Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  Leora covers her mouth in mock surprise, and Hellene dips in deep curtsy, feigning awe.

  "Mock me, if you must. But this is God's business."

  "Oh, do come, Thomas," Rachel pleads impishly. "Play with us. Our Savior said we are to have life and have it more abundantly."

  "I do not think he meant in this world, Grand-mère."

  Rachel laughs jocosely, grabs his hand, and tries to pull him into a run. "The good news is God sent His Son to redeem this world."

  Thomas staggers a few steps and stops. "That we may be reborn into the next."

  Rachel pretends to pout, letting go his hand. "There is no mention in the Old Testament that we are to live for an afterlife. And the Old Testament is the Bible Jesus knew. We must do our good here in this world, where God created us."

  Hellene and Leora giggle and walk away, deploring their young brother’s sullen spirit. Rachel links little fingers with Thomas and guides him away from the distracting troubadours.

  "I have missed you, Thomas," she confesses, and her stomach tightens. Seeing him again, so unexpectedly and in the midst of her frolic, she feels unprepared for the horrific tangle of energy he inspires. Since learning that the moneylenders would not save her, she has given herself entirely to her power. If she is to pay with unhappiness later, she will live as a baroness now and use her authority to bestow on those around her as much pleasure as possible. But she does not know how to please Thomas without betraying her attraction to him.

  Thomas' eyebrows lower heavily. "Did your vision of the Grail truly instruct you to ignore the Gospels?"

  "My vision told me to live as the Savior lived. The Gospels came after Him. I want to return to the original Jesus, the rabbi who lived among the people—who went to the marketplace and to weddings. If we live well now, Thomas, the afterlife will take care of itself."

  "You know this notion verges on heresy, Grand-mère. We are to prepare for the Second Coming, to put our store in the glory that awaits us, not in the temporal blandishments of this world."

  "Here is where you told me you found the spirit," Rachel breathes. "This is where God lives."

  Thomas agrees mutely. His mission feels foolish. This woman has drunk from the Grail, showing him the inexhaustible earth as though it were the true Church. Who is he to disagree? And who is the abbot to say otherwise?

  For now—until it is taken away from her—this is her land, Rachel thinks. She is the baroness. She knows this will not last long, that each day is more rare than the last. And, for that reason, she wants this limitless beauty to redeem all her dread, to compensate all the festering fear for herself and her grandfather and the people of this land who believe in her. No urge, no indulgence can be ignored now, and she surrenders to the impulse of fitting herself into the huge glory of this landscape by darting down the slope and hopping across the stones of the slender brook.

  Thomas follows reluctantly, and as he jumps the brook, the mossy tang of the earth strikes him almost like a blow—and when he lights on the other side he remembers flowers and field grass that have been dead for ten years. That was the last time he had run down this slope.

  Since then, all the books that he has read, that he had expected would lift him higher than the great mountain wall in the west, higher than the ladder of wood smoke rising from an orchard grove where an old cottage squats snugly hidden, higher, he had thought, than childhood, have only weighed him down. With the soft turf under his boots exhaling bogland smells, he runs along the clattering brook and into heaven.

  -/

  Rachel and Thomas lope through the gorse, startling rabbits, skirting sudden shrubs of pink and white wild roses, leaping a bank of honeysuckle and collapsing with surprised shouts into a whole field of foxgloves. Thomas falls on Rachel, and, when he throws himself off her, she holds on and follows, flops atop him.

  And then their faces are very close, smudged with pollen, noses touching, startled eyes staring into each other’s depths, seeing leaf-towers and clouds.

  Without thought, Rachel turns her face and kisses Thomas full on the mouth.

  Thomas shoves her away and sits up, horrified.

  Rachel manages a frightened laugh at the glare of lightning in his face. "It is but play, Thomas."

  "Grand-mère!" He is on his knees, arms outstretched to keep her away.

  Rachel, too startled to face him, looks about at the white flames of flowers and the immovability of the grassy hills under the chapel of clouds and blinks, amazed at how savagely young the world is. She wants to live here without illusion of any sort. "Thomas, there is a thing you must know." She strives to bring forth the words that will divulge her secret—and instead she recalls her grandfather and the threat to him if Thomas cannot bear the truth alone. "I am ... drawn to you."

  "Please—" Thomas stands, backs away a step. The touch of her breasts atop his body lingers, and the sight of her staring at him dazed and frail in the hard sunlight swells his heart. "Say no more. I am afraid for us."

  "I am sorry." She looks down at the matted grass where they had lain. "This is my fault."

  "No." As the initial shock dims, he steps closer and offers his hand. "Don't you see?" He helps her stand and stares powerless into her baffled eyes. "I am drawn to you, too."

  Rachel's heartbeat pauses expectantly, until she turns away. "I'm behaving foolishly—like a young woman."

  "You are a young woman," Thomas answers. "It is I who am the fool. You were right to call me Parsifal. I am on a journey that seems never to end—riding to the abbey and back, trying to discover whom I serve, Maître Pornic and the Church or—something else."

  "The truth of yourself," Rachel says, daring to meet his blue stare.

  "And what is that truth?"

  Rachel smiles plaintively. "Like Parsifal, you must quest till you find out." She releases his hand. "It's taken me a lifetime."

  "Was it worth it?" he asks, following her through the flowery field. "What have you learned?"

  "That we must get back to the castle and carry on with our lives," she replies, determining to master herself more strictly for the sake of her grandfather.

  Thomas strides to her side, both oppressed and elated—contrarily pleased that she carries the same yearning for him that he does for her. As they stroll, he asks, "How will you pay the king's men?"

  Rachel frowns, and the wide-open world seems to darken and narrow to the tall horizon of static trees surrounding them like a piked wall. "I don't know."

  "Mother has collected some money gifts from the visiting earls," Thomas offers helpfully. "Though I imagine that's hardly enough."

  Rachel is not listening. The relief she has stolen for the last few days has vanished.

  "You are a beautiful woman, Grand-mère. Surely, you can marry well."

  Rachel suppresses a shiver. "When I marry, it will be for love," she says, and her voice sounds hollow. As they cross the brook, she considers that her future wears two faces: the toothless marquess or brawny Erec. She must choose.

  Ta-Toh leaps down from a pear tree at the edge of the orchard and bows to the baroness before running with a chittering laugh into the trimmed hedges. Momentarily, Ummu leaps out, says in a loud voice, "Baroness! Master Thomas! Have you seen my knight? The rabbi has directed me to bring him at once to Merlin's Knoll, to discuss where the basins of holy water shall be placed."

  "There is no holy water in a synagogue," Rachel says. "Oh, you must mean the mikvah, the basin for the ritual baths and baptisms. I don't think Gianni would know about that."

  "Rabbi has been instructing me," Gianni says, stepping out from behind the hedge, leading Madelon by her small finger. He bows to Rachel, nods to Thomas. "This lady and I were promenading in the sanctuary of the garden's edge. She seeks my spiritual counsel on her impending betrothal to the good Hubert Macey."

  "Well, Sir Gianni," Ummu says, backing away. "If you've imparted your counsel, then perhaps you will come to Merlin’s Knoll."

  "Forthwith," Gian
ni says. He kisses Madelon's hand, bows again to Rachel, and scurries off with Ummu, Ta-Toh scampering behind.

  Rachel and Thomas share a knowing look and face Madelon. "Love makes fools of us all." She shrugs. "Did you enjoy your walk?"

  -/

  Thomas wanders through the garden, trailing behind the others on their way back toward the castle. Madelon—and Canon Rieti? Shocked that a priest would betray his vows, shocked that his grandmother has kissed him—and shocked that he likes her flirting—he laments, This land is bewitched!

  He gazes at her walking far ahead of him, hand in hand with his mother, giggling with his sisters, sharing sly glances with Madelon.

  It was just a kiss. Yet that kiss has ripped through his mouth and his throat and locked on his soul. He limps through the languor of the flowers, head bowed beneath the kingdom of the clouds.

  -/

  That night, a green feather of icy light appears among the stars, a comet, a terrible portent that alarms everyone in the castle and the village. Evil burns coldly in heaven. The chapel bell splashes chimes of fear.

  Gianni Rieti says Mass to a packed worship-house, and though many of the guildsmen grumble that heaven unhappily judges their new liturgy, Gianni sanctifies the wine and the bread in Hebrew, and Rachel, as ever, drinks first of the cup.

  "The ax is laid to the root of the tree," Rachel overhears one of the guildsmen complaining when the Mass concludes and the eerie-tailed star still burns in the upper air.

  Alone in the chapel with David after the others have left, she asks, "What does this omen mean?"

  "Shoovaw yisroel kee chawshaltaw banvonechaw," he answers. "'Return O Israel to the ways of holiness, for you have stumbled and failed in your ambition, in your passion for material splendor.' We are done here, Granddaughter. We must leave."

  In the dim candlelight, his beard looks silky, pure white, his face weathered dark and sunken under the luminous orbs of his eyes.

  Tears float in her eyes, and she holds them back. "You are not well, certainly not well enough to return to Jerusalem. The voyage will kill you, Grandfather."

  "I will die knowing you have found your way home."

  Later, in her chamber, those words flog her, barbed with the word home. She has no home; and when she tries to remember her childhood home, she sees the dead Jews strewn in the woods, many with their hands cut off at the wrist and nailed to tree trunks.

  From her window, she observes the streak of the comet, and she knows this for a death star, too ill an omen to risk a voyage with her frail grandfather no matter how much he yearns for their freedom. She must find a way to defy that portent, to use its evil charm for the good of David and the others who need her to act as the baroness.

  Rachel opens the chest she has brought from Jerusalem and takes out a curved dagger in a jeweled sheath, the dagger that the old baroness had purchased for her son long ago. She draws the knife and sees her unsteady gaze in its mirroring blade. Ten years before, if she had not gone to her secret place on the knoll, if she had stayed home with her sisters and brothers, Father would have cut her throat, too, bled her like the Paschal lamb, sacrificed her to God to keep her from the atrocities of the mob.

  She holds the keen edge of the knife to her throat, tight enough to feel its sting and the rhythm of her pulse. Mother would have laid her out on the bed next to her sisters, and her blood would have pooled with theirs and with Mother’s when Father placed her among them. She would be dead ten years now, a twelve-year-old girl forever, never having seen the Holy Land, or Ailena Valaise, or this castle, nor yet the death star above it. And the voices that have been ever since an echo in her living blood would never have been heard. Never. And yet—always—for she would have been among them.

  Dark, dark, dark—they have all gone into the dark. Her pulse trips faster against the sharp edge. Father and Mother and all their children—but one—gone into the dark, into the btzelem elohim, into the shadow of Almighty God, where darkness is the light, and silence the singing.

  Dizziness makes her stagger and she lowers the blade. Only Father could have killed her righteously, only Father and God—and now only God.

  God has many hands in this world, and she chooses finally to bare her throat to them and to take her place among her family.

  Rachel puts the knife back in its scabbard. From under neatly folded bliauts and robes, she notices the five vessels of hardened red clay that contain the Saracens' mysterious Greek fire. She lays each of them on the windowsill like icons and places before them the Seljuk dagger. Above them, the comets tail gleams in the sky like the edge of a sword.

  -/

  Thomas Chalandon waits all day in the palais for his grandmother. Servants and Denis Hezetre come and go from her chamber, and Ailena will not admit anyone else to come near her.

  At vespers, she attends Mass, She appears withdrawn and ignores all entreaties to speak with him. She stares at the crucifix as though witnessing the tortured form for the first time, and afterward, she retreats immediately to her room.

  Thomas thinks he understands. Just yesterday, she had gamboled with him in the flowery fields—had kissed him on the mouth! She feels as tormented by her desire and ashamed of her weakness as he.

  God! he cries from his heart. No woman has ever stirred more than token desire in him—and now: I lust for my grandmother! He prays for forgiveness and for relief from the haunted passion he feels for the dark-eyed woman.

  Movements in the courtyard catch his eye, and he watches squires leading out four saddled horses. Moments later, Denis, Harold, Gianni, and an unknown, shadow-slim knight emerge from the palais, sling saddlebags over their steeds, and mount.

  The unknown knight confers with the others, and Thomas leans forward to identify him. He wears black leggings and boots, a sable tunic, and a cap that does not cover his black, shoulder-length hair. The stranger’s horse turns, and, with a jolt that stands him upright, Thomas sees the moonlight limn the youthful, pallid features of Ailena Valaise.

  He presses forward to make sure. Too quickly, she turns and gallops across the courtyard with her retinue, and his call disappears in the din of clattering hooves.

  -/

  Under the ominous gleam of the comet tail high in the night sky, Rachel and her three knights ride swiftly into the forest. Long wands of moonlight penetrate boughs of birch and mountain ash and fill the woods with smoky swirls of shadow.

  Each of the knights, who had in turn tried to dissuade Rachel from this adventure, stares about apprehensively. Only Rachel stays calm, preternaturally calm. In her mind, the golden light of the Grail assuages all fear, and she feels close to the arrogance that the Persian magician imprinted on her instincts, close to the predatory spirit of the baroness.

  The troubling voices in her head have dimmed away, and she hears only the thudding of the horses' hooves, the crackle of trampled ivy, and the aimless wind blundering through the canopy. The smell of loam, dank with night airs, soothes her with the knowledge that only one future exists for all that lives—and that is the earth. Everything comes to rest here.

  Among moonbeams streaming through small fir trees, three figures rear up, so sudden and sharp that the horses startle.

  "Hush! You'll frighten the dead." Erec Rhiwlas and two scrawny comrades step out of the bushes, leading their mounts. "Ailena Valaise, I told your knight this afternoon that this adventure is not for a woman."

  "If lives are to be risked for my castle," Rachel replies, "mine will be among them."

  "I warn you, Dic Long Knife will kill you as readily as any man."

  "Only if he catches me. You said we are to steal this money, not fight for it."

  "If we're lucky and the guards let their blood drain quietly, we'll not have to fight. Otherwise, our salvation will be our swords. You'll be in the way, woman."

  "Nothing you can say will dissuade me," Rachel says, her mouth set tight.

  Erec shakes his head, and his eyebrows bend sadly. "I'm doing this for
you, Servant of Birds. I don't want to lose you in the fray."

  "You do this for me?" Rachel asks imperiously. "As if there's no gain for you in this business? Lead on, Bold Erec, while there's still moonlight to follow you."

  Erec sighs and looks helplessly at Rachel's three companions, who shrug their shoulders in collegial dismay. He mounts, and, leading the pack through the thick-boughed forest, they ride silently into the hills.

  The wind cuts faster, driving the clouds rapidly across the face of the moon. After riding steadily uphill, they find woodlands spread below them, and away to the south shines the tiny, golden gem of the castle.

  The land dips down into Stygian darkness, and the riders must keep close to see each other. Over winding hill trails and whispery moors, among dark summits and the smoldering fringes of the starry night, they creep down into the forest again. They descend into spinneys of large oaks clasping branches, linking roots in thick, muscled coils so that the horses must carefully feel their way.

  A stream scurries among dense shrubs, and Erec paces the ford until he finds a shoal where they can cross without sinking above the stirrups.

  On the far side, they dismount and tether their steeds among stream saplings. Taking only their saddlebags, they walk a long time through near-impenetrable growth before Erec signals to stop.

  Through a covert of hazel shrub, he points to squat osier huts in a glade of arching oaks. Barely visible, the hamlet shines by the dull, evil glow of orange embers in a large firepit.

  Erec dispatches his two men with large hanks of raw meat brought to bait the dogs.

  "We've only a short time to get our treasure and get out before the dogs are done with their meal," Erec whispers. He indicates that Harold and the Welshmen are to stay behind as lookouts.

  With Denis, Gianni, and Rachel behind, Erec darts among the bushes, past a cluster of huts, and emerges beside the pulsing embers of the dying campfire.