Gawain and Lady Green

by Anne Eliot Crompton

  Gawain felt her attention arrow past him. Hunched over his mead, he turned halfway round and saw Lancelot feel it. Lancelot looked up with bored and hungry eyes. His gaze locked with Gwenevere’s. Gawain could see him forget hunger and boredom and where and when he was. King Arthur, the whole Round Table, anyone looking at Lancelot could see sorrowful love spill like tears from his eyes.

  Gawain suppressed a growl.

  Like all the waiting feasters, Gawain was starved. At break of day the Round Table had attended Mass in Arthur’s chapel. Next they had ridden out hunting, thirty knights with expert woodsmen, squires, oat-fed horses, and roaring hounds. After this, a break in which to bathe, comb, and change bloody, sweated clothes for festal ones. At this break, prudent men had snatched a fistful of bread, a dipper of porridge. Gawain was not a prudent man.

  Now at last they came gowned, combed, jeweled, in good appetite, to Arthur’s New Year feast. But they had forgotten Arthur’s dreary New Year custom.

  At least Gawain had forgotten—and glancing sourly about the table, he thought he was not the only one.

  Not a dish was carried in, with fanfare or without. Not a crumb, not a morsel would be served until the New Year’s omen appeared.

  Something quite remarkable must happen now, before the eyes of the famished feasters—and Merlin must analyze, divinate, and expound upon it, and prophesy for the coming year. Only then could the feast begin.

  Nursing his mead, Gawain growled louder than his stomach.

  Drink was allowed before the omen. At the Round Table eyes were dimming, hands fumbling. Unless the omen appeared in the next instants, some at the table would slide under it.

  Drums and dancers’ feet echoed in Gawain’s aching head. He glanced again at Lancelot.

  Erect and attentive now, Lancelot looked steadily over Gawain’s head into Gwenevere’s eyes. The hunger in his face was not now for food.

  A deeper growl, a comment such as the boar had made from his snowy thicket that morning, burst from Gawain. Redness crept in at the edges of his vision. Everyone knew of Lancelot and Gwenevere. No one discussed them aloud. But Gawain dreaded the damage this foolish affair might do the Round Table. He saw it as a crack in the table, which could become a split, which could widen till the table broke in half. That could end Arthur’s reign and Arthur’s hard-won Peace. And all for the love of a red-haired bitch, Queen or no! It maddened him to see Lancelot and Gwenevere lost in admiration of each other before the whole table, before Arthur himself.

  Sir! He heard his Inner Self say. It had been saying Sir! Sir! for some time, unable to make itself heard over the thump of music and dance. Sir, you must not lose control. Must. Not.

  What do you want me to do?

  Maybe a drink would dampen your temper.

  Nothing else to do!

  Gawain seized and drained his goblet. Women! he thought. The fire they lit in a man’s loins could be deadlier than enemy swords. A knight such as Lancelot should know to guard himself against that fire. Gawain himself had known that much.

  A cool green vision floated behind his bleary eyes: his Lady Green, as she had come to him on so many delightful summer nights, green-robed, magic-girdled, her loose hair moonlit fire down her breasts…smiling.

  He shut his eyes against the next vision. But behind closed eyes it came on brighter.

  His Lady Green lay asleep on cold rock. He himself crouched over her, testing her knife on his thumb, ready to slice her throat on whim.

  But I did not do that.

  No. He left her alive. He saw himself stooped under the cave roof, pulling on his clothes, sticking her knife in his sash, ducking out into cold rain alone.

  He saw himself ride away on the brown-bristly pony—Nothing but a peasant knife in my sash!—and leave her asleep, alone in a cave on a wild moor far from home. Brigands, Saxons, and wolves roamed that moor. And she with not even a knife…

  God’s bones! She had her magic girdle. More than I had.

  Gawain had not confessed that part of the story to anyone, nor ever would. He hardly knew what to think of it himself. What might others think?

  Two small brown hands lifted a pitcher past his shoulder and refilled his goblet. These wee and slender hands had all five fingers strangely even-lengthed. Gawain turned to thank Niviene, Merlin’s young assistant mage.

  She stood like a child beside him, dark eyes intent on the flow of mead into his goblet. Gowned in innocent white, she might be someone’s daughter, a girl too young to appear safely even in King’s Hall, with the company hungry and drunk. But no one’s daughter would wind magic mistletoe through her coarse, dark hair. A cold wind breathed on Gawain’s heart.

  Niviene’s strangeness began with her small size and even-lengthed fingers. It did not end there. She was said to read omens and cast spells nearly as well as Mage Merlin himself. Rumor said that those two together had cast the evil spell that bound Lancelot and Gwenevere together; also, that their spells maintained the borders of Arthur’s Peace. No Saxon could breathe easily within those borders. Rumor said that in the worn, patched pouch she wore even here, even today, Niviene carried herbs to heal, to wound, to mangle a man’s mind, to kill.

  Gawain had never paid much heed to such matters. He’d had better things to do and think of—until his northern adventure last summer. A quick vision of Satan’s Dun rose in his fuddled mind and sank again. He shuddered.

  Her task done, Niviene raised her eyes to his and smiled her rare, closed-mouth smile. A sharp, cold frisson ran down his spine, out arms and legs to fingertips. Barely, he managed to nod thanks.

  Niviene regarded him. From the distance he had always kept between them, he had taken her for a girl. Close now, he saw faint lines in her face and ageless, cool wisdom in her eyes. To his intense relief she moved on to fill another goblet.

  Suppose Mage Niviene knew what Gawain had done on the moor last summer. What would she think?

  Thankfully, the din was lessening. Two by two the horn dancers careened out the great doors into the street, taking their music with them. Now only the roar of drunken talk echoed between Gawain’s ears.

  Take Mage Merlin himself, now. If he knew the truth, what would he think? What, in Mary’s name, would he sing?

  Merlin had composed a song, “Gawain, May King,” based on Gawain’s telling of his adventure. It began:

  “You northern knave, what do you here?

  Ride your rough pony not so near!

  We guard King Arthur’s portal, here.

  Stand! Or you’ll maybe stop a spear.

  Give now your lineage and name.

  (If knaves have lineage and name.)

  That name again? Gawain?

  Gawain!”

  In the song, the amazed guards brought Gawain before Arthur, who recognized him with an uncle’s delighted embrace and commanded him to tell his adventure before the whole Round Table.

  In the song, Gawain then related how he, with companions, went to spy out the north country. Saxons, brigands, and wolves killed his companions. Gawain alone escaped, starving and all but disarmed, to roam the wild moors on his white charger, Warrior.

  Starving, he rode into a savage May Day celebration, expecting hospitality. He was surrounded treacherously, pulled down, captured, and crowned May King. Then he had to lie with the beautiful May Queen—half Fairy, half pagan Goddess—where he acquitted himself well, till he learned that the May King would lose his head at Summerend.

  (“Amazing!” listeners would murmur. But some would nod wisely and remark that they had heard such tales before.)

  Recovered by then from exhaustion and hunger, Gawain caught a scruffy pony from the savages’ herd and escaped, without arms or provenance, southward across the moors. On the way he killed game and brigands with his only weapon, the knife in his sash, and turned up at Arthur’s gate a season later, an unrecognizable shadow of himself.

  The song ended with a list of the gifts and honors Arthur showered upon his heroic nephew.
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br />   What the song did not tell—because Merlin never heard—was that the beautiful May Queen fell so deeply in love with Gawain that she helped him escape; that he broke his solemn vow to wed her, and left her alone on the moor; that he discovered only when he was safely home that he was himself in love with her.

  Nor did the song tell of Gawain’s nightly dreams of Lady Green: dreams of her lovemaking, of his vow-taking, and of her probable rape and death.

  But she did have the magic girdle. Remember that.

  If Mage Merlin knew all that…

  God’s blood! He’s going to sing now!

  In the relative silence after the horn dancers’ departure, Merlin had taken a bench close by the royal dais. White-robed and crusted with mystic jewels, now he was tuning his harp, Enchanter. One by one, voices dropped and sank out of hearing till the hall was still.

  Gawain’s heart should have been beating high, hoping to hear again the glorious strains of “Gawain, May King.” Rather, it shrank within; almost as if fearing to hear the true story sung.

  From the corner of his eye Gawain saw Niviene pause beside the Yule fire. She had poured all her mead and left the pitcher aside. Empty-handed, she stood at the fire pit, so close her dress might have caught fire, looking across the hall at Merlin. She dipped a swift hand into her worn, patched pouch, drew something out in her fist, and tossed it into the Yule fire.

  Vaguely wondering, Gawain emptied the goblet she had filled for him.

  Merlin struck a commanding glissando on Enchanter’s tuned strings. The last talk died away. King’s Hall waited for Merlin’s song, so silent that Gawain heard the Yule fire snap.

  From the corner of a misty eye he saw Niviene glide away from the fire.

  Merlin raised hand to harp again. Three slow, strange chords he plucked and drew breath to sing. Puzzled, Gawain felt his heart slow and hairs rise on his neck.

  The wide street doors crashed open.

  Merlin paused, mid-breath. Arthur stiffened on his throne.

  Startled, the Round Table turned toward the doors as one man— one strangely slow and sleepy man. Later, Gawain would feel, and hope, that from this moment the Round Table as one man fell asleep and dreamed.

  Into King’s Hall clattered a great green charger. In the green saddle rode a great green man. With no word, no sound but the clang of shod hooves on stone floor, he rode between the lesser tables past the Round Table, straight toward Merlin and Arthur’s dais.

  As best Gawain could see through newly thick smoke, the green charger was all green-furnished. The saddle was green, studded with gold and green jewels. The stirrups were green, and the bosses of the bit. The horse’s green mane, well crisped and combed, was fringed with golden threads; its tail was wound in gold threads and bound about with a broad band of bright green, sewn with green stones. Golden rings jangled along the green reins.

  Wreathed in smoke, the rider appeared more startling than the horse. Huge and hideous as a giant ogre, skin, hair, and bushy beard as green as the horse’s hide, he rode fur-mantled and hooded. His arms were wrapped in green jeweled hoods that kings might wear. His spurs were golden, his belt covered with embroidered green silk sewn with green stones. In one green-gloved hand he carried a red-berried holly branch, in the other a huge battle-ax. The ax handle, bound about with iron bands, was wrapped in green lace. From his seat Gawain saw how sharp was the green steel blade.

  Knights, pages, squires, servants—everyone in the hall held breath as this apparition clattered past them to halt before Arthur’s dais.

  Gawain thought, Surely, this being is Fey!

  Everyone else seemed to hold the same thought. No one moved or spoke. Now the charger stood still. Only the crackle of the Yule fire was heard in King’s Hall…and the continuing, slow tinkle of Merlin’s harp, so soft that Gawain was not sure he heard it.

  A deep, cracked roar burst from the phantom’s green beard. In a strange, harsh accent he cried, “Where’s the chief of this gang?” As though he were not looking crowned Arthur in the face.

  No one rushed to answer. Arthur himself paused, collecting dignity like a cloak about him.

  He said slowly, “I am Arthur, head of this house.” ( Wisely spoke, Uncle!) “Dismount and join us at our New Year feast. Later we can talk of your errand. I suppose you want a fight.”

  “Nay, nay, help me, God! I came not here to quarrel. Or I would have brought my shining bright spear, my shield and helmet and sword.” The giant’s booming speech hesitated while he swallowed thick spittle.

  He continued, “You can see by this branch I bear that I come in peace. All men say that you are the finest King of the finest men in the world. If you are as fine as all men say, you will play the New Year game I offer you.” The Green Knight turned in his saddle to look around the hall. “But I doubt it. I see here only beardless boys.” No knight there, nor Arthur himself, raised voice or hand to this insult. Merlin’s harp played quietly on. The Green Knight turned back to Arthur. “But, ech, it’s Yule, and New Year, and you have a company here. So I offer you this game.

  “If any man in this house dare give a stroke and take a stroke, I shall hand him this ax.” He lifted and shook the green ax for all to note. “And I shall hold still for his stroke. Then he shall stand still for my stroke. But he shall have a year and a day to live before I strike.

  “There, that’s my game. Now let’s see any takers.”

  No one spoke or moved. Merlin’s harp played on, unheard.

  The Green Knight turned in his saddle and reeled his red eyes around the hall. He bent his bristling green brows in a scowl and wagged his green beard in mock merriment. “Hah!” And he rhymed:

  “What, can this be Arthur’s house,

  In many lands a story?

  Where now your pride, your wrath, your rage,

  Your often-vaunted glory?”

  And he burst into enormous laughter.

  Behind him, Merlin’s harp whispered on.

  Fury flushed Arthur’s face deep red under his crown. He stood up and cried, “Give me that ax! By God’s halo, I’ll crush every bone in your body!” He cast off his ermine mantle, threw it down across Gwenevere’s silken lap, and leaped down from the dais.

  Surprisingly agile for his size, the Green Knight dismounted and handed Arthur his ax. While Arthur tried its swing the Green Knight stroked his beard as though he’d been offered a drink, rather than death.

  Gawain sat appalled, frozen in shock. As if bound in a nightmare he watched the High King risk his life in this foolhardy way because no one of his bewitched knights could move. Barely, he managed to swivel his eyes toward Lancelot.

  Lancelot’s hands trembled on the Round Table. He leaned a little forward, striving to break the spell that bound them all.

  Gawain drew gasping breath. He, Gawain, must break the spell before Lancelot did!

  A hand touched his shoulder and sent energy surging through locked muscles. Like lightning, awakeness flooded his innards. He glimpsed Niviene, just lifting her small hand away.

  Gawain shot up off the bench. His locked throat opened. “Sire!” He yelled to Arthur. “Not right! Unseemly!”

  Intent on hefting the great green ax, Arthur yet heard him. He looked up and gestured for Gawain to come forward.

  Gawain stepped back over the bench and tried to hasten to the dais. Dizzy smoke seemed to trip him up. On his way he stumbled against several broad, seemingly paralyzed backs. The journey to the dais needed only a few strides, but Gawain arrived there panting.

  Meaning to drop to one knee before Arthur, he crashed down.

  “Sire.” His voice cracked like the giant’s. But he forced high, gallant language from his tongue. “It were unseemly that you, our High King, should risk your life on a game, while so many bold knights sit here about you.”

  Arthur nodded broadly to that.

  Gawain continued, firmer and clearer with every elegant word. “This business is not fitting for you, nor for any of your most wise a
nd skillful knights. All know that I am the least of your knights. My only virtue is that you are my uncle. Sire, give this game to me.”

  Arthur nodded to that. He could hardly refuse, for what Gawain said was simply true. He was too valuable for this foolish risk. He said, “God bless you, Nephew. May heart and hand be steady.” And he handed over the green ax.

  Gawain rose—more smoothly than he had knelt—and faced the giant.

  “Tell me your name,” the Green Knight roared. “I would know with whom I play!” His voice came hollow through the bristly green beard.

  “In truth,” Gawain answered with ceremonious courtesy, “I am called Gawain, I who offer you this blow, whatever may follow. And this time next year I will take your blow, with whatever weapon you choose.”

  “By God!” blustered the Green Knight. “You have well recited the covenant I asked of the King! Swear now by your Honor that you will seek me, a year from now, wherever you may find me, and take back the blow you give today.”

  “Where will I find you?” Gawain asked, testing and lifting the ax. “I know neither your name nor your country or home.”

  “After you have struck,” the Green Knight declared, “I will tell you that. And if I cannot tell you, then you’re the better off. Ha, ha! Much the better off! Come now, show me how you strike.”

  “Gladly, Sir, in truth.”

  Swiftly, for all his bulk, the Green Knight knelt down on two knees. He pushed down the neck of his fur mantle, pulled his bush of green hairs forward over his brow, and stretched out his neck.

  Gawain gave himself no time to doubt or fear. Quickly he gripped the lace-wrapped ax handle and heaved the ax high. Down it dove, cut through the giant’s neck as through cheese, and rang against the stone floor.

  The head fell, bounced, and rolled three feet away.

  Green blood fountained from the severed neck. The great green horse stepped a little aside, snorted, and defecated on the King’s Hall floor.