The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  The room was cold and empty. The hour was late. She should build up the fire.

  On the table her bowl sat, covered by the green scarf. Outwardly it was plain. There was no sign of what had been floating on its surface when she had last seen it. Had it gone? If it had gone, perhaps she might be able to use the water again. She could keep calling Ulfin until he came. She reached for the corner of the cloth. Before she lifted it her fingers checked.

  It had gone. Surely it had gone now.

  There was no sign, no sound within the bowl. The cloth was chilly to her touch, the colour faded and yellow in the lamplight. She knew what must lie beneath it, floating like a mask on the surface of the water. She dropped the cloth and let it lie.

  Phaedra! What have you done?

  ‘What price have I paid, Ulfin?’ she asked, with her eyes on the bowl.

  The low wind droned and stirred the ash-motes in the grate.

  ‘Would you tell me?’ she shouted, and spun to where he must be standing. A shadow flitted, and the vision was broken. There was nothing there.

  After thirty heartbeats, waiting for him to come again, she kneeled and began to make up the fire.

  What was her price, to bargain or to sell? In a leafy clearing in the woods, three days to the south, with the wind thrashing in the treetops and the grey skies flowing by above them, she had set it, watching the tubby young man with the brown stubble whom half the Kingdom held to be the Fount of their Law. He had not returned her look, but stared at a point before him on the gold-brown mush of the forest floor, and listened as she spoke.

  ‘I have a son … less than two years old. When I last saw him he was just beginning to walk.’ (Little Ambrose, rising to his feet in a world of three mortal dangers. The first, the nightmares in the twilight beyond the ring of little white stones. The second, the chills and the fever that daily robbed mothers of their sons all through the Kingdom. The third …)

  ‘… Of all men living I suppose he must be counted among your greatest enemies. Your soldiers would think they did you a service if they killed him, for some see him as the heir to your throne.’

  The prince, nodding as though she had made a reasonable point in some scholarly argument. Aun, sitting on the far side of him frowning. Perhaps he did not like to be reminded of her son and, by him, of her marriage.

  ‘I do not ask the throne for him,’ she had heard her own voice say. ‘Nor riches, nor titles.’

  She remembered the face of the prince, as he thought. The man whom she would have been made to marry. So ordinary: so desperate after his latest disaster that he had fled deep into his enemy's heartland to escape pursuit. Perhaps he knew – surely he must know – how much less of a figure he was than his brother, or even his father. By his own admission it had been one of his frequent head-colds that had kept him from joining them on their last, fatal hunt. Did he grudge them their lost glory? Or was it for their sake, and the sake of those around him who had lost their true kings upon that terrible day, that he had carried on?

  For what kept a man like this going through defeat after defeat and humiliation?

  ‘He will have my protection,’ the prince had said at last – in a voice that had more firmness that Phaedra expected. ‘My soldiers shall not harm him, so long as he does not offend my law or commit treason towards my person. Even if, as a grown man, he does, and is brought to me for it, I shall pardon him. Once. After that I may not help him.’

  She remembered her hesitation.

  ‘He cannot do more,’ Aun had said.

  In the iron world of politics no man, not even Ambrose, could be immune for ever. The King would lose face and following if he pardoned a man twice. Once would be bad enough. Phaedra remembered the bustle and excitement at the royal court when the King had thrown the favour of a baron to the winds to preserve a country knight who had stepped forward for an accused witch. There had been some good in old Tuscolo.

  And if Ambrose grew into a man with a heart like Adam diManey she could not be sorry.

  ‘It is enough,’ she had said.

  The bowl lay on the table behind her. She had not spoken to the prince of this, nor asked any protection for herself. It occurred to her that his men might take her and burn her and put Ambrose somewhere safe, and think they had fulfilled his vow. She barely cared. She thought too of Ulfin, bending every power at his disposal to find some clue of what was happening in Tarceny She could fend him off while she was awake. It was only necessary to be aware of him. But in her dreams they would meet halfway, in the land of brown stones. That must not happen. So she must not sleep. Or at least she must sleep when he was not expecting it, which could not be now. She must find snatches of daylight hours in which to rest, until he came.

  The fire was laid. Taking some light tinder, she opened the lamp and held it to the wick until it glowed and the tiny flames began to lick at the tip. Then she lit the fire. She watched it flutter and grow, before turning back to the table.

  With a flick of her fingers she cast the cloth aside and looked down into the bowl. The face floated in the water before her. The eyes opened and looked into hers. The mouth opened to speak.

  With an oath she picked the bowl up and, stepping to the window, flung its contents through into the night outside. A low laugh sounded on the wind.

  XXI

  The Powers of Iron

  t was the old moon, sinking towards the horizon, and perhaps a third past the full. It was still bright enough to silver a great quadrant of the sky. There was no star that could stand near it. From the northwest bastion Phaedra could see the marks upon its cheeks. She could trace the pure arc of its rim and the uneven ripple where the disc dropped into shadow.

  The moon was falling. In the past half-hour that she had paced up here, wrapped in furs against the night winds, it had dropped perhaps a half of the remaining distance to the horizon. Soon the lower edge would break upon the jagged mountaintops, lining the ridges with silver until the light diminished and the dark hours before dawn began. And she had nothing better to do than to pace, pace, pace up here, watching it go.

  It was the eighth night since she had called to Ulfin through the bowl.

  There had been a dog barking somewhere among the olive groves, more than a mile away. The deep, round-throated row had carried clearly. What had startled him? A fox? A line of silent horsemen, passing? A bad dream? He was quiet now. She could hear the sighing of the winds. The olive branches shivered. Some twenty yards away the mail of a watchman jingled against stone, and muttered words were borne to her by the moving air. Below, men slept. And out there, men slept, in their little huts with the low roofs and families of six or more huddled all into their one room where they might snore and keep warm together. It was such a seething world, even now; and the same, still moon so far beyond, shining down on all of it; looking a thousand night-watchers like herself at once in the eye, even as it sank towards darkness.

  Umbriel, send that my son sleeps well.

  Something clinked among the olive trees. She looked where she thought the sound had come from, among the shadows a hundred yards down the slope, opposite the postern gate. There was nothing to be seen. No clear shapes of boughs or men stood out down there. The hillside was a patchwork of shadows and silver grasses, shifting as the wind stirred the boughs – too much for tired eyes. In the moments that followed she wondered if she had heard the hiss of a whisper. Were there men down there? If there were, they must surely have seen her, standing at the parapet under the moon. And within the castle there were other noises, hurried steps of men crossing the outer courtyard. A hinge somewhere cracked. A man was talking somewhere, voice low in the night, but she could hear the sudden surprise in his tone. A horse whickered. And suddenly a dog barked in the outer court, again and again, until a man's voice yelled at it for quiet. More steps – mailed feet climbing stone stairs, moving quickly and yet with as little sound as armed men could hope for.

  Ulfin was home.

  She sighed, and
drummed her fingers lightly on the battlements of Tarceny. She had already decided that she would not go to lie down. He would know that she had not been sleeping these many nights past. He had come in force, and by night, as if to surprise his own castle. There had been no challenge at the gate. Most likely Caw or the gate-captain had simply woken to find his lord standing by his bed, bidding to open without a sound or a moment's delay. Perhaps he was already in her room, searching it lamp in hand for any sign of water, bowl, book or other artefact that might confirm she had dealt with things beyond the world. It was better to wait. The castle watchmen would tell him where to find her.

  The moon had dropped to the rim of the world. The sharp, flat shadow of a mountain peak pressed upwards upon its disc. Its shape was changing to a monstrous skull.

  ‘I am here, Phaedra.’

  ‘You have taken your time,’ she said, without turning.

  ‘I want to know what you have been doing.’

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  She heard him step up behind her, and turned to face him. He looked down on her, and in the fading moonlight his face was iron.

  ‘You have done things that are forbidden. I want to know why, and by what means. And why you then would not hear me. Tell me now.’

  ‘Why? Because I wanted you to come. Why would I not hear you? Because if I had you would not have come. The means I used you know as well as I.’

  ‘Do not play with me, Phaedra.’

  ‘I am not playing! I starved myself and you would not come! I wrote to you that I had been taken – Ulfin, I was nearly killed! And you did not come. They took me from a road in the heart of your lands and tried me for my life! Did you even read my letter?’

  ‘You were in not a farthing of the danger you stood in when you spoke with me. Why did you do that? What did you give?’

  ‘Nothing. Ulfin, they—’

  ‘I do not believe you.’

  ‘Dear Angels!’ She turned away and strode across the platform, wrestling with her own anger. ‘I gave nothing, Ulfin. What I used was the remains of the water I took that morning from the pool. I made no bargain. I spoke to you before he could prevent me. I would not have done it if you had answered my letter. I have done nothing since but throw the water away’

  ‘You threw it away? When?’

  ‘That night. Ask him, if you do not believe me.’

  Ulfin paused. He seemed in doubt. ‘Where is Ambrose?’

  ‘Safe.’ It was a weakness in her defences. She leaned on the parapet and looked outwards, to prevent him from reading her face.

  He was waiting for her to go on.

  ‘Are those your men in the grove, Ulfin? Did you think I would run when you came? Why don't you call them in and let them—’

  ‘I asked you where is Ambrose. Do not evade me. I am your king, as well as your husband!’

  ‘Are you now? Yes, I had heard. Well, Your Majesty, your son is safe. Which is more than could have been said for his mother a fortnight ago. But you do not care about that, do you?’

  ‘You were not in danger. Where is he?’

  ‘I was in danger, Ulfin. In your very lands—’

  ‘All the Kingdom is my land—’

  ‘And for all your kingliness your queen's throat would have been cut if Septimus had not been there too.’

  ‘Septimus?’

  ‘Three days from where we stand. Does that interest you at last?’

  Ulfin paused again. He was tired, as she was. And perhaps he was beginning to believe her. He had not for one second showed concern at her story.

  ‘So that was where he went. He will be long gone by now – back across to Bay, or to the Seabord. And you have not answered me. Where is Ambrose?’

  Ambrose, Ambrose, Ambrose. What price did you pay, Phaedra?

  What price did you pay, Ulfin?

  ‘Have you looked in Hayley?’

  ‘He is not there, Phaedra. I know he came there and left. Where is he now?’

  ‘When you still loved me, you told me not to tell you. But do not worry. I would not put my son at hazard, even if you offered me a crown.’

  And it was so easy to walk away.

  She lay exhausted on her bed in her inner room, and could not sleep. Her head seethed. A false step, a word spoken in the wrong tone, a sentence that he might have known from his spyings was not true, and she would have been lost. But she had held fear back with the palm of her mind. And he had not prevented her from leaving when she chose.

  Speak the truth to one another. She had spoken the truth and lied with every word – as he had done since the day they were wed.

  The tired dawn crept through the windows. The doors of her wardrobe stood open. Around her bed lay the piles of silk cuttings in some disorder. Ulfin had pulled them aside, presumably to look under her bed. Witchcraft was what he had been looking for. He had not disturbed the gown, still hanging on its frame like a black ghost with no head. That was what mattered.

  She heard the door to her antechamber open, and the soft steps of a man in the next room. They paused, as if he were listening. She wondered whether to call that she was awake, and so perhaps make him go away again. But perhaps he would then come in, and question her further. Undecided, she lay quiet. Presently she heard him moving again, to and fro across the antechamber, moving things, looking behind curtains, casting about by daylight for some sign that was not there.

  She wondered if he would try to speak with the grey priest, and if so, what the monster would say.

  It was a long time before she heard the door close again.

  Later Hera came, bringing a lunch of fruits and bread. Phaedra ate lightly, telling Hera between mouthfuls what instructions must be passed to the household now that my lord was home. As she spoke she looked closely at her maid, who sat with eyes downcast and answered in monosyllables. She was miserable and awkward. Phaedra was on the point of asking her what was wrong when she realized what it must be.

  Hera had been questioned, and not kindly. It would have been about Ambrose and signs of witchcraft, of course. And possibly about their captivity in the woods beyond Baer. She would have been told that her mistress had done something terribly wrong. Perhaps she had been threatened, to prevent her telling Phaedra what questions had been asked, and was terrified that Phaedra might try to worm them out of her.

  Phaedra said nothing. As soon as she could she dismissed Hera to go about her business. It would be far better to let the girl find something to do than have her sit trembling on a stool in the antechamber all afternoon. She thanked the Angels that Martin had still not returned.

  So the long afternoon wore on, and on. She spent hours sitting at her window, looking northward to the wooded ridges that ran like huge rollers across the land. They were thickly covered. Nothing could be seen moving there. And so she stayed until the light went grey again, and the colours faded. The detail was lost upon the ridges and the hillsides flattened into shadow with the coming night. When Hera came to light the lamps Phaedra smiled at her and asked for two, and then sent her down to the chapel, to prepare, she said, for a vigil that she would keep that night for her father's soul.

  As Hera's footsteps diminished along the corridor Phaedra took the two lamps and set them, side by side, on the sill of one window. She waited, counting. After one hundred she took them down and counted again. Then she placed them in the window for a second time, and a third. At last she stopped, and waited.

  Minutes seeped by.

  She sighed, and set her teeth, and stared at the black ridges. Why …

  A light showed among the trees. It was so much nearer than she had been expecting that at first she discounted it. It faded, and reappeared again, and then again. Each time it had moved a little, as if some traveller had been walking among the trees with a lamp, moving parallel to the castle wall and a little uphill. Not, by itself, something to alarm a watchman on the walls, but enough to keep him staring outward at that one ridge, wondering when the light would appear ag
ain.

  Phaedra felt along the collar of the robe. Two years in the making, never finished: the silk was cold as metal beneath her fingertips. She found the seam, took the collar on both sides of it, and ripped the robe from collar to waist. There, hanging coil upon coil on the frame, was the forty feet of rope that had come concealed in the silks from Baer. She climbed on a stool and wound one end round a roofbeam, knotting it as best she could. Then she fed the rest of it yard by yard through the window, where it hung close in by the small bastion that housed the living-quarter stairs, and so was hidden for most of its length from any watchers on the north-east tower.

  It was a dark night. The moon would not rise for some hours. Phaedra settled herself to wait again. What was a little more waiting, after so long? She should try to enjoy the dark and quiet for a little while. Things would be moving soon enough, and faster than she would wish. She seemed to herself to be approaching a corner in the passage of her life, not knowing what she would find when she turned it. Some destiny hung only a few moments away. She did not know what. In one future, rippling in the pool of her mind's eye, she saw Ambrose grow to manhood at Chatterfall, and Evalia telling him what sort of a woman his mother had been. It would not be all bad. Evalia had always been generous.

  No, Phaedra! There were a thousand chances yet. One way or another this intolerable life would end soon. She thought of the words that had passed on the fighting platform, and sighed.

  A door opened in the antechamber.

  There were footsteps in the next room. Ulfin's voice called.

  Retrieve the rope? There was not time. Close the door and bolt it? The fastenings were old. He would be instantly suspicious.

  She took a lamp, and stepped out to meet him. ‘Sir,’ she said.

  He was standing in his evening gown, with his fine black silk doublet, traced with gold, and the long sword at his hip.