The Black Chalice (4 page)

“What place is this?” Karelian asked.

“It’s the castle of Car-Iduna, my lord. A small fortress, as you can see, but well appointed. We lack for very little.”

“I regret I’ve never heard the name,” Karelian said.

The man made a small, appeasing gesture. “It doesn’t matter. You are welcome just the same.”

“I thank you for your offer,” the count said. “But we’re bound for Marenfeld, and should be on our way. Where is the road which leads from hence?”

“You have travelled it, my lord.”

For a moment even Karelian could find no suitable reply. He wiped his face with his arm, a brief gesture of frustration.

“We set out on the forest road from the south,” he said, “and we didn’t turn from it. And for the past hundred years or so, that road has led through Helmardin and come out on the other side. At Marenfeld.”

“And so it still does, my lord. But you are no longer on that road.”

“Then,” Karelian said wearily, “will you tell us how we might return to it?”

“No one will pass through Helmardin tonight, my lord.” The man gestured again towards the courtyard. “Come within, and take shelter. When the storm clears, we will guide you wherever you wish to go.”

“As you guided me here?” Karelian said darkly.

The man said nothing, but simply waited, his manner as unyielding as it was polite.

For a moment, the count of Lys still hesitated, glancing back at the tense cluster of his men. He was spent and hungry; they all were; and the cold was growing steadily more unbearable. He seemed almost to shrug, as if saying to himself:
Well, what of it? Tonight even hell might be a nicer place than this empty road….

He nodded, and urged his horse through the open gates. Paul followed numbly, his body icy with dread, unable to find words to protest or strength to pray. Inside the courtyard, servants flocked around them, taking their horses. One of them flung open the castle doors, and stood aside as they entered.

A stairway lay within, curving upwards in a graceful sweep. From the chambers above Paul could hear music. He felt the rush of warm air, pressing his icy clothing against his body. He heard steps, and stood immobile, rooted to the stone.

Approaching them was a woman, the most exquisitely beautiful woman Paul had ever seen. She was tall and black-haired, and she wore a gown which seemed to change color with every shift of motion, shimmering blue and green and amber in the torchlight. Later, as the night wore on, he would notice a thousand tiny details: how long her nails were, and how dark her eyes. The gold belt she wore was studded with small black stones— stones which were not even pretty, and so must have been magical. She wore a bracelet carved with runes, and seven rings, each with a different jewel. Those things, and many others, he noticed later. Now he was aware only of the woman herself, the female, moving smoothly as a panther down the dark steps, torchlight glinting on her hair, her gown liquid against her body, her breasts bared to take a saint’s breath away— all her beauty offered like a gift, and in the same instant demanding worship, like the smile she flashed at Karelian, like the pale ringed hand she held out for him to kiss.

“My lord of Lys, you are truly welcome here!”

Paul was staring like a witless boy, but no one paid him any heed, least of all Karelian. He bowed deeply over the glittering hand, and drank in the image before him as though it were wine.

“You have the advantage, my lady.”

“I always do, if I can manage it,” she said wryly.

“So be it. But will you tell me, perhaps, why you’ve led me and my company astray?”

“It’s a cruel night, as you have seen. Even the bravest woodland creatures are huddling in their dens, and some of them will die. Have I led you astray, my lord, or to shelter?”

“Both, I suspect,” Karelian said. He bowed again, smiling faintly. “And for the latter, at least, I thank you.”

She gave a soft laugh, and met his eyes. Paul was not worldly in the ways of men and women, but even he could read the frank sexual speculation in that look, the coolly hinted possibility.
I think I’m going to like you, and if I do….

Then the woman turned to Paul, greeting him by name, and Reinhard as well, offering welcome to them all. A dark-eyed dwarf of a man had padded quietly down the steps behind her, unnoticed by anyone until she placed her guests into his care.

His name was Marius. It was the only name in Car-Iduna which Paul would ever learn, and he never forgot it.

THREE

The Lady of the Mountain

Such a slaughter of pagans no one has ever seen or heard of;
the pyres they made were like pyramids.

Gesta Francorum —
Anonymous Chronicle of the First Crusade

* * *

What words are there to tell of Car-Iduna? It was full of witchcraft. I do not know what the others saw at first, when we followed the lady and her servants into the great hall. I think Karelian saw nothing but the black silk of her hair, and her splendid body swaying in the torchlight.

I saw a world which was not God’s.

All my life, from my earliest childhood, I lived surrounded by a consciousness of God. Churches dotted the countryside, monastery bells rang the hours, windows were painted with saints, and walls were hung with crucifixes. A man did not eat, or lay down to sleep, or greet his neighbors, without mentioning God’s name. On the road to Jerusalem, we carried the image of our faith upraised in our hands, and stitched on our clothing, and painted on our shields; we were a sea of crosses sweeping across the land.

Never, until I stood inside the walls of Car-Iduna, had I felt myself to be out of God’s presence. Out of his favor, yes, but never out of his
presence
. But now I did. Nothing in my understanding could recognize this place, or name it. My throat was dust, and my belly knotted like a rag wrung out to dry. I had been among the Saracens, and I knew them well— better, indeed, than I ever wanted to. And I knew a Saracen would tremble walking into Car-Iduna, just as I did, and for the same reasons. This place was older than Mahomet their prophet, older than Jesus of Nazareth, older than Moses and the law, older even than Satan whom we imagined was the oldest of God’s enemies….

It took all the strength Paul had to put the quill down, to link his hands and press his face against their hardness and close his eyes. To say five
Pater Nosters
and open them again, and read what he had written.

It was as he feared. The words were quite clear and, in a certain sense, quite true. Those had been his thoughts, or something very near to his thoughts, his instinctive reaction to the castle in Helmardin. But they were not thoughts he meant to write. He hid the parchment carefully away and went for a walk in the fields.

It was April, the easter month, the month when a man’s soul rejoiced in the resurrection of the Lord, and when his body kept drawing him to hell. Especially now, since he had begun to write, everything seemed to remind him of his flesh, and of its terrible possibilities.

Why were men so weak? he wondered. So pathetically, disgustingly weak that the smallest, most innocent thing could turn their minds to sin, and make their loins flood with shame? A dog licking his hand. The smell of sweat on a beggar woman reaching out for a gift of bread. A word in a book. The warmth of the sun pressing through his habit. The color of a stranger’s tunic. The sight of a peach. Even pain, finally. Even those penances whose very objective was to silence the flesh, could awaken it instead. A man took his foul body everywhere he went; he could not escape it in prayer, or even in sleep. Dear God, what had Jesus lowered himself to, taking on a vile existence such as this?

But Jesus incarnate was not like us; he did not sin, or ever wish to sin; his body was pure, and our bodies must become like his….

It had never been easy for him to control his desires, but he had, in these last years, grown a little calmer, a little less vulnerable. Age helped, as did the routine of monastery life, the endless repetition of the same labors, the same prayers, the same passing of the hours and the seasons. It made life orderly; it kept the mind occupied and the body too exhausted for lust.

Now this… this unbearable going back into time, to his youth and to a history filled with evil. It would have been difficult for him even if he had been in control of it, but he was not. By determining which memories he would record, that accursed quill was actually determining which memories he would remember.

Like Karelian’s splendid looks: they were something he had quite forgotten over the years. What did it matter if a man’s body was beautiful, if his soul was corrupt? Now, one by one, images kept tumbling out of the silent places of Paul’s mind, nudged free, like desire itself, by the smallest passing thing. Knights would ride along the valley road to Karn, too far away to recognize, nothing but a bit of dust and shimmer in the distance, and he would remember the first time he saw Karelian in Acre, a proud, glittering centaur of a man, reaching over a wall to snatch an orange as he rode. A young pilgrim would stop at the monastery, or a local lord would bring his son to have him schooled, and Paul would remember: Karelian’s hair was the same tawny color, and it hung to his shoulders exactly so, glinting in the torchlight….

He walked for a very long time, until his feet were sodden with spring mud and numb with cold. It was Sunday, and across the river which bounded the monastery’s property he could see serfs enjoying their few hours of freedom, chasing a ball around, yelling at each other, urged on by laughing women who did not hesitate to join in the game themselves now and then, simply so everyone might end in a tangle in the grass. The people, he thought sadly, never changed. They listened to the priests. They bowed their heads and made their penances. And then a glass of rough beer, or the sound of a fife, or an hour in the summer sun, and it was as though the priests had never spoken. The Church struggled and fought and sacrificed and prayed, and the great body of men just went on living as though it weren’t there.

And the evils of Car-Iduna were still unbound, still stalking the Reinmark from the wood of Helmardin. So much had been destroyed, so many good men brought to ruin, and Car Iduna was still there.
She
was still there, her sorcery coiled in the forests and in his cell, waiting to entangle him again. He reached the brook and halted, turning back the way he came. Woods blocked even the spire of the monastery from view. He felt utterly alone, and more afraid than he had been for many years.

It was bad enough to face his personal memories. But what of the other thing, the thing he dared not write about, not in this chronicle or any other, not even for the pope? What if she compelled those words upon his quill? What if she forced him to betray his secret, a secret he was never meant to know? He would have to quit writing, that was all. Somehow he would have to quit.

* * *

The hall of Car-Iduna shimmered with light. There were torches everywhere, and voices. Many people were gathered there, yet I have not even a vague recollection of their number; and although we remained for more than a day, I can call to mind only a handful of faces. So powerful was the sorcery of the place that it could steal a man’s soul, and yet elude his reason like a dream.

I understand such things now, after years of reflection. But at the time, walking pale with terror at my lord’s back, I was thinking only of how we might escape unharmed.

“We must neither sleep here,” Reinhard warned us, “nor touch any food or drink.” But Karelian did not heed his wisdom, nor did Reinhard himself, nor did any of our company except me. As soon as we were inside Car-Iduna’s high-domed hall, servants came and plied us with cups of heated wine and offerings of food. The men were hungry and cold, and the Lady of the Mountain very gracious. There was nothing menacing which they could see, no trolls or dragons or headless men, and so they imagined they were safe.

Karelian took the cup, and thanked her, raising it in a gallant salute, and then he drank. Reinhard, with a small shrug of resignation, followed his lead. If his lord would hang, well then, he would hang beside him. And so one by one the company was lost to magic.

The dwarf Marius showed us to the chambers which had been set aside for us, where we might leave our belongings. Then he took us to the baths, which were tiled and had heated water. Though it was common in the east, this was a luxury which I think no lord in Europe enjoyed except the emperor, in his splendid palace at Aachen. All the men marvelled at it, but to me it seemed only further proof of the castle’s fearful magic.

We were given fresh clothing to wear, all of it finely made. For Karelian there was a tunic embroidered with the emblem of the winter tree— beautifully embroidered on white linen and trimmed with cloth of gold. This gift pleased him very much, and he said again how gracious the lady was, and how he must find some gift for her in return. In the end he gave her everything he had.

Marius took us back to the great hall. There would be a feast tonight, he said, and revelry and songs; he urged us to enjoy all which might be offered us. Only remember, he added, remember always that his lady was a queen.

The hall was round and domed, and I have often wondered if the castle was a castle at all, or a cavern hollowed into the earth. Perhaps the towers and lights we had seen were only phantoms, and we walked now within the belly of the earth. Plants grew full of flowers, as though it were summer. Again and again as we moved among the gathering we saw wild creatures— foxes, snakes, strange birds who thought nothing of landing on a man’s shoulder and chirping in his ear. But if they were truly creatures, tamed by the lady’s magic, or if they were humans changed into beasts, I did not know, and scarcely dared to wonder.

We had been back only a short time when the ceremony began, and the clamor of voices fell still. From an open doorway on the far side of the hall, opposite from where we had entered, came the sound of music: the slow beat of a drum, the sad, sweet cry of a reed pipe, the steady shiver of a drone. It was beautiful music, beautiful and strange, and utterly hypnotic. A procession was moving out of the inner chamber, slowly, with great solemnity. First came the musicians, dressed in red and silver, and then a body of warriors, with painted helmets and shields. I will not call them knights, for some were women, and none of them were Christian, but they were splendidly dressed and armed. Behind these came dancers, all young people wearing light tunics, their hair unbound and their feet bare.

And then…. Even now my mind falters. I am fifty years old now, a learned man and a monk, and yet I look at the memories which coil in my mind and ask if they are not, perhaps, the leavings of an incubus. For how could those things which I saw in Car-Iduna have been possible, even in such a place, even with God’s permission?

Nine women came from the sanctuary beyond the great hall, carrying a bier, and on the bier was a Chalice. Or so I call it for its shape, but how can such a sacred word be used to describe so dark a thing? It was neither gold nor silver, nor even bronze or fine pottery. It looked as if it were made of mud, and yet it shimmered like a jewel. When it passed close to me I saw that it was scabbed with moss and hung with threads of vine.

The women who bore it were dressed in long silver robes. They were all old women, and as they carried the bier towards us they also turned it, forming its path into a spiral. Each person in the lady’s company bowed as it passed. We stood rigid, frozen in doubt and peril; then Karelian, always the diplomat, bowed his head as well. Out of sheer terror I did the same.

I have no excuse for doing so, as I have no excuse for my many silences. I knew the thing held within it a terrible power, and I was not mistaken. For the lady led us then to share in her feast, and to our great amazement the servants needed only to hold our wine cups before the Chalice, and they would fill with amber wine, or to lay our plates before it, and they would be laden with the finest foods, with anything we wished. Our men all marvelled at this, too, and not one of them thought to ask: By what power is this done? Who does this lady and her Chalice serve?

We sat at one of several long tables in the hall, Karelian at the lady’s right hand, the seneschal at her left. Our knights and various members of her court filled the length of it. She was, of course, the undisputed center of attention— especially Karelian’s attention. She was witty, and spoke freely on any subject she pleased, much as the women of Constantinople had done, who dared to express opinions even on the conduct of war. But she had a breadth of knowledge greater than they, a knowledge which no woman could possess except by witchcraft.

She would say astonishing, reckless things, and then laugh, waiting for Karelian’s response, pleased if he answered her well, and then baiting him again. It was a game of seduction, I understood that, but it was a great deal more. She was studying him, learning the ways of his mind and finding his weaknesses. And he was trying to do the same. For all the toasts and flattery, for all the occasions he took to comment on her beauty or her cleverness, there was an edge sometimes to his words, barely concealing the unspoken question:
Who are you, and what do you want from me?

It was an unequal contest, as such contests always are between women and their prey. My lord was a gifted man. Gottfried ranked him among the best of his vassals, not merely for his skill with arms, but also for his wisdom, his ability to speak well and to manoeuvre through the traps of other men’s words. But here his wisdom failed him. From the start he was only half thinking of his danger, and by the night’s end all he wanted was to please her, and win her to his bed.