Tales from Tennyson Part 15

And ever after that, as those who tell the story say, the proud and scornful Ettarre sighed for Pelleas, the one true knight in the world, her only faithful lover, and at last pined away because he never came back.

THE LAST TOURNAMENT.

One day while King Arthur and Sir Lancelot were riding far, far beneath a winding wall of rock they heard the wail of a child.

A half-dead oak tree climbed up the sides of the rock and up in mid-air it held an eagle's nest. Through its branches rushed a rainy wind and through the wind came the voice of a little child. Lancelot sprang up the crag and from the nest at the tree-top he brought down a baby girl.

Round her neck was twined a necklace of rubies, wound round and round three times.

Arthur took the baby and gave it to Queen Guinevere, who soon loved it very tenderly and named her "Nestling." But Nestling had caught a terrible cold in her strange little home in the wild eagle's nest and died. And after that whenever the Queen looked at the ruby necklace it made her very sad so she gave it to Arthur and said:

"Take these jewels of our Dead Innocence and make them a prize at a tournament."

"Just as you wish," cried the King, "but why don't you wear the diamonds that I found for you in the tarn, which Lancelot won for you at the jousts?"

"Don't you know that they slipped out of my hands the very day that he gave them to me, while I was leaning out of the window to see Elaine in the barge on the river? But these rubies will bring better luck than that to the lady who gets them, for they didn't come from a dead king's skeleton, but from the body of a sweet baby girl. Perhaps, who knows, the purest of your knights will win them at the jousts for the purest of my ladies."

So the great jousts were proclaimed with trumpets that blew all along the streets of Camelot and out across the faded fields to the farthest towers, and everywhere the knights armed themselves for a day of glory before the king.

But just the day before they were to be held, as King Arthur sat in his great hall, a churl staggered in through the door; his face was all striped with the lashes of a dog whip, his nose was broken, one eye was out, a hand was off and the other hand dangled at his side with shattered fingers.

"My poor Churl," cried the king, full of indignant pity, "what beast or fiend has been after you? Or was it a man who hurt you so?"

"He took them all away," sputtered the churl, "a hundred good ones. It was the Red Knight. He--Lord, I was tending sheep, my pigs, a hundred good ones, and he drove them all off to his tower. And when I said that you were always kind to poor churls like me as well as gentle lords and ladies, he made for me and would have killed me outright if he didn't want me to bring you message and made me swear that I would tell you.

"He said, 'Tell the king that I have made a Round Table of my own in the North, and that whatever his knights swear not to do mine swear that they will do; and tell him his hour has come, and that the heathen are after him, and that his long lance is broken, and that his sword Excalibur is a straw.'"

Then Arthur turned to Sir Kay the Seneschal and said: "Take this churl of mine and tend him very carefully as if he were the son of a king until all his hurts are healed," and as Sir Kay left the hall with the churl the king went on to Lancelot: "The heathen have been quiet for a long, long time, but now they are rising again in the North, and I will go with my younger knights to put them down, so as to make the whole island safe from one sh.o.r.e to the other. And while I go away, you, Sir Lancelot, will sit in my chair to-morrow at the tournament and be the judge there of the field. For why should you anyway care to go in again yourself, when you've already won the nine diamonds for the queen?"

"Very well," replied Lancelot, "if you wish, although it would be better if you would let me go off with the younger knights and you stay here with the others and watch the tournament. But, if not, all is well?"

"Is all really well?" cried the king, "or have I just dreamed that our knights are not quite so true and manly as they used to be and that my n.o.ble realm which has been built up by n.o.ble deeds and n.o.ble vows is going to fall back into beastly roughness and violence again?"

He gathered all the younger Knights of the Round Table together and started away with them down the hilly streets of Camelot, and at the gateway turned sharply North.

The next morning, the day of the Tournament, the Tournament of the Dead Innocence they called it, a wet wind blew. But the streets were hung with white samite, the fountains were filled with wine, and round each fountain twelve little girls, all dressed in purest white sat with the cups of gold and gave drinks to all that pa.s.sed. The stately galleries were filled with white-robed ladies. Lancelot mounted the steps to the king's dragon-carved chair, the trumpets blew and the jousts began.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWELVE LITTLE GIRLS GAVE DRINK TO ALL WHO Pa.s.sED.]

But Lancelot did not think of the sport before him, he was dreaming over and over again the words of the king about the kingdom, and many rules of the tournament were broken, and he didn't say a word. Once one of the knights, who was overthrown cursed the little baby girl, the dead innocence, and the king, and once one of the knight's helmets became unlaced and the wicked face of Modred peeped through like a vermin, but Lancelot didn't see.

After a while a roar of welcome shouted all round the galleries and lists as a new knight came in dressed from his head to his feet in green armor all trimmed with tiny silver deer, with holly berries on his helmet crest. It was Sir Tristram of the Woods who had just crossed over the seas from Brittany. Lancelot had fought with him long ago and conquered him, and now he saw him and longed to fight him again. As many, many knights of the Round Table fell down before the new knight Lancelot gripped the golden dragons on each side of his throne to keep himself in his seat, and groaned with pa.s.sion. "Craven crests! oh, shame!" he muttered, "the glory of the Round Table is gone."

So Tristram won the jousts and Sir Lancelot gave him the jewels.

"The hands with which you take these rubies are red," he said as he put the necklace in Tristram's hands.

Then the thick rain began to fall, the plumes on the helmets of the knights drooped and the dresses of the ladies were mussed. When they went inside to feast the ladies took off their pure white gowns and robed themselves in all the colors of the rainbow and field flowers, like poppies, blue-bells, kingcups, and one said she was glad the time to wear the pure innocent simple white was over. They grew so loud in their frolics that at last the queen, who was angry that Sir Tristram had won the prize and angry with the lawless youths, broke up the banquet.

The next morning as Sir Tristram stood before the hall little Dagonet, the fool, came dancing along and Sir Tristram threw his rubies round the little fool's neck as he skipped about like a withered leaf, asking him why he danced.

"It's stupid to dance without music," Tristram said, and picked up his harp and began to tw.a.n.gle a tune on it; but as soon as Sir Tristram began to play Dagonet stopped his dance. "And why don't you go on skipping, Sir Fool?" asked Tristram.

"Because I'd rather skip twenty years to the music of my little brain than skip a minute to the broken music you make."

"And what music have I broken?" cried Sir Tristram. "Arthur the King's music," cried little Dagonet, skipping again and again as Sir Tristram ceased. Then down the city he danced all the way, while Sir Tristram pa.s.sed out into the lonely avenues of the forests. He rode on toward Lyonesse and the West, thinking of Isolt, the White, whom he loved, and how he would put the rubies round her neck.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE DAGONET SKIPPING AGAIN AND AGAIN.]

Arthur, meanwhile, with his hundred spearmen had gone far, far away, until at last over the countless reeds of marshes and islands he saw a huge tower glaring in the wide-winged sunset of the West. As he drew near he saw that the tower doors stood open and heard roars of rioting and wicked songs of ruffian men and women.

"Look," cried one of his knights, for there high on a grim dead tree before the tower, a brother of the Round Table was swinging by his neck, his s.h.i.+eld flowing with a shower of blood on a branch near by.

All the knights wanted to dash forward and blow the great horn that hung beside the gate, but Arthur waved them back and went himself. He blew so hard that the horn roared until all the gra.s.ses of the marshes flared up, and out of the castle gate sallied a knight dressed from tip to toe in blood-red arms, the Red Knight.

"Aren't you the king?" he bellowed, "the king that keeps us all with such strict vows that we can't have any pleasures, a milky-hearted king?

Look to your life now!"

Arthur scorned to speak to so vile a man or to fight him with his sword.

He simply let the drunkard, stretching out from his horse to strike, fall head-heavy, over from the castle causeway to the swamp below.

Then all the Round Table Knights roared and shouted, leaped down on the fallen man, trampled out his face in the mire, sank his head so that it could not be seen, and, still shouting, sprang through the open doors among the people within. They hurled their swords right and left on men and women, hurled over the tables and the wines and slew and slew until all the rafters rang with yells and all the pavements streamed with blood. Then they set the tower all afire and half the night through it flushed the long low meadows and marshlands and lazily plunging sea with its flames. That was how Arthur made the ways of the island safe from one sh.o.r.e to the other.

Sir Tristram, not many nights after, reached Tintagil, where Isolt, the White, lived in a crown of towers, where she now sat with the low sea-sunset glorying her hair and glossy throat, thinking of him and of Mark, her Cornish lord.

When Tristram's footsteps came grinding up the tower steps she flushed, started out to meet him and threw her white arms about him.

"Not Mark, not Mark!" she cried. "At first your footsteps fluttered me, for Mark steals into his own castle like a cat."

"No, it's I," said Sir Tristram, "and don't think about your Mark any more, for he isn't yours any longer."

"But listen," she cried, "to-day he went away for a three days' hunt, he said, and that means that he may be back in an hour for that's his way.

My G.o.d, my hate for him is as strong as my love for you. Let me tell you how I sat here one evening thinking of you, one black midsummer night, all alone, dreaming of you, and sometimes speaking your name aloud, when suddenly there Mark stood behind me, for that's his way to steal behind one in the dark.

"'Tristram has married her!' he hissed out and then this tower shook with such a roar that I swooned away."

"Come," cried Sir Tristram, laughing, "never mind, I'm hungry, give me some meat and wine."

So they ate and drank, talked and laughed about Mark with his long crane-like legs, and Sir Tristram took a harp and sang a song. Then while the last light of the day glimmered away he swung the ruby necklace before Isolt.

"It's the fruit of a magical oak-tree that grew mid air," he cried, "and was won by Sir Tristram as a tourney prize to bring to you."

Flinging the rubies round her neck he had just touched her jeweled throat with his lips when behind him rose a shadow and a shriek.

"Mark's way!" cried Mark, the Cornish king, and he clove Tristram through the brain.