Spires of Spirit (7 page)

Two years before, Alban had attempted to extort money from Andrew, the carpenter. Andrew was well liked—cherished, in fact—by the folk of Saint Brigid, and if he had some dealings with the Elves of Malvern Forest, no one was inclined to fault him for it, for the dealings (if, indeed, there were dealings) had certainly done nothing to make him an undesirable neighbor. Quite to the contrary, in fact.

But Alban had found out about Andrew's dealings and had, after mass one Sunday, threatened him. The carpenter himself, smiling and kind, would neither confirm nor deny the accusation, but Francis, the smith, who stood well over six feet in height and who, it was said, did not fear the Devil himself, pounded, that evening, on the priest's door. With his largest hammer. Another threat was made,t his time to Alban, and the matter of the Elves was dropped.

But David's sister was miles away in the convent of Saint Barnabas, and who knew what influence Alban had with Church dignitaries, or with the prosecutors of the Inquisition? Upon whose door would Francis have to hammer in order to keep Catherine safe? Upon whose door
could
he hammer?

Rising suddenly, David went to the window and shouted out into the forest: “Damn you, Alban! Damn you!”

The trees seemed to trip up the words, which fell flat among the leaves and branches. He worked his mouth for a moment, then turned back to the room. Leaning against his workbench was the first of the panels he was creating for the cathedral in Hypprux. It was partly finished, and the face of Baron of Aurverelle stared out from a network of vines, flowers, and scurrying squirrels.

He ran his hands over its surface. It was life. Like the forest, like the crops, like the rising and setting of the sun and moon. And from this he would have to turn away . . . for a crucifix.

Reluctantly, he took his hands from it and left his house, taking, once more, the road for the village.

***

It was becoming dark by the time David reached the home of Andrew and Elizabeth. In response to his knock, Elizabeth peered out from a window, then quickly opened the heavy door. “David! What brings you out so late?”

“Is Andrew here?”

“He left some minutes ago . . . for the forest. He often takes evening walks.” Elizabeth looked at him, a half smile on her face, as though her words held more meaning than was obvious.

David, agitated, concerned about the crucifix, panicky about Catherine, did not notice her expression. “I have to talk to him, Elizabeth. Tonight. Which way did he go?”

“Take the East Road, David.” Elizabeth met his eyes, and David could see that, in her opinion, what he needed right now was something hot to drink, a chair by the fire to sit in, and a sympathetic listener. But he could not stay. He could not even allow himself to think about comfortable and pleasant things right now.

“Thank you, Elizabeth. Good night.” He turned and started to run off.

Her voice followed him. “God be with you, David.”

Above the nearby rooftops, the spire of the church was visible against the darkening sky, and the carver felt that it was watching him as he left the village and trotted off down the East Road. The image of Alban, fat and smug and kneeling at the prie-dieu, stayed in his mind and quickened his steps, but the sky was covered with stars and the full moon was well above the horizon by the time he made out the smudge on the road ahead that he guessed was the carpenter.

David started explaining when he was still some distance away. “Andrew,” he said. “I need some wood. Some good wood. Oak if you have it. Big.” He gestured with his hands to indicate an indefinite, but very large, size, but it was only when he reached Andrew that he realized that the carpenter was not alone.

Andrew's companion was wearing a gray cloak that blended with the darkness, and, unseen, he had stood to one side, calmly watching David's approach and gesticulations. His face was smooth, gentle, almost womanly, and there seemed to be a faint light hovering about it.

“You are the woodcarver, are you not?” he said. His voice was quiet: pitched just loud enough to carry clearly, no more.

David stared at him, his mouth open.

Andrew put his hand on David's arm. “Varden,” he said to his companion, “this is David, a friend of mine. David, Varden.”

Unnerved, David found himself groping for words. “God be with you,” he blurted out.

Varden smiled. “Hello, David.”

Fair skin, David noticed. Dark hair. A clasp in the form of an interlaced moon and star holding his cloak closed at his throat. Eyes that reflected more light—starlight—than they should have. And that face . . .

Yes, Andrew often took evening walks.

David found his heart was pounding. “Maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe I'd best talk to you . . . ah . . . tomorrow.”

“No need,” said Andrew. “You're here tonight.”

“And you are upset,” Varden put in. “There is no reason for you to return to your house in such a state.”

The starlight was holding David's gaze. Abruptly, he half turned away and rubbed his face, trying to clear his thoughts. First Alban . . . and now this . . .

“What do you need the wood for, David?” said the carpenter.

The thought of the task ahead of him brought the carver's thoughts up short. “Alban,” he said. “He wants a crucifix from me. I don't want to do it, but he's forcing me.” He told them of the priest's words in the church.

Varden's eyes flicked down to the ground. “A grave mistake,” he murmured.

“I can't put Catherine in danger,” David went on. “I didn't want her to enter the convent in the first place, but after the plague took Mother and Father, she seemed to think it was her duty. I imagine Alban has friends up there. He could . . . he could . . .”

He shut his eyes, trying to keep away the possibilities that, like the dying leaves of autumn, seemed bent on pressing close around him. He could smell death in the air.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Peace,” said Varden.

“That's an easy thing to say.”

Varden dropped his hand. “That is true.”

“You usually find your own wood, David,” said Andrew. “Why are you coming to me now?”

“I don't want to cut a living tree,” David said, opening his eyes. “Not for this. It's . . . it's not worth it. Alban's not worth it. It would be like . . . like sacrilege.”

Andrew looked at the moon thoughtfully. “David . . . I'll tell you, I don't think I have a piece of wood big enough for what you need.”

“I don't want to cut a living tree,” David repeated. “I have to carve a dead thing. I hate death.”

Varden suddenly looked up, looked him in the face. “Death is very popular in the cities,” he said. “And in the country, too. Many people think of death a great deal. Much has been written of it, and painted . . . and carved.”

“Yes, yes. That's one of the reasons I left the capital.” David's voice was sharp with annoyance. Why was this stranger belaboring the obvious?

Varden continued to look him in the face. “But there is death, nonetheless,” he said simply, even though the light in his eyes appeared to deny that.

David noticed that his hands were shaking. “The Savior died to bring life,” he said, trying to ignore them. “I want to glorify that life. But people like Alban, like the ones in the cities . . . they're only seeing death. What's more, they seem to be worshiping it, reveling in it. It's like a . . . a horrible mistake. And I have to become a part of it now.” He struggled with words for a moment, then suddenly burst out: “And he'll probably want every single little scourge mark lovingly tricked out in the very best red paint. That . . . that—”

“You hardly sound like a man with a sister in the convent,” said Varden.

Still those starlit eyes. David felt for a moment as if they were searching his face for something.

But: “A mile from here,” Varden said suddenly, “there is a dead tree. It is quite large and well seasoned. I believe it will do for your purposes.”

Andrew was nodding slowly. “That one, Varden? Yes. And it would certainly save time. A new-cut piece of wood takes a while to season. And I assume, David, that you want to take care of this quickly.”

The carver groaned. “It will take time, regardless. It will be a huge carving. Massive.”

“Shall we go look at the tree?” said Varden. He beckoned them to follow, then led them along a nearby forest path.

The tree was in a clearing near the top of a hill, brightly illuminated by the rising moon. It was as Varden had intimated: the thickest part of the main trunk soared up gracefully about six feet, and, near its top, a large branch separated from it, curving out and up.

When he saw it, David stopped, staring, for the tree gave him an odd feeling about his heart. There was something strangely haunting about the stark whiteness of the trunk in the moonlight, and even in death, the branch seemed to be uplifted in blessing.

Andrew was examining it closely, running a hand over it with a carpenter's touch. “It looks like a very good piece of wood.”

“I'm . . .” David tried to speak, but he could not get the words out. “I'm . . .”

A little distance away, Varden was watching him, his eyes mirroring the starlight, his face as calm as that of the pale moon floating over his head.

David stood before the dead tree. “It's beautiful,” he managed at last.

***

The next morning, David, Andrew, and two men from the village went into the forest, carefully cut the dead tree off at ground level, and hoisted it into a wagon. Before they left the clearing, though, Andrew planted a small sapling next to the stump.

David watched. “Interesting sapling.”

“It's a beech. Varden gave it to me.”

“Who is Varden?”

Andrew looked up as he wiped the earth from his hands. David was rather afraid of the answer to his question, was, in fact, rather astonished at his temerity in asking it; but Andrew only gave him one of those impish half smiles that one might well exhibit when extending two closed hands to a child and asking:
Which has the sweet?
Of course, in Andrew's case, there was more than likely a sweet in
both
hands. “A friend of mine,” he said.

“What is Varden?” David felt he had to ask.

Andrew's smile broadened. “A friend of mine.”

And as the wagon jounced and rumbled down the road to his secluded house, David was half wondering if he were seeing that same peculiar starlight in Andrew's eyes. The carpenter had his elbow propped on the side of the wagon, and he was whistling a jaunty tune as he watched the forest go by.

Idly, the carver let his hand rest on the trunk beside him. The wood was surprisingly smooth to the touch, hardly weathered at all considering that the tree was seasoned well enough to have been drying for at least two years.

Andrew's genial little tune danced through his head. The carpenter was a very good whistler, and now he was adding ornaments to the melody, little turns and graces that could not but lift David's spirits in spite of the task he was facing.

Blue sky, yellow sun. David settled down comfortably beside the tree, his hand still on the warm smooth wood, and as his thoughts drifted away from the wagon and into the forest, dancing with Andrew's tune among the leaves and squirrels, leaping and jigging down by hidden brooks and ponds, he suddenly felt as though, in the wood beneath his hand, something stirred.

He jerked his hand away as though he had put it on a hot stove, and, frightened, looked at the tree; but there was nothing overtly unusual about it. It was only good, solid, warm wood. Yet he was now seeing shapes in it, shapes that he, a carver, could release. The tree itself was telling him what should be carved from it. In fact, it was telling him what
must
be carved from it, and the vision that leaped into David's head was so overpowering that it made him giddy.

The problem was that it had nothing whatsoever to do with a crucifix.

***

The wagon reached David's house by noon, and the carver's companions set the tree up in his workshop, said farewell, and left. For several hours, David busied himself cleaning the wood and preparing it for carving, and then he backed off a few feet and looked at it.

And, two weeks later, angry, frustrated, and almost afraid, he was still only looking at it. In the fields surrounding the village, grain was reaped and gathered in, melons ripened, and apples reddened; but David's mallet and chisel lay untouched on his workbench. He had spent the days nervously pacing back and forth in the shadow of the tree, picking things up and putting them down, staring out his window for long minutes: despite his efforts to banish the vision that had come to him on the wagon, the vision that dictated imperiously the final form of the tree, it would not be banished. In fact, while what tentative ideas he had forcibly fostered within his imagination for the design of the crucifix had grown hazy in his mind and threatened to disappear altogether, the vision had not only persisted, but actually intensified. He had only to look at the weathered surface of the trunk and he would see the face, the uplifted arm, the calm eyes. The tree itself was only an overlay, a veil that dimly hid what was already present in the wood, what he, a carver, had to release.

After nearly a month of impotent staring, he was reduced to sitting on a stool with his face buried in his hands. Through his tightly shut eyes, he could still see what he had to carve, and he was roused from his turmoil only by a knock on his door.

He shook himself out of his frustrated trance and rose, but Alban had already entered. The priest's eyes lit up when he saw the tree.

“Ah, David! A fine piece of wood! Some of the men in the village were saying that you had found material for the crucifix, and now I see that it's true. Excellent, my son!”

David watched him, hollow-eyed.

Alban folded his hands inside his sleeves and wandered around the trunk, examining it from every angle. “Just the right size, too. I assume you'll be adding the outstretched arms later?”

David's anger was building. “Have you ever thought about asking permission before entering a household?” he said as evenly as he could.