Arthur scorned to speak to so vile a man or to fight him with his sword. He simply let the drunkard, stretching out from his horse to strike, fall head-heavy, over from the castle causeway to the swamp below.
Then all the Round Table Knights roared and shouted, leaped down on the fallen man, trampled out his face in the mire, sank his head so that it could not be seen, and, still shouting, sprang through the open doors among the people within. They hurled their swords right and left on men and women, hurled over the tables and the wines and slew and slew until all the rafters rang with yells and all the pavements streamed with blood. Then they set the tower all afire and half the night through it flushed the long low meadows and marshlands and lazily plunging sea with its flames. That was how Arthur made the ways of the island safe from one shore to the other.
Sir Tristram, not many nights after, reached Tintagil, where Isolt, the White, lived in a crown of towers, where she now sat with the low sea-sunset glorying her hair and glossy throat, thinking of him and of Mark, her Cornish lord.
When Tristram's footsteps came grinding up the tower steps she flushed, started out to meet him and threw her white arms about him.
"Not Mark, not Mark!" she cried. "At first your footsteps fluttered me, for Mark steals into his own castle like a cat."
"No, it's I," said Sir Tristram, "and don't think about your Mark any more, for he isn't yours any longer."
"But listen," she cried, "to-day he went away for a three days' hunt, he said, and that means that he may be back in an hour for that's his way. My God, my hate for him is as strong as my love for you. Let me tell you how I sat here one evening thinking of you, one black midsummer night, all alone, dreaming of you, and sometimes speaking your name aloud, when suddenly there Mark stood behind me, for that's his way to steal behind one in the dark.
"'Tristram has married her!' he hissed out and then this tower shook with such a roar that I swooned away."
"Come," cried Sir Tristram, laughing, "never mind, I'm hungry, give me some meat and wine."
So they ate and drank, talked and laughed about Mark with his long crane-like legs, and Sir Tristram took a harp and sang a song. Then while the last light of the day glimmered away he swung the ruby necklace before Isolt.