Gawain and Lady Green (2 page)

Gawain shrugged politely. “They usually reap a good crop.”

“They? Who’s ‘they’? Aren’t you in on this yourself?”

How ignorant could even a northern savage be? “I…no, Lady Granny. I am a knight.”

“So what do you do, Knight?”

“I fight for my King.”

“All the time?”

“I hunt with my King. I feast at his Round Table. I hold myself ready to serve him.”

“And that’s all you do?”

“Lady, I am a skilled, strong fighter.”

“Aye, I can see that.” Twirl, twirl went the busy thread.

Unbidden, the child piped up. “He’s famous, Granny. There’s songs about him. Ma told me.” Her voice grated unchildishly.

“Ynis,” the old lady snapped, “mind your thread.”

Lady Green’s little girl sat on the chopping block beside the hut door. Her small, tapered fingers twirled the thread awkwardly. Even Gawain’s untrained eye observed knots and uneven, fraying sections in it.

Unused to children, Gawain put her age at six, maybe seven years. He marveled that young, fresh Lady Green was old enough to have birthed this child. Ynis was dark as her mother was bright, thin as her mother was buxom. Her round child’s face—even missing two front teeth—gave promise of beauty to surpass her mother’s. Gawain had noticed before this her awkwardness, her uneasiness with common tasks and skills.

Now she looked up from the troublesome thread and feasted her eyes on the barley field below the village.

“Feasted her eyes,” Gawain mused, was the right phrase. Her
strange, unchildish gaze wondered and widened. The half-size distaff dropped unheeded in her gray wool lap.

“Look, Granny,” she said dreamily. “She’s out there now.”

Lady Granny swung around abruptly. She shaded her eyes and followed the child’s gaze. “Aye,” she breathed. “So She is.” And her bobbin hung idle.

Curious, Gawain turned on his stool to look out over the land.

The village of unkempt thatched huts squatted on a plateau looking three ways. Northward stretched pastureland, dotted with groves and herds. Northeast lay the Fair-Field, the place of concourse for this and two other villages. East along the stream straggled the all-important crops: fields and fenced patches of grains, peas, and beans, crisscrossed with trails. Now, between the trails, a soft green spread across brown, tilled earth as the seeds sprouted.

(South, behind the village, rose a great, dark oak grove where folk did not go. Lady Green kept a bower there, a wee hut where she lay with Gawain on rainy nights. From a low wing of this grove Gawain had burst so rashly upon the busy Fair-Field, ages ago. Gazing now, he thought he saw again the crowded field, the bright maypole, and himself on his white Warrior, trotting confidently into the midst, making for the nearest table. He shook his head, growled at himself, and dismissed the fancy.)

Today the Fair-Field stretched empty but for a near band of boys hunting rabbits and a far flock of strayed sheep.

Eastward the crops broke earth, reaching their fresh, sweet greenness to the sun. Not even Gawain, born noble and raised for
knighthood, could look upon this rising life and promise entirely unmoved. A primal, unthought joy drew heart up out of body for a moment, and in that moment he prayed,
God-thank.

Small Ynis piped, “She’s getting bigger. Look, Granny. She was like a person, a…a mother. Standing in the peas. Now She’s like a tree. Watch Her spread out!”

“Aye,” Lady Granny said calmly, “She can spread like mist, or cloud. She can cover the world. Or She can dance on your little finger.”

What She? Straining his eyes, Gawain saw only sunshine and spring-greening crops. An invisible, suspicious finger touched his mind. He shivered.

“There, She’s fading…like a rainbow.” Disappointment lowered the child’s voice.

“She don’t really fade,” Granny explained. “’Tis but our sight fades. She’s still there.”

Granny jiggled her bobbin back into action. Ynis looked to Gawain. (Anywhere but to her tangled thread!) She remarked, “His cloud’s a mighty funny color.”

Granny’s shrewd old eyes crinkled at Gawain. “Mind your manners, Ynis. And your thread.”

To Gawain she said lightly, “Don’t you be feared of us, Son.”

Gawain, feared? Feared of these two crazies? He stiffened angrily.

Ynis said, “See? Now his cloud’s turned all red.”

“We’re just two crazies,” Granny confirmed his thought. “Just touched, that’s all we are. Dreamin’ together.”

That was plain to see. These two dreamed in daylight? Let them. It was their village, Gawain sat on their stool, and would soon
drink their mead. He could hear Lady Green now moving about inside the hut, preparing it.

Gawain drew a calming breath. He had no cause for anger. Or fear.

“Now his cloud’s brighter,” Ynis observed.

Granny asked her sweetly, “You want a clout on the ear?”

Ynis fell silent.

If only the whole village did not seem touched! It was fine to be looked on as some sort of angel or pagan God, to be revered and bowed to and politely pushed to the head of every line. That was but a knight’s due among poor, ignorant savages. But, ech! Uneasily, Gawain knew they did not revere him as knight, as noble, or as King’s Companion. They did not honor his warrior’s fame, as would be only right.

Something here was amiss, mysterious. The whole village seemed somehow…off.

Ech. He would have to humor them. Here he sat, unarmed in their midst. And they did him no harm. To the contrary! Southward, King Arthur in his Dun reigned no more comfortably than Sir Gawain, May King, reigned here in Holy Oak.

And yet, if only he had a horse…Leather hinges creaked. His Lady Green stooped through the hut doorway, a brimming mug cradled in her hands. She smiled at him, and all the day’s bright sunshine brightened still more.

Dressed in a sober gray workaday gown, she yet wore green about her: a leaf bracelet, one green-stone ring, one green-stemmed wind flower caught in her swinging red braid. (At night she always came to Gawain gowned and girdled in green.)

She rested a hand on Granny’s shoulder, stepped down from doorsill to ground, and straightened. Dignified as Queen Gwenevere herself, she walked toward Gawain, smiling, holding out the mug of brimming mead. Something in her calm, free walk stirred a memory. Somewhen, someone Gawain had loved had walked like that. But who? But when?

Come, Sir!
(said his talkative Inner Mind).
You are but twenty-six, you cannot have forgotten that much yet!

But it would not come to him.

Tell you one thing
(Inner Mind spoke again),
you’ve never lain with a woman like this one before!

He reached out for the mug, drawing nearer.

Experience there, for all she’s so young. She’s taught you much already.

So, what are you grumbling about? Accept this summer as an adventure! An enterprise old Merlin can sing about. “Gawain, May King!” That’s the song he’ll sing one day. The whole kingdom will sing it. For now, enjoy!

Gawain looked up into Lady Green’s shining, smiling eyes. He took the mug she offered and gulped its contents to the dregs.

Night rain-music is my favorite sound.

Night rain sings softly of summer, of growing crops, of sleep— and so, of love.

I lie here against my May King, head on his arm. Deeply he breathes beside me, catching back well-spent breath. His heart flutters under my hand like a caught bird.

My bower bends low above us. I look up into its arched
branches by dim lamplight. Up there, thick thatch I gathered and bound, dried, and laid catches rain and sends it sliding away all richly wet.

Above in the rain-sweet dark, ancient oaks guard the bower. Heavy in my happy body, I listen to night rain whisper joy in their leaves.

An owl calls, sudden and near. From the eastern edge of the grove, another answers.

My May King starts. He turns to me, draws me closer. The lamp sputtering beside our pallet shows me his smile, his slowly opening eyes.

He is one strange fellow, this Sir Gawain from the south!

I have known men. But never a man so rigid-proud in body and mind.

Despite his pride, he knows nothing. When he first came, he could not even understand speech easily.

Like a young child—like my daughter, Ynis—he most often speaks to ask a question. Ynis asks, “Why do we have to card wool?” Gawain asks, “Why do folk stay away from the oak grove?” No one past toddling should need to ask such questions!

Angry once, in his quick, easy anger, he told me I would need to ask questions in his world! “You think me child-ignorant?” He spluttered. “You go south to Arthur’s Dun, lady, we’ll see who’s the child there!”

A good thing it is I will never have to try that out.

But I myself do not know quite everything. There are things I have been wondering about him.

Now as his eyes open wide gray in lamplight, his lips open to question. I lay a finger across them, and he stills.

“My turn to question, May King. I want to know a thing, and it is this: How came you here to this place, to Holy Oak village, out of the south?” I lift my finger away to let him answer.

“I came a-horse, Lady Green.”

I love that name! Lady Green can only be the mirror of the Green Goddess! I will be Lady Green only and always for him. And because he gave me this sweet, so-dignified name a loving bard might have invented, I like his name too. I speak it now with teasing tenderness. “Gawain, I know full well that you came a-horse!”

“And I have asked the headman, and Merry the druid—”

“The student druid. It takes years to turn druid.”

“I have asked them both to replace my butchered charger; for they two seem more the leaders here than any others. I know you have horses at pasture.”

“Not chargers, Gawain. Ponies.”

“Aye, little northern ponies no winter lack can kill. I’ve seen your herds out there. Better a pony than afoot!”

“But I asked you, how did you come here. You said you were spying the land.”

“Mapping. Learning. Not spying.”

“But the north country is huge, Gawain. How did you come out right there, on that edge of the grove by the Fair-Field? When you had the wide north and west to roam.”

“Ech. As to that, I followed a doe here.”

“Ah?”

“A white fallow doe. I saw her from afar, white against dark trees. The first trees I had seen all day.”

“White. You’re sure she was white.”

“Milk-white. Snow-white. And I was a-hungered, Lady Green!”

I chuckle. “Well I remember you hungry!”

“So I clapped spur after her. And she ran into this grove and disappeared. And there was the Fair-Field.”

“I see…” I see more and farther than Gawain will ever guess.

“And had I known you wanted a May King to help the crops grow, I would have turned back away, unseen!”

“You are ungallant, May King!” He taught me this peevish, lilting phrase that southern ladies use in his King’s Dun.

“No.” His arm comes around me heavy as iron, warm as June. “It is well enough. I am content. We two go well together.”

In truth!

“But you’re wearing me out, I’ll admit that.”

“Nothing a night’s rest won’t cure.”

“Maybe. But tell me, how can a man rest beside you, Lady Green?”

“Now that’s gallant.”

“But answer me this.” Ech, here comes a question! “A thing I’ve wondered. If I’m the May King, I help the crops grow, and everyone bows to the ground to me…”—An exaggeration—“…could I lie with any woman but you, May Queen? Supposing you were ugly and angry as a spider? Could I lie elsewhere?”

Strange, how an icicle pricks my heart!

I lie silent. Night rain sings in oak leaves and thatch. Gawain’s arm weighs down my waist.

“Lady Green?”

At last I answer. “Yes. You could. You can do anything you want.”

“Anything at all.”

“Almost. No one will refuse you anything. Certainly not something as harmless as that.”

“The headman and Student Merry refuse me a horse!”

“They want to keep you here with us. We all do.”

“For your God-blasted crops!” Quick anger rises in his voice.

“For our Goddess-blessed crops.” Wipe out the blasphemy She may have heard.

Quick, now. Turn his quick anger away.

Light-voiced, I tease. “You can lie with anyone you want, Gawain, but I warn you. Better not!”

His arm tightens on my waist as he chuckles. “Now you sound like a woman of my own country. A wedded wife.”

I am somewhat curious about the women Gawain has known. “You say that gravely, Gawain. In your country, what does a wedded wife do?”

“She keeps her husband strictly to herself. Or she tries to.”

“We have rules about that.”

“So do we. But only the wife must truly obey them.”

“What?” With both hands I lift Gawain’s arm off me. Truly curious now, I rise on an elbow and look down on him. “Only the wife must be faithful? What sort of rule is that?”

“A practical one.” He smiles up at me. “The husband is the stronger. Shall we two try that out now?”

“Gawain, answer me! Why should the husband not be as faithful as the wife?”

“Well.” His fingers tease my breast that leans over him. I draw back, sit up. Wrap arms about knees. He sighs.