The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  He wondered how she would judge him now. Count of Lys, and apostate sorcerer. Champion of a lawful king, and rebel against the established order of the world. Crusader knight, and bondsman of a pagan witch.

  Probably she would smile, the way she always had, and brush his hair back from his face: You will do splendidly, Karel. You will win, I know it! You will be a hero, a great lord the whole of Germany will look up to…!

  And then it would be paid for, made worthwhile somehow: the life which had been no life at all, the marriage without a whisper of joy, the years of unrelenting quiet fear. She had had so much potential for life, and so much hunger for it, and year by year it spilled through her hands like broken beads: her beauty wasted, her passions unspent, her daughters rushed into early, low-rank marriages to keep them safe, her son fled into mercenary exile.

  But he would be a great lord.

  He had imagined, in his youthful arrogance, that she was possessed of a dazzling and magnificent faith in himself. What she was possessed of was an obsession— a blind, life-sustaining fantasy of vindication and revenge.

  It was she, more than anyone, who taught him to fight. Christian though she was, there was no turning the other cheek in the manor house of Dorn. And he went on fighting because of her, slashing his way across the world in a twenty-year pilgrimage to the blood-watered streets of Jerusalem. Because he was better than all of them, like she always said, and he would prove it.

  But should he blame her for that— or thank her still, because he was one of the handful who understood what happened there, and walked away? She taught him the laws of rank and power, God and king and all the world in its place. But with every act of tenderness and impassioned sheltering she undid her own words. She loved him, and she would not give him up to the laws of power.

  They can’t hurt you, Karel. Not inside. They’re older, they’re stronger, they have authority; it doesn’t matter. You know who you are, and no one can make you less.

  Soft words and a safe place to sleep; a woman’s hand in his hair; a last, wrinkled apple cut carefully in half and savored by candlelight, in the dead of winter— all worth more than power, more than the world’s approval, even while the world’s approval was held up as a banner to be won with blood and fire. It was a contradiction which took him twenty years to resolve, but without her, there would have been no contradiction at all. There would only have been them, Helmuth and his sons, and he would have grown up like them. It was she who made possible the questions she herself would never ask, the defiance she could give voice to only by giving it to him.

  You know who you are, Karelian, and no one can make you less.

  No one. In the end not even God.

  The church of Dorn was large and old and gloomy, built by a missionary saint whose name Karelian had forgotten, probably on purpose. He felt alien in it, aware that he did not belong. He disturbed a presence here; he could feel it stir and watch him. Why have you come to my temple, unbeliever? What is it that you want?

  There was no hostility in the question, only the aloofness of a sky lord looking down from an immense distance at a tiny, unimportant creature.

  He made a small bow in the direction of the main altar. He meant no offense, but he would do what he came to do, and if offense were taken, well, so be it. Then he knelt before his mother’s tomb, lifted the small clay urn in his hands, lit it, and held it high until the last scented petal had burned and curled into ash.

  Honor to you, Gudrun Rath von Brandeis. I am and I am not the proud lord you dreamed I would be. I ride now by the shoulder of the king… and I may well die on the stake before I am done. But I loved you, lady mother, every hour that I lived, and I love you still.

  The fire swayed and curled in water. For her, the masters of Dorn could still make him cry.

  * * *

  He was less inclined than ever to be patient with Ludolf when he returned to their meeting place. But Ludolf apparently knew when he was outmatched. He had signed the treaty. And stamped it with a great thump of anger, for the seal was badly smudged.

  Karelian glanced at it, rolled it up, and passed it Reinhard.

  “Your oath, margrave,” he said.

  It would hurt Ludolf to have to kneel to him— hurt him more than a heated iron. And yes, Karelian was demanding the oath for Konrad’s sake; it was the proper, necessary thing to do. That did not change a thing. The satisfaction it would give him had nothing to do with Konrad.

  “My loyalty to Prince Konrad is guaranteed in the treaty,” Ludolf said coldly.

  “Do you speak of his majesty the king, margrave?”

  “You know who I’m speaking of—!”

  “Then speak of him with proper respect. As for your personal allegiance, I am commanded to receive it, and receive it I will.”

  “Do you do everything he commands, little brother?”

  Karelian caught his breath. He was swept by a blinding, stomach-wrenching flood of rage. He had a fragment of his tactical good sense left— enough to know this was just Ludolf being Ludolf. It was not about politics, not about the empire or Konrad or the allegiances of Dorn. He had sense enough to know it, but not enough to care. Not any more. For fifteen years he had endured Ludolf just being Ludolf— being eldest, being bully, being permitted. Well, by the gods, not any more!

  He swept forward and struck his brother savagely across the face with the back of his hand. And stepped back, in a silence so absolute he could hear his own heart hammering.

  The margrave straightened, touched his cheek with a kind of lingering disbelief.

  “You dare?” he whispered.

  “Margrave.” It was hard for Karelian to keep his voice calm, hard to stand there and behave like a lord. A boy, a common soldier, even a wandering knight could brawl sometimes, could fling a man across a room and batter him into the walls, use knees on him, boots, wine jugs, anything in reach, until he was a heap that his friends would have to come and carry away. He wanted that. More than anything in the world, just now, he wanted to break Ludolf into very numerous, very small pieces.

  “I will say this only once,” he said. “I am not little brother. I am the count of Lys, and his majesty’s commander in the Reinmark. Until a new duke is named, I am the de facto ruler of this duchy.”

  He paused to let the reminder properly sink in. Then he went on.

  “Since you are my kinsman, I’ll overlook your disrespect towards myself— this time. Your disrespect towards my liege the king you will apologize for.”

  It did not seem possible the room could grow more silent than it was. But it did.

  “I will apologize?” Ludolf was pale and almost trembling with rage. “You dare to strike me under a flag of truce, and I will apologize?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never!”

  “You will apologize, margrave, and you’ll swear allegiance to your king. Or I will take Dorn— and when I do, I’ll hang you from your own gates like a dog!”

  “That’s what you really want, isn’t it?” Ludolf said bitterly. “To take Dorn away from me!”

  “It’s not what I really want. On the other hand, it won’t grieve me much.”

  Ludolf steadied himself a little with wine.

  “Men answer in the field for smaller insults than what you’ve offered me,” he said.

  “So challenge me. But consider this: you’re too old to fight, and I am here on the king’s business. I’m not about to waste my time duelling with one of your lackeys. So two men who’ve never met will try to kill each other on our behalf, in a quarrel neither of them started. Perhaps it will satisfy your honor, but when it’s over, I’ll take Dorn just as surely, and I’ll hang you just as high.”

  He smiled. It was a fiend’s smile, probably. He did not care. He was taut to his core with pure, shimmering hate.

  “Surprise me, Ludolf. Show me you actually have enough good sense to stay alive.”

  The margrave looked at him briefly, turned away, walked a little, turned back.<
br />
  “And what is the… king… offering me for my allegiance?”

  “He will assure your hereditary right to Dorn, and overlook any past collaboration with the traitor Gottfried.”

  You signed the treaty, knave; it’s all there.

  “Then I apologize to his majesty the king.” Ludolf moved forward, slowly, as if every step was painful. He knelt, and raised his hands palm to palm, and repeated the oath of allegiance. His voice was little more than a whisper, and his hands were ever so faintly trembling against Karelian’s own.

  He’s old, Karelian thought. He’s old and he’s never been wise and I am being cruel to him… and worse, I don’t especially care.

  Ludolf stood up. “This will not be forgotten, Karelian.”

  Really? The small flutter of pity in Karelian’s soul went out like a candle in a winter storm. We have a very long way to go, Ludolf Brandeis, until you have as many things to forget as I do!

  The margrave of Dorn marched out of the tent with a great show of dignity. Karelian heard the voices, the jingle of bridles and clatter of hooves as they mounted, the thunder of them riding away. He heard it and did not hear it. The last of Ludolf’s attendants had not left the tent when he waved at the servant who was holding the tankard of wine.

  The boy started to pour some into a cup.

  “Give me all of it, damn it!”

  He lifted the tankard, drank hugely, and wiped his arm across his mouth. They were all watching him, all of his men, rooted to the earth and saying not a word. What could they say, or even think, after a demonstration like this one?

  “Get the horses,” he said.

  They filed out, except for Reinhard, who moved closer to him.

  “Are you all right, my lord?” he asked quietly.

  “All right?” He made a brief, empty gesture, drank some more, and looked into the patient, troubled face of his seneschal.

  “Yes, I’m all right. I’m just… God’s blood, Reini, I’ve bargained with berserker Danes and kept my head. With Huns. With bandits. With Arnulf of Ravensbruck, and that’s like bargaining in hell. But this one…! A dozen words exchanged, and I’m his raging little brother again.”

  “You were unforgivably provoked, my lord.”

  “I’ve been provoked a thousand times. This was different.” He shook his head. “I don’t like forgetting who I am.”

  Or remembering too clearly, either.

  “I didn’t know there was such bad blood between you, my lord. I don’t think anyone knew. There never was anything… public….”

  No. It was never public. The world was full of savagery that was never public.

  He emptied the tankard and flung it away. “Be damned to it, Reini; we have a war to fight. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  He did not sleep well that night. Sometime in the depths of it he gave up trying altogether, and got up. Raven found him sitting by the table with a candle, some wine, and a scattering of maps. She sat across from him, tangle-haired and sleepy, wrapped in a great cape of black silk.

  “What in Tyr’s name are you doing, my lord? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  She purred something. It sounded like bewilderment.

  He did not really want to tell her what he was thinking. He wanted simply to act on it. But it was quite impossible. He was not only Konrad’s vassal now; he was also hers.

  “I think we should change our strategy in Stavoren,” he said.

  “Change it? Why?” Her voice was soft, and carefully even.

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “We’ve tried it twice, Karel, in two different sieges. We know it works.”

  “Stavoren is different. Stavoren is Gottfried’s ancestral castle, and the heart of Theodoric’s defenses. Everything Gottfried didn’t take to the west with him is there— all the men, all the secrets, all the sorcerous power.”

  “Yes. That’s why we decided on this strategy in the first place— because Stavoren was different. Because Stavoren would push our skills, and our resources, and our courage to the limits. We’ve always known it was dangerous. We chose it because it offered the surest hope of success. Now success is a day’s march away, and you want to change your mind?”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Nothing will happen to me.”

  “And if it did?” He stood up, restlessly. “You said it yourself, in Car-Iduna. We are none of us gods. I won’t let you do it, Raven.”

  “You won’t let me? Now there’s an interesting idea.”

  She stood up, and moved around the table to his side, soundlessly, like a shadow.

  “What did he do to you, Karel?”

  “Do to me? Who? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Ludolf.”

  “This has nothing to do with Ludolf.”

  “I rather think it does. You’re wiser than this, Karelian. Wiser and far more daring. What old ghosts did your brother drag out of the rocks of Dorn, and dangle in front of you? You know we’re fighting for our lives, as well as for the safety of the world. We will do what we planned. We have no choice.”

  “We haven’t looked at our choices.”

  “Yes, we have. So has the entire Council of Car-Iduna. All of this was carefully studied, and all of it was agreed on.”

  He said nothing.

  She brushed the back of her hand softly across his cheek. “Come back to bed, my love,” she murmured.

  He took her by the shoulders, hard. “I’m as wise and as daring as I ever was, my Lady of the Mountain. But I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

  “And why have you suddenly decided you’re going to lose me? Here, in Dorn, when you never thought so before?”

  “It has nothing to do with Dorn.”

  But that was a bare-faced lie. It had everything to do with Dorn, with being young, and scared to death for all his defiant courage, in a world with no shelter and no law.

  Ludolf had stripped him of twenty years of armor in a day.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Captive

  It is the height of piety to be cruel for Christ’s sake.

  Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

  * * *

  They closed on Stavoren in the dead of night, and we woke to find ourselves besieged.

  Oh, we had been warned; messengers galloped through our gates at all hours of the day or night, some with fact and some with rumor. Karelian’s forces were on the move. He had swept down on his half-brother the margrave with a great body of men, demanding allegiance and aid. Ludolf, as we all expected, offered no resistance. Karelian gobbled up the last of his resources, took under arms the last of his men, and turned to march west.

  That much we knew for several days. But numbers were still hard to come by, and precise locations were even harder. Peasants and woodsmen from the north reported seeing hundreds of well-armed knights picking their way along the southern edge of the Schildberge, presumably to circle around us and attack from the west. An even more disturbing rumor had a band of Thuringian mercenaries already approaching the borders of the Reinmark from the south.

  Then the weather turned strange. Fogs rose out of the valleys of Dorn, so thick and cottony that Attila’s Huns could have ridden right up to our gates, and they would have had to knock to be noticed.

  When it cleared, we had numbers. Karelian’s army lay all around us in sprawling defiance, a great forest of tents, hundreds of cook-fires kindled against the last receding fog. The world was drenched, but the sun was beginning to inch through breaking cloud, and everywhere it touched, it caught armor and high-flown banners. More of them and still more, till my eyes burned; till Theodoric, standing on the high rampart beside me, found himself — perhaps for the first time in his entire life — reduced to absolute, unmoving silence.

  High over all the bright flags flew the eagle of the Salian kings, the banner of Prince Konrad. But it was not the one we were staring at. To the nort
hwest of us, holding half the perimeter of the siege, was a force of well over two thousand men. There were few fine trappings to be seen among them; their tents looked ragged; their cloaks and surcoats were dark and plain. Their insignia was a square fortress with four high, stark towers.

  A fortress and a banner I remembered very well.

  “Ravensbruck?”

  Men turned from one to the other, but no one spoke. I made myself look at Theodoric, and afterwards wished I had not. His face was pale and blank, like a man who had been clubbed.

  More than anything, in the days which followed, I wished Gottfried could be with us. Theodoric was brave, but he lacked judgment. The empress was wise and good, but she was only a woman. I thought often of Gottfried’s steadiness, of his capacity to stay separate and aloof, to carry his destiny with him like a beacon, an unmoving star around which a whole world could turn. If he were here, I knew, Stavoren would never fall. It was hard to remember that he was where God wanted him to be. He had more important things to do than coddle us.

  I prayed a great deal; I suppose we all did. It was bitterly demoralizing to see the whole of the Reinmark ranged against us. Every one of Gottfried’s vassals, without exception, had at least one company of men baying up at us, firing catapults and arrows at our walls, building their huge siege towers just out of bowshot, where we could watch them grow.

  “When do you think they’ll attack?” I must have asked the question twenty times at least. Every time Wilhelm’s answer was the same.

  “Soon.”

  The towers were growing fast. There were plenty of trees, plenty of men to work on them. And Karelian knew everything there was to know about siege warfare; he had been at Antioch and Jerusalem, not to mention all his little wars in Europe. He had stormed more castles than any of us wanted to think about.

  “Look at it this way, Pauli,” Wilhelm said. “At least it’s men out there, not demons.”

  I gave him a sour look. “What do you mean?”

  “All this talk about sorcery. I was getting properly tired of it; don’t tell me you weren’t. Demon armies, and live men walking on water, and dead ones picking up their severed heads and putting them back with a grin. The next thing we know, I thought, Karelian and his men will be riding around on dragons, and burning up whole cities just by going poof!”