The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  “Very well. My other piece of news is fresh; I think it will surprise even you. The couriers came just last night, and they almost killed their mounts to get here. Cardinal Volken is back from Rome. The cardinal himself, the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, and the duke of Bavaria, are calling for an immediate meeting of the electoral council— and presumably for a new election.”

  “Well.” Karelian poured himself more wine. “The religious contingent wants a new election. That is interesting, to say the least.”

  “The religious contingent? Yes, I suppose you’re right; I hadn’t thought of it that way. Karel, what’s maddening about this is the timing. If it were just a little later, I would think they’d heard about the stone turning strange, and decided it wasn’t a relic and Gottfried was a liar and they wanted to elect me as they should have done in the first place.

  “But even allowing for the marvelous good ears of churchmen, I don’t think it’s possible. Which means they decided to call a new election just around the time Gottfried was thrashing me at Saint Germain and you were said to be leading ghosts and ghoulies to the gates of Ravensbruck.

  “I don’t like it, Karelian. I don’t like it at all.”

  “I don’t know if I like it, either. But there’s one good thing about it. By the time the council meets, and adjourns, it will be too close to winter for another campaign. By anyone. And we’re in no shape for a major battle, my lord; delay can only help us.”

  “Provided they aren’t meeting to make him king.”

  “If they do, will you accept it?”

  Konrad laughed. “I’ll kiss the devil’s arse first.”

  “And so will I. But whatever happens in the council, the mere fact of it will give us time. And time is on our side at the moment.

  “It’s a peculiar situation, my lord. Gottfried has a fearful military advantage right now, but he’s on the brink of an equally fearful political disaster. All his credibility depends on the truthstone. His very image as a Christian lord depends on it. If he can’t use it — if he can’t even allow it to be seen — people will start to wonder if it’s really a relic. And if it isn’t a relic, then he’s nothing but a sorcerer and a usurper. His political support will erode, his soldiers will desert, the Church will condemn him—”

  “So we could simply outwait him. Refuse battle, force him to chase us the length and breadth of Germany—”

  “Except for one thing, my lord. He’s a man of exceptional powers. I can’t promise he won’t get his truthstone back. And if he does, he’ll have more credibility than before. He can tell the whole world how he wrestled a sacred treasure free from the clutches of the devil. He’ll have the stone to use again, and he himself will be more powerful for the struggle. Sorcerers are like all strong warriors, my lord, only more so. If you wound them, and then fail to kill them, you’re usually worse off than before.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t ask you how you know so much about it.”

  Karelian made a small, apologetic gesture with his hands. I know, my lord; that is all. I just know.

  “We must finish it quickly, then?” the king demanded. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “If there’s any way to do so, yes. He’s weakened now— not simply through his loss of the stone, but also through the loss of his sons.”

  “Sometimes grief only makes men more resolute and fierce.”

  “Grief, yes. Bewilderment, no. He had a very clear view of his destiny, my lord. He spoke to me about it at considerable length. He will find it very hard to believe he’s lost the stone, and harder still to believe he has no sons. He cannot be what he thinks he is, without a son. If there’s any way we can turn this council to his ruin, my lord, we must use it. If there’s any way at all.”

  FOURTY-TWO

  The Second Council

  The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness;

  things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one

  ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.

  Angobard

  * * *

  By the time we met up with Gottfried’s slowly advancing army, news of the impending council had already swept across the empire. Whichever side of the quarrel they were on, most men seemed to be happy about it. A long civil war was just behind us. The thought of another was more than most Germans wanted to face. They wanted it settled, and more than anything, the common people wanted it settled without blood.

  And because the council had been urged by the leaders of the Church, everyone hoped it might sort through the tangle of doubts and questions which hung over our rival kings. Both men had been accused of dreadful crimes. Both had priests and princes of excellent reputation among their followers. Both had suffered judgmental defeats and won astonishing victories. Most important of all, both had been helped by powers beyond the world.

  In such a situation, among an ignorant and bewildered people, the confusion was overwhelming. The right and wrong of the quarrel, so clear to us whose sight was clear, grew muddier and muddier to most of the rest of the world. Every question of personal or political morality was becoming secondary to one single question: In which camp was the sorcerer? And it might well have been the right question to ask, if people had looked at the right evidence— if they had looked to God for guidance, instead of to superstition or the welfare of their states.

  Now we could have neither rain nor sunshine without someone calling it an omen. If one king or the other passed by a village, and someone died of an illness, or recovered from it, there was the true king, or the false one. Other men, made cynical by all of it, shrugged their shoulders and considered nothing except the political gains and losses for themselves.

  God, how we needed the Church then! It should have thrown the whole of its moral and political authority behind Gottfried, and made him emperor, and laid the foundations of a kingdom which could finally have brought the world to Christ.

  But here it must be said: For centuries Rome has acted in the world on behalf of God. Rome has put God ahead of dynasties and nations, ahead of princes and priests, ahead of flesh and food and fire. But Rome has never put God ahead of Rome.

  * * *

  If it was hard for me to face the lady Radegund, it was even harder to face Gottfried, when we joined his army in Thuringia. I wanted very much to see him, and yet I dreaded the summons to his tent.

  He looked haggard and weary, but not defeated. I heard after — though I do not know if it was true — I heard he would sit every night alone in his tent, staring at the image in the willstone. He looked upon his son as a sainted martyr. Perhaps he even prayed to him.

  He had also taken a concubine. I do not know, of course, what passed between himself and the empress over this matter, but I never heard from anyone the slightest indication that she was displeased. She was past the age of bearing, and could give him no new son. And I am sure he felt no passion for the wench he had chosen; it was merely an act of duty, and therefore caused his lady no distress.

  Like Radegund, he wished to speak with me because I had been in Ravensbruck. Unlike her, he chose to speak with me in private.

  “Tell me everything,” he said. “Everything you saw, and everything you know.”

  I told him about the draugars and the battle, and the honors with which we had buried his sons— poor honors indeed, but the best we had to offer. When I had finished my meagre tale, he sat for a time and looked at me; then he said flatly:

  “I said you should tell me everything. Why do you not obey?”

  Can you imagine my guilt, my burning shame? Or the rush of love I felt for him, the reverence? What a fool I was, to imagine I could hide anything from him!

  I threw myself to my knees.

  “Forgive me, my lord, forgive me! I was wounded, I couldn’t walk or even stand; a slave dragged me to safety in a hut. And while I lay there… oh, my lord, forgive me—”

  “You saw him killed? My son Theodoric?”

  “Yes,
my lord, forgive me.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Karelian. The fiends slew all the prince’s defenders— all the men who stood with him, one by one. And when he was alone, the count of Lys rode up to him—”

  “Don’t call him that! He’s no lord except in hell!”

  “Karelian rode up to him, and insulted him—”

  “What did he say?”

  And so, as nearly as I could remember it, I told him everything which passed in the battle, including my encounter with Sigune, and her prophesy.

  When I finished he was silent for a time. Never had he seemed so stern to me, so awful. My words had kindled a terrible wrath in him against the man who had killed his son.

  They had kindled, also, a bottomless contempt for me.

  “You worthless empty vessel,” he said at last. “You clatter about the world making noise, but there is nothing inside of you! Nothing! I sent you to Helmardin to find Karelian. He had no army then, no risen ghosts to fight for him. You could have killed him as I commanded you— but no. You judged it too difficult, and wandered off to a monastery, and he lived to raise the powers of hell against me. He lived to take the Reinmark away from me with sorcery and blood. To murder my sons, and give my sacred relic into the hands of my deadliest enemy, so she could do me further mortal harm. If you had done your duty, Paul of Ardiun, none of this would have been!”

  His words were knives in my heart, and yet strange as it may seem, I was glad to hear them. I was glad he knew me as I was, and would not tolerate my weakness.

  “Then punish me, my lord! Whatever punishment you give me, I will accept it— I’ll welcome it! I know I’ve failed you, and you can’t despise me more than I despise myself!”

  I sank even lower onto my knees. Every word I said was true. If he was my enemy, then I had nothing, I had no hope, I had no purpose, I had no self.

  “Go. I have nothing more to say to you. In the days to come, I will give some thought to whether I still want you among my followers.”

  “My lord, please—”

  “Be silent. You want to serve me, but only when it’s easy.”

  “My lord, I will do anything, I’ll die for you—!”

  “Sometimes that’s the easiest of all. Go. But consider this in your prayers. Either you are with me, or you’re not; there is no third possibility. And if you’re with me, then you will obey. You will not ask first if it’s a good idea. You will not care if it’s dangerous. You will not even wonder if it’s possible. You will obey, because I am your lord.”

  * * *

  The electoral council met at Stavoren, late in November. The princes refused to accept Karelian as duke of the Reinmark, but they also refused to accept the new lord of Thuringia, who had been given the duchy by Gottfried after the victory of Saint Germain. Both appointments, they said, were in too much dispute. The electors would be the same ones who had met and voted in Mainz.

  Konrad and his allies, as well as the princes of the Church, were lodged in comfort in the ducal fortress. Gottfried disdained to come as a guest into his own house, and kept regal court in his tent, amidst a large and well-armed body of his troops.

  There was very little pomp. The delegates who had come from the west were weary from the journey, and they faced an even more unpleasant journey home when it was over. They had two armies camped at their elbows, and the fate of the empire in their hands. They took only a single day to rest and plan.

  The night before they met, I was summoned once more to Gottfried’s tent. I went in fear and despair, wondering if I would be sent away forever. He greeted me with a measure of kindness— a very small measure, but it was sweet. He ordered me to sit.

  “As long as a man is alive,” he said, “he can repent. He can begin again.”

  I waited, half undone with hope.

  “I will not take you back into my affections, Paul of Ardiun. Such acceptance is not freely given; it must be earned. But I will give you a chance to earn it. A final chance, I might add. If you fail me, you may still make peace with heaven. You will never again make peace with me.”

  “There is nothing I want more than to redeem myself, my lord.”

  “You know the traitor Karelian better than any of my captains do. And though he is my kinsman and my vassal, you also know him better than I do. You know his moods, his fancies, his habits— all the small and secret things which only a personal servant or a lover knows.”

  I cringed at his choice of words.

  “You will attend the electoral council as a member of my delegation. Your only task there will be to observe Karelian. If he draws aside to whisper to anyone, I want to know who, and I want to know how they react to what he says. I want to know what pleases him in what is said, and what displeases him. Tell me when he drinks, and when he doesn’t; who he smiles at, and who he doesn’t. Notice everything, and be prepared to tell me what all of it means.”

  Tell you what it means? For a moment I was truly appalled; how could I possibly interpret anything to him?

  Do not even ask if it is possible….

  “I will do my best, my lord. And I thank you. I truly thank you.”

  I went singing back to my own lodgings. Only later, in the midst of the council itself, did I come to understand the purpose of my task. There was nothing I could observe about Karelian which Gottfried’s other men could not. There was little, if anything, which I could interpret more accurately than he could. I was not there to observe Karelian. I was there so Gottfried could observe me— in particular, so Gottfried could observe me in the presence of my former liege. So he could see how I responded, and what I saw, and what I left unseen, and whether my judgments of the man were sound. So he could know, finally, where my heart was.

  Thus it came about that I, a knight of insignificant rank and even more insignificant accomplishments, came to sit among the electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Karelian was there too, in the heart of Konrad’s party. He looked towards Gottfried when he came in, and saw me there. He took good note of me, I saw, but his face did not change at all.

  The debate was begun by the archbishop of Mainz, as soon as the prayers and formalities were concluded.

  “My lord Gottfried.” There was something challenging in his voice and in his mien, right from the beginning. “When we met in Mainz last winter, we received extraordinary comfort and guidance from the sacred stone of Jerusalem which you brought with you. Since our deliberations are now even more urgent, and time is short, we respectfully ask if you would share with us this gift which God has so graciously bestowed upon you.”

  He smiled, and looked hopefully at Gottfried.

  Konrad, who had protested against the relic so bitterly in Mainz, did not say a word of protest now. On the contrary, he looked devilishly pleased.

  Gottfried knotted his hands before him. “I regret, my lord archbishop, I can’t bring the relic to this meeting, or I would already have done so. It has been stolen.”

  There was a rush of whispering and turning heads. On a few faces I saw looks of genuine dismay and horror, but mostly I saw looks of nodding confirmation: Stolen, he says? Then the rumors are true! There’s something wrong with it!

  “Stolen? How is it possible, my lord? A relic of such precious worth? How could you have allowed it to be stolen?”

  Before Gottfried could answer, Karelian sprang to his feet.

  “My lords, I doubt very much that this… thing… has been stolen at all. I wager it is lying where it’s always lain— in his personal quarters, and under armed guard.”

  There was protest from Gottfried’s followers, but Mainz silenced it quickly.

  “But why should this be so, my lord Karelian? Are you suggesting the relic is now revealing things which Gottfried doesn’t want us to know?”

  “I’m suggesting it is no relic. It never was a relic, and it never revealed anything you could trust. It’s a sorcerous tool and nothing more. He used it to deceive you. And now he’s made some terrible mistake
while using it, and it’s been ruined.”

  “That’s a lie!” The old bishop of Stavoren was almost shaking with anger. “It’s a foul and demonic lie!”

  “My lord Gottfried?” Mainz prompted.

  Gottfried rose slowly, and even the small whisperings of his enemies gradually fell silent. He was still the most awesome of men. He commanded attention merely by existing. In some eyes he was already emperor; in others he was a powerful and perilous enemy to fear. He was also a man who had just lost both his sons— a personal and political tragedy which every man in the council room understood.

  “My lords, what my enemies are saying does not surprise me. They steal a sacred relic— to blaspheme it, we must suppose, or to try and twist it to their own foul sorcerous purposes. And then they say no, it was no relic at all. They say I am the sorcerer. I will leave it to your own wisdom to judge. You all saw the truthstone in Mainz. You carried it into the cathedral; you saw it placed on God’s holy altar. Do you disbelieve your own eyes, your own faith, and believe these lies instead?

  “Consider who accuses me. Karelian Brandeis. A mercenary knight who all his life never cared if he served evil men or good, as long as they paid him well. A man who betrayed his liege lord, and gave his allegiance to a witch; who conjured the hounds of hell to escape from my justice, and conjured the very dead out of their graves to slaughter my son and his bride on their wedding day. Do you believe him?

  “And then there is the man he serves. The man he would make king, so he can be underking and royal sorcerer. A man who murdered his own father because he grew tired of waiting for the crown. Do you believe him? A violent, vicious boy? A catamite?”

  “I never killed my father!” Konrad’s face was twisted with fury. “God damn you for a liar, Gottfried von Heyden! I never killed him! You arranged for it yourself, you bloody villain, like you’ve arranged for all of this, and I’ll cut your dog’s throat for it! By God, I will!”

  More than once, during the meetings in Mainz, the assembly came close to erupting into violence. After a year, each side had hardened its position. Battles had been fought and men were dead; the possibility of total collapse was likelier now than ever.