The Black Chalice Page 5

  “Yes.”

  “Will you speak of it?”

  He looked up, not at her, but at Reinhard. “I swore if I left there alive, I would never take part in such an enterprise again, nor help any other man to do so, not even with so much as a wooden staff or a copper penny.”

  No one spoke; the crackle of torches and the cheerful talk of guests at other tables was suddenly and painfully loud.

  “It’s the only vow I ever made,” he went on, “and I didn’t make it in a church. I made it in a gutter, kneeling in a lake of blood. Everything around me was dead, even the dogs and the cats. We killed everything that crossed our path. The next day, the bodies were piled outside the city like cordwood, and the piles were as high as the walls. Do you remember, Reinhard?”

  “My lord, it was war—!”

  “Yes. It was war. A war called up by God, and fought with his blessing. When you went to pray, I walked back through the city Back the way we came, through the streets where we fought. Alone. With my sword in its scabbard and my helmet abandoned God knows where. I think I wanted someone to kill me, but there was no one left alive to do it.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Karelian….” Reinhard whispered.

  The count laughed bitterly. “Sweet? He was once, perhaps, many centuries ago. Not any more, my friend. Not any more.” He raised his cup. “Prosit.”

  Reinhard crossed himself, taking comfort, I suppose, in the fact that our lord was drinking and was surely not himself in this unnatural place. And then a thought crossed my mind which left me rigid with fear. Perhaps he was truly himself now, for the first time? Perhaps he had never been the man we thought we knew…?

  I shuddered. No, it couldn’t be; all this wild talk was just to impress her. Every word had been for her, telling her he didn’t care if she was not a Christian, he wasn’t much of a Christian either— indeed not! He would out-heathen the heathens if it would please her, if she would just keep flashing her black eyes at him, leaning so close he could breathe the perfume of her hair, so close that if he bent his head a little he could have pressed his mouth against the pagan offering of her breasts.

  But no man can play such games with his faith, and expect to get away with it….

  For a time the talk was trivial and strained. Karelian had gone too far, and he knew it, and he sat with his wine cup and said very little, but he looked at her sometimes. I knew the look. I had seen it on the face of my older brother, when he was besotted with a scullery maid: a dirty, wild-haired thing who was frighteningly beautiful, whom he wanted unbearably and did not want to want. In the end he bedded her, and when my father discovered it, his anger was like none I had ever seen. The girl he merely sent packing, but my brother he flogged with a whip until the blood ran. His action astonished everyone who heard of it. It was not, they said, as if the girl were high-born; everyone bedded serfs, and of course the priests said they shouldn’t, but the priests did it, too, so what was all the fuss about?

  But my father was a chaste man— the rarest thing which lived among the lords of the Reinmark. From the day of his marriage he had bedded no one but my mother. So he told me, some days after the encounter with my brother, and then he told me why.

  If a man yielded in matters of sex, he said, he would yield in anything. If he held the line in such matters, he would hold it in anything. The measure of manhood was mastery of the flesh. My father never pampered his body, never gave in to it, never looked upon it as anything but a device for doing work, for serving God and his lord.

  “Consider how women live,” he said, “with their soft garments, and their perfumed baths, and their need for every dainty thing; and consider how weak they are, how easily they are led.”

  That was why he had beaten my brother: for being so easily led, for allowing his lust to be stronger than he was. And then, standing straight as a pillar, my father told me to hit him. “Here,” he said, patting his stomach. “As hard as you can.” I didn’t want to do it, and I would not, until he mocked me for my softness. And then I did it, feebly, and he mocked me again, until I was angry, and hit him with all my strength. I almost broke my wrist, and he laughed.

  I thought he was cruel then, but I could see now he was right. In truth, I had seen it already in Jerusalem. The crusader knights were brave and sturdy; they endured hardship as well as my father ever had.Yet in their morals they were weak, because everything they suffered was only from necessity, never from choice. When the fighting was over they forgot it all. They let the city fill up again with infidels; they reveled in the taverns and the brothels every chance they had; they dressed themselves in rich garments and hired fine Egyptian cooks, while the priests who came with them shook their heads, and the Saracens spat in the dust when they thought no one was looking: God’s people, indeed….

  Thinking about all these things, I lost track of time, and did not pay attention to what passed at the table, until I heard the soft ripple of a harp, and looked up. It was the lady herself who had begun to play. Her chair was drawn back from the table and turned a little, so the harp could rest against her knee.

  I knew it was the devil’s work, but it was beautiful, a shimmering sorcery of music so haunting that the whole room grew still; nothing even whispered now except the torches. Later, I would learn she was a shape-shifter; this was the first of many transformations. The worldly seductress was utterly gone, and in her place was someone exquisite and strange— wanton perhaps, but also elusive, a veela who could be won but never held, a goddess whom men would kneel before, and beg to serve.

  Her voice was not delicate at all, as one expected from a woman, but it was beautiful and very clear, almost eerily so, like the voices of wild birds crying across a marsh, the sound still quivering against the grey sky after the birds were still. It took all my strength to withstand its power, all my strength and the grace of Jesus Christ, just to sit unmoved, and not soften towards her, not even a little.

  Her song was not really a song, but a chanted story. I have not forgotten it, nor have I forgotten Karelian’s face as he listened. That brief time, I believe, was when he fell beyond hope. He saw how powerful she could be, how much she had to offer him. Her gifts were all lies, of course, all illusion, and the price was lethal to the end of time. But how enchanting she must have seemed to him, there in the torchlight, how eerily lovely, how close to his reach.

  Just ask, my lord, and all of it is yours….

  The story she told was strange, full of foolishness, as all pagan stories are, but it must be told, for it is part of what came after. As best I can recall it, it went thus:

  Long ago, in the beginning times, there was born in the far north a lady called Erce, who had care of everything which lived. It was she who taught the birds to sing, and named the flowers; and she took for her home the fairest place in all the Reinmark, the rich green valley of Dorn. There she married a lord who came from the east, a stranger who was proud and strong. He loved her dearly at first, for she was very beautiful, and they had many children.

  But in time he grew bitter towards her, and his heart became filled with envy. He saw she could bring forth children and nourish them and he could not. She could take pleasure more than he could, any time she wished. She could laugh at everything, even death. He forgot his own gifts, which were many and very fine; he wanted only those he did not have. He spoke often to his brother, complaining about her; and his brother, who was a holy man living by himself, with neither wife nor children, counselled Erce’s husband thus:

  Clearly, he said, she has some magic talisman inside her body, which gives her these powers. Take it from her, and the powers will be yours.

  So it was that Erce’s husband led her away into the forest, promising her a gift, and he slew her, and cut open her body. But he could find no talisman, no stone, no magic thing at all, only flesh and blood and bones, no different from the animals he killed for food. And then he was more bitter still, bitter because he’d loved a creature of so little worth, and bitter too because s
he was gone, for now he had no wife to comfort him, and no one to care for his children.

  He went back to his house, and told the children their mother no longer wanted them, and had gone away. They were not easily convinced, but having told one lie against her he found it easy to tell others, and in time they all lost faith in her, all except the youngest daughter.

  This girl, who was called Maris, went every day to the forest searching for her mother. For years she searched, gathering up the pieces of her mother’s body, which had been scattered by wild beasts and by time. When she had found them all, she placed them in a splendid urn made of clay, and took them to the bottom of the valley, and hid them in a cave. And from this urn grew an apple tree, and barley, and every kind of flower; in the spring lambs would leap over its dark edges, and in the fall it would be spread about with nuts. When the girl was not there to tend it, the veelas took up her task, making certain the urn was never harmed and never found. And so the girl brought home to her father and her kindred all manner of good things, more than they could eat, and what they could not eat she gave to strangers and to the gods.

  Then her eldest brothers took counsel among themselves, and asked themselves how she could find all these things, even when it was winter. They resolved to follow her. With great skill and stealth they eluded even the veelas, and went back and told their father what they had seen.

  Our sister has a magic urn hidden in a cave, they said. Consider, father, what paltry use she makes of it, and what we could do if this urn were ours! For if it makes grain and milk and every other common thing, then surely it would make gold, and everything it makes we could sell. With such wealth and power we would soon be kings.

  Only the youngest brother argued with them, for he loved his sister dearly. She had found the urn herself, he said, so surely it was hers. And she shared everything with them— was that not good enough? But he was very young, scarcely more than a boy, and no one listened to him. The old man told his sons: Yes, go and take the urn, for we are men, and wiser, and we will use it better.

  And so they armed themselves with spears, and made the long journey deep into the valley. The veelas went to Maris then, and warned her: You must come now, your kinsmen are coming to steal away the urn. And Maris wept, for she knew she could never go home again, or see her little brother any more. I cannot go, she said, leaving nothing good behind me. She tore out a single branch from the sacred urn, and left it on the ground, so life would come again to the vale of Dorn. So there would always be a memory of the winter tree.

  They fled then, Maris and the golden veelas, deep into the forests of Helmardin, weaving behind themselves such magic that no one, even to this day, can find their hiding place. Behind them as they fled, all the land turned to winter, and the winds came down like death. The brothers found themselves walking in snow, in their summer garments and with no food, and they never returned again to their father.

  * * *

  When the tale was finished and I looked up, the nine bearers of the Chalice, the old women in silver samite, had placed it again on its bier and were bearing it towards us. It was shimmering as with marsh lights, and utterly terrible— ugly and beautiful at once, both living and full of death. Everyone at the table stood up then, as if in the presence of a god — myself just like the others — and bowed their heads.

  The lady of Helmardin spoke into absolute silence.

  “This is what your poets seek, men of the Reinmark: the Grail of Life, which is the loins of woman, the seed of man, the bones of the earth, the cycle of the seasons, the gods within the world.

  “Here in Car-Iduna, you look on it with awe and call it magical. Outside, in the world, where the same magic surrounds you, you trample it into the ground. You seek gods in the sky to escape the earth, and virtue in the mind to escape the flesh. You seek dynasty and glory, making yourselves kings and lords in the fantasy that you can thus live forever, and break out of the cycle of time. And it will seem so, for a while. You will build your great churches. You will see your names written down in scrolls. You will see men tremble when you frown. Your sons will carry on your blood, even if you have to kill their mothers to make sure of it. You will have your way… for a little while. Till another king comes and takes your empire, and another god who claims to be the only god leads his armies against you. Till your bones dissolve in the earth with the bones of those you slew, and you are as forgotten as the wind, your kings not even names in books, and your god a bogey to frighten children.

  “Such is your immortality, for which the world bleeds.”

  A drone began to shiver, and then a drum to beat; in the caverned walls of Car-Iduna it seemed to tremble and echo back, until the walls were alive with the sound. And so the Black Chalice passed from our sight, and I thank God and his holy saints that I never laid eyes on it again.

  And yet it is not gone, and nor are my memories of it, which troubled me all down the years, like old wounds. For the thing is alive, as alive as those who keep it, and as wickedly enchanting, an eternal ambush in the dark of the mind, pulling us back from God, pulling us down into death.

  As Karelian was pulled down, Christ, so easily, with nothing more than the offer of her hand. He took it with a boy’s smile and a brush of his own across her hair, and followed her to her sorcerous bed.

  I went alone to the room which Marius had offered us— utterly alone, for Reinhard and all the rest of the company scattered into I know not what dark places. I knelt on the stone floor and prayed all night, but my prayers failed me, for God was far away and Car-Iduna was all around me. I could not block from my mind the thought of Karelian and the woman, the endlessly changing images of their coupling, and the longing which rose unbidden through all my flesh, the unbearable longing to be there in his place.

  Or, more truthfully, in hers….

  FOUR

  The Writing of Histories

  What is truth?

  Attributed to Pontius Pilate

  * * *

  Something must be done, Anselm, I beg you. Something must be done.”

  It was painful to beg. In seventeen years Paul had never asked any of his brothers for anything. He had always been the one to help them, the one who willingly took on more tasks, more problems, or more penances.

  The face of the older monk was calm, but his voice betrayed a hint of impatience.

  “Three times this morning you’ve told me something must be done. There’s only one thing which can be done, my friend. You must go to the abbot, and have this thing exorcised.”

  “And I’m telling you it’s impossible.”

  “Then tell me why it’s impossible, or let me get on with my weeding.”

  “Anselm…!”

  “Listen,” Anselm said, leaning on his hoe and talking to the other almost as if he were a child. “There’s a limit to how much even a confessor may pry into another man’s soul. But I can’t advise you if you tell me nothing. You’re trying to write a book, and you can’t write it properly because your quill is bewitched. On the surface, that seems to me an obvious problem with an obvious solution. But I’m not a fool, Paul. I’ve noticed you don’t take communion. And you scourge yourself so much, I fear it won’t be long before the abbot reprimands you for it—”

  “He already has.”

  “Other brothers tell me you pace at night, and cry out, and while none of us are spies, or wish to be, we live close together. They’ve seen your haunted looks, and the blood creeping out of your shoes, and many other things. And yet you tell me nothing. How can I help you, if I don’t know what lies at the heart of your grief?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Let’s walk down by the river, then,” Paul said. “It’s a long story, and I would rather not be interrupted.”

  Anselm nodded, and put his hoe down. They walked for a time in silence, and at last he said:

  “Well, my brother?”

  “It’s not easy to begin.”

  “I would hardly expect
it to be. Begin anyway. Tell me what you’re writing. Is it a book of devotions which the fiend wishes to spoil?”

  “No. It’s a history. Of Gottfried the Golden and the war, and everything which happened there.”

  Anselm looked surprised. He knew his brother in Christ had once been a knight, and before that, squire to the count of Lys. He knew, but he must almost have forgotten. The world of knights and lords was a strange and distant world to him— as it had been to Paul, not very long ago.

  “Why would you want to write such a book?”

  “I was commanded to do so. Nothing less than a command would move me to such a thing. When I left the world all I wanted was peace. I wanted to forget, to cleanse my soul and forget. Not to write about it, and so live through all of it again.”

  “But if you’ve been commanded to do it, Paul, then you must do it. Many tasks are painful; that’s how men earn their salvation. Is it the quill which is hindering you, or your own reluctance?”

  “I didn’t say the quill was hindering me.”

  “In truth, brother Paul, you’ve said so little I can understand, I’m beginning to lose my patience. What is the quill doing, then?”

  “It’s writing things which aren’t true.”

  Anselm paused in his tracks, and crossed himself. “You must go at once to the abbot—!”

  “I can’t. For heaven’s sake, Anselm, stop and think a moment! It was thirty years ago, but surely you haven’t forgotten who won the war, and what became of those who lost? I can’t speak of this to the abbot; he’s nothing more than the emperor’s pet. Besides, if he had the power to exorcise a wart from my backside, I’d be truly surprised.”

  Anselm ignored the insult to his superior. “But if he told you to write the book, then he—”

  “He didn’t tell me to write it. The Holy Father did.”

  “Oh.” Anselm carefully brushed the bird dung off a fallen log and sat, wrapping his robe around his feet. He watched the ants scurry off in all directions. “That is different.”