Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  “You can’t be in here!” Ocyrhoe was shouting at Ferenc.

  “Which is yours?” Ferenc shouted. “Where did you stay? Where are you keeping it?”

  “You’re not allowed to be here,” Ocyrhoe insisted, teary. Despite herself she was standing in front of one particular hut. “It’s disrespectful to the Goodwomen—”

  “Disrespectful!” Ferenc barked with laughter, staring at her like a feral creature. “That was your home? That one?” He ran past her, pushing open the door to the shack and disappearing inside.

  “No!” Ocyrhoe nearly screamed, and scrambled to follow him.

  Raphael cursed and propelled himself toward the small building, entering a moment after her.

  “Where is it?” Ferenc shouted. The space was very small—a tiny table with two stools beside it and two small bowls on it; an unlit lantern; two abandoned bedrolls on the floor; a simple altar. “Where? Where, Ocyrhoe? Why do you still have it?” He pushed past the table, knocking the bowls to the packed-earth floor; he reached for the closer bedroll and grabbed the coverlet and cushion, throwing them into the corner.

  “Stop! Ferenc! Stop this outrage!” Ocyrhoe shouted desperately. She grabbed for his shoulders, but he pushed her aside so hard that she fell against the wall; he lifted the entire bedroll and shook it, then threw it aside, too; the wooden pallet that it rested on he grabbed and shook as if expecting something to fall out.

  “Where is it?” he snarled again at Ocyrhoe, who kept crying, “Stop this!” as she reached out for him. He smacked her hand every time it came near him. He tore apart the second bed with equal intensity. He found nothing.

  “Where the hell is it?” he shouted at her.

  “Ferenc, calm down,” Raphael said sharply from the doorway. He peered in without entering.

  “Do you know what she has? Do you know what she’s done?” Ferenc retorted, looking almost crazed.

  “I haven’t done anything!” Ocyrhoe shouted at him from behind. He turned suddenly and in two long, angry strides was standing over her; she shrank from him but he grabbed her wrist and dragged her back over to the door.

  “Tell him,” he ordered furiously, through clenched jaws. “Tell him everything. Tell all of them. Explain to that demented man why he must never have the cup.”

  “Let go of her,” Raphael said sharply. “Ferenc, contain yourself.” In his peripheral vision, he saw Vera, Percival, and Peire-Roger approaching the door. The elderly Bishop Marti must have opted against braving the icy slope.

  “Ocyrhoe has something to explain to you,” Ferenc said. Still grabbing her by the wrist, he righted one of the overturned stools and then firmly pushed her down to sit on it. “Go ahead. Explain.”

  “Hold a moment,” Raphael said, silently cursing everyone with visions and all objects related to them. “We’ll only make her tell it once.” He gestured for the others to enter the tiny hut.

  It was very crowded in here with six people. Ocyrhoe sat on the stool, with Ferenc hovering over her; Peire-Roger rested his butt against the table; the other stool remained overturned while Raphael, Vera, and Percival stood listening.

  “Tell them about the cup,” Ferenc said.

  “Let go of her,” Raphael insisted.

  Ferenc released her. “Tell them about the cup,” he repeated.

  Ocyrhoe looked around at all the faces, frightened. “There is a cup that our friend the priest has possession of, which seemed to have magical powers. But he was a madman.”

  “He tried to kill her for the cup,” Ferenc said. “Frederick ordered her to get the cup away from him because it gave him dreadful powers, and when she tried to take it, he nearly killed her. That is why I killed him, because he was about to kill her. Over the cup.” Looking at Ocyrhoe: “Why have you kept it all this time? Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

  “She was holding it for me,” said Percival suddenly, his face luminous with certainty. “It is meant for me. Please, trust me. I have been driven to you by forces I do not understand, to free you from what I know must be a burden to you.”

  “You’re as mad as Rodrigo was,” Ocyrhoe said shakily. “You should not be in possession of it.”

  Percival smiled calmly at her. “Do I seem to you a madman?”

  “Neither did he!” Ocyrhoe shouted.

  Ferenc seemed suddenly to deflate. He took a step away from Ocyrhoe. His expression softened. “Father Rodrigo was very ill for a long time,” said Ferenc. “I knew him, Ocyrhoe, in a way you never could have. He had lost his mind. He had moments of lucidity—seductive moments, he was so convincing—but he really was mad. His madness seemed to—” he broke off, confused, and said specifically to Vera and Raphael, “I do not believe in what I am about to say, and yet I know it’s true.” Then to the whole room, “His madness seemed to express itself into the cup, like milk or venom from a living creature. And then the cup became something else. I thought when it was severed from him, and surely when he was dead, it would just go back to being a cup.”

  “It didn’t,” said Ocyrhoe, adding sardonically, “It must be waiting for the next madman to fuel it.” With a surly look at Percival, “And that’s you, I suppose.”

  “I am not mad,” Percival said pleasantly.

  “I just fought beside him in battle,” Ferenc said wearily. “He is not deranged as Rodrigo was.”

  “But he is a little touched,” said Vera. “So there might be something to the idea that he’s a better owner for the cup than are you.” This, to Ocyrhoe. “Just give it to him so we can move on and address the real issues at hand.”

  “Nobody owns it,” Ocyrhoe replied. She turned to Percival. “It’s true, I feel that I am a steward waiting for directions to do something with it, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know why it should be you just because you happen to have shown up here.”

  Percival smiled at her, handsome and serene, and luminous again with spiritual certainty. “Let me describe to you just one vision, my most recent,” he suggested. “If it resonates with you at all, let that be evidence the grail is meant for me.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Ocyrhoe demanded instantly.

  “Then you hold onto it,” Percival said. “Until some opportunity presents itself for me to earn your trust.” He righted the other stool and sat across from Ocyrhoe at the table. Peire-Roger, who looked so mystified that he almost appeared bored, stood up away from the table and leaned back against a wall, watching them.

  Percival held his hands out palm up on the table, an offering to Ocyrhoe to clasp hands. She did not move.

  “Very well,” Percival said after a moment. “It is a wonderful thing that you are so protective of it.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Ferenc.

  “Shut up,” Raphael said. “Stop interfering.”

  Percival looked at Ocyrhoe for a moment, smiling gently. “The grail,” he began, “as it appears to me in visions, with increasing clarity, is a drinking cup made of silver, I think. There is some decoration on a band around the middle. Sometimes there is a rosy glow that comes out of the center of it. Enough to light your way in darkness.” Ocyrhoe blinked, sat up taller, and grew very still.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Not everybody sees the glow. Some people just see a cup. Even if you shine the light in a dark room, so that you can see what it lights up, other people see nothing but darkness.” Ocyrhoe glanced at Peire-Roger. She nodded. “It is warm in winter and cool in summer,” Percival continued, “but not always.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking down, almost in a whisper.

  Percival continued peacefully, gentle and monklike in his certainty, “There is a kind of wondrous alchemy that occurs when it is in the presence of a small piece of wood, a living piece of wood, a tiny sprig that appears to be just on the verge of blooming into leaf.”

  “What?” Raphael and V
era said at the same moment.

  “Oh my God,” said Ferenc, remembering the sprig Frederick—no, Léna—had ordered him to pinch from Raphael’s clothes.

  Ocyrhoe shook her head. “That is not familiar. I don’t know anything about that.”

  The three who did know exchanged concerned glances. Raphael felt as if the top of his head were coming off. “Tell us more about the sprig, Percival,” he said.

  Percival peaceably shrugged. “I do not know much about it. It’s only appeared recently—since you arrived, Raphael, now that I think of it. It’s inert when I see it. It is waiting for something. It is waiting to turn into something, and the grail is waiting to receive something.” Seeing the look of stunned dismay on his friend’s face, Percival gently prodded, “Why, Raphael? Do you know something about a sprig?”

  Raphael stared at him, mouth slack. “Feronantus,” he said, naming the last elder of their order. “Feronantus is no more.”

  “You told me that, when you first arrived here,” Percival said gently.

  “Before he died…” he shook his head. “But this is mad.”

  “Raphael received a thing like you are describing,” Vera said brusquely. “Without any explanation worth the name. Then the Emperor sent for him and told him to come here and get you, but he had Ferenc steal the sprig before we left, as surety that we’d come back.”

  “It wasn’t Frederick doing any of those things,” Ferenc argued. “It was Léna.”

  “I’m so confused,” said Peire-Roger. “Who is Léna? Who is Frederick?”

  “Emperor Frederick,” said Raphael. “And we have no time to waste on confusion. We do not have the time for this mystical nonsense.”

  “How can you say it’s nonsense when it’s real?” Percival asked. “I had a vision about a grail and a sprig. Lo and behold: there is a grail, and there is a sprig.”

  “There’s a cup and there’s a piece of wood, and we don’t know what any of it means,” countered Raphael. “The only path to clarity takes us back to Frederick’s court. We are going there immediately. Take the cup or don’t, that is your choice, but we cannot stay here.”

  “It’s not my choice,” said Percival. He looked at Ocyrhoe. “It’s yours.”

  Ocyrhoe looked plaintive. “What you have said is interesting,” she said. “But I am waiting to receive a sign that is meaningful to me, myself, not to just hear about someone else’s sign.”

  Immediately Ferenc went back into a paroxysm of rage. “How can you say that there is anything meaningful about this fucking cup? I admit it’s powerful, in ways I do not understand, but the power is random, it’s senseless, it’s nonsense, there is no purpose to it, no meaning.”

  Ocyrhoe suddenly burst into tears. “It has a purpose. I just need to find it!” she cried. “How can you possibly understand what I have been through and what the cup has meant? You went back to Frederick, you were taken in—I was ripped away from everything I’d ever known, banished from my own life!” She turned on him, stood up, and despite her small size suddenly seemed almost to tower over him. “Don’t tell me there was no reason for that! Don’t tell me it was all for nonsense! You are telling me my life is nonsense!”

  “Of course it’s not,” Ferenc said, chastened.

  But she continued to shout over him, her anger pulling her up to tiptoes as she barked, “The only sustaining force I’ve had in all that time is the cup itself. I would never have survived without it. I had nothing. Do you understand that? Nothing, nobody, nowhere. No friends, no tribe, no city, no sister-binders, no vocation, no training. Nothing. Just the cup.” To the room at large, gesturing at Percival, she said, “How can anyone possibly expect me to just give it away to some madman who obviously is going to be just fine whether he has it or not?” Turning more directly to Percival. “You don’t need it. You might want it, but you don’t need it. You are not bereft of everything without it. Here are your friends and there is your sword and the God-almighty Emperor Frederick wants you at his court. Perhaps you have an avocation as a visionary madman, but you have a fine and noble life without indulging in that compulsion.”

  “I agree with her there,” said Raphael, then wished he hadn’t as she collapsed back onto the stool, sobbing into her hands.

  Ferenc immediately bent over her and gently rested his hands on her shaking shoulders. She shrugged him off.

  “Ocyrhoe,” he said gently.

  “Leave me alone, Ferenc,” she sobbed. “Just shut up and leave me alone, you have no idea—”

  “I didn’t, you’re right. I do now.” He carefully put his hands back on her shoulders. She did not shrug them off this time. He softly kissed the top of her head. “You had nothing, but that is no longer true. Now you have me. You don’t need the cup. You have me.” He knelt on one knee to be beside her, and pressed her head against his shoulder. “You have been tested by the gods. I do not know why, but you have been found good and strong and worthy,” he said. He cradled her and rocked gently; she collapsed against him, sobbing with the abandon of a baby about to fall asleep. “You were cast out but now it is time to return to your people. I am your people. I will try to keep you warm in winter and cool in summer, and I will try, very hard, to shine a glimmer of light for you when it is dark.”

  Raphael, touched, pursed his lips and glanced at Vera. Vera was pursing her lips and glancing at him. He almost reached out his hand for her but stopped himself.

  There was a long moment when nobody spoke, and Ocyrhoe’s sobs subsided.

  Raphael cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Where does that leave us?”

  Ocyrhoe interlaced her fingers with Ferenc’s, and sat upright. In a nasal-stuffed voice, sniffing, she said, “Percival can have the cup.”

  Everyone in the hut relaxed; there was a palpable feeling of release in the air.

  “Only one thing,” she said. “I don’t know where it is.”

  CHAPTER 30:

  AN END

  “What?” said Vera, sharply.

  “I was so hysterical because I thought that Ferenc was about to find it…but then it wasn’t here. Last I saw it, it was in my bedroll here. I could not get down here when the village was evacuated to claim it.” She groaned. “Perhaps Rixenda brought it up into the fort during the evacuation and hid it, although that seems very unlikely—she never approved of my attachment to it.”

  “If she does have it, presumably she will give it back to you,” said Raphael.

  “I think so,” said Ocyrhoe. “Although now…” she hesitated. It still was not an easy thing to say. “I suppose she should give it to Percival. If she has it.”

  “I think it must come to me from you,” said Percival. “I don’t know if there should be some sort of ritual transfer, but I think it should leave your hands by your choice, not because somebody else snuck it away. And I wish to receive it with your blessing.” His face was shining; he was suffused with bliss now that he knew he would finally receive the thing.

  “Let’s go back up to the fortress,” said Raphael. “Ocyrhoe will take the cup back from Rixenda, assuming Rixenda has it.“

  “What if Rixenda doesn’t have it?” asked Percival.

  “If she doesn’t have it, she may know where it is, and if she doesn’t know where it is, you’ll have to ask your visions,” said Raphael. “They seem to be getting pretty specific. But if Rixenda does have it, Ocyrhoe will give the cup to Percival, and if the two of you think you need some kind of ritual, work it out between yourselves.”

  “Perhaps we should…” Percival began.

  “I’m not finished,” said Raphael. “Once you’ve transferred stewardship or whatever you’re calling it, Percival comes with Vera and me back to Frederick’s, immediately.”

  “How will you get out of here?” asked Peire-Roger.

  “We’ll risk the main tunnel. The three of us can do it. Or we
’ll fight out way down the side. That’s not my main concern. Ferenc, I would like you to come with us, but it sounds like you’ve just promised not to. I suspect that if Frederick was told he had to choose between his squire and whatever the hell it is he gets if Percival and the cup show up, he’d probably choose the latter.”

  “He’s not choosing,” Ferenc said coldly. “Léna is. She won’t miss me if I do not return.” He rested his hand on Ocyrhoe’s shoulder; Ocyrhoe reached her hand up to rest on his. “Wherever Ocyrhoe goes, I go with her.”

  “She has to stay here,” Peire-Roger said, suddenly involved in the discussion. “Until this is over. We need her. She is our only means of communicating with the outside world.”

  Ferenc squeezed Ocyrhoe’s shoulder and she looked up at him. “This won’t go on forever,” she said quietly to him. “I’m not a Credent, but I certainly owe more to these people than I do to Frederick.”

  Ferenc nodded with calm agreement. “So, remain here until it’s over, and then back to Frederick? Or if he has no use for us, then wherever?”

  “Wherever is a fine destination,” said Ocyrhoe, with a wan smile.

  “All right,” said Ferenc, looking up at the rest of them. “Milord, you have her, and myself as well, for whatever good that is, until you’ve no more need of us. Sir,” he said to Raphael, “I hope you will forgive me for abandoning…”

  “Of course,” said Raphael impatiently, embarrassed by the drama of the moment. “Just please encourage them to transfer the thing quickly so we can get out of here. Milord, I’m sorry we cannot stay, but there are multitudes coming to support you from the ground.”

  “I understand,” said Peire-Roger gruffly. “Let’s get back up to the fort. I’m violating my own orders being here, and so are all of you. Besides, it’s colder than a witch’s teat in this place. If I lived in one of these huts I’d hate the material world, too. No wonder they don’t eat meat—their bellies would too be cold and sluggish to digest it.”