The Black Chalice (19 page)

“You should have taken this information directly to the archbishop of Mainz,” he went on. “To the papal legate, perhaps even to Rome itself. Yet you were silent. You were silent then, and for thirty years thereafter. Tell me why, Brother Paul. Why did it take all these years, and a command from the pope himself, to make you speak to the Church?”

Paul did not know what to say. In a matter of moments the exorcist had penetrated all his defenses. He had found the lethal question, the one question Paul could not answer with the truth.

“I was confused and afraid.”

Yes, he thought. Let it seem so. Let Wilhelm think he was weak, or vain, or stupid. Let him jump to any shabby, wrong conclusion, just as Anselm did.
You don’t want to look bad; you don’t want people to know about your sins….

“I was terribly afraid, Monsignor. And after, when the war was over, I wanted only to forget, and dedicate my life to God.”

“But surely, Brother Paul, the highest service you could have offered God was to confirm those terrible accusations, if you knew they were true. To confirm them at the time, when it would have done the most good. Instead you joined an obscure band of knights and fled to the Holy Land. And you stayed there for eleven years, until Germany had forgotten all about you.

“You had things to hide. Your own involvement, perhaps? Did you obtain such a thorough knowledge of your master’s sorceries by taking part in them yourself?”

Paul stared at him, appalled. “Dear Jesus, Monsignor! Never! As God is my witness, I never once—!”

“Then why were you silent?”

Paul made a brief, helpless gesture. “I don’t know. It was… easier. To say nothing. To just… run away.”

“Yes. But what were you running away from? That is the question, isn’t it?”

Paul had seen strength in von Schielenberg, and found it comforting. How foolish he had been! The face across the table had no warmth in it, no priestly concern. It was a face of raw power.

“Brother Paul.” Wilhelm paused, choosing his words. “You tell me you’ve been bewitched, against your will, and through no fault of your own. It may be so. Or it may be that your own folly and corruption have finally caught up with you. Until I know which, I can’t begin to help you. Where is the manuscript?”

“The manuscript?” Paul whispered.

“Yes, Brother Paul. The manuscript.”

“It’s hidden. Under the floor.”

“I want to see it.”

It was unbearable to think of anyone reading it, seeing those words from his own hand, those memories of his own life so twisted and befouled. But he knew he could not refuse. He retrieved the parchments from their hiding place, and handed them to the priest.

“You must understand, Monsignor,” he said. “I had no power over this. It’s the devil’s work, full of contradictions and lies.”

“We shall see.”

Wilhelm von Shielenberg rose, tucking the bundle under his arm.

“You must pray, Brother Paul. Pray and do penance. Throw yourself utterly on God’s mercy; it’s your only hope of salvation. When we speak again, I will expect you to tell me everything.”

* * *

The pink dawn turned to golden daylight. A faint smell of wood smoke drifted in through Paul’s window, reminding him instinctively of food. He did not know when he had last eaten anything but crusts of bread. He felt a brief tug of longing. As a boy he had lived well in Ardiun. They had eaten meat whenever it was permitted. They always had butter and cheese, and pastries sweetened with honey. His father had such a stern view of human flesh; why did he not fast more?

But Paul knew why, when he thought about it. His father did not have to fast in order to learn mastery of self; the mastery was already there, the absolute will. He, Paul, was only a shabby echo of the man who had sired him. Could his father see him now, he wondered, looking down from his place in heaven? Could his father see him and know what he had become— a plaything for devils, a weakling who stank of sin? It did not bear thinking about. It was worse than God knowing, or the whole world.

The priest from Mainz returned the following day. He looked as though he had not slept at all. He laid the manuscript on Paul’s wooden table and sat down across from him. He did not even bother to hide his distaste. False though it was, the chronicle had done its work. It had marked Paul forever in Wilhelm’s mind as cowardly and sexually corrupt.

“Your writing,” he said, “is full of heresy and abominations.”

“I know, Monsignor—”

“But it’s interesting nonetheless. As long as it’s not allowed to fall into the wrong hands, I think it will prove singularly useful to the Church.”

The room spun. Paul closed his eyes, gripping the side of the table, cold sweat spilling over his face and drenching his habit.

“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I’m weak from fasting.”

“No, Paul. You’re afraid.” The priest smiled; it was the calculated, knowing smile of the born interrogator. “You’re afraid of damnation, but you’re even more afraid of the truth. And since we already know the truth about your… concupiscence… it’s clear you must be hiding something else.”

“I’m hiding nothing,” Paul said desperately. “I want to be free of this… this horrible entrapment.”

“No doubt you do. God knows what you might be compelled to reveal. I’m not a fool, Brother Paul. I know when men are lying to me; it’s my business to know. Left to your own devices, you would never fulfill the pope’s command. You would write what you wished him to know, and conceal the rest. Only now it appears the devil’s minions have come to blows— just as they did thirty years ago. And when thieves fall out, honest men can sometimes prosper.”

As they spoke, Wilhelm had been watching him with cold and relentless eyes, and it occurred to Paul what the exorcist really was— what any exorcist had to be. He was a Christian sorcerer, wielding all the same gifts of power, practicing all the same skills, merely doing so from the other side of the fence. The thought was unexpected, and utterly horrifying.

“Let me be blunt,” Wilhelm went on. “The Church has had little except grief from her German subjects. You do nothing about the paganism in your midst. Your highest lords hang witch-charms around their necks, and call on the old gods in battle. And your people hold them up as heroes. It’s reached the point where good Christians can no longer pick their way through the muddle. They will come to blows quarreling over Gottfried and the count of Lys, claiming one was a sorcerer and the other a saint, but from house to house and village to village they will not agree on which was which.

“The archbishop of Mainz was in Stavoren when it ended,” he went on. “Many times afterwards, he said the same thing: ‘They were all evil,’ he said, ‘all three, and they trampled down the will of God between them.’ I think he was right. And I think you know something about them even the archbishop didn’t know.”

Paul could not believe what he was seeing. The priest was gathering up the sheaves of parchment, as if the interview were over. As if he were about to leave.

“Monsignor…?”

“Your chronicle has a certain ring of truth to it. A perverted, malevolent truth, but a truth nonetheless. That’s what troubles you, I think. It might not be a mistake to hear what the witch of Helmardin has to say about all of these things.”

“You can’t be serious?” Paul whispered. “You would trust a document written like this? A devil’s chronicle? Dear Jesus, you expect it to be true?”

“No. I expect it to be revealing. There is a difference.”

He paused, looking grimly at the monk. “Two things you are forgetting, Brother. First, God’s will is absolute. Nothing passes in the world without his consent, not even this. And second, you forget that evil often works to its own destruction. What better weapon might we wish for to combat sorcery than the testament of sorcerers? I could have spent a lifetime searching out their ways, and found nothing better than this.”

“But when they constantly mingle truth with lies, how will you make sense of it? How will you know what is true?”

“God will give us the wisdom to know. Why else did he send his Church into the world?”

Paul sat numb. It had been a terrible risk, asking for help. He had always known it. But even in his darkest moments he had not feared an outcome as perilous as this.

“You can’t mean to leave me to them?” he said harshly. “My soul is utterly in their hands!”

“Your soul is in your own hands, as are those of all men. I can’t exorcise a man who isn’t sincerely penitent, who will not in full humility lay bare his soul. Truly, I marvel at your arrogance in sending for me. Did you think you could escape them and still hold yourself back from God?

“If you want to be saved — if you really mean it — you know exactly what to do. Renounce all your sorceries and corruptions, not just the ones you’ve grown afraid of. Come with me to Rome. Dictate your history to the Holy Father’s scribes, under oath and in the presence of witnesses. Answer truthfully every question that’s put to you, and confess every sin. You will be forgiven.”

“Come with you to Rome, Monsignor?” Paul said numbly. “That isn’t possible.”

“If it isn’t possible, then clearly your soul is not your first concern. So how can I or anyone possibly help you?”

He stood up. “I’m keeping the document you’ve produced so far. I will take it with me, and I will suggest to the Holy Father that you be called before the Inquisition. You have a great deal of knowledge— knowledge which could advance the Church’s work, and save countless Christian souls. Knowledge you must share with us, if you’re to have any hope of God’s mercy.”

He paused at the door of Paul’s cell, and looked back.

“I will pray for you, my son.”

Then he was gone, stern and upright into a stillborn day. Paul sat for a long time, letting the summons of the monastery bells pass unheeded. He missed lauds; he missed nones. It did not matter. He would be reprimanded and punished. It did not matter.

He was alone now. He had no allies in the world; he had abandoned it. He had no allies in the Church; it had abandoned him. They would pursue him now on an uncontested field, all of them, like Saracens chasing a single, beaten knight across the sand.

They would pursue him, but they would not close and kill… not yet. The desert was vast, and he had nowhere to hide, and the story was only just begun.

SIXTEEN

Stavoren

Leave Babylon behind you and fight
for the kingdom of heaven.

Carmina Burana

* * *

Twice every decade the Holy Roman Emperor made the long journey across his empire, through all his feudal domains to visit all of his chief vassals. The
Königsritt
took months; it was high summer when he came to Stavoren to be feasted and honored in the palace of Duke Gottfried. All of the duke’s vassals were there, too, summoned by his command, so he might, in the full glory of his court, offer proper homage to his king.

There they met again, Gottfried and Karelian, and there the dream was born, the dream I have carried all these years in the silence of my heart. The dream I dare not speak of, not even to the Church where it finally and properly belongs. It is too late now, and too soon. For in the great affairs of history, as in all other things, there is a time and a season, an hour when the tide is at flood, the ship in full sail, the captain chosen and peerless among men, the wind right and the stars in their places. If it sails, the world will be changed forever. If it is run aground, years will pass, or centuries, before the hour comes again.

* * *

A few months earlier, we left Karn, and arrived at Lys in the flower of its spring. There is no fairer place in all the Reinmark, not even the vale of Ardiun where I was raised. The trees were hung with blossom; small creeks were singing everywhere, running headlong into the deep embrace of the Maren. Lambs bounded in the fields, and the sun burned warm in our faces. For a while it seemed as if the world was good.

Karelian loved his lands. Day after day he was out walking in the orchards in the first morning light, or hunting in the woodlands, or visiting with the master brewer and the master miller, with the stewards and the gamekeepers, with the gardeners and the serfs, wanting to know everything they did, and how they might do it better.

As for my lord’s wife, I would as soon not speak of her. Everyone, of course, knew of the scandal in Ravensbruck, or soon was told about it. There was a good deal of whispering in the sculleries and the stables, but Karelian went about his life as though nothing whatever was wrong with it. He turned the household and the running of the manor over to Adelaide. He made her generous gifts. He accepted her strange, soul-scarred moods, her whispers of madness, her sudden offerings of passion, when she would embrace him in full view of anyone who might be about, and kiss his mouth and hang her arms around his neck like a besotted courtesan. What he thought of it he did not say, and no one else dared to say anything at all.

Did she truly come to care for him? Or did she merely offer him the same perfected sham of loyalty she once had offered to her father? To this day I do not know, and I do not think Karelian knew, either. At unexpected moments I would see him looking at her, uncertain and a little sad, as though he did not entirely understand how he had gotten himself into such a strange situation, or where it would lead him, or how he would ever get out.

She did not come with us to Stavoren. She was by now visibly with child, and more fragile than ever. She wept when we left, and stood in the open gate until we were lost in a whisper of dust across the valley. Every night while we were gone — so I learned later from the servants — she burned lights in the chapel, and spread flowers and witch-charms and medals of the Virgin all over Karelian’s pillow. But when she rose, and walked in the sleep of madness from her bed, the name she murmured to the shadows was not his.

It is enough; I will speak of her no more.

As for myself, between me and my lord nothing changed on the surface, and I think for him nothing changed at all. He was as kind to me as always. He never spoke of what passed that night in Karn, not even once; nor did he offend against my honor again, not in the smallest word or deed. It was as though none of it had happened. I had all but forgiven him when we raised our banners yet again, and marched southwest to Stavoren to pay our homage to the king.

Gottfried entertained us with lavish generosity. As lord of all the Reinmark, he was one of the five great German princes whose domains made up the empire. This was the first
Königsritt
since his return from Jerusalem, and thus it was his first opportunity to impress upon both his vassals and his liege how much he had accomplished in the east, how magnificent he was now, and how well served.

I have spoken little of him in this chronicle, for in truth until the meeting in Stavoren he was to me a stern and distant figure, majestic and revered, but distant, a lord so far above me in rank and so outstanding in his achievements that I simply felt awed in his presence, like a stableboy in the presence of a king. I had met him several times in the Holy Land, and as Karelian’s squire I made the long journey home in his retinue, yet I never overcame my feeling of awe. The Golden Duke was always a man apart, a man above the common measure of his peers.

I realize now, with the wisdom of long years, that my sense of his superiority rested only partly on his rank and his accomplishments. There were other highborn dukes in the world, after all. There were other knights whose shields were hung with laurels, whose names were known in every court in Europe. There was Ehrenfried himself, emperor of all the Germans, who stirred no such awe in me, even on the first day I met him.

Gottfried was different from them all. Everything about him stood in contrast to the qualities of lesser men, even the fact that he was difficult to know. He had nothing of Karelian’s common touch. He would never sit in a rough chair in a dirty inn, and laugh at crude jokes and put his feet up and pet the innkeeper’s cat. He was not arrogant, but he never lowered himself, even for a moment; he never forgot who he was.

He was a man of immense physical stature, well over six feet, with massive shoulders and a great, leonine head. Not beautiful at all, in the immediate, sensual way we think of beauty. His neck was too thick, and his nose too large. His mouth was a hard slash across a plain, blunt face. His golden hair was straight and thinning from the forehead. Yet he needed only to walk into a room to be admired. He needed only to speak and conversations around him would fall silent, and men would turn and listen.

It was an evening late in June, the first evening of our arrival. Others had come before us. The summergreen fields below the duke’s castle were now a city of tents, crowded to bewilderment with highborn guests and their retinues. And though the duke was gracious to everyone, from the very first Karelian was favored more than any man there. Gottfried greeted him as a brother, and honored him with several splendid gifts, not least a beautiful grey stallion, an Arabian, one of the finest horses I have ever seen.

“He loves the chase even more than you do,” the duke told Karelian. “I think you will enjoy him.”

Karelian was pleased, and very flattered. It always surprised him a little, I think, to be reminded that he’d finally made his place in the world.

“You are very generous, my lord. Thank you.”

“We’ll go hunting tomorrow, and you can try him out,” Gottfried said. “The emperor will not arrive for a few more days.”

Karelian handed the horse’s reins to me, and fell in step beside his liege.

“He’s bringing over two hundred knights,” the duke went on. “And of course Prince Konrad will be here. So it will be a particularly good tournament, this one. Since I can’t take part, we will all look to you to cover the Reinmark with glory.”

The emperor Ehrenfried arrived with his queen and his court about a week later. I had never seen him before, and I suppose it was unfair of me to expect him to be physically magnificent, or to be disappointed because he was not. But I was very disappointed. He did not look like a king. He was only of medium height, plump as a merchant, with stubby pink fingers and very little hair. He liked to laugh.

Sometimes, when he had passed out of earshot, I would hear the occasional sullen whisper against him, or see men exchange dark looks. The civil wars had been over for some years, but the wounds they left were still raw. On the surface, all was friendship, but there was more than one lord visiting at Gottfried’s court who hated the king.

He wore splendid garments, and he always behaved with dignity. Yet from the day he came until the long festival was over, I could never stop feeling that it was Gottfried, and not the king, who was the greatest lord. More and more it was Gottfried I found myself watching. I began to admire the very qualities which had intimidated me when I was younger— his separateness, his personal reserve, his extraordinary power. He dwarfed the men around him, princes and champions and emperor alike. All of them, and Karelian too.

It saddened me a little to admit it. But Gottfried was lord to me, too, lord to all of us. I thought myself a very fortunate young man, being able to serve and honor them both.

* * *

Oh, there was glitter that summer in Stavoren! It was the last joyful summer of my life, and, until it ended in one black hour, it was the best. There was feast after feast in the duke’s great hall, with such food as I have never tasted since; there were minstrels and dancing; there were magnificent, clamorous hunts along the wild edges of the Silverwald.

And, a few days after Ehrenfried arrived, there was the birth of a new order of knighthood. Gottfried planned it before he ever left the Holy Land. Years later the Church would carry on the idea, creating first the Knights of Saint John and then the Templars, but it was Gottfried who first saw the possibility— the glorious possibility of finally linking warfare and faith. Of creating a true Church Militant, an army of warrior monks.

Only seven to start with, hardly an army, but oh, God, I envied them, those chaste, golden-haired youths in their white garments, keeping vigil through the long night in the chapel of Stavoren. They were the first of the Order of Saint David. In the end Gottfried would drop the word “saint” from the name, and call them, at least among his friends, simply the Order of David, which was what he had always had in mind: the followers of David who slew Goliath, and swept the heathen lands, and took them for God.

The emperor did not approve.

“A warrior monk is a contradiction in terms,” he said. He sat at the head of Gottfried’s feast table. When he sat thus, greying and thoughtful, with his elbows on the table, he looked far more like a scholar than a king.

They said he was a fine soldier in his prime, and I believe it, for he fought two civil wars to keep his crown, both of them under the ban of excommunication. He was very bitter now against the pope. He sent no men on the great crusade, and offered its leaders only token gifts of money. Thus Germany, largest of all the Christian nations, took almost no part in Christianity’s greatest adventure.

“I don’t understand how they think in Rome,” the emperor went on. “For a thousand years the Church said warfare was wrong. Oh, God knows we Christians haven’t always lived by it, but it’s what we were taught. Thou shalt not kill. Blessed are the peacemakers. If thy enemy smite thee on one cheek, turn him the other.”

Gottfried’s son could barely contain himself. He was the eldest son, the duke’s heir, a golden-haired giant named Theodoric who seemed an exact, youthful copy of his father.

“And if we lived by such principles, my lord,” he demanded, “how many Christians would be left in the world? The pagans slaughter us, the infidels slaughter us—”

“And we slaughter each other,” the emperor interrupted calmly. “It’s beside the point.”

“How can it be beside the point?” Gottfried demanded.

“Because the Church’s business is men’s souls. Not warfare. Not politics. The popes are no longer interested in souls, it seems to me. They’re interested in power. Power here, in the world. And they’re turning Christ’s teaching on its head in order to get it. In thirty years we went from ‘Thou shalt not kill’ to a holy war, and in ten years more to an order of warrior monks. That’s not a Church any more, it’s a rival empire.”

He paused, looking grimly at the faces which lined his table.

“Am I the only one who’s noticing a pattern here? God knows some of you are old enough to remember the Saxons who fled to us after William took England. They filled our courts for twenty years. They were scattered all over the world, driven from their lands with nothing but the cloaks on their backs. All because an ambitious Norman poured sacks of gold into the coffers of the Church, and an even more ambitious priest decided that he, and not the people of England, should choose the English king.”

Ehrenfried’s bitterness was almost physical; it darkened his face, and made his voice hard as granite.

“The same priest who sat behind the papal throne and urged his pope to support the invasion of England and overthrow King Harold— that same priest became pope himself, and then did the same thing to me! My crown was promised to another, just like Harold’s. I was excommunicated, just like he was — I and every man who might dare to raise a sword in my defense. What’s an honest citizen to do, faced with such a choice — turn against his lawful king, or turn against his God? Whatever choice he makes he must feel himself condemned.