Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  '"Myself as witness, in the Levant, on the fifth day of June upon the Year of Our Lord 1197.'

  "The seal matches with other documents we have received from the king. Of course, you must realize, if we defy this charter, we defy the king."

  Guy pounds the tabletop with his fist. "Impossible! I am the lord of this manor and domain!"

  Clare sneers at him. "Do you think Richard has forgotten that you supported his brother's rebellion while he fought for Christ in the Holy Land?"

  Guy rises half out of his seat, brows darkening. "I have agreed to pay the king's men their penalty for my alliance with John."

  "John Lackland, you fool," Clare scoffs. "He has no authority and no domain but what he tried to steal from his brother. Now you are forced to sack Branden Neufmarche's domain to pay the penalty. I daresay, Mother will not approve of that, brother."

  "She is not Mother."

  "The king and the pope say she is," Clare persists vehemently.

  Maître Pornic raps a knuckle against the table, commanding silence. "We must not make too much of these documents. Celestine the Third rendered his soul to heaven in January. Our new Holy Father, Innocent the Third, will surely retract this authorization. After all, Celestine doddered in his nineties when he drew up this vellum. I will write our new Holy Father at once about this matter." He faces the glum baron. "I insist, Guy, that you leave this inquisition to me. This woman claims a miracle. She jeopardizes her soul by such an outlandish pretext."

  Clare’s eyes narrowly regard the abbot. "Do you, a scion of the Church, doubt that God can work miracles? Do you dare proscribe God's will?"

  Maître Pornic presses his bony fingers together and lowers his face reverently. His severe, liver-dark lips draw tight. "I would never doubt God's power to work wonders. But Satan is full of deceptions. We must not prejudge appearances."

  "Well and good," Clare declares with finality. "Until proven otherwise, we will assume valid the Holy Father’s document that Mother has returned from the Holy Land, 'restored to her youth, wholesome and sanctified' as this papal writ declares."

  A servitor appears in the arched doorway and announces that the baroness requests the presence of the entire household in the main hall.

  Clare, glaring triumphantly at her brother, leaves with Gerald at once. The other knights linger, looking to Guy.

  Guy rises slowly, jaw pulsing. "Let us not keep Mother waiting."

  -/

  Dwn's fingers look like tubers against the fine material of her chemise. Despite the hot water bath she has just taken, dirt laces the fine crevices of her gnarly hands. Twice, the water from the long wooden bathtub needed to be emptied and refilled, and still she bears smudges, not wholly clean. At least, the caustic lye of the soap and ample quantities of lilac petals have nearly removed the stink of dung.

  In the mirror, Dwn watches as Clare’s maids bring her a pelisson, a lightweight cloak of blue silk edged thinly with white fur. The baroness stands naked across the room, just stepping from her bath.

  No longer visible are the moles and small scars that Dwn remembers on her mistress' flesh. A different constellation of freckles and beauty marks patterns her body, a consequence, the baroness has explained to her daughter's queries, of the miracle that has renewed her youth. “Body marks reflect our fate, as scholars know. Heaven has changed my fate.”

  A brushed cotton robe lifts over Dwn's head and falls lambently across flesh grown accustomed to coarse fibers. She runs her hands over the smooth material, and her fingertips tremble, astonished.

  The maids help her don an azure bliaut—a sheer, ankle-length tunic—taking care to adjust the long, trailing sleeves and the belt of woven silk cords to a comfortable and aesthetic fit. Over this, the airy, fur-trimmed pelisson drapes.

  Dwn, while another maid combs and plaits her hair, watches her mistress standing naked before her own full-length mirror. Trembling, awestruck maids dab her dry.

  She glows blue as milk, or winter, her womb taut as a girl's, her breasts round as small rabbits, pink nipples not yet stained by pregnancy. Visible under a curled mat of fine hair, almost a mist of dark smoke, the wild plum of her sex boasts. Just barely a woman, she shows the child in her spindly elbow bones and narrow thighs.

  Dwn's insides quaver with eagerness to question her old friend, to hear at once how God came to her. She observes the dreaminess in her mistress' mien, the way she stares at everything with distraction, and she restrains herself.

  "Servant of Birds," Dwn says in Welsh, hoping to draw her out, "you are beautiful. The Lord has made you beautiful again."

  Ailena smiles at her in the mirror, retorting through a giggle, "And you have become wise as the chestnut."

  Dwn smiles. She remembers this exchange from their girlhood, when an old Welsh gardener taught them how to accept his compliments on their fresh beauty. "Tell the old they are wise as chestnuts, and they'll find no fault with you, for the chestnut knows how to survive the drought, and its shell opens like an eye in autumn when the land wears its most florid beauty."

  "Talk in French so I can understand you," Clare complains giddily, feeling as though awake inside a dream. She herself carries the garments that her mother will wear, and she lays them carefully on a dressing rack beside the mirror. "When I was a girl, you two were always chattering in Welsh so Father would not understand you."

  "That only fanned his rages," the baroness recalls. "He forbade Welsh in the castle and even in the village—but we defied him, didn’t we, Dwn?"

  "And you took the blows for that defiance," Dwn reminds her.

  "All so long ago." Clare presents her mother with a chemise from her daughter Leora's wardrobe and stands in awe before the young woman. "Tell me everything, Mother. Dwn and I want to hear about the miracle."

  Ailena fingers the fine fabric of the chemise, says in a quiet voice, "Later. I will tell you all that has changed me later." She looks at her daughter and handmaiden in the mirror, her gaze abruptly crisp. "Now, I want to hear about you—about all that has happened since I've been away."

  Clare fixes on Ailena's keen gaze. Color drains from her face as the miraculous import of what has happened occurs again to her: Here is the body that birthed her, its clay reshaped by God’s own hand to a form slender as the lily.

  Her legs give out. Crashing to the ground, she presses her face to her mother's knees and weeps like a child.

  -/

  "There are no troubadours anymore," Clare sobs bitterly. "No music anymore. Not since you've left. Guy scoffs at chansons. He likes only acrobats."

  "And war," Dwn adds. "He favors war."

  "Oh, Mother, there has been so much killing. Every spring, he raids the Welsh tribes and comes back—" Her tears choke her, and she gasps for breath to speak. "He comes back with their ears!"

  Ailena's gaze goes soft again, and her eyes lid sleepily. Dwn signs for the maids to bring a stool, and she drapes the chemise over the baroness as she sits.

  Clare, oblivious to her mother's abstraction, continues: "And now he attacks his own kind. He has hired mercenaries from Hereford to besiege Branden Neufmarche's castle. All for his debt to the king for siding with Count John. And the soldiers are such brutes. They bully our guildsmen, debauch their daughters, and ransack our village. In the Welsh quarter, the villeins are almost all gone, fled back to the hills."

  The young baroness puts a hand to her face, and when it comes away she faces them clear-eyed and alert. "All shall be well," she promises, stroking her daughter's head. "All manner of things shall be well."

  Dwn steps over to plait her mistress' hair and marvel at the filaments of red-gold among the dark tresses, highlights she has not seen in decades.

  "Have you the banner with my device upon it?" Ailena asks.

  "Guy destroyed all he could lay hands on," Clare answers. "I have one preserved in my chest."

  "Have it brought to me. We will bring down the Griffin and raise the Swan."

  Clare bites a knuckle.
"The donjon is guarded by Guy's sergeants. They protect the flagstaff with their lives."

  "Then they will lose their lives," the baroness says sweetly.

  -/

  The shutters of the main hall have been thrown open to admit strong summer light. Hastily, servants hang the finest sendal silk tapestries from the walls and strew the paved floor with fresh rushes and flowers, roses and mint, which crackle softly and fragrantly under the feet of the assembly.

  Among the sun's bright rectangles, the household has gathered—the baroness' family taking the upholstered settles, the servants behind them on wooden benches.

  Guy and Roger refuse to sit. They stand, legs apart and arms crossed truculently, by the base of the dais at the head of the chamber.

  On the dais, the Griffin-embroidered cushions have been removed from the large oak-carved chair of state, and red squabs installed. There, dressed opulently in white silk and ermine, the long braids of her hair intertwined with ribbons and crested with a floral chaplet of gold, sits Ailena Valaise.

  Flanked on either side by her knights, she sits between Dwn and the elderly Jew. The dwarf and his monkey wait in an alcove at the back of the hall, where only the sergeants from the barracks can see them.

  "I've not sat here in ten years," the baroness begins in a voice rich enough to fill the chamber. "Many of the youngest of you have never seen me. Others have changed little." She looks pointedly at Guy and Roger. "Family, I've gathered you here that you may confront me before we sit at table. I know my presence and appearance are shocking, all the more so"—she nods at her son—"for those who never expected to see me again.

  "After our meal together, I shall relate to you in detail the truly wondrous events that have transpired since last I occupied this chair. For now, suffice it that I introduce myself again to you and declare the intent of my return as our Savior has so instructed me to do."

  Maître Pornic, seated in the front rank, rises. His body poses humbly, withered from fasting and bent from a lifetime of kneeling prayer. "Lady, are we to understand that you have spoken with the Son of God?"

  "Indeed, our Lord Jesus has deigned to speak with me," Ailena declares in a steady voice. "And he has instructed me to return here and to rule this estate as a true Christian domain—a realm that He himself will recognize when He comes next before us."

  Maître Pornic blows a gust of disbelief through his dark lips and sits down. Shaking his silver head, he covers his face with his gaunt hands.

  "As it is apparent that the good abbot disbelieves," Ailena continues, "I herewith appoint the canon Gianni Rieti our parish priest."

  Gianni rises, attired in white surplice with crimson cross above his heart and a tapering sword of pearl-gilded hilt at his side. His half-military, half-monastic appearance inspires mutterings from the back benches. The servants have never before seen a warrior-priest.

  "Canon Rieti is a true father in Christ," Ailena assures the mumbling crowd.

  "Then why does he not wear the tonsure?" Maître Pornic demands.

  "By your leave," Gianni asks the baroness and bows at her nod. "I am an ordained member of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulcher," he informs the assembly. "We are sworn to fight the Saracen until Jerusalem is restored to Christian rule. That our Lord Jesus himself abhorred violence, we are keenly aware. Yet, we have chosen to live and die by the sword for the greater glory of the Church. To distinguish our brotherhoods martial efforts on behalf of our faith from the wholly religious and scholarly pursuits of other Christian orders, we abjure tonsure and have been so excepted by our Holy Father the Pope."

  Gianni sits, and Ailena motions for Falan Askersund to rise.

  The Swede, dressed as a Muslim, in white turban, baggy brown trousers, and green leather shoes of upturned toes, steps forward and eyes the crowd coolly. His sleeveless silk blouse exposes long-muscled arms burned almost black by the Palestinian sun. The fair hair on his skin glints like gold. His face, too, dark as a Moor's, bears a close-cropped beard that shines white as ash.

  "Falan Askersund speaks neither French nor Welsh," Ailena explains. "But there is no need for us to speak with him. He is in constant prayer with his god who, he believes, is the one god, Allah, and..."

  "He has deserted his faith for the heathens!" Maître Pornic interrupts.

  "Yes, he has," Ailena admits. "Now he is a devout Muslim. And he is my thrall. See there the gold band about his throat, the bond-ring of his servitude? On it, the Arabic script proclaims that he is my property, a gift from a caliph beholden of the miracle wrought on me by our Savior."

  "The heathens have no faith in our Savior," Maître Pornic protests. "Why would a Saracen gift you with a bondsman?"

  "Their holy book, the Qur'an, identifies Jesus as a prophet of God," Ailena answers patiently. "That God would work a miracle through one of his prophets is obviously more believable to the heathens than to you, Maître."

  "This is a mockery!" Guy shouts. Maître Pornic frowns at him, but he goes on, "This woman is not my mother. I will not tolerate any more of this hoax."

  Angry mutterings sweep through the hall, and Maître Pornic rises and approaches Roger Billancourt. "Silence him," he commands. "This is a religious question. If it is handled brusquely, blood will spill."

  Roger takes his baron’s arm, leans close to whisper. "Will you make a martyr of her and yourself a Judas? She must be discredited before we attack her. Calm yourself. Let the abbot have at her."

  "If your Muslim knight is a thrall," Maître Pornic asks, pointing to the scimitar at Falan’s side, "why is he armed?"

  "Even a holy man must admit, this is a treacherous world," Ailena answers. "The caliph has commanded Falan to protect me, and for that, alone, I keep him."

  "His sword is too thin to do more than fend dogs," Roger snorts, and the sergeants at the back of the hall echo his derision.

  Quickly, Ailena mutters a guttural command in Arabic and points to her neck. The curved saber glazes the air like a pulse of wind shine, hissing to the side of the baroness' throat. In a flash, the weapon is again in its sheath.

  Ailena reaches up and plucks a lock of hair and curl of ribbon that the blade has cleanly cut. She knots the ribbon about the lock and tosses it to Guy. "A memento of your mother, son. And by this be warned."

  The baroness motions Falan to his seat and beckons the Jew forward. "If there are no more interruptions, we may continue. Family, here is David Tibbon, a Jew I have engaged to teach me the language that our Lord and Savior spoke while he dwelled among us. It is my intention to live as near to the manner and custom of our Lord as possible. And I invite all in my family who would study with this erudite and devout biblical scholar – join me!"

  Guy guffaws loudly. "My mother was never a religious woman. She knitted during Mass and ate flesh to her fill on Fridays and throughout the Lenten season. She fornicated adulterously with Drew Neufmarche and voiced nothing but loathing for priests, whom she considered parasites. Albeit, she did all this out of sight and earshot of good Maître Pornic. But to us, who suffered her presence, it was no secret—from the time God strangled the life of her father on his own vomit, she lived faithlessly. Why do you expect us to believe that God would work a miracle for her?"

  "Surely, Guy," the baroness smiles indulgently at him, "it is the faithless who are most in need of miracles. All that you say of me is true. But only of my past. My soul has been renewed with my flesh. As Jesus forgave the harlot at the well, so has he forgiven me and bade me go forth and sin no more."

  "Mother," Clare interjects, "call on our Savior now to give us a sign! Let these disbelievers know that you are in God's favor."

  "Dear Clare, that is not in my power. I am not a saint. I have no miraculous will. God has restored my youth but conferred no supernatural strength on me. I am entirely a natural woman, and I will not permit myself to be worshiped or regarded as holy."

  "If you are indeed the Baroness Valaise, as you so claim," Roger challenges, "then you will remembe
r the destrier that your husband rode when he first came to this castle with me at his side."

  Ailena's stare hardens. "So, now I am to be tested." She nods ruefully. "That is to be expected from one who has always believed the Church exists for children, the infirm, and the dying. Well, Roger Billancourt, it is your memory the years have impaired. Gilbert did not ride a destrier when he first came to my father’s castle. He did not own such a fine horse. He was rich in courage and ferocity but not in goods, neither material nor spiritual. Until he married me and acquired my father's hard-won wealth, he rode a mere palfrey, a brown mare with a narrow breast and a broad face. Her name was Delai, for she was not swift."

  The older servitors and sergeants who knew Gilbert Lanfranc chatter knowingly and nod, and Roger turns away with a troubled frown.

  The assembly silences as Maître Pornic stands again. "How can you assure us that you have been returned to your youth by our Good Lord and not by Satan?"

  "Would Satan bring a writ from the Pope and a priest from the Holy Land?"

  Thierry Morcar, prodded by his father William, hails his great-grandmother. "Arrière-grand-mère—"

  Ailena acknowledges the square-jawed youth whose small eyes gaze at her coldly. "Your harsh stare troubles me, Thierry. I am not surprised you would doubt me, since you were too young to know me well. Have you come to knighthood yet?"

  "I have, Arrière-grand-mère," he answers proudly. "My father granted me adubbement in the spring. I am well trained by my father and this castle’s knights in the manner of combat. And from them I have learned many feints, many tricks by which men are deceived into giving up their lives. That has weakened my faith in things seen let alone things unseen." He looks at his father for confidence, and the mustached knight nods for him to continue. "Forgive me, then, Arrière-grand-mère, for putting a question to you to bolster my faith. Name the priest who baptized me."