Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  When she can get away from her mother's doting attentions and boundless advice on how to comport herself as an earl's wife, she steals time with Gianni. With him, she can be silly or serious, talk about his travels or her love of chanson. And there is the perpetual game of glamour, trying to inveigle him in amorous regard; though, by now, she has accustomed herself to the fact that he is too stubborn in his renewed faith to be seduced by her erotic mischief.

  From her one experience with the young knight she brought to her bed during the tourney, she considers sporting to be vigorous and pleasurable but not as gratifying as she had expected. The seduction proved much more thrilling than the sweaty, athletic act—though she suspects that the experience might be more ravishing with a man of Gianni's expertise.

  Of greater value to her than romance—now that she must endure her mother's anxious prattle without the intervention of her twin or her father—is Gianni's friendship. He often seeks her in the gardens, where they can sit close together without being seen and talk intimately about the important truths of life—the beauty of music and poetry, the expectations of God, and their incessant debate about the preeminence of love or station in marriage.

  Even when they sit together without talking, she is happy to be near him. Is this love? she wonders, linking little fingers with him and listening to a land of quiet different than silence.

  -/

  David sits before a small fire in the shell of the half-built synagogue. On all sides of him the walls stand, mostly just columns of stone with spaces for giant windows. Above, a canopy of stars twists like smoke. Where the grand door of the temple will be, the comet’s claw scratches darkness low in the sky.

  Rachel steps through the doorframe, wispy as a wraith in her silken raiment. Her grandfather rises, pulls a workbench against the wall for her to sit. "You come so late to visit."

  "I couldn't sleep thinking of you out here." She sits on the bench, and he returns to his place on the ground before the twig fire. "You're too frail for this weather. Come back to the castle, Grandfather."

  David shrugs. "This is my home now. I will not leave here until we leave for the Holy Land."

  "Grandfather, please."

  David juts his lower lip, stares up at her from under shaggy brows.

  "Don't look at me with such sadness," she pleads. "You know I love you."

  "If you love me, then you will love your own people, and you will come back to Jerusalem with me." He holds up a thick hand to stay her objection. "I know. You say I am too old to make the journey. But look where this old man chooses to live." He gestures at the mortared stones and the scaffolding. "These hands have hewn wood and dug graves." He presses his fists to his chest. "I am stronger than you know, Rachel. Stronger than you want to know."

  "Tomorrow the king's men will come for their money. I will pay them, and our place here will be secure."

  "Secure? Ailena's son will cut your heart out, if he can. And the villagers say the wild man from the hills expects to take you for his wife. You are not secure."

  Rachel casts her gaze up at the river of stars. "In Jerusalem, the people know I am mad."

  "What do they know? That you talked some nonsense when the Paschal lamb was sacrificed? They know the horror you have lived—we have lived. Do you think we are the only ones? Many of our people understand. You will find one good man among them, and you will make a life together."

  "I have a life here for now, until the spring when you are stronger and the seas are calm."

  "You have death here." He spits into the fire. "You are making a glorious death for yourself."

  Her jaws clamp together, and her shoulders sag.

  David quails before the hurt in her face. "You have done all that the baroness required, Rachel. She would be proud and amazed at how well you have fulfilled her dream. To these people, you are Ailena Valaise. Sometimes I think so myself—and it frightens me. Nothing good can come of that."

  "Grandfather, I do feel the baroness in me."

  "She is not who you are."

  "But she is!" Rachel's face looks childlike in the fire glow. "I have drunk from the Grail."

  David stiffens, afraid of what she means.

  "The baroness told us the Grail is a vessel to hold the soul." She cups her hands and stares in silence at her grandfather. A long moment passes before she finds the strength to add: "I lost my soul with my family. My soul spilled out with their blood. Yours did, too, Grandfather. Your soul spilled out of you, too—but I became your vessel. I carried your soul for you. You went on living, because you had to care for me. I carried your soul. I gave you a reason to live."

  David stares dazedly, and whispered words come from him: "Af bhain hawyoo hoso hanais—woman is not cast aside—she shares."

  "I carried your soul, David Tibbon!" she repeats keenly. "I was empty as any cup, empty of everything but your soul—until Ailena gave me a vessel, a name, an identity, a role to play. And slowly my soul began to fill that cup. You had to make way for me. You had to let me become Ailena. And you did, because this is what God wants. He gave me this vessel to hold my soul. He asks only that I drink of it."

  David shakes off her spell. "You speak nonsense. God commands us to honor Him by being who we are, who He made us. You are a Jew, not a baroness."

  "God has made me a baroness, Grandfather." Her features shine with conviction. "Don't you see? I did not seek this. Now that the cup is in my hands, I must drink of it."

  "But why, Rachel? Why must you drink of this cup? Come away with me. You have your own life."

  "My own life?" Her voice quakes. "What is that life, Grandfather? I am the daughter of a man who killed his own wife and children—for God! And who is God to want that? Why did He answer our family's lifelong devotion to Him and His laws with a massacre? Did we transgress? Were we unfaithful? You know in your heart we were not. Then why are your prayers not answered? Why did God let the gentiles kill your children and their children? Why has God permitted us to live and them to die? What is this life God has left me? Am I to go on now and be a good Jew as though I had not witnessed the damnation of my whole family?"

  "Stop it!" David hides his face. Her words echo the grief that has resounded in him for the past eleven years, pummeling him with questions neither he nor the wisest rabbis of Jerusalem could answer. The sorrow he has kept silent for the sake of his granddaughter rises to claim him.

  Rachel breaks off, kneels beside the old man. With her arm across his back, she feels the sobs breaking in the hollow of his chest. She has never seen him weep. "Grandfather—"

  He shakes his head.

  "Grandfather—I do love you. I would have died long ago, in a dark wood, in a snowy bramble if not for you. You are God's salvation to me. Please, forgive me for having no faith in Rachel Tibbon. This life as a baroness, this is the only life I could say is my own—the only hope. I covet it. But for you, because I love you, Grandfather, I will give it up. Tomorrow, when the king's men are paid, we will leave. And I will try again to find faith in myself and in our God. I remember Job."

  David hears her voice as in a buffeting wind. He hears the salty taste of pain that accompanies her words, and a revelation opens to him with bitter clarity. He wants to leave this alien land. He would be happy to die on the way, knowing his Rachel has found her way back, not just to Jerusalem and her people but to her God. He sees now that this hope is vain ambition. If she is to find her soul, he must help her search here, where God, in all His shameless mystery, has placed them.

  "Grandfather, forgive me, I spoke without thinking."

  David shakes his head. "No, Granddaughter." He sits taller, wipes the tears from his dark cheeks. "It is I who beg your forgiveness. 'Can man hide in the crevices and I, God, shall not see him?'" He frowns ruefully at his own arrogance. "I wanted to hide you away from the atrocities. I wanted to hide you among the people, in sanctity, far away from the abominations and the depth of pain, in a small house of a small community in a small corner
of the world. But that is not to be. God sent the baroness to find us. That is His mercy. You recognize it—but I have coveted more. Now I see, I am not worthy of more."

  "Do not say that."

  "It is true, Rachel. All my life, I have had everything—servants, learning, family. I trusted wholly in God. More. I rested my whole life on God. But now, I see, we must stand alone. That is Adam's curse. We must stand alone among the glories and the atrocities—just as you are doing. You have taught me that. And finally, I see. Yes, it is true. We cannot lean on God, for He leans on nothing."

  -/

  Hellene sits by her window, sorrow seething in her. Where have her men gone? Thierry to Saint David's—but he should be coming back soon. Or will he return now that William, her stalwart, reticent William, is banished, to where? What of Madelon's betrothal ceremony and wedding? Will Hubert Macey's family break it off now that the bride's father is an exile? And what of Hugues? This is his twelfth summer, when he is nigh on manhood and needs a father. He will also need a patron if he is to be dubbed a knight—but Uncle Guy, who would have sponsored him, is cast out. That pleases Leora and Mother and Grandmother, but Hellene and her family must pay for that happiness—the Morcars must pay.

  Outside, trumpets blare, cheers resound, banners snap. The king's men have arrived. The baroness has won another victory. The sounds of joy come to Hellene from a great distance and arrive thin as starlight.

  -/

  The king's men parade through the outer gate under the flag of the rampant lion. Furred with dust, heavy-shouldered from long weeks of travel on the king's highways collecting taxes, the thirty men who dismount in the bailey gratefully hail the squires who rush forward to unbridle their steeds. The weary knights gladly receive the shrewd guildsmen who appear at their elbows with steins of river-cooled wine and redolent loaves of freshly baked bread.

  Among the red-robed tax collectors is the marquess of Talgarth accompanied by three knights in black armor. He waves aside squires and wine vendors and scans the jubilant crowd for the baroness. He spots her with the royal retinue, a head taller than the captain of the king's men, straight-nosed, pale and smiling enigmatically as an archaic stone carving.

  As the marquess approaches, the baroness leads away the captain, who has a wine cup in one hand, a loaf in the other. Vendors jostle, jongleurs leap and juggle, musicians jangle their instruments, but none of these is substitute for silver coin, and the marquess suspects that the young baroness has led the captain aside to whisper a compromise in his ear. That is why he has come himself, to assure no secret pact transpires.

  "I have come to collect my bride," the marquess announces jubilantly, offering his gloved hand to the baroness.

  Rachel takes his hand and curtsies. "I am honored that you would remember. I am not worthy of your attentions."

  "Don't play coy with me, Ailena. You know you inflame me. Don't bother collecting your things. Come away with me at once. My knights will see that your possessions are conveyed to Talgarth."

  Rachel lowers her eyes. "I will not be coming with you, my lord."

  "You agreed—"

  "I agreed to marry you," she says, removing her hand, "if I could not pay the debt to the king." She signals, and a drooling idiot wheeling a barrow of stone shards through the merry throng stops before her.

  The captain picks up a handful of the pebbles, not comprehending.

  The marquess frowns. "Only silver can satisfy our agreement, Ailena."

  "Only silver," she concurs and nods at Aber.

  The idiot leers and tips the barrow. The marquess rears back from the dusty clatter. He raises a hand to cuff the stupid lout and stops, frozen by the loud jangling of coins.

  From under the stone shards, a heap of silver money pours forth, its bright music silencing the rowdy crowd. Faces turn and mouths hinge open to behold the spilled treasure.

  "Call over your assayers, Captain," the baroness announces loudly. "Castle Valaise offers full payment of our debt to the king!"

  The marquess nails Rachel with a stare of irate amazement. And though she bows her head to him, he catches her victorious smirk. With an affronted snort, he strides off and beckons one of his knights. "Find Guy Lanfranc," he orders. "Tell him that the marquess of Talgarth relinquishes all pretensions to Ailena Valaise. He may do as he pleases with her."

  A noisy celebration of brass instruments, tambourines, bass drums, and whistles spills from the bailey onto the inner ward as the king's men partake of the castle’s joy. The delirium persists into the night, even under the tufted star of doom. The baroness with the king's captain and Clare and Gerald toast the revelers from the palais terrace. Denis is there, too, able to stand long enough to salute the king's flag.

  -/

  Thomas meanders through the festival, staring into all the laughing, drunken, dazzle-eyed faces and meeting only masks, comic visages, clown variants of men and women caroming off each other, dancing in the wide courtyard of the inner ward and slumped giddily in alleys of the bailey. Why are they so happy?

  Morosely, Thomas drifts among the celebrants and wanders out of the crowd into the darkness behind the palais. The night breeze here dispels the stink of wine and braised meats, and he smells the perfumes of the garden. He knows that if the penalties had not been paid and the king's men had installed a different baron, the bailey would be as loud with drunken revelry.

  He does not know why that disturbs him until he notices a disconsolate wraith sitting alone on the step of the palais' side door. The robed figure, shimmery in the thin moonglow, is his sister Hellene. At the sight of her, he understands how everything in the world can be right except one’s heart. He goes over and sits down beside her.

  "Uncle Guy's star is fallen," Hellene says, looking up at the green splinter of the comet. "And as he falls, he is taking my William and our Thierry with him."

  "The baroness will have them back—if they will relent their ambitions."

  Even in the dark, Hellene's sneer is scathing. "This is not the abbey, Thomas. Forgiveness has no magic outside the cloisters—not among men of ambition."

  Thomas silently accepts the sting of her rebuke. Ambition has always been what he lacked. He is known for it—refusing to be dubbed, spending his childhood days in the wild fields and forests instead of in the lists, avoiding ordination by hiding in the library. What is this emptiness I have where other men have ambition?

  "William and Uncle are never coming back," Hellene says and pushes to her feet. "I must decide if I will follow them."

  Thomas gets up and walks beside her. "The baroness is a surprising woman, Hellene. She may yet find a way to reconcile with Uncle."

  "The baroness—why do you keep calling her that? As if she were a stranger."

  "But she is. She's not the Grand-mère we remember."

  "That is Uncle's objection, isn't it? Why should this stranger young enough to be his daughter supplant him? It is not natural." She stops, peers at her brother in the dark. "Do you believe her story? Do you believe she is truly Grand-mère made young again?"

  "Does it matter what I believe?" He looks away, to the garden, where fireflies glitter. "The whole of creation grows old each winter and is made young again in the spring. Why not a woman?"

  A monkey wail lashes the night, and a boy's cries screech from the garden. Hugues comes shrieking out of the darkness, Ta-Toh clasping the back of his head, paws over the youth's eyes.

  Thomas grabs the boy, and the monkey bares his fangs with a piercing hiss that makes Hellene scream. Ummu darts from the garden, calling to his beast.

  Ta-Toh pulls fiercely at Hugues' hair, then leaps off and runs to his master. "The lad surprised my Ta-Toh. Skulking in the dark like that."

  "Following Madelon, Mother," Hugues gripes, rubbing his scalp. "She and the priest are in there together now. In the dark alone!"

  Hellene gasps, starts forward, and stops when she confronts them emerging. The ingratiating grin on Gianni's face, the look of hurry that
neither of them can quite conceal, all reveal too much. Hellene snatches her daughter from Gianni's side even as she protests, "Mother!"

  "I was but counseling your daughter on the duties of her forthcoming marriage," Gianni adds, and Ummu, with his face turned so only his master can see him, rolls his eyeballs.

  "That is a mother's task, Canon," Hellene retorts. "And if there is to be any counseling from you at all, it shall be in the chapel or nowhere."

  "The festival around the chapel is so noisy—" Gianni's excuse trails off as Hellene gruffly leads her wayward daughter back to the palais.

  Thomas turns to Gianni, frowning sternly. "Are you and Madelon lovers?"

  Gianni looks aghast. "I have not touched her!"

  "I cannot believe that, Canon."

  "It is true." He wrings his hands. "All our time together is spent talking."

  "Talking?"

  "Yes. She is my soul, Thomas. I am convinced of it—but she does not believe me."

  Thomas blinks with confusion. "Your soul?"

  "Don't you understand? I am in love with Madelon. I want to marry her. But she will not have me."

  Thomas' head jerks back. "You are a priest!"

  "One word from her and I will be a priest no more."

  "That will hardly satisfy Madelon's parents. Besides, she is to marry Hubert Macey."

  Gianni sighs sadly. "So she insists. I am just her toy."

  Ummu takes his hand consolingly, Ta-Toh grips the dwarf's other hand, and the three wander back toward the boisterous festival, leaving Thomas in the dark among the wisping fireflies.

  -/

  Roger Billancourt and William Morcar sit under a hilltop alder in sight of the pavilion tents where Branden Neufmarche has billeted them. Castle Neufmarche squats in the tree-cluttered distance, its repaired wall obvious from the brightness of the new stones.