summer day, a day like all other summer days, except that you feel, hidden in the heat of high afternoon, the first chill of autumn. Besides, there are signs.

I have noticed a new wariness between the Queen and Tristan. When they are together, they are no longer at ease: they avoid each other’s eyes a little too carefully, stand a little farther apart than before. The King’s speech before the Council has clearly taken them by surprise. They detect in it a threat that they haven’t yet been able to unmask.

The Queen, especially, seems tired and somewhat strained. Each night she obediently performs her conjugal duty in the royal bed. Each day she bows her head at mass, dines at the King’s left hand, walks among her ladies. Where is Tristan? What has become of their passion in the forest? Her life is a masque, a play. Everything vital in her is hidden.

Today, as I walked in the courtyard past the kitchen and the bake house, Brangane stepped from around a corner and pressed a note into my hand. I had not spoken with her since the banishment of the Queen and Tristan. When I looked up from the note, she was gone. I was to meet her in the Queen’s tower chamber after the bells tolled noon. The Queen would not be present.

In the sun-warmed chamber, aswirl with glittering dust motes, Brangane barred the door and turned to me. Her face looked worn, her eyes heavy; in the warm, agitated light, she looked as if she were growing old.

“The Queen is unhappy,” she said.

“The Queen”—I hesitated, choosing my words carefully— “has many reasons for happiness.”

There flashed from her a look — of disappointment, of disdain — that made me hate my courtier’s smooth phrases, even as I watched her youth come rushing in.

“Why,” I asked sharply, goaded by her look, “did she return to the castle?”

“The King summoned her.”

“She obeys the King?”

She hesitated for only a moment. “She has always obeyed the King.”

“Always?”

She looked at me boldly. “At her marriage she kneeled before the King as her lord. She left when the King banished her. She returned when he called her back.”

I had forgotten Brangane’s quickness. What she said was true enough, for that matter. I was turning over my reply when she said, “It was Tristan who urged her to return.”

“Because they had been discovered?”

“For the sake of her honor.”

I tried to imagine Tristan waking beside the Queen in the forest, seeing the King’s sword.

“Her honor is now restored.” Even as I spoke I regretted the barely suppressed scorn of those words, but Brangane had already leaped past them.

“I know her. I know Ysolt the Fair. I fear—” She paused.

“You fear she may do something?”

“I fear her unhappiness,” she said tiredly. Then: “The King watches her.”

“The King loves her.”

She ignored me. “You are close to the King. You know where he goes — when he goes—”

“You’re asking me to spy on the King?”

She looked at me with impatience. “I am asking you to see that no harm comes to anyone.” Already she was moving toward the door.

Only after she had left did it strike me that what she was asking wasn’t that I observe the King carefully, but that I report his movements to her, so that the Queen might be at liberty to — do as she liked.

At supper the King turned to me in a burst of boyish good spirits and cried, “Thomas! Why so melancholy?” I was about to answer lightly when I noticed the Queen looking at me. In that proud and sorrowing gaze I felt a confusion come over me, I could not speak, it was as if the word “melancholy” were opening inside me like a black blossom, until lowering my gaze to the edge of my plate I stared down like an awkward child, and I don’t know what would have happened if the King, still in high spirits, hadn’t suddenly cried out, “Tristan! A song for melancholy Thomas!” whereupon I recovered sufficiently to raise my eyes to Tristan, who was staring at the Queen.

The King, whose passion for the hunt can no longer be suppressed, has asked me to watch over the Queen in his absence. By this he means that I am to follow the Queen and Tristan everywhere. The King will leave tomorrow at daybreak and return at nightfall.

I have informed Brangane of the King’s plans.

When she tried to thank me, my head felt suddenly hot, and I became filled with such rage that I could neither see nor hear. I was aware only that she had drawn her head back, as if I had struck her in the face.

Where to begin?

In the heat of the noonday sun, I sometimes like to walk in the King’s garden. The white roses and red roses in their beds, the heartsease and columbine, the interlaced branches of the beech trees on the sanded paths, the leaden birdbath with its dark image of a falcon rising from the center, the arbor of purple grapes, the splash of the fountain from which water pours through the mouths of four stone leopards — all this soothes the troubled mind, soothes the body itself, which, like a tired animal, seeks out hidden and quiet places where it might lie down in the coolness of dark green shade. Here and there stand benches covered in soft turf, but I wandered into the thickest part of the garden, near the far wall. Among the fruit trees I lay down on the grass. The stone wall rose high above; through the green leaves and twisting branches I could see scarcely any sky. The King was hunting in the forest. The Queen had retired with her ladies. In the stillness of the garden I closed my eyes.

When I opened my eyes I saw the King’s face bending close to mine. I could not at first account for this. The King, I thought, had come to lie down beside me in the shade of the garden, as he used to do, in the days of his boyhood, when he liked to lie on his back in the grass and ask whether, in addition to each individual tree, there was a substance named “Tree” that had a real existence, and, if so, how that “Tree” differed from the particular tree before us. Then it struck me that I must be dreaming, since the King was hunting in the forest. But already I knew that I was not dreaming, the King’s face was sharp with urgency, his eyes fierce and sorrowful. He shook me roughly. “Thomas!” As I rose and began to follow him I had the sensation that the green shade, the paths, the fountain, the roses, the stillness of the hour — all were fading and dissolving behind me, like those images that stand hard and brilliant in the mind and, as the eyes open, waver and grow dim.

He led me across the courtyard to the Queen’s tower, from which a narrow door opened into her walled garden.

I followed him along a sanded path shaded by a row of almond and walnut trees growing on one side. We passed a fish pond, a small herb garden of sage, hyssop, marjoram, and rue, square beds of roses and marguerites, a grove of hawthorn trees. Here and there in the garden wall I saw recesses with turf seats shaded by branches on lattice frames. Toward the northwest corner stood a tall hedge, higher than my head, with an opening shaped like an archway. As the King stepped through the opening he drew his sword. Behind him I entered the hedge, passed along the sharply turning paths of a maze with hedgerows on both sides, and came at last to a grove of fruit trees, beyond which rose the garden wall.

Under a pear tree lay Tristan and the Queen, asleep. They lay on white linen, beneath a red silk coverlet brocaded with gold lions. In the green shade they lay mouth to mouth, embracing. The coverlet was partly cast aside, revealing their naked arms and upper bodies. The Queen’s breasts were pressed against Tristan’s breast. What startled me was the Queen’s hair, unbound, naked, wild, like some yellow eruption, pouring along her shoulder, bursting over Tristan, burning along the coverlet.

They were breathing quietly. I could not bear to look at the King’s face.

The King bent toward me and whispered harshly, “We must find witnesses.” He turned and strode away.

I withdrew my dagger and crept up to the sleeping pair. As I bent over Tristan, I imagined someone watching from a tree: the murder in the garden. Carefully I laid the dagger with its jeweled handle across his naked neck. Then I rose and followed the King through the hedge paths.

Why did the King leave? He left because, although he had caught them red-handed, and had every right to kill them on the spot, he had so long imagined this very scene that it must have struck him as familiar, unsurprising, perhaps a little disappointing. He left because, from the instant he saw them, he entered an unhappiness so deep that nothing could relieve him. He left because he was a just King who, although he had caught his wife and nephew lying naked under a pear tree, did not wish to condemn them to death unfairly, in the anger of the moment and in the presence of a single witness known to be his friend, for there might, even now, be an explanation that had not occurred to him and that would reveal them to be innocent. He left because he could not bear a life without the Queen, without Tristan. He left because, although he wished to return with his barons and murder the lovers in their bed, he also wished to offer them a chance to escape. He left because his heart was broken. He left because, in the first instant of seeing them there, before the knowledge of their treachery entered his heart, he had experienced a kind of awe before the beauty of Tristan, the beauty of Ysolt, two lovers under a pear tree, in a garden, out of this world.

These were my thoughts as I followed the King through the hedgerows and back across the garden to the door in the tower.

Inside the door, Modor stepped from the shadows. He had drawn his little sword, which he held high in his excitement. “You saw them!” he cried, his face savage with glee.

The King, uttering a cry, struck with his sword. The blow severed Modor’s hand cleanly from his wrist. Modor gave a high, unpleasant scream and bent over violently with his bleeding stump pressed against his stomach. I looked at the little hand lying palm upward on the floor beside the fallen sword, which lay quite close to it. Modor, shrieking like a child, stumbled away into the shadows.

As he strode toward the great hall to fetch witnesses, the King told me that Modor had ridden out to the forest with the news that he had seen the Queen and Tristan go into the garden. From a ladder at the top of the garden wall the dwarf had watched them lie down under the pear tree.

When we returned to the garden in the company of four barons, we found the Queen lying alone under the tree, with the coverlet up to her neck. In terror she looked up at the six of us standing over her with drawn swords. It was evident she expected to be murdered.

The barons looked at the King. The King looked at the Queen. Without a word, he turned and headed back out of the garden.

No longer does the King leave the castle. He walks in his garden, shuts himself up alone in his tower, stares unblinking in the chapel, presides in silence at dinner beside the silent Queen. Sometimes he stands on the wall walk, looking out over the battlements. Only at meals and at morning mass is he seen with the Queen. They never look at each other.

She, for her part, spends much time in the women’s quarters, embroidering among her companions, or in her tower chamber, with its window looking down upon her garden.

At night, in the royal chamber, the King takes his pleasure of the Queen. But can it be correct to say that he takes his pleasure? Is it not more accurate to say that he takes his pain? For when he lies with the Queen, does he not hear, in the bed beside her, the breath of Tristan, does he not feel, beneath his palm, the back of Tristan’s hand?

Never have the King and Queen been less alone.

Having spared the Queen, the King can do nothing but bear witness to her unhappiness, her uninterrupted desire for Tristan. This form of suffering, which is unbearable, is slightly less unbearable than the suffering that would have been his if he had condemned her to death, since he is left with the hope, however delusory, that a change will come over the Queen, that in the course of time she will begin to forget Tristan.

Thus the King devotes himself to a life of suffering for the sake of a future in which he does not believe.

It is also possible that he wishes the Queen to witness his own suffering, which cannot happen if she is dead.

Is it a wonder that they can’t bear to look at each other, in the light of day?

Last night I walked out into the orchard. I had not walked there for many days. The air was cool and fresh — a touch of autumn — and as I made my way along the wagon paths, under a dark sky brilliant with stars, I recalled the night when I saw Tristan and the Queen walking not far from me among the trees — walking so slowly that they were scarcely moving. I recalled the picture vividly, but for some reason I was unable to recapture the sensations that had been stirred in me then. Had they been illusory, those stirrings and wonderments? Had they perhaps been used up? I was pondering these questions when I found myself in a familiar place, not far from the fence of pointed stakes. I recognized the broad apple tree in whose branches the King and I had hidden ourselves, like boys at play.

On a sudden impulse I reached up to a branch and pulled myself into the tree. I climbed through branches heavy with ripe apples until I was nearly at the top. In one direction I could see over the palisade of stakes into the royal forest; in the other I could see, beyond the moonlit orchard stretching away, the pale, towering wall of the castle. In memory I heard the King’s voice crying, “Come down, Thomas! What the devil are you doing up there?” and I was wondering how I might reply when I became aware of sounds in the near distance. Quickly I withdrew into the darkness of the leaves.

Two figures came into view, whom I recognized at once as the Queen and Brangane. I was divided between the desire to reveal myself, for I had no wish to spy on the Queen, and the desire to remain hidden, for how could I explain my presence to her, in the orchard, at night, in the trysting tree? As I held myself back, the women came up to the tree. I saw that Brangane was carrying a bundle of some kind. The Queen stood staring at the trunk as if she were imploring it to speak, while Brangane unfolded her bundle, which proved to be a quilt and coverlet. In the moon-speckled shade of the apple tree, the Queen lay down and closed her eyes. Beside her Brangane stood guard, like a crossbowman on a castle wall. They did not speak.

High among the apple branches I looked down on the sleeping Queen, who lay with her head turned slightly to one side. Her face, haughty and sorrowful in daylight, looked mild and peaceful now — the face, almost, of a sleeping child. I was struck again by the mystery of her beauty, as it streamed up at me from the foot of the tree. It came over me that I too was guarding her, as she slept her strange sleep, under the trysting tree. Only then did it all come back to me, the night when I saw them in the orchard, the wonder, the stillness, the moment when the sky was about to crack open and reveal a dazzling light.

Had she come to sleep in the open air because she was unable to sleep in the royal chamber? Had she escaped from the King, whose attentions repelled her? Perhaps she had had word from Tristan — at any moment he would leap over the wall and take her in his arms. Or had she, in her sorrow, sought out the place where she had once been happy?

I dared not move, for fear of waking her or alerting Brangane. Fortunately I am well-disciplined; as a young knight I trained my body to follow my will, and once forced myself to stand motionless in my uncle’s orchard from daybreak to sunset. Time passed, or ceased altogether. I had the sensation that I had been in the tree, guarding the Queen, not for this night only, but for many nights — for every night since the night I had seen her and Tristan walking in the moonlit orchard. I was startled, almost disappointed, when Brangane bent over and shook her awake.

She opened her eyes — I could see them opening, as if to gaze at me in my branches — then she sat up abruptly, held out her hand, and allowed Brangane to raise her to her feet.

“Quickly,” Brangane said, as she gathered up the coverlet and quilt.

“He will come,” the Queen said, quietly and sorrowfully.

They turned away, and I watched as they passed through the orchard and out of sight. For a long while I stayed in my tree, like a man bound in a spell. Then I climbed down and returned to the castle, even as the cocks began to crow in the courtyard.

The Queen goes out every night and waits for Tristan under the apple tree. The King cannot be ignorant of these journeys.

At this morning’s service in the chapel, the Queen rose from kneeling and, growing suddenly faint, stumbled for a moment against the King. The King, who had just risen, was startled by the sudden weight of the Queen against him, and would himself have stumbled and perhaps fallen had I not been able to support him with both hands. The King and Queen recovered at once. The episode lasted the space of a moment, but in my mind I see the three of us fixed in place as in a bas relief: the Queen fallen against the King, the King fallen against his old companion, who himself leans slightly away, his left hand grasping the King’s shoulder, his right hand gripping the King’s back, his neck tense, his lips pulled back over bared teeth.

This night I woke from a troubling dream of Tristan — he lay wounded and bleeding under a tree — and seemed to hear a sound coming from Tristan’s chamber. I sat up, listening intently. There could be no doubt: someone was stirring in Tristan’s chamber. I rose, put on my robes and sword belt, and stepped from my room to Tristan’s door, which was open a hand’s width.

When I entered his chamber I saw in the moon-streaked darkness a figure seated on the side of the bed, between drawn-back curtains. My heart leapt — he had come! — but at once I recognized the King.

“Is it you?” he said, in a voice so sorrowful that a heaviness came over me, and I could scarcely speak.

“It is Thomas, my lord.”

“Ah: Thomas. I thought—” He rose, in the dark. “I dislike empty rooms,” he said. “They remind me of—” He gestured with a hand, which dropped to his side. “I sometimes come in here, at night. I don’t know why. Do you remember when the three of us would ride out together? He was fifteen then. He could already cut up a buck like a man. His harp: the time he made the minstrel weep. Do you remember? I was— twenty-five. Twenty-five! God. Where has it gone? I never sleep. Do you sleep, Thomas? But of course you do. I keep thinking he’ll return, to ask my forgiveness. She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t speak. Let me show you something.”

He passed out the door and I followed him into the royal chamber. The shutters were unbarred and night brightness glowed in the room. He pulled aside the bed curtain and showed me the Queen, asleep on her side. I could scarcely see her in the darkness of the bed.

“Have you ever seen a more beautiful face?” the King asked, as he let the curtain drop back. “And yet—” Again that helpless gesture, the hand raised and falling to his side. “But I was going to show you—”

He pulled the curtain aside once more and bent over the Queen. As he gently began to draw down the coverlet, I did not know what to think. Was he going to show me the Queen’s nakedness? Then I saw a glint of something; her upper body was covered to the waist. He drew up the coverlet and led me to the door.

“It’s a shirt of iron. She has it from the chaplain. She wears it night and day. She is cut, bruised — all over.”

“But why—”

“At first I thought she was punishing herself because she had — dishonored me. But now I believe she is punishing herself because he is gone. She removes it if I ask her to. I am tired, Thomas.”

“Sleep, my lord.”

“Sleep? I’m done with sleep. Sleep is for the young. Sleep no longer desires me. Good night, Thomas.”

I left him standing at the door, like a knight whose task it was to guard the Queen’s sleep.

I do not like that iron shirt, cutting into the Queen’s flesh. Perhaps if I speak to the chaplain?

The King is mistaken about one thing: I too no longer sleep.

Today, after the tables were removed from the hall, a blind harper from Brittany played for us. I watched the King and Queen staring fiercely at him, trying to penetrate the disguise. Even I, who saw at once it was not Tristan, studied him closely, wondering whether I had perhaps been mistaken, whether he had deceived us by changing the shape of his body.

We are all waiting for him, the shining one.

If Tristan were to return now, and beg the King’s forgiveness, everything would be restored to him — except the Queen, except the Queen, except the Queen.

A week has passed, with little to report. The harper has left, one of the King’s favorite greyhounds has died, a group of six pilgrims have taken up residence in the guest quarters for a few days, a squire accused of striking a servant girl has been given a lashing. Oswin complains that the guests will exhaust the treasury; he reports expenditures for two dozen fowls, one hundred eggs, hay for six horses. Yesterday, in the royal forest, a boar gashed the thigh of the Baron Amaury de Chastelet.

An extraordinary thing has happened.

I went to bed early yesterday evening, after listening to a minstrel’s song of Charlemagne and Roland and then playing a game of chess with the King. On parting he spoke of the boar that had gored the baron, slitting him from his knee to his upper thigh; it occurred to me that the King’s thoughts were beginning to return to the hunt, a hopeful sign. In my bed I fell at once into a deep sleep and did not wake until dawn. As I woke I became aware of a coldness on my neck. At first I thought it was the chill morning air, but the sensation began to resemble a pressure, a weight of cold. When I reached up to touch my neck I felt a sudden sharp pain in the palm of my hand. I sat up quickly, fully awake, and saw a streak of blood on my palm. On the coverlet lay my dagger with the jeweled handle, which I had placed on Tristan’s neck under the pear tree in the Queen’s garden.

He was here! — I had no doubt it was Tristan who had placed it on my neck — and before descending to the chapel I stepped into his chamber and pulled aside the bed curtain, as if I might find him sleeping there.

In the chapel, kneeling beside the King, I observed the Queen closely. And now it seemed to me that a change had come over her, that her cheeks were slightly flushed, her lips less drawn, and that I had observed these changes, without thinking about them, for the past several days.

After breakfast I sent a message to Brangane, who met me in the King’s garden. On the turf bench beside the fountain of leopards I brought forth the dagger. She drew back — as though I had intended to murder her — but quickly recognized the weapon and its meaning.

“He has gone back,” she then said.

Brangane revealed the stratagem to me, which was executed at precisely the time I believed I had nothing to report. The blind harper, who was not blind, was Tristan’s messenger. He informed the Queen, by means of a message delivered to Brangane, that Tristan had crossed over from Lyonesse and would devise a way to enter the castle. He might easily have arranged to meet her in the orchard, but he wished to penetrate the castle itself. He and five companions disguised themselves as pilgrims and entered the castle gate; under their humble robes they wore ring mail and swords. For three days they dined among other guests in the great hall, walked in the courtyard, prayed in the chapel. Tristan revealed himself by signs to the Queen and visited her alone in her garden by day and in the orchard by night. He remained for three days and three nights; during the third night he stole into my chamber and returned my dagger. At daybreak he departed for Lyonesse, across the sea, where he lived in his ancestral castle. It was to this castle that he had fled after the night of discovery under the pear tree. There he had lived, sorrowing for his lost Queen, until at last, searching for death in the German wars and not finding it, he had plotted a return to Cornwall in the guise of a pilgrim, to pledge his undying love.

Such was Brangane’s story, delivered breathlessly beside the fountain. As she spoke I saw in memory the proud youth from Lyonesse, who long ago came riding to his uncle’s court in Cornwall — came riding with such easy grace that it was said he rivaled the King himself. The King had seen in that face the face of his dead sister, Blanchefleur, and I had seen the face of the young King. And in my mind, for a moment, I confused the two of them, the young Prince whom I loved and whom I had instructed in the arts of fencing and dialectic, and the young lord who ten years later came riding into Cornwall with the bearing, the elegance, the hands, the very look of my beloved and still youthful King.

When I asked Brangane why the Queen had not fled to Lyonesse with Tristan, she sat up a little straighter. “She is married to the King,” she replied; in her voice I detected a note of reproach.

Tristan does not return. The Queen’s face has become sharpened by unhappiness, simplified by longing; her life has contracted to the single act of waiting. It is as if she is shedding herself piece by piece, divesting herself of superfluous looks and gestures, until she has come to resemble the figure of a stone saint on a tympanum, who forever must express, in a single genuflection, the vast multiplicity of poses that constitute a lifetime. The King too is waiting, but without hope: he is waiting for the Queen to forget Tristan and turn her attention to him. Because unhappiness has made him patient, and because he is without hope, he tends to the Queen and even imagines her desires: no longer does he sleep in the royal bedchamber but has removed himself to Tristan’s chamber. Sometimes he hears her return from the orchard, where she waits nightly for Tristan, despite the cold weather. Then he lights her way into her chamber, summons a servant to stoke the fire in the hearth, and wishes her a good night before returning to Tristan’s chamber.

He has brought a sparrow hawk into his new quarters, where it sleeps on a wooden perch beside his bed. There is also his tame raven, which walks about on the floor or sits on the King’s shoulder. Sometimes, at daybreak, the raven gives a loud squawk and flutters up onto the ledge of the window. Once I saw it sitting on top of a carved falcon on a bedpost.

“The Queen wishes to see you in the garden.” These were the hushed words breathed at me by Brangane as I came upon her in the shadow of the arched doorway opening from the great hall to the steps leading down to the courtyard. I had never spoken alone with the Queen, and as I made my way to the tower that opened into the garden, I wondered what pitch of desperation had driven her to request this meeting with the King’s close companion, one of the six men who had stared down at her with drawn swords as she lay under the pear tree. Brangane was waiting for me at the tower door. She led me into the garden, along the sanded path shaded by almond and walnut trees, past the fish pond, the herb garden, the square beds of roses and marguerites, to the high hedge with its arched opening. I followed her along the maze of hedge paths, wondering if I was being led to the famous pear tree; evidently we took a different series of turns, for all at once we emerged in a small grassy plot overarched by latticework covered with vines. The Queen was seated on a yellow silk cushion on a box-shaped bench covered with turf, across from a second turf bench on which lay a white silk cushion worked with gold. She motioned me to sit down as Brangane left us to ourselves.

“I am told you may be trusted,” she said, in a tone that seemed to me haughty and mistrustful. She looked at me warily, as if wondering how far she might go in usurping my loyalty to the King.

“Brangane”—I spoke carefully—“flatters me.”

“No one flatters you!” she said sternly. All at once she stood up — she seemed to tower over me, like an angry father — and as I sprang to my feet I had the sensation that she was going to strike me in the face.

“Have you heard from him?” she said, with a kind of violence. “Why doesn’t he come? Something is wrong.” There was nothing angry in her now — only an energy of unhappiness.

“I’ve heard nothing,” I said, startled by the change in her face, tense with longing, dangerous with sorrow.

“Something is wrong,” she said again, sitting down on her bench. She looked worn and small there, like a tired child.

“If I hear anything—”

“Does he trust you?” she said abruptly, looking up at me.

I hesitated. “He has every reason to.”

“Then if you hear something — anything—”

“Yes, I will let you—”

She stood up again. “Something is wrong.” She said it for the third time, but remotely, as if she were no longer listening to herself. Then, turning to look at me: “Thank you for”—she thought about it—“for being a good man.”

The words startled me — angered me — for it had been a long time since I was able to think of myself as a good man— but she uttered them with such force that I bowed my head in reply, even as I felt the blood beat in my neck.

I think of the change in the Queen, when she stood over me in the garden: the violence of her unhappiness, her face sharp with longing. At that moment, when I felt her passion, her features were unpleasant to look at. Is that her secret for Tristan? Is it when she stops being beautiful to look at that she becomes irresistible to him?

There is news of Tristan — news that must be concealed from the Queen. A fearful rumor! How long will she be spared?

I had it from a minstrel who traveled through Arundel before crossing the sea to Cornwall. He has heard that Tristan of Lyonesse has married the daughter of the Duke of Arundel. She is said to be very beautiful.

Tristan married! It is laughable. It can’t possibly be true. What troubles me — what frightens me — is the name of the Duke’s daughter. She is called Ysolt — Ysolt of the White Hands.

Even as I rage against the rumor, I feel the spell of that name. I imagine Tristan walking beside this second Ysolt, this Ysolt who is not Ysolt, this not-Ysolt who is Ysolt. If he cannot have Ysolt, then he will have — Ysolt. He is drawn to her beauty, but nothing in her beauty can compare with the beauty of her name: Ysolt. Tristan can never marry Ysolt, but he can surely marry Ysolt. His choice is between Ysolt and Ysolt: an Ysolt who is hidden from view, a memory-Ysolt, an Ysolt who is scarcely more than the breath of her name, and a living, laughing Ysolt, a vivid and visible Ysolt, an Ysolt who walks in the sun and casts a strong shadow. All day in exile he thinks of Ysolt, all night in his empty bed he dreams of Ysolt — and slowly, from his dream, a real Ysolt steps forth. How can he not reach out and seize her?

This rumor must not reach the Queen.

My cabin is small and dark, lit only by a lantern swinging on a hook. I steady my writing board with my hand as the shadows stretch and contract. Overhead I hear the creak of masts and stays, the howl of a high wind. So Thomas sails the sea to Lyonesse. .

It is the King who has sent me — to confirm the rumor. Ah, Thomas, Thomas, did you really believe that such a story could fail to blow through the court like a howling wind?

The Queen, when she heard, uttered a cry that is said to have caused men-at-arms on the wall walk to turn their heads. She refused to show herself for three days. When she appeared, tightly wimpled, her face thickly lacquered with skin whiteners and vermilion coloring, her gray eyes motionless, she looked like an artful statue contrived by Odo of Chester for the pleasure of a King.

A thud from above — a rolling rumble — cry of voices. Perhaps a barrel, tumbling across the deck?

The King’s decision to send me to Tristan surprised me at first, but upon reflection it seems necessary and even inevitable. The King, for whom Tristan has become a monstrous problem, a problem that he can never solve, sees in the rumored marriage a miraculous solution. His motive, born of despair, is hope. Tristan married is Tristan reformed, Tristan defeated. It is the death of Tristan’s treasonable passion for the Queen. The Queen is young, the King still vigorous; she will grieve, and after a suitable time she will begin to heal. She will understand that Tristan has turned from her irrevocably, that the King alone has loved her with an unchanging passion. All this I could read in his eagerness, his disturbing decisiveness. Already he is prepared to forgive Tristan everything, as if Tristan’s passion for the Queen were a transient, not very serious, entirely understandable, even praiseworthy episode of his unruly youth. He forgets that Tristan’s youth was far from unruly and was famous for loyalty and discipline. He further forgets that Tristan’s loyalty, his deep sense of honor, his purity of heart, his knightly vow, his devotion to chivalry, his absolute and unwavering trustworthiness, did not for a moment prevent him from deceiving everyone at court and satisfying repeatedly his desire for the Queen. As for the Queen, her love for Tristan has grown more desperate with each passing day. She does not appear to be gifted in renunciation.

On the last day, Brangane pressed into my palm a ring from the Queen, which I am to deliver to Tristan.

The Queen fearful, the King hopeful — and I in a ship at sea, rocked by a wind.

I write these lines in my bedchamber in Tristan’s castle. It is the day after my arrival. The chamber overlooks a cliff, high above the green-gray sea. Through my window I can look down upon the narrow shore and the uneven lines of waves. Far to the right, where the cliff juts forward, I can see a blue-black forest, a line of hills like teeth.

The rumor is true. I have met Ysolt of the White Hands. She is scarcely out of girlhood, and troubling in her young loveliness. Her most striking feature is the skin of her face, which seems to glow like a bowl of translucent ivory containing a candle. Her face is made for happiness. Her eyes are melancholy.

I know who she is, this lovely bride. She is Ysolt without unruliness, without all that bursts forth and disrupts the beauty of the other Ysolt. Tristan, whose life is in terrible disarray, has wedded himself to calmness, to perfection, to innocence, to everything that cannot move him deeply.

This afternoon, when we were alone, I delivered the ring entrusted to me by the Queen. He took it — looked at me— and suddenly bent his head to his hand and kissed the ring passionately.

He does not speak of his marriage.

Evening of the next day. Not until this morning did he ask for news of the Queen. As he spoke, his entire body grew tense, as if he had asked to be lashed across the face.

A servant has spoken to one of my servants. Tristan, it is said, lies beside his wife but does not touch her. She remains a maid.

An unhappy castle! But how could it be otherwise?

Across the sea, the Queen lies awake in the royal chamber. All night long she thinks of the new bride, of Tristan asleep in the arms of his wife. In Tristan’s chamber the King lies awake; he is thinking of the Queen alone in her chamber, of Tristan laughing with his bride. Here, in Tristan’s castle, Tristan lies restlessly beside the beautiful Ysolt, the Ysolt who is not Ysolt, who can never be Ysolt, who by daring to bear the name Ysolt has doomed herself to lie beside him untouched, unloved, and unforgiven. Ysolt of the White Hands lies white and motionless under the coverlet. Her hands are crossed over her breasts. Her eyes remain open in the dark.

This morning I went hunting with Tristan and a small party. Deep in the forest we found ourselves alone and dismounted to rest under the shade of a tree. At once, as if we were close companions, he began to speak of the Queen. Was this Tristan? — Tristan, who keeps his deepest words to himself, as though to speak were a form of cowardice? Never, he said, has he loved anyone else. He has tried to live apart from her, has tried to form a new life — all in vain. He suffers day and night, causes suffering to others — all because of this love, a love that consumes him like a poison, a sweet poison that flows through his body. Sometimes he imagines that she has forgotten him, in the arms of the King. Then, tormented though he is by jealousy, he is further tormented by self-anger, for daring to imagine her faithlessness. He would gladly die, were it not for fear of causing her pain. He has wronged Ysolt of the White Hands, whose sorrow is nothing but his own sorrow, planted in her breast and growing in her face.

At the end of it all, trembling from the force of his unaccustomed outpouring — looking wildly at me — he sprang to his feet and drew his sword. The blade sang against the metal of the scabbard like a knife sharpened against stone. As he stood over me, holding the blade not far from my head, I felt not only no surprise that he had decided to murder me — for hadn’t I heard what only the forest should hear? — but also no surprise that I should accept my death so readily, almost with gratitude.

“Thomas!” he cried, pointing the sword at his own throat. “Tell me she no longer loves me!”

Again I was struck by Tristan’s flair for the dramatic, his instinct for memorable moments. It occurred to me to ask myself, as I sat there — sat at his feet, in the forest — is it perhaps the solution? Tristan dead, Tristan out of it?

I gave him the assurance he sought and, rising to my feet, returned with him to our horses.

I do not mean that Tristan’s gesture was insincere. On the contrary, it sprang from the deepest part of his nature. It is simply that the heroic stance, the admirable pose, is the form most readily assumed by his passion. Tristan has always been drawn to whatever in life is high, dangerous, difficult, impossible. He must always excel, even if the only person he can exceed is himself. If he loves, he has to love more than anyone on earth has ever loved, he must love as if there were nothing else. Ceaselessly he must overcome obstacles, including the obstacle of his own rectitude.

Can his love of overcoming, his passion for reckless excelling — can this be what led him to betray his beloved King? For if he was going to betray at all, then he had to betray as deeply as possible, he had to betray down to the appalled depths of his honorable nature.

Things have taken a turn — a sudden, disturbing turn. And yet, when I consider events more calmly, was it not waiting there all along, this disaster, coiled in the heart of things like a destiny?

Yesterday, two days after our talk under the tree, Tristan and I again rode out with a hunting party. In the course of the hunt we separated into two groups. I spent the morning with the knights of my party, killing and cutting up six barren hinds and a doe, while sparing two fierce harts, for now is the close season for male deer. We fed our hounds bread dipped in warm blood. As we rode deep into the wood in pursuit of a wounded hind, one of Tristan’s men called out to us from a nearby ridge. It was from him that we learned the story.

Tristan, leaving his party to follow his own path, had come upon a young knight who lay bleeding beside a stream. The knight had been set upon by four brothers, one of whom was Foulques de la Blanche Lande, a cruel lord of these parts — a man of gigantic stature and ruthless will, who rides wherever he likes, hunts in Tristan’s forest, slaughters harts in the close season, and attacks whoever stands in his path. Tristan set off after the murderous band. He found them in a clearing and a desperate battle began, in the course of which Tristan slew three brothers but was wounded in the thigh by a spear hurled by Foulques de la Blanche Lande. Despite his wound, Tristan battled until the leaves were red with blood, and at last left Foulques de la Blanche Lande dead among his dead brothers. Faint from loss of blood, Tristan managed to mount his horse, which carried him in the direction of the hunt. His men led him back to the castle.

Our party returned at once to the castle, where Tristan lay in his chamber recovering from his wounds.

But the spear wound troubles us. At first it seemed a mere misfortune, an ugly wound in the upper thigh of his left leg. But the infection worsens. The physician says that the tip of the spear was dipped in poison. He has bathed the wound in white of egg and wrapped it in strips of linen. We watch the leg swell alarmingly. Tristan’s face is hot and the skin of his leg is yellow. He lacks the strength to rise from his sickbed.

The physician has restricted his diet to barley water mixed with honey and, at night, the milk of crushed almonds.

It is feared he is dying.

I think of Tristan, with noble rage in his heart, setting off to do battle with Foulques de la Blanche Lande. An act of daring and courage, certainly — the sort of high deed, worthy of a minstrel’s song, that makes Tristan beloved wherever he rides. And yet, in the heart of his audacity, is there not some darker and more equivocal element? Tristan, immured in a mock marriage of his own devising, tormented with longing, desperate for a way out, haunted by weeks of bliss in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage — will he not feel something terribly alluring about a fight to the death, a fight in which death might no longer refuse him?

So: Tristan wounded, Tristan dying. For it is clear he must die unless his wound can be healed.

He has asked me to send for the Queen. “You have always been true to me,” he said, seizing my arm. I looked at him in amazement. He looked back at me tenderly, and again asked me to send for the Queen.

Every morning four servants carry Tristan down to the sandy strip of shore under the cliff, to wait by the sea for the Queen. He believes that only she can save him — she who cured him of his wound in Ireland, when he went courting for the King. The drama of Tristan’s waiting, the drama of his daily descent to the beach, where he lies on two quilts beneath a purple coverlet sewn with gold, his head propped by silk pillows, facing the waves, is heightened by the drama of the sails: he has so arranged it that if the Queen is on the return ship, the sail will be white, but if she remains in Cornwall, the sail will be black.

In the morning we search the horizon, our hands shading our eyes, as green waves thunder at our feet and sea spray salts our lips. In the afternoon, in Tristan’s chamber, we look down at the sea stretching off to the sky; we strain our eyes to discover the precise line where sea and sky meet and where, at any moment, a sail, a white sail or a black — life or death — will appear.

How like Tristan that, even in the grip of death, he cannot forgo a taste for striking effects.

Every day he grows weaker. I think: his life has become nothing but the act of waiting. And at once I am reminded of the Queen, going out each night to the orchard, sick with longing, feverish and weary with anticipation — a life lived solely in the future, like that of a fanatical monk who has renounced this world and devotes himself entirely to the realm of heaven.

Tristan longs for the Queen, lives only for the Queen, who alone can cure him, but as he lies on the beach, searching the horizon for the white sail, death must seem not without its attractions. If she comes to his rescue, what then? Back to life, a life of bitterness and suffering, of mock marriage, of impossible separation, of unappeasable love. As he lies on the beach, deafened by the roar of the waves, does he not, in his heart of hearts, long for the black sail?

Ysolt of the White Hands, silent and melancholy, watches with him from the beach, sits with Tristan in his high chamber.

What to say? It is tempting to write no more, to abandon myself to the consolations of silence. I have grown to like the sea, the mindless fall of waves, the wheel of birds, sea-salt and wave-spray. Can it be that I am tired of human beings and their passions? But my hand moves, a force compels me to continue, as though the words I write no longer are mine, but belong to the page alone, which knows nothing, which understands nothing, which suffers nothing. So be it.

Yesterday: a day of storm and sun. Black clouds and rain all morning, then the sun streaking through in lances of light. Tristan, in his chamber, was too weak to raise his head. I sat beside him, struck by his almost boyish beauty — as if death, by eating his flesh and muscle, by ruining his hardness, were restoring his childhood. It is dangerous to have the beauty of Tristan. At twelve years old, at fourteen, he must have had to prove his strength tirelessly, to demonstrate that the lovely boy could throw a spear, kill a boar, strip a hart, thrust his sword between a man’s ribs. Now he lay in his bed like a child with a fever. Ysolt of the White Hands sat in the stone window seat, looking out to sea. I could feel the thud of waves on the skin of my arms. I watched her at the window. Her young body was alert and oddly languorous — at any moment it might spring into motion or drift into deep sleep. She too was waiting— waiting for Tristan to touch her into life. Suddenly her body tightened, as if she had been struck by the flat of a sword. “A ship!” she said. Her hand in her lap was a fist.

Tristan struggled to sit up and lay back gasping. “The sail?” His voice was soft, tender, though I saw he was trying to shout. “The sail.”

She leaned her body through the open window, as though to get closer to the ship.

“Black,” she said.

I saw the change in Tristan — the terrible stillness, the look, directed to me, of piercing sweetness and desolation. A dark flush burned along his cheek. I seized his hand, which did not return my pressure. He continued to gaze at me with that childlike sad doomed stare.

“Are you sure?” I shouted — someone had to shout — and shaking myself out of a trance of sorrow I released him and went to the window. On the horizon I saw a little ship. The sun was shining. The sail was white as snow.

“Tristan!” I shouted — was mine the only voice in that room? — and for a moment I hesitated. I looked at Ysolt of the White Hands. She was gazing at me bitterly, gazing at me with such hatred that I felt a sudden fear of her, as if she were a wizardess come to damn us all to hell. Her look was like a knife-thrust aimed at my eyes. I understood what she had done, and still I hesitated — hesitated as though I were bound in the spell of that look — hesitated for only a moment more before shouting, “White! Tristan! The white sail!” I found myself at the bed, gripping Tristan’s hand, shouting the color of the sail long after I knew he could hear nothing.

That monstrous hesitation! Had I acted immediately, would I have saved him? And though I was startled by Ysolt’s bitter look — a look I hadn’t known the gentle, sad girl had inside her, growing secretly, ready to leap into her face like the revelation of a disease — it is also true that I had hesitated even before I turned to catch that look. I was taken aback— surprised by whiteness — bewildered: yes. But isn’t it also true that, far down in my mind, where no light penetrates, I wanted the sail to be black, isn’t it true that the whiteness horrified me, with its promise of more love, more ruin — that, in this matter of Tristan and the Queen, I was already on the side of death?

The rest can be told quickly. The white sail grew larger, the ship made for the harbor, the Queen was ashore. She came rushing into the room, looking fierce and feverish and in disarray — looking, to my eyes, glorious and fiery, as if she were burning at the stake. She threw herself on Tristan — lay on top of him, breast to breast and mouth to mouth, though Ysolt of the White Hands stood nearby. She kissed his dead face, talked to him, tried to coax him back, as if he were teasing her, the naughty boy. No one thought of trying to pull her away. Ysolt of the White Hands said nothing. I said nothing. Brangane stood in a corner watching. I knew the Queen would never rise from that bed. She was throwing herself at death, rolling around in lovely death. There was nothing else left for her to want.

It is night now. Through my window I can hear the waves falling against the shore. The waves fall in irregular lines, in one place and then another, so that there is always the sound of the sea, louder and softer. But now and then, if one listens very carefully, one can hear something else, hidden between or within the waves, and revealed suddenly, as behind a swiftly drawn curtain: the nothing — the nothing — the nothing at all.

Three weeks have passed since my return to Cornwall. The King grieves, the court is hushed and respectful, but everyone feels the lifting of a burden. Even the King, whose grief runs deep, is not as he was before my voyage. Then, he was like a man beaten with fists, day after day, and left for dead, only to stumble to his feet and be beaten senseless again. Now he grieves with dignity, a King carrying his burden in court and chapel, a lord bearing himself well before his vassals, a public man shaping his sorrow to the gaze of crowds. His grief is deep but measured; it flows readily into the ancient forms forged by generations of mourners. It is too early to imagine the King’s happiness. But it is not too early to imagine the diminution of his unhappiness.

The death of Tristan and the Queen is easier for everyone to bear than their life.

There have been changes at court. Modor has been made guardian of the King’s tower, a post he holds proudly. He stands with a sharp-tipped ash spear before the chamber door, his missing hand disguised by a gauntlet of ring mail filled with strips of wool. Oswin has a new eye — a splendid eye of marble fashioned by Odo of Chester and fitted cleverly to his eye-hole. It is painted with a brilliant blue iris. Brangane has returned to Ireland; I shall miss her. Tristan’s favorite falcon has been given to the chief forester.

Already there is talk at court of the daughter of the Duke of Parmenia. She is said to be very beautiful and gifted in playing the harp. Oswin is much in favor of the match. In truth, an alliance between Cornwall and Parmenia would benefit us immeasurably.

Since my return I have not been much with the King. Perhaps he has been avoiding me.

For my part, by concealing that I saw the Queen and Tristan walking in the orchard, by speaking clandestinely with the Queen’s handmaid, by serving the Queen and Tristan and guarding their secret, I betrayed my King, my country, and my God. By hesitating at the window, I betrayed Tristan and the Queen. The Queen was certainly mistaken: I am not a good man. Whether I am a wiser one is not for me to judge.

If I had it all to do over again, I cannot imagine acting otherwise.

This evening I took a walk in the orchard. The harvest is done, the smell of crushed fruit stings the nostrils like firesmoke. I walked along the familiar wagon paths, struck into the trees, brushed past branches to which a few leaves still clung, crossed a stream. Soon those branches will be bare, the streams frozen, the paths covered with snow. But now, in late autumn, there is something bracing in the sharp night air; twigs crack underfoot, birds whistle above my head, cold stream-water trickles over stones. I like trying to become lost in the orchard, though I know it well and can rarely succeed. I had come to a stretch not immediately familiar when I became aware of a movement in the shadows not far from where I stood. Then I saw them before me on the path, the Queen and Tristan. They were leaning together, walking so slowly that they were scarcely moving. Her mantle trailed on the ground. And though I knew it was a deceiving image cast up by memory and the imps of night, though I give scant credence to ghosts, and laugh at monkish visions, though the figures were already dissolving into clumps of night shadow, I felt again, rising within me, the mystery, the tender exaltation, the fierce bliss, the serenity like fury, the sheer power of it, before which you can do nothing but bow your head. In the dark I stood there and bowed my head. When I looked up I was alone in the orchard. I turned back toward the castle.

When I entered my chamber it was dark, lit only by the light of stars through the open shutters. Immediately I became aware of a shape on the edge of the bed, beside the half-drawn curtain. A night of visions, Thomas! It struck me that little was known about the dead. Perhaps they did not vanish entirely but left behind a number of very fine skins, which stuck to things.

“Good evening, Thomas. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Good evening, my lord. I was taking a walk in the orchard.”

“I too was out walking, in the garden. Does it help you sleep?”

“Sometimes, my lord.”

“Perhaps if we were to walk together, Thomas? Perhaps we might both find sleep, wherever he’s hiding.”

“I should like that very much.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

He stood up, a massive darkness in the dark: my sad King. At the doorway he turned.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you, Thomas.”

“I don’t understand, my lord.”

“For going down there. For seeing things through.”

“My lord, I—” In the dark I bowed my head. I listened to his footsteps retreating toward his chamber.

Alone in the dark I felt suddenly restless. Had I not walked enough? I began to pace in the darkness, from the window to the bed and back to the window. The night air was sharp with cold. Tomorrow I would have logs placed in the hearth. Tomorrow I would walk with the King. We would walk in the garden, we would walk in the courtyard, we would tramp along every wagon path in the orchard. Two old warriors, hunting down sleep. In the meantime I was wide awake and fiercely alert. My encounter in the orchard, my words with the King, all this had unfitted me for sleep. I could think of nothing to do but pace up and down in the dark, like a man accursed, like a fool.

All at once I remembered my writing table.

I lit my candle and sat down. The feather of my quill leaped forth in the flamelight like a sword blade. My scraping knife and my lump of pumice cast two sharp shadows. My fingers tingled. No, I wasn’t ready for sleep — I was ready for words. I dipped my quill in the ink of the oxhorn, shook off a drop with a single sharp dip of the wrist. I pulled the candle closer and bent over the page, my head bowed as if in prayer. I, Thomas of Cornwall, prince of parchment, lord of black ink, king of all space, summoner of souls, guardian of ghosts, friend of the pear tree and the silence of waves, companion to all those who watch in the night.