Guinevere

by Sharan Newman

“Peace be to you,” she responded. “I suppose you have brought your usual company with you.”

  He nodded.

  “There is a crock of honey mead by the house and new-baked bread for you,” she called to the air.

  Immediately, the throng around Geraldus disappeared.

  “And this is Leodegrance and Guenlian’s baby.” She held Guinevere at arm’s length, staring fiercely into her eyes. “She doesn’t favor anyone in the family whom I ever met. So, you are making us a visit? Are you willing to help with our work and obey our rules? It will not be what you are used to and I, for one, will not pamper you.”

  Guinevere had no doubt of it. Trembling a little, she answered, “I will do as you do, as far as I am able.”

  Gaia released her. “Good. We will see that you are not given tasks above your ability.”

  She turned away and began to discuss old friends with Geraldus. Guinevere felt she had been dismissed. She stood apart, feeling ignored and hurt. The conversation was animated. It appeared that Gaia knew Merlin well and had a high opinion of him. This didn’t make Guinevere feel any better. Also, they had once been host to Arthur, when he was a boy.

  “Yes,” Gaia was saying. “Merlin brought him for a short stay. He was a pleasant boy: didn’t talk much but was curious about everything. He spent more time with Timon than with me. I can’t believe he’s grown up to be a warrior; a man whose job it is to kill and destroy.”

  “He’s a good man,” Geraldus answered stoutly, “though still very young. His duty now is to drive out the invaders, to make this island safe for ones such as we, who will not fight. I don’t believe he glories in battle.”

  “I hope not,” Gaia answered grimly. “I would hate to regret ever having given him shelter.”

  All this time, Guinevere had been standing by the house, outwardly docile and inwardly raging. She had worked herself up to a fit of righteous fury when she saw a man step out of the woods. Her jaw dropped. If Gaia had been surprising, Timon was unbelievable.

  He was an enormous man, as tall as his sister and wider. He looked like a great, brown bear, with thick hairy arms and legs and a flowing beard that covered his face and twined itself into his shoulder-length hair. Guinevere half expected him to spring at her, growling and gnashing his teeth.

  He gave a huge grin when he saw her face and stopped a good distance away.

  “Is this the little girl come to visit us?” he asked and his voice was so soft and gentle, coming from his rough face, that Guinevere almost wept with relief.

  Gaia stopped her conversation and returned to Guinevere. “Of course it is, brother. Why don’t you get her baggage and show her the place we have for her in our home.”

  “Guenlian has sent far more luxurious things than she should have, I fear,” she added to Geraldus. “We will not chide her now about them, but slowly try to wean her from a love of worldly things.”

  “You will have a hard time weaning that one from a love of comfort,” Geraldus replied jokingly. “She has been surrounded by it so completely that it would never occur to her that there was any other way to live. Don’t mistake me,” he added hastily. “She is not indolent or haughty. I am truly fond of her. She has just known one way of life and believes that all people would live that way, unless, like you, they deliberately choose another.”

  Gaia only shook her head at such ignorant innocence.

  Geraldus spent the night and departed the next morning, enriched by gifts of honey and mead and with his chorus dancing happily about him. Guinevere sighed as she watched him go. She felt that her last hope of rescue was gone.

  It was not really as bad as her misery made it seem. Life with Gaia and Timon was much better than with most hermits. They were not really as fanatic as was the fashion. They lived in a clean, dry home and washed their clothes in the stream. They ate such food as nature provided and were not above improving their vegetables by cooking them and even adding herbs. Timon even used the honey and angelica to make mead, a sweet and potent sort of liquor. Still, their days were guided by prayer, work, and meditation in even amounts, and it was a hard change for Guinevere.

  They awoke at dawn and prayed in the clearing as the sun rose, thanking God for the gift of the day. Then they each worked for an hour or two before eating a breakfast of eggs, honey, and bread. Then they went to a private place to pray again and to ponder the mysteries of the universe. At least this is what Gaia did when she meditated. Guinevere couldn’t imagine Timon wondering about such things.

  At first she had rebelled, though silently, at the life. The jobs given her were not difficult, but she felt they were menial. The sight of Gaia washing her own clothes was enough to stifle her protests, but not enough to cause her to resign herself to the work.

  The constant solitude irritated her, too. At first the command, “Find a quiet spot, free from distractions and there meditate,” had seemed ridiculous. Obediently she had gone a little way into the forest, found a pleasant spot under a pine tree and composed herself to think of religious matters. But she didn’t know how to start. The prayers one recited each day at mass and at vespers somehow weren’t right out here. Oddly enough, she could only think of Ovid and his story of creation, the Golden Age of men and gods.

  **

  The years went by in peace and Earth, untroubled,

  Unharried by hoe or plowshare, brought forth all

  That men had need for, and those men were happy,

  Cherries or black caps and the edible acorns,

  Spring was forever and a west wind blowing

  Softly across the flowers no man had planted,

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and there were rivers

  Of milk and rivers of honey, and golden nectar

  Dripped from the dark-green oak tree.

  **

  That story had always been dearer to her than those in the bible. She had been studying the Metamorphoses all summer and loved it. She could almost see the happy men and gods laughing together in the untainted forest. The oak across from her shimmered as if about to pour forth the golden nectar. Streaks of sunlight dappled the air. Guinevere murmured the words, the rich Latin softened by her British tongue. The stillness was perfect and beautiful. Her eyes closed.

  She awakened sometime later with the feeling that someone was watching her. She had felt this often recently and it made her vaguely uneasy. She had been dreaming again, something heart-breakingly joyous, and it had hurt her to wake. There was only a wisp of her dream left, something about mingled silver and gold and a feeling of great speed and freedom. She tried to grasp it a moment longer, but it was gone.

  Timon and Gaia had a strict rule that meditation must never be interrupted, and that was probably why no one had come looking for her. But she feared they would be angry and think she was shirking her duty if she stayed away so long. She hurriedly gathered her robes about her and tried to smooth her hair. As she left, she thought she heard a sound, as of some large animal, in the woods behind her. She turned to look. There was a thicket of bushes and vines to the left of the path. The leaves shivered. She saw a splash of silver and then it was gone.

  She made her way back slowly, wondering. She had no fear of this thing, only deep curiosity and a strange longing.

  “What can it be, this silver light? Why does it follow me but never let me catch it?”

  She returned to the same place for the next few days. But she saw nothing more.

  After a week or two, Guinevere became accustomed to the pattern of life at the hermitage and, oddly enough, she found that she enjoyed it. She wasn’t given much work to do and she could hardly continue to resent having to wash dishes or help prepare the meals when her hosts, as wellborn as she, did so too.

  She grew to love Timon, who had at first seemed so huge and menacing. He was a gentle, easygoing person with no pretensions, either of holiness or nobility. He rumbled about in his garden or among his bees in perfect contentment.

  Guinevere preferred working with
him, even though it was more strenuous, to staying in the dark hut, enduring Gaia’s silence and accusing stares. Gaia always spoke civilly to Guinevere and was never unkind, but her whole manner was as forbidding as if she had raged at the child and beaten her. There was an air of barely controlled passion about Gaia, which Guinevere, who liked her emotions placid, could never get used to.

  So she made a habit of offering to help Timon in the garden every morning. He made her a hoe from a stick and a sharp stone, tied together with a complicated array of knots, and he helped her whittle a shorter stick into a dibble for planting winter grain.

  “Why don’t you make it longer?” she asked. “I have to keep bending over and it hurts my back.”

  “A lot of reasons,” he told her with a grin. “It’s good for man to bow over the earth. You can see it better; you can smell its richness and, as you look down, you can give thought to the words of the scriptures, ‘Dust ye be and unto dust shall ye return.’”

  “That is gruesome,” Guinevere said. “I am not at all sure that I came from dust and I don’t mean to think about turning back into part of someone’s garden.”

  He laughed again. “I find the thought rather pleasant, myself. One day I shall be part of the corn, making bread for unborn children to grow strong on. However, I trust you won’t need to consider the matter for many years to come. Nevertheless, it will do you no harm to kneel close to the earth. Your eyes are more often on the sky.”

  Guinevere took the reprimand from him meekly, even though she once would have been furious if anyone other than her parents had spoken to her so.

  “It’s not just the sky that I look at,” she tried to explain. “The sky itself is boring, so empty and constantly blue; but the clouds, racing across the sunlight; the changing patterns they make on the leaves and grass, especially when the wind is wild. Sometimes, when I lie under the great oak trees at the top of the hill over there, when the sun is bright and the wind dancing all about, I believe I can hear music!”

  She stopped a moment to see if Timon was laughing at her fancy, but his face showed only gentle understanding. So she went on.

  “The ground contains many marvels, I know. I have considered the mystery of the blade of grass and the blind earthworm,” she sighed. Their priest was very fond of drawing morals from the least of God’s creatures. “But there is something about the things that move freely upon and above the earth that pleases me more. When I see a flock of geese streaming above me or catch a deer in the woods a moment before it leaps from sight—I don’t know—I ache for them. I want to sprout wings or hooves and follow and follow.”

  She paused, a little embarrassed. She had never told anyone of that before, had hardly put it into words herself. Until she came to the hermitage, her days had been too occupied to allow more than the vaguest feeling of longing for . . . what? She smiled shyly at Timon. He smiled back in perfect understanding.

  “How old are you, Guinevere?”

  “Thirteen, last month.”

  “Ah,” his voice was tender. “You are growing up. Not just in your body, everyone must do that, but in your heart. There are new questions that your childhood answers won’t fit. You are beginning to feel the force of the world beyond yourself. Ah, well. I’ve always thought that in this well-ordered universe there must be answers for everything somewhere, if we know how to find them. Just don’t grieve if the answers don’t seem to be the right ones. You might not be asking the right question.”

  Guinevere nodded amiably and went on hoeing. She understood little of his philosophizing but enjoyed hearing him speak. Long years later, she would remember his words when the questions became dire and the answers were all wrong.

  • • •

  One morning, a few days later, they were surprised to hear the sound of a horse approaching up the narrow path. Guinevere rushed out with an expectant smile. Surely it was someone to see her, perhaps to bring her home! But as the rider came nearer she realized that this man had never been to Guenlian’s home. He must have been a monk. He was wrapped in a brown robe that may have once been gray wool but had probably only felt the touch of water when its owner had been caught out in a storm. In the bright sunlight, the filth ground into it shimmered a slimy green. Guinevere wondered if she would be obliged to receive a kiss of peace from him. She shuddered. The hands holding the reins were nearly as grimy as the robe. She heard Gaia come out behind her and sensed from the sudden gasp that she was not pleased with the visitor either. Gaia was as repulsed by filth as she was.

  Suddenly, Gaia strode past Guinevere, brushing against her roughly. She held up her hand as if to repel the man as he drew nearer.

  “Begone!” she shrieked. “You are no longer welcome in our home, Nennius. We warned you never to return!”

  The horse halted. The man threw back his hood, revealing a fine Roman nose and eyes startlingly blue. Nothing more could be seen of his face for the brown mat of beard which covered it. His hair stuck to his forehead and glistened like his robe. He smiled; his teeth were stained and crooked.

  “Now Gaia,” he whispered. “You have no call for such a lack of hospitality to a fellow Christian.”

  Guinevere started. His voice was cultivated and proud, each word formed as if chiseled in stone.

  Gaia grew stiff in her rage. “Christian! The word is desecrated by your tongue! Temptor! Purveyor of filth! Hypocrite! Go at once! Return to your decadent world. You shall never cross our threshold again!”

  His smile faded. “You are as closeminded and foolish as ever, Gaia. I will go if you really wish it. But I do not come alone, my dear. I have brought many worthy friends with me.”

  He patted the leather bag slung behind him.

  “Look, my Gaia,” his voice caressed her. “Gospels, saints’ lives, even a copy of Pastoral Care and the new one by Boethius. Wouldn’t you like a discussion with Dame Philosophia?”

  His leering eyes never left hers as his fingers fumbled with the strings of the bag. Gaia stood stiff with hatred and yet seemed almost mesmerized. Violently she pulled her face away from his gaze. She threw a last epithet at him over her shoulder and raced back to the hut. She stumbled over the lintel and yanked the door shut behind her.

  Timon had arrived to see her exit. He strode up to the monk, his face more stern than Guinevere had ever seen it. He grasped the reins tightly and turned the unresisting horse back down the trail.

  “See what you have done to my poor sister,” he chided. “Why do you return to torment her?”

  “Do you see what your sister has done to me?” Nennius answered. “What other man would wait as I have for so many years?”

  “Only a fool, Nennius,” Timon answered. “Only a fool. You know Gaia better than anyone left on earth and yet you come here every year bringing the two things which tempt her most. You are cruel beyond words.”

  “Cruel? Foolish? I am not the one. Let her ask God what she has made of me through all these years. Would He not have planned better things for us both? It is she who is the fool to waste our lives; and you for supporting her in her insanity! Bah! I am sick with it.” He ended suddenly.

  “I will be back next summer; and the next and every year until I am too feeble to climb the path. She will give way yet. Good-bye, Timon. Watch over her. God and eternity will show us who the fools are.”

  Guinevere had stood astonished throughout the interchange, and she might have been a tree in the forest for all the attention anyone had paid her. She only started to come to life again after Nennius and his horse had disappeared once more into the trees. Timon turned around and only then seemed to realize that she was there and had witnessed the entire scene. He came and put his arm around her gently. From inside the hut could be heard the sound of wild, bitter sobbing, choked in vain.

  “Let’s walk for a time, Guinevere,” Timon whispered. “She doesn’t want us now.”

  The day was ripening and the woods about them were busy with the scurry of birds and animals. Summer would s
oon be over and the squirrels were busy filling hollow trees. They didn’t care about strange human grief. Everything was preparing for the winter. A hard one, Tim guessed; the birds were already migrating, weeks ahead of their time.

  They wandered quietly for a while, both pondering what had happened. Finally they came to her space in the woods, the little stone seat beneath the tree. He motioned her to sit and then paced back and forth across the clearing several times before he decided to speak.

  “You need some explanation for this and I will tell you only if you realize that it is a sacred secret, never to be spoken of again, even to me. Above all, you must never let Gaia know I told you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  He stood for a while, trying to find words to explain. How could she understand? Finally, he began.

  “Gaia has truly loved only two things in her life, books and that man, Nennius. She cares for me, of course, but not the way she loves him. Yes, still. She denies it but I know. She could live happily without me anytime. Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t send me away, too. You can’t imagine how she was when she was younger. I was always the stupid one; strong but not much for learning. In another time I might have been bought subcommand of a legion. I’m glad it was too late for that. But Gaia! She was brilliant and so beautiful!”

  “She still is,” Guinevere interrupted.

  “Yes, she is still both. And that is her great grief. It’s all the fault of that philosopher Pelagius! When his theories came to her she dove in, arguing them with every scholar who visited. I don’t understand them! Even if I did, I don’t see that it much matters whether Christ was man or god or a bit of both. Then more preachers came, each one gloomier than the last, all telling us how to live a Christian life and divest ourselves of the worldly goods we loved so sinfully. Gaia listened and debated and read the scriptures and all the commentaries she could find. In the end she got the idea that she was doomed to everlasting torment if she didn’t give up the ways of the flesh. But hot baths and cool wine never mattered to her, it was all Ovid and Lucretius and Plutarch and Virgil and, of course, Nennius. You mustn’t think he was always like that, all filthy and smelling. He does that . . . well, I don’t really understand that, either. Anyway, he was once a nice, clean-shaven Roman and a brilliant philosopher, too. They were betrothed by their own decision and our families were pleased. They seemed to be very happy in their own argumentative way. But then she decided that if she loved a thing, it must be sinful. She kept fretting because she couldn’t get close to God while so surrounded by the World. She gave up all her books, even the Scriptures. She says that if she reads even one holy word all the wicked voluptuous ones will all come back to her. She daren’t even be near a book. Every waking moment she prays that the longing will be taken from her. And, although she has never said a word, I think she fears that if she ever lets Nennius pass over our doorstep, her longing for him will be too strong to deny.”