The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  And then I heard his voice, heard it maybe in my soul before I heard it in my flesh, soft and close by, without the whisper of a footstep to warn me.

  “Is this what you’re looking for, Pauli?”

  I turned, scrambling to my feet. He stood about ten feet away, his left hand slightly outstretched. The cross was too tiny to recognize even at such a brief distance, but as he moved the afternoon sun caught the crystal, and it shimmered. I made myself look at his face, and then at his other hand, holding his naked sword.

  “My lord…?”

  There are no words for my fear. It was so overwhelming and yet so ambivalent, so mixed with feelings of guilt, with outrage at my own stupidity, and also, with something very close to relief. It was over. Whatever happened now, it was finally over.

  Would things have turned out different in the world, if it really had been over? If I had faced him bravely and said: Yes, I have betrayed you; yes, I belong to Gottfried, yes! If he had used his sword, and truly ended it, I would have had no further part to play in the story. I would not have been there when it all was decided. I could not have done what I did.

  Would it have mattered?

  The wondering is a pain which never leaves me. All I know is what I did: I threw myself upon my knees and pleaded.

  “My good lord, forgive me, I didn’t know, they told me it would help you, I swear to you I didn’t know…!”

  “Who told you? Stand on your feet, damn you! You had the gall to do this, you should have gall enough to answer for it! Get up! And tell me who put you up to this, and how, while you still have breath to do it!”

  I stood. I tried to compose myself.

  “Two priests, my lord. They came to me in Ardiun. They said there was talk all over the Reinmark about you, that you were turning apostate. And they asked me how it was possible, when you had served so well in the great crusade—!”

  “And you didn’t defend me?” he asked scornfully. “My good and faithful squire?”

  “I did at first, but….”

  “But what?”

  “They knew a great deal about you, my lord.”

  “Go on.”

  “They asked me if I might know why you had… changed. They said there must be some dark influence in your life, because those who had gone to Jerusalem were especially favored by God’s grace, and should be the last to falter. I wanted only to help you, my lord, I swear it—!”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That you had been to Car-Iduna. That you were… seduced there.”

  “You gave your word you’d never speak of Car-Iduna!”

  “They were priests, my lord, and concerned for your welfare—”

  “Yes, obviously. Go on.”

  “They gave me the cross. They said it was especially blessed, and very powerful. They said it would protect you from… from sorcery. I never thought it was evil, my lord. I swear to you I didn’t!”

  “Then why—” He took a small, perilous step closer. “Why were you searching for it? Tell me, Pauli. If you believed it was protecting me, then why would you want to take it away?”

  I backed away. I could not help it. And I think it was less from fear than from despair, from the knowledge I read in his eyes. He would never trust me again, never care about me, never want me near him. I should have been glad. I was glad. And yet it had the sharpness of a knife being driven in my flesh— driven and turned there, and turned again.

  “Because of what you told me, my lord,” I whispered. “About Gottfried being a sorcerer. Because of what happened. I realized it had to be … that it wasn’t … what they said.”

  He said nothing. I don’t think he believed me. What was important was that he didn’t entirely disbelieve me. I confess to feeling a small tug of pride, because I had fashioned a credible story with no time at all to consider it. I could, sometimes, think very well on my feet.

  “I beg your forgiveness, my lord.”

  “You I may yet forgive,” he said. “Your God I will not.”

  I shuddered at the blasphemy, and I suppose he saw it, for he made a brief, savage gesture of contempt.

  “You still don’t see it, do you? What men do for this God of yours, and what it turns them into? Jerusalem is butchered, and Lys burned, and the empire ready to shatter into pieces, and all of it for God, and you can’t even see it! You’ve turned into a liar and a traitor, and you can’t see that, either. All you have left for a mind is an echo. You’d send me to the stake and call it love, protesting your virtue every step of the way! With so much love in the world, men hardly need to bother hating, do they?”

  There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do except steel myself against his suddenly unleashed rage. I understood now why the veela had dismissed him as a bandit. He had hardened since our days in Lys. Or perhaps, without the glamour of fine garments and knightly rituals, he was simply revealing a hardness which had always been there. Your master was a savage at sixteen, starving for glory and too angry to think straight….

  Always angry, year after bloodswept year, the rage transferred from his father to other proud and powerful men, one after another, and finally to his liege lord and to God.

  “Did you ever care about me at all, Pauli?” he asked bitterly. “Myself— the man, the knight, the soldier you rode beside? Or just that little abstraction you call my soul? Which isn’t really mine at all, it seems, since I’m to have no lordship over it. It’s just ransom money for men like you to buy their place in heaven. Look, Lord Father, here’s another one I’ve brought you, all shivering and gelded, drowning in guilt for merely being born!

  “Isn’t that more or less what you had in mind, Pauli? Dragging me back to your priestlings like a hound on a chain?”

  “I meant you no evil, my lord—”

  He cut me off with a rough gesture. “I’m quite aware of it, lad. You wouldn’t recognize evil if it tore you into pieces, as long as it wore a cross around its neck! Take out your sword, and drop it on the ground.”

  I obeyed, dry-mouthed with fear.

  “What are you going to do to me, my lord?”

  “By the laws of fealty your life is forfeit, Pauli, as you know. I could kill you where you stand. I could take you prisoner to Car-Iduna, and let my lady deal with you….”

  He paused, letting those dark threats hang long in the air.

  “Or,” he added finally, “I could bind you and let you go.”

  “Bind me, my lord?” I whispered.

  “Yes.” And then he smiled, the smile I used to love, which could have melted the moon. Only there was darkness in it now. It was not malice; it went infinitely beyond malice, as though he simply looked upon something which he knew to be true, and knowing it, was satisfied.

  “Yes,” he said again. “You shall be bound to do no further harm, neither to me, nor to her whom I serve. By your own cross, Paul von Ardiun, by your own lord, whichever one he is—”

  The smile was gone, the soft voice turned to granite. “You have your life back, but under this mortal ban: Any wrong you seek to do us shall return to you. Come to us with fire, and you will burn in it; with poison, and you will drink it; with cunning, and you’ll be snared in it. I’ve spared you once. Neither the gods themselves, nor the winds nor the seas nor the turning of the stars will spare you a second time!”

  And then, without a shred of fear, for he knew his own strength, he sheathed his sword and stepped close to me, taking my face between his palms.

  “So may it be,” he said.

  He drew his hands away, and I saw that he held in one of them the raven’s feather, and in the other Gottfried’s cross.

  “By your gods or by mine, Pauli, it will be so.”

  That was how we parted. And though I would see him many times thereafter, it was always from a distance, across the camps and council rooms of war. We never met as friends again. Oh, there is an apparition which comes into my cell in the dead of night, and speaks as he used to do, but it is only a de
mon she sends to torment me. In the world of men those were his words of farewell, and they were truthful: By your gods or by mine, it will be so. All my deeds thereafter undid themselves, like a rope unravelling from one end even as it was braided from the other.

  Now in this chronicle I must finally undo myself.

  THIRTY

  A Knight and His Lady

  A noble man must not resist love,

  for love will help to make him well.

  Wolfram von Eschenbach

  * * *

  The tent was warm, and the first taste of heated wine was a rush of pure pleasure. Karelian drank it all, and lowered the cup to see her smiling at him. No matter how many times he saw her smile, he would turn to see it again, to be reminded once again that she loved him. That she blamed him for nothing.

  She made it quite clear when she rode into his camp, jumping off her horse and wrapping him in her arms: “Karel, Karel, Karel…!” She barely noticed her escort, barely responded to their deferential and slightly amused requests. “Put the tent anywhere, I don’t care…. What, Marius? Food? Yes, make us some food. Karel, where were you, my love, we searched and we searched and we couldn’t find you…!” No blame at all, only desperate questions and a still more desperate tenderness.

  “Are you all right, Karel? You look weary to death.”

  “I’m all right.”

  She was beautifully dressed, in hunting garments of rich leather trimmed with fur; her elegance only made him more aware of his own disreputable state. In the shelter of the tent she had taken off her hooded cape, and her hair spilled black and wanton over her shoulders.

  “We must talk,” she had said. “The electors are already in Mainz, meeting to choose a new king.”

  He filled his cup again, and toasted her. He did not want to talk— not about Gottfried, not about the world. He wanted to disarrange her hair. First her hair, then the soft tunic lacings which gathered at her throat.

  “What happened, Raven?” he asked. “You promised me you’d warn the king. Didn’t he heed the warnings at all?”

  “Yes and no.”

  She paced a little, as she did when she was deeply troubled. “Things have gone… strangely. It shouldn’t surprise us, considering who we’re dealing with. And considering your own fate in Lys.

  “I sent messengers to Ehrenfried— good men, clever and trustworthy. They told him he was in danger, that the duke of the Reinmark meant to usurp his crown. And he seemed to believe them at first. He said he would guarantee the succession by having Konrad crowned in the spring. And then, as we all know, he sent his envoys out to summon the electors.

  “Something you must remember about the emperor, Karel: he’s always been very much a Christian. His long fight against the pope was never a fight against the Church— or at least, he never saw it that way at the time.

  “In the fall, a few months after my messengers spoke to him, he went hunting and was tumbled from his horse. It was the tiniest of mishaps. They say he only bruised his shoulder, but I think he must have hit his head on a rock. For after that he stopped talking about the succession, and went on instead about dying and the afterlife, and spent endless hours in the chapel worrying about his sins. When my messengers spoke to him again, to remind him that his problems in this life might be of more immediate concern— do you want to know what he said, Karel? You will not believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “He said our warning was a warning from God. It made him realize he had to mend his life, and more precisely, he had to mend his relationship with Rome. If he were once again a true and obedient son of Christ’s vicar the pope, the danger would pass; his kingdom would be safe. And that’s how he set about protecting himself. By going to confession, and writing long, self-abasing letters to the pope.”

  Karelian drained his cup, and filled it yet again.

  “Everything we do turns back on us,” he said bitterly. “Like spit blown into the wind.”

  “Needless to say, my love, Konrad wasn’t happy with his father’s change of heart. He didn’t want the empire tucked under the pope’s belt buckle before he had a chance to inherit it. And Konrad, for all his faults, has at least one solid virtue: he thinks for himself. They quarreled— several times in private, and finally in public.”

  “If Gottfried set all of this up,” Karelian murmured, “he did it extraordinarily well.”

  “Yes. It seems the last quarrel was particularly ugly. Konrad is never careful what he says. He cursed his father, and said he wasn’t fit to be a king. Two days later the emperor was stabbed in his chamber. He was still alive when they found him. They say he whispered his son’s name over and over, but whether he was accusing him, or asking for him, or naming him as his successor, no one can say.”

  “And there’s no trace of the murderer, I suppose.”

  “None whatever. But it must have been someone close to the king, someone with easy access to his quarters.”

  “Probably, but not necessarily. I’ve slipped into a few well-guarded chambers in my life, and out again— and don’t smile so knowingly, my lady; it wasn’t always for pleasure.”

  She regarded him a moment, thoughtfully.

  “Anyone might have killed the emperor, Raven,” he went on. “Anyone who planned it carefully enough. A servant, a courtier, a hired assassin— anyone. But of course they will blame the prince.”

  “Not openly— at least not yet. There are no grounds for blaming him, except the quarrel, and his father’s incoherent words. There’s only a cloud of suspicion. And for a man like Konrad, whispers and doubts may prove worse than an open accusation. He’s reckless, Karel; reckless and arrogant. It may be easy for his enemies to bait him into doing something stupid.”

  “Christ….” He shook his head, and said nothing more. He reached for the wine, and then let his hand fall; he was already light-headed, and she was far too beautiful.

  “The princes are already meeting?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you… sent anyone?”

  “To the electoral council of the Holy Roman Empire? You jest, my love.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t mean officially.”

  She did not return the smile. “I have a few spies in the world. A few messengers. A few friends who still care what becomes of our future and our freedom. Unfortunately, none of them have a place among the high lords of empire. You were my hope for an entry there, Karel. Now even you are discredited and disempowered—”

  “If you have no objection, lady, I’d like to die before you bury me. I’m still a good knight, and Konrad has need of allies. Desperate need of them, I think.”

  “Allies accused of sorcery and treason, when he himself is under the shadow of a worse condemnation? He can hardly risk it.”

  “That will depend,” he said. “I’ve been in more wars than I care to remember, Raven. I’ve seen men lose land and honor over trifles, and I’ve seen others prosper in the face of accusations far worse than these. And it had nothing to do with guilt, proven or otherwise.”

  He took her by the shoulders, lightly. “I’ll make you a wager— and if you win, you may name the prize. I wager I’ll have a place among Konrad’s captains an hour after I meet with him. Agreed?”

  She smiled then, faintly, and brushed the back of her hand across his cheek.

  “I’m beginning to understand why I chose you for this,” she said.

  “So am I, my Lady of the Mountain. You chose me for the same reasons Gottfried did.”

  “Some of the same reasons.” She still caressed him, and the sweetness of it almost hurt. “Do you blame me for it?”

  “No. You read me better than he did. Will you take my wager?”

  “I’d probably lose.”

  “Then I will name the prize,” he said.

  “That could be dangerous.”

  He bent to brush his mouth across her throat. For a moment he thought she might draw away — Gottfried was in Mainz, after all, getting hims
elf made king — but she only leaned her head back slightly, to let him play. He found the lacings of her tunic and began to undo them. Just to look at her, just for a moment, and kiss her there, through that fine scented silk….

  Every touch was a shock of remembered delight: wild hair tangling in his hands, the pulse of her throat against his mouth, the whisper of his fingers between her breasts, taking nothing, not yet, just tugging the soft leather strands from their eyelets. He would not make love to her, that was too much to expect, unshaven and bedraggled and dirty as he was, and she a highborn lady and a queen. Or so he told himself, quite aware at the same time that she was veela, and veelas were as wild as the forests they lived in.

  “Raven.”

  The tunic fell open. He slid it softly back across her shoulders. He had forgotten how exquisitely voluptuous she was, forgotten it and never forgotten it, exaggerated it in his memory and his anticipation, and yet he was surprised, catching his breath at the sight of her. The shift she wore hid nothing, merely draped itself over the curves of her shoulders and the mounds of her breasts like a bit of wanton mist. Her nipples were hard without his touching them, pressing against the silk like copper pebbles. He thought of Lady Malanthine, and he wanted to laugh; in a thousand glittering veela years she would never equal this half-worldly witch— not in anything, and least of all in sheer sexual power.

  “Lady.” He was surprised at the rawness in his voice. “Would the queen of Car-Iduna consider bedding down with a bandit?”

  “Just any bandit? Any ratty knave who happened by? Really, my lord count.”

  He caught her face between his palms, slid the tips of his fingers over the high line of her cheekbones. Her face was angular, sharply but very finely chiselled. Her skin was pale, and her eyes black like her hair. He had known many splendidly made women, and bedded more than one, but he had never been enchanted like this. Pauli called it sorcery. If it was, he truly did not care.