The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories

by Jo Graham

  I had my orders that afternoon — to find out how the waterworks functioned, that it should continue to bring us water. We always think of water first. When you have never had enough, when you have grown up where water is more precious than gold, the first thing you consider is water, even in this bright place beside the green sea. I had my orders, and quarters in one of the palaces the Byzantines had deserted.

  At evening I walked on the terrace. The sea wind kissed me. Below, the harbor made a crescent of blue, as though I stood at the topmost point and watched it curve away to my left. Across, on the island, the mighty lighthouse greeted the dark, taller than anything I had ever seen, a mountain made by men long ago in the dawn of the world. How was it made and how did it work? That was someone else's duty. Mine was waterworks.

  Beside me, fig trees in pots as large as a man bloomed in the twilight. Behind, there was a bathing pool. Water, blessed water in such quantities that a man could spend all day bathing, paddling about in a pool of clean white water! On a trellis that separated it from the terrace roses bloomed, their soft perfume scenting the air. The city gleamed white and pink in the sunset.

  "My lord," one of my men said, coming onto the terrace. "This man says he must speak with you. We have searched him and he is unarmed."

  I turned. He was past his prime but not old, with a trimmed grey beard and bright blue eyes. "What do you want?" I asked him in his tongue. It came easily to me, but I had only heard it a year or two, here and there.

  He inclined his head smoothly. "My lord Mikha'il, I have come to ask you for a life."

  I raised an eyebrow. "There are no prisoners in my keeping, and I shall take no prisoners in Eskendereyya unless someone offends against the law, for the Prophet said to treat the Egyptians as our kin."

  "I am asking for life more dear than our kin. I am asking for our books," he said, and his back was straight. "My name is Eucherios, and I have in my keeping some thousand books that were brought to safety during the siege, when the buildings in which they had been housed from time immemorial were burned."

  I frowned. "Are these sacred texts?"

  Eucherios shook his head. "No, my lord Mikha'il. Not if you ask if they are Bibles. They are science, poetry, records — a little of this and that, whatever we could carry when the fire broke out. Many of our books were taken over the sea, but we could not in conscience leave people here and take instead books to Constantinople. So these have stayed, and I with them as their keeper."

  "You are a brave man then," I said, one to another, "To stay in a city where you do not know what will happen for the sakes of some useless pieces of paper."

  "They are not useless, as you will see," he said. "I am told you have control of the waterworks. But to understand how they work you must read what I have."

  "You can tell me the secrets," I said sharply.

  He shook his head. "I can tell you how this or that gate works, where that plunge is. But you must learn the principles if you mean to truly use them. You must learn the science of hydraulic engineering. And for that you will need books. For that you must read."

  I shook my head, pacing away. The sun had set, and over the harbor the last wild birds were flying, homeward bound, their black wings and white bodies against the sky, black winged gulls. The harbor was empty. Not a ship remained.

  "To read," I said.

  Eucherios stood behind me. "Yes, my lord Mikha'il," he said.

  "And are you not afraid to come to me thus?" I asked. Most Greeks fear us. Yet there was no fear in his face, only a strange familiarity, as though I were greeted by a friend.

  "No," he said. "An angel told me I will be safe."

  I looked at him, but there was no deception about him. He believed what he said.

  "You shall teach me," I said. "You will teach me to read, and teach me all the knowledge of this city."

  His voice was amused. "That should take many lives of men, but I will teach you what I can." He came and stood beside me at the rail, looking out over the sea, the lighthouse against the sky and we stood thus for some minutes.

  A whiff of perfume drifted over from the roses. "It is Paradise," I said, and for a moment wondered if I had not fallen in some battle and dreamed dying that I continued. "Paradise. I have died and gone to Alexandria."

  Slave of the World

  1203 AD

  If, in some ways, Georg is the worst of our main character, Jauffre is the best. Not since Lydias has he been soldier and priest at once.

  It had been twenty years since Esclamonde had married someone else, twenty years since he had replied with a vow of perpetual celibacy, but Jauffre de Vallombreuse was still a handsome man. His neatly trimmed dark beard was threaded with silver now, accenting his temples where his hair swept back like the feathers of a hunting bird. His eyes did nothing to reduce that impression, raven dark under arching brows, with the fine clean lines of his face as beautiful as some ancient sculpture. He had stood, in Ascalon Outre Mer, for a sculptor who wanted his likeness for the Archangel Michael. He knew, without modesty, that it was entirely appropriate. He had thought the sculptor caught perfectly his long, swordsman's hands, and the touch of regret about the mouth. Clad in white samite, the cross formeé on his chest, a cloak of scarlet about him, Jauffre knew he looked every bit what he was, a Knight Commander of the Order of the Temple.

  Behind him his godson, Laurent, cleared his throat. Laurent was fifteen, nearly ready to be knighted on his own, though he was not destined for the Order. Orphaned as a child, and the heir to lands, Jauffre had guarded Laurent's inheritance carefully until he should come of age. Jauffre was a younger son himself, and had had no such prospects. Which of course was the reason Esclamonde had not married him.

  Twenty years had passed since they had been boy and girl together, twenty years since one hurried kiss that he had held in his heart.

  She had married, of course. Esclamonde had married a landed gentleman thirty years her senior. He had been in Damascus when he heard that she had borne a daughter. He remembered vividly sitting in the library, a copy of Ptolemy open before him, thinking that it had been five years. She had been five years a wife, five years that man's possession, while he had fought the Saracens and learned mathematics, traveled through the desert heat and over the wide dark sea. Five years.

  He had been in Ascalon when he'd heard she was widowed. Twelve years. He was part of the Inner Circle then, one of the guardians of the treasures more precious than gold. He had touched them, once or twice, hidden gospels unearthed from buried amphorae, undestroyed by Nicea or any Pope since then. He spoke five languages now, Arabic as well as Greek and Latin and Hebrew, and his native Frankish. He could trace the paths of the stars as the ancients did. He had a copy of Arrian's Anabasis, copied laboriously himself, though he could not quite imagine what an elephant was, nor what Alexander wanted with them.

  Twelve years. Wife and mother and widow, back in distant Aquitaine. It was hard to remember her face.

  Seventeen years, and he had heard of her again when he came at last to Paris, Preceptor and priest. He heard she was a heretic.

  And now she wished to see him, Esclamonde, Cathar Perfect, holy saint or heretic, or whatever she was now.

  "Will you be going in, sir?" Laurent asked, still holding Jauffre's reins politely.

  "Yes, of course," he said, removing his riding gauntlets and handing them to Laurent, while Laurent passed off the reins to the stableboy. A ruby ring glinted on his sword hand, symbol of his mastery.

  And his stomach lurched.

  Esclamonde was in the solar. Three young women sat near her, garbed in white like novices, mending in their laps. She stood.

  Her dark hair was caught beneath a white wimple, and not a strand of it showed, but her eyes were as fierce and bright as ever. He had assumed that ascetics starved themselves, but Esclamonde had run a little to flesh, her breasts full beneath her gray gown. After all, she was only thirty-six.

  "My lady," he said, bending in
a bow.

  "Jauffre de Vallombreuse," she said, and her voice was clear and keen. He would have liked to have thought it caught a little. "We are grateful that the Order has been so helpful with regard to the timbering conflicts we have found ourselves in."

  "My lady," he said, straightening, "It is my understanding that those woods are yours, and that you hold them as your daughter's dower, per your husband's will. If you wish to timber, you certainly may." He met her eyes. "But surely you did not need me here to thank me for helping the resolution of your timbering case."

  "Walk with me," she said, and took his arm, leading him toward the still garden. It was early spring, and there was little to see. The roses entwined, barren, on the wall.

  Jauffre tried to keep his arm from shaking at her touch.

  "You look well," she said, but did not look at him. Her white hand was unadorned on his sleeve.

  "Thank you," he said. "Esclamonde…"

  She turned and faced him, rosemary bushes on either side fragrant where her skirts brushed them. "I sent for you to save you."

  "To save me?"

  Her eyes roved up and down him. "Jauffre, look at yourself. Sword at your side, a man of blood instead of peace. Wearing white silk and jewels, traveling the world. How are you living in the spirit?"

  "I am a priest," Jauffre said, but he felt the color rush to his face.

  She shook her head. "A priest should be humble. Should strive to separate himself from the things of the world. And you, who have traveled the world, what have you found? Riches?"

  Jauffre inclined his head. Once, he should have ached. Once. "The greatest riches I have found are not jewels or silk, but knowledge." He grasped her hand, led her to the bench beneath a leafless tree. "Esclamonde, there are wonders I cannot even begin to describe! How can I show you in a few words what the river Nile looks like, winding through the Delta, or sunrise over Jerusalem when the gates of morning open? Or what it's like to swim in Caesarea, and see the ancient wrecks waiting just below the surface, the curve of an amphora just out of reach?" Her hand was warm in his. "I can tell the circumference of the world, and what India is. I can read poets no Christian has ever heard of, converse with Sufi sages, find the road to Palmyra beneath the desert, walk the chariot tracks of Timothy. I have watched the night in Bethlehem and mapped the skies."

  He stopped then, for there was too much to say, but she only looked at him sadly.

  "You are the slave of the world," she said. "And you know nothing of love."

  With a jolt he remembered Charles in the desert, dying with his hand in his, Baudoin singing with his clear boy's voice, and Rolf, whom he had dared to touch, once. There were others. The woman in Bethlehem who had skittered away, afraid that he would kill her for nothing, seeing something larger than a man in his face. William, standing beside his king, once and always true.

  "I think I know something of love," he said. "If not love such as we might have shared."

  Esclamonde turned away, and for a moment he thought a blush rose in her face. "Love is pain," she said. "Only the pure love of Christ is real, and we can only reach it by simplicity. By purging ourselves of pain and desire. Do you not see how you are enslaved?"

  "By love for the world?" Jauffre put his head to the side. "By love for our fellow humans, no matter how flawed and rough they may be?" He put his hand on her arm. "Christ did not stand apart, but ate and drank and lived with his friends, not as a hermit in the wilderness. He did not enjoin us to abandon the beauties of the world, but to love as he loved, each lily in the field and star in the sky."

  "They are illusion," she said, and in her beautiful eyes he saw an endless valley of pain. "There is pain, which is the world, and the absence of pain, which is heaven."

  "The absence of pain is oblivion," Jauffre said grimly. "You are teaching misery, Esclamonde, you and your friends. And do you not understand that in spreading this heresy you are dooming these people? That you are dooming the peasants who work your lands to the cross when the Church has had enough?"

  Her face was serene. "It doesn't matter, don't you see? We strive and we hurt and we die. And then there is the absence of pain."

  "If you keep this up, it will be flame and sword," Jauffre said. "Esclamonde, I will not be able to protect you. The Order will not be able to protect you. There are currents in Rome. And we do not have the influence we once had. If you continue to spread this heresy, you will bring the suffering I have seen in Outre Mer home to Aquitaine."

  "The suffering you have caused in Outre Mer?" Her eyebrows rose.

  "I do not claim to be innocent of blood," Jauffre said. His fingers closed on her arm, blood red ruby winking. "I have never claimed that. But I have caused as little as I could. And I have never flirted with disaster as you do now. This dream of yours will condemn thousands to the fire!"

  "We shall not cease to live for fear," she said, and took her arm from beneath his. "Nor will we cease to seek purity. You, with your silks and gold, your books and your bloodstained hands, you sicken me!"

  She turned and walked away, her head held high.

  Jauffre closed his eyes. Lord Most High, he thought, she will burn and there is nothing I can do. And how was it that I loved her? And how, oh God, that I still do?

  Little Cat

  1012 BC

  A little more than a century has passed since Gull stood with Neas and watched a little coaster come into the dock, watched Markai come home to his family. The seas have been scourged by raiders and cities burned. The population of the Mediterranean has dropped to less than half of what it was and in Greece literacy itself has been lost.

  But no dark age lasts forever. Settlements away from the sea have begun to prosper again, hill farmers with herds of goats and small towns that are growing again into cities. And in these lands people have begun to say, "Give us a king!"

  However, Egypt has endured. Battered and humbled, the Black Land stands still, temples and libraries, palaces and fields less than they were in Gull's time, but not destroyed either. New peoples have settled there, melting into its rich tapestry. One of them is a girl named Kadis, and with her the soul that was Gull's returns to Egypt as she promised.

  The gods walk the earth among men when they will, and from time to time take a hand in the game of jackals and hounds that they play; we know this in Nubia, though they have forgotten it in Egypt. Perhaps they do it only for sport, or perhaps it is because of some terrible compassion. Either way, it is little comfort to the pieces, moved or knocked down by their whims, like markers on a board.

  I am the wrong person to tell a story of gods and kings. I am not a scholar or a general, not a prince or a magician or even a priest. I am an animal trainer, like my father before me. If I had not been, I would have never left the Black Land, never met Baalthasar or Marah or Jonathan. And whether that would have been better or worse, only the gods can tell.

  For three generations my family were archers in the service of Pharaoh, in his border wars, before my father took a different path. His brothers were archers, but his eyesight was too dim to shoot a falcon on the wing, and so he was apprenticed to one of the trainers of the great hunting cats that the lords of the Black Land love.

  Thus I was born in the city of Elephantine, in Upper Egypt, where the Black Land borders Nubia and the river rushes out of the gorges and cataracts on its way to the sea. It is from Elephantine that the great cats come, and they are trained there before they go north to hunt beside lords and kings. I was my father’s first child, and he was only half there when I was born. I was born the same day that his finest cheetah whelped.

  It is a rare thing for a cheetah to whelp in captivity. They do not mate well when they are under the leash, because the female will lead the male a race across the desert or plains, only capitulating at the end, when he has pursued her day and night without water. In captivity, they often do not mate at all. And if you release a female in heat, usually she will never return.

  Sakah did. She es
caped when her time had come, but three days later she returned to my father, tired and footsore, her business accomplished. Her kittens were born the same day I was. They were infinitely more valuable, for even though I am freeborn the worth of a girl child is much less than even a single starred kitten of one of the great cats.

  My father ran back and forth between the house of his mother, where we lived, and the kennels, where Sakah was. She bore four kittens, three female and a male, and my mother bore only me. It was because of this that they named me Kadis, Little Cat, in the language of Nubia, joking that I was the fifth kitten, the lucky one.

  They had three days to laugh, because on the fourth day my mother took ill with a milk fever, and she died on the tenth day. I do not remember her at all. I wish sometimes that I did, but perhaps it is better so. You cannot miss what you have never known.

  What I do remember of my childhood is good. Motherless, my aunts and grandmother doted on me. My uncles were older than my father, and they did not live with us, though four of my cousins did. My eldest uncle had died in a skirmish with the Melawesh in the far off Delta, and my aunt and her children lived with my grandmother as well. They were all four boys, the oldest nine years my senior, and the youngest the same age as me to the season, so I did not lack for family or love.

  Gahiji, the youngest, was more like my twin brother than anything else, so alike were we in looks and temper. Like me, he was tall and clean limbed. We children of the desert tower over the men of the delta, and like the animals we prize, we can run day and night under the sun and the stars of heaven. Like mine, his skin was dark and fine, his eyes tilted and almond shaped. But where his eyes were dark brown, mine were almost golden, the color of honey or Sakah’s dappled pelt.

  It was Gahiji and I who were always in trouble. Once, when we were six or so, we stowed away on a river boat bound down the Nile to Thebes and then to Memphis. The sailors discovered us in a few hours and put us ashore at Tati, where angry and worried my father found us the next day. In the meantime, however, we had had a scare of our own, and decided that being without dinner and without a place to sleep was perhaps not so much fun as it might seem. By the time we were hauled back to Elephantine, striped from my father’s belt, we were very sorry indeed.