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However, the Green Knight does not die. He simply grabs his severed head and tells Gawain that to keep his honor, Gawain must find him in the Green Chapel and submit to the blow in a year and a day. The Green Knight rides out of the room, and the stunned court returns to its festivities. In the second part of the poem, the poet traces the cycle of the year through the liturgical calendar, moving from the New Year to Michaelmas to All Hallows Day.
Gawain leaves the court as Christmas approaches, facing the wilds of northern England alone in his search for the Green Chapel. When he is nearly defeated by the weather, he prays to the Virgin for help. The lord assures Gawain that he knows where the Green Chapel is and that it is not very far away. He invites Gawain to stay with them for several days and enjoy their company. He invites Gawain to play a game: He says that he will give Gawain anything that he gains on each of three days he is away hunting if Gawain will give him anything he gains while staying at the castle.
Gawain is in a difficult position: The code of courtesy demands that he engage in lovemaking, while the code of chivalry demands that he honor his host. He compromises by taking a kiss, which he dutifully later gives to Lord Bertilak when he returns. On the third day, however, Lady Bertilak offers him a green girdle that she says will protect him from all harm. Fearing death at the hands of the Green Knight, Gawain takes the girdle but does not reveal this to Lord Bertilak.
He puts his head on the block to take the blow, but flinches, and the Green Knight chides him. The Green Knight begins a second blow but does not complete it. He begs for pardon, which Lord Bertilak grants, then says he will wear the girdle on his sleeve as a sign of his shame. He returns to Camelot, humbled, and the court welcomes him home. They make light of his badge, choosing to wear green girdles themselves as a sign of solidarity. From his fine steel shoes, to knee guards burnished bright and tied above his knees with knots of gold, to a mail-mesh shirt of bright metal rings covered by a breast plate, to arm braces and gauntlets of steel, nothing was more breathtaking than the diamond-studded crown upon his helmet.
On his shield was engraved a five-pointed pentacle, an "infinite knot," to symbolize truth. Its five points represented his five knightly obligations - friendship, generosity, courtesy, chastity and compassion. Gawain clutched his sword and shield, mounted his steed Gringolet and sprang on his way.
All the knights and ladies of the court who watched him ride off sighed deep in their hearts and said softly to one another, "What a pity! That one so young and valiant and promising should be sacrificed - and for what? Yet Gawain thought only of his mission. Soon he approached North Wales where he crossed the river to the Wilderness of Wirral. He stopped everyone he met along the way to ask if he or she knew of a Green Knight who lived in a Green Chapel, but none had heard of any him and if they had, they said assuredly, they would no doubt remember such a green-skinned creature.
Day after day, with little food to forage to quiet the pangs of hunger and no company to keep but his own, Gawain climbed cliffs, forded streams, and made his way through hills and mountains, marsh and mire. Any rustle of a leaf, or a snort or howl in the dark could mean sudden and fatal trouble for him.
Wolves, dragons, bulls, bears, trolls or boars stalked the woods and could attack at any time. All this danger he could bear but for the piercing coldness in the air which grew damper and icier every day. Sometimes, exhausted, he lay on the frozen ground in his armor and wondered if he would ever get back up. And yet he carried on, day after day, until the morn of Christmas Eve, when after feeling specially low, he lifted his eyes and to his astonishment beheld a beautiful castle, surrounded by a moat, deep in the frozen, snow-covered forest. Gawain goaded Gringolet to the edge of the drawbridge.
There he stopped and admired the castle behind the moat. Its walls seemed to rise from waters of enormous depth to a wondrous height and were topped with so many towers and pinnacles, each one marvelously shaped and constructed, that it looked like the stuff of dreams. Soon out of a high window a porter's pleasant face appeared. His face disappeared and a few minutes later a number of servants spilled out the front door, dropped the drawbridge and rushed to the edge of the moat so they could greet Gawain as he crossed.
The servants ushered his horse to the stables, while courtiers and squires escorted him inside. There the knight was greeted by the lord of the castle, a handsome, sturdy, bearded fellow who bid him welcome, and they all feasted well into the night. For three days Gawain enjoyed himself at the castle, spending delightful hours with his host, the lady of the castle, an elderly woman who often accompanied the lord's wife, and their courtiers, until his mission so weighed on him that he took aside his host.
After thanking him heartily, Gawain asked if he knew of a green-skinned knight who lived in a Green Chapel, for his quest compelled him to find it by New Year's Day. The lord laughed, surprised, and said, "Is that all you seek? Then surely you can stay a few days more, since the Green Chapel is not even two miles from here. At the end of the day the two of them would exchange whatever they had won during the day.
Both agreed to the game and feasted well into the night. The next morning Gawain, sleeping comfortably beneath the costly canopy, stirred at the sound of footsteps coming into his bedchambers. Peeking through the canopy, he spied the lord's wife coming into his bedroom and sitting beside him.
Confused, he pretended to sleep. Then he pretended to awaken, surprised to see her there. He assured her that he is her servant and beholden to her in every way - and would she mind allowing him to rise and dress himself so as to present himself more suitably to her? This she would not allow, she said charmingly; she far preferred to keep him as her prisoner and to take the opportunity to get to know him better. Why, if she had to choose a husband from among all men, there would be no valiant and brave knight on earth to be chosen before him.
He reminded her that she has already chosen a better, but declared he is proud he should be so prized by a lady as noble as she. And so their banter continued until mid-morning. Suddenly, the lady accused him of not being the famed knight Gawain after all. Why would she doubt it, he asked? The courteous Gawain, said she, would assuredly not allow a lady to leave his bedchamber without a kiss. And so he allowed her one kiss, and she left the room. That evening the lord of the castle returned with a great number of deer. By the terms of their agreement he gave all the venison he had hunted that day to Gawain and asked him what he had won.
Gawain drew the lord to him and kissed him once. Surprised, the lord asked where he had won such a kiss, and Gawain reminded him they had agreed to exchange gifts and not necessarily to reveal how the gift had been won. The second day at dawn the lord left again with his hunting party. The lord's wife entered Gawain's bedchamber as before.
After he woke and greeted her, gazing at her thoughtfully, she chided him why he looked so stern. Surely a knight well trained in the arts of courtliness and honor would seem eager for another kiss from a lady. He replied that it would not behoove him to take a kiss from any lady not given of her own free will. She assured him she would freely grant many such kisses, and she kissed him once again. Then she scolded him again - here she has sat with him for two mornings and he has spoken nothing of love.
Is she so unworthy, she glances at him, that he will not teach her of its art? It is a great joy to him, says the knight, that such a fair lady would seek such a conversation with one as uncouth and inexperienced as he, but surely she knows far more of love herself. And so they jested and talked together until she kissed him one more time and took her leave. That night the lord returned with a wild boar that he had wrestled to the ground. Gawain took his host around the neck and kissed him courteously twice, saying, "Truly, I have now given you all that I have gained.
That night when they feasted together, Gawain reminded his host that he must leave the next morning if he is to arrive at the Green Knight's Chapel by New Year's Day. The lord assured him he would still have plenty of time if he left the day after the morrow, and entreated him to stay one more day. The next morning, after her husband left with his hunting party, the fair lady of the castle clad herself in a mantle that reached to the ground, exposed her neck and fair throat, and was lined with costly furs.
Gawain was having nightmares of the impending fate that awaited him when she woke him by entering the room. Again, she sat by his bed. She declared she must know whether he has another lady love to whom he holds dear. He does not, he said, "No such love have I. He wished he could give her a worthy gift for she deserved far more than he can give, he said in earnest, but it is not to her honor that he can give her any such token, even a glove.
Then, she said, slightly miffed, that she will give him a token instead, and offered him a ring of red gold with a sparkling jewel.
This, unfortunately, he cannot accept, he said. Then she suggested, yet more vixed, that if a ring is too costly and would make him too beholden to her, then he must accept her girdle as a lesser gift. She untied a lace fastened by her side and handed him her own green silk girdle, woven in a beautiful fashion with gold thread, but this, too, he said he could not accept. He begged her to ask for no more favors that he could not grant. The lady continued to hold the girdle forth. This girdle may seem an ordinary garment, said she, but if he knew its true worth he would value it more highly.
For the green lace is a talisman with magical properties, and when worn by a knight its wearer cannot be harmed or slain by any man or by any magic on earth. Given his grim mission scheduled for the next day, this indeed may be a craft worth trying.
And so he accepted the girdle and she gave it to him with good will, though as she did, she entreated him to not tell her husband about the gift, and this pledge he promised to keep. Gawain thanked the lady heartily. She gave him three quick kissed and took her leave. That night Gawain gave the lord three kisses, but made no mention of the girdle.
Per their agreement, his host presented him, though with regrets, a sole fox pelt which was his only haul from the day's hunt. At that night's feasting, Gawain reminded his host he must leave the following morning without delay, and the lord agreed, insisting on providing him a squire to guarantee safe passage. That night, it may have been the blizzard's winds that kept Gawain sleeping fitfully all night, or it may have been dread of what was to come that day, but at sunrise our hero sleepily awoke and bid his chamberlain to bring him his armor.
Deliberately he clad himself, not forgetting to wrap the green silk girdle about his waist, and summoned for his horse Gringolet to be brought to him. The horse glistened with the fine care that had been lavished upon him. The drawbridge of the castle was let down, the knight mounted his steed, and, accompanied by the squire the lord had provided for his safe passage, Gawain ventured into the wilderness. After traveling through the woods and up to the heights of the neighboring snowy hills, the squire drew reins and said, "Master, now we are near the place you seek. Before I go, I feel it is my solemn duty to tell you that none is known to pass these lands that has ever returned.
Here dwells perhaps the most ruthless and bloodthirsty of all creatures, man or beast. Though you are without doubt as brave and renowned a knight as ever walked the earth, surely even you must consider whether it is wise to proceed.
None would blame you if you did not, and I assure you, I would never tell another soul alive that you chose to not continue this quest, which is no doubt doomed for you. Gawain proceeded in the direction described, but to his surprise could see no spires or towers above the trees to signal a stronghold nearby. Then he made out a mound located beside a stream where the water bubbled as if boiling.
Gawain alighted his horse, tied the reins to a branch, and examined the strange promontory. It had two entrances, a hole on one end and a smaller one on the other side, both overgrown with green weeds and emitting a dank and foul smell from within.
This can only be a place of dark wizardry, thought Gawain, and if it is the Green Chapel, it must be a place of evil magic. A sharp sound, as if a scythe were struck against a grindstone, clattered on the cliff and roused him from his thoughts. If this be the Green Knight, show yourself now or it will be too late. Then out stepped the Green Knight, as large and massive and green as ever, from head to foot, bearing a newly sharpened Danish axe with a blade no less than four feet wide.
Now let's get to business. You know the agreement between us - that one year and a day ago, on New Year's Day, I took a blow and that today I shall return that blow to you. We are in this valley all alone with none to serve or witness. Now remove your helmet and prepare for the blow; let's talk no more than we did last year before you served me your blow. The Green Knight grasped his sword, drew the grim axe upward, but as the blade fell Gawain shrank a bit with his shoulders and the weapon stilled in the air.
You pulled away as if you were a coward! In Arthur's chambers, I held my head steady when your blow fell to me. My head fell to the floor but I did not flinch. Gawain, I am the better and braver knight than you! Said Gawain hotly, "I flinched once and won't again. Unlike you, when you faced your blow, I know that when my head falls, it won't talk later in my hands.
UI'm ready for you to deal me my destiny, I will flinch no more. You're taking too long. Be done with it, once and for all! Once more Gawain bent his head and the axe fell, nicking the skin of his neck but not striking through his neck. Gawain felt the sting and saw the blood stain the snow. Yet realizing he was still alive he leaped away, quickly put on his helmet, drew his sword and cried, "Halt! You, sir, have had your blow; you shall have no more.
Our agreement in Arthur's halls was one blow for another. Should you strike again I shall be free to return the same. Then the Green Knight set down his axe and leaned against its handle. No man will do you wrong or step outside the agreement we made in King Arthur's court. You have withstood my blow, fair enough, the terms are met.
If I had so chosen, you would have suffered a far worser blow. My first stroke was utterly feigned and did you no harm, as you did none to me that first night.