Thomas the Rhymer

Thomas of Ercildoune is a harper of great gift and few scruples, welcome at any hall for his playing and rather too welcome in certain beds, and when he needs to lie low he goes to the hill farm of Gavin and Meg, who take him in as a son. There, on the Eildon slopes, he meets a lady in green riding a white horse, and makes her a bargain he does not fully understand: seven years in Elfland, in her service, forbidden to speak a word to anyone but her. He returns with a gift he did not want, which is that he can no longer lie. Kushner tells the story in four voices, Gavin, Thomas, Meg and Elspeth, the woman who waits for him, and the choice is everything, because Thomas's own section is bracketed by people who love him and must live with what came back. The ballad's cadences run through the prose without ever tipping into pastiche. It is a short novel about desire, about the cost of art, and about the very particular loneliness of a man who is compelled to be truthful in a world that runs on kindly evasion.