“With nowhere else to turn,” Wren continued, “I recalled a distant bachelor cousin of my mother, who kept chambers in London. I walked from Norfolk to Staple Inn and threw myself on the mercies of one Mr Ephraim Grigsby, Esquire. I told him my father disapproved of my artistic ambitions, without specifying which details had proved so objectionable. Mr Grigsby, as it so happened, was extraordinarily sympathetic to my plight—far moreso than I deserved, if I may be perfectly frank—and took me on as his clerk. The Restive Quills allowed me to remain a member even after I’d been forced to withdraw from university itself. At first they lauded me for my courageous defiance. They felt delighted to create in the company of one who’d truly suffered for his art as they all wished to do. But as the years passed, they took their degrees. Then they found honest employment in banks and counting-houses and shipping firms. And little by little it happened that I remained one of the few to continue producing new works. They lost their admiration for flouting convention. I kept on until my position as an outsider amongst supposed outsiders became too apparent to ignore.” Wren fell silent, then said, “Are you familiar with the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight?”
The sudden change in subject didn’t give Shrike much pause. He found it more concerning to think on what great exhaustion must have made Wren’s mind wander. Still, by Wren’s own word, there was nothing he could do for it at present, save to keep Wren talking. “I’ve not heard it. Though I’m eager to hear you tell it.”
Shrike could hear the smile in Wren’s voice as he began. “One Christmas, the Green Knight came to Camelot and issued a challenge to all King Arthur’s knights. Any knight could strike him a blow, and he would strike them the same blow back with his axe in a year and a day. Sir Gawain accepted the challenged and decapitated the Green Knight with a single stroke of his sword. However, his victory proved short-lived. The Green Knight picked up his head, set it back on his shoulders, and declared he would meet Gawain in a year and a day at the Green Chapel. I don’t know how common such occurrences are in the fae realms, but here in England I can tell you most men stay down when their heads are off.”
Shrike chuckled.
Wren spoke on. “Though unnerved, Gawain felt honour-bound to fulfil his vow. He spent much of the ensuing year searching in vain for some treasure or trick that might allow him to survive the coming blow from the Green Knight’s axe.”
Privately, Shrike thought Gawain’s quest would have proved more successful by far if he’d had a Wren of his own by his side.
Wren continued his tale. “At length Gawain resolved to face his fate and turned his path towards the Green Chapel. Three days before the year and a day was up, he stumbled upon a castle. It belonged to Lord and Lady Bertilak, who welcomed him as a guest. Lord Bertilak offered Gawain a wager. For the coming three days, Lord Bertilak would go out hunting each morning and return each evening to surrender his kill to Gawain. In return, Gawain would remain in the castle and surrender to Lord Bertilak whatever he caught there. You’d think Gawain would’ve had his fill of wagers by then, but I digress—he accepted the lord’s challenge.
“At dawn, Lord Bertilak rode out to hunt deer. Gawain waited for his return. And as he waited, Lady Bertilak approached him. She demanded he lie with her. He refused, as it would break both his chivalric oath and his duty to her lord as a guest in their castle. She replied that he was her guest as well as her husband’s and to refuse her would offend them both. Caught between opposing fealties, Gawain relented and asked if a kiss would suffice. She agreed, and a kiss was shared between them.
“That evening, when Lord Bertilak returned and gave Gawain his venison, Gawain kissed him.” Wren paused, adding dryly, “Perhaps you can see where in particular this tale piqued my interest.”
Shrike laughed.
With a smile in his voice, Wren continued. “However, Gawain neglected to explain from whom he’d acquired the kiss, and Lord Bertilak did not ask.
“The next dawn, Lord Bertilak rode out to hunt a boar. Again, Gawain waited for his return. And again, Lady Bertilak approached him and demanded he lie with her. Gawain refused on the same grounds as before and again offered to receive her kiss instead. Lady Bertilak relented and kissed him. That evening, Lord Bertilak returned and gave Gawain the boar’s head on a pike, and Gawain gave Lord Bertilak another kiss.
“On the dawn of the third day, Lord Bertilak rode out to hunt a fox. Gawain awaited his return. Lady Bertilak demanded Gawain lie with her. As before, he refused. This time, however, she offered another enticement; she would give Gawain her green gyrdel. The gyrdel, she claimed, was enchanted, and whoever wore it would survive any blow struck against them. Given what Gawain had to face at the Green Chapel on the morrow, you can imagine his temptation. Yet still he resisted her advance and would only consent to a kiss—alongside accepting her gift of the gyrdel.
“At last the morning arrived where Gawain would have to go to the Green Chapel and meet his fate. He set out alone from Castle Bertilak wearing Lady Bertilak’s gyrdel beneath his tabard. But when he arrived at the Green Chapel, he found Lord Bertilak waiting there for him. And in short order Lord Bertilak revealed he’d been the Green Knight all along.
“Gawain knelt and waited to receive the Green Knight’s blow. The axe blade came down on his neck—but he escaped with a mere nick of the nape. This bewildered the Green Knight. That is, until Gawain, overcome by guilt, confessed he’d taken not only kisses from his lordship’s lady but her magic gyrdel as well. The Green Knight, amused rather than outraged, laughed heartily—for all this had been his design from the beginning, to teach the knights of Camelot a valuable lesson. What the deuce that lesson was supposed to be, no one’s quite puzzled out in the intervening centuries since the poem was set down, but regardless, the knights of Camelot wore green sashes in remembrance of it ever after.”
“Quite a story,” Shrike said when the ensuing silence made it plain the tale had reached its end.
“It’s not the elegant telling it ought to have,” said Wren, “but thank you all the same. The poem languished in a medieval manuscript for centuries. Some five years back, Sir Frederick Madden put out a printed edition. I, being altogether mad for chivalric romance afterLe Morte d’ArthurandIvanhoe, snapped it up with my savings. I devoured it all the more greedily when I hit upon the first kiss between Gawain and Lord Bertilak. There’d been suggestions of such things in my earlier readings, the sworn comradeship between knights and all that, but never anything so set down in black-and-white as this. You can well suspect how such a tale set fire to my imagination. I illustrated what I considered the most interesting aspects of the story and brought my sketches to show off at the very next meeting of the Restive Quills.”
Shrike wished he might see those illustrations for himself. But before he could express his wish aloud, Wren spoke on.
“You perceive my folly,” Wren continued. “Giddy with the delight of discovery, I did not. In the privacy of a coffeehouse’s back-room, I laid out my drawings. I expected they would receive, if not a warm reception, then one of polite interest, as my illustrations of my fellow members’ works had gone over well in the past. But from the deafening silence of my audience, I knew I had erred.”
Rainscald’s ears flicked back and forth as Shrike’s hands clenched in his mane.
“Vincent spoke up first,” said Wren. “He declared I had missed the point of the poem entirely. It was a celebration of Courtly Love, a pure and chivalrous affection that lives in the soul rather than in the flesh. The kiss between Gawain and the Green Knight was a kiss between brothers-in-arms. To believe otherwise, one must possess a prurient mind, incapable of comprehending the sublime nature of chaste love. He bade me return to my scribbling and leave literary interpretation to those who’d actually taken a degree at university.”
A hiss escaped Shrike’s clenched teeth.
“When he had finished,” Wren continued, “the others took up his cause. They contributed nothing novel to the argument. Merely making the same point again and again in stupider terms. I hardly heard them. All my thoughts remained fixed on Vincent. Vincent, who’d oft pressed his lips to mine in stolen moments in shadows at university. Kisses which evidently meant nothing.”
Shrike couldn’t fathom a man who could kiss Wren and feel naught.
“I made no mention of this aloud,” Wren added. “Nor did I ask them how, if Gawain gave the lord the same kiss as the lady, why then the kiss between the lady and Gawain held the threat and promise of erotic possibility—it being such a kiss as might stand in for carnal knowledge—whilst the kiss between Gawain and the lord did not. Cowardice held my tongue. Instead I gathered my illustrations with what remained of my dignity and departed the Restive Quills forevermore. Vincent married within the year. Some among their number had already done so; many more did afterward. Fewer left off patronizing unfortunates in Whitechapel. A better man than I might pity their wives. My literary compatriots, who but five years hence were all afire to become the next Byron or Blake, now sought the domestic bliss of Dickens. Something a bachelor of my inclinations can never hope to achieve.”
Shrike knew nothing of Dickens or their domestic bliss. Yet he hoped he might achieve something akin to the peace and tranquillity of hearth and home with Wren.
“But I digress,” Wren continued regardless of Shrike’s private musings. “There is no measure to which I might dilute myself that will make my essence palatable to society. Whereas Felix,” Wren added, his words dripping with disdain, “no matter the depraved depths of his debts or vices, may count upon finding himself accepted and admired wherever he goes, simply because he fits the mould of what society thinks a gentleman ought to be. Everyone bends over backwards to grant him second chances, to shield him from the consequences of his actions—and here I am!” Wren choked out a mirthless laugh. “Rescuing him! After he spurned my efforts to sober him up and sleep off his stupor somewhere safe—he follows me to the fae realms like a sneak-thief, dishonours hisfiancéeby consorting with other women, falls prey to their trap—and just when it seems like he might receive his comeuppance, I rescue him again! And why do I do it? Because he is everything my father is, and everything I ought to be—and so the world loves him, and so I must pretend to do so as well, though I loathe him more than all the world.”
Silence fell in the wake of this outburst, broken only by the steady and gentle plodding of Rainscald’s hooves.
“Not that I’m bitter,” Wren added dryly.
Shrike chuckled despite himself. Wren joined in after.
