The Ballad of Sir Dinadan (16 page)

At Brangienne's name Iseult glanced up eagerly. "Ith she dead?"

Dinadan felt a twinge of nausea, but he took a breath and said, "That's the matter I want to talk to you about."

Iseult started to stand, but King Mark interrupted. "No one speaks to my wife without my permission!"

Tristram raised one hand placatingly and said to the king, "Here's a solution that will make everyone happy. Why don't these knights give their message to me, and then I'll tell Iseult later, when we're alone."

"Ssh, Tristram!" Iseult hissed. King Mark looked at the queen and at Tristram, his face turning red and a vein bulging in his neck.

"You have no reason to be alone with my wife! And as for you two," the king roared at Palomides and Dinadan, "get out!"

Iseult caught Dinadan's eye and favored him with a series of winks and nods and odd grimaces. She looked as if she were having a mild fit, but Dinadan guessed she was trying to convey a message, probably to wait for her outside. Dinadan glanced at Palomides. "Come on. Let's go."

"No," he said. "We must speak to Queen Iseult. And besides, we have that gift to give her."

Iseult smiled brightly. "A gift? You brought a gift for me?"

"I forbid you to give my wife a gift!" King Mark shouted.

"It is not from us," Palomides said calmly. He produced the magic horn. "This is a gift from Sir Lamorak and from his lady. Sir Lamorak begs pardon from the queen for having slighted her beauty and offers her the Horn of Igraine. The horn is said to be magical and to double the beauty of all who drink of it, provided their hearts are noble." Iseult squeaked excitedly, but Palo-mides ignored her. He set the horn on the table beside her, then looked up at King Mark. "I shall leave you to your dinner, but we will speak to your lady before we leave Tintagel."

The king did not respond. He was watching Iseult, who had eagerly snatched up the horn and filled it with wine from her own cup. "Double beauty!" she said breathlessly, raising the cup to her lips.

Wine splattered everywhere, splashing Iseult's face and dribbling in a stream over the front of her gown. Iseult screamed with annoyance and anger. "Who jostled me?" she demanded. A drop of wine trembled at the end of her nose, then fell. "I'll have your head for this, whoever it was. Who did it?"

"No one touched you," Palomides said calmly, but Iseult didn't hear.

"Look at my dress! Ruined! The whole cup of wine spilled. I didn't even get a taste!"

"Waste of good wine," Dinadan murmured.

Several ladies had rushed to the queen's assistance and were ineffectually dabbing at her stained gown with their handkerchiefs. Iseult continued scolding, and Dinadan watched the scene with interest. While Iseult was preoccupied, one of the ladies gently took the horn from Iseult's hand and surreptitiously filled it from a flagon of wine. Evidently, she thought to double her own beauty while she had the chance. She lifted the horn to her lips, and the wine poured itself down her chin and breast. She shrieked with dismay, attracting Iseult's attention. Iseult screamed even louder. "That's mine! Give it back!" With one hand, Iseult snatched the horn away from the lady, and with the other she grabbed the lady's hair and began to pull it vigorously.

Palomides turned away, disgusted, but Dinadan watched the melee with growing appreciation. Iseult appeared frail and ethereal but was evidently stronger than she looked. No one could break her grip either on her lady's hair or on the faery horn. "It's mine, it's mine, it's mine!" she rapped out. In the middle of the knot of tugging women was Tristram, himself liberally spattered with wine, trying helplessly to disentangle himself.

A low laugh came from the great doors behind King Mark's seat, and all the company turned to see a beautiful woman, splendidly clad in a gown that glowed with an eerie light, standing just inside the hall. The ladies, occupied with each other's hair and eyes, were the last to notice the visitor, but once they saw her, even they grew still. Iseult stopped screaming and pulling, though her hand remained twined in her lady's hair. "I see you've received my gift," the woman said with an evil smile. No one spoke, and after a moment, the woman said, "But perhaps my young lover did not completely explain its magic, for I see no reason to fight over it. Indeed, I hope that all this court might drink of it."

The woman paced majestically forward until she was beside King Mark. "Know this, O king. That horn is a test. Only the one who is faithful in love may drink from it. If anyone who is unfaithful tries to drink, the wine will spill out and stain the drinker."

"What?" King Mark roared. His vein was bulging again.

Iseult's eyes widened as she looked at King Mark. "You ... you don't bewieve thith woman, do you, my wuv?"

"I knew it!" King Mark shouted. "It's that Tristram, isn't it? You think you were clever, but I'm no fool!"

"No, no!" Iseult said earnestly. "You mutht be imagining things!"

The lady whose hair Iseult still held said sharply, "Well, if he is, then so is everyone else. For heaven's sake, everyone knows about your affair with Tristram!"

King Mark turned purple and Tristram pushed himself forward. "That's impossible!" he declared. "I haven't told a soul!"

Iseult shrieked, "You idiot!" and King Mark began to rave incoherently, hopping up and down. He was joined in his fury by one of the knights sitting beside him, apparently the husband of the second stained lady. He had evidently just grasped the implications of the horn's magic for himself, and was no better pleased than the king. Dinadan looked at Tristram and shook his head, wondering how he could possibly be related to this clodpole.

"You trollop!" the knight beside King Mark shouted. "Who is it? Who have you been dallying with? Mother told me you were no good!"

"They're
all
trollops!" King Mark shrieked, beside himself. "All women are false! They shall all drink from the horn! Every one! Who shall be first?"

There was a general cry of dismay from the ladies and from some of the men, who begged the king to make no rash decisions. Several ladies began edging toward the door, and one fainted, or pretended to. King Mark and the other husband continued to rant, Iseult and her spattered lady to plead, and Tristram to look confused for several minutes, and in the hubbub Dinadan noticed that the faery beauty had disappeared.

King Mark appeared to be set on taking his revenge on the whole company by forcing every lady in the room to drink from the horn, and was even starting to line them up, when Palomides, his face in grim disgust, stepped forward and took the horn from the table. "Stop this foolishness," he said evenly.

The vein in King Mark's throat bulged again, larger than ever. Dinadan watched its pounding with interest, then said, "I believe you're about to go off in an apoplexy, your highness. Not that I'm opposed to it, mind, but I thought you'd want to know."

King Mark ignored him. "Do you dare oppose my will?" he demanded of Palomides.

Palomides met the king's eyes, and the king's gaze dropped at once. "I dare," Palomides replied. "If you are set on forcing the ladies to drink from this horn, then it is fitting that the men should drink as well. And as king, it would be your place to drink first."

The hall grew still, and for the first time in a quarter of an hour, the king ceased gobbling in rage. His eyes grew wide.

Palomides waited until there was no sound at all, then he dropped the horn on the stone floor and stepped on it. It crushed under his heel, and he ground it to dust, then turned and strode out of the hall.

Dinadan stepped close to Iseult, smiled pleasantly, and said, "Always getting yourself in trouble by drinking the wrong thing, aren't you?"

It took Iseult a moment, but then she understood, and she turned horrified eyes toward Dinadan.

"That's right," Dinadan said softly. "I know all about that potion on the ship. And, if anything happens to Lady Brangienne, I shall tell the tale to everyone in England. Do you understand me?" Iseult did not move, and Dinadan stopped smiling. Leaning forward until he was inches from Iseult's face, he repeated, "Do you understand me?"

Iseult nodded.

"That's the dandy," Dinadan said, smiling again. He turned his attention again to King Mark, whose face was still purple and who seemed to be having trouble breathing. "Thank you for a very pleasant evening, your highness. I had a lovely time." Then he left, closing the door gently behind him.

Dinadan caught up with Palomides in the courtyard, and they rode out of Tintagel together. The Moor seemed preoccupied, so Dinadan respected his mood and did not speak for several miles. At last, the summer sun being about to set, Dinadan asked mildly, "Are we going to stop for the night?"

"If you wish, my friend," Palomides replied.

Dinadan nodded. "I usually do," he said.

They made camp in a wide, treeless meadow. They had traveled together enough that they had a routine and were able to care for their horses and make a light supper without talking, but when they had eaten, Palo-mides leaned back against his saddle and spoke. "Are Sir Tristram and Sir Lamorak truly considered great knights?"

"By some."

"But they are fools and villains."

"Well, yes, if you want to quibble," Dinadan said.

"I thought I knew what a knight was when I came here, but now I do not. I see such different examples before me. Please, my friend, can you tell me what makes a man a knight?"

Dinadan hesitated, remembering with shame how he had been knighted at his father's drunken hands. "I don't think I can," he said at last. He let his breath out slowly. "There was some Greek who said that everything on earth is just a reflection of the perfect, ideal form of that thing. I forget the fellow's name."

"Plato," Palomides said. "I'm surprised that the English have heard of him."

Dinadan grinned. "King Arthur reads a lot, and he mentioned him one time. Anyway, I think about this notion of ideals sometimes. Is there an ideal figure of a knight? The eternal knight that every earthly knight is supposed to reflect?"

"Yes!" Palomides said. "That's just what I want to know."

"I don't think there is," Dinadan said bluntly. "Everyone has a different notion of what a knight is, and so everyone is imitating a different imagined ideal. Tristram and Lamorak think the perfect knight is a great fighter who fetches sticks for his lady love. Others think the true knight's the one who wins the most tournaments, or who wears the dandiest clothes. And heaven only knows what Culloch would think a knight is, if Culloch had a brain to think with."

Palomides frowned. "But if every knight makes up his own idea of what a knight is, how does one judge? How can I know what a great knight is like?"

"You should meet Arthur and Gawain and Bedivere," Dinadan said. "Then you would see what knights should be. So, since we've done spreading cheer at Tin-tagel, shall we go to Camelot?"

The Moor looked at Dinadan for a long, silent minute, his eyes intense in the firelight and shaded with thought. Then Palomides said, "Very well. But not at once. I think, my lord Dinadan, that I should like to see more of Britain—if you would accompany me."

Dinadan was puzzled by, but not averse to, the suggestion. He meant to ride back to the convent and check on Brangienne in a few months, after she'd had some time to settle in, but he had no plans in the meantime. "Ever see Scotland?" he asked.

The two knights rode together for two months, to Scotland and Orkney and then south again. Occasionally they met other knights and often encountered minstrels. It was from the minstrels that Dinadan heard the results of his and Palomides's visit to Tintagel. King Mark, mad with jealous rage, had confined Iseult to the castle, and she was locked in a tower bedroom after dark. All passing knights were turned away at the gates. As for Tristram, it was reported that he was wandering about England, unwashed and unkempt, eating roots and challenging everyone he met to battle. Everyone said he'd been driven mad by love, like someone in a bad story. Dinadan had never believed such tales, but if anyone's mind was weak enough to be overset by such a thing as love, it would be Tristram's.

One crisp fall day, the two knights came upon the sort of mysterious encounter that always seemed to lead to adventure in knightly tales. Topping a hill, they saw a black barge, tied at the edge of a wide river, and beside the barge, an armored knight with a gray beard kneeling before a rough wooden cross.

As the two knights approached, the knight looked up, and his eyes were weary with grief. He did not speak, but he rose to his feet, drew his sword, and laid it on the ground. "At last," the man said. "I am ready."

Dinadan and Palomides glanced at each other. Dinadan shrugged and said, "Ready for what?"

"I will not resist you," the man said. "I have been apart from my brother for too long, and I am ready to rejoin him."

Dinadan scratched his chin and looked again at Palomides. The Moor didn't speak, but only frowned and looked past the man, at the barge. At last, feeling he ought to say something, Dinadan said, "Right, then. Go see your brother. We wouldn't dream of stopping you."

The old man looked at Dinadan, and said in an anguished voice, "Must you sport with me, too? Did your masters Helius and Helake bid you mock me first?"

Dinadan blinked and started to protest, but Palo-mides spoke. "Is that your brother in the boat, my lord?" he asked. Dinadan looked again and realized that the boat was a funeral barge. As a breeze shook the drapes, he glimpsed inside the body of a white-haired man.

"Yes," the old man said. "That is King Hermance. I beg you to delay no more, but do what you were sent to do." With that, the old man bowed his head and bared his neck.

"He expects us to kill him," Palomides said to Dinadan.

"Some people are so demanding," Dinadan replied. "Considering we've only just met, I mean."

The old man looked up, puzzlement in his face. "Do you mean you aren't from Helius and Helake either?"

"No," Dinadan said. "Who are they?"

The man sighed and shook his head sadly. "I must say, it's the outside of enough. I get myself all ready, and then nothing comes of it after all, and I have to start again."