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It’s a fog-heavy morning. Again. The sun would burn that off soon enough, but for now the familiar path is almost hidden beneath the thick, moist clouds. It doesn’t matter. I know the road well enough.
But as I walk, the fog seems to pull at my feet, as though it’s turned the ground beneath to mud. It weighs on my steps. Slows me down. Not today, it seems to whisper. Don’t go today. It doesn’t matter. I know my purpose well enough.
How many days has it been? My broken heart can’t be bothered to count them. Too much loss—too much betrayal sits within my memory to bother with such petty things as time… time that was once so precious… how much better would life have been if I had died at the end of that torturous year of seeking for the green chapel? To never have to tread this path I walk each morning? To have never known my most hated enemy… my most beloved friend.
I can see the great, barricaded door now, and I pause my drudging steps to plant my feet and draw my blade and square my shoulders.
‘Come and fight me, you coward!’
The words ring through the fog and scorch my throat. Days or weeks or months or however long it’s been of standing in this spot, screaming for my enemy, my friend, to face me in honour, have worn my voice to a ragged roar.
There is no answer. Sometimes, I catch him peering through an arrow slit. Or perhaps those glimpses are of his men: distance and field of view make it difficult to identify, but I like to think it’s him. I like to think he looks down on me, and remembers that he killed more than men the day he murdered my brothers.
The sun is creeping upwards. Brilliant pink with streaks of violent orange. The early light hits my exposed face—I will wear no helmet to face the man I once called friend—and I feel it warming my skin, bright and invigorating. ‘Have you lost all sense of decency?’ I shout, and clang my sword on the boss of my shield, adding a clamour I know he’ll hear. ‘Face me! You owe me this much!’ My voice cracks. I’ve worn it too ragged. It has nothing at all to do with the sudden swell of pain in my heart. I am in control of my grief.
‘You didn’t wait for me today.’
I don’t turn around. I don’t even reply. There isn’t any point.
Undeterred, Ywain takes up his place beside me. Hopeful ravens and crows take up positions in the sparse autumn trees behind us, and I’m sure if I did bother to turn, I’d see that tired old lion stretched out in the largest patch of early sunlight it could find. Dear Ywain always did have a way with animals. The thought comes close to making me smile, which piques my anger.
‘Shouldn’t you be heading back to your precious wife before she casts you out again?’ I growl at him.
And patient, come-what-will Ywain does smile, an ambivalent, half rueful, half adoring smile. ‘Eventually. She knows where I am. She knows you need me more than she does just now.’
‘I don’t need anyone.’ I clang my shield again, not trusting my ragged voice to scream any more just yet. I’m so tired. I wish he’d just come out. Come out and kill me like he did my brothers.
‘G’waine…’
I turn to fix the full force of my glare on my cousin. The glare that silenced even Arthur’s objections to my planned course, but Ywain meets my eyes and doesn’t even flinch. I go back to clanging my shield, hoping to drown out whatever words he wants me to hear. He’s hoping to deter me. To steer me to a different path. I know the path he would have me walk: one of forgiveness, and peace, where wounds are healed and friendships mended. But he doesn’t understand. Agravain and Gaheris and Gareth… they weren’t his brothers, cut down by his best friend. He still has something worth living for. He still has a wife to go home to, maybe even some sons or daughters by now—I should have asked him—and that damned fountain to protect—why don’t they just destroy the dratted thing? Then he could come questing with me and I could…
‘Would you leave your wife to take up the errant life with me again?’ I ask him.
He hesitates too long. ‘If it would turn you from this folly? Yes.’
I let my sword drop, and for a moment, though I keep watching the gates of Joyeux Guard, I see only the future that could be. Ywain and me, exploring the wild places of the world, jousting in the tournaments of minor lords (anonymously, of course), and standing as champions of the downtrodden and disinherited. Slipping through the borders between this world and the otherworld. Living on game and roots and the bounty of the land. He’d collect more ridiculous animals to help our causes, and, maybe, we’d run into other friends…
For a moment, a blessed moment, I let myself remember better times. I remember sitting across the fire, the air smoke-heavy between us, but Lancelot’s smile on the other side. He smiled so rarely in those days, always so haunted by his broken heart, but he’d smiled that night, as we sat burning damp wood and trading stories of our more wild adventures. Ywain had gone back to his wife. Everyone was always leaving me for women in those days: Ywain, Erec… but Lance wouldn’t do that. I knew he’d never marry, and even if he did, he had the same restless spirit I had. The same longing for something he could never have. Ragnell was gone, and Guinevere… well. That was a whole pot of worms, wasn’t it? He was smiling, and I was smiling back, and we were laughing despite the smoke-induced tears in our eyes, we were laughing, because we knew we could always depend on each other.
What a lie that was.
I snap back to the present and hammer on my shield some more to drown out the residual memories. That future Ywain wants can never be. It’s just another lie. A world that only exists in a place and time before all of this. Even when we lived that life, it wasn’t real. We were all just fooling ourselves.
‘Come out here you murdering bastard!’ I scream. ‘Come and finish what you started!’
‘G’waine—’
‘There’s just the two of us left! Just Modred and me. Or is it only Lot’s line you care to eliminate?’
‘Gawain!’ Ywain snaps, loud enough to be heard over my clanging.
‘What?!’ I spin to him, angry enough to thrust, but I don’t, because I can control my sword hand, unlike certain murdering bastards who won’t even fight me when I demand it by the bonds of honour.
Ywain once more meets my angry glare, this time with a glare of his own. ‘You know that’s not what Lancelot intended. You know he has no vendetta against your family.’
I do know. My head tells me as much every day as I put on my armour and make the walk from our camp to his door. But my heart beats furiously against such reason: it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t his intent. It only matters that I lost three brothers to the sword of one man. And I will say or do anything at all if it means that man will come out of his little fortress and face me in battle, and finish what he began.
Once, long ago, when my brothers and I were but children, we stumbled into a fairy’s trap. What would you give to save your brother, the fey had asked, sharp teeth dripping with eager saliva.
Anything. Everything. I’d answered, without reservation. If it had come to it, I would have died to save them. To save any of them. And now they are dead instead. Only Modred remains, and he… well, he can take care of himself. He has a new family now, a new father, a step-mother. And as Arthur’s son, he’ll have no trouble finding a good wife. Someone who’ll look after him better than I ever could. He deserves someone who hasn’t failed thrice over. He’ll be fine. Just fine. But Agravain, and Gaheris, and Gareth… I would have given anything, everything to save them. But now that they’re gone, I realize I never had anything but them to give.
‘Come out, Lance!’ I call again. ‘Come out or I will plunge my own blade through my heart and die on your doorstep, and you will live knowing you killed me anyway!’
‘Gawain!’ But this time I pay no attention to Ywain beside me, and I doubt he believes my threat, for he doesn’t move to take my sword—which is good, because even old and decrepit, that lion would give him an advantage if he chose to tackle me.
I give the murderer what seems enough time to put on his armour. And just as the sun peaks above us, my enemy steps from his gate.
He’s also chosen to leave his helmet off, and his dark eyes seem darker even than memory recalls. His sharp features have grown hollower. ‘Don’t make me do this,’ he whispers, just loud enough for me to hear.
I raise my blade.
‘Gawain, please,’ Ywain pleads, but his earnestness is drowned by the excited craw of the birds behind us.
‘Let us end this.’
There was a time when Ywain would have laughed in the face of any who told him Lancelot and Gawain could ever do earnest battle. He isn’t laughing now. He weeps as he watches the two come together. His dear cousin screams the wild cries of his ancestral heritage. Cries that centuries past set the Romans themselves to flight. Lancelot doesn’t even tremble, though there are tears leaking from his eyes. Even so, he moves with the familiar fluidity, dodging and parrying as though the blade in his hands were a part of him. Had always been a part of him. But even he struggles to stay upright under Gawain’s furious, powerful swings. They fall back, gasping, a brief respite from the furious clash.
Lancelot whispers: ‘can we not turn from this? Is there nothing else I can give you? No honour price I can pay?’
‘Can you bring them back? Can you raise them, as you raised Sir Ury?’ Gawain doesn’t wait for a reply: they all know the answer is no. He roars as he swings and thrusts and swipes. He is wild, leaving all sorts of easy openings for Lancelot, who takes none of them, conserving his steps to block.
Ywain catches a brief, sorrowful glance from Lancelot, a momentary flicker that takes his attention from Gawain to Yavain, and the resignation, the acceptance Yavain sees there breaks his heart. He is not surprised when Lancelot wrenches his blade backwards, out of the parrying swing it had been moving through, giving Gawain an opening.
But despite the apparently uncontrolled madness of Gawain’s attacks, he pulls back. His sword still strikes Lancelot’s ribs, but it isn’t the sharp edge that connects to the interlocking mail links, it’s the flat of the blade. They fall back again and Gawain growls low in his throat. Behind them, Yvain’s lion raises its weary head.
‘Don’t hold back.’
Lancelot purses his lips and shakes his head. ‘I’ll kill you. You can’t beat me. I’ll kill you, too.’
‘Yes,’ Gawain says through clenched teeth. ‘You will.’
‘Don’t make me do this.’
‘You’ve already done it!’ Gawain screams. ‘I am wounded and bleeding out on the field of battle and you refuse to end the suffering you’ve caused!’
Lancelot’s head falls to his chest, his eyes closed. Ywain stands paralyzed between them, wishing with all his heart that they could go back to better times. Times when all three of them were nothing but adventuring knights, occasionally journeying together, fighting together, never against each other. Never this.
‘Please, Lance,’ Gawain whispers, his voice ragged and hollow and desperate. ‘Finish it.’
‘You are my dearest friend,’ Lancelot whispers back.
‘Then do me this honour. To die in honoured combat against a worthy foe. Let this cursed life of mine, this life of loss and sorrow, come to a glorious end, worthy of song and tale. Do me this one mercy.’ Gawain is weeping now, too, his face splotchy with rage and grief.
But a serenity seems to fall over Lancelot, and he straightens, drawing up to his full height. Lean and lanky, even within his armour, he faces Gawain, who also straightens from his crouched stance. They nod to one another, and salute with their swords.
Ywain steps back as they come together, knowing beyond doubt that this will be the end of his cousin. There is a soft warmth against his hand, and he tangles his fingers in the lion’s mane without looking away from the clash before him. Lancelot goes on the offensive, and Gawain honourably attempts to defend, but they all know he’s no match for Lance at full intent. And the sun has crested its height. It’s only a matter of time.
His body was so much smaller than it should be. In life, he’d filled a room with such presence that the body that lies on the earth feels too small to have been him. Too small to contain the vibrant, passionate, and boisterous knight who’d been so beloved by so many. It was almost enough that Lancelot could almost convince himself that it wasn’t really Gawain he held in his arms. Almost.
He wept, hardly aware of Ywain’s hand, heavy on his shoulder. ‘He would have settled for nothing less.’
‘I gave him so many openings,’ Lance muttered. ‘I thought… if he’d only taken one of them…’
‘That wasn’t what he wanted.’
Lancelot pressed his forehead to Gawain’s as the sun set around them, ruddy red streaked with sickly purple. ‘What about what I wanted?’
Ywain sighed and sat down beside him. Together, they held Gawain’s body as though they could bring it back to life by sheer force of will. ‘He gave up much for other people’s happiness. He let me return to my wife. Let you have your solo adventures. Let you love the queen. Let Ragnell have her way—though I guess he got rewarded for that one…’ he smiled sadly. ‘Even let that fairy knight strike at his neck, though he thought it would be his death. He was persuasive enough to get us to go along will all manner of mischief, but in the end, he let us leave him for our own happiness. I think… I think this time, he needed to leave us to find his.’
Lancelot shook his head. It didn’t make it any better. But he closed Gawain’s eyes. ‘I am sorry, dear friend. Ou—’ he stopped himself from reciting the Our Father. The wrote prayer felt too empty for this moment. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered instead. ‘May his soul find peace. May he find his brothers, and his wife, and all the rest of what he’s lost in this world. He, more than any other I’ve ever met, deserves a place in your house.’
He bowed his head. It didn’t ease the guilt, or the sorrow, or the pain that clutched at his heart, but he was used to those feelings. He would survive.
He always seemed to survive.
‘You will take him back to Arthur?’
Ywain nodded. ‘And I will write a grant poem to his honour.’
‘He must never be forgotten.’
‘No.’
The Elegy of Sir Gawain
by Sir Ywain, his cousin, in *standard alliteration
No nobler knight, no merrier man
Did ever ride o’r the ruddy ridges of the realm
His slashing sword could sunder sunlight,
His shield could splinter spears to shards.
Great Gawain, o glorious gift to grateful ground
We worship you with words unworthy of your wondrous wit
To the one who honoured humble oaths
Bargained with buffets beneath the burgeoning bough
And returned kiss for kiss and courteous conversation
But held too hard to girdled hope when he greeted the green horseman
How great our glee when Great Gawain
Returned from that reaper’s rough realm
With but a small slash, one shred of shame, his shoulders still supporting
The head and hair of our honourable hero
To he who knew a noble nanny’s need
And offered authority to oversee her own
To a wife who most wonderfully rewarded his respect
Gawain, who grasped the glory of a gilded girlie’s glance
And fathomed the fidelity of a fearless female freed
Husband to Ragnell the Horrid; winner of Ragnell the Wondrous
Lover of the Lady de Lys, sire of uncounted, unknown knights
Whose doings will dwell in darkness, shadowed by their sire’s splendour.
To he who would, without withholding, offer all his worldly wealth
To save the honour, household, or heritage of any asking aid
To the chivalrous cherry among churls
Whose honest appeal attained all that was asked
But whose prowess could prevail where parley brought not peace
Gracious in glory and degradation, valiant in victory and vice
The best of brothers, full fidelious friend,
May your memory remain to move masses ever more
And may all who sing your story know the striving of your soul.