Gawain and Lady Green (3 page)

“In the south, Lady Green, the husband is master in all ways. The wife’s property belongs to him. The wife belongs to him. She keeps his house, comforts his body, bears his sons.”

“And what does he do for her?”

“He guards and maintains her, and the house, and the sons.”

“And the daughters?”

“He marries them off to useful friends and allies.”

I am not like Gawain, easily angered. But I feel my breath come a little fast and anxious. “And have these women of yours no power at all?”

“They wear no swords.” Gawain smiles up at me. Smile and fingers beckon. “Come, Lady Green. Lie down again by me.”

I stay where I am, wrapped in cool wrath. “Let me warn you, May King. Spirit is stronger than a hundred swords.”

Gawain pulls a doubtful, merry face.

Thought stabs, knife-sharp. “And you, Gawain. Are you wed? Do you have a faithful wife back in your own country?”

Instant answer. “No, Lady Green.”

“Hah.” Relief. “Then you owe your—what is that word?—fealty, only to me.”

Instant, serious answer. “No, Lady Green.”

“What! What? You said—”

Gravely. “I owe my fealty to my King.”

“Hah.” His king. A different kind of fealty altogether. Very well. I let tension out in a slow sigh and lie down against him. “Your king…Arthur. I have heard Druid Merlin sing of him.”

Gawain stiffens. He goes all still as if a spirit touched him. Then he rises in his turn and leans above me.

“Merlin? Mage Merlin? Merlin has come here, to this God- forgotten place?”

“He comes now and then. Often at Midsummer. When the sky smiles, and the Green Men dance. Then he comes and sings to us of far kings and gods and heroes. You know him, Gawain?”

“God’s teeth! Old Merlin, here!” His face shines brighter than the lamp. Even in dim light I see his aura now, what Ynis calls his “cloud.” It flames out from him, green with sudden hope.

“This Midsummer when he comes, I will escort him back south!”

No!

I act a delicate yawn. “Not so fast, May King.” Not near so fast.

“You will have to find me a horse!”

“Later. When your task is done.”

“You expect me to wait here till Summerend itself?”

“Why, yes, Gawain. Till the grain is scythed. Come, now.” I bring his hand back to my breast. “If you are so eager to leave me, let us urge the crops a little higher tonight.”

Near and far, three owls hoot.

Later Gawain dozes, head on my shoulder, arm across my hips. Steady feet slog stealthily past in steady rain. Gawain murmurs, “Someone besides us braves this mysterious grove tonight.”

I stroke his coarse black hair. “Only the watchman, love.”

He raises his head. In the lamp’s last light I see his eyes— open, clear, quite conscious. “They guard us, Lady Green. Those watchmen. Why do they guard us all night?”

“May King, you are precious to all of us. Nothing must happen to you. Nothing at all.” I smile up into his too-conscious eyes. “Let me up. I’ll get your drink.”

Obedient, he drinks, lies back and sleeps. I watch him almost tenderly.

He is one beautiful fellow, this Sir Gawain from the south! Hard, lean, lusty as a buck goat, though not skilled in love. I like the thought that I may be one of his first lovers. I like to teach.

Such Goddess-blessed vigor should be preserved in this green world. The life should outlive the man.

When he sleeps, his aura rises gently away. Daytimes, it clings close to his body, a narrow orange-brown cloud. But at night, I sometimes see it, dim in lamplight, rise white, and broaden, and drift away south.

Besides his useful, lovely body, he has a soul.

Unwilling, unwise, I feel for him.

God’s bones! Gawain’s softened hands rejoiced to handle steel again! Though a scythe was at best an unfamiliar tool. Student Druid Merry had shown him how to grasp it: “Here and here, May King. Not like a sword.”

Merry smiled with beardless lips and warm brown eyes. Small and agile, crowned with gold-brown curls, he struck Gawain as slightly Fey. Strange that one like this should appear to lead men! Yet, maybe not so strange. Close to the fellow, Gawain felt leashed power stir under bouncing curls and easy smile.

Perhaps as a small child Gawain might have handled a scythe. The
bend-and-swing motion, which he copied from the men beside him, came easily enough. It did not last as well. Sweat sprang and dripped from brow, stripped chest and shoulders. Bent back and bowed legs screamed.

Stubbornly he thought,
The grass is my enemy
.
The battle rages.
And he charged ahead of the slowly advancing line.

“Hoo!” His neighbors called. “You, May King! Leave grass enough for us!” Whistles and laughter rippled along the line.

Gawain paused to let them catch up. How good it felt to straighten his spine! With bare forearms he swiped sweat from his eyes and saw clearly, for a moment, the field of wild-weed grass sway ahead. Larks sprang up from hidden nests. At Gawain’s feet a serpent writhed desperately away.

God’s blood! The company of men, the rough smell and sound of men, felt good! Like food after hunger, like rest after love.

They were all here, all the men he saw about the village, with their sons. Even the old headman scythed, and Student Merry, though these two were the closest to nobility that Gawain found here.

He had met the men and boys at the latrine pits, all joking and flexing, all eager to work. Laughing and friendly, they had invited him along. Merry had whipped the straw hat off his own head and set it on Gawain’s. “Against the sun, May King. Heat will be our enemy today.”

Bored to exhaustion with luxury, Gawain had come.

He had time now to gasp, swipe sweat once again, and judge the distance to the shade trees where they had left their lunch. A long, long way.

The line came up to him. Bending to scythe again, he gritted his teeth. The man on his left grinned across. “That speed, May King, you’ll never make lunch!”

From the right, “Slow and steady—”

From farther along, “Right and ready—”

“Win my wager!”

So, the bumpkins were wagering on him! Like men-at-arms watching a cockfight, or a joust.

Except that they were all jousting too.

Gawain grinned at his neighbors and attacked the grass. Slowly.

At long, long last he scythed his way into tree shade. His heart pounded, his breath rasped, as though he had just come off a battle. Gratefully he downed scythe and shade hat, straightened and stretched along with his neighbors.

One clapped his shoulder. “Not bad,” he guffawed, blowing breath like the downwind of slaughter in Gawain’s face. “If you’re picky about your hay.” To the others he yelled, “Only the best for the May King!”

Puzzled, Gawain turned to look at his back-trail.

The field lay fairly cut, except for here and there stalks and clumps boys had missed; and except for a long zigzag path of misses where Gawain himself had staggered and swung.

Laughter, back-pounding, bet-collecting. Lunch.

Cheerfully, young Merry shared his loaf, cheese, and ale with Gawain. They sat backed against a beech trunk in the deepest shade. The rest lay about or sat on their heels, munching and gulping in suddenly tired silence. As the sun crossed the tree line
men stretched out on backs and sides and snored. A few boys trotted about the near, uncut field in a halfhearted game.

A handful of top men came into the beech shade with Merry and Gawain. Gawain knew their rank not by dress or title but only by their gaze and bearing.

One said to him, “No offense, May King. But you scythe as though never before. Like my boy over there. How can that be?”

Gawain nursed the last of Merry’s ale. “I am a warrior, a knight, born and raised. Where I come from, knights do not scythe.”

The men murmured. Another asked, “Where you come from, are there wars every day? That much fighting to do?”

“In truth, not now. The wars ended when Arthur became High King.”

“Aha! When he pulled sword from stone, as bards sing.”

“No, that was but the beginning. Not all men accepted his king-ship. We had to ram it down their throats,” Gawain said with relish.

Murmurs. Stirrings.

“So what do you southern knights do now, instead of work?”

“Keep in shape.”

Mumbled chuckles.

“We stand war-ready at every moment. Some under-king might challenge Arthur again any day. We guard his Dun, hunt with him, ride the kingdom with him. Joust to keep in practice.”

“Joust? What’s this joust?”

“Fight mock battles. Singly, or as small armies.”

“Ho! That’s the life, Brothers!”

“More fun than farming.”

“What say, May King? You want to show us a trick now?”

Smiling carefully, Gawain shook his head. “No horses.” (Softly, now. This might just be a way to get on a horse!)

“Horses! You joust a-horse?”

“Hey-hoo! I’d like to see a joust!”

“I’d like to joust a joust.”

“May King, you must show us how!”

“Very well.” Very calm. But hope leaped like a lark in Gawain’s breast. Once a-horse, well out from the village, he might break away free. With luck. With God and Mary’s help.

Doon, a knave barely past boyhood, called out, “Ha, May King! Bards sing of King Arthur’s Round Table.”

Proudly, “I am of the Round Table myself.”

“Are you, now? Well, I say, let us be the Square Table!” Doon flashed a grin from startled face to eager face. “The May King here can show us how. And we’ll give a show at Summerend, one of these here jousts. Eh, May King?”

“Hmmm.” Thoughtfully, Gawain smiled. “Very well.” Very well in truth!

“That’ll be a show to rival the Green Men!”

“Maybe the Square Table can put on a show every feast time forever!”

Gawain said thoughtfully, “You must show me your methods.” They would be useful for Arthur to know.

The bumpkins broke off their happy banter to stare at him. “Methods?”

“Ways of fighting. Weapons.”

“Oh. As to those…” With gestures they showed him, there and then. He found little difference between their sparring and that of the boys out in the sun.

Surprise loosened his jaw. “You have never been fight-trained?”

“There’s refinements.” A few more refined warriors showed him those.

“God’s bones! Where I come from…” But why was he surprised? In truth, they were but a gang of mowers and ploughmen. Dirt-movers. Had he for a moment forgotten that?

He glanced from sun-speckled face to face. In this friendly morning he had learned these faces. Now he saw lines of merriment, of kindness, of temper; bleary eyes, bright eyes, sober and dull; pock marks, lost teeth, scars, bumps.

Inner Mind remarked,
You’re seeing men here like yourself. Like your Round Table brothers. Not just bumpkins anymore.

That’s as well. Now I won’t underestimate them.

But forget not, Sir—they are indeed only ploughmen.

One reminded him, “You’ve been trained to fight and nothing else, May King.”

Chuckles rippled through the shade. “Never held a scythe before!”

Student Druid Merry said, “Tell us somewhat about your life.”

Questions pattered then like rain in leaves.

Gawain told them of his education in Arthur’s Dun, how he had grown from page to squire to knight aspirant.

Children, waking in the shade, rubbed their eyes and listened. Boys who had been wandering the field came back into the shade and listened.

Gawain told them how he had knelt in Arthur’s chapel all night, sword upright in his hands, eyes on the altar. Telling, he relived that last night of simple youth. Candles flickered again in his sleepy eyes. The glowing altar lamp spoke again of Christ’s True Presence. The wooden Mary, Queen of Heaven, smiled as he nodded, startling him awake.

Consciously, soberly, he gathered up his thoughtless youth and freedom and gave them into her keeping.

“The next day Arthur knighted me.” Again the sword laid its man-sized burden of Honor, Fealty, and Chivalry on his young shoulder, then lifted away. Once more in a high and holy moment Gawain became Man and Knight. Astonished, he found his sight tear-dimmed.

Impressed, his audience sighed. Then Merry said, “One matter more. You’ve mentioned no mother, no father.”

“I came young to Arthur’s Dun.” He had ridden there on a wee island pony. “Truth, I barely remember my parents.”

“They had names?”

Gawain hesitated. His position here in Holy Oak was risky enough. Knowing his connections, even these bumpkins might think to use him as a hostage.

But he could not lie. He had never lied since Arthur’s sword lay on his shoulder.

“Lot,” he admitted. “King of the Orkneys. And Morgause, his wife.”

Whistles and growls.

Aroused, Merry leaned forward. “This Morgause,” he asked seriously. “Is she not a famous witch?”

God’s bones! Here it rose again to haunt him, this ghost of his past. Even here, they had heard of his mother. “Aye, that she is.” He had to admit it.

Merry looked him up and down with new eyes. “We have heard of her. Druid Merlin sings of her.”

Gawain shrugged. Strange that Lot, King of the Orkneys, seemed lost in his wife’s sinister shadow. But as long as they did not know—