Gawain and Lady Green (11 page)

“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 and 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.

A sigh rose from the Round Table, but no shout of triumph or relief. And a good thing this was! For the Green Knight’s headless body neither slumped nor fell.

The Green Knight reached out, groping with both hands, one, two, three feet. He grasped the head by its hair and lifted it.

Then he stood up, set foot in stirrup and mounted.

With one hand he took up his reins. The other hand held out his head at arm’s length toward Gawain.

The closed eyelids lifted up. The gaping mouth hardly moved, but the head said clearly, “Look you now, Gawain; you had better do as you have vowed before all the knights in this hall. Men call me the Knight of the Green Chapel. Ask for the Green Chapel, you cannot fail to find me. So come, next New Year’s Day, or be called a coward forever.”

With this farewell the Green Knight turned his green charger and pressed his golden spurs. The charger burst from a standstill into a canter. Its shod hooves raised sparks from stone as it thundered past the Round Table and out the wide street doors as it had entered. And all the way the Green Knight’s corpse held out his open-eyed head at stiff arm’s length.

Merlin’s harp had been playing, unnoticed, since the Green Knight entered. Now he played a last, loud glissando, then stilled the harp strings.

King’s Hall awoke slowly. Knights found they could stir a finger, uncurl a lip. They drew breath and looked at each other.

King Arthur and Gawain stood stiffly together by the dais. Gawain leaned on his new battle-ax, which dripped slow, green slime on the floor.

With waking eyes, Gawain saw a holly branch in berry near his feet and, five feet away, a pile of steaming horse shit.

Arthur cleared his throat. “Well done, Nephew!” He laid an arm about Gawain’s shoulders. “Let your ax hang up here by Caliburn, where all can see it and admire your courage.” He gestured to a dazed servant to take and hang the ax.

He turned to Gwenevere, who sat like a white wooden statue, his shed mantle across her knees. His voice rose and took on assurance. “Dear Lady, look you not so dismayed! This is Yule time! Good it is at Yule to laugh, to sing carols, to act out plays.” Gwenevere managed a weak smile.

Arthur turned to the Round Table. “Now have we all seen a marvel, and an omen for the New Year. Let Mage Merlin interpret the omen.”

Merlin stood, stroked his beard, and thought. After a long moment he said, “Gawain has cut off the head of Enmity. Arthur’s Peace is well established. Yet danger may arise. Next New Year’s Day may find the Peace again at risk. Vigilance is ever called for.”

Arthur clapped loudly. He pulled a gold ring from his hand and went across to Merlin to deliver it himself. “And now, Round Table, let us feast.”

Horns blew. Doors opened; the feast marched in. Huge dish after fancy dish was paraded before the dais, then placed out on
the Round Table and lesser tables. Boar heads biting apples, swans re-dressed in shining feathers, all manner of breads and cakes filed past Gawain, famished only minutes ago; yet now, wreathed in delicious aromas, with little desire to indulge. Arthur murmured, “Go, Nephew. Feast. Show them a bold, hearty appetite!”

Arthur mounted the dais, took back his mantle from the pale Queen and sat down. Dazed, Gawain returned to his seat at the Round Table. A boar’s head sat on a pile of ham before him. Someone had already snatched the apple from its gaping jaws.

He reached for the ham, but the boar’s dead gaze woke words in his mind.
Look you, Gawain, you had better come to the Green Chapel next New Year’s Day. Or be called coward forever.

The boar’s dead eyes reminded him of moonlit heads nailed to oak trees in Satan’s Dun.

Hungry—starving—Gawain drew back his hand from the dish.

I am the Green Man

Who is the Tree

That shades and shelters

Mortality.

O
ne cold, dark noon last cold, dark winter, Ynis remarked, “Ma. Your cloud’s rosy.”

We sat in here where I sit now, remembering, under the smoke hole. Rather sadly, we choked down our last Brindle soup, old Brindle’s last gift to us. (If Granny had not bonked him in his sleep, someone else would have. Dogs were already scarce in hungry Holy Oak.)

Ynis squinted at me through smoke and said, “Your cloud’s rosy.”

Granny gave her a small, grim nod. “Your Ma’s got a Little in there.”

“In her stomach?”

“Where Littles grow.”

They talked on together, between themselves; not to me.

Ynis cocked her head, widened her eyes. “It’s got its own cloud!”

G
RANNY
: Aye. It’s got its own self.

Y
NIS
: Don’t look like a Little! Looks like a…fish.

G
RANNY
: Got a heap of growin’ to do. When it’s born it’ll look human.

Y
NIS
: What’s it eat?

G
RANNY
: What your Ma eats.

Y
NIS
(thoughtful): Oh-oh.

G
RANNY
(nodding): Aye.

Y
NIS
: Does it have a dad?

G
RANNY
: Most times Littles do.

Y
NIS
: Is it a he or a she?

G
RANNY
: You tell us.

Ynis came scrambling around the dead fire to me. Kneeling beside me, she placed both small hands on my stomach, then laid her ear there. Long she listened to Brindle soup gurgle within, to innards grind and air groan, to the flops and flips of the “fish” that I could not yet feel.

She lifted a disappointed face. “It’s a he.”

Disappointment chilled my bones, too.

Granny shrugged. “Goddess dreams up boys, too.”

For the first time Ynis’s dark, widened eyes met mine. “Ma. Do you want a boy Little from that bad dad?”

I folded thinning hands over my belly. I said, “Ynis. This is my Little, given me new and fresh from the Goddess Herself. And he need not answer for his dad. He need answer only for himself, and that only after he is grown.”

Across the dead fire, Granny nodded.

From that day she gave most of her dwindling food portions to Ynis, and to me, and to Dace within me.

Therefore Granny lies here now dying.

Midsummer morning sunlight slants through our thatch. I catch myself thinking that I must re-thatch. Such foolish thoughts mist into my mind, hoping to hide or soften this moment’s truth.

Sunlight dapples Granny’s pillow. It has not yet reached her sunken, wasted face. I think she may be gone before it does.

Drums sound from Fair-Field. The Tribe has been gathering all night for Midsummer. My jeweled green gown hangs ready, behind me. Soon as Granny goes I must rise quickly, dress, and bring the Goddess out to Fair-Field.

Should I fail, an eager substitute waits, a student druidess from Camp-Field Village. There creeps in another misty thought, to ease this dreadful moment!

For this moment, which should be solemn, is dreadful. Granny is going away. I am losing my Granny. Even now I am almost alone.

Not truly alone. Ynis sits cross-legged on Granny’s other side, dressed, like me, in her oldest rags. (Later, we will throw these rags away.) She waits and watches coolly, as I should, armed in ceremonial calm.

In his basket beside me, newborn Dace stretches soft, unswaddled legs and sighs.

No, I am not alone. But after this I shall be chief of our family. I shall stand alone between heaven and earth, Gods and men, and these children, even as I stand now between heaven and our Tribe.

Granny gasps. Ynis leans forward, interested. “Ma,” she whispers, “look at her cloud.”

Granny’s gray aura fades and shrinks with every gasp. I groan. Granny slits filming eyes to look at me. I mutter, “My fault!”

Granny should dispute this. She should comfort me. I think she can still speak. Or she could wag a finger. She only watches me with her fading squint.

I moan. “A fair harvest last fall, and you would be dressing now for Midsummer!”

Yet this was not all my fault. It was his fault! It was the Gods’ fault! Did I not lead him before Their very altar, show him to Them, show Them what I meant to do? They could have stopped us! Then, we were already past the guards. But the Gods could have sent an omen. The Green Man could have swung out of the oaks and torn us to shreds. The Gods were silent. They let me lead him away south. Only then, only after that, came the relentless rains that rotted the grain and the fall peas.

It was his fault! To save his precious life and blood he ran away. He left the Tribe to starve. Anger tightens my breath till I gasp.

“Gwyn…”

I startle. “Granny?”

“Don’t…call…Spirit here.”

“Spirit?”

“Evil. When you think of him…Spirit comes…storm cloud. Not now, Gwyn.”

“Oh. I think I know…” That spirit. My nameless Demon.

“You know! Can’t see…can feel.”

Aye. I feel it now, settling over my head like last summer’s clouds.

“Every time you think…Gawain…”

“Gawain!” I spit the name out like poison.

“Spirit comes. Eats anger. Steals power.”

I lean closer, shading Granny’s pillow from creeping sunshine. “Granny! It promises me more power!”

“Lies. That one gives little. Takes all.” Granny gapes and rattles.
“It’ll harvest you, Gwyn. You’ll be…an empty pod…when it is through. Took me years to…be me again.”

That’s right. Granny knows. “How do I fend it off? What should I do?”

“Think…good.”

Think good. This moment, this hut is my world. And there is nothing good in this world to think of.

Granny whispers, “Think…Goddess. You will be Goddess soon.”

Aye, out in Fair-Field in full Midsummer sun. Now, that hardly seems real.

“Think…Ynis.”

I glance across Granny at Ynis. Calmly she returns my gaze.

My child sits erect in rough rags, her braid newly neat down her slender back, her soft, lovely face thoughtful as a matron’s.

“Ynis will bring joy…” Aye. She will. Already she has brought joy.

“Think…Dace.”

I look down at Dace in his basket. He wiggles, kicks, squirms, and screws up his sleeping face to cry.

Most newborns lie swaddled, bound to a board. Folk say they feel safer like that, warm and confined, as in the womb. And they are certainly quieter than my babes. Granny would not let me swaddle mine. “Binds up their spirit,” she said, when Ynis was born. “Keeps ’em always a bit sleepy, all their life. Like they can’t stretch out just all the way.”

Now Dace opens his wee pink mouth and cries. I gather him up, with all his squirms and wiggles. I open my rags and set him to my
breast. The pink mouth grabs and pulls. Sweetness flows through me, around me.

“There,” Granny murmurs, “it’s going now.”

I feel it going, the dark cloud moving away, disappointed. But I tell Granny, “It can’t go far. It lives in me.”

“Sure,” Granny gasps. “Sure it does. Whole world lives…in you…. Listen.”

I stoop down over Dace to hear the next faint, slow words.

“Wed. Father for babes.”

Ynis leans down and says, “Merry is my Da, Granny.”

“Wed…Merry. Guide…Tribe…together. Old One…old Druid… he will not last long…”

I remember a forgotten message. “Granny! He came to bless you. You were asleep.”

“Think I didn’t see? Saw…Death Wings…on his shoulders! Can’t last long.”

“Granny, does the sun bother you?” Creeping, thatch-dappled sunshine has reached Granny’s face. She squints, turns her head away.

“See you! Children, sit me up. Up!”

Granny grasps Ynis’s hand. With a vast effort she pulls herself upright and reaches out for my hand. I settle Dace across my knees, my breast still in his mouth, and take her hand. Cold! Out of the sunlight her eyes open wide and take in my face. “There…I can breathe…” For moments. Granny’s aura has misted from her body entirely. The last of it wreathes her white hair, ready to float away.

“You and Merry…rule Tribe for good of all.”

“Be sure of that.”

“Or won’t rule long. Keep Secret.”

“Oh, yes!”

“She forgives you. Forgive self.” (The unforgiving Goddess forgives? For the first time ever, Granny must be mistaken. She mistakes her own kind and mortal heart for that of the Goddess.)

“Beware…Demon. Don’t…let it harvest you.”

The hut door unlatches itself and swings open. Sunlight floods in, along with brighter light.

“That one…May King…forget. Think children. Tribe. Gods. Ah.”

Granny’s filmed eyes turn from my face to the doorway. “You!” I see there only sunlight, and brighter light. “Knew you’d come!” To me, Granny breathes, “You live for me.” She sinks back on the sun-speckled pillow. Her breath rattles harshly. We watch the last of her aura drift away through the open door.

Moments later, or a long time later, the rattle stops.

Dace has been squirming, complaining of my breast in his face. I sit up straight and let go Granny’s stony hand.

Ynis lets go the hand she holds. She stands up, shakes herself, and stretches. That’s one task finished.

I ask her, “Who came? Who took Granny away?”

“Dunno, Ma. Just light.”

“I saw light, too.”

Sternly, little Ynis tells me, “You gotta dress, now.”

“Aye.” But I do not move, except to lift Dace to my shoulder and burp him.

“You gotta get out there.”

The Fair-Field drums sound louder.
Come!
they call.
Hurry!
If
I do not go soon, the student druidess from Camp-Field will be the Goddess.

But I can’t move. It is as though my soul has gone away with Granny into light, and all that sits here is…as Granny said, an empty pod. Ma!

“I can’t move.”

Ynis cocks her head, plants small fists on her hips. “You gotta move. Now.” Her aura shoots up around her, high as the thatch— maybe beyond the thatch. It fills the whole hut with silver light.

(When Ynis was born I marveled at her huge aura. But Granny said calmly, “Sure, a Little’s aura can be stronger than a druid’s. Maybe she was a druid, last time.”)

Now I see it expanded as never before. I hold Dace off from my shoulder and see his new, vague eyes wide open, eager, drinking in this light.

Ynis comes carefully around to me, holding up her ragged tunic so as not to touch the corpse. She stands behind me and sets her two little hands on my two shoulders.

Energy flows down through me such as I have not felt in years: the over-spilling energy of childhood, joined with awesome, druidic energy. If my body were the world, it would have swung in this moment from Midwinter to Midsummer.

Satisfaction oils Ynis’s harsh young voice. “Now you can move!”

“Ech, aye!” Yet I hold the dead hand a little longer; I pat it, kiss it, let go slowly.

“Ma!”

“You take Dacie.”

Ynis swoops, catches Dace from my shoulder, and plunks him
against her own bony shoulder. He wails. But I need not tell her to hold his wobbling head steady. She’s already a practiced hand.

“Now, Ma.”

“Aye.” I look my last on Granny’s dead face. This worn, starved face was the Goddess’s face for me, for the Tribe. Now, the Goddess’s face must be my own.

I rise up. I take the largest of our stacked mats and lay it over the corpse.

Ynis says, “I’ll help you dress.”

“Aye.” I take command. “You’ll help, for sure. Run Dace over to Aesa’s hut, she can take care of him. Then throw a cloak over those rags, and run out to Fair-Field. Tell the head drummer I come, and he must drum without pause till I come. This will give Granny time to pass from our midst.”

“Aye, Ma!” Ynis looks a little taken aback, but relieved to see me take charge.

“Then run back here and change your dress.” I lift it down from the ridgepole for her. “Put it on front in front, back in back, all by yourself. And don’t get soot on it! Remember all of this. All of this matters.”

“Of course I’ll remember.”

“You are a good girl, Ynis. At this time you need to be especially good.”

“I know that.”

“And say nothing, at the Field, about…Granny. No talk of Death at the feast of Life.”

“I know that.”

I hear myself say in Granny’s own voice, “Sure you know!”

Alone with the corpse, I latch the door and take off my rags: my work clothes of many years, too wretched to hoe or harvest in, and now stained and smirched with death. After the festival I will burn them.

Out in Fair-Field, the shrill of pipes joins the drums.

Granny had a treasure she kept hidden in the chest behind everything else: a mirror, old and foreign, a relic of some long-ago raid or trade. She used it for magic. Now, so shall I.

I bring it out and hang it from the roof, as she used to do. Naked, I stand before it.

I stand there before myself: tall, large-boned, thin. All through the past, thin year Gawain cost us, Granny gave her food to us, to Ynis and Dace and me. Now Ynis and Dace are perfect, Granny is dead, and I am thin. When Dace was born I was amazed to find myself so light! I was never thin before, and I have not yet learned thinness. I do not yet feel like my real self.

The mirror shows me skin sagging over bones, and full breasts, thank the Goddess! Hair rich and red as ever, all that seems left of my old self; sad, angry gray eyes; and a gray aura.

Those eyes, that aura, must change. Now.

I am about to put on my ceremonial green gown, green crown and jewels. I am about to take up my barley sheaf and walk out onto Fair-Field as the Goddess embodied.

The Goddess may never forgive; but never is She angry or sad. She will not enter a sad, angry body with a gray aura, no matter how many holy verses and prayers I repeat.

And I have not much time.

I step close to the scarred, dented mirror, look close into my own eyes. Granny said,
Forget
. But before I forget, I need to remember. Remembrance is the door to Forgetting.