Richard Powers - Operation Wandering Soul

"In the spring of the year 1212," a text box authoritatively interrupts, "a young boy no older than you tends sheep in a pasture near the tiny town of Cloyes-sur-le-Loir in central France." Two hundred years from now a little girl saint will lead an army through this hamlet on its mission of salvation. "A boy on the threshold of his teens, Stephen, who has never needed a last name until now. Soon the world will know him as Stephen of Cloyes." His flock is agitated and expectant, despite the sweet weather.

He lives in fabulous times, although he cannot know it. Deployments are everywhere in the air. Just outside his cleanly inked borders, towns busily receive city charters, universities spring up, cities band into trade leagues. A fever of new building spreads like flowering weeds across the champaign. The last westwork of Our Lady of Paris and the first stones of Rheims are laid in place even as Stephen keeps the two-year-old ewe with the weak left fore from sliding down a pebbled pitch.

He cannot write or read, has never even needed to sign anything. Simple arithmetic, certainly: lambs, ewes, rams, weight gains and losses, hours spent grazing. His grasp on medicine, meteorology, even natural history has all the finesse of a field practitioner. He can recognize 113 varieties of plants, diagnose fifteen different illnesses, and predict the weather for the next four hours. He once visited Vendome, and last St. Mark's Day he attended a Litana Major in Chartres, a chance service that will charge the conscience of the race. He takes the flock out after sunrise, ranging them from field to field until hail or darkness forces them in. He converses with his animals, calling each by name.

For a frame, he prays, singing psalms to himself. But now that the flock is safe, the dog content, the weather solid, the spring too sweet to admit danger, he sleeps on the sly, fifteen minutes this afternoon, his attention unneeded. The dog wakes him from his secret nap, barking in confusion at a dark figure climbing their remote rise up the path toward them.

The figure is not his father, nor any acquaintance carrying alarm from the village. Stephen can think of no reason short of catastrophe why anyone would hike all the way out to these fields. Thieves would wait for dusk; others are bound to their labor.

As the apparition approaches, Stephen makes out a pilgrim's cloak and cap. The man must have strayed miles from the cathedral route. And alone! Stephen calls out to the wanderer, thinking to set him straight. But the man preempts him, cuts off his speech bubble with another, and greets the startled shepherd boy by name.

"Who are you?" Stephen asks as the man draws closer. "I don't think I know you."

"Don't you?" the stranger smiles. A shiver runs up the boy's spine. "I woke you?"

Stephen manages a terrified, close-up shake of the head. The Pilgrim scolds him gravely with a look. "I would like you to deliver a letter."

"I can't read," Stephen blurts.

"A messenger shouldn't know how. But I will tell you what this note says. 1 have seen the Lord's City, arrayed as for her bridegroom. Why fail her now when the feast is so close?' "

Stephen taps his staff against the dog's flank, to keep her from snarling. "It's in code?" The traveler grubs about in his sack. He withdraws a moldy crust, which he shares with the boy. The man's poverty boosts Stephen's confidence. Thanking the man for the food, he asks, "Where should I deliver the letter?" He adds hopefully, "The village is just that way."

The Pilgrim places a parchment, heavy under its seal, in the child's hands. "You will bring this to the king of France."

At the touch of the man's hand, Stephen falls to his knees and begins crying. Sucking air, he manages to gasp, "Why me?"

The Pilgrim, already halfway down the rise, calls out the answer that Stephen most dreads. "I choose one who follows my profession." The innocent sheep kneel as one beast across the field, praying for absolution.

At night, after bringing his flock in, as his family gathers noisily around its late meal, Stephen announces into his soup, "I must go to the city."

His father bats him across the head with an elbow, automatic, businesslike. The younger ones snicker, and receive similar treatment.

Comic interlude turns into clamor when Stephen clarifies. He doesn't mean Vendôme or even Orléans, an already-impossible fifty miles away. "I must go to Paris." Father looks wearily at mother to discipline the outrage. She brains the boy and washes his mouth out with scalding lard. Dinner breaks up early.

He could tell them of the message and the man who set it in his hands. One word, and his family would fall at his feet and beg forgiveness. Instead, for reasons left undrawn, he chooses to slip out early, before daybreak, stealing the best pair of trekking shoes and some stale rinds destined for the feed bin. He ties the letter firmly to his forearm. He runs from the farm in the dark, choosing a random direction, running anywhere, so long as it is away and unseen.

When it grows light, Stephen stumbles upon a village and orients himself. He points himself northeast and keeps walking. It will take weeks to reach the goal he's been given. He wanders alone at a time when the average adult traveler would not last an afternoon against human ingenuity. "The Pilgrim would not have sent me off without providing for my safety." He puts up for the night in a hayrick, his belly nagging like a scythe wound.

An angel wakes him at daylight. Graphic match: a beautiful girl, perhaps a year younger than he, shakes his shoulder, calling, "Wake up! What do you think you're doing here?"

He begs some milk and a bit of bread, which his angel supplies with scorn. Then he tells her, whispering, that the Savior has sent him to the king of France, bearing a message about the end of the world. She hisses at him until he pulls up his sleeve and shows her the letter fastened there. She touches him gingerly on the muscle, and a delicious pain shoots through him, a change he can't understand. She studies him, amazed, and begs to be allowed to come along.

"Go on, then. Collect provisions, as much as you can carry. Then meet me down by the stile." She returns with a sister, also inflamed by the cause, carrying food, clothing, even a blanket. By midmorning, they are five, having met and bragged of the goal to two of the girls' village friends along the road. They sleep in an open field, together, happy as they have never been, singing religious tunes until they pass unconscious.

They travel in greater safety now, occasionally stealing an egg or two for the Lord's breakfast. To the rare adult who stops and challenges the little band upon the route, the girl lies sweetly, "We are cleaning the weeds off roadside crosses." Stephen cannot help noticing: her face grows beautiful, flushes rose with excitement when she invents the truth. They are joined by a boy named Luc, richer than all of them combined, and another named Henri, who has a dog that knows the useful trick of digging up carrots. They share all things among them, as needed. At night, they trade off standing watch.

Before the week is out, they number twenty. Stephen finds it steadily harder to keep track of this swelling flock. They can no longer move without attracting attention. But something astonishing happens as they reach this critical mass. A family of farmers offers them shelter inside a basse-cour and sends them off the next morning laden with goods. The same implausible transaction repeats itself the following evening. People ask for nothing but to be remembered along the pilgrimage route.

They lie in such a courtyard one night, four dozen children from eight to sixteen, decked out happily amid the animal stalls. They have already reached the woods that ring the royal domains. They will enter the capital in just days. Stephen lies quietly in the stall next to his angel girl. One of the older boys, a monastery runaway, finds him there.