Gawain in the Otherworld
Seeking a Liturgy of the Wild, (Part Seven)
Recap: The Green Knight arrives at Camelot offering a Christmas game: a decapitation of his head, followed by a similar blow a year later at the Green Chapel to whomever delivered it. The greatest knights of the age shy away, leaving Gawain, a bright but young warrior to take up the offer. Once fulfilled, the Green Knight simply picks up his own head and rides off.
***
A time of haunting has arrived for Gawain. Every room he enters people immediately shush, as if they’ve just been discussing him. Usually they have. He tries to numb his terrors with ale, but even in the tavern friends place their hand on his shoulder and sigh deeply. Bors, Lancelot, Lucan the Good, Dreaded Dodinal, do their best to give him counsel but their words trail off. The Green Knight is everywhere in his head: accompanies him down every corridor, dwells in every third thought, the guest at every meal. Their encounter has instantly become legend, a garish legend. All know what he has to do. Gawain feels far away from everyone, locked in his interior.
He frequents mass, keeps his prayers fervent, combs his dreams for auguries. Gawain is sequestered in some esoteric puzzle he simply can’t figure. Even Merlin won’t meet his eye. He wishes the Green Knight had finished him off then and there – a quick hard swipe – not this agony of waiting. The turning of each season assails him, the children that now follow him around, awestruck and whispering. In market squares all over Britain plays are enacted, telling his spooky tale and its predicted, terrible outcome. When the first leaves start to fall he begins to gather his warrior kit.
Til Meghelmas mone
was cumin with winter wage.
then thenkkes Gawan ful sone
of his anious vyage.
It's just after Halloween, all Saints Day, when he knows he must set out. His armour’s design announces his standing, a knight of status and budding reputation, Arthur’s beloved. On the outside all is as it should be, but he feels weak as a kitten as he rides out to who-knows-where and god-knows-what.
Goodbye Camelot,
Goodbye friends,
Goodbye good cheer.
All I have left is the
Chivalric code.
The God-Code.
I will cleave to that.
He knows – the only thing he knows – that the road to the chapel will not be straight and handsomely lit, but crooked and skewered with danger. When there is a choice he always takes the stranger track. As he makes his way across Wales then the Wirral into the north of Britain he crashes into one hostility after another. Stand-offs with wolves, bears and the dreaded Wodwo – odd animal men, some remnant of another age – who haunt the misty crags, taunting him. Each savagery whittles something down in him, encourages something essential. Sandpapers off the courtly flab. This is not jousting on the lawn, this is a journeying into the abysmal.
Gawain is in the Otherworld:
The knyght tok gates straunge
in many a bonk unbene;
his cher ful oft con chaunge,
that chapel er he might sene.
On the rain-trail from one dark forest to the next he keeps his mind bright with prayer. He candles the gloom with praise words to the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Elements. Has God not also created where he finds himself now? He shivers endlessly under his armour, using his shield as a kind of icon for worship.
Let me tell you of his shield.
On the outside is the endless knot, the five-pointed star, the pentagram, revealing the five wounds of Christ, something so powerful it can trap a demon. Crimson backing, star in gold. On the inside is a painting of the Mother, of Mary.