Gawain and Lady Green Read online

  Owls called back and forth from field to grove to river. Gawain drew Green’s hair across him like a blanket. “Let’s dream now together that this fantasy of yours is solemn truth.” A harmless game. “Do you think we could ever have been enemies, Lady Green?”

  “Ech, aye! Maybe once we faced each other in battle; and now again, in love. We meet over and over again. Those we value in this life we have known before.”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “We know in our hearts. Everyone knows.”

  “Not where I come from!”

  “That does not surprise me. Where you come from folk walk on their heads!”

  “Seriously, Lady Green; not gaming, now. Our Faith teaches that we live but once in this world.”

  “Once? Once only?” She raised on her elbow to look down on him. “But who could leave this green world forever? Do you not love the world, May King? Gawain?”

  “I am talking here of Truth, not love!”

  “Are they different?”

  He sat up beside her. “Lady Green! Gwyneth! The Truth is what God makes. Love is…love is only what we feel about what God makes.”

  “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.

  Quickly he glanced around the firelit crowd for a slightly stooped, white-haired figure bearing a harp like a shield on his shoulder. Maybe talking with the white-bearded druid no one talked with?

  No. No Merlin, anywhere.

  Later, fellows of the Square Table upended a great red wheel. They lit torches from the Midsummer Fire and poked them into holes in the center. Then with shouting and drum-rolls they beat the flaring wheel like a huge hoop toward the river. God save whoever got in its way!

  The crowd screamed joyful excitement. When the wheel crashed into the river, men leaped like hares and threw their children in the air. Old fellows waved canes, young girls loosened gowns.

  Thirsty Gawain quaffed ale from Lady Green’s bottle. He told her, “All this reminds me of something. As if I’d been here before.”

  She arched surprised eyebrows. “They don’t celebrate Midsummer at Arthur’s Dun?”

  “Not like this.” He seemed to remember that all this dizzy noise was meant to encourage the sun. But Christians knew that only God ruled the sun. “Peasants do something like this.” Gawain was not sure what exactly they did.

  Lady Green took back her bottle and stored it under her gown. “Now it’s time to jump the fire.”

  “What!”

  Lady Green grasped his hand. “It’s low enough. Over here. Come on, they’re all waiting for us to lead.”

  Hand in hand, Gawain and Lady Green ran at the low line of fire and jumped. It seemed to Gawain that he jumped straight into dying flame. But Lady Green’s hand lifted him. His feet found cool earth again.

  The yokels roared approval. Turning, Gawain saw young couples running and leaping where they had run and leaped.

  Lady Green squeezed his hand. “Now we go.”

  “Go?” That now familiar ale-fuzz muffled thought.

  “To the grove. Now, while they’re all watching the jumps.”

  “The grove? But that’s where…” That’s where the dancing trees had gone. He had no wish to meet one of those.

  “That’s where we work our magic, May King.” She drew him away,
out of the crowd.

  Groping into grove darkness, Gawain asked Lady Green, “Where was Merlin? I was…were…I watched for Merlin…”

  “Why?”

  “Had something to tell him. Ask him. He weren’t…wasn’t there.”

  She laughed. “Merlin is not the sun, Gawain. He does not come and go at sacred times. He’s only human.”

  “Think he’ll come later?”

  “He’ll come when he wants to, May King.”

  “Gawain, girl. Gawain.”

  “I meant to say Gawain. Dear Gawain.”

  Granny saw into my heart. To warn me, she told us her sad story, how long ago she loved her May King. Gods! She loves him still. Love lit her old eyes as she spoke of him.

  I heard her. But already by then I couldn’t help myself.

  Look at him, Gwyneth! Sit up here beside him and look upon those straight, brave brows, those feeling, firm lips, sleep-slacked now. Who could look without love?

  Such a brave child he is!

  And I. Am I not brave too?

  New sunlight steals down through oak leaves and through my thinning thatch. Mist curls past and into my open bower door. Something moves in the mist. I grasp Gawain’s shoulder and cling. Heart beats a small drum-roll. Body-eyes see only mist.

  Spirit, unfold yourself! Rise into your own space, see in your own light.

  Frightened Spirit folds and curls itself low in my stomach. Something moves nearer in mist.

  Under my stiff-frozen hand Gawain’s shoulder turns cold. I cannot lift my hand, or draw frozen breath to cry, “Gawain, defend me!” Which how could he do? I sit here encased in ice, entirely alone.

  A voice not my own speaks inside my head. It creaks and stumbles, as Gawain’s voice did when he first came to us out of the grove. He told me he had not spoken in days. Likewise this voice speaks not often, nor easily. Inside my head it clears throat, licks lips. It says, Give to us, Gwyneth. We pay.

  A good thing I need not speak aloud! Ice closes my throat.

  What do you pay?

  What you want?

  I want…I want power.

  Aha. Power. What power you got now, Gwyneth?

  You know. You know all.

  Not all. Tell

  I have…I see ghosts. Auras.

  Don’t see us!

  No. I don’t see you yet.