The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  “What you speak of is impossible, my lord.”

  “Suppose it were not.”

  “History is full of men who supposed it,” Karelian said. “They were the ones you spoke of just now, the petty kings, the ravening hordes, the makers of empty roads and burning fields.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Karel.”

  “What am I forgetting?”

  “God. And your own cynicism. It’s all very well to be worldly and reasonable, but a man is a great fool when he believes in nothing at all. I want to show you something.”

  After all the duke had said, I could hardly believe he had still another astonishing revelation to make. But he did. He went to the cabinet on the far side of the room, unlocked it, and took out an object. It was perhaps twice the size of a man’s head, shaped like a pyramid and made of splendid crystal.

  “This also came to me in Jerusalem,” Gottfried said. “In the same mysterious fashion as the documents— all of which I will tell you about later, by the way. It’s more than three thousand years old, and it belonged to the kings of Israel.”

  Karelian turned the stone in his hands. There were mottled colors in it, and when the sun caught it briefly, the brightness hurt my eyes.

  “What is it?” Karelian asked.

  “It’s called a willstone. He who has the gift to use it can call up any image he wishes, past or present, as if it were alive before your eyes. Watch. You’ll see your own arrival at my gates three weeks ago!”

  I forgot myself in eagerness and leaned forward, brushing the arras. To my great good fortune neither of them saw it move; they were too absorbed in their own encounter. But I, horrified at my folly, huddled back against the wall, and so I saw nothing at all. I only heard Karelian’s single, soft exclamation.

  “Jesus!”

  “With this stone,” Gottfried said, “I can show the world as it is, in a way which cannot be disbelieved. It was one of God’s gifts to his chosen people, and many things we read of in the Bible were wrought with its power. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the first century, it was taken and hidden away, till the time was right to show it to the world again.”

  He went again to his chair and sat, and took a drink of wine.

  “Karelian, I’m not a foolish man. I know Ehrenfried fought two wars to keep his crown, and won them both, with half of Germany and the wrath of Rome against him. I understand your caution; it’s one of the things about you I admire. I’m as unwilling as you are to start a futile war. But surely you must see: if this sacred object came to me, then I am meant to use it, and I will not fail. Not because I’m personally incapable of failure, but because this is God’s will.”

  I watched the count of Lys. I had never seen him so shaken. He had fought in a hundred wars; he had shrugged off the dangers of Car-Iduna, and walked smiling into a witch’s embrace. Now he seemed devastated and unmanned.

  “Let me be clear about this, my lord. If I understand you correctly, the stone contains no truth within itself. It will convey whatever images, whatever … reality … its user wants others to see—”

  “Yes. And I know what you’re going to say. Such an object is very dangerous. In the hands of an evil man it could be used for dreadful things. That’s why it was hidden for so long, and why we must guard it so carefully.”

  “Actually, my lord, I was going to say something different— though I do agree the thing is dangerous. I was going to ask why we should call sacred an oracle which merely repeats whatever a man tells it to say.”

  “Why should we call anything sacred? The Bible was written down by men, too. How then do we know it’s true? How do we know that God made the world, and that Jesus Christ was his son?”

  “The fact is, my lord, we don’t know.”

  It was Gottfried’s turn to be surprised. And troubled.

  “You’re a dangerous man, Karelian of Lys. I truly wonder if I should have brought you here.”

  “That is precisely why you brought me here.”

  Gottfried laughed, and some of the tension went out of him then. Out of both of them.

  “I like you, do you know that?” the duke said. “Quite apart from anything else, I like you enormously.”

  His face grew serious again, as it mostly was, all traces of laughter fading from it.

  “The stone is not a toy which any fool can play with,” he said quietly. “I tested it before I ever thought of bringing it home. I encouraged others to try it. To some I offered gold; with others I made wagers. I even suggested images they might want to call up: lovely women bathing in a lake, or lying on the sand. Images of their homes, their families.

  “No one could use it, Karelian. They couldn’t raise so much as a shadow on its face. You fear the message may be untrue because any man could tell it what to say. Yet it speaks for no one but me. Is there no truth in that? No argument for who I am?”

  He gestured towards the pyramid which lay between them.

  “Take it up, Karelian. You have a splendid mind and a powerful will. Use it. Call up whatever truth you please.”

  The count hesitated, and then closed his hands about the stone.

  “You won’t use your own will to block me?”

  “I’d be a fool to so deceive myself. Go on. Try your best.”

  I knelt rigid, barely breathing. What did I hope for then? That the stone would speak to Karelian, or that it wouldn’t? Tension whitened his fingers and turned his face to shale. But there was no look of wonder, no cry of surprise, only desperate concentration, ending finally in an exhausted sigh of defeat. He laid his head back against his chair. Even from this distance, I could see his temples gleaming with sweat.

  “Are you convinced?” Gottfried murmured, reaching across the table to take the pyramid back.

  Karelian wiped his face and took a long draught of wine.

  “Do you think I alone would have this power,” Gottfried went on, “if I were not who I am?”

  How splendid he looked then, poised with the godstone in his hands, a great rough-hewn man, not beautiful as Karelian was beautiful, and yet a hundred times more so, his gold hair like a halo around his lion’s head: emperor of Christendom and lord of all the world.

  Karelian smiled faintly, and saluted him with his cup.

  “I am convinced, my lord. You batter a man down like a curtain wall, one stone at a time. I am convinced.”

  “Then you will ride with me?”

  The count’s eyes fell. “To war?” he asked unhappily.

  “To one last war, my friend, and then to peace for all the world. Such a war is worth fighting. And you, my dear doubting Thomas, will be worth more to me than twenty of these tail-wagging fools I have around me, who need merely to be given a whiff of gold, or a whisper of power, and they are all scrambling to follow. Truly now, will you back me in this?”

  I did not breathe until Karelian answered him. With every hammer of my heart I was pleading: Yes, yes, yes, you must tell him yes!

  “I will.” His voice was heavy, but he met Gottfried’s eyes unflinching. “With some regrets and some misgivings. But yes, I will back you.”

  “On the cross? For many men will judge it treason, and dearly though I love you, I must have an oath.”

  “On the cross, my lord, and on my hope of heaven.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Of Treason and Faith

  When a man has carnal knowledge of his wife and the pleasure

  of it in no way pleases him, but rather is hateful to him,

  then such commerce is without sin.

  William of Auxerre

  He who feels nothing does not sin.

  Huguccio, Cardinal of Ferrara

  * * *

  I know what most men will think, reading this chronicle. They will cry heresy and treason— all the while forgetting that Christ himself was condemned on the same charge. I have no better answer than the one Gottfried gave Karelian:

  It is only heresy if it is not true.

  And on
what, you ask me, do I judge its truth? Not on argument, although Gottfried’s arguments were good. Not on miracles, although his power was awesome. I judge his truth — as I believe Christ’s followers judged his — by the man himself, his own magnificence, his own unyielding virtue. Never once, even from his bitterest enemies, was a word ever said against his personal honor. There was no lewdness in the man, no cowardice, no false ambition. He was jealous of his greatness, but how could he not be, being who he was? Unlike the selfish of the world, who will sit back and tuck their worldly goods around them, and ask only to be left alone, he rode into fire and blood to seek the will of God.

  He was not beautiful, but the world stopped when he walked into a room. He was a king in every gesture, in every thread of raiment; his power followed him like grace. He might have captured all the world for God, had he never trusted Karelian of Lys.

  Why did he do so? The question has turned in my soul for thirty years, and there is no answer. Gottfried was not a youth like me, caught up in the folly of the world, admiring a man for nothing but his fine looks and the glitter of his sword. Oh, I still remember myself in Acre, standing in the burning sun and staring until my eyes watered, tugging at the sleeve of my companion who was trying to buy a melon, demanding he pay attention and answer me: Who is that knight? The one in samite and silver, with sapphire fringes hanging to the fetlocks of his horse, and the sun shining in his hair, and an orange in his hand?

  “Who? Oh. That one. Karelian Brandeis,” he said irritably, and went back to his bargaining. I watched Karelian Brandeis until the turning street hid him from my view, and I vowed I would find a place in his service if it took me all my days.

  But Gottfried was not a boy, admiring heroes from a distance. He was a king, and the heir of a godly house of kings. He did not look up to men like the count of Lys, but rather down. He was experienced and wise; he knew the risk of treachery. Why then did he take for his closest confederate a man who would shamelessly betray him?

  How could he not have known?

  The news came to the monastery of Saint Benedict late in the winter, the way news usually came— late and mostly by accident, along with gifts for the abbot and a small satchel of letters. Monsignor Wilhelm von Schielenberg, the great exorcist from Mainz, had fallen with two companions in Lombardy. They died as men often did on the lonely roads of Europe, slain by brigands for nothing more than the horses they were riding, and the garments on their backs.

  The bodies had been found naked, Anselm told Paul. And less than a league away was found what must have been the bandits’ camp, with the remains of the horse they had eaten, and a few scraps of charred parchment scattered around the fire— the holy men’s books and breviaries torn apart and used for kindling.

  “This is what our world is come to,” Anselm said, and crossed himself, and said no more.

  * * *

  Paul walked in the snow. He did not notice that his toes were slowly freezing; he would not have cared. He had come to love the winter, for the same reason other people dreaded it: for the cold. For the purity, the infinite absence, the unlife which was true life, where no birds sang, where God alone existed and God was the only thing which mattered.

  Almost a year had passed since it began, and several months since the priest from Mainz had come and gone. His horrid dreams had almost ceased. As the focus of the chronicle shifted to the Golden Duke, so did the world shift: winter came, and his soul lifted itself to a quiet polar silence, all of its passions burned to ice. Every night he wrote; every day he fasted and labored and did penance. The whispers had begun, passing as whispers did from house to house, from town to town. Whispers of sanctity, of a man who lived without food and did not die, a man who took upon his body more of the sufferings of mankind and the lord Jesus than any human flesh could hope to bear, and yet had strength to work and pray. Just whispers. Just wind in the grass.

  He walked on, and thought of what Anselm had told him. The man who might have unravelled his secret was dead. The perilous manuscript was ash in the mountains of Lombardy.

  Nothing passed in the world which was not God’s will. Once again, in yet another strange and unfathomable way, Gottfried had been protected. Or rather, his memory, his inheritance had been protected, from a world still too fouled to welcome it.

  It was not possible to be happy, not ever, not with everything ruined and undone. But it was possible, sometimes, to close his hands upon a measure of peace, of acceptance, as he did now in this world of silence, of white crystal and pain.

  Gottfried was what he had claimed to be, the heir of Jesus and the son of God. Paul had known it from the first. He had reached out to it instinctively, without needing to be asked. He had been among the first to say ‘Yes, lord.’ He could have been a chosen one, one of those who sat at Gottfried’s right hand, and rested his head upon his shoulder.

  Except for them, those two, who destroyed it all….

  He stumbled and fell. Only then, groping to rise again, did he realize he could no longer feel his hands or his feet.

  * * *

  None of it matters. Perhaps Gottfried could not foresee what Karelian would do. Perhaps in his humanness he was limited to human knowledge, just as he was compelled to die a human death. Or perhaps he did see it, and followed his destiny as Christ followed his: This is what must happen; it is part of God’s plan.

  I do not know which is true, and although I long to know, I must always remind myself it doesn’t matter.

  It is so hard to write. I lost three fingers in January, and I’ve had to break the quill, and press a small piece of it into the palm of my hand, and clutch it there with all my strength. When I quit, my hand is bleeding, but the letters are very clear. I know I must finish this chronicle, but it no longer distresses me. I have ceased to grieve for the world, for there is nothing good in it.

  God’s only purpose here is to exalt his chosen ones. There is no other reason for anything which happens. We must struggle to do good in the world, as Gottfried did, and yet by its very nature the world cannot be saved. It has taken me so long to understand these things, and yet they are all here, in the book of Honorius, the marvelous Elucidarium, which I read every night, till I know its words almost by memory.

  If none but the predestined are saved, for what purpose were the rest created, and what is the fault for which they perish?

  The damned were made for the sake of the chosen, so they might be perfected in their virtues and corrected from their vices. So the chosen few would appear more glorious hereafter, and, seeing the torments of the many, rejoice in their own salvation.

  For this Karelian Brandeis was born. For this he made the fire in which the Golden Duke was forged to his divinest glory… and in the same fire he will burn till the end of time.

  Paul did not hear her come into his cell. Perhaps he slept, for when he first heard her speak his head was resting on his hands, and his mind was empty of thought. Dazed, he stared at her, unable to say a word. There were parchments in her hand. Even before he recognized the script, he knew it was his manuscript. All of his manuscript— the new pages he had hidden under the floor, the old pages he thought had been taken to Rome.

  What a fool a man was, who ever thought he understood the ways of sorcerers…!

  She let the manuscript fall idly onto his desk.

  “Really, squire Paul, a god like the one you speak of here should never be turned loose on an unsuspecting world.”

  “You have no right to speak of my God,” he whispered.

  “I will speak,” she said coldly, “of anything I please. And your god repels me. So do you. Though I must say you are an amazing man. Even when you lie, you reveal the truth. And even when you’re compelled to tell the truth, you still manage to lie.”

  “If I repel you, then why don’t you let me go?” he demanded. He was surprised at the strength in his voice, the boldness.

  She smiled. She looked windblown and weary, as though she had traveled a long distance.
So had she come to Karelian on the banks of the Maren— just so, with tangled hair, and her breasts shining in the moonlight.

  “You know why,” she said. “I am half veela, Paul of Ardiun. Half veela and half Russian Cossack. Do you think a creature such as myself would ever forgive?”

  “I seek forgiveness only from God, not from any whore of Babylon.”

  “Car-Iduna. Please, if we must be so righteous, let’s be a little more precise. And while we’re on the subject of sin, perhaps you can explain something to me. If your Jesus had children, how did he manage it? Without feeling any of that dreadful concupiscence you’re so concerned about? And darling Gottfried, too— he had seven or eight of them, didn’t he? How did it happen, do you suppose? Haven’t you ever wondered?”

  “No. I never did.”

  “Why not?”

  He stared at her, hating her for asking. Why would anyone do so, except to mock the sons of God, to drag them down and diminish them merely by asking? Christ ate, but he never felt gluttony. He was offended, but he never felt anger. He needed material things to live, but he never felt avarice. So why even ask if he ever felt lust? Only out of malice, that was all, out of malice and wickedness.

  “What is divine is untainted by sin,” he said coldly. “As you know very well, witch.”

  She shrugged. “You’re growing very cocky. You learned it from Gottfried, I suppose. So be it. I don’t mind at all how cocky you become. And however you sort out your poor muddled soul, it’s entirely your own affair. But don’t underestimate my power.”

  She leaned slightly across his desk, and he caught the hot, lascivious scent of perfume. He was swept with nausea and hatred— the bitter hatred which always came back when he remembered her body in Karelian’s embrace.