Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Sadness grows its own body, you know," a melancholy voice said behind her. She turned and faced Rosh ha-Qahal, whose woolly curls shone like the silver outlines of a cloud. "It sees with its own eyes, hears with its own ears. You must live with this other body, Rachel. It belongs to God as surely as does your flesh. But you must not let this body of sorrow live for you."

  The Head of the Community retreated as silently as he had arrived. Rachel watched the last vertiginous hue of day vanish in the cope of heaven. She returned to the village to sleep.

  Hours later, she woke and stepped out of the woodsmoke-scented house into the deep chill of the desert. Her breath smoked luminously. She stared west and observed, far off, giant swells of cloud blotting the starlight, releasing their rains over Tyre on their way to the mountains. Distantly, the dead whispered, Never and always.

  -/

  Tyre, Spring 1190

  Rosh ha-Qahal and the others in the community wanted the Tibbons to stay with them, but David insisted on returning to Tyre, to await the baroness in the palazzo as he had promised. He spent most of his time at the synagogue, occasionally hosting Rabbi Meir or Benjamin of Tudela at the palazzo when they visited the city.

  He grew his beard and his temple locks long and became active in the Jewish community, even contributing to the correspondence with the famed Maimonides. The beloved scholar and innovative Talmudic philosopher was then living in Cairo and communicated frequently with the Tyre community, on one occasion writing, "It is because of your dwelling in this place that God assures us a Redeemer even today."

  Rachel waited in the palazzo as a very old woman might, watching the sea mix her pigments. She puttered in the garden among lurid cactus flowers, the black moon-pearls of the pepper tree, and the violet shadows of the jasmine hedges. Or she just followed the servants around, swarthy women in their long oiled plaits padding barefoot among the rooms, wiping the peach-colored dust from sills and polished chests.

  Sometimes her grandfather took her with the servants into the brazen sun of the marketplace. There, under crisscrossed palms and bright domes, against limewashed walls that had peeled to oyster-colored patches, stalls offered early spring crops: sparkling fish, live animals, seabird eggs, bolts of baize and silk, all hawked by dark-faced men with chalk streaked under each eye and their heads wrapped in cloth.

  On the return from one such outing, the hairy-faced courier in the burgundy caftan awaited them at the palazzo with a letter from the baroness. In it, Ailena commanded them to leave the palazzo with its servants and to wait outside of Tyre until she sent word for them.

  David and Rachel returned to the Jewish settlement and lived there several weeks before the courier sought them out and took David back to the city with him before nightfall.

  On the patio overlooking the garden, the baroness awaited him, looking more wan and shriveled in the illumination of the oil lamps than he remembered. Her formalities were brief. She directly informed him of how, having been exiled by her son, she intended to train Rachel to do what the baroness herself could not do—return to Wales and exact revenge.

  David listened simple-eyed, hardly believing his ears. "What you ask is impossible," he said. "Rachel is just barely a woman."

  "Who looks exactly as I myself looked as a young woman. With the proper training, she will know all that I know, and no one will gainsay her. None shall doubt that she is me."

  David’s stare widened as he perceived the madness of the baroness' plan. "If she claims she is you, they will kill her for an impostor—or a witch."

  A cold grin lit up the baroness' face. "The beauty of my stratagem will protect her. You see, David, I will convince them all that I have been made young not by witchcraft but by God's grace—a holy miracle."

  David staggered backward as if punched. He raised both hands palm-outward to protect his face. "That cannot be. Not with my granddaughter. That would blaspheme God."

  The baroness' eyes narrowed lethally. "You and the girl are in my charge. You will do as I say."

  "I will not blaspheme God."

  "Not your God, you fool. The Christian god. She will declare that she has been restored to her youth by the Messiah—by Jesus, who is a false messiah to you. No blasphemy there!"

  "No one will believe. They will kill my granddaughter. You swore she would not be molested."

  "And she will not be. I have thought of everything. I will take every precaution in executing my plan. I will not have it fail. Rachel will return to Wales as Ailena Valaise, baroness of Epynt."

  "But why?" David's voice rose woefully. "To what end must she effect this ruse?"

  "To usurp the usurper!" the baroness snapped. "I want my revenge, even if I must grasp for it from the grave!"

  David lowered his head, unable to face the hatred in her stare. He reached into his robe, removed a pouch heavy with gold, and laid it on the taboret beside her. "Here are two hundred bezants," he said. "This is compensation for the money you have spent on my granddaughter and I. We will have no more to do with your revenge."

  The baroness stared fiercely at the pouch, then picked it up in her crabbed hand and heaved it back at David. "No!" Her shout rang so loudly it echoed from the sea wall. "Money cannot buy what I want. Rachel is mine. She will learn what it is to be me. And she will go back and finish my story as I want it told. Or her story ends here."

  David rose and dropped the pouch in the chair where he had sat. The baroness' loud cries pelted him as he rushed from the palazzo.

  -/

  With the city gates locked for the night, David waited for morning at the home of a fellow Jew. The memory of the baroness' wrath kept him awake until dawn. Then, he borrowed a donkey and hurried from the city. On the way, several horsemen in chain mail and greaves charged past him, and he followed the dust plume of their horses to the Jewish settlement.

  When David reached the hillside, the Norman knights hired by the baroness had arrived before him. They trampled the fields, hacking at the branches of the fruit trees, and stampeding the herds on the hills. One of them hailed him, and threw the pouch of bezants at his feet. "Tomorrow we will return and level this village," he warned menacingly, then waved his men off and rode back toward Tyre.

  The village elders gathered, furious. Benjamin of Tudela prepared to ride to the neighboring villages to rally enough men to fend off the Normans when they came back. David would not have that. He returned the pouch of gold coins and, with a shamed head, shrank from their protestations.

  The next morning, while Rachel eagerly pressed her grandfather for what the baroness had wanted of them, he placed a thick finger against her lips. "We have given our word—that is enough," he said wearily.

  In a letter he left with Rosh ha-Qahal, he apologized to each of the families for the damage the knights had done to their property, and, with his granddaughter riding atop the donkey, he and Rachel returned to Tyre.

  -/

  The baroness' throat felt blistered with her yelling. Her fury at David’s rejection of her plan had almost killed her. Hobbling after him, screaming threats, she had nearly broken her neck on the stone stairs that led from the patio to the garden exit, where he had fled.

  Blessedly, the servants, alerted by her shouted imprecations, had come running and stopped her in time. That night, with her pulse beat knocking furiously under her jawbone, she had sat with the bristly jowled courier, whom she had hired through the marquess to watch the Tibbons, and she had learned of the Jewish community.

  Ailena had already exhausted her fortune, money she could have spent raising a mercenary army in France. Instead, for her money, she now had recognition in the Curia, had invested in Tancred's submission to Richard Coeur de Lion in Sicily, and, through the marquess of Montferrat in Tyre, had purchased two farms, whose rent would help pay her daily expenses. After all her effort, she was not about to let Rachel slip away.

  Under a crown of sunshafts raying through the date palms of the garden, the baroness met with Rachel a
nd David. The baroness gazed triumphantly at David, who sulked on a stone bench beside the prongs of a large cactus.

  She faced Rachel, seated on a stool before her, and smiled lavishly to see again the likeness of her youth. She explained the broad outlines of her stratagem to the girl, speaking gently and confidently in a voice still hoarse from the previous night’s tantrum.

  "I have even conceived of the miracle that will transform me into you," Ailena said. "You will drink from the Holy Grail!"

  Rachel looked to her grandfather, and he opened the palms of his hands to show his ignorance.

  "You do not know of the Grail?" Ailena asked, incredulous. Then, stroking her chin: "Of course—you are Jews. What would you know of Christian superstitions? Well, you will be amused by this one. It is utterly charming." The webs about the baroness' eyes darkened with malicious glee. "The Grail is the chalice from which Jesus drank at the Passover feast, passing it around and saying to his disciples, 'Drink, for this is my blood.' And the next day the Romans crucified him, and, as prophesied, Joseph of Arimathea used that very chalice to catch the Savior's blood as it poured out from his wounds. Over time, the Grail was lost. But now and then it appears to the faithful—and, as legend would have it, those who drink from it are restored to their youth." Ailena smiled chillingly. "I shall drink from the Grail."

  The fifteen-year-old girl received the baroness' idea with a soft nod, which both surprised and relieved Ailena.

  "What if we are not believed?" David queried.

  "I will be believed, for Rachel will be speaking as me. And in Wales the legend of the Grail is renowned. The people there believe that Joseph of Arimathea carried the Grail to their heathen lands with the good news of the resurrection. They believe Saint Joseph brought the Grail to their wilderness, where a great warrior, Uther Pendragon, who drove the Romans from Wales, built around it the famous Round Table in memory of the Last Supper. Many people have claimed to have seen the Grail. To them, it is quite real."

  "What happened to the Grail?" Rachel asked.

  Ailena's withered face brightened, pleasantly surprised at the girl's interest. "Lost. You see, at this Round Table sits an empty seat, the Perilous Seat, where no one could sit without peril of death unless he could answer the question, 'Whom does the Grail serve?' Upon Uther's death, his orgulous son Arthur sat there. He had no idea whom the Grail served. He thought that all in his kingdom served him—his wife answered his passion, his knights provided his strength, his land offered his sustenance, and the Grail in his care acted merely as an emblem of his authority. Shortly thereafter, he entered into battle with the pagan tribes and returned gravely wounded. When his knights carried him back to his castle, the Grail had vanished. Arthur's wound would not heal, and as he lay dying, his wife abandoned him, his knights lost faith, and his kingdom withered to a wasteland. He lost everything. Only a few of his knights remembered the glory of his father Uther, and they began a quest for the Grail."

  "Did they find it?" Rachel wanted to know, intrigued.

  Ailena smiled at her childish wonder. "One did. But that is a different story."

  "Whom does the Grail serve?" Rachel pressed.

  "The Grail king, of course."

  Rachel looked puzzled. "Who was that?"

  "That was Arthur."

  "But he was gravely wounded for sitting in the Perilous Seat."

  Ailena stared shrewdly at the girl. "Because he thought all in the land served him. He did not realize that the king and the land are one."

  Rachel's eyes glazed over as she pondered this.

  "To rule is to serve," David explained. He faced Ailena and sighed. "If you send my granddaughter back to your domain as a baroness, she must serve your people."

  "Bosh. My plan is far simpler. You will return merely long enough to unseat my son. Then, you will collect the jewels I have promised you, and you may go where you please. After you depart, the other barons will fight among themselves for my land. As ever, the strong and the devious shall thrive."

  David frowned darkly, and Rachel merely nodded. Having seen the horror, having since carried the seeing with her through two years, Rachel could not be astonished anymore, only informed. So, now she would learn to be a baroness. If that pleased this lame old woman who had lifted them out of want and despair, who was she to object? From the look of her skull-tight face, the baroness had little time left in this world anyway. Why not humor her and enjoy the privileges of the palazzo?

  Ailena, gratified by Rachel's ready acquiescence, finally allowed the fatigue of her sea journey to claim her. She beckoned the girl closer, kissed her cheek, and waved her off.

  When Rachel and David had retreated to the edge of the garden, the baroness croaked, "Stop." The girl turned, her lean figure in her luminously pale robe a sand lilac among the umbrageous creepers and clicking fronds. She embodied the beautiful wraith of Ailena's past, a burning doorway into the enormous vista of the future. The baroness smiled and closed her eyes.

  -/

  Tyre, Summer 1190

  Ailena installed the Tibbons in the north wing of the palazzo. Every morning she sat with Rachel in the garden and told her something about her life, beginning with her childhood in the Perigord. During the afternoon, while she rested, the baroness let Rachel and a servant roam the white scar of the wide beach below the terraces of the palazzo.

  David spent his days at the synagogue and sometimes in the marketplace, garnering news of the war between the Christians and the Saracens. That summer the great Saracen commander, Saladin, had committed his forces to busily defending Acre, the next large city south of Tyre.

  In July, Henry of Champagne had landed with ten thousand men and a large number of knights, nobles, and fighting priests. As fast as he built his siege engines, Saladin's forces destroyed them, using a sticky, fierce-burning explosive tar called Greek fire, invented by a young coppersmith from Damascus. The Christians had never seen the likes of it, and it thwarted all their traditional attempts to invade Acre.

  In frustration, Henry made the fatal error of marshaling his forces head-on against the defenders. On the feast of Saint James at the end of July, six thousand Christians fell, among the slain women in armor who had fought valiantly beside the knights.

  What sifted down of these gory battle tales invaded Rachel's heart, and she could restore her sense of well-being only by walking the beach under the hard sun and the spray-feathered wind. After sitting on rocks crusted with red splotches of coralline algae and staring into the silver horizon, she found the strength to turn about again and face what the Arabs called the "kiss of thorns"—the towers and garret walls of the city.

  The story of the armored Christian women who had died among the knights anchored Rachel's wits in her own fate. So, the world is cruel to everyone, not to me alone.

  The baroness' continuing history of grief affirmed that dark truth. Day by day, Rachel heard gruesome accounts of what happened to Ailena after her father died. She had been the same age as Rachel when she had been forced to marry a brute who delighted in beating her.

  Understanding the precarious beauty of life for the first time, Rachel realized that the happiness that both she and the baroness had known as children came as a rare gift. From God, as Grandfather believed, or from nowhere, as the baroness had become convinced, the gift of life's beauty did not last long. And if grasped after its time had passed, such beauty darkened to grief that distracted the heart from everything else that must be lived.

  -/

  Tyre, Autumn 1190

  Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, reached Tyre in September with news that the kings of England and France also wended English king a terse and grateful acknowledgment to the baroness for her financial assistance to Richard’s supporters in Sicily. With that small but vital piece of her stratagem in place, Ailena addressed herself to Rachel's training with more zeal.

  The girl seemed to resemble her youthful self more each season as sh
e bloomed into womanhood. However, the horror she had witnessed still haunted her with spells of distraction and gloominess. Ailena despaired of conveying all the small details of her life to so dreamy a pupil, and for a while she became gruff with the child.

  Then, from one of her tinsel-robed maids, the baroness learned of a Persian magician who could put people to sleep with the pass of his hand and with a whisper in their ear convince them they had transformed into camels or monkeys.

  Ailena went at once with Rachel to find this magician. The warmth of the Levant had penetrated to her bones and relieved some of the miserable pain that had polluted her life. Yet, what sustained her was the work her revenge required.

  Eager to find the magician who could help her, she found the strength to walk the twisted warren of streets herself. She hobbled, guided by her maid, through cramped lanes of narrow and verminous rock houses lit by flickering rush lamps. A dirt path meandered among jammed buildings, passed through a stone gate, and arrived at an inelegant wooden hut leaning against an embankment of red earth.

  . The man who greeted them wore a leopardskin mantle over a sinewy body of blue-black skin. From under a dark red headcloth, his austere face gazed impassively. His bright, tapered eyes chilled all who stared at him. He ushered them into his dark hut and lifted a skylight of woven rushes. A silver shaft of daylight illuminated wicker chairs, a floor of tamped earth, and a back wall that was the dirt slope.

  The Frankish soldier whom the baroness had hired to accompany them cursed at the sight of the heathen, and Ailena motioned for him to wait outside. She introduced herself in the halting Arabic she had learned from her servants, until the amused magician replied in a spiced but fluent langue d'oc, "I am Karm Abu Selim. Why are you surprised that I speak your language? Your people have occupied this land for more than a century. I have stolen the nightmares from their souls and given them sleep. I have instilled obedient rage in their arms so they could fight without fear. And, when they came back, I dulled their harsh memories of war like a dwindling star, so that the sun of a new day rose in their breasts. With me, longing and pain can be silenced, the voices of the angels made loud. I know the way through the crooked holes in the heart. I know where to find the chances heaven has strewn around us. How may I serve you?"