Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  She knows about miracles, he thinks as he clutches the crucifix in the pocket of his tunic. The victory is not his but God’s. It came down to him in one bright idea, like a drop of sacred blood dripping from the brow of the Savior and splashing across his mind, a tiny miracle from the crucifix in his hand, a small fruit of wisdom that dropped into his hands from the tree of wounds.

  Shadow of the Sun

  The Grail is the wish for paradise, the stone of exile, the quest of spiritual wholeness, the bridge between higher and lower, earth and sky, people and God, the temporal and the infinite.

  A smoke-blue smell floats from the forest with the night breeze. To Rachel, as she rides from the tilt yard on a camel at the end of the first and only crucial day of the tourney, it is the fragrance of her land—a domain won by trial and suffering. The men around her are her men—Falan on his camel, Canon Rieti riding tall on his Arabian stallion, Thomas grinning proudly, Denis and Harold on their steeds, even little Ummu astride a donkey.

  Overhead, stars gnaw at the darkness. As a child, she believed those stars thrived as angels in the firmament, each angel a particle of God's face. Rachel knows now that this is not true. That is the lesson of the second commandment: Thou shalt not make any likeness. Creation does not show God but shows only itself—and God remains exiled from His creation, a stranger, like nothing else—perhaps nothing itself.

  Rachel looks down at her grandfather riding on the mule behind her. His face is gaunt and drawn from the fever he survived; yet, his eyes are merry. Though he had hoped that her knights would fail, he is content to accept God's will. After the contest, as Rachel descended triumphantly from the lodges, he accepted her victory with a gracious kiss on her hand and a blessing.

  The marquess, aghast at his impertinence, gummed acerbically to Rachel: "Leave religion to the priests, my dear girl. Send the Jew back to the Holy Land and get on with the unholy business of making this land work for you. You've a domain to rule."

  Overhearing the whisper, David retreated. While Rachel received the enthusiastic congratulations of the visiting knights, their ladies and troubadours, he had sat unobtrusively warming his perpetually cold bones in the sun.

  Seeing her looking at him now, David offers a proud smile. She has attained. He will not deny her that.

  From the pavilions beyond the tilt yard, a destrier approaches at a furious gallop. Falan and Gianni grab their sword hilts when they recognize Guy. Denis and Thomas, who have been riding in the lead, turn about, and Harold, at the rear, sidles cautiously out of the way.

  Guy has removed his breastplate yet still wears the tunic with the Griffin device stenciled across it. His hair, now shorn of his topknot, hangs in ragged locks over the tops of his ears, lending his pugnacious features an even ruder appearance. In the glow from the rush torches, his eyes look red and smoky.

  "Mother!" he calls in a surly, sarcastic voice. "You've left without accepting my concession."

  "There is your concession, Sir Guy," Ummu shouts from his donkey, and points at the topknot Falan has affixed to the tip of his banner pole bearing the Swan ensign.

  Rachel hushes the dwarf with a stern glance. "The assise de bataille was won in fair contest, Guy. I have answered your challenge."

  "And very well, too, Mother." Guy sways in his saddle and tilts forward, clearly drunk, though his gaze is level and cold. "I concede this barony to your rule. The chaplet of presence is yours. The chair of state is yours. The castle is yours." He reels, and his frisky horse turns full about. Jerking fiercely at the reins, he brings the beast around again to face Rachel. "But with all of this come the debts, Mother. They are your debts now. The penalty our castle incurred for siding with Prince John when Richard adventured out of the country—a hundred pounds sterling. Another hundred as fine for escaping personal service overseas. There's also a heavy fee to pay for renewal of the king's seal on your charter. And, of course, there's a widow's fine not to marry—or to marry if your cold blood finds the advantage of that. And don't forget the funds due for this glorious tourney. All told, Mother, you've several hundred pounds to raise—and, my!—only a fortnight till Saint Margaret's when the king's men will arrive."

  "The bulk are your penalties, Guy," Denis protests.

  Guy snorts. "I'm but a vassal here now. A vassal's debts are his lord's. The king's men will want immediate payment—or they'll seize this domain for Richard. And he'll sell it to the highest bidder to help pay off the massive debts of his ill-starred Crusade. There'll be not a day's grace afforded on this obligation, be sure of that."

  Rachel turns away from Guy, goading her camel forward. She will not give him the satisfaction of seeing her despair. Three hundred pounds! If she sold all the baroness' jewels at their highest value, she might raise half that—and still lose her realm. She fixes her stare on the torch-glimmering silhouette of the castle. Above it, the ticking stars seem much further away.

  -/

  Feeling tired and chilled, David sits in a lyre-backed chair in the corner of the council room where Rachel placed him. He lets his attention flit among the pastel frescoes on the stucco walls lit by oil lamps depending from the vaulted ceiling. The images, depicting scenes from the "Song of Roland," look flat and lifeless, with stiff unrealistic figures entirely lacking perspective. To David, they present the color of erosion, the depthless shape of loss, airy as the echoey voices in this room.

  "Branden Neufmarche has not appeared at the tourney," Denis says. "By that he makes clear his resentment. He'll be no ally to you, baroness. Therefore, let him pay you for the promise not to assail him."

  Seated in the large chair at the head of the council table, Rachel closes her eyes, trying to feel what the old baroness would do. No instruction arises within, only the darkness of her closed lids. Even so, she knows the baroness would not extort money from her dead lover’s son, no matter how insipid Branden is.

  "No more war," she declares, opening her eyes and regarding each of the serious faces of the men seated around the oval table: Falan—Gianni—Denis—Harold—Thomas—and David, who looks away from the stories on the walls to nod with weary approval. "If I must, I will lose the castle. But no one will die or suffer to keep me in power."

  "Grand-mère is right," Thomas says, rising to her defense. The spiritual certitude he reads in her oblique eyes stirs pride in him. "This is to be a realm our Savior will bless. We cannot consider violence."

  Denis raises his eyebrows at Harold and Gianni. None will say it, though all believe Thomas a fool—as was earlier demonstrated in the tilt yard against Erec.

  "Lady," Harold says glumly, "if we lose the castle, our families will be forced to live as servants to other barons. All our coin was given to Guy to fund the siege. We've no money. And my children are too young to find advantage through marriage."

  "Have heart," Denis says. "Perhaps we will have to forsake privileges, but we will not be reduced to vagabonds. Many a castle will be happy for our services."

  "As what?" Harold bleats. "A stable groom? Falcon master? I have no other services to offer. And I've a wife and four daughters."

  Gianni clears his throat. "I could not help but notice the fond attention our baroness drew from the many nobles in the lodges. Perhaps a marriage of convenience with the proper earl's son would both save the castle and strengthen the domain."

  Rachel recoils and from the corner of her eye sees David hide his face in his hands. "No! I will not marry again. Gilbert taught me the folly of that."

  Harold rises, annoyed. "Lady, if you will not marry and you will not fight, you lose both the advantage of woman and man. There is no hope then for saving our place here."

  Rachel looks hard at Harold. He has the pleated mouth of a sheep, which brings to mind something Ailena had said of him, "He responds best of all the knights to the shepherd's crook." She motions for him to sit. "Harold is right," she declares. "We must abandon hope. If we are to save ourselves, we must rest our faith in God."

  Gianni cross
es himself, and Denis and Harold follow suit. "God did not restore you to your youth and your domain to thwart you now," the priest-knight says. "He will reveal a way."

  David turns his hands palms-up and rocks his head softly at the gentile's assumption of God's will, afraid for his granddaughter. These are people who see their lives, and God Himself, just as they draw their frescoes, without depth. Everything is flatly apparent to them—even God's will—while, in fact, the world they see is but a sketch of what it truly is. "Perhaps God would prefer us to exhaust all earthly means to save ourselves before He intervenes in His creation," he says.

  "What do you suggest, Rabbi?" Gianni asks. "What more can we do?"

  "I have learned from the servitors that there is a sizable Jewish community in Caermathon, three days' journey south," he offers. "The barons have traditionally prohibited their admission to the guilds and their right to possess and cultivate land. Surely then, they have resorted to moneylending as Jews have in all the inhospitable northern countries. Perhaps they will lend us the funds that we need."

  The knights look at one another, then at Rachel, who acquiesces with a shrug of her eyebrows. "If they have such a large sum that they would risk on a frontier estate, that would be an earthly miracle. We have little time to find out. A swift rider must be sent at once."

  "Will you draft a letter to them, Rabbi?" Harold requests, his face bright with expectancy.

  David accedes, and Rachel dismisses the council. As the knights depart, the rabbi bows to the baroness and says, "It is best to look for miracles from ourselves before we look to God. We are, after all, God's hands."

  -/

  Thomas lingers after the others have left. "Grand-mère, I know God will intercede—as He did for you with a miracle in the Levant—and as He did for me today with inspiration in the tilt yard."

  "What you did today was foolish, Thomas," she says, her voice low, charged with anger. "Why did you take such a terrible risk?"

  "You called me Parsifal." His blond face looks like the sun with eyes. "Parsifal would not accept a barbarian for your champion. If God had sent the Grail to you, surely He meant for your family to defend you."

  "What do you mean 'if?’ Do you doubt that I am myself?"

  "No longer."

  "But—you did. What has changed?"

  Thomas, who has been standing before her, sits on the edge of the table and lowers his gaze. "When Longsight Meilwr did not recognize you by the smell of your hair, when Maître Pornic questioned the very miracle that had changed you—I doubted."

  "Perhaps you were right to doubt."

  Thomas looks at her, perplexed.

  "I've told you before. I am not the same woman who was your grandmother. I am changed utterly."

  "But are you my grandmother—or are you not?"

  Rachel feels a wind inside her chest and knows she cannot lie to this seraphic man whose features glow like a shadow of fire. "I am who God made me," she replies.

  They stare at each other in silence.

  At length, Thomas says, "The barbarian was defeated by me, Grand-mère. God favored me. Won't you consider now that the Church is the one true faith?"

  So, that is why he has lingered, she realizes. "Ah, Thomas—I drank from the Grail, and I can tell you, what I drank is what changed me. The vessel itself is not important. The Qur'an, the Torah, the Church are all vessels that carry the same potent elixir."

  "Not the same!" Thomas stands abruptly and takes her hands. "Christ died for our sins. His blood has sanctified the Church."

  The reverence in the youth’s moist eyes needs her reassurance. He is reaching for something more than he can find in himself. She knows she must not give that to him. She removes her hands. "I am tired," she says and walks toward the door.

  "Grand-mère!" He wants to tell her that her miracle has changed him unalterably, made him finally decide: He will become a priest. But she seems unhappy whenever he mentions the Church. Why? The Grail and the Savior came to her, not Allah or Moses. "God favored me today. Don't turn from me."

  Rachel stops in the doorway and looks back. His pleading face has the hewn clarity of a statue. She wants to embrace him, to sop all the supplicative yearning from that face, to love his needfulness and end her own. She is the baroness. She is his grandmother. "Thomas," she says in a hard whisper, remembering something a rabbi had once said, "God does. We name. Now get some sleep."

  -/

  Alone in the dusty attic of the donjon, Thomas' conscience pricks at him and sends a chill creeping up his spine. Leaning in the open window, staring down at the bright windows of the palais under the brocaded stars, he shivers.

  Despite the miracle of inspiration in the tilt yard this day, despite his love of God and Church, and—most potent of all—despite his blind faith that this woman is indeed his grandmother, he feels strangely unclean, ashamed and mortified by the welter of unholy sensations and emotions he feels when he is near her.

  Blue mist rubs between the skinny trees of the forest. Hoar frost hangs from the bare branches. In the crystal silence of the night, the moon has a face, a hazy gaze, the sleepy stare of an opium smoker. It is the face of the Persian magician, Karm Abu Selim, hollow-cheeked as a panther.

  "You remembered it wrong," his voice descends from the star-cut darkness. "God names. We do. He has named you Ailena Valaise. Now, you must do her life."

  "No," she mutters through the haze of sleep. "I am Rachel."

  "Silly child," the magician’s voice chides. "You cannot be both. If you try, you shall be neither."

  -/

  "So, now it's the Philosophers," Ummu taunts. Upon entering the knight-priest's chamber, he has found Gianni curled up in a window alcove under the glow of an oil lamp, reading the volume of Plotinus that the baroness has brought back to the castle from the abbey.

  Since his defeat in the lists, he has found that his soul aches more than his bruised ribs. Why has God let a nullifidian skull-smasher defeat him? Has he not witnessed the miracle of the Grail and been changed? Has he not stoppered his lust for the greater glory of God? Is he not worthy of God's favor?

  Gianni peers over the top of the book. "Ummu, listen to the Fourth Ennead, fourth tractate, verse twenty-three: 'Feeling does not belong to fleshy matter: Soul to have perception does not require body...'"

  Ta-Toh scampers into the room. The dwarf bows to the well-dressed monkey, and the animal bows back. "The opinion of the Pythagoreans is that the Greek vase reflects the proportions of the Pure Mind. On the other hand, the Epicureans believe it mimes the curves of a girl's breasts, thighs, and buttocks."

  "Your irreligious prattle will not distract me, stump."

  "Irreligious? Dear Canon, I am citing the Philosophers. Irreligious?" Ummu thoughtfully twirls a curl about a stubby finger. "Consider then the divorce at Cana where the wine turned to water."

  "Stump—begone."

  "I am gone, and I shall be—here atop the canopy." Adroitly, the dwarf scampers up the serpent-carved bedpost and disappears above the heavy embroidery of the bed's valence. Ta-Toh flits after him.

  "What nonsense is this?"

  "Oh, sense indeed. The sense of sight and of sound and enticing scent—for the Lady Madelon is paces away. And when she comes, Ta-Toh and I pray you will fare better than you did in the lists. May your lance find its mark, good knight. And a good night may it be. Hie away, beast! She is come."

  -/

  Clare and Gerald and their daughters have devoted themselves thoroughly to entertaining their noble guests, with a mind to ingratiating themselves. They have taken it upon themselves to appeal to the earls and the marquess for funds to help the baroness with her debt to the king's men. To that end, they have given all their time and attention to lavish amusements: cross-dressing costume balls for the adults and miracle plays and treasure hunts for the children.

  During an enchanted night picnic on a river barge, Madelon has stayed ashore, begging off with a feigned mal-de-tete. She has already agr
eed reluctantly with her parents and grandparents that the very real danger of losing their castle requires her to marry well and soon. Hellene and William with the help of Clare and Gerald have been busily considering suitable candidates among the earls' sons, and before the tourney is over an engagement shall be arranged.

  Resigned to her inevitable future with some staid viscount but not to her present fortunes, Madelon determines once and for all to experience the adventures of love, the courtly details of which she has been well-versed in since childhood. Guy’s ban on the pastime has only fanned her curiosity.

  In high spirits, she stops in her chamber only long enough to dismiss her maid to her own earthly pleasures. Then, she removes her tight corset and, feeling free and slippery in the clinging folds of her silk robe, skips merrily to Gianni Rieti’s bedchamber.

  "I am a priest," Gianni protests.

  Madelon has closed the door behind her and opened her robe, revealing her erect breasts and the peach fuzz between her legs. "I know the truth of your life, Gianni."

  "But your great-grandmother..." he objects, as she approaches and takes the book from his hands and drops it on the sill. "The miracle of the Grail."

  "Arrière-grand-mère has not become a nun for the Grail." She tugs loose his tunic and reaches down with stealthy fingers for the chimerical ardor that he has been ignoring since that fateful night in the Holy Sepulcher. "God has returned her to her youth to be young. God wants us to be young when we are young. Penance will redeem our old age."

  "Maître Pornic—" he whispers feebly as her lips nibble at his face.

  "Maître is a holy man," she whispers back, her amazed hands gripping a tumid strength that feels smooth as rosin and warmer than she had imagined in the restless darkness of other nights. "But you are wholly a man."