Servant of Birds

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Keep that grief in your heart," she responds and puts a finger to his brow to relax his frown. "Show me only your happiness." She kisses his lips. "Remember, I told you that you are my strength, because you are wrong? You said I am not a Jew. That I am the baroness. That gave me the courage to go on. Now, that destiny is fulfilled. The Grail that Ailena gave me has been drained. I am not the baroness anymore. I am a Jew again—and it is time for me to quest my own Grail." She lets his hand go and steps back. "I will return to the Holy Land, Thomas."

  "I will come too!" he groans.

  "No. Please. Your Grail is here, Parsifal. Have you forgotten? The ruler and the land are one. When I leave, you must be the castle's baron. The earl of Epynt."

  "No!" He seizes her hand. "I will come!"

  She clasps her free hand over his. "Have you heard nothing of what I've said?"

  "I love you!"

  "Then, you must let me go. My place is with my people."

  "Together—" His eyes wince with the effort of speech. "We will go together."

  "Thomas, listen to me." Her grip tightens in his clasp. "If you leave, you will abandon these people who need you. Your solitude belongs here. In your people and your land. If you forsake that, you forsake your truth."

  "We make truth."

  "Do we?" Her head tilts skeptically. "I think not, Thomas. Have I chosen to be a woman? A Jew? An orphan? Have you chosen? We can accept or forsake our destinies. But we cannot make them."

  "For you, I will forsake mine."

  She frowns. "Thomas, will you abandon these people who have fought and died for the vision of the Grail? If you leave, who will rule? Clare? Hugues backed by his grieved father William? Or will some other lord of the March fill your absence with his tyranny? No, Thomas. Too many lives need you. Don't you see? You are blessed. Your Grail is here—and that Cup will not pass from you."

  Thomas hangs his head. What she says, he hears with his heart and knows. "Stay." He speaks without looking up.

  "This is not my place. I belong..." She trails off, not really knowing in her heart where she belongs.

  He grimaces, looks up and says through his teeth, "The Jews think you are wrong—here." He taps his brow. "Mad."

  "Love proceeds from wrong to wrong," she answers with a soft smile. "I will earn a place for myself as Rachel Tibbon."

  You have every answer, he thinks, looking sadly at her, imprinting each small detail of her face in memory. You have won those answers through hardship—and that has made them unbreakable.

  He knows he must bend before their truth. He collects himself and kisses her fingers in his grasp. "When?"

  "Now," she answers. "After we leave the garden. My maids have already packed for me."

  Panic shakes him like a puppet. "So soon!"

  "Please, don't be afraid," she comforts. "The longer we are together, the greater our suffering when we part." She removes the baroness' signet ring and presses it into his hand. "Ailena wants you to have this."

  He feels Rachel's body heat in the ring. Holds it tightly, asks, "How will you go?"

  "I have arranged with Erec and his men for an escort to Newport. The jewels your grandmother bequeathed me will pay for my passage and my place in the Levant." She takes his hand and adds, "I will leave now, Thomas. And you will stay. And rule. If you remember my suffering—you cannot fail. We must reach out of our solitude in communion. Or we are doomed."

  She squeezes his hand and looks deeper into his eyes. "Reach out to Denis. He will be your warmaster. Harold will steward the domain's monies. And William will lend you his wrath to fend off the greed of other men, if only for the sake of the one son left him. With Erec as your ally, the peace will outlive you and your grandchildren."

  She smooths the crease between his eyes with her thumb and smiles softly at him. "Do not fear for me, Thomas. I have grown wise on cruelties. And I have learned to trust in the mercies of love."

  -/

  The news that the Lady of the Grail departs once again for the Holy Land spreads through the village by midmorning. At noon, a crowd from the castle and the village line the toll bridge road. All mourning for the dead ceases, amid tossed flowers and jubilant cheers.

  Clare weeps uncontrollably, and Gerald, Ummu, and her maids struggle to restrain her from mounting the caravan and accompanying her mother. Ta-Toh scurries onto her shoulder and, to appease her, offers a fat beetle he has caught.

  The knights weep, too—quietly.

  Harold kneels to kiss the hem of her bliaut. Gianni blesses her with his last sanctified act as a priest. And Denis insists on standing as she passes, though his wound hammers like a spike through his chest.

  "We will keep our faith in Yeshua ben Miriam," he promises. "Baruch ata adonai!"

  Thomas, heir and appointed ruler, rides beside her. Through gawking crowds, her palfrey exits the castle and trots past kneeling villeins. One of the villeins leaps up and hands her a crucifix so expertly woven from Welsh osier the figure of Christ wears a bristly crown.

  When she holds it aloft, the people shout, "Valaise! Chalandon!"

  At the forest’s edge, Erec and a dozen of his warriors greet Rachel and Thomas.

  Rachel removes a velvet roll from her saddlebag and opens it on her lap, revealing two things: the Seljuk dagger of ivory hilt—and the golden torque from Falan Askersund, inscribed in Arabic.

  "You two must rule Epynt together," she says to the Welshman and the Norman. "And these offer tokens of your union."

  She hands the curved dagger to Erec. "I give you this dagger, forged by a far-off hand, by which to cut away foreign influence and remain pure.

  "And to you, Thomas, I give the torque, to hold you in thrall to this foreign land. I trust you to serve with honor and love."

  She takes each of their hands. "You both know who I am in truth. So, I can speak to you in truth. I am a Jew. Rachel Tibbon. I know what it is to live in foreign lands—and what it is to struggle against foreigners. You are both Christians. If you forget what love is won by your messiah’s suffering, who will remember?"

  During the ride through the woods, both Erec and Thomas try to convince Rachel to stay. The determination in her heart deepens the more they talk. No further explanation is possible.

  She does not know what will become of her in the Holy Land. She knows only, she must go there. Stillness alone holds dread for her now. It is as though the land itself has finished with her in this place. Hazy mountains above the forest peer through shawls of rain, watching her pass.

  She knows she must find the landscape where she belongs. From those granite-browed mountains, the rains wander into the desert, rare and true as faith.

  At the river Usk, a ferry receives her and the Welshmen, and she parts from Thomas. Tears glisten the raw length of his scar.

  Every river is the river of time, he recalls her saying as the barge drifts into the current and she shrinks to a mote on the watery horizon.

  For a long time afterward, he stands on the shore listening to the fruity burble of the river. Tenacious animal patience feeds on the nostalgia of impossible love. A long life attends.

  -/

  On the ferry, Rachel leans at the stern, apart from her escort, alone with herself at last, no longer a baroness, merely a woman listening inward and hearing nothing but her own silence.

  I came here haunted, she thinks, staring at the dazzle of trees on the shore and deer watching from tussocky grass. I leave whole. Now, it is the world in its fragments that is haunted. That is as it always was. A world broken into being.

  Beneath her, the river moves like a slow, strong heart. Reassured by the distances it promises to carry her, she tries to think through what she has endured in this strange land.

  Her grandfather’s sacrifices, his labors had saved her life but could not heal her. All his prayers in the temples, all the rabbis’ prayers, all the blood of the sacrificed doves did not move the dark, mysterious heart of God enough to lift His madness from her brain.
>
  Until now, she had never understood why such sincerity had failed.

  As the river bears her away from the place of her transformation, she only comprehends this much: God is not only good. God is All. God is good and evil.

  So, the rage and the predatory deceit of the baroness have worked a miracle, after all. Ailena's implacable fury and cunning exploited very effectively her people's faith in God—a faith simple and strong enough to believe that miracles happen, that mere bread could be a Savior's flesh—

  That humble faith had joined with the ferocious rapacity of the baroness' wicked heart, and that merger of good and evil had created a role for her to play that has, by sweat of her bone, actually healed her!

  An ironic laugh swells from her silence. Instantly, irreverence vanishes into the absence of her grandfather and her family—good people, whose ancestors had sacrificed countless unmarked birds to their wrathful God, begging for peace.

  But the blood of doves is not what God has wanted from me. All along, it has been the bread of hawks.

  * * *

  Author’s Comments

  The Grail has a long association in literature with King Arthur, and readers have sometimes thought that my Arthurian series, The Perilous Order of Camelot, included this novel, originally titled Kingdom of the Grail. To resolve that confusion, I changed the title of this edition.

  The central theme of this novel asserts that personal identity is a mystery, much as creation itself. To further this theme, I chose to use present tense. My thinking is that past tense intimates a standpoint outside the events of the story; whereas, present tense suggests a continually unfolding truth.

  Truth, of course, is the dark heart of humanity. Truth has warranted much of history’s most pitiless evil. That is so, because truth fractures into wholes – such as justice – God – and self. This novel seeks to penetrate and survey the illusory fortress of truth. To the extent that it fails, it is true.

  A. A. Attanasio

  aaa@lava.net

  http://aaattanasio.com/

  eBooks Available from A. A. Attanasio

  (newly revised by the author)

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  The audiobook edition of The Conjure Book narrated by Laura Rubin available at Audible.com

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  The audiobook edition of Radix narrated by Sergei Burbank available at Audible.com

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  The audiobook edition of In Other Worlds narrated by David Gilmore available at Audible.com