The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  Gottfried…?

  The thought came with a gulp of fear, and a collapsing in the pit of my stomach. I ran down into the valley, sliding on wet rocks and stumbling over broken trees, praying that Gottfried wasn’t dead, he could not be, he could not! Even to imagine it was to imagine the world utterly undone.

  The first man I met was a peasant dragging bundles of firewood, walking with his head down, bent against the wind. He knew the reason for the mourning bell. The whole world knew, I think, except me.

  Ehrenfried, lord of the Holy Roman Empire and king of the Germans, was dead.

  “Oh.”

  Oh, thank God, it isn’t Gottfried, thank the Lord…! I tried to hide my shattering relief, but I don’t think I succeeded, for the peasant was looking at me oddly. I lowered my eyes and quickly signed the cross.

  “God have mercy on him,” I said.

  “Aye, master,” the peasant said. “And on us all.”

  I barely heard him, overwhelmed by my own emotions. First that simple animal flood of thankfulness, so intense I almost cried. And then surprise, remembering the stocky, scholarly-looking man who sat just a few months ago at Gottfried’s feast table, not yet fifty, and hale as a well-fed merchant. None of us, I thought, knew the hour of our going, not even kings.

  And even with those reactions came the other, the sudden wild leap of possibility, the moment of breath-catching hope. Was this the time? Would Gottfried be king now, just as he had promised in the pavilion of Stavoren? Ehrenfried is a fool, a prattling dreamer with his head full of scrolls, good for nothing but chess games and prayers. I will replace him!

  But Ehrenfried had a son, I reminded myself, young and skilful in arms, with no taste for chess games and less for prayers. He was highly thought of among the high lords of Germany.

  My heart sank into my boots, remembering Prince Konrad. Gottfried might have had some hope of deposing Ehrenfried, an aging king whose moral authority had been permanently weakened by his defiance of Rome, and by the resulting twenty years of civil war. But a young king? A legitimate heir whom no one hated, with the warrior talents and the warrior temperament Germans so admired… dear God, I thought, what hope would my lord have now?

  “Konrad will be elected king, then,” I said.

  “Might be,” the peasant said. He fidgeted with the harness straps on his shoulders, and made as if to move on with his burden.

  He looked… afraid. Afraid the way men are in the presence of great evil or terrible uncertainty. It was contagious. The question leapt into my mind like an arrow.

  “Wait!” I said. “How did the king come to die?”

  “You haven’t heard, master?”

  “I’ve heard what you just told me, nothing else.”

  “They say he was murdered.” He crossed himself. “In his own chamber, they say.”

  “Murdered? Dear God, by whom?”

  “How could I know that, master?”

  I could get nothing more from him. I had to find an inn, and some men who had been drinking for an hour or two, before anyone would repeat what was clearly being whispered from one border of the empire to the other. Ehrenfried had indeed been murdered in his chamber, by someone he must have trusted, someone who could get close enough to stab him in the back while he drank a cup of wine. And Prince Konrad had quarreled with his father— bitterly, publicly, repeatedly. He was in the palace at the time the king was attacked, but no one seemed to know where.

  None of these lowly folk, even with their bellies full of ale, would say anything more in public. But it was clear enough what they were wondering, what everyone in Germany must be wondering. Was it the prince, perhaps, who had slain his father? And if he had — or even if he hadn’t — what would such a possibility do to the succession?

  Gottfried and the other princes of Germany had already been summoned, and were already traveling to Mainz with all possible haste to choose a new king. Normally, if the emperor left behind a worthy son, the crown passed to him without much question. But there would be questions now. And if the questions were not resolved, there was likely to be blood. For one thing was well-known, even among the common folk: the young prince was arrogant, strong-willed, and hungry for power.

  One man sat, with two huge hands knotted around his tankard, and his elbows on the table, glowering at a spot somewhere beyond us on the wall.

  “It be Konrad,” he said, “or it be war.”

  He was grim and troubled. But my own heart rose the more I thought on these events, the more I listened. I saw in all of it the clear hand of God, the shape of an inevitable pattern unfolding, where even the worst deeds by the worst of men fell into place like pieces of mosaic. I felt sorry for these grumbling peasants, dull-witted people thinking of nothing but their crops, their little jars of coin. They were so afraid of what a war might cost them; they could not imagine what splendors it might bring.

  I was never bloodthirsty. I never wanted war for its own sake, as some men did. But I was not afraid, and I wanted to tell the people so, and I wanted to tell them why. It will be a war like no other, and after it will come the kingdom! It’s all part of God’s design, and the last thing we should wish for is to stop it!

  But I couldn’t say a word. I could only listen, and wrap myself at last in a filthy blanket, and wait for morning. Then I went back to my bitter searching, to the one place left for me to go. I took the road for Ravensbruck, as we had all done one fateful dark November, and I haunted the ragged hills below the wood of Helmardin.

  Karelian would come there sooner or later. If he still lived at all, he would come.

  It was snowing the night I found him. I was cold and hungry, and my courage was almost gone. I had been in the area for weeks, and I had found nothing. Oh, there were occasional abandoned campsites, but they could have been made by any forester or bandit. And there was talk sometimes of strangers. Lone travelers passed through the inns, ate their meals with half-hooded faces and went away, but what of it? They had been doing so for a hundred years. Once I found a peasant who remembered selling bread and sausages to a traveler who paid him in gold. This seemed promising, for a while, but the traveler left no traces thereafter, neither in the wilds nor on the roads.

  Through every hour of it I lived in terror. Even as humans traveled it, I was only a few day’s journey from the edge of Helmardin. From the very lair of witches and demon-creatures who could fly and change their shapes; who rode on the night winds and trod the darkness with feet which never made a sound; who did not die from the wounds of ordinary weapons; who stalked men, and strangled them with vines and drowned them in marshes. Who sought always and especially to undo their souls, to make them numb or blind, to lure them with music or lust or promises of gold into a dark and endless enslavement.

  Many a night I sat shivering and sleepless, catching my breath at every sound, swearing that with the first hint of daylight I would go back to Stavoren, and throw myself on Gottfried’s mercy: Do with me as you will, my lord, but please don’t send me back there; I will go mad! But with daylight it was always a little easier. Maybe, I would tell myself, maybe I’ll find him this very day. Maybe tonight I’ll sleep in an inn. Maybe I’ll find out he’s already been captured. I had to go on. If I wanted to ever have Gottfried’s favor, I had to go on.

  I did not sleep that night in an inn. It began to snow late in the afternoon: a light snow, the flakes small and hard-edged, spun about in bitter gusts of wind. I sought what shelter I could in a gully, under the lee of a cliff. I made an ill-burning fire, and scorched a bit of meat on it, and ate it without noticing what it was. Finally, too frightened to sleep and too exhausted to stay properly awake, I curled into a ball beside my fire and dreamt of dying.

  And woke to the whisper of steps on the frozen earth, the glint of a sword in the firelight, a very real sword, poised mortal inches from my throat.

  “Get up,” a voice said.

  I was dazed with sleep and terror, and the wind was gusting snow into my face.
I stumbled to my feet. The man with the sword stayed carefully back from the fire; he was just a darker shape against the darkness.

  “Please,” I said. “I have nothing to steal, I’m a pilgrim….”

  “Pauli…?”

  He did not sheathe his weapon, but with his other hand he reached and flung the hood back from my face, and then he laughed.

  “Pauli! What in God’s name are you doing here, lad? I all but cut your throat for one of Gottfried’s hounds!”

  And even then, though I knew his voice, and his laughter, and even the scent of his body, and though my eyes were waking to the light, still it took me a moment to recognize him. Because of the wind lashing snow in my face. Because I had been waiting so long, and seen him so many times when he was not there. Because he no longer looked like a nobleman at all, but like a common bandit.

  “My lord…?”

  His cloak was dark-stained and torn in many places; ridges of snow clung in the fouled and matted tangles of his hair. His boots were in ruins, and the rest of his garments looked as though he had been chased by hounds through a hundred leagues of swamps and rocks and briars.

  “Pauli.” His voice was warm as I had rarely heard it, and it all but undid me with guilt. “I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life. But how did you get here? What’s happening in Lys?”

  “I escaped, my lord.” I could not keep my voice from shaking. It was better so, perhaps. “I knew you were wounded. The duke’s men boasted of it; they said you were probably dead. But I didn’t believe it.”

  “You are the best of lads, my friend. The very best. Come, there’s no need… I’m all right now.”

  Why did I weep then, like a stupid boy? Why did I let him wrap me in his arms, even for a moment? I was cold and frightened and raw with loneliness, with all those weeks of wandering and dread. And I forgot. That is all I can say in my defense: I forgot. He was Gottfried’s enemy, and mine. He was a sorcerer, a thousand times more perilous than death. And I forgot.

  “Sit, lad, come sit, and tell me everything. Has Reinhard kept my fortress safe?”

  “Yes, the last I’ve heard. Duke Gottfried has given the county to his second son, to young Armund, and he has the castle under siege. But Reini swears he won’t surrender. It’ll take a year to starve him out.”

  “Longer,” Karelian said. “It’s well provisioned; I saw to that. And what of my lady, and the babe? Are they safe?”

  “They’re with Reinhard in the castle. It was your priest, Father Thomas, who fetched the child there, and he is with them.”

  “Good. One card, at least, the duke can’t play against me.”

  “Otto is dead, my lord,” I said.

  His only reaction was a troubled frown. He had lost weight, I saw, and he was so weary. Yet there was a hardness in him I had never seen before, even in the war camps of the Holy Land.

  Did he know?

  I swallowed, and tried not to think about it. I made myself ask the questions I had to ask, the questions anyone in my place would ask if he were innocent.

  “My lord, I don’t understand what happened— why Gottfried turned against you so. You were his most favored vassal. Why would he accuse you of such dreadful things? It makes no sense at all.”

  He did not answer me for a time. The fire burned poorly, and he played with it, wondering, I suppose, how much he should confide in me.

  “Gottfried himself is guilty of all the things he accused me of. He is a sorcerer, although he would deny it, and claim his power comes from God. But he is a sorcerer nonetheless.”

  I stared at him, astonished. Gottfried a sorcerer? Yes, but of course; he would have to say it. Perhaps he would even believe it.

  “He plotted mutiny against our common lord, the emperor Ehrenfried,” Karelian went on. “Now that Ehrenfried is dead, I am sure he’ll try to block Konrad’s succession, and take the crown for himself. And if you want to know how I know, it’s quite simple. He told me. He invited me to join him, to be his ally and his warleader, first against the king, and then against whomever he chose to conquer next.”

  “God in heaven…!” I whispered. “But if he asked you to join him, then why—?”

  “Why did he withdraw the invitation?” Karelian said dryly. “I’m not sure. But obviously he discovered I’m against him, though I pretended not to be. His powers of sorcery are exceptional, more than we ever guessed.”

  “But….” I threw out my hands. “I can hardly believe it. The duke always seemed so… so Christian.”

  “What of it? The history of the Church is full of magic. Dying men rise cured from their beds. Dead trees fill with flowers. Stones talk. Sound bridges collapse for no reason, and broken ones mend. People walk through fire without so much as a blister. The list could go on forever—”

  “But those were miracles! Are you trying to say the holy saints were nothing more than sorcerers?”

  “Nothing more?” He smiled faintly. “To be good at sorcery is a considerable achievement, Paul. But yes, those who worked miracles were magicians. That’s what magic is: doing what seems impossible, by using powers other people don’t have, or never learn to use.”

  “But there are only two powers beyond the common world, my lord: those of God, and those of Satan—!”

  He laughed. “There are a million powers, and everyone uses them who can. Power is, Pauli. That’s all. It just is. It exists, and the Church didn’t stop it from existing. All the Church did was lay claim to everything which served its own advancement, and pour guilt and damnation on the rest. If a priest heals a wounded man to prove God’s power to the heathen, he’s likely to be canonized. If a witch does the same because she loves him, she’s likely to be burnt. And it has nothing to do with God or Satan. It has to do with who runs things in the world.”

  “You can’t believe that, my lord.”

  He looked at me, and then at the fire, and then at me again. “Tell me something,” he said. “We’ve crossed words on things like this before. You know I’ve left the Church. I left it in Jerusalem, and I’ll never go back. Have you never considered… serving another lord? One more suited to your heart and conscience?”

  It felt like the most dangerous moment of my life.

  “You’ve always been good to me, my lord….” I faltered. And the words placed themselves in my throat, without conscious thought or judgment, the words I knew I had to say, the words I knew he would believe because he wanted to believe them. Everyone did. It was every man’s eternal, irremediable weakness. Mine as well….

  “And I… I could never love any other lord as much, no matter how good he was. I would always wish I were still by your side.”

  Yes, I did say it. I said all of it, and even as I spoke I knew it was true. Which was also why he would believe it. He was the one who made it so.

  He watched me for a moment. I could not read his eyes, only the dance of firelight on his face, playing over every sharp and well remembered line.

  “And besides,” he said at last, with a faint smile, “if you argue with me long enough, and well enough, I might come to see the folly of my ways.”

  “That too, my lord,” I agreed, and smiled in return. For the moment, I knew I was safe.

  He slept peacefully against the small shelter of the cliff, comforted perhaps by my presence, by my unexpected and exaggerated gift of loyalty. And you might well ask why I did not kill him then, why I did not simply take my dagger and drive it into his heart.

  I could not do it, and you may judge it as you wish. I was only a boy, and he was a man who had lived through every kind of violence, who probably knew every kind of trick. The knight was perilous enough to deal with. The sorcerer… no, dear God, it was quite beyond me. Who could say what he might observe even in his sleep? Or what evil things hovered there beside him, unseen, ready to wake him at the smallest danger?

  I could not kill him, not like this. But if I did not, then I had to get the cross back. Every passing hour increased my danger. W
e were too close to Helmardin now, too close to her. She would find it in a moment. She would sense its power like a burned hand sensed a flame. And once either of them knew, and had me in their power…. I could not bear to think of it, and yet I had no courage to act against him. Worse, I didn’t even want to.

  I huddled against the wind, wrapped in my cloak. For the first time in my life, I felt bitter against Gottfried. Why had he sent me here? Didn’t he know how terrible it would be? Didn’t he know that the darker Karelian’s image became for me, the more I was held in its power? Everything about him now possessed a sordid fascination, not least the fact that he belonged to them. I did not will it so, and I could not control it. All the time we sat by the fire and talked of Lys and politics and saints, my loins were hot and throbbing. With a part of my consciousness I listened to his questions and responded, and with another part I remembered his body against my own, the harsh smell of sweat and bracken, the rush of blood which sickened me and took my breath away. I’d been all but overcome by the impulse to continue, to begin again. Even now — oh yes, now more than ever as he slept beside me, as I wondered what I should do, and how I might hope to save myself — even now I wanted to thrust myself against him like a rutting dog.

  I say wanted, but it is the wrong word, for I didn’t want to. There was no real desire in it, nor any thought of pleasure. No conscious will. Only a driven impulse, crude and feverish, as a man might feel towards a harlot in the street. I could not make it stop, and finally I used my hands— one of the gravest sins I could commit, save for the one I dreaded more. Then I wept, thinking of Gottfried, and of how he would despise me if he knew. How everyone would despise me, and believe of me things which were not true. I never had a carnal nature, never, not like other youths my age, not like my brother, who was always in difficulty, always in the confessional begging God’s forgiveness. I avoided the snares of wanton girls. In truth, I found it easy to avoid them, most times. And when I first entered Karelian’s service, when I was with him in the Holy Land, those other thoughts had never crossed my mind.