The Angel and the Sword

by Sigmund Brouwer

He had first thought it would be possible to stay with the boat until it moored again. Indeed, he had congratulated himself on finding a clever way to stay with the boat.

  However, to keep the knife in his teeth, he couldn’t close his mouth. He found himself constantly gagging as he half choked against the water forced into his face. The river‘s coldness numbed him, and his hands became weaker from the strain of trying to maintain a hold on the slippery rope. Almost immediately, he realized he would be fortunate to last another mile of river.

  How far did Alfred intend to take this boat?

  Raphael had no way of guessing.

  In short, he needed to take desperate measures.

  He reached ahead with one hand. He clenched the rope until he was certain of a firm grip before he reached ahead with the other. He climbed forward, pulling himself against the heaviness of the water.

  Raphael was thankful for the size of the boat, the sound of rushing water, and the darkness of the night. Pulling in this manner against a smaller boat would be easily felt by those inside. Instead, the larger boat towed his weight effortlessly, giving no warning of his presence. The sound of the water hid any of his splashes, and the night darkness kept him invisible as he approached the boat.

  The true test would be in how quickly he could clamber into the boat. The water supported much of his weight. Once even halfway out, he would have to fight against not only his body weight but the weight of his water-soaked clothes.

  He decided to try to ease his way up. If he could climb the last length of rope slowly, he would avoid rocking the boat. With luck, neither Alfred nor the soldier would notice his hands grip the top of the stern.

  Raphael began to lift himself out of the water.

  He gritted his teeth against the noise of water draining from his clothes into the river.

  Slower, he told himself, rise slower.

  The strain tore at his arms. His shoulders began to burn as he inched his way upward. Finally, he was able to hook the fingers of one hand over the top edge of the boat. Then the fingers of the other.

  Would the slight silhouette of his knuckles be seen?

  Raphael had to risk it, because unless he rested, he would not have the strength to pull himself into the boat.

  The height of the stern was such that he now hung with most of his body out of the water, his feet trailing behind. He rested there, wanting to heave for breath but unable to open his mouth fully because of the knife in his teeth.

  He could feel his fingers beginning to slip.

  The fear of falling back into the river drove him to strength he did not know he had. With frantic effort, he pulled up, hard.

  All the flips he’d ever practiced as a jester, all the times he trained by walking across the length of a rope stretched between two poles, all his hours of endless sweat had prepared him for this moment.

  He was up, over, and rolling onto his feet in rush of movement. Its total surprise stunned the soldier who sat on a high middle bench at the oars, facing the stern as he rowed.

  Raphael moved on instinct, not even pausing to remove the knife from his teeth. He continued his forward motion and kicked the soldier in the jaw. The blow of his foot against solid bone jarred Raphael into staggering for balance. The soldier collapsed, flopping backward into the bow where Alfred stood overlooking the river ahead. Juliana and Reynold were tied and bound at Alfred’s feet.

  Alfred spun at the commotion.

  The soldier groaned once, rolled to the side of the bow, then sagged into silence.

  Alfred stared across the short distance to Raphael.

  “What madness is this?”

  Raphael reached for the knife between his teeth and hefted it in his right hand. He could only imagine how he appeared, an apparition rising from the waters.

  “The madness is all yours,” Raphael panted. “Whatever game it is you play, you may now consider it ended.”

  Alfred dropped his hand to his waist. Slowly, with supreme confidence, he withdrew his sword.

  “Do I recognize the voice of the jester?” He laughed. “How amusing.”

  He stepped toward Raphael, waved his sword lazily.

  Juliana and Reynold squirmed against their ropes. Backs against the curve of the bow, they saw clearly the drama in the center of the boat.

  Raphael flinched and pressed backward toward the stern. What hope did he have with this small knife against a sword? Especially against a ruthless soldier who had fought his way to the top of the ranks of the papal guard?

  Clouds broke open, letting moonlight fill the boat. Raphael saw that Juliana and Reynold had their hands bound in front.

  He decided on a desperate gamble.

  “I surrender,” he told Alfred. “I did not expect you to be armed with a sword.”

  He bent and slowly placed the knife at his feet.

  “Surrender? I had hoped for a fight. Your easy death will give me no pleasure at all.”

  Alfred took another step forward. He cut the air with his sword. The tip passed within a few feet of Raphael’s midsection.

  Now! The gamble!

  Raphael kicked the knife ahead. It slid beneath the middle bench, directly between Juliana and Reynold.

  Alfred, intent on his victim, missed the slight movement of Raphael’s foot. He swiped again with his sword. This blow would have nicked Raphael’s face had he not flung his head back.

  Raphael danced away from the sword.

  Another vicious swing.

  Alfred laughed. “How much farther back can you go, jester?”

  Raphael felt the stern press against his legs.

  “So what is it, jester? Death by sword? Or death by drowning?”

  Alfred set the point of his sword down, and leaned on it as if it were a cane. His relaxed manner showed supreme confidence as he spoke. “Jester,” he said, “the sword is quick but painful. Drowning, I‘m told is peaceful, but much longer.”

  “Why?” Raphael said. Anything to keep Alfred talking. “Why this boat? Why all of this?”

  Alfred laughed again. “How could a dim-witted jester understand my perfect schemings?”

  “Those men at the house,” Raphael said. “They’ve hired you to kill Clement VI.”

  “I was in the perfect position to do so, jester. For the gold I was offered, I could not refuse.”

  “Avignon men? Afraid to see Clement VI move the papal court to Rome?”

  “What?” Alfred said with mock cheerfulness. “A jester who looks beyond jesting? I am impressed with your knowledge. And no, not Avignon men. English bankers.”

  “English bankers want the pope dead? I thought they wanted him to move to Rome.”

  “Of course they do.” The boat rocked at a swell. Raphael fought for balance. Alfred, leaning on his sword and enjoying the cat and mouse game, barely swayed. “You see, jester, if it could appear as if Avignon men of business had killed the pope, quite naturally the next pope would find a safer city to live.”

  Raphael did not dare look beyond Alfred, did not dare hope. “So,” Raphael guessed, “if Clement VI did not announce his decision to move to Rome, he would die.”

  “I knew yesterday that he had decided to stay,” Alfred said. “The pope dies tomorrow.” Alfred lifted his sword. “As for me, I will be safely gone.”

  Raphael held up his hand. “Amuse the jester, if you will. How can the pope die if you are gone?”

  “An asp.”

  “A poisonous snake?”

  “The pope returns from travels tomorrow. When he crawls into his bed tomorrow night, he’ll discover that he does not sleep alone.” A short mean laugh. “Or for long.”

  Alfred thrust his sword at Raphael. “Where will you take it, jester. Throat? Belly?”

  “One last thing,” Raphael said. “The assassination attempt that I stopped. If you were waiting for the pope’s decision before trying to kill him, I don’t understand…”

  Alfred snorted. “No more questions, jester.”

  As
he finished speaking, Alfred slashed at Raphael’s face.

  Raphael hopped up and backwards.

  He balanced on the edge of the stern as only the jester could do.

  The sword closed in on him, and he pushed off, still facing the boat.

  He spread his arms wide, hoping, praying, that he’d find the trailing rope before the river pulled him down.

  He kicked once. Twice. Water closed over his head. Darkness roared at him. Then his fingers brushed against the rough hemp of the rope. He grabbed hard, clawed his way to the surface.

  Raphael coughed water, heaved in the blessed relief of cold night air. He shook his head free of water and looked upward.

  Alfred was a black silhouette, outlined against night sky. His hands were on his hips as he looked downward into the water.

  At Raphael’s splashing, Alfred lifted his sword again.

  “Ho, ho, jester, the rope will do you little good when it leaves the boat.”

  Just before Alfred could bring the sword down to slice through the rope, Raphael saw another silouhette. This one armed with only a knife.

  With a swiftness that the jester could envy, the second silhouette grabbed Alfred’s hair with one hand and brought the knife to Alfred’s throat with the other.

  “Slice that rope, soldier,” came Reynold’s voice, “and I slice your throat.”

  Angel Blog

  Is this the happy ending you wanted? Raphael alive, saved by Reynold at the last possible instant? Juliana alive? Justice about to be administered to the bad guy?

  With those questions in mind, I submit once again that it takes wilful blindness to ignore the invisible foundation that makes you human. Your soul.

  If you did not have a soul, where would come your hope for justice, your natural understanding of what is good and what is evil? If our Father was not the Great Presence and the Great Light and the Great Good behind this universe, how would you be able to recognize there was any difference between good and evil?

  A dog, for example, intelligent as it is compared to most other creatures around you, would never understand the events I’ve described, let alone care about the end result.

  But you humans are clearly set apart from the rest of creation, and that awareness alone should alert you to a greater purpose for your species.

  You may find satisfaction in discovering that Raphael and Juliana would survive this. You may find satisfaction in knowing that with the pope’s assassination averted, so too was a war that might have devastated Europe. A war that would have involved all of the countries and their resources. A war that would have taken countless lives before our Father wanted those lives sent into His Presence. A war that would have set back to the advance of civilization by centuries.

  So, had I been sent to save Raphael long enough for him to change the course of civilization for the better?

  Or had I been sent to ensure that he would live long enough to accept faith in our Father, so that when his life on earth did end, he would be received with joy among us?

  Both, perhaps. Our Father knows best.

  I knew, however, that it would be a pleasure to see him on our side of the border between life on earth and eternal life in the presence of our Father. I would delight in telling him about the times I saved him during childhood, as I would also delight in telling him about the night I sent the horses into the river, and of all the other occasions when our Father’s invisible hand of love was upon him.

  Yet whatever satisfaction you might have had in seeing his survival was a sadness of sorts for me.

  I knew that my time with him had ended. Our Father no longer required me to remain as his guardian. Soon enough I, Pelagius, would be sent among you again to watch over another.

  Yet I was still curious.

  And our Father granted my wish to learn the rest of what I wanted to know about Juliana and her jester. . .

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I betrayed you three times and yet you trust me enough to meet in the garden?” Juliana found it difficult to keep her voice steady. At sunrise the next morn, she would depart from Avignon. There was much she wished to say to the jester.

  Raphael nodded. “You have no further reason to betray me. The pope is alive. Alfred is in the dungeon.”

  “Had you not supplied me with the knife to cut Reynold free…” Juliana shuddered. Despite the bright sunshine and cheerful calls of garden birds, she need only close her eyes to feel the horror of waiting helpless for her death in the bottom of the boat.

  “Would you agree, then, that you owe me your life?”

  “As does Reyold. As does Clement VI.” Juliana studied Raphael’s face carefully. There was no trace of his usual carefree smile.

  “Then indulge me,” Raphael said. “Simply provide me with answers, and you may consider the debt settled.”

  She waited.

  “The assassination attempt by Reynold,” he said, eyes boring into her face. “It was a sham, a fake.”

  Juliana hid a grin of pleasure. Perhaps she could allow her heart the luxury of joy in his presence after all. If he had reasoned out this much…

  She kept her voice neutral. “Why would you say such a thing? Because you now know that Reynold is my brother? Because the pope greeted him and myself so warmly when we delivered Alfred?”

  “No. You and Reynold could easily be traitors, just as Alfred was. For all the pope knows, Reynold might lie waiting on the roof again.”

  “Then why would you so firmly believe that Reynold did not intend to kill Clement VI?”

  “It was common knowledge that I fed the pigeons each dawn without fail,” Raphael answered. “After all, I was often teased for the habit by kitchen servants, ladies-in-waiting, other court jesters, and all the others who served the papal royalty.”

  “Yes…”

  “If the master storyteller knew of this, it would be known too that at any dawn, then, I would have no choice but to see the assassin on the roof opposite my balcony.”

  “Could it not also be coincidence?” Juliana felt herself slipping into the role of a teacher forcing the student into patterns of logic. “What if Reynold did not know of your pigeons, and it was his and your misfortune that you saw him?”

  “No,” Raphael said, “your brother deliberately fired the crossbow bolt over the pope, then set the crossbow down before fleeing. And…”

  Raphael shifted to face her more squarely. The sun fell directly across his face. Juliana told herself it was just her imagination, but he did appear to have grown older, wiser.

  “He also addressed me by name,” Raphael continued. “Yet I am certain we had not met each other before. I asked myself, could this man know me by reputation? I had to answer no, for the dark-haired stranger was not part of the royal courts nor a servant. My reputation as jester is only in the royal courts. And it is not likely one outside the papal palace should know of me by name, let alone recognize me.”

  “Your reasoning is sound,” Juliana allowed.

  “Sound, but tardy,” Raphael said with a frown. “I should have thought this through much earlier. It seems, however, that thinking logically is not a habit I am accustomed to.”

  He straightened, and his gaze transferred past her to a faraway hill. “After much more thought,” he said. “I also decided that if the attempt was a sham, it was still arranged by someone who knew the pope’s calendar enough to know he would walk through the courtyard below at that hour and that morning.”

  He shifted his eyes back to her. She saw new strength and determination there.

  “Almost,” she said. “The truth is Clement VI himself agreed to stroll through the courtyard.”

  “As I thought,” he said softly, so softly that Juliana leaned forward to hear his words, “you stood at your window brushing your hair to watch the assassination attempt. You are the master storyteller.” He paused, looking at her intently. “Why all of this?”

  “For good reason.” Juliana found herself proud of Raphael. S
he had been forced to play him as a helpless pawn in events beyond his understanding and, against great odds, he had unravelled much of the mystery.

  “For months, Pope Clement VI had been receiving threats assuring him if he decided to move to Rome, he would be killed. These threats had been left in notes he would find in his bed, under his plate at meals, at private gardens, all places to let him know that he could indeed be killed at any time. He soon decided there was a traitor highly placed in his royal court. How else could the notes appear where they did?”

  “Politics,” Raphael said. “Much at stake if Clement VI abandoned Avignon.”

  “And much if he did not. Until last night, Clement VI believed the threats truly came from those who wanted him to stay in Avignon. As we discovered, however, a small group of highly-placed English bankers were behind it, intent on making it look as if Italy were trying to force him back to Rome. Even Alfred did not know who really had hired him.”

  “This does not explain Reynold on the roof. Nor your presence in Avignon.”

  “No.” Juliana smiled. “I had my instructions. I was to force the traitor to show his hand. By letting him believe that others meant to kill Clement VI, I hoped the traitor would take measures to know his new enemy. Imagine my surprise when I found out so soon. Alfred threatened to kill me if I declared your innocence in front of the pope. Alfred wanted you for himself. He needed to ask you privately who was behind your attempt on the pope.”

  “Demigius,” Raphael said. “Alfred sent him to the dungeon to have me killed.”

  “Not until you answered some of the questions,” Juliana said. “Alfred instructed Demigius to get you on the cliff’s edge and frighten you into telling who had paid you to kill Clement VI. I had anticipated something of that nature.”

  “You had spies watching the dungeon.”

  “Yes. You were never in danger. Demigius was followed into the dungeon and away from it.”

  “That is little consolation. ” Raphael stood and began to pace. “You played me as the fool. I went running to stop a man with a crossbow — an act that could cost my life — and it was simply part of your game.”