PART II
How Tristan Was Conquered by the Wine of Love
Now we return to the story of Tristan. When last we saw him he was in Ireland. The fishermen had found him adrift in his boat, pulled him in to shore, and carried him to the palace of Iseult the Fair. Though he was ravaged by illness and fever, the Princess saw he was of noble blood and finely arrayed. While he slept, Iseult and her mother, the sorceress Queen, applied secret herbs, potions, and spells; in time Tristan felt healing course through his body. So changed was he by the poison that none of the Morholt’s knights knew him, and Tristan said naught of who he was or whence he came. As soon as he had strength to journey he stole away, found passage across the waters, and returned to Cornwall, where the King and court received him with astonished joy.
But Tristan had enemies in Cornwall. Four felon barons envied and hated him, for he was the most famous of knights in that land and the most beloved of the people, and the King had made him heir to the throne. Those felons went among the other barons and said, “Tristan must be a sorcerer. Else how could he have defeated the giant? and magically cured himself of that poison? and returned from sure death on the sea? If he becomes King then will we hold our lands of a warlock!”
So the barons turned against Tristan, for few men know that what wizards do by magic, some men do by goodness, love, and courage. All the barons came before King Mark and said he must take a queen and produce an heir of his body; else they would all rise in rebellion. The king was perplexed and secretly meditated ways to save the throne for Tristan.
One day two sparrows flew in a window in Tintagel Castle; they dropped a woman’s golden hair, long and bright, into the astonished king’s outstretched hand. Then Mark called the barons together and said he would have for his queen none other than the damsel of that golden hair, for he hoped thereby to put off the baron’s demands. But Tristan was shamed, and to prove he did not covet the throne, he stood forth and vowed to find the lady with the hair of gold.
“The search is perilous, but I would put my life into peril for you, that your barons may know I love you loyally. I take this oath, to die on the adventure or to bring back the Queen with that fair hair.”
But Tristan, when he saw that strand of hair, smiled to himself, for he remembered Iseult the Fair, and he already knew whose golden hair it was.
Tristan made ready his ship and sailed to Ireland. His crew trembled; for ever since the death of the Morholt, the Irish King hanged every Cornish sailor he captured. In Whitehaven Tristan pretended to be a merchant and awaited his chance to win the Princess Iseult. Then one day came the roaring of a terrible dragon, ravaging the Irish countryside, and the King of Ireland offered his daughter, Iseult, to marry the knight who defeated that dragon. Now, when Tristan heard this, he lost no time, but swiftly put on armor and mounted his stallion and went to fight.
So fierce was the beast that Tristan’s lance broke against it, and his horse was killed by the dragon’s fiery breath. Tristan plunged his sword deep into the soft un-derthroat, where it has no scales, and the monster fell dead. Iseult found Tristan, wounded and poisoned, close by the dragon’s smoking corpse. So once again Iseult nursed Tristan with healing herbs and drew him back from the edge of death.
One day Iseult and her ladies made Tristan a hot bath of herbs. As Tristan sat contented in the water, she began to burnish his shield, clean dragon blood off his sword, and do such duties as a maiden owes a guest. Suddenly her eyes went to a small notch in the blade. Her head swam and she trembled. She went to find that splinter of steel she had taken from the head of her uncle, the Morholt, which she kept in a sacred reliquary. And she fitted that steel to the notch in Tristan’s sword. Crying out, “You are that same Tristan, murderer of my uncle!” she lifted his own sword to strike him dead. But Tristan spoke calming words, and Iseult, torn between hope of love and vows of revenge, paused to listen.
“King’s daughter, …one day two swallows flew, and flew to Tintagel and bore one hair out of all your hairs of gold, and I thought they brought me good will and peace, so I came to find you over seas. So I braved the monster and his poison. See here, amid the threads of gold upon my coat your hair is sewn: the threads are tarnished, but your bright hair still shines.”
When Iseult heard these words she lowered the sword. She went to look upon his coat of arms and found there her own hair of gold. She was silent for a long time. Then she kissed him on the lips.
A few days hence Tristan stood before the King and Queen of Ireland, and all the Irish lords, and revealed who he was and offered rich gifts from King Mark. He told them he slew the dragon to pay them a blood-fine for the Morholt. He offered that Iseult be King Mark’s bride and Queen of Cornwall, that there be a perpetual alliance and peace between the two kingdoms and an end to war. Now the King and his barons were glad to hear these words and to receive these gifts, and glad for the honor to the Princess Iseult.
But Iseult the Fair trembled for shame and anguish. Thus Tristan, having won her, disdained her; the fine story of the hair of gold was but a lie; it was to another he was delivering her…. So, for the love of King Mark, did Tristan by guile and by force conquer the Queen of the hair of gold….
He had come to Ireland, he the ravisher…with guile he had torn her from her mother and her land; he had not deigned to keep her for himself, and now he was carrying her away as his prey, over the waves, to the land of the enemy.
The sorceress Queen gathered flowers and herbs and roots; she steeped them in wine and over that potion cast a magic spell, and this was its power: They who drink of it together shall love each other with their every single sense and every thought, but its power will wane after a span of three years. Then she gave it secretly to Iseult’s maid Brangien and charged her to offer it only to King Mark and Iseult on the night of their wedding, after they were alone.
When all preparations were made, Iseult went on board Tristan’s ship, and they set sail for Cornwall. But the winds failed; they dropped anchor by a small island, and all went ashore save Tristan and Iseult and a servant child.
Then Tristan heard Iseult, alone in her tent on the deck, weeping pitifully and mourning her lost homeland. So he came to her, and spoke to her softly and sought to comfort her. But she turned her face from him, and would answer but few words.
Now the sun was burning hot, and they called for something to drink. The little servant girl searched, and in a secret place she found a pitcher of cool wine, which she set before them. They drank deeply of the brew, for they were thirsty.
Hours later Brangien the maid found Tristan and Iseult still seated there, staring into each other’s eyes, entranced and spellbound. She saw the pitcher set before them and cold fear ran through her, for that was the vessel of the wine of herbs.
For two days the love potion flowed in Tristan’s veins and he suffered the agonies of love, now as though pierced by sharp thorns, now as though surrounded with sweet, fragrant flowers, and always the image of Iseult floated before his eyes. Finally, on the third day, he went to her tent on the deck.
“Come in, my lord,” she said.
“But why call me your lord,” asked he, “when truly you are my queen?”
“Nay,” she said, “for it is I—and against my will—am truly become your slave. If only you had never come to our shores! If only I had let you die and never healed you! But then I did not know…. I did not know how I should be tormented night and day.”
Tristan stared at her as though at a vision of light. “Iseult,” he whispered, “what did you not know? Iseult, what torments you?”
“The love of you,” she said. Then he kissed her mouth and held her tight against him. Brangien came upon them so, and cried:
“Stay and return if still you can…. But oh! that path has no returning. For already Love and his strength drag you on and now henceforth forever never shall you know joy without pain again…for through me and in that cup, you have drunk not love alone, but love and death mixed together.”
But Tristan held Iseult, and a desire greater than mortal will worked in them, and he said:
“Well, then, let come Death!”
No sooner did he speak those words than the wind freshened, the sails filled, and the bark leaped through the foaming waves. All through the dark night, as the ship rolled beneath them and carried them racing toward the Cornish shore, they gave themselves up utterly to love.