Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "You are still weary from our formidable journey out of Jerusalem," she says quietly. "Stay here and rest, for when I return with the jewels, we must make that laborious journey again."

  "I must come with you," David insists. He defies the nausea in his body and rises shakily to his feet. "You will need my counsel and support. The abbey is a nest of fanatics. They will interrogate you thoroughly."

  "Have no concern for that, Grandfather. I am the baroness now. I will accept no further challenges of my authority."

  "Then your concern about deception, which haunted you yesterday, is well in hand?"

  "I have spoken with Dwn," she answers, "about the truth."

  Alarm stabs him. "You have told her the truth?"

  Rachel smiles and puts a reassuring hand on the fist he has locked over his heart. "No, Grandfather. Do not be alarmed. I have not told her—though I think she knows."

  David presses his fists to his temples and gnashes his teeth. "We are in her hands!"

  "No. She loves Ailena enough to guard our secret. She has made no threats. She has not even said that she knows. Nor will she, I think. She is a humble woman. And she has helped me to see that, for now, I am the baroness. That is what Ailena wanted. It is what has come to pass. For now, it is the truth."

  "That is surely good," David says nervously. He takes her hands, concern furrowing his brow. "But you are still vulnerable to the doubts in your heart. I had better remain by your side."

  "No. You will stay and rest. We will not linger here long after I return." Her countenance has an implacable conviction. "Trust me, Grandfather. Ailena has had her revenge. Her son has tasted humiliation. That is all we owe the baroness, and all her wintry heart wanted. Now let me take our treasure, and Guy Lanfranc can have his barony again, perhaps wiser for his mother's cold-hearted art."

  -/

  The animals gather in the bailey at dawn for the baroness' journey to Trinity Abbey. The camels have been kept behind the stables, as their ill-tempers disturb the horses. At unexpected intervals and without provocation, their heads, deceptively indifferent and sleepy-looking, snake forward and snap at passersby.

  With expert command, Falan drops the camels to their knees and supervises the lading of provisions on one, and the fitting of the special riding saddle and tasseled bridle on the other.

  Rachel feels languid and dignified. What Dwn has said to her last night has given her new strength: The truth does not matter—only what we do with it.

  She lifts her face to the tunnel of fire above the eastern ramparts, testing her resolve. Yes, she assures herself, imagining the sun as a giant Grail embracing her in its power: the baroness' truth fits her closely this morning. She is ready to play her role.

  Dwn smiles at her, unable to take her eyes from her, fascinated and deeply moved by how precisely this woman mimicks her mistress. Knowing now that this is not Ailena, she cannot help noticing the subtle and vital differences: the slightly wider jaw, the fingers longer and more tapered, the shrewd glint missing from her eyes.

  Intuitively, Dwn understands that this stranger is here only because Ailena has placed her here, an instrument with which to fulfill her obstinate will. And though saddened that there has been no miracle, no Grail, to redeem her mistress, Dwn is, deep within her, strangely exultant that the Servant of Birds has nevertheless found a way to return and undo the grief she had left behind.

  David and Maître Pornic emerge from the chapel, where they have been praying together after Gianni Rieti's matin service for the household. At first, David had been uneasy about intoning the names of the One God in a temple rife with idols, with the multiple deities the gentiles call saints. Maître Pornic moved him with his sincerity, and finally David remembered Ezekiel 45:1: Holy of Holies in all directions.

  With Gianni Rieti holding the scroll open for him, he quelled the disquieting nausea that has been with him for several days and read a few passages aloud, then listened patiently to the abbot invoking the blessings of God and His Son and the Holy Spirit.

  At their approach, Rachel and Dwn curtsy to the men of God. David, reassured by the confidence of her bearing and the hard clarity in her eyes, promises that he will spend the time of her absence praying for her return.

  Harold Almquist will also stay in the castle, in the event of an attack by either the Welsh or Branden Neufmarche in their absence. As Rachel departs, waving to Harold, her grandfather, and the assorted crowd of family members gathered on the steps, she notices the calf-eyed admiration with which Madelon regards Gianni. The young woman watches closely as he leaves the chapel, spurs jangling, assiduously avoiding her gaze. When Rachel looks to Dwn, the old woman smiles slyly and whispers, "No doubt, the court of love is already in session."

  Gianni bids adieu to his dwarf, rubs the small man's curly head for luck, and leads Rachel to the other knights. They stand in a counseling group as the squires finish saddling the horses and yoking oxen to the carriage that will convey the baroness.

  Denis alone bows. Only after Rachel has stared pointedly at them, William Morcar and his sullen Thierry perform the most perfunctory of nods.

  "Do we require such a large company for a brief visit to the abbey?" she asks ingenuously.

  "The hills are rife with Welsh raiders, my lady," Denis answers. "Our company is actually small for the jeopardy of this journey. But it would be unwise to leave our castle without sufficient men to defend her, especially now that Neufmarche has a chance to vent his hostility."

  "Perhaps the baroness would like to reconsider leaving her fortress?" Guy asks twittingly, and tosses a knowing look to Roger Billancourt.

  "Your safety cannot be guaranteed in those hills," Roger says gruffly.

  "I trust my knights to guard my safety," she replies with bravura. Then, she demands of Guy, "Show me your payment to Neufmarche."

  Guy bridles at her tone, and his eyes narrow before he opens the saddlebag on his horse. Inside she finds three rolls of fur—miniver from the white marten, black sable, and ermine, the precious pelage of the white weasel from the dim countries called Russia—all gifts of homage he has collected over the years from his harrowing attacks on neighboring baronies.

  Surrendering these is already a deep humiliation. Revealing them to the whole bailey only steepens the shame of his loss. Roger had counseled him to refuse to pay any reparations. Guy knows that the Pretender would use that as ample excuse to exile him, and unseating her from outside the castle walls would be far more difficult.

  "And the coin?" Rachel asks.

  "It is there."

  "Show me."

  Guy's nostril-wings whiten with withheld rage. He thrusts his hand into the saddlebag and comes out with a plump leather pouch.

  Rachel signs for Gianni to inspect it, and the priest takes the pouch, opens it, and fingers the coins within. "At least thirty gold pieces, my lady.”

  "Thirty-six," Guy says tersely. "All I've left after paying my men."

  "We'll consider this a payment in part," Rachel says coolly, "against whatever Branden Neufmarche claims is just and proper." She feels the old baroness stir in her blood with haughty satisfaction as Guy straightens and Roger glowers. The old woman had been very clear about depriving Guy of funds, which could be used against her. She glances about at the stunned knights. "Shouldn't we be on our way? The sun will not stay in his course for us."

  Falan's camels rise, and, from atop his mount, he helps Rachel, Dwn, and Maître Pornic climb into the wagon, whose hide coverings have been rolled up. As the carriage lurches into motion, Rachel holds her grandfather's worried stare a lingering moment before signaling the porter to open the gates.

  -/

  David sits in his prayer shawl at a writing table before his bedchamber's window. He unscrolls a tatter-edged parchment on which he writes his brief prayers, believing the written words spell God's power.

  With the sun slanting over his shoulder and illuminating the parchment, he lifts his stylus from the inkstone and wri
tes the word the old woman Dwn spoke to Rachel in her anguish: truth.

  Truth: three letters, the first, middle, and last letters of the alphabet, written right to left—aleph, mem, taw—the beginning, the midst, and the end of all things. And as he writes those letters on the parchment, as if out of the sun's glare David pronounces: "Emeth—" and then the gentiles' variant of that Hebrew word, "oh-men—amen."

  He puts his stylus aside and, despite a feverish qualm, begins his prayers.

  -/

  With the castle's swine driven before them in a bristly, snorting herd, the baroness' procession crosses the toll bridge over the rushing Llan and enters the thatch-roofed village. The villagers, alerted two days before to the baroness' intention of gifting them the castle's pigs, gather along the rutted avenue, cheering heartily.

  The castle's swineherd has himself been given a share of the herd and his own croft near the village, and he happily oversees the equitable apportionment of the animals to the grateful villagers. As the ox-drawn van wobbles down the avenue, wild flowers pelt the baroness and her companions.

  Guy and Roger shove a way through the crowd with their horses, though even after the village has fallen out of sight behind them, they are lashed by cries for the baroness: "Valaise! Valaise!"

  -/

  Midmorning sunlight lifts violet haze from the pocket valleys and deep ravines of the wilderness. Staring out over mazy hills and layerings of clouds, Rachel experiences something incomprehensible upon the listening stillness—the frightful enormity of a secret wish in the green flames of trees and the starflake flowers on the mountains' flanks.

  For the first time since the horror, she is transported back in her heart to the mystic joy she knew on her hidden knoll in Lunel. A secret dreaming enciphers its own meaning at the eaten heart of eroded rocks and in the frothing water free-falling in silver vertical script. She feels that she and the others with her are suspended by an unutterable thought in the mind of God.

  Among shadows thrown by clouds on the mountain slopes, Rachel glimpses a jumble of huts beside a brown river that wriggles like the biblical Aaron's rod crawling before the Pharaoh. A narrow path leads down the slopes from this high road to the river village. Rachel points and tells the others she wants to go there.

  Maître Pornic pulls on the reins to slow the oxen, turns and shakes his head. "That is a Welsh village, baroness. We'll not be welcome there."

  "Is it within my domain?"

  Denis looks back over his shoulder and nods. "Yes, my lady. We displaced them from the lower meadows last spring."

  Rachel, assuming the imperious posture of the baroness, turns to Dwn. "Let us have a taste of the famous Welsh hospitality, shall we?"

  "The Servant of Birds was always welcomed in the people’s hamlets," Dwn responds humbly in Welsh.

  Warily picking their way down the path, Guy and Roger fall back to the flanks, hands on the hilts of their swords. They let Denis take the lead with Gianni. No danger appears.

  At the sight of the approaching camels, the people descend from their fields and mud-and-woven osier huts and gawk openly. And when they are within earshot, Dwn, glad to play her role in her mistress' strategy, cannot resist calling out triumphantly: "Greetings from the Servant of Birds, returned from the Holy Land, made young by the Holy Grail!"

  As the ox wagon rumbles to a stop in the packed mud clearing before the hamlet, Rachel rises and greets the people in Welsh, offering them a humble gift from the land where Jesus lived: baskets of figs and dates, accordingly passed out by the entourage.

  The people, garbed in pelts, their hair bowl-cut over eyes and ears, receive the strange fruits with trembling hands, for they believe this food, grown from sacred land, is holy indeed. Tears glint in the eyes of the women, and the bitter stares of the men soften. Small children hide behind their mothers while older ones warily circle the camels and the turbaned knight.

  Once their astonishment fades to conviviality, several of the villagers step forward timorously to invite the baroness into their homes. The abbot, Dwn, and the Muslim knight elect to accompany her, while the other knights wait uneasily beside their horses, keeping a wary eye on the surrounding hill-forests for signs of warriors.

  Two villagers carry a harp to the meeting ground where the baroness and abbot sit with the hamlet’s chieftain, and to its soothing accompaniment, the assembled dine on oat bread, milk drunk out of great ram horns, and root-burl bowls of cheese.

  Only after they have eaten does the chieftain, propped on a simple stool, ply the young baroness with questions of her journey and the marvels she has experienced.

  Rachel tells her story, and as she speaks, the utter simplicity of the people—with their smells of river mist and tanned hides, their taciturn swaying, intoxicated by awe, their eyes like wounds of soft light perceiving the truth in what she herself cannot believe—enchants her utterly and holds her in kindred thrall.

  -/

  The kindness of the Welsh people, the jubilant grace with which they received back the land that Guy and his knights had taken from them over the years, redeems all the fetid feelings of Rachel's deception. When she leaves the hamlet, followed all the way back up to the hill road by singing clans people, she feels almost drunkenly free of the guilt that had troubled her the day before with Denis. Even with Guy stony-eyed and Roger Billancourt muttering under his breath, she knows that her role as the baroness has worked some good—at least for the time that she is here.

  Shortly past noon, Branden Neufmarche's castle appears among knolly hills. Trampled fields, an abandoned catapult, and the rubble of a collapsed wall attest to the aborted siege. None of the knights will approach the castle. And on a ridge far out of crossbow range, the Swan banderole unfurls in the summer breeze.

  Branden Neufmarche himself rides out, accompanied by two knights and four sergeants. He looks not at all like the regal-browed, raven-haired Drew Neufmarche of the aquiline nose and heavy jaw whom Ailena had loved without the sanction of marriage for three decades. His son Branden has strawberry hair, oily, pocked skin, and a face as chinless as a toad's. With petulant anxiety, he paces his horse before Guy and Roger, angry and nervous at the same instant. He will not approach close enough to take the saddlebag Guy offers him with a disdainful glare. His sergeant approaches to retrieve it, and Guy withdraws his hand. "Take it yourself, Branden."

  With mincing steps and apprehensive looks, Branden snatches the bag and retreats hurriedly.

  "Let this token inspire peace between us," Rachel announces loudly.

  Branden peers at her incredulously. He remembers the baroness as a knobby, bent hag with a heart of stone. That the rumors about her rejuvenation could possibly be true dents his heart with despair: What God would have mercy on her? Clearly, she is the Devil's scion.

  "Your father and I were friends," Rachel adds warmly. "Let there be no hostility between us."

  Scorn lifts Branden's lip, revealing thick gums and tiny teeth. "I am not my father," he says and gallops off, stealing one nervous glance backward.

  -/

  A brooding wind has lured thunderish clouds out of the mountains, and a gray sun crawls down the sky. The ox van, wending on precarious switchback trails high in the Epynt Hills, advances less than an hour's journey from the remote abbey of the Trinity. Yet, all that is visible are ragged cliffs dotted with goats and, far below, rocky gorges where twisted thorn trees gather their wrath among shattered boulders.

  Thierry, who with his father, William, brings up the rear, knows that his black moment has come. Yesterday, William schooled him in the necessity of toppling the ox van when they reached the high trails. "Power is taken—not given," William had always told him, and that made all the more sense now that the Devil had returned his wicked great-grandmother, the old crone whose curse had doomed her husband, whose evil ways had cruelly haunted his godfather Guy.

  Now the moment had come to win the love of his godfather. He only feared that the holy man might topple into
the abyss with the Devil's daughter. "The abbot will be holding the reins," William had assured him. "And if he lets go, we know at least he's bound for heaven. His soul will bless you for dispatching the Pretender to hell."

  William had planned to do the task himself but realized that the greater danger would be in fending off the saber-armed Falan. To that end, he places his steed behind Falan's camel, and when, at a critical turn along a steep precipice, Thierry lurches forward with a stern shout, as if to control his spooked steed, William advances to keep the Muslim knight from turning on the narrow trail.

  Pretending to lose his balance and reeling hard against the ox wagon, Thierry knocks one of its rear wheels over the edge. The wagon lurches and tilts, throwing Rachel from her bench to the side planks overpeering the gorge. A scream jams in her throat as she stares into the vasty depths.

  Maître Pornic and Dwn, on the driving trestle at the front of the wagon, clutch at each other and look back to see the baroness kneeling over the brink, staring at the rear wheel on its axle spinning in emptiness. They cry out as one for help.

  Falan struggles to turn his camel, and William, feigning alarm for his son and looking away from the Muslim, keeps his horse pressed against the camel's haunch so it cannot turn about. Guy and Roger stand in their saddles to watch, blocking Gianni, who had taken the point.

  Mastering his jittery horse, Thierry leans over the back of the van and reaches for the baroness. Before Maître Pornic and Dwn can react, Thierry fakes a stumble and rams the van again with his mount, this time forcing a front wheel over the edge and heaving the whole wagon to its side.

  Rachel falls, clutching at the roof pole. It snaps in her hands and, shrieking, she topples out of the wagon. With one arm, she seizes hold of the hide coverings lashed to the outside of the van and hangs there, dangling over the rocky plunge. Her other hand claws for a handhold on the hides. Eyes bulging, she sees Dwn above her, on the driver’s bench. The old woman slaps away Maître Pornic's hands reaching to lift her out, and she clambers down into the tilted wagon.