The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  Helga should have had him, Adelaide reflected bitterly. Then everyone would be happy. But it wasn’t God’s business to make people happy, was it? Life was hard. Life was supposed to be hard, the countess said. How else would a Christian deserve heaven?

  The countess ripped open the hem Adelaide had made, and shoved the garment into her face.

  “Do it again, and do it right, or you’ll sit there until morning.”

  She swallowed; she did not cry. It did no good to cry; it only made things worse. It did no good, either, to complain to her father. She had done so once or twice, long ago. He had been furious, and had beaten the countess, and called her names, and that felt good for a while. But it was Clara she had to live with, day after day, Clara who controlled every waking moment of her life, Clara who did not grow kinder towards her, merely more skilful in her choice of cruelties. If she complained to the count, Clara would pay once— and then, for a very long time after, Adelaide would pay over and over. It was better to be silent. Just be silent and dream.

  In the forests of Jutland, very long ago, there lived a king who was very stern and cold. He had a beautiful daughter, but he kept her in his stone fortress all alone. He did not want anyone to marry her. No one came to see her except the birds, who all sang very wonderfully. She learned to imitate them, and to sing in all their different languages.

  One day a prince came, wandering lost and wounded from a distant war, and heard her singing. What bird is this, he asked, that sings so sweetly, and makes my heart so glad? If only I could tame it, I would take it home with me, and I would never be sorrowful again. And at once the princess was transformed into a bird, and flew into his hand….

  The smaller the world grew, the tinier were the things on which it turned. She could live a week on the glance Rudi might cast towards her window as he strode across the courtyard or mounted his horse— a seemingly idle glance, unnoticed by anyone but her, a gift, the only gift he had: I am still here, Heidi; I still adore you…. A week on that, a month on a stolen word, a year on the memory of a kiss.

  A lifetime, if need be, on the quick, silent sharing of their bodies, those few times. It was hard for them to be together in this pitilessly guarded world, this world of stone and eyes; so hard and so desperately dangerous, so little pleasure in it amidst the fear, only the dark pleasure of defiance itself. They had loved each other, and nothing could ever take that away. Not the walls and the black winter, not Clara, not God. Not even death, if it came— the retribution which seemed sometimes too terrible to imagine, and sometimes held a strange compelling beauty. There would be stories about them, perhaps, stories the minnesingers would carry all across the land, love’s last revenge against the law’s revengers: We are the ones who are remembered. We are the ones who made the choice which mattered.

  There were worse things to die for than Rudi’s black eyes, and his hawk’s grace, and his courage. How could Helga think Karelian of Lys was handsome? Dear God, he was old, almost as old as her father. Rudi was only twenty-one, and dark as the hunter elves, and utterly without fear. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for love of her, nothing. She did not care if other men called him ruthless, and wondered about his honor, and stayed carefully out of his way. They did not know why he acted so, and if they had, they would have thought less of him than before. Such love as his was lunacy.

  But Melusine took the prince upon her horse, and rode with him to the very edges of the sea. She threw away her fine garments, and he saw that her body glistened silver as the water touched it, and her loins were the loins of a fish. There, she said, pointing seaward, there lies the realm of my people. I have castles of coral, and forests of green kelp, and the sea maidens play by my side. Come now, and live with me there.

  And he said to her: What of my kingdom?

  And she answered him: Kingdoms will always have kings. What of me?

  NINE

  The Iron Count

  He who believes that anything comes out

  favorably or unfavorably because of the crying of

  a raven shall do penance for seven days.

  Penitential of Bartholomew Iscanus

  * * *

  For years after, Paul would look back to those first days and weeks in Ravensbruck and try to remember when he first began to be afraid. When he first began to notice that something was wrong. Something beyond the ordinary darkness of a sinful world, beyond the ordinary savagery of a border lord’s life. The first whispers of unease he brushed aside, thinking them carry-overs from Car-Iduna. They came again. And again. And again.

  There was the Wend woman, a horrible creature who hung about in the shadows of the hall, and tended the count sometimes, never speaking. The people of Ravensbruck hardly noticed her any more; she had been there so long. It took a stranger’s eye to see the malevolence in her, to realize those always lowered eyes hid pools of hatred.

  There was Peter, the count’s squire, bored to distraction since his master was injured, following Paul around like a dog, wanting stories of the Holy Land, whispering the tale of Sigune in the shadows of the stable, as though it were a secret no one knew but himself: She was his lordship’s concubine; they say she tried to kill him, years ago…. Whispering other things, too, always vague, always full of possibilities which he never explained: Oh, I know things, if I chose to tell you, things nobody would believe…. A pretentious little scoundrel, Paul thought, always looking for favors and for gifts, yet with just enough real knowledge to make one wonder what he might be keeping back.

  There was Rudolf of Selven, whom Paul noticed at first simply because he was dark. Peter had other reasons for noticing him.

  “Nobody messes with that one,” Peter said. “Not since Reisdorf.”

  Silence. Feigning infinite indifference, Paul turned Karelian’s saddle about on his knee, and began polishing the other side.

  “He met his best friend under a flag of truce,” Peter went on, “and then he betrayed him. Oh, it was the right thing to do, of course. Nicholas was a rebel. He’d killed the count’s son, and he was living like a bandit, stealing and plundering. But a lot of the men thought he had cause for it, and they didn’t want to go after him—”

  “Why did they think he had cause?”

  “Well, it’s just gossip of course, no one knows if it’s true. But they say the count’s son lost a wager to Nicholas, and they quarreled. Some days afterwards, they found Nicholas’s young page in the woods, dead— well, worse than dead, if you know what I mean. Nicholas blamed the count’s son, and killed him like a dog, and went to war against the count. He had a lot of friends; it would have been a hard fight.

  “So Rudi slipped off into the hills, with just a few men, and sent out word to arrange a meeting at a farm near Reisdorf, hinting he would join the rebels. There wasn’t another soul in the world Nicholas would have trusted, not even Jesus Christ, but he trusted Rudi. And Rudi brought him back for Arnulf to hang.”

  “No wonder he’s so high in Arnulf’s favor.”

  “Not nearly as high as he’d like to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. Everybody wants more than they have, don’t they?”

  And that was all Peter would say on the subject for almost a fortnight— a fortnight which passed with a wearying sameness of grey winter days, and long winter nights of boasting and drink.

  * * *

  “Why are we sending armies to Palestine, that’s what I would like to know?” Count Arnulf’s voice boomed across the great hall; men at the far end of his long table broke off their conversations and looked up. The man was amazing, hardly a man at all, but a force of nature. He had been gravely injured; he could not walk at all, or stand up without a cane. And yet he sat here, hour after hour, night after night, indifferent to pain, indifferent to time, drinking unimaginable quantities of beer and talking everyone around him to blank exhaustion.

  “We should be sending our men east,” he went on fiercely, “to Prussia, to Latvia— th
e whole damned Baltic could be ours for the taking. Why the devil doesn’t the pope think about that?”

  “I have no idea,” Karelian replied. “He doesn’t make a habit of asking my advice.”

  Arnulf chuckled. “No, I am sure he doesn’t. Not yours, or mine, or any other German’s.” He waved at Peter to fetch him more beer.

  “Well, at least you brought something worthwhile back from that damnable desert. The rumors say Gottfried needed a ship to bring home his booty. Is it true?”

  “It’s true. And he paid off his men first, all of them— and generously too, for seven years of service.”

  “How in God’s name did he come by such a treasure?”

  “He stripped the temple of Jerusalem.”

  Arnulf paused with his cup almost at his mouth. “He did what?”

  “He plundered the great temple. We learned from some spies that it was laden with treasure— gold, silver, precious stones, everything. Once we were over the walls, he made a point of being the first man there.”

  Arnulf banged his fist on the table in delight. “Yes, he would, by God! But it must have been more than the Franks could swallow, when he got there ahead of them. I’ll wager they howled like babies, wanting their own fistful.”

  “They wanted a fistful; the priests wanted it all. They said it should belong to the Church. There was no end of quarreling over it, but in the end Gottfried kept the lion’s share.”

  “As the lion should.”

  Arnulf shifted in his chair, wincing briefly against the pain.

  “God knows, maybe I should have gone, if the pickings were so rich. To say nothing of all those pretty heathen girls to choose from, wearing nothing but their perfumes and their veils. What were they like, Karel, tell me— and for Christ’s sake don’t pretend to be a saint, just because you’re marrying my daughter! I wouldn’t expect any man to pass up a chance like that— four women for every infidel in the city, Christ, it must have been a feast!”

  Arnulf waited, watching him with expectation, but the reply came from Reinhard instead.

  “You misjudge us, my lord count,” he said. “We did no evil with the Saracen women. We killed them wherever we found them.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  The lord of Ravensbruck was not easily surprised, but this time, Paul thought, he truly did not believe what he had heard. “He’s not serious, Karelian? You’re not going to tell me it’s true?”

  Karelian looked at his cup for a time, and then met Arnulf’s eyes levelly, grimly.

  “When the sun went down that day, my lord, every Saracen in Jerusalem was dead, and every Jew, and most every other living thing except ourselves. So, yes, it is true.”

  “You didn’t even hump them first?”

  “Some did, I expect. The knights mostly did not.”

  “And you took no slaves? Even a plain woman is worth a few marks if she’s young and can work.”

  “They were infidels, my lord,” Reinhard said.

  “They were plunder, for Christ’s sake! You kept the gold, didn’t you? Wasn’t it infidel gold? God’s blood, you take this business of holy war entirely too far!”

  Karelian downed another stein, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stared at a spot on the table where a sharp object — a dagger, perhaps, or a spear — had left a deep, ugly gouge. Then he laid his head back against the wooden chair. Paul’s hand had been resting there, idly, only a whisper of distance now from the fine, tawny head. Without noticing, Paul drew his hand away and held it for a long time clenched by his side.

  “We need some minstrels,” Karelian said dreamily. “Minnesingers. Dancing girls. Fools. Lots and lots of fools. What do you think, Pauli? Where can we find some fools?”

  Arnulf was staring at him in absolute bewilderment.

  “My lord,” Paul whispered. “You’re very drunk.”

  “Not nearly drunk enough. Doesn’t anyone in the whole of Ravensbruck know how to sing? Give me some beer, Pauli.”

  He held out his cup unsteadily, but as Paul bent to fill it, he saw that the count’s fingers were closed firmly on the handle, and his eyes were not muddy at all. Only bitter and tired.

  Arnulf was talking again. There was clearly no point discussing the great crusade any further; Karelian was too drunk, and Reinhard too misguided, and Otto was playing dice. But there were other wars to talk about; indeed, he preferred to talk about his own. There were so many. It would take years to tell of every battle, every warrior slain blow by blow in single combat, every house burned, every village, every ship. Every woman taken, and every horse, and every sack of coin.

  “Sit down, lad, for God’s sake, before you fall,” Karelian murmured.

  So Paul sat by the count’s chair as Arnulf talked on, and the night dissolved into a space without borders or meaning. Servants took away the leftover food and sat in huddles in the background, sleeping or gossiping, waiting for commands, waiting for it to end. Dogs fought over bones in the rushes on the floor. Men bloated with beer staggered off to a corner and threw up, or wrapped themselves in their cloaks and found a place to sleep. The room stank of smoke and sweat, and yet it was desolately cold. Wind guttered the torches, and snow blowing in from the cracks of high windows gathered in small ridges along the walls.

  Mostly it was Vikings Arnulf did battle with. Occasionally Prussians. Once, apparently, it had been the Wends. But the Vikings were his enemies of choice. He had travelled the whole of the North Sea coast to meet them wherever they came, and he remembered it all with the pleasure of a man remembering sex.

  “We caught up with them half a mile from the river. They’d have made it back to their ships, but they were loaded with booty. They’d plundered half the valley; Christ, they had cartloads of pigs, they had cattle, and I don’t know how many sacks of grain, and all the women they could find. And do you know what the heathen devils did, when they saw we were on them, and they’d have to abandon everything? They destroyed it. Everything. They slashed the grain sacks, they killed the animals, they cut the women’s throats— that’s Vikings for you, they were bred in hell, the lot of them. But there wasn’t one of them made it home to their heathen altars, not this time. We got between them and the river, and I sent a small party to fire the ships, and the rest of us dealt with the dogs. By luck we took the chief’s son alive. Some of the men wanted to ransom him, to try and get some of our own captives back. But I wouldn’t even consider it. What is the worst death you ever saw a man die, Karelian?”

  Karelian pulled his fur cloak close around his neck. “Don’t know,” he muttered.

  “We torched his balls and the soles of his feet, till they were black. We put out his eyes. We smashed every one of his fingers with a stone club, and every one of his toes, and then his arms and his legs. We drove nails into both sides of his jaws. It took about a week, all of that, and then we finished him off with a burning iron rod, lodged in what I will leave you to judge was the most appropriate place.”

  “You’re an extraordinary man, my lord.”

  “Aye.” Arnulf took a long drink. He was tiring, but only a little. “I can be generous to a fault, Karelian, to those who deserve it. But any man who earns my enmity, God help him. He’ll rue the day he was born.”

  Somewhere down the table a chair scraped, a man cursed, an iron cup smashed against the table. For a moment Paul thought it was only a drunken vassal stumbling to his feet to find the privy or a bed. But men all around were springing to their feet; he heard scuffling, and then a yelp of pain.

  “Stand aside!”

  Arnulf’s voice was a thunderclap, awesome not only for its power, but for the weight of authority it carried. He had risen from his chair, clinging to his cane with one hand and to his squire’s arm with the other; and wounded though he was, Paul knew, no man there was likely to defy him.

  The cluster of men parted, and he saw one of Arnulf’s knights, a man called Franz, swaying drunkenly and daubing at his side with his fingers, comp
letely bewildered, as though he could not understand where the blood was coming from. Rudolf of Selven stood in front of him, grappled to standstill by his comrades, still holding a stained dagger in his hand.

  Arnulf of Ravensbruck chuckled.

  “Is it blood or ale you’re losing there, Franzli?”

  The wounded knight, drunk to a stupor, looked at him, grinned, and collapsed. They heaved him onto the table; someone ran for the surgeon. Carefully, they let Rudi go. He wiped his blade clean and strode without a word towards the door.

  This time the count did not have to shout to be heard. He barely had to murmur.

  “Selven.”

  For a moment Paul thought the young man would simply keep on walking. Then he stopped and turned. He was, except for Paul himself, the only sober man in the place, but it did not seem like a virtue just now. It seemed rather like a demonstration of power, something icy and calculated. This man kept his wits about him for reasons which had nothing to do with Christian moderation.

  “My lord?”

  “There’s a rule in this hall, Rudi. You leave your weapons by the door when you come in. All of them.”

  Selven wiped his face with the back of his hand. Then, for no reason Paul could imagine, he glanced once, with a terrible bitterness, towards Karelian of Lys.

  “I forgot I was carrying it, my lord.”

  “You remembered again right quickly when you wanted to. Give it here.”

  Unwillingly, Selven approached his lord. From the day of his arrival Paul disliked the man, though at first he could not have said why. Now perhaps he could. Rudi’s arrogance, for one thing: the hard-edged, chip-on-his-shoulder arrogance which bristled against everything it met. The sullen demeanor as well; the watchfulness, the thin face hung with ragged hair, too young a face to be so knife-like and hard. The threat of coiled violence in his body, which made even his most innocent movements seem predatory and dangerous. He was a man to walk circles around, just like his liege.