Tristan and Iseult by Rosemary Sutcliff

said Gorvenal. ‘And if you are for Tintagel again, then so am I.’
    And they went on together.
    Soon, coming to the edge of the woods, they looked out towards the fortress on its headland, and saw the place made ready for the Queen’s execution, between the woods and the sea, with the pyre already built in the midst of it, and all about it the great crowd of people who had gathered to see her die.
    ‘And now what would you have us do?’ asked Gorvenal crouching behind a hawthorn bush.
    ‘They have not yet brought her out; when they do, maybe God will help us to know the thing that must be done. Meanwhile there is nothing we can do but wait.’
    And as they waited, just as the far-off gates of Tintagel opened, and the King himself, amidst the rest of his bodyguard, came down between the timber halls and the apple orchards towards the execution place, another band of men came down the track from the woods behind Tristan and Gorvenal. A little band, a terrible band, wearing the long hooded cloaks and carrying the wooden warning clappers that marked them for lepers, who counted as already dead.
    Gorvenal drew further from the track, as all men did when such a company came by, and Tristan made to do the same; then checked, and stepped forward directly into their path.
    ‘Where are you away to, friends?’
    The lepers checked, for they were not used to being spoken to by living men, then one who seemed to be the leader among them said in a cracked and husky voice, ‘To Tintagel as all Cornwall goes today, though with heavy hearts, to see them burn the Queen.’
    ‘Then you would save the Queen if you could?’ said Tristan.
    ‘If it were worth our while.’
    ‘Lend me your cloak and clapper, and there will be no burning in Tintagel today,’ Tristan said. And to Gorvenal, ‘Have you any money? It’s a gold piece I am needing for this man and his comrades.’
    ‘You are mad!’ said Gorvenal.
    ‘Maybe; that is the second time today that you have told me so. But I need the gold piece.’
    And while the others looked on, he took the coin his friend brought from the breast of his tunic, and dropped it into the bandaged hand that the leper held out for it.
    ‘It’s many a long year since any man would wear my cloak of his free will,’ the man said. And he pulled off his stinking rags; and Tristan took them, scarcely even shuddering for there was no time, and flung on the cloak, pulling the hood forward over his face.
    ‘Here is my cloak; it is wet from the sea, but it will serve to cover your sores. Bide here in hiding, while I go on with your companions.’
    ‘I also,’ said Gorvenal.
    But Tristan shook his head. ‘Bide you here. If all goes well, one of us will be enough for the task; if aught goes ill, then I may need you, still free, to get the Queen away.’
    So Tristan went on with the lepers, swinging his wooden clapper, and with their dreadful cry in his ears: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’
    When they reached the execution place, the Queen, clad in nothing but a white shift, and her wonderful red hair falling loose about her, was already being bound to the stake, while men waited with lighted torches, and the King stood by with a frozen face to see it done.
    ‘Come,’ said Tristan to the rest of the grey band behind him; and they made towards the King. No man sought to bar their passage, and so they came to him up a clear road, the people falling back on either side like barley when a reaping-hook cuts its swathe. And Tristan knelt before the King, keeping his hands that had no sores on them hidden in his sleeves, and his face that was not eaten away hidden in the shadows of his hood.
    ‘O Lord King! A boon!’ he cried, making his voice cracked and hoarse.
    And, ‘A boon! A boon!’ cried the lepers crowding behind him.
    The King looked at them with stone eyes in a stone face. ‘You choose a strange moment to come asking a boon.’
    ‘Not so strange,’ said Tristan, ‘for the boon we ask is this, that you