“Gramercy,” quoth Gawain, but ill pleased. “Good fortune be his who
wishes me good, and that thou wouldst keep faith with me I well believe;
but didst thou keep it never so truly, an I passed here and fled for
fear as thou sayest, then were I a coward knight, and might not be held
guiltless. So I will to the chapel let chance what may, and talk with
that man, even as I may list, whether for weal or for woe as fate may
have it. Fierce though he may be in fight, yet God knoweth well how to
save His servants.”
“Well,” quoth the other, “now that ye have said so much that ye will
take your own harm on yourself, and ye be pleased to lose your life, I
will neither let nor keep ye. Have here your helm and the spear in your
hand, and ride down this same road beside the rock till ye come to the
bottom of the valley, and there look a little to the left hand, and ye
shall see in that vale the chapel, and the grim man who keeps it. Now
fare ye well, noble Gawain; for all the gold on earth I would not go
with ye nor bear ye fellowship one step further.” With that the man
turned his bridle into the wood, smote the horse with his spurs as hard
as he could, and galloped off, leaving the knight alone.
Quoth Gawain, “I will neither greet nor groan, but commend myself to
God, and yield me to His will.”
Then the knight spurred Gringalet, and rode adown the path close in by a
bank beside a grove. So he rode through the rough thicket, right into
the dale, and there he halted, for it seemed him wild enough. No sign of
a chapel could he see, but high and burnt banks on either side and rough
rugged crags with great stones above. An ill-looking place he thought
it.
Then he drew in his horse and looked around to seek the chapel, but he
saw none and thought it strange. Then he saw as it were a mound on a
level space of land by a bank beside the stream where it ran swiftly,
the water bubbled within as if boiling. The knight turned his steed to
the mound, and lighted down and tied the rein to the branch of a linden;
and he turned to the mound and walked round it, questioning with himself
what it might be. It had a hole at the end and at either side, and was
overgrown with clumps of grass, and it was hollow within as an old cave
or the crevice of a crag; he knew not what it might be.