day three parts 14 to 19

1. Yseut had set up her oath days in advance, she had designed it so that she could trick the people but still tell the truth. She spoke with a "forked tongue", as you say, in the manner that she purposely set up the situation so that she could fess up to having sex with Tristan but manage to keep it secret from the numerous onlookers. She uses the term from the text "only two people have been between my thighs" (Tha Romance of Tristan, Beroul) so as to make people think that she meant that she had had sex with the king and had been carried by the leper and nothing more. By doing this she manages to tell the whole truth without losing her neck to the hang-mans noose. By all rights she earned her freedom to live by managing to trick all of the nobleman present (including the wise King Arthur). Her plan ingeniously gave Tristan a way to take revenge and enjoy her company as much as he desired, but alas it could not last forever.

4. In the end we knew that the lovers where doomed, there was no happy ending to be spun from the twists of the text. The death of the couple was far over due, in other books of the age the couples never last past their revenge . Yseut coming to openly help Tristan with his wife present was the other sure sign of the couples end. Throughout the book the love was at least partially hidden from the spouse's, by revealing the love and being so open about it the doom of the two became certain. King Mark always had at least a gut feeling that something was going on between Tristan and his wife, but he only pursued it a few times. He only followed up on his suspicions when he had no choice to, in a way this shows us that he might hate the love between his wife and his nephew but he respected it. His respect is shown when he buries them together and lets their love (trees) bloom.