The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  “Would you accept the crown, if it were offered you?” Mainz asked.

  And Gottfried, to his credit, did not pretend to be reluctant.

  “Yes,” he said. “Not for the glory of it, or for the name of king. But there is a war to be fought, and I have always been God’s warrior. So yes, if you want me to lead you, I will.”

  One day the empire will be dust, and men will still be quarreling over that election. Why did each of the electors choose as he did?— for in truth, only Bavaria and Franconia took positions which can be properly understood. The landgrave of Franconia was Konrad’s cousin, a potential heir himself to the Salian crown. He would defend their hereditary rights to the bitter end. And Ludwig was genuinely drawn to the holiness in Gottfried. He was the only man there, I think, who either acknowledged it or truly cared.

  Swabia was a venal man with a nasty personal reputation. He chose the right side, but probably for the shabbiest of reasons. Thuringia was a tribal chieftain of the old school. He spoke like a Christian because it was politic to do so, but more than one man believed he was a pagan in his heart; there was nothing he loved better than a fight. Both he and Swabia, I think, simply sided with the man they thought would win.

  The night before the final vote, it seemed that Gottfried would be chosen. He had three certain votes: Swabia, Bavaria, and the Reinmark; and two probable ones: the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, both of whom had shown nothing but reverence for the relic and hostility to Konrad’s wilfulness and arrogance.

  What passed between sunset and dawn no one knows. The archbishop of Mainz, they said, met long with Cardinal Volken, the papal legate. The legate opposed Gottfried’s election — not because he doubted either the relic or Gottfried’s qualities of leadership, but rather for the opposite reason — though of course he would never admit it. The Vatican did not want a strong king in Germany.

  So it is said, and it may be true. It is said also that Konrad’s agents found the prelate of Cologne in a private moment, and raised with him the thorny issue of his wife.

  And said to him something much like this:

  Did you know that Gottfried von Heyden particularly despises married priests? Oh, yes of course, we know, you’re not married any more, you’d never have made bishop if you hadn’t gotten rid of her— not in the great city of Cologne, anyway. Except you didn’t really get rid of her, and all kinds of people know it. She still lives here, and you still visit her. And don’t look at us like that; we have no objections. It’s your would-be emperor who has objections. He’s routed married priests out of every parish in the domain of Stavoren, just since he came back from Jerusalem, and he swears before he dies he’ll rid the Reinmark of them altogether. He’s even talked of using that old provision from the Synod of Toledo— you know the one we mean? Searching houses in the dead of night, and taking the priests’ women and selling them for slaves?

  Do you really want him for your emperor, my lord bishop? Do you really? Especially since we’ll make a point of telling him about her. After all, if you vote for him, it will be no more than you deserve….

  No one but God knows what really happened, who really met by night with whom, what fears were bred and nurtured. But when they met and cast their votes in earnest, after high Mass in the morning, the archbishop of Cologne was Konrad’s man, and the split was three against three.

  And every man in the room — indeed, every man in Christendom — looked to the prelate of Mainz.

  Who rose, and crossed himself, and said:

  “I cannot vote.”

  “You what?” Fifty, perhaps a hundred voices shouted all at once.

  “I cannot vote. There have been questions raised in this room, on both sides, which have not been properly answered. We’re dealing with extraordinary events, my lords, and with a chain of astonishing coincidences. We are only men, trying to understand the will of God and the manifestations of supernatural power. We can’t possibly do it in so short a time. I will cast no vote in this assembly at this time.”

  “Do you doubt the sacred relic, excellency?” Gottfried asked.

  “No, I don’t. But its arrival at this moment is remarkable, to say the least. My concern is for the future of the empire. I can’t share the landgrave of Franconia’s blind loyalty to the Salian house, but the questions of legitimacy he has raised are entirely sound.”

  “But we are dead-locked! You must choose, my lord—!”

  “If we are dead-locked, then perhaps God himself is telling us something. Perhaps neither of these men should be chosen. Certainly I will not be the one to choose. We must seek further guidance. I think we should consult with Rome—”

  “Rome be damned!” This was Thuringia, banging his great warrior’s fist on the table. “Rome is not choosing our king, by God!”

  And everyone — absolutely everyone except Mainz — agreed with him. Rome had nothing to say in the matter. You must vote, excellency; there is no other way; you must vote!

  Mainz sat again, drawing his robe around him, and locking his hands before his chin.

  “Forgive me, my lords, but I cannot. I cannot, and I will not.”

  “So be it,” Thuringia said. “I’ve had enough. As far as I’m concerned, Konrad is king of Germany.”

  “He is not,” the archbishop snapped. “No man is king without election. It’s the law— and you, my lord, have always insisted on that law, more strongly than any man here.”

  The duke walked over to the wall, and took down his sword.

  “Then we will elect him. The old way,” he added grimly. “In the field.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  War in the Reinmark

  But now, O mighty soldiers, O men of war, you have a cause

  for which you can fight without danger to your souls;

  a cause in which to conquer is glorious and for which to die is gain.

  Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

  * * *

  Idid not run from the highlands where I found Karelian; I crept away like a thief. I longed to go west, to Franconia, to wherever Gottfried might be, gathering men and glory for his kingdom. But I did not have the courage to face him and admit my absolute defeat.

  I sought shelter with the Benedictine monks at Karlsbruck, and I stayed there until the winter was half gone, nursing my wounded pride, my evil grief. For a time I thought about staying there forever, but my heart and my mind were still in the world. Rumors came to us steadily, even in our solitude. There would be war by spring, some said. No, said others; Konrad would give up the struggle, and go into exile. Or Gottfried would give up the struggle, and go into a monastery. Or the matter would be placed in the hands of the pope for arbitration (even the monks chuckled at that one).

  There were questions, too, as well as rumors, and one of them even I could not begin to answer.

  Why would Prince Konrad kill his father?

  Over and over I heard it asked, by the wise and the foolish alike, by the rich and the poor. Why would the prince so recklessly endanger his own secure position? He was young, legitimate, and widely admired. He was certain to be chosen king— indeed, more certain than most heirs, for Ehrenfried had meant to crown his son while he still lived.

  Such a murder was not only evil, it was stupid beyond belief. And therefore many people wavered, torn between accepting the overwhelming evidence of a sacred relic, on the one hand, and trusting their own common sense, on the other.

  For myself, I did not waver. He had done it; therefore there was a reason. Evil had its own dread logic; it did not have to match the logic of the world. Perhaps the prince had made a pact with the devil. He would not have been the first highborn man to do so. Perhaps he was a secret unbeliever, and a secret catamite as well. It was common knowledge that he often failed to go to Mass, that all his favorites were young men, all of them beautiful, and one of them a poet. Perhaps Ehrenfried had learned some dreadful truth about him, and was planning to name another as his heir?

  There were all sorts of poss
ibilities— even, for some men, the possibility that he was innocent. Perhaps it was Gottfried who was the sorcerer. Perhaps his truthstone was something horrid and evil he had found among the infidels…? Rumor fed upon rumor endlessly, and to all of them the abbot of Karlsbruck had only one reply:

  “We don’t know. We must pray, and God will make his judgment known.”

  I prayed more than anyone, I think, but prayer was not enough. When I learned just after Candlemas that Theodoric was mobilizing the whole of the Reinmark, raising an army to send to his father, I headed for Stavoren to offer him my service.

  I caught up with him in Dorn, where he was urging loyalty on the margrave Ludolf Brandeis, Karelian’s half-brother. I wish I could have been a mouse at that meeting.

  Ludolf Brandeis was almost twenty years older than his youngest brother. They were not friends. According to Karelian’s own accounts to me, Ludolf hated his father’s last and prettiest wife, and bullied her children without mercy. When Karelian could, by the age of fourteen, outfight his full-grown brother bare-handed, or with any weapon man had ever made, Ludolf did not come to like him better.

  Still, they were blood kin, and if the lords of Dorn were famous for anything, if was for their unpredictability. Theodoric could not take the margrave’s loyalty for granted.

  They ate and drank and hunted together. What promises Theodoric made to him I do not know, but they seemed to be on the best of terms when I came to Dorn, and begged an audience with the prince, and offered him my service.

  Theodoric had not changed much since I’d seen him last. He was still impatient, still used to having things his way.

  I told him everything I could about Karelian, and as little as I dared about myself. He did not seem interested in either.

  “Your master,” he said, “has already taken service with Konrad in Mainz. But since he brought with him no army and no gold, it seems the princeling wasn’t much impressed.” He smiled, and leaned back in his chair. “I never thought I’d credit Ehrenfried’s son with having any sense, but in this he was wiser than my father. He gave the adventurer a hundred men, and sent him off to command the fort of Saint Orestius.”

  “Saint Orestius?” I said blankly. “Where is that?”

  “Somewhere in the hinterland of Franconia. He can amuse himself there, hunting crows and chasing the odd bandit.”

  I was surprised at the malice in Theodoric’s voice. He hated Karelian as a traitor against his father, of course he did, but there was something more in his hostility, something personal. And I knew there was nothing personal between them. Karelian had spent most of his life in the service of different foreign kings. He and Theodoric met only once, just the summer before, at the Königsritt in Stavoren. The meeting had been formal and friendly.

  So why this remarkable hatred? Others noticed it besides myself, and offered reasons for it, but the only reason I could see was envy. Not envy of things, or even of honors. The son of the Golden Duke, the heir of the Merovingians and the empire, would never covet any man’s place except a king’s.

  But no matter how much princes judged others as lords, they also judged them as men. Watched them and weighed them as men. Competed with them as men. And then a whole other set of rules came into play.

  Karelian never needed to do anything in particular to earn Theodoric’s hostility. He needed only to exist, and to be better than Theodoric at nearly everything which Theodoric considered important. A superior in rank could be forgiven that, perhaps, but an inferior, never.

  Now Konrad had put the upstart in his place. It did not occur to Theodoric to wonder if Konrad was a fool. Or even to be grateful that his enemy had one good captain less. No. All Theodoric could do was gloat.

  “So much for the champion of all Germany.”

  And then he looked at me, as though for the first time, and asked me what I wanted.

  He knighted me at Easter. We were at war now, and he needed all the men he could get. But he did not send me west. There were too many good knights rotting in Lys, he said, starving that damned little traitor Reinhard out of his damned mountain fortress. He sent a ragtag army to replace them: some twenty fresh-dubbed knights, including myself; all of Stavoren’s maimed and aging fighters; and a large body of common soldiers and peasant levies. We could easily maintain the siege, he said, and the skilled knights we replaced could go to Gottfried.

  The first weeks there were dreadful. The spring was cold, and it rained almost every day. There was nothing to do. Simply being there was enough to keep Reinhard prisoner. We did not even have the stimulation of danger. Theodoric’s brother Armund had the local population completely cowed, and any sortie from the castle would have been as vulnerable and exposed, coming down the long and winding road, as we would have been trying to go up. The defenders stayed safe inside their walls, and laughed at us. They had plenty of food. They had water. They even had revelry. Night after night we could hear shawms and drums playing merrily, and if the wind was right we could sometimes even hear the words they sang. War songs, mostly. Sometimes hymns, as though God was still on their side, treason and witchcraft notwithstanding. And tavern songs, too, especially when the summer began to flower, and the women would come out on the walls to dance and cheer on their warriors: Chramer gip diu varwe mier diu min wengel roete….

  It was one of the most popular songs of the day: Mary Magdalene persuading a merchant to sell her his prettiest things, so all the young men who looked at her would fall in love.

  “It hardly seems fair, does it?” my companion said. “They do nothing up there but enjoy themselves, while we sit shivering in the mud.”

  “Till they get hungry,” I said.

  He grunted. His name was Wilhelm. He was a knight of forty or so, who had lost a hand in the civil war. From the first he had taken it upon himself to be my mentor, and give me the benefit of his wisdom and experience. I did not like him much; he was a rough-hewn, unimaginative man— a bit like Reinhard, actually. But he was kind to me, and I was grateful.

  “They won’t get hungry for a long while,” he said.

  He was right, of course. I had been in Lys all last summer; I had seen the loaded wagons, and the droves of pigs and cattle winding up the mountain road, day after day.

  “We’ll stay here as long as we need to,” I said. And I tried hard to feel good about it, to look upon it as a willing act of penitence and self-denial. I deserved nothing better. I had no right to be with Gottfried in the west, in the heart of history. I was lucky to have even this small, unsatisfying place,and luckier still to be far away from the perilous shadow of Karelian Brandeis.

  I would smile at my naiveté now, if I had a mind to smile at anything. It was the Reinmark, not the west, which was to find itself in the heart of history. It was the Reinmark where everything was decided: the fate of the empire, and the fate of the world.

  As for Karelian, should I not have guessed he’d come to us?

  * * *

  He came with midsummer, as unlooked for as its sudden, black-winged storms. It was late in June; the day before had been warm and shimmering, drunk with a wildness of flowers. The slowly descending darkness brought no moon, only distant winking stars, the cry of owls, and a shawm wailing into the night from a high, unlighted battlement. Men sat by the fires and talked long into the night. When I came off my watch I curled up in my cloak and slept like a boy.

  And woke to cries of alarm, to the sight of men running hither and thither among our tents, shouting of berserkers and Wends and I do not know what else. I sprang up dazed. It was barely dawn, and the world was patched with fog. I could see nothing beyond our own frantically waking cluster of tents, but I could hear war-cries and clashing iron, and the pounding hoofs of horses.

  I thought of many things in those fragmented seconds before the attack reached us, but I did not think at all of Karelian. He was hundreds of leagues away, in some nowhere corner of Franconia. I thought instead of foreign invaders, and of the margrave of Dorn and h
is infernally untrustworthy house. Mostly I thought about ourselves, and what a makeshift force we were, green young men and worn-out veterans like Wilhelm. He was stumbling to his feet beside me, groping for his weapons and crossing himself with his one left hand. I thought I might be about to die, and the possibility was strangely calming.

  Wilhelm’s squire was shaking so badly I shoved him aside, fastened my comrade’s armor myself, and handed him his sword. By then we could see our enemies, and I for one would rather have seen Wends. They stormed out of the half-light in waves, and swept everything that lay before them. We had no idea who or how many they might be. They were centaurs in armor, thundering out of hell. But every centaur carried a shield, and on every shield was painted a black tree without leaves. The winter tree of Dorn. The insignia of Karelian Brandeis.

  The best of our men lost their courage then, for what we were seeing was not possible. How could he have come here, through the well-watched passes of the western border, past Gottfried’s outposts along the Maren, and over the populated fields of Lys, in the full panoply of war, without anybody noticing?

  How else except by witchcraft?

  There is little more to tell about the battle. I was praised after for my bravery; Wilhelm and I and a handful of others managed to stay together and fight our way to the edges of the camp. By then our entire force was almost routed. The demon lord of Lys had come back. He had raised up armies of darkness and traversed the empire on horses of wind. Men caught a single glimpse of that stark winter tree and flung down their weapons and covered their eyes. Others, observing the debacle with a more worldly eye, shrugged and surrendered politely. Those who chose to fight went down; those who could still do so, fled.

  A hundred of us, perhaps, made it back to Stavoren.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Return

  The heathen never wearied of love, and from