The Black Chalice (27 page)

“And of the Merovingians,” he added dryly. “And of God knows who else.”

“Never mind. Two generations earlier, a very remarkable sorceress named Cundrie Brandeis married Martin of Helm. She had only one child, a daughter, and died on her childbed, so no one thinks about her much. Her daughter had a daughter, who married a Frankish count, and they had a daughter, who married Wolfram of Thuringia, and they had a daughter who married Albrecht von Heyden. The father of our Golden Duke.”

“But surely Gottfried knows all that.”

“Oh, he knows it, of course— when he thinks about it. But why should he think about it? It’s the female line. And who are the margraves of Dorn in any case? Impoverished gentry on the edges of the Silverwald, famous for nothing except their political unreliability— no offense, my love—”

He shrugged.

“It would never occur to Gottfried to think he owes anything to
those
ancestors. But he does.

“He has sorcerous powers, Karel. I’ve known it for years. It’s why I’ve watched him so closely, and feared him so much. But how can a Christian possibly interpret such a gift? Your God allows only for the demonic or the divine, nothing else. And he can hardly believe himself demonic. He’s Gottfried the Golden, he’s a knight and a prince, he goes to Mass and to the sacraments, he’s been blessed by God with a faithful wife and fine sons. Your saints do works of magic and call them miracles, but they are priests and missionaries; they have some kind of excuse. He has no excuse; he’s a man of the world, a soldier, the ruler of a duchy.

“I don’t believe he was unwilling to accept this. I rather think he stared at it for a minute, and then he put it down, and said ‘No, really, it’s not possible.’ And then he walked about two steps away, and turned around and picked it up again.

“It was an answer made for him. He didn’t want to give up his powers, or his faith. Quite apart from his own inclinations, it’s dangerous these days to be anything except a Christian. But he had all these gifts, he knew he did, and they had to come from somewhere — why not from the blood of Christ? With his terrible pride, his daring, his belief in his own superiority — oh, yes, Karel, the more he would look at it, the more obvious it would seem.”

Karelian was not giving up just yet. “But… but damn it, Raven, it’s heresy. To a Christian it has to be heresy.”

“Only if it isn’t true.”

He stared at her. And then he laughed, unamused. “That’s what he said, too.” He picked up small stones, one after another, and threw them in the river.

“It may look like heresy to you,” she said softly. “From where I’m sitting, it looks very Christian. Your whole world is full of men who claim to speak for God. They bind you in the smallest and most personal aspects of your lives, till you scarcely know what food you dare put into your mouths, or what garments on your backs. Till every human thought is dangerous and every human pleasure sin — except of course the exercise of power. Controlling others is a great Christian virtue, if only you can seem to be doing it for the Lord. You must admit our Golden Duke has solved
that
problem singularly well.

“This is where the pyramid leads, Karel. Where it has to lead: to an endless scramble for the pinnacle, for the place where men can speak for God. And finally, for the place where one man doesn’t need to.”

There was a long silence.

“And your gods, Raven,” he said at last, “does no one claim to speak for them?”

She smiled. “All the time. It’s a good day for planting today, the moon is right. The deer have moved west, into the hills. This child will grow up strong, give it a hunter’s name. This one has the gift of poetry, treat it gently. The winter will be long and cold, we must take offerings to the forest. The enemy advances; here is the place to wait, and make an ambush…. So do the gods of Car-Iduna speak, my love. Only so.”

She brushed her hand across his face. “Perhaps they will speak to us tonight.”

She built a small stone altar at the edge of the river, and when the moon was high they burned offerings there, mating while the flames leapt and shimmered, a long, wild mating which she would not allow to end:
No, Karel, no, not yet, the longer we are bound, the more fiercely we burn, the stronger will be the spells I work here….
He thought he would die in her embrace, die of the fire in his loins and the fire in his mind, each kindling the other in an endless spiral of desire, a wildness which swept him deeper and deeper without direction or time. And then it steadied, and it held. He heard her laugh, softly, triumphantly; he heard his own name like an incantation in the wind, Karel, Karel, Karel…. He could have stayed so forever then, just so, aflame inside of her, content to burn, content with her wild kisses and her hair all over him, content with the knowledge that she was his— gods knew for how long or even for what reason, but his.

So wild, so beautiful in the firelight, kneeling over him, bending to give him her mouth, her breasts, everything she could give and all of it animal with wanting; rocking against him for a reckless, unmeasured time, her breath hot and ragged, his name a sob in her throat as she came and kindled and came again, each time more quickly, until his own drowning surrender finally ended it. And the world returned, slowly, the sound of wind and water, the slow caress of her fingers stroking his hair. Her voice, warm and languorous against his throat, and faintly amused.

“Sorcerer.”

She dressed and knelt by the fire. Before he could protest, she had taken her dagger and pressed the point into her wrist; blood ran into the flames.

“Raven…!”

“Not a word, my lord,” she said harshly. “Bind this for me now, and then say nothing more, nothing until I’m done!”

She swayed beside the leaping fire, chanted over it, sang to it, tossed into its black and red and golden mouth many strange things— some of them he truly hoped were not the things they seemed. Then, as the fire burned out and turned slowly into ash, she played her harp, until he thought the stars would be plucked from the sky and his heart would break. He ached to touch her, just a little, to stroke her hair or her pale cheek, just ever so little, with the back of his hand. But she was priestess now, and he knew he dared not.

The fire was cold. She touched the ash to his face, all over him, ran it down the blade of his sword, over his helmet and the brightly painted iron of his shield. All the while she chanted spells, spells against the wood of lances and the iron of swords, spells against dagger and poison, spells against cold, spells to shield his strength and his cunning and his potency.

Her palms lingered on his face. “I promised you all the gifts of Car-Iduna, Karelian of Lys. You have them now. You are not invulnerable; don’t ever dare to think so. But you are shielded with many strengths. Use them well.”

From a small pouch she drew out three bright, smooth objects, tiny as wrens’ eggs, and offered them to him.

“The red is of wolfsblood,” she said. “The green is of thorn. The black is the belly of the world. They say the first of these were made by Gullveig, before the days of men, and used in the great war between the Vanir and the Aesir.”

He took them wonderingly, turned them in his hands. They felt hard as polished stone.

“What are they for?”

She smiled and kissed him. “When you need them, you will know.”

Last of all she gave him another feather, black and shimmering like the first.

“Use this only if you’re desperate, if there is no other hope. Toss it into the sky, that is all; I will come to you.”

She kissed him yet again, softly. “I promise I will come.”

She slept spent, tangling him in her limbs, in the black silk of her hair. He lay awake for a long time, listening to the river and the melancholy owls, to the easy wanderings of Marius who stood guard for them at night, out of courtesy more than out of need; there was more power here than any ordinary mortals were likely to disturb.

He thought about his fate.

Tell me, he had asked her, how a witch would make war against the lord of the world.

Her answer had been clear, and pitiless, and sound. Every word lingered in his mind, as if they were speaking now.

— Don’t go to Aachen, Karel. Don’t give Gottfried the smallest reason to mistrust you.

— The emperor must be warned. Gottfried is perfectly capable of having him murdered in his bed.

— I will see to it he’s warned. Stay with the duke. Learn everything you can about his plans.

They were in the glade where she had changed herself, where she had rippled into that splendid golden predator. She was still naked; had she been younger, she might have seemed elfin there, and playful; instead she only seemed shamelessly beautiful. And perilous, he thought, more perilous than twenty knights in armor.

— Most of all, Karelian, learn everything you can about the stone. I doubt we can steal it from him, but we may discover ways to block its power, or destroy it. And then we’ll see how divine he really is, our Golden Duke!

It was night now; the glade where they had lingered was shadowed with foxes, the moon high, the altar stone black with ash, the woman spent and soft in his arms.

And he was damned.

If it was true. If the God of Rome and Jerusalem was real, then he was damned now, irrevocably and absolutely damned to those caverns of hellfire churning at the bottom of the world. All his other sins were forgivable— at least in the eyes of the Church, if not in his own. But from this circle of seven stones there would be no way back, even if he should ever halfway wish for one. She would never let him go.

More importantly, he had made his own choice, his own irrevocable act of unfaith and disobedience. He was not even sure when he had made it, if it had been in Stavoren or in Lys or here with her. But it was made, and it lay in his mind as a spear might have lain against his hand, pitiless and comforting.

All he had wanted was to live. To have yet some kind of life, to live it in some measure of human decency.

Gottfried von Heyden had forgotten what it meant to a man to sell his soul for a night’s good lodging, for a promise of land, for a handful of coins to pay for a bit of pleasure, to shut out the memory of how the coins were earned. Or rather, Gottfried von Heyden had never known those things; he had never needed to know them. He was one of those with lands to give away, and promises, and coins; he could buy a man and scarcely notice that he’d done so, and then smile and cross himself and walk away.

Therefore Gottfried von Heyden could rob such a man of his last hope of peace, and never imagine he might be hated for it. Never imagine he might unleash against himself an enemy with absolutely nothing to lose, not even honor. Karelian’s honor had been bought and sold too many times for it to matter. Allegiance counted for nothing now, and rank for less; and as for God, he had not counted much for years.

If it was treason, then so be it. If it was death on the field or on the gallows, then so be it. If it was hellfire, then so be it. He would bring Gottfried down. He would tear out his golden throat, and drag his banners in the mud, and ride his horse across his bones.

And she would help him. She would shield him and counsel him and pour her sweet, dark passion into his blood; she would call forth the old gods, the gods of the earth who were all the gods any man needed to live.

And he would take her gift of sorcery, take it with both hands, triumphantly, and love her better for it. It was magic and wildness and shimmering power; it was strength in his body and cunning in his mind; it was the hunger to live and the hope to win and it was sweet, sweet, sweet… sweet as her harpsongs, sweet as the taste of her flesh against his mouth. He would never go back to the other who was called a God, not ever; and there was fear in his resolve, like the fear which lay over the morning of a battle.
Maybe this is my last sun, my last drink of water, my last word of friendship.

My last chance to turn and ride away….

He knew the meaning of what he did then, and he did it because he knew. He slid out of the tangle of her arms and eased her onto her back. She purred softly, briefly, but she was too spent to waken. He kissed her throat, and took the copper tips of her breasts into his mouth, first one, and then the other, and knelt over her, and took her as she slept.

TWENTY

Betrayal

Among them that broke their vows I saw a young knight
brenning in the fire whom I knew sometime full well.

Revelation to a monk of Evesham

* * *

For weeks I have avoided putting these words to paper. And no, I did not hesitate because I care what you think— whoever you may be who come to read this. I never cared about the small opinions of the world, not even in my youth. Still less do I care now, at the edge of death, in this place where the world is nothing. I fear one thing only, and that is my own despair.

It had rained for days. Sodden grey clouds lay across the whole of the Reinmark. Northward, in the wild march of Ravensbruck, they were wind-blown and cold; here, in the valley of the Maren, some twenty-eight leagues from the great city of Karn, they were sleepy and warm. Rain slithered softly over the monastery walls, and ran down the cobbled paths, whispering of bursting grapes and flowers, whispering of life: boundless life, spilling out forever from the black loins of the earth.

Always more life … and still more … and yet still more. Paul shook his head. He acknowledged God’s generosity, the marvelous abundance of creation, yet he was sickened by this endless glut of life, this growing over of everything by the weeds of indiscriminate existence.

To the black fecund earth, the bones of a king and the leavings of a rat were no different. They were both just offal, just matter to chew up and spit out again in still another form— another weed, another drop of rain, another rat. Why did God permit it? Why did all this life exist, when all but a few tiny fragments of it were meaningless and befouled? Why did it continue, all of it mindlessly clamoring, and then afterwards mindlessly still, disappearing forever into the never-was, the never-mattered, burying the little which was good under its sheer, overwhelming mass?

In Stavoren, he had heard, the tombs of von Heyden were cracking, and briars were growing from their bones.

The cell where he sat was lit with a tiny candle, just enough to write by. He picked up his quill, slowly, hatefully. He did not want to write any more— not this damned and despicable chronicle, dictated by an incubus, turning everything he did into folly, everything he loved into delusion. And yet he could not resist. His hand was restless without the quill in it, and his mind was sick with memories. Writing them was unbearable; resisting them was worse.

* * *

Betrayal did not come easy to me, whatever anyone may think. I was a baron’s son, taught from childhood to respect the bonds of rank. I was a German, born to a world of passionate tribal loyalties, where treachery, though not uncommon, was bitterly condemned. I was a Christian. I knew that Our Lord obeyed his divine Father in all things, even to the point of death, and that he demanded of us the same submission to authority.

And finally, I was young and powerless. To go behind my own lord’s back and accuse him of witchcraft and treason, with no proof except my word— you may well ask how I could have dared to do it, for it was likely to earn me nothing except my own death, or a dungeon cell without a key.

For weeks my knowledge tormented me, yet I could not bring myself to act. Every day I decided I would speak; every night I huddled in my bed, and decided I could not. It was too dangerous, too futile. Gottfried would never believe me.

And yet in the end I went to him, because I had to.

You may say I was treacherous, and a fool. You may say, too, that I should have left the matter in God’s hands. It was for God to unfold the history of Gottfried and Karelian, and not for me to interfere. God would have revealed his truth in his own way, and accomplished his design. How can I answer you? How can I answer God? I did what I did, and the rest followed.

All of the rest of it, ruin by ruin to the end. Was I God’s agent, or was I theirs?

* * *

There were at least a dozen people in the room, counting the guards and the scribe who sat at the duke’s elbow, ready to note down whatever he might command. I walked stiffly across acres of stone floor, trying to swallow my fear, trying to ignore my horrible sense of wrong-doing. I was just twenty. In all my life I had never lied about anything, except the trivial deceptions of childhood— claiming an apple was windfall, perhaps, when in fact I had snatched it off a tree. Things even the priest had smiled at, though of course he told me not to do it again.

Now I stood wrapped in lies, in a peasant woman’s filthy dress, with black cinders in my hair, and old rags covering my hands, so no one would notice how big they were, or how callused from swordplay. I was deception given bones and flesh, a pretender bowing almost to the floor to hide my panic.

They looked at me without much interest. To them I was just another peasant, a pleader for favors or a dreamer of folly. But they would listen to me, if only for a moment, because I claimed to have knowledge concerning the duke’s safety.

“Well?” Gottfried said.

It was three months since I had seen him, and in spite of my love for him, I had forgotten how magnificent he was. Tall and broad, his square face hardened with wisdom, his eyes steady, as though he looked right through men’s flesh into their souls, and feared nothing he might see there.

I held out a folded, sealed paper. Only one sentence was written inside it: I am Paul von Ardiun, squire to the count of Lys.

A servant took the paper and passed it to the duke. He opened it. His face never changed. He folded it and put it carefully away, and glanced at the attendants, who waited patient and bored.

“Leave us,” he said.

When everyone had gone, he waved me to approach him, and smiled.

“What is Karel up to then,” he asked, “that he must resort to such nonsense as this? Surely he knows he can send me messengers at any hour of the day or night, and I will see them?”

“I am not here on the count’s behalf, my lord.”

“Then on whose?”

“Yours, my lord.”

“You will have to explain yourself,” he said.

So I told him everything. How it began the autumn before, as we journeyed to Ravensbruck for Karelian’s marriage. How the bridge was gone at Karlsbruck, and how Karelian had decided, against the advice of all his men, to pass through the perilous forest of Helmardin.

As soon as I mentioned that name, I noticed the tightening of Gottfried’s hand on the arm of his chair, the sudden, riveted attention of his gaze.

“And what befell you in Helmardin?” he asked, very softly.

“A storm came, my lord, a terrible storm, unnatural for the season, and we were lost in it. We came finally upon a castle, a place full of sorcery, kept by a witch queen. They called it Car-Iduna.”

Even now, many months later, I shivered remembering it. Plants grew there without sun, and men were turned into animals, and lust coiled in the air like scented smoke.

“This witch queen you speak of,” Gottfried demanded. “Do you know her name? What did she look like?”

“I never learned her name. But she had black hair. She was tall, and very beautiful, the way a harlot is beautiful. She wore many rings, and a gold belt studded with black stones, and a gown which only pretended to cover her. All she had to do was smile at Karelian, and he was undone.”

“The same one, then,” Gottfried murmured, more to himself than to me.

“Do you know this witch, my lord?” I whispered.

“Of her,” he said. “I know of her.” He gave me a hard, searching look. “They say everyone who enters her realm either remains there captive, or, if they return to the world, they can’t remember anything that happened.”

“It was so for the others, my lord— all the count’s men, except me. Because I did not eat, or drink, or touch any of the women. All the others have forgotten. They think we passed the night in a cave.”

“And why didn’t
you
eat or drink or pleasure yourself? You were the youngest, the least worldly, and you saw the danger of it, when your betters did not?”

“It was the seneschal who warned me, my lord. Reinhard. He warned us all. But once we were inside, and they saw her, and heard the music, and had cups of hot wine pressed into their hands … my lord, the power of the place…! It was like nothing I can describe. It was as if God himself wasn’t present in the world any more, inside those walls.”

“And yet you did not falter,” he said coldly. “How very extraordinary.”

I swallowed. I knew it sounded arrogant and righteous. Surviving always did.

“I was so terrified of them, my lord, I wasn’t much tempted.”

My answer surprised Gottfried, but I think it satisfied him. It was perhaps the only answer he would have considered honest.

“Go on,” he said.

“She wanted something from him; I don’t know what. They quarreled— or at least I thought they did. Then we left, and even as we passed through the gates, my lord, Car-Iduna disappeared. One moment it was there, and the next moment there was only forest. I thought it was over then; I thought we were safe. We went on to Ravensbruck, and afterwards to Lys. Karelian kept the black feather she gave him, but I never thought he’d use it. I never thought he’d call her back. And then he did.”

“When?” the duke asked sharply.

“In August, my lord. After we left your court here in Stavoren.”

After you told him your true identity, and your destiny, and your plans….

“He went to the banks of the Maren, and made offerings to the pagan god Tyr, and burned the feather in the manner she commanded. When she came, he knelt to her and swore allegiance.”

“And he took you along, I suppose, to hold his cloak, and gather the wood for the fire.”

His mockery hurt bitterly. I knew he had to doubt me, test me, trap me in any lie or malice I might be guilty of. But still it hurt.

“He went alone, my lord. I followed him secretly.”

“Do you make a habit of spying on your master?”

“No, my lord, never! Only that one time—!”

“And why, Paul of Ardiun? Why that one time?”

I stared at the duke’s boots; they were heavy and brown, laced to his knees; he had huge feet. I had no idea what to say. Till this moment I had spoken honestly. But I could not tell the truth now. I could not admit to knowing who he was.

“Ever since Helmardin, my lord, ever since he met …
her
… I was afraid for him, afraid he would … do something. He never stopped thinking about her. He cherished the raven’s feather she gave him. He kept it in a pouch hung around his neck, as a man might keep a sacred relic. He carried her colors at the tournament, right here in Stavoren—”

“A moment ago,” Gottfried reminded me grimly, “you told me you were sure it was over. You were sure he’d never call her back.”

Christ, those eyes…! He knew I was lying, and his eyes were pitiless, as the eyes of God will be at the hour of our judgment.

If he had simply sat, and gone on staring at me, God alone knows what I might finally have said, if only to free myself from his look, from the awful knowledge that he despised me for a plotter and a fool. But he reached to the table beside him, and poured himself a small bit of wine, and began to speak.

“What injury has passed between you and the count of Lys, squire Paul?”

“Injury, my lord? None.”

“Karelian is a well bred and well spoken man,” he went on. “An easy man to like. And generous. Last autumn, as I recall, before you left for Ravensbruck, he made you some very fine gifts. And when you came here for the
Königsritt,
we all could see you thought the world of him.

“Now you come to me with a tale which would mean his death— if I decided to believe it. Such a change of heart must surely have a reason. Either he has wronged you, or….” He paused, and considered me again. “Or you have done some wrong against him, and hope to cover your guilt with treachery. Which is it, squire Paul?”

“It is neither, my lord. I am—”

He cut me short with a single blunt gesture. “Listen to me, you babbling whelp! No one knows you’re here; you made sure of it yourself. You may wish you hadn’t been half as clever. You walked in here as a peasant drab— who will care if you walk out again? Who will even
notice?
I can have your liar’s throat cut before you open it to scream! Now tell me the truth. What is your quarrel with the count of Lys?”

My courage almost failed me then. It was as bad as I had feared. He did not believe me. He thought me nothing more than a foolish, dishonorable young man with a grudge. I would die for it, and that was horrible enough. But what would become of him?

I threw myself to my knees at his feet.

“My lord, please, I beg you, let me speak! I haven’t lied to you. I thought the world of Count Karelian, it’s true. And because I did, I blinded myself. Every chance he gave me to think well of him, I took it. And so yes, I believed it was over when we left Helmardin; I believed he would come back to God; I believed he was honorable at heart. Over and over I believed it— because I wanted to. Only… only a part of me was always afraid. And the last while, before he sent for her, he was… he was so dark and silent…! I thought surely something must have happened in Stavoren. Something must be turning his mind back—”