The Angel and the Ring

by Sigmund Brouwer

  He trotted slowly through the fields, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light from the moon and stars. Night held no fear for Brin. He almost thought of it as a friend, especially during the warmth of summer when he often roamed alone beneath the stars, taking pleasure from the soft air and the smell of fields and the buzzing of insects. At night, Brin thought of himself as a cat, padding lightly, alert to any sounds, and part of the rhythm of the breeze and the swaying grass.

  Because he had forced himself to wait until all the gypsies had gone to bed, it was almost midnight when Brin reached the road along the river that would take him to the bridge. He would have liked to have arrived earlier at the bridge, to wait in the shadows to see if the hooded stranger came alone. Brin was not prepared to believe that anyone in the entire world would want to help him, and there were too many questions to be answered before he would trust a stranger.

  He pushed himself to run as quickly as he could, but the last peals of the midnight bells had faded from the night air long before he finally reached the bridge. When Brin finally stepped out from the trees near the road, he saw no one. He feared he was too late.

  He stepped farther into the road, leaving the safety of those comforting shadows.

  Still, he saw no one.

  But then he heard something.

  A groan.

  It came from the bridge!

  The stones of the bridge formed an arch that rose from the road and then fell again to the other side of the river. The groan came from the side of the bridge hidden to Brin.

  He hesitated in stepping onto the bridge. Although Brin did not fear the night, he did fear those who used the darkness for dangerous deeds. Brin knew that robbers and thieves preyed on those who walked these roads alone at night. Bridges were one of the best places for these bad men to ambush unwary travellers as they hurried to the town.

  The groan grew louder and then faded into a sigh.

  Was this a trap?

  Brin thought of the man’s words earlier in the day. If it is harm I want to bring on you, all I need do is call and you will be taken away for stealing from the pockets of the townspeople. What could you, a poor gypsy boy, have of value to steal? Tonight, you shall see that it is an offer of help that I bring.

  If the stranger had wanted to harm Brin, he would have done so earlier.

  Brin also thought of the reddish-blond beard that perhaps he had seen beneath the man’s hood. A traveler from a faraway land? His father’s land?

  Brin would help.

  As another groan rose from the other side of the bridge, Brin moved forward. Ahead, the fallen figure of a man came into view, half hidden against the wall of the bridge.

  The stranger?

  Brin hurried close and knelt beside the man.

  “Is it you?” Brin asked. “The one who promised to help?”

  The man attempted to roll toward Brin. His head fell back.

  Brin lifted the man’s head from the cold hard stones. He felt a slick warmth against his fingers.

  Blood!

  “Yes, it is I,” the man whispered. “Betrayed. The enemy somehow knew I found you.”

  “The enemy?” Brin echoed. “Whom do you fight?”

  “We fight them,” the man groaned. “It is your fight too.”

  “My fight? But—”

  “No,” the man said with sudden strength. “You must run! Now! If they return…” He clutched at Brin’s arm. “The girl will find you. Listen for one word. Grail.”

  “Grail?”

  “When you hear it, trust her.”

  Brin froze. Above the hoarse whispers of the fallen man, his ears had caught the shuffling of leather against stone. Footsteps.

  “They have returned,” the man said. “I told them you had come and gone, but they have returned. Now run!”

  Brin hesitated.

  “Run!” the man repeated with even more urgency. “It is not you they want but your ring.”

  The man pushed Brin away.

  But it was too late. On one side of the bridge, two men appeared in outline against the night sky.

  Brin turned to run the other way, but two men appeared from that side of the bridge as well.

  He was trapped.

  Angel Blog

  It was just as obvious to me as it is to you now that the four men – two on each side of the bridge – had unpleasant intentions for Brin.

  Add it up. And don’t go running for a calculator to do it. For centuries, humans your age had to do it the old-fashioned way – mentally - or by counting fingers. You can too. (Actually, I’m a big fan of calculators and computers. Watching over you when you do homework is very, very boring. The less time it takes you, the better for me. It’s so much more exciting to be on guard duty when you’re outside doing modern-day kid’s stuff like skateboarding or rock climbing.)

  Anyway, add it up. The mysterious hooded stranger is hurt. He’s uttered a warning for Brin to run. Then there’s this ambush on the bridge in the dark of night. Things are not looking good for Brin.

  Maybe at this point you expect it’s time for me to go into action - that it’s my job to swoop in on mighty wings and then swoop away again from the bridge with Brin, setting him down somewhere safe.

  No. No. No.

  First, get this whole thing about angel wings out of your mind. Sure, there have been times when we appear that way to you. But come on. Real wings? With feathers, and bones and tendons? Yuck. Ever watched birds closely enough to see the amount of work they have to spend on their wings? (Try the nature channel since you seem to be spending all that time in front of a television anyway.) There’s grooming, oiling, and, worst of all, picking at those little lice things they eat.

  Get this straight. Angels don’t have real wings.

  How did that get myth get started, you ask?

  Well, I’m more than happy to clear up the misconception. Think about this: Words are only symbols of reality.

  Huh?

  Look at it this way. Someone says to you it’s raining cats and dogs. You certainly don’t look up in the sky expecting to see the local pound dumping all their animals from an airplane. You know that the phrase “raining cats and dogs” really means it’s raining really, really hard. Sometimes we use words in this creative way to describe what we’re seeing.

  Now pretend it’s a situation where nothing in your experience has prepared you for what you’re about to see. Like, if you were going to see an angel. Pretend you are someone in biblical times who sees this supernatural being, shimmering with light, for the first time. You don’t fully comprehend all aspects of this angel, and, when you describe it later, you are forced to use mere words to explain something that is truly not describable with words. So you do the best you can with the words you have. You describe the shimmering light as wings because that’s the best way you can figure out how to describe the indescribable.

  So, one person describes the light surrounding us as looking like wings, the person hearing about it says to the next person this shimmering light is actually a set wings. And they tell the next person that angels have wings! And when the artists get involved, forget it. Suddenly we’re the stars of oil paintings in medieval churches everywhere, except we’re looking like flocks of birds and we’re flitting all over creation in search of seed.

  That’s harmless enough, I suppose. But look what you’ve done with the devil. He’s been turned into a grinning red guy with horns and a pitchfork. Bad. Real bad. You’ve made a harmless cartoon character out of someone so evil it gives me the chills to think about it. (The good news is Satan is only temporary. Our Father totally defeats him at the end of time.)

  All of this to say that one of the reasons I wasn’t about to swoop down like a mighty eagle to rescue Brin is that I don’t have wings – no matter what the paintings of angels look like. Got that? No wings.

  The other reason is really more important, though.

  Listen carefully: You are not on earth to be coddled and protecte
d. If our Father sent us to take care of every problem you faced, how would you grow and learn?

  For example, here’s what happens when a baby learns to walk: A loving parent makes sure that the baby isn’t at the edge of a cliff. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. The parent only allows the baby to crawl in a room where there are no razor blades and no pieces of broken glass on the floor. And no pet cobras on the loose. Okay, those are exaggerations too.

  What I’m trying to say is that a loving parent lets a baby crawl where it’s safe. And when the baby takes his first little steps and falls, unless the baby is hurt and needs help, the parent allows the baby to struggle to his feet again. And fall again. That’s how the baby learns to walk.

  It will help you to think of your entire life as a series of baby steps. Once you learn how to do one thing, you move on to the next. Don’t beat yourself up over mistakes when you’re doing the best you can. Unless you decide to do something wrong that you know has consequences. Then it’s not a mistake. It’s stupid.

  In short, my duty as an angel is not to protect you from every bruise and bump. (Remember: You make the choices, not me.) But on occasion, when absolute disaster is about to hit – and if it’s in our Father’s will – an angel is sent to intervene. Like a parent who gently steers a baby away from the edge of the cliff. Or who makes sure the baby doesn’t mistake dark brown things in the cat litter box for chocolate bars.

  Our Father’s will, however, might be to allow what appears to be a disaster to take place. And this apparent disaster won’t make sense until, on the other side, you see how all the individual baby steps add up to your life’s journey.

  This is a really long way of saying that as I saw the two men approach Brin from each side of the bridge, I understood from our Father that this was not the time to protect him. This was a time to watch and wait to see if Brin could handle it himself.

  If our Father’s will was for me to step in and change the outcome, every aspect of my spiritual being would instantly sense it. And would sense how our Father wanted it accomplished.

  Otherwise, Brin was on his own against the four of them. . .

  Chapter Seven

  What frightened Brin most was the silence of the men on each end of the bridge. They advanced slowly, as if with total certainty of purpose, total certainty that what they wanted was in their grasp.

  In this silence and fear, all other sounds seemed magnified to Brin - the gurgle of the small river beneath the bridge, the wheezing for breath of the fallen man, the pounding of Brin’s heart. All reached him clearly as time seemed to stand still.

  Step by step, quietly, slowly, the men grew closer.

  Brin measured his distances. The bridge was too narrow to allow him room to dodge between the men. The drop to the river was too far, and the water too shallow.

  At five steps away on each side, the men stopped.

  Brin backed himself to the wall of the bridge, trying to keep them in his vision to his right and left.

  All four men withdrew short swords from their capes.

  “The ring, gypsy boy,” said one of the men in a soft, deadly voice. “We mean to have it.”

  Brin could not imagine what importance the ring might have. Yet here were five men — four attacking, one fallen and motionless — who had suddenly appeared in Brin’s life, and all of them sought the ring.

  Yet Brin was not going to give it up. It was the only thing his parents had left him.

  And, suddenly, in that moment on the bridge, Brin understood that the ring was the one thing, maybe the only thing, which could lead him to the secrets of his parents’ lives. Whatever the secret of the ring, it was a secret they kept before dying. And if these men knew of the ring, they must also know about his mother and father.

  “I do not have it with me,” Brin said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “It is back among the gypsies. Tell me why you seek it, and I will bring it to you tomorrow.”

  One man laughed. “Gypsies never tell the truth, even if they’re only half gypsies fathered by a runaway knight. If we let you go, we’ll never see you again.”

  Fathered by a runaway knight. The words echoed in Brin’s mind. His father had been a knight! What else could Brin discover if he kept these men talking?

  “My father did not run away,” Brin said, thinking as quickly as he could. “He was sent on a mission of great importance.”

  “Bah,” another said. “It was doomed from the beginning. Once he reached Rome, he would have been stopped.”

  Despite the danger, Brin felt a surge of triumph. He had outwitted these men into telling more about his father. A knight who truly had been on a mission of great importance. With Rome as a destination. But what was the mission?

  “If you had any idea how important that mission was,” Brin began, hoping to learn more, “you would never say such a thing.”

  “Enough talk!” barked the first man. “The ring, gypsy. We know you carry it around your neck.”

  Brin’s brain whirled. Could he fool these men again?

  Slowly, he moved his left hand into his shirt pocket, hoping the darkness would conceal the motion of his fingers.

  “Do not delay,” the first man said. “Whether we take it from you dead or alive, we will take it.”

  “How is it you know I carry it?” Brin asked, easing his hand away again.

  “We know. It is around your neck, on a strip of leather. Hand it over. Now.”

  With a sudden spin, Brin hopped onto the bridge wall. Looking over the edge and imagining the drop to the black water below dizzied him.

  “Jump, then,” the first man sneered, taking a step forward. “We’ll strip the ring from your broken body.”

  Brin did not jump. Instead, he reached into his shirt and pulled the ring over his head. He dangled it in front of them.

  “And if I throw this far into the river?” Brin asked. “You will never find it.”

  The man stopped. “Do that and you will only live long enough to watch us pull the entrails from your body.”

  “I wish to live,” Brin said. He held the ring over the water. “Yet before I give it to you, tell me about my father.”

  “No!” The sudden shout from the fallen man on the bridge startled everyone. “At the cost of your life,” he moaned, “keep the ring from them.”

  Brin ignored him.

  “Tell me about my father,” he continued. “A knight from where?”

  “Scotland,” came the answer. “A fiefdom in the wild moors of Scotland.”

  “What was his mission?”

  “No more,” the first man answered. “I tire of your games. Hand us the ring and we will let you live. Our fight is not with you.”

  But it is, Brin vowed silently, for any fight of my father’s is now a fight of mine.

  “You may have it,” Brin said. With one hand on the ring and the other on the leather strap, he yanked and snapped it loose.

  One man stepped closer and held out his hand.

  “No…” the fallen man groaned. “Keep it from them.”

  “Here it is,” Brin said to the men.

  With a sleight of hand, Brin tossed the coin he had pulled from his pocket far over their heads. A few seconds later, a rolling clink reached all of their ears as it landed on the cobbles of the road.

  Two of the men turned at the sound. In the dark, they could not see it was the coin and not the ring Brin had thrown.

  It was all the distraction Brin needed.

  He dove from the wall toward them and landed in a rolling somersault. Pain shredded his shoulder, but he kept moving. In a flash, he jumped to his feet and dodged past the men.

  Something touched his forearm, burning a long slice through his skin.

  A sword!

  Brin sprinted.

  Something plucked at his shirt, then landed with a clank ahead of him.

  A thrown dagger!

  Brin twisted and sidestepped, not losing speed, to the end of
the bridge, dreading a blade in his back at any moment.

  None came.

  Brin burst from the bridge and ducked hard into the trees along the road. He plunged through brush, climbed over a stone wall, and ran into the field. He felt like his feet were guided by angels, and he skimmed over the soft, grassy earth.

  Finally, when his throat and lungs were raw, he allowed himself to look back.

  No one chased him.

  He had lost them all.

  He slowed to a walk. As his breathing returned to normal, his mind went into action. These men knew too much about him. They’d known about the ring. They’d known where he kept it.

  That information could only come from one place: the gypsy camp. Someone in the clan had betrayed him to a hated outsider.

  Whatever miserable home Brin had had among the gypsies was no longer safe.

  He was truly alone.

  Chapter Eight

  Brin slept poorly that night. He lay curled against a stack of hay in a field beyond the gypsy camp. The side of his forearm hurt badly from the thin wound caused by the sword. Whenever he rolled in his sleep, the movement cracked the new crust of dried blood and woke him. Each time he opened his eyes, the fright of his near death took him back to the bridge and all his questions.

  The hurt stranger. Was he truly a friend? If he was, how could it be that they shared the same fight? And what was the fight?

  The four men on the bridge. Why did they want the ring so badly? Who were they? How did they know of his father?

  Behind all those questions, though, Brin found some satisfaction. He knew more. His father, a knight! On a mission from Scotland! Comforted by this, Brin didn’t feel so much like an orphan for the first time in his life.

  Finally, when the pain woke him to the gray beginnings of a new day, Brin sat up and hugged his knees toward him. Distant roosters crowed triumph at the miracle of a rising sun. The gray sky brightened to blue, and yet Brin did not move.

  He was tired, hungry, and thirsty, and his stiff muscles ached with the night cold that had not yet left his bones. But he would not move unless a peasant farmer happened to stray toward this particular stack of hay. He would wait until the gypsies packed their tents and cleared camp. That it would happen on this day, he was certain. The gypsy clan always departed the morning after Marcel’s act upon the rope. The townspeople would have rightfully blamed the gypsies for the theft of their money. But with only suspicions instead of proof, it would take the entire day for the townsfolk to build their anger and courage to the point of going to the camp in the evening, usually armed with pitchforks and clubs. They would, of course, find nothing but ashes of fires, bones of chickens stolen from their farms, and grass matted where the tents had stood.