His guards still waited for him at the chantry door, but vainly, for God was now his guard.  And he ran, and the fine sand crunched under his feet, and far off he saw the faggot burning, and the smoke and the crackling flames; and fled.

Sword girt and bridle loose, Gorvenal had fled the city, lest the King burn him in his master’s place:  and he found Tristan on the shore.

“Master,” said Tristan, “God has saved me, but oh! master, to what end?  For without Iseult I may not and I will not live, and I rather had died of my fall.  They will burn her for me, then I too will die for her.”

“Lord,” said Gorvenal, “take no counsel of anger.  See here this thicket with a ditch dug round about it.  Let us hide therein where the track passes near, and comers by it will tell us news; and, boy, if they burn Iseult, I swear by God, the Son of Mary, never to sleep under a roof again until she be avenged.”

There was a poor man of the common folk that had seen Tristan’s fall, and had seen him stumble and rise after, and he crept to Tintagel and to Iseult where she was bound, and said: 

“Queen, weep no more.  Your friend has fled safely.”

“Then I thank God,” said she, “and whether they bind or loose me, and whether they kill or spare me, I care but little now.”

And though blood came at the cord-knots, so tightly had the traitors bound her, yet still she said, smiling: 

“Did I weep for that when God has loosed my friend I should be little worth.”

When the news came to the King that Tristan had leapt that leap and was lost he paled with anger, and bade his men bring forth Iseult.

They dragged her from the room, and she came before the crowd, held by her delicate hands, from which blood dropped, and the crowd called: 

“Have pity on her—­the loyal Queen and honoured!  Surely they that gave her up brought mourning on us all—­our curses on them!”

But the King’s men dragged her to the thorn faggot as it blazed.  She stood up before the flame, and the crowd cried its anger, and cursed the traitors and the King.  None could see her without pity, unless he had a felon’s heart:  she was so tightly bound.  The tears ran down her face and fell upon her grey gown where ran a little thread of gold, and a thread of gold was twined into her hair.

Just then there had come up a hundred lepers of the King’s, deformed and broken, white horribly, and limping on their crutches.  And they drew near the flame, and being evil, loved the sight.  And their chief Ivan, the ugliest of them all, cried to the King in a quavering voice: 

“O King, you would burn this woman in that flame, and it is sound justice, but too swift, for very soon the fire will fall, and her ashes will very soon be scattered by the high wind and her agony be done.  Throw her rather to your lepers where she may drag out a life for ever asking death.”