hese letters worked harm only, for they
roused the evil spirit in the Cornish king's soul, stirring him up to
anger and thirst for revenge. He thereupon wrote to Arthur, bidding him
to meddle with his own concerns, and to take heed to his wife and his
knights, which would give him work enough to do. As for Sir Tristram, he
said that he held him to be his mortal enemy.

He wrote also to Queen Guenever, his letter being full of shameful
charges of illicit relations with Sir Lancelot, and dishonor to her
lord, the king. Full of wrath at these vile charges, Guenever took the
letter to Lancelot, who was half beside himself with anger on reading
it.

"You cannot get at him to make him eat his words," said Dinadan, whom
Lancelot took into his confidence. "And if you seek to bring him to
terms with pen and ink, you will find that his villany will get the
better of your honesty. Yet there are other ways of dealing with
cowardly curs. Leave him to me; I will make him wince. I will write a
mocking lay of King Mark and his doings, and will send a harper to sing
it before him at his court. When this noble king has heard my song I
fancy he will admit that there are other ways of gaining revenge besides
writing scurrilous letters."

A stinging lay, indeed, was that which Dinadan composed. When done he
taught it to a harper named Eliot, who in his turn taught it to other
harpers, and these, by the orders of Arthur and Lancelot, went into
Wales and Cornwall to sing it everywhere.

Meanwhile King Mark's crown had been in great danger. For his country
had been invaded by an army from Session, led by a noted warrior named
Elias, who drove the forces of Cornwall from the field and besieged the
king in his castle of Tintagil. And now Tristram came nobly to the
rescue. At the head of the Cornish forces he drove back the besiegers
with heavy loss, and challenged Elias to a single combat to end the war.
The challenge was accepted, and a long and furious combat followed, but
in the end Elias was slain, and the remnant of his army forced to
surrender.

This great service added to the seeming accord between Tristram and the
king, but in his heart Mark nursed all his old bitterness, and hated him
the more that he had helped him. His secret fury soon found occasion to
flame to the surface. For at the feast which was given in honor of the
victory, Eliot, the harper, appeared, and sang before the king and his
lords the lay that Dinadan had made.