Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  Unobtrusively, Guy signals one of his squires, who leaps up from the boards and disappears into the garden. A moment later, he returns with a sleepy old boarhound. At Guy's nod, the squire guides the tired dog to the high table.

  "Is that Halegrin, my favorite?" Ailena asks at the sight of the dog. Swiftly, she seizes a choice piece of stag and throws it to the hound. "You are still in this world?" She pets the animal as it gnaws at the meat. "Like faithful Argos come to greet travel-worn Odysseus."

  Clare lifts her nose at her brother's attempt to discredit Ailena with the aged dog. Denis, too, catches Guy's attention and shakes his head ruefully.

  Legs of pork on silver platters streak steam over the heads of hurrying servitors. Ailena signs for the servitors to leave them on the lower tables. "I will not eat the flesh that our Savior himself eschewed," she declares loudly.

  Maître Pornic's frown deepens. "The Fathers of the Church made clear long ago that we are not to confuse our Lord's earthly lineage through his blessed Mary to King David with his heavenly mission, which comes from his Father. The Church recognizes the Messiah, the culmination of Jewish tradition. Thus, we are not constrained to obey Jewish law, only heavenly law, which the Church alone is fit to discern."

  "Oh, please, Maître Pornic," Clare sighs. "Let us not debate Church matters at this feast. Let us celebrate, instead, my mother's safe and miraculous return."

  "This was to be a feast for Saint John the Baptist," Maître Pornic acidly reminds his hostess.

  "That is yet two days away," Clare counters. "The cooks troubled themselves greatly to have this meal ready for us now, to honor my mother’s homecoming."

  Ailena lays a soft hand on her daughter’s arm. "I have come from the Holy Land. Spiritual concerns are much on my mind and in my heart. But Clare is right. There will be time later for discussing our souls. Let us fortify our bodies first."

  The cooks and servitors, awed by the miraculous transformation of the baroness, have outdone themselves. The procession from the cookhouse seems endless: braised beef, roasted rabbit and teal, woodcock and snipe in onion gravy, mutton in saffron, pork pies, frogs' legs with sorrel and rosemary, snails with fried filberts, venison pasties, hot custards, aspics of crane and heron, fruit jellies, and, out of the baroness' baggage from Jerusalem, figs and dates, all washed down with hippocras—spiced wine—and serat—buttermilk boiled up with onions and garlic.

  As dogs fight over scraps under the tables and jongleurs at the boards break from their meals to juggle hot roast apples, much laughter resounds and, among the younger people, flirting and horseplay.

  William and Harold feast lustily with their families, and Denis leads the boisterous sergeants in toasting the baroness with each new course.

  Even Maître Pornic, infused with good will after his second cup of hippocras, laughs at greasy-faced Ummu, whose monkey Ta-Toh leaps among the tables bringing back choice tidbits and sometimes even knives from the plates of other diners to feed his master.

  Everyone eats merrily, save Guy and Roger. They pick at their food with sullen disinterest, awaiting the return of the messenger they have dispatched to the siege.

  The cooks themselves enter with the final grand dish, a huge pastry shaped as a swan with a gilt beak and honey-glass feathers, which have been whitened with flour and prinked out as if alive and swimming.

  The assembly applauds the cooks, who present the knife to the baroness.

  Amid expectant whispers, Ailena rises and slashes open the pastry. Dozens of ortolans flutter out and dart about the great hall. The exits, blocked by the castle's grinning falconers, unhood their hawks. In a confusion of feathers and shrill cries, the hawks kill the small birds in the air above the tables, to the delighted shouts of the assembly.

  During the scrambling to retrieve the hawks, a page dashes into the hall. He rushes to Guy and Roger and whispers the news they have been waiting to hear: Tonight, the miners have completed the excavation under the wall at Castle Neufmarche. The wooden posts supporting the mine already have been soaked with tallow and, at Guy’s command, will be set alight, ready to devour the posts and collapse the castle's defense.

  Instantly, Guy and his warmaster rise to depart and sign for their knights and sergeants to meet them in the garden.

  Ailena motions to Falan and Gianni at the far end of the table, and the two knights block the stairs of the dais.

  "Make way!" Guy demands.

  Falan stands poised and impassive, his swart hand on the hilt of his saber.

  "Where are you off so soon?" the baroness enquires sweetly. "After pastries and sugar plums, we shall retire to the garden. It is a beautiful summer night. Under the stars, you will hear my story. Mine is a wondrous telling, and you mustn't miss it."

  "We are called away," Guy says flatly, facing the baroness with an arrogant grimace.

  "To Neufmarche's castle?" Ailena shakes her head. "Clare has told me about your siege. But there's no need to attend to it now. I am calling it off."

  "What?" Roger Billancourt erupts so loudly even the shrieking revelers hush. "You dare not! You have no authority."

  "I dare, indeed. By the authority granted me from the king and the pope and my own birthright. This is my father's castle and mine. No war shall be waged from these walls deficient of my command. The siege at Neufmarche is lifted. I have already dispatched messengers. The war machines shall be withdrawn."

  Guy fixes her with a murderous glare, upper lip curling to a hint of fang, before he wheels about and shoulders past Falan.

  Signing to let him pass, Ailena watches calmly as he and Roger stride through the hall. They pause before Denis, William, and Harold. The knights will not move, and only Denis meets their hot eyes before they march out of the hall.

  "To my mother—the baroness Ailena Valaise!" Clare blurts out, raising her goblet.

  Accordingly, goblets rise, and cheers resound from the great hall and echo through the palais.

  -/

  Small frogs sing from the moat, and fireflies pulse among trellises and arbors of the inner court's jardin. The entire household has assembled in the spacious garden, but for the porters, the tower watch, and Guy and Roger, who have ridden off into the night.

  Maître Pornic, Clare, and Gerald share the seat of honor on a cushioned marble bench beneath the long fingers of a willow. The younger children gather on a quilt laid over the roots. Hugues sits in the groin of the tree. Thierry and Madelon share a smaller stone bench carved as a mushroom.

  The others sit on the ground or on chairs they have carried from the hall. Everyone arranges a great circle around the central rose arbor of the garden. There, the baroness sits in a tall-backed chair with an oil lamp dangling from a tall trivet beside her.

  "As you know, I left here on Saint Fandulf’s day in the year of our Lord eleven hundred and eighty-eight, the fifth day after Saint Michael's, the Sunday before my fifty-eighth autumn in this world. I could not walk more than a dozen paces without falling, my bones were that bent, my muscles that enfeebled. My bearers, pilgrims all, merchants and monks from Saint David's, plodded through the late summer's dust and heat, bearing me to Newport, whence we sailed to Normandie.

  "I left a bitter woman, having been turned out of the castle my father had built—turned out by my son. I heartily wish Guy had elected to hear my tale this night, for I would assure him, he was duly right to set me penniless on my way. I had become a harsh old woman, soured by the abuse of my husband Gilbert many years before. And I had never recovered. The journey taught me pain of the flesh to match the hurt in my soul. It was a most gruesome pilgrimage—and I was made whole by that suffering.

  "Tonight, I will not relate all the difficulties I endured on that long journey south—the brigands, the storms, the wretched people in the dark forests who live as animals and eat human flesh. All these, by God's grace alone, I escaped with my life, though only rarely unscathed. Many horrors I beheld. Many good souls perished before my eyes. There are stories enough
from those first years of my travels for many another night.

  “But this night, I will tell you the most wondrous story of all, my encounter with Prester John in his strange kingdom east of the lands of Babel and Teman. There, where Paradise once touched earth, I came, shriven of my sins through much agony and many trials, and was received into a domain whose marvels today I would doubt myself had I not been entirely changed by them.

  "Alas, my words are only smoky mirrors, foxed by dreams, mine and yours. What I tell you now comes from the edges of the earth, where the mirrors are broken and where reason is the poor cousin of truth. My story will put the pieces back together again. But, I have learned, they fit best in silence."

  -/

  "Out of Smirna, on our way to Samo along the goat steps of craggy mountains, my bearers, three monks from an abbey in Holar of Iceland, with whom I could speak only with the little Latin I know, became lost in a raging storm. We took shelter in a mountain cave. There, we were set upon by some gypsy rovers, who worship the moon and would have sacrificed us to their goddess. My bearers carried me deeper into the cave, and we strove to hide in darkness. But the gypsies burned nettle shrubs at the mouth of the cavern, trying to drive us out and onto the sharp points of their long knives.

  "Choking on the vile fumes, we retreated deeper into the cave, choosing to die by suffocation rather than be mutilated alive. To our amazed relief, the cavern did not conclude in a rocky talus but penetrated ever deeper. My bearers had in their baggage oil lanterns by which they read the Holy Scriptures at night. By the wan glow of those lamps, we discerned that our cave opened upon a portal to a great complex of caverns. One vaulted chamber opened into another.

  "Sometimes the ground narrowed to footpaths no wider than a man’s palm, falling away on either side to black, plumbless chasms. There, I was forced to walk on my own, for no bearers could keep their balance with my weight on their shoulders. Rocks kicked over the side plunged soundlessly, hitting no bottom in that lightless abyss. Pungent and sulfurous fumes assailed us, and the monks feared that we were trespassing Satan's lair.

  "For many days, we wandered thus, sometimes over slender bridges, other times across vast subterranean fields and through forests of stone columns that supported the earth above us. We drank water trickling in rivulets down the rock walls, and we ate lichen and mushrooms tiny as beads of sand that grew in great profusion among the crevices.

  "Hour by hour, the monks prayed for salvation, and eventually their prayers were answered: A star appeared in the distance and gradually grew brighter as we approached. The star became a sun. We approached with our hands covering our eyes, staring through the bones of our fingers until we reached the mouth of a cave. Blinded by the luminosity of daylight, we crouched at the end of our dark journey a long time before we could see again.

  "When sight returned, we had become faithless to our own eyes, for we did not believe what we beheld. Before us were majestic meadows and dells luminous with blossoms, expansive oak and cedar groves—and everywhere we looked, fabulous beasts: Elephants and camels wandered fields with centaurs. In the dark portals of the forest, we glimpsed tigers, satyrs, and fauns. Nearby, a river purled, with crocodiles lazing on the mudbanks and lamia swimming upstream.

  "Soldiers appeared out of the forest, and the monks hailed them. They were swarthy men in topaz armor with long hair streaked like sunset and eyes green as weathered copper. At first, we did not understand their language, but they had us drink of the nearby river—and afterward, we understood them and each other.

  "They informed us that we had arrived in the kingdom of King John the Presbyter. The river from which we had drunk, they declared, descended from a spring in Paradise, out of which Adam was driven, three days' hike from where we were. But journey there was fruitless, for a circle of fire walled in the Garden.

  "Instead, the king's soldiers escorted us to the palace of their monarch. That journey took several days, during which we beheld numerous wonders. Chief among them, a waterless sea, a great expanse of billowing dunes with waves and tides and out of which we netted fish with golden scales, whose blood was purple dye yet whose flesh was very tasty. Down from snowy mountains rolled a waterless river of stones, clacking and thundering into the sandy sea. The pebbles that came ashore gave light in the dark, and the longer one stared at them, the stronger one’s sight became. Also, along the shore scurried ants big as dogs, which the people who dwelled nearby employed to burrow for gold.

  "Prester John’s palace emerged from a cliff face, carved from sapphire. We were met at the golden gates by a stately king dressed in crimson and wearing a gem-studded crown, and we fell on our knees before him. He raised us up and informed us that, though he was indeed a king of Samarcand, he served Prester John as gateskeeper. Our amazement doubled when we learned that the palace’s chamberlain and cook and even the stablemaster were kings all.

  "Prester John himself received us on a high balcony, from where we could see across the extent of his kingdom, from the heights, where flames encircle Paradise down the far slopes to the ruins of Babylon and the tower of Babel. The monarch of this fabulous realm was not attired in finery but wore the simplest cassock the color of raw earth. He was the most humble man I had ever met and declined to be called by any title other than presbyter, for he was a true servant of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  "The days I remained in that kingdom are yet another tale, which I will save for another night. Suffice to say, we were well feted and spent long hours in conversation with the good and humble presbyter. His kingdom contained people of all races, yet none of them impoverished. No thieves or liars dwelled in his domain, for only the good could find their way to this place.

  "'But I—I have never been truly good,' I confessed to him, and he smiled most sweetly at me. He told me then that I had not found my way to his kingdom—the three monks from Holar had carried me there not just on their shoulders but on their grace. And so, I could not remain. After a hospitable stay to recuperate from the arduous journey that had brought me there, I was humbly and firmly asked to leave. A centaur would carry me to the limits of the domain.

  "The monks who had come with me volunteered to accompany me, and I adamantly refused. They were kindly men, who did not deserve to be denied the comforts of that superlative kingdom. I chose to leave on my own, in the night when the monks were sleeping, for they would have come with me anyway of their own goodness. As I hobbled through the palace on my way to the gates, where the centaur awaited me, Prester John appeared to bid me farewell.

  "The good king informed me that by my selflessness I had already begun to earn my way back into God’s grace. He instructed me to continue on my pilgrimage to the Holy Land and once there to devote myself to prayer and fasting. Then, he escorted me to the centaur and blessed me as I rode off.

  "The centaur galloped at a tremendous speed, so that I had to cling fiercely to his shoulders and shut my eyes against the stinging wind. For a long time, I was buffeted, and eventually I swooned. When I awoke, I lay in a sugar cane field near the isthmus of Tyre. I was bedraggled, sores mottled my body, and most of my hair was gone, burned away by sandy winds. The Hospitalers found me there and brought me to Tyre, where they revived me.

  "Even before I could walk again, I began my devotions. What had transpired in the kingdom of Prester John seemed no more than a dream to me. I told my tale to the Hospitalers. Some believed that I had indeed found the sacred domain of the presbyter king, for many had heard of that sacred place. Others tried to convince me that the Lord had merely sent me a dream to blot out the sufferings of my long and punishing pilgrimage.

  "I no longer cared whether Prester John was real or a dream, though to me he was as real as flesh. The torment of my journey had purged my soul of selfishness. I was an old woman with only a short while left before my soul would quit my body. I determined to redeem my life by prayer, petitioning the Lord to have mercy on all of creation, for all that lives suffers. I had seen that most sincerely
. Penniless in my wanderings, without the comfort or protection of my station, I had learned true humility.

  "When our King Richard liberated Acre, I went there, to be closer yet to Jerusalem, which was still in the hands of the Saracens. I spent all my days in prayer, fasting every other day and offering what crippled strength I had to nursing the wounds of the Christian soldiers. It was there that our king drafted me a charter to return to my barony and rule in his name, claiming that he had been instructed to do so in a dream. I humbly accepted the charter—one does not deny kings—and I thought no more of it.

  "In September of 1192, four years after my pilgrimage began, King Richard won the right of pilgrims to enter the Holy City, and I went at once.

  "For the next five years, I toured the Holy Land, devoting each day to prayer in the places where our Savior lived and prayed himself. On Mount Sion, where the old city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, I prayed in a church that has a chamber behind the altar wherein Christ washed the feet of his disciples. There, I heard Prester John's voice tell me: 'Return to Jerusalem and drink of the Cup.'

  "I had been fasting that day and was weak from the crippling pain of old age, so I dismissed the voice as the noise of my creaking bones. I journeyed the next day to the foot of the mountain, to the pool of Siloam, where Christ opened the eyes of the blind man. There, as I was falling asleep after a long day of worshiping God's grace, I beheld a silver cup floating in the green air. I startled fully awake, and it vanished—but I remembered the voice on the previous day.

  "With the morn, news reached me of a terrible battle to the south, where many Christian soldiers were left wounded and dying. I went there as swiftly as my aged body would permit, and I found many Christian men strewn in the fields outside Bethlehem. I aided the Hospitalers who arrived there with me, and after a strenuous day of tending the fallen, I lay down to rest.

  "That night, I heard a boy's voice say, 'Father, behold the fire and the wood—but where is the lamb?'