The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  Phaedra was trying to guess why he had asked the question. It was not just curiosity she thought. He would be testing the incident in his mind. Perhaps he was wondering if Phaedra had been followed to the fountain court, if she had known and, if so, what the significance of it was.

  ‘He was Aun, Baron of Lackmere. A prisoner at Trant since the last rising.’

  ‘Ah. I thought he seemed to know me. But it does not tell us what he was doing armed, and below Trant's walls.’

  ‘He must have escaped. He had heard that his release would not be granted soon. It made him angry. How he got out of the castle, I do not know, for there were always two men at his door after dark. Nor have I any idea how he came to be armed.’

  ‘It was a short-sword. Not a knight's weapon. But his behaviour was strange for a prisoner, I think. First, he pauses in his escape to attack us. Next, although a fugitive, he shouts to raise the castle.’

  ‘He was an impulsive man …’ She felt Ulfin watching her, and hesitated. His questions had filled her mind with sudden doubts. For a moment she saw the world as he must see it, and found it complex, dangerous …

  Could Aun secretly have been under orders to guard her? But that was madness. His imprisonment had been real. She knew that, even if Ulfin could not.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ulfin at last. ‘He attacked a large body of men on his own. He was lucky to get away with it.’

  ‘I'm glad you did not kill him.’

  ‘In a way, so am I. But my thought is this. He knew me. Therefore, if he surrenders to Trant, or is recaptured, Trant and the crown will know where you are and whom to thank for your escape. That makes our position precarious, after all.’

  ‘I see.’

  She was not wholly certain what he meant. But her mind's eye showed her lines of soldiers, armour glittering in the sun, coming to force her home, and smoke drifting along the shore.

  She looked around her, and felt her heart sinking. Talk rippled along the other table, unblemished by the fear of retribution. She heard Elanor Massey's laugh. People were smiling, looking her way, smiling again. The piper had begun to play, in long, low notes that hummed beneath the conversations like deep water.

  ‘Why did we dream of one another?’ she asked.

  Ulfin was silent, looking out across the bay. When he spoke his voice was so low that she could barely make out his words.

  ‘What do you remember of those dreams?’

  When she could not answer, he spoke again. ‘What was I carrying?’

  ‘A cup.’

  ‘It is a gift the Cup brings.’

  ‘A gift?’

  It seemed he was not going to say more.

  ‘Was it not witchcraft?’ she asked.

  He sighed. She thought he was disappointed, as if she had failed some test of trust.

  ‘I prefer to say undef-CTtift, which is simply a March term for knowledge, or cunning,’ he said softly. ‘“The Under-Craft Prevaileth” is a motto of my house. What it means is that you must use what you know, and if you know more than your enemy you will win. Phaedra, when Wulfram led his warriors over the sea to this land, the people who lived here at that time did not know how to work iron. When they found that we had weapons they could not break and armour they could not pierce, they were dismayed. They called our iron-working witchcraft because they did not understand it. And so we took the Kingdom.’

  ‘It is not the same thing.’

  ‘Not knowing, and fearing what you do not know, are the same everywhere, I think. Knights and priests would call the Cup witchcraft, because with it I could defeat them, and they would not understand how. But there is no more evil in this than there was in Wulfram's iron. Less, I say, because I have not driven a people from their lands, destroyed villages, and left the survivors and their descendants to live in misery and barren poverty in the hills. The hillmen's grief with us is very great, Phaedra. What lies in the Cup is the tears of Beyah, who the hillmen say is Mother of the World. That is what you and I have tasted together. Now you share a knowledge I have shown none other since my brothers died. We have spoken enough of this. There is something else I want to say.

  ‘Even when you were still a child, Phaedra, you were always clear to me. You are a rare thing. I do not just mean your looks or your birth, but in your spirit. You would not submit, though all the Kingdom leaned against you. If only for that, I am glad to have helped you as it was in my gift to do.

  ‘You are now in the March of Tarceny Here it is my law that no parent or guardian may order or prevent the marriage of one who is beyond sixteen years of age. You are free to remain as long as you wish as my guest, or, if you will, to go through all my lands. I shall be pleased to furnish you with any aid that you may ask.’

  ‘You are – very kind.’

  ‘That is freely given. But I have something else, and I hope you will hear me.

  ‘My house is ill-reputed. Believe me when I say that is no fault of mine. It lies at my father's door, and should be forgotten. Still men are slow to understand us. We have little doing with Tuscolo, for we are stern, where they are gay; silent, where they gossip; true, where they are false. Yet my line is ancient and, except in latter days, it has been honourable. There is the true blood of Wulfram in my veins. Nor am I the least of my rank in the Kingdom.’

  He was asking her to marry him!

  ‘Most of all I am myself. I would not boast of my abilities, but I have made many studies and seen many places. On my honour I have neither broken a promise nor told a lie in all my living days. All that I am, and have, I would give to you, Phaedra. If you would but give yourself to me.’

  A proposal of marriage should take months; there needed to be long negotiations over lands and dowries. And she was resisting all offers of marriage. All of them.

  Even …

  Somewhere the voice of her dream was crying to her, but it was as if she was under water, and the sound could not carry. She looked into his face with her heart labouring beneath her ribs. He went on.

  ‘Phaedra, the holiest man I know is within a mile of this place. I spoke with him while you slept. He is no vassal of mine, nor does he dwell on my lands or in any one other place in the Kingdom. But he has the right, and is willing, to wed us – if only you wish it.’

  Over her head, the fronds of the fruit tree wavered in a light breeze. Already the branches were in bud. The sun dipped to touch the crests of the mountain, and the first full moon of the new year was heaving itself into view over Derewater. The world was turning about her, still slowly, but with the sudden firmness of the eddy that sucks the leaf to the centre of its whirl.

  ‘Is he near?’ she muttered.

  ‘On the crest of this knoll you see. He will wait.’

  At once she reached to grip his hand where it lay, palm down, on the table between them.

  ‘Then let us go to him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  A last chance. If she passed this point …

  ‘Say what you are thinking.’

  Suddenly the words were running from her mouth like water.

  ‘I remember – when all those knights' and barons' sons started to come to Trant for me – I knew that I had to marry one of them, and yet I knew it was impossible. I remember thinking that you should as well marry a clod of earth to a stream. I knew that because you were there before them. You were there all the time, and they were nothing like you. And now you have changed. I can see you, touch you, speak your name. Ulfin. And I have also changed. All the things that shaped my life have been washed away. Father, Trant, Fear – you have always told me not to be afraid. The only thing that has not changed is that I know you have been at the core of me all the time …’ She looked at him, her eyes to his brown eyes and through them to his heart.

  ‘Now, Ulfin. Let us do this. If we delay – they may come to take me from you.’

  ‘Phaedra, I will often be away …’

  ‘A day, two days in a year with you, better than none or better still
than a whole year with any other man in the Kingdom. Ulfin, you've been – I don't think I can say all you've been to me.’

  He got slowly to his feet, and stood over her. ‘Then come here.’

  She rose into his embrace. Then the world was blotted by his arms about her, his lips upon her face, and the thud, thud, thud of her own heart within her chest.

  The tables were silent. She felt a host of eyes upon her as they stood, and she did not care. Above her Ulfin shouted, ‘Hob!’

  ‘My lord!’

  ‘Send runners through the town. There will be a wedding this very evening, upon Talifer's Knoll – for those who are swift enough to catch us. There will be a feast at my door tonight. Send for food. Empty my cellar. Empty every keg and vat in the town, no matter how poor or good. And pay with gold! Send for torches. You there! Play a tune, and lead us on our way’

  There was a moment of stillness, and then the sudden clatter of people rising from the tables. Someone whooped. The player recovered, cried, ‘Ho-ho-ho-ho!’ and struck up a fast beat on his queer-shaped little lute. The man Hob bustled past, swearing to himself. Ulfin led Phaedra down to the track that ran from the harbour through the huts to the gate of the stockade. Others followed. The player was ahead. As they passed through the gates Phaedra could hear fists hammering on doors behind them in the town.

  The road was rutted, and rough under foot. It looped to the west and north, around the base of the low hill. A hundred yards from the stockade a narrow goat-track curved steeply upwards, and then doubled back on itself, zigzagging up the south side of the knoll. They outstripped the player, who stopped on the slope to sing the others upwards. Behind them a score of followers straggled. Further back still, others were hurrying from the gates. From here they could look down into Aclete and see the people running between the huts.

  She had not let go of Ulfin's hand. He paused beside her. They were both breathing heavily with the climb.

  ‘It is a good place for this,’ he said. ‘You will see when we get to the top. Here the first prince of Tarceny waited for the lady of Velis, as she sailed up the lake to be his bride.’

  ‘Look at the moon!’

  ‘Yes. It is a good omen.’

  He turned to the climb again, and she turned with him, thinking, Is this real? I am going to marry him! There's no one here from my house, no one to support me, no one but myself. I am going to marry him myself. All the lines of her past life seemed to rush together into this moment. There would be no stifled ceremonies, no buying and selling of rights or lands and the families that lived on them. Here, there would be nothing but the sky and an ancient place; and the two of them, running ahead, outstripping their followers in the joy of what they were doing.

  The slope was easing. Aclete was hidden by the curve of the hillside, but all Derewater was in view, stretching into the north. The sun was down behind the mountains, which fumed with mist. The afterglow lit the sky, and across the water the moon was rising from its huge, yellow shape into the pureness of silver. The land about them was darkening. The rugged outlines of the hills were dropping into shadow. The road below was a pale scar tracing north and west until it faded from view. From the very crest of the knoll Phaedra could see the beginnings of a wood that seemed to cover the northern slope. There was a lone, robed figure walking towards them from beneath its shade.

  Ulfin turned, and spread his hands palm outwards, motioning those that followed to stop. Then he took Phaedra by the hand, and they went forward together. The priest approached them. He wore a long, belted robe, like a monk's, which was the colour of evening. His hood was up. Close to, Phaedra could see a thin and pale face within it. He seemed to be an old man, and yet he moved without difficulty

  ‘Who are you?’ His voice was dry.

  ‘Ulfin Ector, March-count of Tarceny’

  ‘Why have you come?’

  ‘To be wed to this woman.’

  The priest looked at Phaedra. Eyes gleamed within his hood. The outlines of his face were spare of flesh. His mouth was a little black hole that moved.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Phaedra, of Trant. I would be wed to this man, sir.’

  She realized that she should have said, Phaedra, daugh-ter of Ambrose, Warden of Trant. But Ulfin had not used his father's name either.

  ‘Your hands.’

  Her hand was inside Ulfin's. They held them out together. The priest reached forward and laid his own hand on Ulfin's.

  ‘Say the truth to one another. Let your lives be as a mirror to one another. Keep the promises you have spoken. You are man and wife.’

  Ulfin bowed. Phaedra took her cue and curtsied. When they rose the priest was already walking away from them, back towards the trees.

  ‘That was short!’ Phaedra gasped.

  ‘We have been very honoured, Phaedra. To my knowledge, he has done this for no other in all his time.’

  There was a note of awe in Ulfin's voice. The priest disappeared among the first trunks. From the sounds Phaedra thought that others, unseen, must have been waiting for him there.

  ‘Does he live here?’

  ‘Not he. He goes where he will.’ He turned to her, and took her hands. For a moment they were both wordless. Phaedra found herself dropping her eyes.

  ‘Now,’ Ulfin said. ‘We have guests to attend to.’

  They turned and walked back towards the crowd, a couple of score of men-at-arms and townsfolk, that had spread in a wide quarter-circle at a distance from the marriage. Phaedra was thinking that the priest had told them to keep their promises, but they had made none. She wondered if that could be held against them, and whether Septimus could claim her back after all, if he knew. Perhaps she should find an ordinary priest, who could be trusted, and see if she could persuade Ulfin to let him say the words of the full marriage to them, to be sure.

  Cheers and clapping spread as the watchers realized that the ceremony was already over. A torch flared brightly in the evening under the moon.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘What is that?’

  The music had changed. The pipes were joining in a melody that rose over the clutter of noise below their window. It was a hill song, unlike any music of the Kingdom: a slow, measured sound, tinged with tears. Ulfin rose on one elbow from the pillow beside her and listened. The mingled moon- and torchlight fell on his right cheek and eye. The rest of his face was in shadow. But he seemed to smile, as if at some secret memory.

  ‘That is the Great Lament. The World mourning for her child.’

  She curled against him for comfort from the thoughts that rose in her mind.

  His hand moved in the darkness. It touched her skin. Again she knew the extraordinary feeling of his fingers upon her, soothing now, and caressing until her body eased and she gasped softly in the sheets. She lay and looked up at him. His face was masked and beautiful as the half-moon on a brilliant night, and he was smiling again.

  Outside, the lights burned on above the tables at Ulfin's door. The people talked and drank and laughed; the pipers played their breathy notes on and on as they had done for hours after their lord and his new countess had retired.

  Here, in the closeness of his embrace, Phaedra had found pain, and indescribable sweetness. But most wonderful of all was this drift, drift drift on the edge of sleep in the arms of the man she loved.

  VI

  The Warden's Answer

  merging from the high coolness of the hall, leaning on his arm, she heard the water playing a second before she understood where she was.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘It's like home. And like Tuscolo!’

  She had been expecting the dusty inner courtyard where they had dismounted on their arrival. Instead she stood in a small paved court with two low fruit trees and a fountain. On all four sides were whitewashed colonnades, roofed with tiles, which gave shade from the sun. The air smelled sweet from the grey-green bushes – mint and rosemary – that stood in huge clay jars at the bases of the pillars.

 
; ‘I thought you would like it,’ said Ulfin. ‘And it is in better repair than the one where we met in Trant, which must have been abandoned long ago. Can you name the seven houses of the Kingdom?’

  ‘Tuscolo and Velis, Baldwin and Bay, Trant, Ferroux and Tarceny’

  ‘Exactly Seven houses for seven princes, and you will find a court like this – or the remains of one – in each. For that is the way we built when we first came over the sea.’

  ‘Were there really seven princes? Are you descended from one?’

  ‘No and yes. The Tale of Kings has been written and remembered many times, and in different ways. In each telling Wulfram rides up out of the sea in three ships, fleeing some war or disaster across the water that we do not recall. Straight away, he divides the land among his seven sons. Yet the seven are not always given the same names in the different tellings I have heard or read. I have counted eight names altogether. So I believe there were not seven princes, but eight. And some of them cannot have been born until well after Wulfram led our people over the sea. From his landing to the time my ancestor Talifer rode from Jent to conquer the March must have been twenty or thirty years.’

  ‘Where is Ferroux? You do not hear of it now.’

  ‘It is an unimportant manor house in Develin's country. There are those who claim descent from the line, of course, but the claim is false. The other houses also fell, one by one. The first house of Baldwin stands ruined since the end of the High Kings – although Faul and Seguin and all the royal house claim descent. And the traitorous stewards raised their tower on a nearby hill and call themselves Baldwin to this day. Trant is now in wardenship, as you know. Bay has a better story, but—’

  ‘I liked Baldwin.’

  ‘Not too much, I hope.’

  ‘Don't be jealous. I did not marry him, did I?’