Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "You don't even know Hubert Macey," Gianni argues. "Have you even met him?"

  "I've seen him at the festivals in Talgarth and Y Pigwyn," Madelon answers defensively.

  "Then you know the pox has disfigured him. His nose looks like nibbled cheese."

  Madelon glances sharply at Gianni. "How do you know that?"

  "Your grandmother, Clare, has told my dwarf all about the old man."

  "He's but thirty years old.'

  "Twice your age!"

  "You're not much younger."

  "Five whole years. And I've no children from a prior marriage."

  "Who knows how many bastards you've strewn behind?"

  "But ... but none will seek me out. Whereas the Macey children will be all about you. And the youngest is merely three years your junior. Think how she'll feel, her mother in the ground a year and you in bed with her father."

  Madelon stops and squints angrily. "The castle is over that rise. May we please go the rest of the way in silence? I do not wish to talk about this anymore."

  "Why not? Are you afraid to dwell on it? Afraid that you will see there is no love in your heart for this man?"

  "Of course I have no love for him. Marriage is not about love, you fool. Hubert Macey is an earl."

  "Am I the fool, Madelon?" His chiseled face holds the moonlight like marble. "Whether you are the wife of an earl or a simple knight in the service of a baroness, we grow old and we die. At least with me, you will know love and passion."

  She huffs a laugh. "I will know humiliation. You are a priest."

  "I am a knight-priest. And I will renounce my priesthood for you and be a knight. There is no humiliation in that."

  Madelon continues walking. Feelings swirl and pulsate like the moonshadows flaring around her. Does she dare hope for what Gianni promises? Her head dizzies as she tries to disengage from her fear and think this through. Gripped by the intimacy of the life growing inside her, all her fibers want to weep—but with caring or rage?

  She stares up stupidly at the radiant clouds, wanting some clarity from heaven. All she can bring to mind is the image of Arrière-grand-mère weeping with joy at the news of the frailty inside her and promising all would be well.

  She pitches forward, her foot sunk in a rabbit hole. A tearing sensation has immobilized her ankle, and pain cuts to the bone. Gianni rushes over her even as she cries out, steadying her, gently extricating her caught leg. He lays her on the ground, and she clutches at his shoulder as he examines her ankle.

  "No bones are broken," he reassures her. "It hurts, I know. The muscle is torn." He forestalls her fright with a quick smile. "Ripped like the fabric of my heart. Only yours will heal."

  The hot wash of pain subsides as he unlaces her shoe. She watches him burst the shoulder seam on the sleeve of his blouse and expertly wrap the cloth over the arch of her foot and around her ankle.

  Clouds slide over the moon, yet even in the tense darkness his presence holds vividly familiar. The slant of his shoulders, the handsome cut of his profile, and the assured and tender strength in his hands disperse her gloomy lamentations.

  Could she give herself to pox-scarred Hubert? Now that her own castle is secure, perhaps, indeed, no necessity requires her to marry simply for sanctuary.

  When Gianni lifts her and she puts her arms about his neck, she senses that heaven has answered her. She intuits that answer more than comprehends it. She feels, unthinkably deeper, the terror of her baby relax. Perhaps no need persists for the purging herbs? Mountains of silver spirit shine again as the moon peeks over the clouds. She feels affirmed in her decision. Arrière-grand-mère is right, she thinks with relief. All manner of thing shall be well!

  "Gianni," she says quietly as he sets her atop her steed. "I admit I have been wrong. I have been much too stubborn to see. I do love you."

  Gianni steps back, then presses closer in the grip of a precarious feeling. "You will be my wife?"

  "When you have put off the Church's cloth and done your penance—yes, I will marry you."

  Gianni closes his eyes, offering a silent prayer. His entire body fringes with joy. He kisses her hand and looks up at her with radiant satisfaction. "I will earn your love anew each day, I promise."

  On the way over the rise and across the moony field under Merlin's Knoll, the two fervently discuss the many possibilities of their future and all the small obstacles to their love. At the toll bridge, they pause. Madelon throws the grass pouch from Pig-eyed Mavis into the Llan, and Gianni draws his dagger, cuts the crimson cross from his tunic, and tosses it after.

  They enter the castle and traverse the bailey laughing conspiratorially and do not notice one of the sergeants running ahead along the rampart of the outer wall. Riding atop her steed, Madelon feels barely troubled by the hot pain in her ankle. This very night, Gianni will write the bishop at Talgarth and, at dawn, he will seek out Maître Pornic and beg penance of the holy man.

  The inner gate opens at Gianni's call, and William and Thierry stand before them, their torchlit faces tight, dark, and savage.

  -/

  From behind a thorn hedge, Erec watches Rachel climb a ferny hummock and scan the maze of forests, hills, and turbulent streams. All the previous day and throughout the night, he has followed her unseen, waiting for her to need him.

  She made no attempt to kill herself again—nor did she seem troubled traversing the somnolent woods far from her castle. She knew where to find edible mushrooms and berries in the dense coverts, and seemed at ease drinking brook water from her hands. When the rain beat her, she opened her arms to the wind, and Erec thought his heart would burst at glimpses of her nakedness shining through her robes.

  Between bouts of storm, she found wind-blown briar wedged among boulders, dry inside, and she concocted little fires by twisting a stick in a burl packed with dusty leaves. Sweet smells of burnt myrtlewood and cedar weave around her, and drift downwind to where Erec crouches, aching with desire. He has had time to consider how much she has dared and suffered to be the Servant of Birds, and he loves her all the more for her audacity.

  Several times he has been tempted to approach her and declare his love again, but each time he stops himself. Love is not enough for a woman like this, he finally believes. Fate alone can join us—or not. A chill blows through him. For the first time since childhood, he longs for supernatural power, for the rhymes his grandmother whispered to the singers behind the sunset.

  A rider appears among the cloud-shadows on the meadow, and Erec backs away, tarrying only long enough to identify the horseman as a Swan knight. Once certain that the knight has spotted the Lady of the Grail, Erec turns and disappears into the dark mouth of the forest.

  -/

  Rachel sits under a yew tree, weary and hungry, watching sunlight glisten on the wind-brushed fur of a grassy field, when a man on horseback approaches.

  Yesterday, she wandered through the country in the rain. The wide vista of rain-lit forest-hills and misty valleys gleamed, a shining, gray-banded agate. By twilight, the storm had passed, and the fiery tumult of the sky cleaved heaven from earth.

  All the dreaminess of her brush with death dimmed with those drastic vapors. Watching the claw of the moon riding through night clouds, she felt despair all over again. Grandfather's murder, Dwn's death, and the life she had shaped from the baroness' deceptions—all seemed futile. When she finally fell asleep curled up in a root cove, she wished she would not wake again.

  She woke famished and weak. For a terrible, disoriented moment, she believed she was back in the woods with her grandfather, a child again, and all that had happened since a dream. Despair clutched her—and then, eyeing the splendor of her muddy and tattered robe, with its fine lace and delicate fabric, she realized what terrors lay behind her. Nothing had been worse than those cruel, numb years of aimless wandering. Even Grandfather’s death had been mercifully swift and good compared to the degradation he had endured as a vagabond, to sustain her.

  All sha
ll be well, she greeted the new day and foraged for berries.

  Emptiness deepened about her again. She remembered enough of yesterday’s intoxication to understand that the stillness of heaven embraced everything—this was God's high silence in which the world, with all its people and things, flowed like clouds. She wandered across the morning and deep into the afternoon enraptured by the strange beauty of fate that had brought her through such sorrow to these strong hills with their nettles and cow-parsley and flowering grass jangling their colors.

  At last, her strength drained. She sat down under a yew, where a few shaggy trees staggered out of a forest into a wide, tussocked field. She dozed for a while. When she woke, she saw a rider approaching across the field. Now, he draws close enough for her to recognize the sugar-white hair of Denis Hezetre. She stands and waves, and his horse trots over.

  Denis approaches with an easy smile in his boyish face. "Where's Bold Erec? Is he nearby—or were your Angevin charms too hot for his Welsh blood?"

  Denis dismounts and removes a flask, a wedge of cheese, and a heel of black bread from his saddlebag. As they eat, she tells of her abduction and attempt at suicide.

  "After Gilbert," Denis says soberly, "you would never marry by duress again. If Erec knew you at all, he would never have forced your hand." He presses his brow to her knee. "I am so grateful God has spared you. We need you, Ailena." He lifts a careworn face. "I need you."

  Rachel's spine tightens, and she sits taller. He does not need Ailena Valaise as she was before, she tells herself. He needs the Ailena Valaise before him now.

  He has abandoned his staunchest friend for her—not for an Ailena whom he had helped to exile, but for her, whatever name he calls her. And that is so for the others as well: Clare, Madelon, the villagers—all would be impoverished without her.

  The helplessness she had experienced yesterday, that had moved her toward death, had been a delusion. She had lost faith in the lie that Ailena Valaise had lived her last years to make true.

  But that lie is truth. She is the baroness so long as she believes in herself. That, she sees, is my Grail—all of Ailena's memories and training wanting to be remade into a destiny—my destiny.

  She places her hands to the sides of Denis' face and says sincerely, "God has favored me."

  -/

  Clare drops the vellum to the floor and stamps on it. "To damnation fire with all of Guy's demands!"

  Gerald bends to retrieve the letter, and Clare seizes his shoulder. He looks apologetically at the other knights sitting at the table in the council chamber. Harold runs an anxious hand over his bald pate, and William and Thierry glower. "Until the baroness returns," he says indulgently, "Clare is the eldest authority."

  "Ailena's been gone two days," William complains. "She may never return. And if she does, she will not be alone. She will occupy our keep with an army of barbarians."

  "I will not have Guy commanding us!" Clare shouts. "He acts as though he were our lord. How dare he write a letter of demands?"

  "Grand-mère," Thierry intercedes firmly, "Uncle is the domain’s rightful heir."

  "Ailena has been gone but two days," Clare answers. "If she does not return by week's end, I will accede to his authority. Not until then."

  "That is not one of your options, Clare," William says. "Guy states, if we do not accept him back at once, he will come with Branden's men."

  "Then let him come!" Clare grinds her foot over the letter defiantly. "Mother’s soldiers are sworn vassals. They will fight."

  "Clare!" Gerald puts his arm about his wife and coaxes her to sit. "We dare not squander the lives of good men."

  "They have sworn their allegiance," Clare insists. "I will not be squandering their lives. They do not obey me. If they did, they would immediately release Ummu and Canon Rieti."

  "Ummu poisoned the rabbi," William states loudly, half-rising from his seat. "And the canon has been fornicating with my daughter!"

  "I cannot believe dear Ummu would murder anyone," Clare says. "As for Madelon, she is old enough to know what she is about. You were too rough with the canon—blackening both his eyes."

  "Not rough enough," William rasps. "He should be castrated! He's a priest who has slandered God!"

  "We may yet hear from the baroness," Harold interjects, wanting to deflect the hostility in the room. "The heralds that have been sent to the Welsh camps may return with word of her."

  "Regardless, we must still respond to Guy," Gerald says. "We must think of a way to borrow time."

  "Let the castle decide," Clare says, lifting her head haughtily. "If the castle will fight, then we will stand off Guy. Let the sergeants and the guildsmen and the villagers decide. Their lives are the castle's strength."

  "Men have no authority to supersede their lords," William laughs darkly. "That is like asking the limbs and organs of the body to supersede the head! That is madness!"

  "No greater madness than turning ourselves over to my iron-hearted brother." Clare rises. "Call an assembly. The castle will decide its own fate."

  -/

  "She loves me, stump!" Gianni says from the dark corner, where he lies on his back in a heap of straw.

  "So you have reminded me since your grand entrance," Ummu responds. "My heart craves pause to your addle-pated talk of love. Madelon’s love has hardly spared us any grief. Your bruised eyes must hurt less to say it, though—you say it so often."

  "She was sincere, Ummu. She cast the purging herbs into the river. She has chosen to trust in me."

  Ummu walks his legs up the stone wall so that he stands on his head. "Madelon has been as sincere with at least one other knight."

  "Am I to begrudge her the same playfulness that once was my life?"

  Ummu sighs. "Would that our jailers had as fine a sense of justice. Ta-Toh and I begrudge their comfort." At the sound of his name, Ta-Toh stirs from his nest and makes a disconsolate noise. "Listen—even this animal can find no home in our dark hole. Stay this prattle of love and tell us again what you learned from the witch."

  Gianni expels a weary breath. "You've heard it twice before. There's no more to tell. Roger Billancourt purchased bane-root from Pig-eyed Mavis. Madelon heard. But to whom will she testify?"

  "You forget—I am not unloved by Clare. If she but knew!"

  "That her son-in-law and grandson are poisoners, stump? If she challenges that heartless pair, she may well be joining us."

  Ummu slumps into the straw. "What will become of us?"

  "Far better to dwell on love, little man."

  -/

  Maître Pornic squeals like a pig. He stands on the main avenue of the village, hands to mouth, oinking loudly. Among the huts scurry guildsmen in leather caps with earflaps tied under their chins and vests embroidered with the devices of their trades: armorers' anvils, cobblers' shoes, chandlers' lamps, butchers' cleavers, drapers' spools, saddle-makers' horseheads. Every guildsman has several apprentices, and all bear quarter-staves.

  Thomas Chalandon, coming over the toll bridge, stops before Blind Sian, who hears the castle's chapel bell tolling and has come down from her prayers on Merlin's Knoll to learn the news. "Good sir, stop a moment and share your eyes with a blind woman."

  "Gladly, Sian—though you'll not like what you hear."

  "Master Thomas!" Sian gusts with surprise, feeling his leather jerkin and the airy texture of his tunic. "Why are you not wearing your cassock?"

  "I've thrown it off, Sian. When our Maître broke the Sacred Visage, he broke my faith in the Church. I saw then that it is God who holds my love—and He is not confined to chapels or creeds."

  "If the Maître did that, he blessed you."

  "So I think, Sian—though the villagers will hardly believe he blesses them this day."

  "Is that Maître Pornic I hear yoicking like a pig?"

  "Yes, it is. He has come from the castle with the guildsmen. The sergeants and my family have chosen to defy my uncle's demand to return the castle to him."

&n
bsp; "The baroness has been away only two days! Your Uncle Guy is an impetuous one."

  "That is indeed one of his traits. And belligerence is another. With Branden Neufmarche's men, he will strive to take our castle. The guildsmen do not favor war, for it eats their profits, so they have sided with Maître Pornic and the Morcars, who have no love for our baroness. They have come to the village to collect the swine the baroness drove from the castle two months ago. They argue that they will need the meat in the event of a siege. But, in truth, they have always resented the villeins receiving this bounty."

  "The villagers will not stand for it," Sian declares.

  "They had better. The guildsmen crave an opportunity to crack villein skulls. And if there is a row, William Morcar and his son Thierry wait in the lists with enough sergeants to enforce the edict. They would like nothing better than to command the vassals loyal to the baroness and perhaps win that allegiance to themselves."

  Sian swats imaginary flies from her face. "The Devil's pestering minions are in the air, Thomas. And why is our holy man Pornic in the midst of them?"

  Thomas takes Sian's arm and guides her back several paces to make way for the first drove of pigs running onto the toll bridge ahead of the jeering guildsmen. "Maître Pornic has no faith in miracles, only in the Church. So you can understand his joy that Ailena Valaise is gone. Now he can restore the world to its former order."

  The squealing of the driven pigs and the shouts of the guildsmen drown out Thomas' voice. Sian tugs at his arm, pulling him away from the cacophony, back toward Merlin’s Knoll, where prayers might lift them above this precarious world.

  -/

  Afternoon shadows darken the bailey when Denis Hezetre enters the castle with the baroness seated before him. The herald’s trumpet announced her when she reached the toll bridge, and the rest of the palais have hurried into the bailey to greet her.