Softly, she speaks to the surging crowd: "Good people, I cannot restore old policies. You must understand. I ... I have become renewed, transfigured. Another pattern cuts our fate and binds us to the strife that divides us. Do you understand? You must understand..."
Her voice trails away, and an uncontainable panic flails through her. In despair, she sits down and strives to see the golden chalice, to drink deeply from the presence of the baroness. Enraged shouts pummel her too fiercely for her to focus on anything. Her alertness smudges, blurs toward blindness, and imminent madness knots tightly in her throat. Gentle hands take her by the shoulders and turn her away from the seething throng. "Mother, are you all right?"
Clare’s concerned face looks down at her and fills in the gaping emptiness with her fleshly presence. Rachel nods, rubs the numbness from her temples. "Where is Grandfather?" she asks.
Clare returns a baffled look.
"The rabbi—where is he?"
"Maître Pornic has summoned him," Clare answers and coaxes her to stand. "Come, Mother. Let us away from this shouting rabble. Merchants!" She sniggers with disgust and waves for Gerald to come and help her. "Money is their soul, cold and dirty."
Rachel gratefully accepts Gerald’s offered arm. All her strength has washed away, leaving her hollow. She closes her eyes and again invokes the Grail. Now it appears, bright as a piece of the sun behind her lids, and her anguish dwindles, but despair does not go completely away. She has come too close to losing everything: She realizes with icy clarity that she is too fragile to go on. Yet—how can I stop? I must play this role just a little longer. I will go on. I must.
-/
"Tell me, Rabbi, is Jesus the Messiah?" Maître Pornic asks. He sits in a sturdy oak chair whose high back displays an engraved lamb bearing a crosier. Facing him, in a chair backed with the carved heads from Ezekiel’s vision of a bull, an eagle, a lion, and an angel, David sits, the scroll of the Law in his lap. They face each other in the apse behind the altar, where light from the stained glass windows breaks the woe-dark of the chapel into fiery bits. Gianni Rieti stands, arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the back of the altar.
"'Shall a man make gods unto himself and they are no gods?'" David answers. "Why do you make Jesus a god?"
"You quote the prophets?" Maître Pornic assesses the man before him with cold-eyed dispassion. "Did not the prophet Isaiah foresee the coming of the Messiah?"
"I quoted Jeremiah, chapter sixteen, verse twenty. As for Isaiah, he wrote, 'And the sons of the stranger that love the name of the Lord, even them will I bring to my holy mountain.'" Watching the quiet darkness in the shriveled man's keen eyes, David’s emotional balance swings from fear to respect and back again.
"The name of the Lord is Jesus Christ," Maître Pornic says with great tenderness. "Do you believe Jesus is Christ the Savior, the Anointed One, the Messiah prophesied by your people?"
"There is no Jesus in the Bible of the Jews."
Maître Pornic closes his eyes and shakes his head. "'He came unto his own,'" he quotes from the first chapter of John, "'and His own received Him not.'"
"Surely, Maître," Gianni Rieti intervenes, "you did not summon the rabbi here to question his faith. The baroness has elicited his aid in learning the language and customs of our Savior because he is a scholarly Jew."
The holy man's face condenses brutally. "He blessed the assembly!" His fingers shake. "This—man, who has no faith in our Savior, blessed an assembly of Christians. What mockery do we make of our Lord's suffering?"
"I blessed the congregation as any rabbi would bless," David answers, experiencing a cold wind through his chest, "even the rabbi you worship."
"I worship the Son of God!" Maître Pornic shrills, his voice clattering back from the dark heights. At the sight of the alarm in the Jew's face, the fury passes, and the abbot raises a dispirited hand to pinch the flesh between his eyes. "Forgive me." He stands, and staggers as if he has been struck. "These are my people, my flock." He waves that thought aside. His starved face has the serene ferocity of an eagle. "The miracle of the Grail—the miracle that transformed the baroness from an aged, bent, and bitter woman to the beautiful youth who rules Epynt today—does that not stir faith in you that Jesus is indeed the Messiah?"
David's mouth opens and hangs open like a mousehole in the shag of his beard.
"The rabbi did not know the baroness before the miracle," Gianni replies for him.
"Did you, my son?"
Gianni shakes his head.
"She was an entirely godless woman," Maître Pornic recalls in a calmer voice. "It was the death of her father, Bernard, the first earl of Epynt, that rotted her faith. He himself had been an assiduously religious man. I knew him well—many years ago." Weariness thins his voice. "We pilgrimaged to Saint David’s together. He loved the Welsh, with their fierceness and their music, and he did not take any more land from them than was needed for his crops. 'They're Christians same as we,' he'd say. 'Let's worship together.' And he built this chapel as much for them—though they stopped coming when he died. The Lord took him away in a fever. And his daughter, our baroness, lost her faith with him."
David strokes his beard and looks haplessly to Gianni Rieti.
"Certainly, you would keep faith in your God," Maître Pornic asks, "if He assailed you as He did Job."
David bows his head. "Eleven years ago, I lost my entire family to the Crusader mob—my two sons and their families—"
"And so God tests our faith," the abbot affirms.
"Is it a test?" David asks, looking up, stricken. "I do not think so. We test ourselves, because we know of good and evil. But the Lord is good and evil."
"No." Maître Pornic rejects that thought with a wave. "Satan is evil, and God has cast him into the abyss."
"Yet, who created Satan?" David asks. "And the abyss—who created that? And the pox and the drought and all manner of calamity, whence do they issue? They come from On High."
"Not at all," the abbot says. "They come from Satan to try our souls and wrest us from God's grace."
David shrugs. "That is your faith. Mine tells me that Adonai is more than we can know. In darkness, in suffering, in human failing—He is there, too. Who are we to question Him? Yet, we must question, for that is the strength He has given us. We must doubt, and we must question. And when we have reached the limit of our strength to question, we remain what we are. For we are never more than we are. We are never more than what He has made us."
Maître Pornic's wispy eyebrows go up and down slowly as he thinks about this.
"I saw the Grail," Gianni blurts. "I witnessed the old and sickly baroness drink from it and be changed. Her withered flesh fell away, her bent bones straightened, and she was made young. I beheld this with my own eyes."
"Think on this," Maître Pornic says to David. "Miracles open the way to faith."
"Do you believe this miracle?" David asks him.
Maître Pornic moves his harrowed visage into the warped light of the stained glass and stares at David with red-slashed eyes. "The way opened to me long ago, Rabbi. I found Jesus in a blade of grass. And now, I believe only in the miracles I see."
-/
Guy Lanfranc sits on a trestle table in the groin-vaulted chamber behind the great hall. As a boy, he had often come here to watch his father ready himself for his forays against the tribes. What he remembers best are the smells: of the vinegar that cleaned the chain mail, the horse sweat that clung to the musky leathers of boots and gloves, and best of all the solemn scent of the flaxseed oil that the varlets daubed on the joints of the armor. To this day, he cannot help feeling tenacious nostalgia, a stirring, puerile thrill whenever he smells its tan fragrance.
As for his father’s armor, Guy would have kept it here had not Ailena disposed of it unceremoniously the day he died. Instead, his own helmet, cuirass, greaves, and chain-mail shirt and cowl lie on the boards against the wall, where his father’s had once hung. Remembering how often i
n the past he has come here to gird himself for countless raids, he feels a surge of confidence borne of combat-tested experience. He must not forget, he scolds, that he has triumphed in too many battles to be concerned by the threat of a mere woman.
"What are you dreaming on?" Roger Billancourt asks as he strides in.
Guy smiles wanly at his mentor. "I was wondering what Father would have done in my place."
The warmaster blows a laugh through his nose. "He'd never have let the wench into the castle to begin with."
"That was a blunder."
"No sense grieving what can't be changed." Roger leans against the wall beside the window, strokes his stubby beard and assesses the baron. He has the steel of his father, he thinks, but not the edge. He's hard enough to endure, all right, but not sharp enough for quick decisions—or keen enough to cut through his moods. "Don't look so melancholy. Your knights will be here in a moment. They must see you in command or you'll lose them to the Pretender."
"She is an impostor, isn't she, Roger?"
Roger's jaw rocks loose. "You doubt it?"
Guy pinches his lower lip, then throws up his hands. "In her bedchamber, when I confronted her, she spoke of my childhood and Anne Gilford—"
"Your mother prompted her," Roger says with sharp certainty. "I'm sure the old harridan has arranged this. It stinks of her scheming."
"Yes—that must be so. But briefly, I believed her—believed she was actually Mother." He laughs at himself and looks around fondly at the walls, where shields and crossed lances are hung. "For years after Father died, I came here every day and stared at these weapons, imagining the vengeance I'd have on Mother when I grew up. I didn't realize how strong she was then—didn't think I'd have to wait until she got old and feeble before her knights would rally around me and I could unseat her. I thought I could just lop her head off and be done with it, just like that."
"Those were long years," Roger agrees. "If I had not made myself useful helping her defend against the other lords of this lawless frontier, the March, she'd have lopped my head off, to be sure." He straightens. "Your men are coming. Show your mettle."
The knights William, Harold, and Denis enter and nod to Guy and then to Roger. The baron stands, his face set like a snake’s jaw, with a hard, joyless smile. "Who is this bitch Ailena has sent to harry me, this bitch who pretends to be my mother? This bitch to whom you have sworn homage? Answer me!" He passes a slit-eyed stare among the knights, leaning forward, arms locked straight, fists knuckling the trestle table, where the banners for the dais had been stitched. Roger Billancourt stands behind him, arms akimbo, square, grizzled head cocked belligerently.
William Morcar tugs at his bushy mustache, elbow in hand, arm across his chest, tilting back on one leg of a stool, staring up at the narrow window. Harold Almquist leans in the doorway, bald head lowered, studying his boot tip. Only Denis Hezetre meets Guy's hard gaze from where he sits at the far end of the trestle table, square hands splayed flat before him. "What if, indeed, she is your mother? What if God has worked a miracle on her?"
"Then, she belongs in a nunnery," Guy responds sharply.
"Her father, Bernard, your grandfather, carved this domain out of wilderness," Denis reminds him. "For thirty years, she ruled from this castle herself before we packed her off on her pilgrimage. She has the right of blood, Guy—and she is capable."
Guy looks to Roger Billancourt with his mouth open, incredulously, wondering what is wrong with his friend, and the old master-at-arms grimaces at Denis reproachfully. When Guy faces Denis again, his gaze is quizzical. "So you believe her? You believe this kitten is my mother?"
"Who else could she be?" Denis asserts.
"There were witnesses to the miracle," Harold mumbles.
"Only two survived the journey here," Guy says, "one with a dwarf in his shadow and the other a treacherous Muslim."
"The pope himself authorized—" Harold offers tentatively.
"Bah!" Guy cuts him off. "Was he there? I say he was bought."
"By God's beard, Guy," Denis protests, "the old servant Dwn recognizes her."
"God's balls! The hag recognizes a chance to help herself and her own people. You heard the impostor. She wants to give our land to the Welsh!"
"But that is exactly what Ailena Valaise would do," Denis protests. "She grew up with a love for them, inherited from her father, is that not true?"
"Denis—" Guy stares imploringly at his friend. "Are you with me?"
"If you are right, Guy, I am with you. I have always been so. But, in truth, I do not see that you're right here. God has worked a miracle! Can you be so faithless as to deny your own mother? Almighty God has returned her to us for His greater glory!"
Guy snorts angrily but, though he flashes sharp looks at the others, experiences a queasy uncertainty. "How do the rest of you stand? With me or with the Pretender?"
"The point is moot," William Morcar ventures. "We backed Count John. Now Richard is king again. Unless we can meet the king's penalties for our service to John, this domain will belong to the king's men."
"Aye—" Roger speaks up for the first time, and squints craftily at the men. "But the king's penalty is not due till Saint Margaret's. We've a month yet. If this deceiver can be discredited quickly, there'll yet be time to break Neufmarche and seize the coin to pay the king."
"The Hereford troops are gone," Harold states. "The siege is lifted. We'll not crack that nut this season."
"Then we must be swift," Roger insists. "We must unseat this deceiving kitten soonest."
"And if she is not a deceiver?" Denis demands. "If she is truly Guy's mother, the baroness Valaise herself?"
"Then let God decide," Roger says, stepping to Guy's side. "A tourney has already been planned to celebrate our victory over Neufmarche. That tourney will be held instead to honor the baroness' return. Let us announce an assise de bataille and challenge the impostor's authority on the tourney grounds. I myself will best the Italian priest-knight and Guy will take the heretic Swede. We'll be done with this pretense quickly."
Denis objects with a shake of his head. "Such an assise cannot assert right of rule if the king and the pope affirm her charter."
"Both vellums are questionable," Guy answers quickly. "That much was made clear in the great hall. If we best her knights, the guildsmen will accept me as baron. They've invested too heavily in our siege to forsake me."
"And we need not sack Neufmarche," Roger adds. "The threat alone may be sufficient to inspire him to pay our penalties."
Guy nods, satisfied. He peers down at Denis. "You will not stand against me at the tourney?"
"No. I have sworn homage to the baroness and will defend any threat to her with my life. But I will not champion her in games the pope has declared illegal." Denis rises and leans forward on the trestle table. "The tourney has no authority in the king's court. It is only a game, Guy, a mock battle."
Guy's thin smile stretches straight back, a viper's grin. "A mock battle to unseat a mock ruler."
-/
"I notice you said little," Roger Billancourt addresses William Morcar. They are alone in a cramped and windowless anteroom, where the tapestries are stored in rolls on wooden shelves. Reluctantly, William has let the older man lead him here, knowing the bow-legged, iron-whiskered warrior requires him for some devilish work. He is afraid of the old warrior, for in battle he has often sacrificed men to win small victories; William dreads what sacrifices the warmaster will demand now that Ailena has returned to threaten him.
"Guy needs no empty words from me."
Roger places his hard fist with its square knuckles on William's chest. "Your heart is an eagle, William. It screams only when it's hungry."
"What mischief is in your heart, Roger?"
"Mischief?" Roger shakes his dented head. "None. Only loyalty to our baron, who is your wife Hellene's uncle as well as your son Thierry's godfather and patron."
"Roger, don't harry me with loyalties I know too well. I'v
e proven my allegiance time and again in the field."
"Then why have you sworn homage to the kitten? What sorcery won you to her side?"
"No sorcery but God's own hand, who restored her to us."
"God's hand—or the Devil's?"
"Only priests see a difference."
The air goes dark when the warmaster smiles, and William regrets speaking in anger. "By God or the Devil, the kitten sits in the chair of state and you have sworn your fealty. That cannot be changed. So what will we do about Thierry?"
William's anger swells again. "I do not want my son’s name in your mouth."
Roger pushes his face closer. One eye is larger than the other, on the side of his head where, years before, in service to Guy's father Gilbert, a mace crushed his skull. His unbalanced stare has a crazed intensity. "Thierry," he says in a flutelike, mocking voice. "Thierry was to inherit the realm when his godfather returned to God or the Devil. But now—" He moves his lips with cruel deliberation. "Do you not understand? Thierry will inherit nothing. The kitten is barely older than he and will outlive him and his children, because she is the Devil's kitten."
"Then that is the will of God or the Devil," William mutters tersely.
"You want your son to live landless, to wander as Gilbert and I wandered, fighting for whoever would give us a meal? Do you want him to marry some legate’s niece, like you, so he'll have someone else's roof over his head and someone else's laws to live by? Think, man! He could be his own law in his own castle! God or the Devil has given it to him. The same Devil-God who cut off Guy's manhood has given it to him!"
"The lineage belongs to Thomas," William says tonelessly.
"Clare's son?" Roger hisses through his brown teeth. "Thomas is a Chalandon, and like his father Gerald he is a flower, all fragrance and delicacy. His place is rightfully in the abbey studying the old texts, so that he can be a priest and make his foolish distinctions between acts of God and the Devil's work. Already, he has forsaken his place in this world. The chair of state belongs to Thierry. The Devil-God has given it to him."
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