The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  “Perhaps the queen could be seduced,” he said. “If the bandit were a brave and highborn knight fallen on hard times.”

  “Queens are never seduced,” she said.

  “That, my love, is a singularly reckless challenge.”

  “Which any brave knight should bravely accept, hard times or not. Don’t you agree, my lord bandit?”

  He laughed and kissed her, just a few small kisses at first, teasing and playful. But he was hungry, so hungry it hurt; the kisses turned wild and shameless and the game was over before it properly began. He pulled her hard against his body, aware of nothing now except jasmine in his throat and blind greed in his loins, of her arms going round him, undoing in a heartbeat whatever had passed for hesitation or restraint.

  He stopped finally, to look at her face, to see the pleasure there, the willingness. From the very first she had wanted him, in the midst of the storm, in the secret depths of Car-Iduna. To see it was like wine, and more than wine; it was like Wulfstan’s potions, unravelling the boundaries of the world.

  “What was it you said about queens, my lady?”

  She smiled, her fingers tangled in his hair. Her eyes were wonderfully soft and smoky.

  “They are never seduced,” she said. “They choose.”

  * * *

  “I feared for you, Karel. Gods, but I feared for you.” Her hand played across his face, lingered briefly on the scar where the young knight’s lance had clubbed him. “Poor love. I promised you so much, and then I came too late. A whole day too late. Dead men were everywhere, and the manor burning. I heard you had escaped, and for a while I dared to hope. Then I saw them bring back your horse, exhausted and covered with blood—”

  “Probably the blood wasn’t all mine,” he said.

  “Probably. I thought of that. I thought of everything I could to keep from despair. But I couldn’t find you. I searched… gods, Malanthine would have thought me a bandit, too, by the time I was done searching.”

  “You couldn’t see through the darkness the shell made?”

  “No. Possibly, just possibly, I could have undone it altogether— but then I would have had to find you before Gottfried’s men did, and there wasn’t much hope of that. It seemed I had done everything wrong. I trusted you, and so I didn’t press you in your silence. So we waited too long, and then we found Gottfried could move faster than we could. I gave you the means to flee, and so, instead of being half-safe in one of Gottfried’s prisons, where we could still hope to rescue you, now you were out of everyone’s reach, wounded, maybe dying, and utterly alone. I grieved for my gifts to you, then. I grieved that I’d ever brought you to Car-Iduna.

  “And the one person in the world who could have helped us we couldn’t find, either, and I cursed him for it. Damned useless elf, I said, all these years he’s claimed to be our ally, he’s claimed to love the children of Dorn. But now, when the finest Dorn has ever bred has such bitter need of him, where is he? Chasing mountain sheep, no doubt, or lolling in some highborn woman’s bed. Oh, I was bitter, Karel. I never knew I loved you so much.”

  He kissed her. It was almost worth half dying, just to hear her say it.

  “You’ve forgiven that damned useless elf, I trust?” he murmured.

  “A thousand times. As soon as I return to Car-Iduna I’ll send messengers to thank him, and more presents than he’ll know what to do with.”

  She paused, concentrating briefly as she plucked at a birch twig hopelessly tangled in his hair. He smiled when she scowled and gave up.

  “The flower of chivalry,” he said wryly. “Without fear and without dishonor. Just very, very dirty.”

  “You made a terrible impression on my sister, did you know?”

  “Yes, it was rather obvious.”

  “Don’t worry about it. She has no taste at all when it comes to men. She chases pretty eighteen-year-olds, and then complains bitterly when they turn out to be boring.”

  He laughed.

  “Was she terribly rude to you?” Raven murmured.

  “Not terribly. I think it’s you she’s annoyed at, not me.”

  “She’s been annoyed at me for years. She could never understand why Car-Iduna was given to me. She’s the eldest. She’s pure veela, not a half-blood like me. But if she were queen, she’d never take care of the Chalice, or of anything else. She’d wander off for years at a time, and forget all about it.”

  “She isn’t….” He faltered. “She won’t turn against you, will she?”

  Her playful caresses stopped utterly still, and her eyes went dark.

  “No. That kind of treachery is born of your world, not of mine.”

  He found he could not meet her eyes.

  “I would have believed it of anyone else before him,” he said. “Anyone, even Adelaide. Even Reini, I think, and Reini is like an oak, like the bones of the earth. I thought the whole world would turn on me before Pauli would.”

  “You should have killed him, Karel.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  She did not ask him why, and he was glad.

  “I should have watched him more carefully, too,” she said. “He made Marius terribly uneasy. But he was so obviously devoted to you, and you trusted him so much, so I did not mistrust him.” She shook her head. “You might be dead now, because of my mistake.”

  “But I’m not. And we have a piece of Gottfried’s willstone for our trouble. It may prove to be fair exchange.”

  “It will be dangerous beyond words to try to use it.”

  “But you will.”

  “Yes.” She smiled faintly. If he had not been so utterly in love with her, he might have been troubled by her smile. “Yes, my bold summer stag, I’ll use it. Carefully….”

  Her hand played softly across his belly, wandering downward with pretended indirection; her tongue brushed his nipple, over and over.

  “Very… very… carefully….”

  He had been starving, the first time, and she had let him take everything he wished, as recklessly as he wished; let him lay her down on nothing but a ragged cloak and mount her without bothering to undress. And she had liked it well enough. But she liked this better, this game that would go on now for an hour, or for two, or for the rest of the day, wantonness mingled with talk and with wine, desire held like a nectar which could be sipped but did not need to be consumed, not yet; waiting made it sweeter, sharper, until at last the boundaries between desire and the rest of existence dissolved, and everything became desire. Darkness or light, music, wine, the sound of wind, the presence or the absence of other people— everything became excitement. Even an ill-favored lover was beautiful then, and an ill-favored place as magical as any other. If the bed was luxurious, he reveled in every thread of silk; if it was fouled straw, he reveled in its earthiness. Nothing mattered except to go on, to follow the spiral where it led.

  Men asked him sometimes why he gave himself up that way — to passing strangers and paid harlots and even infidels — how could he bear to do it? Priests asked him, and the sterner and more Christian of his comrades in arms. He never had an answer. He never entirely understood the question. From the earliest years of his adolescence, sexual pleasure had been his one escape from violence. It took years before he understood that for many men the opposite was true: violence was their one escape from pleasure.

  Pauli’s, too.

  THIRTY-ONE

  To Choose a King

  A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose upon the people.

  Saint Gregory of Nazianzus

  * * *

  In November, in the year of 1104, it fell upon the consciences of seven men to name a new king of Germany, a new lord of the Holy Roman Empire. For it was the way among our people that the crown was never granted to any man solely by virtue of birth. A king’s son was the likeliest choice, if he was brave and capable; indeed, as generations passed, the principle of hereditary kingship was growing stronger. But the old ways were still powerful, when the pagan tribes would fo
llow their leaders through almost anything, but demanded in return the right to choose whom they would follow.

  I will not say which way is better. Either way, evil men will come to power more often than good, for such is the way of the world. Kings must be chosen by God, and we’ve never learned to let him do so.

  The seven who chose the king were these— two archbishops, from Mainz and from Cologne, and five princes: Ludwig, duke of Bavaria; the landgraves of Franconia and Swabia; the duke of Thuringia; and Gottfried von Heyden, duke of the Reinmark. Each prince brought with him a delegation of ten men— vassals and allies who represented differing interests within their master’s domains. These followings had enormous influence, but they had no formal vote. Neither did the papal legate, who spoke for the interests of Rome.

  They met in the great hall of the archbishop’s palace, shielded by the dead king’s honor guard and the bishop’s own soldiery. By custom and by their host’s command, those who bore arms left them on the wall, and sat at the council table unarmed.

  It was a gathering of awesome rank and power, and of course I was not there. I had to piece the story together afterwards, from a dozen different tellers, none of whom seemed to be describing the same event.

  Oh, on a few obvious things they agreed. Every day began with a solemn high Mass in the great cathedral of Mainz, and ended with the most unchristian bitterness, with even priests calling each other evil names, and more than one man ready to consign the whole assembly to the devil.

  Certain positions were also clear to everyone. The archbishop of Mainz was the steadying influence; he insisted that no decision should be reached until all the facts were known.

  He began by demanding that Konrad agree to accept the decision of the assembly, no matter what its decision turned out to be. And Konrad, according to most accounts, went pale with anger, seeing he’d been backed into a corner before a dozen words were spoken. For if the prince said yes, he would in effect renounce his claim to hereditary right. And if he said no, he would alienate the assembly by denying its powers.

  “I am his late majesty’s only son,” he said. “You know he chose me to succeed him. Every man of you knows it, for he commanded you all to come here in the spring, to elect me and crown me while he still lived. So he would see it done. So there would be no doubt about it.”

  “Yes,” said Mainz, unperturbed. “But why summon us to elect you, if we had no power to do so? Do you, my lord, accept the authority of this assembly, or do you not?”

  And Konrad, they said, did not answer for a time, and then threw the firebrand into the straw.

  “I will accept the decision of this assembly,” he said, “if the decision is reached without dishonor or deception.”

  This was a slur on the integrity of the council even before its deliberations were properly begun. Protests erupted on all sides, but Konrad overrode them.

  “I have a reason for what I said, my lords. During the summer, soon after we returned from our visit to your domains, messengers came to my father with a warning. One of my father’s highest lords, they said — one of the great princes of Germany — was planning to overthrow the king and seize the empire. He would do it by treachery, and would probably use sorcery to further his designs.”

  There was a stunned silence. Delegates looked at each other, and then looked back at the prince. They were hard men, and the memories and hatreds from years of civil war were still alive among them. Yet this was a terrible accusation.

  “And did your messengers name this man?” demanded the prelate of Cologne.

  “Yes. Gottfried von Heyden, duke of the Reinmark.”

  A dozen men shoved back their chairs, some of them threatening to leap across the table. Gottfried’s followers, young Theodoric among them, shouted insults and challenges at the prince.

  Then the duke himself rose to his feet, a towering, majestic man even in this gathering. He held up his hand for silence.

  “And who sent these… messengers, my lord Konrad?” he asked. “Or shall I risk a guess? They came from Lys, did they not? From Karelian Brandeis, who has since revealed himself as a traitor and a demon worshipper. He sent the men you speak of.”

  “He did not,” Konrad snapped.

  “Then who did?”

  Konrad was not a clever man, but he was bright enough to realize how unclever he had just been.

  “I gave my word I would not name the man,” he said.

  “This is the highest authority in the land, my lord prince,” Mainz said grimly. “And the matter at hand is one of treason. Tell us who sent you this warning.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Indeed, I suspect that is the truth,” Gottfried said, “for if he told you, he would lose what little sympathy he has left in this room.

  “Let me explain, my lords, before you protest. There is a conspiracy abroad in Christendom— a conspiracy brought to sudden ferocity by our victories in the Holy Land. A conspiracy of men who have turned from God, and given their allegiance to evil. They are gathering demons to help them, and witches, the most vile and powerful of witches, women whom we in our complacency might have thought were creatures of the past, or even just creatures of legend.

  “The wicked have always been with us, of course; Satan and his legions have never lacked for allies in the world. But now is a special time. On the one hand, the Church marches to new triumphs in the east, and so our enemies are raging and afraid. On the other hand, our borders are vulnerable, and the dark ways of paganism are still very much alive in our lands— in all our lands, my lords, whether you are aware of it or not.

  “So they have chosen this time to gather all their forces and strike. I learned, by good fortune and God’s kind favor, that I was one of the first targets of this conspiracy. My cousin, a man I once trusted and rewarded with the highest rank and honor, was chosen to be my betrayer. Karelian Brandeis has sworn himself to the lords of darkness. He worships Tyr the blood-drinker, and he has for his mistress the witch of Helmardin— who is no legend, my lords, believe me. She is real, and very dangerous.”

  At this, men looked from one to the other in black dismay, and soft ohhs rippled through the room.

  “So I would ask this, my lords,” Gottfried went on. “If the messengers Prince Konrad received were not from the count of Lys, or from his sorcerous allies, let the prince name them. And if they were, what trust can be put in their warning? Indeed, we must ask what warning they gave. What did they really tell you, my lord prince: that I meant to take your father’s kingdom? Or that they wanted to take my duchy, and were hoping for your help?”

  At this point — so all my storytellers agreed — the uproar barely stopped short of violence. Only the presence of the archbishops, and their overwhelming moral authority, finally restored a semblance of order.

  “Your words are cause for the greatest concern,” Mainz said then. “But you have given us, to this point, no proof for any of it. Karelian Brandeis may well be guilty of everything you say, but he has never been tried, nor is he present here to answer these charges.”

  “He has not been tried because he fled, my lord, conjuring up demons in order to do so, and leaving a field of dead men behind him.”

  “Flight isn’t proof of guilt,” Konrad flung back. “Least of all if a man has reason to believe he’s already been judged and condemned!”

  “And calling up the hounds of hell to slaughter us— what is that proof of? They slew my men, and caused so much chaos and confusion that he was able to escape—”

  “He did this?” the archbishop asked softly, appalled.

  “Yes.” Gottfried then described the events in Lys. “And now,” he concluded, “Karelian’s castellan holds the fortress of Schildberge, and refuses to surrender it to my lawful authority. There is no question, my lords; he is guilty of both sorcery and treason. And therefore I say again, if he has been in touch with Prince Konrad, then his highness should admit it, and he should admit also that whatever Lord Karelian might h
ave said to him, it must be disbelieved.”

  “And my father’s murder?” Konrad demanded bitterly. “Should it also be disbelieved? My lords, we are getting nowhere. To begin with, we are not here to discuss the count of Lys—”

  “We are here to discuss everything which may bear upon our decision, highness,” Mainz interrupted. “And we will not be hurried. There are many things which are still unclear. How did you learn of this conspiracy you speak of, my lord Gottfried? Of Karelian’s involvement with… with sorcerers? We all expected him to be here as part of your delegation— not to be told he is a fugitive, and a conjurer of devils.”

  “It is a long story, my lords.”

  “And will it bear upon our judgment here?” Thuringia demanded. “For in truth, I begin to share his highness’s impatience with these digressions.”

  “It will bear upon our decision more than anything else we might discuss,” Gottfried said. “My lords, you know well that there are times — rare times in the history of the world — when the affairs of men hang in so critical a balance that God, in his mercy and goodness, intervenes in some extraordinary way to give us help or guidance. So he parted the Red Sea for Moses. So gave us the Holy Lance on our journey to Jerusalem.

  “We live now in such a time. I believe the next fifty years will determine whether Christianity ultimately triumphs in the world, or whether it will be cast back into the slavery of the catacombs. And everything will depend on who governs the empire of Germany.

  “When I was in Jerusalem, I visited all the holy places, and spoke with the hermits and holy men who live there, who down through the years have protected our heritage against the encroachments of the infidel. And I was given, by one of them, a relic.

  “And I will tell you frankly, my lords— when he gave it to me, and told me what it was, I did not believe him. He was a saintly man, but I thought he was also… well, shall we say, a little old? But I took it, because he insisted. It must go back with me to the heart of Christendom, he said. It belonged to Jerusalem once, he said; now it belongs to the empire.”