Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  Nearby, on the pebbly bend of a throbbing stream, watched over by a dozen guardsmen in the shade of a spruce grove, Branden, Guy, and Thierry pace like oxen.

  "Look at the slump of our host's shoulders," Roger says. "Can you tell by that what he's thinking?" He does not wait for an answer. "‘What shall I do with these four knights?' He has tolerated us this long only because we nearly broke him in the spring. Having us working for him is a novelty that is yet appealing. But it wears. Look at the reluctant hang of his head as our Guy tries to bend him to a brief local war with the kitten."

  "He will refuse," William predicts.

  "'How shall I use these four dangerous knights?' he wonders. 'Shall I send them after Dic Long Knife and have them bring me silver coin? Or is it better if I dispatch them to the king to serve his exploits on the Continent?' He is not listening to Guy's strategy. He does not want to attack the Lady of the Grail. She is too well beloved of the villeins. The whole countryside worships her."

  "But surely Branden must consider Bold Erec's presence a threat," William offers. "When the Pretender weds him, the barbarians will have a stronghold from which to pillage all of Epynt."

  Roger sucks air noisily through his teeth. "Branden must see that to believe. For now, he is only concerned with what to do with us." He casts a sidelong glance at his companion. "If Thierry is to regain his rightful place and not wind up muddied or bloodied in France on the king's exploits, we must keep Branden out of this—if we can."

  William chews the corner of his mustache. "How do you propose that?"

  Roger says flatly: "The baroness must not live."

  "She has paid the taxes and the penalties." William shakes his head. "To slay her outright now would be treason against the king."

  "Then we shall not be so outright."

  A whisper of dread seeps from between William's lips, and he sits taller, facing the warmaster. "I have not forgotten our last attempt to favor her with an accident, Roger. My son suffered great risk."

  "No accidents this time." Roger leans his square head back against the tree trunk and thoughtfully scratches the iridescent scar on his temple. "Something far more tried and true. Something more poetic, too. We will use her love of Jesus to dispatch her to her Savior. Drinking from the Grail sent her to us—why not have the Grail carry her away?"

  "I do not understand, Roger."

  "Poison, you dolt. We will put poison in the wine cup from which she is always the first to drink at the Mass."

  "The first after the priest."

  "Dispatch him to heaven, too, I say. Hasn't he already broken his priestly vows lusting with your daughter Madelon?"

  William's head jerks about as if cuffed. "No!"

  "Are you blind, man? Madelon has been well versed in romance by the foppish ways of Gerald's troubadours and Clare’s courtly love. Gianni Rieti is just the rake to take advantage of that."

  "He must be defrocked!" William stands, lifted upright by a surge of rage. "I will castrate him!"

  "For that, we must catch him outright first." Roger shuts one eye and nods. "And we may—once we get past that devilish dwarf who stands guard for them. I have schooled young Hugues in surveillance, and he will find them out eventually. But we need not reveal Madelon's shame at all. There is her marriage to Hubert Macey to think of. Let the priest remain a priest that he may bless our grail and drink of it before passing it to the Pretender." His brown teeth mesh in a heartless smile. "Are you in with me?"

  -/

  Erec Rhiwlas rides alone out of the forest into the full clout of noon. Ahead rears Castle Valaise, reflected in the glittery coils of the Llan, her thunder-dark stones tattered with old ivy. This is his fortress now, won by cleverness and daring—though his father doubts he will ever behold the inside of it.

  When Erec had spilled his share of Dic Long Knife's booty at his father's feet and told of his adventure with the Lady of the Grail, Howel only shook his bearded head and said, "Be happy with your silver, son, for the woman who lives a lie has no trouble speaking lies."

  Dressed in his finest buffed-skin tunic slashed at the sides to cool him on this hot summer's day, Erec rides proudly to the toll bridge. With a silver coin to the amazed bridge-keeper, who has never seen a chieftain's son or any man in red leather leggings and marten-skin tunic, he gains admission to the toll road.

  Head high and square-shouldered, he crosses above the white crash of the Llan and rides past the color-splashed garden and the dark naves of the orchards. The drovers look out from the byres, and he waves as he goes by and calls down compliments on the beauty of the red heifers. My heifers, he smiles to himself.

  At the drawbridge, Erec chats with the arbalesters on the rampart while the porter announces his presence to the castle. He learns about Guy's vain attempt to steal the baroness' silver, and the happy reception of the king's men and how, before they departed reeling with drink and bloated with viands, they renewed the castle's charter.

  The porter returns and opens the gate. A squire greets Erec, takes his steed's bridle and leads him across the bailey. Guildsmen and their apprentices pop their heads from their shops. Villeins stand and gawk. And children point at the burly, bearded Welshman riding by. Awed whispers of "Erec the Bold" flit among the women at the fountain.

  Erec smiles and nods.

  The far gate opens, and Erec rides for the first time over the second moat and into the inner ward of the Invader's keep. The pavements spread broader than he had thought, the flags wide and slick, the palais ornately pinnacled as a church, and, beyond, a dazzle of blossoms from a garden under the colossal tower of the donjon. No time remains for him to take it all in, for the baroness has stepped from the palais to greet him.

  Rachel looks tremulous and fragile in her flowing sleeves and pale green bliaut, her hair tumbling past her shoulders, black, with its red highlights glinting in the hard sun. She squints up at him and curtsies, and when his shadow covers her and her dark eyes relax, she looks regal.

  Erec dismounts, bows, takes her long-fingered hand and is surprised by how callus-coarse it is. She reads his expression and smiles soft as a petal of eglantine. "I'm helping the villeins build a synagogue for the rabbi. The stonework has roughened my hands. Did you see the temple on your way in?"

  "Those stone columns on Merlin’s Knoll?"

  "They look crude now, but there was enough coin left after paying the king to hire a mason from Glastonbury. He'll be here in a week. By mid-August, the place will begin to look like a temple. I may have to sell some jewelry to buy the stained glass for the windows."

  "After we are wed, I will use my coin to buy windows."

  "No," Rachel says firmly. "We will not be wed until the temple is finished."

  "But we agreed—"

  "That if you helped me get the money for the king, I would wed you," Rachel finishes for him. "I did not say when."

  Erec stiffens. "Do not pull my beard, Servant of Birds."

  Rachel lifts her chin. "And do not think to treat me like chattel. When the temple is complete, I will announce our betrothal. No sooner. I will not be bullied by a man again."

  The strength in her unwavering look cannot be broken by words, Erec sees, and he huffs an impatient sigh. Perhaps the old chief is right, and I am being duped by this night-eyed woman. He voices no further objection and, instead, feels a smile widening through him despite himself. "You followed my instructions well on our way to the raid—now I will follow yours to the wedding bower."

  -/

  Harold Almquist stands beside the inner gate listening to the peevish chatter of the sparrows finding their places in the ivy of the curtain wall as the sun crowns the western mountains. He feels tired.

  Today, as on every last Thursday of the month for the past ten years, he has played the role of chamberlain: He makes the rounds of the village, the bailey, and the donjon’s treasury. His inkstone thins as his ledger page darkens with all that has been garnered from time—calves born, cows butchered, fields
sown, bushels and pecks harvested, garments tailored, rags rendered, coin spent, and coin returned.

  He glimpses the children romping in the garden, eager to find the first fireflies. Joyce, his eldest, nine years old, still thrills at the flurry of fireflies, yet summers away from dreams of a lingering kiss and all it discloses. Nevertheless, that summer will come, and she will flourish into provocative womanhood. In time, so will Gilberta, Blythe, and even little Effie. With inexplicable faithfulness, time will make of his daughters beautiful women and wives, mothers, and eventually crones. He sees himself and Leora aged, watching their grandchildren in the garden, seeing beyond them their children, repetitious mirrors of children, generations in servitude to love.

  The strangeness of the baroness' miracle has struck Harold with an unrelenting fright. He had known Ailena only a short time, less than two months, before Guy sent her off on her pilgrimage, yet he well recalls her shriveled, bent body, her flesh like oil-soaked parchment, and her wicked tongue. The Grail has worked a true miracle, he acknowledges to the molten sky and crosses himself.

  Just as in the Grail legend—when the land is healed along with the king's body—the baroness' youth seems to have rejuvenated the realm. In his decade of bookkeeping, the ledger accounts have never been as profitable as now. Even with the expense of the tourney, the penalties and taxes to the king, and the mason's fees for the synagogue, plenty of funds remain to manage through the winter—largely because the villeins unprecedented hard work promise the most bountiful harvest ever.

  "Sir Harold," the porter at the inner gate calls. "Will you recognize this knight or shall I send for our Mistress?"

  Harold tucks his fat ledger more firmly under his arm and accompanies the porter to the closed gate. When the sight-hole slides open, he sees a brutal nose, hawk-bent, freckled, and sun-scarred and, set close together in thick bone sockets, small, dragonish eyes.

  "Thierry!" Harold pants with surprise.

  "Harold, let me in. I am returned from my penance at Saint David’s, and I am shriven."

  -/

  Erec pulls his steed around on the top of the meadow before the forest. He gazes back at Castle Valaise as the sun meets the mountains and sends golden spokes across the sky's length. Above the bright hull of the fortress, taut cirrus clouds flare crimson.

  The afternoon he has spent with the Servant of Birds has left his heart feeling sunburned, blistered with longing. Giddy with envy, he had let the slender woman walk him by the hand through the palais' cathedral chambers, revealing the great hall in the opal light of its lance-long windows. They toured the gaming rooms of felt-bolstered tables and velvet-armed chairs, and apartments appointed with marble-manteled fireplaces and body-length mirrors. They reviewed counsel rooms watched over by antlered stag heads. And they visited the cookhouse with its enormous oven and gleaming copper caldrons as well as the donjon’s armory replete with disassembled war engines, a catapult big as an oak, and wheels taller than a man on a horse.

  The Servant of Birds had even shown him her bedchamber with the rosewood sea chest she had lugged back from the Levant. And there awaited her tall-canopied bed—their bower bed—with valences and coverlets embroidered with hunting scenes. Passion had smarted in him then to imagine this willowy maiden under him on that bed, the sinuous shadow of her hair sprawled beneath her. And he would have thrown her down then and there but for the jewel of command in her gaze.

  After meeting her family and dining with them, she escorted him around the bailey and introduced him to all the guildsmen in their shops. Then she invited him to stay the night—but that he could not do. He has already sworn to himself that he will sleep in this keep only as its lord.

  Howel will mock him, Erec knows. The old man will say he has been tricked. And maybe I have, Erec thinks and smiles tristfully, feeling the burn in his chest, the heat of ardor that has bent the iron of his fate.

  -/

  Thomas kneels in prayer before the window of his donjon apartment, morning light warming his closed eyes. Since Maître Pornic sent him here from the abbey, since his grandmother lured him out into the countryside and kissed him on the mouth, he has been praying for guidance. No whispering counsel has descended from the Holy Spirit, no unsuspected wisdom glitters from the dark of his confusion.

  A knock sounds softly. Wearily, he rises, brushes the wrinkles from his white cassock and opens the door. Rachel stands in the dark corridor wearing a peach-pale bliaut and a white robe cinched tightly at the waist with gold cords. "May I come in?"

  "Grand-mère—" he flusters. "No—not here—I mean, this apartment is too rude." He steps onto the dank stairway and stares down the curve of unlighted steps. "You walked up here?"

  Rachel smiles. "Despite your Uncle Guy's faith that I am a witch, I cannot fly."

  "Come—" Thomas beckons, taking her elbow and immediately suffering a wash of remorse at the soft feel of her. "The roof is just two more flights."

  The violet and golden vista of hills under the lofty clouds sprawls so gigantically that for a while they say nothing, enraptured by the wideness of sky and the plunging hills. The watch before the flagstaff salutes the baroness and fixes his gaze along the clouds' edge.

  "I came to apologize," Rachel says at last. "I behaved like a giddy child with you."

  "That was days and days ago, Grand-mère. I've forgotten."

  "No, you haven't," she says with a puckish smile.

  He wears a surprised look for a moment, then heaves his head back and relents: "You're right. But why have you come to me now?"

  Her large, interested eyes gleam. "Denis is mending well. The king's men have their money. Harold says the villeins' harvest will be their best ever. And the synagogue for the rabbi is to have a master mason. All is well with me for now, Thomas—except you."

  He puts both hands to his chest. "I am well, Grand-mère."

  "Are you? You do not look at me when we eat in the great hall. When I see you riding into the village to say Mass with Gianni, you pretend not to see me. I fear you are unhappy with me. Is it because I stole silver from Dic Long Knife?"

  "I was wrong to reproach you for that," he says. "God returned you here to live as a baroness, not a saint. I'd forgotten."

  "Then are you displeased that I kissed you, that I declared my attraction to you?"

  He waves that aside and blurts out: "My own feelings are my unhappiness. I have already confessed them to you."

  "And I have spoken to you freely of my feelings. We need not be ashamed. They are natural affections for two people in love."

  "Grand-mère!" He moves to step away, and she takes his arm.

  "Can we not love each other?" she asks, clear-eyed. "Look, we are of an age, you and I, Thomas. We are man and woman. And God has put desire in our hearts."

  "That desire must never go beyond our hearts."

  "Never," she avers with a squeeze of his arm. "But neither should it wither in our hearts. Why should our affections not be open? We have done nothing sinful."

  "Grand-mère—" He breathes deeper and says in a rush, "I am determined to take my vows. The miracle that has changed you has changed me as well. In September, on Saint Fandulfs Day, I will give myself to the Church."

  "Then you have found your Grail, Parsifal." She releases his arm and leans back against the parapet under the weight of a decision. "In many ways, I am still questing. In the spring, I will return to Jerusalem."

  Surprise and relief play across his face. "Guy will be pleased to learn that."

  "Perhaps not. I was hoping to name you my heir."

  "Me?" he stammers. "I—I'm not even a knight."

  "One need not be a knight to rule."

  "No—but I will be a priest."

  "Prester John, who rules the greatest kingdom in the Orient, is a priest. If you rule in my stead as a priest, the enemies who would unseat you must challenge the Church as well."

  He shakes his head, grieved. "No, Grand-mère, don't do this to me. The Lord has said
we cannot serve two masters. The Church is master enough for me."

  "As you wish, Thomas. But let there be no more distance between us. Let us love each other."

  Her words frighten him, and he puts a hand to his head, steadying the lightheadedness. "I will love you as a grandson. I feel nothing more."

  "Good. Then there is nothing for us to hide." With a grandmotherly hand to his cheek, she smiles complacently. In the brassy sunlight, his eyes appear three times the color of sky. They stir cryptic longing in her, not for love or passion or belonging but, strangely, for the familiar presence of her grandfather with his dolorous gaze, thick-knuckled hands, and forked beard gray as the ashes of which she knows we are made. "I will see myself down, Thomas. Return to your meditations and later, if you wish, come help us at the synagogue."

  Walking down the dark stairwell, Rachel feels pleased with herself for making peace with Thomas. Now she hopes that the amorous lamentations she feels in herself whenever she sees him will distract her less—for spring seems a long way off.

  -/

  Maître Pornic stares with a face as famished as granite at the temple on Merlin's Knoll. For a long while, no one sees him sitting on his palfrey in the shawl of shadows at the forests edge, and he has ample time to witness the ardor of the people's efforts.

  Men and women, even children, come and go from their labors in the fields to chip at the stones and hammer at the pews being assembled in a nearby carpenter's tent. The baroness labors among them, her long hair tied back like a common woman's.

  Presently, one of the men atop the scaffolding spots the abbot and announces him.

  Maître Pornic guides his horse up the well-worn path to the summit, generously blessing each of the villeins who kneel before him. At the top, the baroness and the canon greet him courteously, and the rabbi nods from where he sits in his high-backed chair wrapped in his prayer shawl. Gianni offers a hand to help the abbot down, but he refuses to dismount.