The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  My last chance to turn and ride away….

  He knew the meaning of what he did then, and he did it because he knew. He slid out of the tangle of her arms and eased her onto her back. She purred softly, briefly, but she was too spent to waken. He kissed her throat, and took the copper tips of her breasts into his mouth, first one, and then the other, and knelt over her, and took her as she slept.

  TWENTY

  Betrayal

  Among them that broke their vows I saw a young knight

  brenning in the fire whom I knew sometime full well.

  Revelation to a monk of Evesham

  * * *

  For weeks I have avoided putting these words to paper. And no, I did not hesitate because I care what you think— whoever you may be who come to read this. I never cared about the small opinions of the world, not even in my youth. Still less do I care now, at the edge of death, in this place where the world is nothing. I fear one thing only, and that is my own despair.

  It had rained for days. Sodden grey clouds lay across the whole of the Reinmark. Northward, in the wild march of Ravensbruck, they were wind-blown and cold; here, in the valley of the Maren, some twenty-eight leagues from the great city of Karn, they were sleepy and warm. Rain slithered softly over the monastery walls, and ran down the cobbled paths, whispering of bursting grapes and flowers, whispering of life: boundless life, spilling out forever from the black loins of the earth.

  Always more life … and still more … and yet still more. Paul shook his head. He acknowledged God’s generosity, the marvelous abundance of creation, yet he was sickened by this endless glut of life, this growing over of everything by the weeds of indiscriminate existence.

  To the black fecund earth, the bones of a king and the leavings of a rat were no different. They were both just offal, just matter to chew up and spit out again in still another form— another weed, another drop of rain, another rat. Why did God permit it? Why did all this life exist, when all but a few tiny fragments of it were meaningless and befouled? Why did it continue, all of it mindlessly clamoring, and then afterwards mindlessly still, disappearing forever into the never-was, the never-mattered, burying the little which was good under its sheer, overwhelming mass?

  In Stavoren, he had heard, the tombs of von Heyden were cracking, and briars were growing from their bones.

  The cell where he sat was lit with a tiny candle, just enough to write by. He picked up his quill, slowly, hatefully. He did not want to write any more— not this damned and despicable chronicle, dictated by an incubus, turning everything he did into folly, everything he loved into delusion. And yet he could not resist. His hand was restless without the quill in it, and his mind was sick with memories. Writing them was unbearable; resisting them was worse.

  * * *

  Betrayal did not come easy to me, whatever anyone may think. I was a baron’s son, taught from childhood to respect the bonds of rank. I was a German, born to a world of passionate tribal loyalties, where treachery, though not uncommon, was bitterly condemned. I was a Christian. I knew that Our Lord obeyed his divine Father in all things, even to the point of death, and that he demanded of us the same submission to authority.

  And finally, I was young and powerless. To go behind my own lord’s back and accuse him of witchcraft and treason, with no proof except my word— you may well ask how I could have dared to do it, for it was likely to earn me nothing except my own death, or a dungeon cell without a key.

  For weeks my knowledge tormented me, yet I could not bring myself to act. Every day I decided I would speak; every night I huddled in my bed, and decided I could not. It was too dangerous, too futile. Gottfried would never believe me.

  And yet in the end I went to him, because I had to.

  You may say I was treacherous, and a fool. You may say, too, that I should have left the matter in God’s hands. It was for God to unfold the history of Gottfried and Karelian, and not for me to interfere. God would have revealed his truth in his own way, and accomplished his design. How can I answer you? How can I answer God? I did what I did, and the rest followed.

  All of the rest of it, ruin by ruin to the end. Was I God’s agent, or was I theirs?

  * * *

  There were at least a dozen people in the room, counting the guards and the scribe who sat at the duke’s elbow, ready to note down whatever he might command. I walked stiffly across acres of stone floor, trying to swallow my fear, trying to ignore my horrible sense of wrong-doing. I was just twenty. In all my life I had never lied about anything, except the trivial deceptions of childhood— claiming an apple was windfall, perhaps, when in fact I had snatched it off a tree. Things even the priest had smiled at, though of course he told me not to do it again.

  Now I stood wrapped in lies, in a peasant woman’s filthy dress, with black cinders in my hair, and old rags covering my hands, so no one would notice how big they were, or how callused from swordplay. I was deception given bones and flesh, a pretender bowing almost to the floor to hide my panic.

  They looked at me without much interest. To them I was just another peasant, a pleader for favors or a dreamer of folly. But they would listen to me, if only for a moment, because I claimed to have knowledge concerning the duke’s safety.

  “Well?” Gottfried said.

  It was three months since I had seen him, and in spite of my love for him, I had forgotten how magnificent he was. Tall and broad, his square face hardened with wisdom, his eyes steady, as though he looked right through men’s flesh into their souls, and feared nothing he might see there.

  I held out a folded, sealed paper. Only one sentence was written inside it: I am Paul von Ardiun, squire to the count of Lys.

  A servant took the paper and passed it to the duke. He opened it. His face never changed. He folded it and put it carefully away, and glanced at the attendants, who waited patient and bored.

  “Leave us,” he said.

  When everyone had gone, he waved me to approach him, and smiled.

  “What is Karel up to then,” he asked, “that he must resort to such nonsense as this? Surely he knows he can send me messengers at any hour of the day or night, and I will see them?”

  “I am not here on the count’s behalf, my lord.”

  “Then on whose?”

  “Yours, my lord.”

  “You will have to explain yourself,” he said.

  So I told him everything. How it began the autumn before, as we journeyed to Ravensbruck for Karelian’s marriage. How the bridge was gone at Karlsbruck, and how Karelian had decided, against the advice of all his men, to pass through the perilous forest of Helmardin.

  As soon as I mentioned that name, I noticed the tightening of Gottfried’s hand on the arm of his chair, the sudden, riveted attention of his gaze.

  “And what befell you in Helmardin?” he asked, very softly.

  “A storm came, my lord, a terrible storm, unnatural for the season, and we were lost in it. We came finally upon a castle, a place full of sorcery, kept by a witch queen. They called it Car-Iduna.”

  Even now, many months later, I shivered remembering it. Plants grew there without sun, and men were turned into animals, and lust coiled in the air like scented smoke.

  “This witch queen you speak of,” Gottfried demanded. “Do you know her name? What did she look like?”

  “I never learned her name. But she had black hair. She was tall, and very beautiful, the way a harlot is beautiful. She wore many rings, and a gold belt studded with black stones, and a gown which only pretended to cover her. All she had to do was smile at Karelian, and he was undone.”

  “The same one, then,” Gottfried murmured, more to himself than to me.

  “Do you know this witch, my lord?” I whispered.

  “Of her,” he said. “I know of her.” He gave me a hard, searching look. “They say everyone who enters her realm either remains there captive, or, if they return to the world, they can’t remember anything that happened.”

  “I
t was so for the others, my lord— all the count’s men, except me. Because I did not eat, or drink, or touch any of the women. All the others have forgotten. They think we passed the night in a cave.”

  “And why didn’t you eat or drink or pleasure yourself? You were the youngest, the least worldly, and you saw the danger of it, when your betters did not?”

  “It was the seneschal who warned me, my lord. Reinhard. He warned us all. But once we were inside, and they saw her, and heard the music, and had cups of hot wine pressed into their hands … my lord, the power of the place…! It was like nothing I can describe. It was as if God himself wasn’t present in the world any more, inside those walls.”

  “And yet you did not falter,” he said coldly. “How very extraordinary.”

  I swallowed. I knew it sounded arrogant and righteous. Surviving always did.

  “I was so terrified of them, my lord, I wasn’t much tempted.”

  My answer surprised Gottfried, but I think it satisfied him. It was perhaps the only answer he would have considered honest.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “She wanted something from him; I don’t know what. They quarreled— or at least I thought they did. Then we left, and even as we passed through the gates, my lord, Car-Iduna disappeared. One moment it was there, and the next moment there was only forest. I thought it was over then; I thought we were safe. We went on to Ravensbruck, and afterwards to Lys. Karelian kept the black feather she gave him, but I never thought he’d use it. I never thought he’d call her back. And then he did.”

  “When?” the duke asked sharply.

  “In August, my lord. After we left your court here in Stavoren.”

  After you told him your true identity, and your destiny, and your plans….

  “He went to the banks of the Maren, and made offerings to the pagan god Tyr, and burned the feather in the manner she commanded. When she came, he knelt to her and swore allegiance.”

  “And he took you along, I suppose, to hold his cloak, and gather the wood for the fire.”

  His mockery hurt bitterly. I knew he had to doubt me, test me, trap me in any lie or malice I might be guilty of. But still it hurt.

  “He went alone, my lord. I followed him secretly.”

  “Do you make a habit of spying on your master?”

  “No, my lord, never! Only that one time—!”

  “And why, Paul of Ardiun? Why that one time?”

  I stared at the duke’s boots; they were heavy and brown, laced to his knees; he had huge feet. I had no idea what to say. Till this moment I had spoken honestly. But I could not tell the truth now. I could not admit to knowing who he was.

  “Ever since Helmardin, my lord, ever since he met … her … I was afraid for him, afraid he would … do something. He never stopped thinking about her. He cherished the raven’s feather she gave him. He kept it in a pouch hung around his neck, as a man might keep a sacred relic. He carried her colors at the tournament, right here in Stavoren—”

  “A moment ago,” Gottfried reminded me grimly, “you told me you were sure it was over. You were sure he’d never call her back.”

  Christ, those eyes…! He knew I was lying, and his eyes were pitiless, as the eyes of God will be at the hour of our judgment.

  If he had simply sat, and gone on staring at me, God alone knows what I might finally have said, if only to free myself from his look, from the awful knowledge that he despised me for a plotter and a fool. But he reached to the table beside him, and poured himself a small bit of wine, and began to speak.

  “What injury has passed between you and the count of Lys, squire Paul?”

  “Injury, my lord? None.”

  “Karelian is a well bred and well spoken man,” he went on. “An easy man to like. And generous. Last autumn, as I recall, before you left for Ravensbruck, he made you some very fine gifts. And when you came here for the Königsritt, we all could see you thought the world of him.

  “Now you come to me with a tale which would mean his death— if I decided to believe it. Such a change of heart must surely have a reason. Either he has wronged you, or….” He paused, and considered me again. “Or you have done some wrong against him, and hope to cover your guilt with treachery. Which is it, squire Paul?”

  “It is neither, my lord. I am—”

  He cut me short with a single blunt gesture. “Listen to me, you babbling whelp! No one knows you’re here; you made sure of it yourself. You may wish you hadn’t been half as clever. You walked in here as a peasant drab— who will care if you walk out again? Who will even notice? I can have your liar’s throat cut before you open it to scream! Now tell me the truth. What is your quarrel with the count of Lys?”

  My courage almost failed me then. It was as bad as I had feared. He did not believe me. He thought me nothing more than a foolish, dishonorable young man with a grudge. I would die for it, and that was horrible enough. But what would become of him?

  I threw myself to my knees at his feet.

  “My lord, please, I beg you, let me speak! I haven’t lied to you. I thought the world of Count Karelian, it’s true. And because I did, I blinded myself. Every chance he gave me to think well of him, I took it. And so yes, I believed it was over when we left Helmardin; I believed he would come back to God; I believed he was honorable at heart. Over and over I believed it— because I wanted to. Only… only a part of me was always afraid. And the last while, before he sent for her, he was… he was so dark and silent…! I thought surely something must have happened in Stavoren. Something must be turning his mind back—”

  “Did he speak of any such… happening?”

  “No, my lord. He spoke of nothing but his plans for war. He said there was talk of invasion from the east. He is already hiring men, and replenishing his fortress—”

  Gottfried waved me to silence.

  “Then he’s doing nothing more than following my advice.”

  He turned the wine glass slowly in his hand. When he spoke again his voice was warm, almost a purr.

  “You still haven’t told me why, Paul. Why you left him, and came to me.”

  The future of the world, I thought, might hang upon my answer.

  “Because he is evil, my lord, and you are good.”

  There was a long and heavy silence. I don’t think Gottfried expected such an answer, or quite knew what to make of it.

  “You’re doing this,” he said at last, “for no ulterior motive whatever? You’ve come to me at the command of your conscience, only because you want to do what is right?”

  “Yes, my lord. Is that so unbelievable?”

  “Not unbelievable. Merely unusual.”

  “I am a Christian, my lord. I cannot serve a man who deals with sorcerers, and offers sacrifice to pagan gods.”

  “Agreed. You could, however, merely walk away. It’s what most men would do, especially young men without power. You’ve taken an extraordinary risk.”

  “I had to warn you, my lord.”

  “Yes, but of what? Perhaps you haven’t noticed the fact, lad, but your warning has no substance whatever. Karelian is besotted with a sorceress, and has offered her some act of service. I am appalled by it, of course, but it hardly proves he is my enemy. Many men still secretly serve the old gods, and have dealings with diviners and witches. It doesn’t follow that every one of them is plotting against his lord. If you know your master at all well, you know he’s never been particularly… devout. If this is all you can tell me, Paul, you must surely admit it isn’t much.”

  He shifted a little in his chair, like a busy man who was losing interest in the subject of discussion. I had persuaded him of my sincerity, perhaps, but of very little else. And in the world of princes and power, a fool was no less a fool for being sincere.

  So I lied. If a small lie is needed to make clear a great truth, it can hardly be a sin. She was evil, and there was no doubt in my mind that she hated Gottfried. She must hate him, being who she was. I did not have to hear her say
so.

  “The sorceress spoke against you, my lord. In Car-Iduna. She said the Reinmark belonged to her gods. She called you many evil names. She said she’d never be content until you were broken and brought to your knees.”

  “She spoke so in front of Karelian?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And he did not object?”

  It took all my strength to continue meeting his eyes, but I did so. I had to.

  “No, my lord. He cared for nothing but pleasing her.”

  “But you said they quarreled,” he reminded me.

  “Yes, my lord. Or so it seemed to me. Perhaps she wanted him to be her ally then, and he wouldn’t. Not until he’d thought about it.”

  I didn’t have to say the rest of it aloud: Not until he knew, until you told him you were the heir of Christ and the son of God.

  The duke did not respond to my words at all. Instead he waved me to my feet, and changed the subject completely.

  “Where does the count of Lys think you are at the moment?”

  “Still at home in Ardiun. I hadn’t seen my parents since we returned from the Holy Land. He gave me a month’s leave to visit them.”

  “And what do you mean to do now?”

  “I will go back to Lys, and take my leave of him. I will tell him I’ve thought about changing the direction of my life— which in fact is true. I even discussed it with my father. I was hoping, my lord, that you might accept me into the Knights of Saint David—”

  “So you want a reward, after all. How surprising.”

  “Only one reward, my lord. To be allowed to serve my God, and to serve you.”

  “The heart of service is obedience, Paul. If what you tell me is true — and I am by no means convinced of it — then you’ll be more than willing to serve me in whatever manner I think best.”

  “I am ready, my lord,” I said eagerly.