The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  It had been written by candlelight, she decided – perhaps after the house was asleep. And it had not come direct from Pemini. Maria must have sent it to some friend who was less likely to court danger or disapproval by sending messages direct to Tarceny She had spared Phaedra from telling her that. Re-reading the letter, Phaedra suspected that Maria had spared her a lot. She could not guess what ‘unholy things’ people were accusing her of, but the idea that she might be bewitched must be the very kindest of them. Eventually she settled herself to reply, trying to write like the brave woman Maria seemed to believe she was. She described the house and lands of Tarceny, and wished that Maria might one day come to see them. Then she put her letter aside, in the hope that a day might come soon when it would be safe for Maria to receive letters from Tarceny again.

  Waiting, waiting. The weeks passed, and she could not fill them all with misery. When the silks for Ulfin's robe came, and with them the fine scissors and needles and threads that Tarceny had not known in a generation, she made herself begin on them. She told herself, with the first crisp cuts, that fears might fail too. Just because she could not believe in the future, it did not mean that good would not come. All she could do was pray and pray in the empty chapel for Ulfin to return.

  And news came flying across the lake of victory.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  She greeted his homecoming with garlands and a welcome-supper. He laughed as he held her, and he laughed again over his food in the hall of Tarceny. He was calling for his chess set even before the tables were cleared, and when it came he slapped a handful of pieces onto the boards in front of him.

  ‘They came against us in three columns,’ he said. ‘From the north, under Baldwin; from the east and from the south-east.’ He set chess pieces in an arc around a goblet that signified Trant. ‘Say five or six thousand in all, to our fifteen hundred. We knew that the southern column was lagging, because Seguin had quarrelled with Develin and therefore was not pressing forward as hard as the others. So we were able to slip out to the south-east’ – a black piece hooked outward from the castle – ‘and come suddenly on Septimus and Develin from their southern flank. They collapsed at the first rush.’

  His hand whipped a white knight from its place with a flourish. His tone was eager, almost boyish. His eyes were fixed on the pieces and his gestures were charged with the echoes of combat. Phaedra watched him with her eyes shining. It was so good to have him home – and safe, and in glory!

  ‘Then we rode north and were on Baldwin before nightfall. There was a stiff fight for the road, because unlike Septimus they knew we were coming. But they had not been able to close up, and we got between Baldwin and Bay. Bay broke back the way they had come, and that was that. My riders chased Septimus to Tuscolo’ – a white pawn skittered away across the tabletop – ‘and Bay to the north. We took Baldwin, for the place was lightly held and the gate was open. We never even had to close with Seguin.’

  ‘I am sorry for Baldwin,’ Phaedra remembered to say. ‘And for the men who died with him.’

  ‘It is a pity Still, Phaedra, such a death is a part of the life. Baldwin was ageing, and for him at least it came with honour. Develin was thrown from his horse and crushed in the press before any of mine even came near. If my hour must come, I would me a death as Baldwin died.’

  ‘ No, Ulfin! Don't speak of that. There must be no more of this! Let there be peace now. It has already gone beyond all reason.’

  ‘It is not in my gift, Phaedra. There will be a pause, for the hot weather is on us and Septimus must re-gather. Whether he will now take charge, or Faul or Seguin, I do not know. But they have lost much honour. They will be at us again after the harvest.’

  ‘Then I shall pray to Michael that you are wrong.’

  Ulfin stayed for two weeks, in the hottest time of the summer, when men might die from heat in their armour and all campaigning ceased. They did little but sit together in the cool places, waiting for the sun to pass. He was silent much of the time, and seemed only to pay attention to the doings of the March when he saw a way to win more men or treasure for the campaign. She watched him looking out on the grand scape of the hills, with his mind turned inwards, unseeing. She saw Caw waiting to catch his master's attention, and being ignored. There was some coldness there. She thought Caw was hoping for release from his stewardship, but could not ask for it, and that Ulfin was not prepared to let him go. When she tried to ask Ulfin about it he answered shortly and off the point.

  He spoke with Phaedra on this and that, but even as he talked his mind was on other things. He seemed to think there was little use in trying to find the priest of the knoll. He was surprised that her pregnancy was making her sick (although she was able to assure him that it was better than it had been, and that indeed she was becoming stronger). And he would not talk about the coming child. She wondered whether he was superstitious, or embarrassed – or whether, like her, he was dreading what the birth would bring.

  One morning he was gone; risen and out of the gate before she could drag herself from sleep. He left messages and keepsakes, but took most of the coin and all the men he could muster down the road to Aclete. She was hurt that he should let it seem to her – even if she did not believe it – that silver and mail meant so much more to him now than the woman who carried his child. She would have given years of her loneliness for a few more days of his company. She could not have them. All there was left that morning was the castle, the household, the child, and Caw.

  Caw was, if anything, grimmer than before. It was clear he did not enjoy his post. He was hard to talk to. He seemed to think of little beyond war and the affairs of the month, and in his short way would speak of them if she wanted him to. She did not want to ask about those things, which were part of the present that imprisoned her. And Caw would not speak of the past at all. When she asked him about Ulfin's childhood his face hardened; he said only that his own father had broken his head and sold his marriage for a window of glass, but that he had never heard of any who had such a raising as old Tarceny had given his sons.

  The afternoon she tried to talk to him about her father he got up and left the table with something that sounded like a curse.

  The evenings after supper were empty places. She and Caw were the only two of rank at table. The household would clear the trestles and go about their duties, leaving them together, and they would look past one another until she could reasonably dismiss him. But Phaedra found that he did indeed play chess, and that this let them bear each other's company without the difficulties of conversation. By the middle of September they were playing every night. Caw always chose black. He was reluctant to make the first move, even in the opening dance of the chessboard. His positions were crabbed, tight and defensive. Phaedra had to do far more of the attacking than she was used to. Her mind was tired in the evenings, and although her sickness had eased, her thinking never quite had the focus that she expected of it. The games grew longer as the days shortened. The pieces moved clip-clip upon the board, separated by the long silences in which Caw thought and the air of the big hall hissed softly in Phaedra's ears. She would look up and see their reflections in a glass across the hall. The knight, in his dark tunic and his belted sword. The woman in the pale dress with the swelling belly. White flagstones and black, breaking into black irregularity at the hearth. Black pieces and white. Death and Life. And still Life lost.

  Another evening, and the game was ended. It was late. Caw left her with a grunt that might have been a goodnight, and went to walk the walls. Phaedra rose too, frowning. She climbed the steps to the gallery and passed into the half-lit corridor that led to the empty living quarters. Her chamber was dusty and a little untidy. Patter was on other duties, now that Ulfin had carried away most of the younger servants to the war. However, Orani had left a bowl of fruit for her on the low table. She mumbled to herself, picked up an apple and bit it. It crashed into juiciness in her ears, and at that moment she thought she heard something else. She tur
ned her head, wondering whether someone had stood for a moment in her bedroom doorway.

  ‘Orani?’

  There was no one there. Watching the door, she finished her mouthful, trying to chew without obliterating her hearing. Nothing moved. She picked up her light and walked softly to the doorway. There was no one in the corridor. From a little room a few paces away she heard the rumble of Orani's snore. The maid was supposed to remain awake to help her mistress retire, but she did not always manage it.

  Phaedra closed the door as softly as she could. After a moment's thought she reached for and drew the old bolts, which were stiff with dust and disuse. They clacked home. Then she undressed and sat in her bed, finishing her supper and watching the door. She wondered whether it was something in the way she had bitten at the fruit that had sounded so like the scrape of a foot, and the sibilant rustle of a robe.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  And now she was heavy with the child. It had woken in the late night, and its squirming had woken her too. She sat in Ulfin's library, wrapped in blankets in the October dawn, telling herself that there was nothing to be done about her discomfort. She could only distract herself until it eased. So she had come here to read by lamplight from Ulfin's books and Ulfin's manuscripts, while her stomach and bladder were crushed in turn by the shifting bulk of his child inside her.

  The pages were uncut from their full size, so she had spread them over the writing desk that Ulfin had given her. They were the beautiful, smooth paper, watermarked with the sails of Velis, that she had sometimes seen at home. Across the cream-like surface Ulfin's hand, curving tightly to make the most use of space, had traced a family tree. At the top was a row of names famous in story: Wulfram the Seafarer, and the seven princes of the Kingdom. Below them Ulfin had listed for each the male line of descent, father to son. There were names she had known all her life – high kings and heroes. There were others she had never seen written or heard in The Tale of Kings. She could only wonder how Ulfin had known of them. One by one the lines came to an end. Only the seventh, headed TALIFER, went on and on, outlasting all the others until, at the foot of the third page, it ended in a row of names:

  CALYN, ULFIN, PAIGAN.

  On her ring the letters cPu glittered, and the worm writhed in the weakening light of the flame.

  Ulfin must have spent many hours on this, and she had many questions for him – or perhaps just one. But he was not home, and word came rarely from him across the lake. Sometimes when she slept, or even when she was awake, he would speak to her through the Cup. Such dreams were good but fleeting, and she could not tell when the next would be; nor could she will them to happen as she so often wished to. He was swept up in his war, crossing the Segne in relentless marches, seizing Tuscolo itself by a miraculous raid, and harrying Septimus and Seguin's forces when they turned to recapture it, until their soldiers melted away and Seguin was drowned in the bloody marshes on the road to Bay.

  Now a group of barons had offered Ulfin the crown.

  The news had come last night, and with it word that Ulfin had refused. Phaedra felt as if she had put a foot over a sudden precipice and had been snatched back before she was aware. Had he reached so far, it would have meant unceasing war. Even with his principal enemies fallen, too many people opposed him. If he lost, then all would be lost. If he won she would be dragged to Tuscolo, with all its whispers and intrigues, and the unceasing games of patronage that she knew she would loathe.

  Turning in her sheets, fretting, trying to find a position in which she was comfortable, she had remembered these pages from other times in the library. Her sleeplessness had brought her to read them; to confirm that Ulfin was, or thought he was, the very last of the male line of the first kings. CALYN, ULFIN, PAIGAN. And his brothers were dead, and his child rested within her. He had never told her.

  She lifted her eyes from the page. Outside a flight of doves – six or seven of them – whirred past the window. Voices called to one another from the towers and rooftops as the garrison looked out in the dawn. ‘All clear, all clear. Stand down.’ Men were walking along the battlements above her head, laughing and talking the short, idiot talk that soldiers always talk. The baby squirmed; she shifted. She could hear Orani moving about in the corridor, and someone, released from watch, settled to play his pipe in those long, breathy notes that would speak to her for ever of Tarceny and the hills.

  Ulfin had refused. Whatever he thought the right of it was, he had known better than to advance his claim. Now, with these victories, there would surely be a chance of peace, and he would come home. She must start again on the robe, which had lain untouched for most of the summer.

  She began to scroll the sheets up again, noticing as she did so that the number of princes at the head of the first page was not seven, but eight. On the right-hand end of the row was a name: PAIGAN. It was the same name as Ulfin's brother. There was no line of descent at all.

  ‘Orani! Orani!’

  She blundered in the darkness. Heaven knew what time it was. It might be midnight, or an hour before the late December dawn. Her foot struck something and she staggered against the side of the bed.

  ‘Orani!’

  There were sounds in the corridor. Hands tried the door to the outer chamber. It shook. Orani's voice came, muffled by wood.

  ‘It's bolted!’

  Of course it was. Phaedra fastened it every night now, after a dream of a shape in the corridor a week ago. She felt her way across the huge space to the door and struggled with the bolts. As she was drawing the second one, the pain came again. She sank to the floor, bending double. The door jerked inwards and struck her thigh. Orani stood over her in the darkness.

  ‘Lady?’

  It was a moment before Phaedra could speak.

  ‘What's happening? Orani – what's happening to me?’

  She knew of course. It was the child. She had been waiting, day in, day out under the grey skies of November and December for something to begin. Now it had – but what? Was it birth? Was it miscarriage? Were these pains just something that would happen, and go away, and come again? No one had told her. She had not dared to ask.

  Was it the beginning of death?

  ‘Ulfin!’

  Orani's hands were under her armpits. Together they staggered back into the bedchamber. Phaedra kneeled on the rug, with her face buried in her arms, while Orani muttered and felt among the bedclothes.

  ‘Your waters gone, lady?’

  ‘I— What?’

  ‘You don't know, do you? Not to mind – you would if they had done. Don't seem to, at least not on the sheets here. Need light.’

  ‘It hurts!’

  ‘Is it hurting now?’

  ‘Yes – no. It will in a minute. What is it?’

  For answer the older woman ran her wrinkled hand up Phaedra's thigh to her swollen belly. Phaedra opened her mouth at the indignity, but said nothing. She knew she needed help. They sat together in the darkness, waiting. Then Phaedra gasped. The pain grew. It went on. She shuddered, and heard herself whimper.

  ‘Little thing's in a hurry to get out, though,’ Orani was saying as she withdrew her hand. ‘That's what it is. Thought it might come tonight, for Puri's hens all laid together yesterday, even the old one. An' your feet are small, lady, so it'll hurt before it's better.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Need a light.’

  ‘Send for my lord!’

  Ulfin was two hundred miles away, on his way to or from a parley in the Seabord.

  ‘Need a light, and some help. You bide there, lady. It won't come before I'm back.’

  Phaedra heard her leave the room. She stifled another sob. She knew she should be brave. Whatever happened now would happen as the Angels willed it. But there was nothing in her to be brave with. She knew nothing about birth. No one had told her about it, and she had never wanted to ask. She had not expected these terrible spasms. She thought that Orani was right, and that the end would not come for some hours. Yet she had no faith in the maid's rambling birt
hlore.

  She might go down into red darkness before Ulfin heard of it, before the messenger even left the castle. She, the start of all the Kingdom's troubles, would disappear in a meaningless end; and the Kingdom would war on, oblivious.

  Then the pain began again.

  Orani returned, her face lit from beneath by a lamp, so that her nose and chin cast demonic shadows up her eyes and cheeks. There were other faces with her. Other people, people of the castle, were being brought into their lady's bedchamber to see her shudder and shriek in gross-ness upon her pillows. Phaedra cared, but did not care enough to try to send them away. She bit her wrist when the pain returned, and it helped. She did it again and again, until they noticed and bound it and gave her a leather strap to bite, which was not half as good. There was warmth and wetness over her legs and belly, and warm, wet cloths mopping at her face. She began to scream.

  Sometime when the grey light was seeping in through the window, she knew she was about to die. She tried to say prayers between her spasms, but the pain came relentlessly and stopped all the words, so that she had to begin again. She opened her eyes and looked up at Orani.

  ‘Fetch the priest!’ she gasped.

  ‘Still a while. You're doing not bad, lady. Puri's said she's seen better an' I say I've seen worse …’

  Either she had not heard or she had not understood.

  ‘The grey priest! The one who married us!’ Ulfin, where are you?

  ‘Him! You don't want him. You'll be fine with us. And we'll need a wet nurse, though maybe you don't want to think of that now.’

  ‘The priest!’

  Whatever else Orani said vanished in Phaedra's rush of agony. She could not think. She could only wait for the next. And the next.

  And so on, for hours.

  There was a strange time, when the pain ended and the weight left her. It was daylight. The sheets were bloody, and her legs were bloody, and women gathered and showed her a bundle of white cloth, in the middle of which was a small face of red and purple with its eyes shut and its mouth open in a thin, wheezing bawl that went on and on.