The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  lake truly empties. Our falls are just a thing it does for fun.’

  Phaedra said something to show that she was listening. Not that Evalia really meant her to pay attention. Her talk was idle stuff, light and unending, to let two gentle ladies while away an afternoon in each other's company. And even Evalia was silent for a moment, lying full length on the thin grass and looking up at the sun as it glanced between the leaves.

  Phaedra could not relax. She was muddling with a sense of depression that would not go away. She had realized, as the weeks passed, that Adam diManey was reluctant to discuss the politics of the Kingdom with her. That morning, when the subject had come up briefly he had hesitated and picked his words so painfully that it was obvious he was trying not to give offence. As a free knight, and one under a ban at that, he was able to take sides in the Kingdom's troubles or remain neutral if he chose (which he did). Clearly he was at best reserved about Ulfin's cause. As one who had stood up against the practices of the old court at Tuscolo, and had suffered for it, she thought he should have been a sympathizer. Either diManey a genuinely good man, was blind to the real needs of the Kingdom, or he saw some reason why Ulfin's entire effort, and her own sacrifices with it, was at fault or would fail uselessly. Perhaps he hated the chaos that war brought more even than the bad justice of the order that had preceded it.

  The boy had left the road. He was making straight for their trees, wading through knee-high grasses and past the low thorns that lurked among them. It was unlikely that he had left property among the trees on the hillock. Village boys did not walk up to a group like this casually, if they could instead wait at a distance until the party had gone. Whatever his business, it concerned Evalia's party. Phaedra watched him come. He could not have been more than eleven years old.

  It was only when he was a few yards off, when he looked around the people under the trees and came hesitantly forward, that she realized he was looking for her.

  ‘Man told me to give you this,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  It held a chess piece.

  Beside her, Evalia rose to look. Phaedra reached out and took it.

  ‘He said he'd like it if you came alone,’ said the boy.

  ‘Did he?’ she said, almost to herself. ‘And where is he?’

  ‘That's him.’ He was pointing to the reed cutter, a furlong up the track by the shore.

  Evalia was at her shoulder. Phaedra heard her gasp as she saw the chess piece. She knew at once that Evalia's mind had flown back to the night, shortly after her arrival, when they had murmured together over the chessboard.

  ‘It's all right,’ she said. ‘This is no eavesdropper.’ Or at least that was not what the piece was supposed to say. ‘He's just telling me who he is.’

  It was the figure of a knight, roughly cut and stained brown. The face had a crazed, lopsided look.

  ‘He must have carried them with him down the wall,’ she muttered. ‘Dear Angels!’

  He was bareheaded, and so roughly dressed that he might have been a peasant himself. It was only when they came close, along the spit of land where he was working, that they could see the leather of his boots, the unconvincing way in which he thrashed among the stalks with his sickle, and that his chosen spot was a poor one for good reeds but was well placed to hide him from anyone passing on the track close by. He had no punt, but a rowboat nosed among the stems. The sickle he must have taken from the boy. He straightened as they approached. Phaedra, helping Evalia pick her way along the narrow strip of land, felt the tension in her companion's grip as they neared him.

  ‘Well met,’ he said. ‘I see you are in good health.’ ‘Indeed I am, sir. As, I hope, are you and your family’ He nodded. ‘And I wish health to your son.’ Phaedra smiled. He might know, or guess, that Ambrose was at Chatterfall, but she was not going to tell him.

  ‘Sir, my companion is the Lady diManey whom you may have once known as Luguan. My lady, this is the Baron Lackmere, who was a guest in my father's house.’ She allowed herself to linger just a fraction on the word ‘guest’, to convey the double meaning and to rob the man of any respectability that her recognition implied. For until she discovered what he wanted, she would not concede him anything.

  Indeed he was a rascally sight. His skin was lined and tanned from long exposure to the weather. His hair was tangled and there was thick stubble on his chin. His boots were spattered with mud. The tunic was faded and torn. From a bundle of reeds on the dry land peeped the hilt of a sword. Phaedra's eyes caught the chipped green mark of the oak leaf on its pommel, and looked away. If he had his chess pieces with him then presumably all his other worldly goods were also stowed nearby, perhaps aboard the small rowboat. He stood straight enough, with the old, angry look in his eye that she remembered.

  ‘Let us sit,’ he said.

  They found themselves places on piles of cut stems. The reeds rose around them and hid all the lakeshore from view.

  ‘I was sorry to hear of your father's death.’

  ‘You are good, sir – to have sought me out to tell me so?’

  ‘I found you were here quite by chance.’

  He was looking at her, as if to assess what sort of woman she had become in the time since their last argument on the walls of Trant.

  ‘Do I need to guess what chance brings a former baron to these reeds?’

  ‘Ah. You think I am an outlaw? Of course. I am sorry that my appearance is something rough these days. But it is hard campaigning, and not a life without the law, that makes me look so. My lady, I should tell you that I am restored to my lands and forgiven my deeds. I appear before you Baron of Lackmere in truth as well as in name.’

  ‘I am pleased for you, sir. If I may enquire who has done this?’

  ‘The only one who could. Septimus, prince of the house that decreed my ban. When I heard that that old woman Inchapter was dead with Seguin, I sought the prince out straight away. I offered him my sword – at a time, I may say, when others of whom he had thought better were sheathing theirs. The widow of Develin herself stood by him at that moment, and although she knew me to have been an enemy of her house, she counselled the prince to accept and restore me, for at that time he needed men sorely. Things go better with him now.’

  ‘And worse for the Kingdom, for now there are two equal powers striving for mastery, where before one was in defeat.’

  ‘Equal?’ He grinned sourly. ‘I tell you, the balance is tipping faster than you think. The chief town of Tarceny is Baer, is it not? I know within a day who has come and gone from its gates. You have a lodge there. If you were to hang a green or a blue cloth from a window, and then travel south, or west, before you had gone two days you would have heard from me.’

  Green or blue: Trant's colours, and Lackmere's. And Septimus had followers in Tarceny.

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that my lord might have helped you regain your lands whether or not Inchapter was dead?’

  ‘It did.’ For a moment Aun frowned, as though he found it hard to say what repelled him from Ulfin's cause. ‘I had unpleasant dealings with him once. And we have crossed swords, as you know.’

  Dealings? They must have been before he came to Trant. She remembered that he had known Ulfin even as he leaped at him out of the night. She's not for you!

  ‘I know. Yet I trust that my lord has the judgement to overlook such a scuffle if it meant righting an injustice in the Kingdom.’ (She was not convinced that there had been any injustice in Lackmere's fall; but Ulfin needed followers too.) ‘Further, if he understood that your hostility had been from some old misunderstanding, and not any fault of his’ – she let the thought dangle for a second, and saw Aun frown again, as if he did not agree – ‘I believe he would have done at least as much for the service of your sword. He might not even mind that it was a sword purloined from my father's castle, and one that you had tried to take his head off with.’

  She finished with more force than she had intended. The baron only laughed.

 
; ‘If you knew how much effort it took to remove it from where it had been set without my guards noticing, to hide it in a bundle of wood, carry it up to my rooms, carry up every other stick of wood I needed in the next fortnight, so that no one should think that there was anything strange in my carrying the first bundle, keep it there for six weeks undiscovered, and get it down that damned wall, you will know why I do not exchange it for a nobler weapon. It was my one achievement in eighteen long months at Trant. And I am not ashamed of the reasons for which I first drew it. Next time he and I meet, I shall wear mail, and we will see what advantage his long blade and pretty swordsmanship bring him.’

  There was a light in his eye as if he were anticipating the coming fight. She looked away across the leaves. At length he spoke again.

  ‘I do not often go among gossiping company’ he said. ‘Even so, you might be surprised how often I hear others talk of you, and what they say’

  ‘I do not listen to gossip at all, sir.’

  ‘You are not concerned, then, at what is said of your part in the fall of your father's house?’

  ‘And what is it that you think should concern me?’ She could guess at some of it. But she would dare him to repeat it to her.

  Aun pulled a face. Then he shrugged. ‘I had supposed you had heard before this. Traitress, is one thing.’

  ‘False, but it does not surprise me.’

  ‘Witch, also. And – well, witch will do.’

  ‘Witch and …?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And, sir?’

  ‘Whore, then!’

  She stared at him levelly. ‘Well,’ she said softly. ‘It seems that beaten men may spin much out of very little things. What I did, sir, was to say to my lord that you had found it possible to escape by climbing down the wall of Trant, and therefore that it might also be possible for the wall to be scaled. What was done then was done with skill and courage by the men of Tarceny such that no life was lost at all in the taking of the castle. Which I count the greatest feat of arms in all this sorry war. My father's death – you may not have heard – occurred some days later, when he broke out of his confinement. He attacked his guards and was killed.’

  ‘By Caw of Enderby I have heard.’

  Caw!

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘If you mean that my departure from Trant showed Tarceny the way in, I must say that I doubt it. I came down that wall from a window I had prepared. Perhaps I could get back up it again, if I had need. But forty strangers in war gear, and without alerting a guard? If that is true, then I shall bow my head to your father when we meet beneath Michael's wings. But I do not think it. My own guess is that Tarceny has other means, and uses them.’

  The reeds stirred in the wind and sighed. Caw. Father. Caw.

  ‘I did not like the way the King died so suddenly on the road to Trant,’ Aun said, half to himself. ‘Just as his force was gathering, like that. It has opened the way for—’

  She was angry now. Angry on Ulfin's behalf. ‘Sir, it seems we are in different camps, you and I. Nevertheless, I can say this to you. Neither my lord nor I wish you any harm, and I hope that when reason prevails in the Kingdom you will be able to live peacefully in your home at last. But my lord is guiltless of the things you accuse him of. And he does not desire the crown. He has refused it twice—’

  ‘And will he refuse it a third time? I wonder.’

  ‘He has refused it. And he did not desire my father's death, nor did I, nor that of anyone at Trant. You have my oath on that!’

  It was Aun's turn to pause, looking away across the reeds to some vision of war beyond them.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I suppose I came to find if you were a willing accomplice in Tarceny's doings, or a victim of abduction in hiding from your so-called husband. I had hoped it was the second, and what gave me hope was to find you this side of the water when I know Tarceny is hurrying back to the other.

  ‘It seems you are more the first, although you may not realize, for example, that a fighting man cannot set out to take another's house without wishing him other than the most grievous harm. Or that in politics it is often necessary to refuse more than once what you would most have others give you. Perhaps you have been bewitched. At all events you are yet young, my lady. I do not forget that. And one day you may need my help. Well, if you do, I have told you how you may come by it. Maybe it is better for both of us if we say no more now.’

  ‘You were very calm,’ said Evalia, as they picked their way back along the lakeshore in the sun.

  ‘Was I? I did not feel it.’

  ‘I'm no good at times like that. I cannot move or speak. I feel like a mouse.’

  ‘He would not have hurt us,’ said Phaedra, thinking that if Evalia had believed there would be serious danger, she deserved more credit than she was giving herself for following Phaedra into the reeds. ‘He loathes my lord – I guess because my lord would not side against the King in the Seabord rising. But that is a different matter. I do not think he will tell others that I am here. He was a captive at Trant. For eighteen months I was almost his only company. You would not think it to hear him speak perhaps; but I am afraid …’

  Pace, pace, along the dusty track where yellow grass tufted among the hard ruts, and a skylark singing somewhere in the blue overhead.

  ‘I am afraid he is in love with me.’

  How time shifted the perspective of things! She had barely thought of Lackmere in the past two years. Now she could see that his bitterness and despair at Trant had not only been caused by his imprisonment. At the time she had been receiving suitor after suitor, and he was already married to a woman with whom he barely corresponded. And then he had risked his neck to escape, and yet had turned aside while still in earshot of the walls – had roused the castle, indeed – in an attempt to prevent Ulfin from carrying her away. Madness. Now he had sought her out again.

  ‘Of course, he may be changing his mind even as I speak. It was a most depressing talk in a number of ways.’

  Evalia was waiting to ask her a different question.

  ‘I see the servants did not stay for us,’ Phaedra continued sourly, looking up at the wooded hillock where they had rested earlier. ‘I suppose we will have to walk home.’

  ‘I sent them back to the house,’ said Evalia.

  ‘Did you? Why?’

  ‘Because— Ah!’

  A rider had appeared on the track ahead of them. Dust rose in a low plume from the hooves of his mount. He was moving heavily, and yet seemed to be hurrying. Sunlight gleamed dully on mail and helm. Now she could hear the double thud of the hooves: a lumbering trot that rose to a canter as the rider saw them. Evalia waved her arm. They could see the lance-pennant, flickering darkly about the tiny point of iron. Now they could feel the ground shake beneath their ankles with the vast weight of the approach. He was almost on them – a mountain of flesh and jingling harness, mail and weapons. The rider's visor was up. It was Adam diManey puffing and pulling and bringing his huge beast to a stop on the track where they stood. Phaedra blinked in the dust.

  ‘He's gone,’ Evalia was saying. ‘He had a rowboat and went off across the lake. No harm has been done.’

  DiManey looked about him, searching the reed beds and the surface of the lake. He was gasping for breath.

  ‘Came as – quick as I could. Who was it?’

  ‘One of Septimus's followers. He wanted to parley only.’

  ‘I don't think he'll come back,’ said Phaedra.

  DiManey was without leg-armour, shield or surplice. He had not stopped to put on his padded undercoat, but had thrown his mail on over his shirt when the servants reached him. He was still panting. His horse had been ridden hard. Phaedra saw him exchange glances with Evalia. They had been afraid.

  ‘The others are following with horses for you,’ Adam said. ‘I suggest we find some shade until they arrive.’ He swung himself ponderously down from his perch, and began to lead his mount up the slope.

  Phaedra f
ollowed, thinking that if Aun had found her, then others might do so, even without his help. They would find that Ambrose was there too. DiManey might be able to keep his lands free of petty outlaws, but he could not stand against a baron's raiding party. If they came here she would have to surrender at once, or it would mean a bloody death for diManey and possibly a traitor's death for Evalia too. But Ulfin was across the lake now …

  ‘Is it not Caw of Enderby whom your lord has set to hold Tarceny?’ Evalia murmured in her ear.

  ‘It is.’ It was the question she had known Evalia would ask.

  She could sense Evalia expecting outrage. And, in part, she was right. Phaedra had never even asked herself whose hands had swung the blade that had cut into her father's flesh: who had stood over him as he had choked and bubbled in his own blood until at last he was still for ever. She had barely wondered what embarrassment it was Caw had caused to Ulfin that he should be consigned to his appointment, eating at her table a thousand times, slow to meet her eye, rude when she spoke of home, and anxious that his lord should release him from his duty! And yet she knew that Ulfin must have known, and moreover, that he had chosen Caw for that very reason.

  She had no sense of betrayal. She thought she could see the matter as Ulfin had done, looking Caw scornfully in the eye. You killed this man. You guard his child, and grandchild, and eat in silence the guilt of what you have done. He had not explained to her, but she saw now that he had not needed to. What he had chosen to do was wisdom: dark and cool as water in a cup of ancient stone.

  ‘I must go back,’ she said.

  ‘Back!’

  ‘To Tarceny My lord is there now.’

  Once again, that long stare. She met it. It was Evalia who dropped her gaze.

  ‘Say what you are thinking.’

  ‘Is it …’ Evalia shook her head, as though suppressing her thought. Then she seemed to change her mind again. ‘Is it – what that man said? Are you sure you are not bewitched?’

  The air was thick with heat. In the puddles of the stream Phaedra could see the pale shapes of the oak-leaves of last summer, lying drowned and still.