Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Let us flee too, then," Thierry suggests anxiously. "Let us join with Richard in the Vexin and fight side by side with the king! We will make our own fortune by our swords."

  William casts an irate sneer at his foolish son. "That is the dream of a child. War is no tourney, boy. In battle your life may easily be shorn from you or, even worse, your eyes spilled with one sword slash, your legs crushed under a fallen steed. Blind or halt, you will live out your life by the roadside begging alms."

  Thierry recoils at being called a child, and his horse sidles under him. "A beggar I might become, but my wounds would be honorable," he sniffs. "What have I to gain here but the dishonor of poison and murder?"

  William grimaces testily before he masters himself. "You may go to battle and even forfeit your limbs, if that is to be your honorable fate. But not at fifteen. You will stay here this summer, and we will play out this intrigue, monstrous as it is. That is the indignity of our play for power. The absence of power is far worse than any indignity we might perpetrate. When your place in this castle is secure and you have a home to return to with your wounds, then I say go fight for the king, go with my blessings."

  "I will remember that, Father."

  "Do. Though for now, bend your mind to the task at hand. We must extricate ourselves from the suspicion of this murder. We alone among the gentry approached near enough to the chalice to administer the poison. Our enemies know that—and they have not forgotten your riding accident that took the life of that miserable crone Dwn."

  "There is one other who had access and arguable motive." Thierry meets his father’s querying stare. "There is the canon's dwarf."

  "Ummu?" William ponders this. "That swarthy imp? What motive would apply?"

  "A motive many would understand: hatred of the Christ-killer."

  William thumbs his chin and chews his mustache. "Have we anymore bane-root?"

  -/

  Rachel does not hear the knock at her door. She stares mesmerized by the molten flow of the Llan.

  "Arrière-grand-mère?" a meek voice calls. The latch lifts, the door opens, and Madelon pokes her head in. She finds the baroness seated on the sill of the window nave, knees drawn up to her shoulders, flaccid face staring blindly into the golden day. "May I come in?"

  Rachel hears the question muffled by distance. She turns and encounters a young woman with long ringlets of blond hair and a hurt, fervent look. She does not recognize the maiden.

  "I am truly saddened to lose the rabbi. He seemed a gentle man."

  Rachel gazes away from the furious tremblings of radiance on the river.

  After a while, Madelon clears her throat and stammers, "I need to speak with you—please."

  Slowly, Rachel faces about. She frowns surprised the woman with the hurt blue eyes is still there. "Who are you?"

  Madelon steps closer. "I need your help, Arrière-grand-mère," she says and begins to cry.

  The sight of the grief-stricken girl shakes Rachel, and she uncurls from the sill. "Madelon—" The name brightens in her. "What is wrong?"

  Madelon flings herself at her great-grandmother and presses hard against her, needing her strength. Through her tears, she tries to speak, and only her fear finds a voice in her sobs.

  Rachel coos soothingly and hugs the shaken child. She guides Madelon to the edge of the bed, and they sit down together. The tears, the shivering sobs touch Rachel as deeply as her own weeping, which has not yet been able to find its way to her eyes. Her sorrow must travel so far—a whole lifetime of learned memories to cross—before she can cry for her grandfather. "Tell me what is wrong, Madelon."

  "You—must—" Her voice dissolves, sobs, tries again, "You must—help me."

  The girl's need, clasping Rachel so tightly, shuddering against her with released fright, unfurls the strength in her that shriveled hours ago when David died. "I will help you," she says firmly. "What is wrong?"

  "I—am—I arn with child," Madelon blurts.

  The words tumble into Rachel's hearing with a soft crash and supernatural beauty. The impact of their meaning crashes aside the granite weight on her heart, and a bulge of feeling fills her throat.

  For an instant, she fears this weird onset of grief and joy intermixed. Then, in a phosphorescent light of understanding, she recognizes the grief of death and the wonder of birth locked together, like a man and a woman, struggling, copulating, making joy and pain—grandfather dead and a nameless one to be born.

  The dumb immensity of joined sorrow and rapture grips her, and, without thinking or even feeling, just seeing, she beholds how all of life is the perpetual departure of everything known and loved and the endless arrival of the fearful unknown—on and on—never and always—

  Rachel laughs, lightheaded and grief-struck, and her tears flow with her laughter.

  Madelon pulls away, baffled by Rachel’s joyful tears. "Why do you laugh?"

  "I am crying with joy for you!"

  "But what will become of me? Mother will be furious."

  "And what will that change?" Rachel, her face slick with tears, closes her eyes against the depths of a long sorrow. "What does grief or anger matter now? What does any of it matter?"

  "I am afraid. I do not know what to do or where to turn."

  Rachel opens her eyes and stares at this girl, remembering that she too had once been this young. Then, she shivers as if with blue cold and continues to weep, softly and deeply, not laughing now. "All shall be well," she whispers. "All manner of thing shall be well—especially with this child."

  Madelon shakes out another sob and hugs her fiercely, and the two lean into each other’s pain.

  -/

  Thomas stares over Maître Pornic's shoulder at the stone wafer, and his breath tightens in him at the sight of the Savior’s image staining the stone. A strange feeling pervades him, as if in a dream where he has just realized that he is dreaming.

  He looks to the others. The knights' faces shine in radiant silence. Tears web Gianni's eyes. Denis, despite his blond beard, looks like a boy thriving on love. Harold’s lips twitch to an inward prayer. Even his father's complexion shines with a glare of strength he has never seen before in Gerald's sallow face.

  Thomas regards the majestic image again. The sorrowful eyes watch him from their mineral darkness without pretense, knowing what is to come. The cruelty of the thorns in the crown, implacable and vicious, bites into flesh and brains. And the mouth, flawlessly clear, flawlessly beautiful and exhausted, holds its cry inside, deep within the wild stone.

  -/

  A ghastly shriek jars the temple. Maître Pornic screams—a wounded scream of fearfulness and rage—and now he has released the sacred image. Thomas watches it fall, the wounded visage dwindling away and then shattering like a fired clay dish. Its perfection disappears into muddled pieces.

  Cries of grief and gasps of despair leap from the knights, and they fall to their knees, snatching at the broken pieces.

  Maître Pornic kicks at them and stomps on the largest shards, grinding them underfoot. "There is no semblance!" he screams. "Jesus is not in the stone! He is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father! Be not deceived! That is the face of the Devil!"

  Gianni howls, rears up and seizes Maître Pornic by his cassock, and lifts the frail man off his feet. "You greedy monster!" the knight shouts. "You want it all! No miracle but your God! No holiness but you!"

  Thomas and Denis pull Gianni away, and he spits at the shaken abbot. Turning Gianni about gruffly so that he faces the draped body of the rabbi, Denis whispers harshly, "Remember what he taught us. We have seen enough. The second commandment forbids icons. He sent this miracle just for us, just for this one time, from the stone that built this temple, to remind us: The blood of the covenant is invisible."

  -/

  Rachel, in her implacable grief, slowly, meticulously rips off her clothes, tearing her bliaut, piercing her robe with the grief in her fingers and rending the soft material. The voices inside her sing a dirgefu
l song in Hebrew, though she understands only some of the words—Baruch ata adonai elohainu melach ha-olam dayan ha-emet.

  Naked, fingers buzzing with the strength that has reduced her garments to shreds, she stands before a window of her bedchamber, gazing at the torchlights on the parapets and the celestial torches glinting in the heavens.

  She remembers when she felt strong in Jerusalem, strong enough to ask David, "Why did you burn them? Why did you burn your children and grandchildren—my parents, my brothers and sisters? Does not the Torah say, 'You must surely bury him'?"

  That was the one time David had shown anger to her. With a clenched face and an iron voice he declared, "God has taken a lifetime's love in death—everything for His selfishness. And now we are left with nothing, only the Law. But I would not give them to the gentiles' earth. What earth is ours? Where is our promised earth? What soil is ours that it can be significant? No. There is no history without land. There is only endings and beginnings. Our land is gone. We belong to the fire that wanders wherever it is fed. Let the fire have us and purge the earth of our memory."

  Those words return to Rachel palpably, and her body quakes to hear them again. She will never hear his voice again—and yet, she will always hear him. Never and always.

  She turns and walks across her room and out the door. She knows what the shadowy voices are singing. She knows what David wants. As she pads down the passage and the stairs, she mutters to herself, "Liberation from the flesh, which is the past—liberation from the future, which is the grave. Let the fire restore. Let the fire redeem."

  Rachel walks through the palais without seeing anyone. When she steps into the night courtyard, the stars see her—distant fires set against the darkness—tiny yods of God's name glinting against His brow of blackness, the sweat of His effort to create the world still shining.

  "Yod-he-vau-he—" she chants. "Yahweh, who departs when we begin, who rises up when we lie down, who arrives when we are gone."

  The porter at the inner gate startles alert to see the ivory nakedness of the young baroness glowing in the dark. And he averts his eyes.

  "Open the gate," she commands. "This is where we start, by returning to the dead. This is where God is hidden."

  The flustered porter swings wide the gate and watches, astonished, as the naked woman blithely strides into the bailey. Do the others know? Must they be alerted? He looks up at the ramparts, catches the night watch gawking, and hurries to the palais to find someone to tell.

  In the bailey, an insomniac stablehand, a milkmaid, and a cobbler witness the luminous trespass of the white woman. They hurry to call others. By the time the baroness has reached the outer gate, a gaggle of people scamper behind, muttering in hushed, awed tones punctuated by snickers.

  "My lady!" the sergeant at the gate gasps. Several of the guards from the front towers have come down into the courtyard and stand gaping at her. When she commands the gate opened, they share troubled looks. "What is wrong, my lady? Why have you come before us undressed?"

  "I am come to stand naked before God. Open the gate at once! As you are my vassals, do as I command."

  The sergeant looks to the others and nods sternly toward the ogling villeins. Guards rush the small gathering and disperse them back into the bailey. The sergeant opens the gate. "Shall I come with you, my lady?"

  "No! This is not your concern. A lifetime is burning. And yours is burning here."

  Rachel walks resolutely out the castle and down the toll bridge road. The cows, darker lumps of darkness, pay her no heed. The garden lies in deep, black communion with the night. At the toll bridge, the keeper shouts with alarm, "Who are you?"

  "I am Rachel Tibbon, come to mourn my grandfather, the last of my family."

  "Baroness!" the tollkeeper starts, finally recognizing her. He tries to fit words to his astoundment and only succeeds in stammering incoherently as she drifts by and across the bridge.

  Through the darkness of the oak grove that fronts the village, Rachel avoids passing the huts and goes directly to the open field that leads to Merlin's Knoll. Only the swine in their pens notice her and jabber among themselves.

  Grass-points prick her thighs as she wades across the wild field. Harebells swipe at her and rocks bite her soles. Ahead, the knoll rears against the gritty stars. All around, the hills float sleek as cloud banks under the star-struck night.

  -/

  The knights, sprawled on reed mats before the bimah, are sleeping when Rachel arrives at the temple. The ner tamid, the Eternal Light, gleams above the awn kodesh, the Holy Ark. By that light, she finds her way down the aisle of pews to the bier, climbs the three steps, and stands over the corpse.

  Gently, she draws back the covering and observes that the knights have treated their rabbi well: David has been washed carefully, his beard and hair combed. They have clothed him in takhrikhim, white robes, and have wrapped him in his prayer shawl, whose fringes have been torn off, signifying the end of his earthly responsibilities.

  Rachel stares into the quiet face of her grandfather and lays a hand against his cold cheek. The hymnal voices in her head hush. They recognize him. They are his children.

  "You have found the Promised Land, Grandfather. Its boundaries are evening and morning. Its highest mountain is noon, its deepest valley midnight. All this is yours now. Bless the silence, for in it we hear God. Bless the suffering, for in it we find strength. Bless the dead, for they are the treasure paid for our lives."

  She kisses the cold stone of his brow and covers his face.

  Immediately, the wraith-voices ascend in her: Hamakom y'nahaim etkhem b'tokh sh'ar availai tziyon vee-yerushalayim.

  "Wake up!" she shouts. "Wake up and bring the fire!"

  The knights startle alert and push to their elbows. Shocked silence grips them at the sight of the naked baroness standing above them.

  "Bring the fire!" she shouts again.

  Denis, first on his feet, gawps like a simpleton. "My lady—" He finally manages to blurt: "You are deeply grieved!" He pulls his tunic over his head and stands naked before her, offering her his garment.

  "Put that back on," she orders. "And bring the fire."

  "Fire?" Gianni repeats, not compehending.

  "Yes—fire. The rabbi will be given to the fire."

  "No, no," Harold says. "Leviticus states, we shall bury the dead."

  "Listen to me!" Rachel declares in a voice that rings to the rafters. "David Tibbon will not go into the earth. This earth is not significant soil. Bring those pews close around him. Gather dried grass for kindling. We set the fire with the ner tamid. Do as I say!"

  The knights look at one another, and Denis shakes his head. He mounts the bimah and drapes his tunic about Rachel, trying to lead her away.

  She shrugs him off and holds out his tunic. "Put this on!"

  The command in her voice and the strength in her stare overwhelm all protest from him, and he dons the tunic.

  "Now, bring the pews close. If you are truly my knights, you will do as I say."

  "Why do you do this, Baroness?" Gerald asks trepidatiously.

  "The light of God is in the earth," she answers. "And from the earth shine forth the grasses and the trees. The darkness of God is in the fire. Let the dark come upon him."

  "Lady—" Gianni speaks. "There has been a sign, a most wonderful sign today. A stone bearing the precise likeness of our Savior has been found. We have seen it. It is an affirmation of the rabbi's holy work—of your holy mission. Do not burn this tabernacle."

  Rachel puts her hands to her head. The voices shout mercilessly. She understands little of it, only a phrase from Proverbs: "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord." The rest resounds as gibberish, battering her like storm-driven surf. "Obey me—" she cries through the din, "or abandon me!"

  Harold begins to drag a pew closer to the dais. Gerald helps him. Then, Gianni joins. Denis watches Rachel closely, notes the torment in her face and turns away chilled. A cold hand closes around his heart
. The countenance of the Savior shattered in this room today—and before that, murder deprived them of the rabbi. Evil owns this place. The mal'ah Yahweh as Satan looms here, Denis has no doubt now: Perhaps the Dark One has always been here, since the time when the ancient people erected their ring of stones.

  Denis descends from the bimah and helps gather the firewood that will purge this tragic temple.

  Soon, pews piled high nearly surround the dais, and Gerald and Harold strew dried grass over them. Rachel directs Gianni to bring the lamp of the Eternal Light, and she removes the Torah from its niche. She returns to the bimah and places the scroll in her grandfather's stiff arms, silencing the protests of the knights with a quick, lightning stare.

  The knights throw their reed mats on the stacked pews and gather their boots, trousers, water flasks, and a Bible to save from the conflagration. In a trance, Rachel walks through the narrow exit among the heaped benches, touching the lamp flame to the dried straw. When she steps out, she throws the lamp onto the pyre and watches flames swarm over the wood.

  The percussive heat pushes her backward out the door of the temple. She stands there, arms limp at her side, nakedness burnished orange by the blaze. She witnesses the angels moving in the open doorways of the fire, and she hears their voices in the crackling conflagration outsinging the ghosts inside her.

  As the flames reach the rafters and crimson angels appear on the roof, Rachel takes the Bible from Gianni's arms. She opens to the forty-eighth chapter of Isaiah and, by the pyre light, reads aloud: "'Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have tested thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it!"'

  When she closes the Bible, the haunted singers in her head have departed. The heat of the fire laves her body. From the path comes the drumming of hooves and shouts from the sergeants. Denis offers her a blanket from his horse, and she wraps it about herself. She feels no need to stand naked any longer. God has seen her.