Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Roger, need I remind you—Thierry has already sworn his homage to the baroness."

  "Only at Guy's nod. Guy loves Thierry like his own son; surely you can see he has been training him to rule since he was a boy. I know he would deny him nothing. Thus he gave Thierry the nod to serve the Pretender. Why exile him with us? If we fail, he at least should not suffer."

  William tugs thoughtfully at his mustache. Though he dislikes the warmaster's cruelty on the field, he cannot deny the truth of what he says. God or the Devil has left men with the power to lift themselves from their miseries and shape their own lives. He learned that early, as the son of a mercenary. His father had died on the field, and his son had no God-given opportunities. Were it not for Hellene, William would have lived an entirely aimless life. "What is there to do?" he asks wearily.

  Roger steps back and rubs his stubbly chin. "Two things must be done. And Guy must know about neither of them, as these are acts we must do for him, not by him." He waits to receive William’s nod of assurance. "First, an alliance must be struck with Branden Neufmarche.”

  "Alliance? Two days ago we were poised to sack his castle."

  "But today the Pretender sits in the chair of state. You heard her surrender our outlying lands and fortalices to the barbarians. That is a danger to all the barons of the March, including Branden Neufmarche." Roger’s scarred face crimps into a one-sided grin. "The old warrior Howel Rhiwlas and his crazy son Bold Erec have been making new alliances among the tribes. The Welsh are slovenly but fierce, and with them banding together like this any marcher lord would rightly be alarmed. Branden will ally with us, thinking to protect his interests. We will even promise him some of the land we will recover, to goad him with greed as well as fear. In return, we will have the advantage of his troops if we need to move against the Pretender and those in this castle who may try to defend her."

  "Attack our own castle and knights?" William whispers with horror.

  "Yes, we must prepare for that eventuality. But if we do the second thing well that we must do, we'll not need the first."

  "Murder," William says somberly. "If we murder her, we will not need Branden's men to fight our own people."

  Roger allows the faintest smile to touch his cracked lips. "In the beginning was the word, eh? In the beginning of every enterprise we must choose carefully what we will call it. Murder is too heinous a word, William. Choose again."

  William lowers his head. "Accident, then."

  Roger smiles and puts his fist against William's chest. "The eagle screams in your breast now, my friend. Accidents are acts of God and ploys of the Devil. God or the Devil are given the credit for bringing the kitten here—let them take the blame for what happens to her."

  -/

  The women sit on stone benches in the court garden as the youngsters, Joyce and Gilberta, frolic among the rose arbors and the children, Blythe and Effie, lie among foxgloves, sharing pastries.

  Rachel gazes up beyond the leaf-dazzle and the castle ramparts to blue clouds in the high silence. Being someone else is both easier and harder than she had imagined. The comforts are easy: Enjoying the rose-blooms under those mountainous gorges of clouds feels natural. But the pretense of caring for strangers poses difficulties. Listening to the roistering voices of the women and answering them in the ways they expect requires all her training.

  "Mother," Clare calls insistently. "Shall we hold court, as we did when I was Madelon's age?"

  Rachel drops her stare from the cloud mass and faces Madelon, Hellene's fifteen-year-old daughter. Skinny as a boy and fleecy blond, with pink eyelashes and a lusty little mole beneath her lower lip, Madelon is Thierry's twin, but she somehow lacks his dark features and stocky frame.

  "Grand-mère has told me about the court," Madelon says in a breathy, petulant voice, "but Uncle forbade it."

  "The court of love—" Rachel feels a prickle of warmth at the sides of her neck, exerting herself to remember the baroness' explicit instructions on the nature and fulfillment of romance with the beau ideal.

  "Grand-mère, you blush!" Leora squeals, and all the women laugh.

  "I am too old to conduct the court," Rachel protests mildly and looks sideways at Dwn for support, and the old servant smiles slyly.

  "On the contrary, Mother, you're too young not to." Clare leads the others in another gust of laughter. "Tell us now, are you going to love again?"

  Rachel looks down at her hands and the white knuckles of her locked fingers. What would the baroness answer? "To love in the courtly manner, a woman must rule."

  "There are knights even here in the Marches who would fall to their knees to be ruled by you," Clare says.

  "But to rule properly," Rachel quickly adds, "one must serve. I must first find a man gentle and wise enough to serve before I would hope to rule him with my love."

  "You'll have to search hard in the Marches to find a creature as rare as that," Dwn clucks.

  "Let us hold the court again, Mother," Clare presses. "Dwn is right. Since you left, there has been only the tilt and the hunt, dice and hawks, only boorishness and fighting cocks, stable-talk and war plans."

  The other women plead beseechingly, and Rachel silences them with an agreeable nod. "We will hold a court of love—but only if there are men enough to attend. Besides your Gerald, Clare, who among this rabble of soldiers would know how to conduct themselves in the court?"

  "Your Italian knight would," Leora says and tangles a suggestive finger in her red locks. She points with her eyes to the arched doorway of the great hall, where Gianni Rieti is passing on his way back from the chapel. "Call him over, Grand-mère. Let us see if he requires instruction."

  Hellene finds her sister Leora's coquettishness trivial beyond all forebearance and her talk of courtly love sheer foolishness. Her William would scold her for sitting here without objecting. But formality is vital to Hellene, and so long as the baroness attends to such customs, she will abide them, too. Including a padre in this nonsense—to that, she objects: "He is a priest."

  "A knight-priest," Leora counters, "and more comely than a priest should be."

  Relieved to have the focus removed from herself, Rachel signs to Falan, who sits nearby under a red maple, saber in his lap.

  Gianni Rieti is surprised by Falan's summoning hand on his shoulder. He has been deep in thought, contemplating his responsibilities to the Church and to God. After witnessing the miracle of the baroness' transformation by the Holy Grail, God's power had seemed evident, and serving Him had seemed straightforward. He would follow and obey the baroness, the object of God's miraculous love. Now, the fast-shriven, mystic abbot, Pornic, so unhappy with the baroness' devotion to Christ's ancestral faith, has troubled him. He has to think this through, and he does not like thinking about such supernal matters.

  As Rachel introduces him to Clare, Clare’s daughters, Hellene and Leora, and to their daughters, adolescent Madelon, and the girls Joyce, Gilberta, Blythe, and little Effie, he greets each cordially. His gaze lingers on Madelon. He cannot help observing, almost despite himself, the elegant curve of her throat, the gypsy mark under her reckless mouth, the demure downcast of her pale eyes that makes her beauty enigmatic.

  When his attention is abruptly drawn away from Madelon by Clare asking if he knows of courtly love, he professes ignorance. He remembers hearing of some frivolity going on in the court of Poitiers, where women took the upper hand in commanding men. He could scarcely believe that such a trivial game has penetrated this deep into the wilderness.

  Clare explains, "It began thirty years ago, Father Rieti, around the time I married Gerald. It was he who brought the notion with him from the Limousin."

  "Remember how it scandalized the old knights?" Rachel asks, almost hearing the baroness' laughter when she first told this anecdote, "especially when Gerald told them that chivalry had begun here in Wales centuries ago in the court of King Arthur in Caerleon on Usk? After that, those stable-stinking knights fell over themselves in the bath
ing tubs, purging the odors of the kennels and the highways."

  Clare brays with raucous laughter. Then, to show the canon her refinement, she adds, "Chivalry was actually devised by the Countess of Champagne, named Marie, the elder daughter of Louis Capet and Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had a clerk named Andre the Chaplain, and she set him to work translating Ovid's Art of Loving and The Remedy for Love. You know those works, Father?"

  "Of course, my lady. Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris poke fun at illicit Roman love affairs with the pretense of taking them seriously."

  "A pretense indeed," Rachel continues. "A pretense Andre turned about. In his Book of Love, man is not the master, employing his arts to seduce women for his pleasure. Man is, instead, the property, the very thing of woman."

  "And the courts of love?" Gianni inquires, feeling Madelon’s eyes upon him and daring to pass her a white-toothed smile.

  "An assembly of men where women hold sway," Rachel answers. "In the court of love, women set the rules, the rules of chivalry."

  "Will you attend our court of love?" Madelon boldly asks, feeling her heart trip nimbly as Gianni's dark, level stare plays over her.

  "Yes—" he answers and turns his handsome regard on Rachel. "But only if the baroness will define love for me."

  The challenge tosses Rachel's head back, and she watches ponderous clouds shouldering heaven. The answer comes easily, for the baroness was fond of mocking love: "Mortal love, dear knight, is like licking honey from thorns."

  -/

  Denis Hezetre drifts like a bronze panel of sunlight in the dark archway of the great hall at the edge of the garden. After catching Rachel's eye, he bows and beckons her away from the giddy women.

  Rachel excuses herself. Clare rises, too, and sends her daughters off to their tasks—no-nonsense Hellene to oversee the servants and freckly Leora to monitor the children's day-lessons. Clare, herself, will tour the cookhouse, sample the day's fare, and mollify the outraged staff, whose talents have been stinted by the baroness' dietary restrictions.

  Gianni Rieti bows as the women disperse and turns to seek out his dwarf companion, Ummu. The little man, lacking respect for all religions, will delight in hearing of the clash between the abbot and the rabbi, Rieti thinks, smiling to himself.

  Neither of those holy men witnessed the miracle of the Grail, and so both doubt its veracity. Ummu had been at Gianni's side when the Holy Chalice appeared. He had seen the dying crone transformed into the nubile maiden—and, yet, his disdain for everything spiritual obliged him to doubt his own eyes. What a wonder the dwarf is, Gianni smiles to himself, pleased and amused to have the companionship of one so monstrously faithful to the earth.

  "Padre."

  Gianni glances over his shoulder. Madelon stands under a trellis of sugary blossoms, a finger of sunlight in her golden curls. She had purposefully forgotten a hair ribbon on the stone bench, so that she might hurry back without arousing the suspicions of her mother.

  Staring at him impudently, with a mixture of defiance and mischief, Madelon says, in one breath, "Meet me in the outer garden by the willows, after the blessing of the holy water, so that we may talk unimpeded." Then, with a half-giggle, she turns and departs.

  Gianni blinks. He had recently learned from Maître Pornic that the villagers traditionally gather in the chapel at this day of the month for noon Mass and the consecration of vialed water—ceremonies he is obliged to perform now that the baroness has dismissed the abbot from castle services.

  Gianni runs both hands through his dark mane, flustered, knowing well what the woman-child wants. This Mass, his first in the castle, which was to be so simple and pure, and in which he would have performed the sacrament of the Eucharist with the unblemished cleanliness and sincerity of soul deserving of the occasion, takes on profounder resonances now, he realizes: His prayers will be as much for his own soul as for the souls of his new flock.

  -/

  Denis Hezetre ushers Rachel into the great hall, to a corner away from where the servants are straightening toppled benches and gathering up the crushed mint and rushes. Falan watches from the doorway while the two sit on facing settles in the silver, oblong fluorescence falling from a high window.

  Denis stares, momentarily breathless, facing this young woman of moon-cold skin whom he remembers only as haggard flesh mottled with broken blood vessels.

  "Your son plans to unseat you, my lady."

  She watches him with ambiguous eyes vibrant with searching and fear. Never had he seen such a look in the old baroness' eyes, which always appeared morose but shrewd. "So I would expect. You know his strategy?"

  "An assise de bataille."

  "That is illegal."

  A glimmer of bewilderment troubles his blond face. "I need not remind you, Guy has never heeded law, only power."

  "He will heed this law. I will not accept such an assise. Why should I risk what is already mine?"

  "He will challenge your knights at the tourney that will be held in your honor."

  "Then cancel the tourney. The pope frowns on them anyhow. If men have ferocity for battle let them not spend it in the tilts when there are Saracens to challenge in the Holy Land."

  "This tourney was announced across the March in the spring, my lady. There are barons on their way here already. But, more importantly, there are the guildsmen to consider, many of whom have invested heavily in the siege you called off. They are not pleased and see the tourney as providing a means of recovering their losses. If you deny them, your position will be in even greater jeopardy."

  With a lachrymal smile, Rachel says hesitantly, "In former times, Denis, I daresay you'd not have to think this through for me. Since the Holy Land, I've lost my head for strategy."

  Denis regards her quizzically. Her candor is unexpected. "Strategy is all that will hold your chair of state so long as your son is your enemy," he says gently.

  "There is more and better than strategy to help me, kind Denis—there is faith. I learned its power well in Jerusalem."

  Denis bows his head. "You have been glorified by God. He will defend your right of rule."

  Rachel nods absently. Time is my only defense. The time it takes to claim the treasure I've earned and to flee this nest of vipers.

  "You have changed more than I can say, my lady. Truly you are not the same baroness who ruled this domain for thirty years. The gentleness I recognize in you now ill serves a ruler on the frontier. Even as I believe that God stands behind you, I ... I fear for you."

  Rachel's eyes sharpen. "Then perhaps I should return to the Holy Land and leave this domain to its natural succession," she replies anxiously. "Tell Guy that, and he will sleep better."

  "The innocent are fools, the wise are cowards—so sing the ancient Welsh bards."

  Rachel smiles. "A fool if I stay, a coward if I leave. Since you think so ill of me, why did you kiss my ring?"

  Denis closely regards the soft-lipped woman whose dark, clear eyes seem as troubled as a seer's. Is Guy right? he wonders. Is this woman not his mother at all? Is she, perhaps, so utterly changed by the Grail that she has become an impostor even to herself? "Devotion is all I've known, my lady."

  "True, your devotion to Guy is famous, even when he bullied you as boys. Because your stepfather was my warmaster, Guy hated him—hated all men who were close to me after Gilbert died. He was a spoiled, pugnacious boy, my son, and still is. I saw then that he could not resist pummeling you, because that was simply the only way he could hurt your father. Yet, I seem to remember, when Guy went to Ireland for adventure in his seventeenth summer, you went with him. Has that devotion never wearied?"

  The sudden mention of that summer takes Denis by surprise. "Never," he stammers. "I am still Guy's friend. I will always be."

  "And there is yet no woman who has won your devotion?"

  "You have, my lady."

  Rachel sits back, lonely in her shoulders and elbows, fingerjoints and knees for the pain that should be there. The old baroness alone h
as the right to this loyalty, and Rachel feels deceitful. She remembers Ailena telling her, "The archer, Denis Hezetre, with the boyish face—my son did more than beat him when they were youths. Guy abused him as if Denis was a village girl and broke his lust on him. I caught them at it once in a hay rick behind the stables. Guy never looked more malicious than when he had that poor boy under him. But Denis, the mistaken fool, thought it was love and has loved him ever since—though the wanker that tamed him was lopped off in Ireland."

  "I do declare myself unworthy, Denis," Rachel confesses. "You are right—I am not the woman I was once. I can never be again. Your devotion to me will set you at dangerous odds with Guy. Be warned."

  The pollen-glinting space between Denis' eyes twitches. "I ... I want to tell you—I know your son has never loved me as I do him." He pauses, gnaws his upper lip; Rachel, seeing his distress, wishes he would say no more. He goes on. "As a young man, I had foolish hopes, apparent joys that were illusions. Since Ireland, a lifetime ago, my heart has been dumb." His gaze drops to his clasped hands. "After that loss, there was no hope of winning his love as I wanted it. Only now, with your return—to see you so marvelously changed by God’s own hand—" He faces her brightly. "Only now have I felt sincere joy. For now I know, there is something timeless in us. Something that is worthy of homage. Even if you are not half the ruler you were, I look at you and I know this devotion will return my love somehow."

  -/

  "He was so sincere, Grandfather," Rachel says in a faltering voice. She sits on a faldstool by the keyhole window of David's room. "I had to bite my tongue not to blurt out the truth."

  David looks down at Rachel, his bearded face drawn with astonishment and growing fright. "Your heart must be a battlement, Rachel. You must feel no pity for them. Or our lives are forfeit."