Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  Guy signals Roger Billancourt and William Morcar forward. "Search the carriage."

  Immediately the camel-mounted knight moves to block their advance, says something in a foreign tongue. The black knight trots to his side and speaks out in elegant French with a southern lilt, "Noble lord, brave knights, dear lady, and good people of Epynt—herein, forsooth, is the baroness Ailena Valaise. She has journeyed from far Jerusalem under our guardianship. I am Gianni Rieti from die Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulcher. To my right is Falan Askersund, a Swedish cavalier, who has served in the Holy Land, but who lost his faith in the Church and gave his soul to Mahomet and the Saracen god. He is the baroness's thrall, a gift of a Muslim caliph. And we are her knights, sworn to protect her well-being and honor by both your king, his high majesty Richard Coeur de Lion, and by his esteemed Holiness, our Holy Father in Rome, Pope Celestine the Third. Through us, they send their greetings and extend their rightful will."

  "His tongue is more slippery than a snail's ass," Denis Hezetre whispers to Guy.

  "Reveal the baroness, that she may be recognized," Guy demands.

  The black knight reaches into a saddlebag and, with a pronounced flourish, produces two vellum packets. "Herewith are documents from King Richard and from our Holy Father, both affixed with official seals. I trust you will find them accurate and binding."

  Gianni Rieti prances forward on his steed, light as a flame, and gracefully hands the vellums to Roger Billancourt.

  When Guy receives the documents, he glances at them only briefly. They appear authentic, and he passes them gruffly to Denis. "These are mere vellum. They could be forgeries," he sneers. "Show us the baroness or turn about and be gone."

  "I cannot comply," Rieti says with sincere regret. "For the baroness to reveal herself outside her own castle would be too great an indignity for us to permit. She will show herself only within the gates."

  "That's horseshit," Guy barks. "If the old bitch is in there have her come forward and show herself. I've no time for your games."

  The Italian knight rears back with indignation. "Your disrespect for your mother offends and dishonors the teachings of our faith."

  "Trickery!" Roger Billancourt cries, hand on his sword. "Don't let them in the castle," he tells Guy. "Kill them out here."

  Gianni Rieti smiles serenely at the irate warrior, gesticulating vaguely at the sky. "Your king and our Holy Father will be sore displeased if you slay their emissaries." He turns his handsome smile on Guy. "Without doubt, dear sir, you will lose your barony—and probably your head."

  "Let Mother enter!" Clare shouts from where Harold and Gerald have stopped her at the drawbridge. Her thick face contorts with impacted resentment at her brother, and she flies forward toward the carriage until restrained by Harold.

  "What harm?" Denis whispers to Guy. "They are too few to threaten us, no matter how many they pack in that carriage."

  Guy gnashes his teeth, reels about, and returns to the castle.

  Denis and William lead the baroness's oxcart across the drawbridge, the camels alongside. Roger follows, his hand still on his sword.

  Clare beseeches Gerald and Harold to let her approach the carriage, but they firmly guide her back into the bailey. There, her servitors surround her to buffer her from the excited throng. "It is Mother," she breathes hotly, with conviction. "This is her way. She never gave an inch to Guy."

  -/

  Erec and Dwn press closer to the clearing Guy has enforced by stamping his horse in a wide circle. The Welshman's massive shoulders wedge through the curious crowd. At the front rank, he leads the old woman forward to stand before him so that her view is unobstructed.

  Gasps of awe spark across the courtyard as the camels stride into the bailey, the turbaned rider staring impassively ahead. The oxcart, creaky and travel-worn, is commonplace and hardly a worthy conveyance for nobility; indeed, it is the dwarf driver and his black monkey, which now stands on his shoulder saluting the assembled crowd, that elicit the most excited murmurings. Head bowed, body waving back and forth, the old Jew mutters prayers. The mules clop forward and behind them rides the Italian knight, regal and dashing on his white charger. With his curly, blue-black hair and his precisely trimmed mustache and beard, he is the image of the foreign cavalier, and when he smiles at the crowd he draws spontaneous cheers.

  "People of Valaise!" Gianni Rieti calls out, his dark eyes glittering with joy. "I bring you wondrous news! Your mistress is returned—but not as she left. A miracle has been wrought. Both the Muslim knight Falan Askersund,"—he gestures at the tur-baned rider—"and myself beheld this miracle with our own eyes, as did many others, and we have come this long way from the Holy Land with the baroness by the grace of God and with the approval of our Holy Father to bear witness to the glory of our Savior. Good people, blessed by faith and fear of the Lord, behold your baroness, Ailena Valaise!"

  The dwarf pulls a rope, and the hide coverings of the carriage fall away, revealing a young woman sitting on a tapestried bench. Under dark, wavy hair spilling past her shoulders in shadowy gleams of auburn, she regards the gathering with the weight of moonlight in her face. Her large, ebony eyes are circles of clarity, looking for recognition from her people. She holds her head high on a long, frail neck, displaying proud cheekbones, a long, patrician nose, and a confident mouth with small underlip and swollen overbite.

  At the sight of her, Dwn's memory jerks backward through the years so swiftly that a sensation of falling bewilders her legs and sends her toppling into Erec's arms.

  -/

  "Deceiver!" Guy bawls.

  Amazed shouts mingle with angry groans. Maître Pornic, the local abbot, a starved-faced man in silver tonsure and a mantle of coarse black serge, squirms through the crowd to stand beside Guy. "This is blasphemy! Have this shameless liar removed at once!"

  The young woman in the carriage stands and holds her left hand high. "I am Ailena Valaise," she says in a voice surprisingly husky for so slender a woman. "I wear my father's signet ring, as I wore it on Saint Fandulfs day, nigh ten years ago, when I left this castle to join the Crusade."

  The crowd presses forward. Rushing in front of them to push them back, Guy stops before the young woman. "Do you think we are fools?" he shouts at her, spit flying.

  Deftly, the camel bearing Falan Askersund skitters backward and separates Guy from the carriage. Guy's horse, alarmed by die scent and sight of the camel, bucks nervously to the side.

  "A miracle has been wrought!" Gianni Rieti shouts and points to the vellum documents still in Denis Hezetres hands. "Our Holy Father has himself authenticated this miracle. We have his seal. Please, gentle knight, to read his proclamation aloud."

  Denis, himself stunned at the resemblance of this woman to his childhood memory of the old baroness, opens the papal document and reads it to the crowd:

  '"Celestine the pope, to all the faithful: We bestow the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ upon you and bid your obedience to this instrument of the Church, written in our own hand. In witness to the truth of our Saviors miraculous interdiction and by apostolic authority we recognize Ailena Valaise as the glorified recipient of God's grace through the manifestation of the Sacred Chalice, from which she has drunk and been restored to her youth, wholesome and sanctified and worthy of restoration to her tide as baroness of Epynt, where by our will, she shall resume her rightful place as the King of England's legate, with all commensurate powers and duties returned to her.

  '"Given at the Lateran, on the feast of Saint Anne, in the seventh year of our pontificate.'"

  Denis sits tall in the saddle and raises the open document so all can see the purple script and the gold imprint. "In truth, this bears the pope's seal," he says with awe and holds it before Maître Por-nic, whose eyes bulge like a startled mare's.

  Cries of astonishment and shouts for salvation pierce the crowd. Many cross themselves and fall to their knees.

  The baroness urgently signs for them to rise. "I am not t
o be worshiped," she declares loudly, but her voice is lost in the mounting frenzy of amazement. Denis draws his sword and points the hilt toward her, signifying his allegiance. Several sergeants in the crowd do likewise. The other knights look to Guy, who glowers blackly at the young woman before him.

  -/

  Erec lifts Dwn above the press of the awestruck crowd and shakes her gently until her senses return. She puts her arms about his thick neck and gazes over the heads of the throng at the young woman in the carriage.

  "Is she indeed the baroness?" Erec asks loudly enough to be heard above the excitement.

  "I did think so," Dwn replies hesitantly, "but my eyes are old. I must get closer—to be assured."

  Sergeants thrust through the crush with long quarter-staves, making way for Clare, Gerald, and Harold. But Erec shifts the old woman so that she sits on his shoulder, and he barges through the horde to follow in their wake. A sergeant blocks his way with a cross-staff, and Erec shouts in his mightiest voice, "Seigneur Gerald!"

  Gerald and Clare turn. Clares face is greased with tears, her red eyes wild. But sallow-skinned Gerald looks sullenly sober. At the sight of the old handmaid, he brightens suddenly, his eyes sparkling craftily, and he taps the shoulder of the sergeant and beckons them forward.

  "Is she your mistress?" Gerald asks the crone.

  Dwn feels strangely radiant with heat. At any instant, she thinks to herself, light will ray from her eyes, ears, mouth. Vainly, she strives to contain her wonder, strives to stare at this young woman and not see the likeness. But the likeness grows more vivid the closer she gets. A drafty fear bites into her as she realizes that in moments they will come face to face. Carried by the strong Welshman, she feels she has fallen from this world into eternity, escaping somehow the finality and greatness of death.

  Gerald turns a stern look upon her. "Not a word to her now, until she speaks to you first. If she is your mistress, she will recognize vou."

  Ahead, Clare has already reached the oxcart, and the sergeants are helping her up. The crowd is falling silent, to hear the miracle-blessed baroness greet her daughter. The baroness takes Clares hands, and Clare, her heavy face quivering, totters, nearly swoons.

  "God bless you, dear child," the baroness speaks, her pale face suddenly hot as flame. "My dear, dear child, Clare. Let me hold you to my heart. Come to your mother. Don't be afraid. Our Lord has touched me with His grace."

  With a thick sob, Clare seizes the young woman, and the two nearly topple from the oxcart hut for the alertness of the camel-rider, who reaches over and steadies them.

  Gerald separates the two women. Clare sits clown heavily on the bench in the carriage bed, her shoulders heaving with sobs, her watery eyes fixed on the young baroness. At Gerald's sign, the crone is hoisted up into the oxcart. Again, he nails the old woman with a harsh stare, and Dwn stands there, shivering in icy wafts of dread and awe.

  The young woman gazes down at the shriveled woman, kindly as the madonna. She takes the crones quavering hands in her own warm grasp, and before she even speaks, there is no longer any doubt in Dwn's soul. The full cut of her dark eyebrows, the pollen-fair down along the line of her jaw, the faint dimple in her chin— she observes these well-remembered traits with a widening stare and a new fear, that all her groping prayers have been heard in God's silence.

  "Dwn, do you recognize me?" the young baroness asks in Welsh laced with the accent of her native tongue. "It is surely I, the Servant of Birds."

  Dwn's hands pull away from the grasp of her lost friend as from a fire, and she covers her gaping mouth. A cry ekes out and then tears of bewilderment. The baroness enfolds the old woman in her embrace and strokes her gray head. "You have left your hair uncut. But that is all that remains unchanged. You have suffered in my absence. My dear Dwn. Where are your fine clothes? And why do you stink of the sty?"

  "No matter, my dearest Ailena," Dwn breathes into the baroness's shoulder. "No matter at all now that you are come home."

  Guy cries out: "This is trickery!"

  Ailena glares at him and separates herself from her ancient friend. "No trickery, Guy—but the Good Lord's wondrous will. I fully expect you to doubt, my son, you who never had even a mustard seed of faith."

  Roger Billancourt angles his steed through the suddenly boisterous assembly until he is alongside Guy. "For Godsake, do not challenge her out here. Get her away from the rabble."

  "I see you whispering your mischief, Roger Billancourt," the baroness calls out loudly. "It was your idea—was it not?—to be rid of me by casting me out penniless to the pilgrimage. How clever. And Guy, the poor fool, cannot resist heeding you." She cocks her head haughtily. "Assembled brethren, I come to tell you, I fulfilled my pilgrimage, and the Savior answered my prayers, as my son could well see if he were not blinded by malice. Now it is his turn to journey to the Holy Land and beg our Lord's forgiveness."

  The crowd hushes at this challenge. Ailena holds her gaze of locked defiance with Roger for a long, angry moment before she looks into the crowd. Surrounded by guardsmen are the family members who have rushed from the palais. Watching her with cold amazement are two women in elegant robes, one ginger-haired, the other freckled, with tresses of fox-red. Ailena smiles and nods. "Hellene and Leora"—she names Clares daughters— "do you recognize me? You've never seen me without my wrinkles."

  Ailena looks with surprise at the offspring surrounding the women. "I recognize William's son Thierry," she says, regarding a brawny lad with the haughty bearing of an heir and the thrust jaw of a bully. "You were a mere child when I left. You must be fifteen now. And your twin—where is Madelon?"

  A slender young woman with golden elf locks and a pixie face steps out from behind her mother Hellene. She curtsies. "Welcome home, Arrière-grand-mère."

  Ailena smiles generously at her, then points to a husky, snub-nosed boy. "And you, of course, are their younger brother Hugues.

  You were a baby of two summers when I saw you last. Now look at you. You've the girth of your father." She casts a bemused look to William Morcar, who sits astride his steed, scrutinizing her and stroking his yellow mustache.

  "And are all these yours and Harold's, Leora?" Ailena asks the fox-haired woman and gestures to the gaggle of well-dressed but restless girls flocking about her. "They're too young for me to know any of them."

  Leora beams proudly. "The eldest was born the year after you left, Grand-mère." She taps each of their heads, "Joyce, Gilberta, Blythe, and Effie."

  Ailena sighs. "It has been so long." She scans the crowd and frowns. "And my one grandson?" She turns to Clare. "Where is your boy Thomas?"

  "He is at the abbey," Clare answers through her joyful tears. "He is studying the holy books, preparing for priesthood."

  "There is much that has changed," she says and looks to Guy, whose face is clamped in a frown. "Much that is new." She faces toward the inner ward. "Denis," she beseeches the one knight who has offered her his sword, and he straightens in the saddle at the mention of his name. "Lead me to the palais, where I will wipe the dust of Jerusalem from my boots."

  As Denis obediently begins to clear a path toward the inner ward and the camels take the lead, the baroness bids Dwn sit beside Clare. Then, she faces about to the man behind her. "Gerald, do not stand at my back gawking like a turniphead. Your wife needs your comfort in the distress of her joy. Have you forgotten everything you once professed of chivalry?"

  Gerald closes his mouth and bows his head. Chastened, he sits meekly beside Clare. Ailena braces herself by grasping the carriage's roof-pole, and as the dwarf snaps the reins and the oxen lurch forward to the muttered cadence of the Jew's prayers, the baroness smiles benignly at the bailey crowd, and waves.

  Erec watches the oxcart trundle off, not taking his eyes from the baroness until she disappears beyond the chapel. Her absence leaves a humming stillness around him like a pause in the wind. And though the crowd is jabbering excitedly around him, their voices are distant echoes.

 
He saw and heard the baroness himself! He witnessed her speaking to the old woman, and he heard her, in his tongue, call herself by her secret name, the Servant of Birds.

  The crush of people jostles him, and the blows pass through him as though he has become a wraith. He drifts toward the outer gate, looking inward, studying his fresh memory of the young baroness, seeing again her quiet black eyes, her nose long as a Roman statue's in the ancient baths at Caermathon, and the swollen upper lip that, even as she smiled, made her seem as though about to weep.

  Jolted by the crowd, he makes his way out of the castle, marveling to himself, She speaks our tongue.

  The sound of her sandy voice continues in his mind, lightening his step, as though, like the mythic Owen, he walks with flowers sprouting under each of his footfalls.

  -/

  "She is the Devil! The Devil incarnate!" Maître Pornic shouts, and his denouncement rings sharply along the carved wood-and-stonework of the palais.

  Clare rouses from the heavy wooden chair where she has collapsed. Her face glows with fury. "Dare you slander my mother?"

  Gerald lays a calming hand on her arm, clucks soothingly. "We are all stunned."

  "It is a miracle," Denis Hezetre avers from the corner, leaning, staring vacantly. "We have witnessed a miracle."

  Guy Lanfranc, who sits at the head of a massive wooden table, passes a hawklike stare among the other knights sitting before him. Roger Billancourt reflects his ire. The others gaze back stupefied. Both Harold Almquist and William Morcar look numbly at their folded hands on the tabletop, not knowing what to think or feel.

  "There are documents," Gerald offers weakly.

  "Forgeries!" Roger snaps.

  "I think not." Denis steps to the table, unfolding the vellums. "This is an authentic charter." He leans over the table, where he has spread the lambskins, and reads aloud:

  '"Richard, king of the English, to all his faithful men: Greetings. We order and command you, as you have faith in us and as you love yourselves and all that is yours, to grant Ailena Valaise, daughter of Earl Bernard, widow of Gilbert Lanfranc, free passage through my kingdom to her domain of Epynt in the frontier of Wales, where she is recognized by us as chief authority and legate.