Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "No!" Rachel yells. Go back! she wants to cry, but her breath is used up with the strain of holding on.

  Denis, who has skillfully maneuvered his steed across the skinny path, manages to pull Maître Pornic from the teetering wagon as the abbot attempts to climb down after Dwn.

  The old woman ignores the shouts of the men and the straining bellows of the oxen. She stands resolutely on the overturned sideboard, reaching over and snatching Rachel's arms in her strong root-digging hands. "Servant of Birds!" she yells with all her exertion and provides enough purchase for the younger woman to clamber back into the wagon.

  As they pull together, face to face, the side plank supporting Dwn splinters, and the old Welshwoman hurtles into the abyss.

  Denis, who has nudged his steed to the crumbling rim, grabs Rachel by the back of her robe as her feet skip out from under her. She dances in the air, watching Dwn’s small body smash below, a broken star among the nettle. Denis grunts above her. With his horse wedged between the oxen and the toppled van, its panicked face jerking back from the chasm, he puts all his strength into both arms and pulls the baroness out of the wagon and into his lap.

  Falan has driven his camel forward and slid down from its back, and scurries between the oxen. A blow of his saber snaps the traces, and, with a kick, he unhooks the draft pole and sends the empty wagon careening down the gorge side. Rachel watches it boiling smoke and rocks behind it. The long echoes of its crash shatter her heart.

  -/

  In downpouring dusk, the pilgrims arrive finally at Trinity Abbey. The baroness, cowled in her mantle and visibly shaken, rides with Falan on his unhappy dromedary. Maître Pornic sits behind Gianni Rieti on his white stallion. The abbot lifts his bony face to the hard rain, grateful to the Maker that they have negotiated the tricky mud trails of the mountains without any further loss of life.

  As they approach the wooden gates of the abbey, a bell clangs in the purple light. The dripping knights, hunched over their exhausted steeds, trail behind the camels and the white stallion.

  Maître Pornic tries to catch the eye of the baroness, to welcome her to his monastery, but she is as if paralyzed and can only watch with a cold fixed look as the gates open and the monks come running through the pelting rain.

  -/

  In the middle of the night, Rachel thrashes awake. The room around her is a glowing mass of darkness, and the Devil's voice intones: "Never and always, Rachel."

  The voice gleams inside the glissando sound of rain on the roof-tiles. Its evil chuckle gurgles with the water in the gutters. Not a voice, she insists to herself. Just the rain. Just the rain.

  "One and many," the Devil says with a soft laugh. "Like the rain, I am one and many. Dwn is with me now. She is here, finally and truly reunited with her mistress."

  Rachel sits up in her bed. Dwn's ghost flimmers in the drafty darkness like incense smoke, her face a fiery vapor without a jawbone, her eyes gasps of emptiness.

  "No!" Rachel covers her face. Madness thickens her blood like adder venom, forcing her heart to thud harder, filling her head with the arterial seething that has, since the horror, droned into the blind voices of her dead family. They mutter the Aramaic qaddish, the holy prayers for the dead she remembers hearing from her childhood but does not understand.

  She opens her eyes to make the dead voices go away and sees the wispy husk bones of Ailena's face full of shadowy wickedness. "You killed my Dwn!"

  "No! She was murdered. I'm sure of it. That was no accident. She was murdered by your own kin!"

  Ailena's fog-face distorts to a goat-visage with eyes of raw darkness. It grins, its decayed lips and jagged teeth rooted in a skullbone wormed with holes. "Soon you, too, will be with me, Rachel."

  With a cry, she presses her hands to her face. "Never!"

  "Always, Rachel. Always."

  I am dreaming, she insists. I am not mad! She presses her eyes until light flares behind her lids. When the whispering voices dim into the loud beat of her heart, she drops her hands.

  For a moment, all is dark. When her blindness relents, she sees the hard shapes of the bedposts, the chest, the chair in the corner, and, hanging from a crevice in the stone wall, a crucifix inside a red nebula, pulsing like a heart.

  -/

  Orange clouds carry off the rain at dawn and leave the sky pink as a healing wound. Rachel dresses slowly, feeling luckless with every movement, a strain against the natural order. The bell chimes for matins. From her window, she watches monks file out of the dormitories and follow a flagstone path across the green turf of the quadrangle to the chapel.

  The blackstone buildings and the men in their black cowls seem sinister to her. Now more than ever, she is determined to be away from here as quickly as possible. Before she leaves the room, she pauses before the crucifix and studies the precision of the icon—the small madness of wreathed thorns crowning the head, dripping blood, the beauty of suffering in that woeful face, flawless submission to torture, pierced hands and feet bleeding darkly, and the side wound like lips grinning at this senseless trial.

  By morning light, the gory image is bearable, and no hint lingers of the madness that assailed her during the night. How weird it seems to her that gentiles would worship a crucified Jew, one who is not even mentioned in the Jewish chronicles.

  With gentleness, she touches the tormented face of this dying Jew as though he were one of her brothers—and she wonders what has happened to her brothers and sisters, her parents, Dwn, the baroness, all the dead. Where do they go?

  She knows that the Christians believe that everything that dies someday comes back. That souls would remain separate from their Creator for all time strikes her as sad. She would rather believe, as her grandfather does, that her family is with God now and that death has no dominion at all.

  Falan, on his knees, face pressed to the stone in prayer, sees her and moves to rise. She signs for him to finish his obeisance. Grateful for the blue shine of morning in the windows, she stands by an alcove casement listening to birds chattering in trees still hung with pieces of night.

  Maître Pornic appears at her side, face haggard with grief. He has prayed all night long for Dwn’s soul.

  "Will you join us for matins?" he asks. "We will pray together."

  "No, Maître." Rachel carefully inflects her voice with sufficient ire. The baroness, even after having drunk from the Grail, would be furious at this blatant attempt on her life and the loss of her dear friend.

  After last night's episode of madness, Rachel lacks the strength to act any more than she must. She thinks only of the jewels and returning to her grandfather, where she can be herself. She yearns to be whole. She wants to flee this dangerous country and forget everything about the baroness. "I will say my prayers for Dwn at my husband’s crypt," she answers wearily.

  "The lauds our monks sing stir the heart. I feel their voices draw God closer to His fallen creation. That is what I miss most during my absence." He cocks a wispy eyebrow. "Of course, now with Canon Rieti to take my place at the castle, I may remain here with my monks."

  "You will always be welcome at my castle," Rachel responds perfunctorily. She notices Falan standing now and asks, "The gate to the crypt is unlocked?"

  The abbot’s gray eyes glint shrewdly. "The key is where you left it."

  "Good," Rachel responds without hesitation, curtsies to the holy man, and departs.

  As she disappears down the passage, Maître Pornic situates himself in the window so that he can see her as she emerges from the chapter house with Falan and walks along the cloisters, past the refectory. When she avoids the lych gate behind the chapel, which is the shortest route to the cemetery, his cocked eyebrow relaxes into place. As he moves to turn away, he sees her pause and look about at the stone buildings. His gaze hardens. She does not remember where the library is, he thinks. Or she never knew!

  He watches her speak with a passing monk, who points directions. As she detours through the postern to the library, he w
alks briskly down the passage to the stairs. When he reaches the library, he catches her looking over the shelves of bound volumes.

  From the corner of her eye, Rachel perceives the abbot, and her mind races, trying to remember exactly where the key lies hidden. Not remembering the location of the library may be forgivable but not knowing if the key hides in a volume of Plutarch or Plotinus will damn her in the abbot’s eyes. She removes the volume of Plutarch's Noble Lives and opens it. Her heart constricts to see no key attached to the inside cover. Is she mistaken—or have the monks moved it? No—the abbot said it is still where the baroness left it.

  With Maître Pornic's steps sounding behind her, Rachel returns the volume and removes the tome marked Plotinus.

  "Have you forgotten where you requested us to keep the key?" the abbot asks.

  Rachel opens the book and sees a key secured to the inside cover with crossed strips of plaster paper. "Plutarch—Plotinus," she shrugs. "To me, they're just dead Greeks."

  Maître Pornic regards her suspiciously. "Plotinus was a Roman."

  She closes the volume and hands it to Falan. "But dead enough to keep my key safely," she says and walks off to the quick beat of her heart.

  -/

  Sunlight slips through yews and glints on the marble lintel, which is carved with floriated letters: Lanfranc. The austere crypt, a stone box with dolmen-doorway of marble, sits on a mound in a ring of dark, narrow trees. The monks have kept the ground around it free of weeds, and bees lumber among sprays of white flowers.

  Nearby stands the more ornate red marble crypt where Bernard, the baroness' father, molders interred. Rachel ignores it. She fumbles with the lock to the smaller crypt, where Ailena promised she would find the payment for her devotion—jewels that the baroness had hidden here in the event she returned from her exile with a mercenary army and needed funds. What if she lied? What if there are no jewels?

  Rachel dismisses that fear. The key to the lock had turned up where Ailena had said it would be, in the abbey's library, taped within the cover of a yellow leather-bound volume of Plotinus' Enneads. A red ribbon marks a page where one line is underscored, as if to explain the thirteen years of misery she endured with her husband: "Evil was before we came to be."

  The key jams in the lock that it has not worked in ten years, and Falan must bend all his strength to it before it clacks open. The gate pulls outward with a mournful whine. Falan lights a rush torch with firestone and flint and sets it in a sconce high on the rime-stained wall.

  Fire shadows prance around the small enclosure, illuminating a low ceiling laced with mineral drippings. A life-size marble effigy of Gilbert Lanfranc lies on its back, clutching the hilt of a sword and staring with bald eyes from under a sturdy helmet.

  While Falan stands watch at the portal, Rachel goes down on her knees at the back of the crypt and feels for the loose tile she was told is there.

  But it is not there. She has been duped—and blood rushes into her head with fury and humiliation. The baroness' cackling laughter whirls up in her, before she realizes that the rock weepings have crusted over the tile. She has to get a stone from outside to chip at the crusty salts until the tile comes loose with a grating rasp.

  With trembling hands, Rachel reaches into the hole and comes out with a bulky leather pouch. In the cobwebby light of the torch, she observes a thick leather wallet. The moldy flap peels away like flesh, and, inside, gems return the light in greasy red and green starpoints.

  Her fingers tremble over the jewels, their bright life reminding her of the Devil's mocking voice in her waking nightmare. Has Dwn died for these? Poor woman: her life exchanged for something cold to the touch, and hard, the softness of their luminance untouchable.

  Falan calls out with hushed urgency, and Rachel quickly closes the wallet and hides it within the loose folds of her bliaut, held snug to her body by a waistband of woven silk cords.

  "Grand-mère—" a tentative male voice calls.

  Rachel goes to the doorway and confronts a sandy-haired monk in white cassock standing under the yew trees. The man has an open countenance of broad jaw, a prowlike nose, and cheeks as angular as a cat's.

  At the sight of her, he gapes with shock and clutches a yew branch to keep from falling. Falan takes steps to help him, and the monk waves him off and approaches, bent over with astonishment.

  "Grand-mère? Is this truly you! It is I, Thomas."

  Thomas Chalandon, Rachel hurriedly recalls: Clare and Gerald's youngest. This is the young man whom Ailena has sworn Rachel to discourage from living the feckless life of a priest.

  Rachel exits from the crypt, offers her hand, afraid to embrace him lest he feel the wallet of gems. "Forgive me, Thomas, for not showing all the joy I feel at seeing you again."

  "Grand-mère..." He kisses her signet ring, then peers into her face with the expression of an astonished child. "Forgive me. The abbot told me of the miracle that changed you. Still, I—I—" Tears glisten in his eyes, and he falls to his knees and clutches at her robe.

  "Dearest Thomas," she says and strokes his feathery hair. "You were still a boy when I saw you last. You were only eleven, and now look at you." She puts her hands on his shoulders and persuades him to stand. "You were always such a sweet child. I remember you making chaplets of flowers and crying over a dead bird—"

  Thomas blinks away tears. "It is you! You've been touched by God! I—I don't know what to say."

  "Say a prayer here with me for Dwn," Rachel suggests.

  They kneel on the stone step of the crypt, and Thomas intones a prayer of petition to the Blessed Virgin. While he prays, eyes downcast, Rachel studies him, unable to look away, curiously intrigued by his forlorn beauty. When he is done, he helps her rise and offers to pray with her in the crypt for Gilbert.

  "No. Walk with me instead. I wish to talk with you. I am concerned about your becoming a monk."

  "Concerned?"

  "Actually, I am angry, Thomas." Rachel tries to muster the outrage the baroness would want her to feel. "You are not a monk."

  "You're right. I am not yet a monk," he sighs and takes her arm. "I am only an acolyte. I have not yet felt worthy of tonsure. But why are you angry that I choose this life? You, who have seen God's face—"

  Rachel signs for Falan to lock the crypt, and leads Thomas away from the lych gate toward the far end of the cemetery, where the round-edged stone crosses end before the chine of a hill.

  "The priesthood is not your calling, and that is why I am angry. You were always a spirited boy. In fact, I seem to recall you were a little pagan. We were constantly sending the servants to retrieve you from the woods. I cannot think this Thomas that I remember so well would wish to sequester himself from the world that gave him so much pleasure. It is not your calling, is it? Tell me the truth."

  "I love our Savior, Grand-mère—but, I admit, I am no good at ritual. I would rather spend my time tending the garden or just sitting in contemplation on the hillside watching God shepherd the clouds."

  For an instant, Rachel feels a sharp nostalgia for her own childhood rise up in her—the summery days when she sat alone among ruins in her secret place, watching the clouds fit themselves to the wind—and the irremediable longing makes her shiver.

  "Are you cold?" Thomas asks.

  Rachel pulls her tunic tighter about her. "A little."

  "You must still be shocked from losing Dwn. We should get you back to the chapel, where you can rest and mourn properly."

  Rachel shakes her head. "I have mourned enough." She releases Thomas' arm and strides quickly to the top of the hill. Mortality wafts through her, Dwn's death not a full day behind her, and the jewels of her future hard against her stomach. So much has been lost to bring her to the gain of this moment, she is afraid to look into the vigilant face of this angel, afraid she will despise herself again.

  From the hill crest, she faces the lavender morning, mists paring among the hills, lifting from the silver threads of streams and rivulets. A heavy
, wordless weight rests on her lungs. She dreads that Dwn’s death was not an accident, that Thierry's shove had not been a riding blunder but murderous intent.

  With that thought, anger piles up in her and shoves aside the oppressive weight in her breast. Dwn did not have to die. Grandfather’s family did not have to die. God had not killed them. The evil in men's hearts...

  "The Grail, Grand-mère," Thomas asks humbly, coming up from behind. "You truly drank from the Holy Grail?"

  Rachel's body feels equal to the bluebell slopes and dark-edged horizon of woods. The same energy rears up in her as in the cloud mass lifting the peach-bright morning into the sky. Life comes from God, she tells herself, and held by life she is stronger than the evil in men's hearts.

  When she faces Thomas Chalandon, Rachel's dark eyes are large with the deep meaning she has beheld briefly: "Yes. I have surely drunk from the Holy Grail."

  -/

  As Rachel tells Thomas her wondrous tale of Prester John, he listens with a shining brow of hopeless worship. Watching his boyish adulation, she secretly marvels at his complete lack of guile. How could such a one have survived in the corrosive atmosphere of the baroness and her cruel son?

  When she finishes, he sits quite still, pensive and transfigured, eyes wet with the inner vision of this miracle. "You are right to be angry at me for studying to be a priest," he says finally, blue eyes searching her face. "I am a lie, an utter lie. Oh, I am happy enough worshiping God in the fields. But field work is deemed inappropriate for gentry. My only other choice is the art of battle with Uncle Guy. I had only one recourse, Grand-mère—this abbey. This has been a calling borne out of default, not of truth. Can you forgive me?"