The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories

by Jo Graham

  Not all treasure is gold and jewels. For centuries people have speculated on what the mysterious treasure of the Knights Templar was. Jauffre de Vallombreuse, who was once an oracle named Gull, discovered it for himself.

  "Jauffre de Vallombreuse?"

  I raised my head. I was keeping the morning vigil in the chapel with two others, and there was no reason to interrupt me, unless upon high authority. The vigil schedules were set by the Knight Commander.

  The squire who had called me was seventeen or so, nearly on the verge of knighting, but I did not know him well. He served Master Raimond de Genlis, who was more than a Knight Commander indeed. He was the Seneschal of Beirut, and I had only spoken to him twice. "My master would like to see you, sir."

  With a quick genuflection to the altar I got up and followed him through the garden and along the rampart.

  Master Raimond stood looking out at the sea, the curve of the cornice slicing like a crescent through the deep blue. I bowed as proper.

  "Jauffre de Vallombreuse," he said, and it seemed to me that his voice was thready. He was, after all, quite old. "You have presented an interesting conundrum to the Order."

  "I have?" I had certainly tried to do no such thing.

  "You are a fine horseman and a dogged fighter, with some good tactical sense, they tell me. As such, you would go far commanding one of our outposts, or leading an advance force against the Saracens." He looked at me keenly. "But unfortunately you also have a mind. I am given to understand that your Latin is passable?"

  "So Sir Hugh tells me, sir," I said. Most knights could not read or write when they were received, no more had I. And why should we? Our business was the horse and sword, and an area no more than a day's ride from the place of our births. We should never see the sea, nor anything but the peaks and valleys of Haute Savoie.

  But I had been gone from there six years, quite a lot of time to learn, even through some battles. And Latin was incredibly easy.

  "And I am given to understand you speak Arabic?"

  "I have picked up a bit, sir," I said, "For the marketplace and the like."

  "Because Knights Templar spend a deal of time in the marketplace." His eyes twinkled. "No Greek?"

  "Just a few words with this Byzantine or that, sir," I said. "No more."

  "I see," he said, and this time the amusement in his voice was unmistakable. "Which is the conundrum. Were you intended for the field, your path would now be clear — a transfer to some fortress more likely to see action than Beirut. And were you feeble in body but keen in wits, it would be best for you to retire to the copyist's work. On top of which I am given to understand that you have a damnable sense of curiosity. What is this business of you wandering about the stones of the old Roman baths?"

  I swallowed. That, at least, I knew I should not have been doing. "I wanted to see how they were constructed, sir. The arches seem too long for the weight they must have borne, and I wanted to see how it was done."

  "And did you discover it?"

  "No, sir," I said.

  "I suspect you have not the mathematics," Master Raimond said, and met my eyes when they sought his. "There is a gentleman named Euclid who might prove of assistance to you, were you to meet him."

  "I should be delighted to meet any friend of yours," I said courteously.

  Master Raimond laughed. "Come then, Jauffre, and I will introduce you to another friend! I think he may prove more to your liking than Euclid!"

  Slowly, he led me into the seaward tower, where I had never been as the first floor was the province of the copyists who did not like soldiers stomping through. He led me up the long spiral stair, stopping often to catch his breath, until at last we came to the uppermost chamber.

  The room was octagonal, with windows in four faces to catch the light. Each window was set with dozens of panes of glass, worth a king's ransom. One window was open, and the breeze from the ocean blew through, teasing a piece of paper on a table, the tassels of a scroll on the shelf. Four walls had windows. The others had books. There must have been a hundred books in that room, some of them locked in covers of leather and precious jewels, others only scrolls, cased in white linen. There was nothing else in the room, save a copyist's table and chair and lead weights for holding paper flat.

  The room and its contents were worth more than every horse in the stable, every sword in Beirut, every ring and chain. I caught my breath. "A hundred books…"

  "A hundred and eleven," Master Raimond said. "Most of them discovered here, or in various places nearby, some quite literally dug out of the ground." He looked at me keenly. "You have doubtless heard that we guard a priceless treasure."

  I nodded.

  "This is part of it. This is a granary, Jauffre. The things contained within these books are precious seeds, and if you read them they will change you. You will no longer be the man you have been. Think upon that before you open them."

  I nodded again sharply. "I am not afraid, Master Raimond." In truth, my hands were itching.

  "They will challenge your faith, your beliefs about the world, your sense of all that is right and proper. They will open windows into a different earth just as surely as if you went over to the Saracens and dwelled in Babylon."

  I met his eyes. "But if the things I believe are right and true, then what fear have I of challenge, for will those things I learn not simply prove what is? And if the things I believe are not right and true, would it not be better for me to know that and face it like a man?"

  Master Raimond laughed. "I see that you will enjoy this. Yes, joy, Jauffre. There is something to be said for joying in work well done. Spend the morning with my friend, here. And come and find me in the afternoon that we may discuss it." He took down a carefully wrapped bundle, opening its linen case and stretching it gently on the table, the paper darkened with age but still readable. "We will talk about copying later. Today you can just read."

  He put the weights on the corners, and I sat down, bending over the spidery Latin. "Read for me, Jauffre."

  The Latin was not hard. I cleared my throat. "The Anabasis of Flavius Arrianus. Wherever Ptolemy and Aristobulus in their histories of Alexander the son of Phillip have given the same account, I have followed it on the assumption of its accuracy…"

  Winter's Child

  1821 AD

  Sometimes a character who is only peripheral in one book wants a story of their own, one that gives a different perspective on the main characters. This is not a story of our main character, Gull etc, who doesn't appear until almost the end, though the events of this story were in many ways set in motion by her. This is the story of her granddaughter, a very brave little girl, growing up in the funeral games of the wars of revolution.

  I wrote this one for my friends Kathryn McCulley and Anna Kiwiel, who have both contributed so much to the Numinous World over the years.

  The first thing Natia remembers is cold, cold and her mother’s arms around her, almost as cold as the rest of the world. In her childhood she was always cold and it was always winter. Now that she is a grown girl eight years old, she knows it’s not always winter. She can remember last summer. It was warm some of those days, and she helped in the gardens at the abbey. Some of the sisters were kind to her and wanted to teach her about plants. Weeding and tending the herbs in the abbey’s garden was a chore, but it seemed like a game to her.

  She was out in the garden when her mother died. She was working among the stones, carefully rearranging the edging of the beds where the birds had disarranged it, when it seemed that suddenly a huge hush came over the world. The birds stopped singing. The soft rustles in the grass were stilled. Even the clouds stopped moving. Natia knew. She knew in that moment that everything was different, that a strange peace turned on a still point.

  One of the sisters came to get her. She washed her hands and they took her in. Her mother lay still and silent in the only occupied bed in the infirmary, her hands clasped around the rosary on her breast, her pale blond hair loo
se around her shoulders like a girl’s, the oil still glistening on her forehead. Natia knelt beside her. It was all still quiet. She had known her mother was dying for years. She was seven and a bit, and entirely alone in the world.

  In her childhood it was always cold. She wonders, now that she is eight, if it felt like that when her father died. She does not know. Perhaps he died before she was born. Probably. That’s what her mother told her, what her mother wanted to believe. Natia doesn’t entirely believe it, but she has always pretended that she did. He froze to death, her mother said, on his way back to us. He never saw you, but he loved you before you were born. Never forget, she said, whatever came afterwards, that you were the child of love.

  Natia has no picture of him. Her mother never had one. She has no memory. Sometimes she looks at her reflection in the glass windows of the convent when the light is behind her and her features reflect, remembers her mother and tries to see what is different.

  Her mother’s face was rounder. Even though Natia is a child there is a sharpness to her chin, to her nose that isn’t like her mother. Her eyes are a different shade, not pale blue-gray, but dark blue, the color of shadowed pools. Her hair is not ice blond, but darker, like warm honey. Someone else has stamped themselves on her, someone else is there in her bones. Her mother was short and deceptively fragile looking. Natia is tall for her age, and her hands and feet are long. Who had these eyes like wildflowers? Who had these big hands?

  He must have been tall, she thinks. He was tall and good looking, and still so young. Her mother said that he was eighteen and she was seventeen that glorious summer of 1812.

  Natia is the child of war. Everyone hates the Russians, even the priests. Everyone hates that Poland is no more, that they are not free. Everyone remembers that for a little while they were.

  Your father was a hero, the sisters said to her soon after her mother began coughing blood, soon after they came here. They were all heroes, the brave young men who died for Poland, whether or not they were Polish. Her father was Dutch, and he served the French Emperor, they said, but he died for Poland.

  And because of that they do not ask too many questions about whether her parents were married. Her mother says they were, that they spoke their vows to one another even though there was no priest, even though he was Protestant. Natia doesn’t know whether that counts or not. She thinks when she was younger, before they came to the abbey, that people called her bastard. Back in Warsaw, when her mother cleaned houses and she lived in the scullery. She doesn’t remember that very well. She doesn’t want to. She was always cold and always hungry.

  The sisters give her food. Mostly it’s the same bread and soup they eat, but they never tell her she can’t have any. She can’t remember who did. Someone, once. Someone when she and her mother were both very hungry.

  Now she is alone. She hears the sisters talking, hears them discussing her with Father Andrzej when they don’t think she can hear. There are so many children who need charity. There are so many poor, now that the Russians are back. They do not want to keep her if there is somewhere she can go, if there is someone who wants her.

  “She’s too pretty,” one of the sisters says. “She will be preyed upon in service, even if we find her a place in a respectable house. The girl will be a beauty. And she is too young to take care of herself, too innocent.”

  Natia thinks to herself that she’s not. She has never been innocent, whatever that means. She remembers what it was like just before they came here, when her mother had the men. She remembers being told to stay in her bed with the covers up and not look, no matter what she heard. She looked anyway. Lots of times. She could peep through a fold and her mother wouldn’t see. She remembers the sweating and the struggling the men did, the coins they left.

  She looks at her face in the window and wonders if she is pretty enough to find someone who will take care of her, someone who will not die. But how do you know who will die?

  Winter. The washbasin freezes over at night in her room. The snow forces the shutters in some of the rooms downstairs, breaks a stained glass window in the chapel with its weight.

  Father Andrzej has written a letter. “Your mother,” he said. “I asked her when she was dying if you had any kin. She said that your father had said that his mother still lived in Paris. She must be an old woman, if she is alive. But I have written to colleagues there. Perhaps someone can find her. Perhaps…”

  Perhaps she has money, Natia thought. Perhaps she will want me. Some old harridan half a world away. If my mother had thought she would help surely my mother would have written to her. And perhaps she too is long dead.

  Cold. The days lengthen, but the world is frozen in ice. They say it is the worst winter since that one, the winter before she was born, when the bravest sons of revolution froze in Vilnius or died in the Berezina.

  A letter comes with the first thaw, and Father Andrzej is happy. You are a fortunate girl, they all tell her. You are going away from here. You are going to Paris.

  Natia wants to see the letter. Father Andrzej shows it to her, but she can’t read it. It’s in French. “Does she say she wants me?” Natia asks.

  He temporizes. “She says that she knew your father intended to marry your mother, and that she met your mother once. We will send you to her.”

  “Does she know I’m coming?” Natia asks.

  “She will when you arrive,” he says.

  And now it is spring. At the first false thaw she is off to Warsaw with Father Andrzej. He leaves her there at another house, and then she is on her way to Munich with Father Wicus, a much older man who has no time for children, but who will take her as far as that. He does not talk to her, but at least they have seats inside the carriage. It’s very cold still.

  Her birthday comes the day they arrive in Munich. She is eight years old.

  That night she sleeps in the infirmary of a convent there. There is no one in the infirmary, but there are no other beds. She dreams of having a kitten who would curl up on her feet. She wonders if the old lady will be very strict, and if she will beat her. She wonders if people will call her bastard in Paris.

  A few days later she is on the way to Frankfurt. Three young seminarians are going there, and she is to go with them. The carriage is dirty and wobbles a lot. The seminarians ignore her and drink more than strictly necessary to keep them warm. They don’t want a little girl. The carriage doesn’t stop until late at night.

  Natia falls asleep looking at her reflection in the window, watching shadows move on the glass. Sometimes she dreams about distant places, watching shadows move. Sometimes she can see mountains and seas in her reflected eyes.

  One of the seminarians is going on to Strasbourg. He is kinder when his friends are gone. She has a few words of German and he has a few words of Polish, enough to say that he has a sister her age.

  Natia looks out the window and sees that spring has come. On this side of the Rhine the trees are blooming and the land is greening. Birds are soaring in the sky, singing absurdly.

  He teaches her a few phrases of French as they roll along. “Bonjour, Madame Grandmere.” That is what she must say when she meets her. She practices saying her father’s name aloud. “Sous-Lieutenant Francis Charles Leopold Ringeling.” It sounds so very big.

  She wonders if there is a big gloomy house with the windows all draped in black, old servants shuffling around in perpetual mourning for the Young Master, an old woman with rings on every crabbed finger who will think her very stupid because she does not know any lessons.

  At Strasbourg she changes to a Flying Coach. She wonders if it will fly, and then is told that just means that they change the horses at posting houses. There is an old priest who doesn’t speak a word of Polish who is supposed to take her along. She can’t understand anything he says and he can’t understand her. Nobody can. The only thing she can say is “Bonjour, Madame Grandmere” and “Je ne parle pas Francais.” He buys her bread and cheese at the posting stops.

&
nbsp; A woman passenger who is very pregnant gives her a handful of raisins and smiles at her, showing Natia her sewing. It’s a baby’s gown in thin white cotton. It might be finished before the baby comes. Natia wishes she could talk to her, but smiles are the only language they have.

  She is asleep when they come into Paris. When she wakes they are already moving through crowded streets. They stop somewhere there is an inn or a posting house, and the priest gestures for her to get out. The woman passenger smiles at her and says something to the priest. Natia can’t understand it, but the priest calls over one of the stableboys and gives him a message and a little coin. The woman pats her arm and smiles, saying goodbye.

  Natia waits in the muddy stableyard. She has a little bundle and she stands next to it so that it won’t get lost. The priest has gone inside. He is talking to people and drinking in the public room. Natia thinks it’s not a good idea to go into public rooms. She thinks her mother told her not to, once long ago. Probably because she’s pretty. So she waits outside instead.

  There is a sudden disturbance at the entrance to the inn yard. An open topped carriage is stopping and a woman getting down. She’s wearing a fashionable bonnet trimmed with feathers, and she’s dressed in rose, not the pale kind of pink Natia thinks of as rose, but the dark rich saturated pink of real roses opening in the sun. She has a short jacket and gloves, but as she steps down Natia can see that her boots are black and scuffed, low heeled and meant for walking. The innkeeper and the stable boys are all running to do her bidding. She turns, and her eyes sweep over the yard.

  Now that Natia sees her better she’s not so young. The hair visible under the bonnet is gold, but her face has lines around her mouth and eyes, and there is a long scar across her forehead over one eye, clear and white as a sword. Her eyes are dark blue. When she moves she walks like a man, like a general must walk, a stable boy running ahead of her into the inn. She takes off one glove with a snap.