The Beatryce Prophecy Read online

  Yet it was war and violence that had brought him the child.

  Who could understand the world?

  “I do not understand,” said the king to the soldier.

  “Nor do I,” said his counselor. “She cannot have just disappeared. She cannot simply have magicked herself away.”

  “If the prophecies speak of her,” said the king to the counselor, “who knows what powers she has.”

  “Where is the one who was sent to dispatch her?” asked the counselor.

  “He, too, is missing,” said the soldier.

  “Find her,” said the counselor. “Find him. Find them both. She must not live. The very kingdom is at stake.”

  “Yes,” said the king. “The kingdom itself is at stake, for the prophecies say it is so. Do they not?”

  “They do,” said the counselor. “So say the prophecies.”

  For a long time, her fever burned so hot that Brother Edik did not know if she would live. He dribbled water in her mouth. He bathed her in cooling herbs. He prayed over her.

  The goat watched his every move, her eyes both suspicious and worried.

  The whole of the order watched him.

  “It is a time of war,” said Father Caddis. “There are many in need. We cannot hover over every refugee who wanders our way. We must feed those in need, bless them, and send them on.”

  “But she is a child,” said Brother Edik. “And she is so ill.”

  “She occupies your mind,” said Father Caddis, “and if your mind is occupied, it cannot properly concentrate upon the work you must do, the words you must receive. Also, there is the matter of the goat.”

  Here, Brother Edik remained silent, for there was nothing to say.

  Answelica had installed herself in the monastery, in the sickroom, at the head of the girl’s pallet, and she would not be moved. Anyone who attempted to unseat her was attacked.

  The goat would bite, snarl, and snap—making very fine use of her terrible teeth. And then, having subdued her attacker, having—more often than not—made him bleed, she would turn back and consider the child.

  The look on her face would miraculously transform from malevolence to adoration.

  It was terrifying to behold.

  When the girl was obviously distressed, when she cried out, Answelica tended to her. She put her head close and offered her ear, and the child took it and was calmed.

  “I believe. . .” said Brother Edik to Father Caddis. He cleared his throat. “It is possible, it could be, that the beast has had a change of heart.”

  “If it is a change, it is an extremely limited one,” said Father Caddis. “And in any case, I do not care if a change has occurred. We are not in the business of saving goats’ souls. Another week—that is all I can allow, Brother Edik. Another week, and then the child must go. Ideally, most ideally, the goat would go with her.”

  In those moments when she was awake, she remembered.

  And she did not want to remember.

  She thought that if she remembered, she might die. And she had made the decision to live.

  So she climbed willfully out of the clutches of the fever and left everything behind her: her brothers, the tutor, the seahorse, and whatever it was that had happened when the seahorse at last hit the floor.

  She gave those memories to the fever. She offered the forgetting as a gift, as a way out, a way to survive.

  And when the fever broke, when she woke at last to the real world, she brought only one thing with her—her name.

  Beatryce.

  It was a small thing to bring, but it was also everything, for it was a name that would appear often in the Chronicles of Sorrowing.

  What she saw when she woke was sunlight streaming through one small window that was up very high. She was in a narrow room on a mattress of straw. A goat was beside her, and outside the window, there was a bird calling—singing two high, sweet notes over and over again.

  She lay and listened to the bird sing.

  She allowed herself to think that the bird was searching for her, singing her name.

  Beatryce.

  Beatryce.

  Beatryce.

  “Listen,” she said to the goat. “The bird sings my name. Beatryce is my name, and the bird sings it, does it not?”

  The goat stared at her from golden, light-filled eyes.

  “Beatryce,” said Beatryce. “I am Beatryce.”

  The goat nodded. Beatryce sat up.

  “Surely, you have a name, too.” She put her face very close to the goat’s. “Massop,” she said. “Is your name Massop? Or is it Blechdor?”

  The goat gazed at her lovingly.

  “Perhaps it is Morelich. Am I right? Are you Morelich?”

  The sun streaming in through the small window outlined the hair on the goat’s ears. The bird sang.

  Beatryce wondered if she was dreaming. If so, it was a pleasant dream.

  She put her hand on the goat’s head. It was knobby and solid and warm. It seemed real enough. She grabbed hold of one of the goat’s ears. She gave it a tug just as the door to the room opened.

  A monk entered.

  “Oh,” he said. He stood unmoving and stared at her. Or rather, his right eye stared at her, and his left eye wandered of its own accord, looking around the room—at the goat, at Beatryce, at the sunlight and the window.

  “Your left eye does as it will,” said Beatryce. “It dances in your head.”

  The monk raised his left hand and covered the roving eye.

  “No, no,” she said. “I did not mean you should hide it.” She smiled at him.

  He smiled back. He removed his hand. “I am Brother Edik,” he said.

  “I am Beatryce.”

  “Beatryce,” he repeated.

  And she was glad to hear it, glad to hear him say her name. She felt a wave of relief go through her. It was as if the monk were confirming something.

  Yes, her name was Beatryce.

  Yes, she existed.

  “And the goat?” she asked. “What is the goat’s name?”

  “She is called Answelica.”

  “Answelica,” said Beatryce. “It is not at all the name I expected.”

  “What name did you expect?”

  “I had settled upon Morelich as the most likely.”

  “Morelich?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why Morelich?” asked Brother Edik.

  “Because she did not answer to Massop,” said Beatryce. “Or Blechdor.”

  Brother Edik smiled at her. She liked his face. She liked his wandering, searching eye. She liked his steady, quiet eye, too.

  “You have been very sick,” he said to her. “Answelica stayed with you all the while.”

  “Yes,” she said. She remembered the fever, the heat and despair of it. “Where is this? Where am I now?”

  “You are with the brothers of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing.”

  “And what are the Chronicles of Sorrowing?” asked Beatryce.

  “The Chronicles tell the story of what has happened and of things that might yet happen, those things which have been prophesied.”

  “Sorrowing,” said Beatryce. The word was a heavy one. “It does not sound like a happy book, a joyful book.”

  “Alas,” said Brother Edik, “it is not.”

  “Well, then,” said Beatryce, “that is not a book I would care to read.”

  Brother Edik stared at her. “You would not care to read it?” he said.

  His wild eye danced. His other eye remained steady on her face—serious, concerned—and some small bell of warning, some bass note of doom, echoed within Beatryce.

  “Who are your people?” Brother Edik asked. “They will want to know that you are alive. They will want you home.”

  And here, whatever brightness Beatryce had felt disappeared.

  Who were her people?

  Where was her home?

  She could not say. A great black emptiness suddenly yawned inside of her. />
  It was as if she had been walking down a path and turned to look behind her and found that all the things that should have been there, all the things that had been there only a moment ago—the trees, the bushes, the birds, the path itself—had suddenly disappeared.

  “I’m Beatryce,” she said to Brother Edik. “Beatryce.”

  It was all she could think to say, all that she knew. She started to cry.

  Answelica made a goat noise of comfort. She leaned up against Beatryce, and Beatryce wrapped her arms around the goat’s neck and wept.

  She wept for something she had lost but could not name.

  Brother Edik stepped forward. He put his hand on her head.

  I am sorrowing, Beatryce thought. I am with the brothers of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing, and I am sorrowing.

  This thought—the circular truth of it—made her laugh.

  “What is it?” asked Brother Edik. “Why do you laugh?”

  “Will you write of this in the Chronicles?” she asked. “Will you say that a girl named Beatryce, who does not know where she came from or who her people are, held on to a goat and sorrowed?”

  “Yes,” said Brother Edik from above her. “It will be written so.”

  “As something that happened?” said Beatryce. “Or as something that has yet to happen? Will I become a prophecy?”

  “Oh, Beatryce,” said Brother Edik.

  And in the castle of the king, in the throne room, the counselor reassured the king.

  “This is nothing but a small delay, sire,” said the counselor.

  “It is quite worrisome,” said the king. “I have been thinking. What if we have mistaken the prophecy as it was written? What if we have the wrong child?”

  “Mistaken, sire? I would remind you that if we had mistaken the prophecy as it was written, if we had misunderstood those great words of wisdom, you would not now be upon the throne.”

  “True, true,” said the king.

  “We do not have the wrong child. She is the one of whom the prophecies speak. I am certain of it.”

  “I would not, though, have her killed,” said the king. “I want her brought to me alive. Yes, alive, so that I may question her.”

  The counselor rubbed his eyes. He sighed. “Very well,” he said. “You are king. We will do as you command. We will instruct that she be brought back alive.”

  Brother Edik’s problems were compounded.

  There was a child who was no longer hot with fever, but who did not know who she was or where she belonged.

  There was a goat who continued to refuse to be separated from the girl.

  And worst of all, the girl—when discussing the Chronicles of Sorrowing—had said, “That is not a book I would care to read.”

  That is not a book I would care to read.

  As if she could read.

  As if such a thing were possible.

  Which, of course, it was not.

  But still, a shiver of wonder and fear went through him at the possibility of a girl who could read.

  Only brothers in service to God could read, and also the tutors and scholars who came and studied the prophecies.

  And counselors to the king.

  And the king himself.

  In the whole of the world—from the great sea that Brother Edik had never laid eyes on but knew existed, to the dark mountains that Brother Edik had heard described—there was only a handful of people who could read.

  All of them were male.

  None of them were female.

  It was against the law to teach a girl to read, a woman to write.

  It had been so for as long as Brother Edik could remember.

  The Chronicles of Sorrowing did not say that it had ever been otherwise.

  Surely, the child misspoke.

  He heard her voice again—playful, imperious. He heard her say, “That is not a book I would care to read.”

  His heart thumped against his rib cage.

  No, he did not doubt it.

  He had not misunderstood.

  The child, the girl child, could read.

  He illuminated the letter B.

  He decorated the letter with a twisty, turning vine that was as green as springtime, as hopeful and insistent as the month of May. He made the B itself bright and gold like the sun.

  And then he took the letter to her.

  He held the B in front of his chest and said to Beatryce, “Will you tell me what this shape is?”

  She looked at the illuminated letter. She looked at him. She said nothing.

  His heart fluttered in relief, and also in a strange sort of disappointment.

  She was not, after all, who he had imagined her to be.

  Beatryce looked at him for a long moment. “Brother Edik,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Brother Edik, it is in me that I should not say. I don’t know why. But I cannot lie to you. That is the letter B, and it is the first letter of my name.”

  Brother Edik’s heart sank.

  “If I were to give you a quill and parchment,” he said, and he heard his voice tremble, “would you be able to write your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what else?” he said.

  “What else?”

  “What else could you write?”

  She gave him a great, grave look. “Anything,” said Beatryce. “Any word. All words. Is it right that I have told you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She smiled. “Will I work to help you write the history of the world, then? Will I join the brothers in chronicling the sorrowing? I would prefer to tell stories. Stories have joy and surprises in them. Do you know the story of the angel and the horse, and how in some trick of destiny, the angel was given hooves and the horse given wings, and the angel danced upon the roof of the palace with her hooves and so woke the king to good deeds, and the horse flapped his wings and flew from this world to another and did not once look behind him?”

  This child!

  “I do not know that story,” said Brother Edik.

  “How could you?” said Beatryce. She laughed. “I made it up just now.” She became serious again. “But I could, if you asked me, write it down for you, every word of it.”

  The B in Brother Edik’s hands trembled as if it were alive. It leapt from his grasp and fluttered to the ground.

  Answelica bent her head and snuffled it.

  Beatryce said gently to the goat, “No, my sweet. It is not for eating.”

  The demon goat being called “my sweet.”

  The girl being able to read. And write.

  It was too much. Too much.

  What could he do? It was all beyond him.

  Brother Edik stared at the top of Beatryce’s head. Her hair was snarled and matted. It needed a comb and brush.

  He remembered, suddenly, being a boy and holding his mother’s brush. It had been a beautiful thing, made of wood, the handle of it shaped like the tail of a mermaid encrusted with small jewels.

  The back of the brush showed the mermaid’s head, with the long and flowing curves of her hair, also strewn with jewels.

  His father had once caught Brother Edik holding the brush, staring at it openmouthed.

  “If she looks this beautiful from behind,” the young Brother Edik had said to his father, “then her face must be too beautiful to look upon.”

  “Whose face?” said his father.

  “The mermaid’s. If only she would turn and look at me.”

  His father had become enraged. He told him that he could not stomach the ridiculous notions, the outrageous fancies that the boy’s crooked mind conceived of.

  His father had beat him. He had said that he was beating the nonsense out of him. It did not work. The nonsense remained, and he was not allowed, ever again, to hold the brush. His father forbade it.

  However, if his father was not home, the young Brother Edik could sit and watch his mother brush her hair—long, thoughtful strokes that made the je
wels in the mermaid’s tail and hair wink and flash.

  His mother had beautiful hair. She had told Brother Edik more than once that women were judged for their hair and must work hard to maintain it. “A woman and her hair are one and the same,” his mother had said.

  “Beatryce,” said Brother Edik.

  “Yes?”

  “I have an idea.”

  She tried not to think about what she could not remember.

  And this, of course, was easy to do. Because she could not remember what she had forgotten, could she?

  It is like a riddle, she thought, a riddle that cannot be solved.

  She could not think about what she had forgotten, but she could think about its great absence, the dark hole where all the knowledge of who she was should be.

  For minutes at a time, she forgot this hole, and then she remembered it again, suddenly and terrifyingly—as if some wind had come upon her and caught at her feet and tugged her violently toward the abyss of not-knowing, not-remembering.

  She ignored this tug.

  She stood very still and let the blackness, the chill of it, pull at her. She stood as firm as she was able, and the feeling passed, and the world—Answelica and Brother Edik and the morning sun and the low murmur of the pigeons on the roof—returned.

  She thought about all of this as Brother Edik cut the hair from her head, as she watched the snarled clumps of it fall to the ground.

  “Tell me again why my hair must be cut,” she said to Brother Edik.

  “Because it is too tangled for anything but cutting,” said Brother Edik. “There is not a brush or comb in all the kingdom that could find its way through such a snarlsome thicket.”

  “But there is another reason,” said Beatryce.

  Brother Edik was silent.

  Answelica leaned up against Beatryce’s legs.

  “What is the other reason?” asked Beatryce.

  “If you do not fidget,” said Brother Edik, “I will give you a moon.”

  “You have not answered my question,” said Beatryce. “And I would like a star this time.”

  Brother Edik had pieces of maple-sugar candy in the pocket of his robe. The candy was made by Brother Antoine, who shaped the maple sugar into stars and half-moons and leaves and small, grim-faced people.