Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "I don't understand."

  "But you do understand!" Rachel replies. "God is a mystery. We can never understand why things work out the way they do. We have only to trust in our own meanings."

  She looks back at Thomas and sees, even in the darkness, the childlike sincerity of his gaze and the angelic grace of his gentle features. The moonglow intensifies his enigmatic beauty, and in the face of this grace, in the face of this Parsifal whose heart was meant only to be pure, she knows with certainty that she must tell him who she is.

  "I desire you, too, Thomas. And if that desire is from God, then I must tell you, out of love, out of caring for you, that I am not your grandmother. I am not Ailena Valaise. My name is Rachel Tibbon. The granddaughter of these ashes."

  Thomas stands before he even realizes he has moved.

  Hurriedly, Rachel tells him her story, leaving out nothing, not even her madness. She does not know if it is rage or disgust that widens his eyes and pulls back his upper lip.

  Thomas listens immobilized, then sags under the weight of her words. He sits on the masonry beside her, stunned, feeling the implications prickling at the numb edge of his soul. "Your vision—the Grail—all of it a lie?"

  "Not a lie, Thomas—a story."

  "A lie!"

  "No! There is a difference. The Grail is real! But not as you think. Look, it has healed me. It has washed the blood of madness from me. It has made me a baroness."

  "But you're not—" Thomas shakes his head, dumbstruck. "You're a Jew. A cruel joke played by Grand-mère from her grave "

  "Thomas—" She reaches for him.

  "No!" He recoils and is on his feet again. "Say no more!"

  "Thomas—I love you. I told you because I love you."

  With a cry, Thomas reels away and runs horrified from the ruins.

  Rachel walks out of the synagogue a husk, lighter than when she entered. The weight of her history—all of it—lies behind in the ashes. The burden of her lie has run off into the night. When Denis takes her hand to help steady her step on the dark trail, he is surprised at the lightness of her gait. Whatever is going to happen tomorrow, she walks toward it with the freedom of knowing she can lose no more of herself.

  -/

  Thomas runs blindly from Merlin's Knoll. The villagers have always said the place is haunted. No wonder the Sacred Visage could not remain whole there. No wonder the rabbi died there. Rabbi! He was no rabbi. The thought flogs him faster, and he trips over a rock, shoves himself back to his feet, and bursts into a field of tall, tasseled grass.

  Thomas runs to the verge of exhaustion, then drops to his knees. What is left to worship? he asks, in the one chapel where for him God has always dwelled. The wind soughs through the hay. Moonlight ripples across it.

  Hurtful thoughts assail him: If there is no Grail, if the old man was no rabbi, maybe the Sacred Visage was not real, either—just an odd rock in whose surface people wanted to see Christ just as they foolishly want to see Ailena Valaise in Rachel Tibbon. So Maître Pornic is right. This fodder grass is a miracle. The stars are miracles. But the Sacred Visage was only a distraction from the real miracle of God's creation and our redemption in Christ. All else is deception, the Devil's work. Maître Pornic is right. He knew about Grand-mère! He knew from the start.

  Thomas rises and staggers through the hay field, astonished at his true grandmother’s vindictive cunning and the stupidities of people hungry for miracles. Anger lances him, anger at Rachel for deceiving him and at his grandmother for mocking his faith from her grave.

  Now what? He is more alone than he has ever been. Wading through tracts of barley, the night breeze garlanding him with fragrances of pollen, river mist, and cow droppings, he is afraid. Who is God to allow such illusions? Who is the Devil with the strength to defy this God?

  The village rises from the fields. To the left, a stand of alders blocks the mountain winds, and there the village dung-pile where Dwn had been exiled. Did she know? Did she die believing her mistress had been lovingly singled out by God?

  The glittery fields of the Milky Way soar above the perishable world, silhouetting thatched huts. He clambers the stile of a low, crumbly rock wall and passes under a walnut tree, where a dog barks awake, recognizes him, and drowsily lowers its head to its paws.

  He thinks to pass through the village, cross the toll bridge, and return to the castle, to his garret in the donjon where he hopes sleep will ease his distressed soul. He spies the village's shanty chapel with its walls of woven branches.

  Inside, he kneels on the packed earth before the bark-covered rail and peers into the dark at the crude crucifix. Head resting in his hands, he prays for the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to come to him.

  Silence quilted with scents of wild mint and rosemary seeps through the walls with the draft from the fields. On the split log that serves as an altar, someone has left an offering of blackberry brambles wreathed into a thorny crown.

  The humble gift brings tears to his eyes, and he weeps at the sincerity of people's love for God—the very sincerity that serves so gullibly in the Devil's work.

  "Shed no tears at the altar," a hushed voice says from the entry, and Thomas turns to see Maître Pornic on his knees in the doorway, crossing himself. The holy man rises and advances between the pews of splintery benches. "Jesus wept tears of blood for us all. His sorrow redeemed our souls. Now we should approach God with joy."

  Thomas wipes the tears from his face. "There can be no joy in my heart tonight."

  "Yes, I feel the same pain, Thomas." Maître Pornic kneels beside him. "Tomorrow, men will die."

  "Men die every day," Thomas says and lifts his face toward the crucifix shrouded in darkness. "I would think you would be happy. They are departing this sinful world for heaven, are they not, Maître?"

  "Those who die in grace, yes." Maître Pornic lays a bony hand on Thomas' shoulder. "My son, are you distressed at something deeper? Are you still angry at me for shattering the icon in the Jew's temple? The rabbi would have been pleased."

  "I cannot say what troubles me, Maître. Please, leave me to my solitude."

  "You are a soul I thought marked for service to God. You threw off your cassock when I destroyed the icon. I have been deeply troubled since that my zeal has deprived God of your love."

  "I understand why you broke the Sacred Visage," Thomas mutters. His clasped hands press against his face. "Now, please, go away."

  "Only an absence of faith requires miracles," the holy man says and squeezes Thomas' shoulder. "Your faith has always been strong. What you have always questioned is not God but your own worthiness to serve as God's priest. Am I wrong?"

  Thomas turns so that Maître Pornic must remove his hand. "I do not wish to speak now. My soul is troubled, and only God can help me bear this. Please, leave me to speak with Him."

  Maître Pornic lowers his chin to his chest, and, in the dark, the ring of his silver hair gleams like a halo. "After you departed the abbey, an encyclical arrived from our Holy Father Innocent the Third. In it, he describes a new way of purging the soul that he encourages all of his flock to practice. It is a general confession of the soul's disturbances and sins. When heard by a priest, this confession is received directly by God."

  "God hears us in our hearts," Thomas says and turns back to the rail.

  "Yes. But let Him hear you also in your voice that you may be forgiven not only in your heart but in your body, which carries the heart’s burdens."

  Thomas shakes his head. "What troubles me is secret. It is a confidence I cannot break without betraying myself."

  "What you tell me, Thomas, belongs to God. Speak, my son. Unburden yourself, find favor with God—and quiet my earthly concerns that I may know I have not driven you from the Church."

  "I threw off my cassock, because I cannot become a priest," Thomas says to the darkness on the altar. "I cannot abide the strictures of faith. God is in all things, and I do not need to reside in the Church to find Him. I am sorry that I h
ave taken so many years to see so obvious a truth."

  "Then I am reassured that I did not estrange you." Maître Pornic pats the young man’s shoulder, crosses himself, and stands. "I will pray for you, Thomas. Whatever path you choose from here will lead you to God."

  Maître Pornic pads away, and Thomas' gaze falls again on the wreath of blackberry brambles. The expectation that shaped this offering and placed it here awakes in him a kindred feeling, a tender trust in what cannot be seen, a love that death cannot gain on, a love that saves us from the frights of living.

  Sadness overwhelms him that such supernal love would be sought in a crown of blackberry thorns, in the stain of a rock shard, or in the deception of an embittered old woman.

  "Maître—" Thomas calls. "Come back. I need to confess."

  -/

  The men sleep restlessly in the barracks. A nightmare yodel from a sergeant fighting tomorrow’s battle wakes the man beside him, and he sits up and blinks into the yellow shine of oil lamps. Sergeants stripped to their loincloths sit at the edges of their bunks muttering angrily. Is it a raid?

  The sleepy-eyed man hears no alarm, looks about to see if anyone else girds for battle. He observes Maître Pornic among the whispering men. Someone has died, he thinks and rises from his bunk.

  "You," one of the master sergeants points to the groggy man. "Wake the others. Maître Pornic has important news."

  -/

  Madelon lies awake in her bed, hands crossed over her belly, imagining the child growing within her. This soul has found refuge in her—and in her Gianni. Their love will defeat the doubts of others. For now, only the baroness believes in them, but in time her love for her baby and for Gianni will matter far more than the anguish of her parents, the ire of Thierry, or the mockery of Hugues.

  She prays for the baby, for this soul so fresh from God that He must be all the closer for this new life in her: Protect my Gianni on the field of battle tomorrow. Spare him mortal wounds and the misery of defeat and return him to me so that he may accomplish his penance to You and be this child's father and— How had the baroness said it? Please, Father in heaven, let my Gianni live that he may fulfill the demands of love.

  -/

  While Gianni sleeps in the sacristy, clutching a ribbon twined about an elf lock of Madelon’s hair, Ummu paces before the altar. Ta-Toh watches drowsily from his resting place in the crook of the Virgin Mary's arm.

  "How can he sleep this night?" Ummu mutters, half-hoping his displeasure will rouse the slumbering knight so he can berate him again for agreeing to marry that wanton gamine. "Tomorrow he cannot beg off fighting as a priest. Tomorrow he risks his life for the privilege to marry! How grotesque!"

  -/

  Blue stars and the half moon dangle above the vineyard, and the cherry orchard chimes, full of nightingales. Thomas wanders slowly along the toll bridge road feeling bright within.

  All the darkness of his grandmother's deception passed out of him with his confession to Maître Pornic. Now, as he wanders through the night, he contemplates the good that Rachel Tibbon has done for the village and the castle in the short time she has been among them.

  She is a good woman, he realizes, recalling how she risked her life to steal from Dic Long Knife so that the castle would not be lost. No anger lingers in his heart. She had not sought out this fate. She had been selected for it by his wily grandmother.

  He laughs aloud with evil joy to think he had actually believed that the bitter and cruel old woman, Ailena Valaise, could have become the playful, selfless lady with the dark eyes.

  Alas, sadness still taints him with the thought that Rachel's story of the Grail is just a story. He regards again the blackberry wreath on the altar in the village chapel, and a pang of remorse troubles him. The greatest good Rachel has accomplished—greater than enriching the peasants or saving the castle—is strengthening her people's faith in the divine.

  Aber the Idiot, Blind Sian, Legless Owain, and all the village's other unfortunates have been renewed by her miracle. Even the knights and sergeants, so cynical under Guy's command, have become Bible scholars, great contemplators on the life of Yeshua ben Miriam!

  Another laugh rises in him at the thought of his father worshiping as a Jew and businesslike Harold Almquist and prosaic Denis Hezetre growing rabbinical beards.

  Another wave of concern sweeps through him, and the smile fades. He stops walking before the road that leads to the castle and wonders if he must tell the others. Should the men ride against Guy tomorrow believing they fight—and die—for the Lady of the Grail?

  He walks onto the field toward a byre, where the cowherd has left a stool, and sits down. He looks up at the castle, the torchlit fastness a massive chesspiece of heaven held in place by darkness. The watchmen on the ramparts ignore him, not realizing that such an insignificant figure in the dark among the lowing cows could carry a secret that might decide their fate.

  Above the castle spires, the distant torches of heaven flicker. There is a God, Thomas believes. The mystical beauty of the night touches his soul. And this whole world is His chapel.

  With those words spoken silently to himself, he has his answer: The lives in this castle and in the abbey where he dwelled for so long—for that matter, the lives in all the castles and abbeys, in all the synagogues and mosques, in all the cities and villages of the world—all exist together in God’s house. Though they go off in different directions, following their destinies like startled birds, they are yet in God's house.

  Thomas stands. He will tell no one other than God what Rachel has confided in him. Tomorrow, these men will fight and die for the Lady of the Grail—because she is real. As his uncle is real. If Guy Lanfranc prevails, all will be as before. The villeins will lose their pigs and the chapel they might yet build from the ruins atop Merlin’s Knoll. His mother and sisters will lose their troubadours and courts of love.

  They will all lose much more as well. They will lose the Lady of the Grail and the sustaining hope of the divine that Rachel Tibbon has made out of an old woman's curse.

  -/

  Rachel cannot sleep. She has lit every oil lamp in her bedchamber and has had three more brought in. She wants light, enough of it to keep out the night. Out in the darkness, a murderous mob lurks, waiting for dawn to attack. They have different faces than she remembers from her childhood; even so, they are the same mob that destroyed her family estate, slaughtered her uncles and cousins, and forced her parents to slay their children and themselves. And now, they are coming for her.

  Each flame perches at the lip of each lamp, delicate and alert. Sitting on her bed, she stares at them, wanting to take them in through her eyes to illuminate the darkness inside her.

  She knows she would see the emptiness holding all her memories, and her fright would shrink into place instead of swelling all around her. If she could let in enough light, her memories would be just memories, not forebodings.

  She reminds herself, this is a war that the people want to fight to stop Guy Lanfranc. This is not her war. Her memories of her family's massacre are just memories, she tells herself again and again. With enough light inside her, she would see that. Tomorrow has its own freedom to be what it will be.

  A knock at her door interrupts her ruminations. She has told her maids to leave her alone, and she opens the door expecting a herald with news from the scouts. Instead, Thomas stands there, his countenance soft and contrite.

  Rachel hides her surprise and dismisses the maids hovering anxiously behind the young man. She invites him to enter.

  "Rachel," he says once the door closes. "I shouldn't have run away."

  Rachel feels the sides of her neck and her cheeks warm with relief. "I shouldn't have lied to you—to everyone."

  Thomas smiles gently. "Not a lie. A story. There is a difference."

  "Is there?" she asks, trying hard to perceive if he mocks her.

  "Yes. One deceives. The other conceives. The good you've conceived during your short time he
re—that is truly a miracle."

  "I fear it is more a curse than a miracle to have brought this castle to the brink of war."

  Thomas' eyebrows go up. "But you haven't! That is my uncle's doing. I am surprised he has not struck at you sooner."

  Pain flinches in Rachel’s stare. "Grandfather—and Dwn— they were both killed by him, I am sure of it. I am so afraid for the many more that will die tomorrow."

  "Here in the March, there has always been war, Rachel. If you had not come, the very men arrayed against us tomorrow would have fallen at Uncle's siege of Neufmarche's castle."

  "I would submit to Guy if that is what is best for the others. My grandfather’s soul does not want vengeance."

  Thomas takes Rachel's shoulders in his hands. "When our castle fights tomorrow, it will not be for vengeance but for the good that we have known from the Lady of the Grail."

  "Then in your heart my story is true?"

  He looks at Rachel's pale face, her eyes round as night. "Let tonight be the one night that your story is not true, the one night when you are not my grandmother but the woman you really are, Rachel Tibbon." Impetuously, he kisses her mouth.

  For a supreme moment, he feels her resist, then relent and press hard against him.

  He sits her down and kneels before her. "Do you doubt my sincerity?" he asks.

  "I believe my love for you is sincere," she answers. "I've not felt as I do now with anyone else."

  Cautiously, solemnly, Thomas begins to undress her, and she does the same to him. They regard each other's nakedness, open-mouthed at first, feeling and caressing, astonished. Then, they kiss again, touching as they have never touched before.

  Thomas draws the curtains around the bed and encloses them in amber shadows of amorous solitude, and a sobering thought of battle claims Rachel again—where will they be at this hour tomorrow?

  "Do not be afraid," he whispers and strokes her sable hair. "There is only tonight—and for as long as it lasts, we will be together."