The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  They came and went at the edge of the light. Very well; there would be more light. She complained of eye-ache in the lengthening dusks of summer, and had lamps placed in every corridor and around every room in use in the living quarters. Forty rushes burned every evening in the great hall, and the night bugs from the dewy hillsides wove and died among them in hundreds. She watched the servants from the corner of her eye for signs that they thought her wasteful, or deranged, or heedless of the risks of fire. And perhaps she saw it. But she thought that they too were glad of the light. Rushes were replaced as they burned low. Doors on dark, unused rooms were shut, and kept locked.

  Ulfin did not come home that summer. Instead, he wrote more frequently than he had done (perhaps because he was writing at the same time to Caw, for money and more soldiers). The malady of the Kingdom persisted. He held the Segne, the heart of the land. She heard that nobles had rallied to him. But to north and east and south other powers watched. Some were openly hostile – especially in the south, where the Develin was strong. Elsewhere, the barons used the weakness of the Kingdom to do as they would; and who was to stop them? The Fount of the Law was dry.

  Raid was followed by counter-raid. The strength of some lord was tested, and his villages withered in fire. Orcrim hammered interminably at the gates of Bay, but the household that had been shamed at Trant crouched behind its walls and would not yield. In June Pemini fell, bloodily, to some of Ulfin's allies, and the town was sacked. Phaedra sent anxiously for news of Maria when she heard, but no answer came.

  One September morning, more news arrived.

  Phaedra was on the north-west fighting platform, looking out over the hills and groves of Tarceny She was remembering the view from the walls of Trant, which would have been all busy with people harvesting in the fields at this time of the year, when she heard a footstep behind her, and a man spoke.

  ‘My lady?’

  It was Martin, the priest, standing alone on the fighting platform.

  ‘Good morning to you, Martin.’

  She thought, once again, that she should find time to ask him how he liked his post, and to talk about what more he might do here. She felt guilty that she had so little for him to be busy with, other than leading in prayer the house-servants and kitchen staff and those others of the household whom she could compel to attend chapel. At the same time she still wanted to watch how he did, and in particular how often he wrote letters to Jent and other places. He was correct and polite, but she could neither bring herself to trust him, nor decide that she definitely did not trust him. It had crossed her mind more than once that she should have his letters intercepted, but she had done nothing. He remained a stranger.

  ‘I heard the men-at-arms talking in the courtyard, my lady. Word from the Segne has come to Caw. I thought perhaps it would concern you.’

  Dear Angels, what had happened now?

  ‘I think you were acquainted with Elward of Baldwin, my lady?’

  ‘Yes.’ Elward. Young, handsome, high-born … She remembered him clearly, standing before Father's chair. ‘I almost agreed to marry him.’

  ‘Then I – I grieve to tell you, my lady, that he is dead.’

  Dead.

  Down below the walls, the olive groves whispered in the light breeze. Once, she might have thought that a man like that could not possibly die. She knew better now.

  ‘Did we do it?’

  ‘My lady?’

  She sighed. Of course we had. We seemed to do everything.

  ‘How did it happen, Martin?’

  ‘He must have been with Septimus in Develin. Early this month he rode north with a small troop. He slipped past my lord's force at Tuscolo and arrived unexpectedly at Baldwin. The gates were open – there were harvest trains coming and going – and they got in. But they were too few, and the garrison was alert. They were cut down in the courtyard – Elward and all his followers.’

  Cut down in the courtyard: in the courtyard where he must have played as a child. He deserved to have loved someone else.

  ‘He was an honourable man, Martin. I knew no wrong of him.’

  And yet another love would not have saved him, because he had also loved the house where he would have brought her to live. He must have hated the thought that the flag of Tarceny had been placed so easily on his walls. He would have brooded on it, during all the dreary months of campaigning, until he could no longer bear to wait for the chances of war to return him home. Then he had taken such as would follow him, to his end and theirs.

  ‘We should say a rite for him, Martin.’

  ‘At noon? Will you summon the house?’

  ‘No, now. Just you and I.’

  He led the way down to the chapel (so much cleaner, lighter and better ordered than it had been before he had come). There they kneeled side by side for a long hour before the Flame. She followed him through the prayers and responses, and listened to his address to Umbriel, in which he prayed the Watcher of Heaven to count twice every good deed the dead man had done. He said the ancient words as though they were new, and marked each appeal with a silence, in which she could almost feel the air drawn past her cheek to the stillness of his prayer.

  Afterwards they walked the fountain court together, among the scents of mint and thyme.

  ‘My thoughts are with his mother,’ Phaedra said. ‘To have lost both her husband and now her son … As a wife and mother myself it seems to me a grief beyond bearing. I cannot think that the Angels intend such things.’

  ‘I doubt that they do, my lady’

  ‘Then why do they permit them to happen – and to the best among us?’

  ‘The Angels do not permit, nor do they prevent. That is not their charge. Nor do they busy themselves only for those who are counted good. “If the miser gives gold to a poor man,” Holy Tuchred tells us, “we have seen Raphael move his heart. When the coward knight turns upon his pursuers, there Michael rides upon his helm. And if a lying man speaks prophesy, you may look for Umbriel behind his eyes.” Their paths are within us, in the most secret places of our thoughts. In as little as a gesture or a word, we may glimpse their light among the evil we have made.’

  ‘But evil walks. It may touch us in so many ways!’ cried Phaedra in frustration. She was thinking of the evil that might walk in shadows, rather than on sword-edges or sickness; but she dared not be more specific. ‘What hope have we if the Angels do not themselves take body to intervene?’

  He frowned. ‘The body is only the battleground. The true fight – where we need all the help the Angels give – is for the mind and soul.’

  Dogma, dogma, thought Phaedra.

  ‘Do you know my lady diManey's story – how she was delivered from an ordeal that was meant to kill her?’ she asked.

  ‘I know what Adam diManey thinks he saw. And I know that His Grace and the lady spoke of it behind a closed door before you came to take her home, but neither have said what they think is the truth. Yet I know His Grace will have told her, as he has said to me, that if the Angels came to rescue each victim and right every wrong, they would long ago have led us back to Paradise, and left none of us the wiser.’

  Phaedra was silent. She needed comfort, and it was not being given. If the Angels did not protect, or cure, or avert evil – what good could they bring in this world where disaster followed disaster in terrible succession?

  Looking back, she could remember the days at Trant when she had almost agreed to marry Elward. Then she had met one more time with Ulfin, had drunk once more from the Cup, and had found the strength to resist, one more time. What if she had not? There would have been no war. Father would have been alive. Baldwin, in its sunbeaten pastures, might yet have been as good a home as Tarceny with its loneliness and shadows. Ulfin; her son Ambrose; everything bad and good in her life seemed to have flowed from that moment when she had lifted the Cup to her lips and seen the tiny oak leaf circling on the face of the water.

  ‘Is it well with you, my lady?’ asked Martin suddenly.
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br />   He was looking at her closely. And he was either a very good actor, or the concern in his eyes was real. She was sure she did not deserve it. She could imagine how she had seemed to him since he had arrived at Tarceny – cold, distracted, distrustful. She must be a poor mistress. And even an honest man would ask himself what it was she so feared.

  ‘I was wondering – how much longer will you be with us before you go into the mountains?’

  He frowned slightly. ‘We agreed I should leave after All Hallows, my lady. But that I would return before the Lenten Days.’

  ‘I shall be sorry to lose you.’

  She had not answered his question, but they both knew that that in itself was an answer. He could not press her again. After a moment she thanked him and dismissed him, thinking that even if he was indeed the bishop's man, Tarceny would be lonelier yet when he was gone.

  And the past was a closed door. Elward was dead, and it was idle to dream of having married him, for she never would have done. Even then, Ulfin in his absence had been more real to her than any man she had met in the light of day. Now – how many times more so! She could close her eyes and remember the depth of his look, and the thud, thud of her heart as he held her in his arms. He might be hundreds of miles away, and yet she could still feel the witchcraft of his touch upon her skin.

  And there was Ambrose. Squalling, petulant child: his uncle's long face was indeed showing now, where Orcrim had claimed so implausibly to see it; but the boy's clear eyes and (she believed) his mulish spirit were all his own. She would not have changed one moment of her past if it meant that he would never be.

  Then she laughed, and she flung her arms to the sky as she had seen Ulfin do when he first met her son.

  Martin left in the late autumn. He went on foot, with a donkey, some rude gear, and no protection but a staff and the appearance of little to steal. He seemed determined to find some hill settlement where he could spend midwinter, but promised to return in the spring. Phaedra watched him dawdle at the slow pace of his beast in and out of the olive groves below the castle, until he was finally hidden from sight. Now the chapel was empty again, and there was just Caw at her table in the evenings.

  The Lady of Tarceny she had never felt so alone.

  Her troubles were beginning to grow. That night, as Orani was brushing the tangles from her hair, Phaedra started and exclaimed aloud. After a few seconds she rose and hurried down the corridor to the room which was now the nursery. Ambrose was awake, but quiet, mouthing at one of Ulfin's stones while Eridi sang him one of the droning lullabies of the hills. Stones and other toys were scattered on the floor of the room. Lamps flickered quietly in their places. The two were alone. So she returned to her chambers, ignoring Orani's stare, and settled herself before the mirror again. She watched the glass intently, looking past the brush and hands of her maid to a certain corner of the wall beyond where, a few moments before, she had locked eyes with something inhuman.

  A face. Not a man's face, or at least she thought not. What she had glimpsed had seemed more like … like a demented cockerel under a cloth hood, staring and gibbering in her glass from the shadows of the far side of the room.

  There was nothing there now. The robe, still unfinished, stood like a headless shadow and did not move. The hanging behind it had pictures of fight scenes from the ancient stories of the Kingdom, but surely not the patterns that could conjure such a thing for a sleepy eye. And Orani, standing beside her, did not appear to have seen or felt anything.

  Phaedra sniffed. Was there a smell?

  ‘We must have more lights,’ she said.

  She wrote guardedly to Ulfin. When his answer came it brought little comfort. She must watch and trust no one. Especially she must watch over Ambrose. Ulfin could not say when he would be able to return.

  Things cannot go on as they are, here. And yet I cannot tell what will change it. No one wants Septimus for King. Yet it suits many to support him, that there should be no King at all. I wish that I might resign the game and withdraw west of the lake. But it would not end there. For the sake of Ambrose and those who follow us, I must finish what we have started.

  He also said, curiously that he hoped she would retain Orani and Eridi in service, for he thought they were good at what they did. It was the first time that she could remember him noticing anything to do with her domestic arrangements since those few weeks after their marriage, eighteen months ago. She wrote back that the weather was bad, and that Ambrose was crawling.

  Her letter crossed with the news that, a year after they had first offered it to him, he had again refused the crown.

  The weather was indeed bad. The light was dim. She had rushes burning in the corridors in the middle of the day, despite the constant risk of fire. They gave off a heavy, sour smell and some fumed so badly that if she had indeed been suffering from eye-ache it would have made things worse rather than better. The air was damp, and chilly in the wind. A round of colds began among the household. Phaedra worried about keeping the tower room warm for Ambrose, keeping the fire going, keeping a flow of dry wood coming up hourly from the woodstore in the arms of kitchen boys.

  She was crossing the upper bailey after a short meeting with Caw and the guard captain about duties. Her head was full of the numbers – a guard and three servants sick, a sergeant and four gone to recruit men for the war. Another guard asking leave to marry. There were too few horses. She knew that Caw would soon ask her to release her horse Thunder to the garrison, which would spark their first argument in months (she did not have much use for the animal, who was a lump – but there were limits!). And with these preoccupations she looked up in the dank day at the north-east tower for the reassuring plume of smoke that wavered thinly up the inner side. It was not there.

  She stopped and waited, but it did not appear. Had the fire gone out? Or was the wood in the hearth so dry that the smoke was simply invisible in this light? Caw's voice sounded behind her, ending a conversation with the guard captain in the doorway to the inner gatehouse.

  She hurried across the courtyard. If the fire had gone out, it would either be because Eridi had allowed it to – in which case she was in for a tongue-lashing if the room was a jot less than very warm – or because the next lot of wood hadn't appeared, in which case some kitchen boy was going to spend a day or two doing something very unpleasant. She entered the hall and climbed the gallery stairs, passed into the living-quarter passage and turned to her right. A flight of wooden steps took her up to the next level, where the house-servants were quartered, and to the door to the tower room. It was shut. She lifted the latch, which clacked in her hand, and entered.

  It was nowhere near warm enough. The floor was littered, as it always was, with Ambrose's stones and other toys. The room was empty. The fire was out. There was no one there.

  The smell. Not the woody scent of dead embers, but something thick and damp, like old stone at the edge of pools. She knew it at once.

  Then she saw Ambrose.

  He was a half-dozen steps up the stair that curled up the side of the chamber to disappear into the tower wall. He was struggling, on hands and knees, to make the next step.

  There was someone on the stair above him …

  Dear Angels!

  A figure – it was smaller than a man – crouched in a heavy, hooded cloak, with its head bowed. The boy was climbing towards it.

  It leaned forward.

  ‘Stop!’ Nothing changed at the sound of her voice.

  There were soldiers on the roof above. Somewhere in the room was a gong to call them, but she could not think where. She could not take her eyes off her son. His tongue was clenched between his lips as he reached for the next flight of stone. His head rocked. He uttered a little grunt as she watched.

  The crouching thing lifted its head. Beneath the hood it seemed eyeless, toad-headed. Something crunched. Flecks of stone trickled down the stair.

  Long fingers that were not a man's stretched towards the child.

 
; ‘Amba!’ she said, louder this time. The boy looked round and saw her.

  I'm busy, his look said.

  If she stepped forward he would turn to climb again. Two steps above him the fingers hovered like the roots of black trees. Water glistened on them. She must not look. She must look at Ambrose. At Ambrose.

  ‘Come down, darling. Please – come down.’

  Slowly the boy turned.

  He frowned in concentration. He hesitated. Then he tried a step downwards.

  He fell.

  Phaedra cried out, and lunged up the stair to catch him as he rolled over and over down the stone steps. Above her the stair was crowded – the hooded crouching thing, stinking, a few feet away, and beyond it, another figure – a man in a robe and hood, looking down, coming down the stairs towards her …

  It was him! It was him!

  ‘Help! Help!’ Down the stairs, and she nearly fell. Somewhere beyond a door feet pounded on wooden steps. People were coming. She turned, snarling, with her child in her arms, to face the enemy.

  The stair was empty.

  Ambrose bawled and bawled. The tower door rattled and Caw flung into the room, with Orani behind him.

  ‘There's someone up there!’

  Caw leaped to the stair foot. Phaedra saw him check as he registered that there was no one on the lower steps. He drew his sword, listened, and crept to the point where the stair disappeared into the thickness of the wall. There he paused.

  ‘Where's Eridi?’ asked Orani.

  ‘Quiet, damn it!’ Caw trying to listen, as the tower rang with Ambrose's cries. After a few seconds he called loudly upwards.

  ‘Ho there! Tower guard!’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Sir?’ came a voice, echoing down.

  ‘Is the stair clear?’

  ‘Clear, sir, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Come on down then, and take care.’

  After a moment there came the sound of armoured heels upon the steps. Watching Caw, Phaedra could see the moment when the guard lurched into his view. The stair was clear.

  ‘Have you seen anything? Inside or out?’