The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  ‘I mean – why must we be so afraid?’

  ‘Phaedra—’ said her father.

  ‘No, Trant,’ said the bishop. ‘She has seen fit to speak, so speak we shall.’

  She suddenly realized how still the other men were, watching him.

  ‘You have spoken an obscenity, child – as you should know. Witchcraft is abomination. I do not mean that a man slain by potion or rune or some such is any more wronged that one whose brain-pan has been opened by a sword. Nor simply, as some of my brethren would say, that the act of witchcraft is damning to the soul. If that woman repents not of her witchcraft, then damned be her soul and good riddance, sir …

  ‘But see the world as the Angels see it. See Man, sitting at a table, a round table such as this one. To his right’ – the bishop gestured towards the Warden – ‘are the virtues: justice, loyalty, honour, and so on brighter and brighter each one until we reach the chairs of Courage, Compassion, Glory and Truth, behind which stand the Angels themselves …

  ‘To his left’ – the baron grunted a half-laugh as the bishop waved dismissively in his direction – ‘war, cruelty, falsehood, and then the little magics – the love-philtres, the potions, the crones who run as lithe hares in the meadow, the words of the dying and of the dead, the images of wax and the blood of cockerels. Beyond them, the dark places where the devils born with us whisper promises that bring the soul to rot.’

  He leaned across the table, and his stubby finger pointed at Phaedra's heart.

  ‘And there is a place where truth and witchcraft touch. There may the Angels help us! For we live by truth. Never doubt it. What should justice be, but the exercise of truth? Yet the truth that borders those places is bent. There, the best-kept oath is that which is broken at once. If it is not, it twists the oath-maker to falsehood and treachery. It spreads from doer to the very ones that would bring him to justice. Foul things are done under every day's sun, girl, by men in iron who are held noble. But never more foul than they will do with the scent of witchcraft on the wind.’

  He paused for a heartbeat. Then: ‘Girl, do you know of anyone who does, or talks of doing, witchcraft?’

  She met his look. ‘No, Your Grace.’

  ‘As the Angels are my witness,’ added Father swiftly. ‘She speaks the truth as I know it, Jent.’

  The bishop sat back, eyeing them both. He said nothing. Surely he did not doubt Father? Phaedra and the Warden watched him as if he were a bear that might charge.

  At last the bishop grinned. ‘Did you ever meet that woman, Lackmere? The one they tried?’

  The baron looked up from studying his fingers. ‘The Luguan? No. I think she was with Calyn of the Moon Rose for a while.’

  ‘Oho! One might say, then, that she had almost invited her trial by the company she kept.’

  ‘Of that I do not know. He was a deep man, but true to his friends, whatever men say of his house or line.’

  ‘And I have already said a few words on truth this evening. Witchcraft or no, a man who is true to rebels such as these may be himself the very worst of all falsehood. What became of him?’

  The fire hissed, and the baron did not answer. Perhaps he too was feeling assaulted.

  ‘What became of him, Lackmere?’

  ‘He died of a plain fever before Hallows,’ growled the baron. ‘No witchcraft helped him there.’

  The three men sat up long after Phaedra had retired. From where she lay in her room she could hear the rumble of voices rising from the chimney, mingling with the muffled, sentimental chorus from the common room.

  South wind, sweeping the waters,

  Shaking the sails above …

  The bishop's voice echoed up through the stonework. ‘Fine daughter you've got there, Trant. Credit to you.’

  Father said something in reply. Perhaps he was mollified now. Perhaps – battered by the bishop's efforts at tact – he was ready to suggest that the exchange about witchcraft had been her fault after all.

  ‘No! Gabriel's Wings, Trant. Be proud! She thinks. She'll make a handsome woman.’

  South wind, sweeping the waters,

  Take me back to my love.

  ‘Thinking?’ cried the bishop again. ‘The greater the merit, the greater the fall – be it man or woman. And the greater the redemption. But a man who looks for a stupid wife is himself a fool. What dowry do you offer for her?’

  Three manors and six hundred silver marks, thought Phaedra.

  ‘Small! Ah, you're a clever man, Trant …’

  ‘The land stands clear of other claim,’ came Father's voice. ‘And if I offered not a blade of grass, still the foppoons would be round us …’

  ‘As thick as moths! They know what will come. And she has looks. Half the Kingdom will be at your door after her. Damn me – I would myself, if I were not a priest.’ His laugh rang among the stones. ‘And if my other fair acquaintance would let me!’

  They would part company with the bishop in the morning, and go their separate ways. (Twenty miles today, thirty tomorrow in the hammering sun. She ached.) She was glad, both because it marked a further stage on their journey home, and because she was in a hurry to get away from this questioning, leering prince of the Church who browbeat men at table and then thought he could flatter them back into friendship with him again. What must the Angels think of such a man in their service!

  She turned her head on the pillow. Through the gauzy hangings around her bed she could see her maid Dilly lying by the hearth, a sleeping shadow lit by the last of the embers. From below came the sounds of the priest, the baron and the king's man, wining together into the small hours. Father and the bishop were probably both drunk by now, as they talked on about the misfortunes of the great, and sniffed like dogs at witchcraft on the wind. And the baron – was he quietly drunk too, or was he plotting? Outside, horses shifted and stamped in the long picket lines, disturbed by something in the darkness. Moonlight shone and faded as the clouds passed. Mail clinked under her window where the armed watchmen paced in the night.

  Take me back to my love.

  Phaedra dreamed.

  She was walking in a heavy brown landscape. The light was dim. Around her reared the hills that she knew lay across the lake from Trant. She felt the heavy clod-clod of her boots on the dry stones. She was trying to find her way home.

  So the bishop would marry you if he were not a bishop, said the man at her side. You should be pleased.

  I do not want to marry him, she said.

  Then be thankful that he is, after all, a bishop.

  He scared me. And Father. He meant to.

  You might find he was better than many a younger man they would wed you to indeed.

  No!

  You are a woman, now. Your father would not have taken you to court if it were not so.

  I am going home, she said.

  They walked on together, picking their way among the brown rocks. Far away the horizons rose to the sky as if all that place lay in a vast circle of mountains. Two great lights, smaller than the moon but larger than any star, hung together on the rim. The air was thick with the rumble of some sound that was too deep to hear.

  They had met here before, many times.

  She could look at him, because she was dreaming. He was tall, and walked with his head bowed. She could see clearly his lean face and short black hair, despite the dim light. He wore black, and as he went he carried the stone cup before him in both hands. She watched the line of his face against the sky as they walked together. She wanted him to talk, and he did not. She wondered what he was thinking.

  At last she said,– Are we going to drink again?

  He stopped, and did not answer immediately. Then he lifted the cup. If you wish.

  There was water in the bowl, dark, like jet, like a deep pit. And yet at the same time it was clear. It moved slightly as she watched it. She put her hand to the rim. They held it between them.

  You first, she said.

  Her fingers rested lightly on his g
love.

  The secret is not to have fear, he said. You will be what you will be if you do not fear anything.

  Stones clattered among the rocks to her left. Something eyeless was moving there, grunting, groping its way: a hooded, toad-headed thing. Small rocks broke beneath its feet, and the long claws of its forelimbs trailed as it went. From the corner of her eye she saw it turn its head towards her as she took the stone cup from him. She did not regard it. She did not fear anything.

  She drank, turning the cup clumsily so that her lips might touch the same spot as his had done.

  Phaedra's pony was a chestnut called Collen. He was friendly and safe, if not very clever. He had plodded through strange, sun-blasted fields and picked his way along the coarse-bouldered roads more competently than some of the grander animals in the cavalcade. Now, as they crawled up the broad slope of Redes Hill in the heat of the late afternoon, he seemed to notice that he was nearing home. Hullo, his ears said as they went up. Haven't I been here before? Let's go and see.

  Phaedra let him take her ahead of the party, and on up the slope. The track curved to the right, through olive trees where goats scuffed and nickered at the thin grass. After half a mile it rounded the shoulder of the down, and the world changed.

  There, Collen seemed to say as he tossed his head. What did I tell you?

  Derewater lay before them. Suddenly, after the days of dry grasslands, the great lake stretched away to left and right until it blended with the sky at the opposite horizons. Its level face wrinkled a deep blue in the late afternoon. Below her, fishing boats crept upon the water, with their sails like little diamonds, curved and pale upon the dark surface. She could see the further shore clearly today. She could make out the shadow of woods and the paleness of grass on the hillsides. Far beyond, the mountains loomed.

  It was a relief to be home, after days of strange places and new faces. It was good to see the water after the parched landscapes of the journey and the frenzies of the King's house. Peace, whispered the lake breeze in the branches. The air was a little cooler here among the scented groves than it had been upon the sunbeaten road. The trees were heavy with their small fruits. There would be an olive harvest soon.

  Hoofbeats sounded behind her. To her surprise, it was the Baron Lackmere and his two guards. The rest of the party were still out of sight below the curve of the ridge.

  ‘Is this country tame enough that you wander so far ahead without care? I am little use to you myself indeed. But it seemed to me that if I joined you these two fellows would not be far behind, and then we should be better placed if any ill befell.’

  ‘You are good, sir, but it was needless. This is my father's land. Look.’ She pointed to the lake.

  ‘I have seen. How far, now?’

  ‘The road follows the lakeside. We should see Trant from the next rise.’

  ‘Let us go, then. Is that a manor?’

  Below them, and to their left, she could glimpse between the trunks the familiar roofs of Manor Gowden.

  ‘One of my father's holdings, sir.’

  ‘Rich?’

  ‘I do not know if you would call it so. There is a large house of wood and stone, surrounded by huts and farm buildings, all within a stockade, and outside that strip fields and orchards.’

  ‘But much land?’

  ‘From the ridge to the lake and a half-hour's walk in either direction. There is a fishing hamlet on the shore that is counted part of it.’

  The track bore them on round to the right through the olive trees, and ran gently downhill. The baron stooped in his stirrups to peer among the whispering, deep-smelling trees.

  ‘So green, so green,’ he said. ‘What do you grow here?’

  ‘Why olives, as you see, sir. And vines, fruits and grain. We have oak woods too, from which we take our badge. For livestock we have mostly sheep and goats. What do you have in Lackmere?’

  ‘The same – where we can. But it is poorer country. A man needs much land to make a fair living – much more than your Gowden. And there are no big towns to bring us wealth or rich goods.’

  ‘Is it very dry? Is that why they call you Lackmere?’

  ‘We have nothing like this,’ he said, gesturing to the lake. ‘Not one tenth nor one hundredth of the size. Our streams and pools are mostly waterless in summer, and the grass is as yellow as straw. It is not desert, but thorn forest. Many miles of it. Good land for wolves. Hard land for shepherds and goatherds, who must guard their flocks with sometimes no more than a cut-thorn staff’ He touched his badge.

  ‘Wolves? Are they big and fierce?’

  He looked at her. His eyes were green. ‘Small and scrawny and fierce. And always hungry’

  They came out of the grove and the track rose, keeping the lake on their left. Near the top they halted. Looking back, she could see the rest of their party emerging from the trees.

  ‘Trant is just over this rise.’

  ‘I should like to see it.’

  ‘We should wait here. My father will want us to top the rise together, blowing his horn.’

  ‘Let us go forward and look, all the same. I do not know how long this place will be my prison. I shall feel easier to see it first in your company’

  He kicked his mount forward. She followed reluctantly, for she did not like what she had heard him say. The rise dropped away to show the familiar mass of Trant bulking on the next hillside. It was just the same as it always had been, after all her long journey. Beyond it the lake stretched away to the north and was lost to sight. She was home.

  ‘Hm. Strong,’ said the baron.

  ‘It is not so big as the King's.’

  Trant was a single compact courtyard, closed in with five huge towers. Below it were other buildings and a wide area surrounded with a dyke that ran down to the lakeside.

  ‘No indeed. But your father has no need to house a thousand men-at-arms in a night, nor to feed and protect a city My own walls are not so high as these, and yet mine is not the least strong place in the south. What other castles are nearby?’

  ‘There are not many. Tower Bay must be the closest, but it is more than a day’

  ‘Whose lands are those, then?’ He pointed across the lake.

  ‘The mountains you see are beyond the Kingdom. The hill people there are heathen. But the lands on this side of them are the March of Tarceny’

  The baron looked sour. ‘The Doubting Moon. I cannot commend you on your neighbours.’

  ‘So they say, sir. Although it has also been said to me that the evil that was done – the harrying of his people and his neighbours – was the work of the old lord there. He died at his hearth some years ago. I have not met the new march-count or his house, and they did not come to Tuscolo for the King's feast. Our sail folk have some dealings with theirs. Otherwise they do not disturb us. Father always left us a strong guard when he was abroad in the recent troubles. But it was not needed.’

  ‘Hm.’ The baron was scowling across the lake now.

  She should have remembered that he was one of those whom Tarceny could have helped by attacking from across the lake during the uprising. Maybe he and his friends had been begging Tarceny for such a move, as the King's men had closed in on their last strongholds. If it had come, maybe he would not have been a prisoner now. And all this land that he had admired for its greenery would have been black with the trails of war. He would not have cared.

  She had to breathe deeply for a moment, and feel the sunlight on her skin, to remind herself that the vultures of Tarceny had stayed at home, and that Trant flourished in its delicate green.

  ‘So,’ said the baron. ‘No visitors then? No suitors yet?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘And what do you do here, between waiting for them to come for you?’

  ‘What I please, sir.’

  ‘What? I did not suppose you were a prisoner, like myself!’

  ‘I am my father's daughter, sir!’

  ‘Of course.’

  Father was ri
ding up with the rest of his party. She might now just watch him come, and that would be the end of this conversation. But she knew that she would have to spend many hours in this man's company. Once he had understood that she would talk to him as an equal, or not at all, there was no more point in fencing with him. Like it or not, they would know one another better before long.

  ‘I read sometimes,’ she said. ‘Often I walk and think by myself

  ‘You read?’

  ‘Yes, and I have learned arithmetic’

  ‘This is rare. My own lady can do neither. Nor can I.’

  So he had a lady of his own. Of course – Father had talked of his family. And now Father himself had laboured up the slope and reined in, six yards away.

  Suddenly the ridge was milling with horsemen: the whole party twenty-strong including the wagon, holding their mounts in check and looking to the Warden. He waved an arm. A rider came up, with the big Sun and Oak Leaf banner beginning to lift and blow in the lake-wind. Under the brave device curled the Warden's motto: WATCH FOR WHO COMES. The herald sounded the long flourish of Trant, and the party poured forward from the ridge. Horns, fragmented by distance, sounded from the castle on the far hill.

  So Phaedra came home for the last time, under the banner of her father.

  III

  Suitors and Chessmen

  rant wallowed in the harvest.

  In the mornings and evenings, when it was cool enough to work, the hillsides swarmed with people among their strips and vines. The grapes were still picking. The grain was in. From every barn came the steady whack, whack of flails upon the threshing floor. The thin months were over. The food was here to be gathered, and every day counted. Every man hurried to bring his own crop in before he did his work for the manor, and every manor knight wanted all that was due to him before he thought of what might be owed to Trant. Ambrose was everywhere, riding from one manor to the next to bully the people into giving what they owed to him and to each other. One day he flew into a rage in the middle of a hearing and had three men from the same village put into stocks over their failure to do the labour due. For five days, three women and their children, down to a six-year-old, worked on without the help of their men at the most vital time of the year.