Still Dinadan was loth to begin. "After I left you, I went to a wedding," he said. Brangienne lifted her eyebrows in question, and Dinadan grinned. "Culloch and Olwen."
Brangienne rolled her eyes. "Oh. Well, I suppose I wish them very happy."
"Can't imagine either of them being happy," said Dinadan reflectively. "Whether they're married or not. But they're not off to the best start." He proceeded to tell her about the wedding, and when he was done, she could only shake her head, aghast.
"What fools some people choose to be," she said. Then she looked again at Dinadan. "But surely that isn't what you came to tell me."
"No." There was nothing left but to say it. "Iseult is dead."
"Dead," Brangienne repeated slowly. "How? By violence?"
"I suppose you could say that." Dinadan told her the story, simply and plainly and without emotion.
Brangienne looked at the ground. "I loved her once, when we were children. I suppose I was never more than a servant to her, but I thought we were more. What a dreadful, horrible, stupid, meaningless death to die."
"But of course it won't be long before the minstrels are telling it as if it were noble somehow, making it a great tragic love story."
"You won't, will you? No, of course you won't."
Dinadan shook his head. "I thought you ought to know, though, that the person who wanted you dead is gone. You're safe now."
Brangienne nodded to herself, her eyes empty, and Dinadan could see she was lost in thought. He was silent for several minutes, waiting for her. His stomach began to tighten, and his mouth grew dry. It became harder and harder to breathe normally. At last Brangienne looked up. "Thank you for coming to tell me, Dinadan."
Dinadan nodded. "Brangienne?"
"Yes?"
"I have something else to ask you, too."
"What?" her voice was very quiet.
Dinadan took the hurdle at a rush. "Would you like to marry me?"
Brangienne was silent for a long time. "Dinadan, you are the only man on earth that I could ever marry," she said at last. Dinadan swallowed, and the tight feeling in his chest seemed about to burst. "But if you don't mind terribly, I think I'd rather not."
Dinadan let his breath out with deep sigh. "Oh, thank God," he said.
Brangienne burst into merry laughter. "What do you mean?" she said at last. "Don't you want to marry me?"
Dinadan was laughing, too. "I feel just as you do, my love. I could never marry anyone else, but no, no, I don't want to marry you."
"Then why did you ask, you idiot? Suppose I had said yes?"
"It was something that Bedivere said after Culloch's wedding. He said he's always thought there was something between us."
"Well, there is, isn't there?"
"Of course there is, though dashed if I know what to call it. But he put the idea in my head that you were in love with me and would never marry anyone else because you were waiting for me to ask."
"Oh," Brangienne said. "I understand. So you screwed up your courage and asked me because you were afraid it was the only thing that would make me happy."
Dinadan shrugged. "Something like that."
Brangienne leaned forward and kissed Dinadan lightly on the forehead. "You're such a dear, my love."
A voice from behind them said, "Then it's all settled?" It was Mother Priscilla.
"What do mean, Mother?" Brangienne asked.
She looked at Dinadan. "Did you ask her to marry you?"
Brangienne's eyes widened. "You knew he would?"
"Of course, you silly girl. Why do you suppose I've never let you take your vows? You had to face this first. So?"
Dinadan stood from the bench and bowed to Mother Priscilla. "Yes, I asked her. And she's made me the happiest man on earth."
"Ah, she has, has she?" Mother Priscilla said quietly.
Brangienne giggled. "Yes, I have. I turned him down."
***
Dinadan sat cross-legged on his saddle and played his rebec. He was riding more or less in the direction of Camelot, but if he missed it, he didn't care much. Other knights of King Arthur's court were always riding out on quests—very intent on going to particular places to perform particular tasks—but Dinadan had come to accept that he was not like that. For him, it was enough to go, without necessarily arriving anywhere. Every time he had gone somewhere specific it had been with someone else or against his wishes for someone else's sake. "I suppose that means that I'll never accomplish as much as those other fellows," he said aloud. "Thank heaven for that, anyway."
He played idly on his instrument for a moment, then began to sing, quietly, a little nonsense ditty he had been fooling about with since leaving Brangienne the day before,
"When I was but a little tiny boy,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish love was but a toy,
For the rain, it raineth every day.
"But when I came to man's estate,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Love's foolishness I came to hate,
For the rain, it raineth every day.
"At last I learnt to be a friend,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
And found a love that doesn't end,
Though the rain, it raineth every day.
"A great while ago, the world begun,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, my song is done,
And I'll strive to please you every day,
To please you every day."
* * *
Author's Note: The Singers of Tales
All the stories I tell about King Arthur and his knights have been told before, some of them hundreds of times. The story of Culloch and the tasks he must do for the hand of the fair Olwen, for instance, is an ancient Welsh story, "How Culhwch Won Olwen," which is found in a collection of Welsh tales called The Mabino-gion. All the tasks that I show Culloch doing are from that original story—including such inane tasks as weaving a leash from the beard of Dillus the Bearded. Whoever he was.
The most important source for my book, though, is the story of Tristram (or Tristan) and Iseult (or Isoud or Isolde or Isolt). The story has been told for centuries, and there are ancient versions in French, German, Italian, English, and even Norwegian. I've used two of these ancient accounts, the wonderful version by the German poet Gottfried von Strassburg and the much more long-winded retelling by Sir Thomas Malory in his Morte d'Arthur. From these two accounts I took the basic love potion mix-up plot, along with such details as the Horn of Infidelity and the Love Grotto. I also appropriated several minor characters, such as Brangienne (sometimes called Bragwaine) and Sir Lam-orak and Sir Palomides.
In Malory's version, appears the knight named Dinadan, who for some reason often finds himself with Tristram, though he doesn't seem to like Tristram very much. Dinadan's a very minor, but memorable, character in Malory, and as I read the story of that thoroughly depressing pair of lovers, Tristram and Iseult, I found myself liking Dinadan more and more by comparison. He jokes and sings and tells tales and—most rare for a Malory knight—occasionally turns down a fight. Here, I thought, was a knight who deserves his own story, and so I've used Dinadan as a new way to tell this tale that has been told so many times before.
Or sung, I should add. You see, the oldest of the Arthurian stories were not originally written down, or even told. They were set to music and sung by professional singers—called minstrels or troubadours in England, trouvères or jongleurs in France, and minnesingers in Germany. Many of these artists could neither read nor write but could recite heroic tales in perfect poetic rhythm from memory for hours at a time. Or, if they didn't have hours, they might sing ballads, love songs, or little poetic riddles. The songs that I have Dinadan and Wadsworth the minstrel sing are almost all based on real songs from the Middle Ages or Renaissance. There really is a song called "My Lief is Faren in Londe" (although the original's better than the one I pres
ent) and there really is a line in a Renaissance poem that goes "Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo."
Okay, so it wasn't the crowning moment of English literature. They weren't all Shakespeare. But without these minstrels, even Shakespeare wouldn't have been Shakespeare. What I mean by that is that even the greatest poets of the Renaissance—Shakespeare and Dante—owed much to the minstrels. Both of them knew the old songs well and used them often in their own works. (In fact, the ditty that Dinadan sings at the end of the last chapter is borrowed and adapted from the end of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.) Since everyone who writes in English owes a debt to Shakespeare, then we also owe much to these anonymous poets, these early performance artists, these marvelous singers of tales.
—Gerald Morris
* * *
Gerald Morris, The Ballad of Sir Dinadan
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