The King in the Tree

by Steven Millhauser

  Tristan is ill at ease. The King pretends to see nothing and suddenly turns his head to look at the Queen, who impatiently adjusts her gaze, searching beyond the edges of his face for Tristan.

  This morning I saw the King inclining his head to Modor in the shade of the garden wall.

  Shortly after noon, as I walked in the courtyard, Brangane stepped out from the narrow alley between the wall of the Queen’s garden and the granary.

  “I have spoken to her,” she said simply.

  “Did you tell her to mock the King?”

  “She feels—she doesn’t like to be accused.”

  “No one accuses her.”

  “She thinks you plot with the King against her.”

  “Splendid! You think so too?”

  “I told her I thought—I believed—you can be trusted.”

  I was startled by a burst of gratitude, like a rush of wind. Why should I care what these women thought of me?—I who loved my King and would gladly have died for him.

  “The King is unhappy,” I then said.

  Brangane looked at me as if waking from a trance. “We’re all unhappy!” she said; it was almost a cry. “Goodbye,” she said, and was gone.

  As I sit at my table, writing these words in the light of a single candle, I can hear, through my partly open door and the closed door of the royal chamber, the noises of love, a sudden cry from Ysolt, silence. It is the second time this night. In Tristan’s chamber, two sounds: the scrape of a table leg, the bang of a shutter thrown open or shut.

  Sometimes a strange thought comes: to murder the lovers in their sleep, to destroy this ugly plague of love that causes nothing but ruin and despair.

  It is even worse than I feared.

  This morning the King called a meeting of his barons in the great hall. He announced that the rumors surrounding his wife and nephew were harmful to the honor of the court and the kingdom; that although he had no evidence of dishonor, it was plain to him, and to all the court, that his wife and nephew bore one another a love beyond that which was proper and fitting; that although it was within his power to exact punishment, he would not, for the love he bore both of them, take revenge, and demanded only that they leave the court together, to seek in another place the life denied them here; that he had tried to live in a fellowship of three—the King and Ysolt, Ysolt and Tristan, Tristan and the King—but that he could do so no longer, for he saw that they were against him, in a fellowship of two; and for the love he bore them, he wished them well.

  This speech—which made a deep impression—struck me as most artful. The King, while speaking continually of the love that was in his heart, was at the same time driving from his castle, and from his protection, the objects of that love. He forgave them for the wrong they had done him, while by the decree of banishment he left no doubt that he had been terribly wronged. He sent them forth to live their lives together, lawfully, without interference from him, while letting it be known that those lives were so shameful that they could not be led at the Cornish court, bright home of honor, but only elsewhere, in some other world, invisibly.

  The Queen, who stood beside the King during the entire performance, never once lowered her eyes.

  The King has surprised me. He is cheerful, energetic, full of schemes. The absence of Tristan and the Queen, which I feared would be harmful to him, appears to have freed him from some impediment in his nature. He inspects the wall walks and gatehouse, consults with a visiting military engineer about defense catapults to be mounted on the towers, bestows a large gift on a Cistercian monastery, speaks with the chamberlain about new curtains for his bed and new tiles for his fireplace. Above all he oversees a burst of castle repairs and construction: carpenters extend the length of the stables, masons construct a new wall for the bake house, the old wooden granary has been torn down and in its place rises a sturdy building of dressed stone. In the chapel the cracked wooden statue of the Virgin, her right arm extended and one finger raised, has been replaced by a new statue in bright colors, while a sculptor repairs the wings of a stone angel.

  The King has invited to the court an artificer, Odo of Chester, a monkish man remarkable for his long face, his long nose, his long thin fingers, and his large moist mournful eyes. On one of his fingers he wears a black stone carved in the shape of a tiny hand. Odo has brought with him a curious device: a wooden box with a small window and a handle on one side. When you look through the window you see a rural scene: a windmill, a stream, a tree, a barn. But turn the handle, and behold!—the windmill turns, the stream flows, the leaves of the tree shake in a breeze, the barn door opens and a cow steps out.

  This toy is well liked by the ladies of the court.

  The King spends many hours closeted with Odo of Chester in his tower chamber. They are preparing something; in the King’s face I can read a quiet excitement.

  The King has revealed his secret. I confess I was taken entirely by surprise.

  In the early afternoon, directly after dinner, the King summoned me to the royal bedchamber, where I found him seated on a clothes chest speaking with Odo, who leaned back on a window seat with one long leg resting along the stone. Together with them I descended to the courtyard and passed the stables and the mews on our way to the King’s tower. I had expected to climb to the privacy of the King’s high chamber, but instead the King led us to the storage room on the ground floor, where in a dim corner behind a locked chest stands one of the four entrances to the inner labyrinth. The King supplied each of us with a small horn lantern, turned the stones, and led us into the castle wall. Like the passage that leads from beneath the white hind in the sixth tower, this one began to branch and turn. The King moved slowly but without hesitation, taking now one branch and now another, until he came to a small chamber hollowed out of the rock. A wooden bench with two silk cushions faced a wall, upon which hung a linen cloth painted with a likeness of the King in his crimson robe trimmed in ermine. On each side of the cloth, a small horn lantern hung from an iron ring on the wall. The King set down his lantern and sat on the bench, where he faced the cloth and motioned for me to sit beside him.

  Odo—long, gaunt Odo, with his bony nose and his chin like the knob of a chicken bone—stood at one side of the wall hanging. Reaching up with his pale fingers, he pulled what appeared to be a cord concealed behind the edge of the cloth. Slowly the cloth divided, breaking the image of the King in half. The two cloths had been placed side by side so artfully that I had not been able to detect the jointure.

  Behind the curtain stood the Queen. She stood very still, in her mantle of green samite trimmed with sable and ermine, fastened at the throat by a gold brooch. She wore a head covering and a white linen wimple. Her head was turned to one side, her lips parted slightly. Her right arm was raised and extended toward us; the finger beside the thumb was lifted a little, as if in supplication or admonition. Her cheeks and eyes shone in the dim light of all five lanterns. She was very lifelike. Only the turned head, the parted lips, the raised, extended arm with its lifted finger brought to mind the old wooden Virgin in the chapel. The face, half concealed by the wimple, had been powdered and vermilioned like the Queen’s. Yellow hair showed beneath the head covering, which was held in place by a gold fillet set with emeralds and jacinths.

  Now Odo reached behind the Queen and withdrew his hand. Slowly the extended arm rose higher; the head began to turn. She looked directly at us, her eyes large, tender, welcoming. The arm began to lower to its original position; slowly the head turned away. The Queen stood motionless with slightly parted lips.

  When I turned to the King, he was unnaturally still. His arm was raised as if frozen in the act of reaching toward the Queen, his head erect, his eyes wide, his lips parted as if in speech.

  The King has released Oswin, who at once resumes his position as chief steward with all its privileges and powers. It is very strange. Perhaps the banishment of the Queen has rendered the steward’s imprisonment superfluous. Another explanation is possible: the
King, tormented by longing for the Queen, feels a kinship with the disgraced steward, who also has desired the Queen. Oswin wears a patch over his blinded eye and behaves with impeccable propriety. He meets no one’s gaze, sits rigidly at the royal board, avoids the company of Modor, and tyrannizes over his servants, whom he punishes mercilessly for the most trivial faults.

  Odo of Chester has departed for the court of the Count of Toulouse, where I have no doubt his art will be celebrated as a wonder of the age, while deep in the castle wall the King continues to visit the Queen in his secret chapel. I do not like these visits. Sometimes the King asks me to accompany him, in order to operate the curtain and the lever. Sometimes he visits the Queen alone. The visits take place suddenly, at any moment of the day or night. Last night, summoned by the King from sleep, I followed him to the chapel, where I drew open the curtain and pressed the lever concealed in the Queen’s back. When I turned to the King, I saw him staring fixedly at the slowly moving Queen, his eyes wide and unblinking. He then began to make low sounds, a mumble of speech that alarmed me. “My lord,” I said. The King seemed to awaken, and giving me one of his mischievous grins, which did not sit naturally on a face marked by sorrow and longing, he said, “Now tell me, Thomas. Isn’t the Queen looking well?”

  The King’s sorrowing face, made oddly youthful by melancholy—the face of an unhappy boy.

  No! My speculations have proved to be mistaken. The King’s reason for releasing Oswin lies elsewhere.

  This afternoon I was summoned by a royal messenger to the prison tower. I was admitted by the guard, who thrust back the double iron bar of the door. Inside it was so dark that at first I could see nothing. A single small window, the width of an arrow loop, sat high up on the wall. A shaft of sunlight, frenzied with silent dust, lay slantwise across the dark air and struck the middle of the opposite wall. On the wooden planks of the floor I made out a crude pallet of straw and, in one corner, an iron chamber pot. Against a dark wall sat the King. He was wearing his royal robes; his hair, not bound in a net, lay loose on his face.

  “Sit, Thomas,” he said. I immediately sat down beside him, on the bare floor.

  “Assure them,” he then said, gesturing vaguely with one arm, “that all is well.”

  “All is not well.”

  “All is as it must be. Only this: they feed me too well. Water and bread: you will speak to Hainault.”

  “There will be talk. The barons—”

  “It is by my order. Let them know. Assure them, and they will be content. Your word, Thomas.”

  “You have my word. They will not be content.”

  “They will be less discontent.”

  I remembered my sharp-minded pupil, fourteen years old, sitting in his father’s garden, battling with me over some question of logic. If each of the three persons of the Trinity has a real existence, how can it be maintained that God is a unity? If each of the three persons of the Trinity does not have a real existence, in what sense are they three?

  A sudden flutter startled me. I leaped to my feet with drawn sword. In the deep dusk of the chamber I saw the King’s raven, settling on his knee. I felt uneasy—even ashamed—standing in the half-dark above my King, holding a sword.

  “Let me leave my sword,” I pleaded.

  “Prisoners have no swords.”

  “And if it had been a rat?”

  “Then I should have made him an archbishop, to absolve me of my sins.”

  “The court misses you.”

  “Court? There is no court. Here is my court: three spiders, a raven, and a fly. Am I not richer than the King of Cornwall, who rules nothing but an empty kingdom?”

  “My lord—”

  “I am tired, Thomas.”

  Outside the prison door I instructed the guard to observe the King closely and inform me in detail about his diet, his health, his words, his movements—his thoughts, I wished to say. I then returned to my chamber.

  The King has ordered his own imprisonment. Evidently he desires to punish himself, but the reason behind his desire is less clear. Does he feel that he must punish himself because he has wronged the Queen and Tristan by banishing them without proof, with nothing to justify his judgment but suspicion and rumor? Or is there a less elementary explanation? The King is suffering because he cannot live without the Queen and Tristan. By having himself imprisoned, he isn’t so much punishing himself as finding a way to display his suffering, to give it a definite and recognizable shape.

  There is yet another possibility. The King, heavily burdened by the duties of kingship, longs for the purity of a suffering that eludes him. Freed by imprisonment from the distractions that prevent him from suffering enough, at liberty to enter his unhappiness as completely as he can, does the King sometimes feel, in his new kingdom, a dark consolation, a secret joy?

  The royal bedchamber is empty. The King is in prison, Tristan and the Queen have been banished into the realm of faery, the castle tosses in its sleep—and I, Thomas of Cornwall, sit at my table before a sheet of smooth-scraped parchment, dipping my quill in ink blacker than night, writing words that gleam for a moment in the light of my candle like drops of black blood.

  For six days the King has remained his own prisoner, sleeping on straw, eating crusts of bread, seeing no one. The knight entrusted with the King’s care reports that the King moves very little, standing only to cross the small room to another wall, where he sits with his great head bowed. He has asked for his crown, which he wears like a heavy punishment. Sometimes he removes the crown to strike weakly at a rat. His eyes, when he opens them, are unusually large above his hollow cheeks. He stares emptily, looking at nothing. Mostly he sleeps. On the ninth day of the King’s self-imprisonment, a knight came striding into the great hall, while we were at supper. This was his story.

  He had been hunting in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage, some three leagues from the King’s forest, when, pursuing a stag, he crossed a stream and entered a thicker and wilder part of the woods, where he made his way with difficulty among the trees. In the near distance he saw a small clearing with a rude hut. As he drew closer to the clearing, the door of the hut opened and a man stepped out. He recognized Tristan. The knight, abandoning all thought of the hunt, spurred his horse toward our castle.

  I informed the King, who upon hearing the news rose unsteadily to his feet. Leaning on my shoulder, he left his wretched cell and returned with me to the royal bedchamber.

  Tomorrow, despite his weakened condition, he insists on leading a hunting party into the Forest de la Roche Sauvage.

  I will try to record only the most important events of this memorable day.

  The King, refreshed by nourishment and sleep, but still seriously weakened after his nine days in the tower, rose at dawn, attended mass at the chapel, ate a breakfast of bread and ale, and ordered our party to depart. Except for a moment of faintness immediately after he mounted his horse, he sat erect in the saddle; I marveled at the return of his strength, while at the same time I had the uneasy sense that he was animated less by physical vitality than by the unnatural glow of a devouring fervor. In the Forest de la Roche Sauvage—named for the bare crag rising at its eastern extremity—our party of two dozen broke into pairs. Each man carried an ivory hunting horn, which he was to sound at the first sign of Tristan or the Queen. I rode with the King.

  It is possible to ride for days in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage without coming to a clearing. Sometimes the growth is so thick that one can ride no farther; here and there among the oaks and pines stand towering tangles of thorn, with immense black spikes the size of spear points. The King’s proud face, with its still-gaunt cheeks, had begun to show signs of weariness. Urging my own tiredness, I persuaded him to dismount and sit with me on the mossy roots of a massive oak, through whose dark and prickly leaves only small pieces of blue sky were visible.

  A white brachet hound, which had accompanied us on our journey, sniffed about as we sat against the broad trunk. The King, settling back, hal
f closed his eyes. Suddenly the brachet darted off after a rabbit, disappeared into the undergrowth, and was gone.

  This was one of the King’s favorite hounds. He called out to it, then rose with a sigh to fetch it back. I followed him through trees growing so close that no horse could have entered. The undergrowth thickened, ferns as long as sword blades thrust up, and suddenly we came to a small opening in the trees. Before us stood a peasant’s hut. It had a roof of thatch and a frame of rough timber, filled in with clay over a weave of branches that poked through here and there.

  The King placed his hand on his sword, and I followed him across the sun and shade of the clearing to the single small window in the side of the hut.

  On an earthen floor covered with rushes, the Queen and Tristan lay asleep on their mantles. They were fully clothed, in tunic and surcoat, and lay facing each other so that their mouths were no more than a hand’s width apart. Between them on the blanket lay Tristan’s naked sword. A ray of sunlight, coming through the window, lay slantwise along the dark, striking the Queen’s cheek, the tip of the sword, and Tristan’s shoulder.

  The King watched for a long time as the two lay there breathing gently. A wisp of the Queen’s hair stirred in Tristan’s breath.

  I looked at the King’s face, with its terrible tumult of despair and joy, and turned my face away.

  Raising a finger to his lips, the King drew his sword and made his way stealthily around the hut toward the door. Through the little window I watched the door open. The King stepped over to the sleeping pair and stood looking down at them with his sword held out as if in readiness. Then he bent over, carefully lifted Tristan’s sword, and laid his own sword between them.