Tristan and Iseult Read Online Free Page B

that the next time they urged the King to marry, he joined himself to them, and spoke out more strongly than all the rest.
    ‘My lord and my kinsman, your nobles are right in wishing you to marry and beget a son of your own to rule Cornwall after you. And as for me, do you think I find any pleasure in knowing that the men I feast with and ride hunting with say behind my back that I am greedy for your throne?’
    But even then the King could not bring himself to agree at once. ‘Give me three days,’ he said, ‘and I will think deeply on this matter. And on the morning of the third day, come to me here, and you shall have your answer.’

    And for three days and nights he shut himself away and thought; but still when the third morning came, his mind swung one moment this way and the next moment that. Now, it was summer again, and he waited for the coming of his nobles in the open court before his Hall, sitting on a pile of fine crimson-dyed sheepskins, and playing with the ears of a favourite hound, while still he wondered what answer he was to give them. The swallows were darting under the eaves, and hearing a sudden thin twittering overhead, he looked up and saw two swallows quarrelling oversomething, darting and swooping in narrow circles and snatching the thing one from the other and back again. At last they dropped it, and as it drifted down, the King saw that it was like a thread of gossamer, yet not silver like gossamer, but red, where the sun caught it, as hot copper. Scarce knowing that he did so, he held out his hand, and the shining thread drifted and eddied into it, and he saw that it was a long hair from a woman’s head.
    It was of such a colour as he had never seen before, so darkly red in the shade that it was almost purple, the colour of bramble stems when the sap rises in the spring, yet shining out when the sun caught it, bright as flame. Surely, thought the King, there can be only one woman in the world with hair this colour; and one woman in the world will be hard to find. And when a little later Tristan and the rest of the nobles came into the forecourt, he showed them the hair and told them how it had fallen into his hand from the beaks of the two quarrelling swallows. ‘This is surely a sign,’ said the King. ‘And so now I give you my answer. I will marry as you wish, but only the woman to whom this hair belongs.’
    The lords looked at each other. ‘There can be only one woman in the world with hair that colour,’ they said. ‘And one woman in the world will be hard to find.’ And again they looked at Tristan, sideways under their brows, believing that he must have put the idea into his uncle’s head. Then Tristan stood forward from the rest. ‘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.’
    Then the King saw that there was no help for it; andhe fitted out a ship with provisions for a long voyage and rich gifts for an unknown bride. And Tristan gathered a hundred warriors – Gorvenal the first among them – whose loyalty he knew he could depend on; and set sail to search all the countries of the world excepting Ireland, where it was still death for any Cornish ship to go.
    Yet a man’s fate is a man’s fate, and none can wipe out the thing written on his forehead. The ship was caught by a great storm off the coast of Wales; and driven hither and yon as the winds and the waves beat upon it. There was neither sun by day nor stars by night to tell them the way they went; until at last the storm blew itself out, and they found themselves driven hard aground on a low reedy shore. And as the light grew, it seemed to Tristan that he knew this shore . . .
    It was the place to which his little boat had brought him in his search for healing!
    They were driven fast upon the Irish coast below Wexford; and already he could see the fisher boats closing in in curiosity, and armed men spurring down towards them from the town. And