The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  Nothing was brief now, or playful. The chanting went on and the mounted knights came and gathered as to a liege lord’s bell. And he knew from whence they came. Their faces were empty, hollowed out like the masks of actors, lit palely as with marsh lights. They were dead. She had raised the walls of Car-Iduna over some ancient butchering-ground, still scattered with broken armor and with ghosts, and she had called forth the dead.

  To ride with him to Ravensbruck.

  He was drunk with the sorcery of the night, and with his own deep hunger for revenge. Otherwise he truly might have faltered then; he might have given in to dread and despair and told himself this was not possible, this was not Raven or Car-Iduna, this was not anything he wanted to be part of….

  The chanting stopped. The dead men waited, looking past him as though he were not there, looking past everyone to the witch of Helmardin.

  She called out names, and six of them moved forward. He did not know the names, but he recognized their marks of rank. They were all highborn men, captains in the emperor’s service, leaders of the war band.

  “Come,” she said, and the circle opened to let them in.

  “Behold your liege lord!” Raven cried, and flung her arm towards Karelian. “You will serve him, and obey him in all things. You will ride with him to Ravensbruck, as you were commanded to do. And you will destroy it as you destroyed Dorn. Such is the will of your emperor!”

  Karelian caught his breath. These were not ordinary dead men. These were the flower of King Henry II’s knights, the men who slaughtered Wulfstan’s people and vanished in the wood of Helmardin, their planned attack on Ravensbruck never carried out. Now, for a different emperor, against a different lord of Ravensbruck, they would finish what they had begun. And in the very act of doing so, they would overturn the purpose of the original command— to destroy the pagans, and break the sacred circles of the world. They had slain the rebel heirs of Dorn. Now they would serve its most rebellious heir of all.

  Oh, yes, this was Raven…! Karelian smiled, and wished he had more wine, for ritual or no ritual he would have saluted her then.

  The six captains turned to him. They did not dismount, but each touched a closed fist to his breast, and bowed. “We are at your command, my lord duke.”

  My lord duke…?

  Before he could wonder about it properly, Raven spoke again.

  “You were cursed to this unrest by Alanas of Dorn. When Ravensbruck is taken, and your lord gives you leave, you may sleep. Till then he is your master and your hope. Shield him from harm, for if he does not return to me safe, you will wander to the last edges of the world, to the last broken scatters of time, and you will find no peace!

  “It’s long since you’ve ridden the marches of the north. I have summoned you a comrade who remembers them well.”

  She paused, turning towards the gathered army of the dead. “My lord of Selven, come.”

  Another man moved into the circle. He wore no armor, for he had died with none. He was young and very dark, and he carried himself with the same taut and thin-lipped arrogance Karelian remembered from his time in Arnulf’s castle.

  Rudolf of Selven. Adelaide’s murdered love.

  He moved towards Raven; then, as if from the corner of his eye, he noticed the count of Lys, and turned on him instead. He was dead, like the others, his face an unface, hollow and insubstantial, yet it twisted with a terrible, unbelieving bitterness.

  “This is what I am to serve?”

  “Aye, Selven,” Raven said fiercely. “Serve him, or return to the shadows unrevenged! Return, and remember that Arnulf lives, and laughs, and readies himself for his daughter’s marriage feast. Arnulf who broke his word to you, who gave Adelaide away, who chained you where you’d lain with her and drove his spear through your bowels—!”

  “Enough!”

  Could a dead man feel pain?— for it seemed he did. It seemed he would buckle from the weight of it. But his eyes never left Karelian’s face, and his voice was as savage as the snarl of a wolf.

  “What became of my lady Adelaide? I may serve you then, since it seems I must, but I want to know!”

  “Answer him, Karelian!” Raven said.

  “She is in Lys, and she is well. I did her no harm, save for the harm I brought to her unknowing.”

  “Does he speak the truth, witch?” Selven demanded harshly. Still staring at Karelian. Not believing his words, but hungering to believe them. He had been faithful to one thing in the world; he had loved Adelaide.

  “He speaks the truth,” Raven said. “He was never your enemy. You have but one enemy, my lord Selven, and he sits in his feast hall with the sons of Lord Gottfried, boasting of his past and future greatness.”

  “Well then.” Selven turned slowly, looked at Raven, at the waiting captains and the knights of empire, men who could still kill but could not die. He gave Karelian the faintest hint of a bow, and smiled bitterly.

  “Well then, take us to Ravensbruck!”

  The six captains as one drew their swords, and raised them high, and shouted: “Ravensbruck! Ravensbruck!” And the cry went up in a great pounding roar, like a sea against a cliff: “Ravensbruck! Ravensbruck!”

  His lady came to him through thunder and dancing light.

  “The pyramid thrives on the blood of its sons,” she said. “So be it, Karelian of Lys. Bring me the blood of the sons of von Heyden. Bring me Theodoric’s head. Sever it clean, and do not mark his face; I want to be sure his father can recognize it.”

  She offered her hand for him to kiss. Her wrist was raw and torn with manacles, the smallest of her wounds.

  “My lady….”

  He longed to hold her, but he knew it was forbidden. Until she was avenged she would be sorceress, and nothing else.

  She gave him a small, golden apple. “Your horse has been tended, my love, and will bear you without tiring. Eat this; you will need nothing more till you return.”

  She bowed to him, something she had never done before. So did each member of the circle always bow to the others, before they parted. He was now one with the witch-lords of Car-Iduna.

  “Bring me his head, Karelian,” she said again. “And then may his God help the man who holds the willstone!”

  * * *

  They rode like wind, like the storms of autumn, black-clouded and indistinct and echoing. It was four days’ journey as the world measured; how long it took them he never knew. They did not rest and they felt no weariness. They pounded through wood and valley, past small brooding villages where everything living slept, or looked away. They splashed through icy streams and swept over hills where bare trees bent against the wind to let them pass. They rode, and the thunder of their hoofbeats sang in his heart. Black clouds rolled overhead, and he thought he heard sometimes the crying of Valkyries, at once harsh, and triumphant, and pitiful. He could have ridden for a thousand years; nothing contained his dark army, neither mountains nor rivers nor time. And the old gods rode with him, all of the old gods, Vanir and Aesir alike, and if he honored some of them more than others, and a few of them hardly at all, still in this they were allies; this night they would ride as one, for the honor of their priestess, for the honor of their wild and still defiant land.

  After, a thousand tales would be told of what men saw, and did not see. But one telling was always the same. At daybreak after the night of the full moon, the walls of Ravensbruck were seen to waffel. The peasants saw it, and shielded their eyes and looked away. The wood-cutters saw it, bringing their wagons of cut timber to feed the fires of the wedding feast. Guests saw it, arriving with their glittering retinues and gifts; a few of them took thoughtful counsel among themselves, and went away.

  The high stone walls, square and solid as the mountain from which they rose, quivered and melted and reappeared, like a light behind a shifting curtain, like the Aurora of midwinter, the kind which did not leap and dance, but merely throbbed between being and not-being.

  So ships were seen to do before they sank
, and houses before they were consumed in fire.

  FOURTY

  The Marriage Feast of Ravensbruck

  I see a channel and a chained wolf lying

  Until the twilight of the gods:

  Forger of lies, unless you be silent,

  That fate will fall on you next.

  Poetic Edda

  * * *

  Ravensbruck was as desolate as I remembered it, a rough-hewn border stronghold in a sullen, half-settled march. Nothing, not even a royal wedding, could make it seem gracious, or soften the violence which seemed to lie everywhere beneath the surface of its life. It was a place where swords were drawn over trifles, where mastery depended on force, and where loyalty and rebellion were equally rooted in fear.

  They called Arnulf of Ravensbruck the Iron Count, and even a half-wit would have understood why. He was bigger and heavier than Gottfried, but without Gottfried’s aura of majesty, just a massive and dangerous beast of a man. Even his enemies admitted he was indestructible, and even his friends admitted he was singularly cruel.

  Two winters earlier, just before we arrived for Karelian’s marriage, he had been thrown by a stallion and horribly injured. His wife Clara was accused by Adelaide of having bewitched his horse, but she was never tried. All he had for evidence was the statement of an adulteress, and a few charms and amulets hidden in her jewel case. Her sons objected to her imprisonment; her daughter Helga, apparently, did not. After some months passed Arnulf allowed her to retire to a convent.

  “He wouldn’t let her come to the wedding, though. And they say she was so mad about it, she howled and cursed and threw things at the nuns.”

  That was Peter, Count Arnulf’s squire, wrapped in finery and talking with barely a pause for breath. We weren’t five minutes in the great hall before he sought me out, renewing his acquaintance and smothering me with gossip.

  “She set a great store by her little Helga, you remember,” he added.

  Oh, yes, I remembered. She wanted her little Helga to marry Karelian, and thought both fate and her husband were miserably cruel when they decided otherwise. Perhaps she thought better of them now.

  “So how’ve you been?” he went on, seeing I was not going to talk about Lady Clara. “I see you’ve changed sides.”

  “I didn’t change sides,” I snapped. “The count of Lys changed sides.”

  He laughed. The hall was crowded, and we were some distance from the cluster of men around Theodoric and Arnulf. Nonetheless Peter lowered his voice.

  “Is it true what they say? That he’s turned sorcerer?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Strange. He didn’t seem the type.”

  “What is the type? Do you think the devil’s men have cloven hoofs and tails?”

  He laughed again. Perhaps he realized his comment had been silly. He drank generously from the cup he held, and leaned close to me to ask his next question, even softer than the first.

  “You didn’t notice anything, did you? While you were riding in?”

  “Notice anything? What do you mean?”

  “About the castle. They say every morning since the full moon — it’s the servants saying it, and of course you can’t believe anything they say — but they say it was… waffeling.”

  “Oh, that. We saw it. Prince Theodoric was very amused.”

  “Amused?”

  I looked at him. He was still a squire, and I was now a knight. Moreover, I was a knight who knew a great many things which he would never dream of. I felt very superior.

  “Of course. It’s just a foul trick of the witch of Helmardin, to try and frighten us away. She’s very good at creating illusions. We thought Karelian had a whole army outside of Stavoren. We even thought he had the men of Ravensbruck—”

  “Ravensbruck? But that’s ridiculous—!”

  “Of course. But you see, Peter, it’s what they do. They fight with deception and trickery; it’s the only way they can hope to win. But if she thought Theodoric would be frightened away by a mirage, she doesn’t know him.”

  Peter brightened visibly. “The count didn’t take it seriously for a moment, either,” he said. “A whole lot of the servants ran off, though, before anybody noticed.”

  I suppose it was the mention of servants which reminded me. I had not seen the Wend woman at all since we arrived. I looked around, and could not see her now, either.

  “What about the slave Count Arnulf had? The Wend with the scarred face? What became of her?”

  “Sick. She’s got a tumor.” He patted his belly. “She’s not allowed inside the hall any more. Lady Helga always did hate her, and the count doesn’t like dying people anywhere near him. She sits in the wash-house and chews leaves— to kill the pain, I suppose. They say she sees things when she chews them.”

  I had cheered him up by saying the waffeling of Ravensbruck castle was just a shabby trick. Now, thinking of the hag Sigune, he grew somber again.

  “A lot of things she sees come true,” he said.

  I wanted to ask him what she had seen that was bothering him, but there was a stir in the room, and we turned to see Helga coming down the stairs to meet her bridegroom.

  She was pretty, there was no denying it, with the kind of full-breasted, pouty-mouthed prettiness men loved in peasant girls and whores.

  Arnulf, leaning heavily on his cane, rose to his feet to present her to Prince Armund. She was the last of his children, he said, and the loveliest.

  “She won’t disappoint him like the other one did,” Peter whispered. “The midwives made sure of it.”

  I looked at him, not understanding.

  “She still has her maidenhead. Can you imagine — marrying the emperor’s son — if she didn’t?”

  Frankly, I did not want to imagine anything where Helga was concerned. I understood Gottfried’s necessity, and I accepted it, but I wished to God he might have found poor Armund a better wife.

  I never liked the count of Ravensbruck. He was coarse and lecherous and brutal, and he had an equally bottomless appetite for vainglory and for drink. He had gloated over the marriage of Adelaide and Karelian: The duke’s kinsman, by God, a man with royal blood! That was all forgotten now, of course; the bride had turned whore and the bridegroom traitor. It was just a small mistake in the past, a small tumble on his long climb to greatness. Now he stood to make his fortune forever, to bind his house not merely to a ducal throne, but to the crown of empire.

  He sweated pride now. He roared it out with his laughter, and washed it down with his uncounted cups of beer. One minute he would curse the servants roundly because, even by laboring day and night, they had not made his feast hall beautiful. And the next minute he would laugh and say be damned to it, Ravensbruck was a fighting castle, not a dancing one, and the whole world knew it. It was why they had come to him, why his daughter would be a princess, and maybe his grandson a king. Not that he wished it so, indeed not, God save your highness Theodoric, may you live as many good years as your father, and have as many fine sons…!

  Other men got drunk. Arnulf simply got stronger, prouder, more unutterably Arnulf. I spent a very long afternoon, and an even longer evening, remembering everything I had forgotten about the man, remembering how deeply Karelian despised him, and I had to admit Karelian was right.

  And I had to ask myself — only once or twice, and very much against my will — where this place, these men, this absurdly vulgar marriage, all fitted in the empire of Christ.

  The revelry, it seemed, would go on forever. The contract was read and signed, the gifts and vows exchanged, the marriage consummated almost immediately, in broad daylight— a disgusting custom, but not uncommon in alliances of state, especially when armies were already preparing to march. Then we feasted. The servants brought mountains of food, and kept filling our tankards from what must have been an ocean of good beer.

  I cannot say when I began to feel uneasy. My brave words to Peter had been at least halfway sincere. Theodoric really had laughed at the wa
vering image of Ravensbruck castle. “Is this the best she can do now? No devils? Not even a few of Attila’s Huns waiting at the gates?” He had laughed and ridden on, and I had been cheered by it. Besides, we were winning. Gottfried’s invasion of Thuringia was going well. Konrad would either have to fight him there, with insufficient men, or let the duchy be gobbled up. Karelian was effectively disempowered. He could stay in Schildberge castle, or he could come down and fight and be destroyed. Either way, he was not going to be any help to Konrad.

  Most important of all, the witch of Helmardin was wounded, and her wounds had obviously reduced her powers. So I thought yes, perhaps it was all she could do, make the stones wobble. Frighten us, if she could, and try to spoil young Armund’s wedding day.

  But even as those thoughts rested comfortably on the surface of my mind, underneath I still remembered Helmardin, I still remembered the courtyard at Lys. With witches there was no certainty, there was never a safe time or a safe place.

  It was Theodoric, I think, who first began to kindle my unease. He was always a restless man, always on edge. As the evening wore on, he became almost desperate with tension. He tried to hide it. He laughed, he drank, he dragged servant girls onto his lap and pawed them. Once he left the hall for a considerable time, and I thought he was probably off coupling with some slut in a darkened corridor.

  It was always hard for me to think of him as Gottfried’s son. He had none of his father’s moral qualities, and few of his powers.

  But he had to have some of them.

  Somewhere in the course of the evening I put all those facts together— his heritage and his tormented unease and the waffeling walls and the runaway servants and the hag Sigune who had apparently seen something no one wanted to talk about, and slowly, by the tiniest and iciest degrees, I began to be afraid. I began to think Theodoric knew something terrible, only he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t even know how or why he knew it; he never understood what it meant to be Gottfried’s son. But he was afraid of something. And finally, so was I.