We all feared her, at least the males with half a brain did.

Dorothy Zultner was a tenured professor to be reckoned with, and she wasn’t amused that she had been imposed upon to teach the dreaded, mandatory, first year Brit Lit course. She let very little expression show on her sharply chiselled, emotionless face. In a way she looked like a greyhound, sharp and intent. She obviously wanted to be somewhere else because she kept touching her gold plated cigarette case she kept in her chest pocket. It was a sign of her unhappiness. The other thing that I found interesting was that when she taught, she never looked at you. It was as though she was giving a lecture to some distant audience and we, as students, were just in between.

Middle aged, she always wore black. Against this, her most strikingly pale skin, stood out. It was so pale that I wondered if she had ever seen the light of day. The way she wore her wavy dark brown hair, shot with a bolt of white, matted to her head, I wondered if she had ever been young. She also had Ingrid’s accent, but more aristocratically evolved: ‘Hungarian nobility,’ Ingrid had told me in a very reverential way, ‘very old, very much like the Teutonic Knights.’ I didn't ask her about that, but it was interesting.  She flicked her long fingers, her red nails pointing to a distant spot on the back wall, and began. 

“So, what can you tell me about our man, Sir Gawain? Was he a hero or was he a naive, imbecilic moron?”

I was keenly aware of the empty seat beside me, where Ingrid usually sat, and felt a pang of loss. Where was she? She loved this class. In a way I could associate with Sir Gawain, the imbecilic version.

“Mr. Jones, what do you think?” Dorothy said staring right through me. It was like being struck and held by an intense search light.

I felt the flush of blood flooding its heated way up into my face.  Evans, a tall square headed fellow off to my left, leaned over to his buddy and snickered. He probably found the name Gawain somewhat amuzing. Then the guy tossed me a smirk, and I knew, just knew, that he had been one of my attackers the other night, and he found my discomfort funny.

Dorothy cleared her voice, prompting me.

“I think he was a hero?” It was a pretty pathetic offering at her academic alter.

“And why would you say that?” The professor’s voice was not full of acidic scorn, but of mild interest and that gave me some courage.

“Well, at the castle, Lady Bertilak was offering herself to Gawain consistently. A normal guy would have given in,” I took a breath gaining momentum, “but a hero, only a true hero could withstand the temptation. I mean, to even get him to kiss her, she had to trick him.”

My square headed attacker coughed into his hands disguising the word ‘gay.’ His friends around him chuckled. He was brave in a pack, but still; he had run from Kam…anybody in their right mind would run from Kam.

Dorothy Zultner turned her sharp nose in the direction of the cough, and tapped her gold plated cigarette holder.

The entire class went silent, as she looked at him, actually looked at him. I didn’t like what I saw in her eyes and I felt a palpable tension thicken the air.

“And you have a better idea, of what makes Sir Gawain a hero?” she said slowly, weighing each word perfectly. “What is your name?” She considered the air for a moment, waving her fingers as if she had her long stem cigarette cradled between them. “Mr. Evans, is it not.”

He cleared his throat, taking strength from his friends. Still, they looked like a group of little guppies being circled by a shark. Professor Zultner smiled. Her eye teeth looked exceptionally long.

“Well,” he said his voice cracking. “A hero takes what he wants. A loser,” and he stared at me, “gets beaten up.”

I discerned a tremor on the professor’s lips. Was that a smile? I had never seen her smile before. “So, what you say, Mr. Evans, is that a hero takes what he wants? I find that refreshingly feebleminded,” she drawled.

The blow caught Evans on the chin. He looked around for support, but his friends seemed to be examining their shoes. He visibly sank into the seat.

“I can tell two things about you, Mr. Evans. One, you have not read the poem, and two, your point of view has the weight of one who is indeed challenged in the places where it counts.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The girls in the class, always quicker than most of the boys, giggled. She was good. She was turning the female sex in the class against him and I could tell by the look on his face that he didn't like it.

Professor Zultner dismissed Evans and began to lecture, and we vanished; the back wall of the classroom infinitely more interesting. “It was not just for delight that the author describes the hunt, of the baying hounds, of the clarion call of the horns. It is not for information that he describes the slaughter of the beast, first the deer, then the boar and finally the fox. There is a purpose here, a purpose steeped in blood and guts -- a warning.”

“A warning,” repeated Evans mindlessly.

“Yes, a warning,” said Professor Zultner, her eyes were on me again. Why not the back wall? “Slaughter was what was waiting for Sir Gawain had he given in to animal side of his nature. Had he slept with Lady Bertilak, he would have been stuck on a spit and roasted like the boar, because, you see, Lord Bertilak was none other than the Green Knight.”

She was mesmerizing. There was a weight to her words, as though she had been there, had seen the contest, that it had actually happened. I shook my head. That was impossible, on so many levels.

“How many times did they play this game?” she asked.

Evans looked bewildered, so did everyone around him, probably because they weren’t looking very deeply.

I heard the door to the lecture hall open. Someone had just come in late, poor soul. Professor Zultner always made an example of those who came late. This time she really was smiling.

“Ah, yes. Miss Zoor, glad you could make it. Can you explain the relevance of the number three in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight?”

I swiveled and caught Ingrid’s eyes. There was a feral intensity in them, like she had been running from something, or someone, and it had just caught her. There was a detonation of something being dropped outside and she started.

“We are waiting, Miss Zoor.”

There’s many ways to say sorry, other than to say sorry, which means the same thing. “The Chinese,” I blurted out, “think three is lucky because it sounds like the word for life.” Ingrid’s eyes touched me with apprehension. “Four is bad luck, because it sounds like the word for death.”

“That is something ...that has nothing to do with the poem we are studying,” mused Professor Zultner.

The class gave a chorus of nervous laughter, not really sure how they could get on the professor’s good side – if she even had a good side, but I had broken the tension. Ingrid’s look melted with gratitude as she made her way to her seat.

“Three is a magical number,” continued Professor Zultner. “Three times Lady Bertilak tried to seduce our knight. The first two times he came away with a kiss. A kiss he traded with Lord Bertilak for the deer, the boar -- but what of the fox?”

“She gave him her favour,” said Ingrid. “The girdle that would keep him from death.”

“I must confess," Professor Zultner drawled, “Miss Zoor was late for a reason, a reason that will prove a point, a point of what makes a hero. If you will, Miss Zoor...”

Ingrid moved down the aisle and I noticed she was carrying a brown package. She handed the package to the professor who took it in a flash of red fingernails. Ripping away the brown paper, she exposed a green scarf of fine linen fabric, and let it fall to the floor. She held it like a flag.

Things of importance have always marked their place in time. It was like a sudden breath, a shock that comes with learning something significant. This was a time like that. Everybody, except Evans and his cronies, could feel it. Something vital was about to happen.

“He would not sleep with the Lady Bertilak,” continued Professor Zultner, “and so, Sir Gawain was awarded the item that would save his life.”

Evans, still smarting at having been embarrassed was looking for a way to build himself back up. “A scarf? A scarf was going to save his life.”

Professor Zultner held it out to Evans. “A girdle. It’s a girdle, to be worn around the waist. As long as Sir Gawain wore it, no blade could pierce him. It also marked him as a hero. Who will take it? I offer it to anyone in this room. But be careful this blade has two edges.”

Evans, the idiot stood up and strode down the aisle. I didn’t like how he was looking at Ingrid. She deserved better.

“I’ll take it,” he brayed and reached for the girdle. “I will show you how a real hero acts.”

“No,” I shouted standing up. I must have been possessed because it seemed every fibre of my being was in rebellion to common sense. This Evans goon was well over six feet and very muscular.

“Mr. Jones?” said Professor Zultner raising an eyebrow. “You protest?”

Ingrid was looking at me in silence, but her eyes were yelling at me to sit down.

I strode down the aisle, and up to Evans. The top of my head barely came up to his shoulder. “He’s not a hero.”

“Why don’t we let the girdle decide,” whispered the Professor. Although her face was as cold as ever, her eyes glittered with excitement. “Gentlemen, if you would simultaneously take each end of the scarf...”

Was it to be a tug of war? If it was, then I was going to lose, but I was determined not to get beaten twice.

“How’s your face?” snapped Evans.

“Hope I didn’t dirty you boot with my blood,” I countered. That caught him by surprise like I hoped it would. The plan was while his brain was trying to work things out I would yank the girdle out of his hands. I never got the chance.

As soon as we both touched the girdle, electricity seemed to run through it. I felt it tingle through my fingers, curl around the nape of my neck like a dog sniffing me, and then it turned on Evans.  A loud crackling sound exploded in the room and Evans went flying through the air only stopping when he hit the wall. He fell to the floor like a sack. I stared horrified at the girdle I alone was holding.

“Behold, the hero,” whispered Professor Zultner.

Ingrid didn’t look happy, and I finally realized why. I, unlike Evans had studied Sir Gawain and The Green Knight.