The Black Chalice koa-1

by Steven Savile

  He drew back the curtain and returned to his seat to offer judgement, although what that judgement might be he still did not know.

  Every eye was on him. Expectancy hung in the air. The two men watched him, each desperate for the verdict to go their way. Craven was sweating. It clung to the front of his shirt, leaving a dark stain beneath his pits and across his belt.

  "I have one question for you, Craven, answer it and I shall offer my decision."

  "Ask anything, my lord. I have no secrets."

  "Good. Then my question is this: is this to be your first union?"

  "No, my lord. I was married once before, to my beloved Elspeth. She was taken by the sickness some six years gone and there isn't a day I do not think of her. There is not a night that I do not lie awake and mourn her loss, and wish that I had some small part of her to live on, a son to labour side by side with me on the farm, a daughter to welcome us home after a hard day's graft. I loved her with all of my body, which is why I will not marry for love again. I could not bear the loss."

  The words were smooth, but they were not glib. He had not rehearsed them, so perhaps they came from the heart? Whatever the truth, Alymere could not see the lie in Craven's eyes. So for all the woman's protestations there was no glimpse of the man's blackened soul to make the decision for him. And, as he looked down at her on her knees before him, the surge of lust he felt all but made his mind up for him. A true man must be pure of heart and free of earthly desires, and that meant unpicking the knot of these temptations and teasing out the lies, the suspicions, the falsehoods and misdirections and getting to the core of it.

  He lowered his head, trying to imagine what his father would have done in his stead. Roth would no doubt tell him he could not damn a man for what he might do, and lacking any evidence of what he had done, his only choice was to enforce the betrothal.

  When he raised his head again, he saw a line of crows had gathered upon the window ledges high above the benches, adding their beady eyes to the gawping crowd. He counted two dozen of them, but only one of them held his gaze for more than a second. It had a streak of white in its feathers, and neither preened nor primped but merely watched. He thought of the red hart he had chased into the forest and how he had taken it as a sign. Could this too be a sign?

  "I have weighed the evidence presented by both parties and find no compelling reason to dismiss the man Craven's claim, as much as I might want to, and so with heavy heart I must find in his favour. I take no joy from this decision, save that it is a fair one." He turned his attention to the fat man, whose delight was evident on his ruddy features. "I would urge you not to wed merely to sire sons but risk your heart once more, for that is the great triumph of man, our ability to love again and again. The old wounds hurt, but new loves can heal them better than any unguent. But if your mind is set on this course, then so be it. It is not for me to change it. If you cannot love, then at least you can fulfil your husbandly duties and provide for this woman so that she does not want, and in that be the best husband you can be to her. This is my verdict. Do you agree to abide by it?"

  "Aye, my lord," Craven said. "Thank you."

  "Do not thank me. A life without love is no life worth living, as far as I can tell." He turned to Isaiah. "And what of you? Do you swear to abide by the judgement of this court?"

  "Yes, my lord," the tall man said. Where he had seemed like a spindle as he first shuffled towards the chair, now he seemed like reed broken in the wind. His back bowed, the strength gone from his spine. There could be no doubting the fact that he truly believed his daughter's claims and took Alymere's judgement to mean she had just been condemned to death. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the when of it was not important. It took what little strength remained to him to walk away from the seat without having to lean upon the bailiffs for support. He maintained that much dignity, at least, though he could no longer look at his daughter.

  The woman spared no such thoughts for dignity. She cried out: "No!" struggling against the hands that reached for her. And he realised he did not even know her name. Like the two men she stood between he had treated her as nothing more than a chattel to be traded. The realisation made him sick. To her he said, "You do not deserve this, and I feel that I have failed you. For that I am truly sorry. I can only hope that you find happiness." And to the men, "I do not want to see either of you before me again. The pair of you sicken me to my stomach. Think on what has happened here. Do right by each other, I implore you." To the galleries, he called, "The court is ended. I need to scrub the taint of this decision from my skin."

  As one, the four and twenty birds took flight, the flurry of their wings against the glass turning every head. Only the white-streaked crow remained. It did not fly away until Alymere left his seat and the Assizes came to a close for the day.

  Thirty-Two

  Word came to the house less than a week later that the woman had died by her own hand the first night she was to have slept with the fat man, Craven. That alone was enough to wrench his heart from his chest and trample on it, but it was not the end to her tragic story. Her father, Isaiah, learning of her suicide, and believing he had failed the girl when she needed him most, broke into the house of his former friend, and cut the fat man's throat, bleeding him like one of his own pigs before turning the knife on himself. The three deaths weighed heavy upon Alymere's shoulders.

  He sat beneath the old apple tree, his back pressed up against the rough bark. He had not spoken since news of the deaths reached him.

  He had based his decision upon what he felt was right, but it had killed them all, so how could it possibly have been right? He had failed all three of them.

  Had he just had the courage to believe the girl — her name was Josephina, he now knew — they might all be alive now. Had he not placed such ridiculously high value upon a man's word that man would not now be consigned to the flames of hell as a murderer. He thought nothing good of the man, Craven, save that he did not deserve to die.

  His breath burned hot in his lungs. Alymere reached up and snapped off a sour apple from a low hanging branch. He did not bite into it — the fruit was not good to eat — but simply toyed with the stem, thinking of the people he had killed with his judgement.

  That was his burden to bear. He felt himself wanting to be free of his mind, to drift away somewhere he did not exist, where he could not feel and he could not be hurt — nor hurt others. He wanted to fall away from himself; to become no-one.

  But he could not.

  These were his dead as surely as if he had killed them with his own hand and he had no choice but to own them.

  He looked up and saw Gwen walking towards him across the lawn. The sun shone through the diaphanous material of her gown, bringing her shape alive beneath it. Again he was struck by her faded beauty, and found a deep-seated loathing within himself for thinking his lustful thoughts. She had been nothing but kind to him, and all he could think of was how the cloth sashayed around her legs and rode her hips as she walked. She deserved better from him, but then, so did everybody. It was self-pity, he knew, but knowing was not enough to quell it.

  She sat beside him.

  "You did not give her the knife, neither did you hold it to Craven's throat," she said. "These were the deeds of others, sweet man. You cannot be responsible for them."

  He looked at her, then. The leafy shadows mottled her cheeks. "If I had decided the other way she would not have taken her life. My decision brought about her death."

  "Perhaps, but who is to say that by denying Craven his new wife, he would not have sought some other recompense? It is not hard to imagine a man like him taking her life as punishment for her father breaking faith, is it? There was no love there, he freely admitted so himself. This was a dispute over property. He came before you a wronged man. Had you ruled against him he would have left the manor house both wronged and humiliated, a dangerous combination in a man like Craven, I think. The only truth here is that we cannot know the mind
s of others, my lord. It is torture to think that we can. It could be that her death was writ on the very day she was born, or that God sealed it the day He took Craven's first wife up to Heaven. Ours is not to question Him, only to abide here before we are worthy of His paradise."

  He tossed the apple away. "She is but one soul in the grand scheme of things, true, but how could such evil come from good intention? That is what I find hardest to bear. I truly believed he would give her a good life, even if not the one she would have chosen for herself."

  "The fires of Hell are fuelled by good intentions, my lord."

  "True." Alymere snapped off another apple, and despite knowing full well the fruit was sour, bit into it. He chewed and swallowed three bites before tossing the core away. "Tell me of Alma. I would hear something good on this wretched day."

  "She is an angel, my lord. I bless the day you brought her into my life and every day thereafter."

  Thirty-Three

  At night, alone, the voice came.

  Still, he could not make out a word it said.

  He didn't need to.

  The words formed impressions inside his head and those impressions came alive inside him.

  He lay in his bed, his entire body hollowed out, so that when the voice came, it filled him. It swelled to reach every corner of his being. The shapeless sounds repeated the same sibilance of syllables, chanting them over and over and over again:

  chalicechalicechalicechalicechalicechalicechalicechalice…

  And for once he did not feel alone in the great manor house.

  Thirty-Four

  He could not say what instinct caused him to open the Devil's Bible the next morning — having left it untouched for days — but even as he opened his eyes to the morning he found himself reaching for it.

  It felt so familiar to his touch; cold and marble-smooth, like the skin of a dead man.

  As Alymere turned the first page and saw those familiar words — being an account of the entire wisdom of Man as transcribed by Harmon Reclusus — he knew that more secrets of the book were going to reveal themselves to him.

  He looked at the words, at the shape of them as they bled across the page, and found his still sleep-addled mind imagining them running together. The letters moved, twisting and sliding into and away from one another, forming new nonsense words and old familiar ones, although never settling for more than a heartbeat in any shape that allowed him to read them. As he rested his fingertips flat on the page he saw the ink stain them, the words climbing from the page to stain his skin. They curled around his fingers, sharing secrets with his flesh that he could not know, rising up the soft smooth expanse of the meat of his forearm, each line becoming a vein and artery, feeding the life of him as completely as might blood. He rubbed at his eyes, knowing it was impossible for words to rewrite themselves once writ and that they could not move of their own accord, nor tattoo his body, and in the back of his mind heard the soft sibilant whisper of the word Chalice again, though this time he was awake and in full charge of his faculties. There could be no pretending the voice was the work of ghosts.

  The spell broken, the words fell back onto the page — although in truth they had never left it — and Alymere pushed himself up in bed. He leaned on an elbow, and called, "Who is there?"

  No-one answered, not that he expected them to.

  "Father?" he asked, not daring to believe it possible and feeling stupid for thinking it. "Is that you?"

  Again there was no answer.

  When he looked down at the book this time there were more words that he recognised — incomplete phrases that alone made no sense, though in the centre of the poem, above the words Black Chalice he could now read seven more words: The White Crow and the Devil's Tree.

  He recalled the white-streaked feathers of the crow that watched him preside over the Assizes, the last of its kin to take flight. Before he could check to see if any more of the words within the book had made themselves known, a floorboard creaked outside his room.

  Someone was out there. There could be no mistaking it this time.

  He closed the book, and as the pages came together again the word chalice slipped into the back of his mind, repeating itself, chalicechalicechalice, in a woman's voice this time. No, he realised — not a woman's, a boy's.

  That he had imagined the word spoken by three different voices ought to have steered his mind toward the truth, or at least some revelation of his own madness. Instead, ignoring the implications, he called out, almost shouting, "What trickery is this?"

  Again, the deliberate sigh of a floorboard beneath someone's foot, and then silence.

  "Who goes there?"

  This time, his question was answered by a soft knock on the chamber door.

  The iron handle twisted and the door opened a crack, and he could see a sliver of shadow sneak into the room.

  He sprung from the bed, casting about for something to defend himself with.

  As the door opened wider he saw that it was the woman, Gwen. She wore a simple white shift, her face like ash as she stepped into the room.

  The tension ebbed from his body, leaving him standing naked in the middle of the floor. He laughed at his own unease, and pulled the blanket from the bed to cover his nakedness.

  "What is it?" Alymere asked, and realising that she could not answer him, abandoned any pretence of modesty and grasped her with both hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. "What is wrong?"

  "It is your uncle."

  Alymere felt a dread chill blossom in his heart. "He is here?"

  The woman nodded. "They brought him in on a stretcher. He is grievously wounded, my lord. They fear he may not make it through the night."

  "What happened to him?"

  "I do not know, and did not think it my place to ask."

  "No. Of course. Thank you, Gwen."

  Alymere grabbed his shirt, discarded the night before with the rest of his clothes in a heap, and buttoned it with trembling hands. Three times he missed the eyelet and the button slipped through his fingers. He pulled on his hose and tied the leather thong tight, before running barefoot out of the room, his feet slapping on the hardwood floor.

  The entire house was in a commotion. He could hear people calling out, barking orders. There was none of the laughter he had come to associate with his home.

  He stopped dead on the landing, clutching the balustrade, caught between looking down the great staircase to the reception room where servants and soldiers gathered, and what had been the door to his parent's chamber along the landing. The white hart painted onto the heavy oak had faded, but it was still visible in the morning gloom.

  They would have taken Sir Lowick to his room so that he might die in his own bed, he knew, though the bitter little voice at the back of his head insisted on reminding Alymere, it wasn't his uncle's bed at all, and that already one of two brothers had died in it.

  He forced himself to walk down the passageway to the door, and knocked once, his knuckles striking the belly of the white hart.

  Pushing open the door without waiting to be summoned, and seeing the dying man sprawled out upon the sheets, his skin already the texture and tone of the dead, Alymere could not help but see the grotesque symmetry in the fates of the brothers Lowick and Roth.

  He was not alone in the room. A giant of a man knelt at his bedside, head bowed in prayer. He did not look up until he had offered his final words to the Lord, beseeching the Almighty to make his friend's final journey a peaceful one.

  Alymere could not see his face, but he did not need to. The voice was unmistakable, as were the wild black curls that spilled over his clasped hands, and the sheer bulk of the man. It could only have been Sir Bors de Ganis at the bedside.

  When finally the big knight raised his head, all mirth and wildness had gone from his eyes. He appeared tortured; haunted by the things he had seen and by the things he had done since last they met.

  "Tis a good thing you were not a pretty boy to start with, lad," he
said, pushing himself to his feet. "For the fire has done you no favours. Still, no doubt some doxy will want to kiss it all better."

  Alymere felt like he was a child again, tiptoeing into his parents room to sit beside his dying father. There were too many dark memories in this room. Stripped down like this, the two of them — the memory and the man — looked so similar it rocked him to the very foundation of his being. He recalled the vow he had made when his uncle first claimed the manor house — that he would never set foot in this room again — and yet here he was, fate making a liar out of him as he watched another man slowly die.

  Alymere made a new vow then: no one else would die in this room. He would have it walled up when he became the man of house.

  He looked at Bors, seeing for the first time the tears streaking the knight's face, and every certainty he had ever had failed him. He threw himself into Bors' arms, and for a moment they hugged fiercely, bonded by grief. "What happened?" Alymere asked, extricating himself from the big man's grip. "I see no dressings, no wounds. Is it sickness?"

  "No, lad. Poison. Tis a dark day when a faithless whoreson can bring down a good man thus." He shook his head.

  "Poison?" Alymere's mind raced.

  "Aye. The poor bastard's dying from the inside out, lad. His body has been failing him ever since he swallowed that damned water from the chalice." That word again. Alymere felt his blood run cold as it coiled like a serpent through his brain: chalicechalicechalicechalicechalice…

  "Every hour another part of him loses its grip on life. Never thought he'd last this long, but the old man's always been one stubborn cur, so why should that change just because he's dying?"

  Alymere had no answer for that.

  "All he would say was that he wanted to die here, that he wanted to be buried beside his brother. The poison ate away at him 'til he couldn't stand on his own two feet, 'til his eyes lost their focus and his body turned gaunt because he couldn't keep a damned thing down. It's only ever been a matter of time, as much as we wanted to deny it. No medicine touched his fever, no herbs quieted the pain in his head or settled his stomach. In truth it would have been a mercy had he died days ago, lad, but he's hung on stubbornly, wanting to come home. No doubt to finally make his peace with you."