Gawain and Lady Green (5 page)

“And that doesn’t matter?”

“How could it matter? What is, is.” Pools of earnest darkness, their eyes met in new moonlight. “I love you now,” Gawain murmured. “But soon I must leave you. That is Truth. Even so we love the world, but we must leave it. That is Truth.”

Lady Green shuddered. Moon-pale, she whispered, “But we belong to the world. With the Green Man we rise, flower, fruit, die, rise. The world and we are one.”

“No!” Gawain told her firmly. “Trees and beasts belong to the world. God makes us human folk of body and soul. Our body returns to the world. But our spirit flies to God. If we have lived right.”

Her wide, dark eyes drank in his words. “How do we live right, Gawain?”

“We follow God’s law.”

“God’s law is the world’s law.”

“No, no. God has revealed His law to His prophets and priests. We listen to them. They teach us how to live.”

“You talk now of human teaching. Human words.”

“Our priests know God’s words.”

“We are God’s words.”

How to convince her?

They stared at each other, silent, while owls conversed.

Lady Green lay down first and patted the mat beside her. “Lie down, May King—Gawain.” Carefully, he let himself down an arm’s reach away. “This is no time or place for talk,” she said. “We don’t want the peas to hear us.”

Nor the Green Man
, she thought.
Neither!
She imagined him stomping angrily toward them through the peas, waving wild arm-branches, and she trembled.

Gawain snorted softly. “Lady Green, the peas hear nothing. Know nothing. Feel nothing.
They are only peas
.”

She murmured, “They are life, Gawain. Our life.”

“Very well.” He sighed in exhaustion. “But I can do nothing more for them right now.”

“Sleep, Love.”

He rolled away from her.

“I’ll get your ale.” She reached out toward the skin bottle, never far away.

“No ale.”

“But—”

“Sleep now.” He rolled away from her. He lay limp.

The small argument had roused him. In the new moonlight she had seen his eyes too conscious. His words had come too fast and feelingly.

Ech, he would go nowhere now. Sleep was as good for him as ale.

There. He snored.

Softly she sat back up. Then she reached behind her. Her searching fingers found the ale bottle, then a fold of silk.

Much earlier, Gawain had unlaced her green gem-crusted girdle and tossed it aside like any rag. A good thing he had not ripped it off her! Even when his square, strong fingers touched magic, this ignorant man felt it not.

She breathed apology to the girdle. “Ech, he meant nothing by it. He knows nothing. But had I worn you, I would have known the words to calm him. Come now. Shield my heart.”

She laced the girdle about her sturdy waist. Her whirling thoughts cleared and stilled.

She saw now a door opened before her into Gawain’s mind. She saw the source of his pride, his stiff uprightness. “Our spirit flies to God, if we have lived right.”

Ech! The man thinks he knows the World’s mind!

When he holds me in his arms and knows not even my mind!

(And I. Do I know my own mind?)

His Faith teaches that we live but once in this world. But once.

She shuddered.

Death is the end for him. He thinks that once he dies he will never see Green
Earth again. Holy Gods! Every morning he wakes to that thought. And yet he smiles and drinks all day and loves all night!

Foolish and ignorant he may be. But this is the bravest man I may ever know!

She leaned to caress his rumpled dark hair, his slack, sleeping shoulder.

I wish now I had not learned his mind. But it was already too late for me. Already I knew him as a man, not only as a tool ready for my hand.

Hoo! an owl called from the river.

Hoo-hoo! one answered from the barley.

“Hoho, Gwyneth!”

A lithe figure breaks from the crowd of men and strides jauntily across Fair-Field.

I haul Ynis’s little tunic up out of the river, wring it out and toss it on the bank. My friends laugh and jibe before bending to their own wash again.

Barefoot and wet-gowned, I splash up on land. I would catch up my gown and run, limping through briars, but mature dignity forbids. I walk to meet him.

Smiling like summer itself, he comes to me. He cocks his head at me—Ynis’s same gesture—and takes my hands.

“You’re thinner,” is all he says.

“Ech, Merry! Summertime. Much ado.”

“You’re pale.”

“You’ve been watching me!”

“Surprised?”

His sweet calm shames me.

This is the real Merry, my first love. I knew this Merry before he went to turn druid—before he learned to make his face a mask and his very body a costume. Uneasily I face him now, with my spirit newly masked. I glance over his shoulder. “There goes the wheel!”

He slips his arm about my waist and turns to look. “We had to mend it. Last year it got fairly banged and burned.”

“Next time you’ll need to make a new one.”

“Maybe right now. That’s what we’re finding out.”

The huge, red-painted Sun-wheel rolls and bounces. Shouting fellows run to shove it, shore it up, poke it along with staves. “Seems to be holding together.”

Older men push handcarts of wood toward the stone circle where soon the Midsummer Fire will roar. “Looks like the show’s coming together.”

“Better than ever, Gwyn. You won’t believe the Green Men!”

“Then maybe you should try again.”

He laughs. “I mean, you
will
believe the Green Men!” He sobers. “Gwyn. I know you. I suspect you.”

“Suspect me?”

“You know how I mean.”

“I could never fool you, Merry.”

“It’s hard for you.” He squeezes my waist. “Truth, I like the fellow myself.”

“You know him at all?”

“Oh, aye. He comes to work with us when he’s bored. And he’s going to knight the lot of us.”

“What?”

“We’re going to be the Square Table. Like King Arthur’s Round Table. He’ll teach us that show.”

“Hmmm. I think you’ll need ponies for that.”

“In truth. But we’ll watch him.”

They surely will.

“We don’t mean to go hungry, come winter. We’ll take good care of him.”

My arm steals around Merry’s supple waist.

The careening Sun-wheel hits a bump and bounces high. Somebody gives it a good thwack from the other side, and it veers toward us. I hear my friends in the river squawk and splash.

“Wager you.” Merry’s lips touch my ear. “It’ll go left.” Suddenly hard, his arm holds me still.

The wheel reels at us. The yelling fellows “guiding” it do not see us. They care only that it hit the river, still wavering upright. We can still scuttle out of the way.

My arm tightens around Merry. I whisper through his curls, “I wager it’ll go right.”

It rolls at us.

Midsummer Eve, the Sun-wheel will be decked in flame. Torches stuck through its center will stream fire as it rolls, reels, and bounds to the river. Folk will grab children out of its way. Young couples will dash across its track, the closer the merrier. Hurt and harm may well happen.

Here it comes rumbling by daylight, grim and fireless.

Merry squeezes my waist. With his other hand he points the wheel left. If I point right, the confused wheel may plough us under. I point left too. “Left!” We both shout to the advancing wheel.

Maybe one of the guides sees us. I think not. I think the wheel sees us. It hops and turns left. It rolls by us an arm’s length away. The running guides stomp our toes as we step back.

Shrieks from the river. We turn to see women, girls, and children scatter. Some climb the bank, some swim out deeper.

The Sun-wheel totters through their midst. It poises a moment
on the brink. Leaning, it spins halfway around. With a final poke and a great splash it dives in.

Cries of relief from the women. Growls from the guides.

As hunters come to their killed quarry, so the guides come to the bank and look down.

We still hold each other. Merry breathes, “It’s dead.”

“Broke up.”

“There’s just time to make a new one.”

We still stand tight-locked. Deliberately I loosen my arm on his waist. My cheek brushes his shoulder. “Hey, Merry. What did we think we were doing?”

“Gaming?”

“We didn’t even wager anything.”

“No time to think.”

Gravely I tell him, “A Demon made us do it.”

He laughs and loosens up. We let each other go.

Midsummer night.

Gawain watched out for Merlin.

Green-crowned again and freshly dressed in new white linen, he led the dance around the rising fire with Lady Green. This time the crown stayed tight to his head, where she had fastened it. He twirled and kicked and leaped, hand in hand at first with Lady Green, later with others. At one point he found himself gently whirling Old Lady Granny. Once he snatched little Ynis off her feet and swung her flat out. But she did not shriek with joy as other children did. Swung arcing around, unsmiling, she kept serious
eyes on his face. He was glad to pass her along and take on a fat matron from another village.

Lady Green had told him that three villages met at this Midsummer Fire. Here he saw again the white-bearded old druid who had crowned him May King. He stood a little aside from the action, holding a leafy staff upright as though planted. Gawain noticed that the dancing, jostling throng left a quiet island around him.

Breathing hard between dances, Gawain watched out for Merlin.

Late at night, masked and antlered Green Men cavorted out from the dark sacred grove. They leaped like stags, waving and jabbing at bystanders with hawthorn staves. And among them, yet carefully apart, staggered trees: huge towers of branches, leaves, flowers, and ribbons.

Pipe music that had never paused since sundown quavered to silence. Drums thumped on, louder at each thump till Gawain felt them inside his own chest, stronger than his heartbeat.

The crowd hushed and stilled to watch three trees dance. Slowly they whirled, close around the fire. Gawain thought it must be hard to see out from inside a tree, especially at night, fire on one side, dark on the other.

Of course there were men inside those trees. Those were human feet that stomped and thumped under their leaf-skirts.

Or were they?

Gawain’s head swam with ale and dancing.

The Green Men were certainly masked men. But the dancing trees that swayed out from the dark sacred grove, guarded at a safe distance by their human servants…

He took Lady Green’s hand and bent to whisper, “What are those trees?”

“As you say. They are trees.”

“No, in truth. What, who, are they?”

“Tree-spirits, May—Gawain. Look how majestically they move!” Admiration flamed with fire-reflection in her eyes.

Drums beat in Gawain’s blood. These three might be tree-spirits, for all he knew. They might be Demons, or savage Gods, or spirits of summer and time. Slowly he signed the Cross on brow, breast, and both shoulders. “Holy Mary,” he breathed. “Angel Michael…”

Only when the trees stomped back into the grove—that same finger of grove from which Gawain had first ventured onto Fair-Field—only then did the drums soften and the pipe music rise again. The crowd relaxed and smiled. Gawain took Lady Green’s hand to lead the dance again. But first, quickly, he scanned the crowd, watching out for Merlin.

Lady Green had said Arthur’s mage often came to Midsummer here in this field. Gawain planned to waylay him. Merlin might well not know him at all in his savage outfit and flower crown, beard untrimmed, thin from travel and travail. Gawain would block Merlin’s path and announce himself. ( With inward glee he imagined Merlin’s stuttering astonishment. He would learn that he and his fellows were not the only ones who could amaze!) Then Gawain would offer himself as Merlin’s escort home to Arthur’s Dun. “That is, Mage, if you can wrangle me a horse from these stubborn bumpkins”…which Merlin would do with a word mumbled in the headman’s ear before morning.

From May Day to Midsummer had been a diverting adventure. And Lady Green, Gwyneth, had been surprisingly alluring for a savage peasant girl. But now Gawain was more than ready to go home to himself and his world.