The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

assuming the appearance of real gods.

  Lactantius

  * * *

  Only one other time in my life had I been so happy to see battlements— four years earlier, crossing the last sun-baked ridge of an unending desert world, and looking finally upon the storied walls of Jerusalem. I did not weep this time, looking on Stavoren, but I did thank God almost as fervently.

  The castle was not a warrior fort like Schildberge, aloof and inaccessible. It was the regal dwelling of a prince, lodged in the very heart of the land. But it was nonetheless massive and secure, dominating everything around it.

  We could see it for hours before we reached it. We rode past scattered villages and flourishing farms, finally past the broad fields below the castle, where the flower of warrior Germany had gathered just one year ago, at Ehrenfried’s last Königsritt.

  I remembered it all now: the vast army of tents, the feasting and the revelry. The tournament. Karelian and Konrad meeting in the final combat, and Karelian winning.

  No one believed he would win— not even me, when I was being honest with myself. But he won beautifully, magnificently. The Reinmark soared in triumph over the Salian princeling, there before the whole world. And there, before the whole world, Karelian bent, and picked Konrad’s sword out of the trampled grass, and gave it back to him….

  I was exhausted, and maybe a little feverish— why else would I have remembered that moment with such an icy shiver of dismay?

  I was grateful then for Wilhelm’s chattering, for the nearness of the gates, for the sight of Gottfried’s banners snapping in the wind. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I had barely crawled off my horse before a page boy came to fetch me. I was to attend the empress Radegund at once.

  “The empress?”

  I looked at the page boy, who nodded, and then at Wilhelm, who shrugged.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t someone else she wanted?” I asked.

  “You’re Paul von Ardiun, aren’t you?” the boy said. He spoke scornfully, as if to remind me that he knew my name, even if I was too stupid to remember it.

  I went to see the empress. She was waiting for me in the great hall, accompanied only by a pair of servants, and by her son Theodoric. I was exhausted and filthy. I almost stumbled as I knelt to her.

  She saw my weariness, and ordered me to sit, and sent for wine.

  “Have you been wounded, Sir Paul?” she asked. Her voice was kind.

  “No, my lady. I’m a little weary, that is all.”

  “My son Armund and his men speak well of you,” she said. “They say you fought bravely, and fled only when nothing else was possible.”

  A servant brought me a tankard. The queen insisted that I drink, and take a moment to collect my thoughts.

  “There are some things I would like to ask you,” she said then. “You were Lord Karelian’s squire, I believe? You were with him in Ravensbruck?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “You realize, I’m sure, the whole of the Reinmark is in danger from his rebellion. We must move quickly to defend ourselves. We need help, and the first place we would like to seek it is the march of Ravensbruck.”

  She was watching me carefully as she spoke.

  “Count Arnulf of Ravensbruck has always enjoyed a good relationship with us,” she went on. “My lord Gottfried speaks of him as the worthiest of his vassals. Not the best man, perhaps, as a Christian, but the most loyal ally.”

  She paused, very briefly. “He is now Karelian’s father-in-law, which could dampen his loyalty towards us. On the other hand, we have heard certain… rumors. It is said Count Arnulf holds a bitter grudge against the lord of Lys. Perhaps you have some knowledge of this, Paul von Ardiun?”

  Before I could think about how I might answer, she added sternly:

  “Only facts, I caution you. Gossip we have in plenty, and speculation in cartloads. Tell us nothing but what you saw with your own eyes, and heard with your own ears.”

  I looked at her. She was a magnificent woman, not especially beautiful, but very regal. Though she dressed splendidly, as befitted her rank, there was no vanity about her, and not a trace of lewdness. Her gown was high-necked and heavy; her hair was coiffed with a splendid veil.

  I honored her, and I wanted to be of use, but I hated talking about my time with Karelian. I wished the world would forget I had ever known him.

  “When we first came to Ravensbruck,” I said, “everything was fine. They got on very well. Though I don’t think Karelian liked Count Arnulf very much.”

  “Really?” she murmured. “And why not?”

  “Even before the wedding, he said he regretted the alliance. He said he wished he’d gone home to Lys and married a widow with a tavern instead.”

  The empress said nothing, but looked at her son as if she could not quite believe this of any highborn man, even Karelian.

  “They were married nonetheless— my lord and Count Arnulf’s daughter. And then, as I think you know, my lady, Adelaide was found with her lover, Rudolf of Selven, only a few weeks later.”

  “The whole of Germany knows about it. We want to know what happened afterwards. Selven was killed, was he not? By Count Arnulf’s men?”

  “Yes, my lady. We had all been out hunting when it happened. Count Arnulf put his daughter in the dungeon until we got back. He thought Karelian would want to punish her himself. But Karelian didn’t. He said she was just a child. Arnulf was furious about it. He’d been shamed in his own house. And it’s well known, lady, he is a harsh man. He kills… very easily. I thought more than once he would kill the lot of us, just to avenge himself on her. She was his favorite daughter, they say, so he took it very ill.”

  “So what passed between him and Karelian?”

  “I don’t know what passed, my lady. The only time they spoke, it was in private, and afterwards Count Arnulf would sit for hours in his chair, ignoring everyone. But when we left he spoke. He told us he would honor his alliance with Karelian for the sake of the duke— I mean his majesty Lord Gottfried. And then he gave a warning to Karelian I’ll never forget, for it made my blood run cold. Never, he said, never fall out of favor with the duke.”

  The empress and her son exchanged another look.

  For the first time, Theodoric questioned me, too. “Count Arnulf hates him, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said. “And it isn’t just because of the lady Adelaide, it’s—”

  I faltered, realizing I had begun to speculate.

  “Go on,” the empress said.

  “Karelian outfaced him in his own house, in front of his own vassals. Arnulf’s men baited him. At the very end, Arnulf baited him, too. He even tried to stage another marriage, to his younger daughter Helga. But he couldn’t get the better of Karelian, no matter what he did.”

  “But he was injured, wasn’t he?” the empress protested. “We’ve been told he could hardly walk.”

  “Yes, lady, but he had his men there. He could have done anything to us he wanted. But Karelian was… Karelian controlled the situation from the first. He was utterly in the wrong, and he had only a handful of men, and still he controlled it. As though he only needed to decide how things would be, and they were so.”

  It had not, I reflected, been quite so easy or so straightforward. Control was the wrong word. Karelian had maneuvred his way through the threats of Ravensbruck, rather than controlling them. But that was, perhaps, the ultimate manifestation of control.

  There was a brief silence. Then the empress rose, and spoke to her son.

  “Send to Ravensbruck at once,” she said. “He gave us only a token force to send west. Well and good; he has that many more men with him now.”

  She looked at me. “We are grateful, Sir Paul. For your knowledge, and for your loyalty.”

  Perhaps something showed in my face then, for she stepped closer. “You find it painful, perhaps, to speak against the man who was your liege?”

  I started to deny it, and then changed my
mind. She would know. “Yes, my lady.”

  She smiled. For the first time, I remembered she was a mother. She had borne Theodoric and Armund, two other boys who died, and three daughters.

  “Any fool can run downhill,” she said. “It’s the hard, bitter climb which is pleasing to God. But if we endure, in time it won’t be hard. In time we won’t even remember why it used to be so hard.”

  She was a wise lady, one of the few women in the Reinmark who were truly Christian, and truly chaste. She was a fit wife for Gottfried. Yet she was wrong in what she said. I endured, and the time she spoke of never came. I always remembered why it was so hard. I will remember till they carry me to my grave, and I greatly fear I will remember after.

  * * *

  Messengers hurried off to Ravensbruck to remind Count Arnulf of his feudal duties, and to summon him to the field against Karelian. On the way they would stop at the great trading city of Karn, and pass on a few reminders there as well. Like the margravate of Dorn, this city was traditionally a difficult place to deal with, not because its rulers were rash and unpredictable— quite the opposite. They were practical, canny, and pitilessly self-centered. Karn was the best place in Germany to buy anything— fine goods, weapons, mercenaries, whores. It was the worst place in Germany to find a friend.

  I never learned precisely what inducements Theodoric meant to offer Karn for its continuing loyalty. But he was prepared to offer Ravensbruck a royal marriage. Arnulf had unmarried sons, and Arnulf was singularly ambitious. If he proved difficult, the princess Ludmilla, Gottfried’s youngest daughter, would be held out to him as the ultimate reward.

  We waited for his answer, and watched the war unfold. From the first it went strangely. Perhaps every war does. Ordinary human daring and ordinary human stupidity can combine in infinitely unpredictable ways, all by themselves, and our situation was far from ordinary. When the archbishop of Mainz folded his hands and refused to vote, Germany was left with two leaders, and with none. Both had allies and a measure of legitimacy, but neither could wield the full, acknowledged authority of a king. Predictably, chaos followed.

  Swabian barons defied their landgrave and sent knights to Prince Konrad instead. In Konrad’s heartland of Franconia, a visionary monk saw Gottfried on a mountain-top, receiving the crown from Christ himself. Peasants and tradesmen by the hundreds left their homes and followed the monk to Gottfried’s camps. There, just like the common folk who marched to Jerusalem, they ate his food and got in his way, but added nothing to his military strength. The Bavarians prayed for his victory, but they had a great deal of difficulty finding either tithes or food. Konrad’s proud warrior Thuringia swore he would drive the Reinmark usurper headlong into the realms of Hel, but when he called his vassals to arms, only half of them came.

  In Stavoren, we heard these accounts one by one; our hopes rose and fell like the wind. There were battles, but they were small and they settled nothing. There were betrayals and sudden political reverses, but both sides suffered them. Uncertainty seemed to be the order of the day— uncertainty and something else, something elusive, which for months we sensed around us but could not begin to identify. A restlessness. A waiting. An uneasiness quietly mixed with anger.

  Where was God in all of this?

  This was his empire, his people, his king. The war was no ordinary struggle for power. There was evil in the land, a new and desperate peril, but only a handful of Germans were certain what it was, or how they might combat it, or even on which side of the quarrel it could be found. The others wanted to be told— by a miracle, or by the undivided authority of the Church, or by some kind of dazzling, absolutely conclusive victory. Unfortunately, miracles and churchmen were turning up on both sides, and victory on neither.

  Where then was God?

  Only in the Reinmark were matters changing decisively. Using his mountain fortress as a base, Karelian stormed over the whole interior of the duchy. He gobbled up Gottfried’s scattered holdings one by one, overwhelming three small castles and placing the last one under siege. Some twenty barons who held modest fiefs directly from the duke he came to terms with, without battle.

  The duke, he told them, was no longer duke, much less emperor. He had risen against his lawful sovereign, and all his lands and rights were forfeit. He, Karelian, would act as Konrad’s agent and confirm the barons in their possessions, provided they swore allegiance and provided him with aid.

  They were small nobility. They had already sent aid to Gottfried. Not one of them could have put fifty knights in the field in his own defense. They swore.

  Stavoren seemed to exist in a state of permanent crisis. Theodoric wanted to attack— to lead his men across the mountains and thunder into battle like the great Teuton warlord he believed himself to be. But we could get no reliable information about Karelian’s forces. A thousand men … a few hundred … a vast, unstoppable army … everyone who saw him saw something different. As at Schildberge, his strikes were swift, sudden, and successful, and rumor raced on the heels of his victories like fear in a time of plague.

  Viking berserkers had joined him from the north — so we were told — and bearded pagans from the east. They walked across canyons and rivers as other men walked on grass. Earthworks gave way before them; stone walls crumpled like those of Jericho, and hardened men fell dead of fear. The devil himself had been seen flying over the demon lord’s forces, with some five hundred of his legion, and Odin’s ravens, too, bearing messages and carrying off the dead.

  And who was to wonder at it? The great witch of Helmardin herself rode by the count’s side. She was seen in his camps, and on the march, and although no one in the world had ever seen her before, no one doubted her identity. A lady of rank, they said, finely dressed and marvelously beautiful. Surely it was she who called up the darkness and the fog to serve him, and so made possible his secret marches and surprise attacks. It was she whom they saw sometimes behind the battle lines, watching from a hilltop or a solitary cliff, mounted on a coal black horse, weaving death for all who came against him.

  “Is this all you can bring me?” was Theodoric’s usual response, roared out in front of some cringing messenger or exhausted spy. “Panic and imaginings? God’s blood, are there no men left in the Reinmark, just battalions of rabbit-wits scaring each other half to death with stories? I don’t want to hear another word about sorcery, by God! I want numbers, do you understand? You fools can count, can’t you? Bring me numbers!”

  But no numbers came, or rather they kept coming and they kept changing, and Theodoric did not attack. Radegund opposed it, but it was Gottfried, I am sure, who gave the final order: Wait! He himself had almost all of the Reinmark’s best men, and he would not send them back. He needed them, no doubt, but more importantly, he needed to diminish the political importance of Karelian’s rebellion by pretending to ignore it. At the same time, he did not want Theodoric to play into Karelian’s hands with some disastrous, ill-conceived attack. Stavoren was defensible, and Ravensbruck had always been able to look after itself. So be patient, Theodoric; trust my power, and wait!

  The prince waited, but in a singularly wicked temper. He slept very little, and ate on his feet. He summoned his advisors at all hours of the day or night, and often dismissed them with explosions of rage. He was the sort of man who lived on action, whether there was an object for his action or not. Day after day he went around us like a wasp— angry, tireless, and full of sting.

  My own circumstances had changed considerably. I was widely praised for my conduct at Schildberge, and that impressed Theodoric, at least a little. Or perhaps Radegund put in a word for me— or even Gottfried, satisfied at last that I had done my best. In any case, I was given a place in the prince’s personal retinue at Stavoren. I stood guard in his council chambers, and accompanied him on journeys. Wilhelm and I both rode in his escort when he went a second time to Dorn, demanding further proofs of the margrave’s loyalty.

  This time I got to see Karelian’s half-brother in per
son, although briefly and at some distance. I could not hear much of what passed between him and Theodoric, but Ludolf nodded and smiled a lot. Entirely too much, in fact. After, riding back, I asked Wilhelm what he thought.

  “Ugly brute,” he said. “Just like the old man before him.”

  “I don’t mean his looks,” I said. “I mean him. He seemed to be babbling a lot.”

  “He’s between the hammer and the anvil,” Wilhelm said. “And he’s scared to death.”

  “Will he stay loyal, do you think?”

  Wilhelm laughed and spat.

  No one expected much of the margrave of Dorn, least of all Theodoric, who sent his men out to drain the granaries of the margravate, and empty the cellars and the smoke-houses, and drive back to Stavoren most of the goats and the cattle. My father’s fief of Ardiun was raked bare like all the others.

  “If we don’t take it all,” Theodoric said, “that accursed traitor will.”

  It was how wars were fought, of course. The first thing you took from your enemy was his food. But I could not help thinking that the only people likely to go hungry this winter were the people of Dorn. On the other side of the mountains, Karelian had half the Reinmark to feed from.

  * * *

  The envoys came back from the north in August. It was late at night. The empress had retired, and came to the council room wrapped in a great cape, with slippers on her feet.

  You needed only to see the men’s faces to know their news was bad.

  “Majesty.” The spokesman, a knight named Friedrich, bowed deeply to the empress, and then to her son. “My lord. It grieves me beyond words to say this; I would willingly—”

  “For Christ’s sake stop grieving and spit it out!” Theodoric said harshly. “Where is the count of Ravensbruck? How many men has he sent us and are they ready to attack?”

  “He’s in his castle, my lord. He awaits your instructions, and your… reply.”

  “He has my instructions. He’s to join me in putting down this damnable traitor in Lys.”

  “He can’t pass through Karn, my lord. And he will not take the other route unless—”