Gawain and Lady Green

by Anne Eliot Crompton

  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—

  “Another matter with Morgause,” Merry pursued. “Is she not a sister of your king?”

  “Aye. That she is.”

  “King Arthur is your uncle.” Aye.

  “Heh! By the Grove Gods!” Merry leaned back against the beech and closed his eyes. His words brought a short silence upon the company.

  Then Doon raised his voice again. “May King. You must know many tales, old and new. Can you tell us tales in the evenings?”

  “Give us news of the world!”

  “Sing the new songs.”

  Gawain muttered, “Sing, I cannot. Tell, aye. I can do that.” Why not?

  Merry’s eyes popped open. “You forget,” he told the men, “the May King works in the evenings.”

  “Ei. Ech. Aye!” Nods, winks, and digs.

  “And we work many days.”

  Mock groans.

  “But not all days. Next rain, come to our Men’s House, May King, and give us a story.”

  “I will, if you call me by my name.”

  “Call you—what is it, Gawain?”

  “Aye. This May King title grates on my ears.”

  The fellows murmured, “Gawain,” trying it out.

  One said loudly, “Look at the sun, Brothers!”

  Men and boys looked up through beech leaves, sighed, grunted, and found their feet. They stretched, peed, bent to pick up dropped scythes and hats.

  “What!” Unpleasant surprise widened Gawain’s eyes. “Is there more hay?” He had thought the field cut.

  Merry swept an arm to point behind the beech shade.

  There stretched another sun-drenched, wind-waved field.

  God’s eyes! Gawain had been ready to drift into sleep. His back, arms, and calves groaned. Satan’s balls! Another endless field?

  Merry touched his shoulder. “Ma
y King—”

  Gawain growled.

  “Gawain. You need not scythe.”

  Merry tilted his head and half smiled like…why, like Lady Green’s troublesome little girl! “No need to work. After all, you are the—”

  “God’s blood, I’m coming! Coming. Now. I only didn’t…”

  Merry picked his straw hat off the ground and crowned Gawain with it. The yokels cheered.

  “Me myself,” Granny says. “In truth. One time I fell in love.”

  The softened wet reed cuts my finger. I lick blood and wave the finger in air to dry. At my feet, old Brindle Dog whines sympathy. Ynis lets her reed-braid drop to her knee as though she can’t braid and listen at the same time. In truth, she can’t.

  Cross-legged, we sit around the tub of soaking reeds outside our hut. Nearby, our low fire hisses, waiting to fry Ynis’s favorite honey cakes. We braid reeds, stitch the braids together, and toss small new mats on our growing pile. Ynis’s mats show bumps, ridges, knots, and blood spots. Her small hands are bloodied as though she braided brambles.

  “Aye, me myself!” Granny asserts again. “I fell in love. You’d never guess with who.”

  I joke. “I hope with Grandpa, Granny.”

  “Him? Nah! A good husband he was, dear, never a word against him. I truly loved that good man. But I weren’t in love with him, you know how I mean.”

  “I dunno how you mean, Granny.” Ynis cocks her head. Her little ears fairly twitch with curiosity.

  “Pick up your reeds, Ynis.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That one’s too big for the others. Get one the same size. Like that.

  “I mean, dear, like when you can’t live without him. He’s all you think of. All day you wait for night, and him.”

  “Ech,” says Ynis. “Yech. Ick.”

  “Wait a while, you’ll change that tune! Anyhow, guess who I fell for flat on my face?”

  Eyes on my work: “You’ll have to tell, Granny.”

  Granny lowers her voice so the near neighbors at their reed tub won’t hear. “I fell for the May King!”

  My fingers freeze on the braid. I look up.

  Our little fire wavers and sinks into ash. A giant bat-shadow swoops and hovers over us. I know the neighbors cannot see it. We four see it clearly. Ynis drops her work again. Trembling, Brindle tries to creep under my stool and twists himself into my dress. Granny braids on, squinting up uneasily at the hovering cloud. Maybe she should say no more.

  But she goes on. “I were May Queen that year. He came from over Holly Wood way. He was the most love-some…” Granny sighs.

  My mother died when I was born. This May King was a memory when she was born. But he lives today in Granny’s heart. “He laughed a lot. I always did like a laughin’ fellow.”

  “So.” Does she guess? Does she see into my heart? Maybe she’s just woolgathering, wandering in memory. “What did you do, Granny?”

  “Do? What did I do…Ah, yes.” With an effort she pulls herself out of dream. “First thing I did, I conceived his son. My first child.”

  So that son was my handsome uncle—the one who wed, fathered four handsome children, then died, with two of them, of a pox.

  “Nextly, I prayed.”

  “And the Gods answered?”

  “A Demon answered.”

  Ynis’s small, soft mouth drops open. Her eyes follow Granny’s words into air. She seems to see the words up there in the dark cloud, fluttering like moths.

  “This Demon, he promised me gifts if I’d forget my May King. Wunnerful gifts. Powers. Till then I didn’t have none. He gave me powers like so.” Granny turns and points at the fire. The ashes spring to life. Flame licks up from air.

  Ynis breathes, “What else, Granny?”

  “Ech…he gave me the healing touch. I’ve lived well on that ever since. Many’s the wart I’ve cured.” But not the pox. “An’ the seein’ eye. That sees fairies an’ auras an’ hearts.”

  All that! “But I see too, Granny. Fairies and clouds.”

  “Aye. You two was born gifted. Not me.”

  All those gifts for turning from love! Keeping my eyes low so as not to see our dark cloud, I try to braid reeds again.

  “I see that black cloud up there.” Ynis points up at it. “I don’t like that. Gives me the creepies.”

  “It’ll go. If we talk somethin’ else. Like about braidin’ mats—”

  Hastily—“Granny, I seed a thing last night. A big thing.”

  “Aye?”

  “I came out here to pee.”

  “Use the pot, child. Nights, stay inside. Unless we’re out here with you.”

  “This tree came walkin’ by.”

  “Eh?”

  Again my fingers freeze on the braid.

  “Ech! It was like a beech tree, Granny. Branches swayin’ ’round.” Ynis waves arms, bobs head. “Feet stompin’—”

  “You mean, roots.”

  “Nay, this tree it had feets. An’ they shook the ground.”

  Granny mumbles, “Holy Gods! You were dreamin’.”

  “Nay, I were peein’.”

  “I guess it didn’t notice you.” Or you might not sit here now.

  “It stomped right on by there.” Ynis points to the neighbor’s hut. Carefully, we do not look there. That would invite neighborly conversation.

  “Whuff!” Granny exhales relief. “You were right lucky, Ynis. You were downright blessed. Like I say—nights, use the pot!”

  I whisper to Ynis, “You saw the Green Man.”

  “Ma, I saw a tree!”

  “Hush! Whisper. The Green Man looks like a tree. Or like a man. Or like grass. He is the life of trees, grass, men.”

  Granny whispers, “He walks now in summer. Winters, he lies in his grave. Spring, he up and rises again.”

  “He stomps and dances through the world. He blesses all crops. All weeds and woods.”

  “And us?”

  “He blesses us through the crops,” I explain. “We eat the crops and turn them into us. All that lives is really grass, Ynis. Grass magicked into flesh.”

  Ynis whispers, “He didn’t look like blessin’ to me. He gave me the creepies.”

  “So he should,” Granny tells her earnestly. “He’s mighty moody. He like to shred folk, be he in a mood.”

  I take this good chance to warn my child. “Spirits you see, Gods, Fairies, they are like folk. Not all good. Some downright bad. Some friendly. Some dangerous.”

  “Like I said,” Granny puts in, “nights, use the pot! Ho, look how we’ve fallen behind here!” She turns and calls to the neighbors, “Hi! How many mats you made?”

  I glance upward. Like smoke, our black cloud drifts away.

  An owl called from beyond the barley. Another answered from the far grove.

  Gawain stretched, rolled over, and turned back to Lady Green. He drew her in toward him, edging his shoulder under her head. Her thick red hair spilled down his bare side and chest. Idly he lifted strands of it and wound them through his fingers, around his arms. He murmured, “You remind me of someone.”

  They lay under an awning between banks of pea plants. Reeds, branches, and whole saplings had been piled in rows and the peas planted to climb over the debris. Already the knee-high vines halfway covered the piles. Lady Green had pointed out the obvious virtue of their lovemaking. “The peas will be ready soon after Midsummer. They love your power, May King!”

  He had reminded her. “Gawain, Love. Call me Gawain.”

  Quickly she promised, “I’ll try to remember.” He had only to ask and she, like all the rest, complied—except in the matter of a horse.

  Now he said, “You remind me of someone…loved. I wish you did not.”

  She caressed his chest. “Why…Gawain? Does that not help you to love me?”

  “It does. Therefore I wish not.”

  “You don’t like…loving me?”

  This love-talk irked Gawain. In truth, he did find himself almost loving
Lady Green. Love came easily, as naturally as anger, to his eager, hungry heart. How could he help loving a woman who gave him so much pleasure every night? But honesty was more natural to him than love—and knightly as well.

  So he said now, “Lady Green, I am going to leave you. We both know that.”

  “Aye, dear…”

  “This loving of ours is only till Summerend. So I would like to love you less. Care less.”

  “Ungallant…”

  “Aye, but truthful. Something in you calls out truth in me.” That was not gallantry. Lady Green’s direct gaze and uncompromising carriage did call from him the same honorable sincerity he practiced with men.

  Chuckle. Snuggle. “Maybe I remind you of a former lover.”

  “No.”

  “Have you had so few you can be sure?”

  “I have not been a great lover, Lady Green. Not like some of my brother knights.” Maybe if he had been more practiced he would not now feel so tempted toward love.

  “But you are talented. For instance—”

  “No.” He caught and held her hand. “Not now. If I could only remember, know, who it is you bring to mind…”

  “Maybe we were lovers earlier.”

  “What earlier?”

  “In another life.”

  “What?”

  “You must remember living before.”

  “What!”

  “Don’t you dream sometimes of another life?”

  “Oh, dreams. Haw! In dreams I can be anyone, any time, any age! In dreams I have been a tree…a young child…a stag. Once I even was”—he whispered this one—“a woman!”

  “Because in the past, in other lives, you were such.”

  “Never! Lady Green, do you not know that we go to God in heaven when we die?”

  “Maybe for a while. But then we long to see the warm green earth again, and we come back. You and I may have loved many times since the Goddess birthed the world.”

  “This I never heard or dreamed!”

  “Or we may have been brother and sister. Or brother and brother. I dream I’m a man sometimes.”