A Dirge for Prester John

And John, too, standing sheepish by his gryphon, practically clinging to Fortunatus’ tail, afraid of what the day might hold, his eyes hollow with sleeplessness. I pitied him. He could not decide what any of it meant. Did it mean his faith stood proven, and all things he knew real? Or that nothing he believed was now true, and all things hopeless?

At least he had grown softer toward me. And I cannot think of how he looked that day, standing by the great gryphon, his hair clean and snowy and thick, all grown back but never the same, his color high, his back straight, not so old as all that, but not so young, and when I looked at him I knew so many stories about him it was like looking twice; I cannot think of how he looked without thinking of him in my arms as I took him to the Fountain, as I fed that green trickle through his lips like a thread. It is all one, the polished wood handle of the turning barrel, the snowy off-season Fountain road, with only a few lanterns swinging up ahead, up the mountain, only a few tensevetes selling restoratives on the pilgrim trail, and no hyenas at all. We walked alone, the six of us, and Fortunatus carried John upon his back, for after Nimat, he could not stand or speak, so deep he dwelt in despair. Hajji told us much, but I found it all confusing and not a little upsetting.

“Does this mean his God is real? Will we never hear the end of it now? Will we have to learn our Latin in earnest?”

Hajji sighed. “I cannot say. It is a story. Stories are both true and untrue. They are both, all the time. Do I believe Thomas had a brother he loved, and that his brother died? Of course. That’s all the story is, really. Love, and death.”

“Why did the snow cease in that clearing? I have never seen such a thing, in the high reaches.”

And the panoti smiled, gently, but with a ruddy pride. “Trees are bigger below ground than above, Hagia. That place is Thomas, all of it—the tree, the grass, the warmth. Even the little birds in his beard. He is very old; he has grown big.”

And even in remembering that, I cannot help but see John on the back of the gryphon so many years later, centuries later, dead and cold, and all of us following, down the river with its crashing stones, John, John, always needing us, and Fortunatus always bearing him up. Everything echoes in my vision, back and back, a hundred times. Pulling him up the final steps, rope by rope, hand by hand, and he like a dead thing between us but breathing, me holding him, his eyes glassy, and the apples around the green and foaming Fountain with all its slime and grudge swelling and shriveling, and the wind, the wind terrible, frigid. Me, holding his head back, and the Oinokha, her feathers ruffling, the night stars a corona over her swan’s head, staring at him in fear and wonder. And how we both of us scooped the thick, bitter water from the cleft of the mountain, how the Oinokha held open his mouth as I tilted it in, and how for a moment, for a moment, I was the Oinokha for John, the water of life sliding from my body into his.

It is hard to remember how I didn’t love him, even then. But I know I did not. I tended a sick body. And then, later, at the Abir—what could sour me at an Abir, when the world stood so eager and ready to be made again?

And so he would stay with us, and in ten years and ten again who knew what woman or man might take him for his final journeys there, so that he could hold in his hands that life everlasting he so longed to know? And so he would take a chit in the Abir, and luck take him where she would.

It is night, it is night in New Byzantium and the mockingbirds are singing and there is a little wine left in my glass, just the dregs, just the dregs, and that day Hadulph had to explain to him how the Abir worked, like a little boy who didn’t even know which way to hold the oil-jar.

“The barrel is full of stones,” Hadulph said, as if John were a little boy who didn’t know which way to hold the oil-jar. The sun glittered on the skin of the custard-apples hanging low over our heads. “Each stone has flaws in it, and the flaws spell a life. For example, if Fortunatus said: John of Constantinople, adopted gryphon and foundling, come forward, and then you spun the barrel—you must spin it and no one else, it must be your own hand, so if you are not feeling strong have a cup of tea-wine and practice now—and then you spun the barrel and pulled out, say, a smoky quartz with a black flaw, a crack in the center, and a blue flaw, it would mean that you ought to be a shepherd, and marry the creature who draws the other smoky quartz with the blue flaw, and that—lucky you, you are permitted a child. See? Fortunatus has been studying for several years. He knows it all, every flaw, every crack, every stone’s meridian. He will make us proud, and afterward, we will introduce ourselves all over again, and buy him fermented eggs until we are new friends, all of us.”

John looked dubious. He had said little since the Fountain, though every day he had grown stronger and his old wounds lighter. It was only that he rarely slept, and I knew he struggled still with himself, with his God, and I, I wanted nothing of any of that fight.

The bone trumpets blared and the noon sun illuminated the barrel, placed just so to catch the light. Fortunatus began, from his prodigious memory, to call the names of every soul in Pentexore, all of whom, when assembled, filled the broad Pavilion in the center of Nural, and some hung out from balconies and windows and high towers, to come down when they heard their names. But there were not so many even then that this seemed onerous, to pack us all in one place.

I remember it in flashes, as I remember my first Abir. How Grisalba drew a silver bead striped with diamond and sard, and hooted with delight for it gave her two husbands and a wife, and a silversmith’s bench besides. Hadulph drew obsidian flecked with white, and went north to become a tender of the lavender fields, with a crow for a wife—and I laughed, but there was pain in my heart, too, for though they would not manage mating, they would be wed, and he had not drawn me. I remember all of it, how Astolfo looked at me, hollow and hurt, as he walked up and drew his clear crystal,

with no flaws at all, and knew he would be a hermit, a holy man without wife or child, and through the ink stains on his face, I saw him weeping and the shame in me was heavy, so heavy, for I had left him, and I could not undo it.

And of course I remember it. There is no forgetting in me. Fortunatus, with only a small quaver, called John forward—of Constantinople, adopted gryphon and foundling. And a great cheer went up, for he was new family then. He smiled bashfully, uncertain, and he looked beautiful in that moment, innocent, young. He spun the barrel strongly, three times round, and thrust his arm within. When he drew it out again he held his fist closed for a long moment, his eyes closed, head tilted toward the sun. His jaw worked; the bells tinkled lazily, and we all held our breath, to see who the stranger would become.

He opened his hand. On his palm sat a bead of lapis, and in it a red smear of carnelian, but also a speck of emerald. He would have a wife. He would have a child.

He would be king.

Silent shock reverberated through the throng. So many mouths hanging open, so many hearts suddenly uncertain. Would the Abir steer us wrong? Was he such the son of luck that he would rule in his first lifetime?

It was my name Fortunatus called next. In a daze I floated to the platform and spun the barrel, all joy sapped for me—I did not even notice it spin. My mind tripped and jangled—what sort of king would John be? I would not become a Christian, I would not. I reached through the dark door of the vessel and felt within, groping, the warm trickle of pebbles sliding over my hand. I chose one, and I swear it was a true Abir, I did not know, I only took a stone which seemed warm and big, no different than when I chose Astolfo, when I chose my scribe-life.

I withdrew my hand. I knew, even without opening it. I cracked my fingers, and there lay a diamond, a deep red flaw within it like a drop of blood.

I would have a husband. And I would be queen.

And I remember it all at once, Astolfo bellowing from below the stage, storming forward, pointing at John, shaking, enraged, unable to speak to accuse him. And I remember Qaspiel, its face so sad I wanted to die there, just to make it stop.

“I think he means to say: it’s not fair. I think he means to say: you cheated, John.”

And I remember lying back on the altar that is a throne that was a sacrificial mound before the al-Qasr was the Basilica, lying back with John above me, and how in the morning the world would be changed and when we woke, the throneroom was full of roses and partridges and orthodox hymns, and peacocks lay sleeping in the rafters. Their blue heads like bruises: the pulse of their throats, the witness of their tails.

“I did not cheat,” John said, and Astolfo whirled on me, his eyes blazing, pained, all the blame there: I left him, I left him and hadn’t I just wanted John all along.

“No, that’s not how it was,” I said faintly.

And I remember how John sat me on that ivory chair and knelt at my knees, the beauty that all supplicants possess sitting full and shining on his thick features. He closed his kiss over my navel-mouth and his tears were like new wax. “Say it,” he whispered.

And I said his prayer. Rosa, rosae, rosae, rosam, rosa. Rex. Regis. Regi. Regem. Rege. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus—

“How could I have cheated?” I remember John saying, spreading his hands. “Only today did I discover how the Abir was conducted. It’s far too complicated to fix. And you, you mean to say Hagia cheated, too?”