The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  Not until we passed through Helmardin. Not until he met her, and began to change….

  I wrapped my arms around my knees, shivering from the cold. It was then, in that black wilderness, in that black night, when I first began to perceive how immense, how encompassing was the power of sorcery. To conjure up a demon, or cause a storm, or make a woman barren— these were small things, the kinds of witchery everyone understood.

  There was another kind, one which crept into the most secret places of our souls, in silence and with no warning at all, coaxing to life sins which we in our ordinary human frailty would have rejected, if not out of goodness then out of shame, still refusing to lower ourselves to that.

  It was all their work, this sickness in my blood, this terrible attraction which made him ever more beautiful as he fell. It was they who filled my mind with foul images, with offers of permission, with the possibility of limitless unrestraint. You can have anything. Do anything. Can you even imagine what is possible with me? Come here, and I will show you.

  His thoughts, not mine. His power… or really hers, the power of what she made him into. A power which could undo me utterly, until my body slavered like a dog after something I never wanted, until my body no longer belonged to me at all. Everything Karelian touched became entangled in sorcery, captivated by the promise of his dazzling corruption. Come here, and I will show you….

  It crept back through the silence even as I prayed. Teasing me, whispering in the corners of my mind, telling me Gottfried was less than he was, telling me I should not go back.

  I could stay, and serve him again, serve him better than before. I could go missing from the world. Who would know, and in the end who would care? It would be so easy, easy as finding a fire in the darkness, a fire already in reach of my hand.

  Paul stood up dizzily, wiped one arm across his face. It was all sorcery— those words carved on parchment as if on stone, lying scattered on the monastery floor. The words, and the memory, too. Both of them were lies, fashioned in his brain and in his loins by the malice of his enemies.

  He had thrown the parchments across the room. Long ago, when it first began, he tried burning them. He knew better now. Fire only made the words brighter, seared them more permanently into the deepest places of his mind.

  God, why do you compel me to suffer this? Pain I can bear, and hunger, and every kind of hardship. I have even learned to endure your abandonment of me, for I know I’m unworthy of your favor. But why this, after all these years? Why do you allow them to befoul my memory with sins I never wanted to commit? I loved him purely; I cared only for his soul, and for mine, and for the good of the Reinmark and of Christendom—

  Soft laughter lapped across the room, like water against pebbles. Even before he looked up, he knew the voice, the silken malevolence, the half-clothed body leaning serpentine against his rough-hewn desk. He was no longer much surprised when she came, or even much frightened. Nor did he try to make her leave; he knew it was beyond his strength.

  “Really, Paul,” she said. “You do lie marvelously well. But if your Christian God is as omniscient as you say, surely he will know?”

  “There is nothing to know,” the monk said. “I am the lowest of sinners, but I was never that kind of man. It was all your doing— yours, and the evil ones you serve.”

  “Mine?” She smiled. “You fell in love with Karelian in Acre, before either of you knew I existed. And please, stifle your protests; they grow boring. Especially since I never had the slightest objection. He was mine from the moment he rode into Helmardin. What pleasures he might have taken with you, or with his countess— they were just strawberries in the grass. Those who find them smile, and eat, and go their way.”

  He stared at her. Did she really think her jealousy, or the lack of it, mattered to him in the least?

  “Do you care about anything,” he asked coldly, “except your lusts?”

  “Never,” she said. “And my lusts, as you have already decided, are many and insatiable.”

  She bent, and with her own ringed hand picked up the scattered pages of his manuscript.

  “You’re getting too old for temper tantrums, Brother Paul. Finish your book.”

  “Suppose I choose not to?” he said.

  “You might. When hailstones choose not to fall, and dead men choose not to decay.” She handed him the quill. “I’m not inclined to offer you even the smallest kindness, Paul of Ardiun, but for my own purposes I will. Finish the story, to the last drop of blood and the last cry of triumph, and you will be free to die.”

  “My death is in God’s hands.”

  “No, little fool,” she said softly. “It’s in mine. The Reinmark is not very Christian, remember? You keep saying so yourself. Veelas haunt the riverbanks, and elves stalk wild in the mountains. The people go to your Masses, maybe, but all week long they pay reverence to Odin and Freya and Thor; Tyr’s altars are laden with game. Your God is as proud as any other, Pauli; he knows where he’s not wanted. You can pray until your monk’s heart breaks; it won’t matter. He is far away from here, and he’ll never come to set you free.” She paused, and added darkly: “I am the only one who can.”

  Many times in his life he thought he had reached the bottom of human despair, and nothing more terrible was left to befall him, short of damnation itself. Yet this was a new and utterly overwhelming terror.

  “Why are you surprised?” she went on. “You’ve seen the powers of Car-Iduna. You know within the Grail of Life is the death of every living thing. It comes to all, even to your priests who imagine they’ll recover from it. When it comes, depends on fate — and, if they choose to involve themselves, on the gods. Iduna has given me the apple of your life — at great cost, I will admit; she doesn’t give any of them lightly. But it’s mine now. You will live, and endure my power over you, until I give you leave to go.”

  She picked up the last page, scarred with the words she had made him write, with the passions she had made him remember.

  “Finish the story,” she said, “and I will let you be.”

  For a long time he said nothing. He knew it was an act of unfaith more terrible than any sin he had ever committed, but he believed her. Maybe God permitted it, or maybe, as she said, God was far away. But his life was in her hands, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  I am damned. If they can persuade me of this, then I am truly and utterly damned….

  That was why he asked the question; if he was damned it did not matter. He had longed to ask so many times. It had been in the back of his mind almost from the first, creeping closer and ever closer to the boundaries of his will. Always he resisted. It was a great sin to seek knowledge from a witch. But he was so tired of resisting. And it would mean so much to know.

  “Will you answer me a question, sorceress?”

  “I might.”

  “What became of Karelian… after… after that day…?”

  “Your God is omniscient, Brother Paul, and your Jesus is all-loving and all-kind. You will have to ask them. You haven’t deserved an answer from me.”

  So. Not even that, to carry with him to his darkness. Neither God’s comfort, nor any other. Only memories, memories so clear they lived before his eyes, and reduced both God and the world to shadows.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Parting

  And anon after that, I was had forth through

  dark places by the cruel and incredible madness of wicked spirits….

  Revelation to a monk of Evesham

  * * *

  I slept finally, I must have, for when I saw the world again the sun was pouring gold all over me, and the air smelled of smoke and roasting meat. Karelian had his crossbow propped against a tree, and three rabbits gutted and browning on the fire.

  I scrambled to my feet, glancing at the sky. It was late, almost noon.

  “Forgive me, my lord. You should have wakened me.”

  “There was no need,” he said. “And you looked like you hadn’t slep
t for a year.”

  “I suppose I haven’t, to tell the truth. I have no talent for living in the woods.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

  I was piqued in spite of myself. “What do you mean, my lord?”

  “When the prey catches the hunter, the hunter is out of his element. Or don’t you think so?”

  He smiled. He was teasing me. Of course he was teasing me, but a cold shiver went all through my bones.

  “Even in my element, I would hardly be a match for you, my lord,” I said. In the sunlight I saw how haggard he really was. I wondered if he had slept any more than I had, and I felt colder still.

  But he only reached to turn the shimmering rabbits on their spits, and fed the fire.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving.” I brought more wood up, and then settled on the ground nearby.

  “Where will you go now, my lord?”

  He shrugged. “Wherever I can do Gottfried the most damage.”

  Yes, of course; that is your mission on this earth, is it not?

  “Wherever I go,” he added, “it will be a dangerous journey. I won’t blame you if you choose not to come.”

  “I swore an oath to serve you, my lord.”

  “I’ll release you from your oath, if you wish. Freely, and with thanks.”

  “Are you sending me away?”

  “No. I’m asking you to be sure. Where I’m going now, I’ll compel no one to follow.”

  “Car-Iduna?” I whispered.

  “No, Pauli. Not simply Car-Iduna. You’ve been there, and you survived it. This time, I may well to go to hell… as the priests would look on it, and men like Gottfried. I mean to destroy him, and I’ll do it any way I can. Do you understand me, Pauli? There’s no weapon I won’t raise against him. And if I must find my strength in darkness, then that’s where I will go.”

  “My lord….”

  “You needn’t follow me. But if you do….” He paused. “If you do, my friend, you probably won’t be able to get back. Not because I’d wish it so, but because there are patterns in the world, and they unfold as they are fashioned. You must choose carefully.”

  “I’ve already chosen, my lord. I will serve you faithfully in all things, saving only the good of my immortal soul.”

  He looked at me bemused, and then he laughed.

  “You’re a jewel of a lad, Pauli, but you don’t listen. Never mind. We’ll talk about it later. Have some rabbit.”

  He pulled one of the haunches off the spit, and handed it to me. I was hungry in spite of everything, and I gobbled it, wondering precisely what it was that we would talk about later, and what I would say or do if he demanded some horrid oath, some dreadful ritual of surrender to his masters and himself.

  Even now I wonder. For we had barely begun to eat when we heard the intruder, and dropped our food and pulled our swords, springing to our feet like cornered thieves.

  The woman was not twenty feet away, and I swear — I swear as God is my witness and the keeper of my soul — I swear she landed there, even as we whirled to challenge her, landed like an angel in a painting, without a breath of effort.

  “Well,” she said.

  For the briefest moment I thought it was her, the lady of Car-Iduna, for her smooth and scornful voice, her smooth and shameless body. But this woman was younger, much younger and fair-haired; and although there was perhaps the faintest resemblance in their eyes and in the lines of their mouths, this was someone very different.

  She moved towards us. She was very slender. She wore a garment I had never seen before on anyone, all furry and wrapping every part of her, even her throat and her fingers. She looked like a white and golden cat.

  “Lord Karelian Brandeis, I take it?” Her eyes raked him, amused and insolent.

  He bowed politely. “My lady.”

  The woman unwrapped a long rabbit scarf from around her shoulders and played with it idly. Her gaze never left Karelian.

  “She told me you were the finest looking man in the empire. I can’t imagine what else she has been looking at.”

  “I’m flattered, my lady,” Karelian said. “But of whom are we speaking?”

  “Her highness of Helmardin. My sister. My baby sister.” She spoke, I thought, like one of those whores in the brothels of Jerusalem, where Karelian had dragged me once or twice when there was no one else to watch his coin-pouch or his back. Look at me! Can’t you see I’m prettier than she is, more experienced, more desirable….

  “Baby sister?” Karelian murmured. The lady of Car-Iduna was his own age or more, and this creature looked all of seventeen. “You surprise me, lady.”

  She tossed her head. “I am veela, Lord Karelian. So was my mother. I had children myself when she took that wandering Cossack for a lover; what she saw in him I never did understand. Your queen was the last of her babes— though of course she doesn’t look it. Humans age so ridiculously fast.”

  “And how fares my queen, lady veela?”

  The creature shrugged. “She’s besotted. But I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

  She scrutinized him again. She obviously found her sister’s choices as bewildering as she had once found her mother’s.

  “She should be thankful I discovered you, in any case. I passed your camp twice, my lord, and didn’t bother stopping. I thought you were just a bandit.”

  This was too much. I stepped forward, surprised at my own anger.

  “There’s no need to insult his lordship,” I said harshly. “He was gravely wounded, and he’s been journeying in the wilderness for weeks—”

  “I’ve been in the wilderness since I was born,” she said archly, “and I don’t look like a rag.”

  “Never mind, Pauli,” Karelian said. “I beg you, lady, tell me where the queen is, or take me to her! It’s urgent that I see her!”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is,” she said. “My sister may be a brat, but she does have a way with men. They may leave her, but they’re always eager to go back. Never fear, my lord, I’ll tell her where you are, and then, gods willing, she’ll leave me in peace. Twenty-nine years, would you believe it, twenty-nine years she sat on a little favor she did me, and then she summoned me halfway across the empire, and demanded that I pay her back! In the middle of winter, for Frigg’s sake, without a shred of pity. Look till you find him, she said— or I’ll strangle you. Being queen has gone to her head.

  “Don’t worry, my lord count, I’m sure she’ll be here to fetch you before the sun goes down tomorrow.”

  “Then I thank you, lady…?” He paused hopefully, and she smiled.

  “Lady Malanthine. First of the veelas of Reinmark and Franconia, daughter of Ursula the Fair, heiress of the immortal Iduna. At your most humble service, my lord.”

  “I thank you, Lady Malanthine, and I beg you to tell the queen—”

  “Yes, of course. You adore her and kiss her feet and can’t wait to explain where the devil you’ve been all this time. I’ll tell her, my lord, with the greatest of delight. Farewell!”

  “Wait! Surely she knows what happened at Lys—!”

  “She knows you failed her. Gottfried is in Mainz, getting himself made king, and you’re playing in the woods like a peasant lad on a Sunday afternoon. That will take some accounting for, I expect.”

  And then, with the smallest of curtseys, and a toss of the fur she had flung over her shoulder, she swept away, so lightly and so quickly it’s possible she flew; I wouldn’t want to say. But in a few heartbeats there was only woods about us, and winter birds chattering at the sun, and nothing more.

  And so I had my chance to get the cross. Karelian was like an animal in a cage, torn between happiness and dismay. I was afraid I’d never find her again, Pauli; I tried every way I knew to reach her, and I couldn’t. He was happy, but half desperate as well, as men are always desperate when they depend on the favor of a woman. Would she be angry? Would she blame him for his absence, berate him, mock him as her sister did, wonder
why she ever thought him beautiful?

  It was a fine day, and since it seemed the lady of Car-Iduna would come to us, we had nothing to do but stay in our camp.

  “My lord,” I said. “Why don’t I take your things down to the brook and wash them? They will dry by the fire before dark.”

  He smiled faintly, ruefully. “And then I will look like a clean bandit…? I don’t think it will help much, Pauli, but all right. Christ knows they need a scrubbing.”

  He wrapped his cloak close around his shoulders and took off his clothing, all but his trousers and his boots. I was shocked by the bloodstains on his tunic, by the three ugly, half-healed wounds he bore. I wondered how he ever survived.

  I drew all the breath I had to keep my voice calm.

  “Give me the pouch, too, my lord; it’s all blood-stained. I’ll wash it and soften it again with tallow.”

  He hesitated, but only for a second. He slipped it over his head, and took the feather out, and gave me the bag.

  And I carried it to the edge of the brook with his garments, trying to control the pounding of my heart, the wish to run in my driven eagerness: Oh, God, only a few moments, only a few moments alone and I will have it, I’ll be safe!

  I threw his clothes into a pile beside me and seized the pouch in both hands, turning it inside out and groping at the bottom of the seam. But it had stiffened from being soaked over and over in sweat and rain and blood, and I was clumsy with haste. And I had forgotten, too, how tiny the cross was. Even when I first placed it there, and knew exactly in which spot, I could barely feel it between my fingers.

  There was no help for it. I would have to take the pouch entirely apart. I sat, spreading my cloak across my lap and making a valley in it. Then, very carefully, I sliced the stitching with my dagger, and opened the folded seam. I thought I would see the cross at once, with its brilliant crystal, but there was dirt on everything, and bits of grass, and caked blood. I felt slowly with one finger, very slowly, tracing the length of the opened seam, once, then again. It had to be there. It was so small, perhaps it had even broken, but it had to still be there, oh, dear God, let it still be there…! Sweat ran into my eyes, and I had to stop to brush it away. My searching began to grow frantic. I was scrabbling at the pouch like a rat at a wall, scraping away the detritus and shaking it into my lap, rubbing it between my fingers, oh, Jesus, if you love me, help me now, please help me find it…! But there was nothing, only dirt and so much mark of blood.