Chalice of Roses

by Jo Beverley

  Ducking beneath the arms of a willow tree, they came to rest next to a waterfall. The air seemed utterly calm, and though the day was cold, they spread their blanket in thick grass by the water, and it immediately seemed warmer.

  “Now, sir, your breakfast,” Alice said, smiling.

  “Cake first.”

  She obliged him, opening the box to reveal a white cake spread with thick layers of red filling. William looked as if he would swoon. “Oh, here’s a glory.” He took a fork and dug in, closing his eyes in bliss. “You must taste it.”

  “What if you’re a fairy trying to trick me into eating?”

  He regarded her soberly. “I am not, but ’tis wise of you to wonder.”

  “You are beautiful enough to be one of them.”

  His cheeks darkened. “I am not one of them, no matter how they desire it.” Fiercely, he stabbed a bite of cake. “Nor will I ever be, no matter how many centuries they keep me.”

  “What is it like there, William? In the land of the fey?” She picked up the other fork Mrs. Leigh had thoughtfully included, and dug into the cake with him. The white crumb was as light as clouds, the jam a perfectly preserved day in June. “Oh, my,” she said. “That’s terrific.”

  “Terrific?”

  “Very good.”

  He shook his head with a quizzical smile. “The language is the thing. Each time I emerge into the mortal world the language has changed, shifting like the light, still the same but always different.”

  “It must be so very lonely for you.”

  “Yes.” He let go of a sigh. “It is very beautiful there. Just as the fey are the most beautiful of us all, so their land is perfection itself. Gardens and forests and great castles, and nary a flaw, ever.” He put down the fork. “But let’s not talk of that land. Tell me of yours. This America, this Chicago.”

  So Alice began to tell him, and as she talked, he looked over the other foods and began to sample them. She found herself drinking in every detail of his person—the flat angle of his wrist and the aggressive bridge of his nose; the soft leather boots he wore, the way his throat moved when he swallowed. It was hard to pinpoint his age—twenty-five? Thirty?

  When he’d finally eaten his fill, he stretched out in the grass and looked at the sky. “I dare not sleep,” he said, “but that is the thing one wishes after so fine a repast.”

  Alice chuckled and fell backward herself. Long grass swayed in a soft breeze, tickling her ear, and prickles of growth poked her shoulder blades. Water rushing over the waterfall was the only sound. The buzzing of facts and theories and remedies in her mind slowed, and she took the first deep breath she’d known since the encounter in the garden. “Will you remember this?” she asked.

  He propped himself up on one elbow to look down at her face. “Not when I am there. Only when I return to this realm again.” He took her hand and lifted her fingers to his mouth, the vivid blue of his eyes locked on hers. Alice opened her hand and touched her fingertips to the edge of his lips. His eyes darkened and he leaned in to kiss her.

  And this time there was no interruption, only his lips pressed into her own, then the velvet sweep of his tongue against her lips. Alice opened to him and he moved closer, his hip against her side, his hand sliding across her shoulder, the bare flesh of her neck. They played, the kiss a dance of greeting, lips pressing, plucking and teasing, now tongues meeting, darting apart, twining, slipping. A sensation of gilded heat centered in her throat where his fingers stroked her gently, and his fingers began to radiate in ever-widening circles, rippling down her body in a rush, awakening every pore and cell and tiny branching nerve in the bend of her elbow and the dip of her belly button and the flesh along the front of her thighs. She made a soft noise and raised her hand to his hair, pulling loose the leather tie. The weight of hair tumbled down across their faces, falling cool and heavy on her shoulder, and even that delicate sensation made her cry out softly.

  William raised his head and looked down at her, fingers tracing her cheekbones and nose, her eyelids, and slowly, slowly, running across her lips. “You have a face like no other I have ever seen,” he said, “as lovely as a field of bluebells.”

  “No, I am plain,” she whispered, feeling the flush in her skin as his fingers moved across her jaw, down her throat, crept along the edge of her neckline.

  There he paused and met her eyes. “May I?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and his long-fingered, beautiful hands slid down over the top of her blouse, beginning to trace the curve of her breast. He looked down into her eyes, and Alice felt overwhelmed, overheated, too hungry.

  This was too much: too much to want, too much to lose. “Wait,” she said, catching his wrist.

  He halted immediately, but his head lowered and there was the enveloping nectar of his mouth, his exquisite kiss, the slow, long sweep of tongue. Against her hip was the unmistakable thrust of his member, nudging her flesh. His hand, still and heavy, curved around her breast, and without meaning to do it, Alice arched upward, pressing herself into the cup of his palm.

  “Sure?” he whispered, and she said, “Yes, please,” and he found the pointed tip and rubbed back and forth over it.

  Alice drifted in sensations, light and heat and pleasure, the sweetness of tongue, the feeling of his long hair sliding through her fingers. Kissing and kissing and kissing, until she felt thoroughly drunk on it. When he slowly drew up her shirt and trailed his fingers on her bare skin, she shivered and pulled up his shirt in return, and then somehow they were both bare chested in the cool day, naked torsos sliding together as they kissed, their legs tangling, their lips still dancing.

  All at once a fog swept into the clearing, and as if doused with it, William leapt away from her. For one instant Alice saw him in all his splendor, the long pale hair falling over his strong shoulders and chest, his slim waist and sturdy thighs in jeans, and she felt no shame at her own half nakedness. It felt as if this were what she had come around the world to find—William and his kiss.

  “Be quick, my lady,” he said now, looking around in alarm. “There is danger here.”

  “What danger?” she said, and he took her by the hand, yanking her to her feet. With a swift gesture, he gathered her blouse in one hand and pressed it into her arms. “Go, my lady! You must go.”

  “I don’t know my way!” she protested.

  He pulled her close to him, kissed her hair, her shoulder. “Forgive me,” he said, “but it matters not where you run, only that you go now.” He shoved her, not ungently, and Alice stumbled, dumbly holding her clothes in her hands, ashamed and frightened.

  “Put it on inside out,” he said. “Now! You must do as I say, Alice. ’Twill be dire if you do not.”

  The fog rose upward from their feet, thicker and thicker, until it was as it had been that evening in her garden, until she could see nothing at all. Shaking in terror, she managed to put on her blouse, inside out, and cried, “William!”

  “Run!” he said, sounding distant. “Run back the way we came.”

  She could see nothing, but run she did, following the thin bit of trail as best she could, banging once into a tree and scraping her arm. Behind her was no sound at all.

  At the pasture, the fog suddenly thinned, enough that Alice could see a trio of Lords coming in her direction. They seemed not to see her and walked right by, as if she were invisible.

  She looked down at the inside-out shirt. That was all it re quired?

  A movement in the obscured middle distance caught her eye, the flash of a long red cloak near the tree at the center of the field. Acacia! The woman did not seem to see Alice, either, and it made her bold. Alice dashed toward the tree, not sure what she meant to do, but needing to somehow force a confrontation. Why me? she wanted to ask the beauty. Why are you targeting me?

  But directly in front of her loomed a great dark shape that suddenly coalesced into the body of Mrs. Leigh. “Ah, there you are, lass!” She carried two net bags full of groceries, and shov
ed one into Alice’s hands. “Be a love and help an old woman home, will you?”

  Alice looked over her shoulder, but the red cloak was gone, along with any sign of the Lords, or even William. Deflated, she took the bag and accompanied the old woman home.

  Chapter 6

  Three days later, Alice found herself restless, sorting through her notes. She had heard nothing from William—the mor tal William in modern clothing, or the William of her dreamland, who arrived in velvet doublet. In class on Monday, not all of the Lords and Ladies had been there, nor had Crystal, but those who did show up seemed only students. Wealthy and eccentric students, but no more enchanted than she was herself.

  The world again seemed utterly mundane. And yet, there was that bracelet on her wrist. There was that rose, fading each night, and blooming anew every morning outside her bedroom window. There was the hodgepodge of items she found each morning on her door-step: a pot of forget-me-nots, a beautiful walking stick, carved with symbols and polished to a deep shine. One of her neighbors, a middle-aged man, said it was rowan wood.

  On Tuesday afternoon, the skies grew pregnant with snow, the depth of softness lowering until the treetops were engulfed. Despite the threat of snow, Alice made her way to the library. There were not many students about, and she had a whole table to herself. In a room somewhere down the hall, a study group drilled one another on some subject she couldn’t quite catch.

  She reread the poem about William of Hartford, a highborn son of the county who had defended his sister from the fey and had been spirited away to their land, never to be heard from again, and made note of anything that seemed it might be significant if she was required to battle the fey.

  Again, she felt the sliding sense of reality: dreams that came to life, and fairies, and ancient curses and the Grail, buried somewhere in this county. If she told anyone what she was thinking, they’d lock her up.

  But wasn’t the reason she had come to Hartford in the first place to trace the link between the ballad and “The Roman de la Rose” and the Grail myths?

  Yes, but she was a twenty-first-century woman. She had not believed the myths.

  A good scholar did not try to fit facts to the reality, but made use of facts to assemble the truth. By that measure, she had no choice but to admit there was something strange afoot here. Her arm still bore the angry mark from being attacked by that creature in the field, and the bracelet on her wrist had come from a dream man who then appeared and disappeared.

  However strange it seemed, the laws and rules she understood no longer served. If she were to find the Grail and take it to Summerland, as her student had called it, what would she need to keep herself safe?

  The rules, as she discovered in the literature,were much the same as William had already instructed her: no dancing, no eating or drinking. She should fill her pockets with fronds of thyme to help her see the fey more clearly, and the bracelet of yew would enhance her abilities to navigate in that odd world, and perhaps lend some abilities to defend herself.

  Would she need a weapon? The carved staff could make a sturdy weapon, but only if she were a strong man, which she was not. Could one even wound a fairy? Rubbing her forehead, she let go of a long sigh. She wished for someone to talk to, someone to help her understand all this material. William had obviously been tugged back to the other side. The only friend she’d made here was Crystal.

  Maybe Crystal knew more than she’d let on. She had admitted to drawing Acacia’s ire. And one of the Lords seemed to want Crystal’s attention.

  Closing her books and tugging a cap back down over her ears, Alice set out to find the girl’s flat.

  It wasn’t difficult, in the end, to find the flat. Alice headed down a narrow lane with snow starting to float out of the dark sky, and knocked at an upstairs door. Another young woman with a short haircut and skinny shoulders opened it. “Hello,” Alice said. “Is Crystal here?”

  “No, she’s not back.”

  “Back?”

  “She went to the pub last Saturday and I haven’t seen her since.”

  Icy fingers shoved themselves down Alice’s spine. She is no doubt abed this morning, sleeping off her drunken revels, William had said of the fairies. “And you weren’t worried?”

  “She’s stayed out this way before, with that guy. I forget his name. It’s something kind of odd. The Scottish one. Laird?”

  “Laithe,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Back on the lane, she paused, slightly airless. What if Crystal had, like William so long ago, been lured over into enchantment? Brushing snow from her arms, she headed to the pub, where to her relief, Phillip was wiping down the old wooden bar with a white towel. Spying her, he said, “Well, hello, lass. What can I get for you today?”

  “A half pint,” she said, sitting at the bar. There were only a few other customers, a couple of elderly men sitting near the fire, and a single businessman eating a late lunch. Alice piled her notebook and rucksack on the bar next to her. “Have you seen my friend Crystal, the one who was here the other night with me?”

  “Ah, she was dancing her heart out that night.” He skimmed a head of foam from the top of her glass and set it down. “Danced her feet right off, I reckon.”

  “Did she leave with that group? The musicians?”

  “Ah, you mean the lot from London? She did. One of the lads has a yen for her, you know. A Scot with black hair. Nicer than most.”

  Alice said, “I see.” She sipped her ale, wondering what Phillip might know. He’d been serving in a pub where fairies had enchanted the customers for quite some time, after all. Maybe he knew more than he let on.

  Or he was one of them. She watched him covertly, eyed his jiggly belly and his gnarled hands. No, not fey.

  “Are you familiar with the legend of the Holy Grail?”

  “Not so much, luv. I’m a simple man.” He polished a glass carefully, setting it neatly in a row of other spotless friends. “Ain’t it the thing Merlin wanted?”

  “Yes, that’s right. It’s the cup that Jesus drank out of with his disciples at the Last Supper.”

  He nodded, chewing gum vigorously. “Thought it was magical?”

  “Some think so. I’ve always thought just the existence of it was magical enough. The pleasure would be in being able to see something so very sacred and very old.”

  “Indeed.”

  “There’s a folk song that seems to say the Grail is somewhere around here. ‘The Ballad of William of Hartford.’ You know it?”

  “Sure. They sing it here all the time.” He launched into a verse, rousingly and badly, then laughed when the businessman at the counter groaned. “Can I get you another before you head back to the missus?”

  The man said, “All right.”

  Alice opened her notebook and found the words to the ballad, examining each verse to see if anything new leapt out at her. Roses, the seventh sister, the queen’s tree, the Star of Hope. On a fresh sheet of paper, she wrote the phrases and drew a bubble around each one.

  The queen’s tree? She thought of the elm standing in solitary splendor at the center of the field. And the Star of Hope—would that be the Star of David? Venus? Or was it a shape to follow to the location of the Grail?

  She tried to visualize a map of the area. Where were the manor house and the village in connection to the tree? Would that make a star?

  Now that it appeared Crystal, too, had been taken, Alice was committed to crossing into that realm to help them both, but she must be prepared.

  “Let’s say you had to go into the fairy realm. What do you use to protect yourself against enchantment?” she asked Phillip idly.

  “Rue,” he said without a moment of hesitation.

  “Ah, of course!” Her grandmother had kept rue by the doors of her house for that very reason. Because of that habit, Alice had noticed the rue by the back door of her flat.

  Growing at the foot of the climbing yellow rose.

  Roses pointed to the Grail.

&nb
sp; “I have to go,” she said, and scrambled for a five-pound note, slapped it on the counter and rushed out. The snow was falling more heavily now, making the light resemble twilight, and the idea of getting caught in that field in darkness was more than she could bear. She ran all the way to the pasture, then halted at the edge. Snow covered the field and the tree with a deceptively beautiful glitter, like a Christmas card, making the tree appear entirely benevolent.

  All the same, she took off her coat, turned it inside out, and then ran as fast as she could all the way across the pasture, not resting until she made it to the small stone bridge over the moat. Panting, pressing her hand to a stitch in her side, she turned around and looked back at the tree. Around it was a lavender haze, glowing in the low light, and did she hear music? She took a step forward, and then stopped.

  No. Not tonight. Not like this. When she entered their realm, she would be well prepared.

  Ducking her head, she went through the gate to the garden, and bent to brush snow from the rue and lavender growing around the back door. The cold had not injured them, and she went inside to the kitchen, found a pair of shears and knelt to clip several long fronds of both. She put them in water to keep them fresh, and only then did she think to check the roses. She stepped back outside into a snow that seemed much heavier than only a moment before. Shivering, she put her arms around her chest.

  Nearly all of the roses on the vine had been dead for many days, but the one that bloomed afresh every morning outside her bedroom window had continued to seem newborn. Now for the first time it was wilted, its head hanging low.