Arthur Rex (30 page)

“But only God, sir, hath perfect strength,” said Gawaine. And he was now vexed, and he said, “And how dare you, as a paynim, to test the virtue of a Christian?”

“Because I have no shame!” merrily replied the lord. “Which is a Christian invention.”

Now Sir Gawaine began to suspect that this lord was the Devil, for never had he heard so much wickedness from any man. “Methinks,” said he, “that you would weaken me for my encounter with the Green Knight.”

“Well,” said the lord, “if you are honest you will admit that it is a ridiculous thing. A charlatan dyes his skin and hair and dressed in green clothes bursts into Arthur’s court to make a preposterous challenge. Would that be taken seriously anywhere but at Camelot? Now you are likely to die of this buffoonery, and
cui bono?”

“For the Green Knight I care not a bean,” said Sir Gawaine. “But to keep my oath I should go to Hell. And methinks I have done so in coming here.”

But the lord did make much mirth. “It is so only if you choose to make it such, I say again,” said he, “the which can be said of any other place on earth but especially of your Britain. But enough of this colloquy! And pray never believe that I do not admire you withal.”

“Despite such flattery,” said Sir Gawaine, “I shall leave you now.”

“Ah,” the lord said, “you well may leave me, but the one freedom not available at Liberty Castle is to leave it before the proper time hath come.”

And Gawaine found that what he had said was true, for when he sought to go out of the gate he was arrested by a strange unseen force and could move only in the direction of the castle behind him. Therefore willy-nilly he stayed the final night, and the next morning the lord came to him again with the familiar proposal.

“Do I have a choice?” asked Gawaine.

And the lord answered, “Well, it is the last time.” And promising to exchange with his guest what they each had come into possession of during the day, he went a-hunting in the forest.

Now Gawaine determined no longer to wait passively for the lady to seek him out, for he knew that she would do so, according to the pattern of the previous days: and all things in Heaven and on earth come in threes, and only the tripod is ever stable even though its legs be of unequal lengths. Therefore taking the virile initiative he did go in search of her, and you may be sure he was not long in finding her, for her sole purpose was to try his virtue (to which end all women, even the chaste, are dedicated) and thus all corridors at Liberty Castle soon led to the most private of her chambers, the walls of which were lined with quilted velvet of pink, the which color deepened and darkened as he penetrated the room, and the couch on which she lay was of magenta. But her body for once was fully covered, in a robe of the richest dark red and of many folds and trimmed with the sleek fur of the otter.

“Good day to you, sir knight,” said she. “And for what have you come to me?”

“To offer my services,” said Sir Gawaine, “the which you have previously required each day at just this time.”

“Of that I have no memory,” said the lady sternly. “And can your purpose be decent, so to seek me out when mine husband is away?” And crying, “Villainy!” she did clap her hands, and soon a brace of huge knights, armed cap-à-pie, burst into the chamber through a secret door and made at Sir Gawaine.

Now Gawaine understood that he had been tricked and mostly by himself, for he had come here voluntarily and unarmored and unweaponed. But being the truest of knights, what he feared was not the death that he might well be dealt here (for he expected to be killed on the morrow by the Green Knight, and we each of us owe God but one life), but rather that if he were not alive to meet his appointment with the verdant giant he would cause great shame to be brought upon the Round Table, for death were never a good excuse for breaking a pledge.

Therefore he seized a tall candlestick of heavy bronze, and he swung its weighted base with such force that the flange not only split the helm of the first knight to reach him, but also cracked his skull to the very brainpan, and his wits spewed out through his ears. Now taking the halberd that this man dropped, Sir Gawaine brought it up from the floor just as the other knight came at him, and he cut him from the crotch to the wishbone, and his guts hung out like ropes.

“Well,” said the lady when this short fight was done, “do not suppose you have me at your mercy.” And she found a dagger within her clothes and leaping at Sir Gawaine she sought to do him grievous injury.

But though he was the protector of women Gawaine saw no obligation to suffer being assailed by a female to whom he had offered no harm. Therefore he seized the dagger from her, and then, because she next tried to claw him with the sharp nails of her fingers, he restrained her hands behind her waist.

But hooking her toe behind his ankle the lady tripped him up, so that he fell onto the couch, and she was underneath him.

“Lady,” he said, “I would not hurt you for all the world.”

“Then release mine hands so that I might feel whether I have broken anything,” said she. And he did so, but when her fingers were free she used them rather to bare her thighs, the which she then spread on either side of him. And whilst he was stunned with amazement at her strange behavior, she lifted his own robe to the waist, saying, “I fear I may have smote your belly with my knee, and I would soothe your bruises.” And then she went to that part and farther with her white fingers.

“Lady,” said Gawaine, “I assure you that I am not sore.”

“Yet you have a swelling,” said she, and she did forthwith apply a poultice to him.

And to his horror Sir Gawaine discovered that his strength of will was as nothing in this circumstance, and therefore he must needs submit to this lady altogether. But this was a defeat which it was the more easy to accept with every passing instant, and before many had gone by he had quite forgot why he had resisted so long, in the service of a mere idea, for such is the eloquence with which the flesh first speaketh to him who ceases to withstand temptation, God save him.

But when the lady was done with him, and they lay resting, he knew great shame, and this grew even worse when he remembered he had agreed to exchange the spoils of the day with the lord of the castle.

Therefore when the lord returned from his hunting and presented to Sir Gawaine a splendid rack of antlers from a stag, and asked in exchange whatever Gawaine had got, his guest did prevaricate and say he had spent all day in prayer and therefore could give the lord only the peace he had thereby obtained.

“I am prevented by the laws of hospitality,” said his host, “from impugning the veracity of a knight to whom I am giving shelter. Yet it seems remarkable to me that you have got no more tangible rewards during a day at Liberty Castle.”

“Well,” said Gawaine, “I cannot call it a reward when I am attacked by two of your armed men. Should you like me to assail you with a halberd and a mace?”

“Hardly,” said the lord, but he smiled. “Yet you appear whole, whereas I passed their bodies being hauled away in a cart.”

“My lord,” said Sir Gawaine, “on the morrow I meet the Green Knight, and though I thank you for your hospitality, I shall be relieved to have it come to an end, for between us there is no common language.”

And so he retired for the night. But while he slept he had bad dreams, for the ghost of the dead Elaine of Astolat came to him and chided him for his failure to confess to the lord what he had been given by the lady, thereby violating his pledge, and she reminded him that she had died for loyalty to an idea of herself.

Therefore when Sir Gawaine awoke, he went to find the lord for to tell him everything that had happened on the previous day. But nowhere could he find him throughout the castle, nor indeed did he see the lady or anyone else, nor the scented pleasure-chambers. In fact, the entire castle was but a ruin and covered in years of moss and vines, and it was apparent that no one had inhabited it since the days of the giants who lived in Britain before the first men came there after the fall of Troy.

Thus it was in sadness that Sir Gawaine rode to seek the Green Knight, for he realized that the last three days of his life had been spent in some magical test at which he had proved himself untrustworthy, mendacious, and adulterous.

Now he was not long in reaching a valley where a green chapel stood, and before it was tethered a green-colored stallion. And when he dismounted and went within he saw the same huge green knight who had come to Camelot one year before.

“Sir Gawaine,” said the Green Knight, brandishing his great green battle-ax, “are you prepared to keep our bargain?”

“I have come here only for that reason,” said Gawaine, removing his helm and baring his neck. “And I would fain have you get it over with quickly.”

“Why for?” cried the green man. “Who rushes to his death?”

“Our bargain, sir,” said Gawaine, “will be completed when you strike off my head. There is no provision in it for argument.”

“I am no quotidian headsman,” said the Green Knight, “and I do not crop necks for profit nor pleasure. Tell me why you are in haste to lose your self, the which is truly the only thing a man possesseth, if but temporarily.”

“I am not pleased with mine,” said Gawaine. “I have not done well. I have lately broken a vow and lied.”

“Which is no more than to say, you have been a man,” said the Green Knight and in a jovial voice. “And with only these failings, are better than most.”

“And worse,” said Gawaine, “I have adulterated with the wife of mine host.” And with a groan he threw himself into the stones of the floor of the chapel so that the Green Knight could chop off his head.

“Sir Gawaine,” said the Green Knight, raising his ax high over his head, “you are the most humane of all the company of the Round Table, and therefore, unlike the others, you are never immodest. To be greater than you is to be tragic; to be less, farcical.”

And with a great rush of air he brought the ax down onto Gawaine’s bare neck and the blade struck the stones with a great clangor, and red sparks sputtered in the air.

But Gawaine was still sensible, and he flexed his shoulders and stretched his neck, and then he felt with his hands that his head was yet in place.

Therefore he sprang to his feet and drew his sword. “Well, sir,” he said, “you have had your one blow. I am not to be held at fault if you missed me! Then have at you!”

But the Green Knight threw down his ax and laughed most merrily. “Feel your neck,” said he, “and you will find that you have been wounded slightly.”

And Gawaine did as directed, and there was a slight cut in the skin, the which bled onto his fingers.

“That is your punishment,” said the Green Knight. “You are no adulterer, dear sir, for that was no one’s wife but rather the Lady of the Lake. You did however break your pledge to the lord of Liberty Castle, and you did prevaricate. But had you told the full and literal truth and fulfilled to the letter the terms of your agreement, you would have been obliged to use the lord as you did the lady.”

“Yes,” said Sir Gawaine, and having escaped the death for which he had been prepared, he felt an unique joy though his demeanor remained sober. “But I had done better to explain that at the time.”

“Indeed,” said the Green Knight. “And therefore, your slight wound. But in the large you performed well: a knight does better to break his word than, keeping it, to behave unnaturally. And a liar, sir, is preferable to a monster.”

“Then can it be said, think you,” asked Sir Gawaine, “that sometimes justice is better served by a lie than by the absolute and literal truth?”

“That may indeed be so,” said the Green Knight, “when trafficking with humanity, but I should not think that God could be ever deluded.”

Then Sir Gawaine knelt to pray, and when he rose he saw that the Green Knight had lost his greenness and had dwindled in size, and in fact was no longer a man, but a woman, and she was the Lady of the Lake.

“My dear Gawaine,” said she, “do not hide thy face. Thou hast done nothing for which to be ashamed.”

“Lady,” said Sir Gawaine, “’tis not all of it shame. I confess that I am vexed that once again you have chosen to gull me. Remember that on the first occasion I did seemingly kill a woman and now I apparently made love to another. Yet each of them was you, and both events were delusions.”

“And from neither have you come away without some reward,” said the Lady of the Lake, who in her true appearance was even more beautiful than in any of her guises. “And would you rather that each time the woman had been real?”

“No, my lady!” cried Gawaine. “But I might ask why my natural addiction to women must invariably be the cause of my difficulties. Methinks I was happier as the lecher of old. I have since been only miserable. And for that matter, what service did I render to Elaine of Astolat, whom I did love without carnality? Better I had made to her lewd advances, the rejection of which would not have altered her fate, but would have freed me!”

“Why,” asked the Lady of the Lake, “didst thou assume thine overtures would have been rejected? Gawaine, thou wert never commanded to be a prude.”

And so having made her favorite knight the more puzzled, the Lady of the Lake did void that place in the form of a golden gossamer, the which floated from the door of the chapel and rose high into the soft air without.

N
OW KING ARTHUR TOOK
every opportunity to bring Guinevere and Sir Launcelot together, for he admired Launcelot above all men in the world, whereas he believed that Guinevere despised that greatest of all knights, and it is natural for a husband to wish that his wife be at one with him in his enthusiasms.

But the queen showed more public disdain for Sir Launcelot than she had ever done, and not only because by this means she sought to avoid suspicion, but also for the reason that she could not understand the admiration which two men might feel for each other without being either of them sexually unnatural. For Sir Launcelot notwithstanding that he had cuckolded his king held Arthur in great reverence, and whilst Guinevere insofar as she was a queen believed this was as it should be with a knight and his sovereign, as a woman she did wonder whether it was unmanly.