The Priest of Blood

by Douglas Clegg

  “I thought it was a gryphon. I did. I thought it was,” I said, feeling as if I had committed the worst crime.

  “We must burn it,” Reinald announced, and went to get one of the torches from his companions. “Then we must scatter its ashes so that they might not ever find their way back from Hell.”

  He set the torch on the body, jabbing it into the chest. The oily skin of the creature quickly caught fire, and the fire spread out to the wings.

  We all gathered around the burning demon, the stench a mix of sulfur and venison, and, on our knees, began reciting the Nostre Pater.

  3

  That evening, we camped briefly, for the men had lost their courage upon the sight of the winged demon. It was a terrible omen for them all. Though I had not known what lay at the bottom of the well, I could tell by their glances that I was held responsible for bringing them to this unholy spot, to this demon place.

  When I went to grab a bit of bread from one of the men, for I had grown hungry during the day, Kenan hefted me up by the collar and dragged me back from them, among the trees near the well. “Do not speak to anyone of this,” he said, after dropping me to the ground. I felt as if I had done something wrong and looked up at him as he returned to the well. He stood there, glaring at me. “Do you know what you’ve done?” he asked.

  I had no voice in me to respond.

  “You’ve cursed us,” he said. “You brought the Devil into our camp. Those men, my men, they believe the plague is coming. Do you understand?”

  “I...I didn’t mean to,” I said weakly. “I thought it was a...”

  “I should have known,” he said, closing his eyes and beating his fist against his breast. “I should have known. When your mother...”

  Opening his eyes, he seemed to have calmed slightly. He whispered something, and gestured for me to draw close to him. As I approached, he swiftly picked me up and swung around, holding me over the well. I became frightened, nearly out of my wits, sure that he would drop me to my death in that awful place.

  “You do not know why you are with me. You do not know what your mother has done in her past. But had I known you would bring us to find a demon, I would have left you in the mud, no matter how well you speak to birds, boy.” His harsh words beat against me, and I fought back tears. I did not understand this sudden change of heart. I did not understand what curse this winged demon brought with it.

  Finally, he set me back on the ground and spoke softly. “I have seen demons before,” he said. “They bring ill winds upon those who witness them. I know it is not your fault. But it may be in your blood to know where they live. To bring them into the light of day.”

  He spoke more, about the Devil, about what he regretted without mentioning these regrets by name. I felt as if I watched a man I had admired and respected grow mad, mumbling words about the past, about his youth, and the wars he had seen when he had been but little older than I.

  Finally, wearily, he began walking back to his huntsmen. As he passed me, he gave me a cold glance and said, “Corentin was right about you. From the start.”

  The words chill me now as they did then. My worst enemy had begun to destroy me in small ways, and my greatest protector had begun to turn against me.

  4

  The story of the demon spread like fire across the village and abbey. Fears of plague arose, then died down again, as no one seemed to be getting sick, and though a woman died from drowning in the marsh, and at first this was seen as the Devil’s work, such rumors were whispered rather than shouted. The priest and the Brethren blessed the land and the abbey and the village and the baron’s household, and soon all returned to normal for us.

  Except for me. At the time, I could not know what mechanism had turned my master against me, other than Corentin himself. Days went by when Kenan did not speak to me, nights passed when I could not sleep, rubbing my grandfather’s blue stone, praying that my master would have a change of heart.

  One cold morning, my mother arrived at the courtyard, riding in the back of a wagon with other beggars. When I found her, I went to get bread and what scraps of meat I could find, for she had nothing to feed my younger brothers and sisters. But when I returned to her, Kenan Sensterre was there, waiting for me. He came up to me, slapping the food from my hands and pushing me to the cold ground. “She is a bad woman,” he said. “Do not feed her. Do not clothe her.”

  I gathered up some of the bread, hiding it under my cloak. “Why have you changed, Master? What have I done? What has my mother done?”

  Without answering, he left me there, and I took what I could to my mother, who shivered at the gates.

  “He cannot forgive,” she said.

  “What have I done to him? And why should he hurt you?”

  I remember her face so clearly: it was filthy, but shone with an inner light. Her hair, though matted, seemed to catch the sun’s glow, and her small hands held mine briefly before taking the bread from me. She had the heat of fire, even in her cold hands. “He has helped us. Even though he is angry now. He has blessed us. Do not forget that, ever.”

  She leaned into me to kiss me on the cheek, but I drew away. I felt confused and unhappy, and unsure of anything I had believed. “You must accept life,” she told me. “The way it is.”

  “Grandfather once told me we were from a noble line,” I said.

  “He was a liar,” she said, and what light I had seen in her eyes grew dark as she turned to go. Her feet were wrapped in bandages, and her cloak was torn and ragged.

  “I will come one night with shoes, and clothing,” I told her.

  She glanced back, briefly. “Do not risk your life here for my sake. I wanted this for you. You must forget you ever knew the field and its misery.”

  I blurted, without meaning to, “You must stay away from Mere Morwenna. And the Forest women. There have been demons. It is a dangerous time.”

  She smiled, as if about to laugh at me, but then thought better of it. “The demons of the world wear men’s faces.”

  As she stepped beyond the gateway, a sharp call from my master brought me back to my duties.

  5

  Corentin taunted me one night by the fire. “They say that common folk worship the Horned One. They say that those pagan demons are still in the Forest, and all of them need to be burned. I bet you are from a family of witches,” he said. “They think you want to bring the plague into the castle. Some believe that your family is unsanctified.”

  “I was baptized just as you,” I spat back at him.

  “They say the Devil looks like an angel when he wants,” he said. “I would not be surprised if the Devil has been baptized in order to fool village folk.”

  I went to the village priest and asked for forgiveness of my sins, though I was not certain that I had many. He took my confession, although my penance was minor, and asked me why I was so vexed. I told him of the demon in the well, and how my master had changed toward me, and my mother’s words, and he began to read from the Bible in Latin, none of which I understood, but it sounded holy and magical and I felt Mary, the Queen of Heaven, with me. The priest assured me that he would light a candle for my soul.

  Kenan Sensterre remained distant from me in a way that he hadn’t been, and I never again felt his touch on my shoulder, nor a kind word from him in the hunt. I wasn’t sure then what great sin I had committed, but these were fearful, ignorant times.

  There were times when I saw Corentin walking with my master, and I felt rage and shame that my greatest enemy should take the hand of him who had once been my only friend. I wondered what Corentin had told him, what nastiness that enemy of mine had perpetrated. In those days, when I was still young, I did not understand what my grandfather had told me about the good and the bad, and so it confused me further to think bad of Kenan when he had been so good to me once.

  Corentin had grown handsome and thick of arm and leg in a way that ladies remarked upon. It was as if the sun lit his hair during the daylight hours, and in t
he night his face shone bright in the torchlight. I could see that he was being favored, not just by Kenan, but also by many others.

  One who favored him greatly was the baron’s youngest daughter.

  6

  Her name was unknown to me when I first caught a glimpse of her against a blood red sunset. The sky blackened from smoke from fires at some distance from the castle, beyond the haystacks, for it was a frosty autumn day, and the bonfires had been lit before a celebration. She passed by on horseback, riding as I’d never seen a woman ride, leaping over bundles of hay, and between the stacks, then up along the rim of the hill. Were it not for her garment, I would have thought her one of the gypsies who yearly came through with their carnivals and dancing, or even one of the Forest women.

  She had no attendant with her, no handmaiden, which was unusual and perhaps even dangerous, for young women of breeding were never seen without protectors around them of some kind. Her fine dress, crimson and white, was in tatters along its hem; her feet were bare and dirty. She clung to her horse as if it were a lover. I heard her laughing gaily as she rounded a curve of the road and brought her horse to jump over the low walls surrounding the sheep meadow. Although she wore the clothes of a woman born to wealth, and pearls and rubies ringed her throat and arms, her hair had torn free of its restrictive braids and flowed as if from an angel in flight. She took the horse across the barren hillside, admonishing it to go faster and faster.

  I could not help but smile as I watched her. What was she celebrating? What happy circumstance had come to pass?

  I had been closing the swans up in a pen for the evening when I saw the blur of motion as she rode—for at first I couldn’t see even her lovely red hair but that it seemed like a trail of fire in the last of the sun. I cannot say that there is love at first sight, but I can say with certainty that there is something in the human soul that recognizes the kinship to another soul, even at a distance. This, I felt for her, though I knew little of her, nor was she my equal. Perhaps it was her beauty, which was unfettered and striking.

  She was my better in nearly every way, and I had no hope for her. A girl of her station and beauty would have been contracted to wed for many years—perhaps as early as birth, depending on how the baron conducted his estate. She had a spirit that none of her sisters possessed, for I had seen them, two others, tall and dour-looking like Roman Fates, ready to spin, measure, and cut their own destinies.

  But she was like a faerie princess, escaped from some goblin’s lair.

  Alienora de Whithors was her name, and I whispered it in my prayers at night once I’d heard it. It seemed exotic and spun of gold, that name, the evocation of an angel when I dared to say it aloud. She was not much older than I, and she sometimes laughed when she saw me herding the swans as she passed across the courtyard on her way to her own chores (for yes, even noblewomen had work to accomplish, for few were idle in those days, for idleness was believed to be, by some, the source of plague). To say that I found her enchanting would be an understatement. I had felt an intense, cruel heat when I chanced to see her. She destroyed me with a pleasant glance, and honored me when she ignored my attentions as she rode her pony along the fields or when she sat with her sisters at the windows overlooking the courtyard.

  My master forbade me to speak with her when he saw me glance her way. “She is betrothed to a nobleman older than even the baron. A man of wealth and power from the north. Know your place, Falconer, and you shall be content with the serving wenches, who are comely and handsome.”

  But one sight of Alienora could turn my thoughts to Heaven and Hell at the same time.

  My predicament became worse when I saw her speaking with Corentin, for I saw in him his plan, which was to gain her affection and improve his status in the baron’s household. He had used the monks to learn the rudiments of reading and writing to further his ambitions, and now he would use a pale young girl to continue on this journey to the stars. I felt as if I could read his blasted heart, and as much as I despised him, I could not help but recognize my own ambitions in his. He and I had been born out of fortune, and we lived in a world where fortune either smiled or scowled. There was not much to be done about it, unless one were clever. Corentin Falmouth was clever, and although I knew his heart to be that of an eel, I felt a pang of jealousy that he might win the young maiden’s favor before me. Although he would have no hope of marrying her, I hated to think that he might entertain a thought of seducing her at all. He would ruin her if she allowed him even to steal a kiss. He would take her maidenhead and her purity and dash them to the ground.

  This was a genuine fear of mine, for it was not uncommon for noble ladies to take lovers from among the household as it suited them, in secret. Only those of us who worked in the halls and fields would be the wiser, for those of noble breeding never seemed to be aware of these couplings. They lived as if what they did among the servants had no effect on their piety or chastity, and they did not see us as entirely elevated beyond the state of animals, to some great extent.

  I saw Alienora de Whithors as more pure than any other young lady of the household, even her pious sisters, and did not want to believe that Corentin Falmouth would try and bed her. I felt ashamed that I had even had those thoughts. Her skin was pure milk, and her lips, like bloodstains on a swan’s wing. Her hair that red, like fire, like the sunset itself, reminding me of her mother, who was from Viking blood. Once, I saw Alienora walking with her youngest brother, holding his hand, and as she walked by, I smelled what could only be hyacinth and spice and citrus, and it made me nearly swoon as if I were some weakling. I looked at the back of her neck, as the ringlets of hair fell over that alabaster skin, that place that I longed to draw aside and press my lips, just once, just one kiss there. One kiss was all I would press upon her, then, perhaps, I could sleep. Then, perhaps, I could forget her, if I had but one such chaste kiss.

  7

  I saw the baron, often, from afar, on the hunt, where I followed the men on horseback and helped flush game from the thickets, with long sticks and shouting, and called to my falcons to aid in getting the smaller creatures for the baron’s table. When wolves had attacked the baron’s deer, I helped carry the torches for my huntsman and his men, as we flushed out the creatures and sent them racing from the baron’s deer park at the edge of the forest.

  Eventually, having shown my bravery among the wolves more than once, the baron had my master bring me to his table and sit with him as he ate from his trencher. He was a twisted man, with one arm bent always; it was said from many battles to have been broken and thus mended in that position. His nose, also, moved to the left when he laughed or when he snarled, and he had only one eye. The other was milky yellow, as if diseased, although he kept the lids so closed that it was hard to catch a glimpse of it. Yet, despite this, his wealth and goodwill gave a handsome, amiable cast to his features, and I was not even a little afraid of him.

  “You are famous for your bird knowledge,” he said after a bit. He leaned closer to me. “I desire for my dear wife, the baroness, a little bird that will sing for her when she is sad in the winter. Might you find one for me?”

  “That is easy enough,” I said. “For the lark has a sweet song, and I have raised many.” It was true—many ladies of breeding enjoyed having a caged bird to bring them music during the harsh winter months, and I had captured many songbirds from the field.

  “I have heard that you can teach a bird to pray,” he said.

  “It is not so much in the teaching,” said I, “but in the bird’s talent to mimic. The birds suited for this are the raven and the daw. I do not know of any other that will speak.”

  “She has been ill a long time,” he said, a shadow crossing his face. It was a secret grief of his, and although it was known within the household, none of us spoke of the baroness’s illness lest we bring her and us bad luck. “I want to lift her spirits. Might you not train a daw to speak soft words to her that she might laugh? I would love to hear her laugh
again, or even smile.”

  I worked industriously, setting traps in the marsh, until finally I captured a young blackbird that had only just left the nest. I had learned in my years that my grandfather had been mistaken about the splitting of the tongue—it was not necessary, even for the raven. I learned instead that the bird must trust the teacher, then words had to be repeated again and again. I spent two months with the little dark bird, feeding it from my own lips, and the only words I could think to say were, “I love you, dear lady, with all my heart,” and although it resisted its lessons, finally, in the days when I had begun to give up hope that this little bird would learn, it began to repeat the words back to me, with a croaked version of my own voice: “Dear lady.”

  I built a tall, wide cage for the bird, which I named Luner, a name that always made me laugh when I heard it. Then I presented it to my master, who took it to the baron and his wife. I lay awake at night imagining her in her room, covered with a winter fur, by the fire, feeding bread to her pet, Luner, as the bird said, with my voice, “Dear lady.” One afternoon, a servant came to me, commanding me to go visit the baroness in her chambers. When I arrived, in awe of the enormous hearth opposite the large, wide bed, covered with the furs of every animal imaginable, the beautiful Alienora stood there at her mother’s bedside, beckoning me with her hand. Her eyes shone with tears that she held within, and when I reached her, she grasped my hands in hers. I felt warmth and fear in her touch.

  I gasped as I saw her mother, who lay shrunken against the bedclothes as if she were slowly vanishing. She seemed much older than a woman who was mother to children no older than nineteen should be, but she wore a slight smile on her face. Sitting in its cage, next to her, Luner, the bird I had trained.