The King in the Tree

by Steven Millhauser

  He has brought a sparrow hawk into his new quarters, where it sleeps on a wooden perch beside his bed. There is also his tame raven, which walks about on the floor or sits on the King’s shoulder. Sometimes, at daybreak, the raven gives a loud squawk and flutters up onto the ledge of the window. Once I saw it sitting on top of a carved falcon on a bedpost.

  “The Queen wishes to see you in the garden.” These were the hushed words breathed at me by Brangane as I came upon her in the shadow of the arched doorway opening from the great hall to the steps leading down to the courtyard. I had never spoken alone with the Queen, and as I made my way to the tower that opened into the garden, I wondered what pitch of desperation had driven her to request this meeting with the King’s close companion, one of the six men who had stared down at her with drawn swords as she lay under the pear tree. Brangane was waiting for me at the tower door. She led me into the garden, along the sanded path shaded by almond and walnut trees, past the fish pond, the herb garden, the square beds of roses and marguerites, to the high hedge with its arched opening. I followed her along the maze of hedge paths, wondering if I was being led to the famous pear tree; evidently we took a different series of turns, for all at once we emerged in a small grassy plot overarched by latticework covered with vines. The Queen was seated on a yellow silk cushion on a box-shaped bench covered with turf, across from a second turf bench on which lay a white silk cushion worked with gold. She motioned me to sit down as Brangane left us to ourselves.

  “I am told you may be trusted,” she said, in a tone that seemed to me haughty and mistrustful. She looked at me warily, as if wondering how far she might go in usurping my loyalty to the King.

  “Brangane”—I spoke carefully—“flatters me.”

  “No one flatters you!” she said sternly. All at once she stood up—she seemed to tower over me, like an angry father—and as I sprang to my feet I had the sensation that she was going to strike me in the face.

  “Have you heard from him?” she said, with a kind of violence. “Why doesn’t he come? Something is wrong.” There was nothing angry in her now—only an energy of unhappiness.

  “I’ve heard nothing,” I said, startled by the change in her face, tense with longing, dangerous with sorrow.

  “Something is wrong,” she said again, sitting down on her bench. She looked worn and small there, like a tired child.

  “If I hear anything—”

  “Does he trust you?” she said abruptly, looking up at me.

  I hesitated. “He has every reason to.”

  “Then if you hear something—anything—”

  “Yes, I will let you—”

  She stood up again. “Something is wrong.” She said it for the third time, but remotely, as if she were no longer listening to herself. Then, turning to look at me: “Thank you for”—she thought about it—“for being a good man.”

  The words startled me—angered me—for it had been a long time since I was able to think of myself as a good man— but she uttered them with such force that I bowed my head in reply, even as I felt the blood beat in my neck.

  I think of the change in the Queen, when she stood over me in the garden: the violence of her unhappiness, her face sharp with longing. At that moment, when I felt her passion, her features were unpleasant to look at. Is that her secret for Tristan? Is it when she stops being beautiful to look at that she becomes irresistible to him?

  There is news of Tristan—news that must be concealed from the Queen. A fearful rumor! How long will she be spared?

  I had it from a minstrel who traveled through Arundel before crossing the sea to Cornwall. He has heard that Tristan of Lyonesse has married the daughter of the Duke of Arundel. She is said to be very beautiful.

  Tristan married! It is laughable. It can’t possibly be true. What troubles me—what frightens me—is the name of the Duke’s daughter. She is called Ysolt—Ysolt of the White Hands.

  Even as I rage against the rumor, I feel the spell of that name. I imagine Tristan walking beside this second Ysolt, this Ysolt who is not Ysolt, this not-Ysolt who is Ysolt. If he cannot have Ysolt, then he will have—Ysolt. He is drawn to her beauty, but nothing in her beauty can compare with the beauty of her name: Ysolt. Tristan can never marry Ysolt, but he can surely marry Ysolt. His choice is between Ysolt and Ysolt: an Ysolt who is hidden from view, a memory-Ysolt, an Ysolt who is scarcely more than the breath of her name, and a living, laughing Ysolt, a vivid and visible Ysolt, an Ysolt who walks in the sun and casts a strong shadow. All day in exile he thinks of Ysolt, all night in his empty bed he dreams of Ysolt—and slowly, from his dream, a real Ysolt steps forth. How can he not reach out and seize her?

  This rumor must not reach the Queen.

  My cabin is small and dark, lit only by a lantern swinging on a hook. I steady my writing board with my hand as the shadows stretch and contract. Overhead I hear the creak of masts and stays, the howl of a high wind. So Thomas sails the sea to Lyonesse . . .

  It is the King who has sent me—to confirm the rumor. Ah, Thomas, Thomas, did you really believe that such a story could fail to blow through the court like a howling wind?

  The Queen, when she heard, uttered a cry that is said to have caused men-at-arms on the wall walk to turn their heads. She refused to show herself for three days. When she appeared, tightly wimpled, her face thickly lacquered with skin whiteners and vermilion coloring, her gray eyes motionless, she looked like an artful statue contrived by Odo of Chester for the pleasure of a King.

  A thud from above—a rolling rumble—cry of voices. Perhaps a barrel, tumbling across the deck?

  The King’s decision to send me to Tristan surprised me at first, but upon reflection it seems necessary and even inevitable. The King, for whom Tristan has become a monstrous problem, a problem that he can never solve, sees in the rumored marriage a miraculous solution. His motive, born of despair, is hope. Tristan married is Tristan reformed, Tristan defeated. It is the death of Tristan’s treasonable passion for the Queen. The Queen is young, the King still vigorous; she will grieve, and after a suitable time she will begin to heal. She will understand that Tristan has turned from her irrevocably, that the King alone has loved her with an unchanging passion. All this I could read in his eagerness, his disturbing decisiveness. Already he is prepared to forgive Tristan everything, as if Tristan’s passion for the Queen were a transient, not very serious, entirely understandable, even praiseworthy episode of his unruly youth. He forgets that Tristan’s youth was far from unruly and was famous for loyalty and discipline. He further forgets that Tristan’s loyalty, his deep sense of honor, his purity of heart, his knightly vow, his devotion to chivalry, his absolute and unwavering trustworthiness, did not for a moment prevent him from deceiving everyone at court and satisfying repeatedly his desire for the Queen. As for the Queen, her love for Tristan has grown more desperate with each passing day. She does not appear to be gifted in renunciation.

  On the last day, Brangane pressed into my palm a ring from the Queen, which I am to deliver to Tristan.

  The Queen fearful, the King hopeful—and I in a ship at sea, rocked by a wind.

  I write these lines in my bedchamber in Tristan’s castle. It is the day after my arrival. The chamber overlooks a cliff, high above the green-gray sea. Through my window I can look down upon the narrow shore and the uneven lines of waves. Far to the right, where the cliff juts forward, I can see a blue-black forest, a line of hills like teeth.

  The rumor is true. I have met Ysolt of the White Hands. She is scarcely out of girlhood, and troubling in her young loveliness. Her most striking feature is the skin of her face, which seems to glow like a bowl of translucent ivory containing a candle. Her face is made for happiness. Her eyes are melancholy.

  I know who she is, this lovely bride. She is Ysolt without unruliness, without all that bursts forth and disrupts the beauty of the other Ysolt. Tristan, whose life is in terrible disarray, has wedded himself to calmness, to perfection, to innocence, to eve
rything that cannot move him deeply.

  This afternoon, when we were alone, I delivered the ring entrusted to me by the Queen. He took it—looked at me— and suddenly bent his head to his hand and kissed the ring passionately.

  He does not speak of his marriage.

  Evening of the next day. Not until this morning did he ask for news of the Queen. As he spoke, his entire body grew tense, as if he had asked to be lashed across the face.

  A servant has spoken to one of my servants. Tristan, it is said, lies beside his wife but does not touch her. She remains a maid.

  An unhappy castle! But how could it be otherwise?

  Across the sea, the Queen lies awake in the royal chamber. All night long she thinks of the new bride, of Tristan asleep in the arms of his wife. In Tristan’s chamber the King lies awake; he is thinking of the Queen alone in her chamber, of Tristan laughing with his bride. Here, in Tristan’s castle, Tristan lies restlessly beside the beautiful Ysolt, the Ysolt who is not Ysolt, who can never be Ysolt, who by daring to bear the name Ysolt has doomed herself to lie beside him untouched, unloved, and unforgiven. Ysolt of the White Hands lies white and motionless under the coverlet. Her hands are crossed over her breasts. Her eyes remain open in the dark.

  This morning I went hunting with Tristan and a small party. Deep in the forest we found ourselves alone and dismounted to rest under the shade of a tree. At once, as if we were close companions, he began to speak of the Queen. Was this Tristan?—Tristan, who keeps his deepest words to himself, as though to speak were a form of cowardice? Never, he said, has he loved anyone else. He has tried to live apart from her, has tried to form a new life—all in vain. He suffers day and night, causes suffering to others—all because of this love, a love that consumes him like a poison, a sweet poison that flows through his body. Sometimes he imagines that she has forgotten him, in the arms of the King. Then, tormented though he is by jealousy, he is further tormented by self-anger, for daring to imagine her faithlessness. He would gladly die, were it not for fear of causing her pain. He has wronged Ysolt of the White Hands, whose sorrow is nothing but his own sorrow, planted in her breast and growing in her face.

  At the end of it all, trembling from the force of his unaccustomed outpouring—looking wildly at me—he sprang to his feet and drew his sword. The blade sang against the metal of the scabbard like a knife sharpened against stone. As he stood over me, holding the blade not far from my head, I felt not only no surprise that he had decided to murder me—for hadn’t I heard what only the forest should hear?—but also no surprise that I should accept my death so readily, almost with gratitude.

  “Thomas!” he cried, pointing the sword at his own throat. “Tell me she no longer loves me!”

  Again I was struck by Tristan’s flair for the dramatic, his instinct for memorable moments. It occurred to me to ask myself, as I sat there—sat at his feet, in the forest—is it perhaps the solution? Tristan dead, Tristan out of it?

  I gave him the assurance he sought and, rising to my feet, returned with him to our horses.

  I do not mean that Tristan’s gesture was insincere. On the contrary, it sprang from the deepest part of his nature. It is simply that the heroic stance, the admirable pose, is the form most readily assumed by his passion. Tristan has always been drawn to whatever in life is high, dangerous, difficult, impossible. He must always excel, even if the only person he can exceed is himself. If he loves, he has to love more than anyone on earth has ever loved, he must love as if there were nothing else. Ceaselessly he must overcome obstacles, including the obstacle of his own rectitude.

  Can his love of overcoming, his passion for reckless excelling—can this be what led him to betray his beloved King? For if he was going to betray at all, then he had to betray as deeply as possible, he had to betray down to the appalled depths of his honorable nature.

  Things have taken a turn—a sudden, disturbing turn. And yet, when I consider events more calmly, was it not waiting there all along, this disaster, coiled in the heart of things like a destiny?

  Yesterday, two days after our talk under the tree, Tristan and I again rode out with a hunting party. In the course of the hunt we separated into two groups. I spent the morning with the knights of my party, killing and cutting up six barren hinds and a doe, while sparing two fierce harts, for now is the close season for male deer. We fed our hounds bread dipped in warm blood. As we rode deep into the wood in pursuit of a wounded hind, one of Tristan’s men called out to us from a nearby ridge. It was from him that we learned the story.

  Tristan, leaving his party to follow his own path, had come upon a young knight who lay bleeding beside a stream. The knight had been set upon by four brothers, one of whom was Foulques de la Blanche Lande, a cruel lord of these parts—a man of gigantic stature and ruthless will, who rides wherever he likes, hunts in Tristan’s forest, slaughters harts in the close season, and attacks whoever stands in his path. Tristan set off after the murderous band. He found them in a clearing and a desperate battle began, in the course of which Tristan slew three brothers but was wounded in the thigh by a spear hurled by Foulques de la Blanche Lande. Despite his wound, Tristan battled until the leaves were red with blood, and at last left Foulques de la Blanche Lande dead among his dead brothers. Faint from loss of blood, Tristan managed to mount his horse, which carried him in the direction of the hunt. His men led him back to the castle.

  Our party returned at once to the castle, where Tristan lay in his chamber recovering from his wounds.

  But the spear wound troubles us. At first it seemed a mere misfortune, an ugly wound in the upper thigh of his left leg. But the infection worsens. The physician says that the tip of the spear was dipped in poison. He has bathed the wound in white of egg and wrapped it in strips of linen. We watch the leg swell alarmingly. Tristan’s face is hot and the skin of his leg is yellow. He lacks the strength to rise from his sickbed.

  The physician has restricted his diet to barley water mixed with honey and, at night, the milk of crushed almonds.

  It is feared he is dying.

  I think of Tristan, with noble rage in his heart, setting off to do battle with Foulques de la Blanche Lande. An act of daring and courage, certainly—the sort of high deed, worthy of a minstrel’s song, that makes Tristan beloved wherever he rides. And yet, in the heart of his audacity, is there not some darker and more equivocal element? Tristan, immured in a mock marriage of his own devising, tormented with longing, desperate for a way out, haunted by weeks of bliss in the Forest de la Roche Sauvage—will he not feel something terribly alluring about a fight to the death, a fight in which death might no longer refuse him?

  So: Tristan wounded, Tristan dying. For it is clear he must die unless his wound can be healed.

  He has asked me to send for the Queen. “You have always been true to me,” he said, seizing my arm. I looked at him in amazement. He looked back at me tenderly, and again asked me to send for the Queen.

  Every morning four servants carry Tristan down to the sandy strip of shore under the cliff, to wait by the sea for the Queen. He believes that only she can save him—she who cured him of his wound in Ireland, when he went courting for the King. The drama of Tristan’s waiting, the drama of his daily descent to the beach, where he lies on two quilts beneath a purple coverlet sewn with gold, his head propped by silk pillows, facing the waves, is heightened by the drama of the sails: he has so arranged it that if the Queen is on the return ship, the sail will be white, but if she remains in Cornwall, the sail will be black.

  In the morning we search the horizon, our hands shading our eyes, as green waves thunder at our feet and sea spray salts our lips. In the afternoon, in Tristan’s chamber, we look down at the sea stretching off to the sky; we strain our eyes to discover the precise line where sea and sky meet and where, at any moment, a sail, a white sail or a black—life or death—will appear.

  How like Tristan that, even in the grip of death, he cannot forgo a taste for striking effects.


  Every day he grows weaker. I think: his life has become nothing but the act of waiting. And at once I am reminded of the Queen, going out each night to the orchard, sick with longing, feverish and weary with anticipation—a life lived solely in the future, like that of a fanatical monk who has renounced this world and devotes himself entirely to the realm of heaven.

  Tristan longs for the Queen, lives only for the Queen, who alone can cure him, but as he lies on the beach, searching the horizon for the white sail, death must seem not without its attractions. If she comes to his rescue, what then? Back to life, a life of bitterness and suffering, of mock marriage, of impossible separation, of unappeasable love. As he lies on the beach, deafened by the roar of the waves, does he not, in his heart of hearts, long for the black sail?

  Ysolt of the White Hands, silent and melancholy, watches with him from the beach, sits with Tristan in his high chamber.

  What to say? It is tempting to write no more, to abandon myself to the consolations of silence. I have grown to like the sea, the mindless fall of waves, the wheel of birds, sea-salt and wave-spray. Can it be that I am tired of human beings and their passions? But my hand moves, a force compels me to continue, as though the words I write no longer are mine, but belong to the page alone, which knows nothing, which understands nothing, which suffers nothing. So be it.

  Yesterday: a day of storm and sun. Black clouds and rain all morning, then the sun streaking through in lances of light. Tristan, in his chamber, was too weak to raise his head. I sat beside him, struck by his almost boyish beauty—as if death, by eating his flesh and muscle, by ruining his hardness, were restoring his childhood. It is dangerous to have the beauty of Tristan. At twelve years old, at fourteen, he must have had to prove his strength tirelessly, to demonstrate that the lovely boy could throw a spear, kill a boar, strip a hart, thrust his sword between a man’s ribs. Now he lay in his bed like a child with a fever. Ysolt of the White Hands sat in the stone window seat, looking out to sea. I could feel the thud of waves on the skin of my arms. I watched her at the window. Her young body was alert and oddly languorous—at any moment it might spring into motion or drift into deep sleep. She too was waiting— waiting for Tristan to touch her into life. Suddenly her body tightened, as if she had been struck by the flat of a sword. “A ship!” she said. Her hand in her lap was a fist.