You shall have gold
and silver at your will."
The King had saddled his horse and girt his sword and left the city
alone, and as he rode alone he minded him of the night when he had
seen Tristan under the great pine-tree, and Iseult with her clear
face, and he thought:
"If I find them I will avenge this awful wrong."
At the foot of the red cross he came to the woodman and said:
"Go first, and lead me straight and quickly."
The dark shade of the great trees wrapt them round, and as the King
followed the spy he felt his sword, and trusted it for the great blows
it had struck of old; and surely had Tristan wakened, one of the two
had stayed there dead. Then the woodman said:
"King, we are near."
He held the stirrup, and tied the rein to a green apple-tree, and saw
in a sunlit glade the hut with its flowers and leaves. Then the King
cast his cloak with its fine buckle of gold and drew his sword from
its sheath and said again in his heart that they or he should die. And
he signed to the woodman to be gone.
He came alone into the hut, sword bare, and watched them as they lay:
but he saw that they were apart, and he wondered because between them
was the naked blade.
Then he said to himself: "My God, I may not kill them. For all the
time they have lived together in this wood, these two lovers, yet is
the sword here between them, and throughout Christendom men know that
sign.
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