Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  Rachel holds her hand to her face and weeps. "They see God's hand in me. Grandfather, am I blaspheming Adonai?"

  "No, child. If anything, you are exalting Him in the hearts of these polytheists. Now their faith is stirred." David walks over and caresses her hair comfortingly. "And soon we will be gone from here, Granddaughter. Tomorrow, we will retrieve the jewels that are our rightful payment for our long service to the baroness, and we will leave. We will return to Kfar Hananya, and we will live as Adonai intended us to live. We will never return. And the people here will be left with a wonder that they will believe has come from God."

  -/

  Gianni Rieti leaves the chapel with the villagers and strolls with them through the bailey gate and along the tollhouse road to the bridge. They are happy with him, for the ingenuousness with which he performed the Mass made the air around him seem to shine with holiness. At the bridge, he blesses the last of them, who hold their clay vials of holy water to their breasts and depart singing a joyful hymn.

  Beyond the tollhouse road range extensive garden and orchards, where Ummu already awaits him. The dwarf beckons from among bearded hazels. During the Mass, Gianni had actually convinced himself that he would return immediately to the castle. The memory of the slender, flaxen-haired girl with the gypsy-mark of a mole on her lower lip lures him into the trees.

  "Is that a hesitant step I see?" Ummu taunts. "Or is it just that you are so heavy with unspent seed your gait slackens?"

  "I am sworn to chastity, evil dwarf." Behind Gianni's scowl, he is glad to see his dwarf, for the little man often provides good counsel though his wit is barbed.

  "How long have you been chaste now, padre? Nigh ten months. Surely, even the angels are amazed. Ah, but your dreams must be sinful indeed. Too bad I cannot peek at them. They must rival all your exploits. "

  "Too sadly true, stump. I wake fevered each night, salacious as a schoolboy. I've lived as Maître Pornic instructed. I am keeping the lust within me, though it burns, Ummu, like rampaging fire."

  "A veritable Saint Anthony! But this is no dream that awaits you in the willows."

  "You've seen her?"

  "While you've been turning water into water, I have indeed watched her. She paces restlessly—and alone. Her horse is bridled to a shade tree not far away but out of sight, where her complicit maid keeps a watchful eye. No doubt for the young sport’s mother, Hellene, her own name's irony, stony-eyed as a Medusa."

  "She would have no cause for concern if she knew," Gianni says. "I intend only to speak with the maiden."

  "Speak all you please, padre. I am sure the lady's replies will please you more than you intend."

  Through the hazels, Gianni spots the shaggy willow copse. "Try to spend at least as much time watching out for me, please, as watching what I do," he begs.

  "I will—if you at least promise to do something worth watching. I've been bored these past ten months."

  "Where's Ta-Toh?"

  "In the cherry trees, I suspect."

  "Keep him close. I don't want him startling the maid, or the horses."

  Gianni Rieti brushes the creases from his black tunic and advances into the willows. Madelon stiffens when she sees him, until his easy smile and flagrant bow set her at ease.

  "You summoned me here, sweet lady, and I am happy to come."

  "You honor me, padre. I was not sure I was worthy of your attention."

  "Your charm is worthy of far more than I have to give." In the dappled light, parts of him glow more vividly—the clean line of his jaw with its thin-edged beard, the soft coils of his blue-black hair, the bright energy compacted in his eye. "Please, do not call me padre. I did not come here as a priest."

  She glances at his tapered sword, the onyx-hilted weapon he has worn at every Mass he has performed since taking his vows to free the Holy Sepulcher. "Are you here as a knight, then?"

  Gianni stares down at his boots, ashamed. "I am here as what I am."

  Madelon steps closer and lays a hand against the scarlet cross above his heart. "Will you walk with me and tell me about yourself and the wonderful lands where you have traveled?"

  Gianni parts the curtains of willow, and they stroll up a grassy hill toward a slope of venerable elms, talking about the Crusades that had begun when these elms thrived as saplings more than a century before.

  Beyond the elms, flowerbeds pattern the fields between the fruit trees, and peasants stoop here and there among swaths of lilies, marigolds, poppies, daffodils, and acanthus plants.

  Madelon inquires how such a striking man came to be a priest, and he tells the story of his orphaned childhood among the friars, dwelling particularly on the peccadillos that obliged him to become ordained. If she knows the truth of me, of my lust, she will protect herself, he reasons, and my vows shall remain unbroken. He describes his dalliances in almost lewd detail, interpreting her wide-eyed pallid expression as revulsion.

  Crooked Simon, the hunchbacked gardener, ignores the couple as they drift by, and he works assiduously at his grafting, marrying plum to pear, quince to peach, looking up only once when an evil-faced imp dressed as a squire scampers through the trees followed by a garishly garbed monkey.

  In a herb croft lush with lettuce, cresses, and mints, Gianni completes his sordid story with a thorough recounting of his debauches in Jerusalem. Done, he bows to the open-mouthed maiden and turns to depart, proud and propitiated.

  But Madelon is not alarmed so much as astonished. Here, in her own castle, among the lummox warriors and rude varlets who care more about horseflesh than women, a handsome knight has arrived who knows the mysteries of romance, who can satisfy her unslaked curiosity about the riddles of love, and initiate her into womanhood before her mother succeeds in marrying her off to some wealthy and crotchety earl! That this charming knight is a priest had seemed an insurmountable problem—until she heard his story and realized he had not been called by God but had become a priest by default.

  She seizes his arm and leads him around a dense hedge to the wild end of the garden, where wreathe woodbine and hawthorn flourish, out of sight of the field workers.

  "How you have suffered," she whispers, pressing close to him. "God does not want you to be a priest. Don't you see? That is why He chose you to be in the Sepulcher the night of my great-grandmother's miracle. He wanted to bring you here, to me, to be healed of your suffering."

  Gianni's mouth sags. "I—I had not thought—"

  "How could you have, poor fool, victim of your passions. You have been led by error and deception your whole life, knowing only lust and never love. But now, here, with me, another miracle can be worked. You can be healed, here in my arms. You can put aside the sword and the cross. You needed them to protect yourself out there. But in here, with me, you are safe at last. You can be yourself now. You can be mine."

  Gianni struggles to breathe without gasping. "I am a ... priest!"

  "In name, yes, but in spirit you are a man of the world, with all the desires of such a man. Your story has told me so." She looks anxiously at him. "Am I too bold? Perhaps you do not find me beautiful?"

  Gianni's mouth works without sound before he blurts, "You are most beautiful."

  "I cannot expect you to save me from my fate," she says with downcast eyes. "I am destined to marry some stodgy nobleman with bad digestion. Before then, before I must spend the rest of my days knowing only the rituals of love, I would hope you could show me love's passion." She bites her knuckle and looks at him with frightened eyes. "I am too bold. You must think me without virtue. That is not so, Gianni. May I call you Gianni? You are the first man who has stirred in me the hope of romance—"

  A woman's reedy cry penetrates the hedge. Madelon pokes her head around the corner, and when she looks back at Gianni, her face is ardent. "My Aunt Leora is coming to pick flowers with the children. We mustn't be seen together yet. I will call for you when we can be alone again."

  Madelon kisses his cheek and softly runs away.

 
The next instant, Ummu tumbles from the hedge, biting his knuckles to keep from bursting into laughter, and Ta-Toh leaps into Gianni's arms and kisses his pale cheek.

  -/

  An owl hoots mysteriously from a cypress tree at midday, and Dwn, who strolls in the garden outside the castle walls gathering flowers for her mistress' chamber, stands tall, alarmed by the evil omen.

  Blythe, the young girl whose knitting the old woman supervises, does not notice. With her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, she knits and purls with fierce attentiveness. Dwn turns to call her from her work when a shadow stirs under the cypress and whispers her name.

  Erec Rhiwlas beckons the maid. He sits on the far side of the tree atop his roll of hides, still dressed in the worn garments of a tanner from the hills.

  "You should be long gone from this place," Dwn scolds with a hand over her chest to still her heart. Though she sees now why the owl hooted in daylight, its sleep disturbed by a prowling Welshman, to her this is still a bad portent. "If the gardener sees you, he'll call the sergeants."

  Erec opens his arms before him with mock innocence. "I'm just your simple cousin." He stands and leans against the tree, green eyes large with amazement, and points with his face to the banner of the Swan fluttering over the castle: "Is it true then, cousin, what I hear in the village? The baroness has unseated Lanfranc?"

  "It is true. And she has lifted the siege on Neufmarche. And restored the river meadows to the tribes."

  Erec smiles broadly and slaps his hand against the tree. "She is the miracle of our prayers! I must meet with her—my father, too. Howel knew her in the old times."

  Dwn wags a knobby finger. "Not here, not now. Guy did not surrender his chair of state gladly. He swears she is not his mother."

  "He's the Devil's son!" Erec acknowledges. "Has he no love for God? This miracle must seem a curse to him."

  "I fear for my lady," Dwn whispers. "I know Guy and his warmaster are already plotting some grief for her."

  "Then I must see her and offer her my sword."

  Dwn watches him shrewdly, still and attentive as a heron. "Is it her amity to the tribes or her beauty that moves you, Erec Rhiwlas?"

  "That is a happy union, isn't it, Old Mother?" Erec smiles rakishly. "You must arrange a meeting."

  Dwn shakes her head. "Not I. In all our years together, I have never presumed to guide Ailena in either statecraft or love. You arrange your own meeting, Bold Erec. She leaves for Trinity Abbey on the morrow."

  "I will tell Howel." Erec leans closer. "But now tell me, Dwn. You have been with this young woman a whole day: Is she truly the baroness Ailena?"

  "Oh, yes. Indeed, she is the Servant of Birds. But she has changed more than in the flesh."

  "How? How is she changed, Dwn?"

  The old woman's amber eyes darken. "This I don't know exactly. She looks and sounds the same. She carries herself as before. But there is something quieter about her—as though, even awake, she is on the verge of a dream."

  -/

  The sky is a dragon’s mane when Dwn returns to the palais from her long day with the children. Feeling airy with joy, she practically floats up the winding stone stairs. Clare and her daughters Hellene and Leora have accepted her back so graciously and completely, her ten years in the dung pile seem little more than a foul dream, though the dirt still grains the cracks of her hands.

  Today, she has helped the young ones knit and dye, and, after meeting unexpectedly with Bold Erec, she has gone flower-picking with the youngest and shared a dinner of braised quail in cherry sauce outdoors under the elms with Clare and Gerald.

  At the door to Rachel's bedchamber, she pauses, sensing something awry. She is not perturbed to see Falan Askersund with his brow pressed to the flagstone, haunches in the air, praying to his heathen god. Something is amiss beyond the closed door. She feels it somehow—the air so close and still her head feels heavy with the smell of it.

  Falan opens the door for her, and she clears her throat softly before entering. The orange flames of evening in the majestic windows light the chamber brightly. The bed curtains are open, and Rachel lies at the foot of the Maîtress, curled up, her face glossy with tears.

  "Servant of Birds, are you angry at me for being away all day?"

  The Welsh words must travel a long way to reach the place in Rachel that understands. Since her encounter with Denis Hezetre, a dumbfounded anguish has possessed her. As if a fog has momentarily lifted in her head, she realizes she is only a woman. Who is she to pretend to be God's miracle?

  Overwrought with shame, she has lain here for hours, returning to the moment when the sham all began, years ago, when just entering her womanhood, returning to when she had crawled into the belly of the dead horse and had lain there pretending to be alive when everyone else in her family was dead.

  No, not everyone, she kept repeating to herself. Grandfather had survived, too, and he had said God was not offended by her pretense. Laughter at that thought had broken into tears several times already, and now she is left with the wonderful arrogance of being alive, naked Rachel beneath all her fine clothes, and alone with death.

  A huge music moves through her, like the sound of the sea, waves of clarity ebbing to grief. For long minutes, she is lucidly calm. In that blinding clarity, she sees no other path: She knows she has no choice but death or life. The thought of her grandfather suffering, after he has suffered so much to bring her this far, pulls her away from her senses into deep grief.

  Tears burn on her face. She does not want to be Rachel anymore. Behind her closed eyes the Grail appears, scalded with gold light, hurting her brain with radiance. The goblet tilts toward her—and blood pours out rayed with sunbeams. She startles alert, her eyes snapping open, and she sees an old woman standing before her.

  "Ailena?" Dwn sits beside her and strokes her hair. In langue d'oc, she asks, "Is it I who have hurt you, Ailena?"

  "No." Rachel unfurls, wipes the blurriness from her eyes, and sits up. "No, you have not hurt me, Dwn."

  "Then what is wrong? Why are you crying?"

  Rachel flings her gaze out into the purpling sky. "I am ... wrong, Dwn. I am all wrong."

  Dwn clucks, wipes the damp strands of hair from the young woman's chill brow. At that touch, she feels that something is indeed wrong ... some error of the soul that wracks this body and shadows the blood with the chill of death on this warm June night.

  "You are troubled because everything is changed. Look at me, look what the hard, wild earth has done to me."

  "You are beautiful," Rachel says with conviction, and clutches her crusty hand. "You are true. You are yourself."

  "As are you, my lady."

  "No, no. I am ... a lie, Dwn."

  Dwn stares hard in the gloom and again recognizes all the details, the dented chin, swollen overlip, long nose, and broad brow limned in last light. "You are the very Servant of Birds I remember well, those long years ago."

  "But I am not. I am someone else," Rachel says fitfully, throwing herself weeping upon the bed.

  "Who are you?" Dwn asks kindly.

  Rachel closes her eyes. The Grail is gone—yet the blood remains. A crimson puddle mirrors her face and, beside her, that of Grandfather. His woe-carved features plead with her to say no more.

  A spasm of fear bends her forward. She feels the sticky warmth of blood on her face. This is the blood from the Grail, the blood that has purchased her lie, which has made her the baroness. She knows it is the blood of her family and the blood of Ailena Valaise, inextricably mixed.

  Disgust pulls her away, and she sees again her grandfather reflected in the spilled blood. In a sharp flash, she recalls his years of splitting wood, digging graves, soliciting her a husband—like some rude peasant, because his lifetime as a landowner, as a son and grandson of landowners and scholars, had come to nothing.

  She looks up, and her face is frail, starred with tears. "I cannot say the truth." She reaches for the old woman and buries her face in
her shoulder, mumbling over and over, "I cannot say the truth. I cannot say the truth."

  Dwn quiets her with a cosseting hand and a tender, humming tune, all the while feeling the old body thickening as night comes on. The truth drains the lightness from Dwn's flesh, and she sits heavy with all her years, knowing now there has been no miracle.

  No visitation of the Grail, no mandate from the Savior of the World has returned the Servant of Birds. This is some strange, gentle young woman whom Ailena has somehow bent to her will. The insight brings soft horror as she realizes the terrible jeopardy of this troubled girl.

  When the sobbing young woman finally goes still and Dwn knows she can hear her, the crone whispers in her ear, "The truth does not matter, Servant of Birds—or whoever you are. Listen to me now, sweet child, listen carefully and always remember this. The truth does not matter at all, only what we do with it matters."

  -/

  David wakes and finds Falan leaning over him, his lanky-haired silhouette backlit by the glimmery light of an oil lamp. The Muslim knight stands back, and Rachel approaches and dismisses him.

  "Dawn is near," she says and hooks the lamp on the wall bracket beside the bed. "I will be leaving soon."

  "I will dress," David says and sits up groggily. Dizziness spins through him, and the dank draftiness of the castle seems to blow through his bones. "We should be off early."

  "No, Grandfather. There is no need. I want you to stay here in the castle."

  David bends forward to chase the vertigo from his head, and pretends to rub sleep from his face. "You will need me on this journey. The abbey is a day's ride away. I can help you."

  "My knights will help me."

  Rachel's composed voice alerts David to some change, and he observes his granddaughter more closely. The anguish that had harrowed her yesterday, after her talk with Denis Hezetre, has eased, and no sign of timidity, no haunted distance occupies her gaze. Instead, she watches him with gentle concern, her lamp-lit eyes quiescent. Karm Abu Selim's magic, he thinks.