The Revelation.

By S. Grant-Suttie

belgone2001@gmail.com

The Bishop had his back to the door and his face buried within his hands. He rested upon his knees, The scrapped baldness of the top of his head bobbed while whispering. He never saw the young Alaires genuflect as she was ushered into the private chapel.  

The priest was in mid conversation with his almighty. Alaires looked around the room and saw the candle light bending in the draft. When the man finished, he placed his fingers on his forehead, chest, and both shoulders, then stood up to face her.

‘I am Bishop Raymond.” He spread his arms out as if displaying himself while walking towards her. 

“I am Alaires, the daughter of....”

The cleric cut her off. “My daughter it matters not. Your last name will change soon enough, if all goes well.” He tried to smile consolingly but it came across with smugness instead. Catching himself, he started again. “So you are Alaires, shall I call you Senorita Alaires de Die?” He did not mention that he had met her father years earlier. 

Alaires did not answer. It was her turn to control the silence and to echo the stare. She let the comment hang in the air.  

The bishop gestured for her to follow him to the other side of the chamber, inside that small room were two chairs and a tiny table, he sat down on one side and motioned for her to sit.  

“I am your future husband’s confessor. He shares everything with me, and now I offer the same service to you. Please tell me about yourself.”

Alaires thought quickly, she was told she was to marry a young man who came from here and he was to inherit his father’s land and more titles. She was sought after for her language skills and social status and possibly her dowry and inheritance. She decided to give the man enough to present some value and the rest with great humility, in case she missed some skills her father had mentioned it would make her appear submissive.

“How many languages do you speak?” The priest seemed frustrated with her drift off into thought.

“Several.” She refocused. “Arabic, Frankish, Anglo, and of course Spanish.” She decided to keep Latin her private since it was the language of the church. 

“How is it that a girl of your young age can speak so many different languages?” His tone sharp with disbelief.  

“My father would host many merchants in our household. They stayed and in order to pay for their keep they would teach me. At other times I was at the nunnery, I would sit and listen to our visitors. I may not know each language enough to read or write, but I know enough to understand.” She opted for the humble persona - a mere student.

The priest, knowing Spanish and Anglo, spoke to her in those two languages, a short question. Alaires replied flawlessly. Arabic was beyond his scope and he decided to accept her word on it. Then they continued in Frankish.  

“Tell me of your relationship with God, Alaires.”

“I am Roman Catholic, as is my father, my mother, and generations before.” She was irritated by his abrasive manner and wanted to send the shuttlecock of the conversation back to him with a swiping comment. “Tell me if there is a book building, a place to read and think here.” Right after words came out of her mouth she realized her humble persona dissipated. 

Squinting his eyes, he wondered if this young woman was insolent or was she possessed by a demon, one minute sweet and obliging, the next demanding to read, imagine a woman reading. He brushed it off, not to be swayed.

“Tell me, do you talk in your sleep?” He said it as almost a throw away question, ignoring hers. 

Alaires paused before she answered. He was pushing for something but she knew not what. “Now, how would I know that? I am asleep when and if I talk.” This question seemed odd.

“Do you walk in your sleep? Have you ever woken up in a different place than where you fell asleep?” His eyes focused upon her again.

“I am not possessed by demons if that is your question. I do my prayers, I do my confessions, I tend to my duties within the church, I have been raised with the assistance of the nunnery, there is no need to suggest anything untoward.” She was now tired of the interrogation.

“Good, because I would not like to spend another night sitting outside your chamber door.”

It was him, he sat outside waiting for something, but was not given any evidence of sin. They both heard the squeak of the large chapel door and a weak voice call out, “M’lady?”

The cleric looked down at the floor and noticed a small ordinary spider scamper across the tile close to the table leg. Without standing, he reached out a foot and stepped on it deliberately, then stood up and gave that queer smile and gestured with his hand that Alaires should leave.  

Alaires gave a cold look to the priest. She closed her eyes for a second and gave a prayer for the spider, but not the priest. She had now met her soon-to-be-husband’s confessor.  

Back to her room she went, her fate yet to be determined. Alaires was advised, and so was her father, that the groom would arrive in two days time.  And so it was agreed by the Comte that yes, two more days and then if there was no meeting for the wedding to be arranged, the three would return home, so read another note passed to Alaires to herself from her father. 

Two more days passed, Alaires still ate with her maid, with the expectation that she was encouraged to eat with the Bishop. She fained illness at each request. Those extra days of waiting were filled with pelting rain, the days were miserable. Yusrah did come three times a day with food and news. Alaires wondered if they were to leave on the morrow as there was no sign of her intended. Alaires longed for either her father or her maid or at least something to break the boredom of time between meals and needle point. Yusrah, as requested, came with a table game, backgammon, but no news of their departure.

“Yusrah, you have been to the village?”

“Oh yes.” Yusrah began to describe the small town. “I can ask my brother, Ali, who works with the horses to join us.” The two girls raised their eyebrows in a mischievous manner and Yusurah left the room with a promise to return shortly. The game was abandoned. 

Two hours later Yusrah returned with Ali who stood in the hallway waiting. He was a tall geeky young man with curly black hair and shy with women. He barely spoke until he discovered that Alaires had sufficient Arabic.  

“I want to go to the place where the other women.” Alaires was forthright. 

Once through the tall doors, she saw the main path out of the castle lined with huts, and families streaming in and out during the break in the rain. She saw animals, sheep, goats, dogs. She saw fires smoking inside the homes, the smells of cooking gruel and wood ash, the floating cinders as they made their lazy way up into the sky. Alaires walked arm in arm with Yusrah and a step behind Ali. There was much to see, to smell, to hear. With these people living so close together, with their animals and their army, they were irritable and reeked of bile and wet dogs. She and her father arrived at night, missing this scene.

Ali went to a hut behind the main path. There was a sound of hammering on metal. He stood outside the eves and called out. “Greetings Faro, we seek your wife.” He turned to Alaires and mentioned that the wife came from the same village as herself.

Faro stopped hammering. He was unusually tall, a retired soldier. He had an eye missing with no eyepatch. The scar went from the top of his head, through his eye, to the middle of his cheek. 

“Why Ali?” The blacksmith was curt and uninterested in stopping his work.

“Her sister wishes to know she is well.” Faro knowing full well that his wife had no sister twisted his head in disbelief but seeing the two women behind and no evident threat, he saw no harm and gave the definition of sister one of religious intent rather than family. He raised his hand and with a quick gesture and he motioned for a young woman to step into the more public area of their residence, his work area. Emma stepped forward from behind a ragged curtain.  

Yusrah opened her arms. “Emma, are you well?”

Emma spoke in calm words, quiet enough to be respectable yet loud enough for Faro to hear. “I am well. You are welcome to come inside, have tea with me. Share your adventures.”

Alaires recognized her accent, “You speak my language!”

Emma, in a surprise move, spoke in an old French dialect, “I am well. I am given much freedom. Life is good.”

Alaires replied, “I can see we are from the same village but I do not recognize you. Who is your father?”

Faro yelled, “Frankish!”  

Emma continued in Frankish, “My parents died and I was raised in the nunnery. They arranged my marriage too.” 

Emma continued, ”I think I remember you, your mother she fell to her death, yes? And you father placed you in the nunnery with us when he went on his pilgrimages? You were but a small child when we first met. Yes, I remember now. I married when you lost your front teeth.”

Alaires replied quickly, “You must have mistaken me with another, my mother passed in childbirth.”

Emma tried to correct herself, “Alaires, your father is Comte De Die?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. This was not the first time that someone referred to her mother’s death in a conflicting way. 

After a short conversation, the adventuring threesome left. As the three were just around the corner, Alaires could hear Emma’s last comments to her husband.

“No one told her of her mother’s death? Poor child, never to know the truth.”

When the evening meal was ready, Alaires joined her future in-laws and her father. She was eager to discuss the day and discover news of their departure. Alaires noted the deeper observance she was given when offered the chance to add to the conversation. They spoke of minstrels, good paintings, and gospels. She paced her responses, neither wanting to be too over enthusiastic, but also wanting to appear highly engaged. For all the waiting, it appeared her father had forgiven the extreme delay and so with his lead, Alaires too forgave the point that her groom was still not present until the morrow.

 “I was given a tour outside in the marketplace today, and I happened to notice there are few women here, are they not allowed outside?”

“It is God’s will.” Bishop Raymond who was also at the dinner table, smiled like a snake and ended that topic. It appeared that anything that would introduce a negative query would be deflected by the Bishop. 

Again, at the end of the night time meal, Alaires was escorted to her chamber by her maid, and again she noticed the chair by the door.

 “Yusrah, why does the bishop still sit outside my door at night?”

“M’lady, he wishes to hear you talk in your sleep.” Yusrah blushed.

“Ridiculous!” Alaires threw her arms in the air and rolled her eyes.

“And more m’lady, he wants to know if you are possessed by demons at night. They heard that you may carry the same demons as did your mother.”

“Same demons? At night? My mother? What nonsense!” 

“Yes, and so they will not let you meet your future husband until they are satisfied.”

“My mother died in childbirth. God determined that, not demons. Who gossips?”

“Your father met with the bishop and your future father-in-law.” Yusrah just stood still with her hands wringing in her apron. 

“Why has my mother’s death come into question here?” Alaires demanded.

“Because we know, we know because the Bishop used to live in your village when he was a parish priest, we know because the blacksmith’s wife came from your village with the same story, we know because the surf that travelled with you confirmed the story to the bishop that you are the one and the same family.”

“Know what?!” Alaires knew that she was being pulled into a tragic story with one key point missing.

“You mother was possessed by the demons, she walked at night, she went through a window and died shortly after you were born. She fell to her death. To commit suicide is a sin.”

“She did not commit suicide! Bring me to my father.”

Within minutes Alaires was banging on the door of her father’s chambers. When the door swung open he stood there silently. He knew she knew.  

Alaires stormed in, her night dress flowing behind her like dragon wings. “Why didn’t you tell me that my mother did not die in childbirth, or did she die walking in her sleep?”

“To what end? To make you live in fear of your own life?” 

“You treated me that way anyhow!” She retorted. “The water by my bed in the nunnery, put there by God knows who every night, now I know that water was supplied to balance my humours, sleep walkers are thought to have unbalanced waters in the brain - is this not true? And the fact that my room was always on the ground floor no matter where I lived. And bars on my windows, and locks on my doors, and people sitting outside my room at night, listening, or watching, or knowing my sleep. Do I sleep walk father? Do I?”

“No, you do not.”

“Do I sleep talk?”

“No, you do not.”

“So what happened to mother? I deserve the truth!” A mouse scampered in fright.

His words were whispered in a low baritone voice, barely audible. “Your mother, a week after you were born, she rose in the night and went to your room, the first time you had slept in a room by yourself. I insisted that you sleep in the nursery. I blame myself for causing your mother distress. She feared you would stop breathing. We found her in the morning under your window with the shutters in your nursery open and she had plunged to her death.”  

Alaires stood stunned.

“The sheriff came and I was accused of pushing her out the window until they discovered there was no reason for me to do so and no evidence and the fact that your mother came from a family of night walkers, in fact an entire village of night walkers. The doctor said your mother’s humours were not balanced and suggested her brain was dry and she sought water. Then the local church became involved, the same Bishop Raymond, came to the house. He suspected she was possessed by demons, maybe even committed suicide, and therefore she could not be buried with due prayers and consecration. I was beside myself and had to have her buried in the right way. So, I pledged to have my one and only daughter raised by the church to assure him that the demons he suspected were not living within you. When you turned six, you were placed in the church until such time both myself and Bishop Raymond decided it was time to marry you or have you become a nun. I had to pay the church a yearly fee to keep you in a... safe room, and prove you did not carry any demons. I went on pilgrimages to pray for your mother’s place in heaven.”

“So you and this Bishop decided it was time?”

“He is not a stranger, he knows your mother’s family. They were walkers too. I would prefer you marry, even if it were someone from his choice and not mine. You would dry up inside if you became a nun. I would also like to have grandchildren and know that you are happy. It is only you and me - we are the end of the family and I have to protect you. I have to protect our future family.”

Alaires took a deep breath and realized that she only had her father. To deny her only father would leave her destitute.  

Her father opened a large bag and pulled out a magnificent dress. “Tomorrow you marry because you passed their test. They believe you are not a walker. They believe you do not carry the sins of your mother. There are no demons and you are pure because you were raised in the house of God.”  

There laid her wedding dress. Alaires pulled at the stiff skirt of the sky blue dress embroidered with magnificent pink thread. The Comte then brought out a beautiful delicate tiara and placed it on the bed beside the dress. It was made of silver, with tiny leaves and tiny slivers of diamonds and other coloured jewels sparkling within the folds of the decorations. With every pilgrimage, her father was praying for his wife and preparing his daughter for her wedding day. He stashed away a little treasure each time he came and went. She then realized how much her father had sacrificed to keep her protected, to keep her mother in heaven’s reach and to ensure a family line.

Alaires sat beside her father with her head on his shoulder. In a whisper she gave him his wish. “I will marry him, father.”  

This is my x29 great grand-mother, and we still secretly walk at night.