Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  When she stood, her limbs moved freely, unfettered by the weariness she had carried across France. Only her stomach ached—with the hollow pang of hunger, not the black, indigestible metal of suffering that had lain inside her belly all these months. She had cried herself free of that.

  Or most of it.

  Deeper inside, an ugly weariness still darkened, but it seemed bearable now. Amazement glimmered: All she had needed this whole time dwelled in words! Simply hearing the horror spoken about in words that defined it as evil, made her experience of the atrocity real. The telling placed the horror outside of her and in the past.

  She looked about the unfamiliar chamber at the wide bed where her grandfather slept. She took in the thick paned windows and the pastel frescoes of a battle adorning the plaster walls.

  "Grandfather," she called to David quietly, and for a bright, vital moment she felt dizzy with the freedom of her own voice. She lost contact with everything for that one precarious flash and felt the dark depths again widening under her.

  Quickly, she sat down on the edge of the bed, and the golden light of the room restored her newfound clarity. "Grandfather, wake up. We must learn why we are here."

  David winced awake, sat up, and rubbed sleep from his face with thick hands. "I dreamed you were speaking to me."

  Rachel smiled. That wonder dropped the old man's hands into his lap.

  "God has restored my voice, Grandfather. I ... I can speak again."

  David seized her shoulders, peered into her face, not seeing the somnolent shine in her features anymore. "A miracle!"

  "Oh, yes, a miracle," she said with a sad smile. She felt her voice in the roots of her teeth, heard it echo across horizons beyond life, far back inside her.

  -/

  David and Rachel returned once more to the hall with the gigantic fireplace and hunting trophies and found the dame still sitting where they had left her, twisted hands locked in her lap.

  Rachel curtsied, saying in a slim, unsteady voice, "Your kindness—in bringing us here—your kindness has cleared my heart of much sorrow. I thank you—for myself and for my grandfather."

  The dame nodded appreciatively, and a satisfied smile curved her severe lips. "You have both suffered terribly for no wrong. Now that you are rested, I would see you in a more fair countenance." The old woman rang a bell attached to her chair, and her servitors appeared. "See that my guests are bathed, clothed, and fed well. Then return them here."

  David held up both of his blackened hands and bowed his head humbly. "Great lady, you have heard our story. You know now how terribly we have been reduced. What can such unfortunates as we offer you?"

  "You will learn of that after I have seen you properly clothed and the famished expressions gone from your faces. Go, we will speak again at nightfall."

  "Lady ... please," Rachel spoke, giddy, emboldened by her new freedom. "We know not even your name..."

  "That we may thank God for your munificence," David added.

  "I am the baroness Ailena Valaise," the dame said, staring at her with half-opened eyes, trying to see Rachel without tear-streaked stains on her face. "I cannot tell you my story, for it has not yet been told. I am what I cannot say. I tell you only this: that I have brought you here into my house because you, dear Rachel, you must help me say it."

  -/

  The baroness sat with eyes closed, face lifted to the sun, feeling heat soak into her bones. The journey from Wales had been trying, and now, all that suffering came to redemption with Rachel. How poignant that salvation arrive as a Jewess!

  That enriched the irony of the strategy she had been developing since last evening, when she first spied the young woman among the ruins. All night, she had lain awake, amazed by her own amazement. No delusion tainted her thinking: The girl appeared very much as she herself had looked forty-five years earlier.

  During the night, when the possibilities for this ghost of her childhood first arose, she wondered if perhaps the child merely resembled a vague memory from her last year of happiness, before her father died. Today, having examined the young woman in direct sunlight, she had faced the truth: Rachel displayed the same lineaments, complexion, hair, and bearing.

  She had known at once the night before, even in silhouette, that this young woman had never lived as a peasant. Her carriage was not that of a field worker. And the baroness recognized immediately that the traits Rachel bore came from Aquitaine, very near the Perigord where Ailena had been sired.

  The long, straight nose, the swollen upper lip, the dimpled chin—those features were common there. The combination of them in the precise proportions of her personal youthful countenance appeared as nothing less than miraculous.

  The baroness' creased face crinkled happily at the thought of God abetting her revenge. Since her son had ousted her from her castle, she had been planning to return. Originally, she had intended to hire mercenaries and besiege her own castle. Grievously, her bones had become more inflamed with each bumpy day of travel, and such a campaign would surely cost her life.

  She decided then that the money she had been sending her cousins in the Perigord for years in anticipation of exile at the hands of her enemies should be sent to the king. He needed money for his adventures. In exchange, she would petition him to claim Castle Valaise for his own by escheat. That would turn Guy out into the world as landless as his father had been when he had forced her to marry him.

  Now, however, she had a more satisfying and sinister plan. The same God who had killed her father and who had surrendered her to a cruel husband had delivered to her this veritable twin from her past. The justice of it, the splendid ingenuity of it, made her show her teeth to the sun for the first time in years.

  -/

  Rachel sat at the table of the dining hall fingering the delicate lace on the close-fitting bodice she had been given to wear with a delicate blue gown and soft shoes. Tears stood in her grandfather’s eyes at the sight of her pleasure to don again garments that, in happier times, she had taken for granted.

  He swallowed those tears, not wanting her to see him grieved by their losses. He feared to inspire her grief again. They had mourned enough. Whatever the baroness' motives, the joy that she had given Rachel had answered his endless prayer.

  On the table lay the remnants of their meal: bread so fresh it steamed as they broke it, rabbit in raisin sauce, and buttery peas with onions. And, in goblets shaped like birds' heads, wine brimmed, which David recognized as the very finest, from Saint Pourcain in Auvergne.

  The fragrant bath, good food, and wine thawed Rachel's numbness, and she looked at her grandfather with brilliance in her eyes he had not seen since the horror.

  In the fresh green tunic he wore with a brown sash, he seemed almost as she remembered him from before. With his beard shorn and the fatigue and concern that had troubled his features eased by wine, she recognized the benign patriarch of her childhood.

  The Bible lay on the table, where David had placed it after reading a psalm in gratitude. Rachel opened it and read aloud, "Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, 'Look, Father, here is the wood and fire for the sacrifice—but where is the lamb?'"

  David laid his hand on Rachel's. "Yes, Granddaughter, where is the lamb? The baroness has cleansed us, dressed us up, and fattened us. What sacrifice does she intend?"

  "Shall we flee?" Rachel looked to the doorway that led to the kitchen. "The cavalier is nowhere in sight, and the servants will not stop us."

  "Where would we run, child? Even if we are not pursued, there is only misery awaiting us out there. Whatever the noble dame wants of us, the sacrifice can be no greater than what we have already offered the Lord."

  -/

  "You will be mine for as long as I live," the baroness informed David and Rachel when they sat before her in the hall beneath the hunting trophies. Evening glowed purple in the tall windows, and bird songs tinkled in the cooling garden beyond. "In return for obeying me, you will have the very best food, cloth
ing, and shelter. You will never again suffer persecution for your faith. And when I die, you will inherit a coffer of jewels sufficiently valuable to keep you in comfort all your lives."

  David bowed his head humbly. "Baroness, for what service are you so generously rewarding us?"

  Ailena's proud face tilted backward. "Complete and utter obedience during my lifetime."

  "We are faithful Jews—"

  "I will not ask you to murder or steal. Nor shall Rachel’s chastity be compromised. Menial work and hard labor will never be required of you. But, for whatever years are left me, you will conduct yourselves as I command."

  David’s brows knitted pensively. "And what do you command of us?"

  "I will arrange for you to journey by sea to the Holy Land—to Tyre, the one city still held by Christian forces. You will bear letters from me that will enable you to acquire a house of stature equal to this one. There, you will await me."

  David and Rachel exchanged amazed looks. In the silence, bird songs echoed in the darkening room. "Baroness," David finally spoke, "the journey to the Holy Land is a dangerous one."

  The baroness' eyes seemed to glitter in the gloom. "Are your lives in the boneyard less dangerous?"

  -/

  Ailena sat alone in the darkness, staring out her window at the dusty stars. For the first time since that cruel day nine months earlier when her son usurped her, her mind toiled with more than rage.

  Strategies branched like lightning in the smoked dark of her brain, each bright fork lighting up new depths where smaller lightnings flashed, revealing all the tiny details that would have to be fulfilled for her grand plan to work.

  For a moment, the complexity of the idea overwhelmed her.

  So much had to be accomplished—would there be time? Death gnawed at her bones already. And she felt most infuriated that her son—as hatefully as she had treated him for the sins of his father—would cast her out in her last days. The kingdom would have been his anyway; he had only to abide her malice a short while longer. But now that she had been humiliated, now she must live; now she must defy the sharp rats' teeth chewing on her tendons and live to create an enduring vengeance.

  With that determination, Ailena relaxed. In the lightless room, a grandmotherly peace composed the wrinkles of her old woman's face. Her alert eyes clicked with starlight as she imagined the minute workings of her revenge.

  -/

  Mediterranean Sea, Summer 1189

  "God is punishing me for our deception," David moaned and clutched at the silken ropes of his berth. Through the gallery window of the cabin, sunlight glistened on the spume of the rolling sea. Flying fish skipped over sparkling swells on translucent wings, and red robes of sargassum weed drifted by. David lay on his back, mouth lolling open, eyeballs rolling in his head.

  Rachel comforted him with a damp sponge. The surging of the ship did not disturb her. "Grandfather, try to sleep again. Perhaps the sea will be calmer when you wake."

  David lurched upright and sat with his head in his hands. "No more sleep. I feel I am smothering. Help me on deck, Rachel. Perhaps the wind will dispel this qualm."

  Rachel unhooked the satin ropes of the berth and took her grandfather's arm as he lowered himself from the bed. Together, they staggered across the wide, handsomely appointed cabin and out the door. Rachel closed the door behind them and followed David up the companionway to the deck.

  No sooner had the hem of her robe vanished through the hatchway than two barefoot men in torn trousers emerged from the hold. It led down into the enormous cargo bay and the rowing benches. The two men, both rowers, had been taking turns watching the cabin, waiting for a time when it would be vacant. One rower, wizened and knotty, with a big nose and prominent ears, the other, dark, burned nearly black by the sun, with a weedy mustache and buckteeth, entered the cabin.

  "Watch the companion ladder," the hoary one said, went immediately for the chest at the foot of the berth.

  "And leave you to filch the best for yourself?" The charred one shook his head and followed. "We're in and out like the butcher's knife. Hurry now. They'll not be long on that pitching deck."

  The chest they rifled contained only lady's garments, none of the coin or gems they had felt sure to find in so stately a cabin. "Be tidy, simpleton," the wizened one said as they returned the clothing, "or they'll know they was plucked."

  "And they'll not know when their gold be gone?" The mustached one sneered and hurried to the other chest across the cabin. "Who's the simpleton?"

  The second chest had only apparel and a sheaf of letters. The men searched under the carpet and the bolsters of the chairs. "Here's the goose," the dark one whispered, lifting the feather Maîtress from one of the two berths and exposed a tooled leather sack. He unthonged it, lifted the flap, and removed a scroll and a book bound in brown tawed hide.

  The thieves opened both articles and squinted at the black, flame-shaped letters. "Is it Latin?" the mustached one asked.

  "No. Not Latin. This be heathen writing."

  "Turk writing? Methought those two looked queer for nobles."

  "No, idiot. This be Jew writing. I seen it on their temples, whence they take the Christian babes to drink their blood. The captain must know of this."

  -/

  On deck, David leaned over the rail with a dozen other pilgrims. Rachel stood behind him with a comforting arm on his back, watching shearwaters beat across the long, slow swells.

  To either side of them, two priests in black cassocks bent over the rail groaning, and David smiled to himself. Perhaps this illness is a blessing after all: The Body of Christ had been locked away so that it would not end up floating in vomit, thus sparing David and his granddaughter, at least for now, the ignominy of having to accept the gentiles' sacrament.

  Water splashed the back of his neck, and he lifted a dizzy head to see another priest blessing the sea-sick pilgrims with holy water. Beyond the priest, on the high deck, the captain stood with his mates and two grimy sailors. David's eyes widened at the sight of them examining the scroll of the Law from his cabin.

  "Grandfather—what's wrong?" Rachel asked as he pushed away from the rail.

  "Say nothing, Rachel," he mumbled, his mind churning. "Follow me now and say nothing."

  David moved as quickly as his wobbly legs allowed and mounted the stairs to the high deck. "Captain, how have you come upon that scroll? Answer me direct!"

  The captain, a narrow man in a black commander's vest and velvet cap, cocked an eyebrow. "This is the writing of the Jews. It was found in your cabin by these rowers."

  "What were they doing there?" David asked, not disguising the alarm in his voice or face.

  "We was passing," the wizened one replied. "The door were open and we sees this scroll and book upon the bed. Were none of our concern but that the roll of the ship dropped it to the floor and opened it. When we spied the heathen writing we brung it here."

  "Liar!" David cried. "That scroll and that book were both well secured beneath my Maîtress."

  "Then you do not deny they are yours?" the captain queried.

  "What are cousins of the baroness Ailena Valaise doing with Jewish scripture?"

  "Conveying them to the Holy Land," David answered hotly.

  "Then you are Jews!" the captain shrilled. "You'll damn us all in the eyes of God!"

  "You will indeed be damned," David agreed, "but not for us being Jews, for we are not. We are cousins of the baroness, as she herself informed you. But—" He hesitated, looking wildly at Rachel. "We are also envoys of the ... archbishop. It was he who selected us for this dangerous charge, which we had hoped to complete in secret, with no jeopardy to any others but ourselves."

  "What is this rant?" the captain demanded.

  "What you hold is a Jewish talisman outfitted with a heathen curse that destroys those who are exposed to it for very long. The Jews—damn their eyes!—the Jews have been using this for generations to sow strife among the Christian kingdoms. The archbis
hop got hold of this during the sacking of the French synagogues after Jerusalem fell. We are charged with conveying it to the Holy Land, where the Temple knights will use it against the Saracens."

  The captain closed it gingerly and passed it to his mate. "Throw it into the sea."

  "No!" David shouted. "No—that would only imperil your ship. The talisman must be taken directly to our enemy, upon whom its evil will work for the glory of Christ." He took the scroll from the mate, who eagerly gave it up. "No one else must know of this. Let the risk be entirely mine and this saintly woman's." He nodded to Rachel, and she bowed her head solemnly. "We are blessed by the archbishop himself and so protected."

  The captain stepped back charily and raised a hand to block his face from the scroll. "Take it out of my sight. Should any harm threaten this ship, I will burn it myself." He glared at the two rowers. "Have them tarred at once. They will be cast ashore on the morn in Sicily."

  David ushered Rachel down the stairs ahead of him and hugged the scroll to his chest, chanting under his breath a prayer of thanksgiving to the one God.

  "Your deception is wonderful," Rachel whispered jubilantly when they reached their cabin. "Your story saved the Torah and our lives."

  David carefully stowed away the scroll and the Bible and then collapsed on his berth, his arm over his eyes. "That was no story," he moaned. "That was the sickness talking in me."

  Rachel nodded compassionately and patted his head.

  "It was so, Granddaughter!" David insisted vibrantly, peering out from under his arm.

  "Of course, Grandfather," Rachel humored him.

  "I would not lie about my faith—" David emphasized by staring intently at her before covering his eyes and groaning. "I dare not speak such blasphemous lies about the Law. I gave my voice to my sickness—and my sickness saved us."

  -/