She stopped and looked up at him. “Now, do you remember what happened to my kin-sisters?” she asked.
He found himself nodding dumbly.
“Good,” she said. “I look forward to hearing news of their release. I might even be inclined to beg clemency from His Holiness on your behalf.”
God believes your heart is strong enough.
At first, there had only been tiny pinpricks of light, shards of sun that dazzled as they fell on the leaves. But when they reached the vale of endless tents, the light had grown stronger. When Rodrigo glanced through the open flaps of tents, thinking he would see nothing but shadows, all he saw were glowing faces. Cherubic angels peering out at him, their rotund moon faces swollen with honey-sticky joy. And when he met the Emperor, the man who spoke with the voice of a black bird, he could no longer bear to raise his eyes toward the sky. Even though there was a heavy canvas tent over his head, he could still see the fiery explosions of God’s spinning eyes.
As he grabbed the cup, all the light went away. It was as if there was a vast hole in the bottom of the vessel, a sucking abyss that began to inhale deeply as he squeezed the metal stem in his hand. He could see the light streaming toward the cup. It flowed across the table like water running uphill; it dribbled out of Ferenc’s eyes in fat, squirming tears; it fell from the sparkling wheels in the sky in sheets of fiery rain. The cup continued to inhale, seemingly unperturbed by the quantity of light it was consuming, until there was nothing left but shadows.
In the resonant darkness, the black bird kept shrieking, and Rodrigo heard answering calls, the echoes of all the crows and vultures from the battlefield. Each voice splintered into tinier voices, like the cries of lost children-the orphans of Mohi, of Legnica, of every city the Mongol horde had destroyed in its relentless quest to trample the world.
Make them stop! he pleaded with the darkness. Give them peace. Embrace them. But if God was in the darkness, he did not respond to Rodrigo’s prayer. The priest teetered on the edge of the abyss, the one that had nearly consumed him once before, buffeted by the screams and cries of all the dead birds.
His feet slipped, but he did not plummet into the empty vastness. He hung, dangling over the abyss, one hand wrapped tightly around the stem of the cup, and it did not move. Grunting and straining, he reached up and put both hands on it.
He remembered everything perfectly: his catechisms from the seminary, the holy words of God writ in the Bible, the insights gleaned from Brother Albertus, the last benediction from the Archbishop before the armies of the West were devastated on the plain near Mohi, the words spoken to him by the fair-haired angel at the farm. Signa hodie lumen vultus tui super me… It was only through arduous reflection upon everything he could recall that he could understand God. That he could understand his place in God’s design.
There was still a glimmer of light in the cup. Every muscle in his body groaned as he raised himself so that he could sip from the floating cup. He put his lips against the warm metal, and as his flesh made contact with the Grail, it tipped toward him. A golden streak of light flowed into his open mouth, and he drank it eagerly, accepting it into his body, into his soul.
When he exploded, he knew he was the exultation of light that he had seen in his vision. The endless wheels within wheels were his existence, shattered and strewn throughout the profusion of possibilities, destinies, histories, implications, and connections. He whirled, each particle of his being shivering with an ecstatic thrill. He saw everything and heard nothing.
As the wheels began to slow, as his being began to coalesce once more, he started to weep.
He could see cracks in the vessel, and even with all this light and warmth, the cracks could not be healed…
Father Rodrigo struggled in Ferenc’s grip. “What are you doing, boy?” the priest screamed. His eyes were wild and his face was pale with blotches of red-the same sort of coloration that Ferenc had seen during more than one of the priest’s feverish fits. “She wants to steal the Grail. She’s a child of Satan.”
He didn’t believe what Father Rodrigo was saying-he couldn’t-and he felt more strongly the fear he had been trying to push away. He had seen the priest become lost in his fever fogs before, but never like this. Never with such little warning.
Without taking his eyes off Father Rodrigo, Ferenc listened to the sounds of movement behind him: Ocyrhoe’s ragged breathing; her hands and knees moving across the rough ground; the sound of cloth scraping against the same. Father Rodrigo thrust out an arm, pointing over Ferenc’s shoulder, and he heard Ocyrhoe’s horse spook with a deep snort.
“Stop her!” Father Rodrigo shrieked.
“Father,” Ferenc said, gently taking the priest’s outstretched hand with both of his and pulling it toward his heart. “Look away. Calm yourself. I beg you. She is not your enemy. She only wants to help. I want to help.” He squeezed the priest’s fingers.
Father Rodrigo shoved Ferenc sharply, and he staggered backward and barely caught himself from falling. “Open your eyes, boy! Domine, oculos habet, et non videbut.” His eyes were frighteningly bright and large, and he pulled his hand free of Ferenc’s grip. Shivering with rage, he grabbed Ferenc’s shoulders and spun the boy around. “I have seen her in my visions, and she is all that stands between me and our salvation. Look!”
Ocyrhoe dashed across the road, her legs at awkward angles as if each wanted to flee in a different direction. She clutched both the cup and the priest’s satchel against her chest.
With a roar, Father Rodrigo released Ferenc and threw himself at the fleeing girl, his hands grasping and clawing. Ferenc saw her, in her confusion and terror, grab the satchel even tighter to herself rather than attempt to avoid his outstretched hands. Father Rodrigo grabbed Ocyrhoe by the hair, yanking her to a stop. She cried out, struggling in his grip, and Ferenc flinched as she wrenched herself free, leaving a fistful of hair in Father Rodrigo’s grip.
Ferenc shook himself free of the fear that was paralyzing him and sprang after Father Rodrigo. The priest heard him coming this time, shook him off as he tried to wrap his arms around the mad priest. Father Rodrigo threw an elbow back, catching Ferenc on the bridge of the nose, and Ferenc tried to blink away the flood of tears that sprang into his eyes.
The priest lunged after Ocyrhoe again, grabbing at her neck and shoulders this time. As he found his grip, he squeezed and lifted her so that she was poised on her toes. Her face was very red, and her hands flew to her throat, trying to pry loose his grip.
“Father, stop,” Ferenc hissed. He grabbed Father Rodrigo’s arm and pulled, but it was like trying to pull a full-grown tree out of the ground. He slapped Father Rodrigo, but the priest ignored him. Ocyrhoe sputtered and choked. She had dropped both the satchel and the cup, and her tiny hands beat ineffectively at Father Rodrigo’s arms.
Ferenc looked at Father Rodrigo’s eyes and saw no sign of the priest he once knew.
He stood on his toes, and wrapped his right arm around the priest’s head and face. “I have to do this,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” With his left arm folding in against his own chest, he grabbed Father Rodrigo’s right ear in his left hand.
The priest’s body tightened against his, dumbly realizing something was amiss. His hands stopped tightening, but he did not release Ocyrhoe.
Having gotten the man’s attention, Ferenc carefully pulled a little with his right arm as he pushed with his left, forcing Father Rodrigo’s head deosil enough to be uncomfortable. A nervous cry slipped from the priest’s mouth, almost as loud as Ocyrhoe’s rasping gasps for air, and Ferenc found himself almost unable to maintain his grip. He had heard the sound before when Father Rodrigo had moments of lucidity during his bouts of fever madness.