The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  ‘I saw three fieldsmen and two donkeys.’

  ‘You can't have been looking! He was there!’

  ‘You saw a priest in that party?’ There was something urgent in the diManey's tone.

  ‘A man with a long pale robe and a hood. My lord chose him.’

  Her companion looked back up the path in the growing dusk. ‘I did not see him,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I did not see him.’

  To Phaedra that answer was the last insult. She was the lady of Tarceny queen of the wide March. She had a score of men immediately at her command, each armoured and mounted at the cost of the harvest of several farms. She could not have the slightest task done for her, be it ever so important. A golden chance to set things right had just been let fade away into the evening. She clamped her jaw shut and watched the olive trees passing.

  After a moment her companion spoke again. ‘Phaedra – I am not sure who your priest is. But if you do see him again, I think you should be careful.’ Phaedra ignored her.

  IX

  Ill News by Water

  he did not understand, then, why her mood swung so heavily against her companion that evening The only thing she could blame Evalia diManey for was that she had used Phaedra's first name without being bidden. But Phaedra was not able to recover from the disappointment of missing the priest. The evening passed in long silences, while Phaedra brooded and Evalia diManey stared curiously around her at the high, black-and-white rooms of Tarceny They both retired early.

  Nor did Phaedra think it strange that she found it so difficult to rise the next morning. She dragged herself from her bed at last, in time to say a few meaningless goodbyes to the Lady diManey, who was about to set off with her party and a half-dozen of Vermian's riders on the final stages of her journey home to Chatterfall. Phaedra dismissed her companion's thanks with a smile and a wave of her hand. After that, there was another of those looks, but no more words. Evalia diManey left the gate in Phaedra's litter, and Phaedra turned to re-enter the maw of Tarceny.

  She was busy with thoughts that would not wait to be ordered. Ulfin had won a breathing space by the passage of arms. It would not last for ever, and there were things she could be doing to help put a settlement in place. She wrote to Ulfin, urging him to send Father across the lake, as soon as his word of honour could be secured. Then she penned a description of the priest of Talifer's Knoll, had it copied and instructed that it be sent to each of the seventy manors and settlements of the March, to be borne by special messengers from each to each so that news of the man's whereabouts might reach her without delay.

  She found Vermian more difficult than she had expected about dispatching half his troop to ride over the March. Bullying him into compliance left her ill at ease and exhausted.

  Her mind was restless, and would not concentrate. She decided to begin work on a great robe for Ulfin, such as Mother had used to make for Father. She told herself that this would make it harder for Father to pretend that she had been carried away against her will. She began to draw up lists of silks and materials to be ordered from Baer or Watermane. And, using the draft of her letter to Maria, she started composing an appeal to Septimus himself, to be delivered when Father's heart was won and her marriage proved. In it she would beg him to leave his quarrel and honour the new house of Tarceny as it would him. It was to be a great piece – the decisive victory. In her mind's eye she saw herself once again before the thrones of Tuscolo, speaking this time not of Obedience but of Love. She tried to imagine the strum of the lyres that would carry her words in song down the years. But the words dried on the page. The image of the thrones shifted, too easily, too quickly; channelled by her memory into a scene of shadows and swords: the flickering torches, the murmuring crowd; and a woman on trial for witchcraft.

  She waited, fretting, for news.

  The house was full of echoes. Ulfin was away. (So also were his knights and most of his men-at-arms, but it was Ulfin's absence that she felt most.) Without him, the castle was strange. The household, a collection of ordinary people whom she hardly knew, moved about their hundred tasks behind closed doors, and left her. She lay in bed in the mornings, watching the light move and grow on the walls and ceiling. She took down books from the shelves, and read them. The Death of Aurelian. Of Taliver and Velis. The Sacred Life of Tuchred among the Pagans. Book after book, in scrolls or in great volumes that bound works such as The Heraldry of the Seabord with A Discourse of Good and Evil and A Treatise of the Northern Seas together under the same covers. The Tale of Kings appeared three times. She found that Ulfin had added short notes in the margins on many pages of the histories, and had written a number of scrolls of his own, so she hunted through his library to discover each jotting and trace the big curves of his letters with her finger. Then she might sit and hold the book against herself while she looked out of the window, missing him.

  She looked for the small comfort of things that reminded her of him – clothes, brooches, his drinking cup: signs that in spite of his absence this was his home, and always had been. There were no portraits of him, nor of any of his family except the sad-faced Paigan in the War Room. She began to visit the War Room, in its emptiness, to look at the face framed by the twisting snake, and to imagine the subtlest broadening and strengthening of the artwork that would make it not Paigan's face, but his. Then she would sit on the stool to the right of the war throne, and lay her hand in her imagination upon her husband's arm. The little chest was gone from where it had stood under Ulfin's left hand.

  ‘Why are there no toys?’ she asked one morning, as one of Ulfin's body-servants moved around her in the outer chamber of the living quarters.

  ‘Toys, my lady?’

  Ulfin valued silence among his servants. They were not used to being spoken to. This one was an elderly man with a thin face and wisps of white hair, but he had the same black-and-white livery and, she thought, the same blank look that they all did. She was almost sure that he was called Patter, but she was still not confident that she knew everyone in the house by name.

  ‘Of my lord and his brothers. From their childhood.’

  It worried her that there was so little in the castle to recall Ulfin's boyhood here – no games, no school slates, no relics of adventures with his brothers. Good toys, like her dolls and cup-and-ball at Trant, were worth keeping. But there seemed to be no sign that three young boys had ever played and squabbled in these rooms and along these corridors. It was as if those years had been lost, or buried altogether. The living quarters – a sparsely furnished set of rooms with a few rugs, chests and low tables – bore no trace of them. This was another emptiness, and one that troubled her because without evidence of Ulfin's past in this place it was harder to imagine him living here all the long years of his future.

  The man was putting a wooden chair back exactly where it had stood before she had moved it to the window to read.

  ‘Don't know that they had many my lady or that he kept them, after.’

  He moved on to the stone mantelpiece above the fire, replacing a candlestick, shifting a small box a few inches to the left.

  Watching him as he moved softly around the room, Phaedra thought that the years when Ulfin had been growing here must have been difficult and unhappy ones. Neither Ulfin nor his servants liked to speak of the lives they had led under the old lord. Certainly Patter seemed very intent on what he was doing. He was probably avoiding her eye deliberately, and hoping that the conversation would stop there. It left a long and awkward silence between them. But he would be gone in a moment, surely. He had already done more than enough among the plain and spartan things with which Ulfin had furnished his chambers.

  The silence lengthened. Still he moved patiently from item to item, dusting the chess set, adjusting the low table, replacing things exactly where they had been before she had disturbed them.

  She watched him, fascinated, as every trace that she had been there disappeared beneath his hands: buried like the lost childhoods of Tarceny />
  There was no priest like Brother David. There was no merryman like Joliper. Phaedra found no good companions among the household. As time went on she depended more and more upon Orani to carry her instructions to the others. But even Orani was not good company: elderly bumbling and silent, with eyes that seemed deep but had nothing in them. She was competent at what she did, but when she spoke she rambled and changed subjects without pausing. She fussed among Phaedra's things.

  So Phaedra drifted through the rooms of Tarceny She looked at the faces in the fine cloth of the wall hangings. She even talked to them; she pitied them their wounds, or begged them to spare the beasts and men they pursued with iron. She scolded them in murmurs over the blood that ran down their hands, and wondered what it had been like for the young sons of Tarceny, growing from childhood under these eyes.

  The evenings were colder than she expected, in this hill air. She shivered, and took to wearing a shawl.

  She felt sick.

  The litter returned after a week, and with it came a short note from Evalia diManey It began respectfully enough, ‘Right worshipful and especial good mistress’, but went on, after expressions of gratitude, to conclude, ‘I pray that the Angels attend you in all things in your new life, and also I pray that we may meet again, for friendship is a means of strength whatever the day may bring.’ It was signed, very informally, with a large, curling E.

  Phaedra's heart sank. In another time, perhaps, with other pasts, the two of them might have been friends. But there was a great gulf of politics and station between them. The woman had been quiet enough – even reticent – for much of their journey. Why was she now claiming a part of Phaedra's soul? Phaedra did not want to find out that the woman was a spy, after all; or that she was something worse. Five days in her company had given no clues to the questions that had arisen about their first meeting.

  In the end, Phaedra's response did include a short invitation to come by Tarceny when next Evalia diManey travelled to or from Jent. Phaedra calculated that the journey by land down the length of the lake, particularly across Tarceny's rough country, would normally take three or four times as long as it would by water. So the diManey would need some very strong reason to take advantage of such an offer. And if she ever appeared at Tarceny's gate again, Phaedra would be on her guard.

  She was growing more tired in the afternoons. Her moods were still heavy, and she was sleeping less well. A new and awful suspicion had begun to steal upon her. She was missing Ulfin worse than ever. She wished she could speak with him, but he was not there.

  She was in the War Room again, resting her arms upon the windowsill, looking north and west to the far mountains, when something changed. At first it might have been just the sun falling on a hillside, or the sudden memory of a lark that had been twittering a few moments before – but he suddenly felt nearer, as though some thought of him that she had already forgotten had parted the emptiness for a moment. It was as if she could feel his presence alongside her thought, growing more real and solid in the room behind her.

  Ulfin! At last!

  He was reaching to her, in the way that he had used to at Trant. He was using the Cup.

  Phaedra.

  I've been missing you, she said.

  Is it not well, at Tarceny?

  I can't imagine what it was like for you, growing up here.

  She felt him sigh.

  Only Calyn remembered our mother, he said. It gave him strength that he could never share with Paigan or myself. All we had was each other, and hate.

  After a moment he spoke again.

  Phaedra. Meet me at Aclete tomorrow evening. I must speak with you.

  She could not stop herself from looking around, just as she had used to as a girl. Her hand reached for him, and into empty air. He was gone. She cursed herself and waited; but he did not come again.

  It was evening once more, on the road to Aclete. The light was dull below the grey clouds. The journey was nearly over. The hulk of Talifer's Knoll was before them, blocking the lake and the town from view. It wore its cloak of woods draped on its northern shoulder, like some squat, bow-legged giant from the past. Phaedra started as her escort blew their horns.

  ‘Vermian! Vermian – what are you blowing for?’ ‘My lord's standard is on the hill, my lady’ Far off, horns were calling in answer. She could just make out the tiny figures on the skyline, stationed to see and be seen from the road. A long banner floated above them. Vermian – or one of his men – must have good eyesight if he could pick out the device on it at this distance. Perhaps it was the banner's shape, or some signal with horn and flag, that identified the party. Maybe Vermian had made such rendezvous as this a score of times before.

  ‘Is he there?’

  ‘Most like, my lady.’

  ‘Then let us go to him.’

  I must speak with you. Why had he not simply done so? Or was it that what he had to say was so involved that it could not be contained, by night or day, in the fleeting visions of his cup? If so, then it must be Father, and her request to bring him to Tarceny Ulfin wanted to talk it through with her, probably to argue with her.

  But she had her own reasons for wanting to talk with Ulfin. She had been counting the hours until she could do so. And now she was at the foot of Talifer's Knoll.

  Vermian checked the party with a call and a wave of his hand. He looked to her. He must have seen that she was not herself today. He said nothing, but his eyes asked, Are you up to this? It was no climb for the litter. It would be a bad one for any horse, for the slope was steep and thick with thorns and tussocks. Orani, looking thin-lipped and bright-eyed, rode on an ass. Thunder followed at the litter's tail. He was saddled and caparisoned for her, but the hands that had decked him in the dawn had worked in vain. She would not ride.

  She was tired. Her stomach was uneasy and her throat tight. The motion of the litter made it worse. Her mind was sleazy with sickness, and with shock.

  She sat on the rim of the litter and let them help her down to stand among them. The ground was hard and unmoving beneath her feet. The hillside swept above them. She was poorly shod for walking. It would, after all, be more sensible to continue into town, and let Ulfin join them there. But he was waiting for her on the knoll.

  ‘It is better when I stand,’ she said. ‘You may send the litter on, Vermian, and such others as you think right. Let the rest of us climb.’

  Men were swinging themselves down from the saddle around her. Vermian was giving orders. The litter was moving. She set herself to face the hillside.

  There was no path here. The tussocks were shin-high. There were thistles in the grass, which scratched her ankles and even her feet through the thinness of her shoes. She gathered her skirts and started upwards, frowning. At another time this slope, even pathless, would have given her little difficulty She was not strong today. She felt herself beginning to breathe heavily. The men on the hillside above them were hidden by the curve of the slope. Her own party struggled behind and below her, the men slowed by their horses and their fighting gear.

  On, on.

  And the slope rose on and on above her. It grew steeper. She was going slowly, so slowly, picking her way around this anthill, past that thorn, another few feet upwards. When she stopped and looked around again she seemed to be only a third of the way up. The woods were to her left, watching her from under dark eaves. The going must be rough in there, rough for an old man's feet. Where are you now, priest, stumbling among the roots of my trees? Perhaps he knew secret paths. He had had companions, then: she had heard them moving in the wood. They would have helped him. There was no one to help her now. The crest was lost to view. She remembered this. She had lost her way on the slope in her dream, and stumbled among the boulders. But Ulfin had been above her, and when she reached him he would give her good news in the sunset.

  A man had halted by her, with the reins of his horse in one hand. He held his other out to her, with a questioning look on his face. How he intended both
to help her and to lead his horse at the same time she could not imagine.

  ‘My lady …’

  That was Orani, sliding off the back of her donkey and offering to help her up. The patient beast stood by, tail flicking, blinking to keep the insects from her eyes. It seemed unconcerned by the climb. Phaedra shook her head. Orani's ass was Orani's. And she would not go to meet Ulfin clinging to its back like a sack of grain.

  ‘On up,’ she said. ‘It will get easier.’

  Her sickness had faded. It was only the weakness now, and she would not let the others see it. Push, push, push on upwards. And another thistle before her, with its bright purple blossom standing proudly among the grass stems at the level of her eyes. Step round it and climb on. Men were shouting, laughing. It was good that they were enjoying this. Someone blew a horn. There were figures above, coming down to meet them – men unencumbered by horses. The livery of Tarceny was all around her. Ulfin was not there, but a man – Squire Cradey – stumbled downwards to her and gave her his arm. To her right two men were embracing, while a horse, its reins released for a moment, ambled off along the hillside.

  ‘Where is my lord?’

  ‘Above, my lady,’ said the squire.

  ‘Is he well?’

  ‘Well and unhurt, my lady’

  Thank Michael.

  The slope was gentler now. The tussocks were more widely spread, and flatter. She could see the skyline above them, and the banner, and men clustered beneath it. Ulfin must be there. She smiled and felt stronger. It seemed so long since she had seen him.

  He was not among them. When she came up to the banner, they pointed her to where he stood alone, a little way down the lakeside slope. He was not looking her way. He watched out across the grey face of Derewater, and the misty lands beyond it. There was something in his stance that spoke of apprehension.

  I must speak with you. And yet now that she had come he would not face her. He seemed to be prolonging the moment before they met. He had something to say that he did not wish to.