The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  And there had been Joliper's frantic, undictated postscript:

  … Written this twenty-sixth day of January at Trant. Right worshipful and dear lady, I tell you he is grievous set with this, for he furies and weeps as I have not seen before. We must arm and practise every day and those who would not are beat until they do. In very truth I wish you good fortune, lady but there will be a river of blood before this is done.

  They would take her from Ulfin!

  His right hand still rested on her arm. She brought her own right hand across to grip it, hard. As if prompted by her touch he spoke again.

  ‘You will know, friends, that since my father died we have given the King no cause to hate us. Yet I judge that he will think he has no cause to love us either, since we have not danced to the tune at his court, or made all his quarrels our own. At all events, I have no wish to wait until the King and my lords Baldwin, Bay and Develin are ready to meet me. If I do, I do not doubt that we should be hard put to it and that the terms of any parley would be harsh indeed. So – the key to their preparation is Trant. There they will gather their boats. There they will summon such of their knights as are not already with them. There the King will come, on the fifteenth day of March …’

  The King, who was the Fount of the Law. He too was against her.

  ‘… if we do not forestall him. So I mean to take Trant. With a royal castle in our hands, I guess we shall hear better terms.’

  It was as if she was looking through a window into the room, seeing it from outside as he spoke. Her mind was in some other place, as his words fell calmly, naturally, into the talk of a world gone mad. She saw some of the knights nodding, as though defying the King to war was something that they had not thought of doing until now, but did not doubt that they could.

  Others were frowning. Take Trant? Just like that?

  ‘It must be the right stroke,’ said Orcrim, from his seat at Ulfin's left. ‘Better still if we wait until most of the boats are gathered there, so that we may seize them for our own use. Yet it must be done before the King arrives.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ulfin. ‘I would not be known in the Kingdom as one who attacked his lord before any challenge was issued.’

  ‘Ulfin!’

  It was her own voice. She recovered herself.

  ‘My lord. If you love me – no one at Trant is to be killed for my sake.’

  ‘I know why you ask this,’ said Ulfin. ‘Although it is asking much. In war nothing can be certain. But,’ he went on, looking around. ‘But I too would not willingly shed any blood of the house of the man I would call Father. Therefore we must plan to come on them in such a way that no one in the house has a chance to draw sword.’

  Now they were shocked.

  ‘It's impossible!’ someone protested.

  ‘We'd have to have someone inside!’

  ‘Not impossible,’ said Ulfin. ‘Difficult, yes. Difficult. But who tells me that what I would do is impossible?’

  There was another silence, thicker this time. No one answered him.

  ‘Good, then.’ And he turned to Phaedra.

  ‘Is there any way that we can come within the walls of Trant unseen? A tunnel, perhaps?’

  Afterwards, when she looked back on that moment, Phaedra remembered his face looking down at her in the torchlight, her own heart beating within her, and the desperate need to help him persuade that room of war-scarred men of what must be done.

  ‘There is no tunnel,’ she said. ‘Nor any stream or drain large enough for a man to crawl through.’

  ‘How did you escape the castle, then?’

  ‘By the postern door. It is in the lakeside wall, under the north-west tower. It opens into the ditch, and on the inside it leads into the courtyard. It is kept bolted from within. You will not force it without alerting the guard. But …’ She hesitated.

  ‘But?’

  They were all looking at her. There was something in her that did not want to speak. She heard herself say: ‘I was not the only one to escape the castle that night.’

  ‘Lackmere?’

  She nodded.

  ‘He had chisels in his room, and a few blankets. When I saw him on the day before he was examining the north wall – how it bulged outwards at the base, how the masonry was cracked. I think he must have let himself out of his window, which was at the top of that tower, and worked his way down the wall, forcing his chisels between the stones for hand- and footholds.’

  ‘Desperate.’

  ‘He was in the mood to risk it. And there is no guard on the wall in peace. It may be a way for you.’

  They did not like it.

  ‘We'll have to get two-score men over the wall, in fighting gear!’

  ‘Not two score,’ said Ulfin. ‘Only enough to reach the postern from within. And it will be easier to climb than it was to descend.’

  ‘That's true,’ said someone. ‘This Lackmere must have been mad.’

  ‘Either he was mad, or we are. I never heard of a place like Trant being taken in such a way!’

  ‘Enough,’ said Ulfin. ‘If a man can get out, a man can get in. One way or another, we must – and shall – reach that postern unseen. Now, my lady. The door is open. Where are the fighting men quartered?’

  She leaned over the table, meeting no one's eye, and began to trace with her fingertips the outlines of her home on the dark wood. The air in the room around her was as thick as coming thunder.

  An hour later, the gathering broke up. No one spoke. The knights filed from the room with set faces. Phaedra stood at Ulfin's hand, listening to the armoured heels crashing down the steps past the chapel door, where someone must have said something to rouse that bitter laugh from the others. The footsteps faded at last behind the futile pit-pit-pit from outside the window, of rain too thin to fill the tanks and cisterns or do any good but rouse the smell of dust from the land. Ulfin lounged in his chair, thinking. Slowly she curled up onto her stool and leaned across the armrest of the throne until her head was upon his shoulder. He put his arm round her.

  ‘They are good fighters, but narrow,’ he said. ‘They only think in certain ways. Phaedra, I am sorry he has chosen this. It was not my intention. Yet with good luck we may yet laugh at it all from the other side.’

  ‘They respect you,’ she said.

  Once he had spoken, they had not challenged him. They had not questioned the marriage rite, or the wisdom of plunging Tarceny into armed confrontation with the King. They had not even asked Ulfin where he had had his news about the King's order to the boats, or how reliable it was. Perhaps they thought they knew. Phaedra thought she could guess too.

  Who tells me that what I would do is impossible?

  ‘When were you planning to leave for Jent?’

  She did not want to think of that.

  ‘I wonder whether you should go at all,’ he said. ‘I cannot come with you now. There is too much to do.’

  ‘There must be a priest in the castle, Ulfin. And this makes it the more urgent.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  His father had harried the priests and monks of the March until few were left but the craven who would oppose nothing he did. So Ulfin had never known what it was to live with the blessing of the Church. Perhaps that was why he did not seem to understand how he was seen in the Kingdom, for not having restored what his father had done. Yet he himself had shown her how the priests were actors in the play of justice.

  What law could there be here, if his lands were unblessed? Nothing could be done in the March that could not be undone. Even a marriage rite – certainly such a hurried rite as they had had – might be declared void if bishop and King agreed that it should be so. They would take her away from him, and say that what the two of them had done was mere wickedness.

  He would not be ready for that argument. Neither was she. She thought that if they quarrelled now they would both be utterly alone.

  ‘They will judge against us, in the Segne,’ was all she said. ‘
Without even thinking—’

  ‘There is so little time. If there is fighting, you cannot travel out of the March in safety. Jent will be busy too, full of pilgrims for Holy Week.’

  ‘It must be a man we can trust, Ulfin; and that means we must choose him. Could – could we not send for the priest from the knoll? He would be—’

  He had already said this was impossible. This time he did not even seem to hear.

  ‘Perhaps it will help. They may try to pretend I carried you away by force, the easier to dissolve our marriage before wedding you to Septimus. It will be good, therefore, if you are seen to go beyond the March freely. And it may also conceal our intentions. However, you must not risk capture. Give them as little warning as you can that you are coming. And you must be back within the March by the twelfth day of next month. It will not be safe to stay longer.’

  Still his arm was round her, and her head was against his chest. For a moment neither said anything more. She could hear and feel his heart, thudding against her ear.

  That was her world, her whole world in there. She had thought, in the first days of her marriage, that she could not have been more in love. It had been astounding to her how her feelings, which had been growing deep within her through all the years that the two of them had met in their dreams, had come upon her so quickly and with such force. Through the Cup they had built a bond between them that she had thought was stronger than anything in the world. Now she knew that it was possible to love even more deeply. She loved him most of all when she thought that she might lose him.

  Old soot, dislodged by the rain, hissed in the chimney. From the wall the picture of the young man regarded them with steady eyes. The border of the canvas was decorated with a great twisting snake, that reminded her of the dragon ring that now hung day and night upon a chain around her neck.

  ‘Is that Paigan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he die, Ulfin?’

  He stirred against her, and sighed. ‘I am bound to tell you the truth, Phaedra. And so you may understand better why the priests do not love us, and why men take up arms when they hear the name of Tarceny

  ‘The truth is that my own father killed him, in this room. And that he did not lie long unavenged.’

  VII

  The Windows of Jent

  n an opulent room of his palace, lit by high windows, the bishop sat like a worm at the heart of an apple. His walls were covered with pale-coloured drapes of soft pink and gold, but his gown was as plain as a novice's. On a small table at his hand were the remains of a meal of bread and water. He would have eaten before dawn, and would touch no more food before sundown. He could not have bathed for a week, nor did he wear oils or perfume. He smelled like a fieldsman from any peasant village.

  These were the Lenten Days: the time before Easter when the Church demanded penitence. Even this bishop marked them in what he ate and wore; and devoted himself day after day to those who came to Jent at this time of year to beg his saint for forgiveness. And he was not pleased to be interrupted in his duties.

  Red-faced and eyes popping, he leaned in his throne. ‘I am told you were most pressing to speak with me.’

  He gave her no title or greeting. There was no mistaking his anger.

  From beyond the door at her back Phaedra could hear the shuffle of the endless crowd of penitents, standing or sitting on the stairs and floorboards of the bishop's palace. The patient pilgrims had watched her force her way past them, using her rank to beat down the objections of the bishop's priests and door-keepers, as she had pushed and argued her way to His Grace's door. They might wait more than a day for their turn to enter his chamber and speak with him of what they had done. She felt as if something had rubbed off them onto her from their thousand pairs of eyes.

  She opened her mouth to speak, conscious of the silks and jewellery that she had put on that morning without a second thought.

  ‘Your Grace will have heard that since our last meeting I have taken the name of Tarceny’ she said.

  ‘I had. I must tell you it is not one that I love. Did you wish me to bless your marriage, or to annul it for you?’

  Annul it? No!

  How could he say such a thing?

  ‘If … If it please Your Grace to bless us,’ she said carefully, ‘we shall be thankful. I came because I find my house has no priest, and I wished to beg of you—’

  ‘A priest? Indeed! It had been in my mind to ask what priest it was that had the gall to wed you.’

  Surprised again, she did not answer. He must have seen by her look that she did not know the man's name.

  ‘Of what church, what order?’ he barked.

  ‘He was a holy wanderer, known to my husband.’

  ‘A mendicant!’

  ‘Such was Tuchred Martyr, sir.’

  ‘And such is every half-educated rogue who claims the cloth to escape the noose if he is caught with another man's goods in his hands! And your father's blessing – you had that too, I suppose? Or did you send for it afterwards, to the man who raised you and guarded you all your little life, when you told him what you had done?’

  Phaedra did not want to talk about Father. She was trying to remember whether the priest had worn a badge of one of the great orders – the Knotted Rope, the Lantern, the Staff … Surely he must have done, and yet she had not noticed. Her earrings jingled heavily as she shook her head, and her silks whispered to her. Damn them. And damn him too, in all his sackcloth and fuss!

  The bishop raised his brows, waiting for her to answer, and she could not. She almost turned for the door then. But this was not Trant, and she was no longer a child.

  ‘Your Grace – I came in good faith, and thinking you would be glad of my purpose. If you wish to speak of my marriage, I will listen. But—’

  ‘Listen then. I do not love it that a child should wed without her father's let, or that a father should be so served after years of care. Nor do I love it that the royal house should be slighted. Nor do I love it that the Kingdom should be brought once again to the brink of war. I do not jest about marriage. Before long, some prince of the Church, and most likely myself, will be asked to judge on yours. When that time comes, it would be well for you to produce this mendicant, and for him to prove as you say. What you are able to tell of him now does not reassure.’

  Silence seeped back into the room after his words. With it, once again, came the soft shuffles of the pilgrims beyond the door. The nearest of them must have heard everything he had said.

  ‘Your Grace … I ask that you help me find a priest for my people at Tarceny who have had none these twelve years.’

  ‘Your people. And is it for your people that you ask this?’

  She could only meet his look. ‘Every soul in my house needs blessing, sir. I was not taught otherwise.’

  He was trying to stare her down. She waited.

  He rose, and began to pace to and fro before the throne. He was still angry – if anything he was angrier now than when she had first entered. She could see the dark wrinkle of the veins in his red cheeks.

  ‘Blessing,’ the bishop said. ‘In the Lenten Days, my blessing is for those who come to me in penitence.’

  ‘Indeed it gives me sorrow, sir, that I have had to interrupt your business today’ For that, at least, she could apologize (as if she could possibly have delayed here the length of Holy Week while he gave audience to a thousand pilgrims, one by one!).

  But if he wanted to hear her regret her marriage, he would wait for ever.

  ‘In truth,’ she went on, ‘I have had very little time, and must leave Jent again tomorrow. Yet it did seem to me’ – she looked him in the eyes again – ‘to both my lord and me, that our household should have one at least who would pray for it, and that this was the first and most urgent of all the matters that awaited us on our return there.’

  He had turned away, and was looking out through one of the great, glassed windows that lit the room. It was a huge thing, made of many diamo
nd panes and worth, she supposed, as much as all the furniture and decorations of the room put together. She could not tell what he was looking at, but he must have a fine view over his city and the people who thronged to his shrines and palace. His hands were clasped behind his back. One fat thumb moved slowly round and round in the palm of the other hand. He was thinking. She could not see his face.

  Surely, now he must see past his anger to where his own interests lay. Whatever the man thought of Tarceny he would have a dozen reasons for wanting to rebuild the Church there. It would be discourteous, even dangerous, for him to turn down her proposal and to send the wife of his most powerful neighbour packing without ceremony. At seventeen years she thought she knew the realities of power.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it would be good if the eyes of the Angels were open in Tarceny again. I will think on it. But at present I have not the usual crowd of ordered idiots clamouring at me for a living.’

  ‘Have you not, Your Grace? I … I am surprised that you should say so.’ Bishops were forever having to manage the demands of their priests to find them places.

  ‘Try me, and I may surprise you more. I have said that I shall think. Enough of this. There is a matter in which you may oblige me.’

  ‘Your Grace?’

  ‘This damned north wind,’ said the bishop. ‘It has blown for days, and few boat-captains will set out against it.’

  ‘Indeed, Your Grace.’ Did he want her to change the weather?

  ‘There are many good folk who have come to this city in faith and find it hard to return. One in particular concerns me.’ He motioned her to stand by him at the window. ‘Down there …’

  The window looked out on the mighty spires of Jent. To her right was the old shrine of St Tuchred Martyr, with its white-finger tower and pointed roof. Beside it rose the new cathedral, a massive grey shape six times the size of the old shrine. It had been building for some twenty years now, and another lifetime would pass before it was completed. Huge crowds of Lenten pilgrims thronged and jostled at its doors. The square below the palace was seething with them, with their robes, their staffs, their asses and their voices.