The King in the Tree

by Steven Millhauser

  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 warn
ing 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?