Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  Gianni can resist no more. God, in His inexplicable wisdom, had abandoned him in the lists, so how could He expect a mere man, capable of laughing at misfortune and crying with joy, to withstand the amorous necessities of a passionate maiden?

  As Madelon wriggles out of her robe, Gianni clutches her hands and stops her.

  "Please, Madelon—no more."

  She stares at him, befuddled. "Don't you find me desirable?"

  His eyes snap open. "Of course! You are driving me mad with your beauty. But there is more—" He pulls her robe tight about her. "There has to be more—or I am damned."

  "What are you saying?" Madelon whines. "I am not asking you to do anything you haven't done before many times over. There is no sin if you've never had the spirit of a priest."

  "Madelon—" He puts his hands to her cheeks. "I am different now. I have seen a miracle with my own eyes. It has changed me forever.'*

  Madelon frowns. "Then you are spurning me?"

  "No!" He smiles radiantly. "What you have said to me in the chapel has worked on my heart, and now I realize you have spoken the truth. I am not a priest. Not in my soul—a soul that was made by God to love woman and be loved."

  Her frown deepens. "Are you going to sport with me or not?"

  "Is that all you want? Sport?"

  "Mother has already found a fusty old earl to be my husband. Is it wrong to want to know some passion before I'm locked away in his castle?" She presses against him. "To want what you've given so many others?"

  "I want to give you more." He takes her shoulders and holds her away from him. "I want to love you, Madelon, not just sport with you." He squeezes her shoulders tenderly. "I will renounce my priesthood. I will ask your parents for your hand."

  "Marriage?" She shrugs off his grip. "I don't want to marry you. I must marry an earl." With a tweak of his beard, she touches her nose to his. "I want your passion, not your name, Gianni. I want to see what the ribald jests delight in. I want to experience the lover's zeal before I become a matron."

  "Marry me and I will give you a lifetime of zeal."

  "Marry you!" She backs off with a frustrated huff. "I want to be your lover, not your wife." She strides to the door and looks back irately. "I thought we were going to have fun."

  As soon as she is gone, Ummu peers down furiously from the canopy. "She stood naked before you! And you turned her out!"

  Gianni starts as if from a dream, and a slow smile widens in his face as he stares at the closed door. "I did!" He faces the scowling dwarf. "You saw it, Ummu. I was sore tested—and yet I was true! I was true to my vows."

  "And false to that poor girl." Ummu rests his head petulantly in his hands, and Ta-Toh begins searching for lice in his hair.

  "But don't you see, Ummu? I've been true when never before I would have been." Gianni laughs aloud. "Now I am free to do as I please. God knows I am sincere. I can leave the priesthood without shame."

  Ummu rolls his eyes to heaven and turns his palms up. "Lord, why do You assail this small man?"

  From the first, when Gianni, as a libertine adolescent, had seduced the wife of the dwarf’s first master, a prominent merchant of Turin, Ummu had felt blessed. Deformity had forced his carnal pleasures to remain vicarious. With the merchant, there had been only rare opportunities for voyeurism, for he had been discreet with his mistresses. Gianni, however, wanted him to watch, actually needed him to stand guard during his numerous amours, a chore which Ummu's small size and prurient fascination made easy.

  Life had been good for the dwarf with his salacious knight—until the so-called miracle of the Grail tamed his master’s lust. And now, marriage! Seeing the simpering smile on Gianni's face, Ummu determines to thwart these delusions of love however he can.

  -/

  Guy's head pounds, and with a groan he sits up in his bunk and squints into the dark. Roger, already awake and dressed, looks over from the wooden basin where he is washing his face. "Is it day?" Guy moans.

  Roger opens the shutters, and pearly light slants in. "I'll have the cookhouse bring you some willow bark for a potion."

  "No potions." Guy stands and looks down at himself. He finds himself still dressed in the same wine-stained tunic from last night. "The squires put me to bed like this?"

  "Your squires are lying besotted in some alley. You dismissed them in a rage."

  "I did?"

  Roger nods and helps him lift the soiled tunic over his head. From the chest between their bunks, he removes a fresh tunic and gray britches. Seeing the baron bare-chested and sleepy-eyed, he remembers Guy as a boy—and he feels old and leathery.

  All his years of plotting war parties and conniving raids with this Lanfranc, and before him his father—all of those battles have come to this: defeated in the lists by a Muslim and the chair of state taken out from under them by a woman.

  Fatigue drenches him as he ponders the work that must be done to get their castle back—but a greater weariness rises up at the thought of starting again elsewhere.

  Guy snatches the garments and steps clumsily into his unlaced boots. "I'll bathe in the river." He seizes his sword and, wearing only brown trousers, clops past the partition and through the barracks followed by Roger. He ignores the greetings of the visiting knights, who are already awake and dressing, and shuffles past them and out the door in his loose boots.

  William Morcar and Thierry fall in behind. As they pass the stables, Harold Almquist and Denis Hezetre look out from where they are chatting with several of the marquess' knights. Guy beckons the two with a wave, and they exchange anxious glances and join him.

  "Come with me to the river," Guy says and leads them across the bailey and out the gate. They march morosely across the exercise grounds and down the rocky slopes to where the Llan chatters along the gravel banks, rustling and swirling among the boulders in deep pools.

  Guy hands his sword to Roger, steps out of his boots, and dives into the frothing water.

  "Why has he called us here?" Denis asks Roger.

  The warmaster ignores him and keeps his eyes on the stream.

  "Come, Roger," Denis calls out impatiently. "You unseated me in the tilt yard yesterday. I hold no grudge."

  "Yes, I unseated you. Yet, your camp won by unfair advantage," Roger grouses.

  "Unfair? Your camp was bested in hand combat."

  "The heretic used a strange weapon. Who has seen a sword like that in contest?"

  "Erec the Bold was not overcome."

  Harold shifts uneasily. "Guy has been under too long."

  The ire in Roger's face fades to concern as he searches the glinting river for Guy.

  Harold climbs atop a boulder and scans from a higher vantage, while Roger paces briskly along the shore, trying to see past the outcrops in midstream. "Perhaps he is gulling us from behind a rock," the warmaster mutters.

  "I don't see him," Harold calls.

  William and Thierry splash in up to their ankles and, with a curse, Roger drops Guy's sword and begins unbuckling his own. "He's too swacked for the river," he cries. "I should have known."

  Denis rushes fully clothed into the stream and dives headlong into the water where Guy vanished. Through the bubbles, he glimpses a body wedged between two rocks. Arms lash out to snatch him. Weighted down by his sword, Denis must pull with all his might for the two to rise.

  They break the surface in a tangle, and Guy gasps for breath. With Denis bolstering him, they thrash back to shore, and the other knights drag them out.

  Kneeling on the bank, Guy looks at Denis with ironic contempt. "You!" He chokes with sarcastic laughter and river water.

  "I should have known," Denis mutters, sitting up. "You did that on purpose."

  Guy wipes the tears from his eyes. "I expected Thierry," he says between breaths. "Or old Roger." He wipes the wet hair from his eyes. "But—of course—" He hacks another laugh. "It would be you. Still returning the favor from Eire."

  Thierry kneels beside the baron. "Uncle, forgive me. I did
n't think you were in jeopardy."

  Guy smiles darkly and cuffs the young knight’s ear. "Tell me you hoped I'd have drowned, and that would be the Thierry I know. I'd have done the same, lad, were I you. Let the river take the fool and you take the barony. That's the Lanfranc spirit, eh? Well, I don't blame you for it." He pushes Thierry back on his haunches. "But you'd have a hard time of it, wresting the chair of state from that vixen who's got it now."

  Denis pushes to his feet with an angry mutter.

  Guy grabs his ankle. "Wait, Denis. I must ... thank you. You have restored some sense to my soul."

  Denis shakes his head. "Enough sense to believe my love for you has never wavered? You have your own selfish and stubborn notions of loyalty, Guy."

  "It's not the love of any of you I question," Guy protests. "But, after my defeat yesterday, I doubted myself, my worthiness."

  "And this is how you must go about proving your worth?" Roger upbraids him. "This feckless gesture of a miffed child? Madness!"

  "I think not," Denis says comfortingly and offers a hand to Guy. "You've lost a great deal, Guy, and that must feel like madness. But you've not lost your life. You still belong among us."

  "As what?" He takes Denis' hand and rises. "A knight? This young woman's son? What mockery!" He laughs, a cold, hollow laugh, then stares at each of the knights, his arms open, his half-naked body dripping. "Have I not been a good leader? I ask you men. Have I not been the first into battle and the last out? Under my leadership, have we not flourished? All of us together— have we not made of this domain more than it were before?"

  The knights nod soberly.

  "Then who is this—this woman to take our domain away from us?" Guy asks and looks at Denis and Harold. "Even if she is Ailena herself, blessed by the saints and breast-fed by the angels, has she any right to claim what we have held and fought to hold for ten years? Let her take her place among the women. I will protect her and provide for her—but I will be damned if I will be ruled by her."

  "Then we must strike out on our own," Denis says, a new hope rising in him. "Let your mother have this land. It was her father’s to begin with. We will fashion our own realm."

  Roger groans. "There's a dream the daylight will squander."

  "I'll not forsake what my father has taken for his own and what is rightly mine," Guy answers tersely.

  Denis nods sadly and turns to go.

  "Hold," Guy says, and takes Denis' arm. The baron's gruff visage, beaded with water, softens in the morning light. "Again, I thank you, Denis—for bringing me back."

  "You belong among us," Denis replies and puts his hand over Guy's.

  "As I am no longer baron, perhaps now we may be friends again."

  Roger shoots a chiding glance at William and Thierry, saying with his look, You should have been the ones to save him.

  Searching Guy's earnest gaze for deception, Denis squeezes his shoulder. "So long as you do not try to sway my allegiance to our mistress, I am your friend."

  "As you proved in the river. Today's contests at the tourney include archery. With you in our camp, we will win the boar’s head and the wine that goes with it!"

  As Guy turns to retrieve his sword and dry clothes, Harold catches Denis' eye and conveys his concern with a fretful look. Denis nods, his expression wary, and slowly meets the stares of the other knights, who regard him with steely looks.

  -/

  Rachel wakes to dawn’s blue shadow in the windows. All she can see before her are sere hills, the Llan dried up, the riverbed cracked in large hexagonal plates, the fields blowing with gray dust and cinders flaking from the sun-blasted mountain slopes in black whirlwinds, as pestilence and plague devour the land. Nausea seizes her, and she pushes weakly to her elbows.

  Never and always, a dry voice crackles from far away. She breathes deeply and imagines the Grail. It appears in her mind shellacked with blood. In growing agitation, she lies back and stares at the rafters hardening in dawnlight. A nerve flickers between her eyes as she slowly realizes only a nightmare troubled her—a nightmare of a horrible wasteland.

  The realization offers no relief, for the gruesome images refuse to dissipate. She remembers Ailena telling her that the ruler and the land are one. How often the old woman had repeated this: The ruler and the land are one.

  So, she herself, her very life has become a wasteland. And because of David’s illness, the wound that will not heal, she is trapped here in a strange wilderness, in a stranger's life. She has lost herself and become someone else.

  Panic jolts through her, and she must grip the bedsheets with deliberate vigor to keep from shouting: I am Rachel Tibbon!

  The strangled cry in her is the clot of her nightmare. Even within her, the scream would mean nothing. She does not know who Rachel Tibbon is. She has forgotten Rachel Tibbon long ago and filled in all the empty spaces with Ailena Valaise.

  Where her own life had been, only a lie remains, a pathetic waste of a life.

  She forces her mind desperately to imagine water and greenery and things that bloom. David’s face looms before her, gaunt and ruined with suffering. "No!" she shouts and squeezes her eyes shut.

  Only when she thinks of Thomas does she remember that she had once been in love with trees, hills, and flowers. Maybe, she thinks, he can help me. He is Parsifal. He is the holy fool who can find the Grail.

  She sinks back down into the bed and breathes a relieved sigh. There can be no harm, she comforts herself, in telling this holy knight the truth, in having him as a confidant and ally until the spring when David will be strong enough to travel.

  Do they not share a unity of purpose? Did not his grandmother become the Grail for her, the cup of her exile that promised to renew her own life someday? A man with a face as sensitive and beatific as his will surely understand that she has been compelled to hide her soul where it would be safe, in the middle of a stranger's fate.

  With gathering strength, Rachel gets out of bed. Gently, she wakes the maid sleeping at the foot of her bed and sends her off to summon Thomas.

  -/

  David's bones creak as he dresses. He feels his age and knows that he hasn't the strength to journey again to Jerusalem. He will die in this alien wilderness. That thought seems strangely right and good. For the first time in a long while, he lets himself remember his dead children, and his sorrow opens a gulf so wide its far side resides not in this world.

  Ten summers have passed since the horror. The mountains that brooded over his land abide there still. The land abides there still and maybe even the vineyard and most of the orchard among the swaths of grass. Are the people who now own the land pruning the trees properly?

  Do they ever stop among the trees when the rain mists out of the snow-spangled mountains and wonder who planted the pear and apple garths? That would have been his grandfather, the big-bearded man with the limp and thundering laugh that used to frighten him as a child.

  He remembers his wife, mercifully dead twenty-five summers now. He remembers her as she looked forty years ago when they had gone up into the mountains together, a young husband and wife: her svelte, fierce body naked in the coppery grass by the slow river, her pale breasts and the dark fire fanning from her sex, even the sand grit that stuck to her flanks where they had lain on the dewfall bank learning love's mysteries in each other's arms.

  The years have gone. They have taken almost everything from him and left him luckless in a strange land. Yet, beneath the stern gaze of Adonai, even this is right and good. To remember being young, watching the somnolent river flow, thinking the years would last always—that is a blessing, for it helps him believe in his granddaughter, who is all that remains of everything he has ever loved.

  David’s prayer by the window, under dawn's pearl robes, does not beseech. Let what happens to us happen, he intones.

  -/

  "Master Thomas has left, my lady," the maid reports. "The porter says he rode off in the middle of the night. Gone back to the abbey, I would think.
"

  Rachel stops brushing her hair. Now that he is gone, and in the cold light of day, her hope of confiding in him seems foolish. He would have loathed her when he learned the truth of her identity: a Jewess sent back as a jape by a hateful and faithless crone. Numb at heart, she feels bitter relief that she has been spared that indignity.

  "The marquess is calling for you," a second maid announces from the doorway. "His lord is hungry and eager to get on with the day's games."

  Rachel blows an exasperated sigh and beckons the maids to hurry with her hair. So long as the marquess stays in the castle, her duty demands she serve him. She regards herself in the mirror. Her face looks proud and remote, with the angular bones of a woman cruel with herself. She perceives annoyance in the tightness of her mouth.

  How very like Ailena herself, Rachel notices with a chill.

  As she composes herself, she realizes that the demands of the marquess do not vex her but her hurt that Thomas has left without even a farewell. And the hopelessness of that caring, the flicker of wantonness that accompanies it, deepens her chill.

  -/

  Rachel dutifully attends the marquess at his meals, where she hears from the old man tales of the royal court, of political intrigues among Queen Eleanor and the magnates, of the illicit affairs of the palace's bored wives, and, while they sup on roasted meats and honeyed fruits, of the three years of battles between Kings Richard and Philip of France that have added famine and disease to the miseries of northern Europe.

  In the lodges, they watch Thierry fling three knights from the saddle and break lances to a draw against two others. The marquess' black-armored knights fare well in the jousts, emerging victorious more often than not. And they are everywhere, mingling with all the camps, garnering news which they then report to the marquess at table.

  Orgulous and bullying, they inspire the knights of other camps to arrogant behavior: Warriors trample fields in private duels, drunken cavaliers carry off village maids into the woods for carnal sport, squires ride hacks into mess halls, and brawls seethe in the bailey.