The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  Everyone else was sent away, even Adelaide herself; but as I rose to follow, Karelian waved me to a chair.

  “Stay,” he said bluntly. “I want someone here who can read better than I can.”

  I obeyed with considerable reluctance. I did not know, at that point, what the nature of his confrontation with the priest would be, but whatever it was going to be, I did not want to be part of it.

  Father Gerius came promptly. He was a man of forty or so, town-born and modestly educated. He had been chaplain at Lys for over ten years, and no doubt expected to end his days there.

  He bowed deeply and smiled. “Good morning, and God bless your lordship.”

  Even when he was angry, Karelian most always let others say their piece. It was in part a basic fairness in the man, but it was also ruthless strategy. If you ever want to hang a man, he told me once, be sure to give him plenty of his own rope.

  “I understand,” the count said, “you have been questioning my wife in confession. About her personal relationship with me.”

  Father Gerius lost nothing of his benign composure. He explained politely, lucidly. No doubt other husbands had challenged him before, and wives, too.

  “My lord, it would never be my wish to ask such questions. But sadly, people are not well educated in the teachings of the Church, regarding carnal matters or any other. Many of my parishioners know little more than pagans. Sometimes even priests do not know precisely what is forbidden by Christian law, and what is not. Which sort of untruth is a venial sin, for example, and which a mortal sin? Is it wrong to wear a charm if you wear it in memory of your mother, who gave it to you, and not for any magical purposes? And so on and so on.

  “Because of this, the Church has commanded us to teach people when they come to confess. They cannot tell us their sins until they know what is sinful. So it is our duty to ask— gently and discreetly, of course; we don’t wish to introduce them to sins they haven’t yet thought of committing.

  “It was never my intention, my lord, to cause embarrassment to her ladyship, or to yourself, but rather to do my duty for the welfare of her soul.”

  “The questions you asked her,” Karelian said, “and the penances you imposed— I understand they’re from a book?”

  “Yes, my lord. As I said, sometimes priests themselves do not know as much as they should about the law. And even those who do might wonder how to say things properly. So we are given a book to guide us, a penitential—”

  “Do you have it?”

  For the first time, the priest looked troubled.

  “Yes, my lord. But it is intended only for the use of the clergy—”

  “Show it to me.”

  “It is in my quarters, my lord.”

  “Then send someone to fetch it.”

  With some dismay, the priest obeyed, and a small, leather-bound volume was brought to the count. Karelian leafed through it briefly and passed it on to me. It was arranged according to the commandments. Those questions dealing with the first commandment, and those dealing with the sixth, were carefully marked and much worn with use.

  “Heresy and sex,” Karelian murmured. “I should have known. Read it to me, Paul. I want to know wherein I’ve sinned.”

  “Were you not instructed in these matters in Ravensbruck, my lord?” the priest wondered. “Before your marriage? It is the custom.”

  “I was instructed in many strange things in Ravensbruck, Father Gerius. But surprisingly, this got missed. Read, lad.”

  I was terribly embarrassed by the whole affair, but I read out, carefully, what the sins were, and what penances were recommended for each. About halfway through the chapter, Karelian waved me impatiently to silence, and sat for a while looking at a scratch on the wooden table. Another man might have imagined he was overcome with shame. I knew better.

  “I understand now,” he said at last, looking up. “I’ve wondered and wondered why the Church is so determined that its priests shouldn’t marry. I could never see why it should matter. But if you had a woman of your own, my friend, you wouldn’t be able to lower yourself to this.

  “It’s a mortal sin to see my wife naked. To make love to her in daylight. To lie behind her— or even worse, beneath her. You would give me a harsher penance for it than for going out to rape my vassals’ daughters. Can you explain that, priest?”

  “My lord, both actions are of course most evil. But even in sin there is the natural and the unnatural, and the unnatural is always much worse, for it overturns the order of things as prescribed by God. The woman is by nature subordinate, and must lie below the man—”

  “Suppose I’m tired? Suppose I have a broken arm?”

  “My lord, I beg you, do not mock the holy faith—”

  “I can’t imagine what connection this has to the holy faith,” Karelian said, “but if there is one, it deserves to be mocked. You are relieved of your duties, Father Gerius. My steward will pay you, and give you a small stipend to see you on your way. I want you out of my demesne before the sun goes down tomorrow.”

  “My good lord…?”

  The man was devastated. He opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked at me, and I looked carefully at the floor.

  “My lord, please…! I assure you, I meant no offense! I sought only the good of my lady’s soul—!”

  “The countess has a body and a mind as well as a soul, Father Gerius. After a few years in your judicious care, I wonder how much would be left of either. Go. Before I start believing you’re something worse than just a fool.”

  “My lord, I beg you…!”

  Karelian said nothing; he merely met the man’s eyes. The chaplain flinched. Visibly.

  “Very well, my lord. May I take all of my belongings?”

  “Please take all of your belongings.”

  “Thank you, my lord. I will pray for you, my lord.” The priest bowed faintly and turned to go. For the first time, from the unevenness of his step, I realized he limped.

  Karelian settled back into his chair with a considerable air of weariness.

  “Do you believe the presumption, Pauli?” he murmured. “I thought princes were arrogant; they are lambs compared to churchmen.”

  I scrambled for something to say.

  “My lord, you can’t mean to leave the manor without a chaplain. There will be no Masses, and no one to fetch if people fall ill. It’s too far to the village—”

  “Yes, I know. I will replace him. The bishop would have my head if I didn’t.”

  And then he smiled, the quick winsome smile which I used to find so enchanting, and which now seemed only cynical to me— cynical and frightening, like the soft, dark smile of a sorcerer.

  “He said there are many priests who aren’t well educated in the teachings of the church. I’m sure with a bit of effort I can find one.”

  * * *

  So it was that Father Thomas came to Lys. He came from Karn, the worldly mercantile city where whores and thieves thrived alongside silk merchants and slavers and lenders of gold. He came with a personal recommendation from Karelian’s old friend Baron Lehelin, and he brought with him his Provençal lyre, his treasured library of seven books, a basket with two yellow cats, and his wife.

  He was not the first married priest I had ever met, nor would he be the last. Rome had been struggling for centuries against the practice, and failing over and over because most of Europe still refused to recognize the authority of the pope. Some bishops enforced celibacy on their priests; some did not think it mattered. Some were themselves married, and used their links with powerful families as a way of advancing their own position in the Church. As for the kings and lords, most of them were like our own Emperor Ehrenfried. He was first of all a German, and no Roman pope was going to tell his German bishops what to do.

  Married priests were often criticized, but they were not rare, and the arrival of Father Thomas raised few eyebrows. Indeed, the women of the manor were mostly glad he had a wife. “He will understand us better,” they sa
id, and other such nonsense, as if the laws of God were social niceties, to be chatted over and served around a fire.

  Karelian had spoken cynically about wanting an ignorant priest; in fact, from his perspective he did better. Father Thomas had an excellent education in the teachings of the Church. He simply did not take most of the teachings seriously. All books were sacred to him, and all brave men were godly. Being a priest was simply a way for him to be a scholar, and a dreamer, and a teller of pretty tales.

  It must have taken him only a few days to learn what was expected of him. Quite possibly Karelian sat him down and told him. Baptize the babies. Marry the young people. Say Mass every day. Console the sorrowful and bury the dead. And otherwise mind your own business. I am a wealthy man; you can have a good life here until the end of your days if you’re sensible….

  Christendom was full of men who wanted that kind of priest, and full of priests willing to accommodate them. I watched and said nothing. I waited for Gottfried to send for me.

  For weeks no news worth mentioning came from the world beyond Lys, and then came news I did not want to hear. Ehrenfried, king of the Germans and lord of the Holy Roman Empire, was summoning all the princes of the land. They were to gather in Mainz in the spring, so they might confirm the succession of his son, Prince Konrad. Ehrenfried meant to see his son crowned king while he still lived.

  I was devastated by the news. At best, it meant the Salian kings would strengthen their position and their dynasty. At worst, it meant Gottfried had already been betrayed.

  My faith almost failed me then. Perhaps the dream I had encountered in Stavoren was only a dream. Perhaps I had imagined it all. Perhaps Gottfried was the Golden Duke, and nothing more, and Helmardin was nothing but a forest, and Karelian an ordinary worldling, no worse to serve than most, and better than many.

  You have a good place there, Pauli, my father had cautioned me. Take care you keep it. At the most unexpected moments his words would come back, like the memory of his iron hands, his iron faith. He was a man to whom everything in the world, including God, made perfect, rational sense.

  I remembered his words, and I wavered. I called myself a child, an overzealous and deluded child. I wished more than once that I could undo my journey to Stavoren.

  But never for long. I took to spending hours in the chapel, and always my certainty returned there. I would remember Gottfried bent before the altar in Stavoren, wrapped in shadows and drenched in light. The image was exact in my mind, unchanging, even to the curve of his great shoulders as he knelt, the paleness of his hair, the power of his closing hands, the presence of God all about him, omnipotent and still. This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased….

  When I saw him so, in my mind, all the world was stripped of its illusions. I saw Lys for what it was— a corrupted, half-pagan world with a bit of Christian glitter on its face. In the morning there was Mass, and that was God’s business for the day; the rest went to Mammon. Karelian spent hours with the brewers and the tanners and the master of horse. He spent whole days with Reinhard, who was his seneschal and military commander. He had no time left to think about his soul.

  Jongleurs and minnesingers came daily to our gates, lured by quick-spreading rumors that the new count of Lys was fond of his pleasures and free with his coins. Father Thomas played his lyre, and spun tales of the heathens and tales of the Church side by side, until you couldn’t tell the saints from the sorcerers, or Balder from Christ. Wagon trains crawled across the autumn landscape, carrying supplies up the winding mountain road to the fortress of Schildberge. Only our demon lord himself knew why he was sending so many men there, and so much food. He was preparing for war — for war and black rebellion — but hardly anyone noticed except me. The knights rode into the village to find whores, and came back by dawn light, wine-soaked and exhausted. The servants rutted in the stables and the sculleries, and lied and brawled and pleaded for forgiveness. Father Thomas smiled and forgave them all, and went back to his lyre and his books.

  And every night I prayed — more than once until the tears came — I prayed Duke Gottfried would send for me, so I might live again with honorable men, in a clean and different kind of world.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Father and Son

  The clergy placed on the altar three books, namely those

  of the Prophets, the Epistles, and the Gospels, and

  prayed the Lord to reveal what should befall Chramm.

  Saint Gregory of Tours

  * * *

  Theodoric von Heyden was, like his sire, a large man, imposing on horseback, massive in armor, perilous even when asleep. His face was pleasantly youthful, a rugged, sharp-eyed Teuton face hung about with thin blond hair.

  Among the warriors of the Reinmark, neither his size nor his looks set him noticeably apart. What made men instantly aware of him was his restlessness. He rarely sat, and he never sat still. His feet would scrape constantly forward and back, and his weight would shift in his chair. His eyes, even while he was engrossed in serious conversation, were always glancing elsewhere, less out of watchfulness than out of what seemed a permanent state of irritation. He made sober men nervous and drunken men weary.

  He paced now, his boots crunching deadfall and leaves. He was almost wordless with anger, and desperate with the need to control it. Finally he stopped, and turned to his father the duke. His words were harsh and clipped.

  “Will you just tell me why?” he demanded. “Why did you trust that accursed spawn of Dorn? In God’s name, my lord, tell me why!”

  For a time Gottfried did not speak. Stray drops of rain fell here and there against his face, and vanished almost as they landed. The face was made of rock, rough-hewn and ageless. He was forty-seven; he might have been sixty, or a tired twenty-eight.

  “I saw him in the willstone,” he said at last, very quietly.

  Theodoric tensed, like a man about to draw his sword.

  “You what?”

  “I saw him. On Holy Saturday, early in the morning—”

  “There is nothing to see in the willstone, for Christ’s sake! It’s nothing but a mirror of your own thoughts. You said so yourself—!”

  “Not that time. I didn’t call up the image, Theo. I was exhausted with fasting, and Karelian Brandeis was the farthest man on earth from my mind. I wasn’t even touching the stone.” He paused, looking hard at his eldest son. “There is only one who can move the stone besides me, Theo. Only one.”

  “It’s God’s doing, then, is it? God’s decision to place a sacred trust into the hands of a barbarian, and your future with it? My future? God’s holy blood, my lord, how could you be so reckless! He’s a nothing but an adventurer—”

  “He is our kinsman.”

  “At some damned remove, my lord, and from a line which never could be trusted. You know that, in God’s name; it was your own father who called Helmuth Brandeis the weathervane of Dorn. And what was his son, before you gave him a place? Nothing but a wandering mercenary. He fought for any man who’d pay him. When he thought God might pay, he fought for God. He didn’t come to Jerusalem to save the holy places, or destroy the infidels. He came to carve himself a name, and make his fortune—”

  “Perhaps. But such men also have a role to play. We marched into Palestine with infidel guides, have you forgotten? It was an infidel who told us of the treasure in the temple of Jerusalem— my treasure now, Theodoric, and yours. God uses many stones to grind his knives.”

  Theodoric could no longer contain his fury. He planted himself before his father and shouted into his face.

  “And did you make those infidels your friends?” he cried. “Did you put your life in their hands? Did you tell them who you were?”

  “You forget yourself, Theo,” the duke said grimly.

  Theodoric growled something, and spun away, tramping brown October grass.

  “Wasn’t it enough to make him landgrave?” he said at last, bitterly. “To give him the Reinmark’s richest county and its
finest fortress? Wasn’t that enough? Why did you have to tell him everything?”

  “He’s an intelligent man,” Gottfried said. “And a survivor. And while it’s true he fought for men of dubious merit, he’s known to have a stubborn sense of honor. He’s of my generation, remember, not yours; I know the stories better than you.

  “I watched him at the Königsritt, Theo. I watched him very, very carefully. He admires the emperor, not least because Ehrenfried has grown peaceful and scholarly. If I didn’t give him a reason to prefer us — an unusually good reason, I might add — I thought it likely he’d go over to the Salian camp.”

  “I should think, my lord, for a man who was once a landless adventurer, the county of Lys would be more than reason enough.”

  “Reason to stay with the man who gave it to him— or with the man most likely to see him keep it? Our cause may not look strong at the outset. Many of the men who say they’re with me may change their minds when promise comes to payment. And there’s no way of knowing which way the Church will jump. When the killing starts, the Salian camp may look like a good place to be. Ehrenfried has won two civil wars, and fought even the pope to a standstill. Unless Karelian knew the truth, he might well have judged his hard-won fortune safer in the emperor’s hands than in mine.”

  “It seems he’s done so anyway, doesn’t it, my lord? Or do you think it’s just a coincidence that Ehrenfried, at the height of his power and in the prime of his health, suddenly wants to see his son elected and crowned king? Karelian has warned him of your intentions.”

  “It may be. We simply don’t know.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Theodoric said bitterly. He looked at the sky, at the ground, at his father’s unyielding face.

  “Couldn’t you just have let it be? Who’d care in the end if the bastard was with us or not? Let him go over to the Salians and be damned!”

  “I would have,” Gottfried said simply. “I would have let him ride the whirlwind, and live or go down as he chose, except for his image in the willstone. His image armed for combat, with the ducal chain of the Reinmark on his breast, and a glowing sword upraised in his hand.”