The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  “Anselm,” Paul said heavily, sitting beside him. “You know what the rest of Christendom thinks of us here in Germany. Our kings have done nothing for a century except fight with the pope, and undermine his authority, and ignore his necessities. When Urban called for the great expedition to Jerusalem, the English came, the Italians came, everyone came — Flemings, Tuscans, Normans, Greeks, Frenchmen by the thousands — everyone except the Germans. Our lords you could have counted on the fingers of one hand: Gottfried, and the knights who followed him, and William of Saxony, and two or three others. That was all, out of the whole of our Holy Roman Empire. Do you think we deserve the name? We are half Christian here, no more; and with Gottfried gone, the Reinmark is barely that.”

  “You’re telling me nothing new,” Anselm said. “But what does it have to do with your insubordinate quill?”

  Paul spoke slowly, choosing his words.

  “There is sorcery here, brother. Here, in the Reinmark. Not just ordinary human wickedness. Not just pride and lust and all the other things we’re familiar with, but something more. There is heathen power here. As it happened, I came to know something of it, years ago. My… my closeness to the matter was brought to the attention of the pope; I don’t know by whom. Some months ago he sent me a letter, by a special messenger, and ordered me to write the history of Karelian of Lys, and Gottfried, and the war, in all the detail I could remember. He said I should pay special attention to the use of sorcery by the German lords.”

  “Sorcery? By the German lords? You mean Gottfried and his allies?”

  “No. I mean the other side.”

  Anselm pulled a branch from a tree and brushed away the ants who were now climbing over his feet.

  “There was talk of that,” he said. “But it was civil war, and every time a man walked into a different village, he heard a different tale, and heard someone else accused. Demonism, witchcraft, heresy— sweet Jesus, the accusations fell everywhere. But I wonder, Paul. I wondered then, and I wonder now, if there was much substance in any of it. A man of honor and good repute suddenly turns, and betrays his lawful lord, and everyone looks for some extraordinary explanation. Perhaps they should just look into the human heart.”

  “It was sorcery, Anselm,” Paul said grimly. “I was there.”

  Anselm looked up, and met his eyes, and looked away again, across the greening fields. He was both a cautious and a compassionate man; he did not leap to believe evil of others. But he was not a fool.

  “And this sorcery you speak of,” he said at last, very softly. “You believe it’s controlling your pen?”

  “There’s no question. The same… being… came to me when I began to write—”

  “Here?” Anselm whispered, horrified. “In the monastery?”

  “Yes.”

  Anselm knotted his hands. For the first time, he seemed truly convinced. And truly afraid.

  “We must have it exorcised, Paul. And we must do so at once.”

  “By whom?” Paul asked simply. “And how, without telling the abbot?”

  “But why shouldn’t you tell the abbot?”

  Paul made a small but bitter gesture, as if to say: In God’s name, Anselm, aren’t you thinking about this at all…?

  “The abbot is a friend of the emperor,” he said pointedly. “The pope is not a friend of the emperor.”

  Anselm sighed, and nodded very faintly. He understood. When he thought about it even a little bit, he understood. The war may have been thirty years ago, but powerful men still had deeply vested interests in how the tale was told. And when politics were involved, one could not always do the simple and obvious thing.

  “The abbot is a man of God,” Anselm said. “It’s not your place to judge him. And although it’s not my place to judge the pope, he would have been wiser to arrange this through your superiors. Now, I must admit, we have a problem. Perhaps I should try an exorcism myself—”

  “No!” Paul said sharply, rising. “I don’t want you to come near the thing! You have no idea of the power we’re dealing with.”

  Anselm was silent for a time. “All right. But there is something here I still don’t understand. Such a great power could compel any poor fool to copy out a false history of the rebellion, if that was what it wanted. Any number of false histories. Why would it choose you?”

  “So I couldn’t fulfill the pope’s command.”

  “There are easier ways to stop you from doing so.”

  Paul paced, glancing now and then at Anselm’s tranquil head, more often at the distant western hills, beyond which lay the wood of Helmardin.

  “It’s not entirely a false history,” he said at last, very softly.

  “Ah.”

  “That’s what’s so terrible, Anselm!” he went on. “It is… oh, Christ, I can’t explain…. The events of which it writes are true— even the words which were spoken. Often it will remember things I had completely forgotten, and yet, when I see them written, I know they took place. Only….” He shuddered, and looked away.

  “It changes… it changes the meaning of everything. It changes who we were, and why we did what we did. If someone read it, someone who knew nothing of the truth, they would think….”

  He faltered.

  “They would think ill of you?” Anselm asked gently.

  Paul stared at him. Dear God, do you think I’m so vain and worldly I would tear myself to pieces over my image in a book?

  And then he caught himself. It was better if Anselm did think so. Yes. Much better. Let Anselm believe the worst of him. Let Anselm never wonder if there might be another reason he was so afraid.

  But the monk had already seen his bitter look.

  “I only asked, my friend,” he said. “Even good men take it hard sometimes, when they are made to look bad.”

  Paul shrugged.

  “It’s not about pride, Anselm. Oh, God knows there are things I’d rather not have told about myself. But it’s… how can I say it? It’s the way everything is being twisted and made different. What mattered most is ignored, and what never mattered at all is made important, and all our motives and reasons are turned upside down. It’s horrible! I can’t keep doing this. I swear to you I can’t!”

  “Then you must stop.”

  “It won’t let me.”

  There was a brief, painful silence. It seemed to Paul he should feel strengthened, having shared his fear with another. Instead he was more afraid than ever.

  “Your soul is in great peril,” Anselm said. “No matter what you say, the thing must be exorcised. I will give thought to finding someone—”

  “Be careful, I beg you! Or I will end like a grain of wheat between two stones!”

  Anselm stood up and wiped his hand across his face. “You are such a quiet, religious man, Pauli. How did you ever find yourself in the midst of something like this?”

  “Karelian tossed a coin at a crossroads, and we followed where it led.”

  In the field above the river a bell began to ring. Anselm looked at the sun.

  “Vespers,” he said, and turned to go. “A coin? As small a thing as that?” And then, without missing a step or a breath, he began to pray.

  FIVE

  Karelian

  Therefore I find no love in Heaven, no light, no beauty,

  A Heaven taken by storm, where none are left but the slain.

  From the Arabic — translated by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

  * * *

  Her hair was black mist shrouding her face, black silk whispering across his flesh. Somewhere, far away in the world, it was midday and winter. Here there was neither time nor season, only a small sheltered chamber in a castle which did not exist, and a spent fire dissolving in his blood, and this strange, enchanting creature lying in his arms.

  And a question. The question which desire always silenced, and which caution always posed again. What place is this, and what manner of woman are you, and where will all of this end?

  His hand played in her hair, slid
down the smooth valley of her back. Lovely, he thought, so utterly lovely…. He was worse than a boy, unable to keep his eyes off her, or his hands; and recklessly unwilling to think about the consequences. He had smiled sometimes at other men who fell like this— mature men who should have known better, tangled up in the smiles of a pretty courtesan, or risking land and life for the caresses of some other man’s wife. More than once he had played the prudent friend, advising a prudent retreat. It had all been babbling in the wind. And so it would be now, if his own friends came with the same excellent and utterly useless advice.

  “What must I do,” he murmured, “to make you tell me your name?”

  She propped herself on one elbow and played a taloned finger softly across his cheek.

  “My true name? Only the Nine know it, and one or two others. But I have a pet name my mother gave me. She said she was tired of chanting an invocation every time she wanted me to come to supper, or get down out of a tree. She called me Raven.” She paused, studying him. “You find that strange, Karel. Why?”

  He considered evading the question. For hours he had been telling her about his life, and she told him very little in return.

  “I went to see a wise man in the Holy Land, in the city of Acre—”

  “The great mage of Acre,” she broke in. “I’ve heard of him. Is he as wise as they say?”

  “Perhaps. He told me there were four things of great danger which lay in my path, and I should fear none of them. Dread neither forests, he said, nor dead men, nor ravens, nor storm.”

  He did not think it was easy to surprise a witch, but he appeared to have just done so.

  “That’s extraordinary,” she said.

  “You don’t… communicate with him, by any chance, do you?”

  She laughed. And then, quite suddenly, she grew serious again— too serious, as though something hard and bitter had moved into her thoughts.

  “Things become known in the world, Karelian, by those who wish to know them. Such knowledge crosses boundaries, and passes easily through time and distance. And yet it is scattered knowledge; no one directs it, and no one can; it’s simply there, like stars and water. I’ve never spoken with the mage of Acre, nor sent him any messages, nor did he ever send anything to me. Whatever counsel he gave you came from his own wisdom.”

  She spared him a small, melancholy smile.

  “I am only half veela, Karelian. I was not above wishing I was wrong, wishing you might simply share my table and my bed, and ride away again, free. But if a wizard halfway across the world has helped to send you here….”

  The words faltered and fell still. He observed, not for the first time, that she was no longer young. There was a world of experience in her eyes, and a hardness in the lines of her mouth— a hardness which laughter and graciousness mostly hid, but which he knew would always be there, always in reach if she needed it.

  It troubled him, but it did not make him want her less.

  “I had hoped to capture a valiant knight, my lord of Lys. I think perhaps I’ve captured something better.”

  He shoved her away and got to his feet. “That’s a compliment with a knife in its teeth, lady.”

  Captured…. Well, what had he expected? Sorcerers never lured men into their realms of power except to use them or destroy them. Any child could have told him as much. Reinhard had warned him. Poor Pauli, too loyal and too frightened to protest, had followed him shivering with fear.

  Yet he had come here almost without hesitation, with his head up and his banners flying. He had never been afraid of it, not really, not even now. Was that sorcery too? Or was it something in himself, something so ravaged and so angry at the world that risks of any sort no longer mattered much?

  “Why did you bring me here?” he asked bitterly.

  “To save the Reinmark,” she said. “If it can yet be saved.”

  All along she had been evasive and indirect; this sudden frank statement astonished him.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and slid her feet gracefully into her sandals. She picked up the soft, shimmering garments abandoned on the floor, and pulled them on— like an autumn moon, he thought, full and wanton, drawing around herself whispers of cloud, so shamelessly beautiful that ordinary common sense and judgment, and all those other things a man depended on, simply failed him. They tinkled to a stop like tired bells, and all he wanted to do was look at her.

  She swept her gold belt around her waist, knotted it, and confronted him.

  “Do you intend to accompany me through the halls of Car-Iduna stark naked, my lord count?”

  “My apologies, lady. I didn’t know I was expected to accompany you anywhere.”

  She stood, one hand on her hip, watching him. He was unconscionably pleased by the admiration in her eyes.

  “Now that I think about it,” she said, “it might not be a bad idea. Consider what it would do for my prestige.”

  “More, I fear, than it would do for mine.” Her hair was still tangled from sleep and pleasure, and his hands found their way into it all by themselves. Christ, I am as defenseless as a baby….

  “Will you tell me the truth, Raven of Car-Iduna? What do you want from me?”

  She did not smile. “Everything,” she said. “Everything you have in exchange for everything you want. Come.”

  She led him to the chamber which lay next to the great hall. It was, as he had guessed, a pagan shrine. In the center was a high dais, where the Black Chalice stood alone, dark, yet almost incandescent. Below was a stone altar with many carefully arranged objects: colored stones, sea shells, pieces of polished wood twisted into strange shapes. And among them, a small onyx cup, shaped like the great urn and crusted with jewels; over the top of it lay a splendid curved horn.

  The horn in my throat, and my blood in the cup… is this how it ends? What a wicked irony, for a man who marched to Jerusalem and spilled so much blood for a different god….

  “I didn’t bring you here to lop your head off, Karelian, but if you continue to scowl at me, I might consider it.”

  He forced himself to smile. “I’ve never scowled at a pretty woman in my life. I merely find all of this… surprising.”

  “I can’t imagine why. You’ve already contemplated all the awful possibilities. That I’m a demon, a vampire, a succubus, a lamia… have I forgotten anything? Men are wonderfully inventive with such notions! All of it has crossed your mind, my lord, has it not?”

  “Yes. Briefly. A man isn’t responsible for every thought which might run across his mind.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  “That you are still the loveliest, most desirable creature I’ve ever seen.”

  She smiled. “I must say I admire your poise.”

  She picked up the chalice and the horn, murmuring, raised them four times, to each corner of the world, and placed them back on the altar.

  “You asked me who I am, Karelian. I am three things: guardian of the Reinmark, keeper of the Grail of Life which Maris brought here from the vale of Dorn, and high priestess of Car-Iduna. I brought you here to make a bargain with you.”

  She paused, her mouth crinkling with amusement. “It’s not what you think. I don’t bargain for my bed— at least not very often, and never with a man like you.”

  “Why not with a man like me?” he asked, offended.

  “Because I would find myself content with pleasure, and forget to ask for anything else. My bed you have for a gift, and willingly. But my protection and my power— those are different matters. If you want to have those, you must pledge me your loyalty, and acknowledge my gods.”

  “Neither of those things is possible, my lady.”

  “Are they not? How truly do you believe in your Christ— the Christ for whose sake Jerusalem was drowned in blood?”

  He looked away, to the spill of winter light falling from a curved window.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” he said heavily. “But however many doubts I have about Ch
rist, I have as many about Odin.”

  “Odin?” She made a small, dismissive gesture. “Odin is an upstart. He’s like most of the sky-riders— Zeus and Yahweh and your bachelor Father Eternal, and now Allah, too, as if we needed another one. They’re like spoiled princes, racing their chariots across the world, full of threats and vanity and blood-lust. I serve better gods than that, Karel.”

  He waited.

  “The Vanir,” she went on, “the ancient earth gods; and those of the high Aesir who still remember that sky belongs to earth, and is nothing but emptiness without it. Gods of the herds and the hunt, of the fields and the fires. Gods of love and pleasure, and of the winter tree which never dies. They aren’t always gentle, but they don’t destroy men just to prove they can.”

  He watched her, silent. Priestess, she had called herself, an alien word in a Christian world, so strange it lingered in the mind long after the conversation had moved to other things. Sorceress was a word a Christian recognized, yes, and catalogued instinctively, without needing to think about it. But what was a priestess? And who were these gods she claimed to serve? Were they true gods, or were they demons? Indeed, were they real at all, and would it ever be possible to know?

  He had wondered about such things in his later youth, in the years before all the gods began to seem unworthy of their divinity. He had been raised staunchly Christian, as the children of the aristocracy mostly were. And he had been a bright lad, eager to excel in learning as in everything else; the teachings had gone deep. But all around him the pagan world still lingered and whispered under its breath. Men might cross themselves at the crying of a raven, but they watched its circling path for omens nonetheless. They wore holy medals and heathen charms on the same thongs around their necks. They sang the songs of the old gods, and told their stories, and claimed them as founders of the race.

  Some Christians said it was all foolish superstition. Others called it evil, a dangerous flirting with old, demonic powers. A long time ago he had wondered which opinion was correct. Now both seemed inadequate and self-serving.

  The priestess spoke again.