The Book of Heaven: A Novel (25 page)

Savour apologized to him for the disturbance. She summoned the self-discipline to apologize further for the inappropriately poetic food she had served to his soldiers.

“Don't concern yourself,” said the Priest. “They won't remember it as long as tomorrow. It is a strange phenomenon, don't you agree, that despite the pleasure your work gives, it vanishes so quickly.

“I don't refer to the usual vulgar pleasantries about elegant food ending as no more than excrement, since those ignore the fact that its substance also becomes our flesh—our strength—our power to form a thought. And yet, we are not mesmerized by what keeps alive so much as by what may kill us. It seems the work of life disappears, while the work of death lasts forever.

“Yours is the work of making life possible—but for all your gift—for all the transforming beauty of your work—you are no more than a housekeeper on an epic scale. You are the world's wife, satisfying again and again the appetite you have just sated.

“You do not create fate. Your work is no more than an offering, a taste, sustaining life without changing it. And there lies the difference, perhaps, between a servant and a ruler. The servant will never know to what use her work is put, but the ruler knows what only God knows. He knows what will happen to his subjects tomorrow—even, it may be, the specific hour of their deaths.”

A third of the art of being a woman is keeping quiet while men speak—and yet Savour would have said that we do remember pleasure—but that we remember it as we remember our lives before speech. We remember pleasure without words, in the way we live. What Savour cooked made each day remembered—and a day gone unremembered is a day unlived, lost as surely to the living as their days are to the dead.

Savour would have said if she dared, that though she did not create fates, she became at moments the conduit for the two things in creation as powerful as fate: memory and miracle.

She said nothing, though, except that she was needed again in the kitchens. Though it was still daylight, a half-moon had risen in the sky, ivory as a freshly cut apple.

They traveled a few days more on the coast; then they turned upward and inland toward the villages where the Indigenes lived. The countryside was noted for its velvety, fertile soil, where most of the grain that supplied the New Kingdom was grown. The region had been thickly forested as well, but the Angels had begun to thin out the surrounding forests; they hated the agate tree and all it symbolized for the Indigenes. Nor did they want the Indigenes to make use of the forests for secret conferences or surprise attacks.

The first villages on their route thus had a bullied look. With their neat fields, and houses well built in the folk style, they had the air of battered wives clinging to their dignity, as the Priest's party approached through avenues of tree stumps like broken teeth.

Messengers throughout the region had previously announced the impending visit of the Priest's entourage, so the village headman and a group of dignitaries were waiting to receive the Priest with the traditional black rose conserves and black rose sherbets in silver cups.

While they conferred, soldiers fanned out around the periphery of the village, and stationed themselves in parties of two at the door of each family compound. Savour was dispatched to set up her mobile kitchen, and ordered to concoct a meal impressive enough to honor the local authorities from the requisitioned stores. The village leaders made florid toasts of welcome to the Angels, which were returned by the Priest and officers of high rank.

Flushed with plenty and with wine, the village officials were dumbfounded at the end of the formalities by the announcement of the new law. They were ordered to deliver not only communal, but all private stores to the Angels.

Surplus food would now be managed for the benefit of the entire population, the Priest explained. “The Indigenes will share in the prosperity of the entire Kingdom. You will give in order to receive. We will at last be equals.”

He raised his arms and spread them out in the universal embrace of Angelic prayer: “In the Paradise of our scriptures, it is promised that every good man who gives abundantly will be filled with good things. We will write our scriptures on the fields of the New Kingdom for you blessed ones to read. The ears of wheat are your keys to Paradise.”

Collecting the stored grain from the village houses took two days; supplies were transported to the local mill, and put under guard. The village headman was ordered to recruit local guards to ensure that grain was not taken unlawfully from the fields. The harvest, too, would be for the common good.

The Priest's party held identical meetings at each community where they stopped, advancing from village to village over the next six days. The guards and the house searches made Savour uneasy, but she herself had often been peremptory with her staff in the effort to accomplish a task she understood better than they did. The Priest had steadfastly protected her from the dangers of the court; now he was trying at last to change the way the Indigenes were treated, too. Patience was the greatest skill those in the power of others must master.

On the seventh day, they crossed the river Song on the way to a village in the northern uplands, where they were attacked by a badly equipped band of young men. One soldier's arm was broken, but the rebels were quickly subdued. All fifteen were taken alive—one was no more than a boy—and hustled into a hastily erected tent for questioning.

Savour was touched by the sight of the brave, misguided children, and was profoundly relieved when a messenger arrived to request several trays of pastries from the extravagant supply the Priest had ordered at the outset of the journey. It was a sign of the Priest's fatherly forgiveness of these foolish and rebellious sons.

She selected some of her richest confections and syrups to seal the sweetness of reconciliation. These young men, once they understood the visionary generosity of the Priest, would surely become instruments of the coming peace between the Indigenes and the Angels. The grain collections at this village took place without further incident.

They were attacked again, though, as they approached a village even farther north; this time, the rebels were men, and one of them was lightly wounded. Again, the Angels subdued the remainder of the fighters. These were questioned, and the Reconciliation pastries sent for. The Priest was indefatigable in his refusal of revenge.

The Angelic party proceeded to the third northern village with much greater vigilance. There, the village elders greeted them hospitably, but told them the village had no grain to contribute. Their stored grain had been stolen by a band of marauding Indigenes, who had heard rumors of the collections taking place, and had determined to make a collection of their own. The Angels settled in this village for an uneasy number of days, despite the fact that it was missing supplies of grain. The Indigenous villagers were already suffering from hunger.

Nevertheless, the Priest parleyed with the village leaders, and pastries were sent for. News of Savour's well-stocked mobile kitchen traveled rapidly through the village streets. Dozens of children, cannily sent by their mothers, who knew they would be harder to resist, came in waves, advancing shyly, but silently. They came progressively closer, like ducklings in a pond when they catch sight of someone with bread. Savour began to give them food. She had no doubt that the Priest would approve; she imagined his face as it looked when he led public prayers, glowing and benevolent, blessing her efforts.

She had been trained to use the finest materials extravagantly; now she struggled to find ways to make each portion increase itself. She had plain bread baked, without the additions of sunflower or pumpkin seeds that made it delectable. She reserved the pulses she had previously used to enrich rice dishes. She nourished them with supplies that had once been mere garnishes.

The children's successful forays, rewarded with small packages of rice, sunflower seeds, potatoes, emboldened the women. They came discreetly, and singly, but they came. One woman with desperate, bitter eyes came two days in a row. Savour ladled out two cups of black beans, and a cup of nuts to pound for butter. The call to assemble sounded; the woman tried to scuttle off, but Savour knew how strict the assembly rules were enforced. She shepherded the woman toward the square, conscientiously setting a rapid pace. Still, they straggled; the Indignous woman she had been provisioning was too weak to keep pace.

Fifteen young men, their hands bound, stood between armed guards in the village square. Each had confessed to grain theft, and been condemned to death. She recognized some faces; these were the fifteen who had carried out the first attack.

Savour trembled; she, at whose hands so many animals had been sacrificed, had never before been in the presence of human beings about to be killed.

These were creatures whose lives spanned more and less than seasons, whose lives ended in a different way than animal lives, replaced identically by the next generation. The children of animals mastered exactly what the dead had once known; how to fly, hunt, breed. No one would ever know what these young men might learn or live, or fail to learn, if they were killed this morning. She was astonished to see them exposed there, in the village square.

“But they ate the pastries, the sweets of Reconciliation,” Savour protested to the Indigenous woman who slouched beside her. The woman looked at her with contempt.

“Yes, they did. Trays and trays of them. What is it you think they do with these jeweled sweetmeats? If they want confessions from grain thieves, true or false, they feed these delights to their prisoners. As in a fairy tale, as many cakes as you could dream of. Until you are killed with honey, because they don't give you water. Some die of thirst, others confess—even when they are not guilty—just to get water in their throats. We have heard what has happened to the others who enjoyed the Priest's hospitality.”

Savour suppressed a wail; she was a newborn again, torn into a world she had never imagined, where all her work, all that was excellent, might be put to evil use. Her stores were crammed with these painstakingly made, exquisite sweets, in the quantities the Priest had specifically ordered. She leaned on the Indigenous woman, suddenly weaker than her exhausted companion.

The cry went up for clemency for the young Indigenes, a clemency that depended on the Priest. According to the ritual, an altar was brought from his quarters.

He knelt there, at the feet of God, in rapt prayer. The words of his prayer were lit candles, by the light of them he would read the Divine Will. His face glowed almost golden, as he held his hands to his heart. He rocked back and forth on his knees. And then he rose, his face beatific. “I speak the word that God wills,” he said. “Death.”

The guards roughly removed the boys; one cried out, hoarse with outrage and despair, “Don't let me die thirsty. Give me water!”

After supper that night, the Priest called to Savour to bring him a plate of pastries. He dispensed with knife and fork, to feel the butter and honey on his fingers, and enjoy the added depth of flavor his flesh gave to the confections. His face was the face of a rapt child, tasting the sweet world on his tongue. Savour saw the miracle of innocence restored that the act of eating renews; even the most vicious criminal tastes his cake with wonder and pleasure, as if for a moment, he falls asleep peacefully at its breast.

Savour, however, had lost her innocence. She was now free of the Priest as she had never been, and in danger from him as never before, which is the effect of revealed truth.

She took risks she understood now, freely and subtly stealing from the stores, doing her utmost to hold life in as many bodies as she could. She noted the topography of the region acutely, the details of the soldiers' outposts, the depths of the rivers they crossed, with a wild animal's desperate perception. She was still and cautious, because now she was running for her life—and not only for her life. She was sharing her very body with other people now, with hundreds of people, this virgin who had never shared her body with even one.

She had seen courtly guests relish the food served at her table, but she had never seen the look of absolute fulfillment on the faces of the hungry when they had at last eaten enough. Her providence became a passion; for the first time, she felt physically, distinctly alive. She called on Heaven to rain bread upon the hungry; she prayed that the milk of Heaven would stream from her virgin breasts, so that her own body might become food.

What she was doing became rapidly known among the Indigenes, a secret they faithfully guarded. They, in their turn, with superhuman self-discipline, began to give her portions of their unique seeds, seeds they might have eaten for their own sustenance. But these were the seeds they wanted to outlive them, seeds that would carry their world into new life.

If samples of seeds were discovered in the possession of the Indigenes, the Angelic guards would toss them into the rivers; but if Savour were found with the precious seeds, the Priest might even honor her for her forethought.

The Priest had spoken with exalted sincerity on his return circuit through the New Kingdom, to village elders, diplomats, and regional governors' about the Angels' love of peace. Already, the countryside was severely short of food, but he reassured their leaders that there was ample grain in the national stores to be purchased.

As always, the price for food was labor—beyond that, when the scheme took root, there would be perfect protection from famine, for which these temporary stinging privations were the unpleasant, but temporary, price.

Even in villages that had been subdued violently, he evoked the just peace that he himself was charged to forge among them. He spoke of his pain at having been forced to meet violence with violence. Some among his audiences refused to meet his eyes, others tested a gingerly belief that the worst was over, that the innate fraternity of human beings had begun to prevail. Others saw the tenderness and familiarity with anguish in his profound and brilliant eyes, and knew he meant what he said.