The two ravens' wingspans filled the room. The cawing and screeching of the birds disrupted the quiet cloister air and plumage fluttered everywhere.
The boy dove under a table to dodge the madly beating pinions, but he stopped short when an almost total silence ensued once he passed out of sight of the birds.
Stillness fell hushed on the chamber, as complete and absolute as the madness that preceded it.
Then, almost magically, a whistling and twittering that reminded Jacob of music replaced the avian screams. He peered cautiously over the edge of the table, wondering what what had caused the change.
Ríg stood completely still, his arm still upraised protectively across his face. One of the ravens perched on his shoulder and the other on the table before him. The youth's legs shook from the strain of standing upright under the gigantic bird; its talons reached around the young man's upraised arm and upper part of his back.
The ravens' singsong vocalizations were steady, melodiously in harmony as if one bird continued a tune when its brother trailed off. Ríg moved only his eyes, remaining calm even as the pressure of the now-friendly raven on his shoulder threatened to drive him to his knees.
Both ravens ceased their sweet-sounding warbling and cocked heads to sides as if listening to a command. They then erupted away with surprising speed, the action throwing Ríg backwards against the cabinetry.
Ríg scrambled upward and rushed to the window; the glassware clinked precariously in the leather bag still over his shoulder.
He watched the birds swoop low over the southern ramparts of the castle and then gain momentum as they caught a current that sped them high into the sky.
"They were beautiful," Jacob came to stand beside Ríg. "They're not messenger birds, are they?"
"Good Lord, no." Ríg noticed two riders on the southern escarpment, one of whom loosed an arrow at the ravens. The projectile flew through the air, but missed its target, and then both birds were gone. Besides feeling irritation at the unprovoked attack, Ríg wondered what the ravens were doing, and why the two Hospitallers were straying so far from normal patrol routes. "Rather large for ravens, weren't they?"
Something odd was happening on the horizon. A cloud of dust was roiling across the Syrian plain, a seeming sandstorm in the making. Ríg looked again at the two men on horseback and, in spite of their apparent Hospitaller garb, a feeling of dread swept through him. He instinctively knew that they weren't his brethren.
"Advance scouts, with an army behind them," he said, turning quickly from the window.
"Yes, Master Khaldun has already let the guards and your preceptor know," Jacob said, "but there are really two armies coming."
"What?"
"That one from the south, but there's another coming from the east, too."
"Indeed?" Ríg returned to the table and laid the satchels on top of it, his face thoughtful. "No trip back to the infirmary now, I guess-need to find out what Arcadian wants to do. Your news changes things, Jacob-we've got to hurry."
Ríg pulled a silken cord that hung near the entryway. A bell tinkled somewhere in the farther part of the library.
Within a moment, a brown-robed monk appeared in the doorway.
"Ah, Demetrius," Ríg said, carefully extending the bags to the man. His dark suntan highlighted the crown of white hair on his bald head and the deep wrinkles in his aged face. "We've got an emergency, and I need your help because I can't be in two places at once. These are medicines for the expedition members in the infirmary. If Master Khaldun is there, could you also tell him that I'll be heading to Father Arcadian's chambers?"
"Of course, Brother Ríg," the monk said with a slight bow and departed.
The Jewish boy was astonished at the exchange between the two men, and unsure if his surprise lay in a lack of knowledge about Christian customs or monastic protocols.
Ríg had just casually given orders to a man at least twice his age!
As with his initial distrust at Ríg's physical appearance being so at odds with this scholastic area of the castle, now, too, the boy couldn't reconcile the easy air of authority that Ríg seemed to have in the presence of one who was so obviously an elder.
That feeling became even more pronounced when Ríg emerged from the inner chamber garbed in a long black Hospitaller robe, a fighting garment with white cross emblazoned on it. Ríg placed a scabbarded sword and dagger on the bench, and then began lacing one of his boots.
Jacob watched the young man before him casually getting ready for war. The boy felt confusion slow his thoughts like a dense patch of reeds to a river current.
Hadn't Master Khaldun called Ríg a squire? No, Jacob corrected himself, he'd used two terms almost interchangeably, although each word had vastly different meanings. At one point, the aged scholar had called Ríg his 'apprentice,' and at another time-especially when inside the castle walls-he'd called Ríg a 'squire.'
Jacob might not know a tome's worth of facts about nazaro culture, but he knew enough to discriminate between the two very distinct roles of a scholar's apprentice and a knight's squire. If Ríg were a student, then shouldn't he have been wearing the same kind of monastic habit worn by all the other monks in this section of the castle? If a squire, then perhaps a tunic and leggings with solierssimilar to Jacob's own?
Yet, there on the bench before the boy lay the weapons of a veteran warrior.
But, it wasn't the dagger that amazed Jacob-that awe was reserved for Ríg's scabbarded falchion sword. Almost three feet in length, longer than any other he'd seen!
He followed Ríg back through the entryway and turned immediately left into the main scriptorium area. An assortment of lecterns, desks, and tables were arrayed in the broad space, and a mix of young oblates and middle-aged scholars occupied most of the benches and stools. They all were bent over parchments and books, trying to make the most of the midmorning light. In the center of the work area, an old man noticed Ríg and impatiently began waving at him with a beckoning hand.
Ríg acknowledged him with a wave of his own, but leaned to the side and spoke to a person standing in a niche whom Jacob hadn't initially seen.
"Andreas, quiet those fellows down, will you?" Ríg whispered to the lean adolescent who stood like a sentry to the left of the entryway. The boy's smile of greeting turned to a scowl as he followed Ríg's nod toward the far end of the chamber.
"Wallace and Edward," Andreas said. "Again. I'll tell them to shut up, but they're hopeless. Sérieusement. They spend as much time chasing the local girls as they do copying their assigned texts. They don't belong here, Ríg. Why don't you have Jeremiah put them with 'Baron Poo-doo' for a while, and get Pellion back in here?"
"I'm working on it. We'll see what Perdieu says when I see him in a few minutes," Ríg said, "but in the meantime, I don't mind if you have our two court jesters run the circuit for the next hour."
Andreas smiled at that, but glanced at the framing bar in his hand as if still tempted to use the heavy wood to brain the two still-giggling boys at the back of the scriptorium.
"Ríg, arrêter de parler et viens ici maintenant! ["Ríg, stop talking and come here now!"] The old monk at the largest of the center tables barked, his voice strong in spite of the long decades of life that wizened his face and left him in a perpetually stooped posture. "I want you to see something."
"Coming, Master."
Ríg walked to the polished mahogany table and peered over the man's shoulder to look at the displayed parchment folio page. The text in the illuminated manuscript was interwoven throughout with intricate designs and richly colored figures. In the central part of the page, an eagle with red-tipped pinfeathers perched on top of a robed monk, its talons plunging into the writer's eyes and mouth.
"It's coming along beautifully, Jeremiah," Ríg murmured.
"Thank you, Ríg," the monk replied, "and I think we'll finish ahead of the date that we planned for returning it to Saidnaya."
"Well, we might not have a choice," Ríg said. "Instead of a Christmas visit to Damascus, we might have to make it Easter. There have been some developments."
"Oh?" Jeremiah raised an eyebrow. "That trip completes your training, Ríg. I've told you that many special things will be revealed when you finish the text. If you will, it's literally the grail at the end of our scholastic quest."
"I know, Jeremiah, I know-how couldn't I? You've had us decorate almost every page with scenes from Arthurian legends and the Grail ..." The youth's voice trailed off, then he frowned. "I also don't know what to tell you, Master. We're under siege again. It looks like two armies are coming from the east and south."
"Hmph. Armies come and go. This book should be the most important thing in your life. It completes the five years you've spent working on it." The old man shook his head in obvious disappointment. "Well, what's the state of affairs? Should I tell the scribes to lock down?"
"No, no, not yet." Ríg said with a shake of his head. "I do have to meet with Arcadian and Perdieu, though, so I may have a different directive from them when I get back. Now, besides telling me again that I'm not studying enough, you said you needed something?"
"Oh, that. Oui, oui. We're running low on blues and greens," Jeremiah said with some exasperation. "Everything's dried from that hodgepodge Pellion made of the powders with that dreadful spill last week. What a mess. I wish you'd have at least let me brain him a couple of times with a stick. Guard duty at the front gate's the worst place for him. You know he's an eye for the girls and putting him with all the pilgrim traffic is certain to tempt him beyond reason."
"If so, then he wasn't meant for the priesthood," Ríg said. "Besides, Brother Perdieu agreed to lessen the punishment time if Pellion pulled the extra shifts."
"I don't care about any of that-have him sent back!" The old man snapped. "Have Pellion sharpen quills or work on pinpricking page layouts for the final chapters here. He's the only one who knows how to draw Caliburn!"
"Caliburn ... you mean, King Arthur's sword?" Jacob asked.
"Who else's?" Jeremiah snorted. He then waved a disgusted hand at one of the younger novitiates. "I tell you this, boy," he said ominously to Ríg, "these striplings you've left me with here might as well just take daggers to the vellum pages, for all the slashes and mistakes I'm finding. None of them could trace a margin to save their lives!"
Ríg smiled, ignoring the barbs. "I can't help you, Master Jeremiah. If you recall, you were the one chasing Pellion through the scriptorium with a broom and throwing quills at him! I had to get him out of range before you took an eye out." He shrugged. "It's not my fault that Brother Perdieu happened to be walking down the hall outside at that moment."
Jeremiah kept glaring at Ríg and then snapped his head away. "Oui, well, I think that we've got enough ground azurite for the blues, but the dried buckthorn berries were completely ruined when Pellion-" he took a deep breath and smacked his lips together, "I mean, when the accident happened."
Ríg clasped a reassuring hand on the old man's shoulder. "Master Khaldun just returned and he might have some of those supplies with him." The knight straightened. "Meanwhile, can't you just keep sketching artwork between the spaces you've made for framing the written columns?"
Jeremiah grimaced. "Not my preference, but of course I'll make do, I'll make do." He chuckled. "You're patient with an old man's fits of madness, boy. I appreciate that. Thankfully, you question everything, Ríg, which is why you keep learning. One couldn't ask for more from a knight, eh? Not even from Lancelot or Palomides, though even they could have done with asking a few more questions in their quest for the Grail ..."
Jeremiah began to rise from the stool and almost tripped over his own feet. The misstep irritated him. "Confound it all! That's what I get for throwing out a compliment, a broken neck!"
He shakily grabbed the table for support, all his earlier irritation returning in a flash. "Well, come on, give me a hand here, Ríg, for God's sake! Do you want me to have an accident, too? Then, you'd be out both Pellion and me!" Jeremiah sat down wearily on the stool, briefly appraising Jacob, before again completely changing his line of thought. "You, boy! Do you know the Greek term,homooúsios?"
"Me?" Jacob replied, startled but glad for the chance to show this cranky monk that he, too, had a scholarly side. "Yes, I do, it's Greek."
"I know that, Whelp! Do you know the answer or not? Quit stalling and-"
"Rabbi Mordecai-my teacher back home- he was fascinated with the idea. He said that it means no matter what the appearance, something's of 'the same substance' as something else." Jacob spoke in a rush, talking over the old man's words. The boy was quick in his study of people, and beyond the judgmental severity in Jeremiah's eyes, he sensed the genial interest of a scholar and educator, too. "Not shape-shifting like when Proteus tried to escape from Menelaus by turning into a snake or a leopard, but more of a ... well, more like the same being who presents different aspects of himself to different people. Kind of like when the wizard, Merlin, cast a spell and disguised Uther Pendragon so he could steal into Tintagel castle, seduce Lady Igraine, and sire King Arthur?"
"Hmph. A proper response would've focused on the Word as a key to understanding the entirety of the Christian worldview. It would've emphasized the paradox of the Essence of the Father, Son, and Spiritus Sanctus as being one and the same, but ... we'll let that pass. Very good. You at least framed your response in the realms of logic and the supernatural, and for our purposes, the shape shifting actually isn't such a bad analogy. We mere mortals can only perceive so much, eh?" Jeremiah looked away as he grumbled, but his eyes twinkled through bushy eyebrows. Jacob had, indeed, taken the right tack. "I didn't know they were teaching such things in synagogues these days. Hmph. So, oui, to remain with your examples from myth, let's use Arthurian history, although a better example than Uther would be the shifting nature of the Holy Grail." He chuckled, as if remembering a private joke. "Oui, oui. Fools ... fools like me, eh ... well," Jeremiah paused, an unidentifiable emotion overtaking him. Finally, he gathered himself, and continued in a voice filled with urgency, his eyes shifting to Ríg. "Fools like you and me, Lad; sometimes they forget the essentially supernatural aspects of faith. They forget that our minds can comprehend both the universal essence of a form and the-what's the word?-oui, comprehend both the essence and the particularity of its physical reality. Things are not always what they seem, Ríg." Then, Jeremiah inhaled deeply, and his cutting tone returned. "Do you see what I'm getting at? Eh? Let me tell you, boys-to return to our point: if the Round Table knights who pursued the Holy Grail had recalled that (like so many magical talismans) the Sangréal could take many shapes other than a mere cup, they'd have saved themselves years of fruitless questing and-"
Ríg held up a hand, "I'm sorry, Jeremiah, we have to stop now. Perhaps we'll discuss this later." He smiled ruefully. "If it weren't for a couple of armies outside, we could spend the rest of the afternoon talking about the substantiae of God, or more Arthurian lore, but we've got to go."
"Years of searching ... centuries of guarding ..." Jeremiah repeated, tears coming into his eyes at the thought of something. He cleared his throat, then: "What were we talking about? Oh, bien sûr." Confusion laced the old man's voice, and then his voice returned to normal. "Oui. Quite right. No rush, Ríg. We can talk later. The world moves on, no matter how old fools like me would try to stop the Wheel of Fortune from turning. I can't get angry at you, son, not if you're asking the right questions. Can you promise me that you'll keep asking?"
Ríg frowned slightly, apparently misunderstanding the direction of the old man's ramblings, but he nodded and said he would keep asking whenever he could.
The monk took quill in hand again, moving it with an astonishingly steady hand to the inkwell nearby, and devoted his entire attention to the parchment page. Jacob tried to say farewell, but the old man seemed to have forgotten that he and Ríg existed.
"Come, let's let him get back to work," Ríg said in a quiet tone. He retrieved the lantern from the stone bench where he'd lain it. "We'll go through the other part of the library."
The lamplight cast fluttering shadows on the walls, and while they walked, Ríg told the boy about varying aspects of the collection.
"Master Khaldun called you his apprentice," Jacob said at one point, trying to get to the bottom of his confusion about the seemingly dual nature of monk-knight beside him.
"Yes, I am, and I'll probably be so for many years to come," Ríg said. "I came to the Krak when I was about your age, and he was a somewhat severe taskmaster for the first few years. I wanted to do nothing but pray and read when I got here, but I've also had to serve as squire for Brother Perdieu-to become a knight."
"Can you do both, though?" Jacob asked.
"Both what?"
"Be a monk and a knight?"
Ríg smiled. "I don't know. The Templars and Hospitallers can be something of both. I'm squired to Brother Perdieu, but still mean to be ordained as a priest at the end of my training."
He looked down at the boy. "I do have to go now, Jacob. You'll take the stairwell at the end of this hall, make two rights and a left, and you'll be at the infirmary."
"Two rights and a left. Got it." Jacob looked back at him. "Where will you be?"
"The opposite way, at the end of this hall. I make two lefts and a right to Arcadian's chambers." Ríg paused. He'd asked about the boy's family in one of the other chambers and received only short answers, and finally silence in response, and he wanted to know more.
"So, your mother has no husband now, and her family in Jerusalem rejected her for marrying a Christian?"
When the boy nodded mutely, Ríg continued, "And now her parents are dead, too?" Another nod.
Ríg tried to get Jacob's attention, but the boy turned away from him. "Look, Jacob. I know it's probably not my place to say this, but your mother needs you all the more since her parents and husband have died. You've got to understand that the deaths of your grandparents would still make her sad, even if things weren't going well between them."
"She's sad, but she was just as sad when my father's parents were alive! They were mean to her, and she was all alone when Aba died." The heat of Jacob's anger flushed his face and tears filled his eyes.
This talk made him think of his father, and he didn't want to answer questions about his family from a Christian. The nazaroshad taken his father, his Aba, from him at the Battle of Mecina. Whatever anyone thought of that massacre, Jacob's father had perished for the sake of Servius Aurelius Santini's own vanity and fanatical religious beliefs.
Why couldn't such man have been as reasonable as Ríg-if all Crusaders were like this, wouldn't Mecina have ended differently? Should he rethink his perceptions and allow that his father might still be alive?
"I took care of my mother for years, Ríg," Jacob said, controlling his anger. "Or, I should say we took care of each other. But, I couldn't be in the shop all of the time. Ima wanted me to continue my studies, so I worked at the scriptorium down the street with Mordecai and a friend. We missed father, but it was a life. It was a life until ... until it wasn't. We had to leave the Italian Quarter when Boccanegra ... that lousy Genoese cur! He ... I walked in when ... ah, he was our landlord and I found Boccanegra trying to have his way with my mother!"
"Oh, I see. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." A long silence fell between them until the sound of running feet made them glance down the hallway. The squire reached forward and tousled the boy's dark hair. "Go, Jacob. I'll come to the infirmary after the knights' council and you can introduce me to your mother." He gave the youth a searching look. "Does that sound all right with you?"
"Yes, Ríg-thank you. I -"
Two French-speaking monks hastened down the corridor, and hailed Ríg. One said something but couldn't be heard because of the length of the hallway.
"I've got to go with these men, they're the Grand Master's guards," Ríg said. "But, one last thing: there's a member of the eastern mission who's my best friend. He's about my age, but kind of silly. Please tell him I said that and use the exact words: 'You're funny.' His name's Marcus-"
"Master Khaldun's son?"
"Oh. You know that, too, do you?" Ríg said. "You're a very fast learner, Jacob. Yes, he's that, too, but the main thing is, if he's awake, introduce yourself and tell him that Ríg said he must've been fighting like a little girl to get hurt so badly by only a couple dozen marauders."
Ríg chuckled and prepared to join his brethren when two other soldiers rushed into the corridor, obviously looking for him. After a brief conversation, Ríg turned and beckoned Jacob to follow.
"Let's go, Jacob! I'll tell Marcus myself-there's an emergency in the hospital!