The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  The things were gone. Ambrose – Angels send – played among the white stones in the mountains, and Ulfin had taken the other two to war, as he had done before. As his brother Calyn had done, with these things or others in the Seabord rising: Calyn who had ‘feared too much’ and yet had paid such a price that it had cost him his life.

  Great Umbriel – what price had Ulfin paid?

  And Paigan, his younger brother, who must have been named after that eighth son of Wulfram who still haunted the world? Ulfin said he had done ‘no more nor less than you’. So he had drunk the water with Ulfin, who had loved him; and then spoken such words of it, perhaps, that his father had flown into a rage and slain him in this room. What price? None perhaps for Paigan, and yet Paigan too was dead. Round the rim of his portrait the great world-worm twisted in oils, and the letters at its head spelled CaPuU; cPu nitched the tiny dark letters of the snake ring on the chain around her neck: the ring that had been his. Each brother had had a ring, with the letter of his own name set between the other two. Calyn's, Evalia had said, had recalled the motto of his house: ‘The Under-Craft Prevaileth’. The ring of Ulfin must spell cUp. She had never noticed, or understood.

  She left the room, empty. The stair wound downwards towards the chapel, from which Martin's voice rose in the morning office.

  Her legs carried her down, but were not strong enough to hold her standing in the little aisle while the morning songs endured. So she sank into the wall-bench and waited, eyes closed, for the notes to die away. At length Martin dropped his hands from prayer and turned.

  ‘I am glad to see you up, my lady’

  ‘They tell me it was only six days.’

  ‘Only?’

  ‘When I was a child I went without food for a fortnight, and would have gone to the end if my father had not himself surrendered. I had not thought I had become so weak-willed. Martin, I want to talk with you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you please.’

  He looked hard at her. ‘Is this penitence?’

  ‘I think it is – at last.’

  ‘Do you wish to kneel? We can perform the office from your seat, if you would find it easier.’

  She thought about it and nodded. He took his place beside her and began to murmur the opening prayer, while Phaedra looked up into the four faces of Heaven.

  ‘I have three things to tell you,’ she said.

  ‘The first is what I said a moment ago. When I was nine years old I set out to starve myself to death because my mother had died and I thought my father would remarry. After two weeks he promised me he would not.’

  ‘Wherein lay the fault?’

  ‘It – was blackmail, and an act of lovelessness. He doted on me, for I was the last of his family. And when I had shown him that I might starve myself at will, if I chose, he could not rule me any more. After that he was bound to do as I wished, and so was everyone in Trant; even, when it came to my marriage, to offend great lords of the land, for fear that I would begin to refuse food again. I was—’

  ‘It is also taught that the intent of self-destruction should be cause of penitence.’

  ‘I know.’ She thought to herself that Martin's former master would have had his own views on that point; but she had not come to argue.

  ‘Umbriel, write what has been said,’ whispered Martin at length. ‘And Michael, lend us courage to face the enemy within.’

  ‘The second is that shortly after that time, I began to meet a man in the places that you and I travelled when we returned to Tarceny a week ago. Together we drank a – a … love philtre.’ The words ‘love philtre’ sounded wrong. They could not describe the meaning of the Cup, year after year of it, but she could not think of anything better. ‘The bond persisted between us. We loved each other, and I became his wife, in a ceremony that – was a true marriage, but took place without my father's blessing.’

  ‘Wherein lay the fault?’

  ‘Witchcraft,’ she whispered, because she knew that she must. And she did not say: I was a child, I trusted him, I knew no better Penitence could not come to Umbriel dressed in excuses; only the thin cloak of filth that she had borne ever since she had begun to taste the water and that she now felt at last, clinging to her skin as she spoke. ‘And betrayal. I had forced my father to give me love, and I—’

  ‘Umbriel, write what has been admitted,’ said Martin softly. ‘And Gabriel, bathe the heart of the penitent in Glory.’

  Phaedra hesitated, partly because he had cut her off from saying that which (at that moment) she felt most keenly, and partly because he had changed the order of the office as she understood it. Gabriel, Messenger of God, should have been accorded the last and greatest place among the brothers of Umbriel.

  ‘The third,’ she said at last. ‘When my father called the King to help him bring me home, I told my husband how I thought my home might be taken in an armed raid.’

  ‘Wherein lay the fault?’

  ‘Betrayal.’

  She had seen in her mind's eye a means of attack on her home. She had spoken of it to those men – hardened, armed killers from the former days of Tarceny She had hoped, stupidly, that no harm would come of it. And yet she had preferred that lives at Trant should be at risk rather than that she should end the quarrel by returning there. She had not even considered the possibility

  It had been betrayal, although Ulfin had had no need to follow her wild plan, and must never have intended to. There would be no need to climb a wall with forty men in war gear if you could walk among the brown rocks and appear suddenly within your enemy's castle, perhaps with one or two most trusted men, and so open the postern door to your storming party before the guard was aware.

  Despite the bond between them – perhaps even because of it – he had allowed her to believe that it was she who had shown his men the way into Trant, and to the ending of her father's life.

  Ulfin!

  Slowly from the fog of her desolation, the outlines of his mind were emerging at last. The past was becoming more than just event after event. He had planned each move, like a chess player, long in advance, seeing clearly where others had gone in blindness. Trant had been the key. Holding Trant he had the road to the heart of the Kingdom. When had he first known that? Long before ever he had lifted the bolts of its postern door and let his swordsmen in. No, even before he had raised the water to her lips one part of his mind had known what the end should be – not just Trant, but Tuscolo, the empty throne, and the changes he would bring around it. He could see far, and speak far. She had been a fool to suppose that, given such power, he would use it only to woo a young girl in a lakeside castle. How had he gained such victories? Why had the gates of Baldwin and Tuscolo opened so suddenly?

  How had the King died?

  A chess player. And yet he was not in his element. The world was less precise, more perverse, than he allowed for it to be. Fathers denied him the hand of their daughters for the sake of an ill reputation earned a generation before. Doors that should have held gave before imprisoned men, so that their blood would be spilled to his shame. The stubborn barons would not yield to his harrying, and the widow of Develin so hated him that she armed the enemies of her house against him. Even his ‘under-craft’ twisted from his purpose, so that the bonds of love that he should throw about his beautiful bride should be bonds for him too – in some unfathomable way a weakness or impediment that he had not intended, and from which he could only break free at the cost of allowing the woman who had been blinded with love to understand at last the secrets that he kept from her: the name of her father's killer; the name of the one who had married them; the charms he had placed around her son, set by two serving women who, because of their ignorance or credulity, he trusted more than he did his wife.

  How he must have longed to be free of the love-bond that he had wished upon them both!

  The last she had seen of him was the loathing in his eyes. Hatred, because she had become to him a burden and a threat. She had pursued
him with her questions among the brown rocks, imagining that he must answer her with the truth. But he had already escaped her. The priest at the pool had given him the water that released him. And so he had left her in that terrible place.

  Ulfin!

  There had been a time when he had talked about leaving the night and entering the day. There would be no more magic. He would do things in the plain, ordinary way that others did them, and let the secrets of twilight sleep. On the battlements above her head she had seen him laugh and fling his arms to the sky, as if he had been pushing something away, or crying ‘Stop!’: towards the peak of Beyah, the ruined house on its great spur; towards the pool that held the dark tears of the Mother of the World. It had been a gesture of defiance, and refusal.

  What had changed his mind? The sight of his enemies, pressing in upon him, with no power but their numbers and iron. Without the magic he would fail. So he had gone back. He had become a suitor again; a suitor to the undying priest, Paigan Wulframson, Prince Under the Sky, who must have found the pool and its power, even as his own brothers abandoned him to his stillborn kingdom in the mountains three hundred years ago.

  Where had Ulfin been, when Father was slain? She could remember his words on the knoll as clearly as if he had spoken yesterday. By the time I got there, he was dead. Where had he been? She had supposed him to have been within Trant, almost, but tragically not quite, within call. What if he had not been there? If he had been within the Cup again, travelling north to some point where no one could expect him to be?

  How had the King died?

  And what price had Ulfin paid?

  ‘My lady?’

  Martin was waiting for her to go on. She shook her head.

  ‘My lady, before I close, I must ask whether this witchcraft persists between yourself and your husband.’

  ‘It did until a week ago. His bond was broken then. Mine – a day or two since, as I fasted and waited for him. I do not love him any more.’

  ‘So – you are now free.’

  ‘Free. Although …’

  The priest, grinning at her as the water had crashed through her mind. He had spared Evalia to suffer. Was that what he had now done for her? Her hands were shaking. Famine, anger or dread? She felt them all.

  ‘… It is the manner in which I have been freed gives me the greatest cause for fear.’

  Ulfin! You did … Oaths and Angels!

  Martin must have been waiting for her. At length he said: ‘If there is more that you would say of this, I beg that you do so under Penitence and not—’

  ‘There is not, Martin. And I came to you because I have begun to understand things that had touched upon me; not because you have already walked with me in places that could only have been reached by witchcraft – although I am glad that our shared journey must at least have made it easier for you to believe what I have been saying.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Close the office, please, Martin.’

  ‘Umbriel, write that which has been owned, and that which has not been owned. Seal it in our minds and hearts until the Day of the Call of the Dead. And Raphael, Compassion of God who walks in the dark places; Friend of the Hapless; Light on our Path; Wise, Tender, Commanding …’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said when he had finished and was helping her to her feet. ‘I had never heard that prayer before. Still, it does not seem wrong to have him take precedence over his brothers at Penitence.’

  ‘My lady, I think that he may have taken an interest in this matter already. And that most directly in a manner I would never have believed.’

  ‘You are saying …?’

  ‘That I was woken in my camp by a man. He was plainly dressed – as if he were a peasant or a pilgrim. Yet his voice was not like that. He led me to find you among those rocks. There was no escape from them, and yet we escaped. I remember telling you then that I did not think we were meant to fail.’

  A pilgrim?

  ‘What did he look like, Martin?’

  ‘I can hardly say, my lady. It was dark, and by the time I was fully awake, he was already walking away from me. Yet – yet I can think of no other explanation than that it was Raphael himself

  Phaedra felt no movement in her empty soul. Great and compassionate as Heaven might be, she could not imagine that it would have stooped to help her. And there was another ugly, horrible possibility that the word ‘pilgrim’ roused in her mind.

  ‘Can you be certain? I remember you saying that the Angels moved only within us, and did not appear in body as we suppose they do. And I cannot think that he should have chosen to intervene for me at all, no matter through what agency’

  ‘They who think themselves furthest fallen are often the most near to help. And I know what Tuchred teaches, and what I have said. Yet there was one who woke me in the night from my camp and bade me follow. I rose, and pursuing him I found you, in need, in that place – I do not know what to believe. I wish I could send a letter to His Grace, but—’

  ‘I may have a message for him too. Can you send it for me?’

  She saw a sudden wariness come over him.

  ‘It would be better if I were not seen to be writing myself,’ she said.

  ‘You know Caw opens my letters, my lady’

  ‘What! No, I did not.’

  ‘Not long after I came here I saw that a message that came for me had been opened, and then re-sealed with some care. So when I wrote the reply and handed it to the messenger I watched what he did. Before leaving he took it to Caw. He has done so with every message I have sent outside the castle since then. Not that I have had occasion to do so often.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘For a while – forgive me – I assumed it was at your orders.’

  Phaedra remembered a time when her first thought about Martin had been that he was the bishop's spy.

  It was that little extra lurch of anger and of guilt that made her decision for her. There, in a corridor outside the chapel, with one hand on his shoulder and the cold draught flowing down the stair, she knew what she was going to do.

  ‘Caw is still in the house, is he?’

  ‘My lord has left him in charge, with some strength, for they believe Septimus has raiders in Tarceny Whether that will remain so after my lord's latest victory at Trant I cannot say’

  ‘I will not stay under the same roof as Caw.’

  Again, Martin was waiting for her to go on. People were always waiting for her.

  ‘Martin, I need you to do me another service.’

  ‘My lady.’

  ‘Go to Hayley If Orani and my son are not there, have the garrison send into the hills to bring them down. I will need to tell you how you may find them. Once they are at Hayley you should set out as if to bring them back here. Then you must turn secretly aside, and take them to the manor of diManey beyond the lake. Its name is Chatterfall, and they will be safe there for a short time …’

  He was listening, thinking. He did not seem in the least surprised that he was to set out again, so soon after his sudden and extraordinary journey home.

  ‘Will the soldiers co-operate?’

  ‘You will need to choose the right ones. There is one called Massey another called Orchard – they have been there before. Do not use any others unless you must. Martin, there is one further thing. I do not know who it was who roused you from your camp. Maybe it was a power of Heaven, maybe not. There is one who walks in the robe of a pilgrim or priest who is no friend. If ever you see him again – I beg you to be careful.’

  Martin looked at her for a long moment. She saw him understand that, even under Penitence, she had not said all that she should have done. Then he nodded.

  ‘And what will you do?’ he asked.

  ‘I will go … I will go to Jent.’

  Another lie. She would go towards Jent. But not even Martin should know what it was she was planning to do.

  XIX

  Ordeal

  er new maid was called Hera.
She had been sent, generously, by Elanor Massey in response to a letter Phaedra had written the day she had ceased her fast. Hera was the same girl who had fallen asleep in the chair while waiting on Phaedra two years before. She smiled openly, and had come with a warm recommendation. All the same, Phaedra thought her both very young and not altogether sensible. So she was less surprised than perhaps she should have been when, an hour after their arrival in Baer, Hera came flying into the upper room where Phaedra was resting, threw herself down and, seizing Phaedra's hand, kissed it. Somewhere nearby a church bell had begun to ring.

  ‘Your Majesty!’ Hera said. ‘What?’

  ‘I'm sorry, mam. I just wanted to be the first to call you that. They're saying in the streets that he's been crowned! I'm going to serve you really well, Your Majesty. I'd never have believed—’

  ‘Dear Angels, girl’ – although Hera was almost exactly her own age – ‘I am not crowned yet. I may never be. Whatever they are saying in the streets, it may not be true. He has refused the crown twice—’

  ‘He's taken it, mam. He truly has! So perhaps the war will be over,’ Hera said. For she had quickly decided that her mistress must be unhappy at her lord's absence.

  ‘He has won battles before, and not brought it to an end,’ said Phaedra dryly. ‘Now get to your feet and be useful, will you? Look,’ she said, lifting the green cloth she had been fingering in her lap. ‘You have made me spill my drinking water on this sleeve. Hang it out of the window to dry, please. And you can tell me whether the people are planning to storm the lodge at the same time.’

  A few scattered cheers broke out when Hera appeared at the window.