The Black Chalice (6 page)

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 she 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.”

“Anselm,” Paul said heavily, sitting beside him. “You know what the rest of Christendom thinks of us here in Germany. Our kings have done nothing for a century except fight with the pope, and undermine his authority, and ignore his necessities. When Urban called for the great expedition to Jerusalem, the English came, the Italians came, everyone came — Flemings, Tuscans, Normans, Greeks, Frenchmen by the thousands — everyone except the Germans. Our lords you could have counted on the fingers of one hand: Gottfried, and the knights who followed him, and William of Saxony, and two or three others. That was all, out of the whole of our Holy Roman Empire. Do you think we deserve the name? We are half Christian here, no more; and with Gottfried gone, the Reinmark is barely that.”

“You’re telling me nothing new,” Anselm said. “But what does it have to do with your insubordinate quill?”

Paul spoke slowly, choosing his words.

“There is sorcery here, brother. Here, in the Reinmark. Not just ordinary human wickedness. Not just pride and lust and all the other things we’re familiar with, but something more. There is heathen power here. As it happened, I came to know something of it, years ago. My… my closeness to the matter was brought to the attention of the pope; I don’t know by whom. Some months ago he sent me a letter, by a special messenger, and ordered me to write the history of Karelian of Lys, and Gottfried, and the war, in all the detail I could remember. He said I should pay special attention to the use of sorcery by the German lords.”

“Sorcery? By the German lords? You mean Gottfried and his allies?”

“No. I mean the other side.”

Anselm pulled a branch from a tree and brushed away the ants who were now climbing over his feet.

“There was talk of that,” he said. “But it was civil war, and every time a man walked into a different village, he heard a different tale, and heard someone else accused. Demonism, witchcraft, heresy— sweet Jesus, the accusations fell everywhere. But I wonder, Paul. I wondered then, and I wonder now, if there was much substance in any of it. A man of honor and good repute suddenly turns, and betrays his lawful lord, and everyone looks for some extraordinary explanation. Perhaps they should just look into the human heart.”

“It was sorcery, Anselm,” Paul said grimly. “I was there.”

Anselm looked up, and met his eyes, and looked away again, across the greening fields. He was both a cautious and a compassionate man; he did not leap to believe evil of others. But he was not a fool.

“And this sorcery you speak of,” he said at last, very softly. “You believe it’s controlling your pen?”

“There’s no question. The same… being… came to me when I began to write—”

“Here?” Anselm whispered, horrified. “In the monastery?”

“Yes.”

Anselm knotted his hands. For the first time, he seemed truly convinced. And truly afraid.

“We must have it exorcised, Paul. And we must do so at once.”

“By whom?” Paul asked simply. “And how, without telling the abbot?”

“But why shouldn’t you tell the abbot?”

Paul made a small but bitter gesture, as if to say: In God’s name, Anselm, aren’t you
thinking
about this at all…?

“The abbot is a friend of the emperor,” he said pointedly. “The pope is
not
a friend of the emperor.”

Anselm sighed, and nodded very faintly. He understood. When he thought about it even a little bit, he understood. The war may have been thirty years ago, but powerful men still had deeply vested interests in how the tale was told. And when politics were involved, one could not always do the simple and obvious thing.

“The abbot is a man of God,” Anselm said. “It’s not your place to judge him. And although it’s not my place to judge the pope, he would have been wiser to arrange this through your superiors. Now, I must admit, we have a problem. Perhaps I should try an exorcism myself—”

“No!” Paul said sharply, rising. “I don’t want you to come near the thing! You have no idea of the power we’re dealing with.”

Anselm was silent for a time. “All right. But there is something here I still don’t understand. Such a great power could compel any poor fool to copy out a false history of the rebellion, if that was what it wanted. Any number of false histories. Why would it choose you?”

“So I couldn’t fulfill the pope’s command.”

“There are easier ways to stop you from doing so.”

Paul paced, glancing now and then at Anselm’s tranquil head, more often at the distant western hills, beyond which lay the wood of Helmardin.

“It’s not entirely a false history,” he said at last, very softly.

“Ah.”

“That’s what’s so terrible, Anselm!” he went on. “It is… oh, Christ, I can’t explain…. The events of which it writes are true— even the words which were spoken. Often it will remember things I had completely forgotten, and yet, when I see them written, I know they took place. Only….” He shuddered, and looked away.

“It changes… it changes the
meaning
of everything. It changes who we were, and why we did what we did. If someone read it, someone who knew nothing of the truth, they would think….”

He faltered.

“They would think ill of you?” Anselm asked gently.

Paul stared at him.
Dear God, do you think I’m so vain and worldly I would tear myself to pieces over my image in a book?

And then he caught himself. It was better if Anselm
did
think so. Yes. Much better. Let Anselm believe the worst of him. Let Anselm never wonder if there might be another reason he was so afraid.

But the monk had already seen his bitter look.

“I only asked, my friend,” he said. “Even good men take it hard sometimes, when they are made to look bad.”

Paul shrugged.

“It’s not about pride, Anselm. Oh, God knows there are things I’d rather not have told about myself. But it’s… how can I say it? It’s the way everything is being twisted and made different. What mattered most is ignored, and what never mattered at all is made important, and all our motives and reasons are turned upside down. It’s horrible! I can’t keep doing this. I swear to you I can’t!”

“Then you must stop.”

“It won’t let me.”

There was a brief, painful silence. It seemed to Paul he should feel strengthened, having shared his fear with another. Instead he was more afraid than ever.

“Your soul is in great peril,” Anselm said. “No matter what you say, the thing must be exorcised. I will give thought to finding someone—”

“Be careful, I beg you! Or I will end like a grain of wheat between two stones!”

Anselm stood up and wiped his hand across his face. “You are such a quiet, religious man, Pauli. How did you ever find yourself in the midst of something like this?”

“Karelian tossed a coin at a crossroads, and we followed where it led.”

In the field above the river a bell began to ring. Anselm looked at the sun.

“Vespers,” he said, and turned to go. “A coin? As small a thing as that?” And then, without missing a step or a breath, he began to pray.