The King Arthur Trilogy (23 page)

Then Marc’s fighting men began to make ready for war, though with little hope of victory, for Ireland had grown strong under the Morholt’s leadership; and the women, weeping, began to seek out places to hide their children.

Then Tristan sought out the King his uncle, and said, ‘Better than all this ready-making for war, if we were to send the Morholt his champion for single combat.’

‘Much better, if we had such a champion. But the Morholt has the strength of four men,’ said King Marc.

‘I have skills that you have not seen me use as yet,’ said Tristan. ‘I will go out as Cornwall’s champion, if you will have me.’

‘You are only a boy! To let you go would be to throw your life away!’

‘It is my life,’ said Tristan, ‘and I am your nephew, your nearest kinsman, I have the right to go!’

And King Marc knew that this was true. So he sent word to the Morholt that a champion of the royal house of Cornwall would meet him in single combat. The place was set – a small island just off the Cornish coast – and on the appointed day Tristan and the Morholt came together upon the island. They landed there alone, Tristan from the shore, the Morholt from the Irish ships that lay waiting out to sea. The Morholt moored his boat where the dark rocks gay with tufted sea-pinks came down to the water’s edge. But when Tristan had landed he pushed his boat off and let the tide take her.

The Morholt stood watching, dark and menacing as thunder in his black armour. And ‘That was surely a strange thing to do,’ said he, when Tristan drew near, ‘to push your boat off again when you landed.’

‘Two of us came to this island,’ Tristan said, ‘but only one will need a boat to carry him away.’

Then the Morholt laughed sharp in the back of his throat, and drew his sword; and together they went up to the level space in the midst of the island. And there they fought, all the long day. Tristan was the swifter swordsman, but the Morholt had the strength of four men, and his blows fell so thick and fast that at times
there was nothing Tristan could do but cover himself as best he might behind his shield. At last, in trying to guard his head, he raised his shield too high, and the Morholt lunged beneath his guard and got in a great blow to the thigh that laid it bare to the bone.

But the fire of his wound, and the blood-flow that should have weakened Tristan, seemed to wake a desperate valour in him that he had not found before. And, yelling, he leapt forward with blade upswung, and brought it down in a whistling stroke that bit so deep through the mail and into the bone beneath, that when he jerked it free a fragment of the blade was left in the Irish champion’s skull.

With a great cry the Morholt turned and fled, leaving a crimson trail, towards where his boat was tied and other boats from the Irish ships were already putting in for him.

And Tristan walked down the landward shore of the island, trailing crimson also; and he could hear the Cornish warriors rejoicing, but it all seemed far off, and his blood soaked and soaked into the grey shingle.

As soon as the ship that carried the Morholt reached Ireland, messengers were sent for the King’s daughter, the Princess Iseult; for in all the land there was none that had her skill in the healing craft. But not even she could bring a dead man back to life, and by the time she
reached him the Morholt was dead of his wound. But she drew out the jagged piece of sword blade from his skull, and laid it carefully by, in case she should ever meet a man whose sword lacked a splinter that shape …

Meanwhile Tristan lay for a long while sick of his wound in Tintagel Castle. And when at last it was healed the King, rejoicing, gave him knighthood and determined to make him his heir. But his lords urged him to marry and have sons of his own. And when he would not listen to them, some, who were jealous of Tristan, began to whisper among themselves that it was his doing. And Tristan, knowing this, also urged his uncle to marry. ‘Give me three days to think the matter over,’ the King said at last, ‘and on the fourth morning you shall have your answer.’

And on the fourth morning as he sat, his mind still not made up, waiting for his lords and nobles, in the sunshine before the entrance to his Great Hall, two swallows fell to quarrelling about something high over his head, darting and circling, snatching it from one to the other, until even as the King looked up, they dropped it. A thread like gossamer, but red as flame; it drifted to his outstretched hand, and he saw that it was a long hair from a woman’s head; and such a colour as the King had never seen before, so dark as to be almost purple in the shade, bright as fire where the sun caught it. Surely only one woman in the world could have hair that
colour; and one woman in the world would be hard to find!

So when the lords came for their answer, Marc showed them the hair, and told them, ‘I will marry, as you wish, but only the woman to whom this hair belongs.’

Then Tristan stood forward from the rest, and said, ‘My uncle, give me the hair and a ship, and I will go and seek this woman, and if she lives, bring her back to you.’

So a ship was made ready for a long voyage, and Tristan gathered his closest companions, Gorvenal among them, and set sail, to search all the countries of the world, save Ireland, where since the Morholt’s death, the King had ordered death for any Cornishman who landed on his shores.

Yet a man’s fate is a man’s fate. The ship was caught in a great storm and driven hither and yon, and when the storm blew itself out at last, they found their vessel driven hard aground on the shore of a great river-mouth. Far off were other boats, and beyond, hearth smoke and the glint of pale sunshine on roofs and church spires. Then Gorvenal, who had travelled far in his own youth before Tristan came to him, said, ‘Now God help us, for yonder is Wexford, and we are held fast upon Ireland’s shore!’

And with the folk of the nearby fisher village already coming down in curiosity they took hurried counsel
and determined to claim that they were storm-driven merchants from Less Britain. This story they told, and the people believed them, and as they were helping them to get their horses overboard and up through the shallows, the bells of Wexford began to toll; and one said to his neighbour, ‘Another good man dead for the Princess’s sake.’

And when Tristan asked his meaning, they all told him, taking up the story one from another, how a terrible fire dragon was laying waste the land, and how in despair, for with the Morholt dead they had no champion who could stand against it, the King had offered his daughter the Princess Iseult to any man who could slay the monster. ‘Many good knights have tried and failed,’ said the last man, sadly. ‘It is for the latest of them that the bells of Wexford are tolling now.’

Then Tristan thought, It is I who led my comrades into this sore danger, and if I can slay the dragon, then the King can scarcely have us killed, even if he discovers that we are from Cornwall.

So in the dark hour before the next day’s dawn, he got into his mail shirt and bade farewell to his companions and, taking his own horse from among those grazing under guard close by, he rode away.

He knew that he was travelling in the right direction, as the light grew round him, by the scorched desolation of the countryside; and presently he heard a terrible
roaring far ahead of him, and across his path came galloping a knot of horsemen who shouted to him to turn back and fly for his life.

But Tristan turned his horse into the way they had come, and rode on. All the country looked as though a heath fire had swept through it, and all around were the blackened snags of tree stumps and the scorched and half-eaten bodies of cattle. And then, rounding a rocky outcrop, he saw before him a cave mouth dark in the side of the hill, and before the cave mouth, coiling itself to and fro in anger, long as a troop of horse and wicked as sin, was the dragon he had come to seek.

He crouched low in his saddle and, levelling his spear, struck spurs to his horse and charged in to meet it. His spear-point took it in the throat as it reared up to meet him, wounding the creature sore; but horse and rider plunged on into the heat and poison fumes that made a cloud about it; and crashing against the spiked and glowing breast-scales, the horse dropped dead. But Tristan sprang clear, as the dragon, still with his spear in its throat, roaring in agony and coughing out great gouts of steaming blood, made for the rocks that choked the hillside. And Tristan sprang after it with his sword upraised.

There among the rocks and the scorched hillside scrub they came together. Tristan’s shield was charred to cinders in the first onslaught and his ring-mail seared
his flesh; but the dragon was weakening as the spear dragged at its throat and breast; and its fire was sinking. And at last, seizing his chance, Tristan sprang in and drove his sword between the breast-scales and found the monster’s heart.

The dragon reared up with a death-roar that echoed like thunder among the hills, flailing the air with its tail and savage claws, then crashed to the ground, its fire dying out.

With his last strength, Tristan wrenched open its jaws and hacked off the venomous black tongue. But his own hurts were very sore, and he had scarce dragged himself a spear’s throw from the great carcass when the ground seemed to rise beneath his feet and a roaring blackness engulfed him.

Now one of the men whom Tristan had seen fleeing from the dragon’s lair was the King’s steward, who had long desired to marry the Princess Iseult though she had no liking for him at all. And when he saw that Tristan rode straight on despite their warning, he slipped away and turned back also, to see what should befall and whether there might be any gain for him in it. And so he was near at hand when he heard the monster’s death-cry; and made bold by that and the silence that came after, he pressed on. And among the rocks he found the dead horse and then the dead dragon, and of the dragon slayer no sign at all. And he thought, The dragon must
have eaten him before it died, and there lies my chance. And drawing his sword he fell to hacking at the monster’s carcass until his blade was reddened to the hilt. Then he galloped back to Wexford and gathering his henchmen and a cart, returned again with them to hack off the dragon’s head and fetch it into the town. And when they had brought it in, he made for the King’s Hall to show him the battered head and his blood-stained sword, and claim the Princess in marriage.

The King was torn between joy that Ireland was delivered from the terror that had laid it waste, and grief that his daughter must marry a man she loathed. But he had given his word, and he sent to the women’s quarters to bid her come down for her betrothal to his steward.

When she received this word, the Princess thought more quickly and desperately than ever she had thought in her life before. And she sent back word to the King that she was unwell and could not come down to her betrothal that evening or the evening after, but that on the third evening she would come. For she was sure that the steward had not himself slain the dragon but was stealing some other man’s glory; and she must play for time.

Then she sent for Brangian, chief among her maidens, and bade her have horses ready at the postern gate before dawn, that they might ride out and look at the place where the dragon had been slain. ‘There is some
mystery here, and it may be that by seeking we shall find the answer to it,’ she said. ‘We
must
find the answer to it, for sooner than wed with that man I will die!’

So in the dark of next morning, the Princess and her maiden slipped out and rode away towards the hills. They found the torn remains of the horse, and then the headless carcass of the dragon; and searching further, they found Tristan lying among the rocks and the blackened thorn-scrub. And at first they thought him dead. But when they had stripped off his mail, they found him clawed and scorched from head to foot, but with seemingly no death-wound upon him. And stowed in the breast of his mail shirt the Princess found what she and Brangian both knew for the forked tip of the dragon’s tongue.

‘Dear mistress,’ said Brangian, ‘you will not go to your betrothal to the steward tomorrow.’

‘Nor any day,’ said the Princess; and she put back the hair from Tristan’s forehead and looked long into his shut face. Then they set to work to get him across Brangian’s horse, and Brangian mounted behind him; and so they returned in the dawn to the King’s palace.

When Tristan came back to himself he was lying in a strange chamber with two women bending over him, and one had hair as black as midnight and the other had hair the colour of hot coals. And he knew that whoever she might be, this was the maiden he was seeking, for no
other in all the world could have hair quite that colour, the colour of the single hair in the silken packet he wore round his neck. And then as he raised himself on his elbow and looked about him, he saw a silver bowl beside the bed, and lying within it the forked tip of the dragon’s tongue.

In a voice that seemed not to be his own, he croaked, ‘Well for me that you found and kept that wicked thing, for it is my only proof that it was I who slew the dragon.’

‘Well for me also,’ said the red-haired maiden. ‘For my father the King promised me to whoever could rid Ireland of the monster, and his steward claims that it was he.’ And then they both heard what she had said, and there was a startled silence between them.

Then the Princess, when she had done salving Tristan’s wounds, gave him a healing broth, and when he had drunk it and was asleep, she and Brangian took his mail shirt and his sword into the next room that they might clean them without disturbing him.

And when the Princess drew his sword, she saw that a small piece was broken out of the blade halfway down.

She laid the sword on the table without a word, and going to a carved chest, brought from it a small packet wrapped in crimson silk; and from the packet she took
the fragment of sword-iron which she had taken from the Morholt’s skull, and held it to the gap in Tristan’s blade. It fitted perfectly.

Across the table she and Brangian looked at each other. ‘This is the slayer of my kinsman,’ she said in a small cold voice. ‘And he lies in my hands for killing or curing.’