Sing to me, Falconer, of
what was and what shall be. Blow the victory ram's horn and recall the
destiny to which you were so cruelly taken.
How you came to us in the
night of your soul's despair, on the rocky ledges and fallen citadels
of the Eastern Kingdoms. Roar the story of the warrior-youth from the
West, who came to plunder the treasures of Antioch and Kur-Nu and was
himself plundered...
Here is the story that
has been kept secret for more than eight hundred years, suppressed by
the Keepers of the Veil, hunted by the humans who came after the
Falconer, and buried by those he most trusted.
The shroud of history is
upon humankind and those born of the Serpent as well, and all has been
lost from the past, but you will invoke it now that it might live –
Speak the prophecies of
Medhya, and of the secret wars that would not have begun without the
appearance of the Maz-Sherah --
And remember the tale of
the Priest of Blood, who brought you to this desolate and wretched and
noble state.
FROM CHAPTER TWO
...I was born in the ember days, a new year, after the Solstice,
into the frozen world of life. They say that my mother was in the
village, a half-day's foot travel from our home at the edge of the
Great Forest. Heavy with child, she had taken rest by the village
well, along its smooth gray stone edge. When the hour of my birth had
come 'round at last, the frost of the day drove her to a stable. Like
Our Blessed Lady, as she has been called, the Maria, Mary, Notre
Dame, mother squatted among goats and sheep and asses and perhaps
even a sunk-backed horse and no doubt several spotted dogs, and out I
came, into the encircling snake of life, into the hoop of time. My
mother grew sick in that place. I have no doubt she thought, for a
moment, that she might kill me and bury me in the dung, to hide her
shame and her sin. No barleyfield for me, my early grave was meant to
be the home of flies and vermin.
But
something stayed her hand, whether the law or her own conscience, I
can’t be certain. Perhaps it was Fate herself who kept my mother from
braining me against the wall. I can even hope that she felt the
maternal warmth of a cow for its calf, and she let me suck at her
teat. Perhaps she held me close and wept over me with love and a sense
of her unfortunate life. Perhaps a midwife had been there, too,
helping to snip the cord and give me first milk from a more generous
breast. Perhaps my mother had, for a few moments of her life, kissed
my cheek and whispered a lullaby.
Perhaps the Great Mater was there with her, Matter, Mother, Mutter,
the Earth that cradled me, in some invisible way, guiding her hand as
She had guided so many hands before.
A
kind merchant put Madonna and squalling brat into the flat of his
wagon, and drove her back over snow-capped slopes to the one-room home
that I would come to think of as little better than the stable in
which I’d been born.
My
name was at first Alaricald, and then changed to Aleric, and my full
name Aleric Atheffelde, which is not the patronym is may seem, nor was
it pronounced as written. In fact, neither my siblings nor mother had
a name passed down, either from mothers or fathers. It is easy to
forget the pains of bastardy, and the lengths to which good folk kept
away from it, and kept all bastards from any number of endeavors,
including attaining a name of any distinction. Attheffeld simply
meant, “At the field,” and that is, in fact, where we lived, although
more appropriately “In-the-Marsh,” “Felding,” or “Attheforet,” as some
families had it, or even my stepfather’s name, which was Simon
Overthewater, for his work in the sea.
You
will detect the Saxon influence in our names – for while we were
Breton by culture, we were the mutts of that world, between Saxon and
Breton and Norseman and Gaul, as well as other influences. Years
later, when the French language took us completely, those called
Attheffeld would become Delafeld, as well as other variations. We were
not fixed in our names except as they were recorded at church. Some of
my siblings had other names, depending on the mood of the priest and
the neighbors and my mother. The village folk often had names passed
down from antiquity or from work, but such as my family was, we simply
were of the land itself. In homes such as mine, the children might go
on to change their names as they discovered life. Whenever one from
our region ventured to other countries, we were generally called as if
by one family name, LeBret, The Breton. Thus, my name, too, would one
day change based on my talents and travels, but as a baby, I had no
such influence.
My
mother told me, when I was older, that she nearly went to heaven the
night after my birth, and that my stepfather, a brute whom I was lucky
enough to rarely lay eyes on after the age of four, called me a whelp
bastard and thrashed my mother for bringing another mouth to feed into
his home. I might hate him for this, but I barely knew him -- he was
often off to sea or to the rocky coast to gather shellfish and the
ocean’s harvest for months at a time, returning with very little in
his pocket but a dried fish or two. My mother, I soon discovered, was
often abed with the local men of the village, lifting her heavy brown
skirts, drawing back her scanty and torn underthings, whenever she
chanced to wear them, giving to get something in return.
As a
result of her wantonness, my brothers and sisters and I barely
resembled each other except, perhaps, in our lack of fat on our bodies
and in the generally sleepless look in our eyes. Even the twins
might've been sired by separate whorehounds. As a child, I hated her
unholy, if brief, alliances, and it was only when I spied her in the
chapel of Our Lady, her dimpled sun-browned thighs wrapped around our
local prelate, a look of absolute sacred radiance on his face, a
reddish glow to his tonsure, that I realized that we all must do what
needs to get done in order to put bread in our mouths. If the fish and
mollusks were not a-plenty, we would go without, but not so long as
our mother prayed on her back and brought home bread and sweets and
mutton. Everyone who is mortal must work at some trade, and my
mother’s was more arduous than most, but possibly pleasurable, if
damnable.
Certainly, the local monks did not think it a damning offense.
That
week, we got a finer share of the Poor’s distribution, a charity taken
in by the brethren of the monastery for the families in need.
My
brother, Aofreyd, who I called Frey, would place bets with me about
where we would find our mother a-laying on a summer afternoon. She
was, nine times out of ten, pressed into some haystack with a local
farmboy half her age. Those nights, we often drank fine milk and had
fresh eggs. When the plague came through each year, bringing with it
terrible nights of praying and endless Masses that lasted past
midnight, and my father stayed away for the season, at sea, my mother
often brought her men home, believing that we were too ignorant to
understand why the planks in the cupboard creaked. At night, Frey and
I would lie together on our matt, listening for the sound, and giggle
together at how the men always seemed like dogs, growling, barking,
whimpering, and how what they did sounded as if it could not be
pleasurable at all, but was, indeed, what the cats in heat must feel
when Old Tom mounts them.
Once, when Frey threw this in her face, furious that he had to defend
her at Market from being called the Whore of Babylon by the local boys
his own age, she gave him a whipping, and told both of us that she
worked for God, and those men were Saints come down to Earth to bring
a message from Heaven.
At
the time -- I was seven, perhaps -- I believed her. Frey did not. My
brother spat at her in the face and told her that she was the kind of
woman who should be dragged through the streets and beaten on a gibbet
until every bone in her body was like honey in a goatskin. He pointed
to little Franseza, with her tangled black hair, and the raised bumps
on her face. "She is dying in front of you, and you lay with strange
men. Look at Aler," as he called me, "he is bones and hair and not
much else. You let those men use you as a sewer for their cods, and
then you bring another bastard into the world and watch as they
suffer." I knew this was bad talk at the time, although I didn't
understand it.
My
mother took a hot pan from the fire, full of oil, and threw it at him.
It hit Frey on the left-hand side of his face. I screamed as if I had
been hit. But Frey made no sound. He put his hand to his forehead. He
kept his eyes on her.
That
was the night she locked him in the root cellar, and I lay atop the
locked wooden platform and whispered to him that it would be all
right, that he would be out in the morning. We touched fingers to each
other that night through a crack in the wood. Frey told me that he
would never forget my loyalty and our kindred (even if we shared the
same mother, but perhaps not the same father), nor would he remain at
home another day. “She is not a bad woman,” he said of our mother.
“But I cannot live here.”
“I
hate her,” I said. “Sometimes.”
“It’s better to pity her. She has some cause for her anger in life.”
Then, he told me a story about our mother, and my grandfather, and how
our family had become outcasts of the village. It made little sense to
me, for I was too young to understand how prejudice might arise even
among neighbors. “I need to leave,” he said. “She is angry because
she knows I must go.”
“She’s mad,” I said.
“She
has her reasons.” His words made me curious about our mother. When I
asked him more about her, he told me to keep quiet. “She is as she is.
I am as I am.”
Frey
was twelve years of age when he left home for good. At dawn's first
light, he dug his way out of the cellar trap, taking with him some
roots and apples, wrapped up in his ragged shirt. The left side of his
face was scarred and full of raised bubbles of skin where the oil had
struck him. He kissed me on the forehead, and swore that should we
ever meet again, in this life or the next, that he would greet me as
brother and friend and allow no one to harm me.
I
thought that I would never see him again. We all knew that if any of
us left, abandoned our home, Death would surely follow. Frey knew
this. We had heard of what happened to boys who ventured into the
world without any means. I said many prayers for my brother the
morning I watched him running along the path at the edge of the
Forest.
It
was the saddest day of my young life, and though you may judge my
mortal days as misspent and full of vain pursuits, you must always
remember that, for a child, the world is meant to be wondrous. When it
is not, it becomes the realm of shadows and of nightmare. In the mud
of that world, I did not know one day to the next if I would eat, or
if I might die, or if one of my sisters might fall dead.
It
was quite natural for a boy such as myself to dream of great things,
to believe in the lies told me by other dreamers, and to want more
than simply the filth and disease of the hovel called home – I wished
for heaven in that lifetime, a sweet place where dreams and hopes were
fulfilled.
The
forest was my place of dreams, and the birds, my messengers to heaven.
3
I
must tell you of the Forest, a place of dreams and wishes in my young
mortal life – as well as nightmares. They said that in the center of
the Great Forest, there was a tree older than all the others. It was
called the Oak of the Priests, or the Devil’s Tree, depending on
whether a peasant or a monk mentioned it. It was said to be the Father
of all trees, and its roots went down into the earth and from them
grew all the trees of the world. This was just one of the legends of
the wood, and I grew up with the magic of these stories.
Although it went by ancient names as well as Christian names and names
of conquerors and chieftains, those of us who lived beside the Forest
knew it as the Great Forest. It was a fortress unto itself, and was
bordered for us with marshy land on all but one edge of it, that could
mainly be crossed easily in the summer or during particularly icy
winters.
To
the west, were the great caves in which the group of sisters, Brides
of Christ, had built into the rock, their quarters and chapel, at a
grotto. They were known as the Magdalens, nuns who shunned material
life, and more importantly, sunlight itself as part of the world of
matter that corrupted the spirit. In those days, Christendom
encompassed a variety of what were later called heresies, and a
century later, the Magdalens of the Languedoc were hunted down and
slaughtered in their chapels, but during my young life, they were
simply part of Christendom’s variety.
These good women lived mainly on the food brought them by pilgrims,
for the grotto and its springs were said to restore the sinful to a
state of innocence by virtue of Mary Magdalen’s blood which had, by
legend, been spilled to create the spring. They had a relic of the
Magdalen, supposedly a bit of her heart, dried and kept in a wooden
box at the foot of the statue of the only female Apostle. The
Magdalens, although friendly with the local Abbey and its Abbe, kept
their distance from all for they were meant for a solitary life of
contemplation and prayer, as well as bestowing a blessing upon the
rock ledge within which they dwelled. But the good sisters were the
furthest point in our land that I then knew of, and the Forest and its
marshes were of much more interest to me than a nunnery and pilgrims.
In
the spring and fall, one had to find entry points through narrow,
muddy paths. The marsh and bog led to streams into the woods, and an
area we later came to know as “The Devil’s Teeth,” which was a series
of large stones standing up-ended in a circle – as tall as many men --
that were said to have been there since the beginning of time. It was
a mysterious and wonderful place, although the priests and monks often
warned us to never go into the Forest except from necessity, for the
Devil lurked everywhere among its branches and roots.
Our
storytellers spun many tales around firesides of the ancient heroes
and damsels who had met their fates within it, of the creatures and
monsters that had once walked among its great trees and the nymphs and
faerie queens that had lived along its bogs and among the caves.
There was a legend of a sacred poisonous tree – its fruit would kill
whoever tasted of it, save for those purest in spirit. I heard a story
once of a man who went foraging for his family, and drew a root out
from the earth, and the root was shaped as a man, and screamed so loud
when the good man pulled it that he went deaf from the sound.
At
the center of the wood (as all legends went) an ancient ruin of a
castle rose up from fern and thicket, home to a Celtic queen, who once
ruled all the forests of the world. An old Roman wall, half-torn,
half-lost, ran among the overgrowth. There were legendary fountains,
and lost treasures buried centuries before; other great tales of
magick and history mingled in its green darkness. Although the Duke
claimed the woods, and of course the Baron, partially, in the name of
the Duke, there was not a family I knew of that did not occasionally
risk the punishment for poaching in order to feed themselves. And
although there was a great cry from the abbots and priests and nuns,
there were still known those who practiced fortune-telling and healing
within the Great Forest.
When
my mother had taken sick, I often accompanied her with my grandfather,
on a journey into the woods, where my grandfather knew how to call the
crones of the wood. They would come with a poultice or a tea for my
mother to drink to help with her fever. When I cut my foot on the edge
of an adz, which was a kind of axe that we used then for woodcutting,
my grandfather carried me deep into the Great Forest to the crone who
I knew as Mere Morwenna.
Although she was not my mother, we called her as such, and she gave me
something that tasted like licorice and mint, and then had me eat a
disgusting chunk of rye bread covered with a gray-green mold. The
candy-flavored treat helped me swallow the pieces of bread, and within
two days, the infection and its accompanying fever had vanished. Like
all the Wise Women, she wore a thin veil that seemed to me to be made
of spiderweb, for once, when I touched it, it seemed sticky to my
hand.
We,
of the fields, knew them as the Forest Women or the Wise, but they
called themselves the Women of the Veil, and so, they wore this to
cover their faces from the nose to the chin. Mere Morwenna had a young
child whose entire body was veiled for it was said that too much
light would kill it. It was little more than a baby when I was a boy.
My mother told me that it had a great deformity of some sort and that
Mere Morwenna had to bathe it hourly in a bog at the center of the
Forest, a bog in which grew berries that cured the ill or poisoned the
healthy, and which was only known to the Wise Women. “Her baby needs
these daily baptisms to cure it, or else it will surely die,” my
mother said. “She is a very good woman, despite what villagers say.”
Once, out of curiosity, I drew back the veil slightly, and looked at
the baby’s face. It had a level of ugliness I’d never before seen,
although its eyes were like pools of clear blue water. I heard the
word, “changeling,” now and then, and that the child was not truly
Mere Morwenna’s, but had been discovered tucked into the opening of an
oak that had been split by lightning. The Forest women’s stories were
all like this – there was nothing of the ordinary about their world,
and I loved every visit to them.
We
knew then that sorcery and witchcraft were outlawed, but those who
lived outside the castle, out in the mud, did not turn against the
Wise Women of the Great Forest. Brittany was not so rigid in its
thoughts, nor were its people far removed from the Celtic ways of old.
While the world of Christendom was our life, and the Christian gospel
our salvation, although none could read it save the monks, the fever
to destroy that Old Religion had not yet arisen in as violent a way as
it would, soon enough.
Mere
Morwenna was our midwife, and with her assistant sisters, Brewalen,
and Gwenvred, would come to a home when the cries of labor had become
too great. They were of value to us country folk, and they did not
curse the priest or the Holy Mother when they were spoken to about
matters of the spirit. Mere Morwenna had a hand that felt like fire
when it was cold, and her eyes were small black rocks at the center of
a wrinkled but kind face. Her hair was white from age, and when I was
very young, she’d rock me on her lap after my mother had fallen asleep
with my new little brother or sister. She told me of my birth, and how
she had not been there to deliver me, but that once I was brought to
her in the forest that she foretold great things for me. What were
these great things? I asked her often enough.
“A
prophecy told to the one who must fulfill it is a destiny
interrupted,” she said more than once.
“But
you must tell me,” I insisted.
She
took my hand then, when I had thrown a fit over not knowing of my
destiny. She kissed the center of my palm, and then peered over the
whorls of my fingers and the lightly creased pathways between fingers
and down to the heel of the palm. “All I can see that can be told is
this: from the smallest, greatness may come.”
“Will I be great? One day?”
“Perhaps,” she said, peering into my eyes. “We live in a world where
those who seem weak are the strongest. And those who seem strong, are
without true power. Someday, when you seem to have great power, you
must remember this, for it is at your greatest moment of strength when
you will also be at your weakest.”
I
laughed at her, for I was too young to understand this, and she
laughed, too, and went back to cradling her little veiled baby in her
arms.
Mere
Morwenna told me more tales of the Forest, of an ancient well and a
great, fearsome beast with wings that had been trapped by some hero of
old; of fountain that was hidden from all men, but from which waters
flowed that could heal the sick, and make those who drank of it either
die a sudden painful death, or remain eternally young; there were
streams within the Forest that went underground, into the caverns
beneath it, and ancient drawings adorned the rock walls in those dark,
dank places, telling of other worlds that had yet to be remembered;
the trees themselves were thousands of years old, far older than
mankind, planted by the giants that once walked the earth, the same
giants who brought the giant stones that existed along the plain at
the center of the Forest. She also told me of the Faerie Queen whose
castle still stood by the golden lake at the center of the Forest,
although I had never ventured far enough to see it. I could well
imagine a lake of gold, and she told me that if the wrong person put
his boat upon the lake, it became a lake of fire. “Seven princesses
sleep in the castle, waiting for seven youths to come and break the
spell,” she would tell me and my brothers and sisters as she tended my
mother’s birthing fever. “Each night, the princesses turn into ravens,
and fly up from the Forest, out to find the brave youths who will risk
the lake to rescue them.”
She
told us on one occasion a tale of the True Bride, which made sense to
me even while I did not entirely understand it.
“So
the maiden went to live in the great castle, and married in the
Church, the handsome prince. When the moon waxed, she would return to
garden in the moonlight. She would stand beneath the pear tree and
call to the golden bird. Soon enough, the bird would fly down from the
sky, carrying in its beak her silver wedding dress. And she would wear
this at night, for those who came to her, knew that she was the True
Bride. But when the prince’s father, the King, returned to his home
after many years at war, he did not like his son’s choice of wife. So,
he had brigands tie her and put her in a great cauldron. This, he
sealed, and bade them throw it into the deepest pit they could find.
Then, he went to his son, the prince, and told him that his wife had
been unfaithful. He brought another maiden to him, this one rich, and
lazy, and spiteful. She would glance at a person and judge them
without thinking twice. When the prince, after many years of waiting
for his Bride to return, finally agreed to marry her, she became more
demanding of him, and of the entire kingdom. But we should not hate
her. She was from another land, and she missed her people. Still, she
caused much heart-ache and only some good. Her jealousy enflamed, she
would have her husband declare war on his neighbors. She punished the
strong and just, and rewarded the weak and vain.
“One
night, the prince, now King, went to his garden, so beloved by his
first bride. He remembered how she had called the bird, and he did the
same, for he missed his true love. When the bird came, down from the
silver moonlight, it brought with it the silver dress in its beak, as
well as a diadem of gold. The bird told the King of what his father
had done, how his first wife had begged for her life, and, feeling
pity, the brigands released her but swore that she would die if she
ever left the Great Forest. The King was inconsolable, but the bird
told him that he must have faith. ‘Keep the gown and the diadem, for
she will return when her strength is in her. Remain with your new
wife, but when the time is right, you will see your True Bride again.
She will come from the Great Forest, so you must protect it and its
creatures. And when she comes, bring out the silver gown and the
diadem, and embrace her and celebrate the True Bride when you see
her.’
“And
so, one day, when the King was very old, and his second wife had died
of a fit of anger and bitterness, he stood in the field and saw the
True Bride step out of the woods, naked and beautiful. On her
forehead, a crescent moon. On her arms and fingers, the secret gems of
the earth. She was as young as she had been when he had last seen her,
and although he barely recognized her because of the years that had
passed for him, and his memory had waned like the moon, still he
welcomed her with warmth and love. He gave her the silver gown and
diadem, and she clothed herself in these. She had no anger for his
father who had betrayed her, nor for him for taking a second bride.
Together, they returned to the castle, for the time had come for the
True Bride to take her place with the King of men.”
None
of us understood this strange tale, but Mere Morwenna looked at each
of us, deeply, to see if we had pictured it in our heads. Had we?
Yes. “Good,” she said. “The Forest stories need to live. For just like
that King, you each will need to recognize the True Bride when she
returns to the world of men. She is hidden now, but she will return,
and you need to have her clothes and crown at hand.”
I
was too ignorant of my own homeland to know that the True Bride she
spoke of was the worship of the goddess of Nature herself, gone into
hiding in the Great Forest when the new god had invaded and sought to
destroy her.
The
Great Forest’s trees were ancient oak, but even between these were a
jungle of other trees and plants such that it seemed always green,
even in the depth of winter. If I chanced upon a salamander along one
of its streams, as a child, I imagined it as a faerie cursed by a
sorceress; and a hedgehog might be a princeling who had not been pure
enough to cross the lake of gold or fire. It was a place of
imagination, wonder, and danger, and the source that sustained us
through hardship.
Once, when my older sister and I went hunting for berries in the wood
(knowing that we risked punishment of the most extreme kind if caught
by any authority), we came across that looked to me like part of a
ruined castle. Covered with vines, its stones interlaced with fern
that grew from it at strange angles, I entered through its little
doorway. Although a mess of mud and brambles met me within, I saw the
roof of it – a domed-shaped place, with faint paintings upon it of
naked women who danced among strange beasts with heads like eagles,
hindquarters like lions, and the wings of dragons. My older sister
Annik told me that we should leave this place, for it was an ancient
one, of the Old Ways, of the ways of the Devil.
4
Beasts were my childhood companions, outside of my grandfather.
My
first loves were the dogs, great wolfhound mutts that were the extra
coverings on winter nights between and among my brothers and I. My
second love were the birds of the air. My grandfather often led me to
the edge of the Forest to teach me bird calls, and the names of each
winged creature, how to find a falcon in its nest, how to raise it
from the egg and teach it to hunt for you; how to train a raven to
speak several words, although I never completely mastered this. My
grandfather kept doves, both for food and for companionship, and I
remember him best, standing on a rock at the edge of a long meadow,
the white wings of his birds flapping along his arms and above his
head as if they might take him to heaven.
Of
all the children, I was the only one who took to birds.
There were six of us, plus two girls who were babies by the time I
left my family.
You
must know of the place birds had in our lives then, for they were as
important as our eyes in many ways. Goshawks and falcons were hard to
come by, and hard to train, and knights throughout Christendom
demanded falconers to travel with hunting parties. It was said that
the Duke of Brittany had a hundred falcons for his hunt; our local
Baron had few. But none of this mattered to me as a boy, for I took
to birds, and soon enough learned how to capture a newly-hatched
falcon from the nest without its mother tearing at me with her
piercing talons and beak. My grandfather taught me much of this. He
had learned the lore of the birds and of falconry in distant lands
during wartime. I suppose that, as a boy, I aspired to greatness,
beyond my natural station in life, because of my interest in falconry,
for poor boys were poor hunters, and the great birds of prey were
meant for nobility.
I
had my eye on the Baron’s household from an early age – I wanted the
horizon beyond the mud that was to be my inheritance. What blood I had
within me was the blood of a scrappy, dirty, undisciplined, and
selfish boy, an inheritance from a long line of the scrappy, dirty,
undisciplined, and selfish. But I wanted more than the dirt and the
marsh and the woods. I wanted all the world could offer, for I saw it
daily in the great castle upon the hillside. I wanted to know the
inside of that place. I wanted to watch the nobility of the world, the
knights and ladies, the great halls and the kitchens full of meat and
bread.
My
grandfather fueled these fantasies of mine to some extent. He was a
tall, spindly man, unusual for a Breton, with hair white as the marsh,
and a nose that hooked like a falcon’s beak. His eyes were warm and
bright as a hearthfire, and my earliest memories of him were of his
shadow which sat beside me as I slept among my brothers. As I grew a
bit, I sought him out to hear his tales of the past, and of the days
when the Great Forest covered the entire world – when birds spoke,
when trees held treasures, and when the moon itself was a stag that
crossed the night stars. Some of the elders of my childhood visited
him for wisdom, for he was eldest among them, and knew both the lore
of the wood and field, and that of the castle.
He
often told me stories when I lay down to sleep at night, on straw that
crawled with lice in winter, with my younger brothers close by me,
nestled in each others’ arms like cherubim.
"Once, many years ago, we owned land, to the south, down at the great
mountains," my grandfather told us. "We are descendants of a most
royal family, lost to misfortune, having crossed the sea to come to
this rocky land. A woman, heavy with child, whose man had died in
another land, brought up the grandfather of my grandfather's
grandfather, and kept secret the lineage. But we were once, our folk,
greater than even the Duke. Greater, I tell you, than the kings of
men. And we may be great again. You, you Aleric, you boy of birds and
hounds, may one day rule this land. You have a talent for what
nobility craves, and even when you hunt down a rabbit or rat, I see
the mix of your ancestral blood in you. Royal blood runs like gold
beneath your skin." He might grasp my small arm and hold it up to
candlelight. "Do you see the blue there? Beneath your skin? That is
the blue of nobility. We are meant for this. You are destined for
great things, grandson."
“I
can be king?”
“King, or prince,” he said. “You have the bloodline in you. Do you not
talk to birds? And understand their language?”
I
laughed when he said this, for I did know the language of birds,
although it was not magickal in any sense. My grandfather took me out
in the spring to take eggs from the nests, and to keep them beneath
the pit of my arm, using a sling, to warm the eggs. When they hatched,
days later, we would feed them with a worm, cut, and impaled upon a
slender hard grass, thrust into the baby birds’ throats. My
grandfather taught me in this way to train birds of all kinds, and
they would follow us as we went about our day – whether geese or dove,
raven or falcon. These last were forbidden to us to raise, by order of
the Baron, for he and his huntsman were to own all falcons and
goshawks. Because my grandfather gave well-trained falcons to the
Baron’s household, he was never prevented from capturing and raising
the birds himself.
“In
my grandfather’s day, all was different,” he told me, while we taught
a young falcon maneuvers of the hunt with me crouching low to imitate
a rabbit (and sometimes being cut by a young bird’s too-sharp talons!)
“Folk came to him for the secrets of the earth and sky. You have his
face, you know. You do. You have the pale skin and the rosy glow and
the smile of him. He could read the leaves, which foretold the end of
the forest’s strength. He knew, by the flight of sparrows, where the
storm might begin in the sky, and how soon it might arrive for us. He
was a remarkable man.”
“And
my father?” I asked.
His
eyes grew shadowed. “The fisherman?”
“My
real father,” I said. “The one who has gone away forever.”
“A
scholar,” my grandfather told me. “From distant lands, and to them, he
returned.” The cloud had not left his face, and when I tried to speak
more of my birth father, he would return the subject to his
grandfather, or to my mother as a girl when she “looked like the
spring itself, bedecked with garlands of wildflowers, and riding a
wild horse along the marsh as if she were a Briary Maiden. And me, her
father, proud of her, happy that she had so much life in her. Ah.”
Sunlight seemed to shine across his face as he spoke. “You must never
grow unkind to your mother,” he warned, shaking a finger at me, his
eyes squinting as if searching my face for any sign of disagreement.
“She has suffered much, and has done much, despite what it may seem.
She saved my life once, and paid a terrible price for it.”
But
I wanted to talk of more exciting things. How I wish I could go back
and beg him to tell me more of my mother’s past, of the young woman I
never knew who might have paid such a price that it had changed her
forever, from a beautiful maiden on a horse to a wanton among the
fields with children all around and begging for bread daily.
I
grabbed him around the collar and told him he was the most wonderful
grandfather in the world. He, in turn, embraced me, holding me so
close that I could feel his tears on my neck. “We are born to this
world to find our destiny, my dear boy. You are of the bloodline of
the Great Forest, and of those who knew of its gifts before even the
Romans came to this land. No matter what misery the world offers you,
do not let go of that love you have now. Do not let go of all that you
were born to do. All is good and bad. There is no one or the other.
You must look at the bad and see the good in it. And when you see the
good, do not forget that it contains the bad, as well. Do you
understand?”
I
murmured that I did, though I did not then have the experience to
comprehend what he told me.
“All
that is good, has bad in it. And if you forget this, you will feel
betrayed when you should merely have understood the nature of the
world.”
I
drew back from him, smiling.
I
recall how much my love for him shone above all other loves. Every
crag of that face, every white hair on his head, the way a knot at his
throat bobbed up and down when he spoke. I could live in the mud and
the cold, put up with my mother’s darkness that erupted now and then,
so long as I could be with this old man whose wisdom and warmth raised
me up and held me aloft, above all that threatened to drag me under.
“You
were once a king,” I said.
“Not
a king,” he corrected. “Not in the way you think of kings. I served a
greater being than any king could offer. As did my father, and my
grandfather. What we once did…” He leaned forward and kissed me on the
forehead. “Once upon a time, in the long ago. That world is gone. The
wind has taken it to sea.” A jewel of a tear arose at the edge of his
eye. “Gone. But you, you are from a great bloodline. Magnificent. That
you must never forget. We are children of this forest. We planted
these trees, and our souls remain here.”
It
was a fabulous history of our clan, and no one believed it, but he
clung to it and I dreamed from it. He spun it like a spider's web for
me. I suppose that's where I got my hunger for better things, for a
finer life. Why the stink of the pig sty and the smell of the rotting
fruit in the orchard vexed me. The disgusting gust of befouled odor
that accompanied the fisherman's trade when my stepfather returned
from his distant journeys. After months of being away, he would arrive
with the chilly rains, his eyes as round and empty as a halibut’s, his
mustache like a carp’s, the malodorous stench of gutted fish on his
rough hands. That life had never held any allure for me.
But
I knew of that other world, and it may have been out of reach, but
early in life, I determined that I would grasp it. While my
grandfather lived, I held the dream of happiness. I overlooked my
mother’s ways. I sometimes saw her as a faerie princess who bestowed
wishes upon wild men.
I
spent so much time with my grandfather that I soon forgot all other
duties. We would train the birds. Teach the ravens to speak. Gather up
the eggs in spring and keep them warm in various ways so that the
hatchlings would follow us. He sold them in exchange for food to the
Baron, to the Abbey. The geese of the abbey honked their greeting
whenever my grandfather and I came onto the grounds with new
hatchlings.
When
I imagine the boy that I was, I remember the smell of mud, the
grass-stained tunic, the scalp that itched, and yet none of these
troubled me. For my grandfather and his birds lifted me to the
heavens. I flew with them above all my troubles.
We
walked along the path at the edge of the marsh, me running ahead in
the exuberance of childhood, while he hobbled along, leaning into a
long branch of a tree he’d carved to help him walk. He led me to a
great oak that was dead and yet stood thick and tall near a gushing,
clear stream. A falcon I had trained the previous winter perched on my
shoulder, digging into the leather pad wound there just for
protection.
Grandfather had wanted to show me something, and had promised all
winter to take me to a particular spot in the forest, “Where the
treasure grows.”
At
the tree, he stood upon his toes, and pulled away the roots of some
thick vines. He lifted me up so that I could see what he had found.
“Put
your hand inside it,” he told me.
In
front of my face, a knot in the oak.
I
reached in, my hand nearly too large to make it through the small
hole. I felt around, and there was a smooth stone. I drew it out.
I
opened my hand to look at it as he lowered me to the ground. I noticed
then that he was out of breath, and began to worry that I had tired
him.
The
stone was a deep blue, but pale and broken at its center, and amber
seemed to blossom within it.
Taking deep breaths, my grandfather said, “I told you once of your
bloodline. This is a sign of it.”
“You
must not speak,” I said. “You are tired. We can rest. I can bring
water.”
“No,” he said. “Just sit beside me.”
He
patted the fern-covered ground to his left, and I plopped down, eager
to hear a new tale. He cradled me with his arm. He took the stone from
me.
“It
is worth little now,” he said. “But it once was a sign of our family.
Before the invaders, our blood ran in the veins of these woods. My
grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather planted this tree. In those
days, there was no abbey. No church. We are now the vanquished. But
you must never forget who we were, for it is in your blood to be more
than what this world has forced upon you. And what your true father
has done.”
“My
father?” I asked, but when his breathing became labored again, I
begged him to rest a bit before speaking.
But
he would not. “My birds are the last of my own childhood. They will
fly away. But you will remember this day, won’t you, Aleric? You will
remember me?”
“Always,” I said, and I took his hand in mine and leaned over to kiss
it. “But you won’t ever leave.” How young I was to say such things!
How ignorant of the pulse of life itself! For, surely, the old man was
past the years of hope for life, and had managed to survive merely
from luck and his love for his family. I could not know then of the
disease that had begun to ravage him a few years’ earlier. That his
breathing and his complaints of soreness of old wounds had all been
part of the beginning of his demise.
“All
who breathe upon this earth,” he said. “Must depart the flesh. This
does not mean that we are not here.The soul flies, and nothing
should stop it from spreading its wings, just like a dove. Its journey
is known to it alone, not to the one who possesses the dove. Here,” he
brought my hand over his heart. “Feel the way it pounds, lightly,
feebly? Like a drummer marching into the distance?” Then, he brought
my hand to my own heart. “Yours is strong and just beginning its
journey. But one day it too will slow. It is a gift to die, Aleric.
You must always remember that. We return to the arms of this.” He
glanced up at the ceiling of leaves, the deep emerald of the forest.
“And the soul flies like a bird to a new nest.”
I
resisted the sorrow his words brought to me. I pressed my face to his
heart, trying to hear it. But it was faint. He stroked the top of my
head. “Your falcon has flown,” he whispered. “He will be free in the
forest now, for he seeks a mate. He is the age of mating and of the
hunt. You will be of that age soon. It is an important time. You will
forget the forest. You will even forget the birds. But you must fight
the world, Aleric. It is important to remember. This stone, from the
tree. It is of little value in the world. But it is an ancient stone
of our people. It was once possessed only by great men and women. We
were once of a line of the priests of the forest. No one speaks of our
kind anymore. Many were hunted. Many killed. Many left to become
priests in the church of the new god. You are of a priestly caste, my
boy. Your talent for the birds shows me that you are closest to the
forest ways. You have been taught the woods are full of devils. But
you know they are not.” As he spoke, his strength seemed to return. I
felt the beating of his heart increase, and was glad of it for all the
talk of the past and of death and of stones and priests made me think
he had but moments left. “I want you to remember this. Your father was
a man I despised. Yet he had greatness in him. He was not of our kind,
nor of any country I know. He chose your mother because he understood
that she was the daughter of the forest, though she lived in the mud
and gave herself too freely to men. He changed her forever. You must
forgive her all, for he had power and terror in his gaze. And yet, for
all that, he had goodness, as well. That goodness is within you.”
“Who
was he? Where may I find him?”
“He
will find you,” my grandfather said. Then, when he had regained some
of his strength, he lifted me up to put the stone into the oak’s knot.
Yet, I did not do as he wished. I was afraid that I might never find
the tree or the stone again. I slipped it into the leather pouch about
my shoulders, and did not tell my grandfather I had taken it. The
badness of this act did not haunt me until the next morning, when my
mother cried out that her father stood too still in the field.
5
By
the time my older sister and I had run out to him, he had already
fallen.
“Grandfather!” I shouted, feeling for his heartbeat, while my sister
cried out for others to come. I wept over his body, not wanting to
believe he had died, not wanting to look at his lifeless face again. I
wrapped my arms around his neck, tears flowing too easily.
I
heard the bird-song at that moment – just a lark in the field.
As I
let go of him, I saw a flock of wild birds flying out from the forest,
across the marshes. Although it may be a trick of memory, I was sure I
heard the geese in their chattering sound as if they were praying; and
the two ravens he kept circled the sky above us. These did not leave
the heavens until my mother had removed his body.
The
birds had known. My grandfather had breathed his last, and the birds
had taken his soul with them as he had taken them up in his hands at
their hatching.
The soul flies, and nothing should stop it from spreading its wings,
he had said.
After his death, I grew ill, and feverish. I kept the stone a secret,
and rubbed it with my fingers in the night as if wishing for my
grandfather to return.
One
dawn, I awoke feeling better, but in my soul, anger had grown. I began
to see things darkly, I began to view the world as a devourer of all
that was good. I no longer could find forgiveness for my mother, nor
did I find comfort in my siblings. I felt as if all love were lost
when that old man dropped in the field, and only my love for the birds
remained.
I
wanted nothing more than to leave that home and get far away. It
became like a thirst that could not be slaked, or a hunger with no
fullness after a feast. I could not escape the feeling that I had to
get away, the way my older brother Frey had done.
By
midsummer’s eve, I found a way to leave and still remain close enough
to my family to help them when I could.
CHAPTER THREE
THE HUNTSMAN
1
When
the Baron's men went looking for a new boy to serve the hunt and train
the falcons and goshawks, I begged my mother to take me to the
midsummer’s fair. It was a league or so up the road where peddlers
sold wares and music played and the huntsmen of the Baron tested the
skills of local boys of talent. After the fuss I made over this, my
mother relented and took me.
I
stood in line behind many other boys, most of whom were of better
lives than I had known, but I had prayed to Our Lady and had left a
birch twig at the edge of the marsh with a wish to the Forest crones
themselves. I had rubbed the blue stone from the oak tree, and walked
backward at the crossroads in the marshes, which was considered good
luck. I had cleaned myself well before the trip, and stood tall and
proud as the other boys my age did.
When
it came my turn, a broad-axe of a man with a booming voice and
brusque manner checked my teeth and the way my legs moved, in case
there was disfigurement, and then my scalp for lice. He commented
greatly on my fair hair and red face to his compatriots.
"The
Baron likes boys who are rough and tumble," he said. "You seem soft.
You have hair like a girl’s, full of bird’s nests, and you smell like
a barnacle."
With
this comment just out from his lips, I kicked him hard in the shins.
He
looked at me, eyes wide with shock, and the next thing I knew, his
hand came down for my face. I flew through the air in the next moment,
backward onto the grass.
Then, he began to laugh, and gave me a hand up again. “You’re a tough
little mudlark,” he said.
So,
this huntsman liked me, and enjoyed my scrappy demeanor. He had me
demonstrate my use of the bow and quiver. He asked me how I was at
running with the dogs. I told him that I often slept with dogs, and
felt they were my cousins. He laughed at this, but I could tell he
meant to dismiss me. “And what of your mother? Would she not miss
you?”
“I
am not a girl who would stay by dung-fire tending the rat-stew,” I
said, boldly. “I intend to be the greatest of hunters one day. And my
mother is a whore.” I said this last part without any sense of
judgment, for I was used to thinking of her this way. When I said
this, the men around us roared with laughter, some of them clapping
their hands and a few asking after my mother and whether or not her
hair was like mine.
“The
Baron would not want the son of a whore in his Forest,” said one of
the men who looked like a great bear. He laughed loudly, as if it were
the finest joke he’d ever told.
“My
father is a great fisherman,” I said, allowing the lie to slip off my
tongue far too easily. “He has a fleet in the sea, right now, and
dives for pearls in the Southern Sea in the winter. He has made a
necklace for the Queen. He finds rare jewels in an ancient city,
beneath the waves, and brings them up for the Seven Princesses of
Spain.”
I
can, even hundreds of years later, recall the burning of shame on my
cheek that day, as I spun a tale that I hoped would save my reputation
as a well-born boy. I heard myself, as if from a distance, recite the
very lies of noble birth and ancestry that my grandfather had taught
me, as well as his stories of the Lost City beneath the sea. Even as I
said it, I could see it in their faces: not just bemusement or even
annoyance at my boasting falsehoods.
They
had lost interest.
I
had to somehow get the attention of the huntsman again. He seemed
kinder than the rest, although his face had something of the aspect of
an ogre, and his nose, a serrated blade. But his eyes had a keenness
to them as I spoke. I had not just yet lost his attentions. I
understood in that moment why my mother, with no means at all, might
do anything to entice men to give her what she needed to feed herself
and her children.
I
needed him to want me working for the Baron. It was my only escape
from the life I hated as a child.
I
took a deep breath. I prayed to the Lord for guidance. Then, to the
Devil for a magic trick.
"If
you give me one night in the forest, I will bring the Baron the most
magnificent hunting bird he will ever find." I am certain that I
didn't use words quite so well placed at eleven. But I said something
as formally and awkwardly as I could to put my point across.
"What kind of bird?" he asked.
The
lie came easy, and I convinced myself even as I spoke. "The most
magnificent bird, a gryphon, with talons as big as goat’s horns, with
a wingspan as wide as the castle walls," I said, quite seriously, and
nearly believing every word.
His
men laughed, but the huntsman nodded. "A wager from the mudlark." He
winked, and patted my hair, calling me "Yellow bird," and told me that
if I could bring him back the finest hunting bird in Christendom, this
gryphon of monstrous glory, the following day, I would be the bird-boy
in the Baron's hunting party.
“But,” he said. “If you do not, if you have lied to me about this
business, I shall cut out your tongue. Do you see this?” He drew a
small, curved blade from his belt. He held it in front of my eyes,
until I saw the sunlight glinting from its edge. “I have cut off a
man’s hands with this blade. I have cut a baby from its mother’s belly
with it. I have even gutted a stag with it and held its beating heart
in my hand. Open your mouth, boy. Open it.”
I
did as I was told, but had never in my life felt quite so terrified.
He
reached forward, and grasped the back of my neck with his left hand.
With his right, he brought the blade to the edge of my lips. “Your
father is a great fisherman, who dives for pearls with in the Spanish
Sea, say you. Do you know how he takes his blade and cracks the oyster
shell, and digs in to the squirming meat of it? How he presses the
sharp edge at the back of the thick slimy creature, and saws, to and
fro, slowly, carefully, to dislodge it from its home?” As he said
these words he made slight motions with the knife, its curved end
inside my open mouth, not touching anything, but nearly. And then I
felt the razor cut of its edge – slight, but painful.
I
tasted blood. Metallic as the knife.
Then, he tucked the blade back into his belt, and let go of my neck.
“Shut your mouth, mudlark. Look at me.”
I
gazed first at his boot, then at his middle, and finally, up at his
face again. His eyes were pinched and small and like shiny stones.
“Tell me again about this gryphon, for I have heard of these
creatures, although I have never seen them. I would like to have one
in the Baron’s menagerie, both as a hunting bird and pet.”
I
then had no reason to doubt that this was a sincere interest on his
part. The legends of gryphons were everywhere in those days. I knew of
one, although I had never seen it. I had been warned away from an
ancient sacred well that was well off the path in the Great Forest,
entangled with vines and encrusted with the roots of trees to the
point that the well – which some called St. Vivienne’s Fountain – was
barely visible for the green growth around it. My mother, when she
heard me mention it, forbade me to speak of it. She told me that it
was of another race of people. That it was of an old time, before even
the churches had been built, and that it was no Saint that had been
martyred there. But she would not tell me the rest. But Mere Morwenna
had told me about it, when she found me in the woods at the old
ruins, training my birds.
“There is a great bird at the well’s bottom,” she had said. “As large
as a dragon. It has claws that will rip a man to pieces, and a
wingspan that can take over the night sky. A thousand years ago, it
fell and broke its wings and so it lays at the bottom of the well.”
She showed me the well, and told me that the pagan Romans had martyred
St. Vivienne there as well. Her story had a profound effect on me, and
when I asked my grandfather about it, he told me that if it had such a
wingspan and such powerful claws and was an immortal bird, that it
must be a gryphon, for that was the only beast with such qualities.
So,
with the huntsman and his party surrounding me, I began to sputter on
about gryphons and great beasts that had remained unseen by men, but
we of the country new them, of wolves the size of dragons, and dragons
the size of mountains, and the poisons of the witches that grew in the
shadows of the great oaks. I felt as if I were drowning as I spoke, as
if my tongue would soon unfurl and grab his blade from beneath his
belt and cut itself off rather than listen to the wild stories I let
loose.
The
Huntsman drew his hand back and slapped me across the face as hard as
he could. Knocked me down. In the dirt, I looked up at him, coughing.
He bent over, grabbing me as if I were an ash-sack, lifting me up from
beneath my armpits, and hefting me above his head, all the while
keeping watch on my eyes as if to catch the imp of perversity
scuttering about inside my soul.
“When you lie,” he whispered, “the angels weep. The Devil himself has
not lied so much as you have in these precious minutes. Will you tell
the truth, Bird Boy? Will you?” As he spoke, he shook and rattled me
in the air, and I was fairly certain he would toss me into the crowd
before too long.
I
felt it was in my best interest to change course.
“I
will tell the truth, sir,” I said, solemnly. As I spoke, the Fair
around us disappeared to me, the men beside him vanished, and I felt
as if there were just the Huntsman and I in all the world. “I am a
poor boy and I have not a trade. Nor is my father a good fisherman,
nor does he hunt pearls. My sister took sick and died last winter, and
my little brother went soon after. My mother is a wanton, and sleeps
with even the clergy for scraps of mutton and pork, but I do not blame
her, for she has many mouths to feed. I have but one small talent. And
that is for falcons and doves, sir. The birds of the air. I speak to
them, in my own way, and they understand me. And they hunt with me.”
“So
please God if you lie now, I will do more than cut out your tongue,”
he said.
“I
do speak to the birds.”
“They listen to you?”
I
nodded. “The Rock and Mourning doves. The falcons, too. I trained a
raven to speak by splitting its tongue, and I once raised a hawk to
bring fish from the river.” This was all true, and had been taught me
by my grandfather when I was barely able to speak. The only lie within
it was that the birds usually escaped to the Forest once they were of
an age, although I could call them to me through whistles and caws now
and then.
“Tell me, what did your raven say with his language?”
“He
repeated the Ave Maria,” I said, which was true, and made the Huntsman
laugh like a crash of thunder. “Not every word of it,” I said. “Just
the first part. His Latin is not as good as our priest’s. He flew
beside old women as they knelt to pray at Mass, and it was the only
thing he would learn. The farmers nearby think he is the spirit of a
damned soul, for he now haunts the old burial grounds repeating the
words again and again.”
When
he had stopped laughing he lowered me to the ground, and scruffed my
hair with his rough fingers.
“I
would love to meet this praying bird,” he said. “You hunt in the
Forest?”
2
It
was against the Law to enter the Baron’s Forest, despite the fact that
I – and all in my family – had been doing this since my memory had
begun. A family of bastards might all be slaughtered by a servant of
the Baron or the Duke if caught with a boar’s head in the home.
Poachers, if discovered, were hanged or drowned, depending on the
availability of a gibbet or a pond and a sack. Now and then, a poacher
was allowed to live as an example to others, and I’d seen one once,
his hands cut off at the wrist, his nose also cut off. There was a man
named Yannick who wandered door to door, begging for morsels, because
he’d stolen a rabbit from the Great Forest. His hands had been chopped
off, as well as the toes on his feet, and his left ear. I did not want
any such fate to befall me or my family. One did not break the law
lightly. So, I lied a bit.
“No,
sir. I hunt in the fields by the cottage. I hunt rat and rabbit and
other small creatures of the marsh and field that are not owned by the
King or Baron.”
“You
speak well for a meadowlark.”
“My
grandfather taught me to speak well.”
“Your grandfather is alive?”
“No,
sir.”
“What was his name?”
When
I mentioned my grandfather’s name, the Huntsman nodded. “Tell me, how
did the old man die?”
I
told him of the day in the field, and of the ravens and doves, as well
as the flocks of birds that seemed to be everywhere at his death,
though I, perhaps, exaggerated the tale as it went.
“Did
your grandfather mention his time in the Wars?”
I
shook my head.
“I
knew him,” the Huntsman said. He half-smiled. “Ronan was a fine
soldier of his day.” Then, his mood darkened. “And your mother is his
daughter?”
Again, I nodded.
“Armaela.” When he said her name, it sent a slight chill through
me. I had never heard a man say her name without trying to bed her. “I
knew her, many years ago,” he said. “ You must not speak ill of her.
Your family truly was once a great one. Perhaps you have greatness in
you, though your kind has fallen from favor in these present times.
Let this be an understanding between us, boy, should you think ill of
any for whom life’s fortunes have turned. Misfortune is the world.
Those who are Kings today may be knaves by sunrise tomorrow. Those who
are peasants without means may become Princes of the world. Only you
and I know this to be true, for I have seen it come to pass, and
remembered, while others forget and believe that we are each born to
our station and remain there until death. Remember this moment in
future years. Remember when a man plucked you from the mud and brought
you into a better life.”
He
glanced over at his compatriots, and roared for them to go off and
drink or wench or devour roasts, but that he was going to go with me
to the Forest to see how well I called the birds. He told me to call
him by his name, not the haughty French name of his father, but by his
Breton name, which was a fairly common one of the time: Kenan. His
father had been from the south, by way of France, and his mother had
lived her whole life in the castle, and died there while he had still
been a boy, sent off to fight Norsemen along the coast. When he had
returned to his home, it had changed and he no longer hungered for war
and adventure. Although he seemed old to me then, Kenan could not
have been more than his late twenties. Yet, he had a kind of halo of
age around him, as if life had been too hard on him.
I
took him down a well-worn path. Once we had gone into the murky part
of the woods where the bramble grew thick and high, I tied his horse
to one of the old oaks. When he’d dismounted, I took him by the hand
and led him in among the giant ferns and the roots rising up like low
cottages among the part of the forest. Running within the overgrowth,
the remnants of an old Roman wall. My grandfather had told me that
many years before, when his great-great-great-great-great grandfather
had lived, this had been a military outpost when the Romans fought the
true people of the land. I showed him the stones that were the markers
of the dead.
“Is
this where your birds speak?”
I
nodded, and cupped my hands to my mouth and let out a whistle and a
call that I had learned from too young an age to even know where I’d
learned it. Within seconds, a giant raven swooped down from the dark
green canopy above us and came to rest on one of the ancient stones.
I
held my arm out, and chirruped for the bird, and it flew to my
shoulder. It was always a jolt when it grasped me, and I had to steady
myself for the bird had grown large over the past year. I pursed my
lips, and my wild pet cocked its head to one side and then another,
and then leaned over and pressed its beak to my lips.
“Sing to me,” I commanded.
And
then the raven began reciting the “Ave Maria,” but in the poor accent
and mispronounced words as I might do it myself.
Kenan roared with laughter, which scared my dark friend away. The bird
flew up again, and although I whistled for it, it had become skittish
around this stranger.
I
looked up at him.
“And
what of the gryphon?” he asked.
“I
have never seen it,” I told him. “But I know where there is an ancient
well, and at the bottom of the well, a gryphon lies, immortal, but
broken-winged.”
“And
who told you this?”
“A
crone,” I said. “Her name is Mere Morwenna. Although she raises a
young child, she is ancient. She is bent and hobbled, a friend of my
mother’s, and has some pox across her face so she lives deep in the
woods so that she might not spread her plague. Her child is hideously
deformed. Yet, she has wisdom, my mother says.”
“She
has a plague but has lived long?”
I
nodded. “I have never seen her face, for she hides it with a veil.
But once, she came to our home to offer the leaves and bark of the
birch tree to help my mother bear the birth of my little sister. She
told me then of the creature in the well. She has told me never to
visit the well, but I have gone once or twice and have heard the
gryphon crying out, at mid-day. It is the saddest sound.” This last
part was something of a lie, for though I had been near the spot, I
had never actually heard anything from the within the well itself.
Still, the lie added a nice glow to his face, and a bit of a light
grew in his eyes.
“And
if you were to capture this beast, how would you do that?”
“I
would first ask for a large fisherman’s net. Then, a rope. I would tie
one end of the rope to a hook lodged at the top of the well. Then, I
would climb down the well, with the net. When I reached the bottom, I
would cover the gryphon with the net and then have someone – perhaps
you, sir, draw me back up.”
“That wouldn’t work,” Kenan said, a grin on his face. “The gryphon
would be too heavy for you to bring up. And it might fight you. And it
might hurt you. Kill you.”
“Might,” I said. “At midday the gryphon is weak. It has not eaten for
many years, perhaps centuries. It has no fight left in it. And I, sir,
am very strong.”
“You
must show me this well one day, mudlark,” my huntsman said. He put
his hand on my shoulder. “You may have been born under a lucky star. I
believe you may have work with the hunt.” He told me that if I proved
able with falcons, I might end up a huntsman just as he had become one
from being a boy who worked with the horses once. He mentioned a
brief memory of knowing my grandfather, yet Kenan would not tell me
much of what he knew of him.
That
night, I drew out the blue stone that my grandfather had shown me at
the oak tree, that I had stolen to keep near me at all times. I rubbed
it for luck, and for hope, that I might prove myself in my work and
help my brothers and sisters in some way. I kissed the stone,
remembering my grandfather’s face, feeling a twinge of guilt that I
had not returned the gem to its rightful place, yet comforted that I
drew the memory of the old man into it and held it there.
3
From
that day forward, I went to live within the Baron’s household.
Although I knew my huntsman to be named Kenan Sensterre, I was
instructed to call him “sir,” or even, “Master,” for the sake of the
castle.
Now
the castle was not the enormous fortress of history, but a fairly
simple structure of wood and earth, grand in its own way, yet fairly
primitive in others. Very little of it was made of stone, except the
chapel and beneath it, the kitchen, and beneath that, underground, a
dungeon of sorts to hold prisoners. The structure was pentagonal in
its interior, but from the outside palisades, seemed curved in a
circle. It was built upon a low, smooth hillside overlooking the
Forest and marshlands, close enough to the abbey and the village if
there ever was an attack (for truthfully, the abbey was a better
fortress if trouble neared). The village beyond it was protected by
the Duke, and then the great King, whose name was never spoken to me,
but was simply known as the father of our universe, next to God.
The
Baron was simply called, “My Lord,” if any were to see him, but in the
first weeks of my employment, I rarely spoke a word to the great man.
The Baron himself was perhaps the richest man within one hundred
hectares of land, which today I suppose would be a thousand acres or
so. Treveur de Whithors had been the name he’d been known by as a
knight in one of the Crusades, and he had returned from years of
battle to his storehouse of land and coin, married quickly and had
three sons. All had gone to war but the youngest who was still a baby,
and remained with nurses and maids, and was treated like a pampered
pet. He also had three daughters who, as they grew, were capable of
running the castle by themselves. His wife took sick after her last
child had been born, and this lingering ailment brought a kind of
unspoken grief to the household that shadowed its halls and etched
lines in its quarters.
I
felt the brunt of the Baron’s anger at times, as passed to me by other
servants; I also felt his generosity during the Christmas feasts. I
felt as if I were a princeling, even so. I slept in a room with the
other boys who worked under the Baron’s household, and at Holy Days
and in seasons of plenty, I was able to take bread and fowl to my
mother and little brothers and sisters. The work took me from dawn
until midnight some days, and it was thankfully constant so that I
always had a roof over my head and food in my belly. I raised doves,
swans, and falcons from the egg, and trained them for the needs of the
castle. My name “Aleric” was soon lost, and I became first Mudlark,
then Bird-Boy, and finally, Falconer before my first working year had
ended.
The
other boys were often envious of the attention that my master gave me,
and one in particular named Corentin Falmouth, who some in the castle
took to calling Foul-Mouth, seemed to enjoy tormenting me in the few
hours of sleep I had.
Corentin first came up to me when I had laid claim to the straw mat in
the corner not far from the fire, and told me that a boy had burned
from lying too close to the hearth. “You should sleep in the back,
with me,” he said, pointing to a pile of bedding in a dark corner. “I
can be your protector.”
I
soon learned that he believed protection meant keeping me from being
beaten – by him.
Like
me, he was a boy from the country, and reminded me somewhat of my
older brother Frey, and what I imagined he might look like then.
Handsome, and not particularly charming, Corentin at first seemed as
if he would be my guide and confidante. There was something of the
familiar to him, and to his manner of speech – he was a youth who had
come from the marshes and woods, as had I. We spoke some of the Old
Tongue, as well as the New. He had been educated a bit, as far as
working boys could be, when he went to work with the Brothers,
cleaning their quarters, and learning bites from their lessons.
He
told me that the Brethren had taught him much about the world and its
workings, and how a boy might rise in station further than he could
imagine if only he would put himself under the care of the correct
guide. He placed his hand on my shoulder and whispered to me that I
should not be afraid so long as he was nearby and would be my guide.
At first, I thought this delightful and part of the goodness that life
had to offer me. I soon learned that he exacted tribute from those of
us he considered his vassals, and that he was nothing like my brother
Frey at all, nor much like any who might be called country people. He
was not particularly adept at companionship. He would crawl onto the
straw-stuffed bed, and tell me of the tortures that the Baron put to
boys who lied or disobeyed.
Corentin was older – perhaps sixteen – and he was the unofficial
leader of some of the other ruffians with whom I shared quarters. Most
of them had not come from families as poor as mine, but they bemoaned
their lives as if they had been dealt the worst fate that had ever
been conjured. Most were the second and third sons of noble blood,
with no estates, no legacy, and many of them were destined for the
monastery in a few years if they were lucky. Corentin himself claimed
to have no living family, and perhaps I could feel for him in his
lonely misery, but he insisted on tormenting me.
“Your mother is a whore. She is known throughout the village, and the
priest takes pity on her when he allows her to Mass. I heard from a
courier that she slept with his horse for a tankard of ale.”
The
most frightening thing about his voice and his words were that I had
thought of my mother in the same way. And yet, it incensed me to hear
this from him. My heart grew dark with hatred of him. I had to resist
wrestling him to the ground, although I didn’t resist nine times out
of ten, and we’d roll around on the floor of our chamber hitting and
biting and tearing at each other. Corentin, the stronger, the larger,
the older, had the better of me. I often ended up bruised and battered
at dawn, but still arose to get out to my birds and my work.
I
was determined to not allow anyone to stop me from proving myself and
moving forward in life, though Corentin did his best to tell me that
Mud-hens (for that was his own nickname for me) never rose higher than
I had, and that when I reached sixteen, I would be sent back to the
filth from which I had been born. “Or else you will be sliced from
nave to chops,” he said, making a motion with his hand from his sack
to his chin. “And your head will be stuck on a pike.”
This
last part terrified me, for I had seen the heads of criminals on pikes
during certain months when treason had been discovered.
I
had gone to the executions of the depraved and the indigent and those
who had cursed the Church or those who had committed adultery. I had
seen three children – two brothers and their younger sister – all
hanged at the gibbet just outside the Baron’s castle, none of them
more than six years old, for stealing food from a family of good
lineage. Mud-hens, indeed, could be hanged, or their heads severed
from their bodies and thrust onto pikes for all to see the faces of
those who had broken the law.
Corentin’s words gave me nightmares when I had thoughts against those
surrounding me. I had to keep my humours balanced and my emotions
buried, or else I might, one day, wind up spinning slowly on a rope or
sliced with a hand-axe for having sinned in some great or small way.
Although I had seen D
